transcriber's note: this text was based on the plain ascii text created by jo churcher, scarborough, ontario (jchurche@io.org), then proofread against a reprint of a edition (macmillan & co. ltd., london). the illustrations by h.r. millar have been omitted from this text-only version. --------------------------------------------------------------------- puck of pook's hill by rudyard kipling contents weland's sword young men at the manor the knights of the joyous venture old men at pevensey a centurion of the thirtieth on the great wall the winged hats hal o' the draft 'dymchurch flit' the treasure and the law weland's sword puck's song see you the dimpled track that runs, all hollow through the wheat? o that was where they hauled the guns that smote king philip's fleet! see you our little mill that clacks, so busy by the brook? she has ground her corn and paid her tax ever since domesday book. see you our stilly woods of oak, and the dread ditch beside? o that was where the saxons broke, on the day that harold died! see you the windy levels spread about the gates of rye? o that was where the northmen fled, when alfred's ships came by! see you our pastures wide and lone, where the red oxen browse? o there was a city thronged and known, ere london boasted a house! and see you, after rain, the trace of mound and ditch and wall? o that was a legion's camping-place, when cæsar sailed from gaul! and see you marks that show and fade, like shadows on the downs? o they are the lines the flint men made, to guard their wondrous towns! trackway and camp and city lost, salt marsh where now is corn; old wars, old peace, old arts that cease, and so was england born! she is not any common earth, water or wood or air, but merlin's isle of gramarye, where you and i will fare. the children were at the theatre, acting to three cows as much as they could remember of _midsummer night's dream_. their father had made them a small play out of the big shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. they began when nick bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey's head on his shoulders, and finds titania, queen of the fairies, asleep. then they skipped to the part where bottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he falls asleep in titania's arms. dan was puck and nick bottom, as well as all three fairies. he wore a pointy-eared cloth cap for puck, and a paper donkey's head out of a christmas cracker--but it tore if you were not careful--for bottom. una was titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand. the theatre lay in a meadow called the long slip. a little mill-stream, carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old fairy ring of darkened grass, which was the stage. the millstream banks, overgrown with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient places to wait in till your turn came; and a grown-up who had seen it said that shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his play. they were not, of course, allowed to act on midsummer night itself, but they went down after tea on midsummer eve, when the shadows were growing, and they took their supper--hard-boiled eggs, bath oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope--with them. three cows had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing noise that one could hear all down the meadow; and the noise of the mill at work sounded like bare feet running on hard ground. a cuckoo sat on a gate-post singing his broken june tune, 'cuckoo-cuk', while a busy kingfisher crossed from the mill-stream, to the brook which ran on the other side of the meadow. everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass. their play went beautifully. dan remembered all his parts--puck, bottom, and the three fairies--and una never forgot a word of titania--not even the difficult piece where she tells the fairies how to feed bottom with 'apricocks, green figs, and dewberries', and all the lines end in 'ies'. they were both so pleased that they acted it three times over from beginning to end before they sat down in the unthistly centre of the ring to eat eggs and bath olivers. this was when they heard a whistle among the alders on the bank, and they jumped. the bushes parted. in the very spot where dan had stood as puck they saw a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting blue eyes, and a grin that ran right across his freckled face. he shaded his forehead as though he were watching quince, snout, bottom, and the others rehearsing _pyramus and thisbe_, and, in a voice as deep as three cows asking to be milked, he began: 'what hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, so near the cradle of our fairy queen?' he stopped, hollowed one hand round his ear, and, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, went on: 'what, a play toward? i'll be auditor; an actor, too, perhaps, if i see cause.' the children looked and gasped. the small thing--he was no taller than dan's shoulder--stepped quietly into the ring. 'i'm rather out of practice,' said he; 'but that's the way my part ought to be played.' still the children stared at him--from his dark-blue cap, like a big columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. at last he laughed. 'please don't look like that. it isn't my fault. what else could you expect?' he said. 'we didn't expect any one,' dan answered, slowly. 'this is our field.' 'is it?' said their visitor, sitting down. 'then what on human earth made you act _midsummer night's dream_ three times over, _on_ midsummer eve, _in_ the middle of a ring, and under--right _under_ one of my oldest hills in old england? pook's hill--puck's hill--puck's hill--pook's hill! it's as plain as the nose on my face.' he pointed to the bare, fern-covered slope of pook's hill that runs up from the far side of the mill-stream to a dark wood. beyond that wood the ground rises and rises for five hundred feet, till at last you climb out on the bare top of beacon hill, to look over the pevensey levels and the channel and half the naked south downs. 'by oak, ash, and thorn!' he cried, still laughing. 'if this had happened a few hundred years ago you'd have had all the people of the hills out like bees in june!' 'we didn't know it was wrong,' said dan. 'wrong!' the little fellow shook with laughter. 'indeed, it isn't wrong. you've done something that kings and knights and scholars in old days would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out. if merlin himself had helped you, you couldn't have managed better! you've broken the hills--you've broken the hills! it hasn't happened in a thousand years.' 'we--we didn't mean to,' said una. 'of course you didn't! that's just why you did it. unluckily the hills are empty now, and all the people of the hills are gone. i'm the only one left. i'm puck, the oldest old thing in england, very much at your service if--if you care to have anything to do with me. if you don't, of course you've only to say so, and i'll go.' he looked at the children, and the children looked at him for quite half a minute. his eyes did not twinkle any more. they were very kind, and there was the beginning of a good smile on his lips. una put out her hand. 'don't go,' she said. 'we like you.' 'have a bath oliver,' said dan, and he passed over the squashy envelope with the eggs. 'by oak, ash and thorn,' cried puck, taking off his blue cap, 'i like you too. sprinkle a plenty salt on the biscuit, dan, and i'll eat it with you. that'll show you the sort of person i am. some of us'--he went on, with his mouth full--'couldn't abide salt, or horse-shoes over a door, or mountain-ash berries, or running water, or cold iron, or the sound of church bells. but i'm puck!' he brushed the crumbs carefully from his doublet and shook hands. 'we always said, dan and i,' una stammered, 'that if it ever happened we'd know ex-actly what to do; but--but now it seems all different somehow.' 'she means meeting a fairy,' said dan. 'i never believed in 'em--not after i was six, anyhow.' 'i did,' said una. 'at least, i sort of half believed till we learned "farewell rewards". do you know "farewell rewards and fairies"?' 'do you mean this?' said puck. he threw his big head back and began at the second line: 'good housewives now may say, for now foul sluts in dairies do fare as well as they; and though they sweep their hearths no less ('join in, una!') than maids were wont to do, yet who of late for cleanliness finds sixpence in her shoe?' the echoes flapped all along the flat meadow. 'of course i know it,' he said. 'and then there's the verse about the rings,' said dan. 'when i was little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.' '"witness those rings and roundelays", do you mean?' boomed puck, with a voice like a great church organ. 'of theirs which yet remain, were footed in queen mary's days on many a grassy plain, but since of late elizabeth, and, later, james came in, are never seen on any heath as when the time hath been.' 'it's some time since i heard that sung, but there's no good beating about the bush: it's true. the people of the hills have all left. i saw them come into old england and i saw them go. giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits; heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes, and the rest--gone, all gone! i came into england with oak, ash and thorn, and when oak, ash and thorn are gone i shall go too.' dan looked round the meadow--at una's oak by the lower gate; at the line of ash trees that overhang otter pool where the mill-stream spills over when the mill does not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where three cows scratched their necks. 'it's all right,' he said; and added, 'i'm planting a lot of acorns this autumn too.' 'then aren't you most awfully old?' said una. 'not old--fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. let me see--my friends used to set my dish of cream for me o' nights when stonehenge was new. yes, before the flint men made the dewpond under chanctonbury ring.' una clasped her hands, cried 'oh!' and nodded her head. 'she's thought a plan,' dan explained. 'she always does like that when she thinks a plan.' 'i was thinking--suppose we saved some of our porridge and put it in the attic for you? they'd notice if we left it in the nursery.' 'schoolroom,' said dan quickly, and una flushed, because they had made a solemn treaty that summer not to call the schoolroom the nursery any more. 'bless your heart o' gold!' said puck. 'you'll make a fine considering wench some market-day. i really don't want you to put out a bowl for me; but if ever i need a bite, be sure i'll tell you.' he stretched himself at length on the dry grass, and the children stretched out beside him, their bare legs waving happily in the air. they felt they could not be afraid of him any more than of their particular friend old hobden the hedger. he did not bother them with grown-up questions, or laugh at the donkey's head, but lay and smiled to himself in the most sensible way. 'have you a knife on you?' he said at last. dan handed over his big one-bladed outdoor knife, and puck began to carve out a piece of turf from the centre of the ring. 'what's that for--magic?' said una, as he pressed up the square of chocolate loam that cut like so much cheese. 'one of my little magics,' he answered, and cut another. 'you see, i can't let you into the hills because the people of the hills have gone; but if you care to take seizin from me, i may be able to show you something out of the common here on human earth. you certainly deserve it.' 'what's taking seizin?' said dan, cautiously. 'it's an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. they used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren't lawfully seized of your land--it didn't really belong to you--till the other fellow had actually given you a piece of it--like this.' he held out the turves. 'but it's our own meadow,' said dan, drawing back. 'are you going to magic it away?' puck laughed. 'i know it's your meadow, but there's a great deal more in it than you or your father ever guessed. try!' he turned his eyes on una. 'i'll do it,' she said. dan followed her example at once. 'now are you two lawfully seized and possessed of all old england,' began puck, in a sing-song voice. 'by right of oak, ash, and thorn are you free to come and go and look and know where i shall show or best you please. you shall see what you shall see and you shall hear what you shall hear, though it shall have happened three thousand year; and you shall know neither doubt nor fear. fast! hold fast all i give you.' the children shut their eyes, but nothing happened. 'well?' said una, disappointedly opening them. 'i thought there would be dragons.' '"though it shall have happened three thousand year,"' said puck, and counted on his fingers. 'no; i'm afraid there were no dragons three thousand years ago.' 'but there hasn't happened anything at all,' said dan. 'wait awhile,' said puck. 'you don't grow an oak in a year--and old england's older than twenty oaks. let's sit down again and think. _i_ can do that for a century at a time.' 'ah, but you're a fairy,' said dan. 'have you ever heard me say that word yet?' said puck quickly. 'no. you talk about "the people of the hills", but you never say "fairies",' said una. 'i was wondering at that. don't you like it?' 'how would you like to be called "mortal" or "human being" all the time?' said puck; 'or "son of adam" or "daughter of eve"?' 'i shouldn't like it at all,' said dan. 'that's how the djinns and afrits talk in the _arabian nights_.' 'and that's how _i_ feel about saying--that word that i don't say. besides, what you call them are made-up things the people of the hills have never heard of--little buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze petticoats, and shiny stars in their hair, and a wand like a schoolteacher's cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ones. _i_ know 'em!' 'we don't mean that sort,' said dan. 'we hate 'em too.' 'exactly,' said puck. 'can you wonder that the people of the hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? butterfly wings, indeed! i've seen sir huon and a troop of his people setting off from tintagel castle for hy-brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the castle, and the horses of the hills wild with fright. out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. butterfly-wings! it was magic--magic as black as merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. and the horses of the hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! _that_ was how it was in the old days!' 'splendid,' said dan, but una shuddered. 'i'm glad they're gone, then; but what made the people of the hills go away?' una asked. 'different things. i'll tell you one of them some day--the thing that made the biggest flit of any,' said puck. 'but they didn't all flit at once. they dropped off, one by one, through the centuries. most of them were foreigners who couldn't stand our climate. _they_ flitted early.' 'how early?' said dan. 'a couple of thousand years or more. the fact is they began as gods. the phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the gauls, and the jutes, and the danes, and the frisians, and the angles brought more when they landed. they were always landing in those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they always brought their gods with them. england is a bad country for gods. now, _i_ began as i mean to go on. a bowl of porridge, a dish of milk, and a little quiet fun with the country folk in the lanes was enough for me then, as it is now. i belong here, you see, and i have been mixed up with people all my days. but most of the others insisted on being gods, and having temples, and altars, and priests, and sacrifices of their own.' 'people burned in wicker baskets?' said dan. 'like miss blake tells us about?' 'all sorts of sacrifices,' said puck. 'if it wasn't men, it was horses, or cattle, or pigs, or metheglin--that's a sticky, sweet sort of beer. _i_ never liked it. they were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the old things. but what was the result? men don't like being sacrificed at the best of times; they don't even like sacrificing their farm-horses. after a while, men simply left the old things alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the old things had to scuttle out and pick up a living as they could. some of them took to hanging about trees, and hiding in graves and groaning o' nights. if they groaned loud enough and long enough they might frighten a poor countryman into sacrificing a hen, or leaving a pound of butter for them. i remember one goddess called belisama. she became a common wet water-spirit somewhere in lancashire. and there were hundreds of other friends of mine. first they were gods. then they were people of the hills, and then they flitted to other places because they couldn't get on with the english for one reason or another. there was only one old thing, i remember, who honestly worked for his living after he came down in the world. he was called weland, and he was a smith to some gods. i've forgotten their names, but he used to make them swords and spears. i think he claimed kin with thor of the scandinavians.' '_heroes of asgard_ thor?' said una. she had been reading the book. 'perhaps,' answered puck. 'none the less, when bad times came, he didn't beg or steal. he worked; and i was lucky enough to be able to do him a good turn.' 'tell us about it,' said dan. 'i think i like hearing of old things.' they rearranged themselves comfortably, each chewing a grass stem. puck propped himself on one strong arm and went on: 'let's think! i met weland first on a november afternoon in a sleet storm, on pevensey level----' 'pevensey? over the hill, you mean?' dan pointed south. 'yes; but it was all marsh in those days, right up to horsebridge and hydeneye. i was on beacon hill--they called it brunanburgh then--when i saw the pale flame that burning thatch makes, and i went down to look. some pirates--i think they must have been peofn's men--were burning a village on the levels, and weland's image--a big, black wooden thing with amber beads round his neck--lay in the bows of a black thirty-two-oar galley that they had just beached. bitter cold it was! there were icicles hanging from her deck and the oars were glazed over with ice, and there was ice on weland's lips. when he saw me he began a long chant in his own tongue, telling me how he was going to rule england, and how i should smell the smoke of his altars from lincolnshire to the isle of wight. i didn't care! i'd seen too many gods charging into old england to be upset about it. i let him sing himself out while his men were burning the village, and then i said (i don't know what put it into my head), "smith of the gods," i said, "the time comes when i shall meet you plying your trade for hire by the wayside."' 'what did weland say?' said una. 'was he angry?' 'he called me names and rolled his eyes, and i went away to wake up the people inland. but the pirates conquered the country, and for centuries weland was a most important god. he had temples everywhere--from lincolnshire to the isle of wight, as he said--and his sacrifices were simply scandalous. to do him justice, he preferred horses to men; but men or horses, i knew that presently he'd have to come down in the world--like the other old things. i gave him lots of time--i gave him about a thousand years--and at the end of 'em i went into one of his temples near andover to see how he prospered. there was his altar, and there was his image, and there were his priests, and there were the congregation, and everybody seemed quite happy, except weland and the priests. in the old days the congregation were unhappy until the priests had chosen their sacrifices; and so would you have been. when the service began a priest rushed out, dragged a man up to the altar, pretended to hit him on the head with a little gilt axe, and the man fell down and pretended to die. then everybody shouted: "a sacrifice to weland! a sacrifice to weland!"' 'and the man wasn't really dead?' said una. 'not a bit. all as much pretence as a dolls' tea-party. then they brought out a splendid white horse, and the priest cut some hair from its mane and tail and burned it on the altar, shouting, "a sacrifice!" that counted the same as if a man and a horse had been killed. i saw poor weland's face through the smoke, and i couldn't help laughing. he looked so disgusted and so hungry, and all he had to satisfy himself was a horrid smell of burning hair. just a dolls' tea-party! 'i judged it better not to say anything then ('twouldn't have been fair), and the next time i came to andover, a few hundred years later, weland and his temple were gone, and there was a christian bishop in a church there. none of the people of the hills could tell me anything about him, and i supposed that he had left england.' puck turned; lay on the other elbow, and thought for a long time. 'let's see,' he said at last. 'it must have been some few years later--a year or two before the conquest, i think--that i came back to pook's hill here, and one evening i heard old hobden talking about weland's ford.' 'if you mean old hobden the hedger, he's only seventy-two. he told me so himself,' said dan. 'he's a intimate friend of ours.' 'you're quite right,' puck replied. 'i meant old hobden's ninth great-grandfather. he was a free man and burned charcoal hereabouts. i've known the family, father and son, so long that i get confused sometimes. hob of the dene was my hobden's name, and he lived at the forge cottage. of course, i pricked up my ears when i heard weland mentioned, and i scuttled through the woods to the ford just beyond bog wood yonder.' he jerked his head westward, where the valley narrows between wooded hills and steep hop-fields. 'why, that's willingford bridge,' said una. 'we go there for walks often. there's a kingfisher there.' 'it was weland's ford then, dear. a road led down to it from the beacon on the top of the hill--a shocking bad road it was--and all the hillside was thick, thick oak-forest, with deer in it. there was no trace of weland, but presently i saw a fat old farmer riding down from the beacon under the greenwood tree. his horse had cast a shoe in the clay, and when he came to the ford he dismounted, took a penny out of his purse, laid it on a stone, tied the old horse to an oak, and called out: "smith, smith, here is work for you!" then he sat down and went to sleep. you can imagine how _i_ felt when i saw a white-bearded, bent old blacksmith in a leather apron creep out from behind the oak and begin to shoe the horse. it was weland himself. i was so astonished that i jumped out and said: "what on human earth are you doing here, weland?"' 'poor weland!' sighed una. 'he pushed the long hair back from his forehead (he didn't recognize me at first). then he said: "_you_ ought to know. you foretold it, old thing. i'm shoeing horses for hire. i'm not even weland now," he said. "they call me wayland-smith."' 'poor chap!' said dan. 'what did you say?' 'what could i say? he looked up, with the horse's foot on his lap, and he said, smiling, "i remember the time when i wouldn't have accepted this old bag of bones as a sacrifice, and now i'm glad enough to shoe him for a penny." '"isn't there any way for you to get back to valhalla, or wherever you come from?" i said. '"i'm afraid not," he said, rasping away at the hoof. he had a wonderful touch with horses. the old beast was whinnying on his shoulder. "you may remember that i was not a gentle god in my day and my time and my power. i shall never be released till some human being truly wishes me well." '"surely," said i, "the farmer can't do less than that. you're shoeing the horse all round for him." '"yes," said he, "and my nails will hold a shoe from one full moon to the next. but farmers and weald clay," said he, "are both uncommon cold and sour." 'would you believe it, that when that farmer woke and found his horse shod he rode away without one word of thanks? i was so angry that i wheeled his horse right round and walked him back three miles to the beacon, just to teach the old sinner politeness.' 'were you invisible?' said una. puck nodded, gravely. 'the beacon was always laid in those days ready to light, in case the french landed at pevensey; and i walked the horse about and about it that lee-long summer night. the farmer thought he was bewitched--well, he _was_, of course--and began to pray and shout. _i_ didn't care! i was as good a christian as he any fair-day in the county, and about four o'clock in the morning a young novice came along from the monastery that used to stand on the top of beacon hill.' 'what's a novice?' said dan. 'it really means a man who is beginning to be a monk, but in those days people sent their sons to a monastery just the same as a school. this young fellow had been to a monastery in france for a few months every year, and he was finishing his studies in the monastery close to his home here. hugh was his name, and he had got up to go fishing hereabouts. his people owned all this valley. hugh heard the farmer shouting, and asked him what in the world he meant. the old man spun him a wonderful tale about fairies and goblins and witches; and i _know_ he hadn't seen a thing except rabbits and red deer all that night. (the people of the hills are like otters--they don't show except when they choose.) but the novice wasn't a fool. he looked down at the horse's feet, and saw the new shoes fastened as only weland knew how to fasten 'em. (weland had a way of turning down the nails that folks called the smith's clinch.) '"h'm!" said the novice. "where did you get your horse shod?" 'the farmer wouldn't tell him at first, because the priests never liked their people to have any dealings with the old things. at last he confessed that the smith had done it. "what did you pay him?" said the novice. "penny," said the farmer, very sulkily. "that's less than a christian would have charged," said the novice. "i hope you threw a 'thank you' into the bargain." "no," said the farmer; "wayland-smith's a heathen." "heathen or no heathen," said the novice, "you took his help, and where you get help there you must give thanks." "what?" said the farmer--he was in a furious temper because i was walking the old horse in circles all this time--"what, you young jackanapes?" said he. "then by your reasoning i ought to say 'thank you' to satan if he helped me?" "don't roll about up there splitting reasons with me," said the novice. "come back to the ford and thank the smith, or you'll be sorry." 'back the farmer had to go. i led the horse, though no one saw me, and the novice walked beside us, his gown swishing through the shiny dew and his fishing-rod across his shoulders, spear-wise. when we reached the ford again--it was five o'clock and misty still under the oaks--the farmer simply wouldn't say "thank you." he said he'd tell the abbot that the novice wanted him to worship heathen gods. then hugh the novice lost his temper. he just cried, "out!" put his arm under the farmer's fat leg, and heaved him from his saddle on to the turf, and before he could rise he caught him by the back of the neck and shook him like a rat till the farmer growled, "thank you, wayland-smith."' 'did weland see all this?' said dan. 'oh yes, and he shouted his old war-cry when the farmer thudded on to the ground. he was delighted. then the novice turned to the oak tree and said, "ho, smith of the gods! i am ashamed of this rude farmer; but for all you have done in kindness and charity to him and to others of our people, i thank you and wish you well." then he picked up his fishing-rod--it looked more like a tall spear than ever--and tramped off down your valley.' 'and what did poor weland do?' said una. 'he laughed and he cried with joy, because he had been released at last, and could go away. but he was an honest old thing. he had worked for his living and he paid his debts before he left. "i shall give that novice a gift," said weland. "a gift that shall do him good the wide world over and old england after him. blow up my fire, old thing, while i get the iron for my last task." then he made a sword--a dark-grey, wavy-lined sword--and i blew the fire while he hammered. by oak, ash and thorn, i tell you, weland was a smith of the gods! he cooled that sword in running water twice, and the third time he cooled it in the evening dew, and he laid it out in the moonlight and said runes (that's charms) over it, and he carved runes of prophecy on the blade. "old thing," he said to me, wiping his forehead, "this is the best blade that weland ever made. even the user will never know how good it is. come to the monastery." 'we went to the dormitory where the monks slept, we saw the novice fast asleep in his cot, and weland put the sword into his hand, and i remember the young fellow gripped it in his sleep. then weland strode as far as he dared into the chapel and threw down all his shoeing-tools--his hammers and pincers and rasps--to show that he had done with them for ever. it sounded like suits of armour falling, and the sleepy monks ran in, for they thought the monastery had been attacked by the french. the novice came first of all, waving his new sword and shouting saxon battle-cries. when they saw the shoeing-tools they were very bewildered, till the novice asked leave to speak, and told what he had done to the farmer, and what he had said to wayland-smith, and how, though the dormitory light was burning, he had found the wonderful rune-carved sword in his cot. 'the abbot shook his head at first, and then he laughed and said to the novice: "son hugh, it needed no sign from a heathen god to show me that you will never be a monk. take your sword, and keep your sword, and go with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and courteous. we will hang up the smith's tools before the altar," he said, "because, whatever the smith of the gods may have been, in the old days, we know that he worked honestly for his living and made gifts to mother church." then they went to bed again, all except the novice, and he sat up in the garth playing with his sword. then weland said to me by the stables: "farewell, old thing; you had the right of it. you saw me come to england, and you see me go. farewell!" 'with that he strode down the hill to the corner of the great woods--woods corner, you call it now--to the very place where he had first landed--and i heard him moving through the thickets towards horsebridge for a little, and then he was gone. that was how it happened. i saw it.' both children drew a long breath. 'but what happened to hugh the novice?' said una. 'and the sword?' said dan. puck looked down the meadow that lay all quiet and cool in the shadow of pook's hill. a corncrake jarred in a hay-field near by, and the small trouts of the brook began to jump. a big white moth flew unsteadily from the alders and flapped round the children's heads, and the least little haze of water-mist rose from the brook. 'do you really want to know?' puck said. 'we do,' cried the children. 'awfully!' 'very good. i promised you that you shall see what you shall see, and you shall hear what you shall hear, though it shall have happened three thousand year; but just now it seems to me that, unless you go back to the house, people will be looking for you. i'll walk with you as far as the gate.' 'will you be here when we come again?' they asked. 'surely, sure-ly,' said puck. 'i've been here some time already. one minute first, please.' he gave them each three leaves--one of oak, one of ash and one of thorn. 'bite these,' said he. 'otherwise you might be talking at home of what you've seen and heard, and--if i know human beings--they'd send for the doctor. bite!' they bit hard, and found themselves walking side by side to the lower gate. their father was leaning over it. 'and how did your play go?' he asked. 'oh, splendidly,' said dan. 'only afterwards, i think, we went to sleep. it was very hot and quiet. don't you remember, una?' una shook her head and said nothing. 'i see,' said her father. 'late--late in the evening kilmeny came home, for kilmeny had been she could not tell where, and kilmeny had seen what she could not declare. but why are you chewing leaves at your time of life, daughter? for fun?' 'no. it was for something, but i can't azactly remember,' said una. and neither of them could till---- a tree song of all the trees that grow so fair, old england to adorn, greater are none beneath the sun, than oak, and ash, and thorn. sing oak, and ash, and thorn, good sirs (all of a midsummer morn)! surely we sing no little thing, in oak, and ash, and thorn! oak of the clay lived many a day, or ever Æneas began; ash of the loam was a lady at home, when brut was an outlaw man; thorn of the down saw new troy town (from which was london born); witness hereby the ancientry of oak, and ash, and thorn! yew that is old in churchyard mould, he breedeth a mighty bow; alder for shoes do wise men choose, and beech for cups also. but when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled, and your shoes are clean outworn, back ye must speed for all that ye need, to oak and ash and thorn! ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth till every gust be laid, to drop a limb on the head of him that anyway trusts her shade: but whether a lad be sober or sad, or mellow with ale from the horn, he will take no wrong when he lieth along 'neath oak, and ash, and thorn! oh, do not tell the priest our plight, or he would call it a sin; but--we have been out in the woods all night, a-conjuring summer in! and we bring you news by word of mouth-- good news for cattle and corn-- now is the sun come up from the south, with oak, and ash, and thorn! sing oak, and ash, and thorn, good sirs (all of a midsummer morn)! england shall bide till judgement tide, by oak and ash and thorn! young men at the manor they were fishing, a few days later, in the bed of the brook that for centuries had cut deep into the soft valley soil. the trees closing overhead made long tunnels through which the sunshine worked in blobs and patches. down in the tunnels were bars of sand and gravel, old roots and trunks covered with moss or painted red by the irony water; foxgloves growing lean and pale towards the light; clumps of fern and thirsty shy flowers who could not live away from moisture and shade. in the pools you could see the wave thrown up by the trouts as they charged hither and yon, and the pools were joined to each other--except in flood time, when all was one brown rush--by sheets of thin broken water that poured themselves chuckling round the darkness of the next bend. this was one of the children's most secret hunting-grounds, and their particular friend, old hobden the hedger, had shown them how to use it. except for the click of a rod hitting a low willow, or a switch and tussle among the young ash-leaves as a line hung up for the minute, nobody in the hot pasture could have guessed what game was going on among the trouts below the banks. 'we've got half-a-dozen,' said dan, after a warm, wet hour. 'i vote we go up to stone bay and try long pool.' una nodded--most of her talk was by nods--and they crept from the gloom of the tunnels towards the tiny weir that turns the brook into the mill-stream. here the banks are low and bare, and the glare of the afternoon sun on the long pool below the weir makes your eyes ache. when they were in the open they nearly fell down with astonishment. a huge grey horse, whose tail-hairs crinkled the glassy water, was drinking in the pool, and the ripples about his muzzle flashed like melted gold. on his back sat an old, white-haired man dressed in a loose glimmery gown of chain-mail. he was bare-headed, and a nut-shaped iron helmet hung at his saddle-bow. his reins were of red leather five or six inches deep, scalloped at the edges, and his high padded saddle with its red girths was held fore and aft by a red leather breastband and crupper. 'look!' said una, as though dan were not staring his very eyes out. 'it's like the picture in your room--"sir isumbras at the ford".' the rider turned towards them, and his thin, long face was just as sweet and gentle as that of the knight who carries the children in that picture. 'they should be here now, sir richard,' said puck's deep voice among the willow-herb. 'they are here,' the knight said, and he smiled at dan with the string of trouts in his hand. 'there seems no great change in boys since mine fished this water.' 'if your horse has drunk, we shall be more at ease in the ring,' said puck; and he nodded to the children as though he had never magicked away their memories a week before. the great horse turned and hoisted himself into the pasture with a kick and a scramble that tore the clods down rattling. 'your pardon!' said sir richard to dan. 'when these lands were mine, i never loved that mounted men should cross the brook except by the paved ford. but my swallow here was thirsty, and i wished to meet you.' 'we're very glad you've come, sir,' said dan. 'it doesn't matter in the least about the banks.' he trotted across the pasture on the sword side of the mighty horse, and it was a mighty iron-handled sword that swung from sir richard's belt. una walked behind with puck. she remembered everything now. 'i'm sorry about the leaves,' he said, 'but it would never have done if you had gone home and told, would it?' 'i s'pose not,' una answered. 'but you said that all the fair--people of the hills had left england.' 'so they have; but i told you that you should come and go and look and know, didn't i? the knight isn't a fairy. he's sir richard dalyngridge, a very old friend of mine. he came over with william the conqueror, and he wants to see you particularly.' 'what for?' said una. 'on account of your great wisdom and learning,' puck replied, without a twinkle. 'us?' said una. 'why, i don't know my nine times--not to say it dodging, and dan makes the most _awful_ mess of fractions. he can't mean _us_!' 'una!' dan called back. 'sir richard says he is going to tell what happened to weland's sword. he's got it. isn't it splendid?' 'nay--nay,' said sir richard, dismounting as they reached the ring, in the bend of the mill-stream bank. 'it is you that must tell me, for i hear the youngest child in our england today is as wise as our wisest clerk.' he slipped the bit out of swallow's mouth, dropped the ruby-red reins over his head, and the wise horse moved off to graze. sir richard (they noticed he limped a little) unslung his great sword. 'that's it,' dan whispered to una. 'this is the sword that brother hugh had from wayland-smith,' sir richard said. 'once he gave it me, but i would not take it; but at the last it became mine after such a fight as never christened man fought. see!' he half drew it from its sheath and turned it before them. on either side just below the handle, where the runic letters shivered as though they were alive, were two deep gouges in the dull, deadly steel. 'now, what thing made those?' said he. 'i know not, but you, perhaps, can say.' 'tell them all the tale, sir richard,' said puck. 'it concerns their land somewhat.' 'yes, from the very beginning,' una pleaded, for the knight's good face and the smile on it more than ever reminded her of 'sir isumbras at the ford'. they settled down to listen, sir richard bare-headed to the sunshine, dandling the sword in both hands, while the grey horse cropped outside the ring, and the helmet on the saddle-bow clinged softly each time he jerked his head. 'from the beginning, then,' sir richard said, 'since it concerns your land, i will tell the tale. when our duke came out of normandy to take his england, great knights (have ye heard?) came and strove hard to serve the duke, because he promised them lands here, and small knights followed the great ones. my folk in normandy were poor; but a great knight, engerrard of the eagle--engenulf de aquila--who was kin to my father, followed the earl of mortain, who followed william the duke, and i followed de aquila. yes, with thirty men-at-arms out of my father's house and a new sword, i set out to conquer england three days after i was made knight. i did not then know that england would conquer me. we went up to santlache with the rest--a very great host of us.' 'does that mean the battle of hastings--ten sixty-six?' una whispered, and puck nodded, so as not to interrupt. 'at santlache, over the hill yonder'--he pointed south-eastward towards fairlight--'we found harold's men. we fought. at the day's end they ran. my men went with de aquila's to chase and plunder, and in that chase engerrard of the eagle was slain, and his son gilbert took his banner and his men forward. this i did not know till after, for swallow here was cut in the flank, so i stayed to wash the wound at a brook by a thorn. there a single saxon cried out to me in french, and we fought together. i should have known his voice, but we fought together. for a long time neither had any advantage, till by pure ill-fortune his foot slipped and his sword flew from his hand. now i had but newly been made knight, and wished, above all, to be courteous and fameworthy, so i forbore to strike and bade him get his sword again. "a plague on my sword," said he. "it has lost me my first fight. you have spared my life. take my sword." he held it out to me, but as i stretched my hand the sword groaned like a stricken man, and i leaped back crying, "sorcery!"' [the children looked at the sword as though it might speak again.] 'suddenly a clump of saxons ran out upon me and, seeing a norman alone, would have killed me, but my saxon cried out that i was his prisoner, and beat them off. thus, see you, he saved my life. he put me on my horse and led me through the woods ten long miles to this valley.' 'to here, d'you mean?' said una. 'to this very valley. we came in by the lower ford under the king's hill yonder'--he pointed eastward where the valley widens. 'and was that saxon hugh the novice?' dan asked. 'yes, and more than that. he had been for three years at the monastery at bec by rouen, where'--sir richard chuckled--'the abbot herluin would not suffer me to remain.' 'why wouldn't he?' said dan. 'because i rode my horse into the refectory, when the scholars were at meat, to show the saxon boys we normans were not afraid of an abbot. it was that very saxon hugh tempted me to do it, and we had not met since that day. i thought i knew his voice even inside my helmet, and, for all that our lords fought, we each rejoiced we had not slain the other. he walked by my side, and he told me how a heathen god, as he believed, had given him his sword, but he said he had never heard it sing before. i remember i warned him to beware of sorcery and quick enchantments.' sir richard smiled to himself. 'i was very young--very young! 'when we came to his house here we had almost forgotten that we had been at blows. it was near midnight, and the great hall was full of men and women waiting news. there i first saw his sister, the lady Ælueva, of whom he had spoken to us in france. she cried out fiercely at me, and would have had me hanged in that hour, but her brother said that i had spared his life--he said not how he saved mine from the saxons--and that our duke had won the day; and even while they wrangled over my poor body, of a sudden he fell down in a swoon from his wounds. '"this is _thy_ fault," said the lady Ælueva to me, and she kneeled above him and called for wine and cloths. '"if i had known," i answered, "he should have ridden and i walked. but he set me on my horse; he made no complaint; he walked beside me and spoke merrily throughout. i pray i have done him no harm." '"thou hast need to pray," she said, catching up her underlip. "if he dies, thou shalt hang." 'they bore off hugh to his chamber; but three tall men of the house bound me and set me under the beam of the great hall with a rope round my neck. the end of the rope they flung over the beam, and they sat them down by the fire to wait word whether hugh lived or died. they cracked nuts with their knife-hilts the while.' 'and how did you feel?' said dan. 'very weary; but i did heartily pray for my schoolmate hugh his health. about noon i heard horses in the valley, and the three men loosed my ropes and fled out, and de aquila's men rode up. gilbert de aquila came with them, for it was his boast that, like his father, he forgot no man that served him. he was little, like his father, but terrible, with a nose like an eagle's nose and yellow eyes like an eagle. he rode tall warhorses--roans, which he bred himself--and he could never abide to be helped into the saddle. he saw the rope hanging from the beam and laughed, and his men laughed, for i was too stiff to rise. '"this is poor entertainment for a norman knight," he said, "but, such as it is, let us be grateful. show me, boy, to whom thou owest most, and we will pay them out of hand."' 'what did he mean? to kill 'em?' said dan. 'assuredly. but i looked at the lady Ælueva where she stood among her maids, and her brother beside her. de aquila's men had driven them all into the great hall.' 'was she pretty?' said una. 'in all my long life i have never seen woman fit to strew rushes before my lady Ælueva,' the knight replied, quite simply and quietly. 'as i looked at her i thought i might save her and her house by a jest. '"seeing that i came somewhat hastily and without warning," said i to de aquila, "i have no fault to find with the courtesy that these saxons have shown me." but my voice shook. it is--it was not good to jest with that little man. 'all were silent awhile, till de aquila laughed. "look, men--a miracle," said he. "the fight is scarce sped, my father is not yet buried, and here we find our youngest knight already set down in his manor, while his saxons--ye can see it in their fat faces--have paid him homage and service! by the saints," he said, rubbing his nose, "i never thought england would be so easy won! surely i can do no less than give the lad what he has taken. this manor shall be thine, boy," he said, "till i come again, or till thou art slain. now, mount, men, and ride. we follow our duke into kent to make him king of england." 'he drew me with him to the door while they brought his horse--a lean roan, taller than my swallow here, but not so well girthed. '"hark to me," he said, fretting with his great war-gloves. "i have given thee this manor, which is a saxon hornets' nest, and i think thou wilt be slain in a month--as my father was slain. yet if thou canst keep the roof on the hall, the thatch on the barn, and the plough in the furrow till i come back, thou shalt hold the manor from me; for the duke has promised our earl mortain all the lands by pevensey, and mortain will give me of them what he would have given my father. god knows if thou or i shall live till england is won; but remember, boy, that here and now fighting is foolishness and"--he reached for the reins--"craft and cunning is all." '"alas, i have no cunning," said i. '"not yet," said he, hopping abroad, foot in stirrup, and poking his horse in the belly with his toe. "not yet, but i think thou hast a good teacher. farewell! hold the manor and live. lose the manor and hang," he said, and spurred out, his shield-straps squeaking behind him. 'so, children, here was i, little more than a boy, and santlache fight not two days old, left alone with my thirty men-at-arms, in a land i knew not, among a people whose tongue i could not speak, to hold down the land which i had taken from them.' 'and that was here at home?' said una. 'yes, here. see! from the upper ford, weland's ford, to the lower ford, by the belle allée, west and east it ran half a league. from the beacon of brunanburgh behind us here, south and north it ran a full league--and all the woods were full of broken men from santlache, saxon thieves, norman plunderers, robbers, and deer-stealers. a hornets' nest indeed! 'when de aquila had gone, hugh would have thanked me for saving their lives; but the lady Ælueva said that i had done it only for the sake of receiving the manor. '"how could i know that de aquila would give it me?" i said. "if i had told him i had spent my night in your halter he would have burned the place twice over by now." '"if any man had put _my_ neck in a rope," she said, "i would have seen his house burned thrice over before _i_ would have made terms." '"but it was a woman," i said; and i laughed, and she wept and said that i mocked her in her captivity. '"lady," said i, "there is no captive in this valley except one, and he is not a saxon." 'at this she cried that i was a norman thief, who came with false, sweet words, having intended from the first to turn her out in the fields to beg her bread. into the fields! she had never seen the face of war! 'i was angry, and answered, "this much at least i can disprove, for i swear"--and on my sword-hilt i swore it in that place--"i swear i will never set foot in the great hall till the lady Ælueva herself shall summon me there." 'she went away, saying nothing, and i walked out, and hugh limped after me, whistling dolorously (that is a custom of the english), and we came upon the three saxons that had bound me. they were now bound by my men-at-arms, and behind them stood some fifty stark and sullen churls of the house and the manor, waiting to see what should fall. we heard de aquila's trumpets blow thin through the woods kentward. '"shall we hang these?" said my men. '"then my churls will fight," said hugh, beneath his breath; but i bade him ask the three what mercy they hoped for. '"none," said they all. "she bade us hang thee if our master died. and we would have hanged thee. there is no more to it." 'as i stood doubting, a woman ran down from the oak wood above the king's hill yonder, and cried out that some normans were driving off the swine there. '"norman or saxon," said i, "we must beat them back, or they will rob us every day. out at them with any arms ye have!" so i loosed those three carles and we ran together, my men-at-arms and the saxons with bills and axes which they had hidden in the thatch of their huts, and hugh led them. half-way up the king's hill we found a false fellow from picardy--a sutler that sold wine in the duke's camp--with a dead knight's shield on his arm, a stolen horse under him, and some ten or twelve wastrels at his tail, all cutting and slashing at the pigs. we beat them off, and saved our pork. one hundred and seventy pigs we saved in that great battle.' sir richard laughed. 'that, then, was our first work together, and i bade hugh tell his folk that so would i deal with any man, knight or churl, norman or saxon, who stole as much as one egg from our valley. said he to me, riding home: "thou hast gone far to conquer england this evening." i answered: "england must be thine and mine, then. help me, hugh, to deal aright with these people. make them to know that if they slay me de aquila will surely send to slay them, and he will put a worse man in my place." "that may well be true," said he, and gave me his hand. "better the devil we know than the devil we know not, till we can pack you normans home." and so, too, said his saxons; and they laughed as we drove the pigs downhill. but i think some of them, even then, began not to hate me.' 'i like brother hugh,' said una, softly. 'beyond question he was the most perfect, courteous, valiant, tender, and wise knight that ever drew breath,' said sir richard, caressing the sword. 'he hung up his sword--this sword--on the wall of the great hall, because he said it was fairly mine, and never he took it down till de aquila returned, as i shall presently show. for three months his men and mine guarded the valley, till all robbers and nightwalkers learned there was nothing to get from us save hard tack and a hanging. side by side we fought against all who came--thrice a week sometimes we fought--against thieves and landless knights looking for good manors. then we were in some peace, and i made shift by hugh's help to govern the valley--for all this valley of yours was my manor--as a knight should. i kept the roof on the hall and the thatch on the barn, but ... the english are a bold people. his saxons would laugh and jest with hugh, and hugh with them, and--this was marvellous to me--if even the meanest of them said that such and such a thing was the custom of the manor, then straightway would hugh and such old men of the manor as might be near forsake everything else to debate the matter--i have seen them stop the mill with the corn half ground--and if the custom or usage were proven to be as it was said, why, that was the end of it, even though it were flat against hugh, his wish and command. wonderful!' 'aye,' said puck, breaking in for the first time. 'the custom of old england was here before your norman knights came, and it outlasted them, though they fought against it cruel.' 'not i,' said sir richard. 'i let the saxons go their stubborn way, but when my own men-at-arms, normans not six months in england, stood up and told me what was the custom of the country, then i was angry. ah, good days! ah, wonderful people! and i loved them all.' the knight lifted his arms as though he would hug the whole dear valley, and swallow, hearing the chink of his chain-mail, looked up and whinnied softly. 'at last,' he went on, 'after a year of striving and contriving and some little driving, de aquila came to the valley, alone and without warning. i saw him first at the lower ford, with a swineherd's brat on his saddle-bow. '"there is no need for thee to give any account of thy stewardship," said he. "i have it all from the child here." and he told me how the young thing had stopped his tall horse at the ford, by waving of a branch, and crying that the way was barred. "and if one bold, bare babe be enough to guard the ford in these days, thou hast done well," said he, and puffed and wiped his head. 'he pinched the child's cheek, and looked at our cattle in the flat by the river. '"both fat," said he, rubbing his nose. "this is craft and cunning such as i love. what did i tell thee when i rode away, boy?" '"hold the manor or hang," said i. i had never forgotten it. '"true. and thou hast held." he clambered from his saddle and with his sword's point cut out a turf from the bank and gave it me where i kneeled.' dan looked at una, and una looked at dan. 'that's seizin,' said puck, in a whisper. '"now thou art lawfully seized of the manor, sir richard," said he--'twas the first time he ever called me that--"thou and thy heirs for ever. this must serve till the king's clerks write out thy title on a parchment. england is all ours--if we can hold it." '"what service shall i pay?" i asked, and i remember i was proud beyond words. '"knight's fee, boy, knight's fee!" said he, hopping round his horse on one foot. (have i said he was little, and could not endure to be helped to his saddle?) "six mounted men or twelve archers thou shalt send me whenever i call for them, and--where got you that corn?" said he, for it was near harvest, and our corn stood well. "i have never seen such bright straw. send me three bags of the same seed yearly, and furthermore, in memory of our last meeting--with the rope round thy neck--entertain me and my men for two days of each year in the great hall of thy manor." '"alas!" said i, "then my manor is already forfeit. i am under vow not to enter the great hall." and i told him what i had sworn to the lady Ælueva.' 'and hadn't you ever been into the house since?' said una. 'never,' sir richard answered, smiling. 'i had made me a little hut of wood up the hill, and there i did justice and slept ... de aquila wheeled aside, and his shield shook on his back. "no matter, boy," said he. "i will remit the homage for a year."' 'he meant sir richard needn't give him dinner there the first year,' puck explained. 'de aquila stayed with me in the hut, and hugh, who could read and write and cast accounts, showed him the roll of the manor, in which were written all the names of our fields and men, and he asked a thousand questions touching the land, the timber, the grazing, the mill, and the fish-ponds, and the worth of every man in the valley. but never he named the lady Ælueva's name, nor went he near the great hall. by night he drank with us in the hut. yes, he sat on the straw like an eagle ruffled in her feathers, his yellow eyes rolling above the cup, and he pounced in his talk like an eagle, swooping from one thing to another, but always binding fast. yes; he would lie still awhile, and then rustle in the straw, and speak sometimes as though he were king william himself, and anon he would speak in parables and tales, and if at once we saw not his meaning he would yerk us in the ribs with his scabbarded sword. '"look you, boys," said he, "i am born out of my due time. five hundred years ago i would have made all england such an england as neither dane, saxon, nor norman should have conquered. five hundred years hence i should have been such a counsellor to kings as the world hath never dreamed of. 'tis all here," said he, tapping his big head, "but it hath no play in this black age. now hugh here is a better man than thou art, richard." he had made his voice harsh and croaking, like a raven's. '"truth," said i. "but for hugh, his help and patience and long-suffering, i could never have kept the manor." '"nor thy life either," said de aquila. "hugh has saved thee not once, but a hundred times. be still, hugh!" he said. "dost thou know, richard, why hugh slept, and why he still sleeps, among thy norman men-at-arms?" '"to be near me," said i, for i thought this was truth. '"fool!" said de aquila. "it is because his saxons have begged him to rise against thee, and to sweep every norman out of the valley. no matter how i know. it is truth. therefore hugh hath made himself an hostage for thy life, well knowing that if any harm befell thee from his saxons thy normans would slay him without remedy. and this his saxons know. is it true, hugh?" '"in some sort," said hugh shamefacedly; "at least, it was true half a year ago. my saxons would not harm richard now. i think they know him--but i judged it best to make sure." 'look, children, what that man had done--and i had never guessed it! night after night had he lain down among my men-at-arms, knowing that if one saxon had lifted knife against me, his life would have answered for mine. '"yes," said de aquila. "and he is a swordless man." he pointed to hugh's belt, for hugh had put away his sword--did i tell you?--the day after it flew from his hand at santlache. he carried only the short knife and the long-bow. "swordless and landless art thou, hugh; and they call thee kin to earl godwin." (hugh was indeed of godwin's blood.) "the manor that was thine is given to this boy and to his children for ever. sit up and beg, for he can turn thee out like a dog, hugh." 'hugh said nothing, but i heard his teeth grind, and i bade de aquila, my own overlord, hold his peace, or i would stuff his words down his throat. then de aquila laughed till the tears ran down his face. '"i warned the king," said he, "what would come of giving england to us norman thieves. here art thou, richard, less than two days confirmed in thy manor, and already thou hast risen against thy overlord. what shall we do to him, _sir_ hugh?" '"i am a swordless man," said hugh. "do not jest with me," and he laid his head on his knees and groaned. '"the greater fool thou," said de aquila, and all his voice changed; "for i have given thee the manor of dallington up the hill this half-hour since," and he yerked at hugh with his scabbard across the straw. '"to me?" said hugh. "i am a saxon, and, except that i love richard here, i have not sworn fealty to any norman." '"in god's good time, which because of my sins i shall not live to see, there will be neither saxon nor norman in england," said de aquila. "if i know men, thou art more faithful unsworn than a score of normans i could name. take dallington, and join sir richard to fight me tomorrow, if it please thee!" '"nay," said hugh. "i am no child. where i take a gift, there i render service"; and he put his hands between de aquila's, and swore to be faithful, and, as i remember, i kissed him, and de aquila kissed us both. 'we sat afterwards outside the hut while the sun rose, and de aquila marked our churls going to their work in the fields, and talked of holy things, and how we should govern our manors in time to come, and of hunting and of horse-breeding, and of the king's wisdom and unwisdom; for he spoke to us as though we were in all sorts now his brothers. anon a churl stole up to me--he was one of the three i had not hanged a year ago--and he bellowed--which is the saxon for whispering--that the lady Ælueva would speak to me at the great house. she walked abroad daily in the manor, and it was her custom to send me word whither she went, that i might set an archer or two behind and in front to guard her. very often i myself lay up in the woods and watched on her also. 'i went swiftly, and as i passed the great door it opened from within, and there stood my lady Ælueva, and she said to me: "sir richard, will it please you enter your great hall?" then she wept, but we were alone.' the knight was silent for a long time, his face turned across the valley, smiling. 'oh, well done!' said una, and clapped her hands very softly. 'she was sorry, and she said so.' 'aye, she was sorry, and she said so,' said sir richard, coming back with a little start. 'very soon--but _he_ said it was two full hours later--de aquila rode to the door, with his shield new scoured (hugh had cleansed it), and demanded entertainment, and called me a false knight, that would starve his overlord to death. then hugh cried out that no man should work in the valley that day, and our saxons blew horns, and set about feasting and drinking, and running of races, and dancing and singing; and de aquila climbed upon a horse-block and spoke to them in what he swore was good saxon, but no man understood it. at night we feasted in the great hall, and when the harpers and the singers were gone we four sat late at the high table. as i remember, it was a warm night with a full moon, and de aquila bade hugh take down his sword from the wall again, for the honour of the manor of dallington, and hugh took it gladly enough. dust lay on the hilt, for i saw him blow it off. 'she and i sat talking a little apart, and at first we thought the harpers had come back, for the great hall was filled with a rushing noise of music. de aquila leaped up; but there was only the moonlight fretty on the floor. '"hearken!" said hugh. "it is my sword," and as he belted it on the music ceased. '"over gods, forbid that i should ever belt blade like that," said de aquila. "what does it foretell?" '"the gods that made it may know. last time it spoke was at hastings, when i lost all my lands. belike it sings now that i have new lands and am a man again," said hugh. 'he loosed the blade a little and drove it back happily into the sheath, and the sword answered him low and crooningly, as--as a woman would speak to a man, her head on his shoulder. 'now that was the second time in all my life i heard this sword sing.'... 'look!' said una. 'there's mother coming down the long slip. what will she say to sir richard? she can't help seeing him.' 'and puck can't magic us this time,' said dan. 'are you sure?' said puck; and he leaned forward and whispered to sir richard, who, smiling, bowed his head. 'but what befell the sword and my brother hugh i will tell on another time,' said he, rising. 'ohé, swallow!' the great horse cantered up from the far end of the meadow, close to mother. they heard mother say: 'children, gleason's old horse has broken into the meadow again. where did he get through?' 'just below stone bay,' said dan. 'he tore down simple flobs of the bank! we noticed it just now. and we've caught no end of fish. we've been at it all the afternoon.' and they honestly believed that they had. they never noticed the oak, ash and thorn leaves that puck had slyly thrown into their laps. sir richard's song i followed my duke ere i was a lover, to take from england fief and fee; but now this game is the other way over-- but now england hath taken me! i had my horse, my shield and banner, and a boy's heart, so whole and free; but now i sing in another manner-- but now england hath taken me! as for my father in his tower, asking news of my ship at sea; he will remember his own hour-- tell him england hath taken me! as for my mother in her bower, that rules my father so cunningly; she will remember a maiden's power-- tell her england hath taken me! as for my brother in rouen city, a nimble and naughty page is he; but he will come to suffer and pity-- tell him england hath taken me! as for my little sister waiting in the pleasant orchards of normandie; tell her youth is the time of mating-- tell her england hath taken me! as for my comrades in camp and highway, that lift their eyebrows scornfully; tell them their way is not my way-- tell them england hath taken me! kings and princes and barons famed, knights and captains in your degree; hear me a little before i am blamed-- seeing england hath taken me! howso great man's strength be reckoned, there are two things he cannot flee; love is the first, and death is the second-- and love, in england, hath taken me! the knights of the joyous venture harp song of the dane women what is a woman that you forsake her, and the hearth-fire and the home-acre, to go with the old grey widow-maker? she has no house to lay a guest in-- but one chill bed for all to rest in, that the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in. she has no strong white arms to fold you, but the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you bound on the rocks where the tide has rolled you. yet, when the signs of summer thicken, and the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken, yearly you turn from our side, and sicken-- sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters,-- you steal away to the lapping waters, and look at your ship in her winter quarters. you forget our mirth, and talk at the tables, the kine in the shed and the horse in the stables-- to pitch her sides and go over her cables! then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow: and the sound of your oar-blades falling hollow is all we have left through the months to follow. ah, what is a woman that you forsake her, and the hearth-fire and the home-acre, to go with the old grey widow-maker? it was too hot to run about in the open, so dan asked their friend, old hobden, to take their own dinghy from the pond and put her on the brook at the bottom of the garden. her painted name was the _daisy_, but for exploring expeditions she was the _golden hind_ or the _long serpent_, or some such suitable name. dan hiked and howked with a boat-hook (the brook was too narrow for sculls), and una punted with a piece of hop-pole. when they came to a very shallow place (the _golden hind_ drew quite three inches of water) they disembarked and scuffled her over the gravel by her tow-rope, and when they reached the overgrown banks beyond the garden they pulled themselves up stream by the low branches. that day they intended to discover the north cape like 'othere, the old sea-captain', in the book of verses which una had brought with her; but on account of the heat they changed it to a voyage up the amazon and the sources of the nile. even on the shaded water the air was hot and heavy with drowsy scents, while outside, through breaks in the trees, the sunshine burned the pasture like fire. the kingfisher was asleep on his watching-branch, and the blackbirds scarcely took the trouble to dive into the next bush. dragonflies wheeling and clashing were the only things at work, except the moorhens and a big red admiral, who flapped down out of the sunshine for a drink. when they reached otter pool the _golden hind_ grounded comfortably on a shallow, and they lay beneath a roof of close green, watching the water trickle over the flood-gates down the mossy brick chute from the mill-stream to the brook. a big trout--the children knew him well--rolled head and shoulders at some fly that sailed round the bend, while, once in just so often, the brook rose a fraction of an inch against all the wet pebbles, and they watched the slow draw and shiver of a breath of air through the tree-tops. then the little voices of the slipping water began again. 'it's like the shadows talking, isn't it?' said una. she had given up trying to read. dan lay over the bows, trailing his hands in the current. they heard feet on the gravel-bar that runs half across the pool and saw sir richard dalyngridge standing over them. 'was yours a dangerous voyage?' he asked, smiling. 'she bumped a lot, sir,' said dan. 'there's hardly any water this summer.' 'ah, the brook was deeper and wider when my children played at danish pirates. are you pirate-folk?' 'oh no. we gave up being pirates years ago,' explained una. 'we're nearly always explorers now. sailing round the world, you know.' 'round?' said sir richard. he sat him in the comfortable crotch of an old ash-root on the bank. 'how can it be round?' 'wasn't it in your books?' dan suggested. he had been doing geography at his last lesson. 'i can neither write nor read,' he replied. 'canst _thou_ read, child?' 'yes,' said dan, 'barring the very long words.' 'wonderful! read to me, that i may hear for myself.' dan flushed, but opened the book and began--gabbling a little--at 'the discoverer of the north cape.' 'othere, the old sea-captain, who dwelt in helgoland, to king alfred, the lover of truth, brought a snow-white walrus tooth, that he held in his brown right hand.' 'but--but--this i know! this is an old song! this i have heard sung! this is a miracle,' sir richard interrupted. 'nay, do not stop!' he leaned forward, and the shadows of the leaves slipped and slid upon his chain-mail. '"i ploughed the land with horses, but my heart was ill at ease, for the old sea-faring men came to me now and then with their sagas of the seas."' his hand fell on the hilt of the great sword. 'this is truth,' he cried, 'for so did it happen to me,' and he beat time delightedly to the tramp of verse after verse. '"and now the land," said othere, "bent southward suddenly, and i followed the curving shore, and ever southward bore into a nameless sea."' 'a nameless sea!' he repeated. 'so did i--so did hugh and i.' 'where did you go? tell us,' said una. 'wait. let me hear all first.' so dan read to the poem's very end. 'good,' said the knight. 'that is othere's tale--even as i have heard the men in the dane ships sing it. not in those same valiant words, but something like to them.' 'have you ever explored north?' dan shut the book. 'nay. my venture was south. farther south than any man has fared, hugh and i went down with witta and his heathen.' he jerked the tall sword forward, and leaned on it with both hands; but his eyes looked long past them. 'i thought you always lived here,' said una, timidly. 'yes; while my lady Ælueva lived. but she died. she died. then, my eldest son being a man, i asked de aquila's leave that he should hold the manor while i went on some journey or pilgrimage--to forget. de aquila, whom the second william had made warden of pevensey in earl mortain's place, was very old then, but still he rode his tall, roan horses, and in the saddle he looked like a little white falcon. when hugh, at dallington, over yonder, heard what i did, he sent for my second son, whom being unmarried he had ever looked upon as his own child, and, by de aquila's leave, gave him the manor of dallington to hold till he should return. then hugh came with me.' 'when did this happen?' said dan. 'that i can answer to the very day, for as we rode with de aquila by pevensey--have i said that he was lord of pevensey and of the honour of the eagle?--to the bordeaux ship that fetched him his wines yearly out of france, a marsh man ran to us crying that he had seen a great black goat which bore on his back the body of the king, and that the goat had spoken to him. on that same day red william our king, the conqueror's son, died of a secret arrow while he hunted in a forest. "this is a cross matter," said de aquila, "to meet on the threshold of a journey. if red william be dead i may have to fight for my lands. wait a little." 'my lady being dead, i cared nothing for signs and omens, nor hugh either. we took that wine-ship to go to bordeaux; but the wind failed while we were yet in sight of pevensey, a thick mist hid us, and we drifted with the tide along the cliffs to the west. our company was, for the most part, merchants returning to france, and we were laden with wool and there were three couple of tall hunting-dogs chained to the rail. their master was a knight of artois. his name i never learned, but his shield bore gold pieces on a red ground, and he limped, much as i do, from a wound which he had got in his youth at mantes siege. he served the duke of burgundy against the moors in spain, and was returning to that war with his dogs. he sang us strange moorish songs that first night, and half persuaded us to go with him. i was on pilgrimage to forget--which is what no pilgrimage brings. i think i would have gone, but ... 'look you how the life and fortune of man changes! towards morning a dane ship, rowing silently, struck against us in the mist, and while we rolled hither and yon hugh, leaning over the rail, fell outboard. i leaped after him, and we two tumbled aboard the dane, and were caught and bound ere we could rise. our own ship was swallowed up in the mist. i judge the knight of the gold pieces muzzled his dogs with his cloak, lest they should give tongue and betray the merchants, for i heard their baying suddenly stop. 'we lay bound among the benches till morning, when the danes dragged us to the high deck by the steering-place, and their captain--witta, he was called--turned us over with his foot. bracelets of gold from elbow to armpit he wore, and his red hair was long as a woman's, and came down in plaited locks on his shoulder. he was stout, with bowed legs and long arms. he spoiled us of all we had, but when he laid hand on hugh's sword and saw the runes on the blade hastily he thrust it back. yet his covetousness overcame him and he tried again and again, and the third time the sword sang loud and angrily, so that the rowers leaned on their oars to listen. here they all spoke together, screaming like gulls, and a yellow man, such as i have never seen, came to the high deck and cut our bonds. he was yellow--not from sickness, but by nature--yellow as honey, and his eyes stood endwise in his head.' 'how do you mean?' said una, her chin on her hand. 'thus,' said sir richard. he put a finger to the corner of each eye, and pushed it up till his eyes narrowed to slits. 'why, you look just like a chinaman!' cried dan. 'was the man a chinaman?' 'i know not what that may be. witta had found him half dead among ice on the shores of muscovy. _we_ thought he was a devil. he crawled before us and brought food in a silver dish which these sea-wolves had robbed from some rich abbey, and witta with his own hands gave us wine. he spoke a little in french, a little in south saxon, and much in the northman's tongue. we asked him to set us ashore, promising to pay him better ransom than he would get price if he sold us to the moors--as once befell a knight of my acquaintance sailing from flushing. '"not by my father guthrum's head," said he. "the gods sent ye into my ship for a luck-offering." 'at this i quaked, for i knew it was still the danes' custom to sacrifice captives to their gods for fair weather. '"a plague on thy four long bones!" said hugh. "what profit canst thou make of poor old pilgrims that can neither work nor fight?" '"gods forbid i should fight against thee, poor pilgrim with the singing sword," said he. "come with us and be poor no more. thy teeth are far apart, which is a sure sign thou wilt travel and grow rich." '"what if we will not come?" said hugh. '"swim to england or france," said witta. "we are midway between the two. unless ye choose to drown yourselves no hair of your head will be harmed here aboard. we think ye bring us luck, and i myself know the runes on that sword are good." he turned and bade them hoist sail. 'hereafter all made way for us as we walked about the ship, and the ship was full of wonders.' 'what was she like?' said dan. 'long, low, and narrow, bearing one mast with a red sail, and rowed by fifteen oars a-side,' the knight answered. 'at her bows was a deck under which men might lie, and at her stern another shut off by a painted door from the rowers' benches. here hugh and i slept, with witta and the yellow man, upon tapestries as soft as wool. i remember'--he laughed to himself--'when first we entered there a loud voice cried, "out swords! out swords! kill, kill!" seeing us start witta laughed, and showed us it was but a great-beaked grey bird with a red tail. he sat her on his shoulder, and she called for bread and wine hoarsely, and prayed him to kiss her. yet she was no more than a silly bird. but--ye knew this?' he looked at their smiling faces. 'we weren't laughing at you,' said una. 'that must have been a parrot. it's just what pollies do.' 'so we learned later. but here is another marvel. the yellow man, whose name was kitai, had with him a brown box. in the box was a blue bowl with red marks upon the rim, and within the bowl, hanging from a fine thread, was a piece of iron no thicker than that grass stem, and as long, maybe, as my spur, but straight. in this iron, said witta, abode an evil spirit which kitai, the yellow man, had brought by art magic out of his own country that lay three years' journey southward. the evil spirit strove day and night to return to his country, and therefore, look you, the iron needle pointed continually to the south.' 'south?' said dan suddenly, and put his hand into his pocket. 'with my own eyes i saw it. every day and all day long, though the ship rolled, though the sun and the moon and the stars were hid, this blind spirit in the iron knew whither it would go, and strained to the south. witta called it the wise iron, because it showed him his way across the unknowable seas.' again sir richard looked keenly at the children. 'how think ye? was it sorcery?' 'was it anything like this?' dan fished out his old brass pocket-compass, that generally lived with his knife and key-ring. 'the glass has got cracked, but the needle waggles all right, sir.' the knight drew a long breath of wonder. 'yes, yes! the wise iron shook and swung in just this fashion. now it is still. now it points to the south.' 'north,' said dan. 'nay, south! there is the south,' said sir richard. then they both laughed, for naturally when one end of a straight compass-needle points to the north, the other must point to the south. 'té,' said sir richard, clicking his tongue. 'there can be no sorcery if a child carries it. wherefore does it point south--or north?' 'father says that nobody knows,' said una. sir richard looked relieved. 'then it may still be magic. it was magic to _us_. and so we voyaged. when the wind served we hoisted sail, and lay all up along the windward rail, our shields on our backs to break the spray. when it failed, they rowed with long oars; the yellow man sat by the wise iron, and witta steered. at first i feared the great white-flowering waves, but as i saw how wisely witta led his ship among them i grew bolder. hugh liked it well from the first. my skill is not upon the water; and rocks and whirlpools such as we saw by the west isles of france, where an oar caught on a rock and broke, are much against my stomach. we sailed south across a stormy sea, where by moonlight, between clouds, we saw a flanders ship roll clean over and sink. again, though hugh laboured with witta all night, i lay under the deck with the talking bird, and cared not whether i lived or died. there is a sickness of the sea which for three days is pure death! when we next saw land witta said it was spain, and we stood out to sea. that coast was full of ships busy in the duke's war against the moors, and we feared to be hanged by the duke's men or sold into slavery by the moors. so we put into a small harbour which witta knew. at night men came down with loaded mules, and witta exchanged amber out of the north against little wedges of iron and packets of beads in earthen pots. the pots he put under the decks, and the wedges of iron he laid on the bottom of the ship after he had cast out the stones and shingle which till then had been our ballast. wine, too, he bought for lumps of sweet-smelling grey amber--a little morsel no bigger than a thumbnail purchased a cask of wine. but i speak like a merchant.' 'no, no! tell us what you had to eat,' cried dan. 'meat dried in the sun, and dried fish and ground beans, witta took in; and corded frails of a certain sweet, soft fruit, which the moors use, which is like paste of figs, but with thin, long stones. aha! dates is the name. '"now," said witta, when the ship was loaded, "i counsel you strangers to pray to your gods, for from here on, our road is no man's road." he and his men killed a black goat for sacrifice on the bows; and the yellow man brought out a small, smiling image of dull-green stone and burned incense before it. hugh and i commended ourselves to god, and saint barnabas, and our lady of the assumption, who was specially dear to my lady. we were not young, but i think no shame to say whenas we drove out of that secret harbour at sunrise over a still sea, we two rejoiced and sang as did the knights of old when they followed our great duke to england. yet was our leader an heathen pirate; all our proud fleet but one galley perilously overloaded; for guidance we leaned on a pagan sorcerer; and our port was beyond the world's end. witta told us that his father guthrum had once in his life rowed along the shores of africa to a land where naked men sold gold for iron and beads. there had he bought much gold, and no few elephants' teeth, and thither by help of the wise iron would witta go. witta feared nothing--except to be poor. '"my father told me," said witta, "that a great shoal runs three days' sail out from that land, and south of the shoal lies a forest which grows in the sea. south and east of the forest my father came to a place where the men hid gold in their hair; but all that country, he said, was full of devils who lived in trees, and tore folk limb from limb. how think ye?" '"gold or no gold," said hugh, fingering his sword, "it is a joyous venture. have at these devils of thine, witta!" '"venture!" said witta sourly. "i am only a poor sea-thief. i do not set my life adrift on a plank for joy, or the venture. once i beach ship again at stavanger, and feel the wife's arms round my neck, i'll seek no more ventures. a ship is heavier care than a wife or cattle." 'he leaped down among the rowers, chiding them for their little strength and their great stomachs. yet witta was a wolf in fight, and a very fox in cunning. 'we were driven south by a storm, and for three days and three nights he took the stern-oar, and threddled the longship through the sea. when it rose beyond measure he brake a pot of whale's oil upon the water, which wonderfully smoothed it, and in that anointed patch he turned her head to the wind and threw out oars at the end of a rope, to make, he said, an anchor at which we lay rolling sorely, but dry. this craft his father guthrum had shown him. he knew, too, all the leech-book of bald, who was a wise doctor, and he knew the ship-book of hlaf the woman, who robbed egypt. he knew all the care of a ship. 'after the storm we saw a mountain whose top was covered with snow and pierced the clouds. the grasses under this mountain, boiled and eaten, are a good cure for soreness of the gums and swelled ankles. we lay there eight days, till men in skins threw stones at us. when the heat increased witta spread a cloth on bent sticks above the rowers, for the wind failed between the island of the mountain and the shore of africa, which is east of it. that shore is sandy, and we rowed along it within three bowshots. here we saw whales, and fish in the shape of shields, but longer than our ship. some slept, some opened their mouths at us, and some danced on the hot waters. the water was hot to the hand, and the sky was hidden by hot, grey mists, out of which blew a fine dust that whitened our hair and beards of a morning. here, too, were fish that flew in the air like birds. they would fall on the laps of the rowers, and when we went ashore we would roast and eat them.' the knight paused to see if the children doubted him, but they only nodded and said, 'go on.' 'the yellow land lay on our left, the grey sea on our right. knight though i was, i pulled my oar amongst the rowers. i caught seaweed and dried it, and stuffed it between the pots of beads lest they should break. knighthood is for the land. at sea, look you, a man is but a spurless rider on a bridleless horse. i learned to make strong knots in ropes--yes, and to join two ropes end to end, so that even witta could scarcely see where they had been married. but hugh had tenfold more sea-cunning than i. witta gave him charge of the rowers of the left side. thorkild of borkum, a man with a broken nose, that wore a norman steel cap, had the rowers of the right, and each side rowed and sang against the other. they saw that no man was idle. truly, as hugh said, and witta would laugh at him, a ship is all more care than a manor. 'how? thus. there was water to fetch from the shore when we could find it, as well as wild fruit and grasses, and sand for scrubbing of the decks and benches to keep them sweet. also we hauled the ship out on low islands and emptied all her gear, even to the iron wedges, and burned off the weed, that had grown on her, with torches of rush, and smoked below the decks with rushes dampened in salt water, as hlaf the woman orders in her ship-book. once when we were thus stripped, and the ship lay propped on her keel, the bird cried, "out swords!" as though she saw an enemy. witta vowed he would wring her neck.' 'poor polly! did he?' said una. 'nay. she was the ship's bird. she could call all the rowers by name.... those were good days--for a wifeless man--with witta and his heathen--beyond the world's end. ... after many weeks we came on the great shoal which stretched, as witta's father had said, far out to sea. we skirted it till we were giddy with the sight and dizzy with the sound of bars and breakers, and when we reached land again we found a naked black people dwelling among woods, who for one wedge of iron loaded us with fruits and grasses and eggs. witta scratched his head at them in sign he would buy gold. they had no gold, but they understood the sign (all the gold-traders hide their gold in their thick hair), for they pointed along the coast. they beat, too, on their chests with their clenched hands, and that, if we had known it, was an evil sign.' 'what did it mean?' said dan. 'patience. ye shall hear. we followed the coast eastward sixteen days (counting time by sword-cuts on the helm-rail) till we came to the forest in the sea. trees grew there out of mud, arched upon lean and high roots, and many muddy waterways ran all whither into darkness, under the trees. here we lost the sun. we followed the winding channels between the trees, and where we could not row we laid hold of the crusted roots and hauled ourselves along. the water was foul, and great glittering flies tormented us. morning and evening a blue mist covered the mud, which bred fevers. four of our rowers sickened, and were bound to their benches, lest they should leap overboard and be eaten by the monsters of the mud. the yellow man lay sick beside the wise iron, rolling his head and talking in his own tongue. only the bird throve. she sat on witta's shoulder and screamed in that noisome, silent darkness. yes; i think it was the silence we most feared.' he paused to listen to the comfortable home noises of the brook. 'when we had lost count of time among those black gullies and swashes we heard, as it were, a drum beat far off, and following it we broke into a broad, brown river by a hut in a clearing among fields of pumpkins. we thanked god to see the sun again. the people of the village gave the good welcome, and witta scratched his head at them (for gold), and showed them our iron and beads. they ran to the bank--we were still in the ship--and pointed to our swords and bows, for always when near shore we lay armed. soon they fetched store of gold in bars and in dust from their huts, and some great blackened elephants' teeth. these they piled on the bank, as though to tempt us, and made signs of dealing blows in battle, and pointed up to the tree-tops, and to the forest behind. their captain or chief sorcerer then beat on his chest with his fists, and gnashed his teeth. 'said thorkild of borkum: "do they mean we must fight for all this gear?" and he half drew sword. '"nay," said hugh. "i think they ask us to league against some enemy." '"i like this not," said witta, of a sudden. "back into mid-stream." 'so we did, and sat still all, watching the black folk and the gold they piled on the bank. again we heard drums beat in the forest, and the people fled to their huts, leaving the gold unguarded. 'then hugh, at the bows, pointed without speech, and we saw a great devil come out of the forest. he shaded his brows with his hand, and moistened his pink tongue between his lips--thus.' 'a devil!' said dan, delightfully horrified. 'yea. taller than a man; covered with reddish hair. when he had well regarded our ship, he beat on his chest with his fists till it sounded like rolling drums, and came to the bank swinging all his body between his long arms, and gnashed his teeth at us. hugh loosed arrow, and pierced him through the throat. he fell roaring, and three other devils ran out of the forest and hauled him into a tall tree out of sight. anon they cast down the blood-stained arrow, and lamented together among the leaves. witta saw the gold on the bank; he was loath to leave it. "sirs," said he (no man had spoken till then), "yonder is what we have come so far and so painfully to find, laid out to our very hand. let us row in while these devils bewail themselves, and at least bear off what we may." 'bold as a wolf, cunning as a fox was witta! he set four archers on the foredeck to shoot the devils if they should leap from the tree, which was close to the bank. he manned ten oars a-side, and bade them watch his hand to row in or back out, and so coaxed he them toward the bank. but none would set foot ashore, though the gold was within ten paces. no man is hasty to his hanging! they whimpered at their oars like beaten hounds, and witta bit his fingers for rage. 'said hugh of a sudden, "hark!" at first we thought it was the buzzing of the glittering flies on the water; but it grew loud and fierce, so that all men heard.' 'what?' said dan and una. 'it was the sword.' sir richard patted the smooth hilt. 'it sang as a dane sings before battle. "i go," said hugh, and he leaped from the bows and fell among the gold. i was afraid to my four bones' marrow, but for shame's sake i followed, and thorkild of borkum leaped after me. none other came. "blame me not," cried witta behind us, "i must abide by my ship." we three had no time to blame or praise. we stooped to the gold and threw it back over our shoulders, one hand on our swords and one eye on the tree, which nigh overhung us. 'i know not how the devils leaped down, or how the fight began. i heard hugh cry: "out! out!" as though he were at santlache again; i saw thorkild's steel cap smitten off his head by a great hairy hand, and i felt an arrow from the ship whistle past my ear. they say that till witta took his sword to the rowers he could not bring his ship inshore; and each one of the four archers said afterwards that he alone had pierced the devil that fought me. i do not know. i went to it in my mail-shirt, which saved my skin. with long-sword and belt-dagger i fought for the life against a devil whose very feet were hands, and who whirled me back and forth like a dead branch. he had me by the waist, my arms to my side, when an arrow from the ship pierced him between the shoulders, and he loosened grip. i passed my sword twice through him, and he crutched himself away between his long arms, coughing and moaning. next, as i remember, i saw thorkild of borkum, bare-headed and smiling, leaping up and down before a devil that leaped and gnashed his teeth. then hugh passed, his sword shifted to his left hand, and i wondered why i had not known that hugh was a left-handed man; and thereafter i remembered nothing till i felt spray on my face, and we were in sunshine on the open sea. that was twenty days after.' 'what had happened? did hugh die?'the children asked. 'never was such a fight fought by christened man,' said sir richard. 'an arrow from the ship had saved me from my devil, and thorkild of borkum had given back before his devil, till the bowmen on the ship could shoot it all full of arrows from near by; but hugh's devil was cunning, and had kept behind trees, where no arrow could reach. body to body there, by stark strength of sword and hand, had hugh slain him, and, dying, the thing had clenched his teeth on the sword. judge what teeth they were!' sir richard turned the sword again that the children might see the two great chiselled gouges on either side of the blade. 'those same teeth met in hugh's right arm and side,' sir richard went on. 'i? oh, i had no more than a broken foot and a fever. thorkild's ear was bitten, but hugh's arm and side clean withered away. i saw him where he lay along, sucking a fruit in his left hand. his flesh was wasted off his bones, his hair was patched with white, and his hand was blue-veined like a woman's. he put his left arm round my neck and whispered, "take my sword. it has been thine since hastings, o my brother, but i can never hold hilt again." we lay there on the high deck talking of santlache, and, i think, of every day since santlache, and it came so that we both wept. i was weak, and he little more than a shadow. '"nay--nay," said witta, at the helm-rail. "gold is a good right arm to any man. look--look at the gold!" he bade thorkild show us the gold and the elephants' teeth, as though we had been children. he had brought away all the gold on the bank, and twice as much more, that the people of the village gave him for slaying the devils. they worshipped us as gods, thorkild told me: it was one of their old women healed up hugh's poor arm.' 'how much gold did you get?'asked dan. 'how can i say? where we came out with wedges of iron under the rowers' feet we returned with wedges of gold hidden beneath planks. there was dust of gold in packages where we slept and along the side, and crosswise under the benches we lashed the blackened elephants' teeth. '"i had sooner have my right arm," said hugh, when he had seen all. '"ahai! that was my fault," said witta. "i should have taken ransom and landed you in france when first you came aboard, ten months ago." '"it is over-late now," said hugh, laughing. 'witta plucked at his long shoulder-lock. "but think!" said he. "if i had let ye go--which i swear i would never have done, for i love ye more than brothers--if i had let ye go, by now ye might have been horribly slain by some mere moor in the duke of burgundy's war, or ye might have been murdered by land-thieves, or ye might have died of the plague at an inn. think of this and do not blame me overmuch, hugh. see! i will only take a half of the gold." '"i blame thee not at all, witta," said hugh. "it was a joyous venture, and we thirty-five here have done what never men have done. if i live till england, i will build me a stout keep over dallington out of my share." '"i will buy cattle and amber and warm red cloth for the wife," said witta, "and i will hold all the land at the head of stavanger fiord. many will fight for me now. but first we must turn north, and with this honest treasure aboard i pray we meet no pirate ships." 'we did not laugh. we were careful. we were afraid lest we should lose one grain of our gold, for which we had fought devils. '"where is the sorcerer?" said i, for witta was looking at the wise iron in the box, and i could not see the yellow man. '"he has gone to his own country," said he. "he rose up in the night while we were beating out of that forest in the mud, and said that he could see it behind the trees. he leaped out on the mud, and did not answer when we called; so we called no more. he left the wise iron, which is all that i care for--and see, the spirit still points to the south." 'we were troubled for fear that the wise iron should fail us now that its yellow man had gone, and when we saw the spirit still served us we grew afraid of too strong winds, and of shoals, and of careless leaping fish, and of all the people on all the shores where we landed.' 'why?' said dan. 'because of the gold--because of our gold. gold changes men altogether. thorkild of borkum did not change. he laughed at witta for his fears, and at us for our counselling witta to furl sail when the ship pitched at all. '"better be drowned out of hand," said thorkild of borkum, "than go tied to a deck-load of yellow dust." 'he was a landless man, and had been slave to some king in the east. he would have beaten out the gold into deep bands to put round the oars, and round the prow. 'yet, though he vexed himself for the gold, witta waited upon hugh like a woman, lending him his shoulder when the ship rolled, and tying of ropes from side to side that hugh might hold by them. but for hugh, he said--and so did all his men--they would never have won the gold. i remember witta made a little, thin gold ring for our bird to swing in. 'three months we rowed and sailed and went ashore for fruits or to clean the ship. when we saw wild horsemen, riding among sand-dunes, flourishing spears, we knew we were on the moors' coast, and stood over north to spain; and a strong south-west wind bore us in ten days to a coast of high red rocks, where we heard a hunting-horn blow among the yellow gorse and knew it was england. '"now find ye pevensey yourselves," said witta. "i love not these narrow ship-filled seas." 'he set the dried, salted head of the devil, which hugh had killed, high on our prow, and all boats fled from us. yet, for our gold's sake, we were more afraid than they. we crept along the coast by night till we came to the chalk cliffs, and so east to pevensey. witta would not come ashore with us, though hugh promised him wine at dallington enough to swim in. he was on fire to see his wife, and ran into the marsh after sunset, and there he left us and our share of gold, and backed out on the same tide. he made no promise; he swore no oath; he looked for no thanks; but to hugh, an armless man, and to me, an old cripple whom he could have flung into the sea, he passed over wedge upon wedge, packet upon packet of gold and dust of gold, and only ceased when we would take no more. as he stooped from the rail to bid us farewell he stripped off his right-arm bracelets and put them all on hugh's left, and he kissed hugh on the cheek. i think when thorkild of borkum bade the rowers give way we were near weeping. it is true that witta was an heathen and a pirate; true it is he held us by force many months in his ship, but i loved that bow-legged, blue-eyed man for his great boldness, his cunning, his skill, and, beyond all, for his simplicity.' 'did he get home all right?' said dan. 'i never knew. we saw him hoist sail under the moon-track and stand away. i have prayed that he found his wife and the children.' 'and what did you do?' 'we waited on the marsh till the day. then i sat by the gold, all tied in an old sail, while hugh went to pevensey, and de aquila sent us horses.' sir richard crossed hands on his sword-hilt, and stared down stream through the soft warm shadows. 'a whole shipload of gold!' said una, looking at the little _golden hind_. 'but i'm glad i didn't see the devils.' 'i don't believe they were devils,'dan whispered back. 'eh?' said sir richard. 'witta's father warned him they were unquestionable devils. one must believe one's father, and not one's children. what were my devils, then?' dan flushed all over. 'i--i only thought,' he stammered; 'i've got a book called _the gorilla hunters_--it's a continuation of _coral island_, sir--and it says there that the gorillas (they're big monkeys, you know) were always chewing iron up.' 'not always,' said una. 'only twice.' they had been reading _the gorilla hunters_ in the orchard. 'well, anyhow, they always drummed on their chests, like sir richard's did, before they went for people. and they built houses in trees, too.' 'ha!' sir richard opened his eyes. 'houses like flat nests did our devils make, where their imps lay and looked at us. i did not see them (i was sick after the fight), but witta told me, and, lo, ye know it also? wonderful! were our devils only nest-building apes? is there no sorcery left in the world?' 'i don't know,' answered dan, uncomfortably. 'i've seen a man take rabbits out of a hat, and he told us we could see how he did it, if we watched hard. and we did.' 'but we didn't,' said una, sighing. 'oh! there's puck!' the little fellow, brown and smiling, peered between two stems of an ash, nodded, and slid down the bank into the cool beside them. 'no sorcery, sir richard?' he laughed, and blew on a full dandelion head he had picked. 'they tell me that witta's wise iron was a toy. the boy carries such an iron with him. they tell me our devils were apes, called gorillas!' said sir richard, indignantly. 'that is the sorcery of books,' said puck. 'i warned thee they were wise children. all people can be wise by reading of books.' 'but are the books true?' sir richard frowned. 'i like not all this reading and writing.' 'ye-es,' said puck, holding the naked dandelion head at arm's length. 'but if we hang all fellows who write falsely, why did de aquila not begin with gilbert the clerk? _he_ was false enough.' 'poor false gilbert. yet, in his fashion, he was bold,' said sir richard. 'what did he do?' said dan. 'he wrote,' said sir richard. 'is the tale meet for children, think you?' he looked at puck; but 'tell us! tell us!' cried dan and una together. thorkild's song there's no wind along these seas, out oars for stavanger! forward all for stavanger! so we must wake the white-ash breeze, let fall for stavanger! a long pull for stavanger! oh, hear the benches creak and strain! (a long pull for stavanger!) she thinks she smells the northland rain! (a long pull for stavanger!) she thinks she smells the northland snow, and she's as glad as we to go. she thinks she smells the northland rime, and the dear dark nights of winter-time. her very bolts are sick for shore, and we--we want it ten times more! so all you gods that love brave men, send us a three-reef gale again! send us a gale, and watch us come, with close-cropped canvas slashing home! but--there's no wind in all these seas. a long pull for stavanger! so we must wake the white-ash breeze, a long pull for stavanger! old men at pevensey 'it has naught to do with apes or devils,'sir richard went on, in an undertone. 'it concerns de aquila, than whom there was never bolder nor craftier, nor more hardy knight born. and remember he was an old, old man at that time.' 'when?' said dan. 'when we came back from sailing with witta.' 'what did you do with your gold?' said dan. 'have patience. link by link is chain-mail made. i will tell all in its place. we bore the gold to pevensey on horseback--three loads of it--and then up to the north chamber, above the great hall of pevensey castle, where de aquila lay in winter. he sat on his bed like a little white falcon, turning his head swiftly from one to the other as we told our tale. jehan the crab, an old sour man-at-arms, guarded the stairway, but de aquila bade him wait at the stair-foot, and let down both leather curtains over the door. it was jehan whom de aquila had sent to us with the horses, and only jehan had loaded the gold. when our story was told, de aquila gave us the news of england, for we were as men waked from a year-long sleep. the red king was dead--slain (ye remember?) the day we set sail--and henry, his younger brother, had made himself king of england over the head of robert of normandy. this was the very thing that the red king had done to robert when our great william died. then robert of normandy, mad, as de aquila said, at twice missing of this kingdom, had sent an army against england, which army had been well beaten back to their ships at portsmouth. a little earlier, and witta's ship would have rowed through them. '"and now," said de aquila, "half the great barons of the north and west are out against the king between salisbury and shrewsbury, and half the other half wait to see which way the game shall go. they say henry is overly english for their stomachs, because he hath married an english wife and she hath coaxed him to give back their old laws to our saxons. (better ride a horse on the bit he knows, _i_ say!) but that is only a cloak to their falsehood." he cracked his finger on the table, where the wine was spilt, and thus he spoke:-- '"william crammed us norman barons full of good english acres after santlache. _i_ had my share too," he said, and clapped hugh on the shoulder; "but i warned him--i warned him before odo rebelled--that he should have bidden the barons give up their lands and lordships in normandy if they would be english lords. now they are all but princes both in england and normandy--trencher-fed hounds, with a foot in one trough and both eyes on the other! robert of normandy has sent them word that if they do not fight for him in england he will sack and harry out their lands in normandy. therefore clare has risen, fitzosborne has risen, montgomery has risen--whom our first william made an english earl. even d'arcy is out with his men, whose father i remember a little hedge-sparrow knight nearby caen. if henry wins, the barons can still flee to normandy, where robert will welcome them. if henry loses, robert, he says, will give them more lands in england. oh, a pest--a pest on normandy, for she will be our england's curse this many a long year!" '"amen," said hugh. "but will the war come our ways, think you?" '"not from the north," said de aquila. "but the sea is always open. if the barons gain the upper hand robert will send another army into england for sure, and this time i think he will land here--where his father, the conqueror, landed. ye have brought your pigs to a pretty market! half england alight, and gold enough on the ground"--he stamped on the bars beneath the table--"to set every sword in christendom fighting." '"what is to do?" said hugh. "i have no keep at dallington; and if we buried it, whom could we trust?" '"me," said de aquila. "pevensey walls are strong. no man but jehan, who is my dog, knows what is between them." he drew a curtain by the shot-window and showed us the shaft of a well in the thickness of the wall. '"i made it for a drinking-well," he said, "but we found salt water, and it rises and falls with the tide. hark!" we heard the water whistle and blow at the bottom. "will it serve?" said he. '"needs must," said hugh. "our lives are in thy hands." so we lowered all the gold down except one small chest of it by de aquila's bed, which we kept as much for his delight in its weight and colour as for any of our needs. 'in the morning, ere we rode to our manors, he said: "i do not say farewell; because ye will return and bide here. not for love nor for sorrow, but to be with the gold. have a care," he said, laughing, "lest i use it to make myself pope. trust me not, but return!"' sir richard paused and smiled sadly. 'in seven days, then, we returned from our manors--from the manors which had been ours.' 'and were the children quite well?' said una. 'my sons were young. land and governance belong by right to young men.' sir richard was talking to himself. 'it would have broken their hearts if we had taken back our manors. they made us great welcome, but we could see--hugh and i could see--that our day was done. i was a cripple and he a one-armed man. no!' he shook his head. 'and therefore'--he raised his voice--'we rode back to pevensey.' 'i'm sorry,' said una, for the knight seemed very sorrowful. 'little maid, it all passed long ago. they were young; we were old. we let them rule the manors. "aha!" cried de aquila from his shot-window, when we dismounted. "back again to earth, old foxes?" but when we were in his chamber above the hall he puts his arms about us and says, "welcome, ghosts! welcome, poor ghosts!" ... thus it fell out that we were rich beyond belief, and lonely. and lonely!' 'what did you do?' said dan. 'we watched for robert of normandy,' said the knight. 'de aquila was like witta. he suffered no idleness. in fair weather we would ride along between bexlei on the one side, to cuckmere on the other--sometimes with hawk, sometimes with hound (there are stout hares both on the marsh and the downland), but always with an eye to the sea, for fear of fleets from normandy. in foul weather he would walk on the top of his tower, frowning against the rain--peering here and pointing there. it always vexed him to think how witta's ship had come and gone without his knowledge. when the wind ceased and ships anchored, to the wharf's edge he would go and, leaning on his sword among the stinking fish, would call to the mariners for their news from france. his other eye he kept landward for word of henry's war against the barons. 'many brought him news--jongleurs, harpers, pedlars, sutlers, priests and the like; and, though he was secret enough in small things, yet, if their news misliked him, then, regarding neither time nor place nor people, he would curse our king henry for a fool or a babe. i have heard him cry aloud by the fishing boats: "if i were king of england i would do thus and thus"; and when i rode out to see that the warning-beacons were laid and dry, he hath often called to me from the shot-window: "look to it, richard! do not copy our blind king, but see with thine own eyes and feel with thine own hands." i do not think he knew any sort of fear. and so we lived at pevensey, in the little chamber above the hall. 'one foul night came word that a messenger of the king waited below. we were chilled after a long riding in the fog towards bexlei, which is an easy place for ships to land. de aquila sent word the man might either eat with us or wait till we had fed. anon jehan, at the stair-head, cried that he had called for horse, and was gone. "pest on him!" said de aquila. "i have more to do than to shiver in the great hall for every gadling the king sends. left he no word?" '"none," said jehan, "except"--he had been with de aquila at santlache--"except he said that if an old dog could not learn new tricks it was time to sweep out the kennel." '"oho!" said de aquila, rubbing his nose, "to whom did he say that?" '"to his beard, chiefly, but some to his horse's flank as he was girthing up. i followed him out," said jehan the crab. '"what was his shield-mark?" '"gold horseshoes on black," said the crab. '"that is one of fulke's men," said de aquila.' puck broke in very gently, 'gold horseshoes on black is _not_ the fulkes' shield. the fulkes' arms are----' the knight waved one hand statelily. 'thou knowest that evil man's true name,' he replied, 'but i have chosen to call him fulke because i promised him i would not tell the story of his wickedness so that any man might guess it. i have changed _all_ the names in my tale. his children's children may be still alive.' 'true--true,' said puck, smiling softly. 'it is knightly to keep faith--even after a thousand years.' sir richard bowed a little and went on:-- '"gold horseshoes on black?" said de aquila. "i had heard fulke had joined the barons, but if this is true our king must be of the upper hand. no matter, all fulkes are faithless. still, i would not have sent the man away empty." '"he fed," said jehan. "gilbert the clerk fetched him meat and wine from the kitchens. he ate at gilbert's table." 'this gilbert was a clerk from battle abbey, who kept the accounts of the manor of pevensey. he was tall and pale-coloured, and carried those new-fashioned beads for counting of prayers. they were large brown nuts or seeds, and hanging from his girdle with his pen and inkhorn they clashed when he walked. his place was in the great fireplace. there was his table of accounts, and there he lay o' nights. he feared the hounds in the hall that came nosing after bones or to sleep on the warm ashes, and would slash at them with his beads--like a woman. when de aquila sat in hall to do justice, take fines, or grant lands, gilbert would so write it in the manor-roll. but it was none of his work to feed our guests, or to let them depart without his lord's knowledge. 'said de aquila, after jehan was gone down the stair: "hugh, hast thou ever told my gilbert thou canst read latin hand-of-write?" '"no," said hugh. "he is no friend to me, or to odo my hound either." '"no matter," said de aquila. "let him never know thou canst tell one letter from its fellow, and"--here he jerked us in the ribs with his scabbard--"watch him, both of ye. there be devils in africa, as i have heard, but by the saints, there be greater devils in pevensey!" and that was all he would say. 'it chanced, some small while afterwards, a norman man-at-arms would wed a saxon wench of the manor, and gilbert (we had watched him well since de aquila spoke) doubted whether her folk were free or slave. since de aquila would give them a field of good land, if she were free, the matter came up at the justice in great hall before de aquila. first the wench's father spoke; then her mother; then all together, till the hall rang and the hounds bayed. de aquila held up his hands. "write her free," he called to gilbert by the fireplace. "a' god's name write her free, before she deafens me! yes, yes," he said to the wench that was on her knees at him; "thou art cerdic's sister, and own cousin to the lady of mercia, if thou wilt be silent. in fifty years there will be neither norman nor saxon, but all english," said he, "and _these_ are the men that do our work!" he clapped the man-at-arms that was jehan's nephew on the shoulder, and kissed the wench, and fretted with his feet among the rushes to show it was finished. (the great hall is always bitter cold.) i stood at his side; hugh was behind gilbert in the fireplace making to play with wise rough odo. he signed to de aquila, who bade gilbert measure the new field for the new couple. out then runs our gilbert between man and maid, his beads clashing at his waist, and the hall being empty, we three sit by the fire. 'said hugh, leaning down to the hearthstones, "i saw this stone move under gilbert's foot when odo snuffed at it. look!" de aquila digged in the ashes with his sword; the stone tilted; beneath it lay a parchment folden, and the writing atop was: "words spoken against the king by our lord of pevensey--the second part." 'here was set out (hugh read it us whispering) every jest de aquila had made to us touching the king; every time he had called out to me from the shot-window, and every time he had said what he would do if he were king of england. yes, day by day had his daily speech, which he never stinted, been set down by gilbert, tricked out and twisted from its true meaning, yet withal so cunningly that none could deny who knew him that de aquila had in some sort spoken those words. ye see?' dan and una nodded. 'yes,' said una gravely. 'it isn't what you say so much. it's what you mean when you say it. like calling dan a beast in fun. only grown-ups don't always understand.' '"he hath done this day by day before our very face?" said de aquila. '"nay, hour by hour," said hugh. "when de aquila spoke even now, in the hall, of saxons and normans, i saw gilbert write on a parchment, which he kept beside the manor-roll, that de aquila said soon there would be no normans left in england if his men-at-arms did their work aright." '"bones of the saints!" said de aquila. "what avail is honour or a sword against a pen? where did gilbert hide that writing? he shall eat it." '"in his breast when he ran out," said hugh. "which made me look to see where he kept his finished stuff. when odo scratched at this stone here, i saw his face change. so i was sure." '"he is bold," said de aquila. "do him justice. in his own fashion, my gilbert is bold." '"overbold," said hugh. "hearken here," and he read: "upon the feast of st agatha, our lord of pevensey, lying in his upper chamber, being clothed in his second fur gown reversed with rabbit----" '"pest on him! he is not my tire-woman!" said de aquila, and hugh and i laughed. '"reversed with rabbit, seeing a fog over the marshes, did wake sir richard dalyngridge, his drunken cup-mate" (here they laughed at me) "and said, 'peer out, old fox, for god is on the duke of normandy's side."' '"so did i. it was a black fog. robert could have landed ten thousand men, and we none the wiser. does he tell how we were out all day riding the marsh, and how i near perished in a quicksand, and coughed like a sick ewe for ten days after?" cried de aquila. '"no," said hugh. "but here is the prayer of gilbert himself to his master fulke." '"ah," said de aquila. "well i knew it was fulke. what is the price of my blood?" '"gilbert prayeth that when our lord of pevensey is stripped of his lands on this evidence which gilbert hath, with fear and pains, collected----" '"fear and pains is a true word," said de aquila, and sucked in his cheeks. "but how excellent a weapon is a pen! i must learn it." '"he prays that fulke will advance him from his present service to that honour in the church which fulke promised him. and lest fulke should forget, he has written below, 'to be sacristan of battle'." 'at this de aquila whistled. "a man who can plot against one lord can plot against another. when i am stripped of my lands fulke will whip off my gilbert's foolish head. none the less battle needs a new sacristan. they tell me the abbot henry keeps no sort of rule there." '"let the abbot wait," said hugh. "it is our heads and our lands that are in danger. this parchment is the second part of the tale. the first has gone to fulke, and so to the king, who will hold us traitors." "assuredly," said de aquila. "fulke's man took the first part that evening when gilbert fed him, and our king is so beset by his brother and his barons (small blame, too!) that he is mad with mistrust. fulke has his ear, and pours poison into it. presently the king gives him my land and yours. this is old," and he leaned back and yawned. '"and thou wilt surrender pevensey without word or blow?" said hugh. "we saxons will fight your king then. i will go warn my nephew at dallington. give me a horse!" '"give thee a toy and a rattle," said de aquila. "put back the parchment, and rake over the ashes. if fulke is given my pevensey, which is england's gate, what will he do with it? he is norman at heart, and his heart is in normandy, where he can kill peasants at his pleasure. he will open england's gate to our sleepy robert, as odo and mortain tried to do, and then there will be another landing and another santlache. therefore i cannot give up pevensey." '"good," said we two. '"ah, but wait! if my king be made, on gilbert's evidence, to mistrust me, he will send his men against me here, and while we fight, england's gate is left unguarded. who will be the first to come through thereby? even robert of normandy. therefore i cannot fight my king." he nursed his sword--thus. '"this is saying and unsaying like a norman," said hugh. "what of our manors?" '"i do not think for myself," said de aquila, "nor for our king, nor for your lands. i think for england, for whom neither king nor baron thinks. i am not norman, sir richard, nor saxon, sir hugh. english am i." '"saxon, norman or english," said hugh, "our lives are thine, however the game goes. when do we hang gilbert?" '"never," said de aquila. "who knows, he may yet be sacristan of battle, for, to do him justice, he is a good writer. dead men make dumb witnesses. wait." '"but the king may give pevensey to fulke. and our manors go with it," said i. "shall we tell our sons?" '"no. the king will not wake up a hornets' nest in the south till he has smoked out the bees in the north. he may hold me a traitor; but at least he sees i am not fighting against him; and every day that i lie still is so much gain to him while he fights the barons. if he were wise he would wait till that war were over before he made new enemies. but i think fulke will play upon him to send for me, and if i do not obey the summons, that will, to henry's mind, be proof of my treason. but mere talk, such as gilbert sends, is no proof nowadays. we barons follow the church, and, like anselm, we speak what we please. let us go about our day's dealings, and say naught to gilbert." '"then we do nothing?" said hugh. '"we wait," said de aquila. "i am old, but still i find that the most grievous work i know." 'and so we found it, but in the end de aquila was right. 'a little later in the year, armed men rode over the hill, the golden horseshoes flying behind the king's banner. said de aquila, at the window of our chamber: "how did i tell you? here comes fulke himself to spy out his new lands which our king hath promised him if he can bring proof of my treason." '"how dost thou know?" said hugh. '"because that is what i would do if i were fulke, but _i_ should have brought more men. my roan horse to your old shoes," said he, "fulke brings me the king's summons to leave pevensey and join the war." he sucked in his cheeks and drummed on the edge of the shaft, where the water sounded all hollow. '"shall we go?" said i. '"go! at this time of year? stark madness," said he. "take _me_ from pevensey to fisk and flyte through fern and forest, and in three days robert's keels would be lying on pevensey mud with ten thousand men! who would stop them--fulke?" 'the horns blew without, and anon fulke cried the king's summons at the great door, that de aquila with all men and horse should join the king's camp at salisbury. '"how did i tell you?" said de aquila. "there are twenty barons 'twixt here and salisbury could give king henry good land service, but he has been worked upon by fulke to send south and call me--_me_!--off the gate of england, when his enemies stand about to batter it in. see that fulke's men lie in the big south barn," said he. "give them drink, and when fulke has eaten we will drink in my chamber. the great hall is too cold for old bones." 'as soon as he was off-horse fulke went to the chapel with gilbert to give thanks for his safe coming, and when he had eaten--he was a fat man, and rolled his eyes greedily at our good roast sussex wheatears--we led him to the little upper chamber, whither gilbert had already gone with the manor-roll. i remember when fulke heard the tide blow and whistle in the shaft he leaped back, and his long down-turned stirrup-shoes caught in the rushes and he stumbled, so that jehan behind him found it easy to knock his head against the wall.' 'did you know it was going to happen?' said dan. 'assuredly,' said sir richard, with a sweet smile. 'i put my foot on his sword and plucked away his dagger, but he knew not whether it was day or night for awhile. he lay rolling his eyes and bubbling with his mouth, and jehan roped him like a calf. he was cased all in that newfangled armour which we call lizard-mail. not rings like my hauberk here'--sir richard tapped his chest--but little pieces of dagger-proof steel overlapping on stout leather. we stripped it off (no need to spoil good harness by wetting it), and in the neck-piece de aquila found the same folden piece of parchment which we had put back under the hearthstone. 'at this gilbert would have run out. i laid my hand on his shoulder. it sufficed. he fell to trembling and praying on his beads. '"gilbert," said de aquila, "here be more notable sayings and doings of our lord of pevensey for thee to write down. take pen and ink-horn, gilbert. we cannot all be sacristans of battle." 'said fulke from the floor, "ye have bound a king's messenger. pevensey shall burn for this." '"maybe. i have seen it besieged once," said de aquila, "but heart up, fulke. i promise thee that thou shalt be hanged in the middle of the flames at the end of that siege, if i have to share my last loaf with thee; and that is more than odo would have done when we starved out him and mortain." 'then fulke sat up and looked long and cunningly at de aquila. '"by the saints," said he, "why didst thou not say thou wast on the duke robert's side at the first?" '"am i?" said de aquila. 'fulke laughed and said, "no man who serves king henry dare do this much to his messenger. when didst thou come over to the duke? let me up and we can smooth it out together." and he smiled and becked and winked. '"yes, we will smooth it out," said de aquila. he nodded to me, and jehan and i heaved up fulke--he was a heavy man--and lowered him into the shaft by a rope, not so as to stand on our gold, but dangling by his shoulders a little above. it was turn of ebb, and the water came to his knees. he said nothing, but shivered somewhat. 'then jehan of a sudden beat down gilbert's wrist with his sheathed dagger. "stop!" he said. "he swallows his beads." '"poison, belike," said de aquila. "it is good for men who know too much. i have carried it these thirty years. give me!" 'then gilbert wept and howled. de aquila ran the beads through his fingers. the last one--i have said they were large nuts--opened in two halves on a pin, and there was a small folded parchment within. on it was written: "_the old dog goes to salisbury to be beaten. i have his kennel. come quickly_." '"this is worse than poison," said de aquila, very softly, and sucked in his cheeks. then gilbert grovelled in the rushes, and told us all he knew. the letter, as we guessed, was from fulke to the duke (and not the first that had passed between them); fulke had given it to gilbert in the chapel, and gilbert thought to have taken it by morning to a certain fishing boat at the wharf, which trafficked between pevensey and the french shore. gilbert was a false fellow, but he found time between his quakings and shakings to swear that the master of the boat knew nothing of the matter. '"he hath called me shaved head," said gilbert, "and he hath thrown haddock-guts at me; but for all that, he is no traitor." '"i will have no clerk of mine mishandled or miscalled," said de aquila. "that seaman shall be whipped at his own mast. write me first a letter, and thou shalt bear it, with the order for the whipping, to-morrow to the boat." 'at this gilbert would have kissed de aquila's hand--he had not hoped to live until the morning--and when he trembled less he wrote a letter as from fulke to the duke, saying that the kennel, which signified pevensey, was shut, and that the old dog (which was de aquila) sat outside it, and, moreover, that all had been betrayed. '"write to any man that all is betrayed," said de aquila, "and even the pope himself would sleep uneasily. eh, jehan? if one told thee all was betrayed, what wouldst thou do?" '"i would run away," said jehan. "it might be true." '"well said," quoth de aquila. "write, gilbert, that montgomery, the great earl, hath made his peace with the king, and that little d'arcy, whom i hate, hath been hanged by the heels. we will give robert full measure to chew upon. write also that fulke himself is sick to death of a dropsy." '"nay!" cried fulke, hanging in the well-shaft. "drown me out of hand, but do not make a jest of me." '"jest? i?" said de aquila. "i am but fighting for life and lands with a pen, as thou hast shown me, fulke." 'then fulke groaned, for he was cold, and, "let me confess," said he. '"now, this is right neighbourly," said de aquila, leaning over the shaft. "thou hast read my sayings and doings--or at least the first part of them--and thou art minded to repay me with thy own doings and sayings. take pen and inkhorn, gilbert. here is work that will not irk thee." '"let my men go without hurt, and i will confess my treason against the king," said fulke. '"now, why has he grown so tender of his men of a sudden?" said hugh to me; for fulke had no name for mercy to his men. plunder he gave them, but pity, none. '"té! té!" said de aquila. "thy treason was all confessed long ago by gilbert. it would be enough to hang montgomery himself." '"nay; but spare my men," said fulke; and we heard him splash like a fish in a pond, for the tide was rising. '"all in good time," said de aquila. "the night is young; the wine is old; and we need only the merry tale. begin the story of thy life since when thou wast a lad at tours. tell it nimbly!" '"ye shame me to my soul," said fulke. '"then i have done what neither king nor duke could do," said de aquila. "but begin, and forget nothing." '"send thy man away," said fulke. '"that much can i do," said de aquila. "but, remember, i am like the danes' king; i cannot turn the tide." '"how long will it rise?" said fulke, and splashed anew. '"for three hours," said de aquila. "time to tell all thy good deeds. begin, and gilbert,--i have heard thou art somewhat careless--do not twist his words from his true meaning." 'so--fear of death in the dark being upon him--fulke began, and gilbert, not knowing what his fate might be, wrote it word by word. i have heard many tales, but never heard i aught to match the tale of fulke his black life, as fulke told it hollowly, hanging in the shaft.' 'was it bad?' said dan, awestruck. 'beyond belief,' sir richard answered. 'none the less, there was that in it which forced even gilbert to laugh. we three laughed till we ached. at one place his teeth so chattered that we could not well hear, and we reached him down a cup of wine. then he warmed to it, and smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries, his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also inconceivably a coward); his lack of gear and honour; his despair at their loss; his remedies, and well-coloured contrivances. yes, he waved the filthy rags of his life before us, as though they had been some proud banner. when he ceased, we saw by torches that the tide stood at the corners of his mouth, and he breathed strongly through his nose. 'we had him out, and rubbed him; we wrapped him in a cloak, and gave him wine, and we leaned and looked upon him, the while he drank. he was shivering, but shameless. 'of a sudden we heard jehan at the stairway wake, but a boy pushed past him, and stood before us, the hall rushes in his hair, all slubbered with sleep. "my father! my father! i dreamed of treachery," he cried, and babbled thickly. '"there is no treachery here," said fulke. "go!" and the boy turned, even then not fully awake, and jehan led him by the hand to the great hall. '"thy only son!" said de aquila. "why didst thou bring the child here?" '"he is my heir. i dared not trust him to my brother," said fulke, and now he was ashamed. de aquila said nothing, but sat weighing a wine cup in his two hands--thus. anon, fulke touched him on the knee. '"let the boy escape to normandy," said he, "and do with me at thy pleasure. yea, hang me tomorrow, with my letter to robert round my neck, but let the boy go." '"be still," said de aquila. "i think for england." 'so we waited what our lord of pevensey should devise; and the sweat ran down fulke's forehead. 'at last said de aquila: "i am too old to judge, or to trust any man. i do not covet thy lands, as thou hast coveted mine; and whether thou art any better or any worse than any other black angevin thief, it is for thy king to find out. therefore, go back to thy king, fulke." '"and thou wilt say nothing of what has passed?" said fulke. '"why should i? thy son will stay with me. if the king calls me again to leave pevensey, which i must guard against england's enemies; if the king sends his men against me for a traitor; or if i hear that the king in his bed thinks any evil of me or my two knights, thy son will be hanged from out this window, fulke."' 'but it hadn't anything to do with his son,' cried una, startled. 'how could we have hanged fulke?' said sir richard. 'we needed him to make our peace with the king. he would have betrayed half england for the boy's sake. of that we were sure.' 'i don't understand,' said una. 'but i think it was simply awful.' 'so did not fulke. he was well pleased.' 'what? because his son was going to be killed?' 'nay. because de aquila had shown him how he might save the boy's life and his own lands and honours. "i will do it," he said. "i swear i will do it. i will tell the king thou art no traitor, but the most excellent, valiant, and perfect of us all. yes, i will save thee." 'de aquila looked still into the bottom of the cup, rolling the wine-dregs to and fro. '"ay," he said. "if i had a son, i would, i think, save him. but do not by any means tell me how thou wilt go about it." '"nay, nay," said fulke, nodding his bald head wisely. "that is my secret. but rest at ease, de aquila, no hair of thy head nor rood of thy land shall be forfeited," and he smiled like one planning great good deeds. '"and henceforward," said de aquila, "i counsel thee to serve one master--not two." '"what?" said fulke. "can i work no more honest trading between the two sides these troublous times?" '"serve robert or the king--england or normandy," said de aquila. "i care not which it is, but make thy choice here and now." '"the king, then," said fulke, "for i see he is better served than robert. shall i swear it?" '"no need," said de aquila, and he laid his hand on the parchments which gilbert had written. "it shall be some part of my gilbert's penance to copy out the savoury tale of thy life, till we have made ten, twenty, an hundred, maybe, copies. how many cattle, think you, would the bishop of tours give for that tale? or thy brother? or the monks of blois? minstrels will turn it into songs which thy own saxon serfs shall sing behind their plough-stilts, and men-at-arms riding through thy norman towns. from here to rome, fulke, men will make very merry over that tale, and how fulke told it, hanging in a well, like a drowned puppy. this shall be thy punishment, if ever i find thee double-dealing with thy king any more. meantime, the parchments stay here with thy son. him i will return to thee when thou hast made my peace with the king. the parchments never." 'fulke hid his face and groaned. '"bones of the saints!" said de aquila, laughing. "the pen cuts deep. i could never have fetched that grunt out of thee with any sword." '"but so long as i do not anger thee, my tale will be secret?" said fulke. '"just so long. does that comfort thee, fulke?" said de aquila. '"what other comfort have ye left me?" he said, and of a sudden he wept hopelessly like a child, dropping his face on his knees.' 'poor fulke,' said una. 'i pitied him also,' said sir richard. '"after the spur, corn," said de aquila, and he threw fulke three wedges of gold that he had taken from our little chest by the bedplace. '"if i had known this," said fulke, catching his breath, "i would never have lifted hand against pevensey. only lack of this yellow stuff has made me so unlucky in my dealings." 'it was dawn then, and they stirred in the great hall below. we sent down fulke's mail to be scoured, and when he rode away at noon under his own and the king's banner, very splendid and stately did he show. he smoothed his long beard, and called his son to his stirrup and kissed him. de aquila rode with him as far as the new mill landward. we thought the night had been all a dream.' 'but did he make it right with the king?' dan asked. 'about your not being traitors, i mean.' sir richard smiled. 'the king sent no second summons to pevensey, nor did he ask why de aquila had not obeyed the first. yes, that was fulke's work. i know not how he did it, but it was well and swiftly done.' 'then you didn't do anything to his son?' said una. 'the boy? oh, he was an imp! he turned the keep doors out of dortoirs while we had him. he sang foul songs, learned in the barons' camps--poor fool; he set the hounds fighting in hall; he lit the rushes to drive out, as he said, the fleas; he drew his dagger on jehan, who threw him down the stairway for it; and he rode his horse through crops and among sheep. but when we had beaten him, and showed him wolf and deer, he followed us old men like a young, eager hound, and called us "uncle". his father came the summer's end to take him away, but the boy had no lust to go, because of the otter-hunting, and he stayed on till the fox-hunting. i gave him a bittern's claw to bring him good luck at shooting. an imp, if ever there was!' 'and what happened to gilbert?' said dan. 'not even a whipping. de aquila said he would sooner a clerk, however false, that knew the manor-roll than a fool, however true, that must be taught his work afresh. moreover, after that night i think gilbert loved as much as he feared de aquila. at least he would not leave us--not even when vivian, the king's clerk, would have made him sacristan of battle abbey. a false fellow, but, in his fashion, bold.' 'did robert ever land in pevensey after all?' dan went on. 'we guarded the coast too well while henry was fighting his barons; and three or four years later, when england had peace, henry crossed to normandy and showed his brother some work at tenchebrai that cured robert of fighting. many of henry's men sailed from pevensey to that war. fulke came, i remember, and we all four lay in the little chamber once again, and drank together. de aquila was right. one should not judge men. fulke was merry. yes, always merry--with a catch in his breath.' 'and what did you do afterwards?' said una. 'we talked together of times past. that is all men can do when they grow old, little maid.' the bell for tea rang faintly across the meadows. dan lay in the bows of the _golden hind_; una in the stern, the book of verses open in her lap, was reading from 'the slave's dream': 'again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, he saw his native land.' 'i don't know when you began that,' said dan, sleepily. on the middle thwart of the boat, beside una's sun-bonnet, lay an oak leaf, an ash leaf, and a thorn leaf, that must have dropped down from the trees above; and the brook giggled as though it had just seen some joke. the runes on weland's sword a smith makes me to betray my man in my first fight. to gather gold at the world's end i am sent. the gold i gather comes into england out of deep water. like a shining fish then it descends into deep water. it is not given for goods or gear, but for the thing. the gold i gather a king covets for an ill use. the gold i gather is drawn up out of deep water. like a shining fish then it descends into deep water. it is not given for goods or gear, but for the thing. a centurion of the thirtieth cities and thrones and powers stand in time's eye, almost as long as flowers, which daily die. but, as new buds put forth to glad new men, out of the spent and unconsidered earth, the cities rise again. this season's daffodil, she never hears, what change, what chance, what chill, cut down last year's: but with bold countenance, and knowledge small, esteems her seven days' continuance to be perpetual. so time that is o'er-kind, to all that be, ordains us e'en as blind, as bold as she: that in our very death, and burial sure, shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith, 'see how our works endure!' a centurion of the thirtieth dan had come to grief over his latin, and was kept in; so una went alone to far wood. dan's big catapult and the lead bullets that hobden had made for him were hidden in an old hollow beech-stub on the west of the wood. they had named the place out of the verse in _lays of ancient rome_: from lordly volaterrae, where scowls the far-famed hold piled by the hands of giants for godlike kings of old. they were the 'godlike kings', and when old hobden piled some comfortable brushwood between the big wooden knees of volaterrae, they called him 'hands of giants'. una slipped through their private gap in the fence, and sat still awhile, scowling as scowlily and lordlily as she knew how; for volaterrae is an important watch-tower that juts out of far wood just as far wood juts out of the hillside. pook's hill lay below her and all the turns of the brook as it wanders out of the willingford woods, between hop-gardens, to old hobden's cottage at the forge. the sou'-west wind (there is always a wind by volaterrae) blew from the bare ridge where cherry clack windmill stands. now wind prowling through woods sounds like exciting things going to happen, and that is why on blowy days you stand up in volaterrae and shout bits of the _lays_ to suit its noises. una took dan's catapult from its secret place, and made ready to meet lars porsena's army stealing through the wind-whitened aspens by the brook. a gust boomed up the valley, and una chanted sorrowfully: 'verbenna down to ostia hath wasted all the plain: astur hath stormed janiculum, and the stout guards are slain.' but the wind, not charging fair to the wood, started aside and shook a single oak in gleason's pasture. here it made itself all small and crouched among the grasses, waving the tips of them as a cat waves the tip of her tail before she springs. 'now welcome--welcome, sextus,' sang una, loading the catapult-- 'now welcome to thy home! why dost thou stay, and turn away? here lies the road to rome.' she fired into the face of the lull, to wake up the cowardly wind, and heard a grunt from behind a thorn in the pasture. 'oh, my winkie!' she said aloud, and that was something she had picked up from dan. 'i b'lieve i've tickled up a gleason cow.' 'you little painted beast!' a voice cried. 'i'll teach you to sling your masters!' she looked down most cautiously, and saw a young man covered with hoopy bronze armour all glowing among the late broom. but what una admired beyond all was his great bronze helmet with a red horse-tail that flicked in the wind. she could hear the long hairs rasp on his shimmery shoulder-plates. 'what does the faun mean,' he said, half aloud to himself, 'by telling me that the painted people have changed?' he caught sight of una's yellow head. 'have you seen a painted lead-slinger?' he called. 'no-o,' said una. 'but if you've seen a bullet----' 'seen?' cried the man. 'it passed within a hair's breadth of my ear.' 'well, that was me. i'm most awfully sorry.' 'didn't the faun tell you i was coming?' he smiled. 'not if you mean puck. i thought you were a gleason cow. i--i didn't know you were a--a----what are you?' he laughed outright, showing a set of splendid teeth. his face and eyes were dark, and his eyebrows met above his big nose in one bushy black bar. 'they call me parnesius. i have been a centurion of the seventh cohort of the thirtieth legion--the ulpia victrix. did you sling that bullet?' 'i did. i was using dan's catapult,' said una. 'catapults!' said he. 'i ought to know something about them. show me!' he leaped the rough fence with a rattle of spear, shield, and armour, and hoisted himself into volaterrae as quickly as a shadow. 'a sling on a forked stick. i understand!' he cried, and pulled at the elastic. 'but what wonderful beast yields this stretching leather?' 'it's laccy--elastic. you put the bullet into that loop, and then you pull hard.' the man pulled, and hit himself square on his thumb-nail. 'each to his own weapon,' he said gravely, handing it back. 'i am better with the bigger machine, little maiden. but it's a pretty toy. a wolf would laugh at it. aren't you afraid of wolves?' 'there aren't any,' said una. 'never believe it! a wolf's like a winged hat. he comes when he isn't expected. don't they hunt wolves here?' 'we don't hunt,' said una, remembering what she had heard from grown-ups. 'we preserve--pheasants. do you know them?' 'i ought to,' said the young man, smiling again, and he imitated the cry of the cock-pheasant so perfectly that a bird answered out of the wood. 'what a big painted clucking fool is a pheasant!' he said. 'just like some romans.' 'but you're a roman yourself, aren't you?' said una. 'ye-es and no. i'm one of a good few thousands who have never seen rome except in a picture. my people have lived at vectis for generations. vectis--that island west yonder that you can see from so far in clear weather.' 'do you mean the isle of wight? it lifts up just before rain, and you see it from the downs.' 'very likely. our villa's on the south edge of the island, by the broken cliffs. most of it is three hundred years old, but the cow-stables, where our first ancestor lived, must be a hundred years older. oh, quite that, because the founder of our family had his land given him by agricola at the settlement. it's not a bad little place for its size. in spring-time violets grow down to the very beach. i've gathered sea-weeds for myself and violets for my mother many a time with our old nurse.' 'was your nurse a--a romaness too?' 'no, a numidian. gods be good to her! a dear, fat, brown thing with a tongue like a cowbell. she was a free woman. by the way, are you free, maiden?' 'oh, quite,' said una. 'at least, till tea-time; and in summer our governess doesn't say much if we're late.' the young man laughed again--a proper understanding laugh. 'i see,' said he. 'that accounts for your being in the wood. _we_ hid among the cliffs.' 'did you have a governess, then?' 'did we not? a greek, too. she had a way of clutching her dress when she hunted us among the gorse-bushes that made us laugh. then she'd say she'd get us whipped. she never did, though, bless her! aglaia was a thorough sportswoman, for all her learning.' 'but what lessons did you do--when--when you were little?' 'ancient history, the classics, arithmetic and so on,' he answered. 'my sister and i were thick-heads, but my two brothers (i'm the middle one) liked those things, and, of course, mother was clever enough for any six. she was nearly as tall as i am, and she looked like the new statue on the western road--the demeter of the baskets, you know. and funny! roma dea! how mother could make us laugh!' 'what at?' 'little jokes and sayings that every family has. don't you know?' 'i know we have, but i didn't know other people had them too,' said una. 'tell me about all your family, please.' 'good families are very much alike. mother would sit spinning of evenings while aglaia read in her corner, and father did accounts, and we four romped about the passages. when our noise grew too loud the pater would say, "less tumult! less tumult! have you never heard of a father's right over his children? he can slay them, my loves--slay them dead, and the gods highly approve of the action!" then mother would prim up her dear mouth over the wheel and answer: "h'm! i'm afraid there can't be much of the roman father about you!" then the pater would roll up his accounts, and say, "i'll show you!" and then--then, he'd be worse than any of us!' 'fathers can--if they like,' said una, her eyes dancing. 'didn't i say all good families are very much the same?' 'what did you do in summer?' said una. 'play about, like us?' 'yes, and we visited our friends. there are no wolves in vectis. we had many friends, and as many ponies as we wished.' 'it must have been lovely,' said una. 'i hope it lasted for ever.' 'not quite, little maid. when i was about sixteen or seventeen, the father felt gouty, and we all went to the waters.' 'what waters?' 'at aquae solis. every one goes there. you ought to get your father to take you some day.' 'but where? i don't know,' said una. the young man looked astonished for a moment. 'aquae solis,' he repeated. 'the best baths in britain. just as good, i'm told, as rome. all the old gluttons sit in hot water, and talk scandal and politics. and the generals come through the streets with their guards behind them; and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and goldsmiths, and merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, and ultra-roman britons, and ultra-british romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be civilised, and jew lecturers, and--oh, everybody interesting. we young people, of course, took no interest in politics. we had not the gout: there were many of our age like us. we did not find life sad. 'but while we were enjoying ourselves without thinking, my sister met the son of a magistrate in the west--and a year afterwards she was married to him. my young brother, who was always interested in plants and roots, met the first doctor of a legion from the city of the legions, and he decided that he would be an army doctor. i do not think it is a profession for a well-born man, but then--i'm not my brother. he went to rome to study medicine, and now he's first doctor of a legion in egypt--at antinoe, i think, but i have not heard from him for some time. 'my eldest brother came across a greek philosopher, and told my father that he intended to settle down on the estate as a farmer and a philosopher. you see,'--the young man's eyes twinkled--'his philosopher was a long-haired one!' 'i thought philosophers were bald,' said una. 'not all. she was very pretty. i don't blame him. nothing could have suited me better than my eldest brother's doing this, for i was only too keen to join the army. i had always feared i should have to stay at home and look after the estate while my brother took _this_.' he rapped on his great glistening shield that never seemed to be in his way. 'so we were well contented--we young people--and we rode back to clausentum along the wood road very quietly. but when we reached home, aglaia, our governess, saw what had come to us. i remember her at the door, the torch over her head, watching us climb the cliff-path from the boat. "aie! aie!" she said. "children you went away. men and a woman you return!" then she kissed mother, and mother wept. thus our visit to the waters settled our fates for each of us, maiden.' he rose to his feet and listened, leaning on the shield-rim. 'i think that's dan--my brother,' said una. 'yes; and the faun is with him,' he replied, as dan with puck stumbled through the copse. 'we should have come sooner,' puck called, 'but the beauties of your native tongue, o parnesius, have enthralled this young citizen.' parnesius looked bewildered, even when una explained. 'dan said the plural of "dominus" was "dominoes", and when miss blake said it wasn't he said he supposed it was "backgammon", and so he had to write it out twice--for cheek, you know.' dan had climbed into volaterrae, hot and panting. 'i've run nearly all the way,' he gasped, 'and then puck met me. how do you do, sir?' 'i am in good health,' parnesius answered. 'see! i have tried to bend the bow of ulysses, but----' he held up his thumb. 'i'm sorry. you must have pulled off too soon,' said dan. 'but puck said you were telling una a story.' 'continue, o parnesius,' said puck, who had perched himself on a dead branch above them. 'i will be chorus. has he puzzled you much, una?' 'not a bit, except--i didn't know where ak--ak something was,' she answered. 'oh, aquae solis. that's bath, where the buns come from. let the hero tell his own tale.' parnesius pretended to thrust his spear at puck's legs, but puck reached down, caught at the horse-tail plume, and pulled off the tall helmet. 'thanks, jester,' said parnesius, shaking his curly dark head. 'that is cooler. now hang it up for me.... 'i was telling your sister how i joined the army,' he said to dan. 'did you have to pass an exam?' dan asked eagerly. 'no. i went to my father, and said i should like to enter the dacian horse (i had seen some at aquae solis); but he said i had better begin service in a regular legion from rome. now, like many of our youngsters, i was not too fond of anything roman. the roman-born officers and magistrates looked down on us british-born as though we were barbarians. i told my father so. '"i know they do," he said; "but remember, after all, we are the people of the old stock, and our duty is to the empire." '"to which empire?" i asked. "we split the eagle before i was born." '"what thieves' talk is that?" said my father. he hated slang. '"well, sir," i said, "we've one emperor in rome, and i don't know how many emperors the outlying provinces have set up from time to time. which am i to follow?" '"gratian," said he. "at least he's a sportsman." '"he's all that," i said. "hasn't he turned himself into a raw-beef-eating scythian?" '"where did you hear of it?" said the pater. '"at aquae solis," i said. it was perfectly true. this precious emperor gratian of ours had a bodyguard of fur-cloaked scythians, and he was so crazy about them that he dressed like them. in rome of all places in the world! it was as bad as if my own father had painted himself blue! '"no matter for the clothes," said the pater. "they are only the fringe of the trouble. it began before your time or mine. rome has forsaken her gods, and must be punished. the great war with the painted people broke out in the very year the temples of our gods were destroyed. we beat the painted people in the very year our temples were rebuilt. go back further still."... he went back to the time of diocletian; and to listen to him you would have thought eternal rome herself was on the edge of destruction, just because a few people had become a little large-minded. '_i_ knew nothing about it. aglaia never taught us the history of our own country. she was so full of her ancient greeks. '"there is no hope for rome," said the pater, at last. "she has forsaken her gods, but if the gods forgive _us_ here, we may save britain. to do that, we must keep the painted people back. therefore, i tell you, parnesius, as a father, that if your heart is set on service, your place is among men on the wall--and not with women among the cities."' 'what wall?' asked dan and una at once. 'father meant the one we call hadrian's wall. i'll tell you about it later. it was built long ago, across north britain, to keep out the painted people--picts, you call them. father had fought in the great pict war that lasted more than twenty years, and he knew what fighting meant. theodosius, one of our great generals, had chased the little beasts back far into the north before i was born. down at vectis, of course, we never troubled our heads about them. but when my father spoke as he did, i kissed his hand, and waited for orders. we british-born romans know what is due to our parents.' 'if i kissed my father's hand, he'd laugh,' said dan. 'customs change; but if you do not obey your father, the gods remember it. you may be quite sure of _that_. 'after our talk, seeing i was in earnest, the pater sent me over to clausentum to learn my foot-drill in a barrack full of foreign auxiliaries--as unwashed and unshaved a mob of mixed barbarians as ever scrubbed a breastplate. it was your stick in their stomachs and your shield in their faces to push them into any sort of formation. when i had learned my work the instructor gave me a handful--and they were a handful!--of gauls and iberians to polish up till they were sent to their stations up-country. i did my best, and one night a villa in the suburbs caught fire, and i had my handful out and at work before any of the other troops. i noticed a quiet-looking man on the lawn, leaning on a stick. he watched us passing buckets from the pond, and at last he said to me: "who are you?" '"a probationer, waiting for a command," i answered. _i_ didn't know who he was from deucalion! '"born in britain?" he said. '"yes, if you were born in spain," i said, for he neighed his words like an iberian mule. '"and what might you call yourself when you are at home?" he said, laughing. '"that depends," i answered; "sometimes one thing and sometimes another. but now i'm busy." 'he said no more till we had saved the family gods (they were respectable householders), and then he grunted across the laurels: "listen, young sometimes-one-thing-and-sometimes-another. in future call yourself centurion of the seventh cohort of the thirtieth, the ulpia victrix. that will help me to remember you. your father and a few other people call me maximus." 'he tossed me the polished stick he was leaning on, and went away. you might have knocked me down with it!' 'who was he?' said dan. 'maximus himself, our great general! _the_ general of britain who had been theodosius's right hand in the pict war! not only had he given me my centurion's stick direct, but three steps in a good legion as well! a new man generally begins in the tenth cohort of his legion, and works up.' 'and were you pleased?' said una. 'very. i thought maximus had chosen me for my good looks and fine style in marching, but, when i went home, the pater told me he had served under maximus in the great pict war, and had asked him to befriend me.' 'a child you were!' said puck, from above. 'i was,' said parnesius. 'don't begrudge it me, faun. afterwards--the gods know i put aside the games!' and puck nodded, brown chin on brown hand, his big eyes still. 'the night before i left we sacrificed to our ancestors--the usual little home sacrifice--but i never prayed so earnestly to all the good shades, and then i went with my father by boat to regnum, and across the chalk eastwards to anderida yonder.' 'regnum? anderida?' the children turned their faces to puck. 'regnum's chichester,' he said, pointing towards cherry clack, 'and'--he threw his arm south behind him--'anderida's pevensey.' 'pevensey again!' said dan. 'where weland landed?' 'weland and a few others,' said puck. 'pevensey isn't young--even compared to me!' 'the headquarters of the thirtieth lay at anderida in summer, but my own cohort, the seventh, was on the wall up north. maximus was inspecting auxiliaries--the abulci, i think--at anderida, and we stayed with him, for he and my father were very old friends. i was only there ten days when i was ordered to go up with thirty men to my cohort.' he laughed merrily. 'a man never forgets his first march. i was happier than any emperor when i led my handful through the north gate of the camp, and we saluted the guard and the altar of victory there.' 'how? how?' said dan and una. parnesius smiled, and stood up, flashing in his armour. 'so!' said he; and he moved slowly through the beautiful movements of the roman salute, that ends with a hollow clang of the shield coming into its place between the shoulders. 'hai!' said puck. 'that sets one thinking!' 'we went out fully armed,' said parnesius, sitting down; 'but as soon as the road entered the great forest, my men expected the pack-horses to hang their shields on. "no!" i said; "you can dress like women in anderida, but while you're with me you will carry your own weapons and armour." '"but it's hot," said one of them, "and we haven't a doctor. suppose we get sunstroke, or a fever?" '"then die," i said, "and a good riddance to rome! up shield--up spears, and tighten your foot-wear!" '"don't think yourself emperor of britain already," a fellow shouted. i knocked him over with the butt of my spear, and explained to these roman-born romans that, if there were any further trouble, we should go on with one man short. and, by the light of the sun, i meant it too! my raw gauls at clausentum had never treated me so. 'then, quietly as a cloud, maximus rode out of the fern (my father behind him), and reined up across the road. he wore the purple, as though he were already emperor; his leggings were of white buckskin laced with gold. 'my men dropped like--like partridges. 'he said nothing for some time, only looked, with his eyes puckered. then he crooked his forefinger, and my men walked--crawled, i mean--to one side. '"stand in the sun, children," he said, and they formed up on the hard road. '"what would you have done," he said to me, "if i had not been here?" '"i should have killed that man," i answered. '"kill him now," he said. "he will not move a limb." '"no," i said. "you've taken my men out of my command. i should only be your butcher if i killed him now." do you see what i meant?' parnesius turned to dan. 'yes,' said dan. 'it wouldn't have been fair, somehow.' 'that was what i thought,' said parnesius. 'but maximus frowned. "you'll never be an emperor," he said. "not even a general will you be." 'i was silent, but my father seemed pleased. '"i came here to see the last of you," he said. '"you have seen it," said maximus. "i shall never need your son any more. he will live and he will die an officer of a legion--and he might have been prefect of one of my provinces. now eat and drink with us," he said. "your men will wait till you have finished." 'my miserable thirty stood like wine-skins glistening in the hot sun, and maximus led us to where his people had set a meal. himself he mixed the wine. '"a year from now," he said, "you will remember that you have sat with the emperor of britain--and gaul." '"yes," said the pater, "you can drive two mules--gaul and britain." '"five years hence you will remember that you have drunk"--he passed me the cup and there was blue borage in it--"with the emperor of rome!" '"no; you can't drive three mules. they will tear you in pieces," said my father. '"and you on the wall, among the heather, will weep because your notion of justice was more to you than the favour of the emperor of rome." 'i sat quite still. one does not answer a general who wears the purple. '"i am not angry with you," he went on; "i owe too much to your father----" '"you owe me nothing but advice that you never took," said the pater. '"----to be unjust to any of your family. indeed, i say you may make a good tribune, but, so far as i am concerned, on the wall you will live, and on the wall you will die," said maximus. '"very like," said my father. "but we shall have the picts _and_ their friends breaking through before long. you cannot move all troops out of britain to make you emperor, and expect the north to sit quiet." '"i follow my destiny," said maximus. '"follow it, then," said my father, pulling up a fern root; "and die as theodosius died." '"ah!" said maximus. "my old general was killed because he served the empire too well. _i_ may be killed, but not for that reason," and he smiled a little pale grey smile that made my blood run cold. '"then i had better follow my destiny," i said, "and take my men to the wall." 'he looked at me a long time, and bowed his head slanting like a spaniard. "follow it, boy," he said. that was all. i was only too glad to get away, though i had many messages for home. i found my men standing as they had been put--they had not even shifted their feet in the dust, and off i marched, still feeling that terrific smile like an east wind up my back. i never halted them till sunset, and'--he turned about and looked at pook's hill below him--'then i halted yonder.' he pointed to the broken, bracken-covered shoulder of the forge hill behind old hobden's cottage. 'there? why, that's only the old forge--where they made iron once,' said dan. 'very good stuff it was too,' said parnesius calmly. 'we mended three shoulder-straps here and had a spear-head riveted. the forge was rented from the government by a one-eyed smith from carthage. i remember we called him cyclops. he sold me a beaver-skin rug for my sister's room.' 'but it couldn't have been here,' dan insisted. 'but it was! from the altar of victory at anderida to the first forge in the forest here is twelve miles seven hundred paces. it is all in the road book. a man doesn't forget his first march. i think i could tell you every station between this and----' he leaned forward, but his eye was caught by the setting sun. it had come down to the top of cherry clack hill, and the light poured in between the tree trunks so that you could see red and gold and black deep into the heart of far wood; and parnesius in his armour shone as though he had been afire. 'wait!' he said, lifting a hand, and the sunlight jinked on his glass bracelet. 'wait! i pray to mithras!' he rose and stretched his arms westward, with deep, splendid-sounding words. then puck began to sing too, in a voice like bells tolling, and as he sang he slipped from volaterrae to the ground, and beckoned the children to follow. they obeyed; it seemed as though the voices were pushing them along; and through the goldy-brown light on the beech leaves they walked, while puck between them chanted something like this: 'cur mundus militat sub vana gloria cujus prosperitas est transitoria? tam cito labitur ejus potentia quam vasa figuli quæ sunt fragilia.' they found themselves at the little locked gates of the wood. 'quo cæsar abiit celsus imperio? vel dives splendidus totus in prandio? dic ubi tullius----' still singing, he took dan's hand and wheeled him round to face una as she came out of the gate. it shut behind her, at the same time as puck threw the memory-magicking oak, ash and thorn leaves over their heads. 'well, you _are_ jolly late,' said una. 'couldn't you get away before?' 'i did,' said dan. 'i got away in lots of time, but--but i didn't know it was so late. where've you been?' 'in volaterrae--waiting for you.' 'sorry,' said dan. 'it was all that beastly latin.' a british-roman song (a.d. ) my father's father saw it not, and i, belike, shall never come, to look on that so-holy spot-- the very rome-- crowned by all time, all art, all might, the equal work of gods and man, city beneath whose oldest height-- the race began! soon to send forth again a brood, unshakeable, we pray, that clings, to rome's thrice-hammered hardihood-- in arduous things. strong heart with triple armour bound, beat strongly, for thy life-blood runs, age after age, the empire round-- in us thy sons, who, distant from the seven hills, loving and serving much, require thee,--thee to guard 'gainst home-born ills the imperial fire! on the great wall 'when i left rome for lalage's sake by the legions' road to rimini, she vowed her heart was mine to take with me and my shield to rimini-- (till the eagles flew from rimini!) and i've tramped britain, and i've tramped gaul, and the pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall as white as the neck of lalage-- (as cold as the heart of lalage!) and i've lost britain, and i've lost gaul,' (the voice seemed very cheerful about it), 'and i've lost rome, and, worst of all, i've lost lalage!' they were standing by the gate to far wood when they heard this song. without a word they hurried to their private gap and wriggled through the hedge almost atop of a jay that was feeding from puck's hand. 'gently!' said puck. 'what are you looking for?' 'parnesius, of course,' dan answered. 'we've only just remembered yesterday. it isn't fair.' puck chuckled as he rose. 'i'm sorry, but children who spend the afternoon with me and a roman centurion need a little settling dose of magic before they go to tea with their governess. ohé, parnesius!' he called. 'here, faun!' came the answer from volaterrae. they could see the shimmer of bronze armour in the beech crotch, and the friendly flash of the great shield uplifted. 'i have driven out the britons.' parnesius laughed like a boy. 'i occupy their high forts. but rome is merciful! you may come up.' and up they three all scrambled. 'what was the song you were singing just now?' said una, as soon as she had settled herself. 'that? oh, _rimini_. it's one of the tunes that are always being born somewhere in the empire. they run like a pestilence for six months or a year, till another one pleases the legions, and then they march to _that_.' 'tell them about the marching, parnesius. few people nowadays walk from end to end of this country,' said puck. 'the greater their loss. i know nothing better than the long march when your feet are hardened. you begin after the mists have risen, and you end, perhaps, an hour after sundown.' 'and what do you have to eat?' dan asked promptly. 'fat bacon, beans, and bread, and whatever wine happens to be in the rest-houses. but soldiers are born grumblers. their very first day out, my men complained of our water-ground british corn. they said it wasn't so filling as the rough stuff that is ground in the roman ox-mills. however, they had to fetch and eat it.' 'fetch it? where from?' said una. 'from that newly invented water-mill below the forge.' 'that's forge mill--_our_ mill!' una looked at puck. 'yes; yours,' puck put in. 'how old did you think it was?' 'i don't know. didn't sir richard dalyngridge talk about it?' 'he did, and it was old in his day,' puck answered. 'hundreds of years old.' 'it was new in mine,' said parnesius. 'my men looked at the flour in their helmets as though it had been a nest of adders. they did it to try my patience. but i--addressed them, and we became friends. to tell the truth, they taught me the roman step. you see, i'd only served with quick-marching auxiliaries. a legion's pace is altogether different. it is a long, slow stride, that never varies from sunrise to sunset. "rome's race--rome's pace," as the proverb says. twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither more nor less. head and spear up, shield on your back, cuirass-collar open one hand's breadth--and that's how you take the eagles through britain.' 'and did you meet any adventures?' said dan. 'there are no adventures south the wall,' said parnesius. 'the worst thing that happened me was having to appear before a magistrate up north, where a wandering philosopher had jeered at the eagles. i was able to show that the old man had deliberately blocked our road; and the magistrate told him, out of his own book, i believe, that, whatever his gods might be, he should pay proper respect to cæsar.' 'what did you do?' said dan. 'went on. why should _i_ care for such things, my business being to reach my station? it took me twenty days. 'of course, the farther north you go the emptier are the roads. at last you fetch clear of the forests and climb bare hills, where wolves howl in the ruins of our cities that have been. no more pretty girls; no more jolly magistrates who knew your father when he was young, and invite you to stay with them; no news at the temples and way-stations except bad news of wild beasts. there's where you meet hunters, and trappers for the circuses, prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves. your pony shies at them, and your men laugh. 'the houses change from gardened villas to shut forts with watch-towers of grey stone, and great stone-walled sheepfolds, guarded by armed britons of the north shore. in the naked hills beyond the naked houses, where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry charging, you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. the hard road goes on and on--and the wind sings through your helmet-plume--past altars to legions and generals forgotten, and broken statues of gods and heroes, and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you. red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, is that big, purple heather country of broken stone. 'just when you think you are at the world's end, you see a smoke from east to west as far as the eye can turn, and then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind--always behind--one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. and that is the wall!' 'ah!' said the children, taking breath. 'you may well,' said parnesius. 'old men who have followed the eagles since boyhood say nothing in the empire is more wonderful than first sight of the wall!' 'is it just a wall? like the one round the kitchen-garden?' said dan. 'no, no! it is _the_ wall. along the top are towers with guard-houses, small towers, between. even on the narrowest part of it three men with shields can walk abreast, from guard-house to guard-house. a little curtain wall, no higher than a man's neck, runs along the top of the thick wall, so that from a distance you see the helmets of the sentries sliding back and forth like beads. thirty feet high is the wall, and on the picts' side, the north, is a ditch, strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads set in wood, and tyres of wheels joined by chains. the little people come there to steal iron for their arrow-heads. 'but the wall itself is not more wonderful than the town behind it. long ago there were great ramparts and ditches on the south side, and no one was allowed to build there. now the ramparts are partly pulled down and built over, from end to end of the wall; making a thin town eighty miles long. think of it! one roaring, rioting, cock-fighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from ituna on the west to segedunum on the cold eastern beach! on one side heather, woods and ruins where picts hide, and on the other, a vast town--long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. yes, a snake basking beside a warm wall! 'my cohort, i was told, lay at hunno, where the great north road runs through the wall into the province of valentia.' parnesius laughed scornfully. 'the province of valentia! we followed the road, therefore, into hunno town, and stood astonished. the place was a fair--a fair of peoples from every corner of the empire. some were racing horses: some sat in wine-shops: some watched dogs baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see cocks fight. a boy not much older than myself, but i could see he was an officer, reined up before me and asked what i wanted. '"my station," i said, and showed him my shield.' parnesius held up his broad shield with its three x's like letters on a beer-cask. '"lucky omen!" said he. "your cohort's the next tower to us, but they're all at the cock-fight. this is a happy place. come and wet the eagles." he meant to offer me a drink. '"when i've handed over my men," i said. i felt angry and ashamed. '"oh, you'll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense," he answered. "but don't let me interfere with your hopes. go on to the statue of roma dea. you can't miss it. the main road into valentia!" and he laughed and rode off. i could see the statue not a quarter of a mile away, and there i went. at some time or other the great north road ran under it into valentia; but the far end had been blocked up because of the picts, and on the plaster a man had scratched, "finish!" it was like marching into a cave. we grounded spears together, my little thirty, and it echoed in the barrel of the arch, but none came. there was a door at one side painted with our number. we prowled in, and i found a cook asleep, and ordered him to give us food. then i climbed to the top of the wall, and looked out over the pict country, and i--thought,' said parnesius. 'the bricked-up arch with "finish!" on the plaster was what shook me, for i was not much more than a boy.' 'what a shame!' said una. 'but did you feel happy after you'd had a good----' dan stopped her with a nudge. 'happy?' said parnesius. 'when the men of the cohort i was to command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight, their birds under their arms, and asked me who i was? no, i was not happy; but i made my new cohort unhappy too ... i wrote my mother i was happy, but, oh, my friends'--he stretched arms over bare knees--'i would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as i suffered through my first months on the wall. remember this: among the officers was scarcely one, except myself (and i thought i had lost the favour of maximus, my general), scarcely one who had not done something of wrong or folly. either he had killed a man, or taken money, or insulted the magistrates, or blasphemed the gods, and so had been sent to the wall as a hiding-place from shame or fear. and the men were as the officers. remember, also, that the wall was manned by every breed and race in the empire. no two towers spoke the same tongue, or worshipped the same gods. in one thing only we were all equal. no matter what arms we had used before we came to the wall, _on_ the wall we were all archers, like the scythians. the pict cannot run away from the arrow, or crawl under it. he is a bowman himself. _he_ knows!' 'i suppose you were fighting picts all the time,' said dan. 'picts seldom fight. i never saw a fighting pict for half a year. the tame picts told us they had all gone north.' 'what is a tame pict?' said dan. 'a pict--there were many such--who speaks a few words of our tongue, and slips across the wall to sell ponies and wolf-hounds. without a horse and a dog, _and_ a friend, man would perish. the gods gave me all three, and there is no gift like friendship. remember this'--parnesius turned to dan--'when you become a young man. for your fate will turn on the first true friend you make.' 'he means,' said puck, grinning, 'that if you try to make yourself a decent chap when you're young, you'll make rather decent friends when you grow up. if you're a beast, you'll have beastly friends. listen to the pious parnesius on friendship!' 'i am not pious,' parnesius answered, 'but i know what goodness means; and my friend, though he was without hope, was ten thousand times better than i. stop laughing, faun!' 'oh, youth eternal and all-believing,' cried puck, as he rocked on the branch above. 'tell them about your pertinax.' 'he was that friend the gods sent me--the boy who spoke to me when i first came. little older than myself, commanding the augusta victoria cohort on the tower next to us and the numidians. in virtue he was far my superior.' 'then why was he on the wall?' una asked, quickly. 'they'd all done something bad. you said so yourself.' 'he was the nephew, his father had died, of a great rich man in gaul who was not always kind to his mother. when pertinax grew up, he discovered this, and so his uncle shipped him off, by trickery and force, to the wall. we came to know each other at a ceremony in our temple--in the dark. it was the bull-killing,' parnesius explained to puck. '_i_ see, said puck, and turned to the children. 'that's something you wouldn't quite understand. parnesius means he met pertinax in church.' 'yes--in the cave we first met, and we were both raised to the degree of gryphons together.' parnesius lifted his hand towards his neck for an instant. 'he had been on the wall two years, and knew the picts well. he taught me first how to take heather.' 'what's that?' said dan. 'going out hunting in the pict country with a tame pict. you are quite safe so long as you are his guest, and wear a sprig of heather where it can be seen. if you went alone you would surely be killed, if you were not smothered first in the bogs. only the picts know their way about those black and hidden bogs. old allo, the one-eyed, withered little pict from whom we bought our ponies, was our special friend. at first we went only to escape from the terrible town, and to talk together about our homes. then he showed us how to hunt wolves and those great red deer with horns like jewish candlesticks. the roman-born officers rather looked down on us for doing this, but we preferred the heather to their amusements. believe me,' parnesius turned again to dan, 'a boy is safe from all things that really harm when he is astride a pony or after a deer. do you remember, o faun,'--he turned to puck--'the little altar i built to the sylvan pan by the pine-forest beyond the brook?' 'which? the stone one with the line from xenophon?' said puck, in quite a new voice. 'no! what do _i_ know of xenophon? that was pertinax--after he had shot his first mountain-hare with an arrow--by chance! mine i made of round pebbles, in memory of my first bear. it took me one happy day to build.' parnesius faced the children quickly. 'and that was how we lived on the wall for two years--a little scuffling with the picts, and a great deal of hunting with old allo in the pict country. he called us his children sometimes, and we were fond of him and his barbarians, though we never let them paint us pict fashion. the marks endure till you die.' 'how's it done?' said dan. 'anything like tattooing?' 'they prick the skin till the blood runs, and rub in coloured juices. allo was painted blue, green, and red from his forehead to his ankles. he said it was part of his religion. he told us about his religion (pertinax was always interested in such things), and as we came to know him well, he told us what was happening in britain behind the wall. many things took place behind us in those days. and by the light of the sun,' said parnesius, earnestly, 'there was not much that those little people did not know! he told me when maximus crossed over to gaul, after he had made himself emperor of britain, and what troops and emigrants he had taken with him. we did not get the news on the wall till fifteen days later. he told me what troops maximus was taking out of britain every month to help him to conquer gaul; and i always found the numbers were as he said. wonderful! and i tell another strange thing!' he joined his hands across his knees, and leaned his head on the curve of the shield behind him. 'late in the summer, when the first frosts begin and the picts kill their bees, we three rode out after wolf with some new hounds. rutilianus, our general, had given us ten days' leave, and we had pushed beyond the second wall--beyond the province of valentia--into the higher hills, where there are not even any of old rome's ruins. we killed a she-wolf before noon, and while allo was skinning her he looked up and said to me, "when you are captain of the wall, my child, you won't be able to do this any more!" 'i might as well have been made prefect of lower gaul, so i laughed and said, "wait till i am captain." '"no, don't wait," said allo. "take my advice and go home--both of you." '"we have no homes," said pertinax. "you know that as well as we do. we're finished men--thumbs down against both of us. only men without hope would risk their necks on your ponies." the old man laughed one of those short pict laughs--like a fox barking on a frosty night. "i'm fond of you two," he said. "besides, i've taught you what little you know about hunting. take my advice and go home." '"we can't," i said. "i'm out of favour with my general, for one thing; and for another, pertinax has an uncle." '"i don't know about his uncle," said allo, "but the trouble with you, parnesius, is that your general thinks well of you." '"roma dea!" said pertinax, sitting up. "what can you guess what maximus thinks, you old horse-coper?" 'just then (you know how near the brutes creep when one is eating?) a great dog-wolf jumped out behind us, and away our rested hounds tore after him, with us at their tails. he ran us far out of any country we'd ever heard of, straight as an arrow till sunset, towards the sunset. we came at last to long capes stretching into winding waters, and on a grey beach below us we saw ships drawn up. forty-seven we counted--not roman galleys but the raven-winged ships from the north where rome does not rule. men moved in the ships, and the sun flashed on their helmets--winged helmets of the red-haired men from the north where rome does not rule. we watched, and we counted, and we wondered, for though we had heard rumours concerning these winged hats, as the picts called them, never before had we looked upon them. '"come away! come away!" said allo. "my heather won't protect you here. we shall all be killed!" his legs trembled like his voice. back we went--back across the heather under the moon, till it was nearly morning, and our poor beasts stumbled on some ruins. 'when we woke, very stiff and cold, allo was mixing the meal and water. one does not light fires in the pict country except near a village. the little men are always signalling to each other with smokes, and a strange smoke brings them out buzzing like bees. they can sting, too! '"what we saw last night was a trading-station," said allo. "nothing but a trading-station." '"i do not like lies on an empty stomach," said pertinax. "i suppose" (he had eyes like an eagle's)--"i suppose _that_ is a trading-station also?" he pointed to a smoke far off on a hill-top, ascending in what we call the picts' call:--puff--double-puff: double-puff--puff! they make it by raising and dropping a wet hide on a fire. '"no," said allo, pushing the platter back into the bag. "that is for you and me. your fate is fixed. come." 'we came. when one takes heather, one must obey one's pict--but that wretched smoke was twenty miles distant, well over on the east coast, and the day was as hot as a bath. '"whatever happens," said allo, while our ponies grunted along, "i want you to remember me." '"i shall not forget," said pertinax. "you have cheated me out of my breakfast." "what is a handful of crushed oats to a roman?" he said. then he laughed his laugh that was not a laugh. "what would _you_ do if _you_ were a handful of oats being crushed between the upper and lower stones of a mill?" '"i'm pertinax, not a riddle-guesser," said pertinax. '"you're a fool," said allo. "your gods and my gods are threatened by strange gods, and all you can do is to laugh." '"threatened men live long," i said. '"i pray the gods that may be true," he said. "but i ask you again not to forget me." 'we climbed the last hot hill and looked out on the eastern sea, three or four miles off. there was a small sailing-galley of the north gaul pattern at anchor, her landing-plank down and her sail half up; and below us, alone in a hollow, holding his pony, sat maximus, emperor of britain! he was dressed like a hunter, and he leaned on his little stick; but i knew that back as far as i could see it, and i told pertinax. '"you're madder than allo!" he said. "it must be the sun!" 'maximus never stirred till we stood before him. then he looked me up and down, and said: "hungry again? it seems to be my destiny to feed you whenever we meet. i have food here. allo shall cook it." '"no," said allo. "a prince in his own land does not wait on wandering emperors. i feed my two children without asking your leave." he began to blow up the ashes. '"i was wrong," said pertinax. "we are all mad. speak up, o madman called emperor!" 'maximus smiled his terrible tight-lipped smile, but two years on the wall do not make a man afraid of mere looks. so i was not afraid. '"i meant you, parnesius, to live and die a centurion of the wall," said maximus. "but it seems from these,"--he fumbled in his breast--"you can think as well as draw." he pulled out a roll of letters i had written to my people, full of drawings of picts, and bears, and men i had met on the wall. mother and my sister always liked my pictures. 'he handed me one that i had called "maximus's soldiers". it showed a row of fat wine-skins, and our old doctor of the hunno hospital snuffing at them. each time that maximus had taken troops out of britain to help him to conquer gaul, he used to send the garrisons more wine--to keep them quiet, i suppose. on the wall, we always called a wine-skin a "maximus". oh, yes; and i had drawn them in imperial helmets. '"not long since," he went on, "men's names were sent up to cæsar for smaller jokes than this." '"true, cæsar," said pertinax; "but you forget that was before i, your friend's friend, became such a good spear-thrower." 'he did not actually point his hunting-spear at maximus, but balanced it on his palm--so! '"i was speaking of time past," said maximus, never fluttering an eyelid. "nowadays one is only too pleased to find boys who can think for themselves, _and_ their friends." he nodded at pertinax. "your father lent me the letters, parnesius, so you run no risk from me." '"none whatever," said pertinax, and rubbed the spear-point on his sleeve. '"i have been forced to reduce the garrisons in britain, because i need troops in gaul. now i come to take troops from the wall itself," said he. '"i wish you joy of us," said pertinax. "we're the last sweepings of the empire--the men without hope. myself, i'd sooner trust condemned criminals." '"you think so?" he said, quite seriously. "but it will only be till i win gaul. one must always risk one's life, or one's soul, or one's peace--or some little thing." 'allo passed round the fire with the sizzling deer's meat. he served us two first. '"ah!" said maximus, waiting his turn. "i perceive you are in your own country. well, you deserve it. they tell me you have quite a following among the picts, parnesius." '"i have hunted with them," i said. "maybe i have a few friends among the heather." '"he is the only armoured man of you all who understands us," said allo, and he began a long speech about our virtues, and how we had saved one of his grandchildren from a wolf the year before.' 'had you?' said una. 'yes; but that was neither here nor there. the little green man orated like a--like cicero. he made us out to be magnificent fellows. maximus never took his eyes off our faces. '"enough," he said. "i have heard allo on you. i wish to hear you on the picts." 'i told him as much as i knew, and pertinax helped me out. there is never harm in a pict if you but take the trouble to find out what he wants. their real grievance against us came from our burning their heather. the whole garrison of the wall moved out twice a year, and solemnly burned the heather for ten miles north. rutilianus, our general, called it clearing the country. the picts, of course, scampered away, and all we did was to destroy their bee-bloom in the summer, and ruin their sheep-food in the spring. '"true, quite true," said allo. "how can we make our holy heather-wine, if you burn our bee-pasture?" 'we talked long, maximus asking keen questions that showed he knew much and had thought more about the picts. he said presently to me: "if i gave you the old province of valentia to govern, could you keep the picts contented till i won gaul? stand away, so that you do not see allo's face; and speak your own thoughts." '"no," i said. "you cannot remake that province. the picts have been free too long." '"leave them their village councils, and let them furnish their own soldiers," he said. "you, i am sure, would hold the reins very lightly." "even then, no," i said. "at least not now. they have been too oppressed by us to trust anything with a roman name for years and years." 'i heard old allo behind me mutter: "good child!" '"then what do you recommend," said maximus, "to keep the north quiet till i win gaul?" '"leave the picts alone," i said. "stop the heather-burning at once, and--they are improvident little animals--send them a shipload or two of corn now and then." '"their own men must distribute it--not some cheating greek accountant," said pertinax. '"yes, and allow them to come to our hospitals when they are sick," i said. '"surely they would die first," said maximus. '"not if parnesius brought them in," said allo. "i could show you twenty wolf-bitten, bear-clawed picts within twenty miles of here. but parnesius must stay with them in hospital, else they would go mad with fear." '"i see," said maximus. "like everything else in the world, it is one man's work. you, i think, are that one man." '"pertinax and i are one," i said. '"as you please, so long as you work. now, allo, you know that i mean your people no harm. leave us to talk together," said maximus. '"no need!" said allo. "i am the corn between the upper and lower millstones. i must know what the lower millstone means to do. these boys have spoken the truth as far as they know it. i, a prince, will tell you the rest. i am troubled about the men of the north." he squatted like a hare in the heather, and looked over his shoulder. '"i also," said maximus, "or i should not be here." '"listen," said allo. "long and long ago the winged hats"--he meant the northmen--"came to our beaches and said, 'rome falls! push her down!' we fought you. you sent men. we were beaten. after that we said to the winged hats, 'you are liars! make our men alive that rome killed, and we will believe you.' they went away ashamed. now they come back bold, and they tell the old tale, which we begin to believe--that rome falls!" '"give me three years' peace on the wall," cried maximus, "and i will show you and all the ravens how they lie!" '"ah, i wish it too! i wish to save what is left of the corn from the millstones. but you shoot us picts when we come to borrow a little iron from the iron ditch; you burn our heather, which is all our crop; you trouble us with your great catapults. then you hide behind the wall, and scorch us with greek fire. how can i keep my young men from listening to the winged hats--in winter especially, when we are hungry? my young men will say, 'rome can neither fight nor rule. she is taking her men out of britain. the winged hats will help us to push down the wall. let us show them the secret roads across the bogs.' do _i_ want that? no!" he spat like an adder. "i would keep the secrets of my people though i were burned alive. my two children here have spoken truth. leave us picts alone. comfort us, and cherish us, and feed us from far off--with the hand behind the back. parnesius understands us. let _him_ have rule on the wall, and i will hold my young men quiet for"--he ticked it off on his fingers--"one year easily: the next year not so easily: the third year, perhaps! see, i give you three years. if then you do not show us that rome is strong in men and terrible in arms, the winged hats, i tell you, will sweep down the wall from either sea till they meet in the middle, and you will go. _i_ shall not grieve over that, but well i know tribe never helps tribe except for one price. we picts will go too. the winged hats will grind us to this!" he tossed a handful of dust in the air. '"oh, roma dea!" said maximus, half aloud. "it is always one man's work--always and everywhere!" "and one man's life," said allo. "you are emperor, but not a god. you may die." '"i have thought of that too," said he. "very good. if this wind holds, i shall be at the east end of the wall by morning. to-morrow, then, i shall see you two when i inspect, and i will make you captains of the wall for this work." '"one instant, cæsar," said pertinax. "all men have their price. i am not bought yet." '"do _you_ also begin to bargain so early?" said maximus. "well?" '"give me justice against my uncle icenus, the duumvir of divio in gaul," he said. '"only a life? i thought it would be money or an office. certainly you shall have him. write his name on these tablets--on the red side; the other is for the living!" and maximus held out his tablets. '"he is of no use to me dead," said pertinax. "my mother is a widow. i am far off. i am not sure he pays her all her dowry." '"no matter. my arm is reasonably long. we will look through your uncle's accounts in due time. now, farewell till to-morrow, o captains of the wall!" 'we saw him grow small across the heather as he walked to the galley. there were picts, scores, each side of him, hidden behind stones. he never looked left or right. he sailed away southerly, full spread before the evening breeze, and when we had watched him out to sea, we were silent. we understood that earth bred few men like to this man. 'presently allo brought the ponies and held them for us to mount--a thing he had never done before. '"wait awhile," said pertinax, and he made a little altar of cut turf, and strewed heather-bloom atop, and laid upon it a letter from a girl in gaul. '"what do you do, o my friend?" i said. '"i sacrifice to my dead youth," he answered, and, when the flames had consumed the letter, he ground them out with his heel. then we rode back to that wall of which we were to be captains.' parnesius stopped. the children sat still, not even asking if that were all the tale. puck beckoned, and pointed the way out of the wood. 'sorry,' he whispered, 'but you must go now.' 'we haven't made him angry, have we?' said una. 'he looks so far off, and--and--thinky.' 'bless your heart, no. wait till tomorrow. it won't be long. remember, you've been playing _lays of ancient rome_.' and as soon as they had scrambled through their gap where oak, ash, and thorn grew, that was all they remembered. a song to mithras mithras, god of the morning, our trumpets waken the wall! 'rome is above the nations, but thou art over all!' now as the names are answered, and the guards are marched away, mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day! mithras, god of the noontide, the heather swims in the heat, our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet. now in the ungirt hour; now ere we blink and drowse, mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows! mithras, god of the sunset, low on the western main, thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again! now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn, mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn! mithras, god of the midnight, here where the great bull dies, look on thy children in darkness. oh, take our sacrifice! many roads thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the light! mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright! the winged hats the next day happened to be what they called a wild afternoon. father and mother went out to pay calls; miss blake went for a ride on her bicycle, and they were left all alone till eight o'clock. when they had seen their dear parents and their dear preceptress politely off the premises they got a cabbage-leaf full of raspberries from the gardener, and a wild tea from ellen. they ate the raspberries to prevent their squashing, and they meant to divide the cabbage-leaf with three cows down at the theatre, but they came across a dead hedgehog which they simply _had_ to bury, and the leaf was too useful to waste. then they went on to the forge and found old hobden the hedger at home with his son, the bee boy, who is not quite right in his head, but who can pick up swarms of bees in his naked hands; and the bee boy told them the rhyme about the slow-worm:-- 'if i had eyes _as_ i could see, no mortal man would trouble me.' they all had tea together by the hives, and hobden said the loaf-cake which ellen had given them was almost as good as what his wife used to make, and he showed them how to set a wire at the right height for hares. they knew about rabbits already. then they climbed up long ditch into the lower end of far wood. this is sadder and darker than the volaterrae end because of an old marlpit full of black water, where weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the willows and alders. but the birds come to perch on the dead branches, and hobden says that the bitter willow-water is a sort of medicine for sick animals. they sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires hobden had given them, when they saw parnesius. 'how quietly you came!' said una, moving up to make room. 'where's puck?' 'the faun and i have disputed whether it is better that i should tell you all my tale, or leave it untold,' he replied. 'i only said that if he told it as it happened you wouldn't understand it,' said puck, jumping up like a squirrel from behind the log. 'i don't understand all of it,' said una, 'but i like hearing about the little picts.' 'what i can't understand,' said dan, 'is how maximus knew all about the picts when he was over in gaul.' 'he who makes himself emperor anywhere must know everything, everywhere,' said parnesius. 'we had this much from maximus's mouth after the games.' 'games? what games?' said dan. parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed to the ground. 'gladiators! _that_ sort of game,' he said. 'there were two days' games in his honour when he landed all unexpected at segedunum on the east end of the wall. yes, the day after we had met him we held two days' games; but i think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor wretches on the sand, but by maximus. in the old days the legions kept silence before their emperor. so did not we! you could hear the solid roar run west along the wall as his chair was carried rocking through the crowds. the garrison beat round him--clamouring, clowning, asking for pay, for change of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads. that chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling, but always rising again after one had shut the eyes.' parnesius shivered. 'were they angry with him?' said dan. 'no more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer walks among them. if he had turned his back an instant, or for an instant had ceased to hold their eyes, there would have been another emperor made on the wall that hour. was it not so, faun?' 'so it was. so it always will be,' said puck. 'late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we followed to the temple of victory, where he lodged with rutilianus, the general of the wall. i had hardly seen the general before, but he always gave me leave when i wished to take heather. he was a great glutton, and kept five asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in oracles. we could smell his good dinner when we entered, but the tables were empty. he lay snorting on a couch. maximus sat apart among long rolls of accounts. then the doors were shut. '"these are your men," said maximus to the general, who propped his eye-corners open with his gouty fingers, and stared at us like a fish. '"i shall know them again, cæsar," said rutilianus. "very good," said maximus. "now hear! you are not to move man or shield on the wall except as these boys shall tell you. you will do nothing, except eat, without their permission. they are the head and arms. you are the belly!" '"as cæsar pleases," the old man grunted. "if my pay and profits are not cut, you may make my ancestors' oracle my master. rome has been! rome has been!" then he turned on his side to sleep. '"he has it," said maximus. "we will get to what _i_ need." 'he unrolled full copies of the number of men and supplies on the wall--down to the sick that very day in hunno hospital. oh, but i groaned when his pen marked off detachment after detachment of our best--of our least worthless men! he took two towers of our scythians, two of our north british auxiliaries, two numidian cohorts, the dacians all, and half the belgians. it was like an eagle pecking a carcass. '"and now, how many catapults have you?" he turned up a new list, but pertinax laid his open hand there. '"no, cæsar," said he. "do not tempt the gods too far. take men, or engines, but not both; else we refuse."' 'engines?' said una. 'the catapults of the wall--huge things forty feet high to the head--firing nets of raw stone or forged bolts. nothing can stand against them. he left us our catapults at last, but he took a cæsar's half of our men without pity. we were a shell when he rolled up the lists! '"hail, cæsar! we, about to die, salute you!" said pertinax, laughing. "if any enemy even leans against the wall now, it will tumble." '"give me the three years allo spoke of," he answered, "and you shall have twenty thousand men of your own choosing up here. but now it is a gamble--a game played against the gods, and the stakes are britain, gaul, and perhaps rome. you play on my side?" '"we will play, cæsar," i said, for i had never met a man like this man. '"good. tomorrow," said he, "i proclaim you captains of the wall before the troops." 'so we went into the moonlight, where they were cleaning the ground after the games. we saw great roma dea atop of the wall, the frost on her helmet, and her spear pointed towards the north star. we saw the twinkle of night-fires all along the guard towers, and the line of the black catapults growing smaller and smaller in the distance. all these things we knew till we were weary; but that night they seemed very strange to us, because the next day we knew we were to be their masters. 'the men took the news well; but when maximus went away with half our strength, and we had to spread ourselves into the emptied towers, and the townspeople complained that trade would be ruined, and the autumn gales blew--it was dark days for us two. here pertinax was more than my right hand. being born and bred among the great country-houses in gaul, he knew the proper words to address to all--from roman-born centurions to those dogs of the third--the libyans. and he spoke to each as though that man were as high-minded as himself. now _i_ saw so strongly what things were needed to be done, that i forgot things are only accomplished by means of men. that was a mistake. 'i feared nothing from the picts, at least for that year, but allo warned me that the winged hats would soon come in from the sea at each end of the wall to prove to the picts how weak we were. so i made ready in haste, and none too soon. i shifted our best men to the ends of the wall, and set up screened catapults by the beach. the winged hats would drive in before the snow-squalls--ten or twenty boats at a time--on segedunum or ituna, according as the wind blew. 'now a ship coming in to land men must furl her sail. if you wait till you see her men gather up the sail's foot, your catapults can jerk a net of loose stones (bolts only cut through the cloth) into the bag of it. then she turns over, and the sea makes everything clean again. a few men may come ashore, but very few. ... it was not hard work, except the waiting on the beach in blowing sand and snow. and that was how we dealt with the winged hats that winter. 'early in the spring, when the east winds blow like skinning-knives, they gathered again off segedunum with many ships. allo told me they would never rest till they had taken a tower in open fight. certainly they fought in the open. we dealt with them thoroughly through a long day: and when all was finished, one man dived clear of the wreckage of his ship, and swam towards shore. i waited, and a wave tumbled him at my feet. 'as i stooped, i saw he wore such a medal as i wear.' parnesius raised his hand to his neck. 'therefore, when he could speak, i addressed him a certain question which can only be answered in a certain manner. he answered with the necessary word--the word that belongs to the degree of gryphons in the science of mithras my god. i put my shield over him till he could stand up. you see i am not short, but he was a head taller than i. he said: "what now?" i said: "at your pleasure, my brother, to stay or go." 'he looked out across the surf. there remained one ship unhurt, beyond range of our catapults. i checked the catapults and he waved her in. she came as a hound comes to a master. when she was yet a hundred paces from the beach, he flung back his hair, and swam out. they hauled him in, and went away. i knew that those who worship mithras are many and of all races, so i did not think much more upon the matter. 'a month later i saw allo with his horses--by the temple of pan, o faun--and he gave me a great necklace of gold studded with coral. 'at first i thought it was a bribe from some tradesman in the town--meant for old rutilianus. "nay," said allo. "this is a gift from amal, that winged hat whom you saved on the beach. he says you are a man." '"he is a man, too. tell him i can wear his gift," i answered. '"oh, amal is a young fool; but, speaking as sensible men, your emperor is doing such great things in gaul that the winged hats are anxious to be his friends, or, better still, the friends of his servants. they think you and pertinax could lead them to victories." allo looked at me like a one-eyed raven. '"allo," i said, "you are the corn between the two millstones. be content if they grind evenly, and don't thrust your hand between them." '"i?" said allo. "i hate rome and the winged hats equally; but if the winged hats thought that some day you and pertinax might join them against maximus, they would leave you in peace while you considered. time is what we need--you and i and maximus. let me carry a pleasant message back to the winged hats--something for them to make a council over. we barbarians are all alike. we sit up half the night to discuss anything a roman says. eh?" '"we have no men. we must fight with words," said pertinax. "leave it to allo and me." 'so allo carried word back to the winged hats that we would not fight them if they did not fight us; and they (i think they were a little tired of losing men in the sea) agreed to a sort of truce. i believe allo, who being a horse-dealer loved lies, also told them we might some day rise against maximus as maximus had risen against rome. 'indeed, they permitted the corn-ships which i sent to the picts to pass north that season without harm. therefore the picts were well fed that winter, and since they were in some sort my children, i was glad of it. we had only two thousand men on the wall, and i wrote many times to maximus and begged--prayed--him to send me only one cohort of my old north british troops. he could not spare them. he needed them to win more victories in gaul. 'then came news that he had defeated and slain the emperor gratian, and thinking he must now be secure, i wrote again for men. he answered: "you will learn that i have at last settled accounts with the pup gratian. there was no need that he should have died, but he became confused and lost his head, which is a bad thing to befall any emperor. tell your father i am content to drive two mules only; for unless my old general's son thinks himself destined to destroy me, i shall rest emperor of gaul and britain, and then you, my two children, will presently get all the men you need. just now i can spare none."' 'what did he mean by his general's son?' said dan. 'he meant theodosius emperor of rome, who was the son of theodosius the general under whom maximus had fought in the old pict war. the two men never loved each other, and when gratian made the younger theodosius emperor of the east (at least, so i've heard), maximus carried on the war to the second generation. it was his fate, and it was his fall. but theodosius the emperor is a good man. as i know.' parnesius was silent for a moment and then continued. 'i wrote back to maximus that, though we had peace on the wall, i should be happier with a few more men and some new catapults. he answered: "you must live a little longer under the shadow of my victories, till i can see what young theodosius intends. he may welcome me as a brother-emperor, or he may be preparing an army. in either case i cannot spare men just now." 'but he was always saying that,' cried una. 'it was true. he did not make excuses; but thanks, as he said, to the news of his victories, we had no trouble on the wall for a long, long time. the picts grew fat as their own sheep among the heather, and as many of my men as lived were well exercised in their weapons. yes, the wall looked strong. for myself, i knew how weak we were. i knew that if even a false rumour of any defeat to maximus broke loose among the winged hats, they might come down in earnest, and then--the wall must go! for the picts i never cared, but in those years i learned something of the strength of the winged hats. they increased their strength every day, but i could not increase my men. maximus had emptied britain behind us, and i felt myself to be a man with a rotten stick standing before a broken fence to turn bulls. 'thus, my friends, we lived on the wall, waiting--waiting--waiting for the men that maximus never sent. 'presently he wrote that he was preparing an army against theodosius. he wrote--and pertinax read it over my shoulder in our quarters: "_tell your father that my destiny orders me to drive three mules or be torn in pieces by them. i hope within a year to finish with theodosius, son of theodosius, once and for all. then you shall have britain to rule, and pertinax, if he chooses, gaul. to-day i wish strongly you were with me to beat my auxiliaries into shape. do not, i pray you, believe any rumour of my sickness. i have a little evil in my old body which i shall cure by riding swiftly into rome._" 'said pertinax: "it is finished with maximus. he writes as a man without hope. i, a man without hope, can see this. what does he add at the bottom of the roll? '_tell pertinax i have met his late uncle, the duumvir of divio, and that he accounted to me quite truthfully for all his mother's monies. i have sent her with a fitting escort, for she is the mother of a hero, to nicaea, where the climate is warm_.' '"that is proof," said pertinax. "nicaea is not far by sea from rome. a woman there could take ship and fly to rome in time of war. yes, maximus foresees his death, and is fulfilling his promises one by one. but i am glad my uncle met him."' '"you think blackly to-day?" i asked. '"i think truth. the gods weary of the play we have played against them. theodosius will destroy maximus. it is finished!" '"will you write him that?" i said. '"see what i shall write," he answered, and he took pen and wrote a letter cheerful as the light of day, tender as a woman's and full of jests. even i, reading over his shoulder, took comfort from it till--i saw his face! '"and now," he said, sealing it, "we be two dead men, my brother. let us go to the temple." 'we prayed awhile to mithras, where we had many times prayed before. after that, we lived day by day among evil rumours till winter came again. 'it happened one morning that we rode to the east shore, and found on the beach a fair-haired man, half frozen, bound to some broken planks. turning him over, we saw by his belt-buckle that he was a goth of an eastern legion. suddenly he opened his eyes and cried loudly, "he is dead! the letters were with me, but the winged hats sank the ship." so saying, he died between our hands. 'we asked not who was dead. we knew! we raced before the driving snow to hunno, thinking perhaps allo might be there. we found him already at our stables, and he saw by our faces what we had heard. '"it was in a tent by the sea," he stammered. "he was beheaded by theodosius. he sent a letter to you, written while he waited to be slain. the winged hats met the ship and took it. the news is running through the heather like fire. blame me not! i cannot hold back my young men any more." '"i would we could say as much for our men," said pertinax, laughing. "but, gods be praised, they cannot run away." '"what do you do?" said allo. "i bring an order--a message--from the winged hats that you join them with your men, and march south to plunder britain." '"it grieves me," said pertinax, "but we are stationed here to stop that thing." '"if i carry back such an answer they will kill me," said allo. "i always promised the winged hats that you would rise when maximus fell. i--i did not think he could fall." '"alas! my poor barbarian," said pertinax, still laughing. "well, you have sold us too many good ponies to be thrown back to your friends. we will make you a prisoner, although you are an ambassador." '"yes, that will be best," said allo, holding out a halter. we bound him lightly, for he was an old man. '"presently the winged hats may come to look for you, and that will give us more time. see how the habit of playing for time sticks to a man!" said pertinax, as he tied the rope. '"no," i said. "time may help. if maximus wrote us a letter while he was a prisoner, theodosius must have sent the ship that brought it. if he can send ships, he can send men." '"how will that profit us?" said pertinax. "we serve maximus, not theodosius. even if by some miracle of the gods theodosius down south sent and saved the wall, we could not expect more than the death maximus died." '"it concerns us to defend the wall, no matter what emperor dies, or makes die," i said. '"that is worthy of your brother the philosopher," said pertinax. "myself i am without hope, so i do not say solemn and stupid things! rouse the wall!" 'we armed the wall from end to end; we told the officers that there was a rumour of maximus's death which might bring down the winged hats, but we were sure, even if it were true, that theodosius, for the sake of britain, would send us help. therefore, we must stand fast. ... my friends, it is above all things strange to see how men bear ill news! often the strongest till then become the weakest, while the weakest, as it were, reach up and steal strength from the gods. so it was with us. yet my pertinax by his jests and his courtesy and his labours had put heart and training into our poor numbers during the past years--more than i should have thought possible. even our libyan cohort--the third--stood up in their padded cuirasses and did not whimper. 'in three days came seven chiefs and elders of the winged hats. among them was that tall young man, amal, whom i had met on the beach, and he smiled when he saw my necklace. we made them welcome, for they were ambassadors. we showed them allo, alive but bound. they thought we had killed him, and i saw it would not have vexed them if we had. allo saw it too, and it vexed him. then in our quarters at hunno we came to council. 'they said that rome was falling, and that we must join them. they offered me all south britain to govern after they had taken a tribute out of it. 'i answered, "patience. this wall is not weighed off like plunder. give me proof that my general is dead." '"nay," said one elder, "prove to us that he lives"; and another said cunningly, "what will you give us if we read you his last words?" '"we are not merchants to bargain," cried amal. "moreover, i owe this man my life. he shall have his proof." he threw across to me a letter (well i knew the seal) from maximus. '"we took this out of the ship we sank," he cried. "i cannot read, but i know one sign, at least, which makes me believe." he showed me a dark stain on the outer roll that my heavy heart perceived was the valiant blood of maximus. '"read!" said amal. "read, and then let us hear whose servants you are!" 'said pertinax, very softly, after he had looked through it: "i will read it all. listen, barbarians!" he read that which i have carried next my heart ever since.' parnesius drew from his neck a folded and spotted piece of parchment, and began in a hushed voice:-- '"_to parnesius and pertinax, the not unworthy captains of the wall, from maximus, once emperor of gaul and britain, now prisoner waiting death by the sea in the camp of theodosius--greeting and good-bye!_" '"enough," said young amal; "there is your proof! you must join us now!" 'pertinax looked long and silently at him, till that fair man blushed like a girl. then read pertinax:-- '"_i have joyfully done much evil in my life to those who have wished me evil, but if ever i did any evil to you two i repent, and i ask your forgiveness. the three mules which i strove to drive have torn me in pieces as your father prophesied. the naked swords wait at the tent door to give me the death i gave to gratian. therefore i, your general and your emperor, send you free and honourable dismissal from my service, which you entered, not for money or office, but, as it makes me warm to believe, because you loved me!_" '"by the light of the sun," amal broke in. "this was in some sort a man! we may have been mistaken in his servants!" 'and pertinax read on: "_you gave me the time for which i asked. if i have failed to use it, do not lament. we have gambled very splendidly against the gods, but they hold weighted dice, and i must pay the forfeit. remember, i have been; but rome is; and rome will be. tell pertinax his mother is in safety at nicaea, and her monies are in charge of the prefect at antipolis. make my remembrances to your father and to your mother, whose friendship was great gain to me. give also to my little picts and to the winged hats such messages as their thick heads can understand. i would have sent you three legions this very day if all had gone aright. do not forget me. we have worked together. farewell! farewell! farewell!_" 'now, that was my emperor's last letter.' (the children heard the parchment crackle as parnesius returned it to its place.) '"i was mistaken," said amal. "the servants of such a man will sell nothing except over the sword. i am glad of it." he held out his hand to me. '"but maximus has given you your dismissal," said an elder. "you are certainly free to serve--or to rule--whom you please. join--do not follow--join us!" '"we thank you," said pertinax. "but maximus tells us to give you such messages as--pardon me, but i use his words--your thick heads can understand." he pointed through the door to the foot of a catapult wound up. '"we understand," said an elder. "the wall must be won at a price?" '"it grieves me," said pertinax, laughing, "but so it must be won," and he gave them of our best southern wine. 'they drank, and wiped their yellow beards in silence till they rose to go. 'said amal, stretching himself (for they were barbarians): "we be a goodly company; i wonder what the ravens and the dogfish will make of some of us before this snow melts." '"think rather what theodosius may send," i answered; and though they laughed, i saw that my chance shot troubled them. 'only old allo lingered behind a little. '"you see," he said, winking and blinking, "i am no more than their dog. when i have shown their men the secret short ways across our bogs, they will kick me like one." '"then i should not be in haste to show them those ways," said pertinax, "till i was sure that rome could not save the wall." '"you think so? woe is me!" said the old man. "i only wanted peace for my people," and he went out stumbling through the snow behind the tall winged hats. 'in this fashion then, slowly, a day at a time, which is very bad for doubting troops, the war came upon us. at first the winged hats swept in from the sea as they had done before, and there we met them as before--with the catapults; and they sickened of it. yet for a long time they would not trust their duck-legs on land, and i think, when it came to revealing the secrets of the tribe, the little picts were afraid or ashamed to show them all the roads across the heather. i had this from a pict prisoner. they were as much our spies as our enemies, for the winged hats oppressed them, and took their winter stores. ah, foolish little people! 'then the winged hats began to roll us up from each end of the wall. i sent runners southward to see what the news might be in britain, but the wolves were very bold that winter, among the deserted stations where the troops had once been, and none came back. we had trouble, too, with the forage for the ponies along the wall. i kept ten, and so did pertinax. we lived and slept in the saddle, riding east or west, and we ate our worn-out ponies. the people of the town also made us some trouble till i gathered them all in one quarter behind hunno. we broke down the wall on either side of it to make as it were a citadel. our men fought better in close order. 'by the end of the second month we were deep in the war as a man is deep in a snowdrift, or in a dream. i think we fought in our sleep. at least i know i have gone on the wall and come off again, remembering nothing between, though my throat was harsh with giving orders, and my sword, i could see, had been used. 'the winged hats fought like wolves--all in a pack. where they had suffered most, there they charged in most hotly. this was hard for the defenders, but it held them from sweeping on into britain. 'in those days pertinax and i wrote on the plaster of the bricked archway into valentia the names of the towers, and the days on which they fell one by one. we wished for some record. 'and the fighting? the fight was always hottest to left and right of the great statue of roma dea, near to rutilianus's house. by the light of the sun, that old fat man, whom we had not considered at all, grew young again among the trumpets! i remember he said his sword was an oracle! "let us consult the oracle," he would say, and put the handle against his ear, and shake his head wisely. "and _this_ day is allowed rutilianus to live," he would say, and, tucking up his cloak, he would puff and pant and fight well. oh, there were jests in plenty on the wall to take the place of food! 'we endured for two months and seventeen days--always being pressed from three sides into a smaller space. several times allo sent in word that help was at hand. we did not believe it, but it cheered our men. 'the end came not with shoutings of joy, but, like the rest, as in a dream. the winged hats suddenly left us in peace for one night and the next day; which is too long for spent men. we slept at first lightly, expecting to be roused, and then like logs, each where he lay. may you never need such sleep! when i waked our towers were full of strange, armed men, who watched us snoring. i roused pertinax, and we leaped up together. '"what?" said a young man in clean armour. "do you fight against theodosius? look!" 'north we looked over the red snow. no winged hats were there. south we looked over the white snow, and behold there were the eagles of two strong legions encamped. east and west we saw flame and fighting, but by hunno all was still. '"trouble no more," said the young man. "rome's arm is long. where are the captains of the wall?" 'we said we were those men. '"but you are old and grey-haired," he cried. "maximus said that they were boys." '"yes, that was true some years ago," said pertinax. "what is our fate to be, you fine and well-fed child?" '"i am called ambrosius, a secretary of the emperor," he answered. "show me a certain letter which maximus wrote from a tent at aquileia, and perhaps i will believe." 'i took it from my breast, and when he had read it he saluted us, saying: "your fate is in your own hands. if you choose to serve theodosius, he will give you a legion. if it suits you to go to your homes, we will give you a triumph." '"i would like better a bath, wine, food, razors, soaps, oils, and scents," said pertinax, laughing. '"oh, i see you are a boy," said ambrosius. "and you?" turning to me. '"we bear no ill-will against theodosius, but in war----" i began. '"in war it is as it is in love," said pertinax. "whether she be good or bad, one gives one's best once, to one only. that given, there remains no second worth giving or taking." '"that is true," said ambrosius. "i was with maximus before he died. he warned theodosius that you would never serve him, and frankly i say i am sorry for my emperor." '"he has rome to console him," said pertinax. "i ask you of your kindness to let us go to our homes and get this smell out of our nostrils." 'none the less they gave us a triumph!' 'it was well earned,' said puck, throwing some leaves into the still water of the marlpit. the black, oily circles spread dizzily as the children watched them. 'i want to know, oh, ever so many things,' said dan. 'what happened to old allo? did the winged hats ever come back? and what did amal do?' 'and what happened to the fat old general with the five cooks?' said una. 'and what did your mother say when you came home? ...' 'she'd say you're settin' too long over this old pit, so late as 'tis already,' said old hobden's voice behind them. 'hst!' he whispered. he stood still, for not twenty paces away a magnificent dog-fox sat on his haunches and looked at the children as though he were an old friend of theirs. 'oh, mus' reynolds, mus' reynolds!' said hobden, under his breath. 'if i knowed all was inside your head, i'd know something wuth knowin'. mus' dan an' miss una, come along o' me while i lock up my liddle hen-house.' a pict song rome never looks where she treads, always her heavy hooves fall on our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; and rome never heeds when we bawl. her sentries pass on--that is all, and we gather behind them in hordes, and plot to reconquer the wall, with only our tongues for our swords. we are the little folk--we! too little to love or to hate. leave us alone and you'll see how we can drag down the great! we are the worm in the wood! we are the rot at the root! we are the germ in the blood! we are the thorn in the foot! mistletoe killing an oak-- rats gnawing cables in two-- moths making holes in a cloak-- how they must love what they do! yes--and we little folk too, we are as busy as they-- working our works out of view-- watch, and you'll see it some day! no indeed! we are not strong, but we know peoples that are. yes, and we'll guide them along, to smash and destroy you in war! we shall be slaves just the same? yes, we have always been slaves, but you--you will die of the shame, and then we shall dance on your graves! we are the little folk, we, etc. hal o' the draft prophets have honour all over the earth, except in the village where they were born, where such as knew them boys from birth nature-ally hold 'em in scorn. when prophets are naughty and young and vain, they make a won'erful grievance of it; (you can see by their writings how they complain), but oh, 'tis won'erful good for the prophet! there's nothing nineveh town can give (nor being swallowed by whales between), makes up for the place where a man's folk live, that don't care nothing what he has been. he might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this, but they love and they hate him for what he is. a rainy afternoon drove dan and una over to play pirates in the little mill. if you don't mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes, the mill-attic, with its trap-doors and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts, is a splendid place. it is lighted by a foot-square window, called duck window, that looks across to little lindens farm, and the spot where jack cade was killed. when they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it 'the mainmast tree', out of the ballad of sir andrew barton, and dan 'swarved it with might and main', as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on duck window-sill. he was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book. 'sit ye! sit ye!' puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'see what it is to be beautiful! sir harry dawe--pardon, hal--says i am the very image of a head for a gargoyle.' the man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the children, and his grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy fringe. he was old--forty at least--but his eyes were young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. a satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt, which looked interesting. 'may we see?' said una, coming forward. 'surely--sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window-seat, and returned to his work with a silver-pointed pencil. puck sat as though the grin were fixed for ever on his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain fingers that copied it. presently the man took a reed pen from his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife, carved in the semblance of a fish. 'oh, what a beauty!' cried dan. ''ware fingers! that blade is perilous sharp. i made it myself of the best low country cross-bow steel. and so, too, this fish. when his back-fin travels to his tail--so--he swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed gaffer jonah ... yes, and that's my ink-horn. i made the four silver saints round it. press barnabas's head. it opens, and then----' he dipped the trimmed pen, and with careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of puck's rugged face, that had been but faintly revealed by the silver-point. the children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page. as he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked--now clearly, now muttering, now breaking off to frown or smile at his work. he told them he was born at little lindens farm, and his father used to beat him for drawing things instead of doing things, till an old priest called father roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich people's books, coaxed the parents to let him take the boy as a sort of painter's apprentice. then he went with father roger to oxford, where he cleaned plates and carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a college called merton. 'didn't you hate that?' said dan after a great many other questions. 'i never thought on't. half oxford was building new colleges or beautifying the old, and she had called to her aid the master-craftsmen of all christendie--kings in their trade and honoured of kings. i knew them. i worked for them: that was enough. no wonder----' he stopped and laughed. 'you became a great man, hal,' said puck. 'they said so, robin. even bramante said so.' 'why? what did you do?' dan asked. the artist looked at him queerly. 'things in stone and such, up and down england. you would not have heard of 'em. to come nearer home, i rebuilded this little st barnabas' church of ours. it cost me more trouble and sorrow than aught i've touched in my life. but 'twas a sound lesson.' 'um,' said dan. 'we've had lessons this morning.' 'i'll not afflict ye, lad,' said hal, while puck roared. 'only 'tis strange to think how that little church was rebuilt, re-roofed, and made glorious, thanks to some few godly sussex iron-masters, a bristow sailor lad, a proud ass called hal o' the draft because, d'you see, he was always drawing and drafting; and'--he dragged the words slowly--'_and_ a scotch pirate.' 'pirate?' said dan. he wriggled like a hooked fish. 'even that andrew barton you were singing of on the stair just now.' he dipped again in the ink-well, and held his breath over a sweeping line, as though he had forgotten everything else. 'pirates don't build churches, do they?' said dan. 'or _do_ they?' 'they help mightily,' hal laughed. 'but you were at your lessons this morn, jack scholar.' 'oh, pirates aren't lessons. it was only bruce and his silly old spider,' said una. 'why did sir andrew barton help you?' 'i question if he ever knew it,' said hal, twinkling. 'robin, how a' mischief's name am i to tell these innocents what comes of sinful pride?' 'oh, we know all about _that_,' said una pertly. 'if you get too beany--that's cheeky--you get sat upon, of course.' hal considered a moment, pen in air, and puck said some long words. 'aha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'beany--you say--but certainly i did not conduct myself well. i was proud of--of such things as porches--a galilee porch at lincoln for choice--proud of one torrigiano's arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when i made the gilt scroll-work for the _sovereign_--our king's ship. but father roger sitting in merton library, he did not forget me. at the top of my pride, when i and no other should have builded the porch at lincoln, he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my sussex clays and rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us dawes have been buried for six generations. "out! son of my art!" said he. "fight the devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman." and i quaked, and i went ... how's yon, robin?' he flourished the finished sketch before puck. 'me! me past peradventure,' said puck, smirking like a man at a mirror. 'ah, see! the rain has took off! i hate housen in daylight.' 'whoop! holiday!' cried hal, leaping up. 'who's for my little lindens? we can talk there.' they tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by the sunny mill-dam. 'body o' me,' said hal, staring at the hop-garden, where the hops were just ready to blossom. 'what are these? vines? no, not vines, and they twine the wrong way to beans.' he began to draw in his ready book. 'hops. new since your day,' said puck. 'they're an herb of mars, and their flowers dried flavour ale. we say-- 'turkeys, heresy, hops, and beer came into england all in one year.' 'heresy i know. i've seen hops--god be praised for their beauty! what is your turkis?' the children laughed. they knew the lindens turkeys, and as soon as they reached lindens orchard on the hill the full flock charged at them. out came hal's book at once. 'hoity-toity!' he cried. 'here's pride in purple feathers! here's wrathy contempt and the pomps of the flesh! how d'you call _them_?' 'turkeys! turkeys!' the children shouted, as the old gobbler raved and flamed against hal's plum-coloured hose. ''save your magnificence!' he said. 'i've drafted two good new things today.' and he doffed his cap to the bubbling bird. then they walked through the grass to the knoll where little lindens stands. the old farmhouse, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-ruby in the afternoon light. the pigeons pecked at the mortar in the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built filled the hot august air with their booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke. the farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard. the old spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was in charge of the empty house. puck clicked back the garden-gate. 'd'you marvel that i love it?' said hal, in a whisper. 'what can town folk know of the nature of housen--or land?' they perched themselves arow on the old hacked oak bench in lindens garden, looking across the valley of the brook at the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the forge behind hobden's cottage. the old man was cutting a faggot in his garden by the hives. it was quite a second after his chopper fell that the chump of the blow reached their lazy ears. 'eh--yeh!' said hal. 'i mind when where that old gaffer stands was nether forge--master john collins's foundry. many a night has his big trip-hammer shook me in my bed here. _boom-bitty! boom-bitty!_ if the wind was east, i could hear master tom collins's forge at stockens answering his brother, _boom-oop! boom-oop!_ and midway between, sir john pelham's sledge-hammers at brightling would strike in like a pack o' scholars, and "_hic-haec-hoc_" they'd say, "_hic-haec-hoc_," till i fell asleep. yes. the valley was as full o' forges and fineries as a may shaw o' cuckoos. all gone to grass now!' 'what did they make?' said dan. 'guns for the king's ships--and for others. serpentines and cannon mostly. when the guns were cast, down would come the king's officers, and take our plough-oxen to haul them to the coast. look! here's one of the first and finest craftsmen of the sea!' he fluttered back a page of his book, and showed them a young man's head. underneath was written: 'sebastianus.' 'he came down with a king's order on master john collins for twenty serpentines (wicked little cannon they be!) to furnish a venture of ships. i drafted him thus sitting by our fire telling mother of the new lands he'd find the far side the world. and he found them, too! there's a nose to cleave through unknown seas! cabot was his name--a bristol lad--half a foreigner. i set a heap by him. he helped me to my church-building.' 'i thought that was sir andrew barton,' said dan. 'ay, but foundations before roofs,' hal answered. 'sebastian first put me in the way of it. i had come down here, not to serve god as a craftsman should, but to show my people how great a craftsman i was. they cared not, and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. what a murrain call had i, they said, to mell with old st barnabas'? ruinous the church had been since the black death, and ruinous she would remain; and i could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! gentle and simple, high and low--the hayes, the fowles, the fenners, the collinses--they were all in a tale against me. only sir john pelham up yonder at brightling bade me heart-up and go on. yet how could i? did i ask master collins for his timber-tug to haul beams? the oxen had gone to lewes after lime. did he promise me a set of iron cramps or ties for the roof? they never came to hand, or else they were spaulty or cracked. so with everything. nothing said, but naught done except i stood by them, and then done amiss. i thought the countryside was fair bewitched.' 'it was, sure-ly,' said puck, knees under chin. 'did you never suspect ary one?' 'not till sebastian came for his guns, and john collins played him the same dog's tricks as he'd played me with my ironwork. week in, week out, two of three serpentines would be flawed in the casting, and only fit, they said, to be re-melted. then john collins would shake his head, and vow he could pass no cannon for the king's service that were not perfect. saints! how sebastian stormed! _i_ know, for we sat on this bench sharing our sorrows inter-common. 'when sebastian had fumed away six weeks at lindens and gotten just six serpentines, dirk brenzett, master of the _cygnet_ hoy, sends me word that the block of stone he was fetching me from france for our new font he'd hove overboard to lighten his ship, chased by andrew barton up to rye port.' 'ah! the pirate!' said dan. 'yes. and while i am tearing my hair over this, ticehurst will, my best mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the devil, horned, tailed, and chained, has run out on him from the church-tower, and the men would work there no more. so i took 'em off the foundations, which we were strengthening, and went into the bell tavern for a cup of ale. says master john collins: "have it your own way, lad; but if i was you, i'd take the sinnification o' the sign, and leave old barnabas' church alone!" and they all wagged their sinful heads, and agreed. less afraid of the devil than of me--as i saw later. 'when i brought my sweet news to lindens, sebastian was limewashing the kitchen-beams for mother. he loved her like a son. '"cheer up, lad," he says. "god's where he was. only you and i chance to be pure pute asses. we've been tricked, hal, and more shame to me, a sailor, that i did not guess it before! you must leave your belfry alone, forsooth, because the devil is adrift there; and i cannot get my serpentines because john collins cannot cast them aright. meantime andrew barton hawks off the port of rye. and why? to take those very serpentines which poor cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines, i'll wager my share of new continents, being now hid away in st barnabas' church-tower. clear as the irish coast at noonday!" "they'd sure never dare to do it," i said; "and, for another thing, selling cannon to the king's enemies is black treason--hanging and fine." '"it is sure, large profit. men'll dare any gallows for that. i have been a trader myself," says he. "we must be upsides with 'em for the honour of bristol." 'then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash bucket. we gave out to ride o' tuesday to london and made a show of taking farewells of our friends--especially of master john collins. but at wadhurst woods we turned; rode home to the watermeadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and, come night, stole a-tiptoe up hill to barnabas' church again. a thick mist, and a moon striking through. 'i had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than over goes sebastian full length in the dark. '"pest!" he says. "step high and feel low, hal. i've stumbled over guns before." 'i groped, and one by one--the tower was pitchy dark--i counted the lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pease straw. no conceal at all! '"there's two demi-cannon my end," says sebastian, slapping metal. "they'll be for andrew barton's lower deck. honest--honest john collins! so this is his warehouse, his arsenal, his armoury! now see you why your pokings and pryings have raised the devil in sussex? you've hindered john's lawful trade for months," and he laughed where he lay. 'a clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry stairs, and there sebastian trips over a cow-hide with its horns and tail. '"aha! your devil has left his doublet! does it become me, hal?" he draws it on and capers in the shafts of window-moonlight--won'erful devilish-like. then he sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a board, and his back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit in, and screeched at the horns of him. '"if you'd keep out the devil, shut the door," he whispered. "and that's another false proverb, hal, for i can hear your tower-door opening." '"i locked it. who a-plague has another key, then?" i said. '"all the congregation, to judge by their feet," he says, and peers into the blackness. "still! still, hal! hear 'em grunt! that's more o' my serpentines, i'll be bound. one--two--three--four they bear in! faith, andrew equips himself like an admiral! twenty-four serpentines in all!" 'as if it had been an echo, we heard john collins's voice come up all hollow: "twenty-four serpentines and two demi-cannon. that's the full tally for sir andrew barton." '"courtesy costs naught," whispers sebastian. "shall i drop my dagger on his head?" '"they go over to rye o' thursday in the wool-wains, hid under the wool-packs. dirk brenzett meets them at udimore, as before," says john. '"lord! what a worn, handsmooth trade it is!" says sebastian. "i lay we are the sole two babes in the village that have not our lawful share in the venture." 'there was a full score folk below, talking like all robertsbridge market. we counted them by voice. 'master john collins pipes: "the guns for the french carrack must lie here next month. will, when does your young fool" (me, so please you!) "come back from lunnon?" '"no odds," i heard ticehurst will answer. "lay 'em just where you've a mind, mus' collins. we're all too afraid o' the devil to mell with the tower now." and the long knave laughed. '"ah! 'tis easy enow for you to raise the devil, will," says another--ralph hobden of the forge. '"aaa-men!" roars sebastian, and ere i could hold him, he leaps down the stairs--won'erful devilish-like howling no bounds. he had scarce time to lay out for the nearest than they ran. saints, how they ran! we heard them pound on the door of the bell tavern, and then we ran too. '"what's next?" says sebastian, looping up his cow-tail as he leaped the briars. "i've broke honest john's face." '"ride to sir john pelham's," i said. "he is the only one that ever stood by me." 'we rode to brightling, and past sir john's lodges, where the keepers would have shot at us for deer-stealers, and we had sir john down into his justice's chair, and when we had told him our tale and showed him the cow-hide which sebastian wore still girt about him, he laughed till the tears ran. '"wel-a-well!" he says. "i'll see justice done before daylight. what's your complaint? master collins is my old friend." '"he's none of mine," i cried. "when i think how he and his likes have baulked and dozened and cozened me at every turn over the church"----and i choked at the thought. '"ah, but ye see now they needed it for another use," says he smoothly. '"so they did my serpentines," sebastian cries. "i should be half across the western ocean by now if my guns had been ready. but they're sold to a scotch pirate by your old friend--" '"where's your proof?" says sir john, stroking his beard. '"i broke my shins over them not an hour since, and i heard john give order where they were to be taken," says sebastian. '"words! words only," says sir john. "master collins is somewhat of a liar at best." 'he carried it so gravely that, for the moment, i thought he was dipped in this secret traffick too, and that there was not an honest ironmaster in sussex. '"name o' reason!" says sebastian, and raps with his cow-tail on the table, "whose guns are they, then?" '"yours, manifestly," says sir john. "you come with the king's order for 'em, and master collins casts them in his foundry. if he chooses to bring them up from nether forge and lay 'em out in the church-tower, why, they are e'en so much the nearer to the main road and you are saved a day's hauling. what a coil to make of a mere act of neighbourly kindness, lad!" '"i fear i have requited him very scurvily," says sebastian, looking at his knuckles. "but what of the demi-cannon? i could do with 'em well, but they are not in the king's order." '"kindness--loving-kindness," says sir john. "questionless, in his zeal for the king and his love for you, john adds those two cannon as a gift. 'tis plain as this coming daylight, ye stockfish!" '"so it is," says sebastian. "oh, sir john, sir john, why did you never use the sea? you are lost ashore." and he looked on him with great love. '"i do my best in my station." sir john strokes his beard again and rolls forth his deep drumming justice's voice thus: "but--suffer me!--you two lads, on some midnight frolic into which i probe not, roystering around the taverns, surprise master collins at his"--he thinks a moment--"at his good deeds done by stealth. ye surprise him, i say, cruelly." '"truth, sir john. if you had seen him run!" says sebastian. '"on this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of pirates, and wool-wains, and cow-hides, which, though it hath moved my mirth as a man, offendeth my reason as a magistrate. so i will e'en accompany you back to the tower with, perhaps, some few of my own people, and three-four wagons, and i'll be your warrant that master john collins will freely give you your guns and your demi-cannon, master sebastian." he breaks into his proper voice--"i warned the old tod and his neighbours long ago that they'd come to trouble with their side-sellings and bye-dealings; but we cannot have half sussex hanged for a little gun-running. are ye content, lads?" '"i'd commit any treason for two demi-cannon," said sebastian, and rubs his hands. '"ye have just compounded with rank treason-felony for the same bribe," says sir john. "wherefore to horse, and get the guns."' 'but master collins meant the guns for sir andrew barton all along, didn't he?' said dan. 'questionless, that he did,' said hal. 'but he lost them. we poured into the village on the red edge of dawn, sir john horsed, in half-armour, his pennon flying; behind him thirty stout brightling knaves, five abreast; behind them four wool-wains, and behind them four trumpets to triumph over the jest, blowing: _our king went forth to normandie_. when we halted and rolled the ringing guns out of the tower, 'twas for all the world like friar roger's picture of the french siege in the queen's missal-book.' 'and what did we--i mean, what did our village do?' said dan. 'oh! bore it nobly--nobly,' cried hal. 'though they had tricked me, i was proud of them. they came out of their housen, looked at that little army as though it had been a post, and went their shut-mouthed way. never a sign! never a word! they'd ha' perished sooner than let brightling overcrow us. even that villain, ticehurst will, coming out of the bell for his morning ale, he all but runs under sir john's horse. '"'ware, sirrah devil!" cries sir john, reining back. '"oh!" says will. "market-day, is it? and all the bullocks from brightling here?" 'i spared him his belting for that--the brazen knave! 'but john collins was our masterpiece! he happened along-street (his jaw tied up where sebastian had clouted him) when we were trundling the first demi-cannon through the lych-gate. '"i reckon you'll find her middlin' heavy," he says. "if you've a mind to pay, i'll loan ye my timber-tug. she won't lie easy on ary wool-wain." 'that was the one time i ever saw sebastian taken flat aback. he opened and shut his mouth, fishy-like. '"no offence," says master john. "you've got her reasonable good cheap. i thought ye might not grudge me a groat if i helped move her." ah, he was a masterpiece! they say that morning's work cost our john two hundred pounds, and he never winked an eyelid, not even when he saw the guns all carted off to lewes.' 'neither then nor later?' said puck. 'once. 'twas after he gave st barnabas' the new chime of bells. (oh, there was nothing the collinses, or the hayes, or the fowles, or the fenners would not do for the church then! "ask and have" was their song.) we had rung 'em in, and he was in the tower with black nick fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. the old man pinches the bell-rope one hand and scratches his neck with t'other. "sooner she was pulling yon clapper than my neck, he says. that was all! that was sussex--seely sussex for everlastin'!' 'and what happened after?' said una. 'i went back into england,' said hal, slowly. 'i'd had my lesson against pride. but they tell me i left st barnabas' a jewel--justabout a jewel! wel-a-well! 'twas done for and among my own people, and--father roger was right--i never knew such trouble or such triumph since. that's the nature o' things. a dear--dear land.' he dropped his chin on his chest. 'there's your father at the forge. what's he talking to old hobden about?' said puck, opening his hand with three leaves in it. dan looked towards the cottage. 'oh, i know. it's that old oak lying across the brook. pater always wants it grubbed.' in the still valley they could hear old hobden's deep tones. 'have it _as_ you've a mind to,' he was saying. 'but the vivers of her roots they hold the bank together. if you grub her out, the bank she'll all come tearin' down, an' next floods the brook'll swarve up. but have it as you've a mind. the mistuss she sets a heap by the ferns on her trunk. 'oh! i'll think it over,' said the pater. una laughed a little bubbling chuckle. 'what devil's in _that_ belfry?' said hal, with a lazy laugh. 'that should be a hobden by his voice.' 'why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits between the three acre and our meadow. the best place for wires on the farm, hobden says. he's got two there now,' una answered. '_he_ won't ever let it be grubbed!' 'ah, sussex! sillly sussex for everlastin',' murmured hal; and the next moment their father's voice calling across to little lindens broke the spell as little st barnabas' clock struck five. a smugglers' song if you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street, them that asks no questions isn't told a lie. watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark-- brandy for the parson, 'baccy for the clerk; laces for a lady; letters for a spy, and watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! running round the woodlump if you chance to find little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine; don't you shout to come and look, nor take 'em for your play; put the brishwood back again,--and they'll be gone next day! if you see the stable-door setting open wide; if you see a tired horse lying down inside; if your mother mends a coat cut about and tore; if the lining's wet and warm--don't you ask no more! if you meet king george's men, dressed in blue and red, you be careful what you say, and mindful what is said. if they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin, don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been! knocks and footsteps round the house--whistles after dark-- you've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark. trusty's here, and pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie-- they don't fret to follow when the gentlemen go by! if you do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance, you'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from france, with a cap of valenciennes, and a velvet hood-- a present from the gentlemen, along o' being good! five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark-- brandy for the parson, 'baccy for the clerk. them that asks no questions isn't told a lie-- watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! 'dymchurch flit' the bee boy's song bees! bees! hark to your bees! 'hide from your neighbours as much as you please, but all that has happened, to _us_ you must tell, or else we will give you no honey to sell!' a maiden in her glory, upon her wedding-day, must tell her bees the story, or else they'll fly away. fly away--die away-- dwindle down and leave you! but if you don't deceive your bees, your bees will not deceive you. marriage, birth or buryin', news across the seas, all you're sad or merry in, you must tell the bees. tell 'em coming in an' out, where the fanners fan, 'cause the bees are justabout as curious as a man! don't you wait where trees are, when the lightnings play; nor don't you hate where bees are, or else they'll pine away. pine away--dwine away-- anything to leave you! but if you never grieve your bees, your bees'll never grieve you! just at dusk, a soft september rain began to fall on the hop-pickers. the mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators out of the gardens; bins were put away, and tally-books made up. the young couples strolled home, two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind them laughing. dan and una, who had been picking after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the oast-house, where old hobden, with blue-eyed bess, his lurcher dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops. they settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn cot in front of the fires, and, when hobden drew up the shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned roundel. slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal, packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly where they would do most good; slowly he reached behind him till dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and then stood for a moment, black against the glare. as he closed the shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before the day's end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. the children liked all these things because they knew them so well. the bee boy, hobden's son, who is not quite right in his head, though he can do anything with bees, slipped in like a shadow. they only guessed it when bess's stump-tail wagged against them. a big voice began singing outside in the drizzle: 'old mother laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead, she heard the hops were doin' well, and then popped up her head.' 'there can't be two people made to holler like that!' cried old hobden, wheeling round. 'for,' says she, 'the boys i've picked with when i was young and fair, they're bound to be at hoppin', and i'm----' a man showed at the doorway. 'well, well! they do say hoppin' 'll draw the very deadest, and now i belieft 'em. you, tom? tom shoesmith?' hobden lowered his lanthorn. 'you're a hem of a time makin' your mind to it, ralph!' the stranger strode in--three full inches taller than hobden, a grey-whiskered, brown-faced giant with clear blue eyes. they shook hands, and the children could hear the hard palms rasp together. 'you ain't lost none o' your grip,' said hobden. 'was it thirty or forty year back you broke my head at peasmarsh fair?' 'only thirty, an' no odds 'tween us regardin' heads, neither. you had it back at me with a hop-pole. how did we get home that night? swimmin'?' 'same way the pheasant come into gubbs's pocket--by a little luck an' a deal o' conjurin'.' old hobden laughed in his deep chest. 'i see you've not forgot your way about the woods. d'ye do any o' _this_ still?' the stranger pretended to look along a gun. hobden answered with a quick movement of the hand as though he were pegging down a rabbit-wire. 'no. _that's_ all that's left me now. age she must as age she can. an' what's your news since all these years?' 'oh, i've bin to plymouth, i've bin to dover-- i've bin ramblin', boys, the wide world over,' the man answered cheerily. 'i reckon i know as much of old england as most.' he turned towards the children and winked boldly. 'i lay they told you a sight o' lies, then. i've been into england fur as wiltsheer once. i was cheated proper over a pair of hedgin'-gloves,' said hobden. 'there's fancy-talkin' everywhere. _you've_ cleaved to your own parts pretty middlin' close, ralph.' 'can't shift an old tree 'thout it dyin',' hobden chuckled. 'an' i be no more anxious to die than you look to be to help me with my hops tonight.' the great man leaned against the brickwork of the roundel, and swung his arms abroad. 'hire me!' was all he said, and they stumped upstairs laughing. the children heard their shovels rasp on the cloth where the yellow hops lie drying above the fires, and all the oast-house filled with the sweet, sleepy smell as they were turned. 'who is it?' una whispered to the bee boy. 'dunno, no more'n you--if _you_ dunno,' said he, and smiled. the voices on the drying-floor talked and chuckled together, and the heavy footsteps moved back and forth. presently a hop-pocket dropped through the press-hole overhead, and stiffened and fattened as they shovelled it full. 'clank!' went the press, and rammed the loose stuff into tight cake. 'gently!' they heard hobden cry. 'you'll bust her crop if you lay on so. you be as careless as gleason's bull, tom. come an' sit by the fires. she'll do now.' they came down, and as hobden opened the shutter to see if the potatoes were done tom shoesmith said to the children, 'put a plenty salt on 'em. that'll show you the sort o' man _i_ be.' again he winked, and again the bee boy laughed and una stared at dan. '_i_ know what sort o' man you be,' old hobden grunted, groping for the potatoes round the fire. 'do ye?' tom went on behind his back. 'some of us can't abide horseshoes, or church bells, or running water; an', talkin' o' runnin' water'--he turned to hobden, who was backing out of the roundel--'d'you mind the great floods at robertsbridge, when the miller's man was drowned in the street?' 'middlin' well.' old hobden let himself down on the coals by the fire-door. 'i was courtin' my woman on the marsh that year. carter to mus' plum i was, gettin' ten shillin's week. mine was a marsh woman.' 'won'erful odd-gates place----romney marsh,' said tom shoesmith. 'i've heard say the world's divided like into europe, ashy, afriky, ameriky, australy, an' romney marsh.' 'the marsh folk think so,' said hobden. 'i had a hem o' trouble to get my woman to leave it.' 'where did she come out of? i've forgot, ralph.' 'dymchurch under the wall,' hobden answered, a potato in his hand. 'then she'd be a pett--or a whitgift, would she?' 'whitgift.' hobden broke open the potato and ate it with the curious neatness of men who make most of their meals in the blowy open. 'she growed to be quite reasonable-like after livin' in the weald awhile, but our first twenty year or two she was odd-fashioned, no bounds. and she was a won'erful hand with bees.' he cut away a little piece of potato and threw it out to the door. 'ah! i've heard say the whitgifts could see further through a millstone than most,' said shoesmith. 'did she, now?' 'she was honest-innocent of any nigromancin',' said hobden. 'only she'd read signs and sinnifications out o' birds flyin', stars fallin', bees hivin', and such. an, she'd lie awake--listenin' for calls, she said.' 'that don't prove naught,' said tom. 'all marsh folk has been smugglers since time everlastin'. 'twould be in her blood to listen out o' nights.' 'nature-ally,' old hobden replied, smiling. 'i mind when there was smugglin' a sight nearer us than what the marsh be. but that wasn't my woman's trouble. 'twas a passel o' no-sense talk'--he dropped his voice--'about pharisees.' 'yes. i've heard marsh men belieft in 'em.' tom looked straight at the wide-eyed children beside bess. 'pharisees,' cried una. 'fairies? oh, i see!' 'people o' the hills,' said the bee boy, throwing half of his potato towards the door. 'there you be!' said hobden, pointing at him. my boy--he has her eyes and her out-gate sense. that's what _she_ called 'em!' 'and what did you think of it all?' 'um--um,' hobden rumbled. 'a man that uses fields an' shaws after dark as much as i've done, he don't go out of his road excep' for keepers.' 'but settin' that aside?' said tom, coaxingly. 'i saw ye throw the good piece out-at-doors just now. do ye believe or--_do_ ye?' 'there was a great black eye to that tater,' said hobden indignantly. 'my liddle eye didn't see un, then. it looked as if you meant it for--for any one that might need it. but settin' that aside, d'ye believe or--_do_ ye?' 'i ain't sayin' nothin', because i've heard naught, an' i've see naught. but if you was to say there was more things after dark in the shaws than men, or fur, or feather, or fin, i dunno as i'd go far about to call you a liar. now turnagain, tom. what's your say?' 'i'm like you. i say nothin'. but i'll tell you a tale, an' you can fit it _as_ how you please.' 'passel o' no-sense stuff,' growled hobden, but he filled his pipe. 'the marsh men they call it dymchurch flit,' tom went on slowly. 'hap you have heard it?' 'my woman she've told it me scores o' times. dunno as i didn't end by belieftin' it--sometimes.' hobden crossed over as he spoke, and sucked with his pipe at the yellow lanthorn flame. tom rested one great elbow on one great knee, where he sat among the coal. 'have you ever bin in the marsh?' he said to dan. 'only as far as rye, once,' dan answered. 'ah, that's but the edge. back behind of her there's steeples settin' beside churches, an' wise women settin' beside their doors, an' the sea settin' above the land, an' ducks herdin' wild in the diks' (he meant ditches). 'the marsh is justabout riddled with diks an' sluices, an' tide-gates an' water-lets. you can hear 'em bubblin' an' grummelin' when the tide works in 'em, an' then you hear the sea rangin' left and right-handed all up along the wall. you've seen how flat she is--the marsh? you'd think nothin' easier than to walk eend-on acrost her? ah, but the diks an' the water-lets, they twists the roads about as ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles. so ye get all turned round in broad daylight.' 'that's because they've dreened the waters into the diks,' said hobden. 'when i courted my woman the rushes was green--eh me! the rushes was green--an' the bailiff o' the marshes he rode up and down as free as the fog.' 'who was he?' said dan. 'why, the marsh fever an' ague. he've clapped me on the shoulder once or twice till i shook proper. but now the dreenin' off of the waters have done away with the fevers; so they make a joke, like, that the bailiff o' the marshes broke his neck in a dik. a won'erful place for bees an' ducks 'tis too.' 'an' old,' tom went on. 'flesh an' blood have been there since time everlastin' beyond. well, now, speakin' among themselves, the marsh men say that from time everlastin' beyond, the pharisees favoured the marsh above the rest of old england. i lay the marsh men ought to know. they've been out after dark, father an' son, smugglin' some one thing or t'other, since ever wool grew to sheep's backs. they say there was always a middlin' few pharisees to be seen on the marsh. impident as rabbits, they was. they'd dance on the nakid roads in the nakid daytime; they'd flash their liddle green lights along the diks, comin' an' goin', like honest smugglers. yes, an' times they'd lock the church doors against parson an' clerk of sundays.' 'that 'ud be smugglers layin' in the lace or the brandy till they could run it out o' the marsh. i've told my woman so,' said hobden. 'i'll lay she didn't belieft it, then--not if she was a whitgift. a won'erful choice place for pharisees, the marsh, by all accounts, till queen bess's father he come in with his reformatories.' 'would that be a act of parliament like?' hobden asked. 'sure-ly. can't do nothing in old england without act, warrant an' summons. he got his act allowed him, an', they say, queen bess's father he used the parish churches something shameful. justabout tore the gizzards out of i dunnamany. some folk in england they held with 'en; but some they saw it different, an' it eended in 'em takin' sides an' burnin' each other no bounds, accordin' which side was top, time bein'. that tarrified the pharisees: for goodwill among flesh an' blood is meat an' drink to 'em, an' ill-will is poison.' 'same as bees,' said the bee boy. 'bees won't stay by a house where there's hating.' 'true,' said tom. 'this reformatories tarrified the pharisees same as the reaper goin' round a last stand o' wheat tarrifies rabbits. they packed into the marsh from all parts, and they says, "fair or foul, we must flit out o' this, for merry england's done with, an' we're reckoned among the images."' 'did they _all_ see it that way?' said hobden. 'all but one that was called robin--if you've heard of him. what are you laughin' at?' tom turned to dan. 'the pharisees's trouble didn't tech robin, because he'd cleaved middlin' close to people, like. no more he never meant to go out of old england--not he; so he was sent messagin' for help among flesh an' blood. but flesh an' blood must always think of their own concerns, an' robin couldn't get _through_ at 'em, ye see. they thought it was tide-echoes off the marsh.' 'what did you--what did the fai--pharisees want?' una asked. 'a boat, to be sure. their liddle wings could no more cross channel than so many tired butterflies. a boat an' a crew they desired to sail 'em over to france, where yet awhile folks hadn't tore down the images. they couldn't abide cruel canterbury bells ringin' to bulverhithe for more pore men an' women to be burnded, nor the king's proud messenger ridin' through the land givin' orders to tear down the images. they couldn't abide it no shape. nor yet they couldn't get their boat an' crew to flit by without leave an' good-will from flesh an' blood; an' flesh an' blood came an' went about its own business the while the marsh was swarvin' up, an' swarvin' up with pharisees from all england over, strivin' all means to get through at flesh an' blood to tell 'em their sore need ... i don't know as you've ever heard say pharisees are like chickens?' 'my woman used to say that too,' said hobden, folding his brown arms. 'they be. you run too many chickens together, an' the ground sickens, like, an' you get a squat, an' your chickens die. same way, you crowd pharisees all in one place--_they_ don't die, but flesh an' blood walkin' among 'em is apt to sick up an' pine off. _they_ don't mean it, an' flesh an' blood don't know it, but that's the truth--as i've heard. the pharisees through bein' all stenched up an' frighted, an' trying' to come _through_ with their supplications, they nature-ally changed the thin airs an' humours in flesh an' blood. it lay on the marsh like thunder. men saw their churches ablaze with the wildfire in the windows after dark; they saw their cattle scatterin' an' no man scarin'; their sheep flockin' an' no man drivin'; their horses latherin' an' no man leadin'; they saw the liddle low green lights more than ever in the dik-sides; they heard the liddle feet patterin' more than ever round the houses; an' night an' day, day an' night, 'twas all as though they were bein' creeped up on, an' hinted at by some one or other that couldn't rightly shape their trouble. oh, i lay they sweated! man an' maid, woman an' child, their nature done 'em no service all the weeks while the marsh was swarvin' up with pharisees. but they was flesh an' blood, an' marsh men before all. they reckoned the signs sinnified trouble for the marsh. or that the sea 'ud rear up against dymchurch wall an' they'd be drownded like old winchelsea; or that the plague was comin'. so they looked for the meanin' in the sea or in the clouds--far an' high up. they never thought to look near an' knee-high, where they could see naught. 'now there was a poor widow at dymchurch under the wall, which, lacking man or property, she had the more time for feeling; and she come to feel there was a trouble outside her doorstep bigger an' heavier than aught she'd ever carried over it. she had two sons--one born blind, an' t'other struck dumb through fallin' off the wall when he was liddle. they was men grown, but not wage-earnin', an' she worked for 'em, keepin' bees and answerin' questions.' 'what sort of questions?' said dan. 'like where lost things might be found, an' what to put about a crooked baby's neck, an' how to join parted sweethearts. she felt the trouble on the marsh same as eels feel thunder. she was a wise woman.' 'my woman was won'erful weather-tender, too,' said hobden. 'i've seen her brish sparks like off an anvil out of her hair in thunderstorms. but she never laid out to answer questions.' 'this woman was a seeker, like, an' seekers they sometimes find. one night, while she lay abed, hot an' achin', there come a dream an' tapped at her window, an' "widow whitgift," it said, "widow whitgift!" 'first, by the wings an' the whistlin', she thought it was peewits, but last she arose an' dressed herself, an' opened her door to the marsh, an' she felt the trouble an' the groanin' all about her, strong as fever an' ague, an' she calls: "what is it? oh, what is it?" 'then 'twas all like the frogs in the diks peepin'; then 'twas all like the reeds in the diks clip-clappin'; an' then the great tide-wave rummelled along the wall, an' she couldn't hear proper. 'three times she called, an' three times the tide-wave did her down. but she catched the quiet between, an' she cries out, "what is the trouble on the marsh that's been lying down with my heart an' arising with my body this month gone?" she felt a liddle hand lay hold on her gown-hem, an' she stooped to the pull o' that liddle hand.' tom shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire and smiled at it. '"will the sea drown the marsh?" she says. she was a marsh woman first an' foremost. '"no," says the liddle voice. "sleep sound for all o' that." '"is the plague comin' to the marsh?" she says. them was all the ills she knowed. '"no. sleep sound for all o' that," says robin. 'she turned about, half mindful to go in, but the liddle voices grieved that shrill an' sorrowful she turns back, an' she cries: "if it is not a trouble of flesh an' blood, what can i do?" 'the pharisees cried out upon her from all round to fetch them a boat to sail to france, an' come back no more. '"there's a boat on the wall," she says, "but i can't push it down to the sea, nor sail it when 'tis there." '"lend us your sons," says all the pharisees. "give 'em leave an' good-will to sail it for us, mother--o mother!" '"one's dumb, an' t'other's blind," she says. "but all the dearer me for that; and you'll lose them in the big sea." the voices justabout pierced through her; an' there was children's voices too. she stood out all she could, but she couldn't rightly stand against _that_. so she says: "if you can draw my sons for your job, i'll not hinder 'em. you can't ask no more of a mother." 'she saw them liddle green lights dance an' cross till she was dizzy; she heard them liddle feet patterin' by the thousand; she heard cruel canterbury bells ringing to bulverhithe, an' she heard the great tide-wave ranging along the wall. that was while the pharisees was workin' a dream to wake her two sons asleep: an' while she bit on her fingers she saw them two she'd bore come out an' pass her with never a word. she followed 'em, cryin' pitiful, to the old boat on the wall, an' that they took an' runned down to the sea. 'when they'd stepped mast an' sail the blind son speaks: "mother, we're waitin' your leave an' good-will to take them over."' tom shoesmith threw back his head and half shut his eyes. 'eh, me!' he said. 'she was a fine, valiant woman, the widow whitgift. she stood twistin' the eends of her long hair over her fingers, an' she shook like a poplar, makin' up her mind. the pharisees all about they hushed their children from cryin' an' they waited dumb-still. she was all their dependence. 'thout her leave an' good-will they could not pass; for she was the mother. so she shook like a aps-tree makin' up her mind. 'last she drives the word past her teeth, an' "go!" she says. "go with my leave an' goodwill." 'then i saw--then, they say, she had to brace back same as if she was wadin' in tide-water; for the pharisees just about flowed past her--down the beach to the boat, i dunnamany of 'em--with their wives an' childern an' valooables, all escapin' out of cruel old england. silver you could hear chinkin', an' liddle bundles hove down dunt on the bottom-boards, an' passels o' liddle swords an' shields raklin', an' liddle fingers an' toes scratchin' on the boatside to board her when the two sons pushed her off. that boat she sunk lower an' lower, but all the widow could see in it was her boys movin' hampered-like to get at the tackle. up sail they did, an' away they went, deep as a rye barge, away into the off-shore mists, an' the widow whitgift she sat down an' eased her grief till mornin' light.' 'i never heard she was _all_ alone,' said hobden. 'i remember now. the one called robin, he stayed with her, they tell. she was all too grievious to listen to his promises.' 'ah! she should ha' made her bargain beforehand. i allus told my woman so!' hobden cried. 'no. she loaned her sons for a pure love-loan, bein' as she sensed the trouble on the marshes, an' was simple good-willin' to ease it.' tom laughed softly. 'she done that. yes, she done that! from hithe to bulverhithe, fretty man an' maid, ailin' woman an' wailin' child, they took the advantage of the change in the thin airs just about _as_ soon as the pharisees flitted. folks come out fresh an' shinin' all over the marsh like snails after wet. an' that while the widow whitgift sat grievin' on the wall. she might have belieft us--she might have trusted her sons would be sent back! she fussed, no bounds, when their boat come in after three days.' 'and, of course, the sons were both quite cured?' said una. 'no-o. that would have been out o' nature. she got 'em back as she sent 'em. the blind man he hadn't seen naught of anythin', an' the dumb man nature-ally he couldn't say aught of what he'd seen. i reckon that was why the pharisees pitched on 'em for the ferryin' job.' 'but what did you--what did robin promise the widow?' said dan. 'what _did_ he promise, now?' tom pretended to think. 'wasn't your woman a whitgift, ralph? didn't she ever say?' 'she told me a passel o' no-sense stuff when he was born.' hobden pointed at his son. 'there was always to be one of 'em that could see further into a millstone than most.' 'me! that's me!' said the bee boy so suddenly that they all laughed. 'i've got it now!' cried tom, slapping his knee. 'so long as whitgift blood lasted, robin promised there would allers be one o' her stock that--that no trouble 'ud lie on, no maid 'ud sigh on, no night could frighten, no fright could harm, no harm could make sin, an' no woman could make a fool of.' 'well, ain't that just me?' said the bee boy, where he sat in the silver square of the great september moon that was staring into the oast-house door. 'they was the exact words she told me when we first found he wasn't like others. but it beats me how you known 'em,' said hobden. 'aha! there's more under my hat besides hair?' tom laughed and stretched himself. 'when i've seen these two young folk home, we'll make a night of old days, ralph, with passin' old tales--eh? an' where might you live?' he said, gravely, to dan. 'an' do you think your pa 'ud give me a drink for takin' you there, missy?' they giggled so at this that they had to run out. tom picked them both up, set one on each broad shoulder, and tramped across the ferny pasture where the cows puffed milky puffs at them in the moonlight. 'oh, puck! puck! i guessed you right from when you talked about the salt. how could you ever do it?' una cried, swinging along delighted. 'do what?' he said, and climbed the stile by the pollard oak. 'pretend to be tom shoesmith,' said dan, and they ducked to avoid the two little ashes that grow by the bridge over the brook. tom was almost running. 'yes. that's my name, mus' dan,' he said, hurrying over the silent shining lawn, where a rabbit sat by the big white-thorn near the croquet ground. 'here you be.' he strode into the old kitchen yard, and slid them down as ellen came to ask questions. 'i'm helping in mus' spray's oast-house,' he said to her. 'no, i'm no foreigner. i knowed this country 'fore your mother was born; an'--yes, it's dry work oastin', miss. thank you.' ellen went to get a jug, and the children went in--magicked once more by oak, ash, and thorn! a three-part song i'm just in love with all these three, the weald an' the marsh an' the down countrie; nor i don't know which i love the most, the weald or the marsh or the white chalk coast! i've buried my heart in a ferny hill, twix' a liddle low shaw an' a great high gill. oh, hop-bine yaller an' woodsmoke blue, i reckon you'll keep her middling true! i've loosed my mind for to out an' run on a marsh that was old when kings begun: oh, romney level an' brenzett reeds, i reckon you know what my mind needs! i've given my soul to the southdown grass, an' sheep-bells tinkled where you pass. oh, firle an' ditchling an' sails at sea, i reckon you keep my soul for me! the treasure and the law song of the fifth river when first by eden tree the four great rivers ran, to each was appointed a man her prince and ruler to be. but after this was ordained, (the ancient legends tell), there came dark israel, for whom no river remained. then he that is wholly just said to him: 'fling on the ground a handful of yellow dust, and a fifth great river shall run, mightier than these four, in secret the earth around; and her secret evermore shall be shown to thee and thy race. so it was said and done. and, deep in the veins of earth, and, fed by a thousand springs that comfort the market-place, or sap the power of kings, the fifth great river had birth, even as it was foretold-- the secret river of gold! and israel laid down his sceptre and his crown, to brood on that river bank, where the waters flashed and sank, and burrowed in earth and fell, and bided a season below; for reason that none might know, save only israel. he is lord of the last-- the fifth, most wonderful, flood. he hears her thunder past and her song is in his blood. he can foresay: 'she will fall,' for he knows which fountain dries behind which desert-belt a thousand leagues to the south. he can foresay: 'she will rise.' he knows what far snows melt; along what mountain-wall a thousand leagues to the north. he snuffs the coming drought as he snuffs the coming rain, he knows what each will bring forth, and turns it to his gain. a prince without a sword, a ruler without a throne; israel follows his quest. in every land a guest, of many lands a lord, in no land king is he. but the fifth great river keeps the secret of her deeps for israel alone, as it was ordered to be. the treasure and the law now it was the third week in november, and the woods rang with the noise of pheasant-shooting. no one hunted that steep, cramped country except the village beagles, who, as often as not, escaped from their kennels and made a day of their own. dan and una found a couple of them towling round the kitchen-garden after the laundry cat. the little brutes were only too pleased to go rabbiting, so the children ran them all along the brook pastures and into little lindens farm-yard, where the old sow vanquished them--and up to the quarry-hole, where they started a fox. he headed for far wood, and there they frightened out all the pheasants, who were sheltering from a big beat across the valley. then the cruel guns began again, and they grabbed the beagles lest they should stray and get hurt. 'i wouldn't be a pheasant--in november--for a lot,' dan panted, as he caught _folly_ by the neck. 'why did you laugh that horrid way?' 'i didn't,' said una, sitting on _flora_, the fat lady-dog. 'oh, look! the silly birds are going back to their own woods instead of ours, where they would be safe.' 'safe till it pleased you to kill them.' an old man, so tall he was almost a giant, stepped from behind the clump of hollies by volaterrae. the children jumped, and the dogs dropped like setters. he wore a sweeping gown of dark thick stuff, lined and edged with yellowish fur, and he bowed a bent-down bow that made them feel both proud and ashamed. then he looked at them steadily, and they stared back without doubt or fear. 'you are not afraid?' he said, running his hands through his splendid grey beard. 'not afraid that those men yonder'--he jerked his head towards the incessant pop-pop of the guns from the lower woods--'will do you hurt?' 'we-ell'--dan liked to be accurate, especially when he was shy--'old hobd--a friend of mine told me that one of the beaters got peppered last week--hit in the leg, i mean. you see, mr meyer _will_ fire at rabbits. but he gave waxy garnett a quid--sovereign, i mean--and waxy told hobden he'd have stood both barrels for half the money.' 'he doesn't understand,' una cried, watching the pale, troubled face. 'oh, i wish----' she had scarcely said it when puck rustled out of the hollies and spoke to the man quickly in foreign words. puck wore a long cloak too--the afternoon was just frosting down--and it changed his appearance altogether. 'nay, nay!' he said at last. 'you did not understand the boy. a freeman was a little hurt, by pure mischance, at the hunting.' 'i know that mischance! what did his lord do? laugh and ride over him?' the old man sneered. 'it was one of your own people did the hurt, kadmiel.' puck's eyes twinkled maliciously. 'so he gave the freeman a piece of gold, and no more was said.' 'a jew drew blood from a christian and no more was said?' kadmiel cried. 'never! when did they torture him?' 'no man may be bound, or fined, or slain till he has been judged by his peers,' puck insisted. 'there is but one law in old england for jew or christian--the law that was signed at runnymede.' 'why, that's magna charta!' dan whispered. it was one of the few history dates that he could remember. kadmiel turned on him with a sweep and a whirr of his spicy-scented gown. 'dost _thou_ know of that, babe?' he cried, and lifted his hands in wonder. 'yes,' said dan firmly. 'magna charta was signed by john, that henry the third put his heel upon. and old hobden says that if it hadn't been for _her_ (he calls everything "her", you know), the keepers would have him clapped in lewes gaol all the year round.' again puck translated to kadmiel in the strange, solemn-sounding language, and at last kadmiel laughed. 'out of the mouths of babes do we learn,' said he. 'but tell me now, and i will not call you a babe but a rabbi, _why_ did the king sign the roll of the new law at runnymede? for he was a king.' dan looked sideways at his sister. it was her turn. 'because he jolly well had to,' said una softly. 'the barons made him.' 'nay,' kadmiel answered, shaking his head. 'you christians always forget that gold does more than the sword. our good king signed because he could not borrow more money from us bad jews.' he curved his shoulders as he spoke. 'a king without gold is a snake with a broken back, and'--his nose sneered up and his eyebrows frowned down--'it is a good deed to break a snake's back. that was my work,' he cried, triumphantly, to puck. 'spirit of earth, bear witness that that was _my_ work!' he shot up to his full towering height, and his words rang like a trumpet. he had a voice that changed its tone almost as an opal changes colour--sometimes deep and thundery, sometimes thin and waily, but always it made you listen. 'many people can bear witness to that,' puck answered. 'tell these babes how it was done. remember, master, they do not know doubt or fear.' 'so i saw in their faces when we met,' said kadmiel. 'yet surely, surely they are taught to spit upon jews?' 'are they?' said dan, much interested. 'where at?' puck fell back a pace, laughing. 'kadmiel is thinking of king john's reign,' he explained. 'his people were badly treated then.' 'oh, we know _that_.' they answered, and (it was very rude of them, but they could not help it) they stared straight at kadmiel's mouth to see if his teeth were all there. it stuck in their lesson-memory that king john used to pull out jews' teeth to make them lend him money. kadmiel understood the look and smiled bitterly. 'no. your king never drew my teeth: i think, perhaps, i drew his. listen! i was not born among christians, but among moors--in spain--in a little white town under the mountains. yes, the moors are cruel, but at least their learned men dare to think. it was prophesied of me at my birth that i should be a lawgiver to a people of a strange speech and a hard language. we jews are always looking for the prince and the lawgiver to come. why not? my people in the town (we were very few) set me apart as a child of the prophecy--the chosen of the chosen. we jews dream so many dreams. you would never guess it to see us slink about the rubbish-heaps in our quarter; but at the day's end--doors shut, candles lit--aha! _then_ we became the chosen again.' he paced back and forth through the wood as he talked. the rattle of the shot-guns never ceased, and the dogs whimpered a little and lay flat on the leaves. 'i was a prince. yes! think of a little prince who had never known rough words in his own house handed over to shouting, bearded rabbis, who pulled his ears and filliped his nose, all that he might learn--learn--learn to be king when his time came. hé! such a little prince it was! one eye he kept on the stone-throwing moorish boys, and the other it roved about the streets looking for his kingdom. yes, and he learned to cry softly when he was hunted up and down those streets. he learned to do all things without noise. he played beneath his father's table when the great candle was lit, and he listened as children listen to the talk of his father's friends above the table. they came across the mountains, from out of all the world, for my prince's father was their counsellor. they came from behind the armies of sala-ud-din: from rome: from venice: from england. they stole down our alley, they tapped secretly at our door, they took off their rags, they arrayed themselves, and they talked to my father at the wine. all over the world the heathen fought each other. they brought news of these wars, and while he played beneath the table, my prince heard these meanly dressed ones decide between themselves how, and when, and for how long king should draw sword against king, and people rise up against people. why not? there can be no war without gold, and we jews know how the earth's gold moves with the seasons, and the crops, and the winds; circling and looping and rising and sinking away like a river--a wonderful underground river. how should the foolish kings know _that_ while they fight and steal and kill?' the children's faces showed that they knew nothing at all as, with open eyes, they trotted and turned beside the long-striding old man. he twitched his gown over his shoulders, and a square plate of gold, studded with jewels, gleamed for an instant through the fur, like a star through flying snow. 'no matter,' he said. 'but, credit me, my prince saw peace or war decided not once, but many times, by the fall of a coin spun between a jew from bury and a jewess from alexandria, in his father's house, when the great candle was lit. such power had we jews among the gentiles. ah, my little prince! do you wonder that he learned quickly? why not?' he muttered to himself and went on:-- 'my trade was that of a physician. when i had learned it in spain i went to the east to find my kingdom. why not? a jew is as free as a sparrow--or a dog. he goes where he is hunted. in the east i found libraries where men dared to think--schools of medicine where they dared to learn. i was diligent in my business. therefore i stood before kings. i have been a brother to princes and a companion to beggars, and i have walked between the living and the dead. there was no profit in it. i did not find my kingdom. so, in the tenth year of my travels, when i had reached the uttermost eastern sea, i returned to my father's house. god had wonderfully preserved my people. none had been slain, none even wounded, and only a few scourged. i became once more a son in my father's house. again the great candle was lit; again the meanly apparelled ones tapped on our door after dusk; and again i heard them weigh out peace and war, as they weighed out the gold on the table. but i was not rich--not very rich. therefore, when those that had power and knowledge and wealth talked together, i sat in the shadow. why not? 'yet all my wanderings had shown me one sure thing, which is, that a king without money is like a spear without a head. he cannot do much harm. i said, therefore, to elias of bury, a great one among our people: "why do our people lend any more to the kings that oppress us?" "because," said elias, "if we refuse they stir up their people against us, and the people are tenfold more cruel than kings. if thou doubtest, come with me to bury in england and live as i live." 'i saw my mother's face across the candle flame, and i said, "i will come with thee to bury. maybe my kingdom shall be there." 'so i sailed with elias to the darkness and the cruelty of bury in england, where there are no learned men. how can a man be wise if he hate? at bury i kept his accounts for elias, and i saw men kill jews there by the tower. no--none laid hands on elias. he lent money to the king, and the king's favour was about him. a king will not take the life so long as there is any gold. this king--yes, john--oppressed his people bitterly because they would not give him money. yet his land was a good land. if he had only given it rest he might have cropped it as a christian crops his beard. but even _that_ little he did not know, for god had deprived him of all understanding, and had multiplied pestilence, and famine, and despair upon the people. therefore his people turned against us jews, who are all people's dogs. why not? lastly the barons and the people rose together against the king because of his cruelties. nay--nay--the barons did not love the people, but they saw that if the king cut up and destroyed the common people, he would presently destroy the barons. they joined then, as cats and pigs will join to slay a snake. i kept the accounts, and i watched all these things, for i remembered the prophecy. 'a great gathering of barons (to most of whom we had lent money) came to bury, and there, after much talk and a thousand runnings-about, they made a roll of the new laws that they would force on the king. if he swore to keep those laws, they would allow him a little money. that was the king's god--money--to waste. they showed us the roll of the new laws. why not? we had lent them money. we knew all their counsels--we jews shivering behind our doors in bury.' he threw out his hands suddenly. 'we did not seek to be paid _all_ in money. we sought power--power--power! that is _our_ god in our captivity. power to use! 'i said to elias: "these new laws are good. lend no more money to the king: so long as he has money he will lie and slay the people." '"nay," said elias. "i know this people. they are madly cruel. better one king than a thousand butchers. i have lent a little money to the barons, or they would torture us, but my most i will lend to the king. he hath promised me a place near him at court, where my wife and i shall be safe." '"but if the king be made to keep these new laws," i said, "the land will have peace, and our trade will grow. if we lend he will fight again." '"who made thee a lawgiver in england?" said elias. "i know this people. let the dogs tear one another! i will lend the king ten thousand pieces of gold, and he can fight the barons at his pleasure." '"there are not two thousand pieces of gold in all england this summer," i said, for i kept the accounts, and i knew how the earth's gold moved--that wonderful underground river. elias barred home the windows, and, his hands about his mouth, he told me how, when he was trading with small wares in a french ship, he had come to the castle of pevensey.' 'oh!' said dan. 'pevensey again!' and looked at una, who nodded and skipped. 'there, after they had scattered his pack up and down the great hall, some young knights carried him to an upper room, and dropped him into a well in a wall, that rose and fell with the tide. they called him joseph, and threw torches at his wet head. why not?' 'why, of course!' cried dan. 'didn't you know it was----' puck held up his hand to stop him, and kadmiel, who never noticed, went on. 'when the tide dropped he thought he stood on old armour, but feeling with his toes, he raked up bar on bar of soft gold. some wicked treasure of the old days put away, and the secret cut off by the sword. i have heard the like before.' 'so have we,' una whispered. 'but it wasn't wicked a bit.' 'elias took a little of the stuff with him, and thrice yearly he would return to pevensey as a chapman, selling at no price or profit, till they suffered him to sleep in the empty room, where he would plumb and grope, and steal away a few bars. the great store of it still remained, and by long brooding he had come to look on it as his own. yet when we thought how we should lift and convey it, we saw no way. this was before the word of the lord had come to me. a walled fortress possessed by normans; in the midst a forty-foot tide-well out of which to remove secretly many horse-loads of gold! hopeless! so elias wept. adah, his wife, wept too. she had hoped to stand beside the queen's christian tiring-maids at court when the king should give them that place at court which he had promised. why not? she was born in england--an odious woman. 'the present evil to us was that elias, out of his strong folly, had, as it were, promised the king that he would arm him with more gold. wherefore the king in his camp stopped his ears against the barons and the people. wherefore men died daily. adah so desired her place at court, she besought elias to tell the king where the treasure lay, that the king might take it by force, and--they would trust in his gratitude. why not? this elias refused to do, for he looked on the gold as his own. they quarrelled, and they wept at the evening meal, and late in the night came one langton--a priest, almost learned--to borrow more money for the barons. elias and adah went to their chamber.' kadmiel laughed scornfully in his beard. the shots across the valley stopped as the shooting party changed their ground for the last beat. 'so it was i, not elias,' he went on quietly, 'that made terms with langton touching the fortieth of the new laws.' 'what terms?' said puck quickly. 'the fortieth of the great charter says: "to none will we sell, refuse, or delay right or justice."' 'true, but the barons had written first: _to no free man_. it cost me two hundred broad pieces of gold to change those narrow words. langton, the priest, understood. "jew though thou art," said he, "the change is just, and if ever christian and jew came to be equal in england thy people may thank thee." then he went out stealthily, as men do who deal with israel by night. i think he spent my gift upon his altar. why not? i have spoken with langton. he was such a man as i might have been if--if we jews had been a people. but yet, in many things, a child. 'i heard elias and adah abovestairs quarrel, and, knowing the woman was the stronger, i saw that elias would tell the king of the gold and that the king would continue in his stubbornness. therefore i saw that the gold must be put away from the reach of any man. of a sudden, the word of the lord came to me saying, "the morning is come, o thou that dwellest in the land."' kadmiel halted, all black against the pale green sky beyond the wood--a huge robed figure, like the moses in the picture-bible. 'i rose. i went out, and as i shut the door on that house of foolishness, the woman looked from the window and whispered, "i have prevailed on my husband to tell the king!" i answered: "there is no need. the lord is with me." 'in that hour the lord gave me full understanding of all that i must do; and his hand covered me in my ways. first i went to london, to a physician of our people, who sold me certain drugs that i needed. you shall see why. thence i went swiftly to pevensey. men fought all around me, for there were neither rulers nor judges in the abominable land. yet when i walked by them they cried out that i was one ahasuerus, a jew, condemned, as they believe, to live for ever, and they fled from me everyways. thus the lord saved me for my work, and at pevensey i bought me a little boat and moored it on the mud beneath the marsh-gate of the castle. that also god showed me.' he was as calm as though he were speaking of some stranger, and his voice filled the little bare wood with rolling music. 'i cast'--his hand went to his breast, and again the strange jewel gleamed--'i cast the drugs which i had prepared into the common well of the castle. nay, i did no harm. the more we physicians know, the less do we do. only the fool says: "i dare." i caused a blotched and itching rash to break out upon their skins, but i knew it would fade in fifteen days. i did not stretch out my hand against their life. they in the castle thought it was the plague, and they ran out, taking with them their very dogs. 'a christian physician, seeing that i was a jew and a stranger, vowed that i had brought the sickness from london. this is the one time i have ever heard a christian leech speak truth of any disease. thereupon the people beat me, but a merciful woman said: "do not kill him now. push him into our castle with his plague, and if, as he says, it will abate on the fifteenth day, we can kill him then." why not? they drove me across the drawbridge of the castle, and fled back to their booths. thus i came to be alone with the treasure.' 'but did you know this was all going to happen just right?' said una. 'my prophecy was that i should be a lawgiver to a people of a strange land and a hard speech. i knew i should not die. i washed my cuts. i found the tide-well in the wall, and from sabbath to sabbath i dove and dug there in that empty, christian-smelling fortress. hé! i spoiled the egyptians! hé! if they had only known! i drew up many good loads of gold, which i loaded by night into my boat. there had been gold-dust too, but that had been washed out by the tides.' 'didn't you ever wonder who had put it there?' said dan, stealing a glance at puck's calm, dark face under the hood of his gown. puck shook his head and pursed his lips. 'often; for the gold was new to me,' kadmiel replied. 'i know the golds. i can judge them in the dark; but this was heavier and redder than any we deal in. perhaps it was the very gold of parvaim. eh, why not? it went to my heart to heave it on to the mud, but i saw well that if the evil thing remained, or if even the hope of finding it remained, the king would not sign the new laws, and the land would perish.' 'oh, marvel!' said puck, beneath his breath, rustling in the dead leaves. 'when the boat was loaded i washed my hands seven times, and pared beneath my nails, for i would not keep one grain. i went out by the little gate where the castle's refuse is thrown. i dared not hoist sail lest men should see me; but the lord commanded the tide to bear me carefully, and i was far from land before the morning.' 'weren't you afraid?' said una. 'why? there were no christians in the boat. at sunrise i made my prayer, and cast the gold--all--all that gold--into the deep sea! a king's ransom--no, the ransom of a people! when i had loosed hold of the last bar, the lord commanded the tide to return me to a haven at the mouth of a river, and thence i walked across a wilderness to lewes, where i have brethren. they opened the door to me, and they say--i had not eaten for two days--they say that i fell across the threshold, crying: "i have sunk an army with horsemen in the sea!"' 'but you hadn't,' said una. 'oh, yes! i see! you meant that king john might have spent it on that?' 'even so,' said kadmiel. the firing broke out again close behind them. the pheasants poured over the top of a belt of tall firs. they could see young mr meyer, in his new yellow gaiters, very busy and excited at the end of the line, and they could hear the thud of the falling birds. 'but what did elias of bury do?' puck demanded. 'he had promised money to the king.' kadmiel smiled grimly. 'i sent him word from london that the lord was on my side. when he heard that the plague had broken out in pevensey, and that a jew had been thrust into the castle to cure it, he understood my word was true. he and adah hurried to lewes and asked me for an accounting. he still looked on the gold as his own. i told them where i had laid it, and i gave them full leave to pick it up ... eh, well! the curses of a fool and the dust of a journey are two things no wise man can escape ... but i pitied elias! the king was wroth with him because he could not lend; the barons were wroth too because they heard that he would have lent to the king; and adah was wroth with him because she was an odious woman. they took ship from lewes to spain. that was wise!' 'and you? did you see the signing of the law at runnymede?' said puck, as kadmiel laughed noiselessly. 'nay. who am i to meddle with things too high for me? i returned to bury, and lent money on the autumn crops. why not?' there was a crackle overhead. a cock-pheasant that had sheered aside after being hit spattered down almost on top of them, driving up the dry leaves like a shell. _flora_ and _folly_ threw themselves at it; the children rushed forward, and when they had beaten them off and smoothed down the plumage kadmiel had disappeared. 'well,' said puck calmly, 'what did you think of it? weland gave the sword! the sword gave the treasure, and the treasure gave the law. it's as natural as an oak growing.' 'i don't understand. didn't he know it was sir richard's old treasure?' said dan. 'and why did sir richard and brother hugh leave it lying about? and--and----' 'never mind,' said una politely. 'he'll let us come and go and look and know another time. won't you, puck?' 'another time maybe,' puck answered. 'brr! it's cold--and late. i'll race you towards home!' they hurried down into the sheltered valley. the sun had almost sunk behind cherry clack, the trodden ground by the cattle-gates was freezing at the edges, and the new-waked north wind blew the night on them from over the hills. they picked up their feet and flew across the browned pastures, and when they halted, panting in the steam of their own breath, the dead leaves whirled up behind them. there was oak and ash and thorn enough in that year-end shower to magic away a thousand memories. so they trotted to the brook at the bottom of the lawn, wondering why _flora_ and _folly_ had missed the quarry-hole fox. old hobden was just finishing some hedge-work. they saw his white smock glimmer in the twilight where he faggoted the rubbish. 'winter, he's come, i reckon, mus' dan,' he called. 'hard times now till heffle cuckoo fair. yes, we'll all be glad to see the old woman let the cuckoo out o' the basket for to start lawful spring in england.' they heard a crash, and a stamp and a splash of water as though a heavy old cow were crossing almost under their noses. hobden ran forward angrily to the ford. 'gleason's bull again, playin' robin all over the farm! oh, look, mus' dan--his great footmark as big as a trencher. no bounds to his impidence! he might count himself to be a man or--or somebody----' a voice the other side of the brook boomed: 'i wonder who his cloak would turn when puck had led him round, or where those walking fires would burn----' then the children went in singing 'farewell rewards and fairies' at the tops of their voices. they had forgotten that they had not even said good-night to puck. the children's song land of our birth, we pledge to thee our love and toil in the years to be; when we are grown and take our place, as men and women with our race. father in heaven who lovest all, oh, help thy children when they call; that they may build from age to age, an undefiled heritage. teach us to bear the yoke in youth, with steadfastness and careful truth; that, in our time, thy grace may give the truth whereby the nations live. teach us to rule ourselves alway, controlled and cleanly night and day; that we may bring, if need arise, no maimed or worthless sacrifice. teach us to look in all our ends, on thee for judge, and not our friends; that we, with thee, may walk uncowed by fear or favour of the crowd. teach us the strength that cannot seek, by deed or thought, to hurt the weak; that, under thee, we may possess man's strength to comfort man's distress. teach us delight in simple things, and mirth that has no bitter springs; forgiveness free of evil done, and love to all men 'neath the sun! land of our birth, our faith, our pride, for whose dear sake our fathers died; o motherland, we pledge to thee head, heart and hand through the years to be! ---------------------------------------------------------------- songs from books by rudyard kipling macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london copyright _all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian_ _first edition october_ _reprinted october (twice), november_ , _preface_ _i have collected in this volume practically all the verses and chapter-headings scattered through my books. in several cases where only a few lines of verse were originally used, i have given in full the song, etc., from which they were taken._ _rudyard kipling._ '_cities and thrones and powers_' _cities and thrones and powers, stand in time's eye, almost as long as flowers, which daily die. but, as new buds put forth to glad new men, out of the spent and unconsidered earth, the cities rise again. this season's daffodil, she never hears, what change, what chance, what chill, cut down last year's: but with bold countenance, and knowledge small, esteems her seven days' continuance to be perpetual. so time that is o'er-kind, to all that be, ordains us e'en as blind, as bold as she: that in our very death, and burial sure, shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith, 'see how our works endure!'_ contents song book page angutivaun taina second jungle book astrologer's song, an rewards and fairies ballad of minepit shaw, the rewards and fairies bee boy's song, the puck of pook's hill bees and the flies, the actions and reactions blue roses light that failed british-roman song, a puck brookland road rewards and fairies butterflies traffics and discoveries 'by the hoof of the wild goat' plain tales captive, the traffics and discoveries carol, a rewards and fairies _chapter headings_ beast and man, etc. " " jungle books " " just-so stories " " naulahka, light that failed " " plain tales charm, a rewards and fairies children's song, the puck chil's song second jungle book 'cities and thrones and powers' puck vii city of sleep, the the day's work cold iron rewards and fairies cuckoo song heathfield parish memoirs darzee's chaunt jungle book dedication, a soldiers three eddi's service rewards and fairies egg-shell, the traffics and discoveries fairies' siege, the kim four angels, the actions and reactions frankie's trade rewards and fairies gallio's song actions and reactions gow's watch kim hadramauti plain tales harp song of the dane women puck heriot's ford light that failed heritage, the the empire and the century hunting song of the seeonee pack jungle book if-- rewards and fairies jester, the collected jubal and tubal cain letters to the family juggler's song, the naulahka kingdom, the naulahka king henry vii. and the shipwrights rewards and fairies king's task, the traffics and discoveries law of the jungle, the second jungle book looking-glass, the rewards and fairies love song of har dyal, the plain tales 'lukannon' jungle book merrow down just-so stories morning song in the jungle second jungle book mother o' mine light that failed mowgli's song against people second jungle book my lady's law naulahka 'my new-cut ashlar' life's handicap necessitarian, the traffics and discoveries new knighthood, the actions and reactions nursing sister, the naulahka old mother laidinwool puck only son, the many inventions 'our fathers also' traffics and discoveries 'our fathers of old' rewards and fairies outsong in the jungle second jungle book parade song of the camp animals jungle book pict song, a puck 'poor honest men' rewards and fairies poseidon's law traffics and discoveries 'power of the dog, the' actions and reactions prairie, the letters to the family prayer, the kim prayer of miriam cohen, the many inventions prodigal son, the kim prophets at home puck pock's song puck puzzler, the actions and reactions queen's men, the rewards and fairies rabbi's song, the actions and reactions recall, the actions and reactions return of the children, the traffics and discoveries 'rimini' puck ripple song, a second jungle book road song of the _bandar_-_log_ jungle book romulus and remus letters to the family run of the downs, the rewards and fairies sack of the gods, the naulahka school song, a stalky & co. 'servant when he reigneth, a' letters to the family shiv and the grasshopper jungle book sir richard's song puck smuggler's song, a puck song of kabir, a second jungle book song of the fifth river puck song of the little hunter second jungle book song of the men's side rewards and fairies song of the red war-boat rewards and fairies song of travel, a letters to the family song to mithras, a puck st. helena lullaby, a rewards and fairies stranger, the letters to the family tarrant moss plain tales thorkild's song puck thousandth man, the rewards and fairies three-part song, a puck tree song, a puck truthful song, a rewards and fairies two-sided man, the kim voortrekker, the collected way through the woods, the rewards and fairies wet litany, the traffics and discoveries 'when the great ark' letters to the family widower, the various winners, the story of the gadsbys wishing caps, the kim index to first lines page about the time that taverns shut, a farmer of the augustan age, after the sack of the city, when rome was sunk to a name, all day long to the judgment-seat, all the world over, nursing their scars, alone upon the housetops to the north, and if ye doubt the tale i tell, 'and some are sulky, while some will plunge', and they were stronger hands than mine, as adam lay a-dreaming beneath the apple tree, as the dawn was breaking the sambhur belled, a stone's throw out on either hand, at the hole where he went in, beat off in our last fight were we?, because i sought it far from men, bees! bees! hark to your bees!, before my spring i garnered autumn's gain, between the waving tufts of jungle-grass, by the hoof of the wild goat uptossed, china-going p. and o.'s, cities and thrones and powers, vii cry 'murder' in the market-place, and each, dark children of the mere and marsh, eddi, priest of st. wilfrid, ere mor the peacock flutters, ere the monkey people cry, excellent herbs had our fathers of old, eyes aloft, over dangerous places, for a season there must be pain, for our white and our excellent nights--for the nights of swift running, for the sake of him who showed, from the wheel and the drift of things, 'gold is for the mistress--silver for the maid', go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather, harry, our king in england, from london town is gone, he drank strong waters and his speech was coarse, here come i to my own again, here we go in a flung festoon, his spots are the joy of the leopard: his horns are the buffalo's pride, 'how far is st. helena from a little child at play?', i am the land of their fathers, i am the most wise baviaan, saying in most wise tones, i closed and drew for my love's sake, 'if i have taken the common clay', if i were hanged on the highest hill, i followed my duke ere i was a lover, if thought can reach to heaven, if you can keep your head when all about you, if you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, i have been given my charge to keep, i keep six honest serving-men, i know not in whose hands are laid, i met my mates in the morning (and oh, but i am old!), i'm just in love with all these three, in the daytime, when she moved about me, 'i see the grass shake in the sun for leagues on either hand', i tell this tale, which is strictly true, it was not in the open fight, i've never sailed the amazon, i was very well pleased with what i knowed, i will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines, i will remember what i was, i am sick of rope and chain, jubal sang of the wrath of god, land of our birth, we pledge to thee, 'less you want your toes trod off you'd better get back at once', 'let us now praise famous men', life's all getting and giving, look, you have cast out love! what gods are these, man goes to man! cry the challenge through the jungle!, mithras, god of the morning, our trumpets waken the wall!, much i owe to the land that grew, my brother kneels, so saith kabir, my father's father saw it not, my new-cut ashlar takes the light, neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs' dove-winged races, not though you die to-night, o sweet, and wail, not with an outcry to allah nor any complaining, now chil the kite brings home the night, now it is not good for the christian's health to hustle the aryan brown, now this is the law of the jungle--as old and as true as the sky, now we are come to our kingdom, of all the trees that grow so fair, oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!, oh, little did the wolf-child care, old horn to all atlantic said, 'old mother laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead', once a ripple came to land, once we feared the beast--when he followed us we ran, one man in a thousand, solomon says, one moment past our bodies cast, our fathers in a wondrous age, our gloves are stiff with the frozen blood, our lord who did the ox command, our sister sayeth such and such, over the edge of the purple down, pit where the buffalo cooled his hide, prophets have honour all over the earth, pussy can sit by the fire and sing, queen bess was harry's daughter. stand forward partners all!, ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel, rome never looks where she treads, roses red and roses white, see you the ferny ride that steals, she dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew, shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow, shove off from the wharf-edge! steady!, singer and tailor am i, so we settled it all when the storm was done, 'stopped in the straight when the race was his own!', strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we, take of english earth as much, tell it to the locked-up trees, the beasts are very wise, the camel's hump is an ugly lump, the celt in all his variants from builth to ballyhoo, the doors were wide, the story saith, the gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire, the lark will make her hymn to god, the law whereby my lady moves, the night we felt the earth would move, the people of the eastern ice, they are melting like the snow, there are three degrees of bliss, there is pleasure in the wet, wet clay, there is sorrow enough in the natural way, there runs a road by merrow down, there's a convict more in the central jail, there's no wind along these seas, there was a strife 'twixt man and maid, there was never a queen like balkis, there were three friends that buried the fourth, these are the four that are never content, that have never been filled since the dews began, these were my companions going forth by night, the stranger within my gate, the stream is shrunk--the pool is dry, the torn boughs trailing o'er the tusks aslant, the weald is good, the downs are best, the wind took off with the sunset, the wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn, the world hath set its heavy yoke, they burnt a corpse upon the sand, they killed a child to please the gods, they shut the road through the woods, this i saw when the rites were done, this is the mouth-filling song of the race that was run by a boomer, three things make earth unquiet, thrones, powers, dominions, peoples, kings, to-night, god knows what thing shall tide, to the heavens above us, unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised, valour and innocence, veil them, cover them, wall them round, we be the gods of the east, we lent to alexander the strength of hercules, we meet in an evil land, what is a woman that you forsake her, what is the moral? who rides may read, what of the hunting, hunter bold?, 'what's that that hirples at my side?', when a lover hies abroad, when first by eden tree, when i left home for lalage's sake, when the cabin port-holes are dark and green, when the drums begin to beat, when the earth was sick and the skies were grey, when the great ark, in vigo bay, when the robust and brass-bound man commissioned first for sea, when the water's countenance, when ye say to tabaqui, 'my brother!' when ye call the hyena to meat, where's the lamp that hero lit who gives him the bath? who knows the heart of the christian? how does he reason? yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him you mustn't swim till you're six weeks old your jar of virginny your tiercel's too long at hack, sir. he's no eyass the recall i am the land of their fathers. in me the virtue stays. i will bring back my children, after certain days. under their feet in the grasses my clinging magic runs. they shall return as strangers, they shall remain as sons. over their heads in the branches of their new-bought, ancient trees, i weave an incantation and draw them to my knees. scent of smoke in the evening. smell of rain in the night, the hours, the days and the seasons, order their souls aright; till i make plain the meaning of all my thousand years-- till i fill their hearts with knowledge. while i fill their eyes with tears. puck's song see you the ferny ride that steals into the oak-woods far? o that was whence they hewed the keels that rolled to trafalgar. and mark you where the ivy clings to bayham's mouldering walls? o there we cast the stout railings that stand around st. paul's. see you the dimpled track that runs all hollow through the wheat? o that was where they hauled the guns that smote king philip's fleet. out of the weald, the secret weald, men sent in ancient years, the horse-shoes red at flodden field, the arrows at poitiers. see you our little mill that clacks, so busy by the brook? she has ground her corn and paid her tax ever since domesday book. see you our stilly woods of oak? and the dread ditch beside? o that was where the saxons broke on the day that harold died. see you the windy levels spread about the gates of rye? o that was where the northmen fled, when alfred's ships came by. see you our pastures wide and lone, where the red oxen browse? o there was a city thronged and known. ere london boasted a house. and see you, after rain, the trace of mound and ditch and wall? o that was a legion's camping-place, when cæsar sailed from gaul. and see you marks that show and fade, like shadows on the downs? o they are the lines the flint men made, to guard their wondrous towns. trackway and camp and city lost, salt marsh where now is corn; old wars, old peace, old arts that cease, and so was england born! she is not any common earth, water or wood or air, but merlin's isle of gramarye, where you and i will fare. the way through the woods they shut the road through the woods seventy years ago. weather and rain have undone it again, and now you would never know there was once a road through the woods before they planted the trees. it is underneath the coppice and heath, and the thin anemones. only the keeper sees that, where the ring-dove broods. and the badgers roll at ease, there was once a road through the woods. yet, if you enter the woods of a summer evening late, when the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools where the otter whistles his mate. (they fear not men in the woods. because they see so few) you will hear the beat of a horse's feet, and the swish of a skirt in the dew, steadily cantering through the misty solitudes, as though they perfectly knew the old lost road through the woods ... but there is no road through the woods! a three-part song i'm just in love with all these three, the weald and the marsh and the down countrie; nor i don't know which i love the most, the weald or the marsh or the white chalk coast! i've buried my heart in a ferny hill, twix' a liddle low shaw an' a great high gill. oh hop-bine yaller an' wood-smoke blue, i reckon you'll keep her middling true! i've loosed my mind for to out and run on a marsh that was old when kings begun. oh romney level and brenzett reeds, i reckon you know what my mind needs! i've given my soul to the southdown grass, and sheep-bells tinkled where you pass. oh firle an' ditchling an' sails at sea, i reckon you keep my soul for me! the run of the downs _the weald is good, the downs are best_-- _i'll give you the run of 'em, east to west._ beachy head and winddoor hill, they were once and they are still, firle, mount caburn and mount harry go back as far as sums'll carry. ditchling beacon and chanctonbury ring, they have looked on many a thing, and what those two have missed between 'em i reckon truleigh hill has seen 'em. highden, bignor and duncton down knew old england before the crown. linch down, treyford and sunwood knew old england before the flood. and when you end on the hampshire side-- butser's old as time and tide. _the downs are sheep, the weald is corn,_ _you be glad you are sussex born!_ brookland road i was very well pleased with what i knowed, i reckoned myself no fool-- till i met with a maid on the brookland road, that turned me back to school. _low down--low down! where the liddle green lanterns shine-- o maids, i've done with 'ee all but one, and she can never be mine!_ 'twas right in the middest of a hot june night, with thunder duntin' round, and i see'd her face by the fairy light that beats from off the ground. she only smiled and she never spoke, she smiled and went away; but when she'd gone my heart was broke, and my wits was clean astray. o stop your ringing and let me be-- let be, o brookland bells! you'll ring old goodman[a] out of the sea, before i wed one else! old goodman's farm is rank sea-sand, and was this thousand year: but it shall turn to rich plough land before i change my dear. o, fairfield church is water-bound from autumn to the spring; but it shall turn to high hill ground before my bells do ring. o, leave me walk on the brookland road, in the thunder and warm rain-- o, leave me look where my love goed, and p'raps i'll see her again! _low down--low down! where the liddle green lanterns shine-- o maids, i've done with 'ee all but one, and she can never be mine!_ [footnote a: earl godwin of the goodwin sands?] the sack of the gods strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we. i was lord of the inca race, and she was queen of the sea. under the stars beyond our stars where the new-forged meteors glow hotly we stormed valhalla, a million years ago. _ever 'neath high valhalla hall the well-tuned horns begin when the swords are out in the underworld, and the weary gods come in. ever through high valhalla gate the patient angel goes; he opens the eyes that are blind with hate--he joins the hands of foes._ dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above-- wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we spurned and we strove. worlds upon worlds we tossed aside, and scattered them to and fro, the night that we stormed valhalla, a million years ago! _they are forgiven as they forgive all those dark wounds and deep, their beds are made on the lap of time and they lie down and sleep. they are forgiven as they forgive all those old wounds that bleed, they shut their eyes from their worshippers. they sleep till the world has need._ she with the star i had marked for my own--i with my set desire-- lost in the loom of the night of nights--lighted by worlds afire-- met in a war against the gods where the headlong meteors glow, hewing our way to valhalla, a million years ago! _they will come back--come back again, as long as the red earth rolls. he never wasted a leaf or a tree. do you think he would squander souls?_ the kingdom now we are come to our kingdom, and the state is thus and thus; our legions wait at the palace gate--- little it profits us, _now we are come to our kingdom!_ now we are come to our kingdom, and the crown is ours to take-- with a naked sword at the council board, and under the throne the snake, _now we are come to our kingdom!_ now we are come to our kingdom, and the realm is ours by right, with shame and fear for our daily cheer, and heaviness at night, _now we are come to our kingdom!_ now we are come to our kingdom, but my love's eyelids fall. all that i wrought for, all that i fought for, delight her nothing at all. my crown is of withered leaves, for she sits in the dust and grieves. _now we are come to our kingdom!_ tarrant moss i closed and drew for my love's sake that now is false to me, and i slew the reiver of tarrant moss and set dumeny free. they have gone down, they have gone down, they are standing all arow-- twenty knights in the peat-water, that never struck a blow! their armour shall not dull nor rust, their flesh shall not decay, for tarrant moss holds them in trust, until the judgment day. their soul went from them in their youth, ah god, that mine had gone, whenas i leaned on my love's truth and not on my sword alone! whenas i leaned on lad's belief and not on my naked blade-- and i slew a thief, and an honest thief, for the sake of a worthless maid. they have laid the reiver low in his place, they have set me up on high, but the twenty knights in the peat-water are luckier than i. and ever they give me gold and praise and ever i mourn my loss-- for i struck the blow for my false love's sake and not for the men of the moss! sir richard's song (a.d. ) i followed my duke ere i was a lover, to take from england fief and fee; but now this game is the other way over-- but now england hath taken me! i had my horse, my shield and banner, and a boy's heart, so whole and free; but now i sing in another manner-- but now england hath taken me! as for my father in his tower, asking news of my ship at sea; he will remember his own hour-- tell him england hath taken me! as for my mother in her bower, that rules my father so cunningly, she will remember a maiden's power-- tell her england hath taken me! as for my brother in rouen city, a nimble and naughty page is he, but he will come to suffer and pity-- tell him england hath taken me! as for my little sister waiting in the pleasant orchards of normandie, tell her youth is the time for mating-- tell her england hath taken me! as for my comrades in camp and highway, that lift their eyebrows scornfully, tell them their way is not my way-- tell them england hath taken me! kings and princes and barons famèd, knights and captains in your degree; hear me a little before i am blamèd-- seeing england hath taken me! howso great man's strength be reckoned, there are two things he cannot flee; love is the first, and death is the second-- and love in england hath taken me! a tree song (a.d. ) of all the trees that grow so fair, old england to adorn, greater are none beneath the sun, than oak, and ash, and thorn. sing oak, and ash, and thorn, good sirs (all of a midsummer morn)! surely we sing no little thing, in oak, and ash, and thorn! oak of the clay lived many a day or ever Ã�neas began; ash of the loam was a lady at home when brut was an outlaw man. thorn of the down saw new troy town (from which was london born); witness hereby the ancientry of oak, and ash, and thorn! yew that is old in churchyard mould, he breedeth a mighty bow; alder for shoes do wise men choose, and beech for cups also. but when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled, and your shoes are clean outworn, back ye must speed for all that ye need, to oak, and ash, and thorn! ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth till every gust be laid, to drop a limb on the head of him that anyway trusts her shade: but whether a lad be sober or sad, or mellow with ale from the horn, he will take no wrong when he lieth along 'neath oak, and ash, and thorn! oh, do not tell the priest our plight, or he would call it a sin; but--we have been out in the woods all night, a-conjuring summer in! and we bring you news by word of mouth-- good news for cattle and corn-- now is the sun come up from the south, with oak, and ash, and thorn! sing oak, and ash, and thorn, good sirs (all of a midsummer morn)! england shall bide till judgment tide, by oak, and ash, and thorn! cuckoo song spring begins in southern england on the th april, on which date the old woman lets the cuckoo out of her basket at heathfield fair--locally known as heffle cuckoo fair. tell it to the locked-up trees, cuckoo, bring your song here! warrant, act and summons, please. for spring to pass along here! tell old winter, if he doubt, tell him squat and square--a! old woman! old woman! old woman's let the cuckoo out at heffle cuckoo fair--a! march has searched and april tried-- 'tisn't long to may now, not so far to whitsuntide, and cuckoo's come to stay now! hear the valiant fellow shout down the orchard bare--a! old woman! old woman! old woman's let the cuckoo out at heffle cuckoo fair--a! when your heart is young and gay and the season rules it-- work your works and play your play 'fore the autumn cools it! kiss you turn and turn about, but my lad, beware--a! old woman! old woman! old woman's let the cuckoo out at heffle cuckoo fair--a! a charm take of english earth as much as either hand may rightly clutch. in the taking of it breathe prayer for all who lie beneath. not the great nor well-bespoke, but the mere uncounted folk of whose life and death is none report or lamentation. lay that earth upon thy heart, and thy sickness shall depart! it shall sweeten and make whole fevered breath and festered soul. it shall mightily restrain over-busy hand and brain. it shall ease thy mortal strife 'gainst the immortal woe of life, till thyself restored shall prove by what grace the heavens do move. take of english flowers these-- spring's full-facèd primroses, summer's wild wide-hearted rose, autumn's wall-flower of the close, and, thy darkness to illume, winter's bee-thronged ivy-bloom. seek and serve them where they bide from candlemas to christmas-tide, for these simples, used aright, can restore a failing sight. these shall cleanse and purify webbed and inward-turning eye; these shall show thee treasure hid, thy familiar fields amid; and reveal (which is thy need) every man a king indeed! the prairie 'i see the grass shake in the sun for leagues on either hand, i see a river loop and run about a treeless land-- an empty plain, a steely pond, a distance diamond-clear, and low blue naked hills beyond. and what is that to fear?' 'go softly by that river-side or, when you would depart, you'll find its every winding tied and knotted round your heart. be wary as the seasons pass, or you may ne'er outrun the wind that sets that yellowed grass a-shiver 'neath the sun.' 'i hear the summer storm outblown--the drip of the grateful wheat. i hear the hard trail telephone a far-off horse's feet. i hear the horns of autumn blow to the wild-fowl overhead; and i hear the hush before the snow. and what is that to dread?' 'take heed what spell the lightning weaves--what charm the echoes shape-- or, bound among a million sheaves, your soul may not escape. bar home the door of summer nights lest those high planets drown the memory of near delights in all the longed-for town.' 'what need have i to long or fear? now, friendly, i behold my faithful seasons robe the year in silver and in gold. now i possess and am possessed of the land where i would be, and the curve of half earth's generous breast shall soothe and ravish me!' chapter headings plain tales from the hills look, you have cast out love! what gods are these you bid me please? the three in one, the one in three? not so! to my own gods i go. it may be they shall give me greater ease than your cold christ and tangled trinities. _lispeth_. when the earth was sick and the skies were grey, and the woods were rotted with rain, the dead man rode through the autumn day to visit his love again. his love she neither saw nor heard, so heavy was her shame; and tho' the babe within her stirred she knew not that he came. _the other man._ cry 'murder' in the market-place, and each will turn upon his neighbour anxious eyes asking;--'art thou the man?' we hunted cain some centuries ago across the world. this bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain to-day. _his wedded wife._ go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather, ride, follow the fox if you can! but, for pleasure and profit together, allow me the hunting of man-- the chase of the human, the search for the soul to its ruin--the hunting of man. _pig._ 'stopped in the straight when the race was his own! look at him cutting it--cur to the bone!' ask ere the youngster be rated and chidden what did he carry and how was he ridden? maybe they used him too much at the start; maybe fate's weight-cloths are breaking his heart. _in the pride of his youth._ 'and some are sulky, while some will plunge. _(so ho! steady! stand still, you!)_ some you must gentle, and some you must lunge. _(there! there! who wants to kill you?)_ some--there are losses in every trade-- will break their hearts ere bitted and made, will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard, and die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard.' _thrown away._ the world hath set its heavy yoke upon the old white-bearded folk who strive to please the king. god's mercy is upon the young, god's wisdom in the baby tongue that fears not anything. _tod's amendment._ not though you die to-night, o sweet, and wail, a spectre at my door, shall mortal fear make love immortal fail-- i shall but love you more, who, from death's house returning, give me still one moment's comfort in my matchless ill. _by word of mouth._ they burnt a corpse upon the sand-- the light shone out afar; it guided home the plunging boats that beat from zanzibar. spirit of fire, where'er thy altars rise, thou art the light of guidance to our eyes! _in error._ ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel. but, once in a way, there will come a day when the colt must be taught to feel the lash that falls, and the curb that galls, and the sting of the rowelled steel. _the conversion of aurelian mcgoggin._ it was not in the open fight we threw away the sword, but in the lonely watching in the darkness by the ford. the waters lapped, the night-wind blew, full-armed the fear was born and grew, from panic in the night. _the rout of the white hussars._ in the daytime, when she moved about me, in the night, when she was sleeping at my side,-- i was wearied, i was wearied of her presence. day by day and night by night i grew to hate her-- would god that she or i had died! _the bronckhorst divorce case._ a stone's throw out on either hand from that well-ordered road we tread, and all the world is wild and strange; churel and ghoul and djinn and sprite shall bear us company to-night, for we have reached the oldest land wherein the powers of darkness range. _in the house of suddhoo._ to-night, god knows what thing shall tide, the earth is racked and fain-- expectant, sleepless, open-eyed; and we, who from the earth were made, thrill with our mother's pain. _false dawn._ pit where the buffalo cooled his hide, by the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried; log in the reh-grass, hidden and lone; bund where the earth-rat's mounds are strown; cave in the bank where the sly stream steals; aloe that stabs at the belly and heels, jump if you dare on a steed untried-- safer it is to go wide--go wide! _hark, from in front where the best men ride;--_ _'pull to the off, boys! wide! go wide!'_ _cupid's arrows._ he drank strong waters and his speech was coarse; he purchased raiment and forbore to pay; he stuck a trusting junior with a horse, and won gymkhanas in a doubtful way. then, 'twixt a vice and folly, turned aside to do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied. _a bank fraud._ cold iron _'gold is for the mistress--silver for the maid-- copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.'_ 'good!' said the baron, sitting in his hall, 'but iron--cold iron--is master of them all.' so he made rebellion 'gainst the king his liege, camped before his citadel and summoned it to siege. 'nay!' said the cannoneer on the castle wall, 'but iron--cold iron--shall be master of you all!' woe for the baron and his knights so strong, when the cruel cannon-balls laid 'em all along! he was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall, and iron--cold iron--was master of it all. yet his king spake kindly (ah, how kind a lord!) 'what if i release thee now and give thee back thy sword?' 'nay!' said the baron, 'mock not at my fall, for iron--cold iron--is master of men all.' _'tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown-- halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown.'_ 'as my loss is grievous, so my hope is small, for iron--cold iron--must be master of men all!' yet his king made answer (few such kings there be!) 'here is bread and here is wine--sit and sup with me. eat and drink in mary's name, the whiles i do recall how iron--cold iron--can be master of men all!' he took the wine and blessed it. he blessed and brake the bread. with his own hands he served them, and presently he said: 'see! these hands they pierced with nails, outside my city wall, show iron--cold iron--to be master of men all! 'wounds are for the desperate, blows are for the strong, balm and oil for weary hearts all cut and bruised with wrong. i forgive thy treason--i redeem thy fall-- for iron--cold iron--must be master of men all!' _'crowns are for the valiant--sceptres for the bold! thrones and powers for mighty men who dare to take and hold.'_ 'nay!' said the baron, kneeling in his hall, 'but iron--cold iron--is master of man all! iron out of calvary is master of men all!' a song of kabir oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands! oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands! he has gone from the _guddee_ and put on the shroud, and departed in guise of _bairagi_ avowed! now the white road to delhi is mat for his feet. the _sal_ and the _kikar_ must guard him from heat. his home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd-- he is seeking the way as _bairagi_ avowed! he has looked upon man, and his eyeballs are clear-- (there was one; there is one, and but one, saith kabir); the red mist of doing has thinned to a cloud-- he has taken the path for _bairagi_ avowed! to learn and discern of his brother the clod, of his brother the brute, and his brother the god, he has gone from the council and put on the shroud ('can ye hear?' saith kabir), a _bairagi_ avowed! a carol our lord who did the ox command to kneel to judah's king, he binds his frost upon the land to ripen it for spring-- to ripen it for spring, good sirs, according to his word; which well must be as ye can see-- and who shall judge the lord? when we poor fenmen skate the ice or shiver on the wold, we hear the cry of a single tree that breaks her heart in the cold-- that breaks her heart in the cold, good sirs, and rendeth by the board; which well must be as ye can see-- and who shall judge the lord? her wood is crazed and little worth excepting as to burn, that we may warm and make our mirth until the spring return-- until the spring return, good sirs. when people walk abroad; which well must be as ye can see-- and who shall judge the lord? god bless the master of this house. and all who sleep therein! and guard the fens from pirate folk. and keep us all from sin, to walk in honesty, good sirs, of thought and deed and word! which shall befriend our latter end-- and who shall judge the lord? 'my new-cut ashlar' my new-cut ashlar takes the light where crimson-blank the windows flare. by my own work before the night, great overseer, i make my prayer. if there be good in that i wrought, thy hand compelled it, master, thine-- where i have failed to meet thy thought i know, through thee, the blame was mine. one instant's toil to thee denied stands all eternity's offence. of that i did with thee to guide to thee, through thee, be excellence. the depth and dream of my desire, the bitter paths wherein i stray-- thou knowest who hath made the fire, thou knowest who hast made the clay. who, lest all thought of eden fade, bring'st eden to the craftsman's brain-- godlike to muse o'er his own trade and manlike stand with god again! one stone the more swings into place in that dread temple of thy worth. it is enough that, through thy grace, i saw nought common on thy earth. take not that vision from my ken-- oh whatsoe'er may spoil or speed. help me to need no aid from men that i may help such men as need! eddi's service (a.d. ) eddi, priest of st. wilfrid in the chapel at manhood end, ordered a midnight service for such as cared to attend. but the saxons were keeping christmas, and the night was stormy as well. nobody came to service though eddi rang the bell. 'wicked weather for walking,' said eddi of manhood end. 'but i must go on with the service for such as care to attend.' the altar-candles were lighted,-- an old marsh donkey came, bold as a guest invited, and stared at the guttering flame. the storm beat on at the windows, the water splashed on the floor, and a wet, yoke-weary bullock pushed in through the open door. 'how do i know what is greatest, how do i know what is least? that is my father's business,' said eddi, wilfrid's priest. 'but--three are gathered together-- listen to me and attend. i bring good news, my brethren!' said eddi of manhood end. and he told the ox of a manger and a stall in bethlehem, and he spoke to the ass of a rider, that rode to jerusalem. they steamed and dripped in the chancel, they listened and never stirred, while, just as though they were bishops, eddi preached them the word. till the gale blew off on the marshes and the windows showed the day, and the ox and the ass together wheeled and clattered away. and when the saxons mocked him, said eddi of manhood end, 'i dare not shut his chapel on such as care to attend.' shiv and the grasshopper shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow, sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago, gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate, from the king upon the _guddee_ to the beggar at the gate. _all things made he--shiva the preserver. mahadeo! mahadeo! he made all,-- thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine, and mother's heart for sleepy head, o little son of mine!_ wheat he gave to rich folk, millet to the poor, broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door; cattle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, and rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low-- parbati beside him watched them come and go; thought to cheat her husband, turning shiv to jest-- stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast. _so she tricked him, shiva the preserver. mahadeo! mahadeo! turn and see! tall are the camels, heavy are the kine, but this was least of little things, o little son of mine!_ when the dole was ended, laughingly she said, 'master, of a million mouths is not one unfed?' laughing, shiv made answer, 'all have had their part, even he, the little one, hidden 'neath thy heart.' from her breast she plucked it, parbati the thief, saw the least of little things gnawed a new-grown leaf! saw and feared and wondered, making prayer to shiv, who hath surely given meat to all that live. _all things made he--shiva the preserver. mahadeo! mahadeo! he made all,-- thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine, and mother's heart for sleepy head, o little son of mine!_ the fairies' siege i have been given my charge to keep-- well have i kept the same! playing with strife for the most of my life, but this is a different game. _i_'ll not fight against swords unseen, or spears that i cannot view-- hand him the keys of the place on your knees-- 'tis the dreamer whose dreams come true! ask for his terms and accept them at once. quick, ere we anger him; go! never before have i flinched from the guns, but this is a different show. _i_'ll not fight with the herald of god (i know what his master can do!) open the gate, he must enter in state, 'tis the dreamer whose dreams come true! i'd not give way for an emperor, i'd hold my road for a king-- to the triple crown i would not bow down-- but this is a different thing. _i_'ll not fight with the powers of air, sentry, pass him through! drawbridge let fall, it's the lord of us all, the dreamer whose dreams come true! a song to mithras (hymn of the th legion: _circa_ a.d. .) mithras, god of the morning, our trumpets waken the wall! 'rome is above the nations, but thou art over all!' now as the names are answered and the guards are marched away, mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day! mithras, god of the noontide, the heather swims in the heat. our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet. now in the ungirt hour--now ere we blink and drowse, mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows! mithras, god of the sunset, low on the western main-- thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again! now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn, mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn! mithras, god of the midnight, here where the great bull dies, look on thy children in darkness. oh take our sacrifice! many roads thou hast fashioned--all of them lead to the light: mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright! the new knighthood who gives him the bath? 'i,' said the wet, rank jungle-sweat, 'i'll give him the bath!' who'll sing the psalms? 'we,' said the palms. 'ere the hot wind becalms, we'll sing the psalms.' who lays on the sword? 'i,' said the sun, 'before he has done, i'll lay on the sword.' who fastens his belt? 'i,' said short-rations, 'i know all the fashions of tightening a belt!' who gives him his spur? 'i,' said his chief, exacting and brief, 'i'll give him the spur.' who'll shake his hand? 'i,' said the fever, 'and i'm no deceiver, i'll shake his hand.' who brings him the wine? 'i,' said quinine, 'it's a habit of mine. '_i_'ll come with the wine.' who'll put him to proof? 'i,' said all earth, 'whatever he's worth, i'll put to the proof.' who'll choose him for knight? 'i,' said his mother, 'before any other, my very own knight.' and after this fashion, adventure to seek, was sir galahad made--as it might be last week! outsong in the jungle baloo for the sake of him who showed one wise frog the jungle-road, keep the law the man-pack make for thy blind old baloo's sake! clean or tainted, hot or stale, hold it as it were the trail, through the day and through the night, questing neither left nor right. for the sake of him who loves thee beyond all else that moves, when thy pack would make thee pain, say: 'tabaqui sings again.' when thy pack would work thee ill, say: 'shere khan is yet to kill.' when the knife is drawn to slay, keep the law and go thy way. (root and honey, palm and spathe, guard a cub from harm and scathe!) _wood and water, wind and tree, jungle-favour go with thee!_ kaa anger is the egg of fear-- only lidless eyes are clear. cobra-poison none may leech, even so with cobra-speech. open talk shall call to thee strength, whose mate is courtesy. send no lunge beyond thy length; lend no rotten bough thy strength. gauge thy gape with buck or goat, lest thine eye should choke thy throat after gorging, wouldst thou sleep? look thy den be hid and deep, lest a wrong, by thee forgot, draw thy killer to the spot. east and west and north and south, wash thy hide and close thy mouth. (pit and rift and blue pool-brim, middle-jungle follow him!) _wood and water, wind and tree, jungle-favour go with thee!_ bagheera in the cage my life began; well i know the worth of man. by the broken lock that freed-- man-cub, 'ware the man-cub's breed! scenting-dew or starlight pale, choose no tangled tree-cat trail. pack or council, hunt or den, cry no truce with jackal-men. feed them silence when they say: 'come with us an easy way.' feed them silence when they seek help of thine to hurt the weak. make no _bandar's_ boast of skill; hold thy peace above the kill. let nor call nor song nor sign turn thee from thy hunting-line. (morning mist or twilight clear, serve him, wardens of the deer!) _wood and water, wind and tree, jungle-favour go with thee!_ the three _on the trail that thou must tread to the thresholds of our dread, where the flower blossoms red; through the nights when thou shalt lie prisoned from our mother-sky, hearing us, thy loves, go by; in the dawns when thou shalt wake to the toil thou canst not break, heartsick for the jungle's sake: wood and water, wind and tree, wisdom, strength, and courtesy, jungle-favour go with thee!_ harp song of the dane women what is a woman that you forsake her, and the hearth-fire and the home-acre, to go with the old grey widow-maker? she has no house to lay a guest in-- but one chill bed for all to rest in, that the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in. she has no strong white arms to fold you, but the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you-- out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you. yet, when the signs of summer thicken, and the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken, yearly you turn from our side, and sicken-- sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters. you steal away to the lapping waters, and look at your ship in her winter quarters. you forget our mirth, and talk at the tables, the kine in the shed and the horse in the stables-- to pitch her sides and go over her cables. then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow, and the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow. is all we have left through the months to follow. ah, what is woman that you forsake her, and the hearth-fire and the home-acre, to go with the old grey widow-maker? the thousandth man one man in a thousand, solomon says, will stick more close than a brother. and it's worth while seeking him half your days if you find him before the other. nine hundred and ninety-nine depend on what the world sees in you, but the thousandth man will stand your friend with the whole round world agin you. 'tis neither promise nor prayer nor show will settle the finding for 'ee. nine hundred and ninety-nine of 'em go by your looks or your acts or your glory. but if he finds you and you find him, the rest of the world don't matter; for the thousandth man will sink or swim with you in any water. you can use his purse with no more talk than he uses yours for his spendings, and laugh and meet in your daily walk as though there had been no lendings. nine hundred and ninety-nine of 'em call for silver and gold in their dealings; but the thousandth man he's worth 'em all. because you can show him your feelings. his wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right, in season or out of season. stand up and back it in all men's sight-- with _that_ for your only reason! nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bide the shame or mocking or laughter, but the thousandth man will stand by your side to the gallows-foot--and after! the winners what is the moral? who rides may read. when the night is thick and the tracks are blind a friend at a pinch is a friend indeed, but a fool to wait for the laggard behind. down to gehenna or up to the throne, he travels the fastest who travels alone. white hands cling to the tightened rein, slipping the spur from the booted heel, tenderest voices cry 'turn again,' red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel, high hopes faint on a warm hearth stone-- he travels the fastest who travels alone. one may fall but he falls by himself-- falls by himself with himself to blame, one may attain and to him is pelf, loot of the city in gold or fame. plunder of earth shall be all his own who travels the fastest and travels alone. wherefore the more ye be holpen and stayed, stayed by a friend in the hour of toil, sing the heretical song i have made-- his be the labour and yours be the spoil, win by his aid and the aid disown-- he travels the fastest who travels alone! a st. helena lullaby 'how far is st. helena from a little child at play?' what makes you want to wander there with all the world between? oh, mother, call your son again or else he'll run away. (_no one thinks of winter when the grass is green!_) 'how far is st. helena from a fight in paris street?' i haven't time to answer now--the men are falling fast. the guns begin to thunder, and the drums begin to beat. (_if you take the first step you will take the last!_) 'how far is st. helena from the field of austerlitz?' you couldn't hear me if i told--so loud the cannons roar. but not so far for people who are living by their wits. (_'gay go up' means 'gay go down' the wide world o'er!_) 'how far is st. helena from an emperor of france?' i cannot see--i cannot tell--the crowns they dazzle so. the kings sit down to dinner, and the queens stand up to dance. (_after open weather you may look for snow!_) 'how far is st. helena from the capes of trafalgar?' a longish way--a longish way--with ten year more to run. it's south across the water underneath a setting star. (_what you cannot finish you must leave undone!_) 'how far is st. helena from the beresina ice?' an ill way--a chill way--the ice begins to crack. but not so far for gentlemen who never took advice. (_when you can't go forward you must e'en come back!_) 'how far is st. helena from the field of waterloo?' a near way--a clear way--the ship will take you soon. a pleasant place for gentlemen with little left to do, (_morning never tries you till the afternoon!_) 'how far from st. helena to the gate of heaven's grace?' that no one knows--that no one knows--and no one ever will. but fold your hands across your heart and cover up your face, and after all your trapesings, child, lie still! chil's song these were my companions going forth by night-- _(for chil! look you, for chil!)_ now come i to whistle them the ending of the fight. _(chil! vanguards of chil!)_ word they gave me overhead of quarry newly slain, word i gave them underfoot of buck upon the plain. here's an end of every trail--they shall not speak again! they that called the hunting-cry--they that followed fast-- _(for chil! look you, for chil!)_ they that bade the sambhur wheel, or pinned him as he passed-- _(chil! vanguards of chil!)_ they that lagged behind the scent--they that ran before, they that shunned the level horn--they that overbore, here's an end of every trail--they shall not follow more. these were my companions. pity 'twas they died! (_for chil! look you, for chil!_') now come i to comfort them that knew them in their pride. (_chil! vanguards of chil!_) tattered flank and sunken eye, open mouth and red, locked and lank and lone they lie, the dead upon their dead. here's an end of every trail--and here my hosts are fed! the captive not with an outcry to allah nor any complaining he answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining. when the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them, he brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them. ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him, observing him nobly at ease, i alighted and followed him. thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow-- rather his red yesterday and his regal to-morrow, wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded, nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded. saluting aloofly his fate, he made swift with his story, and the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory embroidered with names of the djinns--a miraculous weaving-- but the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving. so i submitted myself to the limits of rapture-- bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture-- till he returned me to earth and the visions departed. but on him be the peace and the blessing; for he was great-hearted! the puzzler the celt in all his variants from builth to ballyhoo, his mental processes are plain--one knows what he will do, and can logically predicate his finish by his start; but the english--ah, the english--they are quite a race apart. their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and raw. they abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw, but the straw that they were tickled with--the chaff that they were fed with-- they convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's head with. for undemocratic reasons and for motives not of state, they arrive at their conclusions--largely inarticulate. being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done. yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through clouds of 'ers' and 'ums,' obliquely and by inference illumination comes, on some step that they have taken, or some action they approve-- embellished with the _argot_ of the upper fourth remove. in telegraphic sentences, half nodded to their friends, they hint a matter's inwardness--and there the matter ends. and while the celt is talking from valencia to kirkwall, the english--ah, the english!--don't say anything at all! hadramauti who knows the heart of the christian? how does he reason? what are his measures and balances? which is his season for laughter, forbearance or bloodshed, and what devils move him when he arises to smite us? _i_ do not love him. he invites the derision of strangers--he enters all places. booted, bareheaded he enters. with shouts and embraces he asks of us news of the household whom we reckon nameless. certainly allah created him forty-fold shameless. so it is not in the desert. one came to me weeping-- the avenger of blood on his track--i took him in keeping. demanding not whom he had slain, i refreshed him, i fed him as he were even a brother. but eblis had bred him. he was the son of an ape, ill at ease in his clothing, he talked with his head, hands and feet. i endured him with loathing. whatever his spirit conceived his countenance showed it as a frog shows in a mud-puddle. yet i abode it! i fingered my beard and was dumb, in silence confronting him. _his_ soul was too shallow for silence, e'en with death hunting him. i said: 'tis his weariness speaks,' but, when he had rested, he chirped in my face like some sparrow, and, presently, jested! wherefore slew i that stranger? he brought me dishonour. i saddled my mare, bijli, i set him upon her. i gave him rice and goat's flesh. he bared me to laughter. when he was gone from my tent, swift i followed after, taking my sword in my hand. the hot wine had filled him. under the stars he mocked me--therefore i killed him! chapter headings the naulahka we meet in an evil land that is near to the gates of hell. i wait for thy command to serve, to speed or withstand. and thou sayest, i do not well? oh love, the flowers so red are only tongues of flame, the earth is full of the dead, the new-killed, restless dead. there is danger beneath and o'erhead, and i guard thy gates in fear of peril and jeopardy, of words thou canst not hear, of signs thou canst not see-- and thou sayest 'tis ill that i came? this i saw when the rites were done, and the lamps were dead and the gods alone, and the grey snake coiled on the altar stone-- ere i fled from a fear that i could not see, and the gods of the east made mouths at me. * * * * * now it is not good for the christian's health to hustle the aryan brown, for the christian riles, and the aryan smiles and he weareth the christian down; and the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear: 'a fool lies here who tried to hustle the east.' * * * * * beat off in our last fight were we? the greater need to seek the sea. for fortune changeth as the moon to caravel and picaroon. then eastward ho! or westward ho! whichever wind may meetest blow. our quarry sails on either sea, fat prey for such bold lads as we. and every sun-dried buccaneer must hand and reef and watch and steer. and bear great wrath of sea and sky before the plate-ships wallow by. now, as our tall bows take the foam, let no man turn his heart to home, save to desire treasure more, and larger warehouse for his store, when treasure won from santos bay shall make our sea-washed village gay. * * * * * because i sought it far from men, in deserts and alone, i found it burning overhead, the jewel of a throne. because i sought--i sought it so and spent my days to find-- it blazed one moment ere it left the blacker night behind. * * * * * when a lover hies abroad. looking for his love, azrael smiling sheathes his sword, heaven smiles above. earth and sea his servants be, and to lesser compass round, that his love be sooner found. * * * * * there was a strife 'twixt man and maid-- oh that was at the birth of time! but what befell 'twixt man and maid, oh that's beyond the grip of rhyme. 'twas, 'sweet, i must not bide with you,' and 'love, i cannot bide alone'; for both were young and both were true, and both were hard as the nether stone. * * * * * there is pleasure in the wet, wet clay, when the artist's hand is potting it; there is pleasure in the wet, wet lay, when the poet's pad is blotting it; there is pleasure in the shine of your picture on the line at the royal acade-my; but the pleasure felt in these is as chalk to cheddar cheese when it comes to a well-made lie: to a quite unwreckable lie, to a most impeccable lie! to a water-tight, fire-proof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, steel-face lie! not a private hansom lie, but a pair-and-brougham lie, not a little-place-at-tooting, but a country-house-with-shooting and a ring-fence-deer-park lie. * * * * * we be the gods of the east-- older than all-- masters of mourning and feast how shall we fall? will they gape for the husks that ye proffer or yearn to your song? and we--have we nothing to offer who ruled them so long-- in the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal, the blare of the conch and the gong? over the strife of the schools low the day burns-- back with the kine from the pools each one returns to the life that he knows where the altar-flame glows and the _tulsi_ is trimmed in the urns. * * * * * the light that failed so we settled it all when the storm was done as comfy as comfy could be; and i was to wait in the barn, my dears, because i was only three, and teddy would run to the rainbow's foot because he was five and a man; and that's how it all began, my dears, and that's how it all began. * * * * * 'if i have taken the common clay and wrought it cunningly in the shape of a god that was digged a clod, the greater honour to me.' 'if thou hast taken the common clay, and thy hands be not free from the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil the greater shame to thee.' * * * * * the wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn, where the smoke of the cooking hung grey: he knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn, and he looked to his strength for his prey. but the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away, and he turned from his meal in the villager's close, and he bayed to the moon as she rose. * * * * * the lark will make her hymn to god, the partridge call her brood, while i forget the heath i trod, the fields wherein i stood. tis dule to know not night from morn, but greater dule to know i can but hear the hunter's horn that once i used to blow. * * * * * there were three friends that buried the fourth, the mould in his mouth and the dust in his eyes, and they went south and east and north-- the strong man fights but the sick man dies. there were three friends that spoke of the dead-- the strong man fights but the sick man dies-- 'and would he were here with us now,' they said, 'the sun in our face and the wind in our eyes.' * * * * * yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him, yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save, yet at the last, with his masters around him, he spoke of the faith as a master to slave. yet at the last, though the kafirs had maimed him, broken by bondage and wrecked by the reiver, yet at the last, tho' the darkness had claimed him, he called upon allah, and died a believer! gallio's song (and gallio cared for none of these things.--acts xviii. ) all day long to the judgment-seat the crazed provincials drew-- all day long at their ruler's feet howled for the blood of the jew. insurrection with one accord banded itself and woke, and paul was about to open his mouth when achaia's deputy spoke-- 'whether the god descend from above or the man ascend upon high, whether this maker of tents be jove or a younger deity-- i will be no judge between your gods and your godless bickerings. lictor, drive them hence with rods-- i care for none of these things! 'were it a question of lawful due or cæsar's rule denied, reason would i should bear with you and order it well to be tried; but this is a question of words and names. i know the strife it brings. i will not pass upon any your claims. i care for none of these things. 'one thing only i see most clear, as i pray you also see. claudius cæsar hath set me here rome's deputy to be. it is her peace that ye go to break-- not mine, nor any king's. but, touching your clamour of "conscience sake," i care for none of these things. 'whether ye rise for the sake of a creed, or riot in hope of spoil, equally will i punish the deed, equally check the broil; nowise permitting injustice at all from whatever doctrine it springs-- but--whether ye follow priapus or paul, i care for none of these things.' the bees and the flies a farmer of the augustan age perused in virgil's golden page, the story of the secret won from proteus by cyrene's son-- how the dank sea-god showed the swain means to restore his hives again. more briefly, how a slaughtered bull breeds honey by the bellyful. the egregious rustic put to death a bull by stopping of its breath, disposed the carcass in a shed with fragrant herbs and branches spread, and, having thus performed the charm, sat down to wait the promised swarm. nor waited long. the god of day impartial, quickening with his ray evil and good alike, beheld the carcass--and the carcass swelled. big with new birth the belly heaves beneath its screen of scented leaves. past any doubt, the bull conceives! the farmer bids men bring more hives to house the profit that arrives; prepares on pan, and key and kettle, sweet music that shall make 'em settle; but when to crown the work he goes, gods! what a stink salutes his nose! where are the honest toilers? where the gravid mistress of their care? a busy scene, indeed, he sees, but not a sign or sound of bees. worms of the riper grave unhid by any kindly coffin lid, obscene and shameless to the light, seethe in insatiate appetite, through putrid offal, while above the hissing blow-fly seeks his love, whose offspring, supping where they supt, consume corruption twice corrupt. road-song of the _bandar-log_ here we go in a flung festoon, half-way up to the jealous moon! don't you envy our pranceful bands? don't you wish you had extra hands? wouldn't you like if your tails were--_so_-- curved in the shape of a cupid's bow? now you're angry, but--never mind, _brother, thy tail hangs down behind!_ here we sit in a branchy row, thinking of beautiful things we know; dreaming of deeds that we mean to do, all complete, in a minute or two-- something noble and grand and good, won by merely wishing we could. now we're going to--never mind, _brother, thy tail hangs down behind!_ all the talk we ever have heard uttered by bat or beast or bird-- hide or fin or scale or feather-- jabber it quickly and all together! excellent! wonderful! once again! now we are talking just like men. let's pretend we are ... never mind, _brother, thy tail hangs down behind!_ this is the way of the monkey-kind! _then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines, that rocket by where, light and high, the wild-grape swings. by the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make, be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things._ 'our fathers also' thrones, powers, dominions, peoples, kings, are changing 'neath our hand; our fathers also see these things but they do not understand. by--they are by with mirth and tears, wit or the works of desire-- cushioned about on the kindly years between the wall and the fire. the grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked-- standeth no more to glean; for the gates of love and learning locked when they went out between. all lore our lady venus bares, signalled it was or told by the dear lips long given to theirs and longer to the mould. all profit, all device, all truth written it was or said by the mighty men of their mighty youth, which is mighty being dead. the film that floats before their eyes the temple's veil they call; and the dust that on the shewbread lies is holy over all. warn them of seas that slip our yoke of slow-conspiring stars-- the ancient front of things unbroke but heavy with new wars? by--they are by with mirth and tears, wit or the waste of desire-- cushioned about on the kindly years between the wall and the fire. a british-roman song (a.d. ) my father's father saw it not, and i, belike, shall never come, to look on that so-holy spot-- the very rome-- crowned by all time, all art, all might, the equal work of gods and man, city beneath whose oldest height-- the race began! soon to send forth again a brood, unshakeable, we pray, that clings, to rome's thrice-hammered hardihood-- in arduous things. strong heart with triple armour bound, beat strongly, for thy life-blood runs, age after age, the empire round-- in us thy sons. who, distant from the seven hills, loving and serving much, require thee--_thee_ to guard 'gainst home-born ills, the imperial fire! a pict song rome never looks where she treads. always her heavy hooves fall, on our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; and rome never heeds when we bawl. her sentries pass on--that is all, and we gather behind them in hordes, and plot to reconquer the wall, with only our tongues for our swords. we are the little folk--we! too little to love or to hate. leave us alone and you'll see how we can drag down the state! we are the worm in the wood! we are the rot at the root! we are the germ in the blood! we are the thorn in the foot! mistletoe killing an oak-- rats gnawing cables in two-- moths making holes in a cloak-- how they must love what they do! yes--and we little folk too, we are busy as they-- working our works out of view-- watch, and you'll see it some day! no indeed! we are not strong, but we know peoples that are. yes, and we'll guide them along, to smash and destroy you in war! we shall be slaves just the same? yes, we have always been slaves, but you--you will die of the shame, and then we shall dance on your graves! _we are the little folk, we, etc._ the stranger the stranger within my gate, he may be true or kind. but he does not talk my talk-- i cannot feel his mind. i see the face and the eyes and the mouth, but not the soul behind. the men of my own stock they may do ill or well, but they tell the lies i am wonted to, they are used to the lies i tell. we do not need interpreters when we go to buy and sell. the stranger within my gates, he may be evil or good, but i cannot tell what powers control-- what reasons sway his mood; nor when the gods of his far-off land may repossess his blood. the men of my own stock, bitter bad they may be, but, at least, they hear the things i hear, and see the things i see; and whatever i think of them and their likes they think of the likes of me. this was my father's belief and this is also mine: let the corn be all one sheaf-- and the grapes be all one vine, ere our children's teeth are set on edge by bitter bread and wine. 'rimini' (marching song of a roman legion of the later empire) when i left home for lalage's sake by the legions' road to rimini, she vowed her heart was mine to take with me and my shield to rimini-- (till the eagles flew from rimini!) and i've tramped britain, and i've tramped gaul, and the pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall as white as the neck of lalage-- (as cold as the heart of lalage!) and i've lost britain, and i've lost gaul, and i've lost rome, and worst of all, i've lost lalage! when you go by the via aurelia, as thousands have travelled before, remember the luck of the soldier who never saw rome any more! oh dear was the sweetheart that kissed him and dear was the mother that bore, but his shield was picked up in the heather, and he never saw rome any more! and _he_ left rome, etc. when you go by the via aurelia that runs from the city to gaul, remember the luck of the soldier who rose to be master of all! he carried the sword and the buckler, he mounted his guard on the wall, till the legions elected him cæsar, and he rose to be master of all! and _he_ left rome, etc. it's twenty-five marches to narbo, it's forty-five more up the rhone, and the end may be death in the heather or life on an emperor's throne. but whether the eagles obey us, or we go to the ravens--alone, i'd sooner be lalage's lover than sit on an emperor's throne! we've _all_ left rome for lalage's sake, etc. 'poor honest men' (a.d. ) your jar of virginny will cost you a guinea which you reckon too much by five shillings or ten; but light your churchwarden and judge it according, when i've told you the troubles of poor honest men! from the capes of the delaware, as you are well aware, we sail with tobacco for england--but then, our own british cruisers, they watch us come through, sirs, and they press half a score of us poor honest men! or if by quick sailing (thick weather prevailing) we leave them behind (as we do now and then) we are sure of a gun from each frigate we run from, which is often destruction to poor honest men! broadsides the atlantic we tumble short-handed, with shot-holes to plug and new canvas to bend, and off the azores, dutch, dons and monsieurs are waiting to terrify poor honest men. napoleon's embargo is laid on all cargo which comfort or aid to king george may intend; and since roll, twist and leaf, of all comforts is chief, they try for to steal it from poor honest men! with no heart for fight, we take refuge in flight but fire as we run, our retreat to defend, until our stern-chasers cut up her fore-braces, and she flies up the wind from us poor honest men! twix' the forties and fifties, south-eastward the drift is, and so, when we think we are making land's end, alas! it is ushant with half the king's navy, blockading french ports against poor honest men! but they may not quit station (which is our salvation), so swiftly we stand to the nor'ard again; and finding the tail of a homeward-bound convoy, we slip past the scillies like poor honest men. twix' the lizard and dover, we hand our stuff over, though i may not inform how we do it, nor when. but a light on each quarter low down on the water is well understanded by poor honest men! even then we have dangers, from meddlesome strangers, who spy on our business and are not content to take a smooth answer, except with a handspike ... and they say they are murdered by poor honest men! to be drowned or be shot is our natural lot, why should we, moreover, be hanged in the end-- after all our great pains for to dangle in chains as though we were smugglers, not poor honest men? 'when the great ark' when the great ark, in vigo bay, rode stately through the half-manned fleet, from every ship about her way she heard the mariners entreat-- 'before we take the seas again, let down your boats and send us men! 'we have no lack of victual here with work--god knows!--enough for all, to hand and reef and watch and steer, because our present strength is small. while your three decks are crowded so your crews can scarcely stand or go. 'in war, your numbers do but raise confusion and divided will; in storm, the mindless deep obeys not multitudes but single skill; in calm, your numbers, closely pressed. do breed a mutiny or pest. 'we, even on unchallenged seas, dare not adventure where we would, but forfeit brave advantages for lack of men to make 'em good; whereby, to england's double cost. honour and profit both are lost!' prophets at home prophets have honour all over the earth, except in the village where they were born. where such as knew them boys from birth, nature-ally hold 'em in scorn. when prophets are naughty and young and vain, they make a won'erful grievance of it; (you can see by their writings how they complain), but o, 'tis won'erful good for the prophet! there's nothing nineveh town can give (nor being swallowed by whales between), makes up for the place where a man's folk live, which don't care nothing what he has been. he might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this, but they love and they hate him for what he is. jubal and tubal cain jubal sang of the wrath of god and the curse of thistle and thorn-- but tubal got him a pointed rod, and scrabbled the earth for corn. old--old as that early mould, young as the sprouting grain-- yearly green is the strife between jubal and tubal cain! jubal sang of the new-found sea, and the love that its waves divide-- but tubal hollowed a fallen tree and passed to the further side. black--black as the hurricane-wrack, salt as the under-main-- bitter and cold is the hate they hold-- jubal and tubal cain! jubal sang of the golden years when wars and wounds shall cease-- but tubal fashioned the hand-flung spears and showèd his neighbours peace. new--new as the nine point two, older than lamech's slain-- roaring and loud is the feud avowed twix' jubal and tubal cain! jubal sang of the cliffs that bar and the peaks that none may crown-- but tubal clambered by jut and scar and there he builded a town. high--high as the snowsheds lie, low as the culverts drain-- wherever they be they can never agree-- jubal and tubal cain! the voortrekker the gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire. he shall fulfil god's utmost will, unknowing his desire. and he shall see old planets change and alien stars arise, and give the gale his seaworn sail in shadow of new skies. strong lust of gear shall drive him forth and hunger arm his hand, to win his food from the desert rude, his pittance from the sand. his neighbours' smoke shall vex his eyes, their voices break his rest, he shall go forth till south is north sullen and dispossessed. he shall desire loneliness and his desire shall bring, hard on his heels, a thousand wheels, a people and a king. he shall come back on his own track, and by his scarce-cooled camp there shall he meet the roaring street, the derrick and the stamp: there he shall blaze a nation's ways with hatchet and with brand, till on his last-won wilderness an empire's outposts stand. a school song _'let us now praise famous men'-- men of little showing-- for their work continueth, and their work continueth, broad and deep continueth, greater than their knowing!_ western wind and open surge took us from our mothers. flung us on a naked shore (twelve bleak houses by the shore! seven summers by the shore!) 'mid two hundred brothers. there we met with famous men set in office o'er us; and they beat on us with rods-- faithfully with many rods-- daily beat on us with rods, for the love they bore us! out of egypt unto troy-- over himalaya-- far and sure our bands have gone-- hy-brasil or babylon, islands of the southern run, and cities of cathaia! and we all praise famous men-- ancients of the college; for they taught us common sense-- tried to teach us common sense-- truth and god's own common sense, which is more than knowledge! each degree of latitude strung about creation seeth one or more of us (of one muster each of us), diligent in that he does, keen in his vocation. this we learned from famous men, knowing not its uses, when they showed, in daily work, man must finish off his work-- right or wrong, his daily work-- and without excuses. servants of the staff and chain, mine and fuse and grapnel-- some before the face of kings, stand before the face of kings; bearing gifts to divers kings-- gifts of case and shrapnel. this we learned from famous men teaching in our borders, who declarèd it was best, safest, easiest, and best-- expeditious, wise, and best-- to obey your orders. some beneath the further stars bear the greater burden: set to serve the lands they rule, (save he serve no man may rule), serve and love the lands they rule; seeking praise nor guerdon. this we learned from famous men, knowing not we learned it. only, as the years went by-- lonely, as the years went by-- far from help as years went by, plainer we discerned it. wherefore praise we famous men from whose bays we borrow-- they that put aside to-day-- all the joys of their to-day-- and with toil of their to-day bought for us to-morrow! _bless and praise we famous men-- men of little showing-- for their work continueth, and their work continueth, broad and deep continueth, great beyond their knowing!_ the law of the jungle _now this is the law of the jungle--as old and as true as the sky; and the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. as the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the law runneth forward and back-- for the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack._ wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; and remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. the jackal may follow the tiger, but, cub, when thy whiskers are grown, remember the wolf is a hunter--go forth and get food of thine own. keep peace with the lords of the jungle--the tiger, the panther, the bear; and trouble not hathi the silent, and mock not the boar in his lair. when pack meets with pack in the jungle, and neither will go from the trail, lie down till the leaders have spoken--it may be fair words shall prevail. when ye fight with a wolf of the pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, lest others take part in the quarrel, and the pack be diminished by war. the lair of the wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, not even the head wolf may enter, not even the council may come. the lair of the wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, the council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. if ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, lest ye frighten the deer from the crops, and the brothers go empty away. ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; but kill not for pleasure of killing, and _seven times never kill man!_ if ye plunder his kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride; pack-right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. the kill of the pack is the meat of the pack. ye must eat where it lies; and no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. the kill of the wolf is the meat of the wolf. he may do what he will, but, till he has given permission, the pack may not eat of that kill. cub-right is the right of the yearling. from all of his pack he may claim full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same. lair-right is the right of the mother. from all of her year she may claim one haunch of each kill for her litter; and none may deny her the same. cave-right is the right of the father--to hunt by himself for his own: he is freed of all calls to the pack; he is judged by the council alone. because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, in all that the law leaveth open, the word of the head wolf is law. _now these are the laws of the jungle, and many and mighty are they; but the head and the hoof of the law and the haunch and the hump is--obey!_ 'a servant when he reigneth' (for three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear: for a servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.--prov. xxx. , , .) three things make earth unquiet, and four she cannot brook; the godly agur counted them and put them in a book-- those four tremendous curses with which mankind is cursed: but a servant when he reigneth old agur counted first. an handmaid that is mistress we need not call upon, a fool when he is full of meat will fall asleep anon. an odious woman married may bear a babe and mend. but a servant when he reigneth is confusion to the end. his feet are swift to tumult, his hands are slow to toil, his ears are deaf to reason, his lips are loud in broil. he knows no use for power except to show his might, he gives no heed to judgment unless it prove him right. because he served a master before his kingship came, and hid in all disaster behind his master's name, so, when his folly opens the unnecessary hells, a servant when he reigneth throws the blame on some one else. his vows are lightly spoken, his faith is hard to bind. his trust is easy broken, he fears his fellow-kind. the nearest mob will move him to break the pledge he gave-- oh a servant when he reigneth is more than ever slave! 'our fathers of old' excellent herbs had our fathers of old-- excellent herbs to ease their pain-- alexanders and marigold, eyebright, orris, and elecampane. basil, rocket, valerian, rue, (almost singing themselves they run) vervain, dittany, call-me-to-you-- cowslip, melilot, rose of the sun. anything green that grew out of the mould was an excellent herb to our fathers of old. wonderful tales had our fathers of old-- wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars-- the sun was lord of the marigold, basil and rocket belonged to mars. pat as a sum in division it goes-- (every plant had a star bespoke)-- who but venus should govern the rose? who but jupiter own the oak? simply and gravely the facts are told in the wonderful books of our fathers of old. wonderful little, when all is said, wonderful little our fathers knew. half their remedies cured you dead-- most of their teaching was quite untrue-- 'look at the stars when a patient is ill, (dirt has nothing to do with disease,) bleed and blister as much as you will, blister and bleed him as oft as you please.' whence enormous and manifold errors were made by our fathers of old. yet when the sickness was sore in the land, and neither planets nor herbs assuaged, they took their lives in their lancet-hand and, oh, what a wonderful war they waged! yes, when the crosses were chalked on the door-- (yes, when the terrible dead-cart rolled,) excellent courage our fathers bore-- excellent heart had our fathers of old. none too learned, but nobly bold into the fight went our fathers of old. if it be certain, as galen says, and sage hippocrates holds as much-- 'that those afflicted by doubts and dismays are mightily helped by a dead man's touch', then, be good to us, stars above! then, be good to us, herbs below! we are afflicted by what we can prove, we are distracted by what we know-- so--ah, so! down from your heaven or up from your mould, send us the hearts of our fathers of old! the heritage our fathers in a wondrous age, ere yet the earth was small, ensured to us an heritage, and doubted not at all that we, the children of their heart, which then did beat so high, in later time should play like part for our posterity. a thousand years they steadfast built, to 'vantage us and ours, the walls that were a world's despair, the sea-constraining towers: yet in their midmost pride they knew, and unto kings made known, not all from these their strength they drew, their faith from brass or stone. youth's passion, manhood's fierce intent. with age's judgment wise, they spent, and counted not they spent. at daily sacrifice. not lambs alone nor purchased doves or tithe of trader's gold-- their lives most dear, their dearer loves, they offered up of old. refraining e'en from lawful things. they bowed the neck to bear the unadornèd yoke that brings stark toil and sternest care. wherefore through them is freedom sure; wherefore through them we stand from all but sloth and pride secure, in a delightsome land. then, fretful, murmur not they gave so great a charge to keep. nor dream that awestruck time shall save their labour while we sleep. dear-bought and clear, a thousand year, our fathers' title runs. make we likewise their sacrifice, defrauding not our sons. chapter headings 'beast and man in india' they killed a child to please the gods in earth's young penitence, and i have bled in that babe's stead because of innocence. i bear the sins of sinful men that have no sin of my own, they drive me forth to heaven's wrath unpastured and alone. i am the meat of sacrifice, the ransom of man's guilt, for they give my life to the altar-knife wherever shrine is built. _the goat._ between the waving tufts of jungle-grass, up from the river as the twilight falls, across the dust-beclouded plain they pass on to the village walls. great is the sword and mighty is the pen, but greater far the labouring ploughman's blade, for on its oxen and its husbandmen an empire's strength is laid. _the oxen._ the torn boughs trailing o'er the tusks aslant, the saplings reeling in the path he trod, declare his might--our lord the elephant, chief of the ways of god. the black bulk heaving where the oxen pant, the bowed head toiling where the guns careen, declare our might--our slave the elephant and servant of the queen. _the elephant._ dark children of the mere and marsh, wallow and waste and lea, outcaste they wait at the village gate with folk of low degree. their pasture is in no man's land. their food the cattle's scorn, their rest is mire and their desire the thicket and the thorn. but woe to those who break their sleep, and woe to those who dare to rouse the herd-bull from his keep, the wild boar from his lair! _pigs and buffaloes._ the beasts are very wise, their mouths are clean of lies, they talk one to the other, bullock to bullock's brother resting after their labours, each in stall with his neighbours. but man with goad and whip, breaks up their fellowship, shouts in their silky ears filling their souls with fears. when he has ploughed the land, he says: 'they understand.' but the beasts in stall together, freed from the yoke and tether, say as the torn flanks smoke: 'nay, 'twas the whip that spoke.' life's handicap the doors were wide, the story saith, out of the night came the patient wraith. he might not speak, and he could not stir a hair of the baron's minniver. speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, he roved the castle to find his kin. and oh! 'twas a piteous sight to see the dumb ghost follow his enemy! _the return of imray._ before my spring i garnered autumn's gain, out of her time my field was white with grain, the year gave up her secrets, to my woe. forced and deflowered each sick season lay in mystery of increase and decay; i saw the sunset ere men see the day, who am too wise in all i should not know. _without benefit of clergy._ kim unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised, with idiot moons and stars retracting stars? creep thou between--thy coming's all unnoised. heaven hath her high, as earth her baser, wars. heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray (by adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway); peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars. many inventions and if ye doubt the tale i tell, steer through the south pacific swell; go where the branching coral hives unending strife of endless lives, where, leagued about the 'wildered boat, the rainbow jellies fill and float; and, lilting where the laver lingers, the starfish trips on all her fingers; where, 'neath his myriad spines ashock, the sea-egg ripples down the rock; an orange wonder daily guessed, from darkness where the cuttles rest, moored o'er the darker deeps that hide the blind white sea-snake and his bride who, drowsing, nose the long-lost ships let down through darkness to their lips. _a matter of fact._ there's a convict more in the central jail, behind the old mud wall; there's a lifter less on the border trail, and the queen's peace over all, dear boys, the queen's peace over all! for we must bear our leader's blame, on us the shame will fall, if we lift our hand from a fettered land and the queen's peace over all, dear boys, the queen's peace over all! _the lost legion._ 'less you want your toes trod off you'd better get back at once, for the bullocks are walking two by two, the _byles_ are walking two by two, and the elephants bring the guns. ho! yuss! great--big--long--black--forty-pounder guns: jiggery-jolty to and fro, each as big as a launch in tow-- blind--dumb--broad-breeched--beggars o' battering-guns. _my lord the elephant._ all the world over, nursing their scars, sit the old fighting-men broke in the wars-- sit the old fighting men, surly and grim mocking the lilt of the conquerors' hymn. dust of the battle o'erwhelmed them and hid. fame never found them for aught that they did. wounded and spent to the lazar they drew, lining the road where the legions roll through. sons of the laurel who press to your meed, (worthy god's pity most--ye who succeed!) ere you go triumphing, crowned, to the stars, pity poor fighting men, broke in the wars! _collected_. song of the fifth river when first by eden tree, the four great rivers ran, to each was appointed a man her prince and ruler to be. but after this was ordained, (the ancient legends tell), there came dark israel, for whom no river remained. then he whom the rivers obey said to him: 'fling on the ground a handful of yellow clay, and a fifth great river shall run, mightier than these four, in secret the earth around; and her secret evermore, shall be shown to thee and thy race.' so it was said and done. and deep in the veins of earth, and, fed by a thousand springs that comfort the market-place, or sap the power of kings, the fifth great river had birth, even as it was foretold-- the secret river of gold! and israel laid down his sceptre and his crown, to brood on that river's bank, where the waters flashed and sank, and burrowed in earth and fell, and bided a season below, for reason that none might know, save only israel. he is lord of the last-- the fifth, most wonderful, flood. he hears her thunder past and her song is in his blood. he can foresay: 'she will fall,' for he knows which fountain dries. behind which desert-belt a thousand leagues to the south. he can foresay: 'she will rise.' he knows what far snows melt; along what mountain-wall a thousand leagues to the north. he snuffs the coming drouth as he snuffs the coming rain, he knows what each will bring forths and turns it to his gain. a ruler without a throne, a prince without a sword, israel follows his quest. in every land a guest, of many lands a lord, in no land king is he. but the fifth great river keeps the secret of her deeps for israel alone, as it was ordered to be. the children's song land of our birth, we pledge to thee our love and toil in the years to be; when we are grown and take our place, as men and women with our race. father in heaven who lovest all, oh help thy children when they call; that they may build from age to age, an undefilèd heritage. teach us to bear the yoke in youth, with steadfastness and careful truth; that, in our time, thy grace may give the truth whereby the nations live. teach us to rule ourselves alway, controlled and cleanly night and day; that we may bring, if need arise. no maimed or worthless sacrifice. teach us to look in all our ends, on thee for judge, and not our friends; that we, with thee, may walk uncowed by fear or favour of the crowd. teach us the strength that cannot seek, by deed or thought, to hurt the weak; that, under thee, we may possess man's strength to comfort man's distress. teach us delight in simple things, and mirth that has no bitter springs; forgiveness free of evil done, and love to all men 'neath the sun! land of our birth, our faith, our pride, for whose dear sake our fathers died; o motherland, we pledge to thee, head, heart, and hand through the years to be! parade-song of the camp-animals elephants of the gun-teams we lent to alexander the strength of hercules, the wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees. we bowed our necks to service; they ne'er were loosed again,-- make way there, way for the ten-foot teams of the forty-pounder train! gun-bullocks those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon-ball, and what they know of powder upsets them one and all; then _we_ come into action and tug the guns again,-- make way there, way for the twenty yoke of the forty-pounder train! cavalry horses by the brand on my withers, the finest of tunes is played by the lancers, hussars, and dragoons, and it's sweeter than 'stables' or 'water' to me. the cavalry canter of 'bonnie dundee'! then feed us and break us and handle and groom, and give us good riders and plenty of room, and launch us in column of squadron and see the way of the war-horse to 'bonnie dundee'! screw-gun mules as me and my companions were scrambling up a hill, the path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still; for we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere, and it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare! good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road! bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load! for we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere, and it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare! commissariat camels we haven't a camelty tune of our own to help us trollop along, but every neck is a hair-trombone (_rtt-ta-ta-ta_! is a hair-trombone!) and this is our marching-song: _can't! don't! shan't! won't!_ pass it along the line! somebody's pack has slid from his back, 'wish it were only mine! somebody's load has tipped off in the road-- cheer for a halt and a row! _urrr! yarrh! grr! arrh!_ somebody's catching it now! all the beasts together children of the camp are we, serving each in his degree; children of the yoke and goad, pack and harness, pad and load. see our line across the plain. like a heel-rope bent again, beaching, writhing, rolling far. sweeping all away to war! while the men that walk beside, dusty, silent, heavy-eyed, cannot tell why we or they march and suffer day by day. _children of the camp are we, serving each in hiss degree; children of the yoke and goad, pack and harness, pad and load._ if-- if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too; if you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: if you can dream--and not make dreams your master; if you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same; if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: if you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss; if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone. and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: 'hold on!' if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch; if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much; if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and--which is more--you'll be a man, my son! the prodigal son (western version) here come i to my own again, fed, forgiven and known again, claimed by bone of my bone again and cheered by flesh of my flesh. the fatted calf is dressed for me, but the husks have greater zest for me, i think my pigs will be best for me, so i'm off to the yards afresh. i never was very refined, you see, (and it weighs on my brother's mind, you see) but there's no reproach among swine, d'you see, for being a bit of a swine. so i'm off with wallet and staff to eat the bread that is three parts chaff to wheat, but glory be!--there's a laugh to it, which isn't the case when we dine. my father glooms and advises me, my brother sulks and despises me, and mother catechises me till i want to go out and swear. and, in spite of the butler's gravity, i know that the servants have it i am a monster of moral depravity, and i'm damned if i think it's fair! i wasted my substance, i know i did, on riotous living, so i did, but there's nothing on record to show i did worse than my betters have done. they talk of the money i spent out there-- they hint at the pace that i went out there-- but they all forget i was sent out there alone as a rich man's son. so i was a mark for plunder at once, and lost my cash (can you wonder?) at once, but i didn't give up and knock under at once, i worked in the yards, for a spell. where i spent my nights and my days with hogs, and shared their milk and maize with hogs, till, i guess, i have learned what pays with hogs and--i have that knowledge to sell! so back i go to my job again, not so easy to rob again, or quite so ready to sob again on any neck that's around. i'm leaving, pater. good-bye to you! god bless you, mater! i'll write to you.... i wouldn't be impolite to you, but, brother, you _are_ a hound! the necessitarian i know not in whose hands are laid to empty upon earth from unsuspected ambuscade the very urns of mirth; who bids the heavenly lark arise and cheer our solemn round-- the jest beheld with streaming eyes and grovellings on the ground; who joins the flats of time and chance behind the prey preferred, and thrones on shrieking circumstance the sacredly absurd, till laughter, voiceless through excess, waves mute appeal and sore, above the midriff's deep distress, for breath to laugh once more. no creed hath dared to hail him lord, no raptured choirs proclaim, and nature's strenuous overword hath nowhere breathed his name. yet, it must be, on wayside jape, the selfsame power bestows the selfsame power as went to shape his planet or his rose. the jester there are three degrees of bliss at the foot of allah's throne, and the highest place is his who saves a brother's soul at peril of his own. there is the power made known! there are three degrees of bliss in the gardens of paradise, and the second place is his who saves his brother's soul by excellent advice. for there the glory lies! there are three degrees of bliss and three abodes of the blest, and the lowest place is his who has saved a soul by a jest and a brother's soul in sport ... but there do the angels resort! a song of travel where's the lamp that hero lit once to call leander home? equal time hath shovelled it 'neath the wrack of greece and rome. neither wait we any more that worn sail which argo bore. dust and dust of ashes close all the vestal virgins' care; and the oldest altar shows but an older darkness there. age-encamped oblivion tenteth every light that shone! yet shall we, for suns that die, wall our wanderings from desire? or, because the moon is high. scorn to use a nearer fire? lest some envious pharaoh stir, make our lives our sepulchre? nay! though time with petty fate prison us and emperors, by our arts do we create that which time himself devours-- such machines as well may run 'gainst the horses of the sun. when we would a new abode, space, our tyrant king no more, lays the long lance of the road at our feet and flees before, breathless, ere we overwhelm, to submit a further realm! the two-sided man much i owe to the land that grew-- more to the life that fed-- but most to allah who gave me two separate sides to my head. much i reflect on the good and the true in the faiths beneath the sun, but most upon allah who gave me two sides to my head, not one. wesley's following, calvin's flock, white or yellow or bronze, shaman, ju-ju or angekok, minister, mukamuk, bonze-- here is a health, my brothers, to you, however your prayers are said, and praised be allah who gave me two separate sides to my head! _i_ would go without shirt or shoe, friend, tobacco or bread, sooner than lose for a minute the two separate sides of my head! 'lukannon' (song of the breeding seal. aleutian islands) i met my mates in the morning (and oh, but i am old!) where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled. i heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers' song-- the beaches of lukannon--two million voices strong! _the song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons, the song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes, the song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame-- the beaches of lukannon--before the sealers came!_ i met my mates in the morning (i'll never meet them more!); they came and went in legions that darkened all the shore. and through the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach we hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach. _the beaches of lukannon--the winter-wheat so tall-- the dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all! the platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn! the beaches of lukannon--the home where we were born_! i meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band. men shoot us in the water and club us on the land; men drive us to the salt house like silly sheep and tame, and still we sing lukannon--before the sealers came. _wheel down, wheel down to southward! oh, gooverooska go! and tell the deep-sea viceroys the story of our woe; ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore, the beaches of lukannon shall know their sons no more!_ an astrologer's song to the heavens above us o look and behold the planets that love us all harnessed in gold! what chariots, what horses, against us shall bide while the stars in their courses do fight on our side? all thought, all desires, that are under the sun, are one with their fires, as we also are one. all matter, all spirit, all fashion, all frame, receive and inherit their strength from the same. oh, man that deniest all power save thine own, their power in the highest is mightily shown. not less in the lowest that power is made clear (oh, man, if thou knowest, what treasure is here!) earth quakes in her throes and we wonder for why. but the blind planet knows when her ruler is nigh; and, attuned since creation to perfect accord, she thrills in her station and yearns to her lord. the waters have risen, the springs are unbound-- the floods break their prison, and ravin around. no rampart withstands 'em, their fury will last, till the sign that commands 'em sinks low or swings past. through abysses unproven, o'er gulfs beyond thought, our portion is woven, our burden is brought. yet they that prepare it, whose nature we share, make us who must bear it well able to bear. though terrors o'ertake us we'll not be afraid. no power can unmake us save that which has made. nor yet beyond reason or hope shall we fall-- all things have their season, and mercy crowns all! then, doubt not, ye fearful-- the eternal is king-- up, heart, and be cheerful, and lustily sing:-- _what chariots, what horses, against us shall bide while the stars in their courses do fight on our side?_ 'the power of the dog' there is sorrow enough in the natural way from men and women to fill our day; but when we are certain of sorrow in store, why do we always arrange for more? _brothers and sisters, i bid you beware of giving your heart to a dog to tear._ buy a pup and your money will buy love unflinching that cannot lie-- perfect passion and worship fed by a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. _nevertheless it is hardly fair to risk your heart for a dog to tear._ when the fourteen years which nature permits are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, and the vet's unspoken prescription runs to lethal chambers or loaded guns, _then you will find--it's your own affair, but ... you've given your heart to a dog to tear._ when the body that lived at your single will, when the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still!), when the spirit that answered your every mood is gone--wherever it goes--for good, _you will discover how much you care, and will give your heart to a dog to tear._ we've sorrow enough in the natural way, when it comes to burying christian clay. our loves are not given, but only lent, at compound interest of cent per cent. though it is not always the case, i believe, that the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve: for, when debts are payable, right or wrong, a short-time loan is as bad as a long-- _so why in--heaven (before we are there) should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?_ the rabbi's song if thought can reach to heaven, on heaven let it dwell, for fear thy thought be given like power to reach to hell. for fear the desolation and darkness of thy mind perplex an habitation which thou hast left behind. let nothing linger after-- no whimpering ghost remain, in wall, or beam, or rafter, of any hate or pain. cleanse and call home thy spirit, deny her leave to cast, on aught thy heirs inherit, the shadow of her past. for think, in all thy sadness, what road our griefs may take; whose brain reflect our madness, or whom our terrors shake. for think, lest any languish by cause of thy distress-- the arrows of our anguish fly farther than we guess. our lives, our tears, as water, are spilled upon the ground; god giveth no man quarter, yet god a means hath found, though faith and hope have vanished, and even love grows dim-- a means whereby his banished be not expelled from him. the bee boy's song _bees! bees! hark to your bees! 'hide from your neighbours as much as you please, but all that has happened, to_ us _you must tell, or else we will give you no honey to sell!'_ a maiden in her glory, upon her wedding-day, must tell her bees the story, or else they'll fly away. fly away--die away-- dwindle down and leave you! but if you don't deceive your bees, your bees will not deceive you. marriage, birth or buryin', news across the seas, all you're sad or merry in, you must tell the bees. tell 'em coming in an' out, where the fanners fan, 'cause the bees are just about as curious as a man! don't you wait where trees are, when the lightnings play, nor don't you hate where bees are, or else they'll pine away. pine away--dwine away-- anything to leave you! but if you never grieve your bees, your bees'll never grieve you. the return of the children neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs' dove-winged races-- holding hands forlornly the children wandered beneath the dome, plucking the splendid robes of the passers-by, and with pitiful faces begging what princes and powers refused:--'ah, please will you let us go home?' over the jewelled floor, nigh weeping, ran to them mary the mother, kneeled and caressed and made promise with kisses, and drew them along to the gateway-- yea, the all-iron unbribeable door which peter must guard and none other. straightway she took the keys from his keeping, and opened and freed them straightway. then, to her son, who had seen and smiled, she said: 'on the night that i bore thee, what didst thou care for a love beyond mine or a heaven that was not my arm? didst thou push from the nipple, o child, to hear the angels adore thee? when we two lay in the breath of the kine?' and he said:--'thou hast done no harm.' so through the void the children ran homeward merrily hand in hand, looking neither to left nor right where the breathless heavens stood still. and the guards of the void resheathed their swords, for they heard the command: 'shall i that have suffered the children to come to me hold them against their will?' merrow down i there runs a road by merrow down-- a grassy track to-day it is-- an hour out of guildford town, above the river wey it is. here, when they heard the horse-bells ring, the ancient britons dressed and rode to watch the dark phoenicians bring their goods along the western road. yes, here, or hereabouts, they met to hold their racial talks and such-- to barter beads for whitby jet, and tin for gay shell torques and such. but long and long before that time (when bison used to roam on it) did taffy and her daddy climb that down, and had their home on it. then beavers built in broadstonebrook and made a swamp where bramley stands; and bears from shere would come and look for taffimai where shamley stands. the wey, that taffy called wagai, was more than six times bigger then; and all the tribe of tegumai they cut a noble figure then! ii of all the tribe of tegumai who cut that figure, none remain,-- on merrow down the cuckoos cry-- the silence and the sun remain. but as the faithful years return and hearts unwounded sing again, comes taffy dancing through the fern to lead the surrey spring again. her brows are bound with bracken-fronds, and golden elf-locks fly above; her eyes are bright as diamonds and bluer than the sky above. in mocassins and deer-skin cloak, unfearing, free and fair she flits, and lights her little damp-wood smoke to show her daddy where she flits. for far--oh, very far behind, so far she cannot call to him, comes tegumai alone to find the daughter that was all to him. old mother laidinwool 'old mother laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead. she heard the hops was doing well, an' so popped up her head,' for said she: 'the lads i've picked with when i was young and fair, they're bound to be at hopping and i'm bound to meet 'em there!' _let me up and go back to the work i know, lord! back to the work i know, lord! for it's dark where i lie down, my lord! an' it's dark where i lie down!_ old mother laidinwool, she give her bones a shake, an' trotted down the churchyard path as fast as she could make. she met the parson walking, but she says to him, says she: 'oh don't let no one trouble for a poor old ghost like me!' 'twas all a warm september an' the hops had flourished grand, she saw the folks get into 'em with stockin's on their hands; an' none of 'em was foreigners but all which she had known, and old mother laidinwool she blessed 'em every one. she saw her daughters picking, an' their children them beside, an' she moved among the babies an' she stilled 'em when they cried. she saw their clothes was bought, not begged, an' they was clean an' fat, an' old mother laidinwool she thanked the lord for that. old mother laidinwool she waited on all day until it come too dark to see an' people went away-- until it come too dark to see an' lights began to show, an' old mother laidinwool she hadn't where to go. old mother laidinwool she give her bones a shake, an' trotted back to churchyard-mould as fast as she could make. she went where she was bidden to an' there laid down her ghost, ... an' the lord have mercy on you in the day you need it most! _let me in again, out of the wet an' rain, lord! out of the dark an rain, lord! for it's best as you shall say, my lord! an' it's best as you shall say!_ chapter headings just-so stories when the cabin port-holes are dark and green because of the seas outside; when the ship goes _wop_ (with a wiggle between) and the steward falls into the soup-tureen, and the trunks begin to slide; when nursey lies on the floor in a heap, and mummy tells you to let her sleep, and you aren't waked or washed or dressed, why, then you will know (if you haven't guessed) you're 'fifty north and forty west!' _how the whale got his throat._ the camel's hump is an ugly lump which well you may see at the zoo; but uglier yet is the hump we get from having too little to do. kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo, if we haven't enough to do-oo-oo. we get the hump-- cameelious hump-- the hump that is black and blue! we climb out of bed with a frouzly head and a snarly-yarly voice. we shiver and scowl and we grunt and we growl at our bath and our boots and our toys; and there ought to be a corner for me (and i know there is one for you) when we get the hump-- cameelious hump-- the hump that is black and blue! the cure for this ill is not to sit still, or frowst with a book by the fire; but to take a large hoe and a shovel also, and dig till you gently perspire; and then you will find that the sun and the wind, and the djinn of the garden too, have lifted the hump-- the horrible hump-- the hump that is black and blue! i get it as well as you-oo-oo-- if i haven't enough to do-oo-oo! we all get hump-- cameelious hump-- kiddies and grown-ups too! _how the camel got his hump._ i am the most wise baviaan, saying in most wise tones, 'let us melt into the landscape--just us two by our lones.' people have come--in a carriage--calling. but mummy is there.... yes, i can go if you take me--nurse says _she_ don't care. let's go up to the pig-styes and sit on the farmyard rails! let's say things to the bunnies, and watch 'em skitter their tails! let's--oh, _anything_, daddy, so long as it's you and me, and going truly exploring, and not being in till tea! here's your boots (i've brought 'em), and here's your cap and stick, and here's your pipe and tobacco. oh, come along out of it--quick! _how the leopard got his spots._ i keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all i knew); their names are what and why and when and how and where and who. i send them over land and sea, i send them east and west; but after they have worked for me, _i_ give them all a rest. _i_ let them rest from nine till five, for i am busy then, as well as breakfast, lunch, and tea, for they are hungry men. but different folk have different views; i know a person small-- she keeps ten million serving-men, who get no rest at all! she sends 'em abroad on her own affairs, from the second she opens her eyes-- one million hows, two million wheres, and seven million whys! _the elephant's child._ this is the mouth-filling song of the race that was run by a boomer. run in a single burst--only event of its kind-- started by big god nqong from warrigaborrigarooma, old man kangaroo first, yellow-dog dingo behind. kangaroo bounded away, his back-legs working like pistons-- bounded from morning till dark, twenty-five feet at a bound. yellow-dog dingo lay like a yellow cloud in the distance-- much too busy to bark. my! but they covered the ground! nobody knows where they went, or followed the track that they flew in, for that continent hadn't been given a name. they ran thirty degrees, from torres straits to the leeuwin (look at the atlas, please), then they ran back as they came. s'posing you could trot from adelaide to the pacific, for an afternoon's run--half what these gentlemen did-- you would feel rather hot, but your legs would develop terrific-- yes, my importunate son, you'd be a marvellous kid! _the sing-song of old man kangaroo._ i've never sailed the amazon, i've never reached brazil; but the _don_ and _magdalena_, they can go there when they will! yes, weekly from southampton, great steamers, white and gold, go rolling down to rio (roll down--roll down to rio!). and i'd like to roll to rio some day before i'm old! i've never seen a jaguar, nor yet an armadill-- o dilloing in his armour, and i s'pose i never will, unless i go to rio these wonders to behold-- roll down--roll down to rio-- roll really down to rio! oh, i'd love to roll to rio some day before i'm old! _the beginning of the armadilloes._ china-going p. and o.'s pass pau amma's playground close, and his pusat tasek lies near the track of most b.i.'s. n.y.k. and n.d.l. know pau amma's home as well as the fisher of the sea knows 'bens,' m.m.'s, and rubattinos. but (and this is rather queer) a.t.l.'s can _not_ come here; o. and o. and d.o.a. must go round another way. orient, anchor, bibby, hall, never go that way at all. u.c.s. would have a fit if it found itself on it. and if 'beavers' took their cargoes to penang instead of lagos, or a fat shaw-savill bore passengers to singapore, or a white star were to try a little trip to sourabaya, or a b.s.a. went on past natal to cheribon, then great mr. lloyds would come with a wire and drag them home! * * * * * you'll know what my riddle means when you've eaten mangosteens. _the crab that played with the sea._ pussy can sit by the fire and sing, pussy can climb a tree, or play with a silly old cork and string to 'muse herself, not me. but _i_ like _binkie_ my dog, because he knows how to behave; so, _binkie's_ the same as the first friend was, and i am the man in the cave! pussy will play man-friday till it's time to wet her paw and make her walk on the window-sill (for the footprint crusoe saw); then she fluffles her tail and mews, and scratches and won't attend. but _binkie_ will play whatever i choose, and he is my true first friend! pussy will rub my knees with her head pretending she loves me hard; but the very minute i go to my bed pussy runs out in the yard, and there she stays till the morning-light; so i know it is only pretend; but _binkie_, he snores at my feet all night, and he is my firstest friend! _the cat that walked by himself_ there was never a queen like balkis, from here to the wide world's end; but balkis talked to a butterfly as you would talk to a friend. there was never a king like solomon, not since the world began; but solomon talked to a butterfly as a man would talk to a man. _she_ was queen of sabæa-- and _he_ was asia's lord-- but they both of 'em talked to butterflies when they took their walks abroad! _the butterfly that stamped._ the looking-glass _(a country dance)_ _queen bess was harry's daughter. stand forward partners all! she danced king philip down-a down, and left her shoe to show 'twas true-- (the very tune i'm playing you) in norgem at brickwall!_ the queen was in her chamber, and she was middling old, her petticoat was satin, and her stomacher was gold. backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass, making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass. the cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass as comely or as kindly or as young as what she was! _queen bess was harry's daughter. now hand your partners all!_ the queen was in her chamber, a-combing of her hair. there came queen mary's spirit and it stood behind her chair. singing, 'backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass, but i will stand behind you till you face the looking-glass. the cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass as lovely or unlucky or as lonely as i was!' _queen bess was harry's daughter.--now turn your partners all!_ the queen was in her chamber, a-weeping very sore. there came lord leicester's spirit and it scratched upon the door, singing, 'backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass, but i will walk beside you till you face the looking-glass. the cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass as hard and unforgiving or as wicked as you was!' _queen bess was harry's daughter. now kiss your partners all!_ the queen was in her chamber; her sins were on her head. she looked the spirits up and down and statelily she said:-- backwards and forwards and sideways though i've been, yet i am harry's daughter and i am england's queen!' and she faced the looking-glass (and whatever else there was), and she saw her day was over and she saw her beauty pass in the cruel looking-glass, that can always hurt a lass more hard than any ghost there is or any man there was! the queen's men valour and innocence have latterly gone hence to certain death by certain shame attended. envy--ah! even to tears!-- the fortune of their years which, though so few, yet so divinely ended. scarce had they lifted up life's full and fiery cup, than they had set it down untouched before them. before their day arose they beckoned it to close-- close in confusion and destruction o'er them. they did not stay to ask what prize should crown their task, well sure that prize was such as no man strives for; but passed into eclipse, her kiss upon their lips-- even belphoebe's, whom they gave their lives for! the city of sleep over the edge of the purple down, where the single lamplight gleams. know ye the road to the merciful town that is hard by the sea of dreams-- where the poor may lay their wrongs away, and the sick may forget to-weep? but we--pity us! oh, pity us! we wakeful; ah, pity us!-- we must go back with policeman day-- back from the city of sleep! weary they turn from the scroll and crown, fetter and prayer and plough-- they that go up to the merciful town, for her gates are closing now. it is their right in the baths of night body and soul to steep, but we--pity us! ah, pity us! we wakeful; oh, pity us!-- we must go back with policeman day-- back from the city of sleep! over the edge of the purple down, ere the tender dreams begin, look--we may look--at the merciful towns but we may not enter in! outcasts all, from her guarded wall back to our watch we creep: we--pity us! ah, pity us! we wakeful; oh, pity us!-- we that go back with policeman day-- back from the city of sleep! the widower for a season there must be pain-- for a little, little space i shall lose the sight of her face, take back the old life again while she is at rest in her place. for a season this pain must endure-- for a little, little while i shall sigh more often than smile, till time shall work me a cure, and the pitiful days beguile. for that season we must be apart, for a little length of years, till my life's last hour nears, and, above the beat of my heart, i hear her voice in my ears. but i shall not understand-- being set on some later love, shall not know her for whom i strove, till she reach me forth her hand, saying, 'who but i have the right?' and out of a troubled night shall draw me safe to the land. the prayer of miriam cohen from the wheel and the drift of things deliver us, good lord, and we will face the wrath of kings, the faggot and the sword! lay not thy works before our eyes, nor vex us with thy wars, lest we should feel the straining skies o'ertrod by trampling stars. hold us secure behind the gates of saving flesh and bone, lest we should dream what dream awaits the soul escaped alone. thy path, thy purposes conceal from our beleaguered realm, lest any shattering whisper steal upon us and o'erwhelm. a veil 'twixt us and thee, good lord, a veil 'twixt us and thee, lest we should hear too clear, too clear, and unto madness see! the song of the little hunter ere mor the peacock flutters, ere the monkey people cry, ere chil the kite swoops down a furlong sheer, through the jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh-- he is fear, o little hunter, he is fear! very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade, and the whisper spreads and widens far and near. and the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now-- he is fear, o little hunter, he is fear! ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light, when the downward-dipping trails are dank and drear, comes a breathing hard behind thee--_snuffle-snuffle_ through the night-- it is fear, o little hunter, it is fear! on thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go; in the empty, mocking thicket plunge the spear! but thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left thy cheek-- it is fear, o little hunter, it is fear! when the heat-cloud sucks the tempest, when the slivered pine-trees fall, when the blinding, blaring rain-squalls lash and veer, through the war-gongs of the thunder rings a voice more loud than all-- it is fear, o little hunter, it is fear! now the spates are banked and deep; now the footless boulders leap-- now the lightning shows each littlest leaf-rib clear-- but thy throat is shut and dried, and thy heart against thy side hammers: fear, o little hunter--this is fear! gow's watch act ii. scene _the pavilion in the gardens. enter ferdinand and the king_ _ferdinand_. your tiercel's too long at hack. sir. he's no eyass but a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him. dangerously free o' the air. faith, were he mine (as mine's the glove he binds to for his tirings) i'd fly him with a make-hawk. he's in yarak plumed to the very point. so manned, so weathered! give him the firmament god made him for. and what shall take the air of him? _the king_. a young wing yet. bold--overbold on the perch, but, think you, ferdinand, he can endure the tall skies yonder? cozen advantage out of the teeth of the hurricane? choose his own mate against the lammer-geier? ride out a night-long tempest, hold his pitch between the lightning and the cloud it leaps from, never too pressed to kill? _ferdinand_. i'll answer for him. bating all parable, i know the prince. there's a bleak devil in the young, my lord; god put it there to save 'em from their elders and break their father's heart, but bear them scatheless through mire and thorns and blood if need be. think what our prime saw! such glory, such achievements as now our children, wondering at, examine themselves to see if they shall hardly equal. but what cared we while we wrought the wonders? nothing! the rampant deed contented. _the king_. little enough, god knows! but afterwards? after-- there comes the reckoning. i would save him that. _ferdinand_. save him dry scars that ache of winter-nights. worn out self-pity and as much of knowledge as makes old men fear judgment? then loose him--loose him, a' god's name loose him to adventure early! and trust some random pike, or half-backed horse, besides what's caught in italy, to save him. _the king_. i know. i know. and yet ... what stirs in the garden? _enter gow and a gardener bearing the prince's body_ _ferdinand_.(gods give me patience!) gow and a gardener bearing some load along in the dusk to the dunghill. nay--a dead branch--but as i said, the prince---- _the king. _they've set it down. strange that they work so late. _gow (setting down the body)_. heark, you unsanctified fool, while i set out our story. we found it, this side the north park wall which it had climbed to pluck nectarines from the alley. heark again! there was a nectarine in its hand when we found it, and the naughty brick that slipped from the coping beneath its foot and so caused its death, lies now under the wall for the king to see. _the king (above)_. the king to see! why should he? who's the man? _gow_. that is your tale. swerve from it by so much as the breadth of my dagger and here's your instant reward. you heard not, saw not, and by the horns of ninefold-cuckolded jupiter you thought not nor dreamed not anything more or other! _the king_. ninefold-cuckolded jupiter. that's a rare oath! shall we look closer? _ferdinand_. not yet, my lord! (i cannot hear him breathe.) _gardener_. the north park wall? it was so. plucking nectarines. it shall be. but how shall i say if any ask why our lady the queen-- _gow (stabs him)_. thus! hie after the prince and tell him y'are the first fruits of his nectarine tree. bleed there behind the laurels. _the king_. why did gow buffet the clown? what said he? i'll go look. _ferdinand (above)_. save yourself! it is the king! _enter the king and ferdinand to gow_ _gow_. god save you! this was the prince! _the king_. the prince! not a dead branch? (_uncovers the face_.) my flesh and blood! my son! my son! my son! _ferdinand_ (_to gow_). i had feared something of this. and that fool yonder? _gow_. dead, or as good. he cannot speak. _ferdinand_. better so. _the king_. 'loosed to adventure early!' tell the tale. _gow_. saddest truth alack! i came upon him not a half hour since, fallen from the north park wall over against the deerpark side--dead--dead!--a nectarine in his hand that the dear lad must have climbed for, and plucked the very instant, look you, that a brick slipped on the coping. 'tis there now. so i lifted him, but his neck was as you see--and already cold. _the king_. oh, very cold. but why should he have troubled to climb? he was free of all the fruit in my garden, god knows!... what, gow? _gow_. surely, god knows! _the king_. a lad's trick. but i love him the better for it.... true, he's past loving.... and now we must tell our queen. what a coil at the day's end! she'll grieve for him. not as i shall; ferdinand, but as youth for youth. they were much of the same age. playmate for playmate. see, he wears her colours. that is the knot she gave him last--last.... oh god! when was yesterday? _ferdinand_. come in! come in, my lord. there's a dew falling. _the king_. he'll take no harm of it. i'll follow presently..... he's all his mother's now and none of mine-- her very face on the bride-pillow. yet i tricked her. but that was later--and she never guessed. i do not think he sinned much--he's too young-- much the same age as my queen. god must not judge him too hardly for such slips as youth may fall in. but i'll entreat that throne. (_prays by the body._) _gow_. the heavens hold up still. earth opens not and this dew's mere water. what shall a man think of it all? _(to gardener.)_ not dead yet, sirrah? i bade you follow the prince. despatch! _gardener_. some kind soul pluck out the dagger. why did you slay me? i'd done no wrong. i'd ha' kept it secret till my dying day. but not now--not now! i'm dying. the prince fell from the queen's chamber window. i saw it in the nut alley. he was---- _ferdinand_. but what made you in the nut alley at that hour? _gardener_. no wrong. no more than another man's wife. jocasta of the still-room. she'd kissed me good-night too; but that's over with the rest.... i've stumbled on the prince's beastly loves, and i pay for all. let me pass! _gow_. count it your fortune, honest man. you would have revealed it to your woman at the next meeting. you fleshmongers are all one feather. _(plucks out the dagger.)_ go in peace and lay your death to fortune's door. he's sped--thank fortune! _ferdinand_. who knows not fortune, glutted on easy thrones, stealing from feasts as rare to coney-catch privily in the hedgerows for a clown. with that same cruel-lustful hand and eye, those nails and wedges, that one hammer and lead, and the very gerb of long-stored lightning loosed. yesterday 'gainst some king. _the king_. i have pursued with prayers where my heart warns me my soul shall overtake-- _enter the queen_ _the king_. look not! wait till i tell you, dearest.... air!... 'loosed to adventure early' ... i go late. _(dies.)_ _gow_. so! god hath cut off the prince in his pleasures. gow, to save the king, hath silenced one poor fool who knew how it befell, and now the king's dead, needs only that the queen should kill gow and all's safe for her this side o' the judgment. ...senor ferdinand, the wind's easterly. i'm for the road. _ferdinand_. my horse is at the gate. god speed you. whither? _gow_. to the duke, if the queen does not lay hands on me before. however it goes, i charge you bear witness, senor ferdinand, i served the old king faithfully. to the death, senor ferdinand--to the death! the wishing caps life's all getting and giving. i've only myself to give. what shall i do for a living? i've only one life to live. end it? i'll not find another. spend it? but how shall i best? sure the wise plan is to live like a man and luck may look after the rest! largesse! largesse, fortune! give or hold at your will. if i've no care for fortune, fortune must follow me still. bad luck, she is never a lady, but the commonest wench on the street, shuffling, shabby and shady, shameless to pass or meet. walk with her once--it's a weakness! talk to her twice--it's a crime! thrust her away when she gives you 'good day,' and the besom won't board you next time. largesse! largesse, fortune! what is your ladyship's mood? if i've no care for fortune, my fortune is bound to be good! good luck, she is never a lady, but the cursedest quean alive! tricksey, wincing and jady, kittle to lead or drive. greet her--she's hailing a stranger! meet her--she's busking to leave. let her alone for a shrew to the bone, and the hussy comes plucking your sleeve! largesse! largesse, fortune! i'll neither follow nor flee. if i don't run after fortune, fortune must run after me! 'by the hoof of the wild goat' by the hoof of the wild goat uptossed from the cliff where she lay in the sun fell the stone to the tarn where the daylight is lost, so she fell from the light of the sun and alone! now the fall was ordained from the first with the goat and the cliff and the tarn, but the stone knows only her life is accursed as she sinks from the light of the sun and alone! oh thou who has builded the world, oh thou who has lighted the sun, oh thou who has darkened the tarn, judge thou the sin of the stone that was hurled by the goat from the light of the sun, as she sinks in the mire of the tarn, even now--even now--even now! song of the red war-boat (a.d. ) shove off from the wharf-edge! steady! watch for a smooth! give way! if she feels the lop already she'll stand on her head in the bay. it's ebb--it's dusk--it's blowing. the shoals are a mile of white. but (snatch her along!) we're going to find our master to-night. _for we hold that in all disaster of shipwreck, storm, or sword, a man must stand by his master when once he has pledged his word._ raging seas have we rowed in, but we seldom saw them thus; our master is angry with odin-- odin is angry with us! heavy odds have we taken, but never before such odds. the gods know they are forsaken, we must risk the wrath of the gods! over the crest she flies from, into its hollow she drops, cringes and clears her eyes from the wind-torn breaker-tops, ere out on the shrieking shoulder of a hill-high surge she drives. meet her! meet her and hold her! pull for your scoundrel lives! the thunders bellow and clamour the harm that they mean to do! there goes thor's own hammer cracking the dark in two! close! but the blow has missed her, here comes the wind of the blow! row or the squall'll twist her broadside on to it!--_row!_ heark 'ee, thor of the thunder! we are not here for a jest-- for wager, warfare, or plunder, or to put your power to test. this work is none of our wishing-- we would house at home if we might-- but our master is wrecked out fishing. we go to find him to-night. _for we hold that in all disaster-- as the gods themselves have said-- a man must stand by his master till one of the two is dead._ that is our way of thinking, now you can do as you will, while we try to save her from sinking and hold her head to it still. bale her and keep her moving, or she'll break her back in the trough.... who said the weather's improving, or the swells are taking off? sodden, and chafed and aching, gone in the loins and knees-- no matter--the day is breaking, and there's far less weight to the seas! up mast, and finish baling-- in oars, and out with the mead-- the rest will be two-reef sailing.... that was a night indeed! _but we hold that in all disaster (and faith, we have found it true!) if only you stand by your master, the gods will stand by you!_ morning song in the jungle one moment past our bodies cast no shadow on the plain; now clear and black they stride our track, and we run home again. in morning hush, each rock and bush stands hard, and high, and raw: then give the call: '_good rest to all_ _that keep the jungle law!'_ now horn and pelt our peoples melt in covert to abide; now, crouched and still, to cave and hill our jungle barons glide. now, stark and plain, man's oxen strain, that draw the new-yoked plough; now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red above the lit _talao_. ho! get to lair! the sun's aflare behind the breathing grass: and creaking through the young bamboo the warning whispers pass. by day made strange, the woods we range with blinking eyes we scan; while down the skies the wild duck cries: '_the day--the day to man!_' the dew is dried that drenched our hide, or washed about our way; and where we drank, the puddled bank is crisping into clay. the traitor dark gives up each mark of stretched or hooded claw; then hear the call: '_good rest to all that keep the jungle law!_' blue roses roses red and roses white plucked i for my love's delight. she would none of all my posies-- bade me gather her blue roses. half the world i wandered through, seeking where such flowers grew; half the world unto my quest answered me with laugh and jest. home i came at wintertide, but my silly love had died, seeking with her latest breath roses from the arms of death. it may be beyond the grave she shall find what she would have. mine was but an idle quest-- roses white and red are best. a ripple song once a ripple came to land in the golden sunset burning-- lapped against a maiden's hand, by the ford returning. _dainty foot and gentle breast-- here, across, be glad and rest. 'maiden, wait,' the ripple saith; 'wait awhile, for i am death!'_ 'where my lover calls i go-- shame it were to treat him coldly-- 'twas a fish that circled so, turning over boldly.' _dainty foot and tender heart, wait the loaded ferry-cart. 'wait, ah, wait!' the ripple saith; 'maiden, wait, for i am death!'_ 'when my lover calls i haste-- dame disdain was never wedded!' ripple-ripple round her waist, clear the current eddied. _foolish heart and faithful hand, little feet that touched no land. far away the ripple sped, ripple--ripple--running red!_ butterflies eyes aloft, over dangerous places, the children follow the butterflies, and, in the sweat of their upturned faces, slash with a net at the empty skies. so it goes they fall amid brambles, and sting their toes on the nettle-tops, till, after a thousand scratches and scrambles, they wipe their brows and the hunting stops. then to quiet them comes their father and stills the riot of pain and grief, saying, 'little ones, go and gather out of my garden a cabbage-leaf. 'you will find on it whorls and clots of dull grey eggs that, properly fed, turn, by way of the worm, to lots of glorious butterflies raised from the dead...,' 'heaven is beautiful, earth is ugly,' the three-dimensioned preacher saith, so we must not look where the snail and the slug lie for psyche's birth.... and that is our death! my lady's law the law whereby my lady moves was never law to me, but 'tis enough that she approves whatever law it be. for in that law, and by that law, my constant course i'll steer; not that i heed or deem it dread, but that she holds it dear. tho' asia sent for my content her richest argosies, those would i spurn, and bid return, if that should give her ease. with equal heart i'd watch depart each spicèd sail from sight, sans bitterness, desiring less great gear than her delight. though kings made swift with many a gift my proven sword to hire, i would not go nor serve 'em so, except at her desire. with even mind, i'd put behind adventure and acclaim, and clean give o'er, esteeming more her favour than my fame. yet such am i, yea such am i-- sore bond and freest free, the law that sways my lady's ways is mystery to me! the nursing sister _(maternity hospital)_ our sister sayeth such and such. and we must bow to her behests; our sister toileth overmuch, our little maid that hath no breasts. a field untilled, a web unwove, a flower withheld from sun or bee, an alien in the courts of love, and--teacher unto such as we! we love her, but we laugh the while, we laugh, but sobs are mixed with laughter; our sister hath no time to smile, she knows not what must follow after. wind of the south, arise and blow, from beds of spice thy locks shake free; breathe on her heart that she may know, breathe on her eyes that she may see. alas! we vex her with our mirth, and maze her with most tender scorn, who stands beside the gates of birth, herself a child--a child unborn! _our sister sayeth such and such, and we must bow to her behests; our sister toileth overmuch, our little maid that hath no breasts._ the love song of har dyal alone upon the housetops to the north i turn and watch the lightning in the sky-- the glamour of thy footsteps in the north. _come back to me, beloved, or i die._ below my feet the still bazar is laid-- far, far below the weary camels lie-- the camels and the captives of thy raid. _come back to me, beloved, or i die!_ my father's wife is old and harsh with years, and drudge of all my father's house am i-- my bread is sorrow and my drink is tears. _come back to me. beloved, or i die!_ a dedication and they were stronger hands than mine that digged the ruby from the earth-- more cunning brains that made it worth the large desire of a king, and stouter hearts that through the brine went down the perfect pearl to bring. lo, i have wrought in common clay rude figures of a rough-hewn race, since pearls strew not the market-place in this my town of banishment, where with the shifting dust i play, and eat the bread of discontent. yet is there life in that i make. o thou who knowest, turn and see-- as thou hast power over me so have i power over these, because i wrought them for thy sake, and breathed in them mine agonies. small mirth was in the making--now i lift the cloth that cloaks the clay, and, wearied, at thy feet i lay my wares, ere i go forth to sell. the long bazar will praise, but thou-- heart of my heart--have i done well? mother o' mine if i were hanged on the highest hill, _mother o' mine, o mother o' mine!_ i know whose love would follow me still, _mother o' mine, o mother o' mine!_ if i were drowned in the deepest sea, _mother o' mine, o mother o' mine!_ i know whose tears would come down to me, _mother o' mine, o mother o' mine!_ if i were damned of body and soul, i know whose prayers would make me whole, _mother o' mine, o mother o' mine!_ the only son she dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew, for she heard a whimper under the sill and a great grey paw came through. the fresh flame comforted the hut and shone on the roof-beam, and the only son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream. the last ash fell from the withered log with the click of a falling spark, and the only son woke up again, and called across the dark:-- 'now was i born of womankind and laid in a mother's breast? for i have dreamed of a shaggy hide whereon i went to rest? and was i born of womankind and laid on a father's arm? for i have dreamed of clashing teeth that guarded me from harm. and was i born an only son and did i play alone? for i have dreamed of comrades twain that bit me to the bone. and did i break the barley-cake and steep it in the tyre? for i have dreamed of a youngling kid new-riven from the byre. for i have dreamed of a midnight sky and a midnight call to blood, and red-mouthed shadows racing by, that thrust me from my food. 'tis an hour yet and an hour yet to the rising of the moon, but i can see the black roof-tree as plain as it were noon. 'tis a league and a league to the lena falls where the trooping blackbuck go; but i can hear the little fawn that bleats behind the doe. 'tis a league and a league to the lena falls where the crop and the upland meet, but i can smell the wet dawn-wind that wakes the sprouting wheat. unbar the door, i may not bide, but i must out and see if those are wolves that wait outside or my own kin to me!' * * * * * she loosed the bar, she slid the bolt, she opened the door anon, and a grey bitch-wolf came out of the dark and fawned on the only son! mowgli's song against people i will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines-- i will call in the jungle to stamp out your lines! the roofs shall fade before it, the house-beams shall fall, and the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall cover it all! in the gates of these your councils my people shall sing, in the doors of these your garners the bat-folk shall cling; and the snake shall be your watchman, by a hearthstone unswept; for the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall fruit where ye slept! ye shall not see my strikers; ye shall hear them and guess; by night, before the moon-rise, i will send for my cess, and the wolf shall be your herdsman by a landmark removed, for the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall seed where ye loved! i will reap your fields before you at the hands of a host; ye shall glean behind my reapers for the bread that is lost; and the deer shall be your oxen on a headland untilled, for the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall leaf where ye build! i have untied against you the club-footed vines-- i have sent in the jungle to swamp out your lines! the trees--the trees are on you! the house-beams shall fall, and the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall cover you all! romulus and remus oh, little did the wolf-child care, when first he planned his home, what city should arise and bear the weight and state of rome! a shiftless, westward-wandering tramp, checked by the tiber flood, he reared a wall around his camp of uninspired mud. but when his brother leaped the wall and mocked its height and make, he guessed the future of it all and slew him for its sake. swift was the blow--swift as the thought which showed him in that hour how unbelief may bring to naught the early steps of power. foreseeing time's imperilled hopes of glory, grace, and love-- all singers, cæsars, artists, popes-- would fail if remus throve, he sent his brother to the gods, and, when the fit was o'er, went on collecting turves and clods to build the wall once more! chapter headings the jungle books now chil the kite brings home the night that mang the bat sets free-- the herds are shut in byre and hut for loosed till dawn are we. this is the hour of pride and power, talon and tush and claw. oh hear the call!--good hunting all that keep the jungle law! _mowgli's brothers._ * * * * * his spots are the joy of the leopard: his horns are the buffalo's pride. be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide. if ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed sambhur can gore; ye need not stop work to inform us. we knew it ten seasons before. oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as sister and brother, for though they are little and fubsy, it may be the bear is their mother. 'there is none like to me!' says the cub in the pride of his earliest kill; but the jungle is large and the cub he is small. let him think and be still. _kaa's hunting._ * * * * * the stream is shrunk--the pool is dry, and we be comrades, thou and i; with fevered jowl and dusty flank each jostling each along the bank; and, by one drouthy fear made still, foregoing thought of quest or kill. now 'neath his dam the fawn may see, the lean pack-wolf as cowed as he, and the tall buck, unflinching, note the fangs that tore his father's throat. _the pools are shrunk--the streams are dry, and we be playmates, thou and i, till yonder cloud--good hunting!--loose the rain that breaks our water truce._ _how fear came._ * * * * * what of the hunting, hunter bold? _brother, the watch was long and cold._ what of the quarry ye went to kill? _brother, he crops in the jungle still._ where is the power that made your pride? _brother, it ebbs from my flank and side._ where is the haste that ye hurry by? _brother, i go to my lair to die!_ _'tiger-tiger!'_ * * * * * veil them, cover them, wall them round-- blossom, and creeper, and weed-- let us forget the sight and the sound, the smell and the touch of the breed! fat black ash by the altar-stone. here is the white-foot rain, and the does bring forth in the fields unsown, and none shall affright them again; and the blind walls crumble, unknown, o'erthrown, and none shall inhabit again! _letting in the jungle._ * * * * * these are the four that are never content, that have never been filled since the dews began-- jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of man. _the king's ankus._ * * * * * for our white and our excellent nights--for the nights of swift running, fair ranging, far-seeing, good hunting, sure cunning! for the smells of the dawning, untainted, ere dew has departed! for the rush through the mist, and the quarry blind-started! for the cry of our mates when the sambhur has wheeled and is standing at bay! for the risk and the riot of night! for the sleep at the lair-mouth by day! it is met, and we go to the fight. bay! o bay! _red dog._ * * * * * man goes to man! cry the challenge through the jungle! he that was our brother goes away. hear, now, and judge, o ye people of the jungle,-- answer, who shall turn him--who shall stay? man goes to man! he is weeping in the jungle: he that was our brother sorrows sore! man goes to man! (oh, we loved him in the jungle!) to the man-trail where we may not follow more. _the spring running._ * * * * * at the hole where he went in red-eye called to wrinkle-skin. hear what little red-eye saith: 'nag, come up and dance with death!' eye to eye and head to head, _(keep the measure, nag.)_ this shall end when one is dead; _(at thy pleasure, nag.)_ turn for turn and twist for twist-- _(run and hide thee, nag.)_ hah! the hooded death has missed! _(woe betide thee, nag!)_ _'rikki-tikki-tavi.'_ * * * * * oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, and black are the waters that sparkled so green. the moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us at rest in the hollows that rustle between. where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! the storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas. _the white seal._ * * * * * you mustn't swim till you're six weeks old, or your head will be sunk by your heels; and summer gales and killer whales are bad for baby seals. are bad for baby seals, dear rat, as bad as bad can be; but splash and grow strong, and you can't be wrong, child of the open sea! _the white seal._ * * * * * i will remember what i was, i am sick of rope and chain. i will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs. i will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane. i will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs. i will go out until the day, until the morning break, out to the winds' untainted kiss, the waters' clean caress. i will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake. i will revisit my lost loves, and playmates master-less! _toomai of the elephants._ * * * * * the people of the eastern ice, they are melting like the snow-- they beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go. the people of the western ice, they learn to steal and fight; they sell their furs to the trading-post; they sell their souls to the white. the people of the southern ice, they trade with the whaler's crew; their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few. but the people of the elder ice, beyond the white man's ken-- their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the men! _quiquern._ * * * * * when ye say to tabaqui, 'my brother!' when ye call the hyena to meat, ye may cry the full truce with jacala--the belly that runs on four feet. _the undertakers._ * * * * * the night we felt the earth would move we stole and plucked him by the hand, because we loved him with the love that knows but cannot understand. and when the roaring hillside broke, and all our world fell down in rain, we saved him, we the little folk; but lo! he does not come again! mourn now, we saved him for the sake of such poor love as wild ones may. mourn ye! our brother will not wake, and his own kind drive us away! _the miracle of purun bhagat._ the egg-shell the wind took off with the sunset-- the fog came up with the tide, when the witch of the north took an egg-shell with a little blue devil inside. 'sink,' she said, 'or swim,' she said, 'it's all you will get from me. and that is the finish of _him_!' she said. and the egg-shell went to sea. the wind fell dead with the midnight-- the fog shut down like a sheet, when the witch of the north heard the egg-shell feeling by hand for a fleet. 'get!' she said, 'or you're gone,' she said, but the little blue devil said 'no!' 'the sights are just coming on,' he said, and he let the whitehead go. the wind got up with the morning-- and the fog blew off with the rain, when the witch of the north saw the egg-shell and the little blue devil again. 'did you swim?' she said. 'did you sink?' she said, and the little blue devil replied: 'for myself i swam, but i think,' he said, 'there's somebody sinking outside.' the king's task after the sack of the city, when rome was sunk to a name, in the years that the lights were darkened, or ever st. wilfrid came, low on the borders of britain (the ancient poets sing) between the cliff and the forest there ruled a saxon king. stubborn all were his people from cottar to overlord-- not to be cowed by the cudgel, scarce to be schooled by the sword; quick to turn at their pleasure, cruel to cross in their mood, and set on paths of their choosing as the hogs of andred's wood. laws they made in the witan--the laws of flaying and fine-- common, loppage and pannage, the theft and the track of kine-- statutes of tun and market for the fish and the malt and the meal-- the tax on the bramber packhorse and the tax on the hastings keel. over the graves of the druids and under the wreck of rome rudely but surely they bedded the plinth of the days to come. behind the feet of the legions and before the norseman's ire, rudely but greatly begat they the framing of state and shire. rudely but deeply they laboured, and their labour stands till now, if we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough. there came a king from hamtun, by bosenham he came. he filled use with slaughter, and lewes he gave to flame. he smote while they sat in the witan--sudden he smote and sore, that his fleet was gathered at selsea ere they mustered at cymen's ore. blithe went the saxons to battle, by down and wood and mere, but thrice the acorns ripened ere the western mark was clear. thrice was the beechmast gathered, and the beltane fires burned thrice, and the beeves were salted thrice ere the host returned. they drove that king from hamtun, by bosenham o'erthrown, out of rugnor to wilton they made his land their own. camps they builded at gilling, at basing and alresford, but wrath abode in the saxons from cottar to overlord. wrath at the weary war-game, at the foe that snapped and ran wolf-wise feigning and flying, and wolf-wise snatching his man. wrath for their spears unready, their levies new to the blades-- shame for the helpless sieges and the scornful ambuscades. at hearth and tavern and market, wherever the tale was told, shame and wrath had the saxons because of their boasts of old. and some would drink and deny it, and some would pray and atone; but the most part, after their anger, avouched that the sin was their own. wherefore, girding together, up to the witan they came, and as they had shouldered their bucklers so did they shoulder their blame. for that was the wont of the saxons (the ancient poets sing), and first they spoke in the witan and then they spoke to the king: 'edward king of the saxons, thou knowest from sire to son, 'one is the king and his people--in gain and ungain one. 'count we the gain together. with doubtings and spread dismays 'we have broken a foolish people--but after many days. 'count we the loss together. warlocks hampered our arms, 'we were tricked as by magic, we were turned as by charms. 'we went down to the battle and the road was plain to keep, 'but our angry eyes were holden, and we struck as they strike in sleep-- 'men new shaken from slumber, sweating, with eyes a-stare 'little blows uncertain dealt on the useless air. 'also a vision betrayed us, and a lying tale made bold 'that we looked to hold what we had not and to have what we did not hold: 'that a shield should give us shelter--that a sword should give us power-- 'a shield snatched up at a venture and a hilt scarce handled an hour: 'that being rich in the open, we should be strong in the close-- 'and the gods would sell us a cunning for the day that we met our foes. 'this was the work of wizards, but not with our foe they bide, 'in our own camp we took them, and their names are sloth and pride. 'our pride was before the battle: our sloth ere we lifted spear, 'but hid in the heart of the people as the fever hides in the mere, 'waiting only the war-game, the heat of the strife to rise 'as the ague fumes round oxeney when the rotting reed-bed dries. 'but now we are purged of that fever--cleansed by the letting of blood, 'something leaner of body--something keener of mood. 'and the men new-freed from the levies return to the fields again, 'matching a hundred battles, cottar and lord and thane. 'and they talk aloud in the temples where the ancient wargods are. 'they thumb and mock and belittle the holy harness of war. 'they jest at the sacred chariots, the robes and the gilded staff. 'these things fill them with laughter, they lean on their spears and laugh. 'the men grown old in the war-game, hither and thither they range-- 'and scorn and laughter together are sire and dam of change; 'and change may be good or evil--but we know not what it will bring, 'therefore our king must teach us. that is thy task, o king!' poseidon's law when the robust and brass-bound man commissioned first for sea his fragile raft, poseidon laughed, and 'mariner,' said he, 'behold, a law immutable i lay on thee and thine, that never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine. 'let zeus adjudge your landward kin, whose votive meal and salt at easy-cheated altars win oblivion for the fault, but you the unhoodwinked wave shall test--the immediate gulf condemn-- except ye owe the fates a jest, be slow to jest with them. 'ye shall not clear by greekly speech, nor cozen from your path the twinkling shoal, the leeward beach, and hadria's white-lipped wrath; nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud-avenging hosts; nor make at all, or all make good, your bulwarks and your boasts. 'now and henceforward serve unshod, through wet and wakeful shifts, a present and oppressive god, but take, to aid, my gifts-- the wide and windward-opening eye, the large and lavish hand, the soul that cannot tell a lie--except upon the land!' in dromond and in catafract--wet, wakeful, windward-eyed-- he kept poseidon's law intact (his ship and freight beside), but, once discharged the dromond's hold, the bireme beached once more, splendaciously mendacious rolled the brass-bound man ashore. the thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high, and where three hundred blades bit white the twin-propellers ply: the god that hailed, the keel that sailed, are changed beyond recall, but the robust and brass-bound man he is not changed at all! from punt returned, from phormio's fleet, from javan and gadire, he strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire, and, moist with much falernian or smoked massilian juice, revenges there the brass-bound man his long-enforced truce! a truthful song the bricklayer: _i tell this tale, which is strictly true, just by way of convincing you how very little, since things mere made, things have altered in the building trade._ a year ago, come the middle of march, we was building flats near the marble arch, when a thin young man with coal-black hair came up to watch us working there. now there wasn't a trick in brick or stone that this young man hadn't seen or known; nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul but this young man could use 'em all! then up and spoke the plumbyers bold, which was laying the pipes for the hot and cold: 'since you with us have made so free, will you kindly say what your name might be?' the young man kindly answered them: 'it might be lot or methusalem, or it might be moses (a man i hate), whereas it is pharaoh surnamed the great. 'your glazing is new and your plumbing's strange, but otherwise i perceive no change, and in less than a month if you do as i bid i'd learn you to build me a pyramid!' the sailor: _i tell this tale, which is stricter true, just by way of convincing you how very little, since things was made, things have altered in the shipwright's trade._ in blackwall basin yesterday a china barque re-fitting lay, when a fat old man with snow-white hair came up to watch us working there. now there wasn't a knot which the riggers knew but the old man made it--and better too; nor there wasn't a sheet, or a lift, or a brace. but the old man knew its lead and place. then up and spoke the caulkyers bold, which was packing the pump in the afterhold: 'since you with us have made so free, will you kindly tell what your name might be?' the old man kindly answered them: 'it might be japheth, it might be shem, or it might be ham (though his skin was dark), whereas it is noah, commanding the ark. 'your wheel is new and your pumps are strange, but otherwise i perceive no change, and in less than a week, if she did not ground, i'd sail this hooker the wide world round!' both: _we tell these tales, which are strictest true, just by way of convincing you how very little, since things was made, anything alters in any one's trade._ a smuggler's song if you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street. them that asks no questions isn't told a lie, watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark-- brandy for the parson, 'baccy for the clerk; laces for a lady, letters for a spy, and watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! running round the woodlump if you chance to find little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine, don't you shout to come and look, nor use 'em for your play. put the brishwood back again--and they'll be gone next day! if you see the stable-door setting open wide; if you see a tired horse lying down inside; if your mother mends a coat cut about and tore; if the lining's wet and warm--don't you ask no more! if you meet king george's men, dressed in blue and red, you be careful what you say, and mindful what is said. if they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin. don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been! knocks and footsteps round the house--whistles after dark-- you've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark. _trusty's_ here, and _pinchers_ here, and see how dumb they lie-- _they_ don't fret to follow when the gentlemen go by! if you do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance, you'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from france, with a cap of valenciennes, and a velvet hood-- a present from the gentlemen, along o' being good! five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark-- brandy for the parson, 'baccy for the clerk. them that asks no questions isn't told a lie-- watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! king henry vii. and the shipwrights (a.d. ) harry, our king in england, from london town is gone, and comen to hamull on the hoke in the countie of suthampton. for there lay _the mary of the tower_, his ship of war so strong, and he would discover, certaynely, if his shipwrights did him wrong. he told not none of his setting forth, nor yet where he would go (but only my lord of arundel), and meanly did he show, in an old jerkin and patched hose that no man might him mark; with his frieze hood and cloak above, he looked like any clerk. he was at hamull on the hoke about the hour of the tide. and saw the _mary_ haled into dock, the winter to abide, with all her tackle and habiliments which are the king his own; but then ran on his false shipwrights and stripped her to the bone. they heaved the main-mast overboard, that was of a trusty tree, and they wrote down it was spent and lost by force of weather at sea. but they sawen it into planks and strakes as far as it might go, to maken beds for their own wives and little children also. there was a knave called slingawai, he crope beneath the deck. crying: 'good felawes, come and see! the ship is nigh a wreck! for the storm that took our tall main-mast, it blew so fierce and fell, alack! it hath taken the kettles and pans, and this brass pott as well!' with that he set the pott on his head and hied him up the hatch, while all the shipwrights ran below to find what they might snatch; all except bob brygandyne and he was a yeoman good, he caught slingawai round the waist and threw him on to the mud. 'i have taken plank and rope and nail, without the king his leave, after the custom of portesmouth, but i will not suffer a thief. nay, never lift up thy hand at me! there's no clean hands in the trade-- steal in measure,' quo' brygandyne. 'there's measure in all things made!' 'gramercy, yeoman!' said our king. 'thy council liketh me.' and he pulled a whistle out of his neck and whistled whistles three. then came my lord of arundel pricking across the down, and behind him the mayor and burgesses of merry suthampton town. they drew the naughty shipwrights up, with the kettles in their hands, and bound them round the forecastle to wait the king's commands. but 'since ye have made your beds,' said the king, 'ye needs must lie thereon. for the sake of your wives and little ones--felawes, get you gone!' when they had beaten slingawai, out of his own lips our king appointed brygandyne to be clerk of all his ships. 'nay, never lift up thy hands to me--there's no clean hands in the trade. but steal in measure,' said harry our king. 'there's measure in all things made!' _god speed the 'mary of the tower,' the 'sovereign,' and 'grace dieu,' the 'sweepstakes' and the 'mary fortune,' and the 'henry of bristol' too! all tall ships that sail on, the sea, or in our harbours stand, that they may keep measure with harry our king and peace in engeland!_ the wet litany when the water's countenance blurrs 'twixt glance and second glance; when our tattered smokes forerun. ashen 'neath a silvered sun; when the curtain of the haze shuts upon our helpless ways-- hear the channel fleet at sea; _libera nos domine!_ when the engines' bated pulse scarcely thrills the nosing hulls; when the wash along the side sounds, a sudden, magnified; when the intolerable blast marks each blindfold minute passed; when the fog-buoy's squattering flight guides us through the haggard night; when the warning bugle blows; when the lettered doorways close; when our brittle townships press, impotent, on emptiness; when the unseen leadsmen lean questioning a deep unseen; when their lessened count they tell to a bridge invisible; when the hid and perilous cliffs return our cry to us; when the treble thickness spread swallows up our next-ahead; when her siren's frightened whine shows her sheering out of line; when, her passage undiscerned, we must turn where she has turned, hear the channel fleet at sea: _libera nos domine!_ the ballad of minepit shaw about the time that taverns shut and men can buy no beer, two lads went up to the keepers' hut to steal lord pelham's deer. night and the liquor was in their heads-- they laughed and talked no bounds, till they waked the keepers on their beds, and the keepers loosed the hounds. they had killed a hart, they had killed a hind, ready to carry away, when they heard a whimper down the wind and they heard a bloodhound bay. they took and ran across the fern, their crossbows in their hand, till they met a man with a green lantern that called and bade 'em stand. 'what are ye doing, o flesh and blood, and what's your foolish will, that you must break into minepit wood and wake the folk of the hill?' 'oh, we've broke into lord pelham's park, and killed lord pelham's deer, and if ever you heard a little dog bark you'll know why we come here. 'we ask you let us go our way, as fast as we can flee, for if ever you heard a bloodhound bay you'll know how pressed we be.' 'oh, lay your crossbows on the bank and drop the knife from your hand, and though the hounds are at your flank i'll save you where you stand!' they laid their crossbows on the bank, they threw their knives in the wood, and the ground before them opened and sank and saved 'em where they stood. 'oh, what's the roaring in our ears that strikes us well-nigh dumb?' 'oh, that is just how things appears according as they come.' 'what are the stars before our eyes that strike us well-nigh blind?' 'oh, that is just how things arise according as you find.' 'and why's our bed so hard to the bones excepting where it's cold?' 'oh, that's because it is precious stones excepting where 'tis gold. 'think it over as you stand. for i tell you without fail, if you haven't got into fairyland you're not in lewes gaol.' all night long they thought of it, and, come the dawn, they saw they'd tumbled into a great old pit, at the bottom of minepit shaw. and the keepers' hound had followed 'em close, and broke her neck in the fall; so they picked up their knives and their crossbows and buried the dog. that's all. but whether the man was a poacher too or a pharisee[a] so bold-- i reckon there's more things told than are true, and more things true than are told! [footnote a: a fairy.] heriot's ford 'what's that that hirples at my side?' _the foe that you must fight, my lord._ 'that rides as fast as i can ride?' _the shadow of your might, my lord._ 'then wheel my horse against the foe!' _he's down and overpast, my lord._ _you war against the sunset glow,_ _the judgment follows fast, my lord._ 'oh who will stay the sun's descent?' _king joshua he is dead, my lord._ 'i need an hour to repent!' _'tis what our sister said, my lord._ 'oh do not slay me in my sins!' _you're safe awhile with us, my lord._ 'nay, kill me ere my fear begins.' _we would not serve you thus, my lord._ 'where is the doom that i must face?' _three little leagues away, my lord._ 'then mend the horses' laggard pace!' _we need them for next day, my lord._ 'next day--next day! unloose my cords!' _our sister needed none, my lord. you had no mind to face our swords, and--where can cowards run, my lord?_ 'you would not kill the soul alive?' _'twas thus our sister cried, my lord._ 'i dare not die with none to shrive.' _but so our sister died, my lord._ 'then wipe the sweat from brow and cheek. _it runnels forth afresh, my lord._ 'uphold me--for the flesh is weak.' _you've finished with the flesh, my lord._ frankie's trade old horn to all atlantic said: _(a-hay o! to me o!')_ 'now where did frankie learn his trade? for he ran me down with a three-reef mains'le.' _(all round the horn!)_ atlantic answered:--'not from me! you'd better ask the cold north sea, for he ran me down under all plain canvas.' _(all round the horn!)_ the north sea answered:--'he's my man, for he came to me when he began-- frankie drake in an open coaster. _(all round the sands!)_ 'i caught him young and i used him sore, so you never shall startle frankie more, without capsizing earth and her waters. _(all round the sands!)_ 'i did not favour him at all. i made him pull and i made him haul-- and stand his trick with the common sailors. _(all round the sands!)_ 'i froze him stiff and i fogged him blind. and kicked him home with his road to find by what he could see in a three-day snow-storm _(all round the sands!)_ 'i learned him his trade o' winter nights, 'twixt mardyk fort and dunkirk lights on a five-knot tide with the forts a-firing. _(all round the sands!)_ 'before his beard began to shoot, i showed him the length of the spaniard's foot-- and i reckon he clapped the boot on it later. _(all round the sands!)_ 'if there's a risk which you can make. that's worse than he was used to take nigh every week in the way of his business; _(all round the sands!)_ 'if there's a trick that you can try, which he hasn't met in time gone by, not once or twice, but ten times over; _(all round the sands!)_ 'if you can teach him aught that's new, _(a-hay o! to me o!)_ i'll give you bruges and niewport too, and the ten tall churches that stand between 'em.' _storm along my gallant captains!_ _(all round the horn!)_ the juggler's song when the drums begin to beat down the street, when the poles are fetched and guyed, when the tight-rope's stretched and tied, when the dance-girls make salaam, when the snake-bag wakes alarm, when the pipes set up their drone, when the sharp-edged knives are thrown, when the red-hot coals are shown, to be swallowed by and bye-- _arré_ brethren, here come i! stripped to loin-cloth in the sun, search me well and watch me close! tell me how my tricks are done-- tell me how the mango grows? give a man who is not made to his trade swords to fling and catch again, coins to ring and snatch again, men to harm and cure again. snakes to charm and lure again-- he'll be hurt by his own blade, by his serpents disobeyed, by his clumsiness bewrayed, by the people laughed to scorn-- so 'tis not with juggler born! pinch of dust or withered flower, chance-flung nut or borrowed staff, serve his need and shore his power, bind the spell or loose the laugh! thorkild's song there's no wind along these seas. _out oars for stavanger!_ _forward all for stavanger!_ so we must wake the white-ash breeze, _let fall for stavanger!_ _a long pull for stavanger!_ oh, hear the benches creak and strain! _(a long pull for stavanger!)_ she thinks she smells the northland rain! _(a long pull for stavanger!)_ she thinks she smells the northland snow, and she's as glad as we to go. she thinks she smells the northland rime, and the dear dark nights of winter-time. she wants to be at her own home pier, to shift her sails and standing gear. she wants to be in her winter-shed. to strip herself and go to bed. her very bolts are sick for shore, and we--we want it ten times more! so all you gods that love brave men, send us a three-reef gale again! send us a gale, and watch us come, with close-cropped canvas slashing home! _but_--there's no wind on all these seas, _a long pull for stavanger!_ so we must wake the white-ash breeze, _a long pull for stavanger!_ 'angutivaun taina' song of the returning hunter (esquimaux). our gloves are stiff with the frozen blood, our furs with the drifted snow, as we come in with the seal--the seal! in from the edge of the floe. _an jana! aua! oha! haq!_ and the yelping dog-teams go, and the long whips crack, and the men come back, back from the edge of the floe! we tracked our seal to his secret place, we heard him scratch below, we made our mark, and we watched beside, out on the edge of the floe. we raised our lance when he rose to breathe, we drove it downward--so! and we played him thus, and we killed him thus, out on the edge of the floe. our gloves are glued with the frozen blood, our eyes with the drifting snow; but we come back to our wives again, back from the edge of the floe! _au jana! aua! oha! haq! and the loaded dog-teams go, and the wives can hear their men come back, back from the edge of the floe!_ hunting-song of the seeonee pack as the dawn was breaking the sambhur belled-- once, twice and again! and a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up from the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup. this i, scouting alone, beheld, once, twice and again! as the dawn was breaking the sambhur belled-- once, twice and again! and a wolf stole back, and a wolf stole back to carry the word to the waiting pack, and we sought and we found and we bayed on his track once, twice and again! as the dawn was breaking the wolf pack yelled once, twice and again! feet in the jungle that leave no mark! eyes that can see in the dark--the dark! tongue--give tongue to it! hark! o hark! once, twice and again! song of the men's side (neolithic) once we feared the beast--when he followed us we ran, ran very fast though we knew it was not right that the beast should master man; but what could we flint-workers do? the beast only grinned at our spears round his ears-- grinned at the hammers that we made; but now we will hunt him for the life with the knife-- and this is the buyer of the blade! _room for his shadow on the grass--let it pass! to left and right--stand clear! this is the buyer of the blade--be afraid! this is the great god tyr!_ tyr thought hard till he hammered out a plan, for he knew it was not right (and it _is_ not right) that the beast should master man; so he went to the children of the night. he begged a magic knife of their make for our sake. when he begged for the knife they said: 'the price of the knife you would buy is an eye!' and that was the price he paid. _tell it to the barrows of the dead--run ahead! shout it so the women's side can hear! this is the buyer of the blade--be afraid! this is the great god tyr!_ our women and our little ones may walk on the chalk, as far as we can see them and beyond. we shall not be anxious for our sheep when we keep tally at the shearing-pond. we can eat with both our elbows on our knees, if we please, we can sleep after meals in the sun; for shepherd of the twilight is dismayed at the blade, feet-in-the-night have run! dog-without-a-master goes away (hai, tyr, aie!), devil-in-the-dusk has run! then: _room for his shadow on the grass--let it pass! to left and right--stand clear! this is the buyer of the blade--be afraid! this is the great god tyr!_ darzee's chaunt (sung in honour of rikki-tikki-tavi) singer and tailor am i-- doubled the joys that i know-- proud of my lilt to the sky, proud of the house that i sew-- over and under, so weave i my music--so weave i the house that i sew. sing to your fledglings again, mother, o lift up your head! evil that plagued us is slain, death in the garden lies dead. terror that hid in the roses is impotent--flung on the dung-hill and dead! who hath delivered us, who? tell me his nest and his name. rikki, the valiant, the true, tikki, with eyeballs of flame, rik-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame. give him the thanks of the birds, bowing with tail-feathers spread! praise him with nightingale-words-- nay, i will praise him instead. hear! i will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed rikki, with eyeballs of red! _(here rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is lost.)_ the four angels as adam lay a-dreaming beneath the apple tree, the angel of the earth came down, and offered earth in fee. but adam did not need it, nor the plough he would not speed it, singing:--'earth and water, air and fire, what more can mortal man desire?' (the apple tree's in bud.) as adam lay a-dreaming beneath the apple tree, the angel of the waters offered all the seas in fee. but adam would not take 'em, nor the ships he wouldn't make 'em, singing:--'water, earth and air and fire, what more can mortal man desire?' (the apple tree's in leaf.) as adam lay a-dreaming beneath the apple tree, the angel of the air he offered all the air in fee. but adam did not crave it, nor the flight he wouldn't brave it, singing:--'air and water, earth and fire, what more can mortal man desire?' (the apple tree's in bloom.) as adam lay a-dreaming beneath the apple tree, the angel of the fire rose up and not a word said he, but he wished a flame and made it, and in adam's heart he laid it, singing:--'fire, fire, burning fire! stand up and reach your heart's desire!' (the apple blossom's set.) as adam was a-working outside of eden-wall, he used the earth, he used the seas, he used the air and all; and out of black disaster he arose to be the master of earth and water, air and fire, but never reached his heart's desire! (the apple tree's cut down!) the prayer my brother kneels, so saith kabir, to stone and brass in heathen-wise, but in my brother's voice i hear my own unanswered agonies. his god is as his fates assign, his prayer is all the world's--and mine. _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original | | document have been preserved. | | | | this e-book has dialect and unusual spelling. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * soldier stories soldier stories by rudyard kipling author of "plain tales from the hills," "under the deodars," "the phantom rickshaw," "wee willie winkie," etc., etc. _with numerous illustrations_ new york the macmillan company london: macmillan & co., ltd. _all rights reserved_ copyright, , by the macmillan company. norwood press j.s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith norwood mass. u.s.a. contents page with the main guard the drums of the fore and aft the man who was the courting of dinah shadd the incarnation of krishna mulvaney the taking of lungtungpen the madness of private ortheris list of illustrations to face page 'put yer 'ead between your legs. it'll go orf in a minute' 'he ran forward wid the haymakers' lift on his bay'nit' he picked her up in the growing light, and set her on his shoulder 'hey! what? are you going to argue with _me_?' said the colonel cris slid an arm round his neck the men strolled across the tracks to inspect the afghan prisoners the tune settled into full swing, and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder '_rung ho_, hira singh!' he found the spring it is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of cossacks 'thin whin the kettle was to be filled, dinah came in--my dinah' '"my collar-bone's bruk," sez he' '"the half av that i'll take," sez she' '"out of this," sez he. "i'm in charge av this section av construction."--"i'm in charge av mesilf," sez i, "an' it's like i will stay a while"' 'nine roun's they were even matched, an' at the tenth----' there pranced a portent in the face of the moon 'i was krishna tootlin' on the flute' '"shtrip, bhoys," sez i. "shtrip to the buff, an' shwim in where glory waits!"' 'there was a _melly_ av a sumpshus kind for a whoile' ortheris heaved a big sigh we set off at the double and found him plunging about wildly through the grass [illustration] with the main guard der jungere uhlanen sit round mit open mouth while breitmann tell dem stdories of fightin' in the south; und gif dem moral lessons, how before der battle pops, take a little prayer to himmel und a goot long drink of schnapps. _hans breitmann's ballads._ 'mary, mother av mercy, fwhat the divil possist us to take an' kape this melancolious counthry? answer me that, sorr.' it was mulvaney who was speaking. the time was one o'clock of a stifling june night, and the place was the main gate of fort amara, most desolate and least desirable of all fortresses in india. what i was doing there at that hour is a question which only concerns m'grath the sergeant of the guard, and the men on the gate. 'slape,' said mulvaney, 'is a shuparfluous necessity. this gyard'll shtay lively till relieved.' he himself was stripped to the waist; learoyd on the next bedstead was dripping from the skinful of water which ortheris, clad only in white trousers, had just sluiced over his shoulders; and a fourth private was muttering uneasily as he dozed open-mouthed in the glare of the great guard-lantern. the heat under the bricked archway was terrifying. 'the worrst night that iver i remimber. eyah! is all hell loose this tide?' said mulvaney. a puff of burning wind lashed through the wicket-gate like a wave of the sea, and ortheris swore. 'are ye more heasy, jock?' he said to learoyd. 'put yer 'ead between your legs. it'll go orf in a minute.' 'ah don't care. ah would not care, but ma heart is plaayin' tivvy-tivvy on ma ribs. let me die! oh, leave me die!' groaned the huge yorkshireman, who was feeling the heat acutely, being of fleshly build. the sleeper under the lantern roused for a moment and raised himself on his elbow.--'die and be damned then!' he said. '_i_'m damned and i can't die!' 'who's that?' i whispered, for the voice was new to me. 'gentleman born,' said mulvaney; 'corp'ril wan year, sargint nex'. red-hot on his c'mission, but dhrinks like a fish. he'll be gone before the cowld weather's here. so!' [illustration: 'put yer 'ead between your legs. it'll go orf in a minute.'--p. .] he slipped his boot, and with the naked toe just touched the trigger of his martini. ortheris misunderstood the movement, and the next instant the irishman's rifle was dashed aside, while ortheris stood before him, his eyes blazing with reproof. 'you!' said ortheris. 'my gawd, _you_! if it was you, wot would _we_ do?' 'kape quiet, little man,' said mulvaney, putting him aside, but very gently; ''tis not me, nor will ut be me whoile dinah shadd's here. i was but showin' something.' learoyd, bowed on his bedstead, groaned, and the gentleman-ranker sighed in his sleep. ortheris took mulvaney's tendered pouch, and we three smoked gravely for a space while the dust-devils danced on the glacis and scoured the red-hot plain. 'pop?' said ortheris, wiping his forehead. 'don't tantalise wid talkin' av dhrink, or i'll shtuff you into your own breech-block an'--fire you off!' grunted mulvaney. ortheris chuckled, and from a niche in the veranda produced six bottles of gingerade. 'where did ye get ut, ye machiavel?' said mulvaney. ''tis no bazar pop.' ''ow do _hi_ know wot the orf'cers drink?' answered ortheris. 'arst the mess-man.' 'ye'll have a disthrict coort-martial settin' on ye yet, me son,' said mulvaney, 'but'--he opened a bottle--'i will not report ye this time. fwhat's in the mess-kid is mint for the belly, as they say, 'specially whin that mate is dhrink. here's luck! a bloody war or a--no, we've got the sickly season. war, thin!'--he waved the innocent 'pop' to the four quarters of heaven. 'bloody war! north, east, south, an' west! jock, ye quackin' hayrick, come an' dhrink.' but learoyd, half mad with the fear of death presaged in the swelling veins of his neck, was begging his maker to strike him dead, and fighting for more air between his prayers. a second time ortheris drenched the quivering body with water, and the giant revived. 'an' ah divn't see thot a mon is i' fettle for gooin' on to live; an' ah divn't see thot there is owt for t' livin' for. hear now, lads! ah'm tired--tired. there's nobbut watter i' ma bones. let me die!' the hollow of the arch gave back learoyd's broken whisper in a bass boom. mulvaney looked at me hopelessly, but i remembered how the madness of despair had once fallen upon ortheris, that weary, weary afternoon in the banks of the khemi river, and how it had been exorcised by the skilful magician mulvaney. 'talk, terence!' i said, 'or we shall have learoyd slinging loose, and he'll be worse than ortheris was. talk! he'll answer to your voice.' almost before ortheris had deftly thrown all the rifles of the guard on mulvaney's bedstead, the irishman's voice was uplifted as that of one in the middle of a story, and, turning to me, he said:-- 'in barricks or out of it, as _you_ say, sorr, an oirish rig'mint is the divil an' more. 'tis only fit for a young man wid eddicated fisteses. oh the crame av disruption is an oirish rig'mint, an' rippin', tearin', ragin' scattherers in the field av war! my first rig'mint was oirish--faynians an' rebils to the heart av their marrow was they, an' _so_ they fought for the widdy betther than most, bein' contrairy--oirish. they was the black tyrone. you've heard av thim, sorr?' heard of them! i knew the black tyrone for the choicest collection of unmitigated blackguards, dog-stealers, robbers of hen-roosts, assaulters of innocent citizens, and recklessly daring heroes in the army list. half europe and half asia has had cause to know the black tyrone--good luck be with their tattered colours as glory has ever been! 'they _was_ hot pickils an' ginger! i cut a man's head tu deep wid my belt in the days av my youth, an', afther some circumstances which i will oblitherate, i came to the ould rig'mint, bearin' the character av a man wid hands an' feet. but, as i was goin' to tell you, i fell acrost the black tyrone agin wan day whin we wanted thim powerful bad. orth'ris, me son, fwhat was the name av that place where they sint wan comp'ny av us an' wan av the tyrone roun' a hill an' down again, all for to tache the paythans something they'd niver learned before? afther ghuzni 'twas.' 'don't know what the bloomin' paythans called it. we called it silver's theayter. you know that, sure!' 'silver's theatre--so 'twas. a gut betune two hills, as black as a bucket, an' as thin as a girl's waist. there was over-many paythans for our convaynience in the gut, an' begad they called thimselves a reserve--bein' impident by natur'! our scotchies an' lashins av gurkys was poundin' into some paythan rig'ments, i think 'twas. scotchies and gurkys are twins bekaze they're so onlike, an' they get dhrunk together when god plazes. as i was sayin', they sint wan comp'ny av the ould an' wan av the tyrone to double up the hill an' clane out the paythan reserve. orf'cers was scarce in thim days, fwhat wid dysintry an' not takin' care av thimselves, an' we was sint out wid only wan orf'cer for the comp'ny; but he was a man that had his feet beneath him, an' all his teeth in their sockuts.' 'who was he?' i asked. 'captain o'neil--old crook--cruikna-bulleen--him that i tould ye that tale av whin he was in burma.[ ] hah! he was a man. the tyrone tuk a little orf'cer bhoy, but divil a bit was he in command, as i'll dimonstrate presintly. we an' they came over the brow av the hill, wan on each side av the gut, an' there was that ondacint reserve waitin' down below like rats in a pit. '"howld on, men," sez crook, who tuk a mother's care av us always. "rowl some rocks on thim by way av visitin'-kyards." we hadn't rowled more than twinty bowlders, an' the paythans was beginnin' to swear tremenjus, whin the little orf'cer bhoy av the tyrone shqueaks out acrost the valley:--"fwhat the devil an' all are you doin', shpoilin' the fun for my men? do ye not see they'll stand?" '"faith, that's a rare pluckt wan!" sez crook. "niver mind the rocks, men. come along down an' tak tay wid thim!" '"there's damned little sugar in ut!" sez my rear-rank man; but crook heard. '"have ye not all got spoons?" he sez, laughin', an' down we wint as fast as we cud. learoyd bein' sick at the base, he, av coorse, was not there.' 'thot's a lie!' said learoyd, dragging his bedstead nearer. 'ah gotten _thot_ theer, an' you know it, mulvaney.' he threw up his arms, and from the right arm-pit ran, diagonally through the fell of his chest, a thin white line terminating near the fourth left rib. 'my mind's goin',' said mulvaney, the unabashed. 'ye were there. fwhat was i thinkin' of? 'twas another man, av coorse. well, you'll remimber thin, jock, how we an' the tyrone met wid a bang at the bottom an' got jammed past all movin' among the paythans?' 'ow! it _was_ a tight 'ole. i was squeezed till i thought i'd bloomin' well bust,' said ortheris, rubbing his stomach meditatively. ''twas no place for a little man, but _wan_ little man'--mulvaney put his hand on ortheris's shoulder--'saved the life av me. there we shtuck, for divil a bit did the paythans flinch, an' divil a bit dare we; our business bein' to clear 'em out. an' the most exthryordinar' thing av all was that we an' they just rushed into each other's arrums, an' there was no firing for a long time. nothin' but knife an' bay'nit when we cud get our hands free: an' that was not often. we was breast-on to thim, an' the tyrone was yelpin' behind av us in a way i didn't see the lean av at first. but i knew later, an' so did the paythans. '"knee to knee!" sings out crook, wid a laugh whin the rush av our comin' into the gut shtopped, an' he was huggin' a hairy great paythan, neither bein' able to do anything to the other, tho' both was wishful. '"breast to breast!" he sez, as the tyrone was pushin' us forward closer an' closer. '"an' hand over back!" sez a sargint that was behin'. i saw a sword lick out past crook's ear, an' the paythan was tuck in the apple av his throat like a pig at dromeen fair. '"thank ye, brother inner guard," sez crook, cool as a cucumber widout salt. "i wanted that room." an' he wint forward by the thickness av a man's body, havin' turned the paythan undher him. the man bit the heel off crook's boot in his death-bite. '"push, men!" sez crook. "push, ye paper-backed beggars!" he sez. "am i to pull ye through?" so we pushed, an' we kicked, an' we swung, an' we swore, an' the grass bein' slippery our heels wouldn't bite, an' god help the front-rank man that wint down that day!' ''ave you ever bin in the pit hentrance o' the vic. on a thick night?' interrupted ortheris. 'it was worse nor that, for they was goin' one way, an' we wouldn't 'ave it. leastaways, i 'adn't much to say.' 'faith, me son, ye said ut, thin. i kep' the little man betune my knees as long as i cud, but he was pokin' roun' wid his bay'nit, blindin' and stiffin' feroshus. the devil of a man is orth'ris in a ruction--aren't ye?' said mulvaney. 'don't make game!' said the cockney. 'i knowed i wasn't no good then, but i guv 'em compot from the lef' flank when we opened out. no!' he said, bringing down his hand with a thump on the bedstead, 'a bay'nit ain't no good to a little man--might as well 'ave a bloomin' fishin'-rod! i 'ate a clawin', maulin' mess, but gimme a breech that's wore out a bit, an' hamminition one year in store, to let the powder kiss the bullet, an' put me somewheres where i ain't trod on by 'ulkin swine like you, an' s'elp me gawd, i could bowl you over five times outer seven at height 'undred. would yer try, you lumberin' hirishman?' 'no, ye wasp. i've seen ye do ut. i say there's nothin' better than the bay'nit, wid a long reach, a double twist av ye can, an' a slow recover.' 'dom the bay'nit,' said learoyd, who had been listening intently. 'look a-here!' he picked up a rifle an inch below the foresight with an underhanded action, and used it exactly as a man would use a dagger. 'sitha,' said he softly, 'thot's better than owt, for a mon can bash t' faace wi' thot, an', if he divn't, he can breeak t' forearm o' t' gaard. 'tis not i' t' books, though. gie me t' butt.' 'each does ut his own way, like makin' love,' said mulvaney quietly; 'the butt or the bay'nit or the bullet accordin' to the natur' av the man. well, as i was sayin', we shtuck there breathin' in each other's faces an' swearin' powerful; orth'ris cursin' the mother that bore him bekaze he was not three inches taller. 'prisintly he sez:--"duck, ye lump, an' i can get at a man over your shouldher!" '"you'll blow me head off," i sez, throwin' my arm clear; "go through under my arm-pit, ye blood-thirsty little scutt," sez i, "but don't shtick me or i'll wring your ears round." 'fwhat was ut ye gave the paythan man forninst me, him that cut at me whin i cudn't move hand or foot? hot or cowld was ut?' 'cold,' said ortheris, 'up an' under the rib-jint. 'e come down flat. best for you 'e did.' 'thrue, my son! this jam thing that i'm talkin' about lasted for five minutes good, an' thin we got our arms clear an' wint in. i misremimber exactly fwhat i did, but i didn't want dinah to be a widdy at the depot. thin, after some promishkuous hackin' we shtuck again, an' the tyrone behin' was callin' us dogs an' cowards an' all manner av names; we barrin' their way. '"fwhat ails the tyrone?" thinks i; "they've the makin's av a most convanient fight here." 'a man behind me sez beseechful an' in a whisper:--"let me get at thim! for the love av mary give me room beside ye, ye tall man!" '"an' who are you that's so anxious to be kilt?" sez i, widout turnin' my head, for the long knives was dancin' in front like the sun on donegal bay when ut's rough. '"we've seen our dead," he sez, squeezin' into me; "our dead that was men two days gone! an' me that was his cousin by blood could not bring tim coulan off? let me get on," he sez, "let me get to thim or i'll run ye through the back!" '"my troth," thinks i, "if the tyrone have seen their dead, god help the paythans this day!" an' thin i knew why the oirish was ragin' behind us as they was. 'i gave room to the man, an' he ran forward wid the haymakers' lift on his bay'nit an' swung a paythan clear off his feet by the belly-band av the brute, an' the iron bruk at the lockin'-ring. '"tim coulan'll slape easy to-night," sez he wid a grin; an' the next minut his head was in two halves and he wint down grinnin' by sections. 'the tyrone was pushin' an' pushin' in, an' our men were swearin' at thim, an' crook was workin' away in front av us all, his sword-arm swingin' like a pump-handle; an' his revolver spittin' like a cat. but the strange thing av ut was the quiet that lay upon. 'twas like a fight in a drame--except for thim that was dead. [illustration: 'he ran forward wid the haymakers' lift on his bay'nit.'--p. .] 'whin i gave room to the oirishman i was expinded an' forlorn in my inside. 'tis a way i have, savin' your presince, sorr, in action. "let me out, bhoys," sez i, backin' in among thim. "i'm goin' to be onwell!" faith they gave me room at the wurrd, though they would not ha' given room for all hell wid the chill off. when i got clear, i was, savin' your presince, sorr, outragis sick bekaze i had dhrunk heavy that day. 'well an' far out av harm was a sargint av the tyrone sittin' on the little orf'cer bhoy who had stopped crook from rowlin' the rocks. oh, he was a beautiful bhoy, an' the long black curses was sliding out av his innocint mouth like morning-jew from a rose! '"fwhat have you got there?" sez i to the sargint. '"wan av her majesty's bantams wid his spurs up," sez he. "he's goin' to coort-martial me." '"let me go!" sez the little orf'cer bhoy. "let me go and command my men!" manin' thereby the black tyrone which was beyond any command--ay, even av they had made the divil a field-orf'cer. '"his father howlds my mother's cow-feed in clonmel," sez the man that was sittin' on him. "will i go back to _his_ mother an' tell her that i've let him throw himself away? lie still, ye little pinch av dynamite, an' coort-martial me aftherwards." '"good," sez i; "'tis the likes av him makes the likes av the commandher-in-chief, but we must presarve thim. fwhat d'you want to do, sorr?" sez i, very politeful. '"kill the beggars--kill the beggars!" he shqueaks, his big blue eyes brimmin' wid tears. '"an' how'll ye do that?" sez i. "you've shquibbed off your revolver like a child wid a cracker; you can make no play wid that fine large sword av yours; an' your hand's shakin' like an asp on a leaf. lie still and grow," sez i. '"get back to your comp'ny," sez he; "you're insolint!" '"all in good time," sez i, "but i'll have a dhrink first." 'just thin crook comes up, blue an' white all over where he wasn't red. '"wather!" sez he; "i'm dead wid drouth! oh, but it's a gran' day!" 'he dhrank half a skinful, and the rest he tilts into his chest, an' it fair hissed on the hairy hide av him. he sees the little orf'cer bhoy undher the sargint. '"fwhat's yonder?" sez he. '"mutiny, sorr," sez the sargint, an' the orf'cer bhoy begins pleadin' pitiful to crook to be let go, but divil a bit wud crook budge. '"kape him there," he sez, "'tis no child's work this day. by the same token," sez he, "i'll confishcate that iligant nickel-plated scent-sprinkler av yours, for my own has been vomitin' dishgraceful!" 'the fork av his hand was black wid the back-spit av the machine. so he tuk the orf'cer bhoy's revolver. ye may look, sorr, but, by my faith, _there's a dale more done in the field than iver gets into field ordhers!_ '"come on, mulvaney," sez crook; "is this a coort-martial?" the two av us wint back together into the mess an' the paythans were still standin' up. they was not _too_ impart'nint though, for the tyrone was callin' wan to another to remimber tim coulan. 'crook stopped outside av the strife an' looked anxious, his eyes rowlin' roun'. '"fwhat is ut, sorr?" sez i; "can i get ye anything?" '"where's a bugler?" sez he. 'i wint into the crowd--our men was dhrawin' breath behin' the tyrone who was fightin' like sowls in tormint--an' prisintly i came acrost little frehan, our bugler bhoy, pokin' roun' among the best wid a rifle an' bay'nit. '"is amusin' yoursilf fwhat you're paid for, ye limb?" sez i, catchin' him by the scruff. "come out av that an' attind to your duty," i sez; but the bhoy was not pleased. '"i've got wan," sez he, grinnin', "big as you, mulvaney, an' fair half as ugly. let me go get another." 'i was dishpleased at the personability av that remark, so i tucks him under my arm an' carries him to crook who was watchin' how the fight wint. crook cuffs him till the bhoy cries, an' thin sez nothin' for a whoile. 'the paythans began to flicker onaisy, an' our men roared. "opin ordher! double!" sez crook. "blow, child, blow for the honour av the british arrmy!" 'that bhoy blew like a typhoon, an' the tyrone an' we opined out as the paythans broke, an' i saw that fwhat had gone before wud be kissin' an' huggin' to fwhat was to come. we'd dhruv them into a broad part av the gut whin they gave, an' thin we opined out an' fair danced down the valley, dhrivin' thim before us. oh, 'twas lovely, an' stiddy, too! there was the sargints on the flanks av what was left av us, kapin' touch, an' the fire was runnin' from flank to flank, an' the paythans was dhroppin'. we opined out wid the widenin' av the valley, an' whin the valley narrowed we closed again like the shticks on a lady's fan, an' at the far ind av the gut where they thried to stand, we fair blew them off their feet, for we had expinded very little ammunition by reason av the knife work.' 'hi used thirty rounds goin' down that valley,' said ortheris, 'an' it was gentleman's work. might 'a' done it in a white 'andkerchief an' pink silk stockin's, that part. hi was on in that piece.' 'you could ha' heard the tyrone yellin' a mile away,' said mulvaney, 'an' 'twas all their sargints cud do to get thim off. they was mad--mad--mad! crook sits down in the quiet that fell when we had gone down the valley, an' covers his face wid his hands. prisintly we all came back again accordin' to our natures and disposishins, for they, mark you, show through the hide av a man in that hour. '"bhoys! bhoys!" sez crook to himself. "i misdoubt we could ha' engaged at long range an' saved betther men than me." he looked at our dead an' said no more. '"captain dear," sez a man av the tyrone, comin' up wid his mouth bigger than iver his mother kissed ut, spittin' blood like a whale; "captain dear," sez he, "if wan or two in the shtalls have been discommoded, the gallery have enjoyed the performinces av a roshus." 'thin i knew that man for the dublin dock-rat he was--wan av the bhoys that made the lessee av silver's theatre gray before his time wid tearin' out the bowils av the benches an' t'rowin' thim into the pit. so i passed the wurrud that i knew when i was in the tyrone an' we lay in dublin. "i don't know who 'twas," i whispers, "an' i don't care, but anyways i'll knock the face av you, tim kelly." '"eyah!" sez the man, "was you there too? we'll call ut silver's theatre." half the tyrone, knowin' the ould place, tuk ut up: so we called ut silver's theatre. 'the little orf'cer bhoy av the tyrone was thremblin' an' cryin'. he had no heart for the coort-martials that he talked so big upon. "ye'll do well later," sez crook very quiet, "for not bein' allowed to kill yourself for amusemint." '"i'm a dishgraced man!" sez the little orf'cer bhoy. '"put me undher arrest, sorr, if you will, but, by my sowl, i'd do ut again sooner than face your mother wid you dead," sez the sargint that had sat on his head, standin' to attention an' salutin'. but the young wan only cried as tho' his little heart was breakin'. 'thin another man av the tyrone came up, wid the fog av fightin' on him.' 'the what, mulvaney?' 'fog av fightin'. you know, sorr, that, like makin' love, ut takes each man diff'rint. now i can't help bein' powerful sick whin i'm in action. orth'ris, here, niver stops swearin' from ind to ind, an' the only time that learoyd opins his mouth to sing is whin he is messin' wid other people's heads; for he's a dhirty fighter is jock. recruities sometime cry, an' sometime they don't know fwhat they do, an' sometime they are all for cuttin' throats an' such-like dirtiness; but some men get heavy-dead-dhrunk on the fightin'. this man was. he was staggerin', an' his eyes were half-shut, an' we cud hear him dhraw breath twinty yards away. he sees the little orf'cer bhoy, an' comes up, talkin' thick an' drowsy to himsilf. "blood the young whelp!" he sez; "blood the young whelp;" an' wid that he threw up his arms, shpun roun', an' dropped at our feet, dead as a paythan, an' there was niver sign or scratch on him. they said 'twas his heart was rotten, but oh, 'twas a quare thing to see! 'thin we went to bury our dead, for we wud not lave thim to the paythans, an' in movin' among the haythen we nearly lost that little orf'cer bhoy. he was for givin' wan divil wather and layin' him aisy against a rock. "be careful, sorr," sez i; "a wounded paythan's worse than a live wan." my troth, before the words was out of my mouth, the man on the ground fires at the orf'cer bhoy lanin' over him, an' i saw the helmit fly. i dropped the butt on the face av the man an' tuk his pistol. the little orf'cer bhoy turned very white, for the hair av half his head was singed away. '"i tould you so, sorr," sez i; an', afther that, when he wanted to help a paythan i stud wid the muzzle contagious to the ear. they dare not do anythin' but curse. the tyrone was growlin' like dogs over a bone that has been taken away too soon, for they had seen their dead an' they wanted to kill ivry sowl on the ground. crook tould thim that he'd blow the hide off any man that misconducted himself; but, seeing that ut was the first time the tyrone had iver seen their dead, i do not wondher they were on the sharp. 'tis a shameful sight! whin i first saw ut i wud niver ha' given quarter to any man not of the khaibar--no, nor woman either, for the women used to come out afther dhark--auggrh! 'well, evenshually we buried our dead an' tuk away our wounded, an' come over the brow av the hills to see the scotchies an' the gurkys taking tay with the paythans in bucketsfuls. we were a gang av dissolute ruffians, for the blood had caked the dust, an' the sweat had cut the cake, an' our bay'nits was hangin' like butchers' steels betune ur legs, an' most av us were marked one way or another. 'a staff orf'cer man, clean as a new rifle, rides up an' sez: "what damned scarecrows are you?" '"a comp'ny av her majesty's black tyrone an' wan av the ould rig'mint," sez crook very quiet, givin' our visitors the flure as 'twas. '"oh!" sez the staff orf'cer; "did you dislodge that reserve?" '"no!" sez crook, an' the tyrone laughed. '"thin fwhat the divil have ye done?" '"disthroyed ut," sez crook, an' he took us on, but not before toomey that was in the tyrone sez aloud, his voice somewhere in his stummick: "fwhat in the name av misfortune does this parrit widout a tail mane by shtoppin' the road av his betthers?" 'the staff orf'cer wint blue, an' toomey makes him pink by changin' to the voice av a minowderin' woman an' sayin': "come an' kiss me, major dear, for me husband's at the wars an' i'm all alone at the depot." 'the staff orf'cer wint away, an' i cud see crook's shoulthers shakin'. 'his corp'ril checks toomey. "lave me alone," sez toomey, widout a wink. "i was his bâtman before he was married an' he knows fwhat i mane, av you don't. there's nothin' like livin' in the hoight av society." d'you remimber that, orth'ris!' 'hi do. toomey, 'e died in 'orspital, next week it was, 'cause i bought 'arf his kit; an' i remember after that----' 'guarrd, turn out!' the relief had come; it was four o'clock. 'i'll catch a kyart for you, sorr,' said mulvaney, diving hastily into his accoutrements. 'come up to the top av the fort an' we'll pershue our invistigations into m'grath's shtable.' the relieved guard strolled round the main bastion on its way to the swimming-bath, and learoyd grew almost talkative. ortheris looked into the fort ditch and across the plain. 'ho! it's weary waitin' for ma-ary!' he hummed; 'but i'd like to kill some more bloomin' paythans before my time's up. war! bloody war! north, east, south, and west.' 'amen,' said learoyd slowly. 'fwhat's here?' said mulvaney, checking at a blur of white by the foot of the old sentry-box. he stooped and touched it. 'it's norah--norah m'taggart! why, nonie darlin', fwhat are ye doin' out av your mother's bed at this time?' the two-year-old child of sergeant m'taggart must have wandered for a breath of cool air to the very verge of the parapet of the fort ditch. her tiny night-shift was gathered into a wisp round her neck and she moaned in her sleep. 'see there!' said mulvaney; 'poor lamb! look at the heat-rash on the innocint skin av her. 'tis hard--crool hard even for us. fwhat must it be for these? wake up, nonie, your mother will be woild about you. begad, the child might ha' fallen into the ditch!' [illustration: he picked her up in the growing light, and set her on his shoulder.--p. .] he picked her up in the growing light, and set her on his shoulder, and her fair curls touched the grizzled stubble of his temples. ortheris and learoyd followed snapping their fingers, while norah smiled at them a sleepy smile. then carolled mulvaney, clear as a lark, dancing the baby on his arm:-- 'if any young man should marry you, say nothin' about the joke; that iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box, wrapped up in a soldier's cloak. 'though, on my sowl, nonie,' he said gravely, 'there was not much cloak about you. niver mind, you won't dhress like this ten years to come. kiss your friends an' run along to your mother.' nonie, set down close to the married quarters, nodded with the quiet obedience of the soldier's child, but, ere she pattered off over the flagged path, held up her lips to be kissed by the three musketeers. ortheris wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swore sentimentally; learoyd turned pink; and the two walked away together. the yorkshireman lifted up his voice and gave in thunder the chorus of _the sentry box_, while ortheris piped at his side. ''bin to a bloomin' sing-song, you two?' said the artilleryman, who was taking his cartridge down to the morning gun. 'you're over merry for these dashed days.' 'i bid ye take care o' the brat, said he, for it comes of a noble race,' learoyd bellowed. the voices died out in the swimming-bath. 'oh, terence!' i said, dropping into mulvaney's speech, when we were alone, 'it's you that have the tongue!' he looked at me wearily; his eyes were sunk in his head, and his face was drawn and white. 'eyah!' said he; 'i've blandandhered thim through the night somehow, but can thim that helps others help thimselves? answer me that, sorr!' and over the bastions of fort amara broke the pitiless day. footnotes: [ ] now first of the foemen of boh da thone was captain o'neil of the black tyrone. _the ballad of boh da thone._ [illustration] the drums of the fore and aft in the army list they still stand as 'the fore and fit princess hohenzollern-sigmaringen-auspach's merthyr-tydfilshire own royal loyal light infantry, regimental district a,' but the army through all its barracks and canteens knows them now as the 'fore and aft.' they may in time do something that shall make their new title honourable, but at present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them 'fore and aft' does so at the risk of the head which is on his shoulders. two words breathed into the stables of a certain cavalry regiment will bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language; but a whisper of 'fore and aft' will bring out this regiment with rifles. their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish the job in style. but for a time all their world knows that they were openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking, and afraid. the men know it; their officers know it; the horse guards know it, and when the next war comes the enemy will know it also. there are two or three regiments of the line that have a black mark against their names which they will then wipe out; and it will be excessively inconvenient for the troops upon whom they do their wiping. the courage of the british soldier is officially supposed to be above proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. the exceptions are decently shovelled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshest of unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a mess-table at midnight. then one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them, and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the british army, might have ended in brilliant disaster. these are unpleasant stories to listen to, and the messes tell them under their breath, sitting by the big wood fires; and the young officer bows his head and thinks to himself, please god, his men shall never behave unhandily. the british soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional lapses; but this verdict he should not know. a moderately intelligent general will waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular war that he may be waging; a colonel may utterly misunderstand the capacity of his regiment for three months after it has taken the field; and even a company commander may err and be deceived as to the temper and temperament of his own handful: wherefore the soldier, and the soldier of to-day more particularly, should not be blamed for falling back. he should be shot or hanged afterwards--to encourage the others; but he should not be vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact and waste of space. he has, let us say, been in the service of the empress for, perhaps, four years. he will leave in another two years. he has no inherited morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his regiment. he wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself--in india he wants to save money--and he does not in the least like getting hurt. he has received just sufficient education to make him understand half the purport of the orders he receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and shattering wounds. thus, if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. he may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline under which he has lain for four years. armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes, and unsupported by any regimental associations, this young man is suddenly introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly, generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. if he looks to the right and the left and sees old soldiers--men of twelve years' service, who, he knows, know what they are about--taking a charge, rush, or demonstration without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his shoulder to the butt of his rifle with a stout heart. his peace is the greater if he hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and broken his head on occasion, whispering: 'they'll shout and carry on like this for five minutes. then they'll rush in, and then we've got 'em by the short hairs!' but, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of service, turning white and playing with their triggers and saying: 'what the hell's up now?' while the company commanders are sweating into their sword-hilts and shouting: 'front-rank, fix bayonets. steady there--steady! sight for three hundred--no, for five! lie down, all! steady! front-rank kneel!' and so forth, he becomes unhappy; and grows acutely miserable when he hears a comrade turn over with the rattle of fire-irons falling into the fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. if he can be moved about a little and allowed to watch the effect of his own fire on the enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to the blind passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief, controlled by a chilly devil and shakes men like ague. if he is not moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the stomach, and in that crisis is badly mauled and hears orders that were never given, he will break, and he will break badly; and of all things under the light of the sun there is nothing more terrible than a broken british regiment. when the worst comes to the worst and the panic is really epidemic, the men must be e'en let go, and the company commanders had better escape to the enemy and stay there for safety's sake. if they can be made to come again they are not pleasant men to meet; because they will not break twice. about thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in half-educating everything that wears trousers, our army will be a beautifully unreliable machine. it will know too much and it will do too little. later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer of to-day, it will sweep the earth. speaking roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and despatch. the ideal soldier should, of course, think for himself--the _pocket-book_ says so. unfortunately, to attain this virtue he has to pass through the phase of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. a blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate another's. a powerfully prayerful highland regiment, officered by rank presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible irish ruffians led by most improper young unbelievers. but these things prove the rule--which is that the midway men are not to be trusted alone. they have ideas about the value of life and an upbringing that has not taught them to go on and take the chances. they are carefully unprovided with a backing of comrades who have been shot over, and until that backing is re-introduced, as a great many regimental commanders intend it shall be, they are more liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the empire or the dignity of the army allows. their officers are as good as good can be, because their training begins early, and god has arranged that a clean-run youth of the british middle classes shall, in the matter of backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. for this reason a child of eighteen will stand up, doing nothing, with a tin sword in his hand and joy in his heart until he is dropped. if he dies, he dies like a gentleman. if he lives, he writes home that he has been 'potted,' 'sniped,' 'chipped,' or 'cut over,' and sits down to besiege government for a wound-gratuity until the next little war breaks out, when he perjures himself before a medical board, blarneys his colonel, burns incense round his adjutant, and is allowed to go to the front once more. which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the band of a british regiment. they ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. their names were jakin and lew--piggy lew--and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the drum-major of the fore and aft. jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and lew was about the same age. when not looked after, they smoked and drank. they swore habitually after the manner of the barrack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes from between clinched teeth; and they fought religiously once a week. jakin had sprung from some london gutter, and may or may not have passed through dr. barnardo's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of drummer-boy. lew could remember nothing except the regiment and the delight of listening to the band from his earliest years. he hid somewhere in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch that beautiful ladies who watched the regiment in church were wont to speak of him as a 'darling.' they never heard his vitriolic comments on their manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the band and matured fresh causes of offence against jakin. the other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical conduct. jakin might be pounding lew, or lew might be rubbing jakin's head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an outsider was met by the combined forces of lew and jakin; and the consequences were painful. the boys were the ishmaels of the corps, but wealthy ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate weeks for the sport of the barracks when they were not pitted against other boys; and thus amassed money. on this particular day there was dissension in the camp. they had just been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys who use plug-tobacco, and lew's contention was that jakin had 'stunk so 'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket,' that he and he alone was responsible for the birching they were both tingling under. 'i tell you i 'id the pipe back o' barracks,' said jakin pacifically. 'you're a bloomin' liar,' said lew without heat. 'you're a bloomin' little barstard,' said jakin, strong in the knowledge that his own ancestry was unknown. now there is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse that cannot pass without comment. you may call a man a thief and risk nothing. you may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are prepared to prove it on his front teeth. 'you might ha' kep' that till i wasn't so sore,' said lew sorrowfully, dodging round jakin's guard. 'i'll make you sorer,' said jakin genially, and got home on lew's alabaster forehead. all would have gone well and this story, as the books say, would never have been written, had not his evil fate prompted the bazar-sergeant's son, a long, employless man of five-and-twenty, to put in an appearance after the first round. he was eternally in need of money, and knew that the boys had silver. 'fighting again,' said he. 'i'll report you to my father, and he'll report you to the colour-sergeant.' 'what's that to you?' said jakin with an unpleasant dilation of the nostrils. 'oh! nothing to _me_. you'll get into trouble, and you've been up too often to afford that.' 'what the hell do you know about what we've done?' asked lew the seraph. '_you_ aren't in the army, you lousy, cadging civilian.' he closed in on the man's left flank. 'jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin' their diff'rences with their fistes you stick in your ugly nose where you aren't wanted. run 'ome to your 'arf-caste slut of a ma--or we'll give you what-for,' said jakin. the man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys' heads together. the scheme would have succeeded had not jakin punched him vehemently in the stomach, or had lew refrained from kicking his shins. they fought together, bleeding and breathless, for half an hour, and, after heavy punishment, triumphantly pulled down their opponent as terriers pull down a jackal. 'now,' gasped jakin, 'i'll give you what-for.' he proceeded to pound the man's features while lew stamped on the outlying portions of his anatomy. chivalry is not a strong point in the composition of the average drummer-boy. he fights, as do his betters, to make his mark. ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the wrath of the bazar-sergeant. awful, too, was the scene in orderly-room when the two reprobates appeared to answer the charge of half-murdering a 'civilian.' the bazar-sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and his son lied. the boys stood to attention while the black clouds of evidence accumulated. [illustration: 'hey! what? are you going to argue with _me_?' said the colonel.--p. .] 'you little devils are more trouble than the rest of the regiment put together,' said the colonel angrily. 'one might as well admonish thistledown, and i can't well put you in cells or under stoppages. you must be birched again.' 'beg y' pardon, sir. can't we say nothin' in our own defence, sir?' shrilled jakin. 'hey! what? are you going to argue with _me_?' said the colonel. 'no, sir,' said lew. 'but if a man come to you, sir, and said he was going to report you, sir, for 'aving a bit of a turn-up with a friend, sir, an' wanted to get money out o' _you_, sir--' the orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter. 'well?' said the colonel. 'that was what that measly _jarnwar_ there did, sir, and 'e'd 'a' _done_ it, sir, if we 'adn't prevented 'im. we didn't 'it 'im much, sir. 'e 'adn't no manner o' right to interfere with us, sir. i don't mind bein' birched by the drum-major, sir, nor yet reported by _any_ corp'ral, but i'm--but i don't think it's fair, sir, for a civilian to come an' talk over a man in the army.' a second shout of laughter shook the orderly-room, but the colonel was grave. 'what sort of characters have these boys?' he asked of the regimental sergeant-major. 'accordin' to the bandmaster, sir,' returned that revered official--the only soul in the regiment whom the boys feared--'they do everything _but_ lie, sir.' 'is it like we'd go for that man for fun, sir?' said lew, pointing to the plaintiff. 'oh, admonished--admonished!' said the colonel testily, and when the boys had gone he read the bazar-sergeant's son a lecture on the sin of unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the bandmaster should keep the drums in better discipline. 'if either of you comes to practice again with so much as a scratch on your two ugly little faces,' thundered the bandmaster, 'i'll tell the drum-major to take the skin off your backs. understand that, you young devils.' then he repented of his speech for just the length of time that lew, looking like a seraph in red worsted embellishments, took the place of one of the trumpets--in hospital--and rendered the echo of a battle-piece. lew certainly was a musician, and had often in his more exalted moments expressed a yearning to master every instrument of the band. 'there's nothing to prevent your becoming a bandmaster, lew,' said the bandmaster, who had composed waltzes of his own, and worked day and night in the interests of the band. 'what did he say?' demanded jakin after practice. ''said i might be a bloomin' bandmaster, an' be asked in to 'ave a glass o' sherry-wine on mess-nights.' 'ho! 'said you might be a bloomin' non-combatant, did 'e! that's just about wot 'e would say. when i've put in my boy's service--it's a bloomin' shame that doesn't count for pension--i'll take on as a privit. then i'll be a lance in a year--knowin' what i know about the ins an' outs o' things. in three years i'll be a bloomin' sergeant. i won't marry then, not i! i'll 'old on and learn the orf'cers' ways an' apply for exchange into a reg'ment that doesn't know all about me. then i'll be a bloomin' orf'cer. then i'll ask you to 'ave a glass o' sherry-wine, _mister_ lew, an' you'll bloomin' well 'ave to stay in the hanty-room while the mess-sergeant brings it to your dirty 'ands.' ''s'pose i'm going to be a bandmaster? not i, quite. i'll be a orf'cer too. there's nothin' like takin' to a thing an' stickin' to it, the schoolmaster says. the reg'ment don't go 'ome for another seven years. i'll be a lance then or near to.' thus the boys discussed their futures, and conducted themselves piously for a week. that is to say, lew started a flirtation with the colour-sergeant's daughter, aged thirteen--'not,' as he explained to jakin, 'with any intention o' matrimony, but by way o' keepin' my 'and in.' and the black-haired cris delighan enjoyed that flirtation more than previous ones, and the other drummer-boys raged furiously together, and jakin preached sermons on the dangers of 'bein' tangled along o' petticoats.' but neither love nor virtue would have held lew long in the paths of propriety had not the rumour gone abroad that the regiment was to be sent on active service, to take part in a war which, for the sake of brevity, we will call 'the war of the lost tribes.' the barracks had the rumour almost before the mess-room, and of all the nine hundred men in barracks not ten had seen a shot fired in anger. the colonel had, twenty years ago, assisted at a frontier expedition; one of the majors had seen service at the cape; a confirmed deserter in e company had helped to clear streets in ireland; but that was all. the regiment had been put by for many years. the overwhelming mass of its rank and file had from three to four years' service; the non-commissioned officers were under thirty years old; and men and sergeants alike had forgotten to speak of the stories written in brief upon the colours--the new colours that had been formally blessed by an archbishop in england ere the regiment came away. they wanted to go to the front--they were enthusiastically anxious to go--but they had no knowledge of what war meant, and there was none to tell them. they were an educated regiment, the percentage of school-certificates in their ranks was high, and most of the men could do more than read and write. they had been recruited in loyal observance of the territorial idea; but they themselves had no notion of that idea. they were made up of drafts from an over-populated manufacturing district. the system had put flesh and muscle upon their small bones, but it could not put heart into the sons of those who for generations had done overmuch work for over-scanty pay, had sweated in drying-rooms, stooped over looms, coughed among white-lead, and shivered on lime-barges. the men had found food and rest in the army, and now they were going to fight 'niggers'--people who ran away if you shook a stick at them. wherefore they cheered lustily when the rumour ran, and the shrewd, clerkly non-commissioned officers speculated on the chances of batta and of saving their pay. at headquarters men said: 'the fore and fit have never been under fire within the last generation. let us, therefore, break them in easily by setting them to guard lines of communication.' and this would have been done but for the fact that british regiments were wanted--badly wanted--at the front, and there were doubtful native regiments that could fill the minor duties. 'brigade 'em with two strong regiments,' said headquarters. 'they may be knocked about a bit, though they'll learn their business before they come through. nothing like a night-alarm and a little cutting up of stragglers to make a regiment smart in the field. wait till they've had half-a-dozen sentries' throats cut.' the colonel wrote with delight that the temper of his men was excellent, that the regiment was all that could be wished and as sound as a bell. the majors smiled with a sober joy, and the subalterns waltzed in pairs down the mess-room after dinner, and nearly shot themselves at revolver-practice. but there was consternation in the hearts of jakin and lew. what was to be done with the drums? would the band go to the front? how many of the drums would accompany the regiment? they took counsel together, sitting in a tree and smoking. 'it's more than a bloomin' toss-up they'll leave us be'ind at the depot with the women. you'll like that,' said jakin sarcastically. ''cause o' cris, y' mean? wot's a woman, or a 'ole bloomin' depot o' women, 'longside o' the chanst of field-service? you know i'm as keen on goin' as you,' said lew. ''wish i was a bloomin' bugler,' said jakin sadly. 'they'll take tom kidd along, that i can plaster a wall with, an' like as not they won't take us.' 'then let's go an' make tom kidd so bloomin' sick 'e can't bugle no more. you 'old 'is 'ands an' i'll kick him,' said lew, wriggling on the branch. 'that ain't no good neither. we ain't the sort o' characters to presoom on our rep'tations--they're bad. if they leave the band at the depot we don't go, and no error _there_. if they take the band we may get cast for medical unfitness. are you medical fit, piggy?' said jakin, digging lew in the ribs with force. 'yus,' said lew with an oath. 'the doctor says your 'eart's weak through smokin' on an empty stummick. throw a chest an' i'll try yer.' jakin threw out his chest, which lew smote with all his might. jakin turned very pale, gasped, crowed, screwed up his eyes, and said--'that's all right.' 'you'll do,' said lew. 'i've 'eard o' men dyin' when you 'it 'em fair on the breastbone.' 'don't bring us no nearer goin', though,' said jakin. 'do you know where we're ordered?' 'gawd knows, an' 'e won't split on a pal. somewheres up to the front to kill paythans--hairy big beggars that turn you inside out if they get 'old o' you. they say their women are good-looking, too.' 'any loot?' asked the abandoned jakin. 'not a bloomin' anna, they say, unless you dig up the ground an' see what the niggers 'ave 'id. they're a poor lot.' jakin stood upright on the branch and gazed across the plain. 'lew,' said he, 'there's the colonel coming. 'colonel's a good old beggar. let's go an' talk to 'im.' lew nearly fell out of the tree at the audacity of the suggestion. like jakin he feared not god, neither regarded he man, but there are limits even to the audacity of drummer-boy, and to speak to a colonel was---- but jakin had slid down the trunk and doubled in the direction of the colonel. that officer was walking wrapped in thought and visions of a c.b.--yes, even a k.c.b., for had he not at command one of the best regiments of the line--the fore and fit? and he was aware of two small boys charging down upon him. once before it had been solemnly reported to him that 'the drums were in a state of mutiny,' jakin and lew being the ringleaders. this looked like an organised conspiracy. the boys halted at twenty yards, walked to the regulation four paces, and saluted together, each as well-set-up as a ramrod and little taller. the colonel was in a genial mood; the boys appeared very forlorn and unprotected on the desolate plain, and one of them was handsome. 'well!' said the colonel, recognising them. 'are you going to pull me down in the open? i'm sure i never interfere with you, even though'--he sniffed suspiciously--'you have been smoking.' it was time to strike while the iron was hot. their hearts beat tumultuously. 'beg y' pardon, sir,' began jakin. 'the reg'ment's ordered on active service, sir?' 'so i believe,' said the colonel courteously. 'is the band goin', sir?' said both together. then, without pause, 'we're goin', sir, ain't we?' 'you!' said the colonel, stepping back the more fully to take in the two small figures. 'you! you'd die in the first march.' 'no, we wouldn't, sir. we can march with the reg'ment anywheres--p'rade an' anywhere else,' said jakin. 'if tom kidd goes 'e'll shut up like a clasp-knife,' said lew. 'tom 'as very-close veins in both 'is legs, sir.' 'very how much?' 'very-close veins, sir. that's why they swells after long p'rade, sir. if 'e can go, we can go, sir.' again the colonel looked at them long and intently. 'yes, the band is going,' he said as gravely as though he had been addressing a brother officer. 'have you any parents, either of you two?' 'no, sir,' rejoicingly from lew and jakin. 'we're both orphans, sir. there's no one to be considered of on our account, sir.' 'you poor little sprats, and you want to go up to the front with the regiment, do you? why?' 'i've wore the queen's uniform for two years,' said jakin. 'it's very 'ard, sir, that a man don't get no recompense for doin' of 'is dooty, sir.' 'an'--an' if i don't go, sir,' interrupted lew, 'the bandmaster 'e says 'e'll catch an' make a bloo--a blessed musician o' me, sir. before i've seen any service, sir.' the colonel made no answer for a long time. then he said quietly: 'if you're passed by the doctor i daresay you can go. i shouldn't smoke if i were you.' the boys saluted and disappeared. the colonel walked home and told the story to his wife, who nearly cried over it. the colonel was well pleased. if that was the temper of the children, what would not the men do? jakin and lew entered the boys' barrack-room with great stateliness, and refused to hold any conversation with their comrades for at least ten minutes. then, bursting with pride, jakin drawled: 'i've bin intervooin' the colonel. good old beggar is the colonel. says i to 'im, "colonel," says i, "let me go to the front, along o' the reg'ment."--"to the front you shall go," says 'e, "an' i only wish there was more like you among the dirty little devils that bang the bloomin' drums." kidd, if you throw your 'courtrements at me for tellin' you the truth to your own advantage, your legs'll swell.' none the less there was a battle-royal in the barrack-room, for the boys were consumed with envy and hate, and neither jakin nor lew behaved in conciliatory wise. 'i'm goin' out to say adoo to my girl,' said lew, to cap the climax. 'don't none o' you touch my kit because it's wanted for active service; me bein' specially invited to go by the colonel.' he strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees at the back of the married quarters till cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses being given and taken, lew began to explain the situation. 'i'm goin' to the front with the reg'ment,' he said valiantly. 'piggy, you're a little liar,' said cris, but her heart misgave her, for lew was not in the habit of lying. 'liar yourself, cris,' said lew, slipping an arm round her. 'i'm goin'. when the reg'ment marches out you'll see me with 'em, all galliant and gay. give us another kiss, cris, on the strength of it.' 'if you'd on'y a-stayed at the depot--where you _ought_ to ha' bin--you could get as many of 'em as--as you dam please,' whimpered cris, putting up her mouth. 'it's 'ard, cris. i grant you it's 'ard. but what's a man to do? if i'd a-stayed at the depot, you wouldn't think anything of me.' 'like as not, but i'd 'ave you with me, piggy. an' all the thinkin' in the world isn't like kissin'.' 'an' all the kissin' in the world isn't like 'avin' a medal to wear on the front o' your coat.' '_you_ won't get no medal.' 'oh yus, i shall though. me an' jakin are the only acting-drummers that'll be took along. all the rest is full men, an' we'll get our medals with them.' 'they might ha' taken anybody but you, piggy. you'll get killed--you're so venturesome. stay with me, piggy darlin', down at the depot, an' i'll love you true for ever.' 'ain't you goin' to do that _now_, cris? you said you was.' 'o' course i am, but th' other's more comfortable. wait till you've growed a bit, piggy. you aren't no taller than me now.' [illustration: cris slid an arm round his neck.--p. .] 'i've bin in the army for two years an' i'm not goin' to get out of a chanst o' seein' service, an' don't you try to make me do so. i'll come back, cris, an' when i take on as a man i'll marry you--marry you when i'm a lance.' 'promise, piggy?' lew reflected on the future as arranged by jakin a short time previously, but cris's mouth was very near to his own. 'i promise, s'elp me gawd!' said he. cris slid an arm round his neck. 'i won't 'old you back no more, piggy. go away an' get your medal, an' i'll make you a new button-bag as nice as i know how,' she whispered. 'put some o' your 'air into it, cris, an' i'll keep it in my pocket so long's i'm alive.' then cris wept anew, and the interview ended. public feeling among the drummer-boys rose to fever pitch and the lives of jakin and lew became unenviable. not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before the regulation boy's age--fourteen--but, by virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the front--which thing had not happened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of boy. the band which was to accompany the regiment had been cut down to the regulation twenty men, the surplus returning to the ranks. jakin and lew were attached to the band as supernumeraries, though they would much have preferred being company buglers. ''don't matter much,' said jakin after the medical inspection. 'be thankful that we're 'lowed to go at all. the doctor 'e said that if we could stand what we took from the bazar-sergeant's son we'd stand pretty nigh anything.' 'which we will,' said lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill-made housewife that cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling 'l' upon the cover. 'it was the best i could,' she sobbed. 'i wouldn't let mother nor the sergeants' tailor 'elp me. keep it always, piggy, an' remember i love you true.' they marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong, and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. the drummers gnashed their teeth at jakin and lew marching with the band, the married women wept upon the platform, and the regiment cheered its noble self black in the face. 'a nice level lot,' said the colonel to the second-in-command as they watched the first four companies entraining. 'fit to do anything,' said the second-in-command enthusiastically. 'but it seems to me they're a thought too young and tender for the work in hand. it's bitter cold up at the front now.' 'they're sound enough,' said the colonel. 'we must take our chance of sick casualties.' so they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of camels, armies of camp followers, and legions of laden mules, the throng thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at a hopelessly congested junction where six lines of temporary track accommodated six forty-waggon trains; where whistles blew, babus sweated, and commissariat officers swore from dawn till far into the night amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of a thousand steers. 'hurry up--you're badly wanted at the front,' was the message that greeted the fore and aft, and the occupants of the red cross carriages told the same tale. ''tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin',' gasped a headbound trooper of hussars to a knot of admiring fore and afts. ''tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin', though there's enough o' that. it's the bloomin' food an' the bloomin' climate. frost all night 'cept when it hails, and biling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. i got my 'ead chipped like a egg; i've got pneumonia too, an' my guts is all out o' order. 'tain't no bloomin' picnic in those parts, i can tell you.' 'wot are the niggers like?' demanded a private. 'there's some prisoners in that train yonder. go an' look at 'em. they're the aristocracy o' the country. the common folk are a dashed sight uglier. if you want to know what they fight with, reach under my seat an' pull out the long knife that's there.' they dragged out and beheld for the first time the grim, bone-handled, triangular afghan knife. it was almost as long as lew. 'that's the thing to jint ye,' said the trooper feebly. 'it can take off a man's arm at the shoulder as easy as slicing butter. i halved the beggar that used that 'un, but there's more of his likes up above. they don't understand thrustin', but they're devils to slice.' the men strolled across the tracks to inspect the afghan prisoners. they were unlike any 'niggers' that the fore and aft had ever met--these huge, black-haired, scowling sons of the beni-israel. as the men stared the afghans spat freely and muttered one to another with lowered eyes. 'my eyes! wot awful swine!' said jakin, who was in the rear of the procession. 'say, old man, how you got _puckrowed_, eh? _kiswasti_ you wasn't hanged for your ugly face, hey?' the tallest of the company turned, his leg-irons clanking at the movement, and stared at the boy. 'see!' he cried to his fellows in pushto. 'they send children against us. what a people, and what fools!' [illustration: the men strolled across the tracks to inspect the afghan prisoners.--p. .] '_hya!_' said jakin, nodding his head cheerily. 'you go down-country. _khana_ get, _peenikapanee_ get--live like a bloomin' raja _ke marfik_. that's a better _bandobust_ than baynit get it in your innards. good-bye, ole man. take care o' your beautiful figure-'ad, an' try to look _kushy_.' the men laughed and fell in for their first march, when they began to realise that a soldier's life was not all beer and skittles. they were much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they had now learned to call 'paythans,' and more with the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings. twenty old soldiers in the corps would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night, but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march said, 'they lived like pigs.' they learned the heart-breaking cussedness of camp-kitchens and camels and the depravity of an e.p. tent and a wither-wrung mule. they studied animalculæ in water, and developed a few cases of dysentery in their study. at the end of their third march they were disagreeably surprised by the arrival in their camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired from a steady rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated by the fire. this robbed them of their peace for a night, and was the beginning of a long-range fire carefully calculated to that end. in the daytime they saw nothing except an unpleasant puff of smoke from a crag above the line of march. at night there were distant spurts of flame and occasional casualties, which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom and, occasionally, into opposite tents. then they swore vehemently and vowed that this was magnificent, but not war. indeed it was not. the regiment could not halt for reprisals against the sharpshooters of the countryside. its duty was to go forward and make connection with the scotch and gurkha troops with which it was brigaded. the afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment. thereafter they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the fore and aft on the strain. not for anything would they have taken equal liberties with a seasoned corps--with the wicked little gurkhas, whose delight it was to lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers--with the terrible, big men dressed in women's clothes, who could be heard praying to their god in the night-watches, and whose peace of mind no amount of 'sniping' could shake--or with those vile sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. this white regiment was different--quite different. it slept like a hog, and, like a hog, charged in every direction when it was roused. its sentries walked with a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile, would fire at anything that moved--even a driven donkey--and when they had once fired, could be scientifically 'rushed' and laid out a horror and an offence against the morning sun. then there were camp-followers who straggled and could be cut up without fear. their shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their services would inconvenience them sorely. thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the regiment writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. the crowning triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing of the men who struggled and kicked below. it was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the fore and aft. all the courage that they had been required to exercise up to this point was the 'two o'clock in the morning courage'; and, so far, they had only succeeded in shooting their comrades and losing their sleep. sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uniforms dulled and unclean, the fore and aft joined their brigade. 'i hear you had a tough time of it coming up,' said the brigadier. but when he saw the hospital-sheets his face fell. 'this is bad,' said he to himself. 'they're as rotten as sheep.' and aloud to the colonel--'i'm afraid we can't spare you just yet. we want all we have, else i should have given you ten days to recover in.' the colonel winced. 'on my honour, sir,' he returned, 'there is not the least necessity to think of sparing us. my men have been rather mauled and upset without a fair return. they only want to go in somewhere where they can see what's before them.' 'can't say i think much of the fore and fit,' said the brigadier in confidence to his brigade-major. 'they've lost all their soldiering, and, by the trim of them, might have marched through the country from the other side. a more fagged-out set of men i never put eyes on.' 'oh, they'll improve as the work goes on. the parade gloss has been rubbed off a little, but they'll put on field polish before long,' said the brigade-major. 'they've been mauled, and they don't quite understand it.' they did not. all the hitting was on one side, and it was cruelly hard hitting with accessories that made them sick. there was also the real sickness that laid hold of a strong man and dragged him howling to the grave. worst of all, their officers knew just as little of the country as the men themselves, and looked as if they did. the fore and aft were in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, but they believed that all would be well if they could once get a fair go-in at the enemy. pot-shots up and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, and the bayonet never seemed to get a chance. perhaps it was as well, for a long-limbed afghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, and could carry away lead that would disable three englishmen. the fore and fit would like some rifle-practice at the enemy--all seven hundred rifles blazing together. that wish showed the mood of the men. the gurkhas walked into their camp, and in broken, barrack-room english strove to fraternise with them; offered them pipes of tobacco and stood them treat at the canteen. but the fore and aft, not knowing much of the nature of the gurkhas, treated them as they would treat any other 'niggers,' and the little men in green trotted back to their firm friends the highlanders, and with many grins confided to them: 'that dam white regiment no dam use. sulky--ugh! dirty--ugh! hya, any tot for johnny?' whereat the highlanders smote the gurkhas as to the head, and told them not to vilify a british regiment, and the gurkhas grinned cavernously, for the highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled to the privileges of kinship. the common soldier who touches a gurkha is more than likely to have his head sliced open. three days later the brigadier arranged a battle according to the rules of war and the peculiarity of the afghan temperament. the enemy were massing in inconvenient strength among the hills, and the moving of many green standards warned him that the tribes were 'up' in aid of the afghan regular troops. a squadron and a half of bengal lancers represented the available cavalry, and two screw-guns borrowed from a column thirty miles away the artillery at the general's disposal. 'if they stand, as i've a very strong notion that they will, i fancy we shall see an infantry fight that will be worth watching,' said the brigadier. 'we'll do it in style. each regiment shall be played into action by its band, and we'll hold the cavalry in reserve.' 'for _all_ the reserve?' somebody asked. 'for all the reserve; because we're going to crumple them up,' said the brigadier, who was an extraordinary brigadier, and did not believe in the value of a reserve when dealing with asiatics. indeed, when you come to think of it, had the british army consistently waited for reserves in all its little affairs, the boundaries of our empire would have stopped at brighton beach. that battle was to be a glorious battle. the three regiments debouching from three separate gorges, after duly crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left, and right upon what we will call the afghan army, then stationed towards the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. thus it will be seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to the english, while the fourth was strictly afghan property. in the event of defeat the afghans had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerilla tribes in aid would cover their retreat. in the event of victory these same tribes would rush down and lend their weight to the rout of the british. the screw-guns were to shell the head of each afghan rush that was made in close formation, and the cavalry, held in reserve in the right valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on the combined attack. the brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. the fore and aft would debouch from the central gorge, the gurkhas from the left, and the highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left flank of the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. it was not every day that an afghan force would take ground in the open, and the brigadier was resolved to make the most of it. 'if we only had a few more men,' he said plaintively, 'we could surround the creatures and crumple 'em up thoroughly. as it is, i'm afraid we can only cut them up as they run. it's a great pity.' the fore and aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. but they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known, would not have known how to do it. throughout those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they discussed together their misadventures in the past--how such an one was alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles such another had given up his soul under the afghan knife. death was a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die decently of zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in barracks had done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread. very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the fore and aft, filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting for a cup of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared for the fray. all the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off a highlander. it is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is convinced of the necessity for haste. the fore and aft waited, leaning upon their rifles and listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. the colonel did his best to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was borne in upon him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well did he succeed that the coffee was just ready when--the men moved off, their band leading. even then there had been a mistake in time, and the fore and aft came out into the valley ten minutes before the proper hour. their band wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and retired behind a little rocky knoll, still playing while the regiment went past. it was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view, for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in position--real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and--of this there was no doubt--firing martini-henry bullets which cut up the ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company. over that pock-marked ground the regiment had to pass, and it opened the ball with a general and profound courtesy to the piping pickets; ducking in perfect time, as though it had been brazed on a rod. being half-capable of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the simple process of pitching its rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger. the bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers on the hillside, but they certainly did not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles drowned any orders that might have been given. 'good god!' said the brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all. 'that regiment has spoilt the whole show. hurry up the others, and let the screw-guns get off.' but the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision. the fore and aft continued to go forward, but with shortened stride. where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers use martinis? they took open order instinctively, lying down and firing at random, rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to the regulations. once in this formation, each man felt himself desperately alone, and edged in towards his fellow for comfort's sake. then the crack of his neighbour's rifle at his ear led him to fire as rapidly as he could--again for the sake of the comfort of the noise. the reward was not long delayed. five volleys plunged the files in banked smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of the bayonet dragged down and to the right arms wearied with holding the kick of the leaping martini. the company commanders peered helplessly through the smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying to fan it away with their helmets. 'high and to the left!' bawled a captain till he was hoarse. 'no good! cease firing, and let it drift away a bit.' three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it was obeyed the fore and aft looked that their foe should be lying before them in mown swaths of men. a light wind drove the smoke to leeward, and showed the enemy still in position and apparently unaffected. a quarter of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front of them, as the ragged earth attested. that was not demoralising to the afghans, who have not european nerves. they were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. a private of the fore and aft spun up his company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of his pain. these were the casualties, and they were not soothing to hear or see. the smoke cleared to a dull haze. then the foe began to shout with a great shouting, and a mass--a black mass--detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground at horrid speed. it was composed of, perhaps, three hundred men, who would shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades who were determined to die carried home. the fifty were ghazis, half-maddened with drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticism. when they rushed the british fire ceased, and in the lull the order was given to close ranks and meet them with the bayonet. any one who knew the business could have told the fore and aft that the only way of dealing with a ghazi rush is by volleys at long ranges; because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a lingering prejudice in favour of life. where they should have closed and gone forward, the fore and aft opened out and skirmished, and where they should have opened out and fired, they closed and waited. a man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a pleasant frame of mind. nor does his happiness increase when he watches the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends upon whose beards the foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath, and in whose hands are yard-long knives. the fore and aft heard the gurkha bugles bringing that regiment forward at the double, while the neighing of the highland pipes came from the left. they strove to stay where they were, though the bayonets wavered down the line like the oars of a ragged boat. then they felt body to body the amazing physical strength of their foes; a shriek of pain ended the rush, and the knives fell amid scenes not to be told. the men clubbed together and smote blindly--as often as not at their own fellows. their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty ghazis passed on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they. then the rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew--alone. for the rear-rank had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. they were not going to stay. it was the rushing of the camps over again. let their officers go to hell, if they chose; they would get away from the knives. 'come on!' shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them, drew back, each closing into his neighbour and wheeling round. charteris and devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their death alone in the belief that their men would follow. 'you've killed me, you cowards,' sobbed devlin and dropped, cut from the shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest, and a fresh detachment of his men retreating, always retreating, trampled him under foot as they made for the pass whence they had emerged. i kissed her in the kitchen and i kissed her in the hall. child'un, child'un, follow me! oh golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all? halla--halla--halla--hallelujah! the gurkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the heights at the double to the invitation of their regimental quick-step. the black rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the bugles gave tongue jubilantly:-- in the morning! in the morning _by_ the bright light! when gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning! the gurkha rear-companies tripped and blundered over loose stones. the front-files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to settle stray boot-laces. then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold there below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the gurkhas had doubled so hastily. there was much enemy. there would be amusement. the little men hitched their _kukris_ well to hand, and gaped expectantly at their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch. the gurkhas' ground sloped downward to the valley, and they enjoyed a fair view of the proceedings. they sat upon the boulders to watch, for their officers were not going to waste their wind in assisting to repulse a ghazi rush more than half a mile away. let the white men look to their own front. 'hi! yi!' said the subadar-major, who was sweating profusely. 'dam fools yonder, stand close-order! this is no time for close-order, it is the time for volleys. ugh!' horrified, amused, and indignant, the gurkhas beheld the retirement of the fore and aft with a running chorus of oaths and commentaries. 'they run! the white men run! colonel sahib, may _we_ also do a little running?' murmured runbir thappa, the senior jemadar. but the colonel would have none of it. 'let the beggars be cut up a little,' said he wrathfully. ''serves 'em right. they'll be prodded into facing round in a minute.' he looked through his field-glasses, and caught the glint of an officer's sword. 'beating 'em with the flat--damned conscripts! how the ghazis are walking into them!' said he. the fore and aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. the narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and the rear-rank delivered some sort of a wavering volley. the ghazis drew off, for they did not know what reserves the gorge might hide. moreover, it was never wise to chase white men too far. they returned as wolves return to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they had done, and only stopping to slash at the wounded on the ground. a quarter of a mile had the fore and aft retreated, and now, jammed in the pass, was quivering with pain, shaken and demoralised with fear, while the officers, maddened beyond control, smote the men with the hilts and the flats of their swords. 'get back! get back, you cowards--you women! right about face--column of companies, form--you hounds!' shouted the colonel, and the subalterns swore aloud. but the regiment wanted to go--to go anywhere out of the range of those merciless knives. it swayed to and fro irresolutely with shouts and outcries, while from the right the gurkhas dropped volley after volley of cripple-stopper snider bullets at long range into the mob of the ghazis returning to their own troops. the fore and aft band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush. jakin and lew would have fled also, but their short legs left them fifty yards in the rear, and by the time the band had mixed with the regiment, they were painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and unsupported. 'get back to that rock,' gasped jakin. 'they won't see us there.' and they returned to the scattered instruments of the band; their hearts nearly bursting their ribs. 'here's a nice show for _us_,' said jakin, throwing himself full length on the ground. 'a bloomin' fine show for british infantry! oh, the devils! they've gone an' left us alone here! wot'll we do?' lew took possession of a cast-off water bottle, which naturally was full of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again. 'drink,' said he shortly.' they'll come back in a minute or two--you see.' jakin drank, but there was no sign of the regiment's return. they could hear a dull clamour from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the gurkhas fired at them. 'we're all that's left of the band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as death,' said jakin. 'i'll die game, then,' said lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny drummer's sword. the drink was working on his brain as it was on jakin's. ''old on! i know something better than fightin',' said jakin, 'stung by the splendour of a sudden thought' due chiefly to rum. 'tip our bloomin' cowards yonder the word to come back. the paythan beggars are well away. come on, lew! we won't get hurt. take the fife and give me the drum. the old step for all your bloomin' guts are worth! there's a few of our men coming back now. stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. by your right--quick march!' he slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the 'british grenadiers.' as jakin had said, a few of the fore and aft were coming back sullenly and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their red coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets. but between this shattered line and the enemy, who with afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush, and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of level ground dotted only by the wounded. [illustration: the tune settled into full swing, and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder.--p. .] the tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder, jakin banging the drum as one possessed. the one fife made a thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the gurkhas. 'come on, you dogs!' muttered jakin to himself. 'are we to play for hever?' lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more stiffly than ever he had done on parade. and in bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the old line shrilled and rattled:-- some talk of alexander, and some of hercules; of hector and lysander, and such great names as these! there was a far-off clapping of hands from the gurkhas, and a roar from the highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was fired by british or afghan. the two little red dots moved forward in the open parallel to the enemy's front. but of all the world's great heroes there's none that can compare, with a tow-row-row-row-row-row, to the british grenadier! the men of the fore and aft were gathering thick at the entrance to the plain. the brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with rage. still no movement from the enemy. the day stayed to watch the children. jakin halted and beat the long roll of the assembly, while the fife squealed despairingly. 'right about face! hold up, lew, you're drunk,' said jakin. they wheeled and marched back:-- those heroes of antiquity ne'er saw a cannon-ball, nor knew the force o' powder, 'here they come!' said jakin. 'go on, lew':-- to scare their foes withal! the fore and aft were pouring out of the valley. what officers had said to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known; for neither officers nor men speak of it now. 'they are coming anew!' shouted a priest among the afghans. 'do not kill the boys! take them alive and they shall be of our faith.' but the first volley had been fired, and lew dropped on his face. jakin stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the fore and aft came forward, the curses of their officers in their ears, and in their hearts the shame of open shame. half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. they did not even shout. they doubled out straight across the plain in open order, and they did not fire. 'this,' said the colonel of gurkhas softly, 'is the real attack, as it should have been delivered. come on, my children.' 'ulu-lu-lu-lu!' squealed the gurkhas, and came down with a joyful clicking of _kukris_--those vicious gurkha knives. on the right there was no rush. the highlanders, cannily commending their souls to god (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he has been shot in a border scuffle or at waterloo), opened out and fired according to their custom, that is to say without heat and without intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into the clusters round the flickering green standards on the heights. 'charrging is an unfortunate necessity,' murmured the colour-sergeant of the right company of the highlanders. 'it makes the men sweer so, but i am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if these black devils stand much longer. stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the sun, and he'll not take any harm for government ammuneetion. a foot lower and a great deal slower! what are the english doing? they're very quiet there in the centre. running again?' the english were not running. they were hacking and hewing and stabbing, for though one white man is seldom physically a match for an afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of many white men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart, he becomes capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. the fore and aft held their fire till one bullet could drive through five or six men, and the front of the afghan force gave on the volley. they then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and realised for the first time that an afghan attacked is far less formidable than an afghan attacking: which fact old soldiers might have told them. but they had no old soldiers in their ranks. the gurkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were engaged--to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block--with the _kukri_, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the afghan hates the half-moon blade. as the afghans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved down to assist them in a last rally. this was unwise. the lancers chafing in the right gorge had thrice despatched their only subaltern as galloper to report on the progress of affairs. on the third occasion he returned, with a bullet-graze on his knee, swearing strange oaths in hindustani, and saying that all things were ready. so that squadron swung round the right of the highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pennons of its lances, and fell upon the remnant just when, according to all the rules of war, it should have waited for the foe to show more signs of wavering. but it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the afghans intended to retreat; and down the track that the lances had made streamed two companies of the highlanders, which was never intended by the brigadier. the new development was successful. it detached the enemy from his base as a sponge is torn from a rock, and left him ringed about with fire in that pitiless plain. and as a sponge is chased round the bath-tub by the hand of the bather, so were the afghans chased till they broke into little detachments much more difficult to dispose of than large masses. 'see!' quoth the brigadier. 'everything has come as i arranged. we've cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces.' a direct hammering was all that the brigadier had dared to hope for, considering the size of the force at his disposal; but men who stand or fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven for turning chance into design. the bucketing went forward merrily. the afghan forces were upon the run--the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. the red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. the lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. the highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards' law, and then brought them down, gasping and choking ere they could reach the protection of the boulders above. the gurkhas followed suit; but the fore and aft were killing on their own account, for they had penned a mass of men between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and the flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded coats. 'we cannot hold them, captain sahib!' panted a ressaidar of lancers. 'let us try the carbine. the lance is good, but it wastes time.' they tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away--fled up the hills by hundreds when there were only twenty bullets to stop them. on the heights the screw-guns ceased firing--they had run out of ammunition--and the brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not sufficiently smash the retreat. long before the last volleys were fired, the doolies were out in force looking for the wounded. the battle was over, and, but for want of fresh troops, the afghans would have been wiped off the earth. as it was they counted their dead by hundreds, and nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of the fore and aft. but the regiment did not cheer with the highlanders, nor did they dance uncouth dances with the gurkhas among the dead. they looked under their brows at the colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and panted. 'get back to camp, you. haven't you disgraced yourself enough for one day! go and look to the wounded. it's all you're fit for,' said the colonel. yet for the past hour the fore and aft had been doing all that mortal commander could expect. they had lost heavily because they did not know how to set about their business with proper skill, but they had borne themselves gallantly, and this was their reward. a young and sprightly colour-sergeant, who had begun to imagine himself a hero, offered his water-bottle to a highlander, whose tongue was black with thirst. 'i drink with no cowards,' answered the youngster huskily, and, turning to a gurkha, said, 'hya, johnny! drink water got it?' the gurkha grinned and passed his bottle. the fore and aft said no word. they went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little mopped up and made presentable, and the brigadier, who saw himself a knight in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to them. the colonel was heart-broken, and the officers were savage and sullen. 'well,' said the brigadier, 'they are young troops of course, and it was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a bit.' 'oh, my only aunt maria!' murmured a junior staff officer. 'retire in disorder! it was a bally run!' 'but they came again, as we all know,' cooed the brigadier, the colonel's ashy-white face before him, 'and they behaved as well as could possibly be expected. behaved beautifully, indeed. i was watching them. it's not a matter to take to heart, colonel. as some german general said of his men, they wanted to be shooted over a little, that was all.' to himself he said--'now they're blooded i can give 'em responsible work. it's as well that they got what they did. 'teach 'em more than half-a-dozen rifle flirtations, that will--later--run alone and bite. poor old colonel, though.' all that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away. and in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided correspondent, who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning, and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while. 'let's have the details somehow--as full as ever you can, please. it's the first time i've ever been left this campaign,' said the correspondent to the brigadier; and the brigadier, nothing loath, told him how an army of communication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and all but annihilated, by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of the brigadier. but some say, and among these be the gurkhas who watched on the hillside, that that battle was won by jakin and lew, whose little bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of jagai. [illustration] [illustration] the man who was the earth gave up her dead that tide, into our camp he came, and said his say, and went his way, and left our hearts aflame. keep tally--on the gun-butt score the vengeance we must take, when god shall bring full reckoning, for our dead comrade's sake. _ballad._ let it be clearly understood that the russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. as an oriental he is charming. it is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. the host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next. dirkovitch was a russian--a russian of the russians--who appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a cossack regiment, and corresponding for a russian newspaper with a name that was never twice alike. he was a handsome young oriental, fond of wandering through unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in india from nowhere in particular. at least no living man could ascertain whether it was by way of balkh, badakshan, chitral, beluchistan, or nepaul, or anywhere else. the indian government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was to be seen. so he drifted, talking bad english and worse french, from one city to another, till he foregathered with her majesty's white hussars in the city of peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the khyber pass. he was undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the manner of the russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task, or cask, by the black tyrone, who individually and collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy, and mixed spirits of every kind, had striven in all hospitality to make him drunk. and when the black tyrone, who are exclusively irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner--that foreigner is certain to be a superior man. the white hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in charging the enemy. all that they possessed, including some wondrous brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely--even more than among the black tyrones. but he remained distressingly european through it all. the white hussars were 'my dear true friends,' 'fellow-soldiers glorious,' and 'brothers inseparable.' he would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms of england and russia when their hearts and their territories should run side by side and the great mission of civilising asia should begin. that was unsatisfactory, because asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the west. there is too much asia and she is too old. you cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime. she will never attend sunday school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets. dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. now and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his own sotnia of cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. he had done rough work in central asia, and had seen rather more help-your-self fighting than most men of his years. but he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of her majesty's white hussars. and indeed they were a regiment to be admired. when lady durgan, widow of the late sir john durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar. wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature contradictious; and the white hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. she had jilted them all--from basset-holmer the senior captain to little mildred the junior subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a title. the only person who did not share the general regard for the white hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of jewish extraction who lived across the border, and answered to the name of paythan. they had once met the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled them with prejudice. they even called the white hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. yet they were not above making their aversion fill their money-belts. the regiment possessed carbines--beautiful martini-henri carbines that would lop a bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. therefore they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined silver--seven and one-half pounds weight of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par. they were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather when all the barrack doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. the border people desired them for family vendettas and contingencies. but in the long cold nights of the northern indian winter they were stolen most extensively. the traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and prices ruled high. the regimental guards were first doubled and then trebled. a trooper does not much care if he loses a weapon--government must make it good--but he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. the regiment grew very angry, and one rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this hour. that incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps the lushkar light horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the ground. they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. the lushkar team came, and dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a cossack officer, which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded. they were lighter men than the hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of the punjab frontier force and all irregular horse. like everything else in the service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on the body till death. the great beam-roofed mess-room of the white hussars was a sight to be remembered. all the mess plate was out on the long table--the same table that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten fight long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door of entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks, and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost basset-holmer four months' leave that he might have spent in england, instead of on the road to thibet and the daily risk of his life by ledge, snow-slide, and grassy slope. the servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments on the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the white hussars, and the cream and silver of the lushkar light horse. dirkovitch's dull green uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. he was fraternising effusively with the captain of the lushkar team, who was wondering how many of dirkovitch's cossacks his own dark wiry down-country-men could account for in a fair charge. but one does not speak of these things openly. [illustration: '_rung ho_, hira singh!'--p. .] the talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of obligation, when an officer rising said, 'mr. vice, the queen,' and little mildred from the bottom of the table answered, 'the queen, god bless her,' and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves up and drank the queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to settle their mess-bills. that sacrament of the mess never grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he be by sea or by land. dirkovitch rose with his 'brothers glorious,' but he could not understand. no one but an officer can tell what the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. immediately after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who had played for the lushkar team. he could not, of course, eat with the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue and silver turban atop, and the big black boots below. the mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre in token of fealty for the colonel of the white hussars to touch, and dropped in a vacant chair amid shouts of: '_rung ho_, hira singh' (which being translated means 'go in and win'). 'did i whack you over the knee, old man?' 'ressaidar sahib, what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?' '_shabash_, ressaidar sahib!' then the voice of the colonel, 'the health of ressaidar hira singh!' after the shouting had died away hira singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. thus he spoke in the vernacular:--'colonel sahib and officers of this regiment. much honour have you done me. this will i remember. we came down from afar to play you. but we were beaten' ('no fault of yours, ressaidar sahib. played on our own ground y' know. your ponies were cramped from the railway. don't apologise!') 'therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.' ('hear! hear! hear, indeed! bravo! hsh!') 'then we will play you afresh' ('happy to meet you.') 'till there are left no feet upon our ponies. thus far for sport.' he dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. 'but if by the will of god there arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, colonel sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side, though _they_,' again his eye sought dirkovitch, 'though _they_ i say have fifty ponies to our one horse.' and with a deep-mouthed _rung ho!_ that sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping glasses. dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy,--the terrible brandy aforementioned,--did not understand, nor did the expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point. decidedly hira singh's was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left side. then there was a scuffle and a yell of pain. 'carbine-stealing again!' said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his chair. 'this comes of reducing the guards. i hope the sentries have killed him.' the feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it was as though something was being dragged. 'why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?' said the colonel testily. 'see if they've damaged him, sergeant.' the mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed. 'caught a man stealin' carbines, sir,' said the corporal. 'leastways 'e was crawlin' towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an' the sentry 'e sez, sir----' the limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. never was seen so destitute and demoralised an afghan. he was turbanless, shoeless, caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. hira singh started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. dirkovitch took another glass of brandy. '_what_ does the sentry say?' said the colonel. 'sez 'e speaks english, sir,' said the corporal. 'so you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant! if he spoke all the tongues of the pentecost you've no business----' again the bundle groaned and muttered. little mildred had risen from his place to inspect. he jumped back as though he had been shot. 'perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,' said he to the colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. he put his arms round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. it may not have been explained that the littleness of mildred lay in his being six feet four and big in proportion. the corporal, seeing that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. the mess was left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep. hira singh leapt to his feet. 'colonel sahib,' said he, 'that man is no afghan, for they weep _ai! ai!_ nor is he of hindustan, for they weep _oh! ho!_ he weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say _ow! ow!_' 'now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, hira singh?' said the captain of the lushkar team. 'hear him!' said hira singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that wept as though it would never cease. 'he said, "my god!"' said little mildred. 'i heard him say it.' the colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. it is a horrible thing to hear a man cry. a woman can sob from the top of her palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. 'poor devil!' said the colonel, coughing tremendously. 'we ought to send him to hospital. he's been man-handled.' now the adjutant loved his carbines. they were to him as his grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. he grunted rebelliously: 'i can understand an afghan stealing, because he's built that way. but i can't understand his crying. that makes it worse.' the brandy must have affected dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. there was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. owing to some peculiarity in the construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown when the candles were lighted. it never disturbed the digestion of the white hussars. they were in fact rather proud of it. 'is he going to cry all night?' said the colonel, 'or are we supposed to sit up with little mildred's guest until he feels better?' the man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. 'oh, my god!' he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. then the lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the victoria cross--distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. he picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, 'this isn't _our_ affair, you know, sir,' led them into the veranda and the gardens. hira singh was the last to go, and he looked at dirkovitch. but dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his own. his lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling. 'white--white all over,' said basset-holmer, the adjutant. 'what a pernicious renegade he must be! i wonder where he came from?' the colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and 'who are you?' said he. there was no answer. the man stared round the mess-room and smiled in the colonel's face. little mildred, who was always more of a woman than a man till 'boot and saddle' was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. the man only smiled. dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his chair to the floor. no son of adam in this present imperfect world can mix the hussars' champagne with the hussars' brandy by five and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither. the band began to play the tune with which the white hussars from the date of their formation have concluded all their functions. they would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their system. the man straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers. [illustration: he found the spring.--p. .] 'i don't see why we should entertain lunatics,' said the colonel. 'call a guard and send him off to the cells. we'll look into the business in the morning. give him a glass of wine first though.' little mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over to the man. he drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened himself yet more. then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. there was a mystery connected with that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. he found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. he rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word. when he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed distressed. a piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye. he pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with inquiry in his eyes. 'what is it--oh what is it?' said little mildred. then as a mother might speak to a child, 'that is a horse. yes, a horse.' very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural--'yes, i--have seen. but--where is _the_ horse?' you could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. there was no question of calling the guard. again he spoke--very slowly, 'where is _our_ horse?' there is but one horse in the white hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess-room. he is the piebald drum-horse, the king of the regimental band, that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was shot for old age. half the mess tore the thing down from its place and thrust it into the man's hands. he placed it above the mantelpiece, it clattered on the ledge as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered towards the bottom of the table, falling into mildred's chair. then all the men spoke to one another something after this fashion, 'the drum-horse hasn't hung over the mantelpiece since ' .' 'how does he know?' 'mildred, go and speak to him again.' 'colonel, what are you going to do?' 'oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself together.' 'it isn't possible anyhow. the man's a lunatic.' little mildred stood at the colonel's side talking in his ear. 'will you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen!' he said, and the mess dropped into the chairs. only dirkovitch's seat, next to little mildred's, was blank, and little mildred himself had found hira singh's place. the wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as he looked straight at the man in little mildred's chair and said hoarsely, 'mr. vice, the queen.' there was a little pause, but the man sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, 'the queen, god bless her!' and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank between his fingers. long and long ago, when the empress of india was a young woman and there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few messes to drink the queen's toast in broken glass, to the vast delight of the mess-contractors. the custom is now dead, because there is nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a government, and that has been broken already. 'that settles it,' said the colonel, with a gasp. 'he's not a sergeant. what in the world is he?' the entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have scared any man. it was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could only smile and shake his head. from under the table, calm and smiling, rose dirkovitch, who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. by the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. it was a horrible sight coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together. dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little mildred heaved him up in an instant. it is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of cossacks. the hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist, and his body was seamed with dry black scars. there is only one weapon in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane nor the cat. dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes dilated. also his face changed. he said something that sounded like _shto ve takete_, and the man fawning answered, _chetyre_. [illustration: it is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of cossacks.--p. .] 'what's that?' said everybody together. 'his number. that is number four, you know,' dirkovitch spoke very thickly. 'what has a queen's officer to do with a qualified number?' said the colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table. 'how can i tell?' said the affable oriental with a sweet smile. 'he is a--how you have it?--escape--run-a-way, from over there.' he nodded towards the darkness of the night. 'speak to him if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently,' said little mildred, settling the man in a chair. it seemed most improper to all present that dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in purring, spitting russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such evident dread. but since dirkovitch appeared to understand no one said a word. all breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the conversation. the next time that they have no engagements on hand the white hussars intend to go to st. petersburg in a body to learn russian. 'he does not know how many years ago,' said dirkovitch facing the mess, 'but he says it was very long ago in the war. i think that there was an accident. he says he was of this glorious and distinguished regiment in the war.' 'the rolls! the rolls! holmer, get the rolls!' said little mildred, and the adjutant dashed off bareheaded to the orderly-room, where the muster-rolls of the regiment were kept. he returned just in time to hear dirkovitch conclude, 'therefore, my dear friends, i am most sorry to say there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had apologised to that our colonel, which he had insulted.' then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. the mess was in no mood just then to weigh insults to russian colonels. 'he does not remember, but i think that there was an accident, and so he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another place--how do you say?--the country. _so_, he says, he came here. he does not know how he came. eh? he was at chepany'--the man caught the word, nodded, and shivered--'at zhigansk and irkutsk. i cannot understand how he escaped. he says, too, that he was in the forests for many years, but how many years he has forgotten--that with many things. it was an accident; done because he did not apologise to that our colonel. ah!' instead of echoing dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record that the white hussars livelily exhibited un-christian delight and other emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung themselves at these. 'steady! fifty-six--fifty-five--fifty-four,' said holmer. 'here we are. "lieutenant austin limmason. _missing._" that was before sebastopol. what an infernal shame! insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly shipped off. thirty years of his life wiped out.' 'but he never apologised. said he'd see him damned first,' chorussed the mess. 'poor chap! i suppose he never had the chance afterwards. how did he come here?' said the colonel. the dingy heap in the chair could give no answer. 'do you know who you are?' it laughed weakly. 'do you know that you are limmason--lieutenant limmason of the white hussars?' swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, 'yes, i'm limmason, of course.' the light died out in his eyes, and the man collapsed, watching every motion of dirkovitch with terror. a flight from siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem to lead to continuity of thought. the man could not explain how, like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. he cringed before dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the toast of the queen. the rest was a blank that the dreaded russian tongue could only in part remove. his head bowed on his breast, and he giggled and cowered alternately. the devil that lived in the brandy prompted dirkovitch at this extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. he rose, swaying slightly, gripped the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:-- 'fellow-soldiers glorious--true friends and hospitables. it was an accident, and deplorable--most deplorable.' here he smiled sweetly all round the mess. 'but you will think of this little, little thing. so little, is it not? the czar! posh! i slap my fingers--i snap my fingers at him. do i believe in him? no! but in us slav who has done nothing, _him_ i believe. seventy--how much--millions peoples that have done nothing--not one thing. posh! napoleon was an episode.' he banged a hand on the table. 'hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the world--out here. all our work is to do; and it shall be done, old peoples. get a-way!' he waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the man. 'you see him. he is no good to see. he was just one little--oh, so little--accident, that no one remembered. now he is _that_! so will you be, brother soldiers so brave--so will you be. but you will never come back. you will all go where he is gone, or'--he pointed to the great coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, 'seventy millions--get a-way, you old peoples,' fell asleep. 'sweet, and to the point,' said little mildred. 'what's the use of getting wroth? let's make this poor devil comfortable.' but that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the white hussars. the lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the dead march, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the wondering station, who saw no gap in the mess-table, that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission. and dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too, by a night train. little mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open hand, the law of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality. 'good-bye, dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey,' said little mildred. '_au revoir_,' said the russian. 'indeed! but we thought you were going home?' 'yes, but i will come again. my dear friends, is that road shut?' he pointed to where the north star burned over the khyber pass. 'by jove! i forgot. of course. happy to meet you, old man, any time you like. got everything you want? cheroots, ice, bedding? that's all right. well, _au revoir_, dirkovitch.' 'um,' said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small. 'of--all--the--unmitigated----!' little mildred answered nothing, but watched the north star and hummed a selection from a recent simla burlesque that had much delighted the white hussars. it ran:-- i'm sorry for mister bluebeard, i'm sorry to cause him pain; but a terrible spree there's sure to be when he comes back again. [illustration] [illustration] the courting of dinah shadd what did the colonel's lady think nobody never knew. somebody asked the sergeant's wife an' she told 'em, true. when you git to a man in the case they're like a row o' pins, for the colonel's lady an' judy o'grady are sisters under their skins. _barrack room ballad._ all day i had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. thirty thousand troops had by the wisdom of the government of india been turned loose over a few thousand square miles of country to practise in peace what they would never attempt in war. consequently cavalry charged unshaken infantry at the trot. infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks delivered in line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up to the wheels of an armoured train which carried nothing more deadly than a twenty-five pounder armstrong, two nordenfeldts, and a few score volunteers all cased in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. yet it was a very lifelike camp. operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew the country and nobody spared man or horse. there was unending cavalry scouting and almost unending forced work over broken ground. the army of the south had finally pierced the centre of the army of the north, and was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. its front extended fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the line of route backwards to the divisional transport columns and all the lumber that trails behind an army on the move. on its right the broken left of the army of the north was flying in mass, chased by the southern horse and hammered by the southern guns till these had been pushed far beyond the limits of their last support. then the flying sat down to rest, while the elated commandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held all in check and observation. unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a flying column of northern horse with a detachment of gurkhas and british troops had been pushed round, as fast as the failing light allowed, to cut across the entire rear of the southern army, to break, as it were, all the ribs of the fan where they converged by striking at the transport, reserve ammunition, and artillery supplies. their instructions were to go in, avoiding the few scouts who might not have been drawn off by the pursuit, and create sufficient excitement to impress the southern army with the wisdom of guarding their own flank and rear before they captured cities. it was a pretty manoeuvre, neatly carried out. speaking for the second division of the southern army, our first intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were labouring in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them out, and the main body of the infantry had gone on. a noah's ark of elephants, camels, and the mixed menagerie of an indian transport train bubbled and squealed behind the guns, when there appeared from nowhere in particular british infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang to the heads of the gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid oaths and cheers. 'how's that, umpire?' said the major commanding the attack, and with one voice the drivers and limber gunners answered 'hout!' while the colonel of artillery sputtered. 'all your scouts are charging our main body,' said the major. 'your flanks are unprotected for two miles. i think we've broken the back of this division. and listen,--there go the gurkhas!' a weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was answered by cheerful howlings. the gurkhas, who should have swung clear of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but drawing off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost parallel to us five or six miles away. our column swayed and surged irresolutely,--three batteries, the divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the hospital and bearer corps. the commandant ruefully promised to report himself 'cut up' to the nearest umpire, and commending his cavalry and all other cavalry to the special care of eblis, toiled on to resume touch with the rest of the division. 'we'll bivouac here to-night,' said the major; 'i have a notion that the gurkhas will get caught. they may want us to re-form on. stand easy till the transport gets away.' a hand caught my beast's bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest hands in the world received me sliding. pleasant is the lot of the special correspondent who falls into such hands as those of privates mulvaney, ortheris, and learoyd. 'an' that's all right,' said the irishman calmly. 'we thought we'd find you somewheres here by. is there anything av yours in the transport? orth'ris'll fetch ut out.' ortheris did 'fetch ut out,' from under the trunk of an elephant, in the shape of a servant and an animal, both laden with medical comforts. the little man's eyes sparkled. 'if the brutil an' licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the thruck,' said mulvaney, making practised investigation, 'they'll loot ev'rything. they're bein' fed on iron-filin's an' dog-biscuit these days, but glory's no compensation for a belly-ache. praise be, we're here to protect you, sorr. beer, sausage, bread (soft an' that's a cur'osity), soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an' fowls! mother av moses, but ye take the field like a confectioner! 'tis scand'lus.' ''ere's a orficer,' said ortheris significantly. 'when the sergent's done lushin' the privit may clean the pot.' i bundled several things into mulvaney's haver-sack before the major's hand fell on my shoulder and he said tenderly, 'requisitioned for the queen's service. wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents: they are the soldier's best friends. come and take pot-luck with us to-night.' and so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a waterproof sheet spread on the ground. the flying column had taken three days' rations with it, and there be few things nastier than government rations--especially when government is experimenting with german toys. erbswurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what thomas atkins needs is bulk in his inside. the major, assisted by his brother officers, purchased goats for the camp and so made the experiment of no effect. long before the fatigue-party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the men were settled down by their valises, kettles and pots had appeared from the surrounding country and were dangling over fires as the kid and the compressed vegetable bubbled together; there rose a cheerful clinking of mess-tins; outrageous demands for 'a little more stuffin' with that there liver-wing'; and gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as delicate as a gun-butt. 'the boys are in a good temper,' said the major. 'they'll be singing presently. well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy.' over our heads burned the wonderful indian stars, which are not all pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of heaven itself. the earth was a gray shadow more unreal than the sky. we could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. a native woman from some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. then there was a belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded earth took up the story. the men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,--their officers with them. the subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate step-dancers. by him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, thomas atkins will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer go on alone. the ruined tombs of forgotten mussulman saints heard the ballad of _agra town_, _the buffalo battery_, _marching to kabul_, _the long, long indian day_, _the place where the punkah-coolie died_, and that crashing chorus which announces, youth's daring spirit, manhood's fire, firm hand and eagle eye, must he acquire, who would aspire to see the gray boar die. to-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and lay and laughed round that waterproof sheet, not one remains. they went to camps that were not of exercise and battles without empires. burmah, the soudan, and the frontier,--fever and fight,--took them in their time. i drifted across to the men's fires in search of mulvaney, whom i found strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. there is nothing particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long day's march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the 'might, majesty, dominion, and power' of the british empire which stands on those feet you take an interest in the proceedings. 'there's a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,' said mulvaney. 'i can't touch ut. prick ut out, little man.' ortheris took out his housewife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked into the fire. 'i've bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin' child av disruption,' said mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet; then seeing me, 'oh, ut's you, sorr! be welkim, an' take that maraudin' scutt's place. jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit.' but ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as i took possession of the hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. learoyd on the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast asleep. 'there's the height av politeness for you,' said mulvaney, lighting his pipe with a flaming branch. 'but jock's eaten half a box av your sardines at wan gulp, an' i think the tin too. what's the best wid you, sorr, an' how did you happen to be on the losin' side this day whin we captured you?' 'the army of the south is winning all along the line,' i said. 'then that line's the hangman's rope, savin' your presence. you'll learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble, an' that's what a woman does. by the same tokin, we'll be attacked before the dawnin' an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots. how do i know that? by the light av pure reason. here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. mark my words. i am av the opinion av polonius whin he said, "don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him first and frequint." we ought to ha' gone on an' helped the gurkhas.' 'but what do you know about polonius?' i demanded. this was a new side of mulvaney's character. 'all that shakespeare iver wrote an' a dale more that the gallery shouted,' said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. 'did i not tell you av silver's theatre in dublin, whin i was younger than i am now an' a patron av the drama? ould silver wud never pay actor-man or woman their just dues, an' by consequince his comp'nies was collapsible at the last minut. thin the bhoys wud clamour to take a part, an' oft as not ould silver made them pay for the fun. faith, i've seen hamlut played wid a new black eye an' the queen as full as a cornucopia. i remimber wanst hogin that 'listed in the black tyrone an' was shot in south africa, he sejuced ould silver into givin' him hamlut's part instid av me that had a fine fancy for rhetoric in those days. av course i wint into the gallery an' began to fill the pit wid other peoples' hats, an' i passed the time av day to hogin walkin' through denmark like a hamstrung mule wid a pall on his back. "hamlut," sez i, "there's a hole in your heel. pull up your shtockin's, hamlut," sez i. "hamlut, hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop that skull an' pull up your shtockin's." the whole house begun to tell him that. he stopped his soliloquishms mid-between. "my shtockin's may be comin' down or they may not," sez he, screwin' his eye into the gallery, for well he knew who i was. "but afther this performince is over me an' the ghost'll trample the tripes out av you, terence, wid your-ass's bray!" an' that's how i come to know about hamlut. eyah! those days, those days! did you iver have onendin' devilmint an' nothin' to pay for it in your life, sorr?' 'never, without having to pay,' i said. 'that's thrue! 'tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut's the same wid horse or fut. a headache if you dhrink, an' a belly-ache if you eat too much, an' a heart-ache to kape all down. faith, the beast only gets the colic, an' he's the lucky man.' he dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache the while. from the far side of the bivouac the voice of corbet-nolan, senior subaltern of b company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much appreciated song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him. the north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour, my own little kathleen, my sweet little kathleen, kathleen, my kathleen, kathleen o'moore! with forty-five o's in the last word: even at that distance you might have cut the soft south irish accent with a shovel. 'for all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high,' murmured mulvaney when the chorus had ceased. 'what's the trouble?' i said gently, for i knew that he was a man of an inextinguishable sorrow. 'hear now,' said he. 'ye know what i am now. _i_ know what i mint to be at the beginnin' av my service. i've tould you time an' again, an' what i have not dinah shadd has. an' what am i? oh, mary mother av hiven, an ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg'ment change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores av times! ay, scores! an' me not so near gettin' promotion as in the first! an' me livin' on an' kapin' clear av clink, not by my own good conduck, but the kindness av some orf'cer-bhoy young enough to be son to me! do i not know ut? can i not tell whin i'm passed over at p'rade, tho' i'm rockin' full av liquor an' ready to fall all in wan piece, such as even a suckin' child might see, bekaze, "oh, 'tis only ould mulvaney!" an' whin i'm let off in ord'ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an' a ready answer an' the ould man's mercy, is ut smilin' i feel whin i fall away an' go back to dinah shadd, thryin' to carry ut all off as a joke? not i! 'tis hell to me, dumb hell through ut all; an' next time whin the fit comes i will be as bad again. good cause the reg'ment has to know me for the best soldier in ut. better cause have i to know mesilf for the worst man. i'm only fit to tache the new drafts what i'll niver learn myself; an' i am sure, as tho' i heard ut, that the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities gets away from my "mind ye now," an' "listen to this, jim, bhoy,"--sure i am that the sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin'. so i tache, as they say at musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. lord be good to me, for i have stud some throuble!' 'lie down and go to sleep,' said i, not being able to comfort or advise. 'you're the best man in the regiment, and, next to ortheris, the biggest fool. lie down and wait till we're attacked. what force will they turn out? guns, think you?' 'try that wid your lorrds an' ladies, twistin' an' turnin' the talk, tho' you mint ut well. ye cud say nothin' to help me, an' yet ye niver knew what cause i had to be what i am.' 'begin at the beginning and go on to the end,' i said royally. 'but rake up the fire a bit first.' i passed ortheris's bayonet for a poker. 'that shows how little we know what we do,' said mulvaney, putting it aside. 'fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an' the next time, maybe, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl'll break, an' so you'll ha' killed him, manin' no more than to kape yourself warm. 'tis a recruity's thrick that. pass the clanin'-rod, sorr.' i snuggled down abashed; and after an interval the voice of mulvaney began. 'did i iver tell you how dinah shadd came to be wife av mine?' i dissembled a burning anxiety that i had felt for some months--ever since dinah shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender, had of her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in a barren land where washing was not. 'i can't remember,' i said casually. 'was it before or after you made love to annie bragin, and got no satisfaction?' the story of annie bragin is written in another place. it is one of the many less respectable episodes in mulvaney's chequered career. 'before--before--long before, was that business av annie bragin an' the corp'ril's ghost. niver woman was the worse for me whin i had married dinah. there's a time for all things, an' i know how to kape all things in place--barrin' the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no hope av comin' to be aught else.' 'begin at the beginning,' i insisted. 'mrs. mulvaney told me that you married her when you were quartered in krab bokhar barracks.' 'an' the same is a cess-pit,' said mulvaney piously. 'she spoke thrue, did dinah. 'twas this way. talkin' av that, have ye iver fallen in love, sorr?' i preserved the silence of the damned. mulvaney continued:-- 'thin i will assume that ye have not. _i_ did. in the days av my youth, as i have more than wanst tould you, i was a man that filled the eye an' delighted the sowl av women. niver man was hated as i have bin. niver man was loved as i--no, not within half a day's march av ut! for the first five years av my service, whin i was what i wud give my sowl to be now, i tuk whatever was within my reach an' digested ut--an' that's more than most men can say. dhrink i tuk, an' ut did me no harm. by the hollow av hiven, i cud play wid four women at wanst, an' kape them from findin' out anythin' about the other three, an' smile like a full-blown marigold through ut all. dick coulhan, av the battery we'll have down on us to-night, could drive his team no better than i mine, an' i hild the worser cattle! an' so i lived, an' so i was happy till afther that business wid annie bragin--she that turned me off as cool as a meat-safe, an' taught me where i stud in the mind av an honest woman. 'twas no sweet dose to swallow. 'afther that i sickened awhile an' tuk thought to my reg'mental work; conceiting mesilf i wud study an' be a sargint, an' a major-gineral twinty minutes afther that. but on top av my ambitiousness there was an empty place in my sowl, an' me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut. sez i to mesilf, "terence, you're a great man an' the best set-up in the reg'mint. go on an' get promotion." sez mesilf to me, "what for?" sez i to mesilf, "for the glory av ut!" sez mesilf to me, "will that fill these two strong arrums av yours, terence?" "go to the devil," sez i to mesilf. "go to the married lines," sez mesilf to me. "'tis the same thing," sez i to mesilf. "av you're the same man, ut is," said mesilf to me; an' wid that i considhered on ut a long while. did you iver feel that way, sorr?' i snored gently, knowing that if mulvaney were uninterrupted he would go on. the clamour from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the rival singers of the companies were pitted against each other. 'so i felt that way an' a bad time ut was. wanst, bein' a fool, i wint into the married lines more for the sake av spakin' to our ould colour-sergint shadd than for any thruck wid women-folk. i was a corp'ril then--rejuced afterwards, but a corp'ril then. i've got a photograft av mesilf to prove ut. "you'll take a cup av tay wid us?" sez shadd. "i will that," i sez, "tho' tay is not my divarsion." '"'twud be better for you if ut were," sez ould mother shadd, an' she had ought to know, for shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bung-full each night. [illustration: 'thin whin the kettle was to be filled, dinah came in--my dinah.'--p. .] 'wid that i tuk off my gloves--there was pipe-clay in thim, so that they stud alone--an' pulled up my chair, lookin' round at the china ornaments, an' bits av things in the shadds' quarters. they were things that belonged to a man, an' no camp-kit, here to-day and dishipated next. "you're comfortable in this place, sergint," sez i. "'tis the wife that did ut, boy," sez he, pointin' the stem av his pipe to ould mother shadd, an' she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment. "that manes you want money," sez she. 'an' thin--an' thin whin the kettle was to be filled, dinah came in--my dinah--her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an' her hair in a winkin' glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin' like stars on a frosty night, an' the tread av her two feet lighter than waste-paper from the colonel's basket in ord'ly-room whin ut's emptied. bein' but a shlip av a girl she went pink at seein' me, an' i twisted me moustache an' looked at a picture forninst the wall. niver show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an' begad she'll come bleatin' to your boot-heels!' 'i suppose that's why you followed annie bragin till everybody in the married quarters laughed at you,' said i, remembering that unhallowed wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness. 'i'm layin' down the gin'ral theory av the attack,' said mulvaney, driving his boot into the dying fire. 'if you read the _soldier's pocket-book_, which niver any soldier reads, you'll see that there are exceptions. whin dinah was out av the door (an' 'twas as tho' the sunlight had shut too)--"mother av hiven, sergint," sez i, "but is that your daughter?"--"i've believed that way these eighteen years," sez ould shadd, his eyes twinklin'; "but mrs. shadd has her own opinion, like iv'ry woman."--"'tis wid yours this time, for a mericle," sez mother shadd. "thin why in the name av fortune did i niver see her before?" sez i. "bekaze you've been thrapesin' round wid the married women these three years past. she was a bit av a child till last year, an' she shot up wid the spring," sez ould mother shadd. "i'll thrapese no more," sez i. "d'you mane that?" sez ould mother shadd, lookin' at me side-ways like a hen looks at a hawk whin the chickens are runnin' free. "try me, an' tell," sez i. wid that i pulled on my gloves, dhrank off the tay, an' went out av the house as stiff as at gin'ral p'rade, for well i knew that dinah shadd's eyes were in the small av my back out av the scullery window. faith! that was the only time i mourned i was not a cav'l'ry-man for the pride av the spurs to jingle. 'i wint out to think, an' i did a powerful lot av thinkin', but ut all came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the blue eyes an' the sparkil in them. thin i kept off canteen, an' i kept to the married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin' dinah. did i meet her? oh, my time past, did i not; wid a lump in my throat as big as my valise an' my heart goin' like a farrier's forge on a saturday morning? 'twas "good day to ye, miss dinah," an' "good day t'you, corp'ril," for a week or two, and divil a bit further could i get bekaze av the respect i had to that girl that i cud ha' broken betune finger an' thumb.' here i giggled as i recalled the gigantic figure of dinah shadd when she handed me my shirt. 'ye may laugh,' grunted mulvaney. 'but i'm speakin' the trut', an' 'tis you that are in fault. dinah was a girl that wud ha' taken the imperiousness out av the duchess av clonmel in those days. flower hand, foot av shod air, an' the eyes av the livin' mornin' she had that is my wife to-day--ould dinah, and niver aught else than dinah shadd to me. ''twas after three weeks standin' off an' on, an' niver makin' headway excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer-boy grinned in me face whin i had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin' all over the place. "an' i'm not the only wan that doesn't kape to barricks," sez he. i tuk him by the scruff av his neck,--my heart was hung on a hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand,--an' "out wid ut," sez i, "or i'll lave no bone av you unbreakable."--"speak to dempsey," sez he howlin'. "dempsey which?" sez i, "ye unwashed limb av satan."--"av the bob-tailed dhragoons," sez he. "he's seen her home from her aunt's house in the civil lines four times this fortnight."--"child!" sez i, dhroppin' him, "you're tongue's stronger than your body. go to your quarters. i'm sorry i dhressed you down." 'at that i went four ways to wanst huntin' dempsey. i was mad to think that wid all my airs among women i shud ha' been chated by a basin-faced fool av a cav'l'ry-man not fit to trust on a trunk. presintly i found him in our lines--the bobtails was quartered next us--an' a tallowy, topheavy son av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an' his plastrons on his epigastrons an' all. but he niver flinched a hair. '"a word wid you, dempsey," sez i. "you've walked wid dinah shadd four times this fortnight gone." '"what's that to you?" sez he. "i'll walk forty times more, an' forty on top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin' infantry lance-corp'ril." 'before i cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down i went full-sprawl. "will that content you?" sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a scots greys orf'cer. "content!" sez i. "for your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'tis the beginnin' av the overture; stand up!" [illustration: '"my collar-bone's bruk," sez he.'--p. .] 'he stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jacket, an' his shoulders had no fair play. i was fightin' for dinah shadd an' that cut on my cheek. what hope had he forninst me? "stand up," sez i, time an' again whin he was beginnin' to quarter the ground an' gyard high an' go large. "this isn't ridin'-school," i sez. "o man, stand up an' let me get in at ye." but whin i saw he wud be runnin' about, i grup his shtock in my left an' his waist-belt in my right an' swung him clear to my right front, head undher, he hammerin' my nose till the wind was knocked out av him on the bare ground. "stand up," sez i, "or i'll kick your head into your chest!" and i wud ha' done ut too, so ragin' mad i was. '"my collar-bone's bruk," sez he. "help me back to lines. i'll walk wid her no more." so i helped him back.' 'and was his collar-bone broken?' i asked, for i fancied that only learoyd could neatly accomplish that terrible throw. 'he pitched on his left shoulder-point. ut was. next day the news was in both barricks, an' whin i met dinah shadd wid a cheek on me like all the reg'mintal tailor's samples, there was no "good mornin', corp'ril," or aught else. "an' what have i done, miss shadd," sez i, very bould, plantin' mesilf forninst her, "that ye should not pass the time of day?" '"ye've half-killed rough-rider dempsey," sez she, her dear blue eyes fillin' up. '"maybe," sez i. "was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times in the fortnight?" '"yes," sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners. "an'--an' what's that to you?" she sez. '"ask dempsey," sez i, purtendin' to go away. '"did you fight for me then, ye silly man?" she sez, tho' she knew ut all along. '"who else?" sez i, an' i tuk wan pace to the front. '"i wasn't worth ut," sez she, fingerin' in her apron. '"that's for me to say," sez i. "shall i say ut?" '"yes," sez she in a saint's whisper, an' at that i explained mesilf; and she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an' many that is a woman, hears wanst in his life. '"but what made ye cry at startin', dinah, darlin'?" sez i. '"your--your bloody cheek," sez she, duckin' her little head down on my sash (i was on duty for the day) an' whimperin' like a sorrowful angil. 'now a man cud take that two ways. i tuk ut as pleased me best an' my first kiss wid ut. mother av innocence! but i kissed her on the tip av the nose an' undher the eye; an' a girl that lets a kiss come tumbleways like that has never been kissed before. take note av that, sorr. thin we wint hand in hand to ould mother shadd like two little childher, an' she said 'twas no bad thing, an' ould shadd nodded behind his pipe, an' dinah ran away to her own room. that day i throd on rollin' clouds. all earth was too small to hould me. begad, i cud ha' hiked the sun out av the sky for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent i was. but i tuk recruities at squad-drill instid, an' began wid general battalion advance whin i shud ha' been balance-steppin' them. eyah! that day! that day!' a very long pause. 'well?' said i. ''twas all wrong,' said mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. 'an' i know that ev'ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. that night i tuk maybe the half av three pints--not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural senses. but i was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an' that canteen beer was so much whisky to me. i can't tell how it came about, but _bekaze_ i had no thought for any wan except dinah, _bekaze_ i hadn't slipped her little white arms from my neck five minuts, _bekaze_ the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, i must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' i must stay talkin' to a red-headed mullingar heifer av a girl, judy sheehy, that was daughter to mother sheehy, the wife of nick sheehy, the canteen-sergint--the black curse av shielygh be on the whole brood that are above groun' this day! '"an' what are ye houldin' your head that high for, corp'ril?" sez judy. "come in an' thry a cup av tay," she sez, standin' in the doorway. bein' an ontrustable fool, an' thinkin' av anything but tay, i wint. '"mother's at canteen," sez judy, smoothin' the hair av hers that was like red snakes, an' lookin' at me corner-ways out av her green cats' eyes. "ye will not mind, corp'ril?" '"i can endure," sez i; ould mother sheehy bein' no divarsion av mine, nor her daughter too. judy fetched the tea things an' put thim on the table, leanin' over me very close to get thim square. i dhrew back, thinkin' av dinah. '"is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?" sez judy. '"no," sez i. "why should i be?" '"that rests wid the girl," sez judy, dhrawin' her chair next to mine. '"thin there let ut rest," sez i; an' thinkin' i'd been a trifle onpolite, i sez, "the tay's not quite sweet enough for my taste. put your little finger in the cup, judy. 'twill make ut necthar." '"what's necthar?" sez she. '"somethin' very sweet," sez i; an' for the sinful life av me i cud not help lookin' at her out av the corner av my eye, as i was used to look at a woman. '"go on wid ye, cor'pril," sez she. "you're a flirrt." '"on me sowl i'm not," sez i. '"then you're a cruel handsome man, an' that's worse," sez she, heavin' big sighs an' lookin' cross-ways. '"you know your own mind," sez i. '"twud be better for me if i did not," she sez. '"there's a dale to be said on both sides av that," sez i, unthinkin'. '"say your own part av ut, then, terence, darlin'," sez she; "for begad i'm thinkin' i've said too much or too little for an honest girl," an' wid that she put her arms round my neck an' kissed me. '"there's no more to be said afther that," sez i, kissin' her back again--oh the mane scutt that i was, my head ringin' wid dinah shadd! how does ut come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on wan woman, he's sure bound to put it on another? 'tis the same thing at musketry. wan day ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an' the next, lay high lay low, sight or snap, ye can't get off the bull's-eye for ten shots runnin'.' 'that only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. he does it without thinking,' i replied. 'thankin' you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. but i'm doubtful whether you mint ut for a complimint. hear now; i sat there wid judy on my knee tellin' me all manner av nonsinse an' only sayin' "yes" an' "no," when i'd much better ha' kept tongue betune teeth. an' that was not an hour afther i had left dinah! what i was thinkin' av i cannot say. presintly, quiet as a cat, ould mother sheehy came in velvet-dhrunk. she had her daughter's red hair, but 'twas bald in patches, an' i could see in her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin', what judy wud be twenty years to come. i was for jumpin' up, but judy niver moved. '"terence has promust, mother," sez she, an' the could sweat bruk out all over me. ould mother sheehy sat down of a heap an' began playin' wid the cups. "thin you're a well-matched pair," she sez very thick. "for he's the biggest rogue that iver spoiled the queen's shoe-leather, an'----" '"i'm off, judy," sez i. "ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother. get her to bed, girl." '"nonsinse!" sez the ould woman, prickin' up her ears like a cat an' grippin' the table-edge. "'twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for you, ye grinnin' badger, if nonsinse 'tis. git clear, you. i'm goin' to bed." 'i ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an' my heart sick, but i had sinse enough to see that i'd brought ut all on mysilf. "it's this to pass the time av day to a panjandhrum av hell-cats," sez i. "what i've said, an' what i've not said do not matther. judy an' her dam will hould me for a promust man, an' dinah will give me the go, an' i desarve ut. i will go an' get dhrunk," sez i, "an' forget about ut, for 'tis plain i'm not a marrin' man." 'on my way to canteen i ran against lascelles, colour-sergeant that was av e comp'ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. "you've the head av a drowned man on your shoulders," sez he; "an' you're goin' where you'll get a worse wan. come back," sez he. "let me go," sez i. "i've thrown my luck over the wall wid my own hand!"--"then that's not the way to get ut back again," sez he. "have out wid your throuble, you fool-bhoy." an' i tould him how the matther was. 'he sucked in his lower lip. "you've been thrapped," sez he. "ju sheehy wud be the betther for a man's name to hers as soon as can. an' ye thought ye'd put the comether on her,--that's the natural vanity of the baste. terence, you're a big born fool, but you're not bad enough to marry into that comp'ny. if you said anythin', an' for all your protestations i'm sure ye did--or did not, which is worse,--eat ut all--lie like the father of all lies, but come out av ut free av judy. do i not know what ut is to marry a woman that was the very spit an' image av judy whin she was young? i'm gettin' old an' i've larnt patience, but you, terence, you'd raise hand on judy an' kill her in a year. never mind if dinah gives you the go, you've desarved ut; never mind if the whole reg'mint laughs you all day. get shut av judy an' her mother. they can't dhrag you to church, but if they do, they'll dhrag you to hell. go back to your quarters and lie down," sez he. thin over his shoulder, "you _must_ ha' done with thim." 'next day i wint to see dinah, but there was no tucker in me as i walked. i knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin' av mine, an' i dreaded ut sore. 'i heard judy callin' me, but i hild straight on to the shadds' quarthers, an' dinah wud ha' kissed me but i put her back. '"whin all's said, darlin'," sez i, "you can give ut me if ye will, tho' i misdoubt 'twill be so easy to come by then." 'i had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before judy an' her mother came to the door. i think there was a veranda, but i'm forgettin'. '"will ye not step in?" sez dinah, pretty and polite, though the shadds had no dealin's with the sheehys. old mother shadd looked up quick, an' she was the fust to see the throuble; for dinah was her daughter. '"i'm pressed for time to-day," sez judy as bould as brass; "an' i've only come for terence,--my promust man. 'tis strange to find him here the day afther the day." 'dinah looked at me as though i had hit her, an' i answered straight. '"there was some nonsinse last night at the sheehys' quarthers, an' judy's carryin' on the joke, darlin'," sez i. '"at the sheehys' quarthers?" sez dinah very slow, an' judy cut in wid: "he was there from nine till ten, dinah shadd, an' the betther half av that time i was sittin' on his knee, dinah shadd. ye may look an' ye may look an' ye may look me up an' down, but ye won't look away that terence is my promust man. terence, darlin', 'tis time for us to be comin' home." 'dinah shadd niver said word to judy. "ye left me at half-past eight," she sez to me, "an' i niver thought that ye'd leave me for judy,--promises or no promises. go back wid her, you that have to be fetched by a girl! i'm done with you," sez she, and she ran into her own room, her mother followin'. so i was alone wid those two women and at liberty to spake my sentiments. '"judy sheehy," sez i, "if you made a fool av me betune the lights you shall not do ut in the day. i niver promised you words or lines." '"you lie," sez ould mother sheehy, "an' may ut choke you where you stand!" she was far gone in dhrink. '"an' tho' ut choked me where i stud i'd not change," sez i. "go home, judy. i take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin' your mother out bareheaded on this errand. hear now, and have ut for an answer. i gave my word to dinah shadd yesterday, an', more blame to me, i was wid you last night talkin' nonsinse but nothin' more. you've chosen to thry to hould me on ut. i will not be held thereby for anythin' in the world. is that enough?" 'judy wint pink all over. "an' i wish you joy av the perjury," sez she, duckin' a curtsey. "you've lost a woman that would ha' wore her hand to the bone for your pleasure; an' 'deed, terence, ye were not thrapped...." lascelles must ha' spoken plain to her. "i am such as dinah is--'deed i am! ye've lost a fool av a girl that'll niver look at you again, and ye've lost what ye niver had--your common honesty. if you manage your men as you manage your love makin', small wondher they call you the worst corp'ril in the comp'ny. come away, mother," sez she. 'but divil a fut would the ould woman budge! "d'you hould by that?" sez she, peerin' up under her thick gray eyebrows. '"ay, an' wud," sez i, "tho' dinah gave me the go twinty times. i'll have no thruck with you or yours," sez i. "take your child away, ye shameless woman." '"an' am i shameless?" sez she, bringin' her hands up above her head. "thin what are you, ye lyin', schamin', weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son av a sutler? am _i_ shameless? who put the open shame on me an' my child that we shud go beggin' through the lines in the broad daylight for the broken word of a man? double portion of my shame be on you, terence mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! by mary and the saints, by blood and water an' by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the beginnin', the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be free from pain for another when ut's not your own! may your heart bleed in your breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin' at the bleedin'! strong you think yourself? may your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into the divil's hands against your own will! clear-eyed you are? may your eyes see clear evry step av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers av hell put thim out! may the ragin' dry thirst in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. god preserve the light av your onderstandin' to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an' do, whin you're wallowin' in the muck! may ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there's breath in your body; an' may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin' your death before ut takes you, an' onable to stir hand or foot!" 'i heard a scufflin' in the room behind, and thin dinah shadd's hand dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road. '"the half av that i'll take," sez she, "an' more too if i can. go home, ye silly talkin' woman,--go home an' confess." '"come away! come away!" sez judy, pullin' her mother by the shawl. "'twas none av terence's fault. for the love av mary stop the talkin'!" '"an' you!" said ould mother sheehy, spinnin' round forninst dinah. "will ye take the half av that man's load? stand off from him, dinah shadd, before he takes you down too--you that look to be a quarther-master-sergeant's wife in five years. you look too high, child. you shall _wash_ for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give you the job out av charity; but a privit's wife you shall be to the end, an' evry sorrow of a privit's wife you shall know and niver a joy but wan, that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. the pain av bearin' you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast; an' you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid niver a priest to say a prayer over him, an' on that man-child ye shall think ivry day av your life. think long, dinah shadd, for you'll niver have another tho' you pray till your knees are bleedin'. the mothers av childer shall mock you behind your back when you're wringing over the wash-tub. you shall know what ut is to help a dhrunken husband home an' see him go to the gyard-room. will that plase you, dinah shadd, that won't be seen talkin' to my daughter? you shall talk to worse than judy before all's over. the sergints' wives shall look down on you contemptuous, daughter av a sergint, an' you shall cover ut all up wid a smiling face whin your heart's burstin'. stand off av him, dinah shadd, for i've put the black curse of shielygh upon him an' his own mouth shall make ut good." [illustration: '"the half av that i'll take," sez she.'--p. .] 'she pitched forward on her head an' began foamin' at the mouth. dinah shadd ran out wid water, an' judy dhragged the ould woman into the veranda till she sat up. '"i'm old an' forlore," she sez, thremblin' an' cryin', "and 'tis like i say a dale more than i mane." '"when you're able to walk--go," says ould mother shadd. "this house has no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter." '"eyah!" said the ould woman. "hard words break no bones, an' dinah shadd'll kape the love av her husband till my bones are green corn. judy, darlin', i misremember what i came here for. can you lend us the bottom av a taycup av tay, mrs. shadd?" 'but judy dhragged her off cryin' as tho' her heart wud break. an' dinah shadd an' i, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all.' 'then why do you remember it now?' said i. 'is ut like i'd forget? ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell thrue in my life aftherwards, an' i cud ha' stud ut all--stud ut all,--excipt when my little shadd was born. that was on the line av march three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. we were betune umballa an' kalka thin, an' i was on picket. whin i came off duty the women showed me the child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as i looked. we buried him by the road, an' father victor was a day's march behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp'ny captain read a prayer. an' since then i've been a childless man, an' all else that ould mother sheehy put upon me an' dinah shadd. what do you think, sorr?' i thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for mulvaney's hand. the demonstration nearly cost me the use of three fingers. whatever he knows of his weaknesses, mulvaney is entirely ignorant of his strength. 'but what do you think?' he repeated, as i was straightening out the crushed fingers. my reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where ten men were shouting for 'orth'ris,' 'privit orth'ris,' 'mistah or--ther--ris!' 'deah boy,' 'cap'n orth'ris,' 'field-marshal orth'ris,' 'stanley, you pen'north o' pop, come 'ere to your own comp'ny!' and the cockney, who had been delighting another audience with recondite and rabelaisian yarns, was shot down among his admirers by the major force. 'you've crumpled my dress-shirt 'orrid,' said he, 'an' i shan't sing no more to this 'ere bloomin' drawin'-room.' learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind ortheris, and slung him aloft on his shoulders. 'sing, ye bloomin' hummin' bird!' said he, and ortheris, beating time on learoyd's skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the ratcliffe highway, of this song:-- my girl she give me the go onst, when i was a london lad, an' i went on the drink for a fortnight, an' then i went to the bad. the queen she gave me a shillin' to fight for 'er over the seas; but guv'ment built me a fever-trap, an' injia gave me disease. _chorus._ ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says, an' don't you go for the beer; but i was an ass when i was at grass, an' that is why i'm here. i fired a shot at a afghan, the beggar 'e fired again, an' i lay on my bed with a 'ole in my 'ed, an' missed the next campaign! i up with my gun at a burman who carried a bloomin' _dah_, but the cartridge stuck and the bay'nit bruk, an' all i got was the scar. _chorus._ ho! don't you aim at a afghan when you stand on the sky-line clear; an' don't you go for a burman if none o' your friends is near. i served my time for a corp'ral, an' wetted my stripes with pop, for i went on the bend with a intimate friend, an' finished the night in the 'shop.' i served my time for a sergeant; the colonel 'e sez 'no! the most you'll see is a full c.b.'[ ] an' ... very next night 'twas so. _chorus._ ho! don't you go for a corp'ral unless your 'ed is clear; but i was an ass when i was at grass, an' that is why i'm 'ere. i've tasted the luck o' the army in barrack an' camp an' clink, an' i lost my tip through the bloomin' trip along o' the women an' drink. i'm down at the heel o' my service an' when i am laid on the shelf, my very wust friend from beginning to end by the blood of a mouse was myself! _chorus._ ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says, an' don't you go for the beer; but i was an ass when i was at grass, an' that is why i'm 'ere. ay, listen to our little man now, singin' an' shoutin' as tho' trouble had niver touched him. d' you remember when he went mad with the home-sickness?' said mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season when ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved abominably. 'but he's talkin' bitter truth, though. eyah! 'my very worst frind from beginnin' to ind by the blood av a mouse was mesilf!' . . . . . when i woke i saw mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as prometheus on his rock, with i know not what vultures tearing his liver. [illustration] footnotes: [ ] confined to barracks. [illustration] the incarnation of krishna mulvaney wohl auf, my bully cavaliers we ride to church to-day, the man that hasn't got a horse must steal one straight away. . . . . . be reverent, men, remember this is a gottes haus du, conrad, cut along der aisle and schenck der whisky aus. _hans breitmann's ride to church._ once upon a time, very far from england, there lived three men who loved each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them. they were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer-door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in her majesty's army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for self-culture. their duty is to keep themselves and their accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more often than is necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war. all these things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw in some fighting-work for which the army regulations did not call. their fate sent them to serve in india, which is not a golden country, though poets have sung otherwise. there men die with great swiftness, and those who live suffer many and curious things. i do not think that my friends concerned themselves much with the social or political aspects of the east. they attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier, another one on our western boundary, and a third in upper burma. then their regiment sat still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of cantonment life was their portion. they were drilled morning and evening on the same dusty parade-ground. they wandered up and down the same stretch of dusty white road, attended the same church and the same grog-shop, and slept in the same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two long years. there was mulvaney, the father in the craft, who had served with various regiments from bermuda to halifax, old in war, scarred, reckless, resourceful, and in his pious hours an unequalled soldier. to him turned for help and comfort six and a half feet of slow-moving, heavy-footed yorkshireman, born on the wolds, bred in the dales, and educated chiefly among the carriers' carts at the back of york railway-station. his name was learoyd, and his chief virtue an unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. how ortheris, a fox-terrier of a cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is a mystery which even to-day i cannot explain. 'there was always three av us,' mulvaney used to say. 'an' by the grace av god, so long as our service lasts, three av us they'll always be. 'tis betther so.' they desired no companionship beyond their own, and it was evil for any man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. physical argument was out of the question as regarded mulvaney and the yorkshireman; and assault on ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain--a business which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. therefore they flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of happiness from calicut in southern, to peshawur in northern india. through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure admitted to their friendship--frankly by mulvaney from the beginning, sullenly and with reluctance by learoyd, and suspiciously by ortheris, who held to it that no man not in the army could fraternise with a red-coat. 'like to like,' said he. 'i'm a bloomin' sodger--he's a bloomin' civilian. 'taint natural--that's all.' but that was not all. they thawed progressively, and in the thawing told me more of their lives and adventures than i am ever likely to write. omitting all else, this tale begins with the lamentable thirst that was at the beginning of first causes. never was such a thirst--mulvaney told me so. they kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was only successful in the case of ortheris. he, whose talents were many, went forth into the highways and stole a dog from a 'civilian'--_videlicet_, some one, he knew not who, not in the army. now that civilian was but newly connected by marriage with the colonel of the regiment, and outcry was made from quarters least anticipated by ortheris, and, in the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to dispose at ridiculously unremunerative rates of as promising a small terrier as ever graced one end of a leading string. the purchase-money was barely sufficient for one small outbreak, which led him to the guard-room. he escaped, however, with nothing worse than a severe reprimand, and a few hours of punishment drill. not for nothing had he acquired the reputation of being 'the best soldier of his inches' in the regiment. mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions' creed. 'a dhirty man,' he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, 'goes to clink for a weakness in the knees, an' is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin'; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service--a man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an' whose 'coutrements are widout a speck--_that_ man may, spakin' in reason, do fwhat he likes an' dhrink from day to divil. that's the pride av bein' dacint.' we sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. behind us was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the north-western provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from central india, were supposed to dwell. in front lay the cantonment, glaring white under a glaring sun; and on either side ran the broad road that led to delhi. it was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of mulvaney taking a day's leave and going upon a shooting-tour. the peacock is a holy bird throughout india, and he who slays one is in danger of being mobbed by the nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that mulvaney had gone forth, he had contrived, without in the least offending local religious susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he sold to profit. it seemed just possible then---- 'but fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin' out widout a dhrink? the ground's powdher-dhry underfoot, an' ut gets unto the throat fit to kill,' wailed mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. 'an' a peacock is not a bird you can catch the tail av onless ye run. can a man run on wather--an' jungle-wather too?' ortheris had considered the question in all its bearings. he spoke, chewing his pipe-stem meditatively the while:-- 'go forth, return in glory, to clusium's royal 'ome: an' round these bloomin' temples 'ang the bloomin' shields o' rome. you better go. you ain't like to shoot yourself--not while there's a chanst of liquor. me an' learoyd'll stay at 'ome an' keep shop--'case o' anythin' turnin' up. but you go out with a gas-pipe gun an' ketch the little peacockses or somethin'. you kin get one day's leave easy as winkin'. go along an' get it, an' get peacockses or somethin'.' 'jock,' said mulvaney, turning to learoyd, who was half asleep under the shadow of the bank. he roused slowly. 'sitha, mulvaney, go,' said he. and mulvaney went; cursing his allies with irish fluency and barrack-room point. 'take note,' said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed in his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling-piece in his hand. 'take note, jock, an' you, orth'ris, i am goin' in the face av my own will--all for to please you. i misdoubt anythin' will come av permiscuous huntin' afther peacockses in a desolit lan'; an' i know that i will lie down an' die wid thirrrst. me catch peacockses for you, ye lazy scutts--an' be sacrificed by the peasanthry--ugh!' he waved a huge paw and went away. at twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed, much begrimed with dirt. 'peacockses?' queried ortheris from the safe rest of a barrack-room table whereon he was smoking cross-legged, learoyd fast asleep on a bench. 'jock,' said mulvaney without answering, as he stirred up the sleeper. 'jock, can ye fight? will ye fight?' very slowly the meaning of the words communicated itself to the half-roused man. he understood--and again--what might these things mean? mulvaney was shaking him savagely. meantime the men in the room howled with delight. there was war in the confederacy at last--war and the breaking of bonds. barrack-room etiquette is stringent. on the direct challenge must follow the direct reply. this is more binding than the ties of tried friendship. once again mulvaney repeated the question. learoyd answered by the only means in his power, and so swiftly that the irishman had barely time to avoid the blow. the laughter around increased. learoyd looked bewilderedly at his friend--himself as greatly bewildered. ortheris dropped from the table because his world was falling. 'come outside,' said mulvaney, and as the occupants of the barrack-room prepared joyously to follow, he turned and said furiously, 'there will be no fight this night--onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. the man that does, follows on.' no man moved. the three passed out into the moonlight, learoyd fumbling with the buttons of his coat. the parade-ground was deserted except for the scurrying jackals. mulvaney's impetuous rush carried his companions far into the open ere learoyd attempted to turn round and continue the discussion. 'be still now. 'twas my fault for beginnin' things in the middle av an end, jock. i should ha' comminst wid an explanation; but jock, dear, on your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that iver was--betther than fightin' me? considher before ye answer.' more than ever puzzled, learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an arm, kicked tentatively, and answered, 'ah'm fit.' he was accustomed to fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind. they sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and mulvaney untangled himself in mighty words. 'followin' your fools' scheme i wint out into the thrackless desert beyond the barricks. an' there i met a pious hindu dhriving a bullock-kyart. i tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted for to convoy me a piece, an' i jumped in----' 'you long, lazy, black-haired swine,' drawled ortheris, who would have done the same thing under similar circumstances. ''twas the height av policy. that naygur-man dhruv miles an' miles--as far as the new railway line they're buildin' now back av the tavi river. "'tis a kyart for dhirt only," says he now an' again timoreously, to get me out av ut. "dhirt i am," sez i, "an' the dhryest that you ever kyarted. dhrive on, me son, an' glory be wid you." at that i wint to slape, an' took no heed till he pulled up on the embankmint av the line where the coolies were pilin' mud. there was a matther av two thousand coolies on that line--you remimber that. prisintly a bell rang, an' they throops off to a big pay-shed. "where's the white man in charge?" sez i to my kyart-dhriver. "in the shed," sez he, "engaged on a riffle."--"a fwhat?" sez i. "riffle," sez he. "you take ticket. he take money. you get nothin'."--"oho!" sez i, "that's fwhat the shuperior an' cultivated man calls a raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an' sin. lead on to that raffle, though fwhat the mischief 'tis doin' so far away from uts home--which is the charity-bazar at christmas, an' the colonel's wife grinnin' behind the tea-table--is more than i know." wid that i wint to the shed an' found 'twas pay-day among the coolies. their wages was on a table forninst a big, fine, red buck av a man--sivun fut high, four fut wide, an' three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. he was payin' the coolies fair an' easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud raffle that month, an' each man sez, "yes," av course. thin he wud deduct from their wages accordin'. whin all was paid, he filled an ould cigar-box full av gun-wads an' scatthered ut among the coolies. they did not take much joy av that performince, an' small wondher. a man close to me picks up a black gunwad an' sings out, "i have ut."--"good may ut do you," sez i. the coolie wint forward to this big, fine, red man, who threw a cloth off av the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an' variously bedivilled sedan-chair i iver saw.' 'sedan-chair! put your 'ead in a bag. that was a palanquin. don't yer know a palanquin when you see it?' said ortheris with great scorn. [illustration: '"out of this," sez he, "i'm in charge av this section av construction."--"i'm in charge av mesilf," sez i, "an' it's like i will stay a while."'--p. .] 'i chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an' chair ut shall be, little man,' continued the irishman. ''twas a most amazin' chair--all lined wid pink silk an' fitted wid red silk curtains. "here ut is," sez the red man. "here ut is," sez the coolie, an' he grinned weakly-ways. "is ut any use to you?" sez the red man. "no," sez the coolie; "i'd like to make a presint av ut to you."--"i am graciously pleased to accept that same," sez the red man; an' at that all the coolies cried aloud in fwhat was mint for cheerful notes, an' wint back to their diggin', lavin' me alone in the shed. the red man saw me, an' his face grew blue on his big, fat neck. "fwhat d'you want here?" sez he. "standin'-room an' no more," sez i, "onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an' that's manners, ye rafflin' ruffian," for i was not goin' to have the service throd upon. "out of this," sez he. "i'm in charge av this section av construction."--"i'm in charge av mesilf," sez i, "an' it's like i will stay a while. d'ye raffle much in these parts?"--"fwhat's that to you?" sez he. "nothin'," sez i, "but a great dale to you, for begad i'm thinkin' you get the full half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. is ut always raffled so?" i sez, an' wid that i wint to a coolie to ask questions. bhoys, that man's name is dearsley, an' he's been rafflin' that ould sedan-chair monthly this matther av nine months. ivry coolie on the section takes a ticket--or he gives 'em the go--wanst a month on pay-day. ivry coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him, for 'tis too big to carry away, an' he'd sack the man that thried to sell ut. that dearsley has been makin' the rowlin' wealth av roshus by nefarious rafflin'. think av the burnin' shame to the sufferin' coolie-man that the army in injia are bound to protect an' nourish in their bosoms! two thousand coolies defrauded wanst a month!' 'dom t' coolies. has't gotten t' cheer, man?' said learoyd. 'hould on. havin' onearthed this amazin' an' stupenjus fraud committed by the man dearsley, i hild a council av war; he thryin' all the time to sejuce me into a fight wid opprobrious language. that sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. 'tis a king's chair or a quane's. there's gold on ut an' silk an' all manner av trapesemints. bhoys, 'tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin'--me bein' the ould man--but--anyway he has had ut nine months, an' he dare not make throuble av ut was taken from him. five miles away, or ut may be six----' there was a long pause, and the jackals howled merrily. learoyd bared one arm, and contemplated it in the moonlight. then he nodded partly to himself and partly to his friends. ortheris wriggled with suppressed emotion. 'i thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut,' said mulvaney. 'i made bould to say as much to the man before. he was for a direct front attack--fut, horse, an' guns--an' all for nothin', seem' that i had no thransport to convey the machine away. "i will not argue wid you," sez i, "this day, but subsequintly, mister dearsley, me rafflin' jool, we talk ut out lengthways. 'tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his hard-earned emolumints, an' by presint informashin'"--'twas the kyart man that tould me--"ye've been perpethrating that same for nine months. but i'm a just man," sez i, "an' overlookin' the presumpshin that yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust,"--at that he turned sky-green, so i knew things was more thrue than tellable--"not come by honust, i'm willin' to compound the felony for this month's winnin's."' 'ah! ho!' from learoyd and ortheris. 'that man dearsley's rushin' on his fate,' continued mulvaney, solemnly wagging his head. 'all hell had no name bad enough for me that tide. faith, he called me a robber! me! that was savin' him from continuin' in his evil ways widout a remonstrince--an' to a man av conscience a remonstrince may change the chune av his life. "'tis not for me to argue," sez i, "fwhatever ye are, mister dearsley, but, by my hand, i'll take away the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair."--"you will have to fight me for ut," sez he, "for well i know you will never dare make report to any one."--"fight i will," sez i, "but not this day, for i'm rejuced for want av nourishment."--"ye're an ould bould hand," sez he, sizin' up me an' down; "an' a jool of a fight we will have. eat now an' dhrink, an' go your way." wid that he gave me some hump an' whisky--good whisky--an' we talked av this an' that the while. "it goes hard on me now," sez i, wipin' my mouth, "to confiscate that piece of furniture, but justice is justice."--"ye've not got ut yet," sez he; "there's the fight between."--"there is," sez i, "an' a good fight. ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my regimint for the dinner you have given this day." thin i came hot-foot to you two. hould your tongue, the both. 'tis this way. to-morrow we three will go there an' he shall have his pick betune me an' jock. jock's a deceivin' fighter, for he is all fat to the eye, an' he moves slow. now i'm all beef to the look, an' i move quick. by my reckonin' the dearsley man won't take me; so me an' orth'ris'll see fair play. jock, i tell you, 'twill be big fightin'--whipped, wid the cream above the jam. afther the business 'twill take a good three av us--jock'll be very hurt--to haul away that sedan-chair.' 'palanquin.' this from ortheris. 'fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. 'tis the only sellin' piece av property widin reach that we can get so cheap. an' fwhat's a fight afther all? he has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. we rob him honust for the sake av the whisky he gave me.' 'but wot'll we do with the bloomin' article when we've got it? them palanquins are as big as 'ouses, an' uncommon 'ard to sell, as m'cleary said when ye stole the sentry-box from the curragh.' 'who's goin' to do t' fightin'?' said learoyd, and ortheris subsided. the three returned to barracks without a word. mulvaney's last argument clinched the matter. this palanquin was property, vendible and to be attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. it would eventually become beer. great was mulvaney. next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. learoyd alone was without care, for mulvaney dived darkly into the future, and little ortheris feared the unknown. what befell at that interview in the lonely pay-shed by the side of the half-built embankment, only a few hundred coolies know, and their tale is a confusing one, running thus:-- 'we were at work. three men in red coats came. they saw the sahib--dearsley sahib. they made oration; and noticeably the small man among the red-coats. dearsley sahib also made oration, and used many very strong words. upon this talk they departed together to an open space, and there the fat man in the red coat fought with dearsley sahib after the custom of white men--with his hands, making no noise, and never at all pulling dearsley sahib's hair. such of us as were not afraid beheld these things for just so long a time as a man needs to cook the mid-day meal. the small man in the red coat had possessed himself of dearsley sahib's watch. no, he did not steal that watch. he held it in his hand, and at certain seasons made outcry, and the twain ceased their combat, which was like the combat of young bulls in spring. both men were soon all red, but dearsley sahib was much more red than the other. seeing this, and fearing for his life--because we greatly loved him--some fifty of us made shift to rush upon the red-coats. but a certain man,--very black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused with the small man, or the fat man who fought,--that man, we affirm, ran upon us, and of us he embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our heads together, so that our livers turned to water, and we ran away. it is not good to interfere in the fightings of white men. after that dearsley sahib fell and did not rise, these men jumped upon his stomach and despoiled him of all his money, and attempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed. is it true that dearsley sahib makes no complaint of these latter things having been done? we were senseless with fear, and do not at all remember. there was no palanquin near the pay-shed. what do we know about palanquins? is it true that dearsley sahib does not return to this place, on account of his sickness, for ten days? this is the fault of those bad men in the red coats, who should be severely punished; for dearsley sahib is both our father and mother, and we love him much. yet, if dearsley sahib does not return to this place at all, we will speak the truth. there was a palanquin, for the up-keep of which we were forced to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. on such mulctings dearsley sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before the palanquin. what could we do? we were poor men. he took a full half of our wages. will the government repay us those moneys? those three men in red coats bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and departed. all the money that dearsley sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that palanquin. therefore they stole it. thousands of rupees were there--all our money. it was our bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to dearsley sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. why does the white man look upon us with the eye of disfavour? before god, there was a palanquin, and now there is no palanquin; and if they send the police here to make inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin. why should a palanquin be near these works? we are poor men, and we know nothing.' such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the descent upon dearsley. from the lips of the coolies i received it. dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and mulvaney preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of the lips. he had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech was taken from him. i respected that reserve until, three days after the affair, i discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of unchastened splendour--evidently in past days the litter of a queen. the pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich with the painted _papier-maché_ of cashmere. the shoulder-pads were of yellow silk. the panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all the gods and goddesses of the hindu pantheon--lacquer on cedar. the cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent jaipur enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. the cushions were of brocaded delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's palace were stiff with gold. closer investigation showed that the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discoloured by time and wear; but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the threshold of a royal zenana. i found no fault with it, except that it was in my stable. then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder-pole, i laughed. the road from dearsley's pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment. still i did not quite recognise the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a 'fence' for stolen property. [illustration: 'nine roun's they were even matched, an' at the tenth----.'--p. .] 'i'm askin' you to warehouse ut,' said mulvaney, when he was brought to consider the question. 'there's no steal in ut. dearsley tould us we cud have ut if we fought. jock fought--an', oh, sorr, when the throuble was at uts finest an' jock was bleedin' like a stuck pig, an' little orth'ris was shquealin' on one leg chewin' big bites out av dearsley's watch, i wud ha' given my place at the fight to have had you see wan round. he tuk jock, as i suspicioned he would, an' jock was deceptive. nine roun's they were even matched, an' at the tenth---- about that palanquin now. there's not the least throuble in the world, or we wud not ha' brought ut here. you will ondherstand that the queen--god bless her!--does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an' palanquins an' sich in barricks. afther we had dhragged ut down from dearsley's through that cruel scrub that near broke orth'ris's heart, we set ut in the ravine for a night; an' a thief av a porcupine an' a civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin'. i put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the natural abidin' place av all the vermin in cantonmints? we brought ut to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. do not let your conscience prick. think av the rejoicin' men in the pay-shed yonder--lookin' at dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel--an' well knowin' that they can dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for riffles. indirectly, sorr, you have rescued from an onprincipled son av a night-hawk the peasanthry av a numerous village. an' besides, will i let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? not i. 'tis not every day a piece av pure joolry comes into the market. there's not a king widin these forty miles'--he waved his hand round the dusty horizon--'not a king wud not be glad to buy ut. some day mesilf, whin i have leisure, i'll take ut up along the road an' dishpose av ut.' 'how?' said i, for i knew the man was capable of anything. 'get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open through the curtains. whin i see a likely man av the native persuasion, i will descind blushin' from my canopy and say, "buy a palanquin, ye black scutt?" i will have to hire four men to carry me first, though; and that's impossible till next pay-day.' curiously enough, learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in the winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was altogether disposed to undervalue it, while ortheris openly said it would be better to break the thing up. dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided man, capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of setting in motion the machinery of the civil law--a thing much abhorred by the soldier. under any circumstances their fun had come and passed; the next pay-day was close at hand, when there would be beer for all. wherefore longer conserve the painted palanquin? 'a first-class rifle-shot an' a good little man av your inches you are,' said mulvaney. 'but you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. 'tis me has to lie awake av nights schamin' an' plottin' for the three av us. orth'ris, me son, 'tis no matther av a few gallons av beer--no, nor twenty gallons--but tubs an' vats an' firkins in that sedan-chair. who ut was, an' what ut was, an' how ut got there, we do not know; but i know in my bones that you an' me an' jock wid his sprained thumb will get a fortune thereby. lave me alone, an' let me think.' meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the key of which was in mulvaney's hands. pay-day came, and with it beer. it was not in experience to hope that mulvaney, dried by four weeks' drought, would avoid excess. next morning he and the palanquin had disappeared. he had taken the precaution of getting three days' leave 'to see a friend on the railway,' and the colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hoping it would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully gave him all he demanded. at this point mulvaney's history, as recorded in the mess-room, stopped. ortheris carried it not much further. 'no, 'e wasn't drunk,' said the little man loyally, 'the liquor was no more than feelin' its way round inside of 'im; but 'e went an' filled that 'ole bloomin' palanquin with bottles 'fore 'e went off. 'e's gone an' 'ired six men to carry 'im, an' i 'ad to 'elp 'im into 'is nupshal couch, 'cause 'e wouldn't 'ear reason. 'e's gone off in 'is shirt an' trousies, swearin' tremenjus--gone down the road in the palanquin, wavin' 'is legs out o' windy.' 'yes,' said i, 'but where?' 'now you arx me a question. 'e said 'e was goin' to sell that palanquin, but from observations what happened when i was stuffin' 'im through the door, i fancy 'e's gone to the new embankment to mock at dearsley. 'soon as jock's off duty i'm goin' there to see if 'e's safe--not mulvaney, but t'other man. my saints, but i pity 'im as 'elps terence out o' the palanquin when 'e's once fair drunk!' 'he'll come back without harm,' i said. ''corse 'e will. on'y question is, what'll 'e be doin' on the road? killing dearsley, like as not. 'e shouldn't 'a gone without jock or me.' reinforced by learoyd, ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang. dearsley's head was still embellished with towels. mulvaney, drunk or sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and dearsley indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated brave. 'i had my pick o' you two,' he explained to learoyd, 'and you got my palanquin--not before i'd made my profit on it. why'd i do harm when everything's settled?' your man _did_ come here--drunk as davy's sow on a frosty night--came a-purpose to mock me--stuck his head out of the door an' called me a crucified hodman. i made him drunker, an' sent him along. but i never touched him.' to these things learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity, answered only, 'if owt comes to mulvaaney 'long o' you, i'll gripple you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an' i'll draw t' throat twistyways, man. see there now.' the embassy removed itself, and dearsley, the battered, laughed alone over his supper that evening. three days passed--a fourth and a fifth. the week drew to a close and mulvaney did not return. he, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants, had vanished into air. a very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to travel along the ways without comment. yet no man of all the country round had seen any such wonder. he was, and he was not; and learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of dearsley as a sacrifice to his ghost. ortheris insisted that all was well, and in the light of past experience his hopes seemed reasonable. 'when mulvaney goes up the road,' said he, ''e's like to go a very long ways up, specially when 'e's so blue drunk as 'e is now. but what gits me is 'is not bein' 'eard of pullin' wool off the niggers somewheres about. that don't look good. the drink must ha' died out in 'im by this, unless 'e's broke a bank, an' then--why don't 'e come back? 'e didn't ought to ha' gone off without us.' even ortheris's heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the regiment were out scouring the countryside, and learoyd had been forced to fight two men who hinted openly that mulvaney had deserted. to do him justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward by his much-trusted adjutant. 'mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,' said he. 'no; he's either fallen into a mischief among the villagers--and yet that isn't likely, for he'd blarney himself out of the pit; or else he is engaged on urgent private affairs--some stupendous devilment that we shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms. the worst of it is that i shall have to give him twenty-eight days' confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when i most want him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. i never knew a man who could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as mulvaney can. how does he do it?' 'with blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir,' said the adjutant. 'he is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with an irish draft, and the london lads seem to adore him. the worst of it is that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to bind till he comes out again. i believe ortheris preaches mutiny on those occasions, and i know that the mere presence of learoyd mourning for mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. the sergeants tell me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. they are a queer gang.' 'for all that, i wish we had a few more of them. i like a well-conducted regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue. they don't seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and prowl round the married quarters. i believe i'd forgive that old villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that i could in decency accept.' 'not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir,' said the adjutant. 'mulvaney's explanations are only one degree less wonderful than his performances. they say that when he was in the black tyrone, before he came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the liffey trying to sell his colonel's charger to a donegal dealer as a perfect lady's hack. shackbolt commanded the tyrone then.' 'shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping war-horses answering to that description. he used to buy unbacked devils, and tame them on some pet theory of starvation. what did mulvaney say?' 'that he was a member of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, anxious to "sell the poor baste where he would get something to fill out his dimples." shackbolt laughed, but i fancy that was why mulvaney exchanged to ours.' 'i wish he were back,' said the colonel; 'for i like him and believe he likes me.' that evening, to cheer our souls, learoyd, ortheris, and i went into the waste to smoke out a porcupine. all the dogs attended, but even their clamour--and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before they left cantonments--could not take us out of ourselves. a large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted camelthorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping devils. the smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent of dried roses and water. our fire once started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter. 'this,' said ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation of it all, 'this is sanguinary. this is unusually sanguinary. sort o' mad country. like a grate when the fire's put out by the sun.' he shaded his eyes against the moonlight. 'an' there's a loony dancin' in the middle of it all. quite right. i'd dance too if i wasn't so downheart.' there pranced a portent in the face of the moon--a huge and ragged spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. it had risen out of the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never twice the same. the toga, tablecloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature wore, took a hundred shapes. once it stopped on a neighbouring mound and flung all its legs and arms to the winds. 'my, but that scarecrow 'as got 'em bad!' said ortheris. 'seems like if 'e comes any furder we'll 'ave to argify with 'im.' learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the wallow. and as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave tongue to the stars. 'mulvaaney! mulvaaney! a-hoo!' oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow, till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! then learoyd and ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both swallowing a lump in the throat. [illustration: there pranced a portent in the face of the moon.--p. .] 'you damned fool!' said they, and severally pounded him with their fists. 'go easy!' he answered; wrapping a huge arm round each. 'i would have you to know that i am a god, to be treated as such--tho', by my faith, i fancy i've got to go to the guard-room just like a privit soldier.' the latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the former. any one would have been justified in regarding mulvaney as mad. he was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off him. but he wore one wondrous garment--a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heel--of pale pink silk, wrought all over in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the hindu gods. the monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the fire as he settled the folds round him. ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while i was trying to remember where i had seen it before. then he screamed, 'what _'ave_ you done with the palanquin? you're wearin' the linin'.' 'i am,' said the irishman, 'an' by the same token the 'broidery is scrapin' my hide off. i've lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four days. me son, i begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. widout me boots, an' me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl's leg at a dance, i begin to feel like a naygur-man--all fearful an' timoreous. give me a pipe an' i'll tell on.' he lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and fro in a gale of laughter. 'mulvaney,' said ortheris sternly, ''taint no time for laughin'. you've given jock an' me more trouble than you're worth. you 'ave been absent without leave an' you'll go into cells for that; an' you 'ave come back disgustin'ly dressed an' most improper in the linin' o' that bloomin' palanquin. instid of which you laugh. an' _we_ thought you was dead all the time.' 'bhoys,' said the culprit, still shaking gently, 'whin i've done my tale you may cry if you like, an' little orth'ris here can thrample my inside out. ha' done an' listen. my performinces have been stupenjus: my luck has been the blessed luck av the british army--an' there's no betther than that. i went out dhrunk an' dhrinkin' in the palanquin, and i have come back a pink god. did any of you go to dearsley afther my time was up? he was at the bottom of ut all.' 'ah said so,' murmured learoyd. 'to-morrow ah'll smash t' face in upon his heead.' 'ye will not. dearsley's a jool av a man. afther ortheris had put me into the palanquin an' the six bearer-men were gruntin' down the road, i tuk thought to mock dearsley for that fight. so i tould thim, "go to the embankmint," and there, bein' most amazin' full, i shtuck my head out av the concern an' passed compliments wid dearsley. i must ha' miscalled him outrageous, for whin i am that way the power av the tongue comes on me. i can bare remimber tellin' him that his mouth opened endways like the mouth av a skate, which was thrue afther learoyd had handled ut; an' i clear remimber his takin' no manner nor matter av offence, but givin' me a big dhrink of beer. 'twas the beer did the thrick, for i crawled back into the palanquin, steppin' on me right ear wid me left foot, an' thin i slept like the dead. wanst i half roused, an' begad the noise in my head was tremenjus--roarin' and rattlin' an' poundin', such as was quite new to me. "mother av mercy," thinks i, "phwat a concertina i will have on my shoulders whin i wake!" an' wid that i curls mysilf up to sleep before ut should get hould on me. bhoys, that noise was not dhrink, 'twas the rattle av a thrain!' there followed an impressive pause. 'yes, he had put me on a thrain--put me palanquin an' all, an' six black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence, on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin' an' bowlin' along to benares. glory be that i did not wake up thin an' introjuce mysilf to the coolies. as i was sayin' i slept for the betther part av a day an' a night. but remimber you, that that man dearsley had packed me off on wan av his material-thrains to benares, all for to make me overstay my leave an' get me into the cells.' the explanation was an eminently rational one. benares lay at least ten hours by rail from the cantonments, and nothing in the world could have saved mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the apparel of his orgies. dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge. learoyd, drawing back a little, began to play soft blows over selected portions of mulvaney's body. his thoughts were away on the embankment, and they meditated evil for dearsley. mulvaney continued:-- 'whin i was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, i suspicioned, for i cud hear people passin' an' talkin'. but i knew well i was far from home. there is a queer smell upon our cantonments--a smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable-litter. this place smelt marigold flowers an' bad water, an' wanst somethin' alive came an' blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. "it's in a village i am," thinks i to mysilf, "an' the parochial buffalo is investigatin' the palanquin." but anyways i had no desire to move. only lie still whin you're in foreign parts an' the standin' luck av the british army will carry ye through. that is an epigram. i made ut. 'thin a lot av whishperin' divils surrounded the palanquin. "take ut up," sez wan man. "but who'll pay us?" sez another. "the maharanee's minister, av coorse," sez the man. "oho!" sez i to mysilf, "i'm a quane in me own right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. i'll be an emperor if i lie still long enough; but this is no village i've found." i lay quiet, but i gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an' i saw that the whole street was crammed wid palanquins an' horses, an' a sprinklin' av naked priests all yellow powder an' tigers' tails. but i may tell you, orth'ris an' you, learoyd, that av all the palanquins ours was the most imperial an' magnificent. now a palanquin means a native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the quane happens to be takin' a ride. "women an' priests!" sez i. "your father's son is in the right pew this time, terence. there will be proceedin's." six black divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an' oh! but the rowlin' an' the rockin' made me sick. thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins--not more than fifty av them--an' we grated an' bumped like queenstown potato-smacks in a runnin' tide. i cud hear the women gigglin' and squirkin' in their palanquins, but mine was the royal equipage. they made way for ut, an', begad, the pink muslin men o' mine were howlin', "room for the maharanee av gokral-seetarun." do you know aught av the lady, sorr?' 'yes,' said i. 'she is a very estimable old queen of the central indian states, and they say she is fat. how on earth could she go to benares without all the city knowing her palanquin?' ''twas the eternal foolishness av the naygur-man. they saw the palanquin lying loneful an' forlornsome, an' the beauty av ut, after dearsley's men had dhropped ut and gone away, an' they gave ut the best name that occurred to thim. quite right too. for aught we know the ould lady was thravellin' _incog_--like me. i'm glad to hear she's fat. i was no light weight mysilf, an' my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a great big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the most improper carvin's an' cuttin's i iver saw. begad! they made me blush--like a--like a maharanee.' 'the temple of prithi-devi,' i murmured, remembering the monstrous horrors of that sculptured archway at benares. 'pretty devilskins, savin' your presence, sorr! there was nothin' pretty about ut, except me. 'twas all half dhark, an' whin the coolies left they shut a big black gate behind av us, an' half a company av fat yellow priests began pully-haulin' the palanquins into a dharker place yet--a big stone hall full av pillars, an' gods, an' incense, an' all manner av similar thruck. the gate disconcerted me, for i perceived i wud have to go forward to get out, my retreat bein' cut off. by the same token a good priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. begad! they nearly turned me inside out draggin' the palanquin to the temple. now the disposishin av the forces inside was this way. the maharanee av gokral-seetarun--that was me--lay by the favour av providence on the far left flank behind the dhark av a pillar carved with elephints' heads. the remainder av the palanquins was in a big half circle facing in to the biggest, fattest, an' most amazin' she-god that iver i dreamed av. her head ran up into the black above us, an' her feet stuck out in the light av a little fire av melted butter that a priest was feedin' out av a butter-dish. thin a man began to sing an' play on somethin' back in the dhark, an' 'twas a queer song. ut made my hair lift on the back av my neck. thin the doors av all the palanquins slid back, an' the women bundled out. i saw what i'll niver see again. 'twas more glorious than thransformations at a pantomime, for they was in pink an' blue an' silver an' red an' grass green, wid dimonds an' imralds an' great red rubies all over thim. but that was the least part av the glory. o bhoys, they were more lovely than the like av any loveliness in hiven; ay, their little bare feet were better than the white hands av a lord's lady, an' their mouths were like puckered roses, an' their eyes were bigger an' dharker than the eyes av any livin' women i've seen. ye may laugh, but i'm speakin' truth. i niver saw the like, an' niver i will again.' 'seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and daughters of most of the kings of india, the chances are that you won't,' i said, for it was dawning on me that mulvaney had stumbled upon a big queens' praying at benares. 'i niver will,' he said mournfully. 'that sight doesn't come twist to any man. it made me ashamed to watch. a fat priest knocked at my door. i didn't think he'd have the insolince to disturb the maharanee av gokral-seetarun, so i lay still. "the old cow's asleep," sez he to another. "let her be," sez that. "'twill be long before she has a calf!" i might ha' known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in injia--an' for matter o' that in england too--is childher. that made me more sorry i'd come, me bein', as you well know, a childless man.' he was silent for a moment, thinking of his little son, dead many years ago. 'they prayed, an' the butter-fires blazed up an' the incense turned everything blue, an' between that an' the fires the women looked as tho' they were all ablaze an' twinklin'. they took hold av the she-god's knees, they cried out an' they threw themselves about, an' that world-without-end-amen music was dhrivin' thim mad. mother av hiven! how they cried, an' the ould she-god grinnin' above thim all so scornful! the dhrink was dyin' out in me fast, an' i was thinkin' harder than the thoughts wud go through my head--thinkin' how to get out, an' all manner of nonsense as well. the women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond belts clickin', an' the tears runnin' out betune their hands, an' the lights were goin' lower an' dharker. thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from the roof, an' that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an' at the end where my foot was, stood the livin' spit an' image o' mysilf worked on the linin'. this man here, ut was.' he hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand under one, and thrust into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god krishna, playing on a flute. the heavy jowl, the staring eye, and the blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to mulvaney. 'the blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin. i believe i was mad too. i slid the off-shutter open an' rowled out into the dhark behind the elephint-head pillar, tucked up my trousies to my knees, slipped off my boots an' tuk a general hould av all the pink linin' av the palanquin. glory be, ut ripped out like a woman's dhriss when you tread on ut at a sergeants' ball, an' a bottle came with ut. i tuk the bottle an' the next minut i was out av the dhark av the pillar, the pink linin' wrapped round me most graceful, the music thunderin' like kettledrums, an' a could draft blowin' round my bare legs. by this hand that did ut, i was krishna tootlin' on the flute--the god that the rig'mental chaplain talks about. a sweet sight i must ha' looked. i knew my eyes were big, and my face was wax-white, an' at the worst i must ha' looked like a ghost. but they took me for the livin' god. the music stopped, and the women were dead dumb, an' i crooked my legs like a shepherd on a china basin, an' i did the ghost-waggle with my feet as i had done ut at the rig'mental theatre many times, an' i slid acrost the width av that temple in front av the she-god tootlin' on the beer bottle.' 'wot did you toot?' demanded ortheris the practical. [illustration: 'i was krishna tootlin' on the flute.'--p. .] 'me? oh!' mulvaney sprang up, suiting the action to the word, and sliding gravely in front of us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the half light. 'i sang-- 'only say you'll be mrs. brallaghan. don't say nay, charmin' judy callaghan. i didn't know me own voice when i sang. an' oh! 'twas pitiful to see the women. the darlin's were down on their faces. whin i passed the last wan i cud see her poor little fingers workin' one in another as if she wanted to touch my feet. so i dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over her head for the greater honour, an' i slid into the dhark on the other side av the temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. all i wanted was to get away clear. so i tuk him by his greasy throat an' shut the speech out av him. "out!" sez i. "which way, ye fat heathen?"--"oh!" sez he. "man," sez i. "white man, soldier man, common soldier man. where in the name av confusion is the back door?" the women in the temple were still on their faces, an' a young priest was holdin' out his arms above their heads. '"this way," sez my fat friend, duckin' behind a big bull-god an' divin' into a passage. thin i remimbered that i must ha' made the miraculous reputation av that temple for the next fifty years. "not so fast," i sez, an' i held out both my hands wid a wink. that ould thief smiled like a father. i tuk him by the back av the neck in case he should be wishful to put a knife into me unbeknowst, an' i ran him up an' down the passage twice to collect his sensibilities! "be quiet," sez he, in english. "now you talk sense," i sez. "fwhat'll you give me for the use av that most iligant palanquin i have no time to take away?"--"don't tell," sez he. "is ut like?" sez i. "but ye might give me my railway fare. i'm far from my home an' i've done you a service." bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. the ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. as i will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till i could hould no more.' 'you lie!' said ortheris. 'you're mad or sunstrook. a native don't give coin unless you cut it out o' 'im. 'tain't nature.' 'then my lie an' my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod yonder,' retorted mulvaney unruffled, nodding across the scrub. 'an' there's a dale more in nature than your squidgy little legs have iver taken you to, orth'ris, me son. four hundred an' thirty-four rupees by my reckonin', _an'_ a big fat gold necklace that i took from him as a remimbrancer, was our share in that business.' 'an' 'e give it you for love?' said ortheris. 'we were alone in that passage. maybe i was a trifle too pressin', but considher fwhat i had done for the good av the temple and the iverlastin' joy av those women. 'twas cheap at the price. i wud ha' taken more if i cud ha' found 'ut. i turned the ould man upside down at the last, but he was milked dhry. thin he opened a door in another passage an' i found mysilf up to my knees in benares river-water, an' bad smellin' ut is. more by token i had come out on the river-line close to the burnin' ghat and contagious to a cracklin' corpse. this was in the heart av the night, for i had been four hours in the temple. there was a crowd av boats tied up, so i tuk wan an' wint across the river. thin i came home acrost country, lyin' up by day.' 'how on earth did you manage?' i said. 'how did sir frederick roberts get from cabul to candahar? he marched an' he niver tould how near he was to breakin' down. that's why he is fwhat he is. an' now----' mulvaney yawned portentously. 'now i will go an' give myself up for absince widout leave. it's eight-an'-twenty days an' the rough end of the colonel's tongue in orderly-room, any way you look at ut. but 'tis cheap at the price.' 'mulvaney,' said i softly. 'if there happens to be any sort of excuse that the colonel can in any way accept, i have a notion that you'll get nothing more than the dressing-down. the new recruits are in, and----' 'not a word more, sorr. is ut excuses the old man wants? 'tis not my way, but he shall have thim. i'll tell him i was engaged in financial operations connected wid a church,' and he flapped his way to cantonments and the cells, singing lustily:-- 'so they sent a corp'ril's file, and they put me in the gyard-room for conduck unbecomin' of a soldier.' and when he was lost in the mist of the moonlight we could hear the refrain:-- 'bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals, as we go marchin' along, boys, oh! for although in this campaign there's no whisky nor champagne, we'll keep our spirits goin' with a song, boys!' therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard, and was made much of by his fellows. but to the colonel he said that he had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager's cot for untold hours; and between laughter and good-will the affair was smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to 'fear god, honour the queen, shoot straight, and keep clean.' [illustration] [illustration] the taking of lungtungpen so we loosed a bloomin' volley, an' we made the beggars cut, an' when our pouch was emptied out, we used the bloomin' butt, ho! my! don't yer come anigh, when tommy is a playin' with the baynit an' the butt. _barrack room ballad._ my friend private mulvaney told me this, sitting on the parapet of the road to dagshai, when we were hunting butterflies together. he had theories about the army, and coloured clay pipes perfectly. he said that the young soldier is the best to work with, 'on account av the surpassing innocinse av the child.' 'now, listen!' said mulvaney, throwing himself full length on the wall in the sun. 'i'm a born scutt av the barrick-room! the army's mate an' dhrink to me, bekaze i'm wan av the few that can't quit ut. i've put in sivinteen years, an' the pipeclay's in the marrow av me. av i cud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, i wud have been a hon'ry lift'nint by this time--a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin'-shtock to my equils, an' a curse to meself. bein' fwhat i am, i'm privit mulvaney, wid no good-conduc' pay an' a devourin' thirst. always barrin' me little frind bobs bahadur, i know as much about the army as most men.' i said something here. 'wolseley be shot! betune you an' me an' that butterfly net, he's a ramblin', incoherint sort av a divil, wid wan oi on the quane an' the coort, an' the other on his blessed silf--everlastin'ly playing saysar an' alexandrier rowled into a lump. now bobs is a sensible little man. wid bobs an' a few three-year-olds, i'd swape any army av the earth into a towel, an' throw it away aftherwards. faith, i'm not jokin'! 'tis the bhoys--the raw bhoys--that don't know fwhat a bullut manes, an' wudn't care av they did--that dhu the work. they're crammed wid bull-mate till they fairly _ramps_ wid good livin'; and thin, av they don't fight, they blow each other's hids off. 'tis the trut' i'm tellin' you. they shud be kept on water an' rice in the hot weather; but there'd be a mut'ny av 'twas done. 'did ye iver hear how privit mulvaney tuk the town av lungtungpen? i thought not! 'twas the lift'nint got the credit; but 'twas me planned the schame. a little before i was inviladed from burma, me an' four-an'-twenty young wans undher a lift'nint brazenose was ruinin' our dijeshins thryin' to catch dacoits. an' such double-ended divils i niver knew! 'tis only a _dah_ an' a snider that makes a dacoit. widout thim, he's a paceful cultivator, an' felony for to shoot. we hunted, an' we hunted, an' tuk fever an' elephints now an' again; but no dacoits. evenshually, we _puckarowed_ wan man. "trate him tinderly," sez the lift'nint. so i tuk him away into the jungle, wid the burmese interprut'r an' my clanin'-rod. sez i to the man, "my paceful squireen," sez i, "you shquot on your hunkers an' dimonstrate to _my_ frind here, where _your_ frinds are whin they're at home?" wid that i introjuced him to the clanin'-rod, an' he comminst to jabber; the interprut'r interprutin' in betweens, an' me helpin' the intilligince departmint wid my clanin'-rod whin the man misremimbered. 'prisintly, i learn that, acrost the river, about nine miles away, was a town just dhrippin' wid dahs, an' bohs an' arrows, an' dacoits, an' elephints, an' _jingles_. "good!" sez i; "this office will now close!" 'that night, i went to the lift'nint an' communicates my information. i never thought much of lift'nint brazenose till that night. he was shtiff wid books an' the-ouries, an' all manner av thrimmin's no manner av use. "town did ye say?" sez he. "accordin' to the-ouries av war, we shud wait for reinforcemints."--"faith!" thinks i, "we'd betther dig our graves thin"; for the nearest throops was up to their shtocks in the marshes out mimbu way. "but," says the lift'nint, "since 'tis a speshil case, i'll make an excepshin. we'll visit this lungtungpen to-night." [illustration: '"shtrip, bhoys," sez i. "shtrip to the buff, an' shwim in where glory waits!"'--p. .] 'the bhoys was fairly woild wid deloight whin i tould 'em; an', by this an' that, they wint through the jungle like buck-rabbits. about midnight we come to the shtrame which i had clane forgot to minshin to my orficer. i was on, ahead, wid four bhoys, an' i thought that the lift'nint might want to the-ourise. "shtrip, bhoys," sez i. "shtrip to the buff, an' shwim in where glory waits!"--"but i _can't_ shwim!" sez two av thim. "to think i should live to hear that from a bhoy wid a board-school edukashin!" sez i. "take a lump av thimber, an' me an' conolly here will ferry ye over, ye young ladies!" 'we got an ould tree-trunk, an' pushed off wid the kits an' the rifles on it. the night was chokin' dhark, an' just as we was fairly embarked, i heard the lift'nint behind av me callin' out. "there's a bit av a _nullah_ here, sorr," sez i, "but i can feel the bottom already." so i cud, for i was not a yard from the bank." '"bit av a _nullah_! bit av an eshtuary!" sez the lift'nint. "go on, ye mad irishman! shtrip, bhoys!" i heard him laugh; an' the bhoys began shtrippin' an' rollin' a log into the wather to put their kits on. so me an' conolly shtruck out through the warm wather wid our log, an' the rest come on behind. 'that shtrame was miles woide! orth'ris, on the rear-rank log, whispers we had got into the thames below sheerness by mistake. "kape on shwimmin', ye little blayguard," sez i, "an' don't go pokin' your dirty jokes at the irriwaddy."--"silince, men!" sings out the lift'nint. so we shwum on into the black dhark, wid our chests on the logs, trustin' in the saints an' the luck av the british army. 'evenshually, we hit ground--a bit av sand--an' a man. i put my heel on the back av him. he skreeched an' ran. '"_now_ we've done it!" sez lift'nint brazenose. "where the divil _is_ lungtungpen?" there was about a minute and a half to wait. the bhoys laid a hould av their rifles an' some thried to put their belts on; we was marchin' wid fixed baynits av coorse. thin we knew where lungtungpen was; for we had hit the river-wall av it in the dhark, an' the whole town blazed wid thim messin' _jingles_ an' sniders like a cat's back on a frosty night. they was firin' all ways at wanst; but over our hids into the shtrame. '"have you got your rifles?" sez brazenose. "got 'em!" sez orth'ris. "i've got that thief mulvaney's for all my back-pay, an' she'll kick my heart sick wid that blunderin' long shtock av hers."--"go on!" yells brazenose, whippin' his sword out. "go on an' take the town! an' the lord have mercy on our sowls!" [illustration: 'there was a _melly_ av a sumpshus kind for a whoile.'--p. .] 'thin the bhoys gave wan divastatin' howl, an' pranced into the dhark, feelin' for the town, an' blindin' an' stiffin' like cavalry ridin' masters whin the grass pricked their bare legs. i hammered wid the butt at some bamboo-thing that felt wake, an' the rest come an' hammered contagious, while the _jingles_ was jingling, an' feroshus yells from inside was shplittin' our ears. we was too close under the wall for thim to hurt us. 'evenshually, the thing, whatever ut was, bruk; an' the six-and-twinty av us tumbled, wan after the other, naked as we was borrun, into the town of lungtungpen. there was a _melly_ av a sumpshus kind for a whoile; but whether they tuk us, all white an' wet, for a new breed av divil, or a new kind av dacoit, i don't know. they ran as though we was both, an' we wint into thim, baynit an' butt, shriekin' wid laughin'. there was torches in the shtreets, an' i saw little orth'ris rubbin' his showlther ivry time he loosed my long-shtock martini; an' brazenose walkin' into the gang wid his sword, like diarmid av the gowlden collar--barring he hadn't a stitch av clothin' on him. we diskivered elephints wid dacoits under their bellies, an', what wid wan thing an' another, we was busy till mornin' takin' possession av the town of lungtungpen. 'thin we halted an' formed up, the wimmen howlin' in the houses an' lift'nint brazenose blushin' pink in the light av the mornin' sun. 'twas the most ondasint p'rade i iver tuk a hand in. foive-and-twenty privits an' an orficer av the line in review ordher, an' not as much as wud dust a fife betune 'em all in the way of clothin'! eight av us had their belts an' pouches on; but the rest had gone in wid a handful av cartridges an' the skin god gave thim. _they_ was as nakid as vanus. '"number off from the right!" sez the lift'nint. "odd numbers fall out to dress; even numbers pathrol the town till relieved by the dressing party." let me tell you, pathrollin' a town wid nothing on is an ex_pay_rience. i pathrolled for tin minutes, an' begad, before 'twas over, i blushed. the women laughed so. i niver blushed before or since; but i blushed all over my carkiss thin. orth'ris didn't pathrol. he sez only, "portsmith barricks an' the 'aard av a sunday!" thin he lay down an' rowled any ways wid laughin'. 'whin we was all dhressed, we counted the dead--sivinty-foive dacoits besides wounded. we tuk five elephints, a hunder' an' sivinty sniders, two hunder' dahs, and a lot av other burglarious thruck. not a man av us was hurt--excep' maybe the lift'nint, an' he from the shock to his dasincy. 'the headman av lungtungpen, who surrinder'd himself, asked the interprut'r--"av the english fight like that wid their clo'es off, what in the wurruld do they do wid their clo'es on?" orth'ris began rowlin' his eyes an' crackin' his fingers an' dancin' a step-dance for to impress the headman. he ran to his house; an' we spint the rest av the day carryin' the lift'nint on our showlthers round the town, an' playin' wid the burmese babies--fat, little, brown little divils, as pretty as picturs. 'whin i was inviladed for the dysent'ry to india, i sez to the lift'nint, "sorr," sez i, "you've the makin's in you av a great man; but, av you'll let an ould sodger spake, you're too fond of the-ourisin'." he shuk hands wid me and sez, "hit high, hit low, there's no plasin' you, mulvaney. you've seen me waltzin' through lungtungpen like a red injin widout the war-paint, an' you say i'm too fond av the-ourisin'?"--"sorr," sez i, for i loved the bhoy; "i wud waltz wid you in that condishin through _hell_, an' so wud the rest av the men!" thin i wint downshtrame in the flat an' left him my blessin'. may the saints carry ut where ut should go, for he was a fine upstandin' young orficer. 'to reshume. fwhat i've said jist shows the use av three-year-olds. wud fifty seasoned sodgers have taken lungtungpen in the dhark that way? no! they'd know the risk av fever and chill. let alone the shootin'. two hundher' might have done ut. but the three-year-olds know little an' care less; an' where there's no fear, there's no danger. catch thim young, feed thim high, an' by the honour av that great little man bobs, behind a good orficer 'tisn't only dacoits they'd smash wid their clo'es off--'tis con-ti-nental ar-r-r-mies! they tuk lungtungpen nakid; an' they'd take st. pethersburg in their dhrawers! begad, they would that! 'here's your pipe, sorr. shmoke her tinderly wid honey-dew, afther letting the reek av the canteen plug die away. but 'tis no good, thanks to you all the same, fillin' my pouch wid your chopped hay. canteen baccy's like the army. it shpoils a man's taste for moilder things.' so saying, mulvaney took up his butterfly-net, and returned to barracks. [illustration] [illustration] the madness of private ortheris oh! where would i be when my froat was dry? oh! where would i be when the bullets fly? oh! where would i be when i come to die? why, somewheres anigh my chum. if 'e's liquor 'e'll give me some, if i'm dyin' 'e'll 'old my 'ead, an' 'e'll write 'em 'ome when i'm dead.-- gawd send us a trusty chum! _barrack room ballad._ my friends mulvaney and ortheris had gone on a shooting expedition for one day. learoyd was still in hospital, recovering from fever picked up in burma. they sent me an invitation to join them, and were genuinely pained when i brought beer--almost enough beer to satisfy two privates of the line--and me. ''twasn't for that we bid you welkim, sorr,' said mulvaney sulkily. ''twas for the pleasure av your comp'ny.' ortheris came to the rescue with--'well, 'e won't be none the worse for bringin' liquor with 'im. we ain't a file o' dooks. we're bloomin' tommies, ye cantankris hirishman; an' 'ere's your very good 'ealth!' we shot all the forenoon, and killed two pariah-dogs, four green parrots, sitting, one kite by the burning-ghaut, one snake flying, one mud-turtle, and eight crows. game was plentiful. then we sat down to tiffin--'bull-mate an' bran bread,' mulvaney called it--by the side of the river, and took pot shots at the crocodiles in the intervals of cutting up the food with our only pocket-knife. then we drank up all the beer, and threw the bottles into the water and fired at them. after that, we eased belts and stretched ourselves on the warm sand and smoked. we were too lazy to continue shooting. ortheris heaved a big sigh, as he lay on his stomach with his head between his fists. then he swore quietly into the blue sky. 'fwhat's that for?' said mulvaney. 'have ye not drunk enough?' 'tott'nim court road, an' a gal i fancied there. wot's the good of sodgerin'?' 'orth'ris, me son,' said mulvaney hastily, ''tis more than likely you've got throuble in your inside wid the beer. i feel that way mesilf whin my liver gets rusty.' [illustration: ortheris heaved a big sigh.--p. .] ortheris went on slowly, not heeding the interruption:-- 'i'm a tommy--a bloomin', eight-anna, dog-stealin' tommy, with a number instead of a decent name. wot's the good o' me? if i 'ad a stayed at 'ome, i might a married that gal and a kep' a little shorp in the 'ammersmith 'igh.--"s. orth'ris, prac-ti-cal taxi-der-mist." with a stuff' fox, like they 'as in the haylesbury dairies, in the winder, an' a little case of blue and yaller glass-heyes, an' a little wife to call "shorp!" "shorp!" when the door-bell rung. as it _his_, i'm on'y a tommy--a bloomin' gawd-forsaken beer-swillin' tommy. "rest on your harms--_'versed_. stan' at--_hease_; _'shun_. 'verse--_harms_. right an' lef'--_tarrn_. slow--_march_. 'alt--_front_. rest on your harms--_'versed_. with blank-cartridge--_load_." an' that's the end o' me.' he was quoting fragments from funeral parties' orders. 'stop ut!' shouted mulvaney. 'whin you've fired into nothin' as often as me, over a better man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. 'tis worse than whistlin' the _dead march_ in barricks. an' you full as a tick, an' the sun cool, an' all an' all! i take shame for you. you're no better than a pagin--you an' your firin'-parties an' your glass-eyes. won't _you_ stop ut, sorr?' what could i do? could i tell ortheris anything that he did not know of the pleasures of his life? i was not a chaplain nor a subaltern, and ortheris had a right to speak as he thought fit. 'let him run, mulvaney,' i said. 'it's the beer.' 'no! 'tisn't the beer,' said mulvaney. 'i know fwhat's comin'. he's tuk this way now an' agin, an' it's bad--it's bad--for i'm fond av the bhoy.' indeed, mulvaney seemed needlessly anxious; but i knew that he looked after ortheris in a fatherly way. 'let me talk, let me talk,' said ortheris dreamily. 'd'you stop your parrit screamin' of a 'ot day when the cage is a-cookin' 'is pore little pink toes orf, mulvaney?' 'pink toes! d'ye mane to say you've pink toes undher your bullswools, ye blandanderin','--mulvaney gathered himself together for a terrific denunciation--'school-misthress! pink toes! how much bass wid the label did that ravin' child dhrink?' ''tain't bass,' said ortheris. 'it's a bitterer beer nor that. it's 'ome-sickness!' 'hark to him! an' he goin' home in the _sherapis_ in the inside av four months!' 'i don't care. it's all one to me. 'ow d'you know i ain't 'fraid o' dyin' 'fore i gets my discharge paipers?' he recommenced, in a sing-song voice, the orders. i had never seen this side of ortheris's character before, but evidently mulvaney had, and attached serious importance to it. while ortheris babbled, with his head on his arms, mulvaney whispered to me:-- 'he's always tuk this way whin he's been checked overmuch by the childher they make sarjints nowadays. that an' havin' nothin' to do. i can't make ut out anyways.' 'well, what does it matter? let him talk himself through.' ortheris began singing a parody of _the ramrod corps_, full of cheerful allusions to battle, murder, and sudden death. he looked out across the river as he sang; and his face was quite strange to me. mulvaney caught me by the elbow to ensure attention. 'matther? it matthers everything! 'tis some sort av fit that's on him. i've seen ut. 'twill hould him all this night, an' in the middle av it he'll get out av his cot an' go rakin' in the rack for his 'courtremints. thin he'll come over to me an' say, "i'm goin' to bombay. answer for me in the mornin'." thin me an' him will fight as we've done before--him to go an' me to hould him--an' so we'll both come on the books for disturbin' in barricks. i've belted him, an' i've bruk his head, an' i've talked to him, but 'tis no manner av use whin the fit's on him. he's as good a bhoy as ever stepped whin his mind's clear. i know fwhat's comin', though, this night in barricks. lord send he doesn't loose on me whin i rise to knock him down. 'tis that that's in my mind day an' night.' this put the case in a much less pleasant light, and fully accounted for mulvaney's anxiety. he seemed to be trying to coax ortheris out of the fit; for he shouted down the bank where the boy was lying:-- 'listen now, you wid the "pore pink toes" an' the glass-eyes! did you shwim the irriwaddy at night, behin' me, as a bhoy shud; or were you hidin' under a bed, as you was at ahmid kheyl?' this was at once a gross insult and a direct lie, and mulvaney meant it to bring on a fight. but ortheris seemed shut up in some sort of trance. he answered slowly, without a sign of irritation, in the same cadenced voice as he had used for his firing-party orders:-- '_hi_ swum the irriwaddy in the night, as you know, for to take the town of lungtungpen, nakid an' without fear. _hand_ where i was at ahmed kheyl you know, and four bloomin' paythans know too. but that was summat to do, an' i didn't think o' dyin'. now i'm sick to go 'ome--go 'ome--go 'ome! no, i ain't mammysick, because my uncle brung me up, but i'm sick for london again; sick for the sounds of 'er, an' the sights of 'er, and the stinks of 'er; orange-peel and hasphalte an' gas comin' in over vaux'all bridge. sick for the rail goin' down to box 'ill, with your gal on your knee an' a new clay pipe in your face. that, an' the stran' lights where you knows ev'ry one, an' the copper that takes you up is a old friend that tuk you up before, when you was a little, smitchy boy lying loose 'tween the temple an' the dark harches. no bloomin' guard-mountin', no bloomin' rotten-stone, nor khaki, an' yourself your own master with a gal to take an' see the humaners practisin' a-hookin' dead corpses out of the serpentine o' sundays. an' i lef' all that for to serve the widder beyond the seas, where there ain't no women and there ain't no liquor worth 'avin', and there ain't nothin' to see, nor do, nor say, nor feel, nor think. lord love you, stanley orth'ris, but you're a bigger bloomin' fool than the rest o' the reg'ment and mulvaney wired together! there's the widder sittin' at 'ome with a gold crownd on 'er 'ead; and 'ere am hi, stanley orth'ris, the widder's property, a rottin' fool!' his voice rose at the end of the sentence, and he wound up with a six-shot anglo-vernacular oath. mulvaney said nothing, but looked at me as if he expected that i could bring peace to poor ortheris's troubled brain. i remembered once at rawal pindi having seen a man, nearly mad with drink, sobered by being made a fool of. some regiments may know what i mean. i hoped that we might slake off ortheris in the same way, though he was perfectly sober. so i said:-- 'what's the use of grousing there, and speaking against the widow?' 'i didn't!' said ortheris. 's'elp me, gawd, i never said a word agin 'er, an' i wouldn't--not if i was to desert this minute!' here was my opening. 'well, you meant to, anyhow. what's the use of cracking-on for nothing? would you slip it now if you got the chance?' 'on'y try me!' said ortheris, jumping to his feet as if he had been stung. mulvaney jumped too. 'fwhat are you going to do?' said he. 'help ortheris down to bombay or karachi, whichever he likes. you can report that he separated from you before tiffin, and left his gun on the bank here!' 'i'm to report that--am i?' said mulvaney slowly. 'very well. if orth'ris manes to desert now, and will desert now, an' you, sorr, who have been a frind to me an' to him, will help him to ut, i, terence mulvaney, on my oath which i've never bruk yet, will report as you say. but----' here he stepped up to ortheris, and shook the stock of the fowling-piece in his face--'your fistes help you, stanley orth'ris, if ever i come across you agin!' 'i don't care!' said ortheris. 'i'm sick o' this dorg's life. give me a chanst. don't play with me. le' me go!' 'strip,' said i, 'and change with me, and then i'll tell you what to do.' i hoped that the absurdity of this would check ortheris; but he had kicked off his ammunition-boots and got rid of his tunic almost before i had loosed my shirt-collar. mulvaney gripped me by the arm:-- 'the fit's on him: the fit's workin' on him still! by my honour and sowl, we shall be accessiry to a desartion yet. only twenty-eight days, as you say, sorr, or fifty-six, but think o' the shame--the black shame to him an' me!' i had never seen mulvaney so excited. but ortheris was quite calm, and, as soon as he had exchanged clothes with me, and i stood up a private of the line, he said shortly, 'now! come on. what nex'? d'ye mean fair. what must i do to get out o' this 'ere a-hell?' i told him that, if he would wait for two or three hours near the river, i would ride into the station and come back with one hundred rupees. he would, with that money in his pocket, walk to the nearest side-station on the line, about five miles away, and would there take a first-class ticket for karachi. knowing that he had no money on him when he went out shooting, his regiment would not immediately wire to the seaports, but would hunt for him in the native villages near the river. further, no one would think of seeking a deserter in a first-class carriage. at karachi, he was to buy white clothes and ship, if he could, on a cargo-steamer. here he broke in. if i helped him to karachi, he would arrange all the rest. then i ordered him to wait where he was until it was dark enough for me to ride into the station without my dress being noticed. now god in his wisdom has made the heart of the british soldier, who is very often an unlicked ruffian, as soft as the heart of a little child, in order that he may believe in and follow his officers into tight and nasty places. he does not so readily come to believe in a 'civilian,' but, when he does, he believes implicitly and like a dog. i had had the honour of the friendship of private ortheris, at intervals, for more than three years, and we had dealt with each other as man by man. consequently, he considered that all my words were true, and not spoken lightly. mulvaney and i left him in the high grass near the river-bank, and went away, still keeping to the high grass, towards my horse. the shirt scratched me horribly. [illustration: we set off at the double and found him plunging about wildly through the grass.--p. .] we waited nearly two hours for the dusk to fall and allow me to ride off. we spoke of ortheris in whispers, and strained our ears to catch any sound from the spot where we had left him. but we heard nothing except the wind in the plume-grass. 'i've bruk his head,' said mulvaney earnestly, 'time an' agin. i've nearly kilt him wid the belt, an' _yet_ i can't knock thim fits out av his soft head. no! an' he's not soft, for he's reasonable an' likely by natur'. fwhat is ut? is ut his breedin' which is nothin', or his edukashin which he niver got? you that think ye know things, answer me that.' but i found no answer. i was wondering how long ortheris, in the bank of the river, would hold out, and whether i should be forced to help him to desert, as i had given my word. just as the dusk shut down and, with a very heavy heart, i was beginning to saddle up my horse, we heard wild shouts from the river. the devils had departed from private stanley ortheris, no. , b company. the loneliness, the dusk, and the waiting had driven them out as i had hoped. we set off at the double and found him plunging about wildly through the grass, with his coat off--my coat off, i mean. he was calling for us like a madman. when we reached him he was dripping with perspiration, and trembling like a startled horse. we had great difficulty in soothing him. he complained that he was in civilian kit, and wanted to tear my clothes off his body. i ordered him to strip, and we made a second exchange as quickly as possible. the rasp of his own 'grayback' shirt and the squeak of his boots seemed to bring him to himself. he put his hands before his eyes and said:-- 'wot was it? i ain't mad, i ain't sunstrook, an' i've bin an' gone an' said, an' bin an' gone an' done---- _wot_ 'ave i bin an' done!' 'fwhat have you done?' said mulvaney. 'you've dishgraced yourself--though that's no matter. you've dishgraced b comp'ny, an' worst av all, you've dishgraced _me_! me that taught you how for to walk abroad like a man--whin you was a dhirty little, fish-backed little, whimperin' little recruity. as you are now, stanley orth'ris!' ortheris said nothing for a while. then he unslung his belt, heavy with the badges of half-a-dozen regiments that his own had lain with, and handed it over to mulvaney. 'i'm too little for to mill you, mulvaney,' said he, 'an' you've strook me before; but you can take an' cut me in two with this 'ere if you like.' mulvaney turned to me. 'lave me to talk to him, sorr,' said mulvaney. i left, and on my way home thought a good deal over ortheris in particular, and my friend private thomas atkins, whom i love, in general. but i could not come to any conclusion of any kind whatever. the end new uniform edition of the stories and poems of rudyard kipling. seven volumes, mo, cloth. plain tales from the hills. new edition. mo, cloth, $ . . "mr. kipling knows and appreciates the english in india, and is a born storyteller and a man of humour into the bargain.... it would be hard to find better reading."--_the saturday review, london._ the light that failed. new edition. mo, cloth, $ . . "'the light that failed' is an organic whole--a book with a backbone--and stands out boldly among the nerveless, flaccid, invertebrate things that enjoy an expensive but ephemeral existence in the circulating libraries."--_the athenæum._ life's handicap. stories of mine own people. new edition. mo, cloth, $ . . 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"his characters are drawn with skill, his localities are strongly individualized, and his directness and vivacity display no common literary force."--_boston journal._ "a fascinating novel."--_the press._ "the book is very charming and satisfying. its local descriptions of the wild and arid region of corindah and pictures of australian farm and domestic life are peculiarly attractive."--_boston home journal._ the macmillan company, fifth avenue, new york. transcriber's note minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. all other inconsistencies are as in the original. with the night mail a story of a.d. (together with extracts from the contemporary magazine in which it appeared) books by rudyard kipling brushwood boy, the captains courageous collected verse day's work, the departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads five nations, the jungle book, the jungle book, second just so song book just so stories kim kipling birthday book, the life's handicap; being stories of mine own people light that failed, the many inventions naulahka, the (with wolcott balestier) plain tales from the hills puck of pook's hill sea to sea, from seven seas, the soldier stories soldiers three, the story of the gadsbys, and in black and white stalky & co. they traffics and discoveries under the deodars, the phantom rickshaw and wee willie winkie [illustration: "a man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his ray."] with the night mail a story of a.d. (together with extracts from the contemporary magazine in which it appeared) by rudyard kipling _illustrated in color_ by frank x. leyendecker and h. reuterdahl [decoration] new york doubleday, page & company all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian copyright, , , by rudyard kipling published, march, reprinted in book form by permission of the s. s. mcclure company illustrations "a man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his ray" _frontispiece_ following page "slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the atlantic takes her" the storm "i've asked him to tea on friday" with the night mail a story of a.d. with the night mail at nine o'clock of a gusty winter night i stood on the lower stages of one of the g. p. o. outward mail towers. my purpose was a run to quebec in "postal packet or such other as may be appointed"; and the postmaster-general himself countersigned the order. this talisman opened all doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of the tower, where they were delivering the sorted continental mail. the bags lay packed close as herrings in the long gray under-bodies which our g. p. o. still calls "coaches." five such coaches were filled as i watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting packets three hundred feet nearer the stars. from the despatching-caisson i was conducted by a courteous and wonderfully learned official--mr. l. l. geary, second despatcher of the western route--to the captains' room (this wakes an echo of old romance), where the mail captains come on for their turn of duty. he introduces me to the captain of " "--captain purnall, and his relief, captain hodgson. the one is small and dark; the other large and red; but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and aëronauts. you can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals, from l. v. rautsch to little ada warrleigh--that fathomless abstraction of eyes habitually turned through naked space. on the notice-board in the captains' room, the pulsing arrows of some twenty indicators register, degree by geographical degree, the progress of as many homeward-bound packets. the word "cape" rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: the south african mid-weekly mail is in at the highgate receiving towers. that is all. it reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies the return of a homer. "time for us to be on the move," says captain purnall, and we are shot up by the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers. "our coach will lock on when it is filled and the clerks are aboard."... "no. " waits for us in slip e of the topmost stage. the great curve of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim makes her rock a little in her holding-down slips. captain purnall frowns and dives inside. hissing softly, " " comes to rest as level as a rule. from her north atlantic winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built-out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty feet. her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-five of any crack liner and you will realize the power that must drive a hull through all weathers at more than the emergency-speed of the "cyclonic"! the eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping hair-crack of the bow-rudder--magniac's rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. it is calculated to castelli's "gull-wing" curve. raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again. give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash. cant the whole forward--a touch on the wheel will suffice--and she sweeps at your good direction up or down. open the complete circle and she presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing within a half mile. "yes," says captain hodgson, answering my thought, "castelli thought he'd discovered the secret of controlling aëroplanes when he'd only found out how to steer dirigible balloons. magniac invented his rudder to help war-boats ram each other; and war went out of fashion and magniac he went out of his mind because he said he couldn't serve his country any more. i wonder if any of us ever know what we're really doing." "if you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. it's due now," says mr. geary. i enter through the door amidships. there is nothing here for display. the inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of my head and turns over just short of the turn of the bilges. liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, but the g. p. o. serves them raw under a lick of gray official paint. the inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern, but the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as the stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. the engine-room lies almost amidships. forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an aperture--a bottomless hatch at present--into which our coach will be locked. one looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to the despatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. the light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. it enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and last a pontoon. the two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it comes into place. the quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap into the docketed racks, while both captains and mr. geary satisfy themselves that the coach is locked home. a clerk passes the waybill over the hatch-coaming. captain purnall thumb-marks and passes it to mr. geary. receipt has been given and taken. "pleasant run," says mr. geary, and disappears through the door which a foot-high pneumatic compressor locks after him. "a-ah!" sighs the compressor released. our holding-down clips part with a tang. we are clear. captain hodgson opens the great colloid underbody-porthole through which i watch million-lighted london slide eastward as the gale gets hold of us. the first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view and darkens middlesex. on the south edge of it i can see a postal packet's light ploughing through the white fleece. for an instant she gleams like a star ere she drops toward the highgate receiving towers. "the bombay mail," says captain hodgson, and looks at his watch. "she's forty minutes late." "what's our level?" i ask. "four thousand. aren't you coming up on the bridge?" the bridge (let us ever bless the g. p. o. as a repository of ancientest tradition!) is represented by a view of captain hodgson's legs where he stands on the control platform that runs thwartships overhead. the bow colloid is unshuttered and captain purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a fair slant. the dial shows , feet. "it's steep to-night," he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. "we generally pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at this time o' the year. i hate slathering through fluff." "so does van cutsem. look at him huntin' for a slant!" says captain hodgson. a fog-light breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. the antwerp night mail makes her signal and rises between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red in the glare of sheerness double light. the gale will have us over the north sea in half an hour, but captain purnall lets her go composedly--nosing to every point of the compass as she rises. "five thousand--six, six thousand eight hundred"--the dip-dial reads ere we find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand-fathom level. captain purnall rings up the engines and keys down the governor on the switch before him. there is no sense in urging machinery when Æolus himself gives you good knots for nothing. we are away in earnest now--our nose notched home on our chosen star. at this level the lower clouds are laid out all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the east. below that again is the strong westerly blow through which we rose. overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical gauze across the firmament. the moonlight turns the lower strata to silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. bristol and cardiff double lights (those statelily inclined beams over severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we keep the southern winter route. coventry central, the pivot of the english system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or two off our starboard bow the leek, the great cloud-breaker of saint david's head, swings its unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each way. there must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it does not affect the leek. "our planet's overlighted if anything," says captain purnall at the wheel, as cardiff-bristol slides under. "i remember the old days of common white verticals that 'ud show two or three thousand feet up in a mist, if you knew where to look for 'em. in really fluffy weather they might as well have been under your hat. one could get lost coming home then, an' have some fun. now, it's like driving down piccadilly." he points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers bore through the cloud-floor. we see nothing of england's outlines: only a white pavement pierced in all directions by these manholes of variously coloured fire--holy island's white and red--st. bee's interrupted white, and so on as far as the eye can reach. blessed be sargent, ahrens, and the dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers of the world whereby we travel in security! "are you going to lift for the shamrock?" asks captain hodgson. cork light (green, fixed) enlarges as we rush to it. captain purnall nods. there is heavy traffic hereabouts--the cloud-bank beneath us is streaked with running fissures of flame where the atlantic boats are hurrying londonward just clear of the fluff. mail-packets are supposed, under the conference rules, to have the five-thousand-foot lanes to themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to take liberties with english air. "no. " lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the fore-flange of the rudder and we make valencia (white, green, white) at a safe , feet, dipping our beam to an incoming washington packet. there is no cloud on the atlantic, and faint streaks of cream round dingle bay show where the driven seas hammer the coast. a big s. a. t. a. liner (_société anonyme des transports aëriens_) is diving and lifting half a mile below us in search of some break in the solid west wind. lower still lies a disabled dane: she is telling the liner all about it in international. our general communication dial has caught her talk and begins to eavesdrop. captain hodgson makes a motion to shut it off but checks himself. "perhaps you'd like to listen," he says. "'argol' of st. thomas," the dane whimpers. "report owners three starboard shaft collar-bearings fused. can make flores as we are, but impossible further. shall we buy spares at fayal?" the liner acknowledges and recommends inverting the bearings. the "argol" answers that she has already done so without effect, and begins to relieve her mind about cheap german enamels for collar-bearings. the frenchman assents cordially, cries "_courage, mon ami_," and switches off. their lights sink under the curve of the ocean. "that's one of lundt & bleamers's boats," says captain hodgson. "serves 'em right for putting german compos in their thrust-blocks. _she_ won't be in fayal to-night! by the way, wouldn't you like to look round the engine-room?" i have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and i follow captain hodgson from the control-platform, stooping low to avoid the bulge of the tanks. we know that fleury's gas can lift anything, as the world-famous trials of ' showed, but its almost indefinite powers of expansion necessitate vast tank room. even in this thin air the lift-shunts are busy taking out one-third of its normal lift, and still " " must be checked by an occasional downdraw of the rudder or our flight would become a climb to the stars. captain purnall prefers an overlifted to an underlifted ship; but no two captains trim ship alike. "when _i_ take the bridge," says captain hodgson, "you'll see me shunt forty per cent. of the lift out of the gas and run her on the upper rudder. with a swoop upwards instead of a swoop downwards, _as_ you say. either way will do. it's only habit. watch our dip-dial! tim fetches her down once every thirty knots as regularly as breathing." so is it shown on the dip-dial. for five or six minutes the arrow creeps from , to , . there is the faint "szgee" of the rudder, and back slides the arrow to , on a falling slant of ten or fifteen knots. "in heavy weather you jockey her with the screws as well," says captain hodgson, and, unclipping the jointed bar which divides the engine-room from the bare deck, he leads me on to the floor. here we find fleury's paradox of the bulkheaded vacuum--which we accept now without thought--literally in full blast. the three engines are h. t. &. t. assisted-vacuo fleury turbines running from , to the limit--that is to say, up to the point when the blades make the air "bell"--cut out a vacuum for themselves precisely as over-driven marine propellers used to do. " 's" limit is low on account of the small size of her nine screws, which, though handier than the old colloid thelussons, "bell" sooner. the midships engine, generally used as a reinforce, is not running; so the port and starboard turbine vacuum-chambers draw direct into the return-mains. the turbines whistle reflectively. from the low-arched expansion-tanks on either side the valves descend pillarwise to the turbine-chests, and thence the obedient gas whirls through the spirals of blades with a force that would whip the teeth out of a power-saw. behind, is its own pressure held in leash or spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, the vacuum where fleury's ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled turbillions of flame. the jointed u-tubes of the vacuum-chamber are pressure-tempered colloid (no glass would endure the strain for an instant) and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches the ray intently. it is the very heart of the machine--a mystery to this day. even fleury who begat it and, unlike magniac, died a multi-millionaire, could not explain how the restless little imp shuddering in the u-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike the furious blast of gas into a chill grayish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains back to the bilges. here it returns to its gaseous, one had almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. fleury's ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to fleury's ray. if a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the human finger touch the hooded terminals fleury's ray will wink and disappear and must be laboriously built up again. this means half a day's work for all hands and an expense of one hundred and seventy-odd pounds to the g. p. o. for radium-salts and such trifles. "now look at our thrust-collars. you won't find much german compo there. full-jewelled, you see," says captain hodgson as the engineer shunts open the top of a cap. our shaft-bearings are c. m. c. (commercial minerals company) stones, ground with as much care as the lens of a telescope. they cost £ apiece. so far we have not arrived at their term of life. these bearings came from "no. ," which took them over from the old "dominion of light," which had them out of the wreck of the "perseus" aëroplane in the years when men still flew linen kites over thorium engines! they are a shining reproof to all low-grade german "ruby" enamels, so-called "boort" facings, and the dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina compounds which please dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers crazy. the rudder-gear and the gas lift-shunt, seated side by side under the engine-room dials, are the only machines in visible motion. the former sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. the latter, cased and guarded like the u-tube aft, exhibits another fleury ray, but inverted and more green than violet. its function is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching. that is all! a tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering green lamp. a hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute. between the two, three white-painted turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate the empty perspectives. you can hear the trickle of the liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the soft _gluck-glock_ of gas-locks closing as captain purnall brings " " down by the head. the hum of the turbines and the boom of the air on our skin is no more than a cotton-wool wrapping to the universal stillness. and we are running an eighteen-second mile. i peer from the fore end of the engine-room over the hatch-coamings into the coach. the mail-clerks are sorting the winnipeg, calgary, and medicine hat bags: but there is a pack of cards ready on the table. suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to the turbine-valves and stand by; but the spectacled slave of the ray in the u-tube never lifts his head. he must watch where he is. we are hard-braked and going astern; there is language from the control-platform. "tim's sparking badly about something," says the unruffled captain hodgson. "let's look." captain purnall is not the suave man we left half an hour since, but the embodied authority of the g. p. o. ahead of us floats an ancient, aluminum-patched, twin-screw tramp of the dingiest, with no more right to the , foot lane than has a horse-cart to a modern town. she carries an obsolete "barbette" conning-tower--a six-foot affair with railed platform forward--and our warning beam plays on the top of it as a policeman's lantern flashes on the area sneak. like a sneak-thief, too, emerges a shock-headed navigator in his shirt-sleeves. captain purnall wrenches open the colloid to talk with him man to man. there are times when science does not satisfy. "what under the stars are you doing here, you sky-scraping chimney-sweep?" he shouts as we two drift side by side. "do you know this is a mail-lane? you call yourself a sailor, sir? you ain't fit to peddle toy balloons to an esquimaux. your name and number! report and get down, and be----!" "i've been blown up once," the shock-headed man cries, hoarsely, as a dog barking. "i don't care two flips of a contact for anything _you_ can do, postey." "don't you, sir? but i'll make you care. i'll have you towed stern first to disko and broke up. you can't recover insurance if you're broke for obstruction. do you understand _that_?" then the stranger bellows: "look at my propellers! there's been a wulli-wa down under that has knocked us into umbrella-frames! we've been blown up about forty thousand feet! we're all one conjuror's watch inside! my mate's arm's broke; my engineer's head's cut open; my ray went out when the engines smashed; and ... and ... for pity's sake give me my height, captain! we doubt we're dropping." "six thousand eight hundred. can you hold it?" captain purnall overlooks all insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing. the stranger leaks pungently. "we ought to blow into st. john's with luck. we're trying to plug the fore-tank now, but she's simply whistling it away," her captain wails. "she's sinking like a log," says captain purnall in an undertone. "call up the banks mark boat, george." our dip-dial shows that we, keeping abreast the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet the last few minutes. captain purnall presses a switch and our signal beam begins to swing through the night, twizzling spokes of light across infinity. "that'll fetch something," he says, while captain hodgson watches the general communicator. he has called up the north banks mark boat, a few hundred miles west, and is reporting the case. "i'll stand by you," captain purnall roars to the lone figure on the conning-tower. "is it as bad as that?" comes the answer. "she isn't insured, she's mine." "might have guessed as much," mutters hodgson. "owner's risk is the worst risk of all!" "can't i fetch st. john's--not even with this breeze?" the voice quavers. "stand by to abandon ship. haven't you _any_ lift in you, fore or aft?" "nothing but the midship tanks and they're none too tight. you see, my ray gave out and--" he coughs in the reek of the escaping gas. "you poor devil!" this does not reach our friend. "what does the mark boat say, george?" "wants to know if there's any danger to traffic. says she's in a bit of weather herself and can't quit station. i've turned in a general call, so even if they don't see our beam some one's bound to help--or else we must. shall i clear our slings. hold on! here we are! a planet liner, too! she'll be up in a tick!" "tell her to have her slings ready," cries his brother captain. "there won't be much time to spare.... tie up your mate," he roars to the tramp. "my mate's all right. it's my engineer. he's gone crazy." "shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. hurry!" "but i can make st. john's if you'll stand by." "you'll make the deep, wet atlantic in twenty minutes. you're less than fifty-eight hundred now. get your papers." a planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb spiral and takes the air of us humming. her underbody colloid is open and her transporter-slings hang down like tentacles. we shut off our beam as she adjusts herself--steering to a hair--over the tramp's conning-tower. the mate comes up, his arm strapped to his side, and stumbles into the cradle. a man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his ray. the mate assures him that he will find a nice new ray all ready in the liner's engine-room. the bandaged head goes up wagging excitedly. a youth and a woman follow. the liner cheers hollowly above us, and we see the passengers' faces at the saloon colloid. "that's a good girl. what's the fool waiting for now?" says captain purnall. the skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him fetch st. john's. he dives below and returns--at which we little human beings in the void cheer louder than ever--with the ship's kitten. up fly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody crashes home and she hurtles away again. the dial shows less than , feet. the mark boat signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her death song, as she falls beneath us in long sick zigzags. "keep our beam on her and send out a general warning," says captain purnall, following her down. there is no need. not a liner in air but knows the meaning of that vertical beam and gives us and our quarry a wide berth. "but she'll drown in the water, won't she?" i ask. "not always," is his answer. "i've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of herself and flicker round the lower lanes for three weeks on her forward tanks only. we'll run no risks. pith her, george, and look sharp. there's weather ahead." captain hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. we hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. the derelict's forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. she falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the atlantic takes her. [illustration: "slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the atlantic takes her"] "a filthy business," says hodgson. "i wonder what it must have been like in the old days." the thought had crossed my mind too. what if that wavering carcass had been filled with international-speaking men of all the internationalities, each one of them taught (_that_ is the horror of it!) that after death he would very possibly go forever to unspeakable torment? and not half a century since, we (one knows now that we are only our fathers re-enlarged upon the earth), _we_, i say, ripped and rammed and pithed to admiration. here tim, from the control-platform, shouts that we are to get into our inflators and to bring him his at once. we hurry into the heavy rubber suits--and the engineers are already dressed--and inflate at the air-pump taps. g. p. o. inflators are thrice as thick as a racing man's "flickers," and chafe abominably under the armpits. george takes the wheel until tim has blown himself up to the extreme of rotundity. if you kicked him off the c. p. to the deck he would bounce back. but it is " " that will do the kicking. "the mark boat's mad--stark ravin' crazy," he snorts, returning to command. "she says there's a bad blow-out ahead and wants me to pull over to greenland. i'll see her pithed first! we wasted an hour and a quarter over that dead duck down under, and now i'm expected to go rubbin' my back all round the pole. what does she think a postal packet's made of? gummed silk? tell her we're coming on straight, george." george buckles him into the frame and switches on the direct control. now under tim's left toe lies the port-engine accelerator; under his left heel the reverse, and so with the other foot. the lift-shunt stops stand out on the rim of the steering-wheel where the fingers of his left hand can play on them. at his right hand is the midships engine lever ready to be thrown into gear at a moment's notice. he leans forward in his belt, eyes glued to the colloid, and one ear cocked toward the general communicator. henceforth he is the strength and direction of " ," through whatever may befall. the banks mark boat is reeling out pages of a. b. c. directions to the traffic at large. we are to secure all "loose objects"; hood up our fleury rays; and "on no account to attempt to clear snow from our conning-towers till the weather abates." under-powered craft, we are told, can ascend to the limit of their lift, mail-packets to look out for them accordingly; the lower lanes westward are pitting very badly, "with frequent blow-outs, vortices, laterals, etc." still the clear dark holds up unblemished. the only warning is the electric skin-tension (i feel as though i were a lace-maker's pillow) and an irritability which the gibbering of the general communicator increases almost to hysteria. we have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the tramp and our turbines are giving us an honest two hundred and ten knots. very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low down, shows us the north banks mark boat. there are specks of fire round her rising and falling--bewildered planets about an unstable sun--helpless shipping hanging on to her light for company's sake. no wonder she could not quit station. she warns us to look out for the backwash of the bad vortex in which (her beam shows it) she is even now reeling. the pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminous films--wreathing and uneasy shapes. one forms itself into a globe of pale flame that waits shivering with eagerness till we sweep by. it leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there an instant, and swings off. our roaring bow sinks as though that light were lead--sinks and recovers to lurch and stumble again beneath the next blow-out. tim's fingers on the lift-shunt strike chords of numbers-- : : :-- : : :-- : : , and so on; for he is running by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the uneasy air. all three engines are at work, for the sooner we have skated over this thin ice the better. higher we dare not go. the whole upper vault is charged with pale krypton vapours, which our skin friction may excite to unholy manifestations. between the upper and the lower levels-- , , and , , hints the mark boat--we may perhaps bolt through if.... our bow clothes itself in blue flame and falls like a sword. no human skill can keep pace with the changing tensions. a vortex has us by the beak and we dive down a two-thousand-foot slant at an angle (the dip-dial and my bouncing body record it) of thirty-five. our turbines scream shrilly; the propellers cannot bite on the thin air; tim shunts the lift out of five tanks at once and by sheer weight drives her bulletwise through the maelstrom till she cushions with a jar on an up-gust, three thousand feet below. "_now_ we've done it," says george in my ear. "our skin-friction that last slide, has played old harry with the tensions! look out for laterals, tim, she'll want some holding." "i've got her," is the answer. "come _up_, old woman." she comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her left and right like the pinions of angry angels. she is jolted off her course in four ways at once, and cuffed into place again, only to be swung aside and dropped into a new chaos. we are never without a corposant grinning on our bows or rolling head over heels from nose to midships, and to the crackle of electricity around and within us is added once or twice the rattle of hail--hail that will never fall on any sea. slow we must or we may break our back, pitch-poling. "air's a perfectly elastic fluid," roars george above the tumult. "about as elastic as a head sea off the fastnet, aint it?" [illustration: the storm] he is less than just to the good element. if one intrudes on the heavens when they are balancing their volt-accounts; if one disturbs the high gods' market-rates by hurling steel hulls at ninety knots across tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one must not complain of any rudeness in the reception. tim met it with an unmoved countenance, one corner of his under lip caught up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into the blackness twenty miles ahead, and the fierce sparks flying from his knuckles at every turn of the hand. now and again he shook his head to clear the sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then that george, watching his chance, would slide down the life-rail and swab his face quickly with a big red handkerchief. i never imagined that a human being could so continuously labour and so collectedly think as did tim through that hell's half hour when the flurry was at its worst. we were dragged hither and yon by warm or frozen suctions, belched up on the tops of wulli-was, spun down by vortices and clubbed aside by laterals under a dizzying rush of stars in the company of a drunken moon. i heard the rushing click of the midship-engine-lever sliding in and out, the low growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder than the yelling winds without, the scream of the bow-rudder gouging into any lull that promised hold for an instant. at last we began to claw up on a cant, bow-rudder and port-propeller together; only the nicest balancing of tanks saved us from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days. "we've got to hitch to windward of that mark boat somehow," george cried. "there's no windward," i protested feebly, where i swung shackled to a stanchion. "how can there be?" he laughed--as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out--that red man laughed beneath his inflated hood! "look!" he said. "we must clear those refugees with a high lift." the mark boat was below and a little to the sou'west of us, fluctuating in the centre of her distraught galaxy. the air was thick with moving lights at every level. i take it most of them were trying to lie head to wind but, not being hydras, they failed. an under-tanked moghrabi boat had risen to the limit of her lift and, finding no improvement, had dropped a couple of thousand. there she met a superb wulli-wa and was blown up spinning like a dead leaf. instead of shutting off she went astern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the mark boat, whose language (our g. c. took it in) was humanly simple. "if they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better," said george in a calm, as we climbed like a bat above them all. "but some skippers _will_ navigate without enough lift. what does that tad-boat think she is doing, tim?" "playin' kiss in the ring," was tim's unmoved reply. a trans-asiatic direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. but there was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the t. a. d. was flipped out like a pea from off a fingernail, braking madly as she fled down and all but over-ending. "now i hope she's satisfied," said tim. "i'm glad i'm not a mark boat.... do i want help?" the c. g. dial had caught his ear. "george, you may tell that gentleman with my love--love, remember, george--that i do not want help. who _is_ the officious sardine-tin?" "a rimouski drogher on the lookout for a tow." "very kind of the rimouski drogher. this postal packet isn't being towed at present." "those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage," george explained. "we call 'em kittiwakes." a long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease for one instant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and a single hand in her open tower. he was smoking. surrendered to the insurrection of the airs through which we tore our way, he lay in absolute peace. i saw the smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere his boat dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well. we had just cleared the mark boat and her disorderly neighbours when the storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. a shooting-star to northward filled the sky with the green blink of a meteorite dissipating itself in our atmosphere. said george: "that may iron out all the tensions." even as he spoke, the conflicting winds came to rest; the levels filled; the laterals died out in long easy swells; the airways were smoothed before us. in less than three minutes the covey round the mark boat had shipped their power-lights and whirred away upon their businesses. "what's happened?" i gasped. the nerve-storm within and the volt-tingle without had passed: my inflators weighed like lead. "god, he knows!" said captain george, soberly. "that old shooting-star's skin-friction has discharged the different levels. i've seen it happen before. phew! what a relief!" we dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy suits. tim shut off and stepped out of the frame. the mark boat was coming up behind us. he opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and mopped his face. "hello, williams!" he cried. "a degree or two out o' station, ain't you?" "may be," was the answer from the mark boat. "i've had some company this evening." "so i noticed. wasn't that quite a little draught?" "i warned you. why didn't you pull out round by disko? the east-bound packets have." "me? not till i'm running a polar consumptives' sanatorium boat. i was squinting through a colloid before you were out of your cradle, my son." "i'd be the last man to deny it," the captain of the mark boat replies softly. "the way you handled her just now--i'm a pretty fair judge of traffic in a volt-flurry--it was a thousand revolutions beyond anything even _i_'ve ever seen." tim's back supples visibly to this oiling. captain george on the c. p. winks and points to the portrait of a singularly attractive maiden pinned up on tim's telescope-bracket above the steering-wheel. i see. wholly and entirely do i see! there is some talk overhead of "coming round to tea on friday," a brief report of the derelict's fate, and tim volunteers as he descends: "for an a. b. c. man young williams is less of a high-tension fool than some.... were you thinking of taking her on, george? then i'll just have a look round that port-thrust--seems to me it's a trifle warm--and we'll jog along." the mark boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her appointed eyrie. here she will stay, a shutterless observatory; a life-boat station; a salvage tug; a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteorological bureau for three hundred miles in all directions, till wednesday next when her relief slides across the stars to take her buffeted place. her black hull, double conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent all that remains to the planet of that odd old word authority. she is responsible only to the aërial board of control--the a. b. c. of which tim speaks so flippantly. but that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons of both sexes, controls this planet. "transportation is civilization," our motto runs. theoretically, we do what we please so long as we do not interfere with the traffic _and all it implies_. practically, the a. b. c. confirms or annuls all international arrangements and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of private administration on its shoulders. i discuss this with tim, sipping maté on the c. p. while george fans her along over the white blur of the banks in beautiful upward curves of fifty miles each. the dip-dial translates them on the tape in flowing freehand. tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet, which record " 's" path through the volt-flurry. "i haven't had a fever-chart like this to show up in five years," he says ruefully. a postal packet's dip-dial records every yard of every run. the tapes then go to the a. b. c., which collates and makes composite photographs of them for the instruction of captains. tim studies his irrevocable past, shaking his head. "hello! here's a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at eighty-five degrees! we must have been standing on our heads then, george." "you don't say so," george answers. "i fancied i noticed it at the time." george may not have captain purnall's catlike swiftness, but he is all an artist to the tips of the broad fingers that play on the shunt-stops. the delicious flight-curves come away on the tape with never a waver. the mark boat's vertical spindle of light lies down to eastward, setting in the face of the following stars. westward, where no planet should rise, the triple verticals of trinity bay (we keep still to the southern route) make a low-lifting haze. we seem the only thing at rest under all the heavens; floating at ease till the earth's revolution shall turn up our landing-towers. and minute by minute our silent clock gives us a sixteen-second mile. "some fine night," says tim. "we'll be even with that clock's master." "he's coming now," says george, over his shoulder. "i'm chasing the night west." the stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had been drawn under unobserved, but the deep air-boom on our skin changes to a joyful shout. "the dawn-gust," says tim. "it'll go on to meet the sun. look! look! there's the dark being crammed back over our bow! come to the after-colloid. i'll show you something." the engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the coach are asleep, and the slave of the ray is near to follow them. tim slides open the aft colloid and reveals the curve of the world--the ocean's deepest purple--edged with fuming and intolerable gold. then the sun rises and through the colloid strikes out our lamps. tim scowls in his face. "squirrels in a cage," he mutters. "that's all we are. squirrels in a cage! he's going twice as fast as us. just you wait a few years, my shining friend and we'll take steps that will amaze you. _we'll_ joshua you!" yes, that is our dream: to turn all earth into the vale of ajalon at our pleasure. so far, we can drag out the dawn to twice its normal length in these latitudes. but some day--even on the equator--we shall hold the sun level in his full stride. now we look down on a sea thronged with heavy traffic. a big submersible breaks water suddenly. another and another follow with a swash and a suck and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. the deep-sea freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes of foam. "we'll lung up, too," says tim, and when we return to the c. p. george shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh air sweeps her out. there is no hurry. the old contracts (they will be revised at the end of the year) allow twelve hours for a run which any packet can put behind her in ten. so we breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant which pushes us along at a languid twenty. to enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a mile or so above the dappled atlantic cloud-belts and after a volt-flurry which has cleared and tempered your nerves. while we discussed the thickening traffic with the superiority that comes of having a high level reserved to ourselves, we heard (and i for the first time) the morning hymn on a hospital boat. she was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "_oh, ye winds of god_," sang the unseen voices: "_bless ye the lord! praise him and magnify him forever!_" we slid off our caps and joined in. when our shadow fell across her great open platforms they looked up and stretched out their hands neighbourly while they sang. we could see the doctors and the nurses and the white-button-like faces of the cot-patients. she passed slowly beneath us, heading northward, her hull, wet with the dews of the night, all ablaze in the sunshine. so took she the shadow of a cloud and vanished, her song continuing. _oh, ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the lord! praise him and magnify him forever._ "she's a public lunger or she wouldn't have been singing the _benedicite_; and she's a greenlander or she wouldn't have snow-blinds over her colloids," said george at last. "she'll be bound for frederikshavn or one of the glacier sanatoriums for a month. if she was an accident ward she'd be hung up at the eight-thousand-foot level. yes--consumptives." "funny how the new things are the old things. i've read in books," tim answered, "that savages used to haul their sick and wounded up to the tops of hills because microbes were fewer there. we hoist 'em into sterilized air for a while. same idea. how much do the doctors say we've added to the average life of a man?" "thirty years," says george with a twinkle in his eye. "are we going to spend 'em all up here, tim?" "flap along, then. flap along. who's hindering?" the senior captain laughed, as we went in. we held a good lift to clear the coastwise and continental shipping; and we had need of it. though our route is in no sense a populated one, there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along. we met hudson bay furriers out of the great preserve, hurrying to make their departure from bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. we over-crossed keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who see no land between trepassy and blanco, know what gold they bring back from west africa. trans-asiatic directs, we met, soberly ringing the world round the fiftieth meridian at an honest seventy knots; and white-painted ackroyd & hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath us, their ventilated hulls whistling like chinese kites. their market is in the north among the northern sanatoria where you can smell their grapefruit and bananas across the cold snows. argentine beef boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely outline. they, too, feed the northern health stations in ice-bound ports where submersibles dare not rise. yellow-bellied ore-flats and ungava petrol-tanks punted down leisurely out of the north like strings of unfrightened wild duck. it does not pay to "fly" minerals and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but the risks of transhipping to submersibles in the ice-pack off nain or hebron are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to halifax direct, and scent the air as they go. they are the biggest tramps aloft except the athabasca grain-tubs. but these last, now that the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world's shoulder, timber-lifting in siberia. we held to the st. lawrence (it is astonishing how the old water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his broad line of black between its drifting ice blocks, all down the park that the wisdom of our fathers--but every one knows the quebec run. we dropped to the heights receiving towers twenty minutes ahead of time and there hung at ease till the yokohama intermediate packet could pull out and give us our proper slip. it was curious to watch the action of the holding-down clips all along the frosty river front as the boats cleared or came to rest. a big hamburger was leaving pont levis and her crew, unshipping the platform railings, began to sing "elsinore"--the oldest of our chanteys. you know it of course: _mother rugen's tea-house on the baltic_-- _forty couple waltzing on the floor!_ _and you can watch my ray,_ _for i must go away_ _and dance with ella sweyn at elsinore!_ then, while they sweated home the covering-plates: _nor-nor-nor-nor-_ _west from sourabaya to the baltic--_ _ninety knot an hour to the skaw!_ _mother rugen's tea-house on the baltic_ _and a dance with ella sweyn at elsinore!_ the clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as though quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light and unworthy lovers. our signal came from the heights. tim turned and floated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal that the great tower arms flung open--or did i think so because on the upper staging a little hooded figure also opened her arms wide towards her father? * * * * * in ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle turbines, and tim, prouder of this than all, introduced me to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf. "and by the way," said he to her, stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil life, "i saw young williams in the mark boat. i've asked him to tea on friday." [illustration: "i've asked him to tea on friday"] aerial board of control bulletin aerial board of control lights no changes in english inland lights for week ending dec. . planetary coastal lights. week ending dec. . verde inclined guide-light changes from st proximo to triple flash--green white green--in place of occulting red as heretofore. the warning light for harmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare (white) on all oases of trans-saharan n. e. by e. main routes. invercargil (n. z.)--from st prox.: extreme southerly light (double red) will exhibit white beam inclined degrees on approach of southerly buster. traffic flies high off this coast between april and october. table bay--devil's peak glare removed to simonsberg. traffic making table mountain coastwise keep all lights from three anchor bay at least five shipping hundred feet under, and do not round to till beyond e. shoulder devil's peak. sandheads light--green triple vertical marks new private landing-stage for bay and burma traffic only. snaefell jokul--white occulting light withdrawn for winter. patagonia--no summer light south c. pilar. this includes staten island and port stanley. c. navarin--quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals (new). east cape--fog flash--single white with single bomb, sec. intervals (new). malayan archipelago lights unreliable owing eruptions. lay from somerset to singapore direct, keeping highest levels. _for the board_: catterthun } st. just } _lights._ van hedder } casualties week ending dec. th. sable island landing towers--green freighter, number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, passed -ft. level p.m. dec. th. watched to water and pithed by mark boat. n. f. banks--postal packet reports _halma_ freighter (fowey--st. john's) abandoned, leaking after weather, ° ' n. ° ' w. crew rescued by planet liner _asteroid_. watched to water and pithed by postal packet, dec. th. kerguelen mark boat reports last call from _cymena_ freighter (gayer tong-huk & co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm south mcdonald islands. no wreckage recovered. addresses, etc., of crew at all a. b. c. offices. fezzan--t. a. d. freighter _ulema_ taken ground during harmattan on akakus range. under plates strained. crew at ghat where repairing dec. th. biscay, mark boat reports _carducci_ (valandingham line) slightly spiked in western gorge point de benasque. passengers transferred _andorra_ (same line). barcelona mark boat salving cargo dec. th. ascension, mark boat--wreck of unknown racing-plane, parden rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and harliss engine-seating, sighted and salved ° ' s. ° ' w. dec. th. photos at all a. b. c. offices. missing no answer to general call having been received during the last week from following overdues, they are posted as missing. _atlantis_, w. canton--valparaiso _audhumla_, w. stockholm--odessa _berenice_, w. riga--vladivostock _draco_, e. coventry--puntas arenas _tontine_, e. c. wrath--ungava _wu-sung_, e. hankow--lobito bay general call (all mark boats) out for: _jane eyre_, w. port rupert--city of mexico _santander_, w. gobi-desert--manila _v. edmundsun_, e. kandahar--fiume broke for obstruction, and quitting levels valkyrie (racing plane), a. j. hartley owner, new york (twice warned). geisha (racing plane), s. van cott owner, philadelphia (twice warned). marvel of peru (racing plane), j. x. peixoto owner, rio de janeiro (twice warned). _for the board_: lazareff } mckeough } _traffic._ goldblatt } notes notes high-level sleet the northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. from all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. racing-planes and digs alike have suffered severely--the former from unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane in a cross wind know what that means), and the latter from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. as a consequence, the northern and northwestern upper levels have been practically abandoned, and the high fliers have returned to the ignoble security of the three, five, and six hundred foot levels. but there remain a few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue empyrean. bat-boat racing the scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting world to concerted action in regard to "bat" boat racing. we have been treated to the spectacle of what are practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or more above the water, and only eased down to touch their so-called "native element" as they near the line. judges and starters have been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public demonstration off st. catherine's light at the autumn regattas has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. in future the "bat" is to be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for "no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to be conceded. the new rule severely restricts plane area and lift alike. the gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. these things work, if not for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome _waterborne_ cruiser. the type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the long-davidson make (the patent on which has just expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the strain on the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is admittedly very severe. but bat-boat racing has a great future before it. correspondence correspondence skylarking on the equator to the editor--only last week, while crossing the equator (w. . ), i became aware of a furious and irregular cannonading some fifteen or twenty knots s. e. descending to the ft. level, i found a party of transylvanian tourists engaged in exploding scores of the largest pattern atmospheric bombs (a. b. c. standard) and, in the intervals of their pleasing labours, firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. this orgy--i can give it no other name--went on for at least two hours, and naturally produced violent electric derangements. my compasses, of course, were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and i received two brisk shocks from the lower platform-rail. on remonstrating, i was told that these "professors" were engaged in scientific experiments. the extent of their "scientific" knowledge may be judged by the fact that they expected to produce (i give their own words) "a little blue sky" if "they went on long enough." this in the heart of the doldrums at feet! i have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place (it can be found at the , level for practically twelve months out of the year), but i submit, with all deference to the educational needs of transylvania, that "sky-larking" in the centre of a main-travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. when my friends had finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure-layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. i pitched badly twice in an upward rush--solely due to these diabolical throw-downs--that came near to wrecking my propeller. equatorial work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without the added terrors of scientific hooliganism in the doldrums. rhyl. j. vincent mathews. [we entirely sympathize with professor mathews's views, but unluckily till the board sees fit to further regulate the southern areas in which scientific experiments may be conducted, we shall always be exposed to the risk which our correspondent describes. unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only too capable of producing secondary causes.--_editor_.] answers to correspondents vigilans--the laws of auroral derangements are still imperfectly understood. any overheated motor may of course "seize" without warning; but so many complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours while shooting the aurora that we are inclined to believe with lavalle that the upper strata of the aurora borealis are practically one big electric "leak," and that the paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization of all metallic parts. low-flying planes often "glue up" when near the magnetic pole, and there is no reason in science why the same disability should not be experienced at higher levels when the auroras are "delivering" strongly. indignant--on your own showing, you were not under control. that you could not hoist the necessary n. u. c. lights on approaching a traffic-lane because your electrics had short-circuited is a misfortune which might befall any one. the a. b. c., being responsible for the planet's traffic, cannot, however, make allowance for this kind of misfortune. a reference to the code will show that you were fined on the lower scale. planiston--( ) the five thousand kilometre (overland) was won last year by l. v. rautsch, r. m. rautsch, his brother, in the same week pulling off the ten thousand (oversea). r. m.'s average worked out at a fraction over kilometres per hour, thus constituting a record. ( ) theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a dirigible. for commercial and practical purposes , tons is accepted as the most manageable. paterfamilias--none whatever. he is liable for direct damage both to your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of bricks into garden, etc., etc. bodily inconvenience and mental anguish may be included, but the average jury are not, as a rule, men of sentiment. if you can prove that his grapnel removed _any_ portion of your roof, you had better rest your case on decoverture of domicile (see parkins _v_. duboulay). we entirely sympathize with your position, but the night of the th was stormy and confused, and--you may have to anchor on a stranger's chimney yourself some night. _verbum sap!_ aldebaran--war, as a paying concern, ceased in . ( ) the convention of london expressly reserves to every nation the right of waging war so long as it does not interfere with the world's traffic. ( ) the a. b. c. was constituted in . l. m. d.--keep her dead head-on at half-power, taking advantage of the lulls to speed up and creep into it. she will strain much less this way than in quartering across a gale. ( ) nothing is to be gained by reversing into a following gale, and there is always risk of a turn-over. ( ) the formulæ for stun'sle brakes are uniformly unreliable, and will continue to be so as long as air is compressible. pegamoid--personally we prefer glass or flux compounds to any other material for winter work nose-caps as being absolutely non-hygroscopic. ( ) we cannot recommend any particular make. pulmonar--for the symptoms you describe, try the gobi desert sanitaria. the low levels of the saharan sanitaria are against them except at the outset of the disease. ( ) we do not recommend boarding-houses or hotels in this column. beginner--on still days the air above a large inhabited city being slightly warmer--i. e., thinner--than the atmosphere of the surrounding country, a plane drops a little on entering the rarefied area, precisely as a ship sinks a little in fresh water. hence the phenomena of "jolt" and your "inexplicable collisions" with factory chimneys. in air, as on earth, it is safest to fly high. emergency--there is only one rule of the road in air, earth, and water. do you want the firmament to yourself? picciola--both poles have been overdone in art and literature. leave them to science for the next twenty years. you did not send a stamp with your verses. north nigeria--the mark boat was within her right in warning you up on the reserve. the shadow of a low-flying dirigible scares the game. you can buy all the photos you need at sokoto. new era--it is not etiquette to overcross an a. b. c. official's boat without asking permission. he is one of the body responsible for the planet's traffic, and for that reason must not be interfered with. you, presumably, are out on your own business or pleasure, and should leave him alone. for humanity's sake don't try to be "democratic." reviews reviews the life of xavier lavalle (_reviewed by réné talland. École aëronautique, paris_) ten years ago lavalle, "that imperturbable dreamer of the heavens," as lazareff hailed him, gathered together the fruits of a lifetime's labour, and gave it, with well-justified contempt, to a world bound hand and foot to barald's theory of vertices and "compensating electric nodes." "they shall see," he wrote--in that immortal postscript to "the heart of the cyclone"--"the laws whose existence they derided written in fire _beneath_ them." "but even here," he continues, "there is no finality. better a thousand times my conclusions should be discredited than that my dead name should lie across the threshold of the temple of science--a bar to further inquiry." so died lavalle--a prince of the powers of the air, and even at his funeral céllier jested at "him who had gone to discover the secrets of the aurora borealis." if i choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that céllier's theories are to-day as exploded as the ludicrous deductions of the spanish school. in the place of their fugitive and warring dreams we have, definitely, lavalle's law of the cyclone which he surprised in darkness and cold at the foot of the overarching throne of the aurora borealis. it is there that i, intent on my own investigations, have passed and re-passed a hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon the north cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism of his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes turned to the zenith. "master," i would cry as i moved respectfully beneath him, "what is it you seek to-day?" and always the answer, clear and without doubt, from above: "the old secret, my son!" the immense egotism of youth forced me on my own path, but (cry of the human always!) had i known--if i had known--i would many times have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege, such as tinsley and herrera possess, of having aided him in his monumental researches. it is to the filial piety of victor lavalle that we owe the two volumes consecrated to the ground-life of his father, so full of the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth. once returned from the abysms of the utter north to that little house upon the outskirts of meudon, it was not the philosopher, the daring observer, the man of iron energy that imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate and kindly, the co-equal of his children, and, it must be written, not seldom the comic despair of madame lavalle, who, as she writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, found "in this unequalled intellect whose name i bear the abandon of a large and very untidy boy." here is her letter: "xavier returned from i do not know where at midnight, absorbed in calculations on the eternal question of his aurora--_la belle aurore_, whom i begin to hate. instead of anchoring--i had set out the guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the plane--he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with his anchor down! figure to yourself, dear mother, it is the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first engages! that i do not regret, for the mayor's wife and i are not sympathetic; but when xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears it across the garden into the conservatory i protest at the top of my voice. little victor in his night-clothes runs to the window, enormously amused at the parabolic flight without reason, for it is too dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. the mayor of meudon thunders at our door in the name of the law, demanding, i suppose, my husband's head. here is the conversation through the megaphone--xavier is two hundred feet above us. "'mons. lavalle, descend and make reparation for outrage of domicile. descend, mons. lavalle!' "no one answers. "'xavier lavalle, in the name of the law, descend and submit to process for outrage of domicile.' "xavier, roused from his calculations, only comprehending the last words: 'outrage of domicile? my dear mayor, who is the man that has corrupted thy julie?' "the mayor, furious, 'xavier lavalle----' "xavier, interrupting: 'i have not that felicity. i am only a dealer in cyclones!' "my faith, he raised one then! all meudon attended in the streets, and my xavier, after a long time comprehending what he had done, excused himself in a thousand apologies. at last the reconciliation was effected in our house over a supper at two in the morning--julie in a wonderful costume of compromises, and i have her and the mayor pacified in beds in the blue room." and on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, her xavier departs anew for the aurora borealis, there to commence his life's work. m. victor lavalle tells us of that historic collision (_en plane_) on the flank of hecla between herrera, then a pillar of the spanish school, and the man destined to confute his theories and lead him intellectually captive. even through the years, the immense laugh of lavalle as he sustains the spaniard's wrecked plane, and cries: "courage! _i_ shall not fall till i have found truth, and i hold _you_ fast!" rings like the call of trumpets. this is that lavalle whom the world, immersed in speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor suspect--the lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a pedant and a theorist. the human, as apart from the scientific, side (developed in his own volumes) of his epoch-making discoveries is marked with a simplicity, clarity, and good sense beyond praise. i would specially refer such as doubt the sustaining influence of ancestral faith upon character and will to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are contained the opening and consummation of the tellurionical records extending over nine years. of their tremendous significance be sure that the modest house at meudon knew as little as that the records would one day be the world's standard in all official meteorology. it was enough for them that their xavier--this son, this father, this husband--ascended periodically to commune with powers, it might be angelic, beyond their comprehension, and that they united daily in prayers for his safety. "pray for me," he says upon the eve of each of his excursions, and returning, with an equal simplicity, he renders thanks "after supper in the little room where he kept his barometers." to the last lavalle was a catholic of the old school, accepting--he who had looked into the very heart of the lightnings--the dogmas of papal infallibility, of absolution, of confession--of relics great and small. marvellous--enviable contradiction! the completion of the tellurionical records closed what lavalle himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours--labours from which the youngest and least impressionable planeur might well have shrunk. he had traced through cold and heat, across the deeps of the oceans, with instruments of his own invention, over the inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage of the deserts, league by league, patiently, unweariedly, remorselessly, from their ever-shifting cradle under the magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost ether of the upper atmosphere--each one of the isoconical tellurions--lavalle's curves, as we call them to-day. he had disentangled the nodes of their intersections, assigning to each its regulated period of flux and reflux. thus equipped, he summons herrera and tinsley, his pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as though he were ordering his flighter for some midday journey to marseilles. "i have proved my thesis," he writes. "it remains now only that you should witness the proof. we go to manila to-morrow. a cyclone will form off the pescadores s. e. in four days, and will reach its maximum intensity in twenty-seven hours after inception. it is there i will show you the truth." a letter heretofore unpublished from herrera to madame lavalle tells us how the master's prophecy was verified. (_to be continued_.) advertising section miscellaneous wants required immediately, for east africa, a thoroughly competent plane and dirigible driver, acquainted with petrol radium and helium motors and generators. low-level work only, but must understand heavy-weight digs. mossamedes transport assoc. palestine buildings, e. c. * * * * * man wanted--dig driver for southern alps with saharan summer trips. high levels, high speed, high wages. apply m. sidney hotel san stefano. monte carlo * * * * * family dirigible. a competent, steady man wanted for slow speed, low level tangye dirigible. no night work, no sea trips. must be member of the church of england, and make himself useful in the garden. m. r., the rectory, gray's barton, wilts. * * * * * commercial dig, central and southern europe. a smart, active man for a l. m. t. dig. night work only. headquarters london and cairo. a linguist preferred. bagman charing cross hotel, w. c. (urgent.) * * * * * for sale--a bargain--single plane, narrow-gauge vans, pinke motor. restayed this autumn. hansen air-kit. in. chest, - / collar. can be seen by appointment. n. . this office. =the bee-line bookshop= belt's way-books, giving town lights for all towns over , pop. as laid down by a. b. c. the world. complete vols. thin oxford, limp back. s. d. belt's coastal itinerary. shore lights of the world. s. d. the transatlantic and mediterranean traffic lines. (by authority of the a. b. c.) paper, s. d.; cloth, s. d. ready jan. . arctic aeroplaning. siemens and galt. cloth, bds. s. d. lavalle's heart of the cyclone, with supplementary charts. s. d. rimington's pitfalls in the air, and table of comparative densities. s. d. angelo's desert in a dirigible. new edition, revised. s. d. vaughan's plane racing in calm and storm. s. d. vaughan's hints to the air-mateur. s. hofman's laws of lift and velocity. with diagrams, s. d. de vitre's theory of shifting ballast in dirigibles. s. d. sanger's weathers of the world. s. sanger's temperatures at high altitudes. s. hawkin's fog and how to avoid it. s. van zuylan's secondary effects of thunderstorms. s. d. dahlgren's air currents and epidemic diseases. s. d. redmayne's disease and the barometer. s. d. walton's health resorts of the gobi and shamo. s. d. walton's the pole and pulmonary complaints. s. d. mutlow's high level bacteriology s. d. halliwell's illuminated star map, with clockwork attachment, giving apparent motion of heavens, boxed, complete with clamps for binnacle. inch size, only £ . . . (invaluable for night work.) with a. b. c. certificate, £ . s. d. zalinski's standard works. passes of the himalayas. s. passes of the sierras. s. passes of the rockies. s. passes of the urals. s. the four boxed, limp cloth, with charts, s. gray's air currents in mountain gorges. s. d. =a. c. belt & son, reading= safety wear for aeronauts flickers! flickers! flickers! =high level flickers= "_he that is down need fear no fall_" _fear not! you will fall lightly as down!_ hansen's air-kits are down in all respects. tremendous reductions in prices previous to winter stocking. pure para kit with cellulose seat and shoulder-pads, weighted to balance. unequalled for all drop-work. our trebly resilient heavy kit is the _ne plus ultra_ of comfort and safety. gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, non-conducting flickers with pipe and nozzle fitting all types of generator. graduated tap on left hip. =hansen's flickers lead the aerial flight= = oxford street= the new weighted flicker with tweed or cheviot surface cannot be distinguished from the ordinary suit till inflated. flickers! flickers! flickers! appliances for air planes what "skid" was to our forefathers on the ground, "pitch" is to their sons in the air. the popularity of the large, unwieldy, slow, expensive dirigible over the light, swift plane is mainly due to the former's immunity from pitch. collison's forward-socketed air van renders it impossible for any plane to pitch. the c. f. s. is automatic, simple as a shutter, certain as a power hammer, safe as oxygen. fitted to any make of plane. collison brompton road _workshops_, _chiswick_ lundie & mathers sole agts for east'n hemisphere * * * * * starters and guides hotel, club, and private house plane-starters, slips and guides affixed by skilled workmen in accordance with local building laws. rackstraw's forty-foot collapsible steel starters with automatic release at end of travel--prices per foot run, clamps and crampons included. the safest on the market. _weaver & denison middleboro_ air planes and dirigible goods _=remember=_ =planes are swift--so is death= =planes are cheap--so is life= _why_ does the 'plane builder insist on the safety of his machines? methinks the gentleman protests too much. the standard dig construction company do not build kites. they build, equip and guarantee dirigibles. =_standard dig construction co._= millwall _and_ buenos ayres * * * * * remember we shall always be pleased to see you. we build and test and guarantee our dirigibles for all purposes. they go up when you please and they do not come down till you please. you can please yourself, but--you might as well choose a dirigible. =standard dirigible construction co.= millwall _and_ buenos ayres * * * * * hovers powell's wind hovers for 'planes tying-to in heavy weather, save the motor and strain on the forebody. will not send to leeward. "albatross" wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed; according to h. p. and weight. _we fit and test free to ° east of greenwich_ l. & w. powell victoria street, w * * * * * gayer & hutt birmingham and birmingham eng. ala. towers, landing stages, slips and lifts public and private contractors to the a. b. c., south-western european postal construction dept. sole patentees and owners of the collison anti-quake diagonal tower-tie. only gold medal kyoto exhibition of aerial appliances, . air planes and dirigibles c. m. c. our synthetical mineral bearings are chemically and crystallogically identical with the minerals whose names they bear. any size, any surface. diamond, rock-crystal, agate and ruby bearings--cups, caps and collars for the higher speeds. for tractor bearings and spindles--imperative. for rear propellers--indispensable. for all working parts--advisable. commercial minerals co. minories * * * * * resurgam! if you have not clothed yourself in a normandie resurgam you will probably not be interested in our next week's list of air-kit. resurgam air-kit emporium hymans & graham lower broadway, new york * * * * * remember! ¶ it is now nearly a century since the plane was to supersede the dirigible for all purposes. ¶ to-day _none_ of the planet's freight is carried _en plane_. ¶ less than two per cent. of the planet's passengers are carried _en plane_. _we design, equip and guarantee dirigibles for all purposes._ standard dig construction company millwall and buenos ayres bat-boats [illustration] flint & mantel southampton for sale at the end of season the following bat-boats: =griselda=, knt., ft., (nom.) maginnis motor, under-rake rudder. =mabelle=, knt., ft., hargreaves motor, douglas' lock-steering gear. =ivemona=, knt., ft., hargreaves (radium accelerator), miller keel and rudder. the above are well known on the south coast as sound, wholesome knockabout boats, with ample cruising accommodation. _griselda_ carries spare set of hofman racing vans and can be lifted three foot clear in smooth water with ballast-tank swung aft. the others do not lift clear of water, and are recommended for beginners. also, by private treaty, racing b. b. _tarpon_ ( winning flags) knt., ft.; long-davidson double under-rake rudder, new this season and unstrained. nom. maginnis motor, radium relays and pond generator. bronze breakwater forward, and treble reinforced forefoot and entry. talfourd rockered keel. triple set of hofman vans, giving maximum lifting surface of sq. ft. _tarpon_ has been lifted _and held_ seven feet for two miles between touch and touch. _our autumn list of racing and family bats ready on the th january._ air planes and starters hinks's moderator ¶ monorail overhead starter for family and private planes up to twenty-five foot over all absolutely safe _hinks & co., birmingham_ * * * * * j. d. ardagh i am not concerned with your 'plane after it leaves my guides, but _till then_ i hold myself personally responsible for your life, safety, and comfort. my hydraulic buffer-stop _cannot_ release till the motors are working up to bearing speed, thus securing a safe and graceful flight without pitching. remember our motto, "_upward and outward_," and do not trust yourself to so-called "rigid" guide bars j. d. ardagh, belfast and turin accessories and spares christian wright & oldis established accessories and spares hooded binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording change of level (illuminated face). all heights from to , feet £ with aerial board of control certificate £ foot and hand foghorns; sirens toned to any club note; with air-chest belt-driven from motor £ wireless installations syntonised to a. b. c. requirements, in neat mahogany case, hundred mile range £ grapnels, mushroom anchors, pithing-irons, winches, hawsers, snaps, shackles and mooring ropes, for lawn, city, and public installations. detachable under-cars, aluminum or stamped steel. keeled under-cars for planes: single-action detaching-gear, turning car into boat with one motion of the wrist. invaluable for sea trips. head, side, and riding lights (by size) nos. to a. b. c. standard. rockets and fog-bombs in colours and tones of the principal clubs (boxed). a selection of twenty £ international night-signals (boxed) £ spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover (prices according to power). wind-noses for dirigibles--pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered cane or aluminum and flux for winter work. smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern. propeller blades: metal, tungsten backed; papier-maché; wire stiffened; ribbed xylonite (nickson's patent); all razor-edged (price by pitch and diameter). compressed steel bow-screws for winter work. fused ruby or commercial mineral co. bearings and collars. agate-mounted thrust-blocks up to inch. magniac's bow-rudders--(lavalle's patent grooving). wove steel beltings for outboard motors (non-magnetic). radium batteries, all powers to h. p. (in pairs). helium batteries, all powers to h. p. (tandem). stun'sle brakes worked from upper or lower platform. direct plunge-brakes worked from lower platform only, loaded silk or fibre, wind-tight. _catalogues free throughout the planet_ * * * * * transcriber's note the following changes have been made to the text: page : "passenger's faces" changed to "passengers' faces". page : "instead of shuting" changed to "instead of shutting". page : "orgie" changed to "orgy". page : "earth,and water" changed to "earth, and water". page : "milwall and buenos ayres" changed to "millwall and buenos ayres". sea warfare by rudyard kipling macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london contents page the fringes of the fleet tales of "the trade" destroyers at jutland the fringes of the fleet ( ) in lowestoft a boat was laid, mark well what i do say! and she was built for the herring trade, but she has gone a-rovin', a-rovin', a-rovin', the lord knows where! they gave her government coal to burn, and a q.f. gun at bow and stern, and sent her out a-rovin', etc. her skipper was mate of a bucko ship which always killed one man per trip, so he is used to rovin', etc. her mate was skipper of a chapel in wales, and so he fights in topper and tails-- religi-ous tho' rovin', etc. her engineer is fifty-eight, so he's prepared to meet his fate, which ain't unlikely rovin', etc. her leading-stoker's seventeen, so he don't know what the judgments mean, unless he cops 'em rovin', etc. her cook was chef in the lost dogs' home, mark well what i do say! and i'm sorry for fritz when they all come a-rovin', a-rovin', a-roarin' and a-rovin', round the north sea rovin', the lord knows where! the auxiliaries i the navy is very old and very wise. much of her wisdom is on record and available for reference; but more of it works in the unconscious blood of those who serve her. she has a thousand years of experience, and can find precedent or parallel for any situation that the force of the weather or the malice of the king's enemies may bring about. the main principles of sea-warfare hold good throughout all ages, and, _so far as the navy has been allowed to put out her strength_, these principles have been applied over all the seas of the world. for matters of detail the navy, to whom all days are alike, has simply returned to the practice and resurrected the spirit of old days. in the late french wars, a merchant sailing out of a channel port might in a few hours find himself laid by the heels and under way for a french prison. his majesty's ships of the line, and even the big frigates, took little part in policing the waters for him, unless he were in convoy. the sloops, cutters, gun-brigs, and local craft of all kinds were supposed to look after that, while the line was busy elsewhere. so the merchants passed resolutions against the inadequate protection afforded to the trade, and the narrow seas were full of single-ship actions; mail-packets, west country brigs, and fat east indiamen fighting, for their own hulls and cargo, anything that the watchful french ports sent against them; the sloops and cutters bearing a hand if they happened to be within reach. the oldest navy it was a brutal age, ministered to by hard-fisted men, and we had put it a hundred decent years behind us when--it all comes back again! to-day there are no prisons for the crews of merchantmen, but they can go to the bottom by mine and torpedo even more quickly than their ancestors were run into le havre. the submarine takes the place of the privateer; the line, as in the old wars, is occupied, bombarding and blockading, elsewhere, but the sea-borne traffic must continue, and that is being looked after by the lineal descendants of the crews of the long extinct cutters and sloops and gun-brigs. the hour struck, and they reappeared, to the tune of fifty thousand odd men in more than two thousand ships, of which i have seen a few hundred. words of command may have changed a little, the tools are certainly more complex, but the spirit of the new crews who come to the old job is utterly unchanged. it is the same fierce, hard-living, heavy-handed, very cunning service out of which the navy as we know it to-day was born. it is called indifferently the trawler and auxiliary fleet. it is chiefly composed of fishermen, but it takes in every one who may have maritime tastes--from retired admirals to the sons of the sea-cook. it exists for the benefit of the traffic and the annoyance of the enemy. its doings are recorded by flags stuck into charts; its casualties are buried in obscure corners of the newspapers. the grand fleet knows it slightly; the restless light cruisers who chaperon it from the background are more intimate; the destroyers working off unlighted coasts over unmarked shoals come, as you might say, in direct contact with it; the submarine alternately praises and--since one periscope is very like another--curses its activities; but the steady procession of traffic in home waters, liner and tramp, six every sixty minutes, blesses it altogether. since this most christian war includes laying mines in the fairways of traffic, and since these mines may be laid at any time by german submarines especially built for the work, or by neutral ships, all fairways must be swept continuously day and night. when a nest of mines is reported, traffic must be hung up or deviated till it is cleared out. when traffic comes up channel it must be examined for contraband and other things; and the examining tugs lie out in a blaze of lights to remind ships of this. months ago, when the war was young, the tugs did not know what to look for specially. now they do. all this mine-searching and reporting and sweeping, _plus_ the direction and examination of the traffic, _plus_ the laying of our own ever-shifting mine-fields, is part of the trawler fleet's work, because the navy-as-we-knew-it is busy elsewhere. and there is always the enemy submarine with a price on her head, whom the trawler fleet hunts and traps with zeal and joy. add to this, that there are boats, fishing for real fish, to be protected in their work at sea or chased off dangerous areas whither, because they are strictly forbidden to go, they naturally repair, and you will begin to get some idea of what the trawler and auxiliary fleet does. the ships and the men now, imagine the acreage of several dock-basins crammed, gunwale to gunwale, with brown and umber and ochre and rust-red steam-trawlers, tugs, harbour-boats, and yachts once clean and respectable, now dirty and happy. throw in fish-steamers, surprise-packets of unknown lines and indescribable junks, sampans, lorchas, catamarans, and general service stink-pontoons filled with indescribable apparatus, manned by men no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same clothes. the mustard-coloured jersey who is cleaning a six-pounder on a hull boat clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in gaelic. the whitish singlet and grey trousers held up by what is obviously his soldier brother's spare regimental belt is pure lowestoft. the complete blue-serge-and-soot suit passing a wire down a hatch is glasgow as far as you can hear him, which is a fair distance, because he wants something done to the other end of the wire, and the flat-faced boy who should be attending to it hails from the remoter hebrides, and is looking at a girl on the dock-edge. the bow-legged man in the ulster and green-worsted comforter is a warm grimsby skipper, worth several thousands. he and his crew, who are mostly his own relations, keep themselves to themselves, and save their money. the pirate with the red beard, barking over the rail at a friend with gold earrings, comes from skye. the friend is west country. the noticeably insignificant man with the soft and deprecating eye is skipper and part-owner of the big slashing iceland trawler on which he droops like a flower. she is built to almost western ocean lines, carries a little boat-deck aft with tremendous stanchions, has a nose cocked high against ice and sweeping seas, and resembles a hawk-moth at rest. the small, sniffing man is reported to be a "holy terror at sea." hunters and fishers the child in the pullman-car uniform just going ashore is a wireless operator, aged nineteen. he is attached to a flagship at least feet long, under an admiral aged twenty-five, who was, till the other day, third mate of a north atlantic tramp, but who now leads a squadron of six trawlers to hunt submarines. the principle is simple enough. its application depends on circumstances and surroundings. one class of german submarines meant for murder off the coasts may use a winding and rabbit-like track between shoals where the choice of water is limited. their career is rarely long, but, while it lasts, moderately exciting. others, told off for deep-sea assassinations, are attended to quite quietly and without any excitement at all. others, again, work the inside of the north sea, making no distinction between neutrals and allied ships. these carry guns, and since their work keeps them a good deal on the surface, the trawler fleet, as we know, engages them there--the submarine firing, sinking, and rising again in unexpected quarters; the trawler firing, dodging, and trying to ram. the trawlers are strongly built, and can stand a great deal of punishment. yet again, other german submarines hang about the skirts of fishing-fleets and fire into the brown of them. when the war was young this gave splendidly "frightful" results, but for some reason or other the game is not as popular as it used to be. lastly, there are german submarines who perish by ways so curious and inexplicable that one could almost credit the whispered idea (it must come from the scotch skippers) that the ghosts of the women they drowned pilot them to destruction. but what form these shadows take--whether of "the lusitania ladies," or humbler stewardesses and hospital nurses--and what lights or sounds the thing fancies it sees or hears before it is blotted out, no man will ever know. the main fact is that the work is being done. whether it was necessary or politic to re-awaken by violence every sporting instinct of a sea-going people is a question which the enemy may have to consider later on. dawn off the foreland--the young flood making jumbled and short and steep-- black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking-- awkward water to sweep. "mines reported in the fairway, "warn all traffic and detain. "'sent up unity, claribel, assyrian, stormcock, and golden gain." noon off the foreland--the first ebb making lumpy and strong in the bight. boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking and the jackdaws wild with fright! "mines located in the fairway, "boats now working up the chain, "sweepers--unity, claribel, assyrian, stormcock and golden gain." dusk off the foreland--the last light going and the traffic crowding through, and five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing heading the whole review! "sweep completed in the fairway. "no more mines remain. "'sent back unity, claribel, assyrian, stormcock, and golden gain." the auxiliaries ii the trawlers seem to look on mines as more or less fairplay. but with the torpedo it is otherwise. a yarmouth man lay on his hatch, his gear neatly stowed away below, and told me that another yarmouth boat had "gone up," with all hands except one. "'twas a submarine. not a mine," said he. "they never gave our boys no chance. na! she was a yarmouth boat--we knew 'em all. they never gave the boys no chance." he was a submarine hunter, and he illustrated by means of matches placed at various angles how the blindfold business is conducted. "and then," he ended, "there's always what _he'll_ do. you've got to think that out for yourself--while you're working above him--same as if 'twas fish." i should not care to be hunted for the life in shallow waters by a man who knows every bank and pothole of them, even if i had not killed his friends the week before. being nearly all fishermen they discuss their work in terms of fish, and put in their leisure fishing overside, when they sometimes pull up ghastly souvenirs. but they all want guns. those who have three-pounders clamour for sixes; sixes for twelves; and the twelve-pound aristocracy dream of four-inchers on anti-aircraft mountings for the benefit of roving zeppelins. they will all get them in time, and i fancy it will be long ere they give them up. one west country mate announced that "a gun is a handy thing to have aboard--always." "but in peacetime?" i said. "wouldn't it be in the way?" "we'm used to 'em now," was the smiling answer. "niver go to sea again without a gun--_i_ wouldn't--if i had my way. it keeps all hands pleased-like." they talk about men in the army who will never willingly go back to civil life. what of the fishermen who have tasted something sharper than salt water--and what of the young third and fourth mates who have held independent commands for nine months past? one of them said to me quite irrelevantly: "i used to be the animal that got up the trunks for the women on baggage-days in the old bodiam castle," and he mimicked their requests for "the large brown box," or "the black dress basket," as a freed soul might scoff at his old life in the flesh. "a common sweeper" my sponsor and chaperon in this elizabethan world of eighteenth-century seamen was an a.b. who had gone down in the _landrail_, assisted at the heligoland fight, seen the _blücher_ sink and the bombs dropped on our boats when we tried to save the drowning ("whereby," as he said, "those germans died gottstrafin' their own country because _we_ didn't wait to be strafed"), and has now found more peaceful days in an office ashore. he led me across many decks from craft to craft to study the various appliances that they specialise in. almost our last was what a north country trawler called a "common sweeper," that is to say, a mine-sweeper. she was at tea in her shirt-sleeves, and she protested loudly that there was "nothing in sweeping." "'see that wire rope?" she said. "well, it leads through that lead to the ship which you're sweepin' _with_. she makes her end fast and you make yourn. then you sweep together at whichever depth you've agreed upon between you, by means of that arrangement there which regulates the depth. they give you a glass sort o' thing for keepin' your distance from the other ship, but _that's_ not wanted if you know each other. well, then, you sweep, as the sayin' is. there's nothin' _in_ it. you sweep till this wire rope fouls the bloomin' mines. then you go on till they appear on the surface, so to say, and then you explodes them by means of shootin' at 'em with that rifle in the galley there. there's nothin' in sweepin' more than that." "and if you hit a mine?" i asked. "you go up--but you hadn't ought to hit em', if you're careful. the thing is to get hold of the first mine all right, and then you go on to the next, and so on, in a way o' speakin'." "and you can fish, too, 'tween times," said a voice from the next boat. a man leaned over and returned a borrowed mug. they talked about fishing--notably that once they caught some red mullet, which the "common sweeper" and his neighbour both agreed was "not natural in those waters." as for mere sweeping, it bored them profoundly to talk about it. i only learned later as part of the natural history of mines, that if you rake the tri-nitro-toluol by hand out of a german mine you develop eruptions and skin-poisoning. but on the authority of two experts, there is nothing in sweeping. nothing whatever! a block in the traffic now imagine, not a pistol-shot from these crowded quays, a little office hung round with charts that are pencilled and noted over various shoals and soundings. there is a movable list of the boats at work, with quaint and domestic names. outside the window lies the packed harbour--outside that again the line of traffic up and down--a stately cinema-show of six ships to the hour. for the moment the film sticks. a boat--probably a "common sweeper"--reports an obstruction in a traffic lane a few miles away. she has found and exploded one mine. the office heard the dull boom of it before the wireless report came in. in all likelihood there is a nest of them there. it is possible that a submarine may have got in last night between certain shoals and laid them out. the shoals are being shepherded in case she is hidden anywhere, but the boundaries of the newly discovered mine-area must be fixed and the traffic deviated. there is a tramp outside with tugs in attendance. she has hit something and is leaking badly. where shall she go? the office gives her her destination--the harbour is too full for her to settle down here. she swings off between the faithful tugs. down coast some one asks by wireless if they shall hold up their traffic. it is exactly like a signaller "offering" a train to the next block. "yes," the office replies. "wait a while. if it's what we think, there will be a little delay. if it isn't what we think, there will be a little longer delay." meantime, sweepers are nosing round the suspected area--"looking for cuckoos' eggs," as a voice suggests; and a patrol-boat lathers her way down coast to catch and stop anything that may be on the move, for skippers are sometimes rather careless. words begin to drop out of the air into the chart-hung office. "six and a half cables south, fifteen east" of something or other. "mark it well, and tell them to work up from there," is the order. "another mine exploded!" "yes, and we heard that too," says the office. "what about the submarine?" "_elizabeth huggins_ reports...." _elizabeth's_ scandal must be fairly high flavoured, for a torpedo-boat of immoral aspect slings herself out of harbour and hastens to share it. if _elizabeth_ has not spoken the truth, there may be words between the parties. for the present a pencilled suggestion seems to cover the case, together with a demand, as far as one can make out, for "more common sweepers." they will be forthcoming very shortly. those at work have got the run of the mines now, and are busily howking them up. a trawler-skipper wishes to speak to the office. "they" have ordered him out, but his boiler, most of it, is on the quay at the present time, and "ye'll remember, it's the same wi' my foremast an' port rigging, sir." the office does not precisely remember, but if boiler and foremast are on the quay the rest of the ship had better stay alongside. the skipper falls away relieved. (he scraped a tramp a few nights ago in a bit of a sea.) there is a little mutter of gun-fire somewhere across the grey water where a fleet is at work. a monitor as broad as she is long comes back from wherever the trouble is, slips through the harbour mouth, all wreathed with signals, is received by two motherly lighters, and, to all appearance, goes to sleep between them. the office does not even look up; for that is not in their department. they have found a trawler to replace the boilerless one. her name is slid into the rack. the immoral torpedo-boat flounces back to her moorings. evidently what _elizabeth huggins_ said was not evidence. the messages and replies begin again as the day closes. the night patrol return now to the inner harbour. at twilight there was a stir among the packed craft like the separation of dried tea-leaves in water. the swing-bridge across the basin shut against us. a boat shot out of the jam, took the narrow exit at a fair seven knots and rounded in the outer harbour with all the pomp of a flagship, which was exactly what she was. others followed, breaking away from every quarter in silence. boat after boat fell into line--gear stowed away, spars and buoys in order on their clean decks, guns cast loose and ready, wheel-house windows darkened, and everything in order for a day or a week or a month out. there was no word anywhere. the interrupted foot-traffic stared at them as they slid past below. a woman beside me waved her hand to a man on one of them, and i saw his face light as he waved back. the boat where they had demonstrated for me with matches was the last. her skipper hadn't thought it worth while to tell me that he was going that evening. then the line straightened up and stood out to sea. "you never said this was going to happen," i said reproachfully to my a.b. "no more i did," said he. "it's the night-patrol going out. fact is, i'm so used to the bloomin' evolution that it never struck me to mention it as you might say." next morning i was at service in a man-of-war, and even as we came to the prayer that the navy might "be a safeguard to such as pass upon the sea on their lawful occasions," i saw the long procession of traffic resuming up and down the channel--six ships to the hour. it has been hung up for a bit, they said. farewell and adieu to you, greenwich ladies, farewell and adieu to you, ladies ashore! for we've received orders to work to the eastward where we hope in a short time to strafe 'em some more. we'll duck and we'll dive like little tin turtles, we'll duck and we'll dive underneath the north seas, until we strike something that doesn't expect us, from here to cuxhaven it's go as you please! the first thing we did was to dock in a mine-field, which isn't a place where repairs should be done; and there we lay doggo in twelve-fathom water with tri-nitro-toluol hogging our run. the next thing we did, we rose under a zeppelin, with his shiny big belly half blocking the sky. but what in the--heavens can you do with six-pounders? so we fired what we had and we bade him good-bye. submarines i the chief business of the trawler fleet is to attend to the traffic. the submarine in her sphere attends to the enemy. like the destroyer, the submarine has created its own type of officer and man--with language and traditions apart from the rest of the service, and yet at heart unchangingly of the service. their business is to run monstrous risks from earth, air, and water, in what, to be of any use, must be the coldest of cold blood. the commander's is more a one-man job, as the crew's is more team-work, than any other employment afloat. that is why the relations between submarine officers and men are what they are. they play hourly for each other's lives with death the umpire always at their elbow on tiptoe to give them "out." there is a stretch of water, once dear to amateur yachtsmen, now given over to scouts, submarines, destroyers, and, of course, contingents of trawlers. we were waiting the return of some boats which were due to report. a couple surged up the still harbour in the afternoon light and tied up beside their sisters. there climbed out of them three or four high-booted, sunken-eyed pirates clad in sweaters, under jackets that a stoker of the last generation would have disowned. this was their first chance to compare notes at close hand. together they lamented the loss of a zeppelin--"a perfect mug of a zepp," who had come down very low and offered one of them a sitting shot. "but what _can_ you do with our guns? i gave him what i had, and then he started bombing." "i know he did," another said. "i heard him. that's what brought me down to you. i thought he had you that last time." "no, i was forty foot under when he hove out the big un. what happened to _you_?" "my steering-gear jammed just after i went down, and i had to go round in circles till i got it straightened out. but _wasn't_ he a mug!" "was he the brute with the patch on his port side?" a sister-boat demanded. "no! this fellow had just been hatched. he was almost sitting on the water, heaving bombs over." "and my blasted steering-gear went and chose _then_ to go wrong," the other commander mourned. "i thought his last little egg was going to get me!" half an hour later, i was formally introduced to three or four quite strange, quite immaculate officers, freshly shaved, and a little tired about the eyes, whom i thought i had met before. labour and refreshment meantime (it was on the hour of evening drinks) one of the boats was still unaccounted for. no one talked of her. they rather discussed motor-cars and admiralty constructors, but--it felt like that queer twilight watch at the front when the homing aeroplanes drop in. presently a signaller entered. "v outside, sir; wants to know which channel she shall use." "oh, thank you. tell her to take so-and-so." ... mine, remember, was vermouth and bitters, and later on v himself found a soft chair and joined the committee of instruction. those next for duty, as well as those in training, wished to hear what was going on, and who had shifted what to where, and how certain arrangements had worked. they were told in language not to be found in any printable book. questions and answers were alike hebrew to one listener, but he gathered that every boat carried a second in command--a strong, persevering youth, who seemed responsible for everything that went wrong, from a motor cylinder to a torpedo. then somebody touched on the mercantile marine and its habits. said one philosopher: "they can't be expected to take any more risks than they do. _i_ wouldn't, if i was a skipper. i'd loose off at any blessed periscope i saw." "that's all very fine. you wait till you've had a patriotic tramp trying to strafe you at your own back-door," said another. some one told a tale of a man with a voice, notable even in a service where men are not trained to whisper. he was coming back, empty-handed, dirty, tired, and best left alone. from the peace of the german side he had entered our hectic home-waters, where the usual tramp shelled, and by miraculous luck, crumpled his periscope. another man might have dived, but boanerges kept on rising. majestic and wrathful he rose personally through his main hatch, and at yards (have i said it was a still day?) addressed the tramp. even at that distance she gathered it was a naval officer with a grievance, and by the time he ran alongside she was in a state of coma, but managed to stammer: "well, sir, at least you'll admit that our shooting was pretty good." "and that," said my informant, "put the lid on!" boanerges went down lest he should be tempted to murder; and the tramp affirms she heard him rumbling beneath her, like an inverted thunder-storm, for fifteen minutes. "all those tramps ought to be disarmed, and _we_ ought to have all their guns," said a voice out of a corner. "what? still worrying over your 'mug'?" some one replied. "he _was_ a mug!" went on the man of one idea. "if i'd had a couple of twelves even, i could have strafed him proper. i don't know whether i shall mutiny, or desert, or write to the first sea lord about it." "strafe all admiralty constructors to begin with. _i_ could build a better boat with a -inch lathe and a sardine-tin than ----," the speaker named her by letter and number. "that's pure jealousy," her commander explained to the company. "ever since i installed--ahem!--my patent electric washbasin he's been intriguin' to get her. why? we know he doesn't wash. he'd only use the basin to keep beer in." underwater works however often one meets it, as in this war one meets it at every turn, one never gets used to the holy spirit of man at his job. the "common sweeper," growling over his mug of tea that there was "nothing in sweepin'," and these idly chaffing men, new shaved and attired, from the gates of death which had let them through for the fiftieth time, were all of the same fabric--incomprehensible, i should imagine, to the enemy. and the stuff held good throughout all the world--from the dardanelles to the baltic, where only a little while ago another batch of submarines had slipped in and begun to be busy. i had spent some of the afternoon in looking through reports of submarine work in the sea of marmora. they read like the diary of energetic weasels in an overcrowded chicken-run, and the results for each boat were tabulated something like a cricket score. there were no maiden overs. one came across jewels of price set in the flat official phraseology. for example, one man who was describing some steps he was taking to remedy certain defects, interjected casually: "at this point i had to go under for a little, as a man in a boat was trying to grab my periscope with his hand." no reference before or after to the said man or his fate. again: "came across a dhow with a turkish skipper. he seemed so miserable that i let him go." and elsewhere in those waters, a submarine overhauled a steamer full of turkish passengers, some of whom, arguing on their allies' lines, promptly leaped overboard. our boat fished them out and returned them, for she was not killing civilians. in another affair, which included several ships (now at the bottom) and one submarine, the commander relaxes enough to note that: "the men behaved very well under direct and flanking fire from rifles at about fifteen yards." this was _not_, i believe, the submarine that fought the turkish cavalry on the beach. and in addition to matters much more marvellous than any i have hinted at, the reports deal with repairs and shifts and contrivances carried through in the face of dangers that read like the last delirium of romance. one boat went down the straits and found herself rather canted over to one side. a mine and chain had jammed under her forward diving-plane. so far as i made out, she shook it off by standing on her head and jerking backwards; or it may have been, for the thing has occurred more than once, she merely rose as much as she could, when she could, and then "released it by hand," as the official phrase goes. four nightmares and who, a few months ago, could have invented, or having invented, would have dared to print such a nightmare as this: there was a boat in the north sea who ran into a net and was caught by the nose. she rose, still entangled, meaning to cut the thing away on the surface. but a zeppelin in waiting saw and bombed her, and she had to go down again at once--but not too wildly or she would get herself more wrapped up than ever. she went down, and by slow working and weaving and wriggling, guided only by guesses at the meaning of each scrape and grind of the net on her blind forehead, at last she drew clear. then she sat on the bottom and thought. the question was whether she should go back at once and warn her confederates against the trap, or wait till the destroyers which she knew the zeppelin would have signalled for, should come out to finish her still entangled, as they would suppose, in the net? it was a simple calculation of comparative speeds and positions, and when it was worked out she decided to try for the double event. within a few minutes of the time she had allowed for them, she heard the twitter of four destroyers' screws quartering above her; rose; got her shot in; saw one destroyer crumple; hung round till another took the wreck in tow; said good-bye to the spare brace (she was at the end of her supplies), and reached the rendezvous in time to turn her friends. and since we are dealing in nightmares, here are two more--one genuine, the other, mercifully, false. there was a boat not only at, but _in_ the mouth of a river--well home in german territory. she was spotted, and went under, her commander perfectly aware that there was not more than five feet of water over her conning-tower, so that even a torpedo-boat, let alone a destroyer, would hit it if she came over. but nothing hit anything. the search was conducted on scientific principles while they sat on the silt and suffered. then the commander heard the rasp of a wire trawl sweeping over his hull. it was not a nice sound, but there happened to be a couple of gramophones aboard, and he turned them both on to drown it. and in due time that boat got home with everybody's hair of just the same colour as when they had started! the other nightmare arose out of silence and imagination. a boat had gone to bed on the bottom in a spot where she might reasonably expect to be looked for, but it was a convenient jumping-off, or up, place for the work in hand. about the bad hour of . a.m. the commander was waked by one of his men, who whispered to him: "they've got the chains on us, sir!" whether it was pure nightmare, an hallucination of long wakefulness, something relaxing and releasing in that packed box of machinery, or the disgustful reality, the commander could not tell, but it had all the makings of panic in it. so the lord and long training put it into his head to reply! "have they? well, we shan't be coming up till nine o'clock this morning. well see about it then. turn out that light, please." _he_ did not sleep, but the dreamer and the others did, and when morning came and he gave the order to rise, and she rose unhampered, and he saw the grey, smeared seas from above once again, he said it was a very refreshing sight. lastly, which is on all fours with the gamble of the chase, a man was coming home rather bored after an uneventful trip. it was necessary for him to sit on the bottom for awhile, and there he played patience. of a sudden it struck him, as a vow and an omen, that if he worked out the next game correctly he would go up and strafe something. the cards fell all in order. he went up at once and found himself alongside a german, whom, as he had promised and prophesied to himself, he destroyed. she was a mine-layer, and needed only a jar to dissipate like a cracked electric-light bulb. he was somewhat impressed by the contrast between the single-handed game fifty feet below, the ascent, the attack, the amazing result, and when he descended again, his cards just as he had left them. the ships destroy us above and ensnare us beneath. we arise, we lie down, and we move in the belly of death. the ships have a thousand eyes to mark where we come ... and the mirth of a seaport dies when our blow gets home. submarines ii i was honoured by a glimpse into this veiled life in a boat which was merely practising between trips. submarines are like cats. they never tell "who they were with last night," and they sleep as much as they can. if you board a submarine off duty you generally see a perspective of fore-shortened fattish men laid all along. the men say that except at certain times it is rather an easy life, with relaxed regulations about smoking, calculated to make a man put on flesh. one requires well-padded nerves. many of the men do not appear on deck throughout the whole trip. after all, why should they if they don't want to? they know that they are responsible in their department for their comrades' lives as their comrades are responsible for theirs. what's the use of flapping about? better lay in some magazines and cigarettes. when we set forth there had been some trouble in the fairway, and a mined neutral, whose misfortune all bore with exemplary calm, was careened on a near-by shoal. "suppose there are more mines knocking about?" i suggested. "we'll hope there aren't," was the soothing reply. "mines are all joss. you either hit 'em or you don't. and if you do, they don't always go off. they scrape alongside." "what's the etiquette then?" "shut off both propellers and hope." we were dodging various craft down the harbour when a squadron of trawlers came out on our beam, at that extravagant rate of speed which unlimited government coal always leads to. they were led by an ugly, upstanding, black-sided buccaneer with twelve-pounders. "ah! that's the king of the trawlers. isn't he carrying dog, too! give him room!" one said. we were all in the narrowed harbour mouth together. "'there's my youngest daughter. take a look at her!'" some one hummed as a punctilious navy cap slid by on a very near bridge. "we'll fall in behind him. they're going over to the neutral. then they'll sweep. by the bye, did you hear about one of the passengers in the neutral yesterday? he was taken off, of course, by a destroyer, and the only thing he said was: 'twenty-five time i 'ave insured, but not _this_ time.... 'ang it!'" the trawlers lunged ahead toward the forlorn neutral. our destroyer nipped past us with that high-shouldered, terrier-like pouncing action of the newer boats, and went ahead. a tramp in ballast, her propeller half out of water, threshed along through the sallow haze. "lord! what a shot!" somebody said enviously. the men on the little deck looked across at the slow-moving silhouette. one of them, a cigarette behind his ear, smiled at a companion. then we went down--not as they go when they are pressed (the record, i believe, is feet in seconds from top to bottom), but genteelly, to an orchestra of appropriate sounds, roarings, and blowings, and after the orders, which come from the commander alone, utter silence and peace. "there's the bottom. we bumped at fifty--fifty-two," he said. "i didn't feel it." "we'll try again. watch the gauge, and you'll see it flick a little." the practice of the art it may have been so, but i was more interested in the faces, and above all the eyes, all down the length of her. it was to them, of course, the simplest of manoeuvres. they dropped into gear as no machine could; but the training of years and the experience of the year leaped up behind those steady eyes under the electrics in the shadow of the tall motors, between the pipes and the curved hull, or glued to their special gauges. one forgot the bodies altogether--but one will never forget the eyes or the ennobled faces. one man i remember in particular. on deck his was no more than a grave, rather striking countenance, cast in the unmistakable petty officer's mould. below, as i saw him in profile handling a vital control, he looked like the doge of venice, the prior of some sternly-ruled monastic order, an old-time pope--anything that signifies trained and stored intellectual power utterly and ascetically devoted to some vast impersonal end. and so with a much younger man, who changed into such a monk as frank dicksee used to draw. only a couple of torpedo-men, not being in gear for the moment, read an illustrated paper. their time did not come till we went up and got to business, which meant firing at our destroyer, and, i think, keeping out of the light of a friend's torpedoes. the attack and everything connected with it is solely the commander's affair. he is the only one who gets any fun at all--since he is the eye, the brain, and the hand of the whole--this single figure at the periscope. the second in command heaves sighs, and prays that the dummy torpedo (there is less trouble about the live ones) will go off all right, or he'll be told about it. the others wait and follow the quick run of orders. it is, if not a convention, a fairly established custom that the commander shall inferentially give his world some idea of what is going on. at least, i only heard of one man who says nothing whatever, and doesn't even wriggle his shoulders when he is on the sight. the others soliloquise, etc., according to their temperament; and the periscope is as revealing as golf. submarines nowadays are expected to look out for themselves more than at the old practices, when the destroyers walked circumspectly. we dived and circulated under water for a while, and then rose for a sight--something like this: "up a little--up! up still! where the deuce has he got to--ah! (half a dozen orders as to helm and depth of descent, and a pause broken by a drumming noise somewhere above, which increases and passes away.) that's better! up again! (this refers to the periscope.) yes. ah! no, we _don't_ think! all right! keep her _down_, damn it! umm! that ought to be nineteen knots.... dirty trick! he's changing speed. no, he isn't. _he's_ all right. ready forward there! (a valve sputters and drips, the torpedo-men crouch over their tubes and nod to themselves. _their_ faces have changed now.) he hasn't spotted us yet. we'll ju-ust--(more helm and depth orders, but specially helm)--'wish we were working a beam-tube. ne'er mind! up! (a last string of orders.) six hundred, and he doesn't see us! fire!" the dummy left; the second in command cocked one ear and looked relieved. up we rose; the wet air and spray spattered through the hatch; the destroyer swung off to retrieve the dummy. "careless brutes destroyers are," said one officer. "that fellow nearly walked over us just now. did you notice?" the commander was playing his game out over again--stroke by stroke. "with a beam-tube i'd ha' strafed him amidships," he concluded. "why didn't you then?" i asked. there were loads of shiny reasons, which reminded me that we were at war and cleared for action, and that the interlude had been merely play. a companion rose alongside and wanted to know whether we had seen anything of her dummy. "no. but we heard it," was the short answer. i was rather annoyed, because i had seen that particular daughter of destruction on the stocks only a short time ago, and here she was grown up and talking about her missing children! in the harbour again, one found more submarines, all patterns and makes and sizes, with rumours of yet more and larger to follow. naturally their men say that we are only at the beginning of the submarine. we shall have them presently for all purposes. the man and the work now here is a mystery of the service. a man gets a boat which for two years becomes his very self-- his morning hope, his evening dream, his joy throughout the day. with him is a second in command, an engineer, and some others. they prove each other's souls habitually every few days, by the direct test of peril, till they act, think, and endure as a unit, in and with the boat. that commander is transferred to another boat. he tries to take with him if he can, which he can't, as many of his other selves as possible. he is pitched into a new type twice the size of the old one, with three times as many gadgets, an unexplored temperament and unknown leanings. after his first trip he comes back clamouring for the head of her constructor, of his own second in command, his engineer, his cox, and a few other ratings. they for their part wish him dead on the beach, because, last commission with so-and-so, nothing ever went wrong anywhere. a fortnight later you can remind the commander of what he said, and he will deny every word of it. she's not, he says, so very vile--things considered--barring her five-ton torpedo-derricks, the abominations of her wireless, and the tropical temperature of her beer-lockers. all of which signifies that the new boat has found her soul, and her commander would not change her for battle-cruisers. therefore, that he may remember he is the service and not a branch of it, he is after certain seasons shifted to a battle-cruiser, where he lives in a blaze of admirals and aiguillettes, responsible for vast decks and crypt-like flats, a student of extended above-water tactics, thinking in tens of thousands of yards instead of his modest but deadly three to twelve hundred. and the man who takes his place straight-way forgets that he ever looked down on great rollers from a sixty-foot bridge under the whole breadth of heaven, but crawls and climbs and dives through conning-towers with those same waves wet in his neck, and when the cruisers pass him, tearing the deep open in half a gale, thanks god he is not as they are, and goes to bed beneath their distracted keels. * * * * * expert opinions "but submarine work is cold-blooded business." (this was at a little session in a green-curtained "wardroom" cum owner's cabin.) "then there's no truth in the yarn that you can feel when the torpedo's going to get home?" i asked. "not a word. you sometimes see it get home, or miss, as the case may be. of course, it's never your fault if it misses. it's all your second-in-command." "that's true, too," said the second. "i catch it all round. that's what i am here for." "and what about the third man?" there was one aboard at the time. "he generally comes from a smaller boat, to pick up real work--if he can suppress his intellect and doesn't talk 'last commission.'" the third hand promptly denied the possession of any intellect, and was quite dumb about his last boat. "and the men?" "they train on, too. they train each other. yes, one gets to know 'em about as well as they get to know us. up topside, a man can take you in--take himself in--for months; for half a commission, p'rhaps. down below he can't. it's all in cold blood--not like at the front, where they have something exciting all the time." "then bumping mines isn't exciting?" "not one little bit. you can't bump back at 'em. even with a zepp----" "oh, now and then," one interrupted, and they laughed as they explained. "yes, that was rather funny. one of our boats came up slap underneath a low zepp. 'looked for the sky, you know, and couldn't see anything except this fat, shining belly almost on top of 'em. luckily, it wasn't the zepp's stingin' end. so our boat went to windward and kept just awash. there was a bit of a sea, and the zepp had to work against the wind. (they don't like that.) our boat sent a man to the gun. he was pretty well drowned, of course, but he hung on, choking and spitting, and held his breath, and got in shots where he could. this zepp was strafing bombs about for all she was worth, and--who was it?--macartney, i think, potting at her between dives; and naturally all hands wanted to look at the performance, so about half the north sea flopped down below and--oh, they had a charlie chaplin time of it! well, somehow, macartney managed to rip the zepp a bit, and she went to leeward with a list on her. we saw her a fortnight later with a patch on her port side. oh, if fritz only fought clean, this wouldn't be half a bad show. but fritz can't fight clean." "and _we_ can't do what he does--even if we were allowed to," one said. "no, we can't. 'tisn't done. we have to fish fritz out of the water, dry him, and give him cocktails, and send him to donnington hall." "and what does fritz do?" i asked. "he sputters and clicks and bows. he has all the correct motions, you know; but, of course, when he's your prisoner you can't tell him what he really is." "and do you suppose fritz understands any of it?" i went on. "no. or he wouldn't have lusitaniaed. this war was his first chance of making his name, and he chucked it all away for the sake of showin' off as a foul gottstrafer." and they talked of that hour of the night when submarines come to the top like mermaids to get and give information; of boats whose business it is to fire as much and to splash about as aggressively as possible; and of other boats who avoid any sort of display--dumb boats watching and relieving watch, with their periscope just showing like a crocodile's eye, at the back of islands and the mouths of channels where something may some day move out in procession to its doom. be well assured that on our side our challenged oceans fight, though headlong wind and heaping tide make us their sport to-night. through force of weather, not of war, in jeopardy we steer. then, welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it shall appear how in all time of our distress as in our triumph too, the game is more than the player of the game, and the ship is more than the crew! be well assured, though wave and wind have mightier blows in store, that we who keep the watch assigned must stand to it the more; and as our streaming bows dismiss each billow's baulked career, sing, welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it is made clear how in all time of our distress as in our triumph too, the game is more than the player of the game, and the ship is more than the crew! be well assured, though in our power is nothing left to give but time and place to meet the hour and leave to strive to live, till these dissolve our order holds, our service binds us here. then, welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it is made clear how in all time of our distress and our deliverance too, the game is more than the player of the game, and the ship is more than the crew! patrols i on the edge of the north sea sits an admiral in charge of a stretch of coast without lights or marks, along which the traffic moves much as usual. in front of him there is nothing but the east wind, the enemy, and some few our ships. behind him there are towns, with m.p.'s attached, who a little while ago didn't see the reason for certain lighting orders. when a zeppelin or two came, they saw. left and right of him are enormous docks, with vast crowded sheds, miles of stone-faced quay-edges, loaded with all manner of supplies and crowded with mixed shipping. in this exalted world one met staff-captains, staff-commanders, staff-lieutenants, and secretaries, with paymasters so senior that they almost ranked with admirals. there were warrant officers, too, who long ago gave up splashing about decks barefoot, and now check and issue stores to the ravenous, untruthful fleets. said one of these, guarding a collection of desirable things, to a cross between a sick-bay attendant and a junior writer (but he was really an expert burglar), "_no!_ an' you can tell mr. so-and-so, with my compliments, that the storekeeper's gone away--right away--with the key of these stores in his pocket. understand me? in his trousers pocket." he snorted at my next question. "_do_ i know any destroyer-lootenants?" said he. "this coast's rank with 'em! destroyer-lootenants are born stealing. it's a mercy they's too busy to practise forgery, or i'd be in gaol. engineer-commanders? engineer-lootenants? they're worse!... look here! if my own mother was to come to me beggin' brass screws for her own coffin, i'd--i'd think twice before i'd oblige the old lady. war's war, i grant you that; but what i've got to contend with is crime." i referred to him a case of conscience in which every one concerned acted exactly as he should, and it nearly ended in murder. during a lengthy action, the working of a gun was hampered by some empty cartridge-cases which the lieutenant in charge made signs (no man could hear his neighbour speak just then) should be hove overboard. upon which the gunner rushed forward and made other signs that they were "on charge," and must be tallied and accounted for. he, too, was trained in a strict school. upon which the lieutenant, but that he was busy, would have slain the gunner for refusing orders in action. afterwards he wanted him shot by court-martial. but every one was voiceless by then, and could only mouth and croak at each other, till somebody laughed, and the pedantic gunner was spared. "well, that's what you might fairly call a naval crux," said my friend among the stores. "the lootenant was right. 'mustn't refuse orders in action. the gunner was right. empty cases _are_ on charge. no one ought to chuck 'em away that way, but.... damn it, they were _all_ of 'em right! it ought to ha' been a marine. then they could have killed him and preserved discipline at the same time." a little theory the problem of this coast resolves itself into keeping touch with the enemy's movements; in preparing matters to trap and hinder him when he moves, and in so entertaining him that he shall not have time to draw clear before a blow descends on him from another quarter. there are then three lines of defence: the outer, the inner, and the home waters. the traffic and fishing are always with us. the blackboard idea of it is always to have stronger forces more immediately available everywhere than those the enemy can send. _x_ german submarines draw _a_ english destroyers. then _x_ calls _x + y_ to deal with _a_, who, in turn, calls up _b_, a scout, and possibly _a²_, with a fair chance that, if _x + y + z_ (a zeppelin) carry on, they will run into _a² + b² + c_ cruisers. at this point, the equation generally stops; if it continued, it would end mathematically in the whole of the german fleet coming out. then another factor which we may call the grand fleet would come from another place. to change the comparisons: the grand fleet is the "strong left" ready to give the knock-out blow on the point of the chin when the head is thrown up. the other fleets and other arrangements threaten the enemy's solar plexus and stomach. somewhere in relation to the grand fleet lies the "blockading" cordon which examines neutral traffic. it could be drawn as tight as a turkish bowstring, but for reasons which we may arrive at after the war, it does not seem to have been so drawn up to date. the enemy lies behind his mines, and ours, raids our coasts when he sees a chance, and kills seagoing civilians at sight or guess, with intent to terrify. most sailor-men are mixed up with a woman or two; a fair percentage of them have seen men drown. they can realise what it is when women go down choking in horrible tangles and heavings of draperies. to say that the enemy has cut himself from the fellowship of all who use the seas is rather understating the case. as a man observed thoughtfully: "you can't look at any water now without seeing 'lusitania' sprawlin' all across it. and just think of those words, 'north-german lloyd,' 'hamburg-amerika' and such things, in the time to come. they simply mustn't be." he was an elderly trawler, respectable as they make them, who, after many years of fishing, had discovered his real vocation. "i never thought i'd like killin' men," he reflected. "never seemed to be any o' my dooty. but it is--and i do!" a great deal of the east coast work concerns mine-fields--ours and the enemy's--both of which shift as occasion requires. we search for and root out the enemy's mines; they do the like by us. it is a perpetual game of finding, springing, and laying traps on the least as well as the most likely runaways that ships use--such sea snaring and wiring as the world never dreamt of. we are hampered in this, because our navy respects neutrals; and spends a great deal of its time in making their path safe for them. the enemy does not. he blows them up, because that cows and impresses them, and so adds to his prestige. death and the destroyer the easiest way of finding a mine-field is to steam into it, on the edge of night for choice, with a steep sea running, for that brings the bows down like a chopper on the detonator-horns. some boats have enjoyed this experience and still live. there was one destroyer (and there may have been others since) who came through twenty-four hours of highly-compressed life. she had an idea that there was a mine-field somewhere about, and left her companions behind while she explored. the weather was dead calm, and she walked delicately. she saw one scandinavian steamer blow up a couple of miles away, rescued the skipper and some hands; saw another neutral, which she could not reach till all was over, skied in another direction; and, between her life-saving efforts and her natural curiosity, got herself as thoroughly mixed up with the field as a camel among tent-ropes. a destroyer's bows are very fine, and her sides are very straight. this causes her to cleave the wave with the minimum of disturbance, and this boat had no desire to cleave anything else. none the less, from time to time, she heard a mine grate, or tinkle, or jar (i could not arrive at the precise note it strikes, but they say it is unpleasant) on her plates. sometimes she would be free of them for a long while, and began to hope she was clear. at other times they were numerous, but when at last she seemed to have worried out of the danger zone lieutenant and sub together left the bridge for a cup of tea. ("in those days we took mines very seriously, you know.") as they were in act to drink, they heard the hateful sound again just outside the wardroom. both put their cups down with extreme care, little fingers extended ("we felt as if they might blow up, too"), and tip-toed on deck, where they met the foc'sle also on tip-toe. they pulled themselves together, and asked severely what the foc'sle thought it was doing. "beg pardon, sir, but there's another of those blighters tap-tapping alongside, our end." they all waited and listened to their common coffin being nailed by death himself. but the things bumped away. at this point they thought it only decent to invite the rescued skipper, warm and blanketed in one of their bunks, to step up and do any further perishing in the open. "no, thank you," said he. "last time i was blown up in my bunk, too. that was all right. so i think, now, too, i stay in my bunk here. it is cold upstairs." somehow or other they got out of the mess after all. "yes, we used to take mines awfully seriously in those days. one comfort is, fritz'll take them seriously when he comes out. fritz don't like mines." "who does?" i wanted to know. "if you'd been here a little while ago, you'd seen a commander comin' in with a big 'un slung under his counter. he brought the beastly thing in to analyse. the rest of his squadron followed at two-knot intervals, and everything in harbour that had steam up scattered." the admirable commander presently i had the honour to meet a lieutenant-commander-admiral who had retired from the service, but, like others, had turned out again at the first flash of the guns, and now commands--he who had great ships erupting at his least signal--a squadron of trawlers for the protection of the dogger bank fleet. at present prices--let alone the chance of the paying submarine--men would fish in much warmer places. his flagship was once a multi-millionaire's private yacht. in her mixture of stark, carpetless, curtainless, carbolised present, with voluptuously curved, broad-decked, easy-stairwayed past, she might be queen guinevere in the convent at amesbury. and her lieutenant-commander, most careful to pay all due compliments to admirals who were midshipmen when _he_ was a commander, leads a congregation of very hard men indeed. they do precisely what he tells them to, and with him go through strange experiences, because they love him and because his language is volcanic and wonderful--what you might call popocatapocalyptic. i saw the old navy making ready to lead out the new under a grey sky and a falling glass--the wisdom and cunning of the old man backed up by the passion and power of the younger breed, and the discipline which had been his soul for half a century binding them all. "what'll he do _this_ time?" i asked of one who might know. "he'll cruise between two and three east; but if you'll tell me what he _won't_ do, it 'ud be more to the point! he's mine-hunting, i expect, just now." wasted material here is a digression suggested by the sight of a man i had known in other scenes, despatch-riding round a fleet in a petrol-launch. there are many of his type, yachtsmen of sorts accustomed to take chances, who do not hold masters' certificates and cannot be given sea-going commands. like my friend, they do general utility work--often in their own boats. this is a waste of good material. nobody wants amateur navigators--the traffic lanes are none too wide as it is. but these gentlemen ought to be distributed among the trawler fleet as strictly combatant officers. a trawler skipper may be an excellent seaman, but slow with a submarine shelling and diving, or in cutting out enemy trawlers. the young ones who can master q.f. gun work in a very short time would--though there might be friction, a court-martial or two, and probably losses at first--pay for their keep. even a hundred or so of amateurs, more or less controlled by their squadron commanders, would make a happy beginning, and i am sure they would all be extremely grateful. where the east wind is brewed fresh and fresh every morning, and the balmy night-breezes blow straight from the pole, i heard a destroyer sing: "what an enjoyable life does one lead on the north sea patrol! "to blow things to bits is our business (and fritz's), which means there are mine-fields wherever you stroll. unless you've particular wish to die quick, you'll avoid steering close to the north sea patrol. "we warn from disaster the mercantile master who takes in high dudgeon our life-saving rôle, for every one's grousing at docking and dowsing the marks and the lights on the north sea patrol." [twelve verses omitted.] so swept but surviving, half drowned but still driving, i watched her head out through the swell off the shoal, and i heard her propellers roar: "write to poor fellers who run such a hell as the north sea patrol!" patrols ii the great basins were crammed with craft of kinds never known before on any navy list. some were as they were born, others had been converted, and a multitude have been designed for special cases. the navy prepares against all contingencies by land, sea, and air. it was a relief to meet a batch of comprehensible destroyers and to drop again into the little mouse-trap ward-rooms, which are as large-hearted as all our oceans. the men one used to know as destroyer-lieutenants ("born stealing") are serious commanders and captains to-day, but their sons, lieutenants in command and lieutenant-commanders, do follow them. the sea in peace is a hard life; war only sketches an extra line or two round the young mouths. the routine of ships always ready for action is so part of the blood now that no one notices anything except the absence of formality and of the "crimes" of peace. what warrant officers used to say at length is cut down to a grunt. what the sailor-man did not know and expected to have told him, does not exist. he has done it all too often at sea and ashore. i watched a little party working under a leading hand at a job which, eighteen months ago, would have required a gunner in charge. it was comic to see his orders trying to overtake the execution of them. ratings coming aboard carried themselves with a (to me) new swing--not swank, but consciousness of adequacy. the high, dark foc'sles which, thank goodness, are only washed twice a week, received them and their bags, and they turned-to on the instant as a man picks up his life at home. like the submarine crew, they come to be a breed apart--double-jointed, extra-toed, with brazen bowels and no sort of nerves. it is the same in the engine-room, when the ships come in for their regular looking-over. those who love them, which you would never guess from the language, know exactly what they need, and get it without fuss. everything that steams has her individual peculiarity, and the great thing is, at overhaul, to keep to it and not develop a new one. if, for example, through some trick of her screws not synchronising, a destroyer always casts to port when she goes astern, do not let any zealous soul try to make her run true, or you will have to learn her helm all over again. and it is vital that you should know exactly what your ship is going to do three seconds before she does it. similarly with men. if any one, from lieutenant-commander to stoker, changes his personal trick or habit--even the manner in which he clutches his chin or caresses his nose at a crisis--the matter must be carefully considered in this world where each is trustee for his neighbour's life and, vastly more important, the corporate honour. "what are the destroyers doing just now?" i asked. "oh--running about--much the same as usual." the navy hasn't the least objection to telling one everything that it is doing. unfortunately, it speaks its own language, which is incomprehensible to the civilian. but you will find it all in "the channel pilot" and "the riddle of the sands." it is a foul coast, hairy with currents and rips, and mottled with shoals and rocks. practically the same men hold on here in the same ships, with much the same crews, for months and months. a most senior officer told me that they were "good boys"--on reflection, "quite good boys"--but neither he nor the flags on his chart explained how they managed their lightless, unmarked navigations through black night, blinding rain, and the crazy, rebounding north sea gales. they themselves ascribe it to joss that they have not piled up their ships a hundred times. "i expect it must be because we're always dodging about over the same ground. one gets to smell it. we've bumped pretty hard, of course, but we haven't expended much up to date. you never know your luck on patrol, though." the nature of the beast personally, though they have been true friends to me, i loathe destroyers, and all the raw, racking, ricochetting life that goes with them--the smell of the wet "lammies" and damp wardroom cushions; the galley-chimney smoking out the bridge; the obstacle-strewn deck; and the pervading beastliness of oil, grit, and greasy iron. even at moorings they shiver and sidle like half-backed horses. at sea they will neither rise up and fly clear like the hydroplanes, nor dive and be done with it like the submarines, but imitate the vices of both. a scientist of the lower deck describes them as: "half switchback, half water-chute, and hell continuous." their only merit, from a landsman's point of view, is that they can crumple themselves up from stem to bridge and (i have seen it) still get home. but one does not breathe these compliments to their commanders. other destroyers may be--they will point them out to you--poisonous bags of tricks, but their own command--never! is she high-bowed? that is the only type which over-rides the seas instead of smothering. is she low? low bows glide through the water where those collier-nosed brutes smash it open. is she mucked up with submarine-catchers? they rather improve her trim. no other ship has them. have they been denied to her? thank heaven, _we_ go to sea without a fish-curing plant on deck. does she roll, even for her class? she is drier than dreadnoughts. is she permanently and infernally wet? stiff; sir--stiff: the first requisite of a gun-platform. "service as requisite" thus the cæsars and their fortunes put out to sea with their subs and their sad-eyed engineers, and their long-suffering signallers--i do not even know the technical name of the sin which causes a man to be born a destroyer-signaller in this life--and the little yellow shells stuck all about where they can be easiest reached. the rest of their acts is written for the information of the proper authorities. it reads like a page of todhunter. but the masters of merchant-ships could tell more of eyeless shapes, barely outlined on the foam of their own arrest, who shout orders through the thick gloom alongside. the strayed and anxious neutral knows them when their searchlights pin him across the deep, or their syrens answer the last yelp of his as steam goes out of his torpedoed boilers. they stand by to catch and soothe him in his pyjamas at the gangway, collect his scattered lifeboats, and see a warm drink into him before they turn to hunt the slayer. the drifters, punching and reeling up and down their ten-mile line of traps; the outer trawlers, drawing the very teeth of death with water-sodden fingers, are grateful for their low, guarded signals; and when the zeppelin's revealing star-shell cracks darkness open above him, the answering crack of the invisible destroyers' guns comforts the busy mine-layers. big cruisers talk to them, too; and, what is more, they talk back to the cruisers. sometimes they draw fire--pinkish spurts of light--a long way off, where fritz is trying to coax them over a mine-field he has just laid; or they steal on fritz in the midst of his job, and the horizon rings with barking, which the inevitable neutral who saw it all reports as "a heavy fleet action in the north sea." the sea after dark can be as alive as the woods of summer nights. everything is exactly where you don't expect it, and the shyest creatures are the farthest away from their holes. things boom overhead like bitterns, or scutter alongside like hares, or arise dripping and hissing from below like otters. it is the destroyer's business to find out what their business may be through all the long night, and to help or hinder accordingly. dawn sees them pitch-poling insanely between head-seas, or hanging on to bridges that sweep like scythes from one forlorn horizon to the other. a homeward-bound submarine chooses this hour to rise, very ostentatiously, and signals by hand to a lieutenant in command. (they were the same term at dartmouth, and same first ship.) "what's he sayin'? secure that gun, will you? 'can't hear oneself speak," the gun is a bit noisy on its mountings, but that isn't the reason for the destroyer-lieutenant's short temper. "'says he's goin' down, sir," the signaller replies. what the submarine had spelt out, and everybody knows it, was: "cannot approve of this extremely frightful weather. am going to bye-bye." "well!" snaps the lieutenant to his signaller, "what are you grinning at?" the submarine has hung on to ask if the destroyer will "kiss her and whisper good-night." a breaking sea smacks her tower in the middle of the insult. she closes like an oyster, but--just too late. _habet!_ there must be a quarter of a ton of water somewhere down below, on its way to her ticklish batteries. "what a wag!" says the signaller, dreamily. "well, 'e can't say 'e didn't get 'is little kiss." the lieutenant in command smiles. the sea is a beast, but a just beast. racial untruths this is trivial enough, but what would you have? if admirals will not strike the proper attitudes, nor lieutenants emit the appropriate sentiments, one is forced back on the truth, which is that the men at the heart of the great matters in our empire are, mostly, of an even simplicity. from the advertising point of view they are stupid, but the breed has always been stupid in this department. it may be due, as our enemies assert, to our racial snobbery, or, as others hold, to a certain god-given lack of imagination which saves us from being over-concerned at the effects of our appearances on others. either way, it deceives the enemies' people more than any calculated lie. when you come to think of it, though the english are the worst paper-work and _viva voce_ liars in the world, they have been rigorously trained since their early youth to live and act lies for the comfort of the society in which they move, and so for their own comfort. the result in this war is interesting. it is no lie that at the present moment we hold all the seas in the hollow of our hands. for that reason we shuffle over them shame-faced and apologetic, making arrangements here and flagrant compromises there, in order to give substance to the lie that we have dropped fortuitously into this high seat and are looking round the world for some one to resign it to. nor is it any lie that, had we used the navy's bare fist instead of its gloved hand from the beginning, we could in all likelihood have shortened the war. that being so, we elected to dab and peck at and half-strangle the enemy, to let him go and choke him again. it is no lie that we continue on our inexplicable path animated, we will try to believe till other proof is given, by a cloudy idea of alleviating or mitigating something for somebody--not ourselves. [here, of course, is where our racial snobbery comes in, which makes the german gibber. i cannot understand why he has not accused us to our allies of having secret commercial understandings with him.] for that reason, we shall finish the german eagle as the merciful lady killed the chicken. it took her the whole afternoon, and then, you will remember, the carcase had to be thrown away. meantime, there is a large and unlovely water, inhabited by plain men in severe boats, who endure cold, exposure, wet, and monotony almost as heavy as their responsibilities. charge them with heroism--but that needs heroism, indeed! accuse them of patriotism, they become ribald. examine into the records of the miraculous work they have done and are doing. they will assist you, but with perfect sincerity they will make as light of the valour and fore-thought shown as of the ends they have gained for mankind. the service takes all work for granted. it knew long ago that certain things would have to be done, and it did its best to be ready for them. when it disappeared over the sky-line for manoeuvres it was practising--always practising; trying its men and stuff and throwing out what could not take the strain. that is why, when war came, only a few names had to be changed, and those chiefly for the sake of the body, not of the spirit. and the seniors who hold the key to our plans and know what will be done if things happen, and what lines wear thin in the many chains, they are of one fibre and speech with the juniors and the lower deck and all the rest who come out of the undemonstrative households ashore. "here is the situation as it exists now," say the seniors. "this is what we do to meet it. look and count and measure and judge for yourself, and then you will know." it is a safe offer. the civilian only sees that the sea is a vast place, divided between wisdom and chance. he only knows that the uttermost oceans have been swept clear, and the trade-routes purged, one by one, even as our armies were being convoyed along them; that there was no island nor key left unsearched on any waters that might hide an enemy's craft between the arctic circle and the horn. he only knows that less than a day's run to the eastward of where he stands, the enemy's fleets have been held for a year and four months, in order that civilisation may go about its business on all our waters. tales of "the trade" ( ) "the trade" they bear, in place of classic names, letters and numbers on their skin. they play their grisly blindfold games in little boxes made of tin. sometimes they stalk the zeppelin, sometimes they learn where mines are laid or where the baltic ice is thin. that is the custom of "the trade." few prize-courts sit upon their claims. they seldom tow their targets in. they follow certain secret aims down under, far from strife or din. when they are ready to begin no flag is flown, no fuss is made more than the shearing of a pin. that is the custom of "the trade." the scout's quadruple funnel flames a mark from sweden to the swin, the cruiser's thundrous screw proclaims her comings out and goings in: but only whiffs of paraffin or creamy rings that fizz and fade show where the one-eyed death has been. that is the custom of "the trade." their feats, their fortunes and their fames are hidden from their nearest kin; no eager public backs or blames, no journal prints the yarns they spin (the censor would not let it in!) when they return from run or raid. unheard they work, unseen they win. that is the custom of "the trade." i some work in the baltic no one knows how the title of "the trade" came to be applied to the submarine service. some say that the cruisers invented it because they pretend that submarine officers look like unwashed chauffeurs. others think it sprang forth by itself, which means that it was coined by the lower deck, where they always have the proper names for things. whatever the truth, the submarine service is now "the trade"; and if you ask them why, they will answer: "what else could you call it? the trade's 'the trade,' of course." it is a close corporation; yet it recruits its men and officers from every class that uses the sea and engines, as well as from many classes that never expected to deal with either. it takes them; they disappear for a while and return changed to their very souls, for the trade lives in a world without precedents, of which no generation has had any previous experience--a world still being made and enlarged daily. it creates and settles its own problems as it goes along, and if it cannot help itself no one else can. so the trade lives in the dark and thinks out inconceivable and impossible things which it afterwards puts into practice. it keeps books, too, as honest traders should. they are almost as bald as ledgers, and are written up, hour by hour, on a little sliding table that pulls out from beneath the commander's bunk. in due time they go to my lords of the admiralty, who presently circulate a few carefully watered extracts for the confidential information of the junior officers of the trade, that these may see what things are done and how. the juniors read but laugh. they have heard the stories, with all the flaming detail and much of the language, either from a chief actor while they perched deferentially on the edge of a mess-room fender, or from his subordinate, in which case they were not so deferential, or from some returned member of the crew present on the occasion, who, between half-shut teeth at the wheel, jerks out what really happened. there is very little going on in the trade that the trade does not know within a reasonable time. but the outside world must wait until my lords of the admiralty release the records. some of them have been released now. submarine and ice-breaker let us take, almost at random, an episode in the life of h.m. submarine e . it is true that she was commanded by commander max horton, but the utter impersonality of the tale makes it as though the boat herself spoke. (also, never having met or seen any of the gentlemen concerned in the matter, the writer can be impersonal too.) some time ago, e was in the baltic, in the deeps of winter, where she used to be taken to her hunting grounds by an ice-breaker. obviously a submarine cannot use her sensitive nose to smash heavy ice with, so the broad-beamed pushing chaperone comes along to see her clear of the thick harbour and shore ice. in the open sea apparently she is left to her own devices. in company of the ice-breaker, then, e "proceeded" (neither in the senior nor the junior service does any one officially "go" anywhere) to a "certain position." here--it is not stated in the book, but the trade knows every aching, single detail of what is left out--she spent a certain time in testing arrangements and apparatus, which may or may not work properly when immersed in a mixture of block-ice and dirty ice-cream in a temperature well towards zero. this is a pleasant job, made the more delightful by the knowledge that if you slip off the superstructure the deadly baltic chill will stop your heart long before even your heavy clothes can drown you. hence (and this is not in the book either) the remark of the highly trained sailor-man in these latitudes who, on being told by his superior officer in the execution of his duty to go to hell, did insubordinately and enviously reply: "d'you think i'd be here if i could?" whereby he caused the entire personnel, beginning with the commander, to say "amen," or words to that effect. e evidently made things work. next day she reports: "as circumstances were favourable decided to attempt to bag a destroyer." her "certain position" must have been near a well-used destroyer-run, for shortly afterwards she sees three of them, but too far off to attack, and later, as the light is failing, a fourth destroyer towards which she manoeuvres. "depth-keeping," she notes, "very difficult owing to heavy swell." an observation balloon on a gusty day is almost as stable as a submarine "pumping" in a heavy swell, and since the baltic is shallow, the submarine runs the chance of being let down with a whack on the bottom. none the less, e works her way to within yards of the quarry; fires and waits just long enough to be sure that her torpedo is running straight, and that the destroyer is holding her course. then she "dips to avoid detection." the rest is deadly simple: "at the correct moment after firing, to seconds, heard the unmistakable noise of torpedo detonating." four minutes later she rose and "found destroyer had disappeared." then, for reasons probably connected with other destroyers, who, too, may have heard that unmistakable sound, she goes to bed below in the chill dark till it is time to turn homewards. when she rose she met storm from the north and logged it accordingly. "spray froze as it struck, and bridge became a mass of ice. experienced considerable difficulty in keeping the conning-tower hatch free from ice. found it necessary to keep a man continuously employed on this work. bridge screen immovable, ice six inches thick on it. telegraphs frozen." in this state she forges ahead till midnight, and any one who pleases can imagine the thoughts of the continuous employee scraping and hammering round the hatch, as well as the delight of his friends below when the ice-slush spattered down the conning-tower. at last she considered it "advisable to free the boat of ice, so went below." "as requisite" in the senior service the two words "as requisite" cover everything that need not be talked about. e next day "proceeded as requisite" through a series of snowstorms and recurring deposits of ice on the bridge till she got in touch with her friend the ice-breaker; and in her company ploughed and rooted her way back to the work we know. there is nothing to show that it was a near thing for e , but somehow one has the idea that the ice-breaker did not arrive any too soon for e 's comfort and progress. (but what happens in the baltic when the ice-breaker does not arrive?) that was in winter. in summer quite the other way, e had to go to bed by day very often under the long-lasting northern light when the baltic is as smooth as a carpet, and one cannot get within a mile and a half of anything with eyes in its head without being put down. there was one time when e , evidently on information received, took up "a certain position" and reported the sea "glassy." she had to suffer in silence, while three heavily laden german ships went by; for an attack would have given away her position. her reward came next day, when she sighted (the words run like marryat's) "enemy squadron coming up fast from eastward, proceeding inshore of us." they were two heavy battleships with an escort of destroyers, and e turned to attack. she does not say how she crept up in that smooth sea within a quarter of a mile of the leading ship, "a three-funnel ship, of either the deutschland or braunschweig class," but she managed it, and fired both bow torpedoes at her. "no. torpedo was seen and heard to strike her just before foremost funnel: smoke and _débris_ appeared to go as high as masthead." that much e saw before one of the guardian destroyers ran at her. "so," says she, "observing her i took my periscope off the battleship." this was excusable, as the destroyer was coming up with intent to kill and e had to flood her tanks and get down quickly. even so, the destroyer only just missed her, and she struck bottom in feet. "but," says e , who, if she could not see, kept her ears open, "at the correct interval (the or seconds mentioned in the previous case) the second torpedo was heard to explode, though not actually seen." e came up twenty minutes later to make sure. the destroyer was waiting for her a couple of hundred yards away, and again e dipped for the life, but "just had time to see one large vessel approximately four or five miles away." putting courage aside, think for a moment of the mere drill of it all--that last dive for that attack on the chosen battleship; the eye at the periscope watching "no. torpedo" get home; the rush of the vengeful destroyer; the instant orders for flooding everything; the swift descent which had to be arranged for with full knowledge of the shallow sea-floors waiting below, and a guess at the course that might be taken by the seeking bows above, for assuming a destroyer to draw feet and a submarine on the bottom to stand feet to the top of her conning-tower, there is not much clearance in feet salt water, specially if the boat jumps when she touches bottom. and through all these and half a hundred other simultaneous considerations, imagine the trained minds below, counting, as only torpedo-men can count, the run of the merciless seconds that should tell when that second shot arrived. then "at the correct interval" as laid down in the table of distances, the boom and the jar of no. torpedo, the relief, the exhaled breath and untightened lips; the impatient waiting for a second peep, and when that had been taken and the eye at the periscope had reported _one_ little nigger-boy in place of two on the waters, perhaps cigarettes, &c., while the destroyer sickled about at a venture overhead. certainly they give men rewards for doing such things, but what reward can there be in any gift of kings or peoples to match the enduring satisfaction of having done them, not alone, but with and through and by trusty and proven companions? defeated by darkness e , also a baltic boat, her commander f.n. laurence, had her experiences too. she went out one summer day and late--too late--in the evening sighted three transports. the first she hit. while she was arranging for the second, the third inconsiderately tried to ram her before her sights were on. so it was necessary to go down at once and waste whole minutes of the precious scanting light. when she rose, the stricken ship was sinking and shortly afterwards blew up. the other two were patrolling near by. it would have been a fair chance in daylight, but the darkness defeated her and she had to give up the attack. it was e who during thick weather came across a squadron of battle-cruisers and got in on a flanking ship--probably the _moltke_. the destroyers were very much on the alert, and she had to dive at once to avoid one who only missed her by a few feet. then the fog shut down and stopped further developments. thus do time and chance come to every man. the trade has many stories, too, of watching patrols when a boat must see chance after chance go by under her nose and write--merely write--what she has seen. naturally they do not appear in any accessible records. nor, which is a pity, do the authorities release the records of glorious failures, when everything goes wrong; when torpedoes break surface and squatter like ducks; or arrive full square with a clang and burst of white water and--fail to explode; when the devil is in charge of all the motors, and clutches develop play that would scare a shore-going mechanic bald; when batteries begin to give off death instead of power, and atop of all, ice or wreckage of the strewn seas racks and wrenches the hull till the whole leaking bag of tricks limps home on six missing cylinders and one ditto propeller, _plus_ the indomitable will of the red-eyed husky scarecrows in charge. there might be worse things in this world for decent people to read than such records. ii business in the sea of marmara this war is like an iceberg. we, the public, only see an eighth of it above water. the rest is out of sight and, as with the berg, one guesses its extent by great blocks that break off and shoot up to the surface from some underlying out-running spur a quarter of a mile away. so with this war sudden tales come to light which reveal unsuspected activities in unexpected quarters. one takes it for granted such things are always going on somewhere, but the actual emergence of the record is always astonishing. once upon a time, there were certain e type boats who worked the sea of marmara with thoroughness and humanity; for the two, in english hands, are compatible. the road to their hunting-grounds was strewn with peril, the waters they inhabited were full of eyes that gave them no rest, and what they lost or expended in wear and tear of the chase could not be made good till they had run the gauntlet to their base again. the full tale of their improvisations and "makee-does" will probably never come to light, though fragments can be picked up at intervals in the proper places as the men concerned come and go. the admiralty gives only the bones, but those are not so dry, of the boat's official story. when e , commander e. courtney-boyle, went to her work in the sea of marmara, she, like her sister, "proceeded" on her gas-engine up the dardanelles; and a gas-engine by night between steep cliffs has been described by the lower-deck as a "full brass band in a railway cutting." so a fort picked her up with a searchlight and missed her with artillery. she dived under the minefield that guarded the straits, and when she rose at dawn in the narrowest part of the channel, which is about one mile and a half across, all the forts fired at her. the water, too, was thick with steamboat patrols, out of which e selected a turkish gunboat and gave her a torpedo. she had just time to see the great column of water shoot as high as the gunboat's mast when she had to dip again as "the men in a small steamboat were leaning over trying to catch hold of the top of my periscope." "six hours of blind death" this sentence, which might have come out of a french exercise book, is all lieutenant-commander courtney-boyle sees fit to tell, and that officer will never understand why one taxpayer at least demands his arrest after the war till he shall have given the full tale. did he sight the shadowy underline of the small steamboat green through the deadlights? or did she suddenly swim into his vision from behind, and obscure, without warning, his periscope with a single brown clutching hand? was she alone, or one of a mob of splashing, shouting small craft? he may well have been too busy to note, for there were patrols all around him, a minefield of curious design and undefined area somewhere in front, and steam trawlers vigorously sweeping for him astern and ahead. and when e had burrowed and bumped and scraped through six hours of blind death, she found the sea of marmara crawling with craft, and was kept down almost continuously and grew hot and stuffy in consequence. nor could she charge her batteries in peace, so at the end of another hectic, hunted day of starting them up and breaking off and diving--which is bad for the temper--she decided to quit those infested waters near the coast and charge up somewhere off the traffic routes. this accomplished, after a long, hot run, which did the motors no good, she went back to her beat, where she picked up three destroyers convoying a couple of troopships. but it was a glassy calm and the destroyers "came for me." she got off a long-range torpedo at one transport, and ducked before she could judge results. she apologises for this on the grounds that one of her periscopes had been damaged--not, as one would expect, by the gentleman leaning out of the little steamboat, but by some casual shot--calibre not specified--the day before. "and so," says e , "i could not risk my remaining one being bent." however, she heard a thud, and the depth-gauges--those great clock-hands on the white-faced circles--"flicked," which is another sign of dreadful certainty down under. when she rose again she saw a destroyer convoying one burning transport to the nearest beach. that afternoon she met a sister-boat (now gone to valhalla), who told her that she was almost out of torpedoes, and they arranged a rendezvous for next day, but "before we could communicate we had to dive, and i did not see her again." there must be many such meetings in the trade, under all skies--boat rising beside boat at the point agreed upon for interchange of news and materials; the talk shouted aloud with the speakers' eyes always on the horizon and all hands standing by to dive, even in the middle of a sentence. annoying patrol ships e kept to her job, on the edge of the procession of traffic. patrol vessels annoyed her to such an extent that "as i had not seen any transports lately i decided to sink a patrol-ship as they were always firing on me." so she torpedoed a thing that looked like a mine-layer, and must have been something of that kidney, for it sank in less than a minute. a tramp-steamer lumbering across the dead flat sea was thoughtfully headed back to constantinople by firing rifles ahead of her. "under fire the whole day," e observes philosophically. the nature of her work made this inevitable. she was all among the patrols, which kept her down a good deal and made her draw on her batteries, and when she rose to charge, watchers ashore burned oil-flares on the beach or made smokes among the hills according to the light. in either case there would be a general rush of patrolling craft of all kinds, from steam launches to gunboats. nobody loves the trade, though e did several things which made her popular. she let off a string of very surprised dhows (they were empty) in charge of a tug which promptly fled back to constantinople; stopped a couple of steamers full of refugees, also bound for constantinople, who were "very pleased at being allowed to proceed" instead of being lusitaniaed as they had expected. another refugee-boat, fleeing from goodness knows what horror, she chased into rodosto harbour, where, though she could not see any troops, "they opened a heavy rifle fire on us, hitting the boat several times. so i went away and chased two more small tramps who returned towards constantinople." transports, of course, were fair game, and in spite of the necessity she was under of not risking her remaining eye, e got a big one in a night of wind and made another hurriedly beach itself, which then opened fire on her, assisted by the local population. "returned fire and proceeded," says e . the diversion of returning fire is one much appreciated by the lower-deck as furnishing a pleasant break in what otherwise might be a monotonous and odoriferous task. there is no drill laid down for this evolution, but etiquette and custom prescribe that on going up the hatch you shall not too energetically prod the next man ahead with the muzzle of your rifle. likewise, when descending in quick time before the hatch closes, you are requested not to jump directly on the head of the next below. otherwise you act "as requisite" on your own initiative. when she had used up all her torpedoes e prepared to go home by the way she had come--there was no other--and was chased towards gallipoli by a mixed pack composed of a gunboat, a torpedo-boat, and a tug. "they shepherded me to gallipoli, one each side of me and one astern, evidently expecting me to be caught by the nets there." she walked very delicately for the next eight hours or so, all down the straits, underrunning the strong tides, ducking down when the fire from the forts got too hot, verifying her position and the position of the minefield, but always taking notes of every ship in sight, till towards teatime she saw our navy off the entrance and "rose to the surface abeam of a french battleship who gave us a rousing cheer." she had been away, as nearly as possible, three weeks, and a kind destroyer escorted her to the base, where we will leave her for the moment while we consider the performance of e (lieutenant-commander m.e. nasmith) in the same waters at about the same season. e "proceeded" in the usual way, to the usual accompaniments of hostile destroyers, up the straits, and meets the usual difficulties about charging-up when she gets through. her wireless naturally takes this opportunity to give trouble, and e is left, deaf and dumb, somewhere in the middle of the sea of marmara, diving to avoid hostile destroyers in the intervals of trying to come at the fault in her aerial. (yet it is noteworthy that the language of the trade, though technical, is no more emphatic or incandescent than that of top-side ships.) then she goes towards constantinople, finds a turkish torpedo-gunboat off the port, sinks her, has her periscope smashed by a six-pounder, retires, fits a new top on the periscope, and at . a.m.--they must have needed it--pipes "all hands to bathe." much refreshed, she gets her wireless linked up at last, and is able to tell the authorities where she is and what she is after. mr. silas q. swing at this point--it was off rodosto--enter a small steamer which does not halt when requested, and so is fired at with "several rounds" from a rifle. the crew, on being told to abandon her, tumble into their boats with such haste that they capsize two out of three. "fortunately," says e , "they are able to pick up everybody." you can imagine to yourself the confusion alongside, the raffle of odds and ends floating out of the boats, and the general parti-coloured hurrah's-nest all over the bright broken water. what you cannot imagine is this: "an american gentleman then appeared on the upper deck who informed us that his name was silas q. swing, of the _chicago sun_, and that he was pleased to make our acquaintance. he then informed us that the steamer was proceeding to chanak and he wasn't sure if there were any stores aboard." if anything could astonish the trade at this late date, one would almost fancy that the apparition of silas q. swing ("very happy to meet you, gentlemen") might have started a rivet or two on e 's placid skin. but she never even quivered. she kept a lieutenant of the name of d'oyley hughes, an expert in demolition parties; and he went aboard the tramp and reported any quantity of stores--a six-inch gun, for instance, lashed across the top of the forehatch (silas q. swing must have been an unobservant journalist), a six-inch gun-mounting in the forehold, pedestals for twelve-pounders thrown in as dunnage, the afterhold full of six-inch projectiles, and a scattering of other commodities. they put the demolition charge well in among the six-inch stuff, and she took it all to the bottom in a few minutes, after being touched off. "simultaneously with the sinking of the vessel," the e goes on, "smoke was observed to the eastward." it was a steamer who had seen the explosion and was running for rodosto. e chased her till she tied up to rodosto pier, and then torpedoed her where she lay--a heavily laden store-ship piled high with packing-cases. the water was shallow here, and though e bumped along the bottom, which does not make for steadiness of aim, she was forced to show a good deal of her only periscope, and had it dented, but not damaged by rifle-fire from the beach. as she moved out of rodosto bay she saw a paddle-boat loaded with barbed wire, which stopped on the hail, but "as we ranged alongside her, attempted to ram us, but failed owing to our superior speed." then she ran for the beach "very skilfully," keeping her stern to e till she drove ashore beneath some cliffs. the demolition-squad were just getting to work when "a party of horsemen appeared on the cliffs above and opened a hot fire on the conning tower." e got out, but owing to the shoal water it was some time before she could get under enough to fire a torpedo. the stern of a stranded paddle-boat is no great target and the thing exploded on the beach. then she "recharged batteries and proceeded slowly on the surface towards constantinople." all this between the ordinary office hours of a.m. and p.m. her next day's work opens, as no pallid writer of fiction dare begin, thus: "having dived unobserved into constantinople, observed, etc." her observations were rather hampered by cross-tides, mud, and currents, as well as the vagaries of one of her own torpedoes which turned upside down and ran about promiscuously. it hit something at last, and so did another shot that she fired, but the waters by constantinople arsenal are not healthy to linger in after one has scared up the whole sea-front, so "turned to go out." matters were a little better below, and e in her perilous passage might have been a lady of the harem tied up in a sack and thrown into the bosporus. she grounded heavily; she bounced up feet, was headed down again by a manoeuvre easier to shudder over than to describe, and when she came to rest on the bottom found herself being swivelled right round the compass. they watched the compass with much interest. "it was concluded, therefore, that the vessel (e is one of the few who speaks of herself as a 'vessel' as well as a 'boat') was resting on the shoal under the leander tower, and was being turned round by the current." so they corrected her, started the motors, and "bumped gently down into feet of water" with no more knowledge than the lady in the sack where the next bump would land them. the preening perch and the following day was spent "resting in the centre of the sea of marmara." that was their favourite preening perch between operations, because it gave them a chance to tidy the boat and bathe, and they were a cleanly people both in their methods and their persons. when they boarded a craft and found nothing of consequence they "parted with many expressions of good will," and e "had a good wash." she gives her reasons at length; for going in and out of constantinople and the straits is all in the day's work, but going dirty, you understand, is serious. she had "of late noticed the atmosphere in the boat becoming very oppressive, the reason doubtless being that there was a quantity of dirty linen aboard, and also the scarcity of fresh water necessitated a limit being placed on the frequency of personal washing." hence the centre of the sea of marmara; all hands playing overside and as much laundry work as time and the service allowed. one of the reasons, by the way, why we shall be good friends with the turk again is that he has many of our ideas about decency. in due time e went back to her base. she had discovered a way of using unspent torpedoes twice over, which surprised the enemy, and she had as nearly as possible been cut down by a ship which she thought was running away from her. instead of which (she made the discovery at three thousand yards, both craft all out) the stranger steamed straight at her. "the enemy then witnessed a somewhat spectacular dive at full speed from the surface to feet in as many seconds. he then really did turn tail and was seen no more." going through the straits she observed an empty troopship at anchor, but reserved her torpedoes in the hope of picking up some battleships lower down. not finding these in the narrows, she nosed her way back and sank the trooper, "afterwards continuing journey down the straits." off kilid bahr something happened; she got out of trim and had to be fully flooded before she could be brought to her required depth. it might have been whirlpools under water, or--other things. (they tell a story of a boat which once went mad in these very waters, and for no reason ascertainable from within plunged to depths that contractors do not allow for; rocketed up again like a swordfish, and would doubtless have so continued till she died, had not something she had fouled dropped off and let her recover her composure.) an hour later: "heard a noise similar to grounding. knowing this to be impossible in the water in which the boat then was, i came up to feet to investigate, and observed a large mine preceding the periscope at a distance of about feet, which was apparently hung up by its moorings to the port hydroplane." hydroplanes are the fins at bow and stern which regulate a submarine's diving. a mine weighs anything from hundredweights to half-tons. sometimes it explodes if you merely think about it; at others you can batter it like an empty sardine-tin and it submits meekly; but at no time is it meant to wear on a hydroplane. they dared not come up to unhitch it, "owing to the batteries ashore," so they pushed the dim shape ahead of them till they got outside kum kale. they then went full astern, and emptied the after-tanks, which brought the bows down, and in this posture rose to the surface, when "the rush of water from the screws together with the sternway gathered allowed the mine to fall clear of the vessel." now a fool, said dr. johnson, would have tried to describe that. iii ravages and repairs before we pick up the further adventures of h.m. submarine e and her partner e , here is what you might call a cutting-out affair in the sea of marmara which e (lieutenant-commander k.m. bruce) put through quite on the old lines. e 's main motors gave trouble from the first, and she seems to have been a cripple for most of that trip. she sighted two small steamers, one towing two, and the other three, sailing vessels; making seven keels in all. she stopped the first steamer, noticed she carried a lot of stores, and, moreover, that her crew--she had no boats--were all on deck in life-belts. not seeing any gun, e ran up alongside and told the first lieutenant to board. the steamer then threw a bomb at e , which struck, but luckily did not explode, and opened fire on the boarding-party with rifles and a concealed -in. gun. e answered with her six-pounder, and also with rifles. the two sailing ships in tow, very properly, tried to foul e 's propellers and "also opened fire with rifles." it was as orientally mixed a fight as a man could wish: the first lieutenant and the boarding-party engaged on the steamer, e foul of the steamer, and being fouled by the sailing ships; the six-pounder methodically perforating the steamer from bow to stern; the steamer's -in. gun and the rifles from the sailing ships raking everything and everybody else; e 's coxswain on the conning-tower passing up ammunition; and e 's one workable motor developing "slight defects" at, of course, the moment when power to manoeuvre was vital. the account is almost as difficult to disentangle as the actual mess must have been. at any rate, the six-pounder caused an explosion in the steamer's ammunition, whereby the steamer sank in a quarter of an hour, giving time--and a hot time it must have been--for e to get clear of her and to sink the two sailing ships. she then chased the second steamer, who slipped her three tows and ran for the shore. e knocked her about a good deal with gun-fire as she fled, saw her drive on the beach well alight, and then, since the beach opened fire with a gun at yards, went away to retinker her motors and write up her log. she approved of her first lieutenant's behaviour "under very trying circumstances" (this probably refers to the explosion of the ammunition by the six-pounder which, doubtless, jarred the boarding-party) and of the cox who acted as ammunition-hoist; and of the gun's crew, who "all did very well" under rifle and small-gun fire "at a range of about ten yards." but she never says what she really said about her motors. a brawl at a pier now we will take e on various work, either alone or as flagship of a squadron composed of herself and lieutenant-commander nasmith's boat, e . hers was a busy midsummer, and she came to be intimate with all sort of craft--such as the two-funnelled gunboat off sar kioi, who "fired at us, and missed as usual"; hospital ships going back and forth unmolested to constantinople; "the gunboat which fired at me on sunday," and other old friends, afloat and ashore. when the crew of the turkish brigantine full of stores got into their boats by request, and then "all stood up and cursed us," e did not lose her temper, even though it was too rough to lie alongside the abandoned ship. she told acting lieutenant r.w. lawrence, of the royal naval reserve, to swim off to her, which he did, and after a "cursory search"--who can be expected to sherlock holmes for hours with nothing on?--set fire to her "with the aid of her own matches and paraffin oil." then e had a brawl with a steamer with a yellow funnel, blue top and black band, lying at a pier among dhows. the shore took a hand in the game with small guns and rifles, and, as e manoeuvred about the roadstead "as requisite" there was a sudden unaccountable explosion which strained her very badly. "i think," she muses, "i must have caught the moorings of a mine with my tail as i was turning, and exploded it. it is possible that it might have been a big shell bursting over us, but i think this unlikely, as we were feet at the time." she is always a philosophical boat, anxious to arrive at the reason of facts, and when the game is against her she admits it freely. there was nondescript craft of a few hundred tons, who "at a distance did not look very warlike," but when chased suddenly played a couple of six-pounders and "got off two dozen rounds at us before we were under. some of them were only about yards off." and when a wily steamer, after sidling along the shore, lay up in front of a town she became "indistinguishable from the houses," and so was safe because we do not löwestrafe open towns. sailing dhows full of grain had to be destroyed. at one rendezvous, while waiting for e , e dealt with three such cases and then "towed the crews inshore and gave them biscuits, beef, and rum and water, as they were rather wet." passenger steamers were allowed to proceed, because they were "full of people of both sexes," which is an unkultured way of doing business. here is another instance of our insular type of mind. an empty dhow is passed which e was going to leave alone, but it occurs to her that the boat looks "rather deserted," and she fancies she sees two heads in the water. so she goes back half a mile, picks up a couple of badly exhausted men, frightened out of their wits, gives them food and drink, and puts them aboard their property. crews that jump overboard have to be picked up, even if, as happened in one case, there are twenty of them and one of them is a german bank manager taking a quantity of money to the chanak bank. hospital ships are carefully looked over as they come and go, and are left to their own devices; but they are rather a nuisance because they force e and others to dive for them when engaged in stalking warrantable game. there were a good many hospital ships, and as far as we can make out they all played fair. e boarded one and "reported everything satisfactory." strange messmates a layman cannot tell from the reports which of the duties demanded the most work--whether the continuous clearing out of transports, dhows, and sailing ships, generally found close to the well-gunned and attentive beach, or the equally continuous attacks on armed vessels of every kind. whatever else might be going on, there was always the problem how to arrange for the crews of sunk ships. if a dhow has no small boats, and you cannot find one handy, you have to take the crew aboard, where they are horribly in the way, and add to the oppressiveness of the atmosphere--like "the nine people, including two very old men," whom e made honorary members of her mess for several hours till she could put them ashore after dark. oddly enough she "could not get anything out of them." imagine nine bewildered moslems suddenly decanted into the reeking clamorous bowels of a fabric obviously built by shaitan himself, and surrounded by--but our people are people of the book and not dog-eating kaffirs, and i will wager a great deal that that little company went ashore in better heart and stomach than when they were passed down the conning-tower hatch. then there were queer amphibious battles with troops who had to be shelled as they marched towards gallipoli along the coast roads. e went out with e on this job, early one morning, each boat taking her chosen section of landscape. thrice e rose to fire, thinking she saw the dust of feet, but "each time it turned out to be bullocks." when the shelling was ended "i think the troops marching along that road must have been delayed and a good many killed." the turks got up a field-gun in the course of the afternoon--your true believer never hurries--which out-ranged both boats, and they left accordingly. the next day she changed billets with e , who had the luck to pick up and put down a battleship close to gallipoli. it turned out to be the _barbarossa_. meantime e got a -ton supply ship, and later had to burn a sailing ship loaded with bales of leaf and cut tobacco--turkish tobacco! small wonder that e "came alongside that afternoon and remained for an hour"--probably making cigarettes. refitting under difficulties then e went back to her base. she had a hellish time among the dardanelles nets; was, of course, fired at by the forts, just missed a torpedo from the beach, scraped a mine, and when she had time to take stock found electric mine-wires twisted round her propellers and all her hull scraped and scored with wire marks. but that, again, was only in the day's work. the point she insisted upon was that she had been for seventy days in the sea of marmara with no securer base for refit than the centre of the same, and during all that while she had not had "any engine-room defect which has not been put right by the engine-room staff of the boat." the commander and the third officer went sick for a while; the first lieutenant got gastro-enteritis and was in bed (if you could see that bed!) "for the remainder of our stay in the sea of marmara," but "this boat has never been out of running order." the credit is ascribed to "the excellence of my chief engine-room artificer, james hollier hague, o.n. ," whose name is duly submitted to the authorities "for your consideration for advancement to the rank of warrant officer." seventy days of every conceivable sort of risk, within and without, in a boat which is all engine-room, except where she is sick-bay; twelve thousand miles covered since last overhaul and "never out of running order"--thanks to mr. hague. such artists as he are the kind of engine-room artificers that commanders intrigue to get hold of--each for his own boat--and when the tales are told in the trade, their names, like abou ben adhem's, lead all the rest. i do not know the exact line of demarcation between engine-room and gunnery repairs, but i imagine it is faint and fluid. e , for example, while she was helping e to shell a beached steamer, smashed half her gun-mounting, "the gun-layer being thrown overboard, and the gun nearly following him." however, the mischief was repaired in the next twenty-four hours, which, considering the very limited deck space of a submarine, means that all hands must have been moderately busy. one hopes that they had not to dive often during the job. but worse is to come. e (commander d. stocks) carried an externally mounted gun which, while she was diving up the dardanelles on business, got hung up in the wires and stays of a net. she saw them through the conning-tower scuttles at a depth of ft--one wire hawser round the gun, another round the conning-tower, and so on. there was a continuous crackling of small explosions overhead which she thought were charges aimed at her by the guard-boats who watch the nets. she considered her position for a while, backed, got up steam, barged ahead, and shore through the whole affair in one wild surge. imagine the roof of a navigable cottage after it has snapped telegraph lines with its chimney, and you will get a small idea of what happens to the hull of a submarine when she uses her gun to break wire hawsers with. trouble with a gun e was a wet, strained, and uncomfortable boat for the rest of her cruise. she sank steamers, burned dhows; was worried by torpedo-boats and hunted by hun planes; hit bottom freely and frequently; silenced forts that fired at her from lonely beaches; warned villages who might have joined in the game that they had better keep to farming; shelled railway lines and stations; would have shelled a pier, but found there was a hospital built at one end of it, "so could not bombard"; came upon dhows crowded with "female refugees" which she "allowed to proceed," and was presented with fowls in return; but through it all her chief preoccupation was that racked and strained gun and mounting. when there was nothing else doing she reports sourly that she "worked on gun." as a philosopher of the lower deck put it: "'tisn't what you blanky _do_ that matters, it's what you blanky _have_ to do." in other words, worry, not work, kills. e 's gun did its best to knock the heart out of them all. she had to shift the wretched thing twice; once because the bolts that held it down were smashed (the wire hawser must have pretty well pulled it off its seat), and again because the hull beneath it leaked on pressure. she went down to make sure of it. but she drilled and tapped and adjusted, till in a short time the gun worked again and killed steamers as it should. meanwhile, the whole boat leaked. all the plates under the old gun-position forward leaked; she leaked aft through damaged hydroplane guards, and on her way home they had to keep the water down by hand pumps while she was diving through the nets. where she did not leak outside she leaked internally, tank leaking into tank, so that the petrol got into the main fresh-water supply and the men had to be put on allowance. the last pint was served out when she was in the narrowest part of the narrows, a place where one's mouth may well go dry of a sudden. here for the moment the records end. i have been at some pains not to pick and choose among them. so far from doctoring or heightening any of the incidents, i have rather understated them; but i hope i have made it clear that through all the haste and fury of these multiplied actions, when life and death and destruction turned on the twitch of a finger, not one life of any non-combatant was wittingly taken. they were carefully picked up or picked out, taken below, transferred to boats, and despatched or personally conducted in the intervals of business to the safe, unexploding beach. sometimes they part from their chaperones "with many expressions of good will," at others they seem greatly relieved and rather surprised at not being knocked on the head after the custom of their allies. but the boats with a hundred things on their minds no more take credit for their humanity than their commanders explain the feats for which they won their respective decorations. destroyers at jutland ( ) "have you news of my boy jack?" _not this tide._ "when d'you think that he'll come back?" _not with this wind blowing, and this tide._ "has any one else had word of him?" _not this tide. for what is sunk will hardly swim, not with this wind blowing and this tide._ "oh, dear, what comfort can i find?" _none this tide, nor any tide, except he didn't shame his kind not even with that wind blowing and that tide._ _then hold your head up all the more, this tide, and every tide, because he was the son you bore, and gave to that wind blowing and that tide!_ i stories of the battle cripple and paralytic there was much destroyer-work in the battle of jutland. the actual battle field may not have been more than twenty thousand square miles, but the incidental patrols, from first to last, must have covered many times that area. doubtless the next generation will comb out every detail of it. all we need remember is there were many squadrons of battleships and cruisers engaged over the face of the north sea, and that they were accompanied in their dread comings and goings by multitudes of destroyers, who attacked the enemy both by day and by night from the afternoon of may to the morning of june , . we are too close to the gigantic canvas to take in the meaning of the picture; our children stepping backward through the years may get the true perspective and proportions. to recapitulate what every one knows. the german fleet came out of its north sea ports, scouting ships ahead; then destroyers, cruisers, battle-cruisers, and, last, the main battle fleet in the rear. it moved north, parallel with the coast of stolen schleswig-holstein and jutland. our fleets were already out; the main battle fleet (admiral jellicoe) sweeping down from the north, and our battle-cruiser fleet (admiral beatty) feeling for the enemy. our scouts came in contact with the enemy on the afternoon of may about miles off the jutland coast, steering north-west. they satisfied themselves he was in strength, and reported accordingly to our battle-cruiser fleet, which engaged the enemy's battle-cruisers at about half-past three o'clock. the enemy steered south-east to rejoin their own fleet, which was coming up from that quarter. we fought him on a parallel course as he ran for more than an hour. then his battle-fleet came in sight, and beatty's fleet went about and steered north-west in order to retire on our battle-fleet, which was hurrying down from the north. we returned fighting very much over the same waters as we had used in our slant south. the enemy up till now had lain to the eastward of us, whereby he had the advantage in that thick weather of seeing our hulls clear against the afternoon light, while he himself worked in the mists. we then steered a little to the north-west bearing him off towards the east till at six o'clock beatty had headed the enemy's leading ships and our main battle-fleet came in sight from the north. the enemy broke back in a loop, first eastward, then south, then south-west as our fleet edged him off from the land, and our main battle-fleet, coming up behind them, followed in their wake. thus for a while we had the enemy to westward of us, where he made a better mark; but the day was closing and the weather thickened, and the enemy wanted to get away. at a quarter past eight the enemy, still heading south-west, was covered by his destroyers in a great screen of grey smoke, and he got away. night and morning as darkness fell, our fleets lay between the enemy and his home ports. during the night our heavy ships, keeping well clear of possible mine-fields, swept down south to south and west of the horns reef, so that they might pick him up in the morning. when morning came our main fleet could find no trace of the enemy to the southward, but our destroyer-flotillas further north had been very busy with enemy ships, apparently running for the horns reef channel. it looks, then, as if when we lost sight of the enemy in the smoke screen and the darkness he had changed course and broken for home astern our main fleets. and whether that was a sound manoeuvre or otherwise, he and the still flows of the north sea alone can tell. but how is a layman to give any coherent account of an affair where a whole country's coast-line was background to battle covering geographical degrees? the records give an impression of illimitable grey waters, nicked on their uncertain horizons with the smudge and blur of ships sparkling with fury against ships hidden under the curve of the world. one sees these distances maddeningly obscured by walking mists and weak fogs, or wiped out by layers of funnel and gun smoke, and realises how, at the pace the ships were going, anything might be stumbled upon in the haze or charge out of it when it lifted. one comprehends, too, how the far-off glare of a great vessel afire might be reported as a local fire on a near-by enemy, or _vice versa_; how a silhouette caught, for an instant, in a shaft of pale light let down from the low sky might be fatally difficult to identify till too late. but add to all these inevitable confusions and misreckonings of time, shape, and distance, charges at every angle of squadrons through and across other squadrons; sudden shifts of the centres of the fights, and even swifter restorations; wheelings, sweepings, and regroupments such as accompany the passage across space of colliding universes. then blanket the whole inferno with the darkness of night at full speed, and--see what you can make of it. three destroyers a little time after the action began to heat up between our battle-cruisers and the enemy's, eight or ten of our destroyers opened the ball for their branch of the service by breaking up the attack of an enemy light cruiser and fifteen destroyers. of these they accounted for at least two destroyers--some think more--and drove the others back on their battle-cruisers. this scattered that fight a good deal over the sea. three of our destroyers held on for the enemy's battle-fleet, who came down on them at ranges which eventually grew less than yards. our people ought to have been lifted off the seas bodily, but they managed to fire a couple of torpedoes apiece while the range was diminishing. they had no illusions. says one of the three, speaking of her second shot, which she loosed at fairly close range, "this torpedo was fired because it was considered very unlikely that the ship would escape disablement before another opportunity offered." but still they lived--three destroyers against all a battle-cruiser fleet's quick-firers, as well as the fire of a batch of enemy destroyers at yards. and they were thankful for small mercies. "the position being favourable," a third torpedo was fired from each while they yet floated. at yards, one destroyer was hit somewhere in the vitals and swerved badly across her next astern, who "was obliged to alter course to avoid a collision, thereby failing to fire a fourth torpedo." then that next astern "observed signal for destroyers' recall," and went back to report to her flotilla captain--alone. of her two companions, one was "badly hit and remained stopped between the lines." the other "remained stopped, but was afloat when last seen." ships that "remain stopped" are liable to be rammed or sunk by methodical gun-fire. that was, perhaps, fifty minutes' work put in before there was any really vicious "edge" to the action, and it did not steady the nerves of the enemy battle-cruisers any more than another attack made by another detachment of ours. "what does one do when one passes a ship that 'remains stopped'?" i asked of a youth who had had experience. "nothing special. they cheer, and you cheer back. one doesn't think about it till afterwards. you see, it may be your luck in another minute." luck there were many other torpedo attacks in all parts of the battle that misty afternoon, including a quaint episode of an enemy light cruiser who "looked as if she were trying" to torpedo one of our battle-cruisers while the latter was particularly engaged. a destroyer of ours, returning from a special job which required delicacy, was picking her way back at knots through batches of enemy battle-cruisers and light cruisers with the idea of attaching herself to the nearest destroyer-flotilla and making herself useful. it occurred to her that as she "was in a most advantageous position for repelling enemy's destroyers endeavouring to attack, she could not do better than to remain on the 'engaged bow' of our battle-cruiser." so she remained and considered things. there was an enemy battle-cruiser squadron in the offing; with several enemy light cruisers ahead of that squadron, and the weather was thickish and deceptive. she sighted the enemy light cruiser, "class uncertain," only a few thousand yards away, and "decided to attack her in order to frustrate her firing torpedoes at our battle fleet." (this in case the authorities should think that light cruiser wished to buy rubber.) so she fell upon the light cruiser with every gun she had, at between two and four thousand yards, and secured a number of hits, just the same as at target practice. while thus occupied she sighted out of the mist a squadron of enemy battle-cruisers that had worried her earlier in the afternoon. leaving the light cruiser, she closed to what she considered a reasonable distance of the newcomers, and let them have, as she thought, both her torpedoes. she possessed an active acting sub-lieutenant, who, though officers of that rank think otherwise, is not very far removed from an ordinary midshipman of the type one sees in tow of relatives at the army and navy stores. he sat astride one of the tubes to make quite sure things were in order, and fired when the sights came on. _but_, at that very moment, a big shell hit the destroyer on the side and there was a tremendous escape of steam. believing--since she had seen one torpedo leave the tube before the smash came--believing that both her tubes had been fired, the destroyer turned away "at greatly reduced speed" (the shell reduced it), and passed, quite reasonably close, the light cruiser whom she had been hammering so faithfully till the larger game appeared. meantime, the sub-lieutenant was exploring what damage had been done by the big shell. he discovered that only _one_ of the two torpedoes had left the tubes, and "observing enemy light cruiser beam on and apparently temporarily stopped," he fired the providential remainder at her, and it hit her below the conning-tower and well and truly exploded, as was witnessed by the sub-lieutenant himself, the commander, a leading signalman, and several other ratings. luck continued to hold! the acting sub-lieutenant further reported that "we still had three torpedoes left and at the same time drew my attention to enemy's line of battleships." they rather looked as if they were coming down with intent to assault. so the sub-lieutenant fired the rest of the torpedoes, which at least started off correctly from the shell-shaken tubes, and must have crossed the enemy's line. when torpedoes turn up among a squadron, they upset the steering and distract the attention of all concerned. then the destroyer judged it time to take stock of her injuries. among other minor defects she could neither steam, steer, nor signal. towing under difficulties mark how virtue is rewarded! another of our destroyers an hour or so previously had been knocked clean out of action, before she had done anything, by a big shell which gutted a boiler-room and started an oil fire. (that is the drawback to oil.) she crawled out between the battleships till she "reached an area of comparative calm" and repaired damage. she says: "the fire having been dealt with it was found a mat kept the stokehold dry. my only trouble now being lack of speed, i looked round for useful employment, and saw a destroyer in great difficulties, so closed her." that destroyer was our paralytic friend of the intermittent torpedo-tubes, and a grateful ship she was when her crippled sister (but still good for a few knots) offered her a tow, "under very trying conditions with large enemy ships approaching." so the two set off together, cripple and paralytic, with heavy shells falling round them, as sociable as a couple of lame hounds. cripple worked up to knots, and the weather grew vile, and the tow parted. paralytic, by this time, had raised steam in a boiler or two, and made shift to get along slowly on her own, cripple hirpling beside her, till paralytic could not make any more headway in that rising sea, and cripple had to tow her once more. once more the tow parted. so they tied paralytic up rudely and effectively with a cable round her after bollards and gun (presumably because of strained forward bulkheads) and hauled her stern-first, through heavy seas, at continually reduced speeds, doubtful of their position, unable to sound because of the seas, and much pestered by a wind which backed without warning, till, at last, they made land, and turned into the hospital appointed for brave wounded ships. everybody speaks well of cripple. her name crops up in several reports, with such compliments as the men of the sea use when they see good work. she herself speaks well of her lieutenant, who, as executive officer, "took charge of the fire and towing arrangements in a very creditable manner," and also of tom battye and thomas kerr, engine-room artificer and stoker petty officer, who "were in the stokehold at the time of the shell striking, and performed cool and prompt decisive action, although both suffering from shock and slight injuries." useful employment have you ever noticed that men who do homeric deeds often describe them in homeric language? the sentence "i looked round for useful employment" is worthy of ulysses when "there was an evil sound at the ships of men who perished and of the ships themselves broken at the same time." roughly, very roughly, speaking, our destroyers enjoyed three phases of "prompt decisive action"--the first, a period of daylight attacks (from to p.m.) such as the one i have just described, while the battle was young and the light fairly good on the afternoon of may ; the second, towards dark, when the light had lessened and the enemy were more uneasy, and, i think, in more scattered formation; the third, when darkness had fallen, and the destroyers had been strung out astern with orders to help the enemy home, which they did all night as opportunity offered. one cannot say whether the day or the night work was the more desperate. from private advices, the young gentlemen concerned seem to have functioned with efficiency either way. as one of them said: "after a bit, you see, we were all pretty much on our own, and you could really find out what your ship could do." i will tell you later of a piece of night work not without merit. ii the night hunt ramming an enemy cruiser as i said, we will confine ourselves to something quite sane and simple which does not involve more than half-a-dozen different reports. when the german fleet ran for home, on the night of may , it seems to have scattered--"starred," i believe, is the word for the evolution--in a general _sauve qui peut_, while the devil, livelily represented by our destroyers, took the hindmost. our flotillas were strung out far and wide on this job. one man compared it to hounds hunting half a hundred separate foxes. i take the adventures of several couples of destroyers who, on the night of may , were nosing along somewhere towards the schleswig-holstein coast, ready to chop any hun-stuff coming back to earth by that particular road. the leader of one line was gehenna, and the next two ships astern of her were eblis and shaitan, in the order given. there were others, of course, but with the exception of one goblin they don't come violently into this tale. there had been a good deal of promiscuous firing that evening, and actions were going on all round. towards midnight our destroyers were overtaken by several three-and four-funnel german ships (cruisers they thought) hurrying home. at this stage of the game anybody might have been anybody--pursuer or pursued. the germans took no chances, but switched on their searchlights and opened fire on gehenna. her acting sub-lieutenant reports: "a salvo hit us forward. i opened fire with the after-guns. a shell then struck us in a steam-pipe, and i could see nothing but steam. but both starboard torpedo-tubes were fired." eblis, gehenna's next astern, at once fired a torpedo at the second ship in the german line, a four-funnelled cruiser, and hit her between the second funnel and the mainmast, when "she appeared to catch fire fore and aft simultaneously, heeled right over to starboard, and undoubtedly sank." eblis loosed off a second torpedo and turned aside to reload, firing at the same time to distract the enemy's attention from gehenna, who was now ablaze fore and aft. gehenna's acting sub-lieutenant (the only executive officer who survived) says that by the time the steam from the broken pipe cleared he found gehenna stopped, nearly everybody amidships killed or wounded, the cartridge-boxes round the guns exploding one after the other as the fires took hold, and the enemy not to be seen. three minutes or less did all that damage. eblis had nearly finished reloading when a shot struck the davit that was swinging her last torpedo into the tube and wounded all hands concerned. thereupon she dropped torpedo work, fired at an enemy searchlight which winked and went out, and was closing in to help gehenna when she found herself under the noses of a couple of enemy cruisers. "the nearer one," he says, "altered course to ram me apparently." the senior service writes in curiously lawyer-like fashion, but there is no denying that they act quite directly. "i therefore put my helm hard aport and the two ships met and rammed each other, port bow to port bow." there could have been no time to think and, for eblis's commander on the bridge, none to gather information. but he had observant subordinates, and he writes--and i would humbly suggest that the words be made the ship's motto for evermore--he writes, "those aft noted" that the enemy cruiser had certain marks on her funnel and certain arrangements of derricks on each side which, quite apart from the evidence she left behind her, betrayed her class. eblis and she met. says eblis: "i consider i must have considerably damaged this cruiser, as feet of her side plating was left in my foc'sle." twenty feet of ragged rivet-slinging steel, razoring and reaping about in the dark on a foc'sle that had collapsed like a concertina! it was very fair plating too. there were side-scuttle holes in it--what we passengers would call portholes. but it might have been better, for eblis reports sorrowfully, "by the thickness of the coats of paint (duly given in nds of the inch) she would not appear to have been a very new ship." a fugitive on fire new or old, the enemy had done her best. she had completely demolished eblis's bridge and searchlight platform, brought down the mast and the fore-funnel, ruined the whaler and the dinghy, split the foc'sle open above water from the stem to the galley which is abaft the bridge, and below water had opened it up from the stem to the second bulkhead. she had further ripped off eblis's skin-plating for an amazing number of yards on one side of her, and had fired a couple of large-calibre shells into eblis at point-blank range, narrowly missing her vitals. even so, eblis is as impartial as a prize-court. she reports that the second shot, a trifle of eight inches, "may have been fired at a different time or just after colliding." but the night was yet young, and "just after getting clear of this cruiser an enemy battle-cruiser grazed past our stern at high speed" and again the judgmatic mind--"i think she must have intended to ram us." she was a large three-funnelled thing, her centre funnel shot away and "lights were flickering under her foc'sle as if she was on fire forward." fancy the vision of her, hurtling out of the dark, red-lighted from within, and fleeing on like a man with his throat cut! [as an interlude, all enemy cruisers that night were not keen on ramming. they wanted to get home. a man i know who was on another part of the drive saw a covey bolt through our destroyers; and had just settled himself for a shot at one of them when the night threw up a second bird coming down full speed on his other beam. he had bare time to jink between the two as they whizzed past. one switched on her searchlight and fired a whole salvo at him point blank. the heavy stuff went between his funnels. she must have sighted along her own beam of light, which was about a thousand yards. "how did you feel?" i asked. "i was rather sick. it was my best chance all that night, and i had to miss it or be cut in two." "what happened to the cruisers?" "oh, they went on, and i heard 'em being attended to by some of our fellows. they didn't know what they were doing, or they couldn't have missed me sitting, the way they did.] the confidential books after all that eblis picked herself up, and discovered that she was still alive, with a dog's chance of getting to port. but she did not bank on it. that grand slam had wrecked the bridge, pinning the commander under the wreckage. by the time he had extricated himself he "considered it advisable to throw overboard the steel chest and dispatch-box of confidential and secret books." these are never allowed to fall into strange hands, and their proper disposal is the last step but one in the ritual of the burial service of his majesty's ships at sea. gehenna, afire and sinking, out somewhere in the dark, was going through it on her own account. this is her acting sub-lieutenant's report: "the confidential books were got up. the first lieutenant gave the order: 'every man aft,' and the confidential books were thrown overboard. the ship soon afterwards heeled over to starboard and the bows went under. the first lieutenant gave the order: 'everybody for themselves.' the ship sank in about a minute, the stern going straight up into the air." but it was not written in the book of fate that stripped and battered eblis should die that night as gehenna died. after the burial of the books it was found that the several fires on her were manageable, that she "was not making water aft of the damage," which meant two-thirds of her were, more or less, in commission, and, best of all, that three boilers were usable in spite of the cruiser's shells. so she "shaped course and speed to make the least water and the most progress towards land." on the way back the wind shifted eight points without warning--it was this shift, if you remember, that so embarrassed cripple and paralytic on their homeward crawl--and, what with one thing and another, eblis was unable to make port till the scandalously late hour of noon on june , "the mutual ramming having occurred about . p.m. on may ." she says, this time without any legal reservation whatever, "i cannot speak too highly of the courage, discipline, and devotion of the officers and ship's company." her recommendations are a compendium of godly deeds for the use of mariners. they cover pretty much all that man may be expected to do. there was, as there always is, a first lieutenant who, while his commander was being extricated from the bridge wreckage, took charge of affairs and steered the ship first from the engine-room, or what remained of it, and later from aft, and otherwise manoeuvred as requisite, among doubtful bulkheads. in his leisure he "improvised means of signalling," and if there be not one joyous story behind that smooth sentence i am a hun! the art of improvising they all improvised like the masters of craft they were. the chief engine-room artificer, after he had helped to put out fires, improvised stops to the gaps which were left by the carrying away of the forward funnel and mast. he got and kept up steam "to a much higher point than would have appeared at all possible," and when the sea rose, as it always does if you are in trouble, he "improvised pumping and drainage arrangements, thus allowing the ship to steam at a good speed on the whole." there could not have been more than feet of hole. the surgeon--a probationer--performed an amputation single-handed in the wreckage by the bridge, and by his "wonderful skill, resource, and unceasing care and devotion undoubtedly saved the lives of the many seriously wounded men." that no horror might be lacking, there was "a short circuit among the bridge wreckage for a considerable time." the searchlight and wireless were tangled up together, and the electricity leaked into everything. there were also three wise men who saved the ship whose names must not be forgotten. they were chief engine-room artificer lee, stoker petty officer gardiner, and stoker elvins. when the funnel carried away it was touch and go whether the foremost boiler would not explode. these three "put on respirators and kept the fans going till all fumes, etc., were cleared away." to each man, you will observe, his own particular hell which he entered of his own particular initiative. lastly, there were the two remaining quartermasters--mutinous dogs, both of 'em--one wounded in the right hand and the other in the left, who took the wheel between them all the way home, thus improvising one complete navy-pattern quartermaster, and "refused to be relieved during the whole thirty-six hours before the ship returned to port." so eblis passes out of the picture with "never a moan or complaint from a single wounded man, and in spite of the rough weather of june st they all remained cheery." they had one hun cruiser, torpedoed, to their credit, and strong evidence abroad that they had knocked the end out of another. but gehenna went down, and those of her crew who remained hung on to the rafts that destroyers carry till they were picked up about the dawn by shaitan, third in the line, who, at that hour, was in no shape to give much help. here is shaitan's tale. she saw the unknown cruisers overtake the flotilla, saw their leader switch on searchlights and open fire as she drew abreast of gehenna, and at once fired a torpedo at the third german ship. shaitan could not see eblis, her next ahead, for, as we know, eblis after firing her torpedoes had hauled off to reload. when the enemy switched his searchlights off shaitan hauled out too. it is not wholesome for destroyers to keep on the same course within a thousand yards of big enemy cruisers. she picked up a destroyer of another division, goblin, who for the moment had not been caught by the enemy's searchlights and had profited by this decent obscurity to fire a torpedo at the hindmost of the cruisers. almost as shaitan took station behind goblin the latter was lighted up by a large ship and heavily fired at. the enemy fled, but she left goblin out of control, with a grisly list of casualties, and her helm jammed. goblin swerved, returned, and swerved again; shaitan astern tried to clear her, and the two fell aboard each other, goblin's bows deep in shaitan's fore-bridge. while they hung thus, locked, an unknown destroyer rammed shaitan aft, cutting off several feet of her stern and leaving her rudder jammed hard over. as complete a mess as the personal devil himself could have devised, and all due to the merest accident of a few panicky salvoes. presently the two ships worked clear in a smother of steam and oil, and went their several ways. quite a while after she had parted from shaitan, goblin discovered several of shaitan's people, some of them wounded, on her own foc'sle, where they had been pitched by the collision. goblin, working her way homeward on such boilers as remained, carried on a one-gun fight at a few cables' distance with some enemy destroyers, who, not knowing what state she was in, sheered off after a few rounds. shaitan, holed forward and opened up aft, came across the survivors from gehenna clinging to their raft, and took them aboard. then some of our destroyers--they were thick on the sea that night--tried to tow her stern-first, for goblin had cut her up badly forward. but, since shaitan lacked any stern, and her rudder was jammed hard across where the stern should have been, the hawsers parted, and, after leave asked of lawful authority, across all that waste of waters, they sank shaitan by gun-fire, having first taken all the proper steps about the confidential books. yet shaitan had had her little crumb of comfort ere the end. while she lay crippled she saw quite close to her a german cruiser that was trailing homeward in the dawn gradually heel over and sink. this completes my version of the various accounts of the four destroyers directly concerned for a few hours, on one minute section of one wing of our battle. other ships witnessed other aspects of the agony and duly noted them as they went about their business. one of our battleships, for instance, made out by the glare of burning gehenna that the supposed cruiser that eblis torpedoed was a german battleship of a certain class. so gehenna did not die in vain, and we may take it that the discovery did not unduly depress eblis's wounded in hospital. asking for trouble the rest of the flotilla that the four destroyers belonged to had their own adventures later. one of them, chasing or being chased, saw goblin out of control just before goblin and shaitan locked, and narrowly escaped adding herself to that triple collision. another loosed a couple of torpedoes at the enemy ships who were attacking gehenna, which, perhaps, accounts for the anxiety of the enemy to break away from that hornets' nest as soon as possible. half a dozen or so of them ran into four german battleships, which they set about torpedoing at ranges varying from half a mile to a mile and a half. it was asking for trouble and they got it; but they got in return at least one big ship, and the same observant battleship of ours who identified eblis's bird reported _three_ satisfactory explosions in half an hour, followed by a glare that lit up all the sky. one of the flotilla, closing on what she thought was the smoke of a sister in difficulties, found herself well in among the four battleships. "it was too late to get away," she says, so she attacked, fired her torpedo, was caught up in the glare of a couple of searchlights, and pounded to pieces in five minutes, not even her rafts being left. she went down with her colours flying, having fought to the last available gun. another destroyer who had borne a hand in gehenna's trouble had her try at the four battleships and got in a torpedo at yards. she saw it explode and the ship take a heavy list. "then i was chased," which is not surprising. she picked up a friend who could only do knots. they sighted several hun destroyers who fled from them; then dropped on to four hun destroyers all together, who made great parade of commencing action, but soon afterwards "thought better of it, and turned away." so you see, in that flotilla alone there was every variety of fight, from the ordered attacks of squadrons under control, to single ship affairs, every turn of which depended on the second's decision of the men concerned; endurance to the hopeless end; bluff and cunning; reckless advance and red-hot flight; clear vision and as much of blank bewilderment as the senior service permits its children to indulge in. that is not much. when a destroyer who has been dodging enemy torpedoes and gun-fire in the dark realises about midnight that she is "following a strange british flotilla, having lost sight of my own," she "decides to remain with them," and shares their fortunes and whatever language is going. if lost hounds could speak when they cast up next day, after an unchecked night among the wild life of the dark, they would talk much as our destroyers do. the doorkeepers of zion, they do not always stand in helmet and whole armour, with halberds in their hand; but, being sure of zion, and all her mysteries, they rest awhile in zion, sit down and smile in zion; ay, even jest in zion, in zion, at their ease. the gatekeepers of baal, they dare not sit or lean, but fume and fret and posture and foam and curse between; for being bound to baal, whose sacrifice is vain, their rest is scant with baal, they glare and pant for baal, they mouth and rant for baal, for baal in their pain. but we will go to zion, by choice and not through dread, with these our present comrades and those our present dead; and, being free of zion in both her fellowships, sit down and sup in zion-- stand up and drink in zion whatever cup in zion is offered to our lips! iii the meaning of "joss" a young officer's letter as one digs deeper into the records, one sees the various temperaments of men revealing themselves through all the formal wording. one commander may be an expert in torpedo-work, whose first care is how and where his shots went, and whether, under all circumstances of pace, light, and angle, the best had been achieved. destroyers do not carry unlimited stocks of torpedoes. it rests with commanders whether they shall spend with a free hand at first or save for night-work ahead--risk a possible while he is yet afloat, or hang on coldly for a certainty. so in the old whaling days did the harponeer bring up or back off his boat till some shift of the great fish's bulk gave him sure opening at the deep-seated life. and then comes the question of private judgment. "i thought so-and-so would happen. therefore, i did thus and thus." things may or may not turn out as anticipated, but that is merely another of the million chances of the sea. take a case in point. a flotilla of our destroyers sighted six (there had been eight the previous afternoon) german battleships of kingly and imperial caste very early in the morning of the st june, and duly attacked. at first our people ran parallel to the enemy, then, as far as one can make out, headed them and swept round sharp to the left, firing torpedoes from their port or left-hand tubes. between them they hit a battleship, which went up in flame and _débris_. but one of the flotilla had not turned with the rest. she had anticipated that the attack would be made on another quarter, and, for certain technical reasons, she was not ready. when she was, she turned, and single-handed--the rest of the flotilla having finished and gone on--carried out two attacks on the five remaining battleships. she got one of them amidships, causing a terrific explosion and flame above the masthead, which signifies that the magazine has been touched off. she counted the battleships when the smoke had cleared, and there were but four of them. she herself was not hit, though shots fell close. she went her way, and, seeing nothing of her sisters, picked up another flotilla and stayed with it till the end. do i make clear the maze of blind hazard and wary judgment in which our men of the sea must move? saved by a smoke screen some of the original flotilla were chased and headed about by cruisers after their attack on the six battleships, and a single shell from battleship or cruiser reduced one of them to such a condition that she was brought home by her sub-lieutenant and a midshipman. her captain, first lieutenant, gunner, torpedo coxswain, and both signalmen were either killed or wounded; the bridge, with charts, instruments, and signalling gear went; all torpedoes were expended; a gun was out of action, and the usual cordite fires developed. luckily, the engines were workable. she escaped under cover of a smoke-screen, which is an unbearably filthy outpouring of the densest smoke, made by increasing the proportion of oil to air in the furnace-feed. it rolls forth from the funnels looking solid enough to sit upon, spreads in a searchlight-proof pat of impenetrable beastliness, and in still weather hangs for hours. but it saved that ship. it is curious to note the subdued tone of a boy's report when by some accident of slaughter he is raised to command. there are certain formalities which every ship must comply with on entering certain ports. no fully-striped commander would trouble to detail them any more than he would the aspect of his club porter. the young 'un puts it all down, as who should say: "i rang the bell, wiped my feet on the mat, and asked if they were at home." he is most careful of the port proprieties, and since he will be sub. again to-morrow, and all his equals will tell him exactly how he ought to have handled her, he almost apologises for the steps he took--deeds which ashore might be called cool or daring. the senior service does not gush. there are certain formulae appropriate to every occasion. one of our destroyers, who was knocked out early in the day and lay helpless, was sighted by several of her companions. one of them reported her to the authorities, but, being busy at the time, said he did not think himself justified in hampering himself with a disabled ship in the middle of an action. it was not as if she was sinking either. she was only holed foreward and aft, with a bad hit in the engine-room, and her steering-gear knocked out. in this posture she cheered the passing ships, and set about repairing her hurts with good heart and a smiling countenance. she managed to get under some sort of way at midnight, and next day was taken in tow by a friend. she says officially, "his assistance was invaluable, as i had no oil left and met heavy weather." what actually happened was much less formal. fleet destroyers, as a rule, do not worry about navigation. they take their orders from the flagship, and range out and return, on signal, like sheep-dogs whose fixed point is their shepherd. consequently, when they break loose on their own they may fetch up rather doubtful of their whereabouts--as this injured one did. after she had been so kindly taken in tow, she inquired of her friend ("message captain to captain")--"have you any notion where we are?" the friend replied, "i have not, but i will find out." so the friend waited on the sun with the necessary implements, which luckily had not been smashed, and in due time made: "our observed position at this hour is thus and thus." the tow, irreverently, "is it? didn't know you were a navigator." the friend, with hauteur, "yes; it's rather a hobby of mine." the tow, "had no idea it was as bad as all that; but i'm afraid i'll have to trust you this time. go ahead, and be quick about it." they reached a port, correctly enough, but to this hour the tow, having studied with the friend at a place called dartmouth, insists that it was pure joss. concerning joss and joss, which is luck, fortune, destiny, the irony of fate or nemesis, is the greatest of all the battle-gods that move on the waters. as i will show you later, knowledge of gunnery and a delicate instinct for what is in the enemy's minds may enable a destroyer to thread her way, slowing, speeding, and twisting between the heavy salvoes of opposing fleets. as the dank-smelling waterspouts rise and break, she judges where the next grove of them will sprout. if her judgment is correct, she may enter it in her report as a little feather in her cap. but it is joss when the stray -inch shell, hurled by a giant at some giant ten miles away, falls on her from heaven and wipes out her and her profound calculations. this was seen to happen to a hun destroyer in mid-attack. while she was being laboriously dealt with by a -inch gun something immense took her, and--she was not. joss it is, too, when the cruiser's -inch shot, that should have raked out your innards from the forward boiler to the ward-room stove, deflects miraculously, like a twig dragged through deep water, and, almost returning on its track, skips off unbursten and leaves you reprieved by the breadth of a nail from three deaths in one. later, a single splinter, no more, may cut your oil-supply pipes as dreadfully and completely as a broken wind-screen in a collision cuts the surprised motorist's throat. then you must lie useless, fighting oil-fires while the precious fuel gutters away till you have to ask leave to escape while there are yet a few tons left. one ship who was once bled white by such a piece of joss, suggested it would be better that oil-pipes should be led along certain lines which she sketched. as if that would make any difference to joss when he wants to show what he can do! our sea-people, who have worked with him for a thousand wettish years, have acquired something of joss's large toleration and humour. he causes ships in thick weather, or under strain, to mistake friends for enemies. at such times, if your heart is full of highly organised hate, you strafe frightfully and efficiently till one of you perishes, and the survivor reports wonders which are duly wirelessed all over the world. but if you worship joss, you reflect, you put two and two together in a casual insular way, and arrive--sometimes both parties arrive--at instinctive conclusions which avoid trouble. an affair in the north sea witness this tale. it does not concern the jutland fight, but another little affair which took place a while ago in the north sea. it was understood that a certain type of cruiser of ours would _not_ be taking part in a certain show. therefore, if anyone saw cruisers very like them he might blaze at them with a clear conscience, for they would be hun-boats. and one of our destroyers--thick weather as usual--spied the silhouettes of cruisers exactly like our own stealing across the haze. said the commander to his sub., with an inflection neither period, exclamation, nor interrogation-mark can render--"that--is--them." said the sub. in precisely the same tone--"that is them, sir." "as my sub.," said the commander, "your observation is strictly in accord with the traditions of the service. now, as man to man, what _are_ they?" "we-el," said the sub., "since you put it that way, i'm d----d if _i'd_ fire." and they didn't, and they were quite right. the destroyer had been off on another job, and joss had jammed the latest wireless orders to her at the last moment. but joss had also put it into the hearts of the boys to save themselves and others. i hold no brief for the hun, but honestly i think he has not lied as much about the jutland fight as people believe, and that when he protests he sank a ship, he _did_ very completely sink a ship. i am the more confirmed in this belief by a still small voice among the jutland reports, musing aloud over an account of an unaccountable outlying brawl witnessed by one of our destroyers. the voice suggests that what the destroyer saw was one german ship being sunk by another. amen! our destroyers saw a good deal that night on the face of the waters. some of them who were working in "areas of comparative calm" submit charts of their tangled courses, all studded with notes along the zigzag--something like this:-- p.m.--_heard explosion to the n.w._ (a neat arrow-head points that way.) half an inch farther along, a short change of course, and the word _hit_ explains the meaning of--"_sighted enemy cruiser engaged with destroyers._" another twist follows. " . p.m.--_passed wreckage. engaged enemy destroyers port beam opposite courses._" a long straight line without incident, then a tangle, and--_picked up survivors so-and-so_. a stretch over to some ship that they were transferred to, a fresh departure, and another brush with "_single destroyer on parallel course. hit. . a.m.--passed bows enemy cruiser sticking up. . .--joined flotilla for attack on battleship squadron._" so it runs on--one little ship in a few short hours passing through more wonders of peril and accident than all the old fleets ever dreamed. a "child's" letter in years to come naval experts will collate all those diagrams, and furiously argue over them. a lot of the destroyer work was inevitably as mixed as bombing down a trench, as the scuffle of a polo match, or as the hot heaving heart of a football scrum. it is difficult to realise when one considers the size of the sea, that it is that very size and absence of boundary which helps the confusion. to give an idea, here is a letter (it has been quoted before, i believe, but it is good enough to repeat many times), from a nineteen-year-old child to his friend aged seventeen (and minus one leg), in a hospital: "i'm so awfully sorry you weren't in it. it was rather terrible, but a wonderful experience, and i wouldn't have missed it for anything, but, by jove, it isn't a thing one wants to make a habit of. "i must say it is very different from what i expected. i expected to be excited, but was not a bit. it's hard to express what we did feel like, but you know the sort of feeling one has when one goes in to bat at cricket, and rather a lot depends upon your doing well, and you are waiting for the first ball. well, it's very much the same as that. do you know what i mean? a sort of tense feeling, not quite knowing what to expect. one does not feel the slightest bit frightened, and the idea that there's a chance of you and your ship being scuppered does not enter one's head. there are too many other things to think about." follows the usual "no ship like our ship" talkee, and a note of where she was at the time. "then they ordered us to attack, so we bustled off full bore. being navigator, also having control of all the guns, i was on the bridge all the time, and remained for twelve hours without leaving it at all. when we got fairly close i sighted a good-looking hun destroyer, which i thought i'd like to strafe. you know, it's awful fun to know that you can blaze off at a real ship, and do as much damage as you like. well, i'd just got their range on the guns, and we'd just fired one round, when some more of our destroyers coming from the opposite direction got between us and the enemy and completely blanketed us, so we had to stop, which was rather rot. shortly afterwards they recalled us, so we bustled back again. how any destroyer got out of it is perfectly wonderful. "literally there were hundreds of progs (shells falling) all round us, from a -inch to a -inch, and you know what a big splash a -inch bursting in the water does make. we got washed through by the spray. just as we were getting back, a whole salvo of big shells fell just in front of us and short of our big ships. the skipper and i did rapid calculations as to how long it would take them to reload, fire again, time of flight, etc., as we had to go right through the spot. we came to the conclusion that, as they were short a bit, they would probably go up a bit, and (they?) didn't, but luckily they altered deflection, and the next fell right astern of us. anyhow, we managed to come out of that row without the ship or a man on board being touched. what the big ships stand "it's extraordinary the amount of knocking about the big ships can stand. one saw them hit, and they seemed to be one mass of flame and smoke, and you think they're gone, but when the smoke clears away they are apparently none the worse and still firing away. but to see a ship blow up is a terrible and wonderful sight; an enormous volume of flame and smoke almost feet high and great pieces of metal, etc., blown sky-high, and then when the smoke clears not a sign of the ship. we saw one other extraordinary sight. of course, you know the north sea is very shallow. we came across a hun cruiser absolutely on end, his stern on the bottom and his bow sticking up about feet in the water; and a little farther on a destroyer in precisely the same position. "i couldn't be certain, but i rather think i saw your old ship crashing along and blazing away, but i expect you have heard from some of your pals. but the night was far and away the worse time of all. it was pitch dark, and, of course, absolutely no lights, and the firing seems so much more at night, as you could see the flashes lighting up the sky, and it seemed to make much more noise, and you could see ships on fire and blowing up. of course _we_ showed absolutely no lights. one expected to be surprised any moment, and eventually we were. we suddenly found ourselves within yards of two or three big hun cruisers. they switched on their searchlights and started firing like nothing on earth. then they put their searchlights on us, but for some extraordinary reason did not fire on us. as, of course, we were going full speed we lost them in a moment, but i must say, that i, and i think everybody else, thought that that was the end, but one does not feel afraid or panicky. i think i felt rather cooler then than at any other time. i asked lots of people afterwards what they felt like, and they all said the same thing. it all happens in a few seconds; one hasn't time to think; but never in all my life have i been so thankful to see daylight again--and i don't think i ever want to see another night like that--it's such an awful strain. one does not notice it at the time, but it's the reaction afterwards. "i never noticed i was tired till i got back to harbour, and then we all turned in and absolutely slept like logs. we were seventy-two hours with little or no sleep. the skipper was perfectly wonderful. he never left the bridge for a minute for twenty-four hours, and was on the bridge or in the chart-house the whole time we were out (the chart-house is an airy dog-kennel that opens off the bridge) and i've never seen anybody so cool and unruffled. he stood there smoking his pipe as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. "one quite forgot all about time. i was relieved at a.m., and on looking at my watch found i had been up there nearly twelve hours, and then discovered i was rather hungry. the skipper and i had some cheese and biscuits, ham sandwiches, and water on the bridge, and then i went down and brewed some cocoa and ship's biscuit." not in the thick of the fight, not in the press of the odds, do the heroes come to their height or we know the demi-gods. that stands over till peace. we can only perceive men returned from the seas, very grateful for leave. they grant us sudden days snatched from their business of war. we are too close to appraise what manner of men they are. and whether their names go down with age-kept victories, or whether they battle and drown unreckoned is hid from our eyes. they are too near to be great, but our children shall understand when and how our fate was changed, and by whose hand. our children shall measure their worth. we are content to be blind, for we know that we walk on a new-born earth with the saviours of mankind. iv the minds of men how it is done what mystery is there like the mystery of the other man's job--or what world so cut off as that which he enters when he goes to it? the eminent surgeon is altogether such an one as ourselves, even till his hand falls on the knob of the theatre door. after that, in the silence, among the ether fumes, no man except his acolytes, and they won't tell, has ever seen his face. so with the unconsidered curate. yet, before the war, he had more experience of the business and detail of death than any of the people who contemned him. his face also, as he stands his bedside-watches--that countenance with which he shall justify himself to his maker--none have ever looked upon. even the ditcher is a priest of mysteries at the high moment when he lays out in his mind his levels and the fall of the water that he alone can draw off clearly. but catch any of these men five minutes after they have left their altars, and you will find the doors are shut. chance sent me almost immediately after the jutland fight a lieutenant of one of the destroyers engaged. among other matters, i asked him if there was any particular noise. "well, i haven't been in the trenches, of course," he replied, "but i don't think there could have been much more noise than there was." this bears out a report of a destroyer who could not be certain whether an enemy battleship had blown up or not, saying that, in that particular corner, it would have been impossible to identify anything less than the explosion of a whole magazine. "it wasn't exactly noise," he reflected. "noise is what you take in from outside. this was _inside_ you. it seemed to lift you right out of everything." "and how did the light affect one?" i asked, trying to work out a theory that noise and light produced beyond known endurance form an unknown anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to, but infinitely more potent than, the soothing effect of the smoke-pall of ancient battles. "the lights were rather curious," was the answer. "i don't know that one noticed searchlights particularly, unless they meant business; but when a lot of big guns loosed off together, the whole sea was lit up and you could see our destroyers running about like cockroaches on a tin soup-plate." "then is black the best colour for our destroyers? some commanders seem to think we ought to use grey." "blessed if _i_ know," said young dante. "everything shows black in that light. then it all goes out again with a bang. trying for the eyes if you are spotting." ship dogs "and how did the dogs take it?" i pursued. there are several destroyers more or less owned by pet dogs, who start life as the chance-found property of a stoker, and end in supreme command of the bridge. "most of 'em didn't like it a bit. they went below one time, and wanted to be loved. they knew it wasn't ordinary practice." "what did arabella do?" i had heard a good deal of arabella. "oh, arabella's _quite_ different. her job has always been to look after her master's pyjamas--folded up at the head of the bunk, you know. she found out pretty soon the bridge was no place for a lady, so she hopped downstairs and got in. you know how she makes three little jumps to it--first, on to the chair; then on the flap-table, and then up on the pillow. when the show was over, there she was as usual." "was she glad to see her master?" "_ra-ather._ arabella was the bold, gay lady-dog _then_!" now arabella is between nine and eleven and a half inches long. "does the hun run to pets at all?" "i shouldn't say so. he's an unsympathetic felon--the hun. but he might cherish a dachshund or so. we never picked up any ships' pets off him, and i'm sure we should if there had been." that i believed as implicitly as the tale of a destroyer attack some months ago, the object of which was to flush zeppelins. it succeeded, for the flotilla was attacked by several. right in the middle of the flurry, a destroyer asked permission to stop and lower dinghy to pick up ship's dog which had fallen overboard. permission was granted, and the dog was duly rescued. "lord knows what the hun made of it," said my informant. "he was rumbling round, dropping bombs; and the dinghy was digging out for all she was worth, and the dog-fiend was swimming for dunkirk. it must have looked rather mad from above. but they saved the dog-fiend, and then everybody swore he was a german spy in disguise." the fight "and--about this jutland fight?" i hinted, not for the first time. "oh, that was just a fight. there was more of it than any other fight, i suppose, but i expect all modern naval actions must be pretty much the same." "but what does one _do_--how does one feel?" i insisted, though i knew it was hopeless. "one does one's job. things are happening all the time. a man may be right under your nose one minute--serving a gun or something--and the next minute he isn't there." "and one notices that at the time?" "yes. but there's no time to keep _on_ noticing it. you've got to carry on somehow or other, or your show stops. i tell you what one _does_ notice, though. if one goes below for anything, or has to pass through a flat somewhere, and one sees the old wardroom clock ticking, or a photograph pinned up, or anything of that sort, one notices _that_. oh yes, and there was another thing--the way a ship seemed to blow up if you were far off her. you'd see a glare, then a blaze, and then the smoke--miles high, lifting quite slowly. then you'd get the row and the jar of it--just like bumping over submarines. then, a long while after p'raps, you run through a regular rain of bits of burnt paper coming down on the decks--like showers of volcanic ash, you know." the door of the operating-room seemed just about to open, but it shut again. "and the huns' gunnery?" "that was various. sometimes they began quite well, and went to pieces after they'd been strafed a little; but sometimes they picked up again. there was one hun-boat that got no end of a hammering, and it seemed to do her gunnery good. she improved tremendously till we sank her. i expect we'd knocked out some scientific hun in the controls, and he'd been succeeded by a man who knew how." it used to be "fritz" last year when they spoke of the enemy. now it is hun or, as i have heard, "yahun," being a superlative of yahoo. in the napoleonic wars we called the frenchmen too many names for any one of them to endure; but this is the age of standardisation. "and what about our lower deck?" i continued. "they? oh, they carried on as usual. it takes a lot to impress the lower deck when they're busy." and he mentioned several little things that confirmed this. they had a great deal to do, and they did it serenely because they had been trained to carry on under all conditions without panicking. what they did in the way of running repairs was even more wonderful, if that be possible, than their normal routine. the lower deck nowadays is full of strange fish with unlooked-for accomplishments, as in the recorded case of two simple seamen of a destroyer who, when need was sorest, came to the front as trained experts in first-aid. "and now--what about the actual hun losses at jutland?" i ventured. "you've seen the list, haven't you?" "yes, but it occurred to me--that they might have been a shade under-estimated, and i thought perhaps--" a perfectly plain asbestos fire-curtain descended in front of the already locked door. it was none of his business to dispute the drive. if there were any discrepancies between estimate and results, one might be sure that the enemy knew about them, which was the chief thing that mattered. it was, said he, joss that the light was so bad at the hour of the last round-up when our main fleet had come down from the north and shovelled the hun round on his tracks. _per contra_, had it been any other kind of weather, the odds were the hun would not have ventured so far. as it was, the hun's fleet had come out and gone back again, none the better for air and exercise. we must be thankful for what we had managed to pick up. but talking of picking up, there was an instance of almost unparalleled joss which had stuck in his memory. a soldier-man, related to one of the officers in one of our ships that was put down, had got five days' leave from the trenches which he spent with his relative aboard, and thus dropped in for the whole performance. he had been employed in helping to spot, and had lived up a mast till the ship sank, when he stepped off into the water and swam about till he was fished out and put ashore. by that time, the tale goes, his engine-room-dried khaki had shrunk half-way up his legs and arms, in which costume he reported himself to the war office, and pleaded for one little day's extension of leave to make himself decent. "not a bit of it," said the war office. "if you choose to spend your leave playing with sailor-men and getting wet all over, that's _your_ concern. you will return to duty by to-night's boat." (this may be a libel on the w.o., but it sounds very like them.) "and he had to," said the boy, "but i expect he spent the next week at headquarters telling fat generals all about the fight." "and, of course, the admiralty gave _you_ all lots of leave?" "us? yes, heaps. we had nothing to do except clean down and oil up, and be ready to go to sea again in a few hours." that little fact was brought out at the end of almost every destroyer's report. "having returned to base at such and such a time, i took in oil, etc., and reported ready for sea at ---- o'clock." when you think of the amount of work a ship needs even after peace manoeuvres, you can realise what has to be done on the heels of an action. and, as there is nothing like housework for the troubled soul of a woman, so a general clean-up is good for sailors. i had this from a petty officer who had also passed through deep waters. "if you've seen your best friend go from alongside you, and your own officer, and your own boat's crew with him, and things of that kind, a man's best comfort is small variegated jobs which he is damned for continuous." the silent navy presently my friend of the destroyer went back to his stark, desolate life, where feelings do not count, and the fact of his being cold, wet, sea-sick, sleepless, or dog-tired had no bearing whatever on his business, which was to turn out at any hour in any weather and do or endure, decently, according to ritual, what that hour and that weather demanded. it is hard to reach the kernel of navy minds. the unbribable seas and mechanisms they work on and through have given them the simplicity of elements and machines. the habit of dealing with swift accident, a life of closest and strictest association with their own caste as well as contact with all kinds of men all earth over, have added an immense cunning to those qualities; and that they are from early youth cut out of all feelings that may come between them and their ends, makes them more incomprehensible than jesuits, even to their own people. what, then, must they be to the enemy? here is a service which prowls forth and achieves, at the lowest, something of a victory. how far-reaching a one only the war's end will reveal. it returns in gloomy silence, broken by the occasional hoot of the long-shore loafer, after issuing a bulletin which though it may enlighten the professional mind does not exhilarate the layman. meantime the enemy triumphs, wirelessly, far and wide. a few frigid and perfunctory-seeming contradictions are put forward against his resounding claims; a naval expert or two is heard talking "off"; the rest is silence. anon, the enemy, after a prodigious amount of explanation which not even the neutrals seem to take any interest in, revises his claims, and, very modestly, enlarges his losses. still no sign. after weeks there appears a document giving our version of the affair, which is as colourless, detached, and scrupulously impartial as the findings of a prize-court. it opines that the list of enemy losses which it submits "give the minimum in regard to numbers though it is possibly not entirely accurate in regard to the particular class of vessel, especially those that were sunk during the night attacks." here the matter rests and remains--just like our blockade. there is an insolence about it all that makes one gasp. yet that insolence springs naturally and unconsciously as an oath, out of the same spirit that caused the destroyer to pick up the dog. the reports themselves, and tenfold more the stories not in the reports, are charged with it, but no words by any outsider can reproduce just that professional tone and touch. a man writing home after the fight, points out that the great consolation for not having cleaned up the enemy altogether was that "anyhow those east coast devils"--a fellow-squadron, if you please, which up till jutland had had most of the fighting--"were not there. they missed that show. we were as cock-ahoop as a girl who had been to a dance that her sister has missed." this was one of the figures in that dance: "a little british destroyer, her midships rent by a great shell meant for a battle-cruiser; exuding steam from every pore; able to go ahead but not to steer; unable to get out of anybody's way, likely to be rammed by any one of a dozen ships; her syren whimpering: 'let me through! make way!'; her crew fallen in aft dressed in life-belts ready for her final plunge, and cheering wildly as it might have been an enthusiastic crowd when the king passes." let us close on that note. we have been compassed about so long and so blindingly by wonders and miracles; so overwhelmed by revelations of the spirit of men in the basest and most high; that we have neither time to keep tally of these furious days, nor mind to discern upon which hour of them our world's fate hung. the neutral brethren, how shall it fare with me when the war is laid aside, if it be proven that i am he for whom a world has died? if it be proven that all my good, and the greater good i will make, were purchased me by a multitude who suffered for my sake? that i was delivered by mere mankind vowed to one sacrifice, and not, as i hold them, battle-blind, but dying with opened eyes? that they did not ask me to draw the sword when they stood to endure their lot, what they only looked to me for a word, and i answered i knew them not? if it be found, when the battle clears, their death has set me free, then how shall i live with myself through the years which they have bought for me? brethren, how must it fare with me, or how am i justified, if it be proven that i am he for whom mankind has died; if it be proven that i am he who being questioned denied? the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. * * * * * the seven seas by rudyard kipling author of many inventions, barrack-room ballads, the jungle books, etc. [illustration] new york d. appleton and company copyright, , by rudyard kipling this book is also protected by copyright under the laws of great britain, and the several poems contained herein have also been severally copyrighted in the united states of america. contents. page dedication to the city of bombay v a song of the english the first chantey the last chantey the merchantmen mcandrews' hymn the miracles the native-born the king the rhyme of the three sealers the derelict the song of the banjo "the liner she's a lady" mulholland's contract anchor song the sea-wife hymn before action to the true romance the flowers the last rhyme of true thomas the story of ung the three-decker an american the mary gloster sestina of the tramp-royal barrack-room ballads. "back to the army again" "birds of prey" march "soldier an' sailor too" sappers that day "the men that fought at minden" cholera camp the ladies bill 'awkins the mother-lodge "follow me 'ome" the sergeant's weddin' the jacket the 'eathen the shut-eye sentry "mary, pity women!" for to admire l'envoi dedication to the city of bombay. the cities are full of pride, challenging each to each-- this from her mountain-side, that from her burthened beach. they count their ships full tale-- their corn and oil and wine, derrick and loom and bale, and rampart's gun-flecked line; city by city they hail: "hast aught to match with mine?" and the men that breed from them they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown. when they talk with the stranger bands, dazed and newly alone; when they walk in the stranger lands, by roaring streets unknown; blessing her where she stands for strength above their own. (on high to hold her fame that stands all fame beyond, by oath to back the same, most faithful-foolish-fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond.) so thank i god my birth fell not in isles aside-- waste headlands of the earth, or warring tribes untried-- but that she lent me worth and gave me right to pride. surely in toil or fray under an alien sky, comfort it is to say: "of no mean city am i." (neither by service nor fee come i to mine estate-- mother of cities to me, for i was born in her gate, between the palms and the sea, where the world-end steamers wait.) now for this debt i owe, and for her far-borne cheer must i make haste and go with tribute to her pier. and she shall touch and remit after the use of kings (orderly, ancient, fit) my deep-sea plunderings, and purchase in all lands. and this we do for a sign her power is over mine, and mine i hold at her hands. a song of the english. _fair is our lot--o goodly is our heritage! (humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!) for the lord our god most high he hath made the deep as dry, he hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth!_ _yea, though we sinned--and our rulers went from righteousness-- deep in all dishonour though we stained our garments' hem. oh be ye not dismayed, though we stumbled and we strayed, we were led by evil counsellors--the lord shall deal with them._ _hold ye the faith--the faith our fathers sealèd us; whoring not with visions--overwise and overstale. except ye pay the lord single heart and single sword, of your children in their bondage shall he ask them treble-tale._ _keep ye the law--be swift in all obedience. clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. make ye sure to each his own that he reap what he hath sown; by the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the lord._ * * * * * _hear now a song--a song of broken interludes-- a song of little cunning; of a singer nothing worth. through the naked words and mean may ye see the truth between as the singer knew and touched it in the ends of all the earth!_ the coastwise lights. our brows are wreathed with spindrift and the weed is on our knees; our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas. from reef and rock and skerry--over headland, ness and voe-- the coastwise lights of england watch the ships of england go! through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors; through the yelling channel tempest when the syren hoots and roars-- by day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail-- as the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail. we bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care, the flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer; from our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains the lover from the sea-rim drawn--his love in english lanes. we greet the clippers wing-and-wing that race the southern wool; we warn the crawling cargo-tanks of bremen, leith and hull; to each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea-- the white wall-sided warships or the whalers of dundee! come up, come in from eastward, from the guard-ports of the morn! beat up, beat in from southerly, o gipsies of the horn! swift shuttles of an empire's loom that weave us main to main, the coastwise lights of england give you welcome back again! go, get you gone up-channel with the sea-crust on your plates; go, get you into london with the burden of your freights! haste, for they talk of empire there, and say, if any seek, the lights of england sent you and by silence shall ye speak. the song of the dead. _hear now the song of the dead--in the north by the torn berg-edges-- they that look still to the pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges. song of the dead in the south--in the sun by their skeleton horses, where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses._ _song of the dead in the east--in the heat-rotted jungle hollows, where the dog-ape barks in the kloof--in the brake of the buffalo-wallows. song of the dead in the west--in the barrens, the snow that betrayed them, where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the grave-mound they made them; hear now the song of the dead!_ i. we were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; we yearned beyond the skyline where the strange roads go down. came the whisper, came the vision, came the power with the need. till the soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. as the deer breaks--as the steer breaks--from the herd where they graze, in the faith of little children we went on our ways. then the wood failed--then the food failed--then the last water dried-- in the faith of little children we lay down and died. on the sand-drift--on the veldt-side--in the fern-scrub we lay, that our sons might follow after by the bones on the way. follow after--follow after! we have watered the root, and the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit! follow after--we are waiting by the trails that we lost for the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host. follow after--follow after--for the harvest is sown: by the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own! * * * * * _when drake went down to the horn and england was crowned thereby, 'twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed our lodge--our lodge was born (and england was crowned thereby)._ _which never shall close again by day nor yet by night, while man shall take his life to stake at risk of shoal or main (by day nor yet by night),_ _but standeth even so as now we witness here, while men depart, of joyful heart, adventure for to know. (as now bear witness here)._ ii. we have fed our sea for a thousand years and she calls us, still unfed, though there's never a wave of all her waves but marks our english dead: we have strawed our best to the weed's unrest to the shark and the sheering gull. if blood be the price of admiralty, lord god, we ha' paid in full! there's never a flood goes shoreward now but lifts a keel we manned; there's never an ebb goes seaward now but drops our dead on the sand-- but slinks our dead on the sands forlore, from the ducies to the swin. if blood be the price of admiralty, if blood be the price of admiralty, lord god, we ha' paid it in! we must feed our sea for a thousand years, for that is our doom and pride, as it was when they sailed with the _golden hind_ or the wreck that struck last tide-- or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef where the ghastly blue-lights flare. if blood be the price of admiralty, if blood be the price of admiralty, if blood be the price of admiralty, lord god, we ha' bought it fair! the deep-sea cables. the wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar-- down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. there is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep. here in the womb of the world--here on the tie-ribs of earth words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat-- warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth-- for a power troubles the still that has neither voice nor feet. they have wakened the timeless things; they have killed their father time; joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun. hush! men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime, and a new word runs between: whispering, "let us be one!" the song of the sons. one from the ends of the earth--gifts at an open door-- treason has much, but we, mother, thy sons have more! from the whine of a dying man, from the snarl of a wolf-pack freed, turn, for the world is thine. mother, be proud of thy seed! count, are we feeble or few? hear, is our speech so rude? look, are we poor in the land? judge, are we men of the blood? those that have stayed at thy knees, mother, go call them in-- we that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin. not in the dark do we fight--haggle and flout and gibe; selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe. gifts have we only to-day--love without promise or fee-- hear, for thy children speak, from the uttermost parts of the sea: the song of the cities. _bombay._ royal and dower-royal, i the queen fronting thy richest sea with richer hands-- a thousand mills roar through me where i glean all races from all lands. _calcutta._ me the sea-captain loved, the river built, wealth sought and kings adventured life to hold. hail, england! i am asia--power on silt, death in my hands, but gold! _madras._ clive kissed me on the mouth and eyes and brow, wonderful kisses, so that i became crowned above queens--a withered beldame now, brooding on ancient fame. _rangoon._ hail, mother! do they call me rich in trade? little care i, but hear the shorn priest drone, and watch my silk-clad lovers, man by maid, laugh 'neath my shwe dagon. _singapore._ hail, mother! east and west must seek my aid ere the spent gear shall dare the ports afar. the second doorway of the wide world's trade is mine to loose or bar. _hong-kong._ hail, mother! hold me fast; my praya sleeps under innumerable keels to-day. yet guard (and landward) or to-morrow sweeps thy warships down the bay. _halifax._ into the mist my guardian prows put forth, behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie, the warden of the honour of the north, sleepless and veiled am i! _quebec and montreal._ peace is our portion. yet a whisper rose, foolish and causeless, half in jest, half hate. now wake we and remember mighty blows, and, fearing no man, wait! _victoria._ from east to west the circling word has passed, till west is east beside our land-locked blue; from east to west the tested chain holds fast, the well-forged link rings true! _capetown._ hail! snatched and bartered oft from hand to hand, i dream my dream, by rock and heath and pine, of empire to the northward. ay, one land from lion's head to line! _melbourne._ greeting! nor fear nor favour won us place, got between greed of gold and dread of drouth, loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race that whips our harbour-mouth! _sydney._ greeting! my birth-stain have i turned to good; forcing strong wills perverse to steadfastness; the first flush of the tropics in my blood, and at my feet success! _brisbane._ the northern stirp beneath the southern skies-- i build a nation for an empire's need, suffer a little, and my land shall rise, queen over lands indeed! _hobart._ man's love first found me; man's hate made me hell; for my babes' sake i cleansed those infamies. earnest for leave to live and labour well god flung me peace and ease. _auckland._ last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart-- on us, on us the unswerving season smiles, who wonder 'mid our fern why men depart to seek the happy isles! england's answer. truly ye come of the blood; slower to bless than to ban; little used to lie down at the bidding of any man. flesh of the flesh that i bred, bone of the bone that i bare; stark as your sons shall be--stern as your fathers were. deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether, but we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come together. my arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by; sons, i have borne many sons but my dugs are not dry. look, i have made ye a place and opened wide the doors, that ye may talk together, your barons and councillors-- wards of the outer march, lords of the lower seas, ay, talk to your gray mother that bore you on her knees!-- that ye may talk together, brother to brother's face-- thus for the good of your peoples--thus for the pride of the race. also, we will make promise. so long as the blood endures, i shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours: in the day of armageddon, at the last great fight of all, that our house stand together and the pillars do not fall. draw now the three-fold knot firm on the nine-fold bands, and the law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands. this for the waxen heath, and that for the wattle-bloom, this for the maple-leaf, and that for the southern broom. the law that ye make shall be law and i do not press my will, because ye are sons of the blood and call me mother still. now must ye speak to your kinsmen and they must speak to you, after the use of the english, in straight-flung words and few. go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways, baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise. stand to your work and be wise--certain of sword and pen, who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men! the first chantey. mine was the woman to me, darkling i found her; haling her dumb from the camp, held her and bound her. hot rose her tribe on our track ere i had proved her; hearing her laugh in the gloom, greatly i loved her. swift through the forest we ran; none stood to guard us, few were my people and far; then the flood barred us-- him we call son of the sea, sullen and swollen; panting we waited the death, stealer and stolen, yet ere they came to my lance laid for the slaughter, lightly she leaped to a log lapped in the water; holding on high and apart skins that arrayed her, called she the god of the wind that he should aid her. life had the tree at that word, (praise we the giver!) otter-like left he the bank for the full river. far fell their axes behind, flashing and ringing, wonder was on me and fear, yet she was singing. low lay the land we had left. now the blue bound us, even the floor of the gods level around us. whisper there was not, nor word, shadow nor showing, still the light stirred on the deep, glowing and growing. then did he leap to his place flaring from under, he the compeller, the sun, bared to our wonder. nay, not a league from our eyes blinded with gazing, cleared he the womb of the world, huge and amazing! this we beheld (and we live)--the pit of the burning, then the god spoke to the tree for our returning; back to the beach of our flight, fearless and slowly, back to our slayers he went: but we were holy. men that were hot in that hunt, women that followed, babes that were promised our bones, trembled and wallowed: over the necks of the tribe crouching and fawning-- prophet and priestess we came back from the dawning! the last chantey. "and there was no more sea." thus said the lord in the vault above the cherubim, calling to the angels and the souls in their degree: "lo! earth has passed away on the smoke of judgment day. that our word may be established shall we gather up the sea?" loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners: "plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee! but the war is done between us, in the deep the lord hath seen us-- our bones we'll leave the barracout', and god may sink the sea!" then said the soul of judas that betrayèd him: "lord, hast thou forgotten thy covenant with me? how once a year i go to cool me on the floe, and ye take my day of mercy if ye take away the sea!" then said the soul of the angel of the off-shore wind: (he that bits the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee): "i have watch and ward to keep o'er thy wonders on the deep, and ye take mine honour from me if ye take away the sea!" loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners: "nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we! if we worked the ship together till she foundered in foul weather, are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the sea?" then said the souls of the slaves that men threw overboard: "kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we; but thy arm was strong to save, and it touched us on the wave, and we drowsed the long tides idle till thy trumpets tore the sea." then cried the soul of the stout apostle paul to god: "once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily. there were fourteen score of these, and they blessed thee on their knees, when they learned thy grace and glory under malta by the sea." loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners, plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily: "our thumbs are rough and tarred, and the tune is something hard-- may we lift a deep-sea chantey such as seamen use at sea?" then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers-- fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity: "ho, we revel in our chains o'er the sorrow that was spain's; heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!" up spake the soul of a gray gothavn 'speckshioner-- (he that led the flinching in the fleets of fair dundee): "ho, the ringer and right whale, and the fish we struck for sale, will ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the sea?" loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners, crying: "under heaven, here is neither lead nor lea! must we sing for evermore on the windless, glassy floor? take back your golden fiddles and we'll beat to open sea!" then stooped the lord, and he called the good sea up to him, and 'stablished his borders unto all eternity, that such as have no pleasure for to praise the lord by measure, they may enter into galleons and serve him on the sea. _sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it, stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free; and the ships shall go abroad to the glory of the lord who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!_ the merchantmen. king solomon drew merchantmen, because of his desire for peacocks, apes, and ivory, from tarshish unto tyre: with cedars out of lebanon which hiram rafted down, but we be only sailormen that use in london town. _coastwise--cross-seas--round the world and back again-- where the flaw shall head us or the full trade suits-- plain-sail--storm-sail--lay your board and tack again-- and that's the way we'll pay paddy doyle for his boots!_ we bring no store of ingots, of spice or precious stones, but that we have we gathered with sweat and aching bones: in flame beneath the tropics, in frost upon the floe, and jeopardy of every wind that does between them go. and some we got by purchase, and some we had by trade, and some we found by courtesy of pike and carronade, at midnight, 'mid-sea meetings, for charity to keep, and light the rolling homeward-bound that rode a foot too deep. by sport of bitter weather we're walty, strained, and scarred from the kentledge on the kelson to the slings upon the yard. six oceans had their will of us to carry all away-- our galley 's in the baltic, and our boom 's in mossel bay! we've floundered off the texel, awash with sodden deals, we've slipped from valparaiso with the norther at our heels: we've ratched beyond the crossets that tusk the southern pole, and dipped our gunnels under to the dread agulhas roll. beyond all outer charting we sailed where none have sailed, and saw the land-lights burning on islands none have hailed; our hair stood up for wonder, but, when the night was done, there danced the deep to windward blue-empty 'neath the sun! strange consorts rode beside us and brought us evil luck; the witch-fire climbed our channels, and danced on vane and truck: till, through the red tornado, that lashed us nigh to blind, we saw the dutchman plunging, full canvas, head to wind! we've heard the midnight leadsman that calls the black deep down-- ay, thrice we've heard the swimmer, the thing that may not drown. on frozen bunt and gasket the sleet-cloud drave her hosts, when, manned by more than signed with us, we passed the isle o' ghosts! and north, amid the hummocks, a biscuit-toss below, we met the silent shallop that frighted whalers know; for, down a cruel ice-lane, that opened as he sped, we saw dead henry hudson steer, north by west, his dead. so dealt god's waters with us beneath the roaring skies, so walked his signs and marvels all naked to our eyes: but we were heading homeward with trade to lose or make-- good lord, they slipped behind us in the tailing of our wake! let go, let go the anchors; now shamed at heart are we to bring so poor a cargo home that had for gift the sea! let go the great bow-anchors-- ah, fools were we and blind-- the worst we baled with utter toil, the best we left behind! _coastwise--cross-seas--round the world and back again, whither the flaw shall fail us or the trades drive down: plain-sail--storm-sail--lay your board and tack again-- and all to bring a cargo up to london town!_ mcandrews' hymn. lord, thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream, an', taught by time, i tak' it so--exceptin' always steam. from coupler-flange to spindle-guide i see thy hand, o god-- predestination in the stride o' yon connectin'-rod. john calvin might ha' forged the same--enorrmous, certain, slow-- ay, wrought it in the furnace-flame--_my_ "institutio." i cannot get my sleep to-night; old bones are hard to please; i'll stand the middle watch up here--alone wi' god an' these my engines, after ninety days o' race an' rack an' strain through all the seas of all thy world, slam-bangin' home again. slam-bang too much--they knock a wee--the crosshead-gibs are loose; but thirty thousand mile o' sea has gied them fair excuse.... fine, clear an' dark--a full-draught breeze, wi' ushant out o' sight, an' ferguson relievin' hay. old girl, ye'll walk to-night! his wife's at plymouth.... seventy--one--two--three since he began-- three turns for mistress ferguson ... an' who's to blame the man? there's none at any port for me, by drivin' fast or slow, since elsie campbell went to thee, lord, thirty years ago. (the year the _sarah sands_ was burned. oh roads we used to tread, fra' maryhill to pollokshaws--fra' govan to parkhead!) not but they're ceevil on the board. ye'll hear sir kenneth say: "good morrn, mcandrews! back again? an' how's your bilge to-day?" miscallin' technicalities but handin' me my chair to drink madeira wi' three earls--the auld fleet engineer, that started as a boiler-whelp--when steam and he were low. i mind the time we used to serve a broken pipe wi' tow. ten pound was all the pressure then--eh! eh!--a man wad drive; an' here, our workin' gauges give one hunder' fifty-five! we're creepin' on wi' each new rig--less weight an' larger power: there'll be the loco-boiler next an' thirty knots an hour! thirty an' more. what i ha' seen since ocean-steam began leaves me no doot for the machine: but what about the man? the man that counts, wi' all his runs, one million mile o' sea: four time the span from earth to moon.... how far, o lord, from thee? that wast beside him night an' day. ye mind my first typhoon? it scoughed the skipper on his way to jock wi' the saloon. three feet were on the stokehold floor--just slappin' to an' fro-- an' cast me on a furnace-door. i have the marks to show. marks! i ha' marks o' more than burns--deep in my soul an' black, an' times like this, when things go smooth, my wickudness comes back. the sins o' four and forty years, all up an' down the seas, clack an' repeat like valves half-fed.... forgie's our trespasses. nights when i'd come on deck to mark, wi' envy in my gaze, the couples kittlin' in the dark between the funnel stays; years when i raked the ports wi' pride to fill my cup o' wrong-- judge not, o lord, my steps aside at gay street in hong-kong! blot out the wastrel hours of mine in sin when i abode-- jane harrigan's an' number nine, the reddick an' grant road! an' waur than all--my crownin' sin--rank blasphemy an' wild. i was not four and twenty then--ye wadna' judge a child? i'd seen the tropics first that run--new fruit, new smells, new air-- how could i tell--blind-fou wi' sun--the deil was lurkin' there? by day like playhouse-scenes the shore slid past our sleepy eyes; by night those soft, lasceevious stars leered from those velvet skies, in port (we used no cargo-steam) i'd daunder down the streets-- an ijjit grinnin' in a dream--for shells an' parrakeets, an' walkin'-sticks o' carved bamboo an' blowfish stuffed an' dried-- fillin' my bunk wi' rubbishry the chief put overside. till, off sumbawa head, ye mind, i heard a land-breeze ca' milk-warm wi' breath o' spice an' bloom: "mcandrews, come awa'!" firm, clear an' low--no haste, no hate--the ghostly whisper went, just statin' eevidential facts beyon' all argument: "your mither's god's a graspin' deil, the shadow o' yoursel', got out o' books by meenisters clean daft on heaven an' hell. they mak' him in the broomielaw, o' glasgie cold an' dirt, a jealous, pridefu' fetich, lad, that's only strong to hurt, ye'll not go back to him again an' kiss his red-hot rod, but come wi' us" (now, who were _they_?) "an' know the leevin' god, that does not kipper souls for sport or break a life in jest, but swells the ripenin' cocoanuts an' ripes the woman's breast." an' there it stopped: cut off: no more; that quiet, certain voice-- for me, six months o' twenty-four, to leave or take at choice. 'twas on me like a thunderclap--it racked me through an' through-- temptation past the show o' speech, unnamable an' new-- the sin against the holy ghost?... an' under all, our screw. that storm blew by but left behind her anchor-shiftin' swell, thou knowest all my heart an' mind, thou knowest, lord, i fell. third on the _mary gloster_ then, and first that night in hell! yet was thy hand beneath my head: about my feet thy care-- fra' deli clear to torres strait, the trial o' despair, but when we touched the barrier reef thy answer to my prayer! we dared na run that sea by night but lay an' held our fire, an' i was drowzin' on the hatch--sick--sick wi' doubt an' tire: "_better the sight of eyes that see than wanderin' o' desire!_" ye mind that word? clear as our gongs--again, an' once again, when rippin' down through coral-trash ran out our moorin'-chain; an' by thy grace i had the light to see my duty plain. light on the engine-room--no more--clear as our carbons burn. i've lost it since a thousand times, but never past return. * * * * * obsairve! per annum we'll have here two thousand souls aboard-- think not i dare to justify myself before the lord, but--average fifteen hunder' souls safe-borne fra' port to port-- i _am_ o' service to my kind. ye wadna' blame the thought? maybe they steam from grace to wrath--to sin by folly led,-- it isna mine to judge their path--their lives are on my head. mine at the last--when all is done it all comes back to me, the fault that leaves six thousand ton a log upon the sea. we'll tak' one stretch--three weeks an' odd by any road ye steer-- fra' cape town east to wellington--ye need an engineer. fail there--ye've time to weld your shaft--ay, eat it, ere ye're spoke, or make kerguelen under sail--three jiggers burned wi' smoke! an' home again, the rio run: it's no child's play to go steamin' to bell for fourteen days o' snow an' floe an' blow-- the bergs like kelpies overside that girn an' turn an' shift whaur, grindin' like the mills o' god, goes by the big south drift. (hail, snow an' ice that praise the lord: i've met them at their work, an' wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.) yon's strain, hard strain, o' head an' hand, for though thy power brings all skill to naught, ye'll understand a man must think o' things. then, at the last, we'll get to port an' hoist their baggage clear-- the passengers, wi' gloves an' canes--an' this is what i'll hear: "well, thank ye for a pleasant voyage. the tender's comin' now." while i go testin' follower-bolts an' watch the skipper bow. they've words for everyone but me--shake hands wi' half the crew, except the dour scots engineer, the man they never knew. an' yet i like the wark for all we've dam' few pickin's here-- no pension, an' the most we earn's four hunder' pound a year. better myself abroad? maybe. _i'd_ sooner starve than sail wi' such as call a snifter-rod _ross_.... french for nightingale. commeesion on my stores? some do; but i can not afford to lie like stewards wi' patty-pans. i'm older than the board. a bonus on the coal i save? ou ay, the scots are close, but when i grudge the strength ye gave i'll grudge their food to _those_. (there's bricks that i might recommend--an' clink the fire-bars cruel. no! welsh--wangarti at the worst--an' damn all patent fuel!) inventions? ye must stay in port to mak' a patent pay. my deeferential valve-gear taught me how that business lay, i blame no chaps wi' clearer head for aught they make or sell. _i_ found that i could not invent an' look to these--as well. so, wrestled wi' apollyon--nah!--fretted like a bairn-- but burned the workin'-plans last run wi' all i hoped to earn. ye know how hard an idol dies, an' what that meant to me-- e'en tak' it for a sacrifice acceptable to thee.... _below there! oiler! what's your wark? ye find her runnin' hard? ye needn't swill the cap wi' oil--this isn't the cunard. ye thought? ye are not paid to think. go, sweat that off again!_ tck! tck! it's deeficult to sweer nor tak' the name in vain! men, ay an' women, call me stern. wi' these to oversee ye'll note i've little time to burn on social repartee. the bairns see what their elders miss; they'll hunt me to an' fro, till for the sake of--well, a kiss--i tak' 'em down below. that minds me of our viscount loon--sir kenneth's kin--the chap wi' russia leather tennis-shoon an' spar-decked yachtin'-cap. i showed him round last week, o'er all--an' at the last says he: "mister mcandrews, don't you think steam spoils romance at sea?" damned ijjit! i'd been doon that morn to see what ailed the throws, manholin', on my back--the cranks three inches from my nose. romance! those first-class passengers they like it very well, printed an' bound in little books; but why don't poets tell? i'm sick of all their quirks an' turns--the loves an' doves they dream-- lord, send a man like robbie burns to sing the song o' steam! to match wi' scotia's noblest speech yon orchestra sublime whaurto--uplifted like the just--the tail-rods mark the time. the crank-throws give the double-bass; the feed-pump sobs an' heaves: an' now the main eccentrics start their quarrel on the sheaves. her time, her own appointed time, the rocking link-head bides, till--hear that note?--the rod's return whings glimmerin' through the guides. they're all awa'! true beat, full power, the clangin' chorus goes clear to the tunnel where they sit, my purrin' dynamoes. interdependence absolute, foreseen, ordained, decreed, to work, ye'll note, at any tilt an' every rate o' speed. fra' skylight-lift to furnace-bars, backed, bolted, braced an' stayed, an' singin' like the mornin' stars for joy that they are made; while, out o' touch o' vanity, the sweatin' thrust-block says: "not unto us the praise, or man--not unto us the praise!" now, a' together, hear them lift their lesson--theirs an' mine: "law, orrder, duty an' restraint, obedience, discipline!" mill, forge an' try-pit taught them that when roarin' they arose, an' whiles i wonder if a soul was gied them wi' the blows. oh for a man to weld it then, in one trip-hammer strain, till even first-class passengers could tell the meanin' plain! but no one cares except mysel' that serve an' understand my seven thousand horse-power here. eh, lord! they're grand--they're grand! uplift am i? when first in store the new-made beasties stood, were ye cast down that breathed the word declarin' all things good? not so! o' that warld-liftin' joy no after-fall could vex, ye've left a glimmer still to cheer the man--the arrtifex! _that_ holds, in spite o' knock and scale, o' friction, waste an' slip, an' by that light--now, mark my word--we'll build the perfect ship. i'll never last to judge her lines or take her curve--not i. but i ha' lived an' i ha' worked. all thanks to thee, most high! an' i ha' done what i ha' done--judge thou if ill or well-- always thy grace preventin' me.... losh! yon's the "stand by" bell. pilot so soon? his flare it is. the mornin'-watch is set. well, god be thanked, as i was sayin', i'm no pelagian yet. now i'll tak' on.... _'morrn, ferguson. man, have ye ever thought what your good leddy costs in coal?... i'll burn 'em down to port._ the miracles. i sent a message to my dear-- a thousand leagues and more to her-- the dumb sea-levels thrilled to hear, and lost atlantis bore to her. behind my message hard i came, and nigh had found a grave for me; but that i launched of steel and flame did war against the wave for me. uprose the deep, by gale on gale, to bid me change my mind again-- he broke his teeth along my rail, and, roaring, swung behind again. i stayed the sun at noon to tell my way across the waste of it; i read the storm before it fell and made the better haste of it. afar, i hailed the land at night-- the towers i built had heard of me-- and, ere my rocket reached its height, had flashed my love the word of me. earth gave her chosen men of strength (they lived and strove and died for me) to drive my road a nation's length, and toss the miles aside for me. i snatched their toil to serve my needs-- too slow their fleetest flew for me-- i tired twenty smoking steeds, and bade them bait a new for me. i sent the lightnings forth to see where hour by hour she waited me. among ten million one was she, and surely all men hated me! dawn ran to meet us at my goal-- ah, day no tongue shall tell again!-- and little folk of little soul rose up to buy and sell again! the native-born. we've drunk to the queen--god bless her!-- we've drunk to our mothers' land; we've drunk to our english brother (but he does not understand); we've drunk to the wide creation, and the cross swings low to the morn, last toast, and of obligation, a health to the native-born! they change their skies above them, but not their hearts that roam! we learned from our wistful mothers to call old england "home"; we read of the english sky-lark, of the spring in the english lanes, but we screamed with the painted lories as we rode on the dusty plains! they passed with their old-world legends-- their tales of wrong and dearth-- our fathers held by purchase, but we by the right of birth; our heart's where they rocked our cradle, our love where we spent our toil, and our faith and our hope and our honour we pledge to our native soil! i charge you charge your glasses-- i charge you drink with me to the men of the four new nations, and the islands of the sea-- to the last least lump of coral that none may stand outside, and our own good pride shall teach us to praise our comrade's pride. to the hush of the breathless morning on the thin, tin, crackling roofs, to the haze of the burned back-ranges and the dust of the shoeless hoofs-- to the risk of a death by drowning, to the risk of a death by drouth-- to the men of a million acres, to the sons of the golden south. _to the sons of the golden south, (stand up!) and the life we live and know, let a fellow sing o' the little things he cares about, if a fellow fights for the little things he cares about with the weight of a single blow!_ to the smoke of a hundred coasters, to the sheep on a thousand hills, to the sun that never blisters, to the rain that never chills-- to the land of the waiting springtime, to our five-meal, meat-fed men, to the tall deep-bosomed women, and the children nine and ten! _and the children nine and ten, (stand up!) and the life we live and know, let a fellow sing o' the little things he cares about, if a fellow fights for the little things he cares about with the weight of a two-fold blow!_ to the far-flung fenceless prairie where the quick cloud-shadows trail, to our neighbour's barn in the offing and the line of the new-cut rail; to the plough in her league-long furrow with the gray lake gulls behind-- to the weight of a half-year's winter and the warm wet western wind! to the home of the floods and thunder, to her pale dry healing blue-- to the lift of the great cape combers, and the smell of the baked karroo. to the growl of the sluicing stamp-head-- to the reef and the water-gold, to the last and the largest empire, to the map that is half unrolled! to our dear dark foster-mothers, to the heathen songs they sung-- to the heathen speech we babbled ere we came to the white man's tongue. to the cool of our deep verandas-- to the blaze of our jewelled main, to the night, to the palms in the moonlight, and the fire-fly in the cane! to the hearth of our people's people-- to her well-ploughed windy sea, to the hush of our dread high-altars where the abbey makes us we; to the grist of the slow-ground ages, to the gain that is yours and mine-- to the bank of the open credit, to the power-house of the line! we've drunk to the queen--god bless her!-- we've drunk to our mothers' land; we've drunk to our english brother (and we hope he'll understand). we've drunk as much as we're able, and the cross swings low to the morn; last toast--and your foot on the table!-- a health to the native-born! _a health to the native-born, (stand up!) we're six white men arow, all bound to sing o' the little things we care about, all bound to fight for the little things we care about with the weight of a six-fold blow! by the might of our cable-tow, (take hands!) from the orkneys to the horn, all round the world (and a little loop to pull it by), all round the world (and a little strap to buckle it), a health to the native-born!_ the king. "farewell, romance!" the cave-men said; "with bone well carved he went away, flint arms the ignoble arrowhead, and jasper tips the spear to-day. changed are the gods of hunt and dance, and he with these. farewell, romance!" "farewell, romance!" the lake-folk sighed; "we lift the weight of flatling years; the caverns of the mountain side hold him who scorns our hutted piers. lost hills whereby we dare not dwell, guard ye his rest. romance, farewell!" "farewell, romance!" the soldier spoke; "by sleight of sword we may not win, but scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke of arquebus and culverin. honour is lost, and none may tell who paid good blows. romance, farewell!" "farewell, romance!" the traders cried; "our keels ha' lain with every sea; the dull-returning wind and tide heave up the wharf where we would be; the known and noted breezes swell our trudging sail. romance, farewell!" "good-bye, romance!" the skipper said; "he vanished with the coal we burn; our dial marks full steam ahead, our speed is timed to half a turn. sure as the tidal trains we ply 'twixt port and port. romance, good-bye!" "romance!" the season-tickets mourn, "_he_ never ran to catch his train, but passed with coach and guard and horn-- and left the local--late again! confound romance!"... and all unseen romance brought up the nine-fifteen. his hand was on the lever laid, his oil-can soothed the worrying cranks, his whistle waked the snowbound grade, his fog-horn cut the reeking banks; in dock and deep and mine and mill the boy-god reckless laboured still. robed, crowned and throned, he wove his spell, where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke curled, with unconsidered miracle, hedged in a backward-gazing world; then taught his chosen bard to say: "the king was with us--yesterday!" the rhyme of the three sealers. _away by the lands of the japanee, when the paper lanterns glow and the crews of all the shipping drink in the house of blood street joe, at twilight, when the landward breeze brings up the harbour noise, and ebb of yokohama bay swigs chattering through the buoys, in cisco's dewdrop dining rooms they tell the tale anew of a hidden sea and a hidden fight, when the baltic ran from the northern light and the stralsund fought the two!_ now this is the law of the muscovite, that he proves with shot and steel, when ye come by his isles in the smoky sea ye must not take the seal, where the gray sea goes nakedly between the weed-hung shelves, and the little blue fox he is bred for his skin and the seal they breed for themselves; for when the _matkas_ seek the shore to drop their pups aland, the great man-seal haul out of the sea, aroaring, band by band; and when the first september gales have slaked their rutting-wrath, the great man-seal haul back to the sea and no man knows their path. then dark they lie and stark they lie--rookery, dune, and floe, and the northern lights come down o' nights to dance with the houseless snow. and god who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe, he hears the cry of the little kit-fox and the lemming on the snow. but since our women must walk gay and money buys their gear, the sealing-boats they filch that way at hazard year by year. english they be and japanee that hang on the brown bear's flank, and some be scot, but the worst, god wot, and the boldest thieves, be yank! it was the sealer northern light, to the smoky seas she bore. with a stovepipe stuck from a starboard port and the russian flag at her fore. (baltic, stralsund, and northern light--oh! they were birds of a feather-- slipping away to the smoky seas, three seal-thieves together!) and at last she came to a sandy cove and the baltic lay therein, but her men were up with the herding seal to drive and club and skin. there were fifteen hundred skins abeach, cool pelt and proper fur, when the northern light drove into the bight and the sea-mist drove with her. the baltic called her men and weighed--she could not choose but run-- for a stovepipe seen through the closing mist, it shows like a four-inch gun (and loss it is that is sad as death to lose both trip and ship and lie for a rotting contraband on vladivostock slip). she turned and dived in the sea-smother as a rabbit dives in the whins, and the northern light sent up her boats to steal the stolen skins. they had not brought a load to side or slid their hatches clear, when they were aware of a sloop-of-war, ghost-white and very near. her flag she showed, and her guns she showed--three of them, black, abeam, and a funnel white with the crusted salt, but never a show of steam. there was no time to man the brakes, they knocked the shackle free, and the northern light stood out again, goose-winged to open sea. (for life it is that is worse than death, by force of russian law to work in the mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw!) they had not run a mile from shore--they heard no shots behind-- when the skipper smote his hand on his thigh and threw her up in the wind: "bluffed--raised out on a bluff," said he, "for if my name's tom hall, you must set a thief to catch a thief--and a thief has caught us all! by every butt in oregon and every spar in maine, the hand that spilled the wind from her sail was the hand of reuben paine! he has rigged and trigged her with paint and spar, and, faith, he has faked her well-- but i'd know the stralsund's deckhouse yet from here to the booms o' hell. oh, once we ha' met at baltimore, and twice on boston pier, but the sickest day for you, reuben paine, was the day that you came here-- the day that you came here, my lad, to scare us from our seal with your funnel made o' your painted cloth, and your guns o' rotten deal! ring and blow for the baltic now, and head her back to the bay, for we'll come into the game again with a double deck to play!" they rang and blew the sealers' call--the poaching cry o' the sea-- and they raised the baltic out of the mist, and an angry ship was she: and blind they groped through the whirling white, and blind to the bay again, till they heard the creak of the stralsund's boom and the clank of her mooring-chain. they laid them down by bitt and boat, their pistols in their belts, and: "will you fight for it, reuben paine, or will you share the pelts?" a dog-toothed laugh laughed reuben paine, and bared his flenching knife. "yea, skin for skin, and all that he hath a man will give for his life; but i've six thousand skins below, and yeddo port to see, and there's never a law of god or man runs north of fifty-three. so go in peace to the naked seas with empty holds to fill, and i'll be good to your seal this catch, as many as i shall kill." answered the snap of a closing lock and the jar of a gun-butt slid, but the tender fog shut fold on fold to hide the wrong they did. the weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak, and the flame-spurts pale ran down the rail as the sealing-rifles spoke. the bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free, (little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!) the thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue, but three were down on the baltic's deck and two of the stralsund's crew. an arm's length out and overside the banked fog held them bound; but, as they heard or groan or word, they fired at the sound. for one cried out on the name of god, and one to have him cease; and the questing volley found them both and bade them hold their peace. and one called out on a heathen joss and one on the virgin's name; and the schooling bullet leaped across and showed them whence they came. and in the waiting silences the rudder whined beneath, and each man drew his watchful breath slow taken 'tween the teeth-- trigger and ear and eye acock, knit brow and hard-drawn lips-- bracing his feet by chock and cleat for the rolling of the ships: till they heard the cough of a wounded man that fought in the fog for breath, till they heard the torment of reuben paine that wailed upon his death: "the tides they'll go through fundy race but i'll go never more and see the hogs from ebb-tide mark turn scampering back to shore. no more i'll see the trawlers drift below the bass rock ground, or watch the tall fall steamer lights tear blazing up the sound. sorrow is me, in a lonely sea and a sinful fight i fall, but if there's law o' god or man you'll swing for it yet, tom hall!" tom hall stood up by the quarter-rail. "your words in your teeth," said he. "there's never a law of god or man runs north of fifty three. so go in grace with him to face, and an ill-spent life behind, and i'll take care o' your widows, rube, as many as i shall find." a stralsund man shot blind and large, and a warlock finn was he, and he hit tom hall with a bursting ball a hand's-breadth over the knee. tom hall caught hold by the topping-lift, and sat him down with an oath, "you'll wait a little, rube," he said, "the devil has called for both. the devil is driving both this tide, and the killing-grounds are close, and we'll go up to the wrath of god as the holluschickie goes. o men, put back your guns again and lay your rifles by, we've fought our fight, and the best are down. let up and let us die! quit firing, by the bow there--quit! call off the baltic's crew! you're sure of hell as me or rube--but wait till we get through." there went no word between the ships, but thick and quick and loud the life-blood drummed on the dripping decks, with the fog-dew from the shroud, the sea-pull drew them side by side, gunnel to gunnel laid, and they felt the sheerstrakes pound and clear, but never a word was said. then reuben paine cried out again before his spirit passed: "have i followed the sea for thirty years to die in the dark at last? curse on her work that has nipped me here with a shifty trick unkind-- i have gotten my death where i got my bread, but i dare not face it blind. curse on the fog! is there never a wind of all the winds i knew to clear the smother from off my chest, and let me look at the blue?" the good fog heard--like a splitten sail, to left and right she tore, and they saw the sun-dogs in the haze and the seal upon the shore. silver and gray ran spit and bay to meet the steel-backed tide, and pinched and white in the clearing light the crews stared overside. o rainbow-gay the red pools lay that swilled and spilled and spread, and gold, raw gold, the spent shell rolled between the careless dead-- the dead that rocked so drunkenwise to weather and to lee, and they saw the work their hands had done as god had bade them see! and a little breeze blew over the rail that made the headsails lift, but no man stood by wheel or sheet, and they let the schooners drift. and the rattle rose in reuben's throat and he cast his soul with a cry, and "gone already?" tom hall he said. "then it's time for me to die." his eyes were heavy with great sleep and yearning for the land, and he spoke as a man that talks in dreams, his wound beneath his hand. "oh, there comes no good in the westering wind that backs against the sun; wash down the decks--they're all too red--and share the skins and run, baltic, stralsund, and northern light,--clean share and share for all, you'll find the fleets off tolstoi mees, but you will not find tom hall. evil he did in shoal-water and blacker sin on the deep, but now he's sick of watch and trick, and now he'll turn and sleep. he'll have no more of the crawling sea that made him suffer so, but he'll lie down on the killing-grounds where the holluschickie go. and west you'll turn and south again, beyond the sea-fog's rim, and tell the yoshiwara girls to burn a stick for him. and you'll not weight him by the heels and dump him overside, but carry him up to the sand-hollows to die as bering died, and make a place for reuben paine that knows the fight was fair, and leave the two that did the wrong to talk it over there!" _half-steam ahead by guess and lead, for the sun is mostly veiled-- through fog to fog, by luck and log, sail ye as bering sailed; and, if the light shall lift aright to give your landfall plain, north and by west, from zapne crest, ye raise the crosses twain. fair marks are they to the inner bay, the reckless poacher knows, what time the scarred see-catchie lead their sleek seraglios. ever they hear the floe-pack clear, and the blast of the old bull-whale, and the deep seal-roar that beats off shore above the loudest gale. ever they wait the winter's hate as the thundering_ boorga _calls, where northward look they to st. george, and westward to st. paul's. ever they greet the hunted fleet--lone keels off headlands drear-- when the sealing-schooners flit that way at hazard year by year. ever in yokohama port men tell the tale anew of a hidden sea and a hidden fight, when the baltic ran from the northern light and the stralsund fought the two!_ the derelict. "and reports the derelict _mary pollock_ still at sea." _shipping news._ _i was the staunchest of our fleet till the sea rose beneath our feet unheralded, in hatred past all measure. into his pits he stamped my crew, buffeted, blinded, bound and threw; bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure._ man made me, and my will is to my maker still, whom now the currents con, the rollers steer-- lifting forlorn to spy trailed smoke along the sky, falling afraid lest any keel come near. wrenched as the lips of thirst, wried, dried, and split and burst, bone-bleached my decks, wind-scoured to the graining; and, jarred at every roll, the gear that was my soul answers the anguish of my beams' complaining. for life that crammed me full, gangs of the prying gull that shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches. for roar that dumbed the gale my hawse-pipes guttering wail, sobbing my heart out through the uncounted watches. blind in the hot blue ring through all my points i swing-- swing and return to shift the sun anew. blind in my well-known sky i hear the stars go by, mocking the prow that can not hold one true! white on my wasted path wave after wave in wrath frets 'gainst his fellow, warring where to send me. flung forward, heaved aside, witless and dazed i bide the mercy of the comber that shall end me. north where the bergs careen, the spray of seas unseen smokes round my head and freezes in the falling; south where the corals breed, the footless, floating weed folds me and fouls me, strake on strake upcrawling. i that was clean to run my race against the sun-- strength on the deep, am bawd to all disaster-- whipped forth by night to meet my sister's careless feet, and with a kiss betray her to my master! man made me, and my will is to my maker still-- to him and his, our peoples at their pier: lifting in hope to spy trailed smoke along the sky; falling afraid lest any keel come near! the song of the banjo. you couldn't pack a broadwood half a mile-- you mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp-- you couldn't raft an organ up the nile, and play it in an equatorial swamp. _i_ travel with the cooking-pots and pails-- _i_'m sandwiched 'tween the coffee and the pork-- and when the dusty column checks and tails, you should hear me spur the rearguard to a walk! with my "_pilly-willy-winky-winky popp!_" [o it's any tune that comes into my head!] so i keep 'em moving forward till they drop; so i play 'em up to water and to bed. in the silence of the camp before the fight, when it's good to make your will and say your prayer, you can hear my _strumpty-tumpty_ overnight explaining ten to one was always fair. i'm the prophet of the utterly absurd, of the patently impossible and vain-- and when the thing that couldn't has occurred, give me time to change my leg and go again. with my "_tumpa-tumpa-tumpa-tum-pa tump!_" in the desert where the dung-fed camp-smoke curled there was never voice before us till i led our lonely chorus, i--the war-drum of the white man round the world! by the bitter road the younger son must tread, ere he win to hearth and saddle of his own,-- 'mid the riot of the shearers at the shed, in the silence of the herder's hut alone-- in the twilight, on a bucket upside down, hear me babble what the weakest won't confess-- i am memory and torment--i am town! i am all that ever went with evening dress! with my "_tunk-a tunka-tunka-tunka-tunk!_" [so the lights--the london lights--grow near and plain!] so i rowel 'em afresh towards the devil and the flesh, till i bring my broken rankers home again. in desire of many marvels over sea, where the new-raised tropic city sweats and roars, i have sailed with young ulysses from the quay till the anchor rumbled down on stranger shores. he is blooded to the open and the sky, he is taken in a snare that shall not fail, he shall hear me singing strongly, till he die, like the shouting of a backstay in a gale. with my "_hya! heeya! heeya! hullah! haul!_" [o the green that thunders aft along the deck!] are you sick o' towns and men? you must sign and sail again, for it's "johnny bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!" through the gorge that gives the stars at noon-day clear-- up the pass that packs the scud beneath our wheel-- round the bluff that sinks her thousand fathom sheer-- down the valley with our guttering brakes asqueal: where the trestle groans and quivers in the snow, where the many-shedded levels loop and twine, so i lead my reckless children from below till we sing the song of roland to the pine. with my "_tinka-tinka-tinka-tinka-tink!_" [and the axe has cleared the mountain, croup and crest!] so we ride the iron stallions down to drink, through the cañons to the waters of the west! and the tunes that mean so much to you alone-- common tunes that make you choke and blow your nose, vulgar tunes that bring the laugh that brings the groan-- i can rip your very heartstrings out with those; with the feasting, and the folly, and the fun-- and the lying, and the lusting, and the drink, and the merry play that drops you, when you're done, to the thoughts that burn like irons if you think. with my "_plunka-lunka-lunka-lunka-lunk!_" here's a trifle on account of pleasure past, ere the wit that made you win gives you eyes to see your sin and the heavier repentance at the last. let the organ moan her sorrow to the roof-- i have told the naked stars the grief of man. let the trumpets snare the foeman to the proof-- i have known defeat, and mocked it as we ran. my bray ye may not alter nor mistake when i stand to jeer the fatted soul of things, but the song of lost endeavour that i make, is it hidden in the twanging of the strings? with my "_ta-ra-rara-rara-ra-ra-rrrp!_" [is it naught to you that hear and pass me by?] but the word--the word is mine, when the order moves the line and the lean, locked ranks go roaring down to die. the grandam of my grandam was the lyre-- [o the blue below the little fisher-huts!] that the stealer stooping beach ward filled with fire, till she bore my iron head and ringing guts! by the wisdom of the centuries i speak-- to the tune of yestermorn i set the truth-- i, the joy of life unquestioned--i, the greek-- i, the everlasting wonder song of youth! with my "_tinka-tinka-tinka-tinka-tink!_" [what d'ye lack, my noble masters? what d'ye lack?] so i draw the world together link by link: yea, from delos up to limerick and back! "the liner she's a lady." the liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds-- the man-o'-war's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs; but, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun', they're just the same as you an' me a-plyin' up an' down! _plyin' up an' down, jenny, 'angin' round the yard, all the way by fratton tram down to portsmouth 'ard; anythin' for business, an' we're growin' old-- plyin' up an' down, jenny, waitin' in the cold!_ the liner she's a lady by the paint upon 'er face, an' if she meets an accident they call it sore disgrace: the man-o'-war's 'er 'usband, and 'e's always 'andy by, but, oh, the little cargo-boats! they've got to load or die. the liner she's a lady, and 'er route is cut an' dried; the man-o'-war's 'er 'usband, an' 'e always keeps beside; but, oh, the little cargo-boats that 'aven't any man! they've got to do their business first, and make the most they can. the liner she's a lady, and if a war should come, the man-o'-war's 'er 'usband, and 'e'd bid 'er stay at home; but, oh, the little cargo-boats that fill with every tide! 'e'd 'ave to up an' fight for them, for they are england's pride. the liner she's a lady, but if she wasn't made, there still would be the cargo-boats for 'ome an' foreign trade. the man-o'-war's 'er 'usband, but if we wasn't 'ere, 'e wouldn't have to fight at all for 'ome an' friends so dear. _'ome an' friends so dear, jenny, 'angin' round the yard, all the way by fratton tram down to portsmouth 'ard; anythin' for business, an' we're growin' old-- 'ome an' friends so dear, jenny, waitin' in the cold!_ mulholland's contract. the fear was on the cattle, for the gale was on the sea, an' the pens broke up on the lower deck an' let the creatures free-- an' the lights went out on the lower deck, an' no one down but me. i had been singin' to them to keep 'em quiet there, for the lower deck is the dangerousest, requirin' constant care, an' give to me as the strongest man, though used to drink and swear. i see my chance was certain of bein' horned or trod, for the lower deck was packed with steers thicker 'n peas in a pod, an' more pens broke at every roll--so i made a contract with god. an' by the terms of the contract, as i have read the same, if he got me to port alive i would exalt his name, an' praise his holy majesty till further orders came. he saved me from the cattle an' he saved me from the sea, for they found me 'tween two drownded ones where the roll had landed me-- an' a four-inch crack on top of my head, as crazy as could be. but that were done by a stanchion, an' not by a bullock at all, an' i lay still for seven weeks convalessing of the fall, an' readin' the shiny scripture texts in the seamen's hospital. an' i spoke to god of our contract, an' he says to my prayer: "i never puts on my ministers no more than they can bear. so back you go to the cattle-boats an' preach my gospel there. "for human life is chancy at any kind of trade, but most of all, as well you know, when the steers are mad-afraid; so you go back to the cattle-boats an' preach 'em as i've said. "they must quit drinkin' an' swearin', they mustn't knife on a blow, they must quit gamblin' their wages, and you must preach it so; for now those boats are more like hell than anything else i know." i didn't want to do it, for i knew what i should get, an' i wanted to preach religion, handsome an' out of the wet, but the word of the lord were lain on me, an' i done what i was set. i have been smit an' bruisèd, as warned would be the case, an' turned my cheek to the smiter exactly as scripture says; but following that, i knocked him down an' led him up to grace. an' we have preaching on sundays whenever the sea is calm, an' i use no knife nor pistol an' i never take no harm, for the lord abideth back of me to guide my fighting arm. an' i sign for four pound ten a month and save the money clear, an' i am in charge of the lower deck, an' i never lose a steer; an' i believe in almighty god an' i preach his gospel here. the skippers say i'm crazy, but i can prove 'em wrong, for i am in charge of the lower deck with all that doth belong-- _which they would not give to a lunatic, and the competition so strong!_ anchor song. (_from many inventions_). heh! walk her round. heave, ah heave her short again! over, snatch her over, there, and hold her on the pawl. loose all sail, and brace your yards aback and full-- ready jib to pay her off and heave short all! well, ah fare you well; we can stay no more with you, my love-- down, set down your liquor and your girl from off your knee; for the wind has come to say: "you must take me while you may, if you'd go to mother carey, (walk her down to mother carey!) oh, we're bound to mother carey where she feeds her chicks at sea!" heh! walk her round. break, ah break it out o' that! break our starboard bower out, apeak, awash, and clear. port--port she casts, with the harbour-roil beneath her foot, and that's the last o' bottom we shall see this year! well, ah fare you well, for we've got to take her out again-- take her out in ballast, riding light and cargo-free. and it's time to clear and quit when the hawser grips the bitt, so we'll pay you with the foresheet and a promise from the sea! heh! tally on! aft and walk away with her! handsome to the cathead, now; o tally on the fall! stop, seize and fish, and easy on the davit-guy. up, well up the fluke of her, and inboard haul! well, ah fare you well, for the channel wind's took hold of us, choking down our voices as we snatch the gaskets free. and it's blowing up for night, and she's dropping light on light, and she's snorting under bonnets for a breath of open sea. wheel, full and by; but she'll smell her road alone to-night. sick she is and harbour-sick--o sick to clear the land! roll down to brest with the old red ensign over us-- carry on and thrash her out with all she'll stand! well, ah fare you well, and it's ushant gives the door to us, whirling like a windmill on the dirty scud to lee: till the last, last flicker goes from the tumbling water-rows, and we're off to mother carey (walk her down to mother carey!) oh, we're bound for mother carey where she feeds her chicks at sea! the sea-wife. there dwells a wife by the northern gate, and a wealthy wife is she; she breeds a breed o' rovin' men and casts them over sea, and some are drowned in deep water, and some in sight o' shore. and word goes back to the weary wife, and ever she sends more. for since that wife had gate and gear, and hearth and garth and bield, she willed her sons to the white harvest, and that is a bitter yield. she wills her sons to the wet ploughing, to ride the horse of tree; and syne her sons come home again far-spent from out the sea. the good wife's sons come home again with little into their hands, but the lore of men that ha' dealt with men in the new and naked lands. but the faith of men that ha' brothered men by more than the easy breath, and the eyes o' men that ha' read wi' men in the open books of death. rich are they, rich in wonders seen, but poor in the goods o' men, so what they ha' got by the skin o' their teeth they sell for their teeth again. for whether they lose to the naked skin, or win to their hearts' desire, they tell it all to the weary wife that nods beside the fire. her hearth is wide to every wind that makes the white ash spin; and tide and tide and 'tween the tides her sons go out and in; (out with great mirth that do desire hazard of trackless ways, in with content to wait their watch and warm before the blaze); and some return by failing light, and some in waking dream, for she hears the heels of the dripping ghosts that ride the rough roof-beam. home, they come home from all the ports, the living and the dead; the good wife's sons come home again for her blessing on their head! hymn before action. the earth is full of anger, the seas are dark with wrath; the nations in their harness go up against our path! ere yet we loose the legions-- ere yet we draw the blade, jehovah of the thunders, lord god of battles, aid! high lust and froward bearing, proud heart, rebellious brow-- deaf ear and soul uncaring, we seek thy mercy now: the sinner that forswore thee, the fool that passed thee by, our times are known before thee-- lord, grant us strength to die! for those who kneel beside us at altars not thine own, who lack the lights that guide us, lord, let their faith atone; if wrong we did to call them, by honour bound they came; let not thy wrath befall them, but deal to us the blame. from panic, pride, and terror, revenge that knows no rein-- light haste and lawless error, protect us yet again. cloak thou our undeserving, make firm the shuddering breath, in silence and unswerving to taste thy lesser death! ah, mary pierced with sorrow, remember, reach and save the soul that comes to-morrow before the god that gave! since each was born of woman, for each at utter need-- true comrade and true foeman, madonna, intercede! e'en now their vanguard gathers, e'en now we face the fray-- as thou didst help our fathers, help thou our host to-day! fulfilled of signs and wonders, in life, in death made clear-- jehovah of the thunders, lord god of battles, hear! to the true romance. (_from many inventions_). _thy face is far from this our war, our call and counter-cry, i shall not find thee quick and kind, nor know thee till i die: enough for me in dreams to see and touch thy garments' hem: thy feet have trod so near to god i may not follow them._ through wantonness if men profess they weary of thy parts, e'en let them die at blasphemy and perish with their arts; but we that love, but we that prove thine excellence august, while we adore discover more thee perfect, wise, and just. since spoken word man's spirit stirred beyond his belly-need, what is is thine of fair design in thought and craft and deed; each stroke aright of toil and fight, that was and that shall be, and hope too high, wherefore we die, has birth and worth in thee. who holds by thee hath heaven in fee to gild his dross thereby, and knowledge sure that he endure a child until he die-- for to make plain that man's disdain is but new beauty's birth-- for to possess, in loneliness, the joy of all the earth. as thou didst teach all lovers speech, and life all mystery, so shalt thou rule by every school till love and longing die, who wast or yet the lights were set, a whisper in the void, who shalt be sung through planets young when this is clean destroyed. beyond the bounds our staring rounds, across the pressing dark, the children wise of outer skies look hitherward and mark a light that shifts, a glare that drifts, rekindling thus and thus, not all forlorn, for thou hast borne strange tales to them of us. time hath no tide but must abide the servant of thy will; tide hath no time, for to thy rhyme the ranging stars stand still-- regent of spheres that lock our fears our hopes invisible, oh 'twas certes at thy decrees we fashioned heaven and hell! pure wisdom hath no certain path that lacks thy morning-eyne, and captains bold by thee controlled most like to gods design; thou art the voice to kingly boys to lift them through the fight, and comfortress of unsuccess, to give the dead good-night-- a veil to draw 'twixt god his law and man's infirmity, a shadow kind to dumb and blind the shambles where we die; a sum to trick th' arithmetic too base of leaguing odds, the spur of trust, the curb of lust, thou handmaid of the gods! oh charity, all patiently abiding wrack and scaith! oh faith, that meets ten thousand cheats yet drops no jot of faith! devil and brute thou dost transmute to higher, lordlier show, who art in sooth that lovely truth the careless angels know! _thy face is far from this our war, our call and counter-cry, i may not find thee quick and kind, nor meet thee till i die._ _yet may i look with heart unshook on blow brought home or missed-- yet may i hear with equal ear the clarions down the list; yet set my lance above mischance and ride the barriere-- oh, hit or miss, how little 'tis, my lady is not there!_ the flowers. "to our private taste, there is always something a little exotic, almost artificial, in songs which, under an english aspect and dress, are yet so manifestly the product of other skies. they affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in april as the english thrush."--_the athenæum._ _buy my english posies-- kent and surrey may, violets of the undercliff wet with channel spray; cowslips from a devon combe midland furze afire-- buy my english posies, and i'll sell your hearts' desire!_ buy my english posies!-- you that scorn the may won't you greet a friend from home half the world away? green against the draggled drift, faint and frail and first-- buy my northern blood-root and i'll know where you were nursed! robin down the logging-road whistles, "come to me," spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free; all the winds o' canada call the ploughing-rain. take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! buy my english posies!-- here's to match your need. buy a tuft of royal heath, buy a bunch of weed white as sand of muysenberg spun before the gale-- buy my heath and lilies and i'll tell you whence you hail! under hot constantia broad the vineyards lie-- throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky-- slow below the wynberg firs trails the tilted wain-- take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! buy my english posies!-- you that will not turn, buy my hot-wood clematis, buy a frond o' fern gathered where the erskine leaps down the road to lorne-- buy my christmas creeper and i'll say where you were born! west away from melbourne dust holidays begin-- they that mock at paradise woo at cora lynn-- through the great south otway gums sings the great south main-- take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! buy my english posies!-- here's your choice unsold! buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom, buy the kowhai's gold flung for gift on taupo's face sign that spring is come-- buy my clinging myrtle and i'll give you back your home! broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine-- bell-bird in the leafy deep where the _ratas_ twine-- fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain-- take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! buy my english posies! ye that have your own buy them for a brother's sake overseas, alone. weed ye trample underfoot floods his heart abrim-- bird ye never heeded, oh, she calls his dead to him! far and far our homes are set round the seven seas. woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these! unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land-- masters of the seven seas, oh, love and understand! the last rhyme of true thomas. the king has called for priest and cup, the king has taken spur and blade to dub true thomas a belted knight, and all for the sake o' the songs he made. they have sought him high, they have sought him low, they have sought him over down and lea; they have found him by the milk-white thorn that guards the gates o' faerie. _'twas bent beneath and blue above, their eyes were held that they might not see the kine that grazed between the knowes, oh, they were the queens o' faerie!_ "now cease your song," the king he said, "oh, cease your song and get you dight to vow your vow and watch your arms, for i will dub you a belted knight. "for i will give you a horse o' pride, wi' blazon and spur and page and squire; wi' keep and tail and seizin and law, and land to hold at your desire." true thomas smiled above his harp, and turned his face to the naked sky, where, blown before the wastrel wind, the thistle-down she floated by. "i ha' vowed my vow in another place, and bitter oath it was on me, i ha' watched my arms the lee-long night, where five-score fighting-men would flee. "my lance is tipped o' the hammered flame, my shield is beat o' the moonlight cold; and i won my spurs in the middle world, a thousand fathoms beneath the mould. "and what should i make wi' a horse o' pride, and what should i make wi' a sword so brown, but spill the rings o' the gentle folk and flyte my kin in the fairy town? "and what should i make wi' blazon and belt, wi' keep and tail and seizin and fee, and what should i do wi' page and squire that am a king in my own countrie? "for i send east and i send west, and i send far as my will may flee, by dawn and dusk and the drinking rain, and syne my sendings return to me. "they come wi' news of the groanin' earth, they come wi' news o' the roarin' sea, wi' word of spirit and ghost and flesh, and man that's mazed among the three." the king he bit his nether lip, and smote his hand upon his knee: "by the faith o' my soul, true thomas," he said, "ye waste no wit in courtesie! "as i desire, unto my pride, can i make earls by three and three, to run before and ride behind and serve the sons o' my body." "and what care i for your row-foot earls, or all the sons o' your body? before they win to the pride o' name, i trow they all ask leave o' me. "for i make honour wi' muckle mouth, as i make shame wi' mincin' feet, to sing wi' the priests at the market-cross, or run wi' the dogs in the naked street. "and some they give me the good red gold, and some they give me the white money, and some they give me a clout o' meal, for they be people o' low degree. "and the song i sing for the counted gold the same i sing for the white money, but best i sing for the clout o' meal that simple people given me." the king cast down a silver groat, a silver groat o' scots money, "if i come with a poor man's dole," he said, "true thomas, will ye harp to me?" "whenas i harp to the children small, they press me close on either hand: and who are you," true thomas said, "that you should ride while they must stand? "light down, light down from your horse o' pride, i trow ye talk too loud and hie, and i will make you a triple word, and syne, if ye dare, ye shall 'noble me." he has lighted down from his horse o' pride, and set his back against the stone. "now guard you well," true thomas said, "ere i rax your heart from your breast-bone!" true thomas played upon his harp, the fairy harp that couldna' lee, and the first least word the proud king heard, it harpit the salt tear out o' his ee. "oh, i see the love that i lost long syne, i touch the hope that i may not see, and all that i did o' hidden shame, like little snakes they hiss at me. "the sun is lost at noon--at noon! the dread o' doom has grippit me. true thomas, hide me under your cloak, god wot, i'm little fit to dee!" _'twas bent beneath and blue above-- 'twas open field and running flood-- where, hot on heath and dyke and wall, the high sun warmed the adder's brood._ "lie down, lie down," true thomas said. "the god shall judge when all is done; but i will bring you a better word and lift the cloud that i laid on." true thomas played upon his harp, that birled and brattled to his hand, and the next least word true thomas made, it garred the king take horse and brand. "oh, i hear the tread o' the fighting-men, i see the sun on splent and spear! i mark the arrow outen the fern! that flies so low and sings so clear! "advance my standards to that war, and bid my good knights prick and ride; the gled shall watch as fierce a fight as e'er was fought on the border side!" _'twas bent beneath and blue above, 'twas nodding grass and naked sky, where ringing up the wastrel wind the eyass stooped upon the pye._ true thomas sighed above his harp, and turned the song on the midmost string; and the last least word true thomas made he harpit his dead youth back to the king. "now i am prince, and i do well to love my love withouten fear; to walk wi' man in fellowship, and breathe my horse behind the deer. "my hounds they bay unto the death, the buck has couched beyond the burn, my love she waits at her window to wash my hands when i return. "for that i live am i content (oh! i have seen my true love's eyes!) to stand wi' adam in eden-glade, and run in the woods o' paradise!" _'twas nodding grass and naked sky, 'twas blue above and bent below, where, checked against the wastrel wind, the red deer belled to call the doe._ true thomas laid his harp away, and louted low at the saddle-side; he has taken stirrup and hauden rein, and set the king on his horse o' pride. "sleep ye or wake," true thomas said, "that sit so still, that muse so long; sleep ye or wake?--till the latter sleep i trow ye'll not forget my song. "i ha' harpit a shadow out o' the sun to stand before your face and cry; i ha' armed the earth beneath your heel, and over your head i ha' dusked the sky! "i ha' harpit ye up to the throne o' god, i ha' harpit your secret soul in three; i ha' harpit ye down to the hinges o' hell, and--ye--would--make--a knight o' me!" the story of ung. once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago, ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. fashioned the form of a tribesman--gaily he whistled and sung, working the snow with his fingers. _read ye the story of ung!_ pleased was his tribe with that image--came in their hundreds to scan-- handled it, smelt it, and grunted: "verily, this is a man! thus do we carry our lances--thus is a war-belt slung. ay, it is even as we are. glory and honour to ung!" later he pictured an aurochs--later he pictured a bear-- pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair-- pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone-- out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone. swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still-- men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill, hunters and fishers and trappers--presently whispering low; "yea, they are like--and it may be.... but how does the picture-man know? "ung--hath he slept with the aurochs--watched where the mastodon roam? spoke on the ice with the bow-head--followed the sabre-tooth home? nay! these are toys of his fancy! if he have cheated us so, how is there truth in his image--the man that he fashioned of snow?" wroth was that maker of pictures--hotly he answered the call: "hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all! look at the beasts when ye hunt them!" swift from the tumult he broke, ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke. and the father of ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft, maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed: "if they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done, and each man would make him a picture, and--what would become of my son? "there would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift, nor dole of the oily timber that strands with the baltic drift; no store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale; no new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale. "_thou_ hast not toiled at the fishing when the sodden trammels freeze, nor worked the war-boats outward, through the rush of the rock-staked seas, yet they bring thee fish and plunder--full meal and an easy bed-- and all for the sake of thy pictures." and ung held down his head. "_thou_ hast not stood to the aurochs when the red snow reeks of the fight; men have no time at the houghing to count his curls aright: and the heart of the hairy mammoth thou sayest they do not see, yet they save it whole from the beaches and broil the best for thee. "and now do they press to thy pictures, with open mouth and eye, and a little gift in the doorway, and the praise no gift can buy: but--sure they have doubted thy pictures, and that is a grievous stain-- son that can see so clearly, return them their gifts again." and ung looked down at his deerskins--their broad shell-tasselled bands-- and ung drew downward his mitten and looked at his naked hands; and he gloved himself and departed, and he heard his father, behind: "son that can see so clearly, rejoice that thy tribe is blind!" straight on that glittering ice-field, by the caves of the lost dordogne, ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scribing on bone-- even to mammoth editions. gaily he whistled and sung, blessing his tribe for their blindness. _heed ye the story of ung!_ the three-decker. "the three-volume novel is extinct." full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail. it cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail; but, spite all modern notions, i found her first and best-- the only certain packet for the islands of the blest. fair held our breeze behind us--'twas warm with lovers' prayers: we'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs; they shipped as able bastards till the wicked nurse confessed, and they worked the old three-decker to the islands of the blest. _carambas_ and _serapés_ we waved to every wind, we smoked good corpo bacco when our sweethearts proved unkind; with maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed we also took our manners to the islands of the blest. we asked no social questions--we pumped no hidden shame-- we never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came: we left the lord in heaven, we left the fiends in hell. we weren't exactly yussufs, but--zuleika didn't tell! no moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, the villain got his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered. 'twas fiddles in the foc'sle--'twas garlands on the mast, for every one got married, and i went ashore at last. i left 'em all in couples akissing on the decks. i left the lovers loving and the parents signing checks. in endless english comfort by county-folk caressed, i left the old three-decker at the islands of the blest! that route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of spain. they're just beyond the skyline, howe'er so far you cruise in a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws. swing round your aching search-light--'twill show no haven's peace! ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas! boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's unrest-- but you aren't a knot the nearer to the islands of the blest. and when you're threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail, on a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale, calm as the flying dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed, you'll see the old three-decker for the islands of the blest. you'll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread; you'll hear the long-drawn thunder 'neath her leaping figure-head; while far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine. hull down--hull down and under--she dwindles to a speck, with noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck. all's well--all's well aboard her--she's dropped you far behind, with a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind. her crew are babes or madmen? her port is all to make? you're manned by truth and science, and you steam for steaming's sake? well, tinker up your engines--you know your business best-- _she's_ taking tired people to the islands of the blest! an american. the american spirit speaks: if the led striker call it a strike, or the papers call it a war, they know not much what i am like, nor what he is, my avatar. through many roads, by me possessed, he shambles forth in cosmic guise; he is the jester and the jest, and he the text himself applies. the celt is in his heart and hand, the gaul is in his brain and nerve; where, cosmopolitanly planned, he guards the redskin's dry reserve. his easy unswept hearth he lends from labrador to guadeloupe; till, elbowed out by sloven friends, he camps, at sufferance, on the stoop. calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown, or panic-blinded stabs and slays: blatant he bids the world bow down, or cringing begs a crumb of praise; or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart, he dubs his dreary brethren kings. his hands are black with blood: his heart leaps, as a babe's, at little things. but, through the shift of mood and mood, mine ancient humour saves him whole-- the cynic devil in his blood that bids him mock his hurrying soul; that bids him flout the law he makes, that bids him make the law he flouts, till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes the drumming guns that--have no doubts; that checks him foolish hot and fond, that chuckles through his deepest ire, that gilds the slough of his despond but dims the goal of his desire; inopportune, shrill-accented, the acrid asiatic mirth that leaves him careless 'mid his dead, the scandal of the elder earth. how shall he clear himself, how reach our bar or weighed defence prefer-- a brother hedged with alien speech and lacking all interpreter? which knowledge vexes him a space; but while reproof around him rings, he turns a keen untroubled face home, to the instant need of things. enslaved, illogical, elate, he greets th' embarrassed gods, nor fears to shake the iron hand of fate or match with destiny for beers. lo! imperturbable he rules, unkempt, disreputable, vast-- and, in the teeth of all the schools i--i shall save him at the last! the mary gloster. i've paid for your sickest fancies; i've humoured your crackedest whim-- dick, it's your daddy--dying: you've got to listen to him! good for a fortnight, am i? the doctor told you? he lied. i shall go under by morning, and---- put that nurse outside. never seen death yet, dickie? well, now is your time to learn, and you'll wish you held my record before it comes to your turn. not counting the line and the foundry, the yards and the village, too, i've made myself and a million; but i'm damned if i made you. master at two-and-twenty, and married at twenty three-- ten thousand men on the pay-roll, and forty freighters at sea! fifty years between 'em, and every year of it fight, and now i'm sir anthony gloster, dying, a baronite: for i lunched with his royal 'ighness--what was it the papers a-had? "not least of our merchant-princes." dickie, that's me, your dad! _i_ didn't begin with askings. _i_ took my job and i stuck; and i took the chances they wouldn't, an' now they're calling it luck. lord, what boats i've handled--rotten and leaky and old! ran 'em, or--opened the bilge-cock, precisely as i was told. grub that 'ud bind you crazy, and crews that 'ud turn you gray, and a big fat lump of insurance to cover the risk on the way. the others they duresn't do it; they said they valued their life (they've served me since as skippers). _i_ went, and i took my wife. over the world i drove 'em, married at twenty-three, and your mother saving the money and making a man of me. i was content to be master, but she said there was better behind; she took the chances i wouldn't, and i followed your mother blind. she egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me clear the loan, when we bought half shares in a cheap 'un and hoisted a flag of our own. patching and coaling on credit, and living the lord knew how, we started the red ox freighters--we've eight-and-thirty now. and those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights, and we knew we were making our fortune, but she died in macassar straits-- by the little paternosters, as you come to the union bank-- and we dropped her in fourteen fathom; i pricked it off where she sank. owners we were, full owners, and the boat was christened for her, and she died out there in childbed. my heart, how young we were! so i went on a spree round java and well-nigh ran her ashore, but your mother came and warned me and i wouldn't liquor no more. strict i stuck to my business, afraid to stop or i'd think, saving the money (she warned me), and letting the other men drink. and i met mccullough in london (i'd saved five 'undred then), and 'tween us we started the foundry--three forges and twenty men: cheap repairs for the cheap 'uns. it paid, and the business grew, for i bought me a steam-lathe patent, and that was a gold mine too. "cheaper to build 'em than buy 'em," _i_ said, but mccullough he shied, and we wasted a year in talking before we moved to the clyde. and the lines were all beginning, and we all of us started fair, building our engines like houses and staying the boilers square. but mccullough 'e wanted cabins with marble and maple and all, and brussels and utrecht velvet, and baths and a social hall, and pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light. but mccullough he died in the sixties, and---- well, i'm dying to-night.... i knew--_i_ knew what was coming, when we bid on the _byfleet's_ keel. they piddled and piffled with iron: i'd given my orders for steel. steel and the first expansions. it paid, i tell you, it paid, when we came with our nine-knot freighters and collared the long-run trade. and they asked me how i did it, and i gave 'em the scripture text, "you keep your light so shining a little in front o' the next!" they copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind, and i left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind. then came the armour-contracts, but that was mccullough's side; he was always best in the foundry, but better, perhaps, he died. i went through his private papers; the notes was plainer than print; and i'm no fool to finish if a man'll give me a hint. (i remember his widow was angry.) so i saw what the drawings meant, and i started the six-inch rollers, and it paid me sixty per cent. sixty per cent _with_ failures, and more than twice we could do, and a quarter-million to credit, and i saved it all for you. i thought--it doesn't matter--you seemed to favour your ma, but you're nearer forty than thirty, and i know the kind you are. harrer an' trinity college! i ought to ha' sent you to sea-- but i stood you an education, an' what have you done for me? the things i knew was proper you wouldn't thank me to give, and the things i knew was rotten you said was the way to live; for you muddled with books and pictures, an' china an' etchin's an' fans, and your rooms at college was beastly--more like a whore's than a man's-- till you married that thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone, and she gave you your social nonsense; but where's that kid o' your own? i've seen your carriages blocking the half of the cromwell road, but never the doctor's brougham to help the missus unload. (so there isn't even a grandchild, an' the gloster family's done.) not like your mother, she isn't. _she_ carried her freight each run. but they died, the pore little beggars! at sea she had 'em--they died. only you, an' you stood it; you haven't stood much beside-- weak, a liar, and idle, and mean as a collier's whelp nosing for scraps in the galley. no help--my son was no help! so he gets three 'undred thousand, in trust and the interest paid. i wouldn't give it you, dickie--you see, i made it in trade. you're saved from soiling your fingers, and if you have no child, it all comes back to the business. gad, won't your wife be wild! calls and calls in her carriage, her 'andkerchief up to 'er eye: "daddy! dear daddy's dyin'!" and doing her best to cry. grateful? oh, yes, i'm grateful, but keep 'er away from here. your mother 'ud never ha' stood 'er, and, anyhow, women are queer.... there's women will say i've married a second time. not quite! but give pore aggie a hundred, and tell her your lawyers'll fight. she was the best o' the boiling--you'll meet her before it ends; i'm in for a row with the mother--i'll leave you settle my friends: for a man he must go with a woman, which women don't understand-- or the sort that say they can see it they aren't the marrying brand. but i wanted to speak o' your mother that's lady gloster still. i'm going to up and see her, without it's hurting the will. here! take your hand off the bell-pull. five thousand's waiting for you, if you'll only listen a minute, and do as i bid you do. they'll try to prove me a loony, and, if you bungle, they can; and i've only you to trust to! (o god, why ain't he a man?) there's some waste money on marbles, the same as mccullough tried-- marbles and mausoleums--but i call that sinful pride. there's some ship bodies for burial--we've carried 'em, soldered and packed; down in their wills they wrote it, and nobody called _them_ cracked. but me--i've too much money, and people might.... all my fault: it come o' hoping for grandsons and buying that wokin' vault. i'm sick o' the 'ole dam' business; i'm going back where i came. dick, you're the son o' my body, and you'll take charge o' the same! i'm going to lie by your mother, ten thousand mile away, and they'll want to send me to woking; and that's where you'll earn your pay. i've thought it out on the quiet, the same as it ought to be done-- quiet, and decent, and proper--an' here's your orders, my son. you know the line? you don't, though. you write to the board, and tell your father's death has upset you an' you're goin' to cruise for a spell, an' you'd like the mary gloster--i've held her ready for this-- they'll put her in working order an' you'll take her out as she is. yes, it was money idle when i patched her and put her aside (thank god, i can pay for my fancies!)--the boat where your mother died, by the little paternosters, as you come to the union bank, we dropped her--i think i told you--and i pricked it off where she sank. [tiny she looked on the grating--that oily, treacly sea--] hundred and eighteen east, remember, and south just three. easy bearings to carry--three south--three to the dot; but i gave mcandrews a copy in case of dying--or not. and so you'll write to mcandrews, he's chief of the maori line; they'll give him leave, if you ask 'em and say it's business o' mine. i built three boats for the maoris, an' very well pleased they were, an' i've known mac since the fifties, and mac knew me--and her. after the first stroke warned me i sent him the money to keep against the time you'd claim it, committin' your dad to the deep; for you are the son o' my body, and mac was my oldest friend, i've never asked 'im to dinner, but he'll see it out to the end. stiff-necked glasgow beggar, i've heard he's prayed for my soul, but he couldn't lie if you paid him, and he'd starve before he stole. he'll take the mary in ballast--you'll find her a lively ship; and you'll take sir anthony gloster, that goes on his wedding-trip, lashed in our old deck-cabin with all three port-holes wide, the kick o' the screw beneath him and the round blue seas outside! sir anthony gloster's carriage--our 'ouse-flag flyin' free-- ten thousand men on the pay-roll and forty freighters at sea! he made himself and a million, but this world is a fleetin' show, and he'll go to the wife of 'is bosom the same as he ought to go. by the heel of the paternosters--there isn't a chance to mistake-- and mac'll pay you the money as soon as the bubbles break! five thousand for six weeks' cruising, the stanchest freighter afloat, and mac he'll give you your bonus the minute i'm out o' the boat! he'll take you round to macassar, and you'll come back alone; he knows what i want o' the mary.... i'll do what i please with my own. your mother 'ud call it wasteful, but i've seven-and-thirty more; i'll come in my private carriage and bid it wait at the door.... for my son 'e was never a credit: 'e muddled with books and art, and 'e lived on sir anthony's money and 'e broke sir anthony's heart. there isn't even a grandchild, and the gloster family's done-- the only one you left me, o mother, the only one! harrer an' trinity college! me slavin' early an' late, an' he thinks i'm dyin' crazy, and you're in macassar strait! flesh o' my flesh, my dearie, for ever an' ever amen, that first stroke come for a warning; i ought to ha' gone to you then, but--cheap repairs for a cheap 'un--the doctors said i'd do: mary, why didn't _you_ warn me? i've allus heeded to you, excep'--i know--about women; but you are a spirit now; an', wife, they was only women, and i was a man. that's how. an' a man 'e must go with a woman, as you could not understand; but i never talked 'em secrets. i paid 'em out o' hand. thank gawd, i can pay for my fancies! now what's five thousand to me, for a berth off the paternosters in the haven where i would be? _i_ believe in the resurrection, if i read my bible plain, but i wouldn't trust 'em at wokin'; we're safer at sea again. for the heart it shall go with the treasure--go down to the sea in ships. i'm sick of the hired women--i'll kiss my girl on her lips! i'll be content with my fountain, i'll drink from my own well, and the wife of my youth shall charm me--an' the rest can go to hell! (dickie, _he_ will, that's certain.) i'll lie in our standin'-bed, an' mac'll take her in ballast--and she trims best by the head.... down by the head an' sinkin'. her fires are drawn and cold, and the water's splashin' hollow on the skin of the empty hold-- churning an' choking and chuckling, quiet and scummy and dark-- full to her lower hatches and risin' steady. hark! that was the after-bulkhead ... she's flooded from stem to stern.... never seen death yet, dickie?... well, now is your time to learn! sestina of the tramp-royal. speakin' in general, i 'ave tried 'em all, the 'appy roads that take you o'er the world. speakin' in general, i 'ave found them good for such as cannot use one bed too long, but must get 'ence, the same as i 'ave done, an' go observin' matters till they die. what do it matter where or 'ow we die, so long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all-- the different ways that different things are done, an' men an' women lovin' in this world-- takin' our chances as they come along, an' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good? in cash or credit--no, it ain't no good; you 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die, unless you lived your life but one day long, nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all, but drew your tucker some'ow from the world, an' never bothered what you might ha' done. but, gawd, what things are they i 'aven't done? i've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good, in various situations round the world-- for 'im that doth not work must surely die; but that's no reason man should labour all 'is life on one same shift; life's none so long. therfore, from job to job i've moved along. pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done, for something in my 'ead upset me all, till i 'ad dropped whatever 'twas for good, an', out at sea, be'eld the dock-lights die, an' met my mate--the wind that tramps the world. it's like a book, i think, this bloomin' world, which you can read and care for just so long, but presently you feel that you will die unless you get the page you're readin' done, an' turn another--likely not so good; but what you're after is to turn 'em all. gawd bless this world! whatever she 'ath done-- excep' when awful long--i've found it good. so write, before i die, "'e liked it all!" barrack-room ballads. _when 'omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre, he'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea; an' what he thought 'e might require, 'e went an' took--the same as me!_ _the market-girls an' fishermen, the shepherds an' the sailors, too, they 'eard old songs turn up again, but kep' it quiet--same as you!_ _they knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed. they didn't tell, nor make a fuss, but winked at 'omer down the road, an' 'e winked back--the same as us!_ "back to the army again." i'm 'ere in a ticky ulster an' a broken billycock 'at, a-layin' on to the sergeant i don't know a gun from a bat; my shirt's doin' duty for jacket, my sock's stickin' out o' my boots, an' i'm learnin' the damned old goose-step along o' the new recruits! back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again. don't look so 'ard, for i 'aven't no card, i'm back to the army again! i done my six years' service. 'er majesty sez: "good day-- you'll please to come when you're rung for, an' 'ere's your 'ole back pay; an' fourpence a day for baccy--an' bloomin' gen'rous, too; an' now you can make your fortune--the same as your orf'cers do." back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again; 'ow did i learn to do right-about turn? i'm back to the army again! a man o' four-an'-twenty that 'asn't learned of a trade-- beside "reserve" agin' him--'e'd better be never made. i tried my luck for a quarter, an' that was enough for me, an' i thought of 'er majesty's barricks, an' i thought i'd go an' see. back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again; 'tisn't my fault if i dress when i 'alt-- i'm back to the army again! the sergeant arst no questions, but 'e winked the other eye, e' sez to me, "'shun!" an' i shunted, the same as in days gone by; for 'e saw the set o' my shoulders, an' i couldn't 'elp 'oldin' straight when me an' the other rookies come under the barrick gate. back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again; 'oo would ha' thought i could carry an' port? i'm back to the army again! i took my bath, an' i wallered--for, gawd, i needed it so! i smelt the smell o' the barricks, i 'eard the bugles go. i 'eard the feet on the gravel--the feet o' the men what drill-- an' i sez to my flutterin' 'eartstrings, i sez to 'em, "peace, be still!" back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again; 'oo said i knew when the jumner was due? i'm back to the army again! i carried my slops to the tailor; i sez to 'im, "none o' your lip! you tight 'em over the shoulders, an' loose 'em over the 'ip, for the set o' the tunic's 'orrid." an' 'e sez to me, "strike me dead, but i thought you was used to the business!" an' so 'e done what i said. back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again. rather too free with my fancies? wot--me? i'm back to the army again! next week i'll 'ave 'em fitted; i'll buy me a walkin' cane; they'll let me free o' the barricks to walk on the hoe again in the name o' william parsons, that used to be edward clay, an'--any pore beggar that wants it can draw my fourpence a day! back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again: out o' the cold an' the rain, sergeant, out o' the cold an' the rain. 'oo's there? a man that's too good to be lost you, a man that is 'andled an' made-- a man that will pay what 'e cost you in learnin' the others their trade--parade! you're droppin' the pick o' the army because you don't 'elp 'em remain, but drives 'em to cheat to get out o' the street an' back to the army again! "birds of prey" march. march! the mud is cakin' good about our trousies. front!--eyes front, an' watch the colour-casin's drip. front! the faces of the women in the 'ouses ain't the kind o' things to take aboard the ship. _cheer! an' we'll never march to victory. cheer! an' we'll never live to 'ear the cannon roar! the large birds o' prey they will carry us away, an' you'll never see your soldiers any more!_ wheel! oh, keep your touch; we're goin' round a corner. time!--mark time, an' let the men be'ind us close. lord! the transport's full, an' 'alf our lot not on 'er-- cheer, o cheer! we're going off where no one knows. march! the devil's none so black as 'e is painted! cheer! we'll 'ave some fun before we're put away. 'alt, an' 'and 'er out--a woman's gone and fainted! cheer! get on--gawd 'elp the married men to-day! hoi! come up, you 'ungry beggars, to yer sorrow. ('ear them say they want their tea, an' want it quick!) you won't have no mind for slingers, not to-morrow-- no; you'll put the 'tween-decks stove out, bein' sick! 'alt! the married kit 'as all to go before us! 'course it's blocked the bloomin' gangway up again! cheer, o cheer the 'orse guards watchin' tender o'er us, keepin' us since eight this mornin' in the rain! stuck in 'eavy marchin'-order, sopped and wringin'-- sick, before our time to watch 'er 'eave an' fall, 'ere's your 'appy 'ome at last, an' stop your singin'. 'alt! fall in along the troop-deck! silence all! _cheer! for we'll never live to see no bloomin' victory! cheer! an' we'll never live to 'ear the cannon roar! (one cheer more!) the jackal an' the kite 'ave an 'ealthy appetite, an' you'll never see your soldiers any more! ('ip! urroar!) the eagle an' the crow they are waitin' ever so, an' you'll never see your soldiers any more! ('ip! urroar!) yes, the large birds o' prey they will carry us away, an' you'll never see your soldiers any more!_ "soldier an' sailor too." as i was spittin' into the ditch aboard o' the crocodile, i seed a man on a man-o'-war got up in the reg'lars' style. 'e was scrapin' the paint from off of 'er plates, an' i sez to 'im, "'oo are you?" sez 'e, "i'm a jolly--'er majesty's jolly--soldier an' sailor too!" now 'is work begins at gawd knows when, and 'is work is never through; 'e isn't one o' the reg'lar line, nor 'e isn't one of the crew. 'e's a kind of a giddy harumfrodite--soldier an' sailor too! an' after i met 'im all over the world, a-doin' all kinds of things, like landin' 'isself with a gatlin' gun to talk to them 'eathen kings; 'e sleeps in an 'ammick instead of a cot, an' 'e drills with the deck on a slew, an' 'e sweats like a jolly--'er majesty's jolly--soldier an' sailor too! for there isn't a job on the top o' the earth the beggar don't know, nor do. you can leave 'im at night on a bald man's 'ead, to paddle 'is own canoe; 'e's a sort of a bloomin' cosmopolouse--soldier an' sailor too. we've fought 'em on trooper, we've fought 'em in dock, an' drunk with 'em in betweens, when they called us the seasick scull'ry maids, an' we called 'em the ass marines; but, when we was down for a double fatigue, from woolwich to bernardmyo, we sent for the jollies--'er majesty's jollies--soldier an' sailor too! they think for 'emselves, an' they steal for 'emselves, and they never ask what's to do, but they're camped an' fed an' they're up an' fed before our bugle's blew. ho! they ain't no limpin' procrastitutes--soldier an' sailor too. you may say we are fond of an 'arness-cut, or 'ootin' in barrick-yards, or startin' a board school mutiny along o' the onion guards; but once in a while we can finish in style for the ends of the earth to view, the same as the jollies--'er majesty's jollies--soldier an' sailor too! they come of our lot, they was brothers to us; they was beggars we'd met an' knew; yes, barrin' an inch in the chest an' the arms, they was doubles o' me an' you; for they weren't no special chrysanthemums--soldier an' sailor too! to take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about, is nothing so bad when you've cover to 'and, an' leave an' likin' to shout; but to stand an' be still to the _birken'ead_ drill is a damn tough bullet to chew, an' they done it, the jollies--'er majesty's jollies--soldier an' sailor too! their work was done when it 'adn't begun; they was younger nor me an' you; their choice it was plain between drownin' in 'eaps an' bein' mashed by the screw, so they stood an' was still to the _birken'ead_ drill, soldier an' sailor too! we're most of us liars, we're 'arf of us thieves, an' the rest are as rank as can be, but once in a while we can finish in style (which i 'ope it won't 'appen to me). but it makes you think better o' you an' your friends, an' the work you may 'ave to do, when you think o' the sinkin' _victorier's_ jollies--soldier an' sailor too! now there isn't no room for to say ye don't know--they 'ave proved it plain and true-- that whether it's widow, or whether it's ship, victorier's work is to do, an' they done it, the jollies--'er majesty's jollies--soldier an' sailor too! sappers. when the waters were dried an' the earth did appear ("it's all one," says the sapper), the lord he created the engineer, her majesty's royal engineer, with the rank and pay of a sapper! when the flood come along for an extra monsoon, 'twas noah constructed the first pontoon to the plans of her majesty's, etc. but after "fatigue" in the wet an' the sun, old noah got drunk, which he wouldn't ha' done if he'd trained with, etc. when the tower o' babel had mixed up men's _bat_, some clever civilian was managing that, an' none of, etc. when the jews had a fight at the foot of an 'ill, young joshua ordered the sun to stand still, for he was a captain of engineers, etc. when the children of israel made bricks without straw, they were learnin' the regular work of our corps, the work of, etc. for ever since then, if a war they would wage, behold us a-shinin' on history's page-- first page for, etc. we lay down their sidings an' help 'em entrain, an' we sweep up their mess through the bloomin' campaign, in the style of, etc. they send us in front with a fuse an' a mine to blow up the gates that are rushed by the line, but bent by, etc. they send us behind with a pick an' a spade, to dig for the guns of a bullock-brigade which has asked for, etc. we work under escort in trousies an' shirt, an' the heathen they plug us tail-up in the dirt, annoying, etc. we blast out the rock an' we shovel the mud, we make 'em good roads an'--they roll down the _khud_, reporting, etc. we make 'em their bridges, their wells, an' their huts, an' the telegraph-wire the enemy cuts, an' it's blamed on, etc. an' when we return an' from war we would cease, they grudge us adornin' the billets of peace, which are kept for, etc. we build 'em nice barricks--they swear they are bad, that our colonels are methodist, married or mad, insultin', etc. they haven't no manners nor gratitude too, for the more that we help 'em the less will they do, but mock at, etc. now the line's but a man with a gun in his hand, an' cavalry's only what horses can stand, when helped by, etc. artillery moves by the leave o' the ground, but _we_ are the men that do something all round, for _we_ are, etc. i have stated it plain, an' my argument's thus, ("it's all one," says the sapper), there's only one corps which is perfect--that's us; an' they call us her majesty's engineers, her majesty's royal engineers, with the rank and pay of a sapper! that day. it got beyond all orders an' it got beyond all 'ope; it got to shammin' wounded an' retirin' from the 'alt. 'ole companies was lookin' for the nearest road to slope; it were just a bloomin' knock-out--an' our fault! _now there ain't no chorus 'ere to give, nor there ain't no band to play; an' i wish i was dead 'fore i done what i did or seen what i seed that day!_ we was sick o' bein' punished, an' we let 'em know it, too; an' a company-commander up an' 'it us with a sword, an' some one shouted "'ook it!" an' it come to _sove-ki-poo_, an' we chucked our rifles from us--oh, my gawd! there was thirty dead an' wounded on the ground we wouldn't keep-- no, there wasn't more than twenty when the front begun to go; but, christ! along the line o' flight they cut us up like sheep, an' that was all we gained by doin' so. i 'eard the knives be'ind me, but i dursn't face my man, an' i don't know where i went to, 'cause i didn't 'alt to see, till i 'eard a beggar squealin' out for quarter as 'e ran, an' i thought i knew the voice an'--it was me! we was 'idin' under bedsteads more than 'arf a march away; we was lyin' up like rabbits all about the country side; an' the major cursed 'is maker 'cause 'e lived to see that day, an' the colonel broke 'is sword acrost, an' cried. we was rotten 'fore we started--we was never disci_plined_; we made it out a favour if an order was obeyed; yes, every little drummer 'ad 'is rights an' wrongs to mind, so we had to pay for teachin'--an' we paid! the papers 'id it 'andsome, but you know the army knows; we was put to groomin' camels till the regiments withdrew, an' they give us each a medal for subduin' england's foes, an' i 'ope you like my song--because it's true! _an' there ain't no chorus 'ere to give, nor there ain't no band to play; but i wish i was dead 'fore i done what i did or seen what i seed that day!_ "the men that fought at minden." a song of instruction. the men that fought at minden, they was rookies in their time-- so was them that fought at waterloo! all the 'ole command, yuss, from minden to maiwand, they was once dam' sweeps like you! _then do not be discouraged, 'eaven is your 'elper, we'll learn you not to forget; an' you mustn't swear an' curse, or you'll only catch it worse, for we'll make you soldiers yet._ the men that fought at minden, they 'ad stocks beneath their chins, six inch 'igh an' more; but fatigue it was their pride, and they _would_ not be denied to clean the cook-'ouse floor. the men that fought at minden, they 'ad anarchistic bombs served to 'em by name of 'and-grenades; but they got it in the eye (same as you will by an' by) when they clubbed their field-parades. the men that fought at minden, they 'ad buttons up an' down, two-an'-twenty dozen of 'em told; but they didn't grouse an' shirk at an hour's extry work, they kept 'em bright as gold. the men that fought at minden, they was armed with musketoons, also, they was drilled by 'alberdiers; i don't know what they were, but the sergeants took good care they washed be'ind their ears. the men that fought at minden, they 'ad ever cash in 'and which they did not bank nor save, but spent it gay an' free on their betters--such as me-- for the good advice i gave. the men that fought at minden, they was civil--yuss, they was-- never didn't talk o' rights an' wrongs, but they got it with the toe (same as you will get it--so!)-- for interrupting songs. the men that fought at minden, they was several other things which i don't remember clear; but _that's_ the reason why, now the six-year men are dry, the rooks will stand the beer! _then do not be discouraged, 'eaven is your 'elper, we'll learn you not to forget; an' you mustn't swear an' curse, or you'll only catch it worse, and we'll make you soldiers yet._ _soldiers yet, if you've got it in you-- all for the sake o' the core; soldiers yet, if we 'ave to skin you-- run an' get the beer, johnny raw--johnny raw! ho! run an' get the beer, johnny raw!_ cholera camp. we've got the cholerer in camp--it's worse than forty fights; we're dyin' in the wilderness the same as isrulites! it's before us, an' be'ind us, an' we cannot get away, an' the doctor's just reported we've ten more to-day! _oh, strike your camp an' go, the bugle's callin', the rains are fallin'-- the dead are bushed an' stoned to keep 'em safe below; the band's a-doin' all she knows to cheer us; the chaplain's gone and prayed to gawd to 'ear us-- to 'ear us-- o lord, for it's a-killing of us so!_ since august, when it started, it's been sticking to our tail, tho' they've 'ad us out by marches an' they've 'ad us back by rail; but it runs as fast as troop-trains, an' we can not get away; an' the sick-list to the colonel makes ten more to-day. there ain't no fun in women nor there ain't no bite to drink; it's much too wet for shootin', we can only march and think; an' at evenin', down the _nullahs_, we can 'ear the jackals say, "get up, you rotten beggars, you've ten more to-day!" 'twould make a monkey cough to see our way o' doin' things-- lieutenants takin' companies an' captains takin' wings, an' lances actin' sergeants--eight file to obey-- for we've lots o' quick promotion on ten deaths a day! our colonel's white an' twitterly--'e gets no sleep nor food, but mucks about in 'orspital where nothing does no good. 'e sends us 'eaps o' comforts, all bought from 'is pay-- but there aren't much comfort 'andy on ten deaths a day. our chaplain's got a banjo, an' a skinny mule 'e rides, an' the stuff 'e says an' sings us, lord, it makes us split our sides! with 'is black coat-tails a-bobbin' to _ta-ra-ra boom-der-ay!_ 'e's the proper kind o' _padre_ for ten deaths a day. an' father victor 'elps 'im with our roman catholicks-- he knows an 'eap of irish songs an' rummy conjurin' tricks; an' the two they works together when it comes to play or pray; so we keep the ball a-rollin' on ten deaths a day. we've got the cholerer in camp--we've got it 'ot an' sweet; it ain't no christmas dinner, but it's 'elped an' we must eat. we've gone beyond the funkin', 'cause we've found it doesn't pay, an' we're rockin' round the districk on ten deaths a day! _then strike your camp an' go, the rains are fallin', the bugle's callin'! the dead are bushed an' stoned to keep 'em safe below! an' them that do not like it they can lump it, an' them that can not stand it they can jump it; we've got to die somewhere--some way--some'ow-- we might as well begin to do it now! then, number one, let down the tent-pole slow, knock out the pegs an' 'old the corners--so! fold in the flies, furl up the ropes, an' stow! oh, strike--oh, strike your camp an' go! (gawd 'elp us!)_ the ladies. i've taken my fun where i've found it; i've rogued an' i've ranged in my time; i've 'ad my pickin' o' sweet'earts, an' four o' the lot was prime. one was an 'arf-caste widow, one was a woman at prome, one was the wife of a _jemadar-sais_,[ ] an' one is a girl at 'ome. _now i aren't no 'and with the ladies, for, takin' 'em all along, you never can say till you've tried 'em, an' then you are like to be wrong. there's times when you'll think that you mightn't, there's times when you'll know that you might; but the things you will learn from the yellow an' brown, they'll 'elp you an 'eap with the white!_ i was a young un at 'oogli, shy as a girl to begin; aggie de castrer she made me, an' aggie was clever as sin; older than me, but my first un-- more like a mother she were-- showed me the way to promotion an' pay, an' i learned about women from 'er. then i was ordered to burma, actin' in charge o' bazar, an' i got me a tiddy live 'eathen through buyin' supplies off 'er pa. funny an' yellow an' faithful-- doll in a teacup she were, but we lived on the square, like a true-married pair, an' i learned about women from 'er. then we was shifted to neemuch (or i might ha' been keepin' 'er now), an' i took with a shiny she-devil, the wife of a nigger at mhow; taught me the gipsy-folks' _bolee_;[ ] kind o' volcano she were, for she knifed me one night 'cause i wished she was white, and i learned about women from 'er. then i come 'ome in the trooper, 'long of a kid o' sixteen-- girl from a convent at meerut, the straightest i ever 'ave seen. love at first sight was 'er trouble, _she_ didn't know what it were; an' i wouldn't do such, 'cause i liked 'er too much, but--i learned about women from 'er! i've taken my fun where i've found it, an' now i must pay for my fun, for the more you 'ave known o' the others the less will you settle to one; an' the end of it's sittin' and thinkin', an' dreamin' hell-fires to see; so be warned by my lot (which i know you will not), an' learn about women from me! _what did the colonel's lady think? nobody never knew. somebody asked the sergeant's wife, an' she told 'em true. when you get to a man in the case, they're like as a row of pins-- for the colonel's lady an' judy o'grady are sisters under their skins!_ footnotes: [ ] head-groom. [ ] slang. bill 'awkins. "'as anybody seen bill 'awkins?" "now 'ow in the devil would i know?" "'e's taken my girl out walkin', an' i've got to tell 'im so-- gawd--bless--'im! i've got to tell 'im so." "d'yer know what 'e's like, bill 'awkins?" "now what in the devil would i care?" "'e's the livin', breathin' image of an organ-grinder's monkey, with a pound of grease in 'is 'air-- gawd--bless--'im! an' a pound o' grease in 'is 'air." "an' s'pose you met bill 'awkins, now what in the devil 'ud ye do?" "i'd open 'is cheek to 'is chin-strap buckle, an' bung up 'is both eyes, too-- gawd--bless--'im! an' bung up 'is both eyes, too!" "look 'ere, where 'e comes, bill 'awkins! now what in the devil will you say?" "it isn't fit an' proper to be fightin' on a sunday, so i'll pass 'im the time o' day-- gawd--bless--'im! i'll pass 'im the time o' day!" the mother-lodge. there was rundle, station master, an' beazeley of the rail, an' 'ackman, commissariat, an' donkin o' the jail; an' blake, conductor-sargent, our master twice was 'e, with 'im that kept the europe shop, old framjee eduljee. _outside--"sergeant! sir! salute! salaam!" inside--"brother," an' it doesn't do no 'arm. we met upon the level an' we parted on the square, an' i was junior deacon in my mother lodge out there!_ we'd bola nath, accountant, an' saul the aden jew, an' din mohammed, draughtsman of the survey office too; there was babu chuckerbutty, an' amir singh the sikh, an' castro from the fittin'-sheds, the roman catholick! we 'adn't good regalia, an' our lodge was old an' bare, but we knew the ancient landmarks, an' we kep' 'em to a hair; an' lookin' on it backwards it often strikes me thus, there ain't such things as infidels, excep', per'aps, it's us. for monthly, after labour, we'd all sit down and smoke (we dursn't give no banquits, lest a brother's caste were broke), an' man on man got talkin' religion an' the rest, an' every man comparin' of the god 'e knew the best. so man on man got talkin', an' not a brother stirred till mornin' waked the parrots an' that dam' brain-fever-bird; we'd say 'twas 'ighly curious, an' we'd all ride 'ome to bed, with mo'ammed, god, an' shiva changin' pickets in our 'ead. full oft on guv'ment service this rovin' foot 'ath pressed, an' bore fraternal greetin's to the lodges east an' west, accordin' as commanded from kohat to singapore, but i wish that i might see them in my mother lodge once more! i wish that i might see them, my brethren black an' brown, with the trichies smellin' pleasant an' the _hog-darn_[ ] passin' down; an' the old khansamah[ ] snorin' on the bottle-khana[ ] floor, like a master in good standing with my mother lodge once more! _outside--"sergeant! sir! salute! salaam!" inside--"brother," an' it doesn't do no 'arm. we met upon the level an' we parted on the square, an' i was junior deacon in my mother lodge out there!_ footnotes: [ ] cigar-lighter. [ ] butler. [ ] pantry. "follow me 'ome." there was no one like 'im, 'orse or foot, nor any o' the guns i knew; an' because it was so, why, o' course 'e went an' died, which is just what the best men do. _so it's knock out your pipes an' follow me! an' it's finish up your swipes an' follow me! oh, 'ark to the big drum callin', follow me--follow me 'ome!_ 'is mare she neighs the 'ole day long, she paws the 'ole night through, an' she won't take 'er feed 'cause o' waitin' for 'is step, which is just what a beast would do. 'is girl she goes with a bombardier before 'er month is through; an' the banns are up in church, for she's got the beggar hooked, which is just what a girl would do. we fought 'bout a dog--last week it were-- no more than a round or two; but i strook 'im cruel 'ard, an' i wish i 'adn't now, which is just what a man can't do. 'e was all that i 'ad in the way of a friend, an' i've 'ad to find one new; but i'd give my pay an' stripe for to get the beggar back, which it's just too late to do. _so it's knock out your pipes an' follow me! an' it's finish off your swipes an' follow me! oh, 'ark to the fifes a-crawlin'! follow me--follow me 'ome!_ _take 'im away! 'e's gone where the best men go. take 'im away! an' the gun-wheels turnin' slow. take 'im away! there's more from the place 'e come. take 'im away, with the limber an' the drum._ _for it's "three rounds blank" an' follow me, an' it's "thirteen rank" an' follow me; oh, passin' the love o' women, follow me--follow me 'ome!_ the sergeant's weddin'. 'e was warned agin' 'er-- that's what made 'im look; she was warned agin' 'im-- that is why she took. wouldn't 'ear no reason, went an' done it blind; we know all about 'em, they've got all to find! _cheer for the sergeant's weddin'-- give 'em one cheer more! gray gun-'orses in the lando, an' a rogue is married to, etc._ what's the use o' tellin' 'arf the lot she's been? 'e's a bloomin' robber, _an'_ 'e keeps canteen. 'ow did 'e get 'is buggy? gawd, you needn't ask! made 'is forty gallon out of every cask! watch 'im, with 'is 'air cut, count us filin' by-- won't the colonel praise 'is pop--u--lar--i--ty! we 'ave scores to settle-- scores for more than beer; she's the girl to pay 'em-- that is why we're 'ere! see the chaplain thinkin'? see the women smile? twig the married winkin' as they take the aisle? keep your side-arms quiet, dressin' by the band. ho! you 'oly beggars, cough be'ind your 'and! now it's done an' over, 'ear the organ squeak, "_voice that breathed o'er eden_"-- ain't she got the cheek! white an' laylock ribbons, think yourself so fine! i'd pray gawd to take yer 'fore i made yer mine! escort to the kerridge, wish 'im luck, the brute! chuck the slippers after-- [pity 'taint a boot!] bowin' like a lady, blushin' like a lad-- 'oo would say to see 'em-- both are rotten bad! _cheer for the sergeant's weddin'-- give 'em one cheer more! gray gun-'orses in the lando, an' a rogue is married to, etc._ the jacket. through the plagues of egyp' we was chasin' arabi, gettin' down an' shovin' in the sun; an' you might 'ave called us dirty, an' you might ha' called us dry, an' you might 'ave 'eard us talkin' at the gun. but the captain 'ad 'is jacket, an' the jacket it was new-- ('orse-gunners, listen to my song!) an' the wettin' of the jacket is the proper thing to do, nor we didn't keep 'im waiting very long! one day they give us orders for to shell a sand redoubt, loadin' down the axle-arms with case; but the captain knew 'is dooty, an' he took the crackers out, an' he put some proper liquor in its place. an' the captain saw the shrapnel (which is six-an'-thirty clear). ('orse-gunners, listen to my song!) "will you draw the weight," sez 'e, "or will you draw the beer?" an' we didn't keep 'im waitin' very long. _for the captain_, etc. then we trotted gentle, not to break the bloomin' glass, though the arabites 'ad all their ranges marked; but we dursn't 'ardly gallop, for the most was bottled bass, an' we'd dreamed of it since we was disembarked. so we fired economic with the shells we 'ad in 'and, ('orse-gunners, listen to my song!) but the beggars under cover 'ad the impidence to stand, an' we couldn't keep 'em waitin' very long. _and the captain_, etc. so we finished 'arf the liquor (an' the captain took champagne), an' the arabites was shootin' all the while; an' we left our wounded 'appy with the empties on the plain, an' we used the bloomin' guns for pro-jec-tile! we limbered up an' galloped--there were nothin' else to do-- ('orse-gunners, listen to my song!) an' the battery come a-boundin' like a boundin' kangaroo, but they didn't watch us comin' very long. _as the captain_, etc. we was goin' most extended--we was drivin' very fine, an' the arabites were loosin' 'igh an' wide, till the captain took the glassy with a rattlin' right incline, an' we dropped upon their 'eads the other side. then we give 'em quarter--such as 'adn't up and cut, ('orse-gunners, listen to my song!) an' the captain stood a limberful of fizzy--somethin' brutt, but we didn't leave it fizzing very long. _for the captain_, etc. we might ha' been court-martialled, but it all come out all right when they signalled us to join the main command. there was every round expended, there was every gunner tight, an' the captain waved a corkscrew in 'is 'and! _but the captain had 'is jacket_, etc. the 'eathen. the 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone; 'e don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own; 'e keeps 'is side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about, an' then comes up the regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out. _all along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, all along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less, all along of abby-nay,[ ] kul,[ ] and hazar-ho,[ ] mind you keep your rifle an' yourself jus' so!_ the young recruit is 'aughty--'e draf's from gawd knows where; they bid 'im show 'is stockin's an' lay 'is mattress square; 'e calls it bloomin' nonsense--'e doesn't know, no more-- an' then up comes 'is company an' kicks 'em round the floor! the young recruit is 'ammered--'e takes it very 'ard; 'e 'angs 'is 'ead an' mutters--'e sulks about the yard; 'e talks o' "cruel tyrants" 'e'll swing for by-an'-bye, an' the others 'ears an' mocks 'im, an' the boy goes orf to cry. the young recruit is silly--'e thinks o' suicide; 'e's lost 'is gutter-devil; 'e 'asn't got 'is pride; but day by day they kicks 'im, which 'elps 'im on a bit, till 'e finds 'isself one mornin' with a full an' proper kit. _gettin' clear o' dirtiness, gettin' done with mess, gettin' shut o' doin' things rather-more-or-less; not so fond of abby-nay, kul, nor hazar-ho, learns to keep 'is rifle an' 'isself jus' so!_ the young recruit is 'appy--'e throws a chest to suit; you see 'im grow mustaches; you 'ear 'im slap 'is boot; 'e learns to drop the "bloodies" from every word he slings, an' 'e shows an 'ealthy brisket when 'e strips for bars an' rings. the cruel tyrant sergeants they watch 'im 'arf a year; they watch 'im with 'is comrades, they watch 'im with 'is beer; they watch 'im with the women, at the regimental dance, and the cruel tyrant sergeants send 'is name along for "lance." an' now 'e's 'arf o' nothin', an' all a private yet, 'is room they up an' rags 'im to see what they will get; they rags 'im low an' cunnin', each dirty trick they can, but 'e learns to sweat 'is temper an' 'e learns to know 'is man. an', last, a colour-sergeant, as such to be obeyed, 'e leads 'is men at cricket, 'e leads 'em on parade; they sees 'em quick an' 'andy, uncommon set an' smart, an' so 'e talks to orficers which 'ave the core at 'eart. 'e learns to do 'is watchin' without it showin' plain; 'e learns to save a dummy, an' shove 'im straight again; 'e learns to check a ranker that's buyin' leave to shirk; an' 'e learns to make men like 'im so they'll learn to like their work. an' when it comes to marchin' he'll see their socks are right, an' when it comes to action 'e shows 'em 'ow to sight; 'e knows their ways of thinkin' and just what's in their mind; 'e feels when they are comin' on an' when they've fell be'ind. 'e knows each talkin' corpril that leads a squad astray; 'e feels 'is innards 'eavin', 'is bowels givin' way; 'e sees the blue-white faces all tryin' 'ard to grin, an' 'e stands an' waits an' suffers till it's time to cap 'em in. an' now the hugly bullets come peckin' through the dust, an' no one wants to face 'em, but every beggar must; so, like a man in irons which isn't glad to go, they moves 'em off by companies uncommon stiff an' slow. of all 'is five years' schoolin' they don't remember much excep' the not retreatin', the step an' keepin' touch. it looks like teachin' wasted when they duck an' spread an' 'op, but if 'e 'adn't learned 'em they'd be all about the shop! an' now it's "'oo goes backward?" an' now it's "'oo comes on?" an' now it's "get the doolies," an' now the captain's gone; an' now it's bloody murder, but all the while they 'ear 'is voice, the same as barrick drill, a-shepherdin' the rear. 'e's just as sick as they are, 'is 'eart is like to split, but 'e works 'em, works 'em, works 'em till 'e feels 'em take the bit; the rest is 'oldin' steady till the watchful bugles play, an' 'e lifts 'em, lifts 'em, lifts 'em through the charge that wins the day! _the 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone; 'e don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own; the 'eathen in 'is blindness must end where 'e began, but the backbone of the army is the noncommissioned man!_ _keep away from dirtiness--keep away from mess. don't get into doin' things rather-more-or-less! let's ha' done with abby-nay, kul, an' hazar-ho; mind you keep your rifle an' yourself jus' so!_ footnotes: [ ] not now. [ ] to-morrow. [ ] wait a bit. the shut-eye sentry. sez the junior orderly sergeant to the senior orderly man: "our orderly orf'cer's _hokee-mut_, you 'elp 'im all you can. for the wine was old and the night is cold, an' the best we may go wrong, so, 'fore 'e gits to the sentry-box, you pass the word along." _then it was "rounds! what rounds?" at two of a frosty night, 'e's 'oldin' on by the sergeant's sash, but, sentry, shut your eye. an' it's "pass! all's well!" oh, ain't 'e rockin' tight! 'e'll need an affidavit pretty badly by-an'-bye._ the moon was white on the barricks, the road was white an' wide, an' the orderly orf'cer took it all, an' the ten-foot ditch beside. an' the corporal pulled an' the sergeant pushed, an' the three they wagged along, but i'd shut my eyes in the sentry-box, so i didn't see nothin' wrong. _though it was "rounds! what rounds?" o corporal, 'old 'im up! 'e's usin' 'is cap as it shouldn't be used, but, sentry, shut your eye. an' it's "pass! all's well!" ho, shun the foamin' cup! 'e'll need_, etc. 'twas after four in the mornin'; we 'ad to stop the fun, an' we sent 'im 'ome on a bullock-cart, with 'is belt an' stock undone; but we sluiced 'im down an' we washed 'im out, an' a first-class job we made, when we saved 'im smart as a bombardier for six o'clock parade. _it 'ad been "rounds! what rounds?" oh, shove 'im straight again! 'e's usin' 'is sword for a bicycle, but, sentry, shut your eye. an' it was "pass! all's well!" 'e's called me "darlin' jane"! 'e'll need_, etc. the drill was 'ard an' 'eavy, the sky was 'ot an' blue, an' 'is eye was wild an' 'is 'air was wet, but 'is sergeant pulled 'im through. our men was good old trusties-- they'd done it on their 'ead; but you ought to 'ave 'eard 'em markin' time to 'ide the things 'e said! _for it was "right flank--wheel!" for "'alt, an' stand at ease!" an' "left extend!" for "centre close!" o marker, shut your eye! an' it was, "'ere, sir, 'ere! before the colonel sees!" so he needed affidavits pretty badly by-an'-bye._ there was two-an'-thirty sergeants, there was corp'rals forty-one, there was just nine 'undred rank an' file to swear to a touch o' sun. there was me 'e'd kissed in the sentry-box (as i 'ave not told in my song), but i took my oath, which were bible truth, i 'adn't seen nothin' wrong. there's them that's 'ot an' 'aughty, there's them that's cold an' 'ard, but there comes a night when the best gets tight, an' then turns out the guard. i've seen them 'ide their liquor in every kind o' way, but most depends on makin' friends with privit thomas a. _when it is "rounds! what rounds?" 'e's breathin' through 'is nose. 'e's reelin', rollin', roarin' ripe, but, sentry, shut your eye. an' it's "pass! all's well!" an' that's the way it goes. we'll 'elp 'im for 'is mother, an' 'e'll 'elp us by-an'-bye._ "mary, pity women!" you call yourself a man, for all you used to swear, an' leave me, as you can, my certain shame to bear? i 'ear! you do not care-- you done the worst you know. i 'ate you, grinnin' there.... ah, gawd, i love you so! _nice while it lasted, an' now it is over-- tear out your 'eart an' good-bye to your lover! what's the use o' grievin', when the mother that bore you (mary, pity women!) knew it all before you?_ it aren't no false alarm, the finish to your fun; you--you 'ave brung the 'arm, an' i'm the ruined one; an' now you'll off an' run with some new fool in tow. your 'eart? you 'aven't none.... ah, gawd, i love you so! _when a man is tired there is naught will bind 'im; all 'e solemn promised 'e will shove be'ind 'im. what's the good o' prayin' for the wrath to strike 'im, (mary, pity women!) when the rest are like 'im?_ what 'ope for me or--it? what's left for us to do? i've walked with men a bit, but this--but this is you! so 'elp me christ, it's true! where can i 'ide or go? you coward through an' through!... ah, gawd, i love you so! _all the more you give 'em the less are they for givin'! love lies dead, an' you can not kiss 'im livin'. down the road 'e led you there is no returnin', (mary, pity women!) but you're late in learnin'._ you'd like to treat me fair? you can't, because we're pore? we'd starve? what do i care! we might, but _this_ is shore: i want the name--no more-- the name, an' lines to show, an' not to be an 'ore.... ah, gawd, i love you so! _what's the good o' pleadin', when the mother that bore you (mary, pity women!) knew it all before you? sleep on 'is promises an' wake to your sorrow, (mary, pity women!) for we sail to-morrow!_ for to admire. the injian ocean sets an' smiles so sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue; there aren't a wave for miles an' miles excep' the jiggle from the screw. the ship is swep', the day is done, the bugle's gone for smoke an' play; an' black agin' the settin' sun the lascar sings, "_hum deckty hai!_"[ ] _for to admire an' for to see, for to be'old this world so wide-- it never done no good to me, but i can't drop it if i tried!_ i see the sergeants pitchin' quoits, i 'ear the women laugh an' talk, i spy upon the quarter-deck the orficers an' lydies walk. i thinks about the things that was, an' leans an' looks acrost the sea, till, spite of all the crowded ship, there's no one lef' alive but me. the things that was which i 'ave seen, in barrick, camp, an' action too, i tells them over by myself, an' sometimes wonders if they're true; for they was odd--most awful odd-- but all the same now they are o'er, there must be 'eaps o' plenty such, an' if i wait i'll see some more. oh, i 'ave come upon the books, an' often broke a barrick rule, an' stood beside an' watched myself be'avin' like a bloomin' fool. i paid my price for findin' out, nor never grutched the price i paid, but sat in clink without my boots, admirin' 'ow the world was made. be'old a cloud upon the beam, an' 'umped above the sea appears old aden, like a barrick-stove that no one's lit for years an' years! i passed by that when i began, an' i go 'ome the road i came, a time-expired soldier-man with six years' service to 'is name. my girl she said, "oh, stay with me!" my mother 'eld me to 'er breast. they've never written none, an' so they must 'ave gone with all the rest-- with all the rest which i 'ave seen an' found an' known an' met along. i cannot say the things i feel, but still i sing my evenin' song: _for to admire an' for to see, for to be'old this world so wide-- it never done no good to me, but i can't drop it if i tried!_ footnotes: [ ] "i'm looking out." l'envoi when earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, when the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, we shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down for an æon or two, till the master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew! and those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; they shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair; they shall find real saints to draw from--magdalene, peter, and paul; they shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! and only the master shall praise us, and only the master shall blame; and no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; but each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, shall draw the thing as he sees it for the god of things as they are! [illustration] * * * * * transcriber's note: variant and dialect spellings remain as printed. minor typographical errors have been corrected without note, whilst significant amendments have been listed below: pp. iii, , "mcandrew's hymn" amended to _mcandrews' hymn_; p. , "lea" amended to _lee_: "... whirling like a windmill on the dirty scud to lee ..." the riverside literature series kipling stories and poems every child should know book ii _from rudyard kipling's the seven seas, the days work, etc._ edited by mary e. burt and w. t. chapin, ph.d. (princeton) boston new york chicago san francisco houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge copyright, , , , , , , , , , , , , , by rudyard kipling copyright, , by wolcott balestier copyright, , , , by macmillan & company copyright, , , by d. appleton & company copyright, , , , , by the century company copyright, , by harper & brothers copyright, , by the curtis publishing company published, april, the riverside press cambridge · massachusetts * * * * * contents page biographical sketch--charles eliot norton vii part iv (_continued from book i, riverside literature series, no. _) iv. baa, baa, black sheep (from "under the deodars," etc.) v. wee willie winkie (from "under the deodars," etc.) vi. the dove of dacca (from "departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads") vii. the smoke upon your altar dies (from "departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads") viii. recessional (from "the five nations") ix. l'envoi (from "the seven seas") part v i. the sing-song of old man kangaroo (from "just so stories") ii. fuzzy wuzzy (from "departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads") iii. the english flag (from "departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads") iv. the king (from "the seven seas") v. to the unknown goddess (from "departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads") vi. the galley slave (from "departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads") vii. the ship that found herself (from "the day's work") part vi i. a trip across a continent (from "captains courageous") ii. the children of the zodiac (from "many inventions") iii. the bridge builders (from "the day's work") iv. the miracles (from "the seven seas") v. our lady of the snows (from "the five nations") vi. the song of the women (from "the naulahka") vii. the white man's burden (from "the five nations") * * * * * illustrations by rudyard kipling initial for "the sing-song of old man kangaroo" a picture of old man kangaroo when he was the different animal with four short legs old man kangaroo at five in the afternoon, when he had got his beautiful hind legs just as big god nqong had promised * * * * * a biographical sketch by charles eliot norton the deep and widespread interest which the writings of mr. rudyard kipling have excited has naturally led to curiosity concerning their author and to a desire to know the conditions of his life. much has been written about him which has had little or no foundation in truth. it seems, then, worth while, in order to prevent false or mistaken reports from being accepted as trustworthy, and in order to provide for the public such information concerning mr. kipling as it has a right to possess, that a correct and authoritative statement of the chief events in his life should be given to it. this is the object of the following brief narrative. * * * * * rudyard kipling was born at bombay on the th of december, . his mother, alice, daughter of the rev. g. b. macdonald, a wesleyan preacher, eminent in that denomination, and his father, john lockwood kipling, the son also of a wesleyan preacher, were both of yorkshire birth. they had been married in london early in the year, and they named their first-born child after the pretty lake in staffordshire on the borders of which their acquaintance had begun. mr. lockwood kipling, after leaving school, had served his apprenticeship in one of the famous staffordshire potteries at burslem, had afterward worked in the studio of the sculptor, mr. birnie philip, and from to had been engaged on the decorations of the south kensington museum. during our american war and in the years immediately following, the trade of bombay was exceedingly flourishing, the city was immensely prosperous, a spirit of inflation possessed the government and the people alike, there were great designs for the improvement and rebuilding of large portions of the town, and a need was felt for artistic oversight and direction of the works in hand and contemplated. the distinction which mr. lockwood kipling had already won by his native ability and thorough training led to his being appointed in to go to bombay as the professor of architectural sculpture in the british school of art which had been established there. it was thus that rudyard kipling came to be born in the most cosmopolitan city of the eastern world, and it was there and in its neighbourhood that the first three years of the boy's life were spent, years in which every child receives ineffaceable impressions, shaping his conceptions of the world, and in which a child of peculiarly sensitive nature and active disposition, such as this boy possessed, lies open to myriad influences that quicken and give colour to the imagination. in the spring of he was taken by his mother for a visit to england, and there, in the same year, his sister was born. in the next year his mother returned to india with both her children, and the boy's next two years were spent at and near bombay. he was a friendly and receptive child, eager, interested in all the various entertaining aspects of life in a city which, "gleaning all races from all lands," presents more diversified and picturesque varieties of human condition than any other, east or west. a little incident which his mother remembers is not without a pretty allegoric significance. it was at nasik, on the dekhan plain, not far from bombay: the little fellow trudging over the ploughed field, with his hand in that of the native husbandman, called back to her in the hindustani, which was as familiar to him as english, "good-bye, this is my brother." in mr. and mrs. kipling went with their children to england, and being compelled to return to india the next year, they took up the sorrow common to anglo-indian lives, in leaving their children "at home," in charge of friends at southsea, near portsmouth. it was a hard and sad experience for the boy. the originality of his nature and the independence of his spirit had already become clearly manifest, and were likely to render him unintelligible and perplexing to whosoever might have charge of him unless they were gifted with unusual perceptions and quick sympathies. happily his mother's sister, mrs. (now lady) burne-jones, was near at hand, in case of need, to care for him. in the spring of mrs. kipling came to england to see her children, and was followed the next year by her husband. the children were removed from southsea, and rudyard, grown into a companionable, active-minded, interesting boy, now in his thirteenth year, had the delight of spending some weeks in paris, with his father, attracted thither by the exhibition of that year. his eyesight had been for some time a source of trouble to him, and the relief was great from glasses, which were specially fitted to his eyes, and with which he has never since been able to dispense. on the return of his parents to india, early in , rudyard was placed at the school of westward ho, at bideford, in devon. this school was one chiefly intended for the sons of members of the indian services, most of whom were looking forward to following their fathers' careers as servants of the crown. it was in charge of an admirable head-master, mr. cormell price, whose character was such that he won the affection of his boys no less than their respect. the young kipling was not an easy boy to manage. he chose his own way. his talents were such that he might have held a place near the highest in his studies, but he was content to let others surpass him in lessons, while he yielded to his genius in devoting himself to original composition and to much reading in books of his own choice. he became the editor of the school paper, he contributed to the columns of the local bideford _journal_, he wrote a quantity of verse, and was venturesome enough to send a copy of verses to a london journal, which, to his infinite satisfaction, was accepted and published. some of his verses were afterward collected in a little volume, privately printed by his parents at lahore, with the title "schoolboy lyrics." all through his time at school his letters to his parents in india were such as to make it clear to them that his future lay in the field of literature. his literary gifts came to him by inheritance from both the father and mother, and they were nurtured and cultivated in the circle of relatives and family friends with whom his holidays were spent. a sub-master at westward ho, though little satisfied with the boy's progress in the studies of the school, gave to him the liberty of his own excellent library. the holidays were spent at the grange, in south kensington, the home of his aunt and uncle, mr. and mrs. burne-jones, and here he came under the happiest possible domestic influences, and was brought into contact with men of highest quality, whose lives were given to letters and the arts, especially with william morris, the closest intimate of the household of the grange. other homes were open to him where the pervading influence was that of intellectual pursuits, and where he had access to libraries through which he was allowed to wander and to browse at his will. the good which came to him, directly and indirectly, from these opportunities can hardly be overstated. to know, to love, and to be loved by such a man as burne-jones was a supreme blessing in his life. in the autumn of , having finished his course at school, a position was secured for him on the _civil and military gazette_, lahore, and he returned to his parents in india, who had meanwhile removed from bombay to lahore, where his father was at the head of the most important school of the arts in india. the _civil and military gazette_ is the chief journal of northwestern india, owned and conducted by the managers and owners of the allahabad _pioneer_, the ablest and most influential of all indian newspapers published in the interior of the country. for five years he worked hard and steadily on the _gazette_. much of the work was simple drudgery. he shirked nothing. the editor-in-chief was a somewhat grim man, who believed in snubbing his subordinates, and who, though he recognized the talents of the "clever pup," as he called him, and allowed him a pretty free hand in his contributions to the paper, yet was inclined to exact from him the full tale of the heavy routine work of a newspaper office. but these were happy years. for the youth was feeling the spring of his own powers, was full of interest in life, was laying up stores of observation and experience, and found in his own home not only domestic happiness, but a sympathy in taste and a variety of talent and accomplishment which acted as a continual stimulus to his own genius. father, mother, sister, and brother all played and worked together with rare combination of sympathetic gifts. in some of the verses with the writing of which he and his sister had amused themselves were published at lahore, in a little volume entitled "echoes," because most of them were lively parodies on some of the poems of the popular poets of the day. the little book had its moment of narrowly limited success and opened the way for the wider notoriety and success of a volume into which were gathered the "departmental ditties" that had appeared from time to time in the _gazette_. many of the stories also which were afterward collected under the now familiar title of "plain tales from the hills" made their first appearance in the _gazette_, and attracted wide attention in the anglo-indian community. kipling's work for five years at lahore had indeed been of such quality that it was not surprising that he was called down to allahabad, in , to take a place upon the editorial staff of the _pioneer_. the training of an anglo-indian journalist is peculiar. he has to master knowledge of many kinds, to become thoroughly acquainted with the affairs of the english administration and the conditions of anglo-indian life, and at the same time with the interests, the modes of life, and thought of the vast underlying native population. the higher positions in indian journalism are places of genuine importance and of large emolument, worthy objects of ambition for a young man conscious of literary faculty and inspired with zeal for public ends. the _pioneer_ issued a weekly as well as a daily edition, and in addition to his regular work upon the daily paper, kipling continued to write for the weekly issue stories similar to those which had already won him reputation, and they now attracted wider attention than ever. his home at allahabad was with professor hill, a man of science attached to the allahabad college. but the continuity of his life was broken by various journeys undertaken in the interest of the paper--one through rajputana, from which he wrote a series of descriptive letters, called "letters of marque"; another to calcutta and through bengal, which resulted in "the city of dreadful night" and other letters describing the little-known conditions of the vast presidency; and, finally, in , he was sent off by the _pioneer_ on a tour round the world, on which he was accompanied by his friends, professor and mrs. hill. going first to japan, he thence came to america, writing on the way and in america the letters which appeared in the _pioneer_ under the title of "from sea to sea"; and in september, , he arrived in london. his indian repute had not preceded him to such degree as to make the way easy for him through the london crowd. but after a somewhat dreary winter, during which he had been making acquaintances and had found irregular employment upon newspapers and magazines, arrangements were made with messrs. macmillan & co. for the publication of an edition of "plain tales from the hills." the book appeared in june. its success was immediate. it was republished at once in america, and was welcomed as warmly on this side of the atlantic as on the other. the reprint of kipling's other indian stories and of his "departmental ditties" speedily followed, together with the new tales and poems which showed the wide range of his creative genius. each volume was a fresh success; each extended the circle of mr. kipling's readers, till now he is the most widely known of english authors. in mr. kipling left england for a long voyage to south africa, australia, new zealand, and ceylon, and thence to visit his parents at lahore. on his return to england, he was married in london to miss balestier, daughter of the late mr. wolcott balestier of new york. shortly after their marriage, mr. and mrs. kipling visited japan, and in august they came to america. they established their home at brattleboro, vermont, where mrs. kipling's family had a large estate: and here, in a pleasant and beautifully situated house which they had built for themselves, their two eldest children were born, and here they continued to live till september, . during these four years mr. kipling made three brief visits to england to see his parents, who had left india and were now settled in the old country. the winter of - was spent by mr. kipling and his family, accompanied by his father, in south africa. he was everywhere received with the utmost cordiality and friendliness. returning to england in the spring of , he took a house at rottingdean, near brighton, with intention to make it his permanent home. of the later incidents of his life there is no need to speak. iv baa, baa, black sheep at the school council baa, baa, black sheep was elected to a very high position among the kipling stories "because it shows how mean they were to a boy and he did n't need it." baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? yes, sir; yes, sir; three bags full. one for the master, one for the dame-- none for the little boy that cries down the lane. --_nursery rhyme._ the first bag "when i was in my father's house, i was in a better place." they were putting punch to bed--the ayah and the hamal, and meeta, the big surti boy with the red and gold turban. judy, already tucked inside her mosquito-curtains, was nearly asleep. punch had been allowed to stay up for dinner. many privileges had been accorded to punch within the last ten days, and a greater kindness from the people of his world had encompassed his ways and works, which were mostly obstreperous. he sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare legs defiantly. "punch-baba going to bye-lo?" said the ayah suggestively. "no," said punch. "punch-baba wants the story about the ranee that was turned into a tiger. meeta must tell it, and the hamal shall hide behind the door and make tiger-noises at the proper time." "but judy-baba will wake up," said the ayah. "judy-baba is waking," piped a small voice from the mosquito-curtains. "there was a ranee that lived at delhi. go on, meeta," and she fell asleep again while meeta began the story. never had punch secured the telling of that tale with so little opposition. he reflected for a long time. the hamal made the tiger-noises in twenty different keys. "'top!" said punch authoritatively. "why does n't papa come in and say he is going to give me put-put?" "punch-baba is going away," said the ayah. "in another week there will be no punch-baba to pull my hair any more." she sighed softly, for the boy of the household was very dear to her heart. "up the ghauts in a train?" said punch, standing on his bed. "all the way to nassick, where the ranee-tiger lives?" "not to nassick this year, little sahib," said meeta, lifting him on his shoulder. "down to the sea where the cocoanuts are thrown, and across the sea in a big ship. will you take meeta with you to belait?" "you shall all come," said punch, from the height of meeta's strong arms. "meeta and the ayah and the hamal and bhini-in-the-garden, and the salaam-captain-sahib-snake-man." there was no mockery in meeta's voice when he replied--"great is the sahib's favour," and laid the little man down in the bed, while the ayah, sitting in the moonlight at the doorway, lulled him to sleep with an interminable canticle such as they sing in the roman catholic church at parel. punch curled himself into a ball and slept. next morning judy shouted that there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. it did not much matter, for judy was only three and she would not have understood. but punch was five; and he knew that going to england would be much nicer than a trip to nassick. * * * * * and papa and mamma sold the brougham and the piano, and stripped the house, and curtailed the allowance of crockery for the daily meals, and took long council together over a bundle of letters bearing the rocklington postmark. "the worst of it is that one can't be certain of anything," said papa, pulling his moustache. "the letters in themselves are excellent, and the terms are moderate enough." "the worst of it is that the children will grow up away from me," thought mamma; but she did not say it aloud. "we are only one case among hundreds," said papa bitterly. "you shall go home again in five years, dear." "punch will be ten then--and judy eight. oh, how long and long and long the time will be! and we have to leave them among strangers." "punch is a cheery little chap. he's sure to make friends wherever he goes." "and who could help loving my ju?" they were standing over the cots in the nursery late at night, and i think that mamma was crying softly. after papa had gone away, she knelt down by the side of judy's cot. the ayah saw her and put up a prayer that the memsahib might never find the love of her children taken away from her and given to a stranger. mamma's own prayer was a slightly illogical one. summarized it ran: "let strangers love my children and be as good to them as i should be, but let me preserve their love and their confidence for ever and ever. amen." punch scratched himself in his sleep, and judy moaned a little. that seems to be the only answer to the prayer: and, next day, they all went down to the sea, and there was a scene at the apollo bunder when punch discovered that meeta could not come too, and judy learned that the ayah must be left behind. but punch found a thousand fascinating things in the rope, block, and steam-pipe line on the big p. and o. steamer, long before meeta and the ayah had dried their tears. "come back, punch-baba," said the ayah. "come back," said meeta, "and be a burra sahib." "yes," said punch, lifted up in his father's arms to wave good-bye. "yes, i will come back, and i will be a burra sahib bahadur!" at the end of the first day punch demanded to be set down in england, which he was certain must be close at hand. next day there was a merry breeze, and punch was very sick. "when i come back to bombay," said punch on his recovery, "i will come by the road--in a broom-gharri. this is a very naughty ship." the swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his opinions as the voyage went on. there was so much to see and to handle and ask questions about that punch nearly forgot the ayah and meeta and the hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the hindustani once his second-speech. but judy was much worse. the day before the steamer reached southampton, mamma asked her if she would not like to see the ayah again. judy's blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had swallowed all her tiny past, and she said: "ayah! what ayah?" mamma cried over her, and punch marveled. it was then that he heard for the first time mamma's passionate appeal to him never to let judy forget mamma. seeing that judy was young, ridiculously young, and that mamma, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to sing her and punch to sleep with a mysterious tune that he called "sonny, my soul," punch could not understand what mamma meant. but he strove to do his duty, for the moment mamma left the cabin, he said to judy: "ju, you bemember mamma?" "'torse i do," said judy. "then always bemember mamma, 'r else i won't give you the paper ducks that the red-haired captain sahib cut out for me." so judy promised always to "bemember mamma." many and many a time was mamma's command laid upon punch, and papa would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child. "you must make haste and learn to write, punch," said papa, "and then you'll be able to write letters to us in bombay." "i'll come into your room," said punch, and papa choked. papa and mamma were always choking in those days. if punch took judy to task for not "bemembering," they choked. if punch sprawled on the sofa in the southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if judy put up her mouth for a kiss. through many days all four were vagabonds on the face of the earth: punch with no one to give orders to, judy too young for anything, and papa and mamma grave, distracted, and choking. "where," demanded punch, wearied of a loathsome contrivance on four wheels with a mound of luggage atop--"where is our broom-gharri? this thing talks so much that i can't talk. where is our own broom-gharri? when i was at bandstand before we comed away, i asked inverarity sahib why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. and i said, 'i will give it you'--i like inverarity sahib--and i said, 'can you put your legs through the pully-wag loops by the windows? and inverarity sahib said no, and laughed. i can put my legs through the pully-wag loops. i can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. look! oh, mamma's crying again! i did n't know. i was n't not to do so." punch drew his legs out of the loops of the four-wheeler: the door opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the door of an austere little villa whose gates bore the legend "downe lodge." punch gathered himself together and eyed the house with disfavour. it stood on a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knickerbockered legs. "let us go away," said punch. "this is not a pretty place." but mamma and papa and judy had quitted the cab, and all the luggage was being taken into the house. at the door-step stood a woman in black, and she smiled largely, with dry chapped lips. behind her was a man, big, bony, gray, and lame as to one leg--behind him a boy of twelve, black-haired and oily in appearance. punch surveyed the trio, and advanced without fear, as he had been accustomed to do in bombay when callers came and he happened to be playing in the veranda. "how do you do?" said he. "i am punch." but they were all looking at the luggage--all except the gray man, who shook hands with punch and said he was a "smart little fellow." there was much running about and banging of boxes, and punch curled himself up on the sofa in the dining-room and considered things. "i don't like these people," said punch. "but never mind. we'll go away soon. we have always went away soon from everywhere. i wish we was gone back to bombay soon." the wish bore no fruit. for six days mamma wept at intervals, and showed the woman in black all punch's clothes--a liberty which punch resented. "but p'raps she's a new white ayah," he thought. "i'm to call her antirosa, but she does n't call me sahib. she says just punch," he confided to judy. "what is antirosa?" judy did n't know. neither she nor punch had heard anything of an animal called an aunt. their world had been papa and mamma, who knew everything, permitted everything, and loved everybody--even punch when he used to go into the garden at bombay and fill his nails with mold after the weekly nail-cutting, because, as he explained between two strokes of the slipper to his sorely tried father, his fingers "felt so new at the ends." in an undefined way punch judged it advisable to keep both parents between himself and the woman in black and the boy in black hair. he did not approve of them. he liked the gray man, who had expressed a wish to be called "uncleharri." they nodded at each other when they met, and the gray man showed him a little ship with rigging that took up and down. "she is a model of the _brisk_--the little _brisk_ that was sore exposed that day at navarino." the gray man hummed the last words and fell into a reverie. "i'll tell you about navarino, punch, when we go for walks together; and you must n't touch the ship, because she's the _brisk_." long before that walk, the first of many, was taken, they roused punch and judy in the chill dawn of a february morning to say good-bye; and of all people in the wide earth to papa and mamma--both crying this time. punch was very sleepy and judy was cross. "don't forget us," pleaded mamma. "oh, my little son, don't forget us, and see that judy remembers too." "i've told judy to bemember," said punch, wiggling, for his father's beard tickled his neck. "i've told judy--ten--forty--'leven thousand times. but ju 's so young--quite a baby--is n't she?" "yes," said papa, "quite a baby, and you must be good to judy, and make haste to learn to write and--and--and----" punch was back in his bed again. judy was fast asleep, and there was the rattle of a cab below. papa and mamma had gone away. not to nassick; that was across the sea. to some place much nearer, of course, and equally of course they would return. they came back after dinner-parties, and papa had come back after he had been to a place called "the snows," and mamma with him, to punch and judy at mrs. inverarity's house in marine lines. assuredly they would come back again. so punch fell asleep till the true morning, when the black-haired boy met him with the information that papa and mamma had gone to bombay, and that he and judy were to stay at downe lodge "forever." antirosa, tearfully appealed to for a contradiction, said that harry had spoken the truth, and that it behooved punch to fold up his clothes neatly on going to bed. punch went out and wept bitterly with judy, into whose fair head he had driven some ideas of the meaning of separation. when a matured man discovers that he has been deserted by providence, deprived of his god, and cast without help, comfort, or sympathy, upon a world which is new and strange to him, his despair, which may find expression in evil-living, the writing of his experiences, or the more satisfactory diversion of suicide, is generally supposed to be impressive. a child, under exactly similar circumstances as far as its knowledge goes, cannot very well curse god and die. it howls till its nose is red, its eyes are sore, and its head aches. punch and judy, through no fault of their own, had lost all their world. they sat in the hall and cried; the black-haired boy looking on from afar. the model of the ship availed nothing, though the gray man assured punch that he might pull the rigging up and down as much as he pleased; and judy was promised free entry into the kitchen. they wanted papa and mamma, gone to bombay beyond the seas, and their grief while it lasted was without remedy. when the tears ceased the house was very still. antirosa had decided it was better to let the children "have their cry out," and the boy had gone to school. punch raised his head from the floor and sniffed mournfully. judy was nearly asleep. three short years had not taught her how to bear sorrow with full knowledge. there was a distant, dull boom in the air--a repeated heavy thud. punch knew that sound in bombay in the monsoon. it was the sea--the sea that must be traversed before anyone could get to bombay. "quick, ju!" he cried, "we're close to the sea. i can hear it! listen! that's where they've went. p'raps we can catch them if we was in time. they did n't mean to go without us. they've only forgot." "iss," said judy. "they've only forgotted. less go to the sea." the hall-door was open and so was the garden-gate. "it's very, very big, this place," he said, looking cautiously down the road, "and we will get lost; but i will find a man and order him to take me back to my house--like i did in bombay." he took judy by the hand, and the two fled hatless in the direction of the sound of the sea. downe villa was almost the last of a range of newly built houses running out, through a chaos of brick-mounds, to a heath where gypsies occasionally camped and where the garrison artillery of rocklington practised. there were few people to be seen, and the children might have been taken for those of the soldiery, who ranged far. half an hour the wearied little legs tramped across heath, potato-field, and sand-dune. "i'se so tired," said judy, "and mamma will be angry." "mamma's never angry. i suppose she is waiting at the sea now while papa gets tickets. we'll find them and go along with them. ju, you must n't sit down. only a little more and we'll come to the sea. ju, if you sit down i'll thmack you!" said punch. they climbed another dune, and came upon the great gray sea at low tide. hundreds of crabs were scuttling about the beach, but there was no trace of papa and mamma not even of a ship upon the waters--nothing but sand and mud for miles and miles. and "uncleharri" found them by chance--very muddy and very forlorn--punch dissolved in tears, but trying to divert judy with an "ickle trab," and judy wailing to the pitiless horizon for "mamma, mamma!"--and again "mamma!" the second bag ah, well-a-day, for we are souls bereaved! of all the creatures under heaven's wide scope we are most hopeless, who had once most hope, and most beliefless, who had most believed. --_the city of dreadful night._ all this time not a word about black sheep. he came later, and harry, the black-haired boy, was mainly responsible for his coming. judy--who could help loving little judy?--passed, by special permit, into the kitchen and thence straight to aunty rosa's heart. harry was aunty rosa's one child, and punch was the extra boy about the house. there was no special place for him or his little affairs, and he was forbidden to sprawl on sofas and explain his ideas about the manufacture of this world and his hopes for his future. sprawling was lazy and wore out sofas, and little boys were not expected to talk. they were talked to, and the talking to was intended for the benefit of their morals. as the unquestioned despot of the house at bombay, punch could not quite understand how he came to be of no account in this new life. harry might reach across the table and take what he wanted; judy might point and get what she wanted. punch was forbidden to do either. the gray man was his great hope and stand-by for many months after mamma and papa left, and he had forgotten to tell judy to "bemember mamma." this lapse was excusable, because in the interval he had been introduced by aunty rosa to two very impressive things--an abstraction called god, the intimate friend and ally of aunty rosa, generally believed to live behind the kitchen-range because it was hot there--and a dirty brown book filled with unintelligible dots and marks. punch was always anxious to oblige everybody. he, therefore, welded the story of the creation on to what he could recollect of his indian fairy tales, and scandalized aunty rosa by repeating the result to judy. it was a sin, a grievous sin, and punch was talked to for a quarter of an hour. he could not understand where the iniquity came in, but was careful not to repeat the offence, because aunty rosa told him that god had heard every word he had said and was very angry. if this were true why did n't god come and say so, thought punch, and dismissed the matter from his mind. afterward he learned to know the lord as the only thing in the world more awful than aunty rosa--as a creature that stood in the background and counted the strokes of the cane. but the reading was, just then, a much more serious matter than any creed. aunty rosa sat him upon a table and told him that a b meant ab. "why?" said punch. "a is a and b is bee. why does a b mean ab?" "because i tell you it does," said aunty rosa "and you've got to say it." punch said it accordingly, and for a month, hugely against his will, stumbled through the brown book, not in the least comprehending what it meant. but uncle harry, who walked much and generally alone, was wont to come into the nursery and suggest to aunty rosa that punch should walk with him. he seldom spoke, but he showed punch all rocklington, from the mud-banks and the sand of the back-bay to the great harbours where ships lay at anchor, and the dockyards where the hammers were never still, and the marine-store shops, and the shiny brass counters in the offices where uncle harry went once every three months with a slip of blue paper and received sovereigns in exchange; for he held a wound-pension. punch heard, too, from his lips the story of the battle of navarino, where the sailors of the fleet, for three days afterward, were deaf as posts and could only sign to each other. "that was because of the noise of the guns," said uncle harry, "and i have got the wadding of a bullet somewhere inside me now." punch regarded him with curiosity. he had not the least idea what wadding was, and his notion of a bullet was a dockyard cannon-ball bigger than his own head. how could uncle harry keep a cannon-ball inside him? he was ashamed to ask, for fear uncle harry might be angry. punch had never known what anger--real anger--meant until one terrible day when harry had taken his paint-box to paint a boat with, and punch had protested with a loud and lamentable voice. then uncle harry had appeared on the scene and, muttering something about "strangers' children," had with a stick smitten the black-haired boy across the shoulders till he wept and yelled, and aunty rosa came in and abused uncle harry for cruelty to his own flesh and blood, and punch shuddered to the tips of his shoes. "it was n't my fault," he explained to the boy, but both harry and aunty rosa said that it was, and that punch had told tales, and for a week there were no more walks with uncle harry. but that week brought a great joy to punch. he had repeated till he was thrice weary the statement that "the cat lay on the mat and the rat came in." "now i can truly read," said punch, "and now i will never read anything in the world." he put the brown book in the cupboard where his schoolbooks lived and accidentally tumbled out a venerable volume, without covers, labelled _sharpe's magazine_. there was the most portentous picture of a griffin on the first page, with verses below. the griffin carried off one sheep a day from a german village, till a man came with a "falchion" and split the griffin open. goodness only knew what a falchion was, but there was the griffin, and his history was an improvement upon the eternal cat. "this," said punch, "means things, and now i will know all about everything in all the world." he read till the light failed, not understanding a tithe of the meaning, but tantalized by glimpses of new worlds hereafter to be revealed. "what is a 'falchion'? what is a 'e-wee lamb'? what is a 'base ussurper'? what is a 'verdant me-ad'? he demanded, with flushed cheeks, at bedtime, of the astonished aunt rosa. "say your prayers and go to sleep," she replied, and that was all the help punch then or afterward found at her hands in the new and delightful exercise of reading. "aunt rosa only knows about god and things like that," argued punch. "uncle harry will tell me." the next walk proved that uncle harry could not help either; but he allowed punch to talk, and even sat down on a bench to hear about the griffin. other walks brought other stories as punch ranged farther afield, for the house held large store of old books that no one ever opened--from frank fairlegh in serial numbers, and the earlier poems of tennyson, contributed anonymously to _sharpe's magazine_, to ' exhibition catalogues, gay with colours and delightfully incomprehensible, and odd leaves of "gulliver's travels." as soon as punch could string a few pot-hooks together, he wrote to bombay, demanding by return of post "all the books in all the world." papa could not comply with this modest indent, but sent "grimm's fairy tales" and a "hans andersen." that was enough. if he were only left alone punch could pass, at any hour he chose, into a land of his own, beyond reach of aunty rosa and her god, harry and his teasements, and judy's claims to be played with. "don't disturb me, i'm reading. go and play in the kitchen," grunted punch. "aunty rosa lets you go there." judy was cutting her second teeth and was fretful. she appealed to aunty rosa, who descended on punch. "i was reading," he explained, "reading a book. i want to read." "you're only doing that to show off," said aunty rosa. "but we'll see. play with judy now, and don't open a book for a week." judy did not pass a very enjoyable playtime with punch, who was consumed with indignation. there was a pettiness at the bottom of the prohibition which puzzled him. "it's what i like to do," he said, "and she's found out that and stopped me. don't cry, ju--it was n't your fault--please don't cry, or she'll say i made you." ju loyally mopped up her tears, and the two played in their nursery, a room in the basement and half underground, to which they were regularly sent after the midday dinner while aunty rosa slept. she drank wine--that is to say, something from a bottle in the cellaret--for her stomach's sake, but if she did not fall asleep she would sometimes come into the nursery to see that the children were really playing. now bricks, wooden hoops, ninepins, and chinaware cannot amuse forever, especially when all fairyland is to be won by the mere opening of a book, and, as often as not, punch would be discovered reading to judy or tell her interminable tales. that was an offence in the eyes of the law, and judy would be whisked off by aunty rosa, while punch was left to play alone, "and be sure that i hear you doing it." it was not a cheering employ, for he had to make a playful noise. at last, with infinite craft, he devised an arrangement whereby the table could be supported as to three legs on toy bricks, leaving the fourth clear to bring down on the floor. he could work the table with one hand and hold a book with the other. this he did till an evil day when aunty rosa pounced upon him unawares and told him that he was "acting a lie." "if you're old enough to do that," she said--her temper was always worst after dinner--"you're old enough to be beaten." "but--i'm--i'm not a animal!" said punch, aghast. he remembered uncle harry and the stick, and turned white. aunty rosa had hidden a light cane behind her, and punch was beaten then and there over the shoulders. it was a revelation to him. the room door was shut, and he was left to weep himself into repentance and work out his own gospel of life. aunty rosa, he argued, had the power to beat him with many stripes. it was unjust and cruel and mamma and papa would never have allowed it. unless perhaps, as aunty rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret orders. in which case he was abandoned indeed. it would be discreet in the future to propitiate aunty rosa, but, then, again, even in matters in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to "show off." he had "shown off" before visitors when he had attacked a strange gentleman--harry's uncle, not his own--with requests for information about the griffin and the falchion, and the precise nature of the tilbury in which frank fairlegh rode--all points of paramount interest which he was bursting to understand. clearly it would not do to pretend to care for aunty rosa. at this point harry entered and stood afar off, eying punch, a disheveled heap in the corner of the room, with disgust. "you're a liar--a young liar," said harry, with great unction, "and you're to have tea down here because you're not fit to speak to us. and you're not to speak to judy again till mother gives you leave. you'll corrupt her. you're only fit to associate with the servant. mother says so." having reduced punch to a second agony of tears harry departed upstairs with the news that punch was still rebellious. uncle harry sat uneasily in the dining-room. "d---- it all, rosa," said he at last, "can't you leave the child alone? he's a good enough little chap when i meet him." "he puts on his best manners with you, henry," said aunty rosa, "but i'm afraid, i'm very much afraid, that he is the black sheep of the family." harry heard and stored up the name for future use. judy cried till she was bidden to stop, her brother not being worth tears; and the evening concluded with the return of punch to the upper regions and a private sitting at which all the blinding horrors of hell were revealed to punch with such store of imagery as aunty rosa's narrow mind possessed. most grievous of all was judy's round-eyed reproach, and punch went to bed in the depths of the valley of humiliation. he shared his room with harry and knew the torture in store. for an hour and a half he had to answer that young gentleman's question as to his motives for telling a lie, and a grievous lie, the precise quantity of punishment inflicted by aunty rosa, and had also to profess his deep gratitude for such religious instruction as harry thought fit to impart. from that day began the downfall of punch, now black sheep. "untrustworthy in one thing, untrustworthy in all," said aunty rosa, and harry felt that black sheep was delivered into his hands. he would wake him up in the night to ask him why he was such a liar. "i don't know," punch would reply. "then don't you think you ought to get up and pray to god for a new heart?" "y-yess." "get out and pray, then!" and punch would get out of bed with raging hate in his heart against all the world, seen and unseen. he was always tumbling into trouble. harry had a knack of cross-examining him as to his day's doings, which seldom failed to lead him, sleepy and savage, into half a dozen contradictions--all duly reported to aunty rosa next morning. "but it was n't a lie," punch would begin, charging into a laboured explanation that landed him more hopelessly in the mire. "i said that i did n't say my prayers twice over in the day, and that was on tuesday. once i did, i know i did, but harry said i did n't," and so forth, till the tension brought tears, and he was dismissed from the table in disgrace. "you use n't to be as bad as this?" said judy, awe-stricken at the catalogue of black sheep's crimes. "why are you so bad now?" "i don't know," black sheep would reply. "i'm not, if i only was n't bothered upside down. i knew what i did, and i want to say so; but harry always makes it out different somehow, and aunty rosa does n't believe a word i say. oh, ju! don't you say i'm bad too." "aunty rosa says you are," said judy. "she told the vicar so when he came yesterday." "why does she tell all the people outside the house about me? it is n't fair," said black sheep. "when i was in bombay, and was bad--doing bad, not made-up bad like this--mamma told papa, and papa told me he knew, and that was all. outside people did n't know too--even meeta did n't know." "i don't remember," said judy wistfully. "i was all little then. mamma was just as fond of you as she was of me, was n't she?" "'course she was. so was papa. so was everybody." "aunty rosa likes me more than she does you. she says that you are a trial and a black sheep, and i'm not to speak to you more than i can help." "always? not outside of the times when you must n't speak to me at all?" judy nodded her head mournfully. black sheep turned away in despair, but judy's arms were round his neck. "never mind, punch," she whispered. "i will speak to you just the same as ever and ever. you're my own, own brother though you are--though aunty rosa says you're bad, and harry says you're a little coward. he says that if i pulled your hair hard, you'd cry." "pull, then," said punch. judy pulled gingerly. "pull harder--as hard as you can! there! i don't mind how much you pull it now. if you'll speak to me same as ever i'll let you pull it as much as you like--pull it out if you like. but i know if harry came and stood by and made you do it i'd cry." so the two children sealed the compact with a kiss, and black sheep's heart was cheered within him, and by extreme caution and careful avoidance of harry he acquired virtue and was allowed to read undisturbed for a week. uncle harry took him for walks and consoled him with rough tenderness, never calling him black sheep. "it's good for you, i suppose, punch," he used to say. "let us sit down. i'm getting tired." his steps led him now not to the beach, but to the cemetery of rocklington, amid the potato-fields. for hours the gray man would sit on a tombstone, while black sheep read epitaphs, and then with a sigh would stump home again. "i shall lie there soon," said he to black sheep; one winter evening, when his face showed white as a worn silver coin under the lights of the chapel-lodge. "you need n't tell aunty rosa." a month later, he turned sharp round, ere half a morning walk was completed, and stumped back to the house. "put me to bed, rosa," he muttered. "i've walked my last. the wadding has found me out." they put him to bed, and for a fortnight the shadow of his sickness lay upon the house, and black sheep went to and fro unobserved. papa had sent him some new books, and he was told to keep quiet. he retired into his own world, and was perfectly happy. even at night his felicity was unbroken. he could lie in bed and string himself tales of travel and adventure while harry was downstairs. "uncle harry's going to die," said judy, who now lived almost entirely with aunty rosa. "i'm very sorry," said black sheep soberly. "he told me that a long time ago." aunty rosa heard the conversation. "will nothing check your wicked tongue?" she said angrily. there were blue circles round her eyes. black sheep retreated to the nursery and read "cometh up as a flower" with deep and uncomprehending interest. he had been forbidden to read it on account of its "sinfulness," but the bonds of the universe were crumbling, and aunty rosa was in great grief. "i'm glad," said black sheep. "she 's unhappy now. it was n't a lie, though. i knew. he told me not to tell." that night black sheep woke with a start. harry was not in the room, and there was a sound of sobbing on the next floor. then the voice of uncle harry, singing the song of the battle of navarino, cut through the darkness: "our vanship was the asia-- the albion and genoa!" "he 's getting well," thought black sheep, who knew the song through all its seventeen verses. but the blood froze at his little heart as he thought. the voice leapt an octave and rang shrill as a boatswain's pipe: "and next came on the lovely rose, the philomel, her fire-ship, closed, and the little brisk was sore exposed that day at navarino." "that day at navarino, uncle harry!" shouted black sheep, half wild with excitement and fear of he knew not what. a door opened and aunty rosa screamed up the staircase: "hush! for god's sake hush, you little devil. uncle harry is dead!" the third bag journeys end in lovers' meeting, every wise man's son doth know. "i wonder what will happen to me now," thought black sheep, when the semi-pagan rites peculiar to the burial of the dead in middle-class houses had been accomplished, and aunty rosa, awful in black crape, had returned to this life. "i don't think i've done anything bad that she knows of. i suppose i will soon. she will be very cross after uncle harry's dying, and harry will be cross too. i 'll keep in the nursery." unfortunately for punch's plans, it was decided that he should be sent to a day-school which harry attended. this meant a morning walk with harry, and perhaps an evening one; but the prospect of freedom in the interval was refreshing. "harry 'll tell everything i do, but i won't do anything," said black sheep. fortified with this virtuous resolution, he went to school only to find that harry's version of his character had preceded him, and that life was a burden in consequence. he took stock of his associates. some of them were unclean, some of them talked in dialect, many dropped their h's, and there were two jews and a negro, or someone quite as dark, in the assembly. "that's a hubshi," said black sheep to himself. "even meeta used to laugh at a hubshi. i don't think this is a proper place." he was indignant for at least an hour, till he reflected that any expostulation on his part would be by aunty rosa construed into "showing off," and that harry would tell the boys. "how do you like school?" said aunty rosa at the end of the day. "i think it is a very nice place," said punch quietly. "i suppose you warned the boys of black sheep's character?" said aunty rosa to harry. "oh, yes!" said the censor of black sheep's morals. "they know all about him." "if i was with my father," said black sheep, stung to the quick, "i should n't speak to those boys. he would n't let me. they live in shops. i saw them go into shops--where their fathers live and sell things." "you're too good for that school, are you?" said aunty rosa, with a bitter smile. "you ought to be grateful, black sheep, that those boys speak to you at all. it is n't every school that takes little liars." harry did not fail to make much capital out of black sheep's ill-considered remark; with the result that several boys, including the hubshi, demonstrated to black sheep the eternal equality of the human race by smacking his head, and his consolation from aunty rosa was that it "served him right for being vain." he learned, however, to keep his opinions to himself, and by propitiating harry in carrying books and the like to secure a little peace. his existence was not too joyful. from nine till twelve he was at school, and from two to four, except on saturdays. in the evenings he was sent down into the nursery to prepare his lessons for the next day, and every night came the dreaded cross-questionings at harry's hand. of judy he saw but little. she was deeply religious--at six years of age religion is easy to come by--and sorely divided between her natural love for black sheep and her love for aunty rosa, who could do no wrong. the lean woman returned that love with interest, and judy, when she dared, took advantage of this for the remission of black sheep's penalties. failures in lessons at school were furnished at home by a week without reading other than schoolbooks, and harry brought the news of such a failure with glee. further, black sheep was then bound to repeat his lessons at bedtime to harry, who generally succeeded in making him break down, and consoled him by gloomiest forebodings for the morrow. harry was at once spy, practical joker, inquisitor, and aunty rosa's deputy executioner. he filled his many posts to admiration. from his actions, now that uncle harry was dead, there was no appeal. black sheep had not been permitted to keep any self-respect at school; at home he was of course utterly discredited, and grateful for any pity that the servant-girls--they changed frequently at downe lodge because they, too, were liars--might show. "you 're just fit to row in the same boat with black sheep," was a sentiment that each new jane or eliza might expect to hear, before a month was over, from aunty rosa's lips; and black sheep was used to ask new girls whether they had yet been compared to him. harry was "master harry" in their mouths; judy was officially "miss judy"; but black sheep was never anything more than black sheep _tout court_. as time went on and the memory of papa and mamma became wholly overlaid by the unpleasant task of writing them letters under aunty rosa's eye, each sunday, black sheep forgot what manner of life he had led in the beginning of things. even judy's appeals to "try and remember about bombay" failed to quicken him. "i can't remember," he said. "i know i used to give orders and mamma kissed me." "aunty rosa will kiss you if you are good," pleaded judy. "ugh! i don't want to be kissed by aunty rosa. she'd say i was doing it to get something more to eat." the weeks lengthened into months, and the holidays came; but just before the holidays black sheep fell into deadly sin. among the many boys whom harry had incited to "punch black sheep's head because he dare n't hit back," was one more aggravating than the rest, who, in an unlucky moment, fell upon black sheep when harry was not near. the blows stung, and black sheep struck back at random with all the power at his command. the boy dropped and whimpered. black sheep was astounded at his own act, but, feeling the unresisting body under him, shook it with both his hands in blind fury and then began to throttle his enemy; meaning honestly to slay him. there was a scuffle, and black sheep was torn off the body by harry and some colleagues, and cuffed home tingling but exultant. aunty rosa was out; pending her arrival harry set himself to lecture black sheep on the sin of murder--which he described as the offence of cain. "why did n't you fight him fair? what did you hit him when he was down for, you little cur?" black sheep looked up at harry's throat and then at a knife on the dinner-table. "i don't understand," he said wearily. "you always set him on me and told me i was a coward when i blubbed. will you leave me alone until aunty rosa comes in? she'll beat me if you tell her i ought to be beaten; so it's all right." "it's all wrong," said harry magisterially. "you nearly killed him, and i should n't wonder if he dies." "will he die?" said black sheep. "i daresay," said harry, "and then you'll be hanged." "all right," said black sheep, possessing himself of the table-knife. "then i'll kill you now. you say things and do things and--and i don't know how things happen, and you never leave me alone--and i don't care what happens!" he ran at the boy with the knife, and harry fled upstairs to his room, promising black sheep the finest thrashing in the world when aunty rosa returned. black sheep sat at the bottom of the stairs, the table-knife in his hand, and wept for that he had not killed harry. the servant-girl came up from the kitchen, took the knife away, and consoled him. but black sheep was beyond consolation. he would be badly beaten by aunty rosa; then there would be another beating at harry's hands; then judy would not be allowed to speak to him; then the tale would be told at school and then---- there was no one to help and no one to care, and the best way out of the business was by death. a knife would hurt, but aunty rosa had told him, a year ago, that if he sucked paint he would die. he went into the nursery, unearthed the now-disused noah's ark, and sucked the paint off as many animals as remained. it tasted abominable, but he had licked noah's dove clean by the time aunty rosa and judy returned. he went upstairs and greeted them with: "please, aunty rosa, i believe i've nearly killed a boy at school, and i've tried to kill harry, and when you've done all about god and hell, will you beat me and get it over?" the tale of the assault as told by harry could only be explained on the ground of possession by the devil. wherefore black sheep was not only most excellently beaten, once by aunty rosa and once, when thoroughly cowed down, by harry, but he was further prayed for at family prayers, together with jane, who had stolen a cold rissole from the pantry and snuffled audibly as her enormity was brought before the throne of grace. black sheep was sore and stiff, but triumphant. he would die that very night and be rid of them all. no, he would ask for no forgiveness from harry, and at bedtime would stand no questioning at harry's hands, even though addressed as "young cain." "i've been beaten," said he, "and i've done other things. i don't care what i do. if you speak to me to-night, harry, i'll get out and try to kill you. now you can kill me if you like." harry took his bed into the spare-room, and black sheep lay down to die. it may be that the makers of noah's arks know that their animals are likely to find their way into young mouths, and paint them accordingly. certain it is that the common, weary next morning broke through the windows and found black sheep quite well and a good deal ashamed of himself, but richer by the knowledge that he could, in extremity, secure himself against harry for the future. when he descended to breakfast on the first day of the holidays, he was greeted with the news that harry, aunty rosa, and judy were going away to brighton, while black sheep was to stay in the house with the servant. his latest outbreak suited aunty rosa's plans admirably. it gave her good excuse for leaving the extra boy behind. papa in bombay, who really seemed to know a young sinner's wants to the hour, sent, that week, a package of new books. and with these, and the society of jane on board-wages, black sheep was left alone for a month. the books lasted for ten days. they were eaten too quickly, in long gulps of four-and-twenty hours at a time. then came days of doing absolutely nothing, of dreaming dreams and marching imaginary armies up and down stairs, of counting the number of banisters, and of measuring the length and breadth of every room in handspans--fifty down the side, thirty across, and fifty back again. jane made many friends, and, after receiving black sheep's assurance that he would not tell of her absences, went out daily for long hours. black sheep would follow the rays of the sinking sun from the kitchen to the dining-room and thence upward to his own bedroom until all was gray dark, and he ran down to the kitchen fire and read by its light. he was happy in that he was left alone and could read as much as he pleased. but, later, he grew afraid of the shadows of window-curtains and the flapping of doors and the creaking of shutters. he went out into the garden, and the rustling of the laurel-bushes frightened him. he was glad when they all returned--aunty rosa, harry, and judy--full of news, and judy laden with gifts. who could help loving loyal little judy? in return for all her merry babblement, black sheep confided to her that the distance from the hall-door to the top of the first landing was exactly one hundred and eighty-four handspans. he had found it out himself. then the old life recommenced; but with a difference, and a new sin. to his other iniquities black sheep had now added a phenomenal clumsiness--was as unfit to trust in action as he was in word. he himself could not account for spilling everything he touched, upsetting glasses as he put his hand out, and bumping his head against doors that were manifestly shut. there was a gray haze upon all his world, and it narrowed month by month, until at last it left black sheep almost alone with the flapping curtains that were so like ghosts, and the nameless terrors of broad daylight that were only coats on pegs after all. holidays came and holidays went, and black sheep was taken to see many people whose faces were all exactly alike; was beaten when occasion demanded, and tortured by harry on all possible occasions; but defended by judy through good and evil report, though she hereby drew upon herself the wrath of aunty rosa. the weeks were interminable and papa and mamma were clean forgotten. harry had left school and was a clerk in a banking-office. freed from his presence, black sheep resolved that he should no longer be deprived of his allowance of pleasure-reading. consequently, when he failed at school he reported that all was well, and conceived a large contempt for aunty rosa as he saw how easy it was to deceive her. "she says i'm a little liar when i don't tell lies, and now i do, she does n't know," thought black sheep. aunty rosa had credited him in the past with petty cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his head. by the light of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to him he paid her back full tale. in a household where the most innocent of his motives, his natural yearning for a little affection, had been interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam or to ingratiate himself with strangers and so put harry into the background, his work was easy. aunty rosa could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but not all. he set his child's wits against hers and was no more beaten. it grew monthly more and more of a trouble to read the schoolbooks, and even the pages of the open-print story-books danced and were dim. so black sheep brooded in the shadows that fell about him and cut him off from the world, inventing horrible punishments for "dear harry," or plotting another line of the tangled web of deception that he wrapped round aunty rosa. then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken. it was impossible to foresee everything. aunty rosa made personal inquiries as to black sheep's progress and received information that startled her. step by step, with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed housemaid of the theft of cold meats, she followed the trail of black sheep's delinquencies. for weeks and weeks, in order to escape banishment from the book-shelves, he had made a fool of aunty rosa, of harry, of god, of all the world. horrible, most horrible, and evidence of an utterly depraved mind. black sheep counted the cost. "it will only be one big beating, and then she'll put a card with 'liar' on my back, same as she did before. harry will whack me and pray for me, and she will pray for me at prayers and tell me i'm a child of the devil and give me hymns to learn. but i've done all my reading and she never knew. she'll say she knew all along. she's an old liar, too," said he. for three days black sheep was shut in his own bedroom--to prepare his heart. "that means two beatings. one at school and one here. that one will hurt most." and it fell even as he thought. he was thrashed at school before the jews and the hubshi, for the heinous crime of bringing home false reports of progress. he was thrashed at home by aunty rosa on the same count, and then the placard was produced. aunty rosa stitched it between his shoulders and bade him go for a walk with it upon him. "if you make me do that," said black sheep very quietly, "i shall burn this house down, and perhaps i'll kill you. i don't know whether i can kill you--you 're so bony--but i'll try." no punishment followed this blasphemy, though black sheep held himself ready to work his way to aunty rosa's withered throat, and grip there till he was beaten off. perhaps aunty rosa was afraid, for black sheep, having reached the nadir of sin, bore himself with a new recklessness. in the midst of all the trouble there came a visitor from over the seas to downe lodge, who knew papa and mamma, and was commissioned to see punch and judy. black sheep was sent to the drawing-room and charged into a solid tea-table laden with china. "gently, gently, little man," said the visitor turning black sheep's face to the light slowly. "what's that big bird on the palings?" "what bird?" asked black sheep. the visitor looked deep down into black sheep's eyes for a half a minute, and then said suddenly: "good god, the little chap's nearly blind." it was a most business-like visitor. he gave orders, on his own responsibility, that black sheep was not to go to school or open a book until mamma came home. "she'll be here in three weeks, as you know of course," said he, "and i'm inverarity sahib. i ushered you into this wicked world, young man, and a nice use you seem to have made of your time. you must do nothing whatever. can you do that?" "yes," said punch in a dazed way. he had known that mamma was coming. there was a chance, then, of another beating. thank heaven, papa was n't coming too. aunty rosa had said of late that he ought to be beaten by a man. for the next three weeks black sheep was strictly allowed to do nothing. he spent his time in the old nursery looking at the broken toys, for all of which account must be rendered to mamma. aunty rosa hit him over the hands if even a wooden boat were broken. but that sin was of small importance compared to the other revelations, so darkly hinted at by aunty rosa. "when your mother comes, and hears what i have to tell her, she may appreciate you properly," she said grimly, and mounted guard over judy lest that small maiden should attempt to comfort her brother, to the peril of her own soul. and mamma came--in a four-wheeler and a flutter of tender excitement. such a mamma! she was young, frivolously young, and beautiful, with delicately flushed cheeks, eyes that shone like stars, and a voice that needed no additional appeal of outstretched arms to draw little ones to her heart. judy ran straight to her, but black sheep hesitated. could this wonder be "showing off"? she would not put out her arms when she knew of his crimes. meantime was it possible that by fondling she wanted to get anything out of black sheep? only all his love and all his confidence; but that black sheep did not know. aunty rosa withdrew and left mamma, kneeling between her children, half laughing, half crying, in the very hall where punch and judy had wept five years before. "well, chicks, do you remember me?" "no," said judy frankly, "but i said 'god bless papa and mamma,' ev'vy night." "a little," said black sheep. "remember i wrote to you every week, anyhow. that is n't to show off, but 'cause of what comes afterward." "what comes after! what should come after, my darling boy?" and she drew him to her again. he came awkwardly, with many angles. "not used to petting," said the quick mother-soul. "the girl is." "she's too little to hurt anyone," thought black sheep, "and if i said i'd kill her, she'd be afraid. i wonder what aunty rosa will tell." there was a constrained late dinner, at the end of which mamma picked up judy and put her to bed with endearments manifold. faithless little judy had shown her defection from aunty rosa already. and that lady resented it bitterly. black sheep rose to leave the room. "come and say good night," said aunty rosa, offering a withered cheek. "huh!" said black sheep. "i never kiss you, and i'm not going to show off. tell that woman what i've done, and see what she says." black sheep climbed into bed feeling that he had lost heaven after a glimpse through the gates. in half an hour "that woman" was bending over him. black sheep flung up his right arm. it was n't fair to come and hit him in the dark. even aunty rosa never tried that. but no blow followed. "are you showing off? i won't tell you anything more than aunty rosa has, and she does n't know everything," said black sheep as clearly as he could for the arms round his neck. "oh, my son--my little, little son! it was my fault--my fault, darling--and yet how could we help it? forgive me, punch." the voice died out in a broken whisper, and two hot tears fell on black sheep's forehead. "has she been making you cry, too?" he asked. "you should see jane cry. but you're nice, and jane is a born liar--aunty rosa says so." "hush, punch, hush! my boy, don't talk like that. try to love me a little bit--a little bit. you don't know how i want it. punch-baba, come back to me! i am your mother--your own mother--and never mind the rest. i know--yes, i know, dear. it does n't matter now. punch, won't you care for me a little?" it is astonishing how much petting a big boy of ten can endure when he is quite sure that there is no one to laugh at him. black sheep had never been made much of before, and here was this beautiful woman treating him--black sheep, the child of the devil and the inheritor of undying flame--as though he were a small god. "i care for you a great deal, mother dear," he whispered at last, "and i'm glad you've come back; but are you sure aunty rosa told you everything?" "everything. what does it matter? but----" the voice broke with a sob that was also laughter--"punch, my poor, dear, half-blind darling, don't you think it was a little foolish of you?" "no. it saved a lickin'." mamma shuddered and slipped away in the darkness to write a long letter to papa. here is an extract: "... judy is a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman, and wears with as much gravity as her religious opinions--only eight, jack!--a venerable horsehair atrocity which she calls her bustle. i have just burned it, and the child is asleep in my bed as i write. she will come to me at once. punch i cannot quite understand. he is well nourished, but seems to have been worried into a system of small deceptions which the woman magnifies into deadly sins. don't you recollect our own up-bringing, dear, when the fear of the lord was so often the beginning of falsehood? i shall win punch to me before long. i am taking the children away into the country to get them to know me, and, on the whole, i am content, or shall be when you come home, dear boy, and then, thank god, we shall be all under one roof again at last!" * * * * * three months later, punch, no longer black sheep, has discovered that he is the veritable owner of a real, live, lovely mamma, who is also a sister, comforter, and friend, and that he must protect her till the father comes home. deception does not suit the part of a protector, and, when one can do anything without question, where is the use of deception? "mother would be awfully cross if you walked through that ditch," says judy, continuing a conversation. "mother's never angry," says punch. "she'd just say, 'you're a little pagal'; and that's not nice, but i'll show." punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the knees. "mother, dear," he shouts, "i'm just as dirty as i can pos-sib-ly be!" "then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-sib-ly can!" rings out mother's clear voice from the house. "and don't be a little pagal!" "there! told you so," says punch. "it's all different now, and we are just as much mother's as if she had never gone." not altogether, o punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate, suspicion, and despair, all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach faith where no faith was. v wee willie winkie "an officer and a gentleman." his full name was percival william williams, but he picked up the other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. his mother's ayah called him willie-baba, but as he never paid the faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom did not help matters. his father was the colonel of the th, and as soon as wee willie winkie was old enough to understand what military discipline meant, colonel williams put him under it. there was no other way of managing the child. when he was good for a week, he drew good-conduct pay; and when he was bad, he was deprived of his good-conduct-stripe. generally he was bad, for india offers so many chances to little six-year-olds of going wrong. children resent familiarity from strangers, and wee willie winkie was a very particular child. once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. he accepted brandis, a subaltern of the th, on sight. brandis was having tea at the colonel's, and wee willie winkie entered, strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. he regarded brandis with gravity for at least ten minutes, and then delivered himself of his opinion. "i like you," said he slowly, getting off his chair and coming over to brandis. "i like you. i shall call you coppy, because of your hair. do you mind being called coppy? it is because of ve hair, you know." here was one of the most embarrassing of wee willie winkie's peculiarities. he would look at a stranger for some time, and then, without warning or explanation, would give him a name. and the name stuck. no regimental penalties could break wee willie winkie of this habit. he lost his good-conduct badge for christening the commissioner's wife "pobs"; but nothing that the colonel could do made the station forego the nickname, and mrs. collen remained mrs. "pobs" till the end of her stay. so brandis was christened "coppy," and rose, therefore, in the estimation of the regiment. if wee willie winkie took an interest in anyone, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. and in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. "the colonel's son" was idolized on his own merits entirely. yet wee willie winkie was not lovely. his face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. "i want my hair like sergeant tummil's," said wee willie winkie, and, his father abetting, the sacrifice was accomplished. three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on lieutenant brandis--henceforward to be called "coppy" for the sake of brevity--wee willie winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond his comprehension. coppy returned his liking with interest. coppy had let him wear for five rapturous minutes his own big sword--just as tall as wee willie winkie. coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. nay, more--coppy had said that even he, wee willie winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and a silver-handled "sputter-brush," as wee willie winkie called it. decidedly, there was no one, except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as coppy with the afghan and egyptian medals on his breast. why, then, should coppy be guilty of the unmanly weakness of kissing--vehemently kissing--a "big girl," miss allardyce to wit? in the course of a morning ride, wee willie winkie had seen coppy so doing, and, like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round and cantered back to his groom, lest the groom should also see. under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to his father, but he felt instinctively that this was a matter on which coppy ought first to be consulted. "coppy," shouted wee willie winkie, reining up outside that subaltern's bungalow early one morning--"i want to see you, coppy!" "come in, young 'un," returned coppy, who was at early breakfast in the midst of his dogs. "what mischief have you been getting into now?" wee willie winkie had done nothing notoriously bad for three days, and so stood on a pinnacle of virtue. "i've been doing nothing bad," said he, curling himself into a long chair with a studious affectation of the colonel's langour after a hot parade. he buried his freckled nose in a tea-cup and, with eyes staring roundly over the rim, asked: "i say, coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls?" "by jove! you're beginning early. who do you want to kiss?" "no one. my muvver's always kissing me if i don't stop her. if it is n't pwoper, how was you kissing major allardyce's big girl last morning, by ve canal?" coppy's brow wrinkled. he and miss allardyce had with great craft managed to keep their engagement secret for a fortnight. there were urgent and imperative reasons why major allardyce should not know how matters stood for at least another month, and this small marplot had discovered a great deal too much. "i saw you," said wee willie winkle calmly. "but ve groom did n't see. i said, 'hut jao.'" "oh, you had that much sense, you young rip," groaned poor coppy, half amused and half angry. "and how many people may you have told about it?" "only me myself. you did n't tell when i twied to wide ve buffalo ven my pony was lame; and i fought you would n't like." "winkie," said coppy enthusiastically, shaking the small hand, "you're the best of good fellows. look here, you can't understand all these things. one of these days--hang it, how can i make you see it!--i'm going to marry miss allardyce, and then she'll be mrs. coppy, as you say. if your young mind is so scandalized at the idea of kissing big girls, go and tell your father." "what will happen?" said wee willie winkie, who firmly believed that his father was omnipotent. "i shall get into trouble," said coppy, playing his trump card with an appealing look at the holder of the ace. "ven i won't," said wee willie winkie briefly. "but my faver says it's un-man-ly to be always kissing, and i did n't fink you'd do vat, coppy." "i'm not always kissing, old chap. it's only now and then, and when you're bigger you'll do it too. your father meant it's not good for little boys." "ah!" said wee willie winkle, now fully enlightened. "it's like ve sputter-brush?" "exactly," said coppy gravely. "but i don't fink i'll ever want to kiss big girls, nor no one, 'cept my muvver. and i must vat, you know." there was a long pause, broken by wee willie winkie. "are you fond of vis big girl, coppy?" "awfully!" said coppy. "fonder van you are of bell or ve butcha--or me?" "it's in a different way," said coppy. "you see, one of these days miss allardyce will belong to me, but you'll grow up and command the regiment and--all sorts of things. it's quite different, you see." "very well," said wee willie winkie, rising. "if you're fond of ve big girl, i won't tell anyone. i must go now." coppy rose and escorted his small guest to the door, adding: "you're the best of little fellows, winkie. i tell you what. in thirty days from now you can tell if you like--tell anyone you like." thus the secret of the brandis-allardyce engagement was dependent on a little child's word. coppy, who knew wee willie winkie's idea of truth, was at ease, for he felt that he would not break promises. wee willie winkie betrayed a special and unusual interest in miss allardyce, and, slowly revolving round that embarrassed young lady, was used to regard her gravely with unwinking eye. he was trying to discover why coppy should have kissed her. she was not half so nice as his own mother. on the other hand she was coppy's property, and would in time belong to him. therefore it behooved him to treat her with as much respect as coppy's big sword or shiny pistol. the idea that he shared a great secret in common with coppy kept wee willie winkie unusually virtuous for three weeks. then the old adam broke out, and he made what he called a "camp-fire" at the bottom of the garden. how could he have foreseen that the flying sparks would have lighted the colonel's little hay-rick and consumed a week's store for the horses? sudden and swift was the punishment--deprivation of the good-conduct badge and, most sorrowful of all, two days' confinement to barracks--the house and veranda--coupled with the withdrawal of the light of his father's countenance. he took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew himself up with a quivering under-lip, saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran to weep bitterly in his nursery--called by him "my quarters." coppy came in the afternoon and attempted to console the culprit. "i'm under awwest," said wee willie winkie mournfully, "and i did n't ought to speak to you." very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof of the house--that was not forbidden--and beheld miss allardyce going for a ride. "where are you going?" cried wee willie winkie. "across the river," she answered, and trotted forward. now the cantonment in which the th lay was bounded on the north by a river--dry in the winter. from his earliest years, wee willie winkie had been forbidden to go across the river, and had noted that even coppy--the almost almighty coppy--had never set foot beyond it. wee willie winkie had once been read to, out of a big blue book, the history of the princess and the goblins--a most wonderful tale of a land where the goblins were always warring with the children of men until they were defeated by one curdie. ever since that date it seemed to him that the bare black and purple hills across the river were inhabited by goblins, and, in truth, everyone had said that there lived the bad men. even in his own house the lower halves of the windows were covered with green paper on account of the bad men who might, if allowed clear view, fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and comfortable bedrooms. certainly, beyond the river, which was the end of all the earth, lived the bad men. and here was major allardyce's big girl, coppy's property, preparing to venture into their borders! what would coppy say if anything happened to her? if the goblins ran off with her as they did with curdie's princess? she must at all hazards be turned back. the house was still. wee willie winkie reflected for a moment on the very terrible wrath of his father; and then--broke his arrest! it was a crime unspeakable. the low sun threw his shadow, very large and very black, on the trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables and ordered his pony. it seemed to him in the hush of the dawn that all the big world had been bidden to stand still and look at wee willie winkie guilty of mutiny. the drowsy groom handed him his mount, and since the one great sin made all others insignificant, wee willie winkie said that he was going to ride over to coppy sahib, and went out at a foot-pace, stepping on the soft mould of the flower-borders. the devastating track of the pony's feet was the last misdeed that cut him off from all sympathy of humanity. he turned into the road, leaned forward, and rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground in the direction of the river. but the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do little against the long canter of a waler. miss allardyce was far ahead, had passed through the crops, beyond the police-post, when all the guards were asleep, and her mount was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as wee willie winkie left the cantonment and british india behind him. bowed, forward and still flogging, wee willie winkie shot into afghan territory, and could just see miss allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. the reason of her wandering was simple enough. coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her over night that she must not ride out by the river. and she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach coppy a lesson. almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills wee willie winkie saw the waler blunder and come down heavily. miss allardyce struggled clear, but her ankle had been severely twisted, and she could not stand. having thus demonstrated her spirit, she wept copiously, and was surprised by the apparition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, on a nearly spent pony. "are you badly, badly hurted?" shouted wee willie winkie, as soon as he was within range. "you did n't ought to be here." "i don't know," said miss allardyce ruefully ignoring the reproof. "good gracious, child, what are you doing here?" "you said you was going acwoss ve wiver," panted wee willie winkie, throwing himself off his pony. "and nobody--not even coppy--must go acwoss ve wiver, and i came after you ever so hard, but you would n't stop, and now you 've hurted yourself, and coppy will be angry wiv me, and--i've bwoken my awwest! i've bwoken my awwest!" the future colonel of the th sat down and sobbed. in spite of the pain in her ankle the girl was moved. "have you ridden all the way from cantonments, little man? what for?" "you belonged to coppy. coppy told me so!" wailed wee willie winkie disconsolately. "i saw him kissing you, and he said he was fonder of you van bell or ve butcha or me. and so i came. you must get up and come back. you did n't ought to be here. vis is a bad place, and i 've bwoken my awwest." "i can't move, winkie," said miss allardyce, with a groan. "i've hurt my foot. what shall i do?" she showed a readiness to weep afresh which steadied wee willie winkie, who had been brought up to believe that tears were the depth of unmanliness. still, when one is as great a sinner as wee willie winkie, even a man may be permitted to break down. "winkie," said miss allardyce, "when you've rested a little, ride back and tell them to send out something to carry me back in. it hurts fearfully." the child sat still for a little time and miss allardyce closed her eyes; the pain was nearly making her faint. she was roused by wee willie winkie tying up the reins on his pony's neck and setting it free with a vicious cut of his whip that made it whicker. the little animal headed toward the cantonments. "oh, winkie! what are you doing?" "hush!" said wee willie winkie. "vere's a man coming--one of ve bad men. i must stay wiv you. my faver says a man must always look after a girl. jack will go home, and ven vey 'll come and look for us. vat 's why i let him go." not one man, but two or three, had appeared from behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart of wee willie winkie sank within him, for just in this manner were the goblins wont to steal out and vex curdie's soul. thus had they played in curdie's garden, he had seen the picture, and thus had they frightened the princess's nurse. he heard them talking to each other, and recognized with joy the bastard pushto that he had picked up from one of his father's grooms lately dismissed. people who spoke that tongue could not be the bad men. they were only natives, after all. they came up to the boulders on which miss allardyce's horse had blundered. then rose from the rock wee willie winkie, child of the dominant race, aged six and three-quarters, and said briefly and emphatically "jao!" the pony had crossed the river-bed. the men laughed, and laughter from natives was the one thing wee willie winkie could not tolerate. he asked them what they wanted and why they did not depart. other men with most evil faces and crooked-stocked guns crept out of the shadows of the hills, till, soon, wee willie winkie was face to face with an audience some twenty strong. miss allardyce screamed. "who are you?" said one of the men. "i am the colonel sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once. you black men are frightening the miss sahib. one of you must run into cantonments and take the news that the miss sahib has hurt herself, and that the colonel's son is here with her." "put our feet into the trap?" was the laughing reply. "hear this boy's speech!" "say that i sent you--i, the colonel's son. they will give you money." "what is the use of this talk? take up the child and the girl, and we can at least ask for the ransom. ours are the villages on the heights," said a voice in the background. these were the bad men--worse than goblins--and it needed all wee willie winkie's training to prevent him from bursting into tears. but he felt that to cry before a native, excepting only his mother's ayah, would be an infamy greater than any mutiny. moreover, he, as future colonel of the th, had that grim regiment at his back. "are you going to carry us away?" said wee willie winkie, very blanched and uncomfortable. "yes, my little sahib bahadur," said the tallest of the men, "and eat you afterward." "that is child's talk," said wee willie winkie. "men do not eat men." a yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on firmly--"and if you do carry us away, i tell you that all my regiment will come up in a day and kill you all without leaving one. who will take my message to the colonel sahib?" speech in any vernacular--and wee willie winkie had a colloquial acquaintance with three--was easy to the boy who could not yet manage his "r's" and "th's" aright. another man joined the conference, crying: "oh, foolish men! what this babe says is true. he is the heart's heart of those white troops. for the sake of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment will break loose and gut the valley. our villages are in the valley, and we shall not escape. that regiment are devils. they broke khoda yar's breast-bone with kicks when he tried to take the rifles; and if we touch this child they will fire and rape and plunder for a month, till nothing remains. better to send a man back to take the message and get a reward. i say that this child is their god, and that they will spare none of us, nor our women, if we harm him." it was din mahommed, the dismissed groom of the colonel, who made the diversion, and an angry and heated discussion followed. wee willie winkie, standing over miss allardyce, waited the upshot. surely his "wegiment," his own "wegiment," would not desert him if they knew of his extremity. * * * * * the riderless pony brought the news to the th, though there had been consternation in the colonel's household for an hour before. the little beast came in through the parade-ground in front of the main barracks, where the men were settling down to play spoil-five till the afternoon. devlin, the colour sergeant of e company, glanced at the empty saddle and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each room corporal as he passed. "up, ye beggars! there's something happened to the colonel's son," he shouted. "he could n't fall off! s'elp me, 'e could n't fall off," blubbered a drummer-boy. "go an' hunt acrost the river. he's over there if he's anywhere, an' maybe those pathans have got 'im. for the love o' gawd don't look for 'im in the nullahs! let's go over the river." "there's sense in mott yet," said devlin. "e company, double out to the river--sharp!" so e company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, doubled for the dear life, and in the rear toiled the perspiring sergeant, adjuring it to double yet faster. the cantonment was alive with the men of the th hunting for wee willie winkie, and the colonel finally overtook e company, far too exhausted to swear, struggling in the pebbles of the river-bed. up the hill under which wee willie winkie's bad men were discussing the wisdom of carrying off the child and the girl, a lookout fired two shots. "what have i said?" shouted din mahommed. "there is the warning! the pulton are out already and are coming across the plain! get away! let us not be seen with the boy!" the men waited for an instant, and then, as another shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, silently as they had appeared. "the wegiment is coming," said wee willie winkie confidently to miss allardyce, "and it's all wight. don't cwy!" he needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later, when his father came up, he was weeping bitterly with his head in miss allardyce's lap. and the men of the th carried him home with shouts and rejoicings; and coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men. but there was balm for his dignity. his father assured him that not only would the breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the good-conduct badge would be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on his blouse-sleeve. miss allardyce had told the colonel a story that made him proud of his son. "she belonged to you, coppy," said wee willie winkie, indicating miss allardyce with a grimy forefinger. "i knew she did n't ought to go acwoss ve wiver, and i knew ve wegiment would come to me if i sent jack home." "you're a hero, winkie," said coppy--"a pukka hero!" "i don't know what vat means," said wee willie winkie, "but you must n't call me winkie any no more. i'm percival will'am will'ams." and in this manner did wee willie winkie enter into his manhood. vi the dove of dacca the freed dove flew to the rajah's tower-- fled from the slaughter of moslem kings-- and the thorns have covered the city of gaur. dove--dove--oh, homing dove! little white traitor, with woe on thy wings! the rajah of dacca rode under the wall; he set in his bosom a dove of flight-- "if she return, be sure that i fall." dove--dove--oh, homing dove! pressed to his heart in the thick of the fight. "fire the palace, the fort, and the keep-- leave to the foeman no spoil at all. in the flame of the palace lie down and sleep if the dove, if the dove--if the homing dove come and alone to the palace wall." the kings of the north they were scattered abroad-- the rajah of dacca he slew them all. hot from slaughter he stooped at the ford, and the dove--the dove--oh, the homing dove! she thought of her cote on the palace wall. she opened her wings and she flew away-- fluttered away beyond recall; she came to the palace at break of day. dove--dove--oh, homing dove! flying so fast for a kingdom's fall. the queens of dacca they slept in flame-- slept in the flame of the palace old-- to save their honour from moslem shame. and the dove--the dove--oh, the homing dove! she cooed to her young where the smoke-cloud rolled. the rajah of dacca rode far and fleet, followed as fast as a horse could fly, he came and the palace was black at his feet; and the dove--the dove--the homing dove, circled alone in the stainless sky. so the dove flew to the rajah's tower-- fled from the slaughter of moslem kings; so the thorns covered the city of gaur, and dacca was lost for a white dove's wings. dove--dove--oh, homing dove, dacca is lost from the roll of the kings! vii the smoke upon your altar dies (_to whom it may concern._) the smoke upon your altar dies, the flowers decay, the goddess of your sacrifice has flown away. what profit, then, to sing or slay the sacrifice from day to day? "we know the shrine is void," they said, "the goddess flown-- yet wreaths are on the altar laid-- the altar-stone is black with fumes of sacrifice, albeit she has fled our eyes. "for it may be, if still we sing and tend the shrine, some deity on wandering wing may there incline; and, finding all in order meet, stay while we worship at her feet." viii recessional the recessional is one of the most popular poems of this century. it is a warning to age and a nation drunk with power, a rebuke to materialistic tendencies and boastfulness, a protest against pride. "reverence is the master-key of knowledge." god of our fathers, known of old-- lord of our far-flung battle-line-- beneath whose awful hand we hold dominion over palm and pine-- lord god of hosts, be with us yet lest we forget--lest we forget! the tumult and the shouting dies-- the captains and the kings depart-- still stands thine ancient sacrifice, an humble and a contrite heart. lord god of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget--lest we forget! far-called our navies melt away-- on dune and headland sinks the fire-- lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with nineveh and tyre! judge of the nations, spare us yet, lest we forget--lest we forget! if, drunk with sight of power, we loose wild tongues that have not thee in awe-- such boasting as the gentiles use or lesser breeds without the law-- lord god of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget--lest we forget! for heathen heart that puts her trust in reeking tube and iron shard-- all valiant dust that builds on dust, and guarding calls not thee to guard-- for frantic boast and foolish word, thy mercy on thy people, lord! amen. ix l'envoi when earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, when the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, we shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down for an æon or two, till the master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew! and those who were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; they shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair; they shall find real saints to draw from--magdalene, peter, and paul; they shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! and only the master shall praise us, and only the master shall blame; and no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; but each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, shall draw the thing as he sees it for the god of things as they are! i the sing-song of old man kangaroo not always was the kangaroo as now we do behold him, but a different animal with four short legs. he was gray and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on an outcrop in the middle of australia, and he went to the little god nqa at six before breakfast, saying, "make me different from all other animals by five this afternoon." up jumped nqa from his seat on the sandflat and shouted, "go away!" he was gray and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on a rockledge in the middle of australia, and he went to the middle god nquing. he went to nquing at eight after breakfast, saying, "make me different from all other animals; make me, also, wonderfully popular by five this afternoon." up jumped nquing from his burrow in the spinifex and shouted, "go away!" he was gray and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on a sandbank in the middle of australia, and he went to the big god nqong. he went to nqong at ten before dinner-time, saying, "make me different from all other animals; make me popular and wonderfully run after by five this afternoon." up jumped nqong from his bath in the salt-pan and shouted, "yes, i will!" nqong called dingo--yellow-dog dingo--always hungry, dusty in the sunshine, and showed him kangaroo. nqong said, "dingo! wake up, dingo! do you see that gentleman dancing on an ash-pit? he wants to be popular and very truly run after. dingo, make him so!" up jumped dingo--yellow-dog dingo--and said, "what, _that_ cat-rabbit?" off ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--always hungry, grinning like a coal-scuttle--ran after kangaroo. off went the proud kangaroo on his four little legs like a bunny. this, o beloved of mine, ends the first part of the tale! he ran through the desert; he ran through the mountains; he ran through the salt-pans; he ran through the reed-beds; he ran through the blue gums; he ran through the spinifex; he ran till his front legs ached. he had to! [illustration: this is a picture of old man kangaroo when he was the different animal with four short legs. i have drawn him gray and woolly, and you can see that he is very proud because he has a wreath of flowers in his hair. he is dancing on an outcrop (that means a ledge of rock) in the middle of australia at six o'clock before breakfast. you can see that it is six o'clock, because the sun is just getting up. the thing with the ears and the open mouth is little god nqa. nqa is very much surprised, because he has never seen a kangaroo dance like that before. little god nqa is just saying, "go away," but the kangaroo is so busy dancing that he has not heard him yet. the kangaroo has n't any real name except boomer. he lost it because he was so proud.] still ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--always hungry, grinning like a rat-trap, never getting nearer, never getting farther--ran after kangaroo. he had to! still ran kangaroo--old man kangaroo. he ran through the ti-trees; he ran through the mulga; he ran through the long grass; he ran through the short grass; he ran through the tropics of capricorn and cancer; he ran till his hind legs ached. he had to! still ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--hungrier and hungrier, grinning like a horse-collar, never getting nearer, never getting farther; and they came to the wollgong river. now, there was n't any bridge, and there was n't any ferry-boat, and kangaroo did n't know how to get over; so he stood on his legs and hopped. he had to! he hopped through the flinders; he hopped through the cinders; he hopped through the deserts in the middle of australia. he hopped like a kangaroo. first he hopped one yard; then he hopped three yards; then he hopped five yards; his legs growing stronger; his legs growing longer. he had n't any time for rest or refreshment, and he wanted them very much. still ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--very much bewildered, very much hungry, and wondering what in the world or out of it made old man kangaroo hop. [illustration: this is the picture of old man kangaroo at five in the afternoon, when he had got his beautiful hind legs just as big god nqong had promised. you can see that it is five o'clock, because big god nqong's pet tame clock says so. that is nqong in his bath, sticking his feet out. old man kangaroo is being rude to yellow-dog dingo. yellow-dog dingo has been trying to catch kangaroo all across australia. you can see the marks of kangaroo's big new feet running ever so far back over the bare hills. yellow-dog dingo is drawn black, because i am not allowed to paint these pictures with real colours out of the paint-box; and besides, yellow-dog dingo got dreadfully black and dusty after running through the flinders and the cinders. i don't know the names of the flowers growing round nqong's bath. the two little squatty things out in the desert are the other two gods that old man kangaroo spoke to early in the morning. that thing with the letters on it is old man kangaroo's pouch. he had to have a pouch just as he had to have legs.] for he hopped like a cricket; like a pea in a saucepan; or a new rubber ball on a nursery floor. he had to! he tucked up his front legs; he hopped on his hind legs; he stuck out his tail for a balance-weight behind him; and he hopped through the darling downs. he had to! still ran dingo--tired dog dingo--hungrier and hungrier, very much bewildered, and wondering when in the world or out of it would old man kangaroo stop. then came nqong from his bath in the salt-pan, and said, "it's five o'clock." down sat dingo--poor dog dingo--always hungry, dusky in the sunshine; hung out his tongue and howled. down sat kangaroo--old man kangaroo--stuck out his tail like a milking-stool behind him, and said, "thank goodness _that's_ finished!" then said nqong, who is always a gentleman, "why are n't you grateful to yellow-dog dingo? why don't you thank him for all he has done for you?" then said kangaroo--tired old kangaroo--"he's chased me out of the homes of my childhood; he's chased me out of my regular meal-times; he's altered my shape so i'll never get it back; and he's played old scratch with my legs." then said nqong, "perhaps i'm mistaken, but didn't you ask me to make you different from all other animals, as well as to make you very truly sought after? and now it is five o'clock." "yes," said kangaroo. "i wish that i had n't. i thought you would do it by charms and incantations, but this is a practical joke." "joke!" said nqong from his bath in the blue gums. "say that again and i'll whistle up dingo and run your hind legs off." "no," said the kangaroo. "i must apologize. legs are legs, and you need n't alter 'em so far as i am concerned. i only meant to explain to your lordliness that i've had nothing to eat since morning, and i'm very empty indeed." "yes," said dingo--yellow-dog dingo--"i am just in the same situation. i've made him different from all other animals; but what may i have for my tea?" then said nqong from his bath in the salt-pan, "come and ask me about it to-morrow, because i'm going to wash." so they were left in the middle of australia, old man kangaroo and yellow-dog dingo, and each said, "that's _your_ fault." this is the mouth-filling song of the race that was run by a boomer, run in a single burst--only event of its kind-- started by big god nqong from warrigaborrigarooma, old man kangaroo first: yellow-dog dingo behind. kangaroo bounded away, his back-legs working like pistons-- bounded from morning till dark, twenty-five feet to a bound. yellow-dog dingo lay like a yellow cloud in the distance-- much too busy to bark. my! but they covered the ground! nobody knows where they went, or followed the track that they flew in, for that continent had n't been given a name. they ran thirty degrees, from torres straits to the leeuwin (look at the atlas, please), and they ran back as they came. s'posing you could trot from adelaide to the pacific, for an afternoon's run-- half what these gentlemen did-- you would feel rather hot but your legs would develop terrific-- yes, my importunate son, you'd be a marvellous kid! ii fuzzy-wuzzy at the school council fuzzy-wuzzy was elected vice-president of mr. kipling's poems, "because he was so brave." (_soudan expeditionary force._) we've fought with many men acrost the seas, an' some of 'em was brave an' some was not: the paythan an' the zulu an' burmese; but the fuzzy was the finest o' the lot. we never got a ha'porth's change of 'im: 'e squatted in the scrub an' 'ocked our 'orses, 'e cut our sentries up at suakim, an' 'e played the cat an' banjo with our forces. so 'ere's _to_ you, fuzzy-wuzzy, at your 'ome in the sowdan; you 're a poor benighted 'eathen, but a first-class fightin' man; we gives you your certifikit, an' if you want it signed, we'll come an' 'ave a romp with you whenever you're inclined. we took our chanst among the khyber hills, the boers knocked us silly at a mile, the burman guv us irriwaddy chills, an' a zulu _impi_ dished us up in style; but all we ever got from such as they was pop to what the fuzzy made us swaller; we 'eld our bloomin' own, the papers say, but man for man the fuzzy knocked us 'oller. then 'ere's _to_ you, fuzzy-wuzzy, an' the missis an' the kid, our orders was to break you, an' of course we went an' did. we sloshed you with martinis, an' it was n't 'ardly fair; but for all the odds agin you, fuzzy wuz, you bruk the square. 'e 'as n't got no papers of 'is own, 'e 'as n't got no medals nor rewards, so we must certify the skill 'e 's shown in usin' of 'is long two-'anded swords; when 'e 's 'oppin' in an' out among the bush with 'is coffin-headed shield an' shovel-spear, a 'appy day with fuzzy on the rush will last a 'ealthy tommy for a year. so 'ere 's _to_ you, fuzzy-wuzzy, an' your friends which is no more, if we 'ad n't lost some messmates we would 'elp you to deplore; but give an' take 's the gospel, an' we'll call the bargain fair, for if you 'ave lost more than us, you crumpled up the square! 'e rushes at the smoke, when we let drive, an', before we know, 'e 's 'ackin' at our 'ead; 'e 's all 'ot sand an ginger when alive, an' 'e 's generally shammin' when 'e 's dead. 'e 's a daisy, 'e 's a duck, 'e 's a lamb! 'e 's a injun-rubber idiot on the spree, 'e 's the on'y thing that does n't care a clam for the regiment o' british infantree. so 'ere's _to_ you, fuzzy-wuzzy, at your 'ome in the sowdan; you 're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man; an' 'ere's _to_ you, fuzzy-wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air-- you big black boundin' beggar--for you bruk a british square. iii the english flag above the portico the union jack remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.--_daily papers._ winds of the world, give answer? they are whimpering to and fro-- and what should they know of england who only england know?-- the poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, they are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the english flag! must we borrow a clout from the boer--to plaster anew with dirt? an irish liar's bandage, or an english coward's shirt? we may not speak of england; her flag's to sell or share. what is the flag of england? winds of the world, declare! the north wind blew:--"from bergen my steel-shod vanguards go; i chase your lazy whalers home from the disko floe; by the great north lights above me i work the will of god, that the liner splits on the ice-field or the dogger fills with cod. "i barred my gates with iron, i shuttered my doors with flame, because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; i took the sun from their presence, i cut them down with my blast, and they died, but the flag of england blew free ere the spirit passed. "the lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long arctic night, the musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the northern light: what is the flag of england? ye have but my bergs to dare, ye have but my drifts to conquer. go forth, for it is there!" the south wind sighed:--"from the virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon. "strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, i waked the palms to laughter--i tossed the scud in the breeze-- never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, but over the scud and the palm-trees an english flag was flown. "i have wrenched it free from the halliard, to hang for a wisp on the horn; i have chased it north to the lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn; i have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; i have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free. "my basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the southern cross. what is the flag of england? ye have but my reefs to dare, ye have but my seas to furrow. go forth, for it is there!" the east wind roared:--"from the kuriles, the bitter seas, i come, and me men call the home-wind, for i bring the english home. look--look well to your shipping! by the breath of my mad typhoon i swept your close-packed praya and beached your best at kowloon! "the reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, i raped your richest roadstead--i plundered singapore! i set my hand on the hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, and i flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows. "never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake, but a soul goes out on the east wind that died for england's sake-- man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid-- because on the bones of the english the english flag is stayed. "the desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows. the scared white leopard winds it across the taint-less snows. what is the flag of england? ye have but my sun to dare, ye have but my sands to travel. go forth, for it is there!" the west wind called:--"in squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly that bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die. they make my might their porter, they make my house their path, till i loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath. "i draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole; they bellow one to the other, the frightened ship-bells toll, for day is a drifting terror till i raise the shroud with my breath, and they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death. "but whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day, i heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, first of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, dipping between the rollers, the english flag goes by. "the dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed-- the naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist. what is the flag of england? ye have but my breath to dare, ye have but my waves to conquer. go forth, for it is there!" iv the king "farewell, romance!" the cave-men said; "with bone well carved he went away; flint arms the ignoble arrowhead, and jasper tips the spear to-day. changed are the gods of hunt and dance, and he with these. farewell, romance!" "farewell, romance!" the lake-folk sighed; "we lift the weight of flatling years; the caverns of the mountain side hold him who scorns our hutted piers. lost hills whereby we dare not dwell, guard ye his rest. romance, farewell!" "farewell, romance!" the soldier spoke; "by sleight of sword we may not win, but scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke of arquebus and culverin. honour is lost, and none may tell who paid good blows. romance, farewell!" "farewell, romance!" the traders cried; "our keels ha' lain with every sea; the dull-returning wind and tide heave up the wharf where we would be; the known and noted breezes swell our trudging sail. romance, farewell!" "good-bye, romance!" the skipper said; "he vanished with the coal we burn; our dial marks full steam ahead. our speed is timed to half a turn. sure as the tidal trains we ply 'twixt port and port. romance, good-bye!" "romance!" the season-tickets mourn, "_he_ never ran to catch his train, but passed with coach and guard and horn-- and left the local--late again! confound romance!" ... and all unseen romance brought up the nine-fifteen. his hand was on the lever laid, his oil-can soothed the worrying cranks, his whistle waked the snow-bound grade, his fog-horn cut the reeking banks; in dock and deep and mine and mill the boy-god reckless laboured still. robed, crowned and throned, he wove his spell, where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke curled with unconsidered miracle, hedged in a backward-gazing world: then taught his chosen bard to say: "the king was with us--yesterday!" v to the unknown goddess will you conquer my heart with your beauty, my soul going out from afar? shall i fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious _shikar_? have i met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking, and blind shall i meet you next session at simla, oh, sweetest and best of your kind? * * * * * ah, goddess! child, spinster, or widow--as of old on mars hill when they raised to the god that they knew not an altar--so i, a young pagan, have praised. the goddess i know not nor worship; yet if half that men tell me be true, you will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you. vi the galley slave oh, gallant was our galley from her carven steering-wheel to her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel; the leg-bar chafed the ankle, and we gasped for cooler air, but no galley on the water with our galley could compare! our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold-- we ran a mighty merchandise of negroes in the hold; the white foam spun behind us, and the black shark swam below, as we gripped the kicking sweep-head and we made that galley go. it was merry in the galley, for we revelled now and then-- if they wore us down like cattle, faith, we fought and loved like men! as we snatched her through the water, so we snatched a minute's bliss, and the mutter of the dying never spoiled the lover's kiss. our women and our children toiled beside us in the dark-- they died, we filed their fetters, and we heaved them to the shark-- we heaved them to the fishes, but so fast the galley sped, we had only time to envy, for we could not mourn our dead. bear witness, once my comrades, what a hard-bit gang were we-- the servants of the sweep-head, but the masters of the sea! by the hands that drove her forward as she plunged and yawed and sheered, woman, man, or god, or devil, was there anything we feared? was it storm? our fathers faced it, and a wilder never blew; earth that waited for the wreckage watched the galley struggle through. burning noon or choking midnight, sickness, sorrow, parting, death? nay our very babes would mock you, had they time for idle breath. but to-day i leave the galley, and another takes my place; there's my name upon the deck-beam--let it stand a little space. i am free--to watch my messmates beating out to open main, free of all that life can offer--save to handle sweep again. by the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel, by the welt the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal; by eyes grown old with staring through the sun-wash on the brine, i am paid in full for service--would that service still were mine! * * * * * it may be that fate will give me life and leave to row once more-- set some strong man free for fighting as i take awhile his oar. but to-day i leave the galley. shall i curse her service then? god be thanked--whate'er comes after, i have lived and toiled with men! vii the ship that found herself it was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer of twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind, the outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements in framework and machinery; and her designers and owner thought as much of her as though she had been the _lucania_. anyone can make a floating hotel that will pay expenses, if he puts enough money into the saloon, and charges for private baths, suites of rooms, and such like; but in these days of competition and low freights every square inch of a cargo-boat must be built for cheapness, great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed. this boat was, perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her holds. her owners--they were a very well-known scotch firm--came round with her from the north, where she had been launched and christened and fitted, to liverpool, where she was to take cargo for new york; and the owner's daughter, miss frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass work, and the patent winches, and particularly the strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the _dimbula_. it was a beautiful september afternoon, and the boat in all her newness--she was painted lead-colour with a red funnel--looked very fine indeed. her house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new to the high and narrow seas and wished to make her welcome. "and now," said miss frazier, delightedly, to the captain, "she's a real ship, is n't she? it seems only the other day father gave the order for her, and now--and now--is n't she a beauty!" the girl was proud of the firm, and talked as though she were the controlling partner. "oh, she's no so bad," the skipper replied cautiously. "but i'm sayin' that it takes more than christenin' to mak' a ship. in the nature o' things, miss frazier, if ye follow me, she's just irons and rivets and plates put into the form of a ship. she has to find herself yet." "i thought father said she was exceptionally well found." "so she is," said the skipper, with a laugh. "but it's this way wi' ships, miss frazier. she's all here, but the parrts of her have not learned to work together yet. they've had no chance." "the engines are working beautifully. i can hear them." "yes, indeed. but there's more than engines to a ship. every inch of her, ye'll understand, has to be livened up and made to work wi' its neighbour--sweetenin' her, we call it, technically." "and how will you do it?" the girl asked. "we can no more than drive and steer her, and so forth; but if we have rough weather this trip--it's likely--she'll learn the rest by heart! for a ship, ye'll obsairve, miss frazier, is in no sense a reegid body closed at both ends. she's a highly complex structure o' various an' conflictin' strains, wi' tissues that must give an' tak' accordin' to her personal modulus of elasteecity." mr. buchanan, the chief engineer, was coming toward them. "i'm sayin' to miss frazier, here, that our little _dimbula_ has to be sweetened yet, and nothin' but a gale will do it. how's all wi' your engines, buck?" "well enough--true by plumb an' rule, o' course; but there's no spontaneeity yet." he turned to the girl. "take my word, miss frazier, and maybe ye'll comprehend later; even after a pretty girl's christened a ship it does not follow that there's such a thing as a ship under the men that work her." "i was sayin' the very same, mr. buchanan," the skipper interrupted. "that's more metaphysical than i can follow," said miss frazier, laughing. "why so? ye're good scotch, an'--i knew your mother's father, he was fra' dumfries--ye've a vested right in metapheesics, miss frazier, just as ye have in the _dimbula_," the engineer said. "eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn miss frazier her deevidends. will you not come to my cabin for tea?" said the skipper. "we'll be in dock the night, and when you're goin' back to glasgie ye can think of us loadin' her down an' drivin' her forth--all for your sake." in the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons' dead weight into the _dimbula_, and took her out from liverpool. as soon as she met the lift of the open water, she naturally began to talk. if you lay your ear to the side of the cabin next time you are in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of little voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm. wooden ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver through all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. the _dimbula_ was very strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter or number, or both, to describe it; and every piece had been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or punched by man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of the shipyard for months. therefore, every piece had its own separate voice in exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it. cast-iron as a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and wrought-iron, and ribs and beams that have been much bent and welded and riveted, talk continuously. their conversation, of course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because they are all, though they do not know it, bound down one to the other in a black darkness, where they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what will overtake them next. as soon as she had cleared the irish coast a sullen gray-headed old wave of the atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on her steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. now the capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes being ducked. "don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered through the teeth of his cogs. "hi! where's the fellow gone?" the wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but "plenty more where he came from," said a brother-wave, and went through and over the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron deck-beams below. "can't you keep still up there?" said the deck-beams. "what's the matter with you? one minute you weigh twice as much as you ought to, and the next you don't!" "it is n't my fault," said the capstan. "there's a green brute outside that comes and hits me on the head." "tell that to the shipwrights. you've been in position for months and you've never wriggled like this before. if you are n't careful you'll strain _us_." "talking of strain," said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, "are any of you fellows--you deck-beams, we mean--aware that those exceedingly ugly knees of yours happen to be riveted into our structure--_ours_?" "who might you be?" the deck-beams inquired. "oh, nobody in particular," was the answer. "we're only the port and starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving and hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps." now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak, that run lengthways from stern to bow. they keep the iron frames (what are called ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends of the deck-beams, which go from side to side of the ship. stringers always consider themselves most important, because they are so long. "you will take steps--will you?" this was a long echoing rumble. it came from the frames--scores and scores of them, each one about eighteen inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in four places. "we think you will have a certain amount of trouble in _that_;" and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held everything together whispered: "you will. you will! stop quivering and be quiet. hold on, brethren! hold on! hot punches! what's that?" rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they did their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern to bow, and she shook like a rat in a terrier's mouth. an unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the big throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning round in a kind of soda-water--half sea and half air--going much faster than was proper, because there was no deep water for it to work in. as it sank again, the engines--and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a row--snorted through all their three pistons, "was that a joke, you fellow outside? it's an uncommonly poor one. how are we to do our work if you fly off the handle that way?" "i did n't fly off the handle," said the screw, twirling huskily at the end of the screw-shaft. "if i had, you'd have been scrap-iron by this time. the sea dropped away from under me, and i had nothing to catch on to. that's all." "that's all, d'you call it?" said the thrust-block whose business it is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing to hold it back it would crawl right into the engine-room. (it is the holding back of the screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) "i know i do my work deep down and out of sight, but i warn you i expect justice. all i ask for is bare justice. why can't you push steadily and evenly instead of whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under all my collars." the thrust-block had six collars, each faced with brass, and he did not wish to get them heated. all the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as it ran to the stern whispered: "justice--give us justice." "i can only give you what i can get," the screw answered. "look out! it's coming again!" he rose with a roar as the _dimbula_ plunged, and "whack--flack--whack--whack" went the engines, furiously, for they had little to check them. "i'm the noblest outcome of human ingenuity--mr. buchanan says so," squealed the high-pressure cylinder. "this is simply ridiculous!" the piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it was mixed with dirty water. "help! oiler! fitter! stoker! help! i'm choking," it gasped. "never in the history of maritime invention has such a calamity overtaken one so young and strong. and if i go, who's to drive the ship?" "hush! oh, hush!" whispered the steam, who, of course, had been to sea many times before. he used to spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where water was needed. "that's only a little priming, a little carrying-over, as they call it. it'll happen all night, on and off. i don't say it's nice, but it's the best we can do under the circumstances." "what difference can circumstances make? i'm here to do my work--on clean, dry steam. blow circumstances!" the cylinder roared. "the circumstances will attend to the blowing. i've worked on the north atlantic run a good many times--it's going to be rough before morning." "it is n't distressingly calm now," said the extra-strong frames--they were called web-frames--in the engine-room. "there's an upward thrust that we don't understand, and there's a twist that is very bad for our brackets and diamond-plates, and there's a sort of west-north-westerly pull that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. we mention this because we happened to cost a good deal of money, and we feel sure that the owner would not approve of our being treated in this frivolous way." "i'm afraid the matter is out of owner's hand, for the present," said the steam, slipping into the condenser. "you're left to your own devices till the weather betters." "i would n't mind the weather," said a flat bass voice below; "it's this confounded cargo that's breaking my heart. i'm the garboard-strake, and i'm twice as thick as most of the others, and i ought to know something." the garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship, and the _dimbula's_ garboard-strake was nearly three-quarters of an inch mild steel. "the sea pushes me up in a way i should never have expected," the strake grunted, "and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the two, i don't know what i'm supposed to do." "when in doubt, hold on," rumbled the steam, making head in the boilers. "yes; but there's only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and how do i know whether the other plates are doing their duty? those bulwark-plates up above, i've heard, ain't more than five-sixteenths of an inch thick--scandalous, i call it." "i agree with you," said a huge web-frame by the main cargo-hatch. he was deeper and thicker than all the others, and curved half-way across the ship in the shape of half an arch, to support the deck where deck beams would have been in the way of cargo coming up and down. "i work entirely unsupported, and i observe that i am the sole strength of this vessel, so far as my vision extends. the responsibility, i assure you, is enormous. i believe the money-value of the cargo is over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. think of that!" "and every pound of it is dependent on my personal exertions." here spoke a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water outside, and was seated not very far from the garboard-strake. "i rejoice to think that i am a prince-hyde valve, with best para rubber facings. five patents cover me--i mention this without pride--five separate and several patents, each one finer than the other. at present i am screwed fast. should i open, you would immediately be swamped. this is incontrovertible!" patent things always use the longest words they can. it is a trick that they pick up from their inventors. "that's news," said a big centrifugal bilge-pump. "i had an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things with. at least, i've used you for that more than once. i forget the precise number, in thousands, of gallons which i am guaranteed to throw per hour; but i assure you, my complaining friends, that there is not the least danger. i alone am capable of clearing any water that may find its way here. by my biggest deliveries, we pitched then!" the sea was getting up in workmanlike style. it was a dead westerly gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on all sides by fat, gray clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it fretted the spray into lacework on the flanks of the waves. "i tell you what it is," the foremast telephoned down its wire-stays. "i'm up here, and i can take a dispassionate view of things. there's an organized conspiracy against us. i'm sure of it, because every single one of these waves is heading directly for our bows. the whole sea is concerned in it--and so's the wind. it's awful!" "what's awful?" said a wave, drowning the capstan for the hundredth time. "this organized conspiracy on your part," the capstan gurgled, taking his cue from the mast. "organized bubbles and spindrift! there has been a depression in the gulf of mexico. excuse me!" he leaped overside; but his friends took up the tale one after another. "which has advanced----" that wave hove green water over the funnel. "as far as cape hatteras----" he drenched the bridge. "and is now going out to sea--to sea--to sea!" the third went free in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom up and sank in the darkening troughs alongside, while the broken falls whipped the davits. "that's all there is to it," seethed the white water roaring through the scuppers. "there's no animus in our proceedings. we're only meteorological corollaries." "is it going to get any worse?" said the bow-anchor, chained down to the deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes. "not knowing, can't say. wind may blow a bit by midnight. thanks awfully. good-bye." the wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck sunk between high bulwarks. one of the bulwark plates, which was hung on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again with a clean smack. "evidently that's what i'm made for," said the plate, closing again with a sputter of pride. "oh, no, you don't my friend!" the top of a wave was trying to get in from the outside, but as the plate did not open in that direction, the defeated water spurted back. "not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the bulwark-plate. "my work, i see, is laid down for the night"; and it began opening and shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship. "we are not what you might call idle," groaned all the frames together, as the _dimbula_ climbed a big wave, lay on her side at the top, and shot into the next hollow, twisting in the descent. a huge swell pushed up exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free with nothing to support them. then one joking wave caught her up at the bow, and another at the stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from under her just to see how she would like it; so she was held up at her two ends only, and the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron keels and bilge-stringers. "ease off! ease off, there!" roared the garboard-strake. "i want one-eighth of an inch fair play. d' you hear me, you rivets!" "ease off! ease off!" cried the bilge-stringers. "don't hold us so tight to the frames!" "ease off!" grunted the deck-beams, as the _dimbula_ rolled fearfully. "you've cramped our knees into the stringers, and we can't move. ease off, you flat-headed little nuisances." then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell away in torrents of streaming thunder. "ease off!" shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. "i want to crumple up, but i'm stiffened in every direction. ease off, you dirty little forge-filings. let me breathe!" all the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position, complained against the rivets. "we can't help it! _we_ can't help it!" they murmured in reply. "we're put here to hold you, and we're going to do it; you never pull us twice in the same direction. if you'd say what you were going to do next, we'd try to meet your views." "as far as i could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and that was four inches thick, "every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in opposite directions. now, what's the sense of that? my friends, let us all pull together." "pull any way you please," roared the funnel, "so long as you don't try your experiments on _me_. i need fourteen wire ropes, all pulling in different directions, to hold me steady. is n't that so?" "we believe you, my boy!" whistled the funnel-stays through their clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel to the deck. "nonsense! we must all pull together," the decks repeated. "pull lengthways." "very good," said the stringers; "then stop pushing sideways when you get wet. be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at the ends as we do." "no--no curves at the end! a very slight workmanlike curve from side to side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on," said the deck-beams. "fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "who ever heard of curves? stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight--like that! there!" a big sea smashed on the deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load. "straight up and down is not bad," said the frames, who ran that way in the sides of the ship, "but you must also expand yourselves sideways. expansion is the law of life, children. open out! open out!" "come back!" said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave of the sea made the frames try to open. "come back to your bearings, you slack-jawed irons!" "rigidity! rigidity! rigidity!" thumped the engines. "absolute, unvarying rigidity--rigidity!" "you see!" whined the rivets, in chorus. "no two of you will ever pull alike, and--and you blame it all on us. we only know how to go through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can't, and must n't, and shan't move." "i've got one-fraction of an inch play, at any rate," said the garboard-strake, triumphantly. so he had, and all the bottom of the ship felt the easier for it. "then we're no good," sobbed the bottom rivets. "we were ordered--we were ordered--never to give; and we've given, and the sea will come in, and we'll all go to the bottom together! first we're blamed for everything unpleasant, and now we have n't the consolation of having done our work." "don't say i told you," whispered the steam, consolingly; "but, between you and me and the last cloud i came from, it was bound to happen sooner or later. you _had_ to give a fraction, and you've given without knowing it. now, hold on, as before." "what's the use?" a few hundred rivets chattered. "we've given--we've given; and the sooner we confess that we can't keep the ship together, and go off our little heads, the easier it will be. no rivet forged can stand this strain." "no one rivet was ever meant to. share it among you," the steam answered. "the others can have my share. i'm going to pull out," said a rivet in one of the forward plates. "if you go, others will follow," hissed the steam. "there's nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going. why, i knew a little chap like you--he was an eighth of an inch fatter, though--on a steamer--to be sure, she was only twelve hundred tons, now i come to think of it--in exactly the same place as you are. he pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same butt-strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door, and i had to climb into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat went down." "now that's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet. "fatter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? reedy little peg! i blush for the family, sir." he settled himself more firmly than ever in his place, and the steam chuckled. "you see," he went on, quite gravely, "a rivet, and especially a rivet in your position, is really the one indispensable part of the ship." the steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to every single piece of iron aboard. there is no sense in telling too much truth. and all that while the little _dimbula_ pitched and chopped, and swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped; for the gale was at its worst. it was inky black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand before your face. this did not make much difference to the ironwork below, but it troubled the foremast a good deal. "now it's all finished," he said dismally. "the conspiracy is too strong for us. there is nothing left but to----" "_hurraar! brrrraaah! brrrrrrp!_" roared the steam through the fog-horn, till the decks quivered. "don't be frightened, below. it's only me, just throwing out a few words, in case any one happens to be rolling round to-night." "you don't mean to say there's any one except us on the sea in such weather?" said the funnel in a husky snuffle. "scores of 'em," said the steam, clearing its throat; "_rrrrrraaa! brraaaaa! prrrrp!_ it's a trifle windy up here; and, great boilers! how it rains!" "we're drowning," said the scuppers. they had been doing nothing else all night, but this steady thrash of rain above them seemed to be the end of the world. "that's all right. we'll be easier in an hour or two. first the wind and then the rain: soon you may make sail again! _grrraaaaaah! drrrraaaa! drrrp!_ i have a notion that the sea is going down already. if it does you'll learn something about rolling. we've only pitched till now. by the way, are n't you chaps in the hold a little easier than you were?" there was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave with a supple little waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf-club. "we have made a most amazing discovery," said the stringers, one after another. "a discovery that entirely changes the situation. we have found, for the first time in the history of ship-building, that the inward pull of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of marine architecture." the steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog-horn. "what massive intellects you great stringers have," he said softly, when he had finished. "we also," began the deck-beams, "are discoverers and geniuses. we are of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially helps us. we find that we lock up on them when we are subjected to a heavy and singular weight of sea above." here the _dimbula_ shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side--righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm. "in these cases--are you aware of this, steam?--the plating at the bows, and particularly at the stern--we would also mention the floors beneath us--help _us_ to resist any tendency to spring." the frames spoke, in the solemn, awed voice which people use when they have just come across something entirely new for the very first time. "i'm only a poor puffy little flutterer," said the steam, "but i have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business. it's all tremendously interesting. tell us some more. you fellows are so strong." "watch us and you'll see," said the bow-plates, proudly. "ready, behind there! here's the father and mother of waves coming! sit tight, rivets all!" a great sluicing comber thundered by, but through the scuffle and confusion the steam could hear the low, quick cries of the ironwork as the various strains took them--cries like these: "easy, now--easy! _now_ push for all your strength! hold out! give a fraction! holdup! pull in! shove crossways! mind the strain at the ends! grip, now! bite tight! let the water get away from under--and there she goes!" the wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, "not bad, that, if it's your first run!" and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed to the beat of the engines inside her. all three cylinders were white with the salt spray that had come down through the engine-room hatch; there was white fur on the canvas-bound steam-pipes, and even the bright-work deep below was speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make the most of steam that was half water, and were pounding along cheerfully. "how's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?" said the steam, as he whirled through the engine-room. "nothing for nothing in this world of woe," the cylinders answered, as though they had been working for centuries, "and precious little for seventy-five pounds' head. we've made two knots this last hour and a quarter! rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, is n't it?" "well, it's better than drifting astern, at any rate. you seem rather less--how shall i put it?--stiff in the back than you were." "if you'd been hammered as we've been this night, you would n't be stiff--iff--iff, either. theoreti--retti--retti--cally, of course, rigidity is the thing. purrr--purr--practically, there has to be a little give and take. _we_ found that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a stretch--chch--chh. how's the weather?" "sea's going down fast," said the steam. "good business," said the high-pressure cylinder. "whack her up, boys. they've given us five pounds more steam"; and he began humming the first bars of "said the young obadiah to the old obadiah," which, as you may have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not built for high speed. racing-liners with twin-screws sing "the turkish patrol" and the overture to the "bronze horse," and "madame angot," till something goes wrong, and then they render gounod's "funeral march of a marionette" with variations. "you'll learn a song of your own some fine day," said the steam, as he flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow. next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the _dimbula_ began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron in her was sick and giddy. but luckily they did not all feel ill at the same time: otherwise she would have opened out like a wet paper box. the steam whistled warnings as he went about his business: it is in this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of the accidents happen, for then everything thinks that the worst is over and goes off guard. so he orated and chattered till the beams and frames and floors and stringers and things had learned how to lock down and lock up on one another, and endure this new kind of strain. they found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at sea, and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of new york. the _dimbula_ picked up her pilot and came in covered with salt and red rust. her funnel was dirty gray from top to bottom; two boats had been carried away; three copper ventilators looked like hats after a fight with the police; the bridge had a dimple in the middle of it; the house that covered the steam steering-gear was split as with hatchets; there was a bill for small repairs in the engine-room almost as long as the screw-shaft; the forward cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when they raised the iron cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had been badly wrenched on its bed. altogether, as the skipper said, it was "a pretty general average." "but she's soupled," he said to mr. buchanan. "for all her dead weight she rode like a yacht. ye mind that last blow off the banks? i am proud of her, buck." "it's vera good," said the chief engineer, looking along the dishevelled decks. "now, a man judgin' superfeecially would say we were a wreck, but we know otherwise--by experience." naturally everything in the _dimbula_ fairly stiffened with pride, and the foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead who are pushing creatures, begged the steam to warn the port of new york of their arrival. "tell those big boats all about us," they said. "they seem to take us quite as a matter of course." it was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with less than half a mile between each, their bands playing and their tug-boats shouting and waving handkerchiefs, were the _majestic_, the _paris_, the _touraine_, the _servia_, the _kaiser wilhelm ii._, and the _werkendam_, all statelily going out to sea. as the _dimbula_ shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the steam (who knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and then) shouted: "oyez! oyez! oyez! princes, dukes, and barons of the high seas! know ye by these presents, we are the _dimbula_, fifteen days nine hours from liverpool, having crossed the atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for the first time in our career! we have not foundered. we are here, _'eer! 'eer!_ we are not disabled. but we have had a time wholly unparalleled in the annals of ship-building! our decks were swept! we pitched; we rolled! we thought we were going to die! _hi! hi!_ but we did n't. we wish to give notice that we have come to new york all the way across the atlantic through the worst weather in the world; and we are the _dimbula_! we are--arr--ha--ha--ha-r-r-r!" the beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the seasons. the _dimbula_ heard the _majestic_ say, "hmph!" and the _paris_ grunted, "how!" and the _touraine_ said, "oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the _servia_ said "haw!" and the _kaiser_ and the _werkendam_ said, "hoch!" dutch fashion--and that was absolutely all. "i did my best," said the steam, gravely, "but i don't think they were much impressed with us, somehow. do you?" "it's simply disgusting," said the bow-plates. "they might have seen what we've been through. there is n't a ship on the sea that has suffered as we have--is there, now?" "well, i would n't go so far as that," said the steam, "because i've worked on some of those boats, and sent them through weather quite as bad as the fortnight that we've had, in six days; and some of them are a little over ten thousand tons, i believe. now i've seen the _majestic_, for instance, ducked from her bows to her funnel; and i've helped the _arizona_, i think she was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and i had to run out of the _paris's_ engine-room, one day, because there was thirty foot of water in it. of course, i don't deny----" the steam shut off suddenly, as a tug-boat, loaded with a political club and a brass band, that had been to see a new york senator off to europe, crossed their bows, going to hoboken. there was a long silence that reached, without a break, from the cut-water to the propeller-blades of the _dimbula_. then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had just waked up: "it's my conviction that i have made a fool of myself." the steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one voice, which is the soul of the ship. "who are you?" he said, with a laugh. "i am the _dimbula_, of course. i've never been anything else except that--and a fool!" the tug-boat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away just in time, its band playing clashily and brassily a popular but impolite air: in the days of old rameses--are you on? in the days of old rameses--are you on? in the days of old rameses, that story had paresis, are you on--are you on--are you on? "well, i'm glad you've found yourself," said the steam. "to tell the truth i was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and stringers. here's quarantine. after that we'll go to our wharf and clean up a little, and--next month we'll do it all over again." i a trip across a continent[ ] harvey n. cheyne, a spoiled darling, "perhaps fifteen years old," "an american--first, last, and all the time," had "staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail," after trying to smoke a "wheeling stogie." "he was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail," where a "gray mother-wave tucked him under one arm." he was picked up by the fishing schooner _we're here_, and after many marvellous experiences among the sailors arrived in port, a happier and wiser fellow. his telegram to his father brings the following result. cheyne was flying to meet the only son, so miraculously restored to him. the bear was seeking his cub, not the bulls. hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and wished him god-speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot roads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful things they would have done had not cheyne buried the hatchet. [footnote : a selection from "captains courageous," copyrighted by the century company.] it was a busy week-end among the wires; for, now that their anxiety was removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate. los angeles called to san diego and barstow that the southern california engineers might know and be ready in their lonely roundhouses; barstow passed the word to the atlantic and pacific; and albuquerque flung it the whole length of the atchison, topeka, and santa fé management, even into chicago. an engine, combination-car with crew, and the great and gilded "constance" private car were to be "expedited" over those two thousand three hundred and fifty miles. the train would take precedence of one hundred and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; despatchers and crews of every one of those said trains must be notified. sixteen locomotives; sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be needed--each and every one the best available. two and one-half minutes would be allowed for changing engines, three for watering, and two for coaling. "warn the men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; for harvey cheyne is in a hurry, a hurry--hurry," sang the wires. "forty miles an hour will be expected, and division superintendents will accompany this special over their respective divisions. from san diego to sixteenth street, chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. hurry! oh, hurry!" "it will be hot," said cheyne, as they rolled out of san diego in the dawn of sunday. "we're going to hurry, mamma, just as fast as ever we can; but i really don't think there's any good of your putting on your bonnet and gloves yet. you'd much better lie down and take your medicine. i'd play you a game o' dominoes, but it's sunday." "i'll be good. oh, i _will_ be good. only--taking off my bonnet makes me feel as if we'd never get there." "try to sleep a little, mamma, and we'll be in chicago before you know." "but it's boston, father. tell them to hurry." the six-foot drivers were hammering their way to san bernardino and the mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. that would come later. the heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned east to the needles and the colorado river. the car cracked in the utter drought and glare, and they put crushed ice to mrs. cheyne's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past ash fork, toward flagstaff, where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. the needle of the speed-indicator flicked and wagged to and fro, the cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling wheels. the crew of the combination sat on their bunks, panting in their shirt-sleeves, and cheyne found himself among them shouting old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows, above the roar of the car. he told them about his son, and how the sea had given up its dead, and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him; asked after "her, back there," and whether she could stand it if the engineer "let her out a piece," and cheyne thought she could. accordingly the great fire-horse was "let out" from flagstaff to winslow, till a division superintendent protested. but mrs. cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom, where the french maid, sallow-white with fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only moaned a little and begged her husband to bid them "hurry." and so they dropped the dry sands and moon-struck rocks of arizona behind them, and grilled on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-hose told them they were at coolidge by the continental divide. three bold and experienced men--cool, confident, and dry when they began; white, quivering, and wet when they finished their trick at those terrible wheels--swung her over the great lift from albuquerque to glorietta and beyond springer, up and up to the raton tunnel on the state line, whence they dropped rocking into la junta, had sight of the arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to dodge city, where cheyne took comfort once again from setting his watch an hour ahead. there was very little talk in the car. the secretary and typewriter sat together on the stamped spanish-leather cushions by the plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their best to entertain him. at night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the emptiness of abject desolation. now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a chinaman, the clink-clink of hammers that tested the krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. now they looked out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out half the stars. now scaur and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last came the true plains. at dodge city an unknown hand threw in a copy of a kansas paper containing some sort of an interview with harvey, who had evidently fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on from boston. the joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond question their boy, and it soothed mrs. cheyne for a while. her one word "hurry" was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at nickerson, topeka, and marceline, where the grades are easy, and they brushed the continent behind them. towns and villages were close together now, and a man could feel here that he moved among people. "i can't see the dial, and my eyes ache so. what are we doing?" "the very best we can, mamma. there's no sense in getting in before the limited. we'd only have to wait." "i don't care. i want to feel we're moving. sit down and tell me the miles." cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles which stand for records to this day), but the seventy-foot car never changed its long steamer-like roll, moving through the heat with the hum of a giant bee. yet the speed was not enough for mrs. cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless august heat, was making her giddy; the clock-hands would not move, and when, oh, when would they be in chicago? it is not true that, as they changed engines at fort madison, cheyne passed over to the amalgamated brotherhood of locomotive engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. he paid his obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved, and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had sympathized with him. it is on record that the last crew took entire charge of switching operations at sixteenth street, because "she" was in a doze at last, and heaven was to help any one who bumped her. now the highly paid specialist who conveys the lake shore and michigan southern limited from chicago to elkhart is something of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back up to a car. none the less he handled the "constance" as if she might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him they did it in whispers and dumb show. "pshaw!" said the atchison, topeka, and santa fé men, discussing life later, "we were n't runnin' for a record. harvey cheyne's wife, she was sick back, an' we did n't want to jounce her. come to think of it, our runnin' time from san diego to chicago was . . you can tell that to them eastern way-trains. when we're tryin' for a record, we 'll let you know." to the western man (though this would not please either city) chicago and boston are cheek by jowl, and some railroads encourage the delusion. the limited whirled the "constance" into buffalo and the arms of the new york central and hudson river (illustrious magnates with white whiskers and gold charms on their watch-chains boarded her here to talk a little business to cheyne), who slid her gracefully into albany, where the boston and albany completed the run from tide-water to tide-water--total time, eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes or three days, fifteen hours and one half. harvey was waiting for them. ii the children of the zodiac[ ] "it's too hard," said the big boy. "i don't know what 'zodiac' means." "i will hunt up the words for you in the dictionary," said the little girl. and when they came to the next story the boy took pleasure in doing his own hunting in the dictionary. though thou love her as thyself, as a self of purer clay, though her parting dim the day, stealing grace from all alive, heartily know when half gods go the gods arrive.--_emerson._ thousands of years ago, when men were greater than they are to-day, the children of the zodiac lived in the world. there were six children of the zodiac--the ram, the bull, the lion, the twins, and the girl; and they were afraid of the six houses which belonged to the scorpion, the balance, the crab, the fishes, the goat, and the waterman. even when they first stepped down upon the earth and knew that they were immortal gods, they carried this fear with them; and the fear grew as they became better acquainted with mankind and heard stories of the six houses. men treated the children as gods and came to them with prayers and long stories of wrong, while the children of the zodiac listened and could not understand. [footnote : copyrighted, , by harper & brothers.] a mother would fling herself before the feet of the twins, or the bull, crying: "my husband was at work in the fields and the archer shot him and he died; and my son will also be killed by the archer. help me!" the bull would lower his huge head and answer: "what is that to me?" or the twins would smile and continue their play, for they could not understand why the water ran out of people's eyes. at other times a man and a woman would come to leo or the girl crying: "we two are newly married and we are very happy. take these flowers." as they threw the flowers they would make mysterious sounds to show that they were happy, and leo and the girl wondered even more than the twins why people shouted "ha! ha! ha!" for no cause. this continued for thousands of years by human reckoning, till on a day, leo met the girl walking across the hills and saw that she had changed entirely since he had last seen her. the girl, looking at leo, saw that he too had changed altogether. then they decided that it would be well never to separate again, in case even more startling changes should occur when the one was not at hand to help the other. leo kissed the girl and all earth felt that kiss, and the girl sat down on a hill and the water ran out of her eyes; and this had never happened before in the memory of the children of the zodiac. as they sat together a man and a woman came by, and the man said to the woman: "what is the use of wasting flowers on those dull gods. they will never understand, darling." the girl jumped up and put her arms around the woman, crying, "i understand. give me the flowers and i will give you a kiss." leo said beneath his breath to the man: "what was the new name that i heard you give to your woman just now?" the man answered, "darling, of course." "why, of course," said leo; "and if of course, what does it mean?" "it means 'very dear,' and you have only to look at your wife to see why." "i see," said leo; "you are quite right;" and when the man and the woman had gone on he called the girl "darling wife"; and the girl wept again from sheer happiness. "i think," she said at last, wiping her eyes, "i think that we two have neglected men and women too much. what did you do with the sacrifices they made to you, leo?" "i let them burn," said leo. "i could not eat them. what did you do with the flowers?" "i let them wither. i could not wear them, i had so many of my own," said the girl, "and now i am sorry." "there is nothing to grieve for," said leo; "we belong to each other." as they were talking the years of men's life slipped by unnoticed, and presently the man and the woman came back, both white-headed, the man carrying the woman. "we have come to the end of things," said the man quietly. "this that was my wife----" "as i am leo's wife," said the girl quickly, her eyes staring. "---- was my wife, has been killed by one of your houses." the man set down his burden, and laughed. "which house?" said leo angrily, for he hated all the houses equally. "you are gods, you should know," said the man. "we have lived together and loved one another, and i have left a good farm for my son: what have i to complain of except that i still live?" as he was bending over his wife's body there came a whistling through the air, and he started and tried to run away, crying, "it is the arrow of the archer. let me live a little longer--only a little longer!" the arrow struck him and he died. leo looked at the girl, and she looked at him, and both were puzzled. "he wished to die," said leo. "he said that he wished to die, and when death came he tried to run away. he is a coward." "no, he is not," said the girl; "i think i feel what he felt. leo, we must learn more about this for their sakes." "for _their_ sakes," said leo, very loudly. "because _we_ are never going to die," said the girl and leo together, still more loudly. "now sit you still here, darling wife," said leo, "while i go to the houses whom we hate, and learn how to make these men and women live as we do." "and love as we do?" said the girl. "i do not think they need to be taught that," said leo, and he strode away very angry, with his lion-skin swinging from his shoulder, till he came to the house where the scorpion lives in the darkness, brandishing his tail over his back. "why do you trouble the children of men?" said leo, with his heart between his teeth. "are you so sure that i trouble the children of men alone?" said the scorpion. "speak to your brother the bull, and see what he says." "i come on behalf of the children of men," said leo. "i have learned to love as they do, and i wish them to live as i--as we--do." "your wish was granted long ago. speak to the bull. he is under my special care," said the scorpion. leo dropped back to the earth again, and saw the great star aldebaran, that is set in the forehead of the bull, blazing very near to the earth. when he came up to it he saw that his brother, the bull, yoked to a countryman's plough, was toiling through a wet rice-field with his head bent down, and the sweat streaming from his flanks. the countryman was urging him forward with a goad. "gore that insolent to death," cried leo, "and for the sake of our family honour come out of the mire." "i cannot," said the bull, "the scorpion has told me that some day, of which i cannot be sure, he will sting me where my neck is set on my shoulders, and that i shall die bellowing." "what has that to do with this disgraceful exhibition?" said leo, standing on the dyke that bounded the wet field. "everything. this man could not plough without my help. he thinks that i am a stray bullock." "but he is a mud-crusted cottar with matted hair," insisted leo. "we are not meant for his use." "you may not be; i am. i cannot tell when the scorpion may choose to sting me to death--perhaps before i have turned this furrow." the bull flung his bulk into the yoke, and the plough tore through the wet ground behind him, and the countryman goaded him till his flanks were red. "do you like this?" leo called down the dripping furrows. "no," said the bull over his shoulder as he lifted his hind legs from the clinging mud and cleared his nostrils. leo left him scornfully and passed to another country, where he found his brother the ram in the centre of a crowd of country people who were hanging wreaths round his neck and feeding him on freshly plucked green corn. "this is terrible," said leo. "break up that crowd and come away, my brother. their hands are spoiling your fleece." "i cannot," said the ram. "the archer told me that on some day of which i had no knowledge, he would send a dart through me, and that i should die in very great pain." "what has that to do with this?" said leo, but he did not speak as confidently as before. "everything in the world," said the ram. "these people never saw a perfect sheep before. they think that i am a stray, and they will carry me from place to place as a model to all their flocks." "but they are greasy shepherds, we are not intended to amuse them," said leo. "you may not be; i am," said the ram. "i cannot tell when the archer may choose to send his arrow at me--perhaps before the people a mile down the road have seen me." the ram lowered his head that a yokel newly arrived might throw a wreath of wild garlic-leaves over it, and waited patiently while the farmers tugged his fleece. "do you like this?" cried leo over the shoulders of the crowd. "no," said the ram, as the dust of the trampling feet made him sneeze, and he snuffed at the fodder piled before him. leo turned back, intending to retrace his steps to the houses, but as he was passing down a street he saw two small children, very dusty, rolling outside a cottage door, and playing with a cat. they were the twins. "what are you doing here?" said leo, indignant. "playing," said the twins calmly. "cannot you play on the banks of the milky way?" said leo. "we did," said they, "till the fishes swam down and told us that some day they would come for us and not hurt us at all and carry us away. so now we are playing at being babies down here. the people like it." "do you like it?" said leo. "no," said the twins, "but there are no cats in the milky way," and they pulled the cat's tail thoughtfully. a woman came out of the doorway and stood behind them, and leo saw in her face a look that he had sometimes seen in the girl's. "she thinks that we are foundlings," said the twins, and they trotted indoors to the evening meal. then leo hurried as swiftly as possible to all the houses one after another; for he could not understand the new trouble that had come to his brethren. he spoke to the archer, and the archer assured him that so far as that house was concerned leo had nothing to fear. the waterman, the fishes, and the goat, gave the same answer. they knew nothing of leo, and cared less. they were the houses, and they were busied in killing men. at last he came to that very dark house where cancer the crab lies so still that you might think he was asleep if you did not see the ceaseless play and winnowing motion of the feathery branches round his mouth. that movement never ceases. it is like the eating of a smothered fire into rotten timber in that it is noiseless and without haste. leo stood in front of the crab, and the half darkness allowed him a glimpse of that vast blue-black back, and the motionless eyes. now and again he thought that he heard some one sobbing, but the noise was very faint. "why do you trouble the children of men?" said leo. there was no answer, and against his will leo cried, "why do you trouble us? what have we done that you should trouble us?" this time cancer replied, "what do i know or care? you were born into my house, and at the appointed time i shall come for you." "when is the appointed time?" said leo, stepping back from the restless movement of the mouth. "when the full moon fails to call the full tide," said the crab, "i shall come for the one. when the other has taken the earth by the shoulders, i shall take that other by the throat." leo lifted his hand to the apple of his throat, moistened his lips, and recovering himself, said: "must i be afraid for two, then?" "for two," said the crab, "and as many more as may come after." "my brother, the bull, had a better fate," said leo, sullenly. "he is alone." a hand covered his mouth before he could finish the sentence, and he found the girl in his arms. woman-like, she had not stayed where leo had left her, but had hastened off at once to know the worst, and passing all the other houses, had come straight to cancer. "that is foolish," said the girl whispering. "i have been waiting in the dark for long and long before you came. _then_ i was afraid. but now----" she put her head down on his shoulder and sighed a sigh of contentment. "i am afraid now," said leo. "that is on my account," said the girl. "i know it is, because i am afraid for your sake. let us go, husband." they went out of the darkness together and came back to the earth, leo very silent, and the girl striving to cheer him. "my brother's fate is the better one," leo would repeat from time to time, and at last he said: "let us each go our own way and live alone till we die. we were born into the house of cancer, and he will come for us." "i know; i know. but where shall i go? and where will you sleep in the evening? but let us try. i will stay here. do you go on." leo took six steps forward very slowly, and three long steps backward very quickly, and the third step set him again at the girl's side. this time it was she who was begging him to go away and leave her, and he was forced to comfort her all through the night. that night decided them both never to leave each other for an instant, and when they had come to this decision they looked back at the darkness of the house of cancer high above their heads, and with their arms round each other's necks laughed, "ha! ha! ha!" exactly as the children of men laughed. and that was the first time in their lives that they had ever laughed. next morning they returned to their proper home and saw the flowers and the sacrifices that had been laid before their doors by the villagers of the hills. leo stamped down the fire with his heel and the girl flung the flower-wreaths out of sight, shuddering as she did so. when the villagers re-returned, as of custom, to see what had become of their offerings, they found neither roses nor burned flesh on the altars, but only a man and a woman, with frightened white faces sitting hand in hand on the altar-steps. "are you not virgo?" said a woman to the girl. "i sent you flowers yesterday." "little sister," said the girl, flushing to her forehead, "do not send any more flowers, for i am only a woman like yourself." the man and the woman went away doubtfully. "now, what shall we do?" said leo. "we must try to be cheerful, i think," said the girl. "we know the very worst that can happen to us, but we do not know the best that love can bring us. we have a great deal to be glad of." "the certainty of death?" said leo. "all the children of men have that certainty also; yet they laughed long before we ever knew how to laugh. we must learn to laugh, leo. we have laughed once, already." people who consider themselves gods, as the children of the zodiac did, find it hard to laugh, because the immortals know nothing worth laughter or tears. leo rose up with a very heavy heart, and he and the girl together went to and fro among men; their new fear of death behind them. first they laughed at a naked baby attempting to thrust its fat toes into its foolish pink mouth; next they laughed at a kitten chasing her own tail; and then they laughed at a boy trying to steal a kiss from a girl, and getting his ears boxed. lastly, they laughed because the wind blew in their faces as they ran down a hill-side together, and broke panting and breathless into a knot of villagers at the bottom. the villagers laughed, too, at their flying clothes and wind-reddened faces; and in the evening gave them food and invited them to a dance on the grass, where everybody laughed through the mere joy of being able to dance. that night leo jumped up from the girl's side crying: "every one of those people we met just now will die----" "so shall we," said the girl sleepily. "lie down again, dear." leo could not see that her face was wet with tears. but leo was up and far across the fields, driven forward by the fear of death for himself and for the girl, who was dearer to him than himself. presently he came across the bull drowsing in the moonlight after a hard day's work, and looking through half-shut eyes at the beautiful straight furrows that he had made. "ho!" said the bull. "so you have been told these things too. which of the houses holds your death?" leo pointed upward to the dark house of the crab and groaned. "and he will come for the girl too," he said. "well," said the bull, "what will you do?" leo sat down on the dike and said that he did not know. "you cannot pull a plough," said the bull, with a little touch of contempt. "i can, and that prevents me from thinking of the scorpion." leo was angry, and said nothing till the dawn broke, and the cultivator came to yoke the bull to his work. "sing," said the bull, as the stiff, muddy ox-bow creaked and strained. "my shoulder is galled. sing one of the songs that we sang when we thought we were all gods together." leo stepped back into the canebrake, and lifted up his voice in a song of the children of the zodiac--the war-whoop of the young gods who are afraid of nothing. at first he dragged the song along unwillingly, and then the song dragged him, and his voice rolled across the fields, and the bull stepped to the tune, and the cultivator banged his flanks out of sheer light-heartedness, and the furrows rolled away behind the plough more and more swiftly. then the girl came across the fields looking for leo, and found him singing in the cane. she joined her voice to his, and the cultivator's wife brought her spinning into the open and listened with all her children round her. when it was time for the nooning, leo and the girl had sung themselves both thirsty and hungry, but the cultivator and his wife gave them rye bread and milk, and many thanks; and the bull found occasion to say: "you have helped me to do a full half field more than i should have done. but the hardest part of the day is to come, brother." leo wished to lie down and brood over the words of the crab. the girl went away to talk to the cultivator's wife and baby, and the afternoon ploughing began. "help us now," said the bull. "the tides of the day are running down. my legs are very stiff. sing, if you never sang before." "to a mud-spattered villager?" said leo. "he is under the same doom as ourselves. are you a coward?" said the bull. leo flushed, and began again with a sore throat and a bad temper. little by little he dropped away from the songs of the children and made up a song as he went along; and this was a thing he could never have done had he not met the crab face to face. he remembered facts concerning cultivators and bullocks and rice-fields that he had not particularly noticed before the interview, and he strung them all together, growing more interested as he sang, and he told the cultivator much more about himself and his work than the cultivator knew. the bull grunted approval as he toiled down the furrows for the last time that day, and the song ended, leaving the cultivator with a very good opinion of himself in his aching bones. the girl came out of the hut where she had been keeping the children quiet, and talking woman-talk to the wife, and they all ate the evening meal together. "now yours must be a very pleasant life," said the cultivator; "sitting as you do on a dyke all day and singing just what comes into your head. have you been at it long, you two--gipsies?" "ah!" lowed the bull from his byre. "that's all the thanks you will ever get from men, brother." "no. we have only just begun it," said the girl; "but we are going to keep to it as long as we live. are we not, leo?" "yes," said he; and they went away hand in hand. "you can sing beautifully, leo," said she, as a wife will to her husband. "what were you doing?" said he. "i was talking to the mother and the babies," she said. "you would not understand the little things that make us women laugh." "and--and i am to go on with this--this gipsy work?" said leo. "yes, dear, and i will help you." there is no written record of the life of leo and of the girl, so we cannot tell how leo took to his new employment which he detested. we are only sure that the girl loved him when and wherever he sang; even when, after the song was done, she went round with the equivalent of a tambourine and collected the pence for the daily bread. there were times, too, when it was leo's very hard task to console the girl for the indignity of horrible praise that people gave him and her--for the silly wagging peacock feathers that they stuck in his cap, and the buttons and pieces of cloth that they sewed on his coat. woman-like, she could advise and help to the end, but the meanness of the means revolted. "what does it matter," leo would say, "so long as the songs make them a little happier?" and they would go down the road and begin again on the old, old refrain--that whatever came or did not come the children of men must not be afraid. it was heavy teaching at first, but in process of years leo discovered that he could make men laugh and hold them listening to him even when the rain fell. yet there were people who would sit down and cry softly, though the crowd was yelling with delight, and there were people who maintained that leo made them do this; and the girl would talk to them in the pauses of the performance and do her best to comfort them. people would die, too, while leo was talking and singing and laughing; for the archer and the scorpion and the crab and the other houses were as busy as ever. sometimes the crowd broke, and were frightened, and leo strove to keep them steady by telling them that this was cowardly; and sometimes they mocked at the houses that were killing them, and leo explained that this was even more cowardly than running away. in their wanderings they came across the bull, or the ram, or the twins, but all were too busy to do more than nod to each other across the crowd, and go on with their work. as the years rolled on even that recognition ceased, for the children of the zodiac had forgotten that they had ever been gods working for the sake of men. the star aldebaran was crusted with caked dirt on the bull's forehead, the ram's fleece was dusty and torn, and the twins were only babies fighting over the cat on the door-step. it was then that leo said, "let us stop singing and making jokes." and it was then that the girl said, "no." but she did not know why she said "no" so energetically. leo maintained that it was perversity, till she herself, at the end of a dusty day, made the same suggestion to him, and he said, "most certainly not!" and they quarrelled miserably between the hedgerows, forgetting the meaning of the stars above them. other singers and other talkers sprang up in the course of the years, and leo, forgetting that there could never be too many of these, hated them for dividing the applause of the children of men, which he thought should be all his own. the girl would grow angry too, and then the songs would be broken, and the jests fall flat for weeks to come, and the children of men would shout: "go home, you two gipsies. go home and learn something worth singing!" after one of these sorrowful, shameful days, the girl, walking by leo's side through the fields, saw the full moon coming up over the trees, and she clutched leo's arm, crying: "the time has come now. oh, leo, forgive me!" "what is it?" said leo. he was thinking of the other singers. "my husband!" she answered, and she laid his hand upon her breast, and the breast that he knew so well was hard as stone. leo groaned, remembering what the crab had said. "surely we were gods once," he cried. "surely we are gods still," said the girl. "do you not remember when you and i went to the house of the crab and--were not very much afraid? and since then ... we have forgotten what we were singing for--we sang for the pence, and, oh, we fought for them!--we, who are the children of the zodiac!" "it was my fault," said leo. "how can there be any fault of yours that is not mine too?" said the girl. "my time has come, but you will live longer, and...." the look in her eyes said all she could not say. "yes, i will remember that we are gods," said leo. it is very hard, even for a child of the zodiac who has forgotten his godhead, to see his wife dying slowly, and to know that he cannot help her. the girl told leo in those last months of all that she had said and done among the wives and the babies at the back of the roadside performances, and leo was astonished that he knew so little of her who had been so much to him. when she was dying she told him never to fight for pence or quarrel with the other singers; and, above all, to go on with his singing immediately after she was dead. then she died, and after he had buried her he went down the road to a village that he knew, and the people hoped that he would begin quarrelling with a new singer that had sprung up while he had been away. but leo called him "my brother." the new singer was newly married--and leo knew it--and when he had finished singing leo straightened himself, and sang the "song of the girl," which he had made coming down the road. every man who was married, or hoped to be married, whatever his rank or colour, understood that song--even the bride leaning on the new husband's arm understood it too--and presently when the song ended, and leo's heart was bursting in him, the men sobbed. "that was a sad tale," they said at last, "now make us laugh." because leo had known all the sorrow that a man could know, including the full knowledge of his own fall who had once been a god--he, changing his song quickly, made the people laugh till they could laugh no more. they went away feeling ready for any trouble in reason, and they gave leo more peacock feathers and pence than he could count. knowing that pence led to quarrels and that peacock feathers were hateful to the girl, he put them aside and went away to look for his brothers, to remind them that they too were gods. he found the bull goring the undergrowth in a ditch, for the scorpion had stung him, and he was dying, not slowly, as the girl had died, but quickly. "i know all," the bull groaned, as leo came up. "i had forgotten, too, but i remember now. go and look at the fields i ploughed. the furrows are straight. i forgot that i was a god, but i drew the plough perfectly straight, for all that. and you, brother?" "i am not at the end of the ploughing," said leo. "does death hurt?" "no; but dying does," said the bull, and he died. the cultivator who then owned him was much annoyed, for there was a field still unploughed. it was after this that leo made the song of the bull who had been a god and forgotten the fact, and he sang it in such a manner that half the young men in the world conceived that they too might be gods without knowing it. a half of that half grew impossibly conceited, and died early. a half of the remainder strove to be gods and failed, but the other half accomplished four times more work than they would have done under any other delusion. later, years later, always wandering up and down, and making the children of men laugh, he found the twins sitting on the bank of a stream waiting for the fishes to come and carry them away. they were not in the least afraid, and they told leo that the woman of the house had a real baby of her own, and that when that baby grew old enough to be mischievous he would find a well-educated cat waiting to have its tail pulled. then the fishes came for them, but all that the people saw was two children drowning in a brook; and though their foster-mother was very sorry, she hugged her own real baby to her breast, and was grateful that it was only the foundlings. then leo made the song of the twins who had forgotten that they were gods, and had played in the dust to amuse a foster-mother. that song was sung far and wide among the women. it caused them to laugh and cry and hug their babies closer to their hearts all in one breath; and some of the women who remembered the girl said: "surely that is the voice of virgo. only she could know so much about ourselves." after those three songs were made, leo sang them over and over again, till he was in danger of looking upon them as so many mere words, and the people who listened grew tired, and there came back to leo the old temptation to stop singing once and for all. but he remembered the girl's dying words and went on. one of his listeners interrupted him as he was singing. "leo," said he, "i have heard you telling us not to be afraid for the past forty years. can you not sing something new now?" "no," said leo; "it is the only song that i am allowed to sing. you must not be afraid of the houses, even when they kill you." the man turned to go, wearily, but there came a whistling through the air, and the arrow of the archer was seen skimming low above the earth, pointing to the man's heart. he drew himself up, and stood still waiting till the arrow struck home. "i die," he said, quietly. "it is well for me, leo, that you sang for forty years." "are you afraid?" said leo, bending over him. "i am a man, not a god," said the man. "i should have run away but for your songs. my work is done, and i die without making a show of my fear." "i am very well paid," said leo to himself. "now that i see what my songs are doing, i will sing better ones." he went down the road, collected his little knot of listeners, and began the song of the girl. in the middle of his singing he felt the cold touch of the crab's claw on the apple of his throat. he lifted his hand, choked, and stopped for an instant. "sing on, leo," said the crowd. "the old song runs as well as ever it did." leo went on steadily till the end, with the cold fear at his heart. when his song was ended, he felt the grip on his throat tighten. he was old, he had lost the girl, he knew that he was losing more than half his power to sing, he could scarcely walk to the diminishing crowds that waited for him, and could not see their faces when they stood about him. none the less he cried angrily to the crab: "why have you come for me _now_?" "you were born under my care. how can i help coming for you?" said the crab, wearily. every human being whom the crab killed had asked that same question. "but i was just beginning to know what my songs were doing," said leo. "perhaps that is why," said the crab, and the grip tightened. "you said you would not come till i had taken the world by the shoulders," gasped leo, falling back. "i always keep my word. you have done that three times, with three songs. what more do you desire?" "let me live to see the world know it," pleaded leo. "let me be sure that my songs----" "make men brave?" said the crab. "even then there would be one man who was afraid. the girl was braver than you are. come." leo was standing close to the restless, insatiable mouth. "i forgot," said he, simply. "the girl was braver. but i am a god too, and i am not afraid." "what is that to me?" said the crab. then leo's speech was taken from him, and he lay still and dumb, watching death till he died. leo was the last of the children of the zodiac. after his death there sprang up a breed of little mean men, whimpering and flinching and howling because the houses killed them and theirs, who wished to live forever without any pain. they did not increase their lives, but they increased their own torments miserably, and there were no children of the zodiac to guide them, and the greater part of leo's songs were lost. only he had carved on the girl's tombstone the last verse of the song of the girl, which stands at the head of this story. one of the children of men, coming thousands of years later, rubbed away the lichen, read the lines, and applied them to a trouble other than the one leo meant. being a man, men believed that he had made the verses himself; but they belong to leo, the child of the zodiac, and teach, as he taught, that what comes or does not come, we must not be afraid. iii the bridge builders the least that findlayson, of the public works department, expected was a c.i.e.; he dreamed of a c.s.i.: indeed his friends told him that he deserved more. for three years he had endured heat and cold, disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through that time, the great kashi bridge over the ganges had grown under his charge. now, in less than three months, if all went well, his excellency the viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it, the first train-load of soldiers would come over it, and there would be speeches. findlayson, c. e., sat in his trolley on a construction-line that ran along one of the main revetments--the huge, stone-faced banks that flared away north and south for three miles on either side of the river--and permitted himself to think of the end. with its approaches, his work was one mile and three-quarters in length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed with the findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick piers. each one of those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red agra stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the ganges' bed. above them ran the railway-line fifteen feet broad; above that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. at either end rose towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to their haunches. the raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. the river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up. in the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the timber-yard. riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under the bellies of the girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale yellow in the sun's glare. east and west and north and south the construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand tons more material were thrown out to hold the river in place. findlayson, c. e., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the country that he had changed for seven miles around. looked back on the humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down, along the vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers, lessening in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers--and only he knew how strong those were--and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work was good. there stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks' work on the girders of the three middle piers--his bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but _pukka_--permanent--to endure when all memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid findlayson truss, had perished. practically, the thing was done. hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little switch-tailed kabuli pony, who, through long practice, could have trotted securely over a trestle, and nodded to his chief. "all but," said he, with a smile. "i've been thinking about it," the senior answered, "not half a bad job for two men, is it?" "one--and a half. 'gad, what a cooper's hill cub i was when i came on the works!" hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences of the past three years, that had taught him power and responsibility. "you _were_ rather a colt," said findlayson. "i wonder how you'll like going back to office work when this job's over." "i shall hate it!" said the young man, and as he went on his eye followed findlayson's, and he muttered, "is n't it good?" "i think we'll go up the service together," findlayson said to himself. "you're too good a youngster to waste on another man. cub thou wast; assistant thou art. personal assistant, and at simla, thou shalt be, if any credit comes to me out of the business!" indeed, the burden of the work had fallen altogether on findlayson and his assistant, the young man whom he had chosen because of his rawness to break to his own needs. there were labour-contractors by the half-hundred--fitters and riveters, european, borrowed from the railway workshops, with perhaps twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under direction, the bevies of workmen--but none knew better than these two, who trusted each other, how the underlings were not to be trusted. they had been tried many times in sudden crises--by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes, and the wrath of the river--but no stress had brought to light any man among them whom findlayson and hitchcock would have honoured by working as remorselessly as they worked themselves. findlayson thought it over from the beginning: the months of office work destroyed at a blow when the government of india, at the last moment, added two feet to the width of the bridge, under the impression that bridges were cut out of paper, and so brought to ruin at least half an acre of calculations--and hitchcock, new to disappointment, buried his head in his arms and wept; the heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts in england; the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of commission if one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were passed; the war that followed the refusal; the careful, polite obstruction at the other end that followed the war, till young hitchcock, putting one month's leave to another month, and borrowing ten days from findlayson, spent his poor little savings of a year in a wild dash to london, and there, as his own tongue asserted, and the later consignments proved, put the fear of god into a man so great that he feared only parliament, and said so till hitchcock wrought with him across his own dinner-table, and--he feared the kashi bridge and all who spoke in its name. then there was the cholera that came in the night to the village by the bridge-works; and after the cholera smote the small-pox. the fever they had always with them. hitchcock had been appointed a magistrate of the third class with whipping powers, for the better government of the community, and findlayson watched him wield his powers temperately, learning what to overlook and what to look after. it was a long, long reverie, and it covered storm, sudden freshets, death in every manner and shape, violent and awful rage against red tape half frenzying a mind that knows it should be busy on other things; drought, sanitation, finance; birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the village of twenty warring castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion, and the blank despair that a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his rifle is all in pieces in the gun-case. behind everything rose the black frame of the kashi bridge--plate by plate, girder by girder, span by span--and each pier of it recalled hitchcock, the all-round man, who had stood by his chief without failing from the very first to this last. so the bridge was two men's work--unless one counted peroo, as peroo certainly counted himself. he was a lascar, a kharva from bulsar, familiar with every port between rockhampton and london, who had risen to the rank of serang on the british india boats, but wearying of routine musters and clean clothes, had thrown up the service and gone inland, where men of his calibre were sure of employment. for his knowledge of tackle and the handling of heavy weights, peroo was worth almost any price he might have chosen to put upon his services; but custom decreed the wage of the overhead-men, and peroo was not within many silver pieces of his proper value. neither running water nor extreme heights made him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he knew how to hold authority. no piece of iron was so big or so badly placed that peroo could not devise a tackle to lift it--a loose-ended, sagging arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount of talking, but perfectly equal to the work in hand. it was peroo who had saved the girder of number seven pier from destruction when the new wire rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate tilted in its slings, threatening to slide out sideways. then the native workmen lost their heads with great shoutings, and hitchcock's right arm was broken by a falling t-plate, and he buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came to and directed for four hours till peroo, from the top of the crane reported, "all's well," and the plate swung home. there was no one like peroo, serang, to lash and guy and hold, to control the donkey-engines, to hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the borrow-pit into which it had tumbled; to strip and dive, if need be, to see how the concrete blocks round the piers stood the scouring of mother gunga, or to adventure up-stream on a monsoon night and report on the state of the embankment-facings. he would interrupt the field-councils of findlayson and hitchcock without fear, till his wonderful english, or his still more wonderful _lingua-franca_, half portuguese and half malay, ran out and he was forced to take string and show the knots that he would recommend. he controlled his own gang of tacklemen--mysterious relatives from kutch mandvi gathered month by month and tried to the uttermost. no consideration of family or kin allowed peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy head on the pay-roll. "my honour is the honour of this bridge," he would say to the about-to-be dismissed. "what do i care for your honour? go and work on a steamer. that is all you are fit for." the little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest--one who had never set foot on black water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by two generations of sea-rovers, all unaffected by port missions or those creeds which are thrust upon sailors by agencies along thames' bank. the priest of the lascars had nothing to do with their caste, or indeed with anything at all. he ate the offerings of his church, and slept and smoked, and slept again, "for," said peroo, who had haled him a thousand miles inland, "he is a very holy man. he never cares what you eat so long as you do not eat beef, and that is good, because on land we worship shiva, we kharvas; but at sea on the kumpani's boats we attend strictly to the orders of the burra malum (the first mate), and on this bridge we observe what finlinson sahib says." findlayson sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding from the guard-tower on the right bank, and peroo with his mates was casting loose and lowering down the bamboo poles and planks as swiftly as ever they had whipped the cargo out of a coaster. from his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang's silver pipe and the creak and clatter of the pulleys. peroo was standing on the topmost coping of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of his abandoned service, and as findlayson motioned to him to be careful, for his was no life to throw away, he gripped the last pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with the long-drawn wail of the fo'c'sle lookout: "_ham dekhta hai_" ("i am looking out"). findlayson laughed, and then sighed. it was years since he had seen a steamer, and he was sick for home. as his trolley passed under the tower, peroo descended by a rope, ape-fashion, and cried: "it looks well now, sahib. our bridge is all but done. what think you mother gunga will say when the rail runs over?" "she has said little so far. it was never mother gunga that delayed us." "there is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay. has the sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the stone-boats were sunk without warning--or only a half-day's warning?" "yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. the spurs are holding well on the west bank." "mother gunga eats great allowances. there is always room for more stone on the revetments. i tell this to the chota sahib"--he meant hitchcock--"and he laughs." "no matter, peroo. another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge in thine own fashion." the lascar grinned. "then it will not be in this way--with stonework sunk under water, as the _quetta_ was sunk. i like sus-sus-pen-sheen bridges that fly from bank to bank, with one big step, like a gang-plank. then no water can hurt. when does the lord sahib come to open the bridge?" "in three months, when the weather is cooler." "ho! ho! he is like the burra malum. he sleeps below while the work is being done. then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches with his finger and says: 'this is not clean! jiboon-wallah!'" "but the lord sahib does not call me a jiboon-wallah, peroo." "no, sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all finished. even the burra malum of the _nerbudda_ said once at tuticorin----" "bah! go! i am busy." "i, also!" said peroo, with an unshaken countenance. "may i take the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?" "to hold them with thy hands? they are, i think, sufficiently heavy." "nay, sahib. it is thus. at sea, on the black water, we have room to be blown up and down without care. here we have no room at all. look you, we have put the river into a dock, and run her between stone sills." findlayson smiled at the "we." "we have bitted and bridled her. she is not like the sea, that can beat against a soft beach. she is mother gunga--in irons." his voice fell a little. "peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than i. speak true talk, now. how much dost thou in thy heart believe of mother gunga?" "all that our priest says. london is london, sahib. sydney is sydney, and port darwin is port darwin. also mother gunga is mother gunga, and when i come back to her banks i know this and worship. in london i did poojah to the big temple by the river for the sake of the god within.... yes, i will not take the cushions in the dinghy." findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow that he shared with his assistant. the place had become home to him in the last three years. he had grilled in the heat, sweated in the rains, and shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof; the lime-wash beside the door was covered with rough drawings and formulæ, and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of the veranda showed where he had walked alone. there is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's work, and the evening meal with hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as the gangs came up from the river-bed and the lights began to twinkle. "peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. he's taken a couple of nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a commodore," said hitchcock. "that's all right. he's got something on his mind. you 'd think that ten years in the british india boats would have knocked most of his religion out of him." "so it has," said hitchcock, chuckling. "i over-heard him the other day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old _guru_ of theirs. peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the _guru_ to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he could stop a monsoon." "all the same, if you carried off his _guru_ he'd leave us like a shot. he was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of st. paul's when he was in london." "he told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder." "not half bad a thing to pray to, either. he's propitiating his own gods now, and he wants to know what mother gunga will think of a bridge being run across her. who's there?" a shadow darkened the doorway, and a telegram was put into hitchcock's hand. "she ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. only a _tar_. it ought to be ralli's answer about the new rivets.... great heavens!" hitchcock jumped to his feet. "what is it?" said the senior, and took the form. "_that's_ what mother gunga thinks, is it," he said, reading. "keep cool, young 'un. we've got all our work cut out for us. let's see. muir wires, half an hour ago: '_floods on the ramgunga. look out._' well, that gives us--one, two--nine and a half for the flood to reach melipur ghaut and seven's sixteen and a half to latodi--say fifteen hours before it comes down to us." "curse that hill-fed sewer of a ramgunga! findlayson, this is two months before anything could have been expected, and the left bank is littered up with stuff still. two full months before the time!" "that's why it happens. i've only known indian rivers for five and twenty years, and i don't pretend to understand. here comes another _tar_." findlayson opened the telegram. "cockran, this time, from the ganges canal: '_heavy rains here. bad._' he might have saved the last word. well, we don't want to know any more. we've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the river-bed. you'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. get everything that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. what have you got on the east bank that needs looking after?" "pontoon, one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. t'other overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from twenty to twenty-three piers--two construction lines, and a turning-spur. the pile-work must take its chance," said hitchcock. "all right. roll up everything you can lay hands on. we'll give the gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub." close to the veranda stood a big night-gong, never used except for flood, or fire in the village. hitchcock had called for a fresh horse, and was off to his side of the bridge when findlayson took the cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing stroke that brings out the full thunder of the metal. long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village had taken up the warning. to these were added the hoarse screaming of conches in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms; and from the european quarters, where the riveters lived, mccartney's bugle, a weapon of offence on sundays and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to "stables." engine after engine toiling home along the spurs after her day's work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the far bank. then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon soft earth. the order in all cases was to stand by the day's work and wait instructions. the gangs poured by in the dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal; gang-foremen shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused by the tool-issue sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd, till the brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the river-bed, raced over the pile-work, swarmed along the lattices, clustered by the cranes, and stood still, each man in his place. then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up everything and bear it beyond high-water mark, and the flare-lamps broke out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the riveters began a night's work racing against the flood that was to come. the girders of the three centre piers--those that stood on the cribs--were all but in position. they needed just as many rivets as could be driven into them, for the flood would assuredly wash out the supports, and the ironwork would settle down on the caps of stone if they were not blocked at the ends. a hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers of the temporary line that fed the unfinished piers. it was heaved up in lengths, loaded into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond flood-level by the groaning locomotives. the tool-sheds on the sands melted away before the attack of shouting armies, and with them went the stacked ranks of government stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of the rivet-machines, spare pumps and chains. the big crane would be the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy stuff up to the main structure of the bridge. the concrete blocks on the fleet of stone-boats were dropped overside, where there was any depth of water, to guard the piers, and the empty boats themselves were poled under the bridge down-stream. it was here that peroo's pipe shrilled loudest, for the first stroke of the big gong had brought aback the dinghy at racing speed, and peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for the honour and credit which are better than life. "i knew she would speak," he cried. "_i_ knew, but the telegraph gave us good warning. o sons of unthinkable begetting--children of unspeakable shame--are we here for the look of the thing?" it was two feet of wire rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders as peroo leaped from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of the sea. findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats than anything else. mccartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the three doubtful spans, but boats adrift, if the flood chanced to be a high one, might endanger the girders; and there was a very fleet in the shrunken channels. "get them behind the swell of the guard-tower," he shouted down to peroo. "it will be dead-water there; get them below the bridge." "_accha!_ [very good.] _i_ know. we are mooring them with wire rope," was the answer. "hah! listen to the chota sahib. he is working hard." from across the river came an almost continuous whistling of locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone. hitchcock at the last minute was spending a few hundred more trucks of tarakee stone in reinforcing his spurs and embankments. "the bridge challenges mother gunga," said peroo, with a laugh. "but when _she_ talks i know whose voice will be the loudest." for hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the lights. it was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by clouds and a sudden squall that made findlayson very grave. "she moves!" said peroo, just before the dawn. "mother gunga is awake! hear!" he dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the current mumbled on it. a little wave hit the side of a pier with a crisp slap. "six hours before her time," said findlayson, mopping his forehead savagely. "now we can't depend on anything. we'd better clear all hands out of the river-bed." again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing of naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased. in the silence, men heard the dry yawn of water crawling over thirsty sand. foreman after foreman shouted to findlayson, who had posted himself by the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been cleaned out, and when the last voice dropped findlayson hurried over the bridge till the iron plating of the permanent way gave place to the temporary plank-walk over the three centre piers, and there he met hitchcock. "all clear your side?" said findlayson. the whisper rang in the box of latticework. "yes, and the east channel's filling now. we're utterly out of our reckoning. when is this thing down on us?" "there's no saying. she's filling as fast as she can. look!" findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand, burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper and fizz. "what orders?" said hitchcock. "call the roll--count stores--sit on your bunkers--and pray for the bridge. that's all i can think of. good night. don't risk your life trying to fish out anything that may go down-stream." "oh, i'll be as prudent as you are! 'night. heavens, how she's filling! here's the rain in earnest!" findlayson picked his way back to his bank, sweeping the last of mccartney's riveters before him. the gangs had spread themselves along the embankments, regardless of the cold rain of the dawn, and there they waited for the flood. only peroo kept his men together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the stone-boats lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-ropes, and chains. a shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and half wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to bank between the stone facings, and the far-away spurs went out in spouts of foam. mother gunga had come bank-high in haste, and a wall of chocolate-coloured water was her messenger. there was a shriek above the roar of the water, the complaint of the spans coming down on their blocks as the cribs were whirled out from under their bellies. the stone-boats groaned and ground each other in the eddy that swung round the abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher and higher against the dim sky-line. "before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do. now she is thus cramped god only knows what she will do!" said peroo, watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. "ohé! fight, then! fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out." but mother gunga would not fight as peroo desired. after the first down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in mid-summer, plucking and fingering along the revetments, and banking up behind the piers till even findlayson began to recalculate the strength of his work. when day came the village gasped. "only last night," men said, turning to each other, "it was as a town in the river-bed! look now!" and they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing water that licked the throat of the piers. the farther bank was veiled by rain, into which the bridge ran out and vanished; the spurs up-stream were marked by no more than eddies and spoutings, and down-stream the pent river, once freed of her guide-lines, had spread like a sea to the horizon. then hurried by, rolling in the water, dead men and oxen together, with here and there a patch of thatched roof that melted when it touched a pier. "big flood," said peroo, and findlayson nodded. it was as big a flood as he had any wish to watch. his bridge would stand what was upon her now, but not very much more; and if by any of a thousand chances there happened to be a weakness in the embankments, mother gunga would carry his honour to the sea with the other raffle. worst of all, there was nothing to do except to sit still; and findlayson sat still under his macintosh till his helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were over ankle in mire. he took no count of time, for the river was marking the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the embankment, and he listened, numb and hungry, to the straining of the stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers, and the hundred noises that make the full note of a flood. once a dripping servant brought him food, but he could not eat; and once he thought that he heard a faint toot from a locomotive across the river, and then he smiled. the bridge's failure would hurt his assistant not a little, but hitchcock was a young man with his big work yet to do. for himself the crash meant everything--everything that made a hard life worth the living. they would say, the men of his own profession--he remembered the half-pitying things that he himself had said when lockhart's big water-works burst and broke down in brick heaps and sludge, and lockhart's spirit broke in him and he died. he remembered what he himself had said when the sumao bridge went out in the big cyclone by the sea; and most he remembered poor hartopp's face three weeks later, when the shame had marked it. his bridge was twice the size of hartopp's, and it carried the findlayson truss as well as the new pier-shoe--the findlayson bolted shoe. there were no excuses in his service. government might listen, perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by his bridge, as that stood or fell. he went over it in his head, plate by plate, span by span, brick by brick, pier by pier, remembering, comparing, estimating, and recalculating, lest there should be any mistake; and through the long hours and through the nights of formulæ that danced and wheeled before him, a cold fear would come to pinch his heart. his side of the sum was beyond question; but what man knew mother gunga's arithmetic? even as he was making all sure by the multiplication-table, the river might be scooping pot-holes to the very bottom of any one of those eighty-foot piers that carried his reputation. again a servant came to him with food, but his mouth was dry, and he could only drink and return to the decimals in his brain. and the river was still rising. peroo, in a mat shelter-coat, crouched at his feet, watching now his face and now the face of the river, but saying nothing. at last the lascar rose and floundered through the mud toward the village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the boats. presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the priest of his creed--a fat old man with a gray beard that whipped the wind with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder. never was seen so lamentable a _guru_. "what good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain," shouted peroo, "if squatting in the mud is all that thou canst do? thou hast dealt long with the gods when they were contented and well-wishing. now they are angry. speak to them!" "what is a man against the wrath of gods?" whined the priest, cowering as the wind took him. "let me go to the temple, and i will pray there." "son of a pig, pray _here_! is there no return for salt fish and curry powder and dried onions? call aloud! tell mother gunga we have had enough. bid her be still for the night. i cannot pray, but i have served in the kumpani's boats, and when men did not obey my orders i----" a flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded the sentence, and the priest, breaking from his disciple, fled to the village. "fat pig!" said peroo. "after all that we have done for him! when the flood is down i will see to it that we get a new _guru_. finlinson sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday nothing has been eaten. be wise, sahib. no man can endure watching and great thinking on an empty belly. lie down, sahib. the river will do what the river will do." "the bridge is mine; i cannot leave it." "wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?" said peroo, laughing. "i was troubled for my boats and sheers _before_ the flood came. now we are in the hands of the gods. the sahib will not eat and lie down? take these, then. they are meat and good toddy together, and they kill all weariness, besides the fever that follows the rain. i have eaten nothing else to-day at all." he took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waist-belt and thrust it into findlayson's hand, saying, "nay, do not be afraid. it is no more than opium--clean malwa opium!" findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his hand, and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them. the stuff was at least a good guard against fever--the fever that was creeping upon him out of the wet mud--and he had seen what peroo could do in the stewing mists of autumn on the strength of a dose from the tin box. peroo nodded with bright eyes. "in a little--in a little the sahib will find that he thinks well again. i too will----" he dived into his treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and squatted down to watch the boats. it was too dark now to see beyond the first pier, and the night seemed to have given the river new strength. findlayson stood with his chin on his chest, thinking. there was one point about one of the piers--the seventh--that that he had not fully settled in his mind. the figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one by one and at enormous intervals of time. there was a sound, rich and mellow in his ears, like the deepest note of a double-bass--an entrancing sound upon which he pondered for several hours, as it seemed. then peroo was at his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had snapped and the stone-boats were loose. findlayson saw the fleet open and swing out fanwise to a long-drawn shriek of wire straining across gunnels. "a tree hit them. they will all go," cried peroo. "the main hawser has parted. what does the sahib do?" an immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into findlayson's mind. he saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and angles--each rope a line of white fire. but there was one rope which was the master-rope. he could see that rope. if he could pull it once, it was absolutely and mathematically certain that the disordered fleet would reassemble itself in the backwater behind the guard-tower. but why, he wondered, was peroo clinging so desperately to his waist as he hastened down the bank? it was necessary to put the lascar aside, gently and slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and, further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so difficult. and then--but it was of no conceivable importance--a wire rope raced through his hand burning it, the high bank disappeared, and with it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem. he was sitting in the rainy darkness--sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and peroo was standing over him. "i had forgotten," said the lascar slowly, "that to those fasting and unused the opium is worse than any wine. those who die in gunga go to the gods. still, i have no desire to present myself before such great ones. can the sahib swim?" "what need? he can fly--fly as swiftly as the wind," was the thick answer. "he is mad!" muttered peroo under his breath. "and he threw me aside like a bundle of dung-cakes. well, he will not know his death. the boat cannot live an hour here even if she strike nothing. it is not good to look at death with a clear eye." he refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the bows of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft staring through the mist at the nothing that was there. a warm drowsiness crept over findlayson, the chief engineer, whose duty was with his bridge. the heavy raindrops struck him with a thousand tingling little thrills, and the weight of all time since time was made hung heavy on his eyelids. he thought and perceived that he was perfectly secure, for the water was so solid that a man could surely step out upon it, and standing still with his legs apart to keep his balance--this was the most important point--would be borne with great and easy speed to the shore. but yet a better plan came to him. it needed only an exertion of will for the soul to hurl the body ashore as wind drives paper; to waft it kite-fashion to the bank. thereafter--the boat spun dizzily--suppose the high wind got under the freed body? would it tower up like a kite and pitch headlong on the far-away sands, or would it duck about beyond control through all eternity? findlayson gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it seemed that he was on the edge of taking the flight before he had settled all his plans. opium has more effect on the white man than the black. peroo was only comfortably indifferent to accidents. "she cannot live," he grunted. "her seams open already. if she were even a dinghy with oars we could have ridden it out; but a box with holes is no good. finlinson sahib, she fills." "_accha!_ i am going away. come thou also." in his mind findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was circling high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot. his body--he was really sorry for its gross helplessness--lay in the stern, the water rushing about its knees. "how very ridiculous!" he said to himself, from his eyrie; "that--is findlayson--chief of the kashi bridge. the poor beast is going to be drowned, too. drowned when it's close to shore. i'm--i'm on shore already. why does n't it come along?" to his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again, and that body spluttering and choking in deep water. the pain of the reunion was atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight for the body. he was conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand, and striding prodigiously, as one strides in a dream, to keep foothold in the swirling water, till at last he hauled himself clear of the hold of the river, and dropped, panting, on wet earth. "not this night," said peroo in his ear. "the gods have protected us." the lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among dried stumps. "this is some island of last year's indigo crop," he went on. "we shall find no men here; but have great care, sahib; all the snakes of a hundred miles have been flooded out. here comes the lightning, on the heels of the wind. now we shall be able to look; but walk carefully." findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed any merely human emotion. he saw, after he had rubbed the water from his eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to himself, with world-encompassing strides. somewhere in the night of time he had built a bridge--a bridge that spanned illimitable levels of shining seas; but the deluge had swept it away, leaving this one island under heaven for findlayson and his companion, sole survivors of the breed of man. an incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was to be seen on the little patch in the flood--a clump of thorn, a clump of swaying, creaking bamboos, and a gray, gnarled peepul over-shadowing a hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered red flag. the holy man whose summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it, and the weather had broken the red-daubed image of his god. the two men stumbled, heavy-limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the branches, while the rain and river roared together. the stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as a huge and dripping brahminee bull shouldered his way under the tree. the flashes revealed the trident mark of shiva on his flank, the insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms and the silky dewlap that night swept the ground. there was a noise behind him of other beasts coming up from the flood-line through the thicket, a sound of heavy feet and deep breathing. "here be more beside ourselves," said findlayson, his head against the tree-pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease. "truly," said peroo thickly, "and no small ones." "what are they, then? i do not see clearly." "the gods. who else? look!" "ah, true! the gods surely--the gods." findlayson smiled as his head fell forward on his chest. peroo was eminently right. after the flood, who should be alive in the land except the gods that made it--the gods to whom his village prayed nightly--the gods who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways? he could not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him, and peroo was smiling vacantly at the lightning. the bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth. a green parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the shifting shadows of beasts. there was a black-buck at the bull's heels--such a buck as findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might have seen in dreams--a buck with a royal head, ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming straight horns. beside him, her head bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning under the heavy brows, with restless tail switching the dead grass, paced a tigress, full-bellied and deep-jowled. the bull crouched beside the shrine and there leaped from the darkness a monstrous gray ape, who seated himself man-wise in the place of the fallen image, and the rain spilled like jewels from the hair of his neck and shoulders. other shadows came and went behind the circle, among them a drunken man flourishing staff and drinking-bottle. then a hoarse bellow broke out from near the ground. "the flood lessens even now," it cried. "hour by hour the water falls, and their bridge still stands!" "my bridge," said findlayson to himself. "that must be very old work now. what have the gods to do with my bridge?" his eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar. a crocodile--the blunt-nosed, ford-haunting mugger of the ganges--draggled herself before the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left with her tail. "they have made it too strong for me. in all this night i have only torn away a handful of planks. the walls stand! the towers stand! they have chained my flood, and my river is not free any more. heavenly ones, take this yoke away! give me clear water between bank and bank! it is i, mother gunga, that speak. the justice of the gods! deal me the justice of the gods!" "what said i?" whispered peroo. "this is in truth a punchayet of the gods. now we know that all the world is dead, save you and i, sahib." the parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the tigress, her ears flat to her head, snarled wickedly. somewhere in the shadow a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to and fro, and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on the snarl. "we be here," said a deep voice, "the great ones. one only and very many. shiv, my father, is here, with indra. kali has spoken already. hanuman listens also." "kashi is without her kotwal to-night," shouted the man with the drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the island rang to the baying of hounds. "give her the justice of the gods." "ye were still when they polluted my waters," the great crocodile bellowed. "ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the walls. i had no help save my own strength, and that failed--the strength of mother gunga failed--before their guard-towers. what could i do? i have done everything. finish now, heavenly ones!" "i brought the death; i rode the spotted sickness from hut to hut of their workmen, and yet they would not cease." a nose-slitten, hide-worn ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled, limped forward. "i cast the death at them out of my nostrils, but they would not cease." peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him. "bah!" he said, spitting. "here is sitala herself; mata--the small-pox. has the sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?" "small help! they fed me the corpses for a month, and i flung them out on my sand-bars, but their work went forward! demons they are, and so sons of demons! and ye left mother gunga alone for their fire-carriage to make a mock of. the justice of the gods on the bridge-builders!" the bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly, "if the justice of the gods caught all who made a mock of holy things, there would be many dark altars in the land, mother." "but this goes beyond a mock," said the tigress, darting forward a griping paw. "thou knowest, shiv, and ye, too, heavenly ones; ye know that they have defiled gunga. surely they must come to the destroyer. let indra judge." the buck made no movement as he answered, "how long has this evil been?" "three years, as men count years," said the mugger, close pressed to the earth. "does mother gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious to see vengeance now? the deep sea was where she runs but yesterday, and to-morrow the sea shall cover her again as the gods count that which men call time. can any say that this their bridge endures till to-morrow?" said the buck. there was a long hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full moon stood up above the dripping trees. "judge ye, then," said the river sullenly. "i have spoken my shame. the flood falls still. i can do no more." "for my own part"--it was the voice of the great ape seated within the shrine--"it pleases me well to watch these men, remembering that i also builded no small bridge in the world's youth." "they say, too," snarled the tiger, "that these men came of the wreck of thy armies, hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided----" "they toil as my armies toiled in lanka, and they believe that their toil endures. indra is too high, but shiv, thou knowest how the land is threaded with their fire-carriages." "yea, i know," said the bull. "their gods instructed them in the matter." a laugh ran round the circle. "their gods! what should their gods know? they were born yesterday, and those that made them are scarcely yet cold," said the mugger. "to-morrow their gods will die." "ho!" said peroo. "mother gunga talks good talk. i told that to the padre-sahib who preached on the _mombassa_, and he asked the burra malum to put me in irons for a great rudeness." "surely they make these things to please their gods," said the bull again. "not altogether," the elephant rolled forth. "it is for the profit of my mahajuns--my fat money-lenders that worship me at each new year, when they draw my image at the head of the account-books. i, looking over their shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in the books are those of men in far places--for all the towns are drawn together by the fire-carriage, and the money comes and goes swiftly, and the account-books grow as fat as--myself. and i, who am ganesh of good luck, i bless my peoples." "they have changed the face of the land--which is my land. they have killed and made new towns on my banks," said the mugger. "it is but the shifting of a little dirt. let the dirt dig in the dirt if it pleases the dirt," answered the elephant. "but afterward?" said the tiger. "afterward they will see that mother gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her first, and later from us all, one by one. in the end, ganesh, we are left with naked altars." the drunken man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently in the face of the assembled gods. "kali lies. my sister lies. also this my stick is the kotwal of kashi, and he keeps tally of my pilgrims. when the time comes to worship bhairon--and it is always time--the fire-carriages move one by one, and each bears a thousand pilgrims. they do not come afoot any more, but rolling upon wheels, and my honour is increased." "gunna, i have seen thy bed at pryag black with the pilgrims," said the ape, leaning forward "and but for the fire-carriage they would have come slowly and in fewer numbers. remember." "they come to me always," bhairon went on thickly. "by day and night they pray to me, all the common people in the fields and the roads. who is like bhairon to-day? what talk is this of changing faiths? is my staff kotwal of kashi for nothing? he keeps the tally, and he says that never were so many altars as to-day, and the fire-carriage serves them well. bhairon am i--bhairon of the common people, and the chiefest of the heavenly ones to-day. also my staff says----" "peace, thou!" lowed the bull. "the worship of the schools is mine, and they talk very wisely, asking whether i be one or many, as is the delight of my people, and ye know what i am. kali, my wife, thou knowest also." "yea, i know," said the tigress, with lowered head. "greater am i than gunga also. for ye know who moved the minds of men that they should count gunga holy among the rivers. who die in that water--ye know how men say--come to us without punishment, and gunga knows that the fire-carriage has borne to her scores upon scores of such anxious ones; and kali knows that she has held her chiefest festivals among the pilgrimages that are fed by the fire-carriage. who smote at pooree, under the image there, her thousands in a day and a night, and bound the sickness to the wheels of the fire-carriages, so that it ran from one end of the land to the other? who but kali? before the fire-carriage came it was a heavy toil. the fire-carriages have served thee well, mother of death. but i speak for mine own altars, who am not bhairon of the common folk, but shiv. men go to and fro, making words and telling talk of strange gods, and i listen. faith follows faith among my people in the schools, and i have no anger; for when the words are said, and the new talk is ended, to shiv men return at the last." "true. it is true," murmured hanuman. "to shiv and to the others, mother, they return. i creep from temple to temple in the north, where they worship one god and his prophet; and presently my image is alone within their shrines." "small thanks," said the buck, turning his head slowly. "i am that one and his prophet also." "even so, father," said hanuman. "and to the south i go who am the oldest of the gods as men know the gods, and presently i touch the shrines of the new faith and the woman whom we know is hewn twelve-armed, and still they call her mary." "small thanks, brother," said the tigress. "i am that woman." "even so, sister; and i go west among the fire-carriages, and stand before the bridge-builder in many shapes, and because of me they change their faiths and are very wise. ho! ho! i am the builder of bridges, indeed--bridges between this and that, and each bridge leads surely to us in the end. be content, gunga. neither these men nor those that follow them mock thee at all." "am i alone, then, heavenly ones? shall i smooth out my flood lest unhappily i bear away their walls? will indra dry my springs in the hills and make me crawl humbly between their wharfs? shall i bury me in the sand ere i offend?" "and all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage atop. truly, mother gunga is always young!" said ganesh the elephant. "a child had not spoken more foolishly. let the dirt dig in the dirt ere it return to the dirt. i know only that my people grow rich and praise me. shiv has said that the men of the schools do not forget; bhairon is content for his crowd of the common people; and hanuman laughs." "surely i laugh," said the ape. "my altars are few beside those of ganesh or bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new worshippers from beyond the black water--the men who believe that their god is toil. i run before them beckoning, and they follow hanuman." "give them the toil that they desire, then," said the river. "make a bar across my flood and throw the water back upon the bridge. once thou wast strong in lanka, hanuman. stoop and lift my bed." "who gives life can take life." the ape scratched in the mud with a long forefinger. "and yet, who would profit by the killing? very many would die." there came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the boys sing when they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late spring. the parrot screamed joyously, sidling along his branch with lowered head as the song grew louder, and in a patch of clear moonlight stood revealed the young herd, the darling of the gopis, the idol of dreaming maids and of mothers ere their children are born--krishna the well-beloved. he stooped to knot up his long, wet hair, and the parrot fluttered to his shoulder. "fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting," hiccupped bhairon. "those make thee late for the council, brother." "and then?" said krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head. "ye can do little without me or karma here." he fondled the parrot's plumage and laughed again. "what is this sitting and talking together? i heard mother gunga roaring in the dark, and so came quickly from a hut where i lay warm. and what have ye done to karma, that he is so wet and silent? and what does mother gunga here? are the heavens full that ye must come paddling in the mud beast-wise? karma, what do they do?" "gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridge-builders, and kali is with her. now she bids hanuman whelm the bridge, that her honour may be made great," cried the parrot. "i waited here, knowing that thou wouldst come o my master!" "and the heavenly ones said nothing? did gunga and the mother of sorrows out-talk them? did none speak for my people?" "nay," said ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; "i said it was but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?" "i was content to let them toil--well content," said hanuman. "what had i to do with gunga's anger?" said the bull. "i am bhairon of the common folk, and this my staff is kotwal of all kashi. i spoke for the common people." "thou?" the young god's eyes sparkled. "am i not the first of the gods in their mouths to-day?" returned bhairon, unabashed. "for the sake of the common people i said--very many wise things which i have now forgotten--but this my staff----" krishna turned impatiently, saw the mugger at his feet, and kneeling, slipped an arm round the cold neck. "mother," he said gently, "get thee to thy flood again. the matter is not for thee. what harm shall thy honour take of this live dirt? thou hast given them their fields new year after year, and by thy flood they are made strong. they come all to thee at the last. what need to slay them now? have pity, mother, for a little--and it is only for a little." "if it be only for a little----" the slow beast began. "are they gods, then?" krishna returned with a laugh, his eyes looking into the dull eyes of the river. "be certain that it is only for a little. the heavenly ones have heard thee, and presently justice will be done. go, now, mother, to the flood again. men and cattle are thick on the waters--the banks fall--the villages melt because of thee." "but the bridge--the bridge stands." the mugger turned grunting into the undergrowth as krishna rose. "it is ended," said the tigress, viciously. "there is no more justice from the heavenly ones. ye have made shame and sport of gunga, who asked no more than a few score lives." "of _my_ people--who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village yonder--of the young girls, and the young men who sing to them," said krishna. "and when all is done, what profit? to-morrow sees them at work. ay, if ye swept the bridge out from end to end they would begin anew. hear me! bhairon is drunk always. hanuman mocks his people with new riddles." "nay, but they are very old ones," the ape said, laughing. "shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy men; ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but i--i live with these my people, asking for no gifts, and so receiving them hourly." "and very tender art thou of thy people," said the tigress. "they are my own. the old women dream of me, turning in their sleep; the maids look and listen for me when they go to fill their lotahs by the river. i walk by the young men waiting without the gates at dusk, and i call over my shoulder to the white-beards. ye know, heavenly ones, that i alone of us all walk upon the earth continually, and have no pleasure in our heavens so long as a green blade springs here, or there are two voices at twilight in the standing crops. wise are ye, but ye live far off, forgetting whence ye came. so do i not forget. and the fire-carriage feeds your shrines, ye say? and the fire-carriages bring a thousand pilgrimages where but ten came in the old years? true. that is true to-day." "but to-morrow they are dead, brother," said ganesh. "peace!" said the bull, as hanuman leaned forward again. "and to-morrow, beloved--what of to-morrow?" "this only. a new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the common folk--a word that neither man nor god can lay hold of--an evil word--a little lazy word among the common folk, saying (and none know who set that word afoot) that they weary of ye, heavenly ones." the gods laughed together softly. "and then, beloved?" they said. "and to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee, shiv, and to thee, ganesh, at first greater offerings and a louder noise of worship. but the word has gone abroad, and, after, they will pay fewer dues to your fat brahmins. next they will forget your altars, but so slowly that no man can say how his forgetfulness began." "i knew--i knew! i spoke this also, but they would not hear," said the tigress. "we should have slain--we should have slain!" "it is too late now. ye should have slain at the beginning, when the men from across the water had taught our folk nothing. now my people see their work, and go away thinking. they do not think of the heavenly ones altogether. they think of the fire-carriage and the other things that the bridge-builders have done, and when your priests thrust forward hands asking alms, they give unwillingly a little. that is the beginning, among one or two, or five or ten--for i, moving among my people, know what is in their hearts." "and the end, jester of the gods? what shall the end be?" said ganesh. "the end shall be as it was in the beginning, o slothful son of shiv! the flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue till ye become little gods again--gods of the jungle--names that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the caves--rag-gods, pot godlings of the tree, and the village-mark, as ye were at the beginning. that is the end, ganesh, for thee, and for bhairon--bhairon of the common people." "it is very far away," grunted bhairon. "also, it is a lie." "many women have kissed krishna. they told him this to cheer their own hearts when the gray hairs came, and he has told us the tale," said the bull, below his breath. "their gods came, and we changed them. i took the woman and made her twelve-armed. so shall we twist all their gods," said hanuman. "their gods! this is no question of their gods--one or three--man or woman. the matter is with the people. _they_ move, and not the gods of the bridge-builders," said krishna. "so be it. i have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it stood still breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped me," said hanuman the ape. "they will only change a little the names of their gods. i shall lead the builders of the bridges as of old; shiv shall be worshipped in the schools by such as doubt and despise their fellows; ganesh shall have his mahajuns, and bhairon the donkey-drivers, the pilgrims, and the sellers of toys. beloved, they will do no more than change the names, and that we have seen a thousand times." "surely they will do no more than change the names," echoed ganesh: but there was an uneasy movement among the gods. "they will change more than the names. me alone they cannot kill, so long as maiden and man meet together or the spring follows the winter rains. heavenly ones, not for nothing have i walked upon the earth. my people know not now what they know; but i, who live with them, i read their hearts. great kings, the beginning of the end is born already. the fire-carriages shout the names of new gods that are _not_ the old under new names. drink now and eat greatly! bathe your faces in the smoke of the altars before they grow cold! take dues and listen to the cymbals and the drums, heavenly ones, while yet there are flowers and songs. as men count time the end is far off; but as we who know reckon it is to-day. i have spoken." the young god ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long in silence. "this i have not heard before," peroo whispered in his companion's ear. "and yet sometimes, when i oiled the brasses in the engine-room of the _goorkha_, i have wondered if our priests were so wise--so wise. the day is coming, sahib. they will be gone by the morning." a yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river changed as the darkness withdrew. suddenly the elephant trumpeted aloud as though men had goaded him. "let indra judge. father of all, speak thou! what of the things we have heard? has krishna lied indeed? or----" "ye know," said the buck, rising to his feet. "ye know the riddle of the gods. when brahm ceases to dream the heavens and the hells and earth disappear. be content. brahm dreams still. the dreams come and go, and the nature of the dreams changes, but still brahm dreams. krishna has walked too long upon earth, and yet i love him the more for the tale he has told. the gods change, beloved--all save one!" "ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men," said krishna, knotting his girdle. "it is but a little time to wait, and ye shall know if i lie." "truly it is but a little time, as thou sayest, and we shall know. get thee to thy huts again, beloved, and make sport for the young things, for still brahm dreams. go, my children! brahm dreams--and till he wakes the gods die not." * * * * * "whither went they?" said the lascar, awe-struck, shivering a little with the cold. "god knows!" said findlayson. the river and the island lay in full daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the wet earth under the peepul. only a parrot screamed in the branches, bringing down showers of water-drops as he fluttered his wings. "up! we are cramped with cold! has the opium died out? canst thou move, sahib?" findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself. his head swam and ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he sluiced his forehead in a pool, the chief engineer of the kashi bridge was wondering how he had managed to fall upon the island, what chances the day offered of return, and, above all, how his work stood. "peroo, i have forgotten much. i was under the guard-tower watching the river; and then--did the flood sweep us away?" "no. the boats broke loose, sahib, and" (if the sahib had forgotten about the opium, decidedly peroo would not remind him) "in striving to retie them, so it seemed to me--but it was dark--a rope caught the sahib and threw him upon a boat. considering that we two, with hitchcock sahib, built, as it were, that bridge, i came also upon the boat, which came riding on horseback, as it were, on the nose of this island, and so, splitting, cast us ashore. i made a great cry when the boat left the wharf, and without doubt hitchcock sahib will come for us. as for the bridge, so many have died in the building that it cannot fall." a fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden land, had followed the storm, and in that clear light there was no room for a man to think of dreams of the dark. findlayson stared up-stream, across the blaze of moving water, till his eyes ached. there was no sign of any bank to the ganges, much less of a bridge-line. "we came down far," he said. "it was wonderful that we were not drowned a hundred times." "that was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his time. i have seen sydney, i have seen london, and twenty great ports, but"--peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the peepul--"never man has seen that we saw here." "what?" "has the sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the gods?" "there was a fever upon me." findlayson was still looking uneasily across the water. "it seemed that the island was full of beasts and men talking, but i do not remember. a boat could live in this water now, i think." "oho! then it _is_ true. 'when brahm ceases to dream, the gods die.' now i know, indeed, what he meant. once, too, the _guru_ said as much to me; but then i did not understand. now i am wise." "what?" said findlayson over his shoulder. peroo went on as if he were talking to himself. "six--seven--ten monsoons since, i was watch on the fo'c'sle of the _rewah_--the kumpani's big boat--and there was a big _tufan_, green and black water beating; and i held fast to the life-lines, choking under the waters. then i thought of the gods--of those whom we saw to-night"--he stared curiously at findlayson's back, but the white man was looking across the flood. "yes, i say of those whom we saw this night past, and i called upon them to protect me. and while i prayed, still keeping my lookout, a big wave came and threw me forward upon the ring of the great black bow-anchor, and the _rewah_ rose high and high, leaning toward the left-hand side, and the water drew away from beneath her nose, and i lay upon my belly, holding the ring, and looking down into those great deeps. then i thought, even in the face of death, if i lose hold i die, and for me neither the _rewah_ nor my place by the galley where the rice is cooked, nor bombay, nor calcutta, nor even london, will be any more for me. 'how shall i be sure,' i said, 'that the gods to whom i pray will abide at all?' this i thought, and the _rewah_ dropped her nose as a hammer falls, and all the sea came in and slid me backward along the fo'c'sle and over the break of the fo'c'sle, and i very badly bruised my shin against the donkey-engine: but i did not die, and i have seen the gods. they are good for live men, but for the dead----they have spoken themselves. therefore, when i come to the village i will beat the _guru_ for talking riddles which are no riddles. when brahm ceases to dream, the gods go." "look up-stream. the light blinds. is there smoke yonder?" peroo shaded his eyes with his hands. "he is a wise man and quick. hitchcock sahib would not trust a rowboat. he has borrowed the rao sahib's steam-launch, and comes to look for us. i have always said that there should have been a steam-launch on the bridge-works for us." the territory of the rao of baraon lay within ten miles of the bridge; and findlayson and hitchcock had spent a fair portion of their scanty leisure in playing billiards and shooting black-buck with the young man. he had been bear-led by an english tutor of sporting tastes for some five or six years, and was now royally wasting the revenues accumulated during his minority by the indian government. his steam-launch, with its silver-plated rails, striped silk awning, and mahogany decks, was a new toy which findlayson had found horribly in the way when the rao came to look at the bridge-works. "it's great luck," murmured findlayson, but he was none the less afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge. the gaudy blue and white funnel came down-stream swiftly. they could see hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses, and his face was unusually white. then peroo hailed, and the launch made for the tail of the island. the rao sahib, in tweed shooting-suit and a seven-hued turban, waved his royal hand, and hitchcock shouted. but he need have asked no questions, for findlayson's first demand was for his bridge. "all serene! 'gad, i never expected to see you again, findlayson. you're seven koss down-stream. yes, there's not a stone shifted anywhere; but how are you? i borrowed the rao sahib's launch, and he was good enough to come along. jump in." "ah, finlinson, you are very well, eh? that was most unprecedented calamity last night, eh? my royal palace, too, it leaks like the devil, and the crops will also be short all about my country. now you shall back her out, hitchcock. i--i do not understand steam-engines. you are wet? you are cold finlinson? i have some things to eat here, and you will take a good drink." "i'm immensely grateful, rao sahib. i believe you've saved my life. how did hitchcock----" "oho! his hair was upon end. he rode to me in the middle of the night and woke me up in the arms of morphus. i was most truly concerned, finlinson, so i came too. my head-priest he is very angry just now. we will go quick, mister hitchcock. i am due to attend at twelve-forty-five in the state temple, where we sanctify some new idol. if not so i would have asked you to spend the day with me. they are dam-bore, these religious ceremonies, finlinson, eh?" peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the wheel, and was taking the launch craftily up-stream. but while he steered he was, in his mind, handling two feet of partially untwisted wire-rope; and the back upon which he beat was the back of his _guru_. iv the miracles i sent a message to my dear-- a thousand leagues and more to her-- the dumb sea-levels thrilled to hear, and lost atlantis bore to her. behind my message hard i came, and nigh had found a grave for me; but that i launched of steel and flame did war against the wave for me. uprose the deep, by gale on gale, to bid me change my mind again-- he broke his teeth along my rail, and, roaring, swung behind again. i stayed the sun at noon to tell my way across the waste of it; i read the storm before it fell and made the better haste of it. afar, i hailed the land at night-- the towers i built had heard of me-- and, ere my rocket reached its height, had flashed my love the word of me. earth gave her chosen men of strength (they lived and strove and died for me) to drive my road a nation's length, and toss the miles aside for me. i snatched their toil to serve my needs-- too slow their fleetest flew for me-- i tired twenty smoking steeds, and bade them bait a new for me. i sent the lightnings forth to see where hour by hour she waited me. among ten million one was she, and surely all men hated me! dawn ran to meet us at my goal-- ah, day no tongue shall tell again!-- and little folk of little soul rose up to buy and sell again! v our lady of the snows (_canadian preferential tariff, _) a nation spoke to a nation. a queen sent word to a throne: "daughter am i in my mother's house but mistress in my own. the gates are mine to open, as the gates are mine to close, and i set my house in order," said our lady of the snows. "neither with laughter nor weeping, fear or the child's amaze-- soberly under the white man's law my white men go their ways. not for the gentiles' clamour-- insult or threat of blows-- bow we the knee to baal," said our lady of the snows. "my speech is clean and single, i talk of common things-- words of the wharf and the market-place and the ware the merchant brings: favour to those i favour, but a stumbling-block to my foes. many there be that hate us," said our lady of the snows. "i called my chiefs to council in the din of a troubled year; for the sake of a sign ye would not see, and a word ye would not hear. this is our message and answer; this is the path we chose: for we be also a people," said our lady of the snows. "carry the word to my sisters-- to the queens of the east and the south i have proven faith in the heritage by more than the word of the mouth. they that are wise may follow ere the world's war-trumpet blows, but i--i am first in the battle," said our lady of the snows. _a nation spoke to a nation, a throne sent word to a throne: "daughter am i in my mother's house, but mistress in my own. the gates are mine to open, as the gates are mine to close, and i abide by my mother's house," said our lady of the snows._ vi the song of the women (_lady dufferin's fund for medical aid to the women of india_). how shall she know the worship we would do her? the walls are high, and she is very far. how shall the women's message reach unto her above the tumult of the packed bazaar? free wind of march, against the lattice blowing, bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing. go forth across the fields we may not roam in, go forth beyond the trees that rim the city, to whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in, who dowered us with wealth of love and pity. out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing-- "i have no gifts but love alone for bringing." say that we be a feeble folk who greet her, but old in grief, and very wise in tears; say that we, being desolate, entreat her that she forget us not in after years; for we have seen the light, and it were grievous to dim that dawning if our lady leave us. by life that ebbed with none to stanch the failing, by love's sad harvest garnered in the spring, when love in ignorance wept unavailing o'er young buds dead before their blossoming; by all the gray owl watched, the pale moon viewed, in past grim years, declare our gratitude! by hands uplifted to the gods that heard not, by gifts that found no favour in their sight, by faces bent above the babe that stirred not, by nameless horrors of the stifling night; by ills foredone, by peace her toils discover, bid earth be good beneath and heaven above her! if she have sent her servants in our pain, if she have fought with death and dulled his sword; if she have given back our sick again, and to the breast the weakling lips restored, is it a little thing that she has wrought? then life and death and motherhood be naught. go forth, oh, wind, our message on thy wings, and they shall hear thee pass and bid thee speed, in red-roofed hut, or white-walled home of kings, who have been helped by her in their need. all spring shall give thee fragrance, and the wheat shall be a tasselled floor-cloth to thy feet. haste, for our hearts are with thee, take no rest, loud-voiced ambassador, from sea to sea proclaim the blessing, manifold, confest, of those in darkness by her hand set free; then very softly to her presence move, and whisper: "lady, lo, they know and love!" vii the white man's burden take up the white man's burden-- send forth the best ye breed-- go bind your sons to exile to serve your captives' need; to wait in heavy harness, on fluttered folk and wild-- your new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half child. take up the white man's burden-- in patience to abide, to veil the threat of terror and check the show of pride; by open speech and simple, an hundred times made plain, to seek another's profit, and work another's gain. take up the white man's burden-- the savage wars of peace-- fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness cease; and when your goal is nearest the end for others sought, watch sloth and heathen folly bring all your hope to naught. take up the white man's burden-- no tawdry rule of kings, but toil of serf and sweeper-- the tale of common things. the ports ye shall not enter, the roads ye shall not tread, go make them with your living, and mark them with your dead. take up the white man's burden-- and reap his old reward; the blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard-- the cry of hosts ye humour (ah, slowly!) toward the light:-- "why brought ye us from bondage, our loved egyptian night?" take up the white man's burden-- ye dare not stoop to less-- nor call too loud on freedom to cloak your weariness; by all ye cry or whisper, by all ye leave or do, the silent, sullen peoples shall weigh your gods and you. take up the white man's burden-- have done with childish days-- the lightly proffered laurel the easy, ungrudged praise. comes now, to search your manhood through all the thankless years, cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, the judgment of your peers! * * * * * transcriber's note: minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. dialect spellings, contractions and discrepancies have been retained. books by rudyard kipling actions and reactions light that failed, the brushwood boy, the many inventions captains courageous naulahka, the (with wolcott collected verse balestier) day's work, the plain tales from the hills departmental ditties and puck of pook's hill ballads and barrack-room ballads rewards and fairies diversity of creatures, a sea warfare eyes of asia, the seven seas, the five nations, the soldier stories france at war soldiers three, the story from sea to sea of the gadsbys, and in history of england, a black and white jungle book, the song of the english, a jungle book, second songs from books just so song book stalky & co. just so stories they kim traffics and discoveries kipling stories and poems under the deodars, the every child should know phantom 'rickshaw, and kipling birthday book, the wee willie winkie life's handicap: being stories with the night mail of mine own people the eyes of asia by rudyard kipling garden city new york doubleday, page & company copyright, , , by rudyard kipling contents page a retired gentleman the fumes of the heart the private account a trooper of horse a retired gentleman _from bishen singh saktawut, subedar major, th indurgurh [todd's] rajputs, now at lyndhurst, hampshire, england, this letter is sent to madhu singh, sawant, risaldar major [retired] th [dublana] horse, on his fief which he holds under the thakore sahib of pech at bukani by the river, near chiturkaira, kotah, rajputana, written in the fifth month of the year , english count._ having experienced five months of this war, i became infected with fever and a strong coldness of the stomach [rupture]. the doctor ordered me out of it altogether. they have also cut me with knives for a wound on my leg. it is now healed but the strength is gone, and it is very frightened of the ground. i have been in many hospitals for a long time. at this present i am living in a hospital for indian troops in a forest-reservation called "new," which was established by a king's order in ages past. there is no order for my return to india. i do not desire it. my regiment has now gone out of france--to egypt, or africa. my officer sahibs are for the most part dead or in hospitals. during a railway journey when two people sit side by side for two hours one feels the absence of the other when he alights. how great then was my anguish at being severed from my regiment after thirty-three years! now, however, i am finished. if i return to india i cannot drill the new men between my two crutches. i should subsist in my village on my wound-pension among old and young who have never seen war. here i have great consideration. though i am useless they are patient with me. having knowledge of the english tongue, i am sometimes invited to interpret between those in the hospital for the indian troops and visitors of high position. i advance eminent visitors, such as relatives of kings and princes into the presence of the colonel doctor sahib. i enjoy a small room apart from the hospital wards. i have a servant. the colonel doctor sahib examines my body at certain times. i am forbidden to stoop even for my crutches. they are instantly restored to me by orderlies and my friends among the english. i come and go at my pleasure where i will, and my presence is solicited by the honourable. you say i made a mistake to join the war at the end of my service? i have endured five months of it. come you out and endure two and a half. you are three years younger than i. why do you sit at home and drill new men? remember: the brahman who steals, the widow who wears ornaments, the rajput who avoids the battle, are only fit for crows' meat. you write me that this is a war for young men? the old are not entirely useless. the badshah [the king] himself gave me the medal for fetching in my captain from out of the wires upon my back. that work caused me the coldness in my stomach. old men should not do coolie-work. your cavalry were useless in france. infantry can fight in this war--not cavalry. it is as impossible for us to get out of our trenches and exterminate the enemy as it is for the enemy to attack us. doubtless the cavalry brigades will show what they are made of in egypt or persia. this business in france is all artillery work and mines. the blowing up of the chitoree bastion when arjoon went to heaven waving his sword, as the song says, would not be noticed in the noise of this war. the nature of the enemy is to go to earth and flood us with artillery of large weight. when we were in the trenches it was a burden. when we rested in the villages we found great ease. as to our food, it was like a bunnia's marriage-feast. everything given, nothing counted. some of us--especially among your cavalry--grew so fat that they were compelled to wrestle to keep thin. this is because there was no marching. the nature of the enemy is to commit shame upon women and children, and to defile the shrines of his own faith with his own dung. it is done by him as a drill. we believed till then they were some sort of caste apart from the rest. we did not know they were outcaste. now it is established by the evidence of our senses. they attack on all fours running like apes. they are specially careful for their faces. when death is certain to them they offer gifts and repeat the number of their children. they are very good single shots from cover. it is the nature of the enemy to shower seductions from out of their air-machines on our troops in the lines. they promised such as would desert that they would become rajahs among them. some of the men went over to see if this were true. no report came back. in this way we cleaned out five bad characters from our company exactly as it used to be in the little wars on the border. may the enemy be pleased with them! no man of any caste disgraced our regiment. the nature of the enemy in this war is like the nat [juggler] who is compelled to climb a pole for his belly's sake. if he does not climb he starves. if he stops he falls down. this is my thought concerning the enemy. now that our troops have gone out of france, the war is entirely between the enemy and the english, etc., etc. both sides accordingly increased the number and the size of their guns. the new wounded officers in the english hospital say that the battles of even yesterday are not to be compared with the battle of to-day. tell this to those who have returned and who boast. only fools will desire more war when this war is ended. their reward will be an instant extinction on account of the innumerable quantity of arms, munitions, etc., etc., which will be left in the hands of the experts. those who make war henceforward will be as small jackals fighting beneath the feet of elephants. this government has abundance of material, and fresh strength is added every hour. let there be no mistake. the foolish have been greatly deceived in these matters by the nature of the english which is in the highest degree deceptive. everything is done and spoken upside-down in this country of the english. he who has a thousand says: "it is but a scant hundred." the possessor of palaces says: "it is a hut," and the rest in proportion. their boast is not to boast. their greatness is to make themselves very small. they draw a curtain in front of all they do. it is as difficult to look upon the naked face of their achievements as in our country upon the faces of women. it is not true there is no caste in england. the mark of the high castes, such as ul or baharun [earl or baron] is that they can perform any office, such as handling the dead, wounds, blood, etc., without loss of caste. the maharanee of the nurses in the english hospital which is near our hospital is by caste baharanee [baroness]. i resort thither daily for society and enlightenment on the habits of this people. the high castes are forbidden to show curiosity, appetite, or fear in public places. in this respect they resemble troops on parade. their male children are beaten from their ninth year to their seventeenth year, by men with sticks. their women are counted equal with their men. it is reckoned as disgraceful for a baharanee to show fear when lights are extinguished in the hospital on account of bomb-dropping air-ships, as for an ul to avoid battle. they do not blacken each other's faces by loud abuse, but by jests spoken in a small voice. the nature of the young men of high caste is as the nature of us rajputs. they do not use opium, but they delight in horses, and sport and women, and are perpetually in debt to the moneylender. they shoot partridge and they are forced to ride foxes because there are no wild pig here. they know nothing of hawking or quail-fighting, but they gamble up to the hilt on all occasions and bear losses laughing. their card-play is called baraich [bridge?]. they belittle their own and the achievements of their friends, so long as that friend faces them. in his absence they extol his deeds. they are of cheerful countenance. when they jest, they respect honour. it is so also with their women. the nurses in the hospital of my baharanee where i resort for society jest with me as daughters with a father. they say that they will be stricken with grief if i return to india. they call me dada which is father also in their tongue. though i am utterly useless they are unwearied of me. they themselves hasten to restore me my crutches when i let them fall. none of these women lament their dead openly. the eldest son of my baharanee at the english hospital where i am made welcome, was slain in battle. the next morning after the news my baharanee let loose the plate-pianos [turned on the gramophones] for the delectation of the wounded. it comes into my mind to suggest to you that our women are unable to stand by themselves. when the badshah commanded me to his palace to receive the medal, i saw all the wonders and entertainments of the city of london. there was neither trouble nor expense. my baharanee gave orders i should inhabit her own house in that city. it was in reality a palace filled with carpets, gilt furniture, marbles, mirrors, silks, velvets, carvings, etc., etc. hot water ran in silver pipes to my very bedside. the perfumed baths were perpetually renewed. when it rained daily i walked in a glass pavilion filled with scented flowers. i inhabited here ten days. though i was utterly useless they were unwearied of me. a companion was found me. he was a risaldar of dekkani horse, a man of family, wounded in the arms. we two received our medals together. we saw the king's palace, and the custom of the guard mount in the mornings daily. their drill is like stone walls, but the nature of the english music is without any meaning. we two saw the great temple, seyn pol [st. paul's?], where their dead are. it is as a country enclosed in a house. my companion ascended to the very roof-top and saw all the city. we are nothing beside these people. we two also saw the bird garden [zoological gardens] where they studiously preserve all sorts of wild animals, even down to jackals and green parrots. it is the nature of the english to consider all created beings as equal. the badshah himself wears khaki. his son the shahzada is a young man who inhabits the trenches except when he is forbidden. he is a keen son of the sword. it is true that trains run underneath the city in all directions. we descended into the earth upon a falling platform [lift] and travelled. the stopping-places are as close as beads on a thread. the doors of the carriages are guarded with gates that strike out sideways like cobras. each sitter is allowed a space upon a divan of yellow canework. when the divans are full the surplus hang from the roof by leathers. though our carriage was full, place was made for us. at the end of our journey the train was halted beyond its lawful time that we might come forth at ease. the trains were full of english soldiers. all castes of the english are now soldiers. they are become like us rajputs--as many people so many soldiers. we two saw houses, shops, carriages, and crowds till our souls were broken. the succeeding days were as the first, without intermission. we begged at last to be excused from the sight of the multitudes and the height of the houses. we two agreed that understanding is most needful in this present age. we in india must get education before all things. hereafter we rajputs must seriously consider our arrangements in all respects--in our houses as well as in our fields, etc., etc. otherwise we become nothing. we have been deceived by the nature of the english. they have not at any time shown us anything of their possessions or their performances. we are not even children beside them. they have dealt with us as though they were themselves children talking _chotee boli_ [little talk]. in this manner the ill-informed have been misled. nothing is known in india of the great strength of this people. make that perfectly clear to all fools. why should we who serve the government have the blood of the misinformed on our heads when they behave foolishly? this people have all the strength. there is no reason except the nature of the english that anything in their dominions should stand up which has been ordered to lie down. it is only their soft nature which saves evil from destruction. as the saying is, "we thought it was only an armed horseman. behold, it is an elephant bearing a tower!" it is in my mind that the glory of us rajputs has become diminished since the old days. in the old days, our princesses charged in battle beside their men, and the name of the clans was great. then all rajputs were brothers and sisters. how has this come about? what man of us now relies upon the advice of his womenkind in any matter outside? in this country and in france the women understand perfectly what is needful in the day of trial. they say to their men: "add to the renown of your race. we will attend to the rest through the excellent education which this just government has caused us to receive." thus the men's hearts are lightened when they go to the war. they confide securely in their well educated women. how is it with our horses? shape and size from the sire: temper and virtue from the dam. if the mare endures thirst, the colt can run without water. man's nature also draws from the spindle-side. why have we allowed forgetfulness to impair our memory? this was well known in the old days. in this country arrangements for washing clothes exist in almost every house, such as tubs, boards, and irons, and there is a machine to squeeze water out of the washed clothes. they do not conceal their astonishment at our methods. our women should be taught. only by knowledge is anything achieved. otherwise we are as children running about naked under the feet of grown men and women. see what our women have already accomplished by education! the thakore sahib of philawat was refused leave from the government to go to the war, on account of his youth. yet his sister, who wedded the rana of haliana had prepared a contingent of infantry out of her own dower-villages. they were set down in the roll of the princes' contingents as stretcher-bearers: they being armed men out of the desert. she sent a telegram to her brother, commissioning him to go with them as captain of stretcher-bearers: he being a son of the sword for seventy generations. thus cleverly he received permission from the government to go. when they reached france he stole them out of the camp, every one of his sister's men, and joined himself to the rajah of kandesur's contingent. those two boys together made their name bright in the trenches. the philawat boy was hit twice and came to hospital here. the government sent him a sealed letter by messenger where he lay. he had great fear of it, because what he and kandesur had done was without orders. he expected a reprimand from the government and also from his uncle because of the succession. but the letter was an announcement of decoration from the shahzada himself, and when he had read it, the child hid his face beneath the sheets and wept for joy. i saw and heard this from my very bed in the hospital. so his military cross and the rest was due to the maharanee of haliana, his sister. before her marriage she attended instruction in england at the great school for maidens called ghatun [girton?]. she goes unveiled among englishmen, laying hold upon her husband's right arm in public assemblies in open daylight. and haliana is sunborn.[ ] consider it! consider it! [ ] the royal clans of the rajputs derive their descent from the sun. do not be concerned if i do not return. i have seen all the reports of all the arrangements made for burial, etc., etc., in this country. they are entirely in accordance with our faith. my youth and old age have been given to the service of the government, and if the government can be served with the dust of my bones it is theirs, now that my boy is dead in arabia i have also withdrawn my petition to the government for a land-grant. what use? the house is empty. man does not remain in the world but his name remains. though jam and suliman are gone their names are not lost. when that arrives, my maharanee baharanee will despatch to you _posh-free par parshel-posh_ [post-free per parcel-post] my cross that the badshah gave me, and a letter from my captain sahib's mother with whose brother i served when i was a man. as for my debts, it does not trouble me in the least that the moneylenders should be so troubled about them. but for the army and the police the people would have killed all moneylenders. give my duty to the rana of pech, for his line were my father's overlords from the first. he can hang up my sword beside my father's. do not be concerned for whatever overtakes me. i have sifted the sands of france: now i sift those of england. here i am held in the greatest kindness and honour imaginable by all whom i meet. though i am useless as a child yet they are unwearied of me. the nurses in my maharanee baharanee's hospital, which is by day a home and a house to me, minister to me as daughters to a father. they run after me and rebuke me if i do not wear a certain coat when it rains daily. i am like a dying tree in a garden of flowers. the fumes of the heart _scene._ pavilion and dome hospital, brighton-- . _what talk is this, doctor sahib? this sahib says he will be my letter-writer? just as though he were a bazar letter-writer at home?... what are the sahib's charges? two annas? too much! i give one.... no. no! sahib. you shouldn't have come down so quickly. you've forgotten, we sikhs always bargain.... well; one anna be it. i will give a bond to pay it out of my wound-pension when i get home. sit by the side of my bed...._ _this is the trouble, sahib. my brother who holds his land and works mine, outside amritsar city, is a fool. he is older than i. he has done his service and got one wound out of it in what they used to call war--that child's play in the tirah years ago. he thinks himself a soldier! but that is not his offence. he sends me postcards, sahib--scores of postcards--whining about the drouth or the taxes, or the crops, or our servants' pilferings or some such trouble. he doesn't know what trouble means. i want to tell him he is a fool.... what? true! true! one can get money and land but never a new brother. but for all that, he is a fool.... is he a good farmer? sa_-heeb! _if an amritsar sikh isn't a good farmer, a hen doesn't know an egg.... is he honest? as my own pet yoke of bullocks. he is only a fool. my belly is on fire now with knowledge i never had before, and i wish to impart it to him--to the village elders--to all people. yes, that is true, too. if i keep calling him a fool, he will not gain any knowledge.... let me think it over on all sides! aha! now that i have a bazar-writer of my own i will write a book--a very book of a letter to my fool of a brother.... and now we will begin. take down my words from my lips to my foolish old farmer-brother:--_ * * * * * "you will have received the notification of my wounds which i took in franceville. now that i am better of my wounds, i have leisure to write with a long hand. here we have paper and ink at command. thus it is easy to let off the fumes of our hearts. send me all the news of all the crops and what is being done in our village. this poor parrot is always thinking of kashmir. "as to my own concerns, the trench in which i sat was broken by a _bomb-golee_ as large as our smallest grain-chest." [_he'll go off and measure it at once!_] "it dropped out of the air. it burst, the ground was opened and replaced upon seven of us. i and two others took wounds. sweetmeats are not distributed in war-time. god permitted my soul to live, by means of the doctors' strong medicines. i have inhabited six hospitals before i came here to england. this hospital is like a temple. it is set in a garden beside the sea. we lie on iron cots beneath a dome of gold and colours and glittering glass work, with pillars." [_you know that's true, sahib. we can see it--but d'you think_ he'll _believe? never! never!_] "our food is cooked for us according to our creeds--sikh, or brahmin, or mussulman and all the rest--when a man dies he is also buried according to his creed. though he has been a groom or a sweeper, he is buried like some great land-owner. do not let such matters trouble you henceforth. living or dying, all is done in accordance with the ordinance of our faiths. some low-caste men, such as sweepers, counting upon the ignorance of the doctors here make a claim to be of reputable caste in order that they may get consideration. if a sweeper in this hospital says he is forbidden by his caste to do certain things he is believed. he is not beaten." [_now, why is that, sahib? they ought to be beaten for pretending to have caste, and making a mock of the doctors._ i _should slipper them publicly--but--i'm not the government. we will go on._] "the english do not despise any sort of work. they are of many castes, but they are all one kind in this. on account of my wounds, i have not yet gone abroad to see english fields or towns." [_it is true i have been out twice in a motor-carriage, sahib, but that goes too quickly for a man to see shops, let alone faces. we will not tell him that. he does not like motor-cars._] "the french in franceville work continually without rest. the french and the phlahamahnds [flamands] who are a caste of french, are kings among cultivators. as to cultivation--" [_now, i pray, sahib, write quickly for i am as full of this matter as a buffalo of water_] "their fields are larger than ours, without any divisions, and they do not waste anything except the width of the footpath. their land descends securely from father to son upon payment of tax to the government, just as in civilized countries. i have observed that they have their land always at their hearts and in their mouths, just as in civilized countries. they do not grow more than one crop a year, but this is recompensed to them because their fields do not need irrigation. the rain in franceville is always sure and abundant and in excess. they grow all that we grow such as peas, onions, garlic, spinach, beans, cabbages and wheat. they do not grow small grains or millet, and their only spice is mustard. they do not drink water, but the juice of apples which they squeeze into barrels for that purpose. a full bottle is sold for two pice. they do not drink milk but there is abundance of it. it is all cows' milk, of which they make butter in a churn which is turned by a dog." [_now, how shall we make my brother believe that? write it large._] "in franceville, the dogs are both courteous and industrious. they play with the cat, they tend the sheep, they churn the butter, they draw a cart and guard it too. when a regiment meets a flock, the dogs of their own wisdom order the sheep to step to one side of the road. i have often seen this." [_not one word of this will he or anyone in the villages believe, sahib. what can you expect? they have never even seen lahore city! we will tell him what he can understand._] "ploughs and carts are drawn by horses. oxen are not used for these purposes in these villages. the field work is wholly done by old men and women and children, who can all read and write. the young men are all at the war. the war comes also to the people in the villages, but they do not regard the war because they are cultivators. i have a friend among the french--an old man in the village where the regiment was established, who daily fills in the holes made in his fields by the enemy's shells with dirt from a long-handled spade. i begged him once to desist when we were together on this work, but he said that idleness would cause him double work for the day following. his grandchild, a very small maiden, grazed a cow behind a wood where the shells fell, and was killed in that manner. our regiment was told the news and they took an account of it, for she was often among them, begging buttons from their uniforms. she was small and full of laughter, and she had learned a little of our tongue." [_yes. that was a very great shame, sahib. she was the child of us all. we exacted a payment, but she was slain--slain like a calf for no fault. a black shame!... we will write about other matters._] "as to cultivation, there are no words for its excellence or for the industry of the cultivators. they esteem manure most highly. they have no need to burn cow-dung for fuel. there is abundance of charcoal. thus, not irrigating nor burning dung for fuel, their wealth increases of itself. they build their houses from ancient times round about mountainous dung-heaps, upon which they throw all things in season. it is a possession from father to son, and increase comes forth. owing to the number of army horses in certain places there arises very much horse-dung. when it is excessive, the officers cause a little straw to be lit near the heaps. the french and the phlahamahnds seeing the smoke, assemble with carts, crying:--'what waste is this?' the officers reply:--'none will carry away this dung. therefore, we burn it.' all the cultivators then entreat for leave to carry it away in their carts, be it only as much as two dogs can draw. by this device horse-lines are cleaned. "listen to one little thing. the women and the girls cultivate as well as the men in all respects." [_that is a true tale, sahib. we know--but my brother knows nothing except the road to market._] "they plough with two and four horses as great as hills. the women of franceville also keep the accounts and the bills. they make one price for everything. no second price is to be obtained by _any_ talking. they cannot be cheated over the value of one grain. yet of their own will they are generous beyond belief. when we come back from our work in the trenches, they arise at any hour and make us warm drinks of hot coffee and milk and bread and butter. may god reward these ladies a thousand times for their kindness! "but do not throw everything upon god. i desire you will get me in amritsar city a carpet, at the shop of davee sahai and chumba mall--one yard in width and one yard and a half in length, of good colour and quality to the value of forty rupees. the shop must send it with _all_ charges paid, to the address which i have had written in english character on the edge of this paper. she is the lady of the house in which i was billeted in a village for three months. though she was advanced in years and belonged to a high family, yet in the whole of those three months i never saw this old lady sit idle. her three sons had gone to the war. one had been killed; one was in hospital, and a third, at that time, was in the trenches. she did not weep nor wail at the death or the sickness but accepted the dispensation. during the time i was in her house, she ministered to me to such an extent that i cannot adequately describe her kindness. of her own free-will she washed my clothes, arranged my bed, and polished my boots daily for three months. she washed down my bedroom daily with hot water, having herself heated it. each morning she prepared me a tray with bread, butter, milk and coffee. when we had to leave that village that old lady wept on my shoulder. it is strange that i had never seen her weep for her dead son, but she wept for me. moreover, at parting she would have had me take a _fi-farang_ [five franc] note for expenses on the road." [_what a woman! what a woman! i had never believed such women existed in this black age._] "if there be any doubt of the quality or the colour of the carpet, ask for an audience of the doctor linley sahib if he be still in amritsar. he knows carpets. tell him all i have written concerning this old lady--may god keep her and her remaining household!--and he will advise. i do not know the doctor sahib, but this he will overlook in war-time. if the carpet is even fifty rupees, i can securely pay out of the monies which our lands owe me. she is an old lady. it must be soft to her feet, and not inclined to slide upon the wooden floor. she is well-born and educated." [_and now we will begin to enlighten him and the elders!_] "we must cause our children to be educated in the future. that is the opinion of all the regiment, for by education, even women accomplish marvels, like the women of franceville. get the boys and girls taught to read and write well. here teaching is by government order. the men go to the war daily. it is the women who do all the work at home, having been well taught in their childhood. we have only yoked one buffalo to the plough up till now. it is now time to yoke up the milch-buffaloes. tell the village elders this and exercise influence." [_write that down strongly, sahib. we who have seen franceville_ all _know it is true._] "but as to cultivation. the methods in franceville are good. all tools are of iron. they do not break. a man keeps the tools he needs for his work and his repairs in his house under his own hand. he has not to go back to the village a mile away if anything breaks. we never thought, as these people do, that all repairs to tools and ploughs can be done on the very spot. all that is needed when a strap breaks, is that each ploughman should have an awl and a leather-cutter to stitch the leather. how is it with us in our country? if leather breaks, we farmers say that leather is unclean, and we go back from the fields into the village to the village cobbler that he may mend it. unclean? do not we handle that same thing with the leather on it after it has been repaired? do we not even drink water all day with the very hand that has sweated into the leather? meantime, we have surely lost an hour or two in coming and going from the fields." [_he will understand_ that. _he chatters like a monkey when the men waste time. but the village cobbler will be very angry with me!_] "the people of franceville are astonished to learn that all our land is full of dogs which do no work--not even to keep the cattle out of the tilled fields. among the french, both men and women and little children occupy themselves with work at all times on the land. the children wear no jewelry, but they are more beautiful than i can say. it is a country where the women are not veiled. their marriage is at their own choice, and takes place between their twentieth and twenty-fifth year. they seldom quarrel or shout out. they do not pilfer from each other. they do not tell lies at all. when calamity overtakes them there is no ceremonial of grief such as tearing the hair or the like. they swallow it down and endure silently. doubtless, this is the fruit of learning in youth." [_now we will have a word for our guru at home. he is a very holy man. write this carefully, sahib._] "it is said that the french worship idols. i have spoken of this with my old lady and her _guru_ [priest]. it is _not_ true in any way. there are certainly images in their shrines and _deotas_ [local gods] to whom they present petitions as we do in our home affairs, but the prayer of the heart goes to the god himself. i have been assured this by the old priests. all the young priests are fighting in the war. the french men uncover the head but do not take off the shoes at prayer. they do not speak of their religion to strangers, and they do not go about to make converts. the old priest in the village where i was billeted so long, said that all roads, at such times as these, return to god." [_our guru at home says that himself; so he cannot be surprised if there are others who think it._] "the old priest gave me a little medal which he wished me to wear round my neck. such medals are reckoned holy among the french. he was a very holy man and it averts the evil eye. the women also carry holy beads to help keep count of their prayers. "certain men of our regiment divided among themselves as many as they could pick up of the string of such beads that used to be carried by the small maiden whom the shell slew. it was found forty yards distant from the hands. it was that small maiden who begged us for our buttons and had no fear. the regiment made an account of it, reckoning one life of the enemy for each bead. they deposited the beads as a pledge with the regimental clerk. when a man of the guarantors became killed, the number of his beads which remained unredeemed was added to the obligation of the other guarantors, or they elected an inheritor of the debt in his place." [_he will understand that. it was all very correct and business-like, sahib. our pathan company arranged it._] "it was seven weeks before all her beads were redeemed because the weather was bad and our guns were strong and the enemy did not stir abroad after dark. when all the account was cleared, the beads were taken out of pawn and returned to her grandfather, with a certificate, and he wept. "this war is not a war. it is a world-destroying battle. all that has gone before this war in this world till now has been only boys throwing coloured powder at each other. no man could conceive it! what do you or the mohmunds or anyone who has not been here know of war? when the ignorant in future speak of war, i shall laugh, even though they be my elder brethren. consider what things are done here and for what reasons. "a little before i took my wounds, i was on duty near an officer who worked in wire and wood and earth to make traps for the enemy. he had acquired a tent of green cloth upon sticks, with a window of soft glass that could not be broken. all coveted the tent. it was three paces long and two wide. among the covetous was an officer of artillery, in charge of a gun that shook mountains. it gave out a shell of ten maunds or more [eight hundred pounds]. but those who have never seen even a rivulet cannot imagine the indus. he offered many rupees to purchase the tent. he would come at all hours increasing his offer. he overwhelmed the owner with talk about it." [_i heard them often, sahib._] "at last, and i heard this also, that tent-owner said to that artillery officer:--'i am wearied with your importunity. destroy to-day a certain house that i shall show you, and i will give you the tent for a gift. otherwise, have no more talk.' he showed him the roof of a certain white house which stood back three _kos_ [six miles] in the enemy country, a little underneath a hill with woods on each side. consider this, measuring three _kos_ in your mind along the amritsar road. the gunner officer said:--'by god, i accept this bargain.' he issued orders and estimated the distance. i saw him going back and forth as swiftly as a lover. then fire was delivered and at the fourth discharge the watchers through their glasses saw the house spring high and spread abroad and lie upon its face. it was as a tooth taken out by a barber. seeing this, the gunner officer sprang into the tent and looked through the window and smiled because the tent was now his. but the enemy did not understand the reasons. there was a great gunfire all that night, as well as many enemy-regiments moving about. the prisoners taken afterwards told us their commanders were disturbed at the fall of the house, ascribing it to some great design on our part, so that their men had no rest for a week. yet it was all done for a little green tent's sake! "i tell you this that you may understand the meaning of things. this is a world where the very hills are turned upside down, with the cities upon them. he who comes alive out of this business will forever after be as a giant. if anyone wishes to see it let him come here or remain disappointed all his life." [_we will finish with affection and sweet words. after all, a brother is a brother._] "as for myself, why do you write to me so many complaints? are _you_ fighting in this war or i? you know the saying: 'a soldier's life is for his family: his death is for his country: his discomforts are for himself alone.' i joined to fight when i was young. i have eaten the government's salt till i am old. i am discharging my obligation. when all is at an end, the memory of our parting will be but a dream. "i pray the guru to bring together those who are separated. "god alone is true. everything else is but a shadow." [_that is poetry. oh--and add this, sahib._] "let there be no delay about the carpet. she would not accept anything else." the private account _scene_: three and a half miles across the border--kohat way. _time_: the edge of sunset. single room in a stone built tower house reached by a ladder from the ground. an afghan woman, wrapped in a red cotton quilt, squats on the floor trimming a small kerosene lamp. her husband, an elderly afghan with a purple dyed beard, lies on a native cot, covered by a striped blue and white cloth. he is wounded in the knee and hip. a government rifle leans against the cot. their son, aged twenty, kneels beside him, unfolding a letter. as the mother places the lighted lamp in a recess in the wall, the son picks up the rifle and pushes the half-opened door home with the butt. the wife passes her husband a filled pipe of tobacco, blowing on the charcoal ball in the bowl. son [_as he unfolds letter_]. it is from france. his regiment is still there. father. what does he say about the money? son [_reading_]. he says: "i am made easy by the news that you are now receiving my pay-allotment regularly. you may depend upon its coming every month henceforward. i have also sent eleven rupees over and above the allotment. it is a gift towards the purchase of the machine needed in your business." father [_drawing a cheap nickel-plated revolver from his breast_]. it is a good machine, and he is a good son. what else. son. he says: "you tell me our enemies have killed my uncle and my brother, beside wounding our father. i am very far away and can give no help whatever. it is a matter for great regret. our enemies are now two lives to the good against us in the account. we must take our revenge quickly. the responsibility, i suppose, is altogether on the head of my youngest brother." father. but i am still good for sitting-shots. mother [_soothingly_]. ah! but he means, to think over all the arrangements. wounded men cannot think clearly till the fever is out of the wound. son [_reading_]. "my youngest brother said he would enlist after me when the harvest was gathered. that is now out of the question. tell him he must attend to the work in hand." (that is true, i cannot enlist now.) "tell him not to wander about after the people who did the actual killing. they will probably have taken refuge on the government side of the border." (that is true, too. it is exactly what they did.) "even up the account from the nearest household of our enemies. this will force the murderers for their honour's sake to return and attend to their proper business when--god willing--they can be added as a bonus. take our revenge quickly." father [_stroking beard_]. this is all wisdom. i have a man for a son. what else does he say, akbar? son. he says: "i have a letter from kohat telling me that a certain man of a family that we know is coming out here with a draft in order to settle with me for an account which he says i opened." mother [_quickly_]. would that be gul shere khan--about that peshawari girl? son. perhaps. but ahmed is not afraid. listen! he says: "if that man or even his brothers wish to come to france after me i shall be very pleased. if, in fact, anyone wishes to kill me, let them by all means come out. i am here present in the field of battle. i have placed my life on a tray. the people in our country who talk about killing are children. they have not seen the reality of things. _we_ do not turn our heads when forty are killed at a breath. men are swallowed up or blown apart here as one divides meat. when we are in the trenches, there is no time to strike a blow on the private account. when we are at rest in the villages, one's lust for killing has been satisfied. two men joined us in the draft last month to look after a close friend of mine with whom they had a private account. they were great swash-bucklers at first. they even volunteered to go into the trenches though it was not their turn of duty. they expected that their private account could be settled during some battle. since that turn of duty they have become quite meek. they had, till then, only seen men killed by ones and twos, half a mile separating them. _this_ business was like killing flies on sugar. have no fear for me, therefore, no matter who joins the regiment. it needs a very fierce stomach to add anything to our government rations." mother. he writes like a poet, my son. that is wonderful writing. father. all the young men write the same with regard to the war. it _quite_ satisfies all desires. what else does he say? son [_summarizing_]. he says that he is well fed and has learned to drink the french coffee. he says there are two sorts of french tobacco--one yellow, one blue. the blue, he says, is the best. they are named for the papers they are wrapped in. he says that on no account must we send him any opium or drugs, because the punishment for drugging is severe and the doctors are quick to discover. he desires to be sent to him some strong hair-dye of the sort that our father uses. mother [_with a gesture_]. hair-dye! he is a child. what's he been doing? son. he says he wishes to win favour from his native officer whose white hairs are showing and who has no proper dye. he says he will repay the cost and that no charges are made for the parcel. it must be very strong henna-dye. mother [_laughing_]. it shall be. i will make it myself. a start it gave me to hear _him_ ask for dyes! they are not due for another twenty years. father [_fretfully_]. read it. read it all as it is written, word for word. what else does he say? son. he speaks of the country of the french. listen! he says: "this country is full of precious objects, such as grain, ploughs, and implements, and sheep which lie about the fields by day with none to guard them. the french are a virtuous people and do not steal from each other. if a man merely approaches towards anything there are eyes watching him. to take one chicken is to loosen the tongues of fifty old women. i was warned on joining that the testimony of one such would outweigh the testimony of six honourable pathans. it is true. money and valuables are, therefore, left openly in houses. none dare even to look at them with a covetous eye. i have seen two hundred rupees' worth of clothing hung up on a nail. none knew the owner, yet it remained till her return." mother. that is the country for me! dresses worth two hundred rupees hanging on nails! princesses all they must be. son [_continuing_]. listen to these fresh marvels. he says: "we reside in brick houses with painted walls of flowers and birds; we sit upon chairs covered with silks. we sleep on high beds that cost a hundred rupees each. there is glass in all the doors and windows; the abundance of iron and brass, pottery, and copper kitchen-utensils is not to be estimated. every house is a palace of entertainment filled with clocks, lamps, candlesticks, gildings, and images." father. what a country! what a country! how much will he be able to bring back of it all? son. he says: "the inhabitants defend their possessions to the uttermost--even down to the value of half a chicken or a sheep's kidney. they do not keep their money in their houses, but send it away on loan. their rates of interest are very low. they talk among themselves of loans and pledges and the gaining of money, just as we do. we indian troops are esteemed and honoured by all, by the children specially. these children wear no jewelry. therefore, there are no murders committed for the sake of ornaments except by the enemy. these children resemble small moons. they make mud figures in their play of men and horses. he who can add figures of oxen, elephants and palanquins is highly praised. do you remember when i used to make them?" mother. do i remember? am i a block of wood or an old churn? go on, akbar? what of my child? son. he says: "when the children are not in the school they are at work in the fields from their earliest years. they soon lose all fear of us soldiers, and drill us up and down the streets of the villages. the smallest salute on all occasions. they suffer little from sickness. the old women here are skilful in medicines. they dry the leaves of trees and give them for a drink against diseases. one old woman gave me an herb to chew for a worm in my tooth [toothache] which cured me in an hour." mother. god reward that woman! i wonder what she used. son. he says: "she is my french mother." mother. what-t! how many mothers has a man? but god reward her none the less! it must have been that old double-tooth at the back on the left lower side, for i remember---- father. let it wait. it is cured now. what else does he write? son. he writes, making excuses for not having written. he says: "i have been so occupied and sent from one place to another that on several occasions i have missed the post. i know you must have experienced anxiety. but do not be displeased. let my mother remember that i can only write when i have opportunity, and the only remedy for helplessness is patience." father [_groaning_]. ah! he has not yet been wounded, and he sets himself up for a physician. mother. he speaks wisely and beautifully. but what of his "french mother"--burn her! son. he says: "moreover, this french mother of mine in france is displeased with me if i do not write to her about my welfare. my mother, like you, my french mother does all she can for my welfare. i cannot write sufficiently in praise of what she does for me. when i was in the village behind the trench if, on any day, by reason of duty, i did not return till evening, she, herself, would come in search of me and lead me back to the house. mother. aha! _she_ knew! i wish i could have caught him by the other ear! son. he says: "and when i was sent away on duty to another village, and so could not find time to write either to you or to her, she came close to the place where i was and where no one is permitted to come and asked to see her boy. she brought with her a great parcel of things for me to eat. what more am i to say for the concern she has for my welfare?" mother. fools all old women are! may god reward that kafir woman for her kindness, and her children after her.... as though any orders could keep out a mother! does he say what she resembles in the face? son. no. he goes on to speak more about the customs of the french. he says: "the new men who join us come believing they are in the country of the rakshas [demons]. they are told this by the ignorant on their departure. it is always cold here. many clothes are worn. the sun is absent. the wet is present. yet this france is a country created by allah, and its people are manifestly a reasonable people with reason for all they do. the windows of their houses are well barred. the doors are strong, with locks of a sort i have never before tried. their dogs are faithful. they gather in and keep their kine and their asses and their hens under their hands at night. their cattle graze and return at the proper hour in charge of the children. they prune their fruit trees as carefully as our barbers attend to men's nostrils and ears. the old women spin, walking up and down. scissors, needles, threads, and buttons are exposed for sale on stalls in a market. they carry hens by the feet. butchers sell dressed portions of fowls and sheep ready to be cooked. there is aniseed, coriander, and very good garlic." mother. but all this--but all this is our very own way---- son. he says so. he says: "seeing these things, the new men are relieved in their minds. do not be anxious for me. these people precisely resemble all mankind. they are, however, idolators. they do not speak to any of us about their religion. their imams [priests] are old men of pious appearance, living in poverty. they go about their religious offices, even while the shells fall. their god is called bandoo [bon dieu?]. there is also the bibbee miriam [the virgin mary]. she is worshipped on account of the intelligence and capacity of the women." father. hmm! ah! this travelling about is bad for the young. women are women--world over. what else, akbar? son [_reading_]. "there are holy women in this country, dressed in black who wear horns of white cloth on their heads. they too, are without any sort of fear of death from the falling shells. i am acquainted with one such who often commands me to carry vegetables from the market to the house which they inhabit. it is filled with the fatherless. she is very old, very highborn, and of irascible temper. all men call her mother. the colonel himself salutes her. thus are all sorts mingled in this country of france." mother. ha! well, at least that holy woman was well-born, but she is too free with her tongue. go on! son. he says: "through my skill with my rifle, i have been made a sharp-shooter. a special place is given to me to shoot at the enemy singly. this was old work to me. this country was flat and open at the beginning. in time it became all _kandari-kauderi_--cut up--with trenches, _sungars_ and bye-ways in the earth. their faces show well behind the loop-holes of their _sungars_. the distance was less than three hundred yards. great cunning was needed. before they grew careful, i accounted for nine in five days. it is more difficult by night. they then send up fireballs which light all the ground. this is a good arrangement to reveal one's enemy, but the expense would be too great for poor people." father. he thinks of everything--everything! even of the terrible cost for us poor people. son [_reading_]. "i attended the funeral of a certain french child. she was known to us all by the name of 'marri' which is miriam. she would openly claim the regiment for her own regiment in the face of the colonel walking in the street. she was slain by a shell while grazing cattle. what remained was carried upon a litter precisely after our custom. there were no hired mourners. all mourners walked slowly behind the litter, the women with the men. it is not their custom to scream or beat the breast. they recite all prayers above the grave itself for they reckon the burial-ground to be holy. the prayers are recited by the imam of the village. the grave is not bricked and there is no recess. they do not know that the two angels visit the dead. they say at the end, 'peace and mercy be on you'." mother. one sees as he writes! he would have made a great priest, this son of ours. so they pray over their dead, out yonder, those foreigners? father. even a kafir may pray, but--they are manifestly kafirs or they would not pray in a grave-yard. go on! son. "when their prayers were done, our havildar-major, who is orthodox, recited the appropriate verse from the koran, and cast a little mud into the grave. the imam of the village then embraced him. i do not know if this is the custom. the french weep very little. the french women are small-handed and small-footed. they bear themselves in walking as though they were of birth and descent. they commune with themselves, walking up and down. their lips move. this is on account of their dead. they are never abashed or at a loss for words. they forget nothing. nothing either do they forgive." mother. good. very good. that is the right honour. son. listen! he says: "each village keeps a written account of all that the enemy has done against it. if a life--a life, whether it be man or priest, or hostage, or woman or babe. every horn driven off; and every feather; all bricks and tiles broken, all things burned, and their price, are written in the account. the shames and the insults are also written. there is no price set against them." father. this is without flaw! this is a people! there is never any price for shame offered. and they write it all down. marvellous! son. yes. he says: "each village keeps its own tally and all tallies go to their government to be filed. the whole of the country of france is in one great account against the enemy--for the loss, for the lives, and for the shames done. it has been kept from the first. the women keep it with the men. all french women read, write, and cast accounts from youth. by this they are able to keep the great account against the enemy. i think that it is good that our girls should get schooling like this. then we shall have no more confusion in our accounts. it is only to add up the sums lost and the lives. we should teach our girls. we are fools compared with these people." mother. but a pathani girl remembers without all this book-work. it is waste. who of any decent descent ever forgot a blood-debt? he must be sickening for illness to write thus. father. one should not forget. yet we depend on songs and tales. it is more secure--certainly, it is more business-like--that a written account should be kept. since it is the men who must pay off the debt, why should not the women keep it? mother. they can keep tally on a stick or a distaff. it is unnecessary for a girl to scribble in books. they never come to good ends. they end by---- son. sometimes, my mother, sometimes. on the government side of the border, women are taught to read, and write, and cast accounts, and---- mother [_with intention_]. far be the day when such an one is brought to _my_ house as a bride. for _i_ say---- father. no matter. what does _he_ say about those french women? son. he says: "they are not divided in opinion as to which of their enemies shall be sought after first. they say: 'let us even the account every day and night out of the nearest assembly of the enemy and when we have brought all the enemy into the right way of thinking we can demand the very people who did the shame and offences. in the meantime, let it be any life.' this is good counsel for _us_ in our account, oh my mother." father [_after a pause_]. true! true! it is good advice. let it be any life.... is that all? son. that is all. he says: "let it be _any_ life." and i think so too. mother. "_any_ life." even so! and then we can write to him quickly that we have taken our revenge quickly. [_she reaches for her husband's rifle which she passes over to her son, who stretches his hand towards it with a glance at his father._] father. on your head, akbar, our account must lie--at least till i am better. do you try to-night? son. may be! i wish we had the high-priced illuminating fireballs he spoke of. [_half rises._] mother. wait a little. there is the call for the ishr [the evening prayer]. muezzin [_in the village mosque without as the first stars show_]. god is great! god is great! god is great! i bear witness, etc. [_the family compose themselves for evening prayer._] a trooper of horse _to the sister of the pensioned risaldar major abdul qadr khan, at her own house behind the shrine of gulu shah near by the village of korake in the pasrur tehsil of the sialkot district in the province of the punjab. sent out of the country of france on the rd of august, , by duffadar abdul rahman of the nd (pakpattan) cavalry--late lambart's horse._ mother! the news is that once only in five months i have not received a letter from you. my thoughts are always with you. mother, put your ear down and listen to me. do not fret; i will soon be with you again. imagine that i have merely gone to lyallpur [the big recruiting-dépôt in india]; think that i have been delayed there by an officer's order, or that i am not yet ready to come back. mother, think of me always as though i were sitting near by, just as i imagine you always beside me. be of good cheer, mother, there is nothing that i have done which is hidden from you. i tell you truly, mother, i will salute you again. do not grieve. i tell you confidently i shall bow before you again in salutation. it will be thus, mother. i shall come in the dead of the night and knock at your door. then i will call loudly that you may wake and open the door to me. with great delight you will open the door and fold me to your breast, my mother. then i will sit down beside you and tell you what has happened to me--good and evil. then having rested the night in comfort i will go out after the day has come and i will salute all my brethren at the mosque and in the village. then i will return and eat my bread in pleasure and happiness. you, mother, will say to me: "shall i give you some _ghi_?" [native butter]. i will say at first proudly, like one who has travelled:--"no, i want none." you will press me, and i will softly push my plate over to you and you will fill it with _ghi_, and i shall dip my cake in it with delight. believe me, mother, this homecoming will take place just as i have described it. i see you before me always. it seems to me only yesterday that i bent to your feet when i made salutation and you put your hand upon my head. mother, put your trust in god to guard my head. if my grave lies in france it can never be in the punjab, though we try for a thousand years. if it be in the punjab then i shall certainly return to it to that very place. meantime, mother, consider what i have to eat. this is the true list. i eat daily sugar and ghi and flour, salt, meat, red peppers, some almonds and dates, sweets of various kinds as well as raisins and cardamoms. in the morning i eat tea and white biscuits. an hour after, halwa and puri [native dishes]. at noon, tea and bread; at seven o'clock of the evening, vegetable curry. at bedtime i drink milk. there is abundance of milk in this country. i am more comfortable here, i swear it to you, mother, than any high officer in india. as for our clothing, there is no account kept of it. you would cry out, mother, to see the thick cloth expended. so i beg you, mother, to take comfort concerning your son. do not tear my heart by telling me your years. though we both lived to be as old as elephants i am your son who will come asking for you as i said, at your door. as to the risk of death, who is free from it anywhere? certainly not in the punjab. i hear that all those religious mendicants at zilabad have proclaimed a holy fair this summer in order that pious people may feed them, and now, having collected in thousands beside the river in hot weather, they have spread cholera all over the district. there is trouble raging throughout all the world, mother, and yet these sons of mean fathers must proclaim a beggars' festival in order to add to it! there should be an order of the government to take all those lazy rascals out of india into france and put them in our front-line that their bodies may be sieves for the machine guns. why cannot they blacken their faces and lie in a corner with a crust of bread? it is certainly right to feed the family priests, mother, but when the idle assemble in thousands begging and making sickness and polluting the drinking-water, punishment should be administered. very much sickness, such as cholera and dysentery, is caused by drinking foul water. therefore, it is best to have it boiled, mother, no matter what is said. when clothes are washed in foul water, sickness also spreads. you will say, mother, that i am no longer a trooper but a washer-woman or an apothecary, but i swear to you, my mother, what i have said is true. now, i have two charges to deliver to you as to the household under you. i beg you, my mother, to give order that my son drink water which is boiled, at least from the beginning of the hot weather till after the rains. that is one charge. the second is that when i was going down to the sea with the regiment from home, the lady doctor sahiba in the civil lines asked of our colonel's lady whether any of us desired that their households should take the charm against the small-pox [be vaccinated]. i was then busy with my work and i made no reply. now let that doctor sahiba know that i desire by her favour that my son take the charm as soon as may be. i charge you, mother, upon _his_ head that it is done soon. i beg you respectfully to take this charge upon you. oh, my mother, if i could now see you for but half of one watch in the night or at evening preparing food! i remember the old days in my dreamings but when i awake--there is the sleeper and there is the bedding and it is more far off than delhi. but god will accomplish the meetings and surely arrange the return. mother, before going out to the attack the other day, i had a dream. i dreamed that a great snake appeared in our trenches in france and at the same time our pir murshid [our family priest] whose face i saw quite clearly, appeared with a stick and destroyed it. well then, mother, our lot went in to the attack and returned from it safely. those who were fated to be the victims of death were taken and those who were fated to be wounded were wounded; and all our party returned safely. at the same time, the government secured a victory and the regiment obtained renown. it was _our_ horse that went out over the trenches, mother, and the germans, being alarmed, fled. we were forbidden to pursue because of hidden guns. this was trouble to us. we owed them much blood on our brethren's account. tell the murshid my dream and ask him for a full interpretation. i have also seen our murshid twice before in my dreams. ask him why he comes to me thus. i am not conscious of any wrong-doing, and if it is a sign of favour to me, then the shape should speak. i am quite aware how god rewards the unwilling. he is all powerful. look at the case of that man of our own family who was ordered to the front with a higher rank. he refused promotion in order to stay behind, and in a month's time he died of the plague in his own village. if he had gone to the front his family would have received the war pension. an atheist never achieves honour, mother. he is always unsettled and has no consolations. do we mussulmans think that the prophet will spend all his time in asking god to forgive our transgressions? tell the pir murshid what i have written. mother, put down your ear and listen to me in this matter, my mother. there is one thing i wish to impress earnestly on you. you must know that among recruits for the regiment there are too few of our kind of mussulmans. they are sending recruits from the punjab who were formerly labourers and common workmen. the consequence of this is, in the regiment, that we mussulmans are completely outnumbered by these low people, and the promotions go accordingly. each of our troops, my mother, has been divided into two; that is to say there are four troops to a squadron. we mussulmans should have at least two troops out of the four, but owing to the lack of recruits we have not sufficient men of our faith to form more than one. now, mother, as it was in our fathers' time, he who supplies the men gets the promotion. therefore, if our friends at home, and especially our pir murshid, would exert themselves to supply fifteen or twenty recruits, i could approach my colonel sahib in regard to promotion. if my colonel received my request favourably then you at home would only have the trouble to provide the men. but i do not think, mother, there would be any trouble if our pir murshid exerted himself in the matter and if my father's brother also exerted himself. a family is a family even [if it be] scattered to the ends of the earth, mother. my father's brother's name is still remembered in the regiment on account of his long service and his great deeds of old. tell him, my mother, that the men talk of him daily as though he had only resigned yesterday. if he rides out among the villages with his medals he will certainly fetch in many of our class. if it were fifty it would mean much more influence for me with my colonel. he is very greedy for our class of mahommedans. mother, our pir murshid too, is a very holy man. if he preached to them after harvest he would fetch in many and i should be promoted, and the pensions go with the promotion. in a short time by god's assistance, i might command a troop if sufficient recruits were attained by the exertions of my friends and well-wishers. the honour of one is the honour of all. lay all this before the murshid and my uncle. none of the cavalry have yet done anything to compare with our regiment. this may be because of fate or that their nature is not equal to ours. there is great honour to be got out of a lance before long. the war has become loosened and cavalry patrols are being sent forward. we have driven mama lumra [a nickname for the enemy] several miles across country. he has planted his feet again but it is not the same mama lumra. his arrogance is gone. our guns turn the earth upside down upon him. he has made himself houses underground which are in all respects fortresses with beds, chairs and lights. our guns break these in. there is little to see because mama lumra is buried underneath. these days are altogether different from the days when all our army was here and mama lumra's guns overwhelmed us by day and by night. now mama lumra eats his own stick. fighting goes on in the sky, on earth and under earth. such a fighting is rarely vouchsafed any one to behold. yet if one reflects upon god it is no more than rain on a roof. mother, once i was reported "missing, killed or believed taken prisoner." i went with a patrol to a certain place beyond which we went forward to a place which had recently been taken by the english infantry. suddenly the enemy's fire fell upon us and behind us like water. seeing we could not go back, we lay down in the holes made by the shells. the enemy exerted himself to the utmost, but our guns having found him bombarded him and he ceased. in the evening we retired out of our shell-holes. we had to walk; it was fasting time and we suffered from thirst. so our hearts were relieved when we returned to the regiment. we had all been reported to divisional headquarters as lost. this false report was then cancelled. the shell-holes in the ground are the size of our goat-pen and as deep as my height with the arm raised. they are more in number than can be counted, and of all colours. it is like small-pox upon the ground. we have no small-pox or diseases here. our doctors are strict, and refuse is burned by the sweepers. it is said there is no physician like fire. he leaves nothing to the flies. it is said that flies produce sicknesses, especially when they are allowed to sit on the nostrils and the corners of the eyes of the children or to fall into their milk-pots. the young children of this country of france are beautiful and do not suffer from sickness. their women do not die in childbed. this is on account of physicians and midwives who abound in knowledge. it is a government order, mother, that none can establish as a midwife till she has shown her ability. these people are idolators. when there is a death which is not caused by war, they instantly ascribe it to some fault in eating or drinking or the conduct of life on the part of the dead. if one dies without manifest cause the physicians at once mutilate the body to ascertain what evil was hidden inside it. if anything is discovered there is a criminal trial. thus the women-folk do not traffic in poisons and wives have no suspicion one against the other. truly, mother, people are only defective on account of ignorance. learning and knowledge are the important things. your letters come to me with every mail exactly as if we were at headquarters. this is accomplished solely by knowledge. there are hundreds of women behind our lines who make clean and repair the dirty clothes of the troops. afterwards, they are baked in very hot ovens which utterly destroy the vermin and also, it is said, diseases. we have, too, been issued iron helmets to protect the head against falling shots. it was asked of us all if any had an objection. the sikhs reported that they had not found any permission in their law to wear such things. they, therefore, go uncovered. it was reported by our priests for us mahommedans that our law neither forbids nor enjoins. it is a thing indifferent. they are heavier than the pagri [turban], but they turn falling iron. doubtless, it is allah's will that the lives of his faithful should be prolonged by these hats. the sons of mothers who go to foreign parts are specially kept under his eye. we know very well how the world is made. to earn a living and bear trouble is the duty of man. if i send you a report that i have won promotion in the regiment, do not forget to distribute alms to the extent of fifteen rupees and to feed the poor. mother, put down your ear and listen to me. there is no danger whatever in box-pictures [snapshot-photographs]. anyone submitted to them is in all respects as he was before. nothing is taken out of his spirit. i, myself, mother, have submitted myself to many box-pictures, both mounted and standing beside my horse. if at any time again the zenana doctor sahiba desires to make a box-picture of _him_ do not snatch the child away but send the picture to me. i cannot see him in my dreams because at his age he changes with each month. when i went away he was still on all fours. now you tell me he stands up holding by the skirts. i wish to see a box-picture of this very greatly indeed. i can read box-pictures now as perfectly as the french. when i was new to this country i could not understand their meaning in the least. this is on account of knowledge which comes by foreign travel and experience. mother, this world abounds in marvels beyond belief. we in india are but stones compared to these people. they do not litigate among themselves; they speak truth at first answer; their weddings are not [performed] till both sides are at least eighteen, and no man has authority here to beat his wife. i have resided in billets with an old man and his wife, who possess seven hens, an ass, and a small field of onions. they collect dung from our horse-lines upon their backs, a very little at a time but continuously. they are without means of maintenance, yet they do not lay a finger upon any food except through invitation. they exhibit courtesy to each other in all things. they call me _sia_ [monsieur?] which is mian [mahommedan title of respect] and also _man barah_ [mon brave?] which signifies hero. i have spoken to them many times of you, my mother, and they desire i send you their salutations. she calls me to account strictly for my doings each day. at evening tide i am fetched in with the hens. my clothes are then inspected and repaired when there is need. she turns me back and forth between her hands. if i exhibit impatience, she hits me upon the side of the head, and i say to my heart it is your hands. now this is the french language, mother. ( ) _zuur mononfahn._ the morning salutation. ( ) _wasi lakafeh._ coffee is prepared. ( ) _abil towah mononfahn._ rise and go to parade. ( ) _dormeh beeahn mon fiz nublieh pahleh bondihu._ this is their dismissal at night, invoking the blessing of their god. they use a _tasbih_ [rosary] in form like ours but of more beads. they recite prayers both sitting and walking. having seen my _tasbih_ these old people become curious concerning the faith. certainly they are idolators. i have seen the images by the roadside which they worship. yet they are certainly not kafirs, who hide the truth and the mercy of allah is illimitable. they two send you their salutations thus:--_onvoyeh no zalutazioun zempresseh ar zmadam vot mair._ it is their form of blessing. she has borne three sons. two are already dead in this war and of the third no information since the spring-time. there remains in the house the son of the eldest son. he is three years old. his name is pir, which in their language also means a holy man. he runs barefoot in summer and wears only one garment. he eats all foods and specially dates. in this country it is not allowed to give children pepper or cardamoms. he has learned to speak our tongue and bears a wooden sword which was made for him and a turban of our sort. when he is weary he repairs to the centre of my bed which is forbidden to him by his grandmother of whom he has no fear. he fears nothing. my mother, he is almost the same sort as my own. he sends his salutations to him. he calls him "my brother who is in india." he also prays for him aloud before an idol which he is taken to worship. on account of his fatness he cannot yet kneel long, but falls over sideways. the idol is of bibbee miriam [the virgin mary] whom they, in this country, believe to watch over children. he has also a small idol of his own above his bed which represents a certain saint called pir. he rides upon the ass and says he will become a trooper. i take delight in his presence and his conversation. the children in this country are learned from their very birth. they go to the schools even when the shells fall near by. they know all the countries in the world, and to read and write in their language and to cast accounts. even the girls of eight years can cast accounts and those that are marriageable have complete knowledge of cookery, accounts, and governments, and washing of clothes, agriculture and the manufacture of garments and all other offices: otherwise they are reckoned infirm-minded. each girl is given a dowry to which she adds with her own hands. no man molests any woman here on any occasion. they come and go at their pleasure upon their business. there is one thing i should like to see, mother. i should like to see all the men of india with all their wives brought to france in order to see the country and profit by their experiences. here are no quarrels or contentions, and there is no dishonesty. all day long men do their work and the women do theirs. compared with these people the people of india do not work at all, but all day long are occupied with evil thoughts and our women all day long they do nothing but quarrel. now i see this. the blame for this state of affairs, mother, lies upon the men of india, for if the men were to educate the women they would give up quarrelling. when a man goes out into the world his understanding is enlarged and he becomes proficient in different kinds of work. all that is needed is to show courage. at the present time, one's bravery or one's cowardice is apparent. the opportunities for advancement come quickly. such opportunities will not occur again. as for any marriage proposed [for me?] when i return, those things can wait till i return. it is no gain to take into the house a child or a sickly one who, through no fault of her own, dies in bringing forth. if there be any talk between our house and any other family upon this subject they should understand that i desire knowledge more than dowry. there are schools where girls are educated by english ladies. i am not of the sort to make a wedding outside my clan or country, but if i fight to keep mama lumra out of the punjab i will choose my wives out of the punjab. i desire nothing that is contrary to the faith, mother, but what was ample yesterday does not cover even the palm of the hand to-day. this is owing to the spread of enlightenment among all men coming and going and observing matters which they had never before known to exist. in this country when one of them dies, the tomb is marked and named and kept like a garden so that the others may go to mourn over her. nor do they believe a burial-ground to be inhabited by evil spirits or ghouls. when i was upon a certain duty last month, i lay three nights in a grave-yard. none troubled me, even though the dead had been removed from their graves by the violence of shells bursting. one was a woman of this country, newly dead, whom we reburied for the sake of the pity of allah, and made the prayer. tell the pir murshid this, and that i performed _tayamummum_ [the shorter purification with sand or dust] afterwards. there was no time for the full purification. oh, my mother, my mother, i am your son, your son; and as i have said at the beginning i will return to your arms from out of this country, when god shall permit! the end the country life press garden city, n.y. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustration. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) the years between by rudyard kipling [illustration] methuen and co. ltd. essex street w.c. london first published in dedication to the seven watchmen _seven watchmen sitting in a tower, watching what had come upon mankind, showed the man the glory and the power, and bade him shape the kingdom to his mind. 'all things on earth your will shall win you' ('twas so their counsel ran) 'but the kingdom--the kingdom is within you,' said the man's own mind to the man. for time, and some time-- as it was in the bitter years before, so it shall be in the over-sweetened hour-- that a man's mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower._ contents page benefactors, the choice, the 'city of brass, the' covenant, the craftsman, the dead king, the death-bed, a declaration of london, the dedication v en-dor epitaphs female of the species, the 'for all we have and are' france gehazi gethsemane holy-war, the houses, the hyÆnas, the justice irish guards, the lord roberts mary's son mesopotamia my boy jack nativity, a natural theology oldest song, the outlaws, the pilgrim's way, a pro-consuls, the question, the recantation, a rowers, the russia to the pacifists song at cock-crow, a song in storm, a song of the lathes, the sons of martha, the spies' march, the things and the man ulster verdicts, the veterans, the virginity, the zion index to first lines page _across a world where all men grieve,_ _a._ 'i was a "have"' _b._ 'i was a "have-not,"' after the burial-parties leave, _ah! what avails the classic bent,_ _a tinker out of bedford,_ be well assured that on our side, brethren, how shall it fare with me, _broke to every known mischance, lifted over all,_ for all we have and are, god rest you, peaceful gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, 'have you news of my boy jack?' he passed in the very battle-smoke, i ate my fill of a whale that died, i do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way, if you stop to find out what your wages will be, _in a land that the sand overlays--the ways to her gates are untrod,_ not in the thick of the fight, oh ye who hold the written clue, once, after long-drawn revel at the mermaid, _seven watchmen sitting in a tower,_ v _the babe was laid in the manger,_ the banked oars fell an hundred strong, the dark eleventh hour, the doorkeepers of zion, the fans and the beltings they roar round me, the first time that peter denied his lord, the garden called gethsemane, _the overfaithful sword returns the user,_ there are no leaders to lead us to honour, and yet without leaders we sally, the road to en-dor is easy to tread, these were never your true love's eyes, the sons of mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part, they shall not return to us, the resolute, the young, 'this is the state above the law, to-day, across our fathers' graves, _to the judge of right and wrong,_ through learned and laborious years, try as he will, no man breaks wholly loose, 'twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, we're not so old in the army list, we thought we ranked above the chance of ill, we were all one heart and one race, what boots it on the gods to call? 'whence comest thou, gehazi, when the himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, _who in the realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear?_ the rowers (when germany proposed that england should help her in a naval demonstration to collect debts from venezuela.) the banked oars fell an hundred strong, and backed and threshed and ground, but bitter was the rowers' song as they brought the war-boat round. they had no heart for the rally and roar that makes the whale-bath smoke-- when the great blades cleave and hold and leave as one on the racing stroke. they sang:--'what reckoning do you keep, and steer her by what star, if we come unscathed from the southern deep to be wrecked on a baltic bar? 'last night you swore our voyage was done, but seaward still we go, and you tell us now of a secret vow you have made with an open foe! 'that we must lie off a lightless coast and haul and back and veer, at the will of the breed that have wronged us most for a year and a year and a year! 'there was never a shame in christendie they laid not to our door-- and you say we must take the winter sea and sail with them once more? 'look south! the gale is scarce o'erpast that stripped and laid us down, when we stood forth but they stood fast and prayed to see us drown 'our dead they mocked are scarcely cold, our wounds are bleeding yet-- and you tell us now that our strength is sold to help them press for a debt' ''neath all the flags of all mankind that use upon the seas, was there no other fleet to find that you strike hands with these? 'of evil times that men can choose on evil fate to fall, what brooding judgment let you loose to pick the worst of all? 'in sight of peace--from the narrow seas o'er half the world to run-- with a cheated crew, to league anew with the goth and the shameless hun!' the veterans [written for the gathering of survivors of the indian mutiny, albert hall, .] to-day, across our fathers' graves, the astonished years reveal the remnant of that desperate host which cleansed our east with steel. hail and farewell! we greet you here, with tears that none will scorn-- o keepers of the house of old, or ever we were born! one service more we dare to ask-- pray for us, heroes, pray, that when fate lays on us our task we do not shame the day! the declaration of london june , ('on the re-assembling of parliament after the coronation, the government have no intention of allowing their followers to vote according to their convictions on the declaration of london, but insist on a strictly party vote'--_daily papers_.) we were all one heart and one race when the abbey trumpets blew. for a moment's breathing-space we had forgotten you now you return to your honoured place panting to shame us anew. we have walked with the ages dead-- with our past alive and ablaze, and you bid us pawn our honour for bread; this day of all the days! and you cannot wait till our guests are sped, or last week's wreath decays? the light is still in our eyes of faith and gentlehood, of service and sacrifice, and it does not match our mood, to turn so soon to your treacheries that starve our land of her food. our ears still carry the sound of our once imperial seas, exultant after our king was crowned, beneath the sun and the breeze. it is too early to have them bound or sold at your decrees. wait till the memory goes, wait till the visions fade, we may betray in time, god knows, but we would not have it said, when you make report to our scornful foes, that we kissed as we betrayed! ulster ('their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.'--_isaiah lix _) the dark eleventh hour draws on and sees us sold to every evil power we fought against of old. rebellion, rapine, hate, oppression, wrong and greed are loosed to rule our fate, by england's act and deed. the faith in which we stand, the laws we made and guard, our honour, lives, and land are given for reward to murder done by night, to treason taught by day, to folly, sloth, and spite, and we are thrust away. the blood our fathers spilt, our love, our toils, our pains, are counted us for guilt, and only bind our chains. before an empire's eyes the traitor claims his price. what need of further lies? we are the sacrifice. we asked no more than leave to reap where we had sown, through good and ill to cleave to our own flag and throne. now england's shot and steel beneath that flag must show how loyal hearts should kneel to england's oldest foe. we know the war prepared on every peaceful home, we know the hells declared for such as serve not rome-- the terror, threats, and dread in market, hearth, and field-- we know, when all is said, we perish if we yield. believe, we dare not boast, believe, we do not fear-- we stand to pay the cost in all that men hold dear. what answer from the north? one law, one land, one throne. if england drive us forth we shall not fall alone. the covenant we thought we ranked above the chance of ill. others might fall, not we, for we were wise-- merchants in freedom. so, of our free-will we let our servants drug our strength with lies. the pleasure and the poison had its way on us as on the meanest, till we learned that he who lies will steal, who steals will slay. neither god's judgment nor man's heart was turned. yet there remains his mercy--to be sought through wrath and peril till we cleanse the wrong by that last right which our forefathers claimed when their law failed them and its stewards were bought. this is our cause. god help us, and make strong our wills to meet him later, unashamed! france _broke to every known mischance, lifted over all by the light sane joy of life, the buckler of the gaul; furious in luxury, merciless in toil, terrible with strength that draws from her tireless soil; strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of man's mind, first to follow truth and last to leave old truths behind-- france, beloved of every soul that loves its fellow-kind!_ ere our birth (rememberest thou?) side by side we lay fretting in the womb of rome to begin our fray. ere men knew our tongues apart, our one task was known-- each must mould the other's fate as he wrought his own to this end we stirred mankind till all earth was ours, till our world-end strifes begat wayside thrones and powers-- puppets that we made or broke to bar the other's path-- necessary, outpost folk, hirelings of our wrath to this end we stormed the seas, tack for tack, and burst through the doorways of new worlds, doubtful which was first, hand on hilt (rememberest thou?) ready for the blow-- sure, whatever else we met, we should meet our foe. spurred or balked at every stride by the other's strength, so we rode the ages down and every ocean's length! where did you refrain from us or we refrain from you? ask the wave that has not watched war between us two! others held us for a while, but with weaker charms, these we quitted at the call for each other's arms. eager toward the known delight, equally we strove-- each the other's mystery, terror, need, and love to each other's open court with our proofs we came. where could we find honour else, or men to test our claim? from each other's throat we wrenched--valour's last reward-- that extorted word of praise gasped 'twixt lunge and guard. in each other's cup we poured mingled blood and tears, brutal joys, unmeasured hopes, intolerable fears-- all that soiled or salted life for a thousand years. proved beyond the need of proof, matched in every clime, o companion, we have lived greatly through all time! yoked in knowledge and remorse, now we come to rest, laughing at old villainies that time has turned to jest, pardoning old necessities no pardon can efface-- that undying sin we shared in rouen marketplace. now we watch the new years shape, wondering if they hold fiercer lightnings in their heart than we launched of old. now we hear new voices rise, question, boast or gird, as we raged (rememberest thou?) when our crowds were stirred, now we count new keels afloat, and new hosts on land, massed like ours (rememberest thou?) when our strokes were planned. we were schooled for dear life's sake, to know each other's blade what can blood and iron make more than we have made? we have learned by keenest use to know each other's mind. what shall blood and iron loose that we cannot bind? we who swept each other's coast, sacked each other's home, since the sword of brennus clashed on the scales at rome, listen, count and close again, wheeling girth to girth, in the linked and steadfast guard set for peace on earth! broke to every known mischance, lifted over all by the light sane joy of life, the buckler of the gaul; furious in luxury, merciless in toil, terrible with strength renewed from a tireless soil; strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of man's mind, first to face the truth and last to leave old truths behind-- france, beloved of every soul that loves or serves its kind! 'for all we have and are' . for all we have and are, for all our children's fate, stand up and take the war, the hun is at the gate! our world has passed away, in wantonness o'erthrown. there is nothing left to-day but steel and fire and stone! though all we knew depart, the old commandments stand:-- 'in courage keep your heart, in strength lift up your hand.' once more we hear the word that sickened earth of old:-- 'no law except the sword unsheathed and uncontrolled.' once more it knits mankind, once more the nations go to meet and break and bind a crazed and driven foe. comfort, content, delight, the ages' slow-bought gain, they shrivelled in a night. only ourselves remain to face the naked days in silent fortitude, through perils and dismays renewed and re-renewed. though all we made depart, the old commandments stand;-- 'in patience keep your heart, in strength lift up your hand.' no easy hope or lies shall bring us to our goal, but iron sacrifice of body, will, and soul. there is but one task for all-- one life for each to give who stands if freedom fall? who dies if england live? a song in storm be well assured that on our side the abiding oceans fight, though headlong wind and heaping tide make us their sport to-night. by force of weather not of war in jeopardy we steer, then welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it shall appear, how in all time of our distress, and our deliverance too, the game is more than the player of the game, and the ship is more than the crew. out of the mist into the mirk the glimmering combers roll. almost these mindless waters work as though they had a soul-- almost as though they leagued to whelm our flag beneath their green then welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it shall be seen, etc. be well assured, though wave and wind have weightier blows in store, that we who keep the watch assigned must stand to it the more; and as our streaming bows rebuke each billow's baulked career, sing, welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it is made clear, etc. no matter though our deck be swept and masts and timber crack-- we can make good all loss except the loss of turning back. so, 'twixt these devils and our deep let courteous trumpets sound, to welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it will be found, etc. be well assured, though in our power is nothing left to give but chance and place to meet the hour, and leave to strive to live, till these dissolve our order holds, our service binds us here. then welcome fate's discourtesy whereby it is made clear, how in all time of our distress, and in our triumph too, the game is more than the player of the game, and the ship is more than the crew! the outlaws through learned and laborious years they set themselves to find fresh terrors and undreamed-of fears to heap upon mankind. all that they drew from heaven above or digged from earth beneath, they laid into their treasure-trove and arsenals of death: while, for well-weighed advantage sake, ruler and ruled alike built up the faith they meant to break when the fit hour should strike. they traded with the careless earth, and good return it gave; they plotted by their neighbour's hearth the means to make him slave. when all was ready to their hand they loosed their hidden sword, and utterly laid waste a land their oath was pledged to guard. coldly they went about to raise to life and make more dread abominations of old days, that men believed were dead. they paid the price to reach their goal across a world in flame; but their own hate slew their own soul before that victory came. zion the doorkeepers of zion, they do not always stand in helmet and whole armour, with halberds in their hand, but, being sure of zion, and all her mysteries, they rest awhile in zion, sit down and smile in zion; ay, even jest in zion; in zion, at their ease. the gatekeepers of baal, they dare not sit or lean, but fume and fret and posture and foam and curse between; for being bound to baal, whose sacrifice is vain. their rest is scant with baal, they glare and pant for baal, they mouth and rant for baal, for baal in their pain! but we will go to zion, by choice and not through dread, with these our present comrades and those our present dead; and, being free of zion in both her fellowships, sit down and sup in zion-- stand up and drink in zion whatever cup in zion is offered to our lips! lord roberts he passed in the very battle-smoke of the war that he had descried. three hundred mile of cannon spoke when the master-gunner died. he passed to the very sound of the guns; but, before his eye grew dim, he had seen the faces of the sons whose sires had served with him. he had touched their sword-hilts and greeted each with the old sure word of praise; and there was virtue in touch and speech as it had been in old days. so he dismissed them and took his rest, and the steadfast spirit went forth between the adoring east and west and the tireless guns of the north. clean, simple, valiant, well-beloved, flawless in faith and fame, whom neither ease nor honours moved an hair's-breadth from his aim. never again the war-wise face, the weighed and urgent word that pleaded in the market-place-- pleaded and was not heard! yet from his life a new life springs through all the hosts to come, and glory is the least of things that follow this man home. the question brethren, how shall it fare with me when the war is laid aside, if it be proven that i am he for whom a world has died? if it be proven that all my good, and the greater good i will make, were purchased me by a multitude who suffered for my sake? that i was delivered by mere mankind vowed to one sacrifice, and not, as i hold them, battle-blind, but dying with open eyes? that they did not ask me to draw the sword when they stood to endure their lot-- that they only looked to me for a word, and i answered i knew them not? if it be found, when the battle clears, their death has set me free, then how shall i live with myself through the years which they have bought for me? brethren, how must it fare with me, or how am i justified, if it be proven that i am he for whom mankind has died, if it be proven that i am he who being questioned denied? the choice (the american spirit speaks) _to the judge of right and wrong with whom fulfilment lies our purpose and our power belong, our faith and sacrifice._ let freedom's land rejoice! our ancient bonds are riven; once more to us the eternal choice of good or ill is given. not at a little cost, hardly by prayer or tears, shall we recover the road we lost in the drugged and doubting years. but, after the fires and the wrath, but, after searching and pain, his mercy opens us a path to live with ourselves again. in the gates of death rejoice! we see and hold the good-- bear witness, earth, we have made our choice with freedom's brotherhood! then praise the lord most high whose strength hath saved us whole, who bade us choose that the flesh should die and not the living soul! _to the god in man displayed-- where e'er we see that birth, be love and understanding paid as never yet on earth!_ _to the spirit that moves in man, on whom all worlds depend, be glory since our world began and service to the end!_ the holy war ('for here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built mansoul that the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto'--bunyan's _holy war_) _a tinker out of bedford, a vagrant oft in quod, a private under fairfax, a minister of god-- two hundred years and thirty ere armageddon came his single hand portrayed it, and bunyan was his name!_ he mapped, for those who follow, the world in which we are-- 'this famous town of mansoul' that takes the holy war her true and traitor people, the gates along her wall, from eye gate unto feel gate, john bunyan showed them all. all enemy divisions, recruits of every class, and highly-screened positions for flame or poison-gas, the craft that we call modern, the crimes that we call new, john bunyan had 'em typed and filed in sixteen eighty-two likewise the lords of looseness that hamper faith and works, the perseverance-doubters, and present-comfort shirks, with brittle intellectuals who crack beneath a strain-- john bunyan met that helpful set in charles the second's reign. emmanuel's vanguard dying for right and not for rights, my lord apollyon lying to the state-kept stockholmites, the pope, the swithering neutrals, the kaiser and his gott-- their rôles, their goals, their naked souls-- he knew and drew the lot. now he hath left his quarters, in bunhill fields to lie. the wisdom that he taught us is proven prophecy-- one watchword through our armies, one answer from our lands-- 'no dealings with diabolus as long as mansoul stands. _a pedlar from a hovel, the lowest of the low, the father of the novel, salvation's first defoe, eight blinded generations ere armageddon came, he showed us how to meet it, and bunyan was his name!_ the houses (a song of the dominions) 'twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, in thy house or my house is half the world's hoard; by my house and thy house hangs all the world's fate, on thy house and my house lies half the world's hate. for my house and thy house no help shall we find save thy house and my house--kin cleaving to kind: if my house be taken, thine tumbleth anon, if thy house be forfeit, mine followeth soon. 'twixt my house and thy house what talk can there be of headship or lordship, or service or fee? since my house to thy house no greater can send than thy house to my house--friend comforting friend; and thy house to my house no meaner can bring than my house to thy house--king counselling king. russia to the pacifists god rest you, peaceful gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, but--leave your sports a little while--the dead are borne this way! armies dead and cities dead, past all count or care. god rest you, merry gentlemen, what portent see you there? singing.--break ground for a wearied host that have no ground to keep. give them the rest that they covet most, and who shall next to sleep, good sirs, in such a trench to sleep? god rest you, peaceful gentlemen, but give us leave to pass. we go to dig a nation's grave as great as england was. for this kingdom and this glory and this power and this pride three hundred years it flourished--in three hundred days it died. singing--pour oil for a frozen throng, that lie about the ways. give them the warmth they have lacked so long and what shall be next to blaze, good sirs, on such a pyre to blaze? god rest you, thoughtful gentlemen, and send your sleep is light! remains of this dominion no shadow, sound, or sight, except the sound of weeping and the sight of burning fire, and the shadow of a people that is trampled into mire. singing.--break bread for a starving folk that perish in the field. give them their food as they take the yoke ... and who shall be next to yield, good sirs, for such a bribe to yield? god rest you, merry gentlemen, and keep you in your mirth! was ever kingdom turned so soon to ashes, blood, and earth? 'twixt the summer and the snow--seeding-time and frost-- arms and victual, hope and counsel, name and country lost! singing:--_let down by the foot and the head-- shovel and smooth it all! so do we bury a nation dead ..._ and who shall be next to fall, good sirs, with your good help to fall? the irish guards we're not so old in the army list, but we're not so young at our trade, for we had the honour at fontenoy of meeting the guards' brigade. 'twas lally, dillon, bulkeley, clare, and lee that led us then, and after a hundred and seventy years we're fighting for france again! _old days! the wild geese are flighting, head to the storm as they faced it before! for where there are irish there's bound to be fighting, and when there's no fighting, it's ireland no more! ireland no more!_ the fashion's all for khaki now, but once through france we went full-dressed in scarlet army cloth, the english--left at ghent they're fighting on our side to-day. but, before they changed their clothes, the half of europe knew our fame, as all of ireland knows! _old days! the wild geese are flying, head to the storm as they faced it before! for where there are irish there's memory undying, and when we forget, it is ireland no more! ireland no more!_ from barry wood to gouzeaucourt, from boyne to pilkem ridge, the ancient days come back no more than water under the bridge but the bridge it stands and the water runs as red as yesterday, and the irish move to the sound of the guns like salmon to the sea. _old days! the wild geese are ranging, head to the storm as they faced it before! for where there are irish their hearts are unchanging, and when they are changed, it is ireland no more! ireland no more!_ we're not so old in the army list, but we're not so new in the ring, for we carried our packs with marshal saxe when louis was our king. but douglas haig's our marshal now and we're king george's men, and after one hundred and seventy years we're fighting for france again! _ah, france! and did we stand by you, when life was made splendid with gifts and rewards? ah, france! and will we deny you in the hour of your agony, mother of swords? old days! the wild geese are flighting, head to the storm as they faced it before! for where there are irish there's loving and fighting, and when we stop either, it's ireland no more! ireland no more!_ a nativity _the babe was laid in the manger between the gentle kine-- all safe from cold and danger--_ 'but it was not so with mine. (with mine! with mine!) 'is it well with the child, is it well?' the waiting mother prayed. 'for i know not how he fell, and i know not where he is laid.' _a star stood forth in heaven, the watchers ran to see the sign of the promise given--_ 'but there comes no sign to me. (to me! to me!) '_my_ child died in the dark. is it well with the child, is it well? there was none to tend him or mark, and i know not how he fell.' _the cross was raised on high; the mother grieved beside--_ 'but the mother saw him die and took him when he died. (he died! he died!) 'seemly and undefiled his burial-place was made-- is it well, is it well with the child? for i know not where he is laid.' _on the dawning of easter day comes mary magdalene; but the stone was rolled away, and the body was not within--_ (within! within!) 'ah, who will answer my word?' the broken mother prayed. 'they have taken away my lord, and i know not where he is laid.' * * * * * _the star stands forth in heaven. the watchers watch in vain for a sign of the promise given of peace on earth again--_ (again! again!) 'but i know for whom he fell'-- the steadfast mother smiled 'is it well with the child--is it well? it is well--it is well with the child!' en-dor 'behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at en-dor' _samuel_ xxviii the road to en-dor is easy to tread for mother or yearning wife. there, it is sure, we shall meet our dead as they were even in life. earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store for desolate hearts on the road to en-dor. whispers shall comfort us out of the dark-- hands--ah god!--that we knew! visions and voices--look and heark!-- shall prove that our tale is true, and that those who have passed to the further shore may be hailed--at a price--on the road to en-dor. but they are so deep in their new eclipse nothing they say can reach, unless it be uttered by alien lips and framed in a stranger's speech. the son must send word to the mother that bore, through an hireling's mouth. 'tis the rule of en-dor. and not for nothing these gifts are shown by such as delight our dead. they must twitch and stiffen and slaver a groan ere the eyes are set in the head, and the voice from the belly begins. therefore we pay them a wage where they ply at en-dor. even so, we have need of faith and patience to follow the clue. often, at first, what the dear one saith is babble, or jest, or untrue. (lying spirits perplex us sore till our loves--and our lives--are well known at en-dor).... _oh the road to en-dor is the oldest road and the craziest road of all! straight it runs to the witch's abode, as it did in the days of saul, and nothing has changed of the sorrow in store for such as go down on the road to en-dor!_ a recantation (to lyde of the music halls) what boots it on the gods to call? since, answered or unheard, we perish with the gods and all things made--except the word. ere certain fate had touched a heart by fifty years made cold, i judged thee, lyde, and thy art o'erblown and over-bold. but he--but he, of whom bereft i suffer vacant days-- he on his shield not meanly left-- he cherished all thy lays. witness the magic coffer stocked with convoluted runes wherein thy very voice was locked and linked to circling tunes. witness thy portrait, smoke-defiled, that decked his shelter-place. life seemed more present, wrote the child, beneath thy well-known face. and when the grudging days restored him for a breath to home, he, with fresh crowds of youth, adored thee making mirth in rome. therefore, i, humble, join the hosts, loyal and loud, who bow to thee as queen of songs--and ghosts-- for i remember how never more rampant rose the hall at thy audacious line than when the news came in from gaul thy son had--followed mine. but thou didst hide it in thy breast and, capering, took the brunt of blaze and blare, and launched the jest that swept next week the front. singer to children! ours possessed sleep before noon--but thee, wakeful each midnight for the rest, no holocaust shall free. yet they who use the word assigned, to hearten and make whole, not less than gods have served mankind, though vultures rend their soul. my boy jack 'have you news of my boy jack?' _not this tide._ 'when d'you think that he'll come back?' _not with this wind blowing, and this tide._ 'has any one else had word of him?' _not this tide. for what is sunk will hardly swim, not with this wind blowing, and this tide._ 'oh, dear, what comfort can i find?' _none this tide, nor any tide, except he did not shame his kind-- not even with that wind blowing, and that tide._ _then hold your head up all the more, this tide, and every tide; because he was the son you bore, and gave to that wind blowing and that tide!_ the verdicts (jutland) not in the thick of the fight, not in the press of the odds, do the heroes come to their height, or we know the demi-gods. that stands over till peace. we can only perceive men returned from the seas, very grateful for leave. they grant us sudden days snatched from their business of war; but we are too close to appraise what manner of men they are. and, whether their names go down with age-kept victories, or whether they battle and drown unreckoned, is hid from our eyes. they are too near to be great, but our children shall understand when and how our fate was changed, and by whose hand. our children shall measure their worth. we are content to be blind but we know that we walk on a new-born earth with the saviours of mankind. mesopotamia they shall not return to us, the resolute, the young, the eager and whole-hearted whom we gave: but the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung, shall they come with years and honour to the grave? they shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain in sight of help denied from day to day: but the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain, are they too strong and wise to put away? our dead shall not return to us while day and night divide-- never while the bars of sunset hold: but the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died, shall they thrust for high employments as of old? shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour? when the storm is ended shall we find how softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power by the favour and contrivance of their kind? even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends, even while they make a show of fear, do they call upon their debtors, and take council with their friends, to confirm and re-establish each career? their lives cannot repay us--their death could not undo-- the shame that they have laid upon our race: but the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew, shall we leave it unabated in its place? the hyÆnas after the burial-parties leave and the baffled kites have fled, the wise hyænas come out at eve to take account of our dead. how he died and why he died troubles them not a whit. they snout the bushes and stones aside and dig till they come to it. they are only resolute they shall eat that they and their mates may thrive, and they know that the dead are safer meat than the weakest thing alive. (for a goat may butt, and a worm may sting, and a child will sometimes stand; but a poor dead soldier of the king can never lift a hand.) they whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt until their tushes white take good hold in the army shirt, and tug the corpse to light, and the pitiful face is shewn again for an instant ere they close; but it is not discovered to living men-- only to god and to those who, being soulless, are free from shame, whatever meat they may find. nor do they defile the dead man's name-- that is reserved for his kind. the spies' march (before the war) ('the outbreak is in full swing and our death-rate would sicken napoleon.... dr m---- died last week, and c---- on monday, but some more medicines are coming.... we don't seem to be able to check it at all.... villages panicking badly.... in some places not a living soul.... but at any rate the experience gained may come in useful, so i am keeping my notes written up to date in case of accidents.... death is a queer chap to live with for steady company.' _extracted from a private letter from manchuria._) there are no leaders to lead us to honour, and yet without leaders we sally, each man reporting for duty alone, out of sight, out of reach, of his fellow. there are no bugles to call the battalions, and yet without bugles we rally, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth, to follow the standard of yellow! _fall in! o fall in! o fall in!_ not where the squadrons mass, not where the bayonets shine, not where the big shell shout as they pass over the firing-line; not where the wounded are, not where the nations die, killed in the cleanly game of war-- that is no place for a spy! o princes, thrones and powers, your work is less than ours-- here is no place for a spy! trained to another use, we march with colours furled, only concerned when death breaks loose on a front of half a world. only for general death the yellow flag may fly, while we take post beneath-- that is the place for a spy. where plague has spread his pinions over nations and dominions-- then will be work for a spy! the dropping shots begin, the single funerals pass, our skirmishers run in, the corpses dot the grass! the howling towns stampede, the tainted hamlets die. now it is war indeed-- now there is room for a spy! o peoples, kings and lands, we are waiting your commands-- what is the work for a spy? (drums)--_'fear is upon us, spy!_ 'go where his pickets hide-- unmask the shapes they take, whether a gnat from the waterside, or stinging fly in the brake, or filth of the crowded street, or a sick rat limping by, or a smear of spittle dried in the heat-- that is the work of a spy! (drums)--_death is upon us, spy!_ 'what does he next prepare? whence will he move to attack?-- by water, earth or air?-- how can we head him back? shall we starve him out if we burn or bury his food-supply? slip through his lines and learn-- that is work for a spy! (drums)--_get to your business, spy!_ 'does he feint or strike in force? will he charge or ambuscade? what is it checks his course? is he beaten or only delayed? how long will the lull endure? is he retreating? why? crawl to his camp and make sure-- that is the work for a spy! (drums)--_fetch us our answer, spy!_ 'ride with him girth to girth wherever the pale horse wheels, wait on his councils, ear to earth, and say what the dust reveals. for the smoke of our torment rolls where the burning thousands lie; what do we care for men's bodies or souls? bring us deliverance, spy!' the sons of martha the sons of mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part, but the sons of martha favour their mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart. and because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the lord her guest, her sons must wait upon mary's sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest. it is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock. it is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock. it is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain, tally, transport, and deliver duly the sons of mary by land and main. they say to mountains 'be ye removèd.' they say to the lesser floods 'be dry.' under their rods are the rocks reprovèd--they are not afraid of that which is high. then do the hill-tops shake to the summit--then is the bed of the deep laid bare, that the sons of mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware. they finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires. he rears against the gates they rend: they feed him hungry behind their fires. early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall, and hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall. to these from birth is belief forbidden; from these till death is relief afar. they are concerned with matters hidden--under the earth-line their altars are. the secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth, and gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city's drouth. they do not preach that their god will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose. they do not teach that his pity allows them to leave their work when they damn-well choose. as in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand, wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land. raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat, lo, it is black already with blood some son of martha spilled for that! not as a ladder from earth to heaven, not as a witness to any creed, but simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need. and the sons of mary smile and are blessèd--they know the angels are on their side. they know in them is the grace confessèd, and for them are the mercies multiplied. they sit at the feet--they hear the word--they see how truly the promise runs: they have cast their burden upon the lord, and--the lord he lays it on martha's sons! mary's son if you stop to find out what your wages will be and how they will clothe and feed you, willie, my son, don't you go on the sea, for the sea will never need you. if you ask for the reason of every command, and argue with people about you, willie, my son, don't you go on the land, for the land will do better without you. if you stop to consider the work you have done and to boast what your labour is worth, dear, angels may come for you, willie, my son, but you'll never be wanted on earth, dear! the song of the lathes (being the words of the tune hummed at her lathe by mrs. l. embsay, widow.) the fans and the beltings they roar round me. the power is shaking the floor round me till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over. it is good for me to be here! _guns in flanders--flanders guns! (i had a man that worked 'em once!) shells for guns in flanders, flanders! shells for guns in flanders, flanders! shells for guns in flanders! feed the guns!_ the cranes and the carriers they boom over me, the bays and the galleries they loom over me, with their quarter-mile of pillars growing little in the distance: it is good for me to be here! the zeppelins and gothas they raid over us. our lights give warning, and fade over us. (seven thousand women keeping quiet in the darkness!) oh, it is good for me to be here! the roofs and the buildings they grow round me, eating up the fields i used to know round me; and the shed that i began in is a sub-inspector's office-- so long have i been here! i've seen six hundred mornings make our lamps grow dim, through the bit that isn't painted round our skylight rim, and the sunshine in the window slope according to the seasons, twice since i've been here. the trains on the sidings they call to us with the hundred thousand blanks that they haul to us; and we send 'em what we've finished, and they take it where it's wanted, for that is why we are here! man's hate passes as his love will pass. god made woman what she always was. them that bear the burden they will never grant forgiveness so long as they are here! once i was a woman, but that's by with me. all i loved and looked for, it must die with me. but the lord has left me over for a servant of the judgment, and i serve his judgments here! _guns in flanders--flanders guns! (i had a son that worked 'em once!) shells for guns in flanders, flanders! shells for guns in flanders, flanders! shells for guns in flanders! feed the guns!_ gethsemane the garden called gethsemane in picardy it was, and there the people came to see the english soldiers pass. we used to pass--we used to pass or halt, as it might be, and ship our masks in case of gas beyond gethsemane. the garden called gethsemane, it held a pretty lass, but all the time she talked to me i prayed my cup might pass. the officer sat on the chair, the men lay on the grass, and all the time we halted there i prayed my cup might pass-- it didn't pass--it didn't pass-- it didn't pass from me. i drank it when we met the gas beyond gethsemane. the pro-consuls _the overfaithful sword returns the user his heart's desire at price of his heart's blood. the clamour of the arrogant accuser wastes that one hour we needed to make good. this was foretold of old at our outgoing; this we accepted who have squandered, knowing, the strength and glory of our reputations, at the day's need, as it were dross, to guard the tender and new-dedicate foundations against the sea we fear--not man's award._ they that dig foundations deep, fit for realms to rise upon, little honour do they reap of their generation, any more than mountains gain stature till we reach the plain. with no veil before their face such as shroud or sceptre lend-- daily in the market-place, of one height to foe and friend-- they must cheapen self to find ends uncheapened for mankind. through the night when hirelings rest, sleepless they arise, alone, the unsleeping arch to test and the o'er-trusted corner-stone, 'gainst the need, they know, that lies hid behind the centuries. not by lust of praise or show, not by peace herself betrayed-- peace herself must they forego till that peace be fitly made; and in single strength uphold wearier hands and hearts acold. on the stage their act hath framed for thy sports, o liberty! doubted are they, and defamed by the tongues their act set free, while they quicken, tend and raise power that must their power displace. lesser men feign greater goals, failing whereof they may sit scholarly to judge the souls that go down into the pit, and, despite its certain clay, heave a new world towards the day. these at labour make no sign, more than planets, tides or years which discover god's design, not our hopes and not our fears; nor in aught they gain or lose seek a triumph or excuse. _for, so the ark be borne to zion, who heeds how they perished or were paid that bore it? for, so the shrine abide, what shame--what pride-- if we, the priests, were bound or crowned before it?_ the craftsman once, after long-drawn revel at the mermaid, he to the overbearing boanerges jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor, blessed be the vintage!) saying how, at an alehouse under cotswold, he had made sure of his very cleopatra, drunk with enormous, salvation-contemning love for a tinker. how, while he hid from sir thomas's keepers, crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight dews, he had listened to gipsy juliet rail at the dawning. how at bankside, a boy drowning kittens winced at the business; whereupon his sister (lady macbeth aged seven) thrust 'em under, sombrely scornful. how on a sabbath, hushed and compassionate-- she being known since her birth to the townsfolk-- stratford dredged and delivered from avon dripping ophelia. so, with a thin third finger marrying drop to wine-drop domed on the table, shakespeare opened his heart till sunrise entered to hear him. london wakened and he, imperturbable, passed from waking to hurry after shadows ... busied upon shows of no earthly importance? yes, but he knew it! things and the man (in memoriam, joseph chamberlain) 'and joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren; and they hated him yet the more.'--_genesis_ xxxvii. . oh ye who hold the written clue to all save all unwritten things, and, half a league behind, pursue the accomplished fact with flouts and flings, look! to your knee your baby brings the oldest tale since earth began-- the answer to your worryings _'once on a time there was a man.'_ he, single-handed, met and slew magicians, armies, ogres, kings. he lonely 'mid his doubting crew-- 'in all the loneliness of wings'-- he fed the flame, he filled the springs, he locked the ranks, he launched the van straight at the grinning teeth of things. _'once on a time there was a man.'_ the peace of shocked foundations flew before his ribald questionings. he broke the oracles in two, and bared the paltry wires and strings. he headed desert wanderings, he led his soul, his cause, his clan a little from the ruck of things. _'once on a time there was a man.'_ thrones, powers, dominions block the view with episodes and underlings-- the meek historian deems them true nor heeds the song that clio sings-- the simple central truth that stings the mob to boo, the priest to ban; _things never yet created things-- 'once on a time there was a man.'_ a bolt is fallen from the blue. a wakened realm full circle swings where dothan's dreamer dreams anew of vast and farborne harvestings; and unto him an empire clings that grips the purpose of his plan. my lords, how think you of these things? _once--in our time--is there a man?_ the benefactors _ah! what avails the classic bent and what the cultured word, against the undoctored incident that actually occurred?_ _and what is art whereto we press through paint and prose and rhyme-- when nature in her nakedness defeats us every time?_ it is not learning, grace nor gear, nor easy meat and drink, but bitter pinch of pain and fear that makes creation think. when in this world's unpleasing youth our god-like race began, the longest arm, the sharpest tooth, gave man control of man; till, bruised and bitten to the bone and taught by pain and fear, he learned to deal the far-off stone, and poke the long, safe spear. so tooth and nail were obsolete as means against a foe, till, bored by uniform defeat, some genius built the bow. then stone and javelin proved as vain as old-time tooth and nail, ere, spurred anew by fear and pain, man fashioned coats of mail. then was there safety for the rich and danger for the poor, till someone mixed a powder which redressed the scale once more. helmet and armour disappeared with sword and bow and pike, and, when the smoke of battle cleared, all men were armed alike.... and when ten million such were slain to please one crazy king, man, schooled in bulk by fear and pain, grew weary of the thing; and, at the very hour designed, to enslave him past recall, his tooth-stone-arrow-gun-shy mind turned and abolished all. * * * * * _all power, each tyrant, every mob whose head has grown too large, ends by destroying its own job and earns its own discharge._ _and man, whose mere necessities move all things from his path, trembles meanwhile at their decrees, and deprecates their wrath!_ the dead king (edward vii.) _who in the realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear? and, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run? let him approach. it is proven here our king asks nothing of any man more than our king himself has done._ for to him above all was life good, above all he commanded her abundance full-handed. the peculiar treasure of kings was his for the taking: all that men come to in dreams he inherited waking:-- his marvel of world-gathered armies--one heart and all races, his seas 'neath his keels when his war-castles foamed to their places; the thundering foreshores that answered his heralded landing; the huge lighted cities adoring, the assemblies upstanding; the councils of kings called in haste to learn how he was minded-- the kingdoms, the powers, and the glories he dealt with unblinded. to him came all captains of men, all achievers of glory, hot from the press of their battles they told him their story. they revealed him their life in an hour and, saluting, departed, joyful to labour afresh--he had made them new-hearted. and, since he weighed men from his youth, and no lie long deceived him, he spoke and exacted the truth, and the basest believed him. and god poured him an exquisite wine, that was daily renewed to him, in the clear-welling love of his peoples that daily accrued to him. honour and service we gave him, rejoicingly fearless; faith absolute, trust beyond speech and a friendship as peerless. and since he was master and servant in all that we asked him, we leaned hard on his wisdom in all things, knowing not how we tasked him. for on him each new day laid command, every tyrannous hour, to confront, or confirm, or make smooth some dread issue of power; to deliver true judgment aright at the instant, unaided, in the strict, level, ultimate phrase that allowed or dissuaded; to foresee, to allay, to avert from us perils unnumbered, to stand guard on our gates when he guessed that the watchmen had slumbered; to win time, to turn hate, to woo folly to service and, mightily schooling his strength to the use of his nations, to rule as not ruling. these were the works of our king; earth's peace was the proof of them. god gave him great works to fulfil, and to us the behoof of them. we accepted his toil as our right--none spared, none excused him. when he was bowed by his burden his rest was refused him. we troubled his age with our weakness--the blacker our shame to us! hearing his people had need of him, straightway he came to us. as he received so he gave--nothing grudged, naught denying, not even the last gasp of his breath when he strove for us, dying for our sakes, without question, he put from him all that he cherished. simply as any that serve him he served and he perished. all that kings covet was his, and he flung it aside for us. simply as any that die in his service he died for us. _who in the realm to-day has choice of the easy road or the hard to tread? and, much concerned for his own estate, would sell his soul to remain in the sun? let him depart nor look on our dead. our king asks nothing of any man more than our king himself has done._ a death-bed 'this is the state above the law. the state exists for the state alone.' [_this is a gland at the back of the jaw,_ _and an answering lump by the collar-bone._] some die shouting in gas or fire; some die silent, by shell and shot. some die desperate, caught on the wire; some die suddenly. this will not. 'regis suprema voluntas lex.' [_it will follow the regular course of--throats._] some die pinned by the broken decks, some die sobbing between the boats. some die eloquent, pressed to death by the sliding trench, as their friends can hear. some die wholly in half a breath some--give trouble for half a year. 'there is neither evil nor good in life except as the needs of the state ordain.' [_since it is rather too late for the knife, all we can do is to mask the pain._] some die saintly in faith and hope-- one died thus in a prison-yard-- some die broken by rape or the rope; some die easily. this dies hard. 'i will dash to pieces who bar my way. woe to the traitor! woe to the weak!' [_let him write what he wishes to say. it tires him out if he tries to speak._] some die quietly. some abound in loud self-pity. others spread bad morale through the cots around ... this is a type that is better dead. 'the war was forced on me by my foes. all that i sought was the right to live.' [_don't be afraid of a triple dose; the pain will neutralize half we give._ _here are the needles. see that he dies while the effects of the drug endure.... what is the question he asks with his eyes?-- yes, all-highest, to god, be sure._] gehazi 'whence comest thou, gehazi, so reverend to behold, in scarlet and in ermines and chain of england's gold?' 'from following after naaman to tell him all is well, whereby my zeal hath made me a judge in israel.' well done, well done, gehazi, stretch forth thy ready hand, thou barely 'scaped from judgment, take oath to judge the land, unswayed by gift of money or privy bribe, more base, of knowledge which is profit in any market-place. search out and probe, gehazi, as thou of all canst try, the truthful, well-weighed answer that tells the blacker lie-- the loud, uneasy virtue, the anger feigned at will, to overbear a witness and make the court keep still. take order now, gehazi, that no man talk aside in secret with his judges the while his case is tried. lest he should show them--reason to keep a matter hid, and subtly lead the questions away from what he did. thou mirror of uprightness, what ails thee at thy vows? what means the risen whiteness of the skin between thy brows? the boils that shine and burrow, the sores that slough and bleed-- the leprosy of naaman on thee and all thy seed? stand up, stand up, gehazi, draw close thy robe and go, gehazi, judge in israel, a leper white as snow! the virginity try as he will, no man breaks wholly loose from his first love, no matter who she be. oh, was there ever sailor free to choose, that didn't settle somewhere near the sea? myself, it don't excite me nor amuse to watch a pack o' shipping on the sea, but i can understand my neighbour's views from certain things which have occurred to me. men must keep touch with things they used to use to earn their living, even when they are free; and so come back upon the least excuse-- same as the sailor settled near the sea. he knows he's never going on no cruise-- he knows he's done and finished with the sea, and yet he likes to feel she's there to use-- if he should ask her--as she used to be. even though she cost him all he had to lose, even though she made him sick to hear or see, still, what she left of him will mostly choose her skirts to sit by. how comes such to be? _parsons in pulpits, tax-payers in pews, kings on your thrones, you know as well as me, we've only one virginity to lose, and where we lost it there our hearts will be!_ a pilgrim's way i do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way, or male and female devilkins to lead my feet astray. if these are added, i rejoice--if not, i shall not mind, so long as i have leave and choice to meet my fellow-kind. for as we come and as we go (and deadly-soon go we!) the people, lord, thy people, are good enough for me! thus i will honour pious men whose virtue shines so bright (though none are more amazed than i when i by chance do right), and i will pity foolish men for woe their sins have bred (though ninety-nine per cent. of mine i brought on my own head) and, amorite or eremite, or general averagee, the people, lord, thy people, are good enough for me! and when they bore me overmuch, i will not shake mine ears, recalling many thousand such whom i have bored to tears. and when they labour to impress, i will not doubt nor scoff; since i myself have done no less and--sometimes pulled it off. yea, as we are and we are not, and we pretend to be, the people, lord, thy people, are good enough for me! and when they work me random wrong, as often-times hath been, i will not cherish hate too long (my hands are none too clean) and when they do me random good i will not feign surprise, no more than those whom i have cheered with wayside charities. but, as we give and as we take--whate'er our takings be-- the people, lord, thy people, are good enough for me! but when i meet with frantic folk who sinfully declare there is no pardon for their sin, the same i will not spare till i have proved that heaven and hell which in our hearts we have show nothing irredeemable on either side the grave. for as we live and as we die--if utter death there be-- the people, lord, thy people, are good enough for me! deliver me from every pride--the middle, high, and low-- that bars me from a brother's side, whatever pride he show. and purge me from all heresies of thought and speech and pen that bid me judge him otherwise than i am judged. _amen!_ that i may sing of crowd or king or road-borne company, that i may labour in my day, vocation and degree, to prove the same in deed and name, and hold unshakenly (where'er i go, whate'er i know, whoe'er my neighbour be) this single faith in life and death and all eternity 'the people, lord, thy people, are good enough for me!' the oldest song for before eve was lilith--_old tale._ these were never your true love's eyes. why do you feign that you love them? you that broke from their constancies, and the wide calm brows above them! this was never your true love's speech. why do you thrill when you hear it? you that have ridden out of its reach the width of the world or near it! this was never your true love's hair,-- you that chafed when it bound you screened from knowledge or shame or care, in the night that it made around you! '_all these things i know, i know._ _and that's why my heart is breaking!_' then what do you gain by pretending so? '_the joy of an old wound waking._' natural theology primitive i ate my fill of a whale that died, and stranded after a month at sea.... there is a pain in my inside. why have the gods afflicted me? ow! i am purged till i am a wraith! wow! i am sick till i cannot see! what is the sense of religion and faith? look how the gods have afflicted me! pagan how can the skin of rat or mouse hold anything more than a harmless flea?... the burning plague has taken my household. why have my gods afflicted me? all my kith and kin are deceased, though they were as good as good could be. i will out and batter the family priest, because my gods have afflicted me. mediÆval my privy and well drain into each other after the custom of christendie.... fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother. why has the lord afflicted me? the saints are helpless for all i offer-- so are the clergy i used to fee henceforward i keep my cash in my coffer, because the lord has afflicted me. material i run eight hundred hens to the acre. they die by dozens mysteriously.... i am more than doubtful concerning my maker. why has the lord afflicted me? what a return for all my endeavour-- not to mention the l. s. d.! i am an atheist now and for ever, because this god has afflicted me! progressive money spent on an army or fleet is homicidal lunacy.... my son has been killed in the mons retreat. why is the lord afflicting me? why are murder, pillage and arson and rape allowed by the deity? i will write to the _times_, deriding our parson because my god has afflicted me. chorus we had a kettle, we let it leak; our not repairing it made it worse. we haven't had any tea for a week.... the bottom is out of the universe! conclusion this was none of the good lord's pleasure, for the spirit he breathed in man is free; but what comes after is measure for measure and not a god that afflicteth thee. as was the sowing so the reaping is now and evermore shall be. thou art delivered to thy own keeping. only thyself hath afflicted thee! a song at cock-crow '_ille autem iterum negavit._' the first time that peter deniéd his lord he shrank from the cudgel, the scourge and the cord, but followed far off to see what they would do, till the cock crew--till the cock crew-- after gethsemane, till the cock crew! the first time that peter deniéd his lord 'twas only a maid in the palace who heard, as he sat by the fire and warmed himself through. then the cock crew! then the cock crew! ('thou also art one of them.') then the cock crew! the first time that peter deniéd his lord he had neither the throne, nor the keys nor the sword-- a poor silly fisherman, what could he do when the cock crew--when the cock crew-- but weep for his wickedness when the cock crew? * * * * * the next time that peter deniéd his lord he was fisher of men, as foretold by the word, with the crown on his brow and the cross on his shoe, when the cock crew--when the cock crew-- _in flanders and picardy when the cock crew_. the next time that peter deniéd his lord 'twas mary the mother in heaven who heard, and she grieved for the maidens and wives that they slew when the cock crew--when the cock crew-- _at tirmonde and aerschott when the cock crew_. the next time that peter deniéd his lord the babe in the manger awakened and stirred, and he stretched out his arms for the playmates he knew-- when the cock crew--when the cock crew-- _but the waters had covered them when the cock crew_. the next time that peter deniéd his lord 'twas earth in her agony waited his word, but he sat by the fire and naught would he do, though the cock crew--though the cock crew-- _over all christendom, though the cock crew_. the last time that peter deniéd his lord, the father took from him the keys and the sword, and the mother and babe brake his kingdom in two, when the cock crew--when the cock crew-- (_because of his wickedness_) _when the cock crew_! the female of the species when the himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, he shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. but the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail for the female of the species is more deadly than the male. when nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man, he will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it as he can. but his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail. for the female of the species is more deadly than the male. when the early jesuit fathers preached to hurons and choctaws, they prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws. 'twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale for the female of the species is more deadly than the male. man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say, for the woman that god gave him isn't his to give away; but when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale-- the female of the species is more deadly than the male. man, a bear in most relations--worm and savage otherwise,-- man propounds negotiations, man accepts the compromise. very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact to its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act. fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, to concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe. mirth obscene diverts his anger! doubt and pity oft perplex him in dealing with an issue--to the scandal of the sex! but the woman that god gave him, every fibre of her frame proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same; and to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, the female of the species must be deadlier than the male. she who faces death by torture for each life beneath her breast may not deal in doubt or pity--must not swerve for fact or jest. these be purely male diversions--not in these her honour dwells. she the other law we live by, is that law and nothing else. she can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great as the mother of the infant and the mistress of the mate! and when babe and man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same. she is wedded to convictions--in default of grosser ties; her contentions are her children, heaven help him who denies!-- he will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child. unprovoked and awful charges--even so the she-bear fights, speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons--even so the cobra bites, scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw and the victim writhes in anguish--like the jesuit with the squaw! so it comes that man the coward, when he gathers to confer with his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her where, at war with life and conscience, he uplifts his erring hands to some god of abstract justice--which no woman understands. and man knows it! knows, moreover, that the woman that god gave him must command but may not govern--shall enthral but not enslave him. and _she_ knows, because she warns him and her instincts never fail, that the female of her species is more deadly than the male. epitaphs 'equality of sacrifice' _a._ 'i was a "have."' _b._ 'i was a "have-not."' (_together_) 'what hast thou given which i gave not?' a servant we were together since the war began he was my servant--and the better man. a son my son was killed while laughing at some jest. i would i knew what it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few. an only son i have slain none except my mother, she (blessing her slayer) died of grief for me. ex-clerk pity not! the army gave freedom to a timid slave: in which freedom did he find strength of body, will, and mind: by which strength he came to prove mirth, companionship, and love: for which love to death he went: in which death he lies content. the wonder body and spirit i surrendered whole to harsh instructors--and received a soul ... if mortal man could change me through and through from all i was--what may the god not do? hindu sepoy in france this man in his own country prayed we know not to what powers. we pray them to reward him for his bravery in ours. the coward i could not look on death, which being known, men led me to him, blindfold and alone. shock my name, my speech, my self i had forgot. my wife and children came--i knew them not. i died. my mother followed. at her call and on her bosom i remembered all. a grave near cairo gods of the nile, should this stout fellow here get out--get out! he knows not shame nor fear. pelicans in the wilderness (a grave near halfa) the blown sand heaps on me, that none may learn where i am laid for whom my children grieve.... o wings that beat at dawning, ye return out of the desert to your young at eve! the favour death favoured me from the first, well knowing i could not endure to wait on him day by day. he quitted my betters and came whistling over the fields, and, when he had made all sure, 'thy line is at end,' he said, 'but at least i have saved its name.' the beginner on the first hour of my first day in the front trench i fell. (children in boxes at a play stand up to watch it well.) r. a. f. (aged eighteen) laughing through clouds, his milk-teeth still unshed, cities and men he smote from overhead. his deaths delivered, he returned to play childlike, with childish things now put away. the refined man i was of delicate mind. i went aside for my needs, disdaining the common office. i was seen from afar and killed.... how is this matter for mirth? let each man be judged by his deeds _i have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that i willed._ native water-carrier (m. e. f.) prometheus brought down fire to men. this brought up water. the gods are jealous--now, as then, they gave no quarter. bombed in london on land and sea i strove with anxious care to escape conscription. it was in the air! the sleepy sentinel faithless the watch that i kept: now i have none to keep. i was slain because i slept: now i am slain i sleep. let no man reproach me again, whatever watch is unkept-- i sleep because i am slain. they slew me because i slept. batteries out of ammunition if any mourn us in the workshop, say we died because the shift kept holiday. common form if any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied. a dead statesman i could not dig; i dared not rob: therefore i lied to please the mob. now all my lies are proved untrue, and i must face the men i slew. what tale shall save me here among mine angry and defrauded young? the rebel if i had clamoured at thy gate for gift of life on earth, and, thrusting through the souls that wait, flung headlong into birth-- even then, even then, for gin and snare about my pathway spread, lord, i had mocked thy thoughtful care before i joined the dead! but now?... i was beneath thy hand ere yet the planets came. and now--though planets pass, i stand the witness to thy shame. the obedient daily, though no ears attended, did my prayers arise daily, though no fire descended did i sacrifice.... though my darkness did not lift, though i faced no lighter odds, though the gods bestowed no gift, none the less, none the less, i served the gods! a drifter off tarentum he from the wind-bitten north with ship and companions descended, searching for eggs of death spawned by invisible hulls. many he found and drew forth. of a sudden the fishery ended in flame and a clamorous breath not new to the eye-pecking gulls. destroyers in collision for fog and fate no charm is found to lighten or amend. i, hurrying to my bride, was drowned-- cut down by my best friend. convoy escort i was a shepherd to fools causelessly bold or afraid. they would not abide by my rules. yet they escaped. for i stayed. unknown female corpse headless, lacking foot and hand, horrible i come to land. i beseech all women's sons know i was a mother once. raped and revenged one used and butchered me: another spied me broken--for which thing a hundred died. so it was learned among the heathen hosts how much a freeborn woman's favour costs. salonikan grave i have watched a thousand days push out and crawl into night slowly as tortoises now i, too, follow these. it is fever, and not fight-- time, not battle--that slays. the bridegroom call me not false, beloved, if, from thy scarce-known breast so little time removed, in other arms i rest. for this more ancient bride whom coldly i embrace was constant at my side before i saw thy face. our marriage, often set-- by miracle delayed-- at last is consummate, and cannot be unmade. live, then, whom life shall cure, almost, of memory, and leave us to endure its immortality. v. a. d. (mediterranean) ah, would swift ships had never been, for then we ne'er had found, these harsh Ægean rocks between, this little virgin drowned, whom neither spouse nor child shall mourn, but men she nursed through pain and--certain keels for whose return the heathen look in vain. 'the city of brass' here was a people whom after their works thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion: and in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. _the arabian nights_ _in a land that the sand overlays--the ways to her gates are untrod-- a multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by god, till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, and of these is a story written: but allah alone knoweth all!_ when the wine stirred in their heart their bosoms dilated, they rose to suppose themselves kings over all things created-- to decree a new earth at a birth without labour or sorrow-- to declare: 'we prepare it to-day and inherit to-morrow.' they chose themselves prophets and priests of minute understanding, men swift to see done, and outrun, their extremest commanding-- of the tribe which describe with a jibe the perversions of justice-- panders avowed to the crowd whatsoever its lust is. swiftly these pulled down the walls that their fathers had made them-- the impregnable ramparts of old, they razed and relaid them as playgrounds of pleasure and leisure with limitless entries, and havens of rest for the wastrels where once walked the sentries; and because there was need of more pay for the shouters and marchers, they disbanded in face of their foemen their bowmen and archers. they replied to their well-wishers' fears--to their enemies' laughter, saying: 'peace! we have fashioned a god which shall save us hereafter. we ascribe all dominion to man in his factions conferring, and have given to numbers the name of the wisdom unerring.' they said: 'who has hate in his soul? who has envied his neighbour? let him arise and control both that man and his labour.' they said: 'who is eaten by sloth? whose unthrift has destroyed him? he shall levy a tribute from all because none have employed him.' they said: 'who hath toiled? who hath striven, and gathered possession? let him be spoiled. he hath given full proof of transgression.' they said. 'who is irked by the law? _though we may not remove it, if he lend us his aid in this raid, we will set him above it!_' so the robber did judgment again upon such as displeased him, the slayer, too, boasted his slain, and the judges released him. as for their kinsmen far off, on the skirts of the nation, they harried all earth to make sure none escaped reprobation, they awakened unrest for a jest in their newly-won borders, and jeered at the blood of their brethren betrayed by their orders. they instructed the ruled to rebel, their rulers to aid them; and, since such as obeyed them not fell, their viceroys obeyed them. when the riotous set them at naught they said: 'praise the upheaval! for the show and the word and the thought of dominion is evil!' they unwound and flung from them with rage, as a rag that defiled them the imperial gains of the age which their forefathers piled them. they ran panting in haste to lay waste and embitter for ever the wellsprings of wisdom and strength which are faith and endeavour. they nosed out and digged up and dragged forth and exposed to derision all doctrine of purpose and worth and restraint and prevision: and it ceased, and god granted them all things for which they had striven, and the heart of a beast in the place of a man's heart was given.... * * * * * when they were fullest of wine and most flagrant in error, out of the sea rose a sign--out of heaven a terror. then they saw, then they heard, then they knew--for none troubled to hide it, an host had prepared their destruction, but still they denied it. they denied what they dared not abide if it came to the trial, but the sword that was forged while they lied did not heed their denial. it drove home, and no time was allowed to the crowd that was driven. the preposterous-minded were cowed--they thought time would be given. there was no need of a steed nor a lance to pursue them; it was decreed their own deed, and not chance, should undo them the tares they had laughingly sown were ripe to the reaping, the trust they had leagued to disown was removed from their keeping. the eaters of other men's bread, the exempted from hardship, the excusers of impotence fled, abdicating their wardship. for the hate they had taught through the state brought the state no defender, and it passed from the roll of the nations in headlong surrender. justice october _across a world where all men grieve and grieving strive the more, the great days range like tides and leave our dead on every shore. heavy the load we undergo, and our own hands prepare, if we have parley with the foe, the load our sons must bear._ before we loose the word that bids new worlds to birth, needs must we loosen first the sword of justice upon earth; or else all else is vain since life on earth began, and the spent world sinks back again hopeless of god and man. a people and their king through ancient sin grown strong, because they feared no reckoning would set no bound to wrong; but now their hour is past, and we who bore it find evil incarnate held at last to answer to mankind. for agony and spoil of nations beat to dust, for poisoned air and tortured soil and cold, commanded lust, and every secret woe the shuddering waters saw-- willed and fulfilled by high and low-- let them relearn the law. that when the dooms are read, not high nor low shall say:-- 'my haughty or my humble head has saved me in this day.' that, till the end of time, their remnant shall recall their fathers' old, confederate crime availed them not at all. that neither schools nor priests, nor kings may build again a people with the heart of beasts made wise concerning men. whereby our dead shall sleep in honour, unbetrayed, and we in faith and honour keep that peace for which they paid. printed by t and a constable, printers to his majesty at the edinburgh university press "captains courageous" a story of the grand banks by rudyard kipling chapter i the weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the north atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the fishing-fleet. "that cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "he isn't wanted here. he's too fresh." a white-haired german reached for a sandwich, and grunted between bites: "i know der breed. ameriga is full of dot kind. i dell you you should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff." "pshaw! there isn't any real harm to him. he's more to be pitied than anything," a man from new york drawled, as he lay at full length along the cushions under the wet skylight. "they've dragged him around from hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. i was talking to his mother this morning. she's a lovely lady, but she don't pretend to manage him. he's going to europe to finish his education." "education isn't begun yet." this was a philadelphian, curled up in a corner. "that boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he told me. he isn't sixteen either." "railroads, his father, aind't it?" said the german. "yep. that and mines and lumber and shipping. built one place at san diego, the old man has; another at los angeles; owns half a dozen railroads, half the lumber on the pacific slope, and lets his wife spend the money," the philadelphian went on lazily. "the west don't suit her, she says. she just tracks around with the boy and her nerves, trying to find out what'll amuse him, i guess. florida, adirondacks, lakewood, hot springs, new york, and round again. he isn't much more than a second-hand hotel clerk now. when he's finished in europe he'll be a holy terror." "what's the matter with the old man attending to him personally?" said a voice from the frieze ulster. "old man's piling up the rocks. 'don't want to be disturbed, i guess. he'll find out his error a few years from now. 'pity, because there's a heap of good in the boy if you could get at it." "mit a rope's end; mit a rope's end!" growled the german. once more the door banged, and a slight, slim-built boy perhaps fifteen years old, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth, leaned in over the high footway. his pasty yellow complexion did not show well on a person of his years, and his look was a mixture of irresolution, bravado, and very cheap smartness. he was dressed in a cherry-coloured blazer, knickerbockers, red stockings, and bicycle shoes, with a red flannel cap at the back of the head. after whistling between his teeth, as he eyed the company, he said in a loud, high voice: "say, it's thick outside. you can hear the fish-boats squawking all around us. say, wouldn't it be great if we ran down one?" "shut the door, harvey," said the new yorker. "shut the door and stay outside. you're not wanted here." "who'll stop me?" he answered deliberately. "did you pay for my passage, mister martin? 'guess i've as good right here as the next man." he picked up some dice from a checker-board and began throwing, right hand against left. "say, gen'elmen, this is deader'n mud. can't we make a game of poker between us?" there was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs, and drummed on the table with rather dirty fingers. then he pulled out a roll of bills as if to count them. "how's your mamma this afternoon?" a man said. "i didn't see her at lunch." "in her state-room, i guess. she's 'most always sick on the ocean. i'm going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking after her. i don't go down more 'n i can avoid. it makes me feel mysterious to pass that butler's-pantry place. say, this is the first time i've been on the ocean." "oh, don't apologise, harvey." "who's apologising? this is the first time i've crossed the ocean, gen'elmen, and, except the first day, i haven't been sick one little bit. no, sir!" he brought down his fist with a triumphant bang, wetted his finger, and went on counting the bills. "oh, you're a high-grade machine, with the writing in plain sight," the philadelphian yawned. "you'll blossom into a credit to your country if you don't take care." "i know it. i'm an american--first, last, and all the time. i'll show 'em that when i strike europe. pif! my cig's out. i can't smoke the truck the steward sells. any gen'elman got a real turkish cig on him?" the chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet. "say, mac," cried harvey, cheerfully, "how are we hitting it?" "vara much in the ordinary way," was the grave reply. "the young are as polite as ever to their elders, an' their elders are e'en tryin' to appreciate it." a low chuckle came from a corner. the german opened his cigar-case and handed a skinny black cigar to harvey. "dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt," he said. "you vill dry it? yes? den you vill be efer so happy." harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was getting on in grown-up society. "it would take more 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that he was lighting that terrible article, a wheeling 'stogie'. "dot we shall bresently see," said the german. "where are we now, mr. mactonal'?" "just there or thereabouts, mr. schaefer," said the engineer. "we'll be on the grand bank to-night; but in a general way o' speakin', we're all among the fishing-fleet now. we've shaved three dories an' near skelped the boom off a frenchman since noon, an' that's close sailin', ye may say." "you like my cigar, eh?" the german asked, for harvey's eyes were full of tears. "fine, full flavour," he answered through shut teeth. "guess we've slowed down a little, haven't we? i'll skip out and see what the log says." "i might if i vhas you," said the german. harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. he was very unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together, and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the stern, which was finished in a turtle-back. the deck was deserted, and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the flagpole. there he doubled up in limp agony, for the wheeling "stogie" joined with the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out his soul. his head swelled; sparks of fire danced before his eyes; his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels wavered in the breeze. he was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the turtle-back. then a low, grey mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked harvey under one arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and away to leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep. he was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to blow at a summer-school he had once attended in the adirondacks. slowly he remembered that he was harvey cheyne, drowned and dead in mid-ocean, but was too weak to fit things together. a new smell filled his nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and he was helplessly full of salt water. when he opened his eyes, he perceived that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him in silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a pile of half-dead fish, looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey. "it's no good," thought the boy. "i'm dead, sure enough, and this thing is in charge." he groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little gold rings half hidden in curly black hair. "aha! you feel some pretty well now'?" it said. "lie still so: we trim better." with a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy pit beyond. but this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey's talk. "fine good job, i say, that i catch you. eh, wha-at? better good job, i say, your boat not catch me. how you come to fall out?" "i was sick," said harvey; "sick, and couldn't help it." "just in time i blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. then i see you come all down. eh, wha-at? i think you are cut into baits by the screw, but you dreeft--dreeft to me, and i make a big fish of you. so you shall not die this time." "where am i?" said harvey, who could not see that life was particularly safe where he lay. "you are with me in the dory--manuel my name, and i come from schooner 'we're here' of gloucester. i live to gloucester. by-and-by we get supper. eh, wha-at?" he seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. how long this entertainment lasted, harvey could not remember, for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. he fancied he heard a gun and a horn and shouting. something bigger than the dory, but quite as lively, loomed alongside. several voices talked at once; he was dropped into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink and took off his clothes, and he fell asleep. when he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the steamer, wondering why his stateroom had grown so small. turning, he looked into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge square beam. a three-cornered table within arm's reach ran from the angle of the bows to the foremast. at the after end, behind a well-used plymouth stove, sat a boy about his own age, with a flat red face and a pair of twinkling grey eyes. he was dressed in a blue jersey and high rubber boots. several pairs of the same sort of foot-wear, an old cap, and some worn-out woolen socks lay on the floor, and black and yellow oilskins swayed to and fro beside the bunks. the place was packed as full of smells as a bale is of cotton. the oilskins had a peculiarly thick flavour of their own which made a sort of background to the smells of fried fish, burnt grease, paint, pepper, and stale tobacco; but these, again, were all hooped together by one encircling smell of ship and salt water. harvey saw with disgust that there were no sheets on his bed-place. he was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of lumps and nubbles. then, too, the boat's motion was not that of a steamer. she was neither sliding nor rolling, but rather wriggling herself about in a silly, aimless way, like a colt at the end of a halter. water-noises ran by close to his ear, and beams creaked and whined about him. all these things made him grunt despairingly and think of his mother. "feelin' better?" said the boy, with a grin. "hev some coffee?" he brought a tin cup full, and sweetened it with molasses. "is n't there milk?" said harvey, looking round the dark double tier of bunks as if he expected to find a cow there. "well, no," said the boy. "ner there ain't likely to be till 'baout mid-september. 'tain't bad coffee. i made it." harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of pieces of crisp fried pork, which he ate ravenously. "i've dried your clothes. guess they've shrunk some," said the boy. "they ain't our style much--none of 'em. twist round an' see ef you're hurt any." harvey stretched himself in every direction, but could not report any injuries. "that's good," the boy said heartily. "fix yerself an' go on deck. dad wants to see you. i'm his son,--dan, they call me,--an' i'm cook's helper an' everything else aboard that's too dirty for the men. there ain't no boy here 'cep' me sence otto went overboard--an' he was only a dutchy, an' twenty year old at that. how'd you come to fall off in a dead flat ca'am?" "'twasn't a calm," said harvey, sulkily. "it was a gale, and i was seasick. guess i must have rolled over the rail." "there was a little common swell yes'day an' last night," said the boy. "but ef thet's your notion of a gale----" he whistled. "you'll know more 'fore you're through. hurry! dad's waitin'." like many other unfortunate young people, harvey had never in all his life received a direct order--never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. mrs. cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. he could not see why he should be expected to hurry for any man's pleasure, and said so. "your dad can come down here if he's so anxious to talk to me. i want him to take me to new york right away. it'll pay him." dan opened his eyes, as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him. "say, dad!" he shouted up the fo'c'sle hatch, "he says you kin slip down an' see him ef you're anxious that way. 'hear, dad?" the answer came back in the deepest voice harvey had ever heard from a human chest: "quit foolin', dan, and send him to me." dan sniggered, and threw harvey his warped bicycle shoes. there was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father's wealth on the voyage home. this rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for life. he hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with grey eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck. the swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. the schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof--"house" they call it--she was deserted. "mornin'--good afternoon, i should say. you've nigh slep' the clock around, young feller," was the greeting. "mornin'," said harvey. he did not like being called "young feller"; and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy. his mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this mariner did not seem excited. "naow let's hear all abaout it. it's quite providential, first an' last, fer all concerned. what might be your name? where from (we mistrust it's noo york), an' where baound (we mistrust it's europe)?" harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history of the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back immediately to new york, where his father would pay anything any one chose to name. "h'm," said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of harvey's speech. "i can't say we think special of any man, or boy even, that falls overboard from that kind o' packet in a flat ca'am. least of all when his excuse is thet he's seasick." "excuse!" cried harvey. "d'you suppose i'd fall overboard into your dirty little boat for fun?" "not knowin' what your notions o' fun may be, i can't rightly say, young feller. but if i was you, i wouldn't call the boat which, under providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. in the first place, it's blame irreligious. in the second, it's annoyin' to my feelin's--an' i'm disko troop o' the "we're here" o' gloucester, which you don't seem rightly to know." "i don't know and i don't care," said harvey. "i'm grateful enough for being saved and all that, of course; but i want you to understand that the sooner you take me back to new york the better it'll pay you." "meanin'--haow?" troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a suspiciously mild blue eye. "dollars and cents," said harvey, delighted to think that he was making an impression. "cold dollars and cents." he thrust a hand into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his way of being grand. "you've done the best day's work you ever did in your life when you pulled me in. i'm all the son harvey cheyne has." "he's bin favoured," said disko, drily. "and if you don't know who harvey cheyne is, you don't know much--that's all. now turn her around and let's hurry." harvey had a notion that the greater part of america was filled with people discussing and envying his father's dollars. "mebbe i do, an' mebbe i don't. take a reef in your stummick, young feller. it's full o' my vittles." harvey heard a chuckle from dan, who was pretending to be busy by the stump-foremast, and the blood rushed to his face. "we'll pay for that too," he said. "when do you suppose we shall get to new york?" "i don't use noo york any. ner boston. we may see eastern point about september; an' your pa--i'm real sorry i hain't heerd tell of him--may give me ten dollars efter all your talk. then o' course he mayn't." "ten dollars! why, see here, i--" harvey dived into his pocket for the wad of bills. all he brought up was a soggy packet of cigarettes. "not lawful currency, an' bad for the lungs. heave 'em overboard, young feller, and try ag'in." "it's been stolen!" cried harvey, hotly. "you'll hev to wait till you see your pa to reward me, then?" "a hundred and thirty-four dollars--all stolen," said harvey, hunting wildly through his pockets. "give them back." a curious change flitted across old troop's hard face. "what might you have been doin' at your time o' life with one hundred an' thirty-four dollars, young feller?" "it was part of my pocket-money--for a month." this harvey thought would be a knockdown blow, and it was--indirectly. oh! one hundred and thirty-four dollars is only part of his pocket-money--for one month only! you don't remember hittin' anything when you fell over, do you? crack ag'in' a stanchion, le's say. old man hasken o' the "east wind"--troop seemed to be talking to himself--"he tripped on a hatch an' butted the mainmast with his head--hardish. 'baout three weeks afterwards, old man hasken he would hev it that the "east wind" was a commerce-destroyin' man-o'-war, an' so he declared war on sable island because it was bridish, an' the shoals run aout too far. they sewed him up in a bed-bag, his head an' feet appearin', fer the rest o' the trip, an' now he's to home in essex playin' with little rag dolls." harvey choked with rage, but troop went on consolingly: "we're sorry fer you. we're very sorry fer you--an' so young. we won't say no more abaout the money, i guess." "'course you won't. you stole it." "suit yourself. we stole it ef it's any comfort to you. naow, abaout goin' back. allowin' we could do it, which we can't, you ain't in no fit state to go back to your home, an' we've jest come on to the banks, workin' fer our bread. we don't see the ha'af of a hundred dollars a month, let alone pocket-money; an' with good luck we'll be ashore again somewheres abaout the first weeks o' september." "but--but it's may now, and i can't stay here doin' nothing just because you want to fish. i can't, i tell you!" "right an' jest; jest an' right. no one asks you to do nothin'. there's a heap as you can do, for otto he went overboard on le have. i mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we f'und there. anyways, he never come back to deny it. you've turned up, plain, plumb providential for all concerned. i mistrust, though, there's ruther few things you kin do. ain't thet so?" "i can make it lively for you and your crowd when we get ashore," said harvey, with a vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about "piracy," at which troop almost--not quite--smiled. "excep' talk. i'd forgot that. you ain't asked to talk more'n you've a mind to aboard the "we're here". keep your eyes open, an' help dan to do ez he's bid, an' sechlike, an' i'll give you--you ain't wuth it, but i'll give--ten an' a ha'af a month; say thirty-five at the end o' the trip. a little work will ease up your head, an' you kin tell us all abaout your dad an' your ma n' your money efterwards." "she's on the steamer," said harvey, his eyes fill-with tears. "take me to new york at once." "poor woman--poor woman! when she has you back she'll forgit it all, though. there's eight of us on the "we're here", an' ef we went back naow--it's more'n a thousand mile--we'd lose the season. the men they wouldn't hev it, allowin' i was agreeable." "but my father would make it all right." "he'd try. i don't doubt he'd try," said troop; "but a whole season's catch is eight men's bread; an' you'll be better in your health when you see him in the fall. go forward an' help dan. it's ten an' a ha'af a month, ez i said, an', o' course, all f'und, same ez the rest o' us." "do you mean i'm to clean pots and pans and things?" said harvey. "an' other things. you've no call to shout, young feller." "i won't! my father will give you enough to buy this dirty little fish-kettle"--harvey stamped on the deck--"ten times over, if you take me to new york safe; and--and--you're in a hundred and thirty by me, anyway." "ha-ow?" said troop, the iron face darkening. "how? you know how, well enough. on top of all that, you want me to do menial work"--harvey was very proud of that adjective--"till the fall. i tell you i will not. you hear?" troop regarded the top of the mainmast with deep interest for a while, as harvey harangued fiercely all around him. "hsh!" he said at last. "i'm figurin' out my responsibilities in my own mind. it's a matter o' jedgment." dan stole up and plucked harvey by the elbow. "don't go to tamperin' with dad any more," he pleaded. "you've called him a thief two or three times over, an' he don't take that from any livin' bein'." "i won't!" harvey almost shrieked, disregarding the advice; and still troop meditated. "seems kinder unneighbourly," he said at last, his eye travelling down to harvey. "i don't blame you, not a mite, young feller, nor you won't blame me when the bile's out o' your systim. 'be sure you sense what i say? ten an' a ha'af fer second boy on the schooner--an' all f'und--fer to teach you an' fer the sake o' your health. yes or no?" "no!" said harvey. "take me back to new york or i'll see you--" he did not exactly remember what followed. he was lying in the scuppers, holding on to a nose that bled, while troop looked down on him serenely. "dan," he said to his son, "i was sot ag'in' this young feller when i first saw him, on account o' hasty jedgments. never you be led astray by hasty jedgments, dan. naow i'm sorry for him, because he's clear distracted in his upper works. he ain't responsible fer the names he's give me, nor fer his other statements nor fer jumpin' overboard, which i'm abaout ha'af convinced he did. you be gentle with him, dan, 'r i'll give you twice what i've give him. them hemmeridges clears the head. let him sluice it off!" troop went down solemnly into the cabin, where he and the older men bunked, leaving dan to comfort the luckless heir to thirty millions. chapter ii "i warned ye," said dan, as the drops fell thick and fast on the dark, oiled planking. "dad ain't noways hasty, but you fair earned it. pshaw! there's no sense takin' on so." harvey's shoulders were rising and falling in spasms of dry sobbing. "i know the feelin'. first time dad laid me out was the last--and that was my first trip. makes ye feel sickish an' lonesome. i know." "it does," moaned harvey. "that man's either crazy or drunk, and--and i can't do anything." "don't say that to dad," whispered dan. "he's set ag'in' all liquor, an'--well, he told me you was the madman. what in creation made you call him a thief? he's my dad." harvey sat up, mopped his nose, and told the story of the missing wad of bills. "i'm not crazy," he wound up. "only--your father has never seen more than a five-dollar bill at a time, and my father could buy up this boat once a week and never miss it." "you don't know what the "we're here's" worth. your dad must hey a pile o' money. how did he git it? dad sez loonies can't shake out a straight yarn. go ahead." "in gold-mines and things, west." "i've read o' that kind o' business. out west, too? does he go around with a pistol on a trick-pony, same ez the circus? they call that the wild west, and i've heard that their spurs an' bridles was solid silver." "you are a chump!" said harvey, amused in spite of himself. "my father hasn't any use for ponies. when he wants to ride he takes his car." "haow? lobster-car?" "no. his own private car, of course. you've seen a private car some time in your life?" "slatin beeman he hez one," said dan, cautiously. "i saw her at the union depot in boston, with three niggers hoggin' her run." (dan meant cleaning the windows.) "but slatin beeman he owns 'baout every railroad on long island, they say; an' they say he's bought 'baout ha'af noo hampshire an' run a line-fence around her, an' filled her up with lions an' tigers an' bears an' buffalo an' crocodiles an' such all. slatin beeman he's a millionaire. i've seen his car. yes?" "well, my father's what they call a multi-millionaire; and he has two private cars. one's named for me, the 'harvey,' and one for my mother, the 'constance.'" "hold on," said dan. "dad don't ever let me swear, but i guess you can. 'fore we go ahead, i want you to say hope you may die if you're lying." "of course," said harvey. "thet ain't 'nuff. say, 'hope i may die if i ain't speakin' truth.'" "hope i may die right here," said harvey, "if every word i've spoken isn't the cold truth." "hundred an' thirty-four dollars an' all?" said dan. "i heard ye talkin' to dad, an' i ha'af looked you'd be swallered up, same's jonah." harvey protested himself red in the face. dan was a shrewd young person along his own lines, and ten minutes' questioning convinced him that harvey was not lying--much. besides, he had bound himself by the most terrible oath known to boyhood, and yet he sat, alive, with a red-ended nose, in the scuppers, recounting marvels upon marvels. "gosh!" said dan at last, from the very bottom of his soul, when harvey had completed an inventory of the car named in his honour. then a grin of mischievous delight overspread his broad face. "i believe you, harvey. dad's made a mistake fer once in his life." "he has, sure," said harvey, who was meditating an early revenge. "he'll be mad clear through. dad jest hates to be mistook in his jedgments." dan lay back and slapped his thigh. "oh, harvey, don't you spile the catch by lettin' on." "i don't want to be knocked down again. i'll get even with him, though." "never heard any man ever got even with dad. but he'd knock ye down again sure. the more he was mistook the more he'd do it. but gold-mines and pistols--" "i never said a word about pistols," harvey cut in, for he was on his oath. "thet's so; no more you did. two private cars, then, one named fer you an' one fer her; an' two hundred dollars a month pocket-money, all knocked into the scuppers fer not workin' fer ten an' a ha'af a month! it's the top haul o' the season." he exploded with noiseless chuckles. "then i was right? "said harvey, who thought he had found a sympathiser. "you was wrong; the wrongest kind o' wrong! you take right hold an' pitch in 'longside o' me, or you'll catch it, an' i'll catch it fer backin' you up. dad always gives me double helps 'cause i'm his son, an' he hates favourin' folk. 'guess you're kinder mad at dad. i've been that way time an' again. but dad's a mighty jest man; all the fleet says so." "looks like justice, this, don't it?" harvey pointed to his outraged nose. "thet's nothin'. lets the shore blood outer you. dad did it for yer health. say, though, i can't have dealin's with a man that thinks me or dad or any one on the "we're here's" a thief. we ain't any common wharf-end crowd by any manner o' means. we're fishermen, an' we've shipped together for six years an' more. don't you make any mistake on that! i told ye dad don't let me swear. he calls 'em vain oaths, and pounds me; but ef i could say what you said 'baout your pap an' his fixin's, i'd say that 'baout your dollars. i dunno what was in your pockets when i dried your kit, fer i didn't look to see; but i'd say, using the very same words ez you used jest now, neither me nor dad--an' we was the only two that teched you after you was brought aboard--knows anythin' 'baout the money. thet's my say. naow?" the bloodletting had certainly cleared harvey's brain, and maybe the loneliness of the sea had something to do with it. "that's all right," he said. then he looked down confusedly. "'seems to me that for a fellow just saved from drowning i haven't been over and above grateful, dan." "well, you was shook up and silly," said dan. "anyway, there was only dad an' me aboard to see it. the cook he don't count." "i might have thought about losing the bills that way," harvey said, half to himself, "instead of calling everybody in sight a thief where's your father?" "in the cabin what d' you want o' him again?" "you'll see," said harvey, and he stepped, rather groggily, for his head was still singing, to the cabin steps, where the little ship's clock hung in plain sight of the wheel. troop, in the chocolate-and-yellow painted cabin, was busy with a note-book and an enormous black pencil, which he sucked hard from time to time. "i haven't acted quite right," said harvey, surprised at his own meekness. "what's wrong naow?" said the skipper "walked into dan, hev ye?" "no; it's about you." "i'm here to listen." "well, i--i'm here to take things back," said harvey, very quickly. "when a man's saved from drowning--" he gulped. "ey? you'll make a man yet ef you go on this way." "he oughtn't begin by calling people names." "jest an' right--right an' jest," said troop, with the ghost of a dry smile. "so i'm here to say i'm sorry." another big gulp. troop heaved himself slowly off the locker he was sitting on and held out an eleven-inch hand. "i mistrusted 'twould do you sights o' good; an' this shows i weren't mistook in my jedgments." a smothered chuckle on deck caught his ear. "i am very seldom mistook in my jedgments." the eleven-inch hand closed on harvey's, numbing it to the elbow. "we'll put a little more gristle to that 'fore we've done with you, young feller; an' i don't think any worse of ye fer anythin' thet's gone by. you wasn't fairly responsible. go right abaout your business an' you won't take no hurt." "you're white," said dan, as harvey regained the deck, flushed to the tips of his ears. "i don't feel it," said he. "i didn't mean that way. i heard what dad said. when dad allows he don't think the worse of any man, dad's give himself away. he hates to be mistook in his jedgments, too. ho! ho! onct dad has a jedgment, he'd sooner dip his colours to the british than change it. i'm glad it's settled right eend up. dad's right when he says he can't take you back. it's all the livin' we make here--fishin'. the men'll be back like sharks after a dead whale in ha'af an hour." "what for?" said harvey. "supper, o' course. don't your stummick tell you? you've a heap to learn." "'guess i have," said harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of ropes and blocks overhead. "she's a daisy," said dan, enthusiastically, misunderstanding the look. "wait till our mainsail's bent, an' she walks home with all her salt wet. there's some work first, though." he pointed down into the darkness of the open main-hatch between the two masts. "what's that for? it's all empty," said harvey. "you an' me an' a few more hev got to fill it," said dan. "that's where the fish goes." "alive?" said harvey. "well, no. they're so's to be ruther dead--an' flat--an' salt. there's a hundred hogshead o' salt in the bins; an' we hain't more'n covered our dunnage to now." "where are the fish, though?" "'in the sea, they say; in the boats, we pray,'" said dan, quoting a fisherman's proverb. "you come in last night with 'baout forty of 'em." he pointed to a sort of wooden pen just in front of the quarter-deck. "you an' me we'll sluice that out when they're through. 'send we'll hev full pens to-night! i've seen her down ha'af a foot with fish waitin' to clean, an' we stood to the tables till we was splittin' ourselves instid o' them, we was so sleepy. yes, they're comin' in naow." dan looked over the low bulwarks at half a dozen dories rowing towards them over the shining, silky sea. "i've never seen the sea from so low down," said harvey. "it's fine." the low sun made the water all purple and pinkish, with golden lights on the barrels of the long swells, and blue and green mackerel shades in the hollows. each schooner in sight seemed to be pulling her dories towards her by invisible strings, and the little black figures in the tiny boats pulled like clockwork toys. "they've struck on good," said dan, between his half-shut eyes. "manuel hain't room fer another fish. low ez a lily-pad in still water, ain't he?" "which is manuel? i don't see how you can tell 'em 'way off, as you do." "last boat to the south'ard. he f'und you last night," said dan, pointing. "manuel rows portugoosey; ye can't mistake him. east o' him--he's a heap better'n he rows--is pennsylvania. loaded with saleratus, by the looks of him. east o' him--see how pretty they string out all along with the humpy shoulders, is long jack. he's a galway man inhabitin' south boston, where they all live mostly, an' mostly them galway men are good in a boat. north, away yonder--you'll hear him tune up in a minute--is tom platt. man-o'-war's man he was on the old ohio--first of our navy, he says, to go araound the horn. he never talks of much else, 'cept when he sings, but he has fair fishin' luck. there! what did i tell you?" a melodious bellow stole across the water from the northern dory. harvey heard something about somebody's hands and feet being cold, and then: "bring forth the chart, the doleful chart; see where them mountings meet! the clouds are thick around their heads, the mists around their feet." "full boat," said dan, with a chuckle. "if he gives us 'o captain' it's toppin' full." the bellow continued: "and naow to thee, o capting, most earnestly i pray that they shall never bury me in church or cloister grey." "double game for tom platt. he'll tell you all about the old ohio to-morrow. 'see that blue dory behind him? he's my uncle,--dad's own brother,--an' ef there's any bad luck loose on the banks she'll fetch up ag'in' uncle salters, sure. look how tender he's rowin'. i'll lay my wage and share he's the only man stung up to-day--an' he's stung up good." "what'll sting him?" said harvey, getting interested. "strawberries, mostly. punkins, sometimes, an' sometimes lemons an' cucumbers. yes, he's stung up from his elbows down. that man's luck's perfectly paralysin'. naow we'll take a-holt o' the tackles an' h'ist 'em in. is it true, what you told me jest now, that you never done a hand's turn o' work in all your born life? must feel kinder awful, don't it?" "i'm going to try to work, anyway," harvey replied stoutly. "only it's all dead new." "lay a-holt o' that tackle, then. behind ye!" harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron hook dangling from one of the stays of the mainmast, while dan pulled down another that ran from something he called a "topping-lift," as manuel drew alongside in his loaded dory. the portuguese smiled a brilliant smile that harvey learned to know well later, and a short-handled fork began to throw fish into the pen on deck. "two hundred and thirty-one," he shouted. "give him the hook," said dan, and harvey ran it into manuel's hands. he slipped it through a loop of rope at the dory's bow, caught dan's tackle, hooked it to the stern-becket, and clambered into the schooner. "pull!" shouted dan; and harvey pulled, astonished to find how easily the dory rose. "hold on; she don't nest in the crosstrees!" dan laughed; and harvey held on, for the boat lay in the air above his head. "lower away," dan shouted; and as harvey lowered, dan swayed the light boat with one hand till it landed softly just behind the mainmast. "they don't weigh nothin' empty. thet was right smart fer a passenger. there's more trick to it in a sea-way." "ah ha!" said manuel, holding out a brown hand. "you are some pretty well now? this time last night the fish they fish for you. now you fish for fish. eh, wha-at?" "i'm--i'm ever so grateful," harvey stammered, and his unfortunate hand stole to his pocket once more, but he remembered that he had no money to offer. when he knew manuel better the mere thought of the mistake he might have made would cover him with hot, uneasy blushes in his bunk. "there is no to be thankful for to me!" said manuel. "how shall i leave you dreeft, dreeft all around the banks? now you are a fisherman eh, wha-at? ouh! auh!" he bent backward and forward stiffly from the hips to get the kinks out of himself. "i have not cleaned boat to-day. too busy. they struck on queek. danny, my son, clean for me." harvey moved forward at once. here was something he could do for the man who had saved his life. dan threw him a swab, and he leaned over the dory, mopping up the slime clumsily, but with great good-will. "hike out the foot-boards; they slide in them grooves," said dan. "swab 'em an' lay 'em down. never let a foot-board jam. ye may want her bad some day. here's long jack." a stream of glittering fish flew into the pen from a dory alongside. "manuel, you take the tackle. i'll fix the tables. harvey, clear manuel's boat. long jack's nestin' on the top of her." harvey looked up from his swabbing at the bottom of another dory just above his head. "jest like the injian puzzle-boxes, ain't they?" said dan, as the one boat dropped into the other. "takes to ut like a duck to water," said long jack, a grizzly-chinned, long-lipped galway man, bending to and fro exactly as manuel had done. disko in the cabin growled up the hatchway, and they could hear him suck his pencil. "wan hunder an' forty-nine an' a half--bad luck to ye, discobolus!" said long jack. "i'm murderin' meself to fill your pockuts. slate ut for a bad catch. the portugee has bate me." whack came another dory alongside, and more fish shot into the pen. "two hundred and three. let's look at the passenger!" the speaker was even larger than the galway man, and his face was made curious by a purple cut running slantways from his left eye to the right corner of his mouth. not knowing what else to do, harvey swabbed each dory as it came down, pulled out the foot-boards, and laid them in the bottom of the boat. "he's caught on good," said the scarred man, who was tom platt, watching him critically. "there are two ways o' doin' everything. one's fisher-fashion--any end first an' a slippery hitch over all--an' the other's--" "what we did on the old ohio!" dan interrupted, brushing into the knot of men with a long board on legs. "git out o' here, tom platt, an' leave me fix the tables." he jammed one end of the board into two nicks in the bulwarks, kicked out the leg, and ducked just in time to avoid a swinging blow from the man-o'-war's man. "an' they did that on the ohio, too, danny. see?" said tom platt, laughing. "'guess they was swivel-eyed, then, fer it didn't git home, and i know who'll find his boots on the main-truck ef he don't leave us alone. haul ahead! i'm busy, can't ye see?" "danny, ye lie on the cable an' sleep all day," said long jack. "you're the hoight av impidence, an' i'm persuaded ye'll corrupt our supercargo in a week." "his name's harvey," said dan, waving two strangely shaped knives, "an' he'll be worth five of any sou' boston clam-digger 'fore long." he laid the knives tastefully on the table, cocked his head on one side, and admired the effect. "i think it's forty-two," said a small voice over-side, and there was a roar of laughter as another voice answered, "then my luck's turned fer onct, 'caze i'm forty-five, though i be stung outer all shape." "forty-two or forty-five. i've lost count," the small voice said. "it's penn an' uncle salters caountin' catch. this beats the circus any day," said dan. "jest look at 'em!" "come in--come in!" roared long jack. "it's wet out yondher, children." "forty-two, ye said." this was uncle salters. "i'll count again, then," the voice replied meekly. the two dories swung together and bunted into the schooner's side. "patience o' jerusalem!" snapped uncle salters, backing water with a splash. "what possest a farmer like you to set foot in a boat beats me. you've nigh stove me all up." "i am sorry, mr. salters. i came to sea on account of nervous dyspepsia. you advised me, i think." "you an' your nervis dyspepsy be drowned in the whale-hole," roared uncle salters, a fat and tubly little man. "you're comin' down on me ag'in. did ye say forty-two or forty-five?" "i've forgotten, mr. salters. let's count." "don't see as it could be forty-five. i'm forty-five," said uncle salters. "you count keerful, penn." disko troop came out of the cabin. "salters, you pitch your fish in naow at once," he said in the tone of authority. "don't spile the catch, dad," dan murmured. "them two are on'y jest beginnin'." "mother av delight! he's forkin' them wan by wan," howled long jack, as uncle salters got to work laboriously; the little man in the other dory counting a line of notches on the gunwale. "that was last week's catch," he said, looking up plaintively, his forefinger where he had left off. manuel nudged dan, who darted to the after-tackle, and, leaning far overside, slipped the hook into the stern-rope as manuel made her fast forward. the others pulled gallantly and swung the boat in--man, fish, and all. "one, two, four--nine," said tom platt, counting with a practised eye. "forty-seven. penn, you're it!" dan let the after-tackle run, and slid him out of the stern on to the deck amid a torrent of his own fish. "hold on!" roared uncle salters, bobbing by the waist. "hold on, i'm a bit mixed in my caount." he had no time to protest, but was hove inboard and treated like "pennsylvania." "forty-one," said tom platt. "beat by a farmer, salters. an' you sech a sailor, too!" "'tweren't fair caount," said he, stumbling out of the pen; "an' i'm stung up all to pieces." his thick hands were puffy and mottled purply white. "some folks will find strawberry-bottom," said dan, addressing the newly risen moon, "ef they hev to dive fer it, seems to me." "an' others," said uncle salters, "eats the fat o' the land in sloth, an' mocks their own blood-kin." "seat ye! seat ye!" a voice harvey had not heard called from the fo'c'sle. disko troop, tom platt, long jack, and salters went forward on the word. little penn bent above his square deep-sea reel and the tangled cod-lines; manuel lay down full length on the deck, and dan dropped into the hold, where harvey heard him banging casks with a hammer. "salt," he said, returning. "soon as we're through supper we git to dressing-down. you'll pitch to dad. tom platt an' dad they stow together, an' you'll hear 'em arguin'. we're second ha'af, you an' me an' manuel an' penn--the youth an' beauty o' the boat." "what's the good of that?" said harvey. "i'm hungry." "they'll be through in a minute. sniff! she smells good to-night. dad ships a good cook ef he do suffer with his brother. it's a full catch today, ain't it?" he pointed at the pens piled high with cod. "what water did ye hev, manuel?" "twenty-fife father," said the portuguese, sleepily. "they strike on good an' queek. some day i show you, harvey." the moon was beginning to walk on the still sea before the elder men came aft. the cook had no need to cry "second half." dan and manuel were down the hatch and at table ere tom platt, last and most deliberate of the elders, had finished wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. harvey followed penn, and sat down before a tin pan of cod's tongues and sounds, mixed with scraps of pork and fried potato, a loaf of hot bread, and some black and powerful coffee. hungry as they were, they waited while "pennsylvania" solemnly asked a blessing. then they stoked in silence till dan drew breath over his tin cup and demanded of harvey how he felt. "'most full, but there's just room for another piece." the cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and dumb-show invitations to eat more. "see, harvey," said dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's jest as i said. the young an' handsome men--like me an' pennsy an' you an' manuel--we 're second ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are through. they're the old fish; and they're mean an' humpy, an' their stummicks has to be humoured; so they come first, which they don't deserve. ain't that so, doctor?" the cook nodded. "can't he talk?" said harvey, in a whisper. "'nough to git along. not much o' anything we know. his natural tongue's kinder curious. comes from the in'ards of cape breton, he does, where the farmers speak home-made scotch. cape breton's full o' niggers whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an' they talk like the farmers--all huffy-chuffy." "that is not scotch," said "pennsylvania." "that is gaelic. so i read in a book." "penn reads a heap. most of what he says is so--'cep' when it comes to a caount o' fish--eh?" "does your father just let them say how many they've caught without checking them?" said harvey. "why, yes. where's the sense of a man lyin' fer a few old cod?" "was a man once lied for his catch," manuel put in. "lied every day. fife, ten, twenty-fife more fish than come he say there was." "where was that?" said dan. "none o' aour folk." "frenchman of anguille." "ah! them west shore frenchmen don't caount, anyway. stands to reason they can't caount. ef you run acrost any of their soft hooks, harvey, you'll know why," said dan, with an awful contempt. "always more and never less, every time we come to dress," long jack roared down the hatch, and the "second ha'af" scrambled up at once. the shadow of the masts and rigging, with the never-furled riding-sail, rolled to and fro on the heaving deck in the moonlight; and the pile of fish by the stern shone like a dump of fluid silver. in the hold there were tramplings and rumblings where disko troop and tom platt moved among the salt-bins. dan passed harvey a pitchfork, and led him to the inboard end of the rough table, where uncle salters was drumming impatiently with a knife-haft. a tub of salt water lay at his feet. "you pitch to dad an' tom platt down the hatch, an' take keer uncle salters don't cut yer eye out," said dan, swinging himself into the hold. "i'll pass salt below." penn and manuel stood knee-deep among cod in the pen, flourishing drawn knives. long jack, a basket at his feet and mittens on his hands, faced uncle salters at the table, and harvey stared at the pitchfork and the tub. "hi!" shouted manuel, stooping to the fish, and bringing one up with a finger under its gill and a finger in its eye. he laid it on the edge of the pen; the knife-blade glimmered with a sound of tearing, and the fish, slit from throat to vent, with a nick on either side of the neck, dropped at long jack's feet. "hi!" said long jack, with a scoop of his mittened hand. the cod's liver dropped in the basket. another wrench and scoop sent the head and offal flying, and the empty fish slid across to uncle salters, who snorted fiercely. there was another sound of tearing, the backbone flew over the bulwarks, and the fish, headless, gutted, and open, splashed in the tub, sending the salt water into harvey's astonished mouth. after the first yell, the men were silent. the cod moved along as though they were alive, and long ere harvey had ceased wondering at the miraculous dexterity of it all, his tub was full. "pitch!" grunted uncle salters, without turning his head, and harvey pitched the fish by twos and threes down the hatch. "hi! pitch 'em bunchy," shouted dan. "don't scatter! uncle salters is the best splitter in the fleet. watch him mind his book!" indeed, it looked a little as though the round uncle were cutting magazine pages against time. manuel's body, cramped over from the hips, stayed like a statue; but his long arms grabbed the fish without ceasing. little penn toiled valiantly, but it was easy to see he was weak. once or twice manuel found time to help him without breaking the chain of supplies, and once manuel howled because he had caught his finger in a frenchman's hook. these hooks are made of soft metal, to be rebent after use; but the cod very often get away with them and are hooked again elsewhere; and that is one of the many reasons why the gloucester boats despise the frenchmen. down below, the rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the whirring of a grindstone--a steady undertune to the "click-nick" of the knives in the pen; the wrench and schloop of torn heads, dropped liver, and flying offal; the "caraaah" of uncle salters's knife scooping away backbones; and the flap of wet, opened bodies falling into the tub. at the end of an hour harvey would have given the world to rest; for fresh, wet cod weigh more than you would think, and his back ached with the steady pitching. but he felt for the first time in his life that he was one of a working gang of men, took pride in the thought, and held on sullenly. "knife oh!" shouted uncle salters, at last. penn doubled up, gasping among the fish, manuel bowed back and forth to supple himself, and long jack leaned over the bulwarks. the cook appeared, noiseless as a black shadow, collected a mass of backbones and heads, and retreated. "blood-ends for breakfast an' head-chowder," said long jack, smacking his lips. "knife oh!" repeated uncle salters, waving the flat, curved splitter's weapon. "look by your foot, harve," cried dan, below. harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a cleat in the hatch combing. he dealt these around, taking over the dulled ones. "water!" said disko troop. "scuttle-butt's for'ard, an' the dipper's alongside. hurry, harve," said dan. he was back in a minute with a big dipperful of stale brown water which tasted like nectar, and loosed the jaws of disko and tom platt. "these are cod," said disko. "they ain't damarskus figs, tom platt, nor yet silver bars. i've told you that every single time sence we've sailed together." "a matter o' seven seasons," returned tom platt, coolly. "good stowin's good stowin' all the same, an' there's a right an' a wrong way o' stowin' ballast even. if you'd ever seen four hundred ton o' iron set into the--" "hi!" with a yell from manuel the work began again, and never stopped till the pen was empty. the instant the last fish was down, disko troop rolled aft to the cabin with his brother; manuel and long jack went forward; tom platt only waited long enough to slide home the hatch ere he too disappeared. in half a minute harvey heard deep snores in the cabin, and he was staring blankly at dan and penn. "i did a little better that time, danny," said penn, whose eyelids were heavy with sleep. "but i think it is my duty to help clean." "'wouldn't hev your conscience fer a thousand quintal," said dan. "turn in, penn. you've no call to do boy's work. draw a bucket, harvey. oh, penn, dump these in the gurry-butt 'fore you sleep. kin you keep awake that long?" penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers, emptied them into a cask with a hinged top lashed by the fo'c'sle; then he too dropped out of sight in the cabin. "boys clean up after dressin' down, an' first watch in ca'am weather is boy's watch on the 'we're here'." dan sluiced the pen energetically, unshipped the table, set it up to dry in the moonlight, ran the red knife-blades through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen them on a tiny grindstone, as harvey threw offal and backbones overboard under his direction. at the first splash a silvery-white ghost rose bolt upright from the oily water and sighed a weird whistling sigh. harvey started back with a shout, but dan only laughed. "grampus," said he. "beggin' fer fish-heads. they up-eend thet way when they're hungry. breath on him like the doleful tombs, hain't he?" a horrible stench of decayed fish filled the air as the pillar of white sank, and the water bubbled oilily. "hain't ye never seen a grampus up-eend before? you'll see 'em by hundreds 'fore ye're through. say, it's good to hev a boy aboard again. otto was too old, an' a dutchy at that. him an' me we fought consid'ble. 'wouldn't ha' keered fer thet ef he'd hed a christian tongue in his head. sleepy?" "dead sleepy," said harvey, nodding forward. "'mustn't sleep on watch. rouse up an' see ef our anchor-light's bright an' shinin'. you're on watch now, harve." "pshaw! what's to hurt us? bright's day. sn-orrr! "jest when things happen, dad says. fine weather's good sleepin', an' 'fore you know, mebbe, you're cut in two by a liner, an' seventeen brass-bound officers, all gen'elmen, lift their hand to it that your lights was aout an' there was a thick fog. harve, i've kinder took to you, but ef you nod onct more i'll lay into you with a rope's end." the moon, who sees many strange things on the banks, looked down on a slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering around the cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between the blows he dealt. the lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the riding-sail slatted a little in the shifts of the light wind, the windlass creaked, and the miserable procession continued. harvey expostulated, threatened, whimpered, and at last wept outright, while dan, the words clotting on his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchfulness, and slashed away with the rope's end, punishing the dories as often as he hit harvey. at last the clock in the cabin struck ten, and upon the tenth stroke little penn crept on deck. he found two boys in two tumbled heaps side by side on the main-hatch, so deeply asleep that he actually rolled them to their berths. chapter iii it was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. they emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish--the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. they cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the fo'c'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. it was another perfect day--soft, mild, and clear; and harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs. more schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were full of sails and dories. far away on the horizon, the smoke of some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a big ship's topgallantsails, just lifting, made a square nick in it. disko troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin--one eye on the craft around, and the other on the little fly at the mainmast-head. "when dad kerflummoxes that way," said dan, in a whisper, "he's doin' some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. i'll lay my wage an' share we'll make berth soon. dad he knows the cod, an' the fleet they know dad knows. 'see 'em comin' up one by one, lookin' fer nothin' in particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the time? there's the prince leboa; she's a chat-ham boat. she's crep' up sence last night. an' see that big one with a patch in her foresail an' a new jib? she's the carrie pitman from west chatham. she won't keep her canvas long on less her luck's changed since last season. she don't do much 'cep' drift. there ain't an anchor made'll hold her. . . . when the smoke puffs up in little rings like that, dad's studyin' the fish. ef we speak to him now, he'll git mad. las' time i did, he jest took an' hove a boot at me." disko troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that saw nothing. as his son said, he was studying the fish--pitting his knowledge and experience on the banks against the roving cod in his own sea. he accepted the presence of the inquisitive schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his powers. but now that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make his berth alone, till it was time to go up to the virgin and fish in the streets of that roaring town upon the waters. so disko troop thought of recent weather, and gales, currents, food-supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view of a twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked remarkably like one. then he removed the pipe from his teeth. "dad," said dan, "we've done our chores. can't we go overside a piece? it's good catch-in' weather." "not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'afbaked brown shoes. give him suthin' fit to wear." "dad's pleased--that settles it," said dan, delightedly, dragging harvey into the cabin, while troop pitched a key down the steps. "dad keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause ma sez i'm keerless." he rummaged through a locker, and in less than three minutes harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber boots that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of flippers, and a sou'wester. "naow ye look somethin' like," said dan. "hurry!" "keep nigh an' handy," said troop, "an' don't go visitin' raound the fleet. ef any one asks you what i'm cal'latin' to do, speak the truth--fer ye don't know." a little red dory, labelled hattie s., lay astern of the schooner. dan hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards, while harvey tumbled clumsily after. "that's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said dan. "ef there was any sea you'd go to the bottom, sure. you got to learn to meet her." dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart, and watched harvey's work. the boy had rowed, in a ladylike fashion, on the adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and well-balanced rowlocks--light sculls and stubby, eight-foot sea-oars. they stuck in the gentle swell, and harvey grunted. "short! row short!" said dan. "ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea you're liable to turn her over. ain't she a daisy? mine, too." the little dory was specklessly clean. in her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding. a tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under harvey's right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick. a couple of lines, with very heavy leads and double cod-hooks, all neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck in their place by the gunwale. "where's the sail and mast?" said harvey, for his hands were beginning to blister. dan chuckled. "ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. ye pull; but ye needn't pull so hard. don't you wish you owned her?" "well, i guess my father might give me one or two if i asked 'em," harvey replied. he had been too busy to think much of his family till then. "that's so. i forgot your dad's a millionaire. you don't act millionary any, naow. but a dory an' craft an' gear"--dan spoke as though she were a whale-boat "costs a heap. think your dad 'u'd give you one fer--fer a pet like?" "shouldn't wonder. it would be 'most the only thing i haven't stuck him for yet." "must be an expensive kinder kid to home. don't slitheroo thet way, harve. short's the trick, because no sea's ever dead still, an' the swells'll--" crack! the loom of the oar kicked harvey under the chin and knocked him backward. "that was what i was goin' to say. i hed to learn too, but i wasn't more than eight years old when i got my schoolin'." harvey regained his seat with aching jaws and a frown. "no good gettin' mad at things, dad says. it's our own fault ef we can't handle 'em, he says. le's try here. manuel'll give us the water." the "portugee" was rocking fully a mile away, but when dan up-ended an oar he waved his left arm three times. "thirty fathom," said dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. "over with the dough-boys. bait same's i do, harve, an' don't snarl your reel." dan's line was out long before harvey had mastered the mystery of baiting and heaving out the leads. the dory drifted along easily. it was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground. "here we come!" dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on harvey's shoulders as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside. "muckle, harvey, muckle! under your hand! quick!" evidently "muckle" could not be the dinner-horn, so harvey passed over the maul, and dan scientifically stunned the fish before he pulled it inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short wooden stick he called a "gob-stick." then harvey felt a tug, and pulled up zealously. "why, these are strawberries!" he shouted. "look!" the hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and white on the other--perfect reproductions of the land fruit, except that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy. "don't tech 'em! slat 'em off. don't--" the warning came too late. harvey had picked them from the hook, and was admiring them. "ouch!" he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped many nettles. "naow ye know what strawberry-bottom means. nothin' 'cep' fish should be teched with the naked fingers, dad says. slat 'em off ag'in' the gunnel, an' bait up, harve. lookin' won't help any. it's all in the wages." harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and wondered what his mother would say if she could see him hanging over the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean. she suffered agonies whenever he went out on saranac lake; and, by the way, harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her anxieties. suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the "flippers," the woolen circlets supposed to protect it. "he's a logy. give him room accordin' to his strength," cried dan. "i'll help ye." "no, you won't," harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "it's my first fish. is--is it a whale?" "halibut, mebbe." dan peered down into the water alongside, and flourished the big "muckle," ready for all chances. something white and oval flickered and fluttered through the green. "i'll lay my wage an' share he's over a hundred. are you so everlastin' anxious to land him alone?" harvey's knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been banged against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was half blinded from staring at the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line. the boys were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them and the dory for the next twenty minutes. but the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last. "beginner's luck," said dan, wiping his forehead. "he's all of a hundred." harvey looked at the huge grey-and-mottled creature with unspeakable pride. he had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with fatigue. "ef dad was along," said dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs plain's print. the fish are runnin' smaller an' smaller, an' you've took baout as logy a halibut's we're apt to find this trip. yesterday's catch--did ye notice it?--was all big fish an' no halibut. dad he'd read them signs right off. dad says everythin' on the banks is signs, an' can be read wrong er right. dad's deeper'n the whale-hole." even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the "we're here", and a potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging. "what did i say, naow? that's the call fer the whole crowd. dad's onter something, er he'd never break fishin' this time o' day. reel up, harve, an' we'll pull back." they were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to penn, who was careering around a fixed point, for all the world like a gigantic water-bug. the little man backed away and came down again with enormous energy, but at the end of each manoeuvre his dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope. "we'll hey to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said dan. "what's the matter?" said harvey. this was a new world, where he could not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions humbly. and the sea was horribly big and unexcited. "anchor's fouled. penn's always losing 'em. lost two this trip a'ready,--on sandy bottom, too,--an' dad says next one he loses, sure's fish-in', he'll give him the kelleg. that 'u'd break penn's heart." "what's a 'kelleg'?" said harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in the story-books. "big stone instid of an anchor. you kin see a kelleg ridin' in the bows fur's you can see a dory, an' all the fleet knows what it means. they'd guy him dreadful. penn couldn't stand that no more'n a dog with a dipper to his tail. he's so everlastin' sensitive. hello, penn! stuck again? don't try any more o' your patents. come up on her, and keep your rodin' straight up an' down." "it doesn't move," said the little man, panting. "it doesn't move at all, and indeed i tried everything." "what's all this hurrah's-nest for'ard?" said dan, pointing to a wild tangle of spare oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the hand of inexperience. "oh, that," said penn, proudly, "is a spanish windlass. mr. salters showed me how to make it; but even that doesn't move her." dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice on the roding, and, behold, the anchor drew at once. "haul up, penn," he said, laughing, "er she 'll git stuck again." they left him regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor with big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking them profusely. "oh, say, while i think of it, harve," said dan, when they were out of ear-shot, "penn ain't quite all caulked. he ain't nowise dangerous, but his mind's give out. see?" "is that so, or is it one of your father's judgments?" harvey asked, as he bent to his oars. he felt he was learning to handle them more easily. "dad ain't mistook this time. penn's a sure'nuff loony. no, he ain't thet, exactly, so much ez a harmless ijjit. it was this way (you're rowin' quite so, harve), an' i tell you 'cause it's right you orter know. he was a moravian preacher once. jacob boller wuz his name, dad told me, an' he lived with his wife an' four children somewheres out pennsylvania way. well, penn he took his folks along to a moravian meetin',--camp-meetin', most like,--an' they stayed over jest one night in johnstown. you've heered talk o' johnstown?" harvey considered. "yes, i have. but i don't know why. it sticks in my head same as ashtabula." "both was big accidents--thet's why, harve. well, that one single night penn and his folks was to the hotel johnstown was wiped out. 'dam bu'st an' flooded her, an' the houses struck adrift an' bumped into each other an' sunk. i've seen the pictures, an' they're dretful. penn he saw his folk drowned all 'n a heap 'fore he rightly knew what was comin'. his mind give out from that on. he mistrusted somethin' hed happened up to johnstown, but for the poor life of him he couldn't remember what, an' he jest drifted araound smilin' an' wonderin'. he didn't know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an' thet way he run ag'in' uncle salters, who was visitin' 'n allegheny city. ha'af my mother's folks they live scattered inside o' pennsylvania, an' uncle salters he visits araound winters. uncle salters he kinder adopted penn, well knowin' what his trouble wuz; an' he brought him east, an' he give him work on his farm." "why, i heard him calling penn a farmer last night when the boats bumped. is your uncle salters a farmer?" "farmer!" shouted dan. "there ain't water enough 'tween here an' hatt'rus to wash the furrer-mould off'n his boots. he's jest everlastin' farmer. why, harve, i've seen thet man hitch up a bucket, long towards sundown, an' set twiddlin' the spigot to the scuttle-butt same's ef 'twuz a cow's bag. he's thet much farmer. well, penn an' he they ran the farm--up exeter way, 'twuz. uncle salters he sold it this spring to a jay from boston as wanted to build a summerhaouse, an' he got a heap for it. well, them two loonies scratched along till, one day, penn's church he'd belonged to--the moravians--found out where he wuz drifted an' layin', an' wrote to uncle salters. 'never heerd what they said exactly; but uncle salters was mad. he's a 'piscopalian mostly--but he jest let 'em hev it both sides o' the bow, 'sif he was a baptist, an' sez he warn't goin' to give up penn to any blame moravian connection in pennsylvania or anywheres else. then he come to dad, towin' penn,--thet was two trips back,--an' sez he an' penn must fish a trip fer their health. 'guess he thought the moravians wouldn't hunt the banks fer jacob boller. dad was agreeable, fer uncle salters he'd been fishin' off an' on fer thirty years, when he warn't inventin' patent manures, an' he took quarter-share in the 'we're here'; an' the trip done penn so much good, dad made a habit o' takin' him. some day, dad sez, he'll remember his wife an' kids an' johnstown, an' then, like's not, he'll die, dad sez. don't yer talk about johnstown ner such things to penn, 'r uncle salters he'll heave ye overboard." "poor penn!" murmured harvey. "i shouldn't ever have thought uncle salters cared for him by the look of 'em together." "i like penn, though; we all do," said dan. "we ought to ha' give him a tow, but i wanted to tell ye first." they were close to the schooner now, the other boats a little behind them. "you needn't heave in the dories till after dinner," said troop, from the deck. "we'll dress-daown right off. fix table, boys!" "deeper'n the whale-deep," said dan, with a wink, as he set the gear for dressing-down. "look at them boats that hev edged up sence mornin'. they're all waitin' on dad. see 'em, harve?" "they are all alike to me." and, indeed, to a landsman the nodding schooners around seemed run from the same mould. "they ain't, though. that yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit steeved that way, she's the 'hope of prague'. nick brady's her skipper, the meanest man on the banks. we'll tell him so when we strike the main ledge. 'way off yander's the 'day's eye'. the two jeraulds own her. she's from harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good luck; but dad he'd find fish in a graveyard. them other three, side along, they're the 'margie smith', 'rose', and 'edith s. walen', all frum home. 'guess we'll see the 'abbie m. deering' to-morrer, dad, won't we? they're all slippin' over from the shoal o' 'queereau." "you won't see many boats to-morrow, danny." when troop called his son danny, it was a sign that the old man was pleased. "boys, we're too crowded," he went on, addressing the crew as they clambered inboard. "we'll leave 'em to bait big an' catch small." he looked at the catch in the pen, and it was curious to see how little and level the fish ran. save for harvey's halibut, there was nothing over fifteen pounds on deck. "i'm waitin' on the weather," he added. "ye'll have to make it yourself, disko, for there's no sign i can see," said long jack, sweeping the clear horizon. and yet, half an hour later, as they were dressing-down, the bank fog dropped on them, "between fish and fish," as they say. it drove steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless water. the men stopped dressing-down without a word. long jack and uncle salters slipped the windlass-brakes into their sockets, and began to heave up the anchor, the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the barrel. manuel and tom platt gave a hand at the last. the anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as troop steadied her at the wheel. "up jib and foresail," said he. "slip 'em in the smother," shouted long jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the fore-boom creaked as the "we're here" looked up into the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white. "there's wind behind this fog," said troop. it was all wonderful beyond words to harvey; and the most wonderful part was that he heard no orders except an occasional grunt from troop, ending with, "that's good, my son!" "'never seen anchor weighed before?" said tom platt, to harvey gaping at the damp canvas of the foresail. "no. where are we going?" "fish and make berth, as you'll find out 'fore you've bin a week aboard. it's all new to you, but we never know what may come to us. now, take me--tom platt--i'd never ha' thought--" "it's better than fourteen dollars a month an' a bullet in your belly," said troop, from the wheel. "ease your jumbo a grind." "dollars an' cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "but we didn't think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the 'miss jim buck',[ ] outside beaufort harbor, with fort macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. where was you then, disko?" "jest here, or hereabouts," disko replied, "earnin' my bread on the deep waters, and dodgin' reb privateers. 'sorry i can't accommodate you with red-hot shot, tom platt; but i guess we'll come aout all right on wind 'fore we see eastern point." there was an incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by a solid thud and a little spout of spray that clattered down on the fo'c'sle. the rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along the lee of the house--all save uncle salters, who sat stiffly on the main-hatch nursing his stung hands. [ ] the gemsbok, u. s. n.? "'guess she'd carry stays'l," said disko, rolling one eye at his brother. "guess she wouldn't to any sorter profit. what's the sense o' wastin' canvas?" the farmer-sailor replied. the wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in disko's hands. a few seconds later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote uncle salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to foot. he rose sputtering, and went forward, only to catch another. "see dad chase him, all around the deck," said dan. "uncle salters he thinks his quarter-share's our canvas. dad's put this duckin' act up on him two trips runnin'. hi! that found him where he feeds." uncle salters had taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave slapped him over the knees. disko's face was as blank as the circle of the wheel. "'guess she'd lie easier under stays'l, salters," said disko, as though he had seen nothing. "set your old kite, then," roared the victim, through a cloud of spray; "only don't lay it to me if anything happens. penn, you go below right off an' git your coffee. you ought to hev more sense than to bum araound on deck this weather." "now they'll swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come home," said dan, as uncle salters hustled penn into the fore-cabin. "'looks to me like's if we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. there's nothin' in creation deader-limpsey-idler'n a banker when she ain't on fish." "i'm glad ye spoke, danny," cried long jack, who had been casting round in search of amusement. "i'd clean forgot we'd a passenger under that t-wharf hat. there's no idleness for thim that don't know their ropes. pass him along, tom platt, an' we'll l'arn him." "'tain't my trick this time," grinned dan. "you've got to go it alone. dad learned me with a rope's end." for an hour long jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as he said, "things at the sea that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk, or asleep." there is not much gear to a seventy-ton schooner with a stump-foremast, but long jack had a gift of expression. when he wished to draw harvey's attention to the peak-halyards, he dug his knuckles into the back of the boy's neck and kept him at gaze for half a minute. he emphasised the difference between fore and aft generally by rubbing harvey's nose along a few feet of the boom, and the lead of each rope was fixed in harvey's mind by the end of the rope itself. the lesson would have been easier had the deck been at all free; but there appeared to be a place on it for everything and anything except a man. forward lay the windlass and its tackle, with the chain and hemp cables, all very unpleasant to trip over; the fo'c'sle stovepipe, and the gurry-butts by the fo'c'sle-hatch to hold the fish-livers. aft of these the fore-boom and booby of the main-hatch took all the space that was not needed for the pumps and dressing-pens. then came the nests of dories lashed to ring-bolts by the quarter-deck; the house, with tubs and oddments lashed all around it; and, last, the sixty-foot main-boom in its crutch, splitting things lengthwise, to duck and dodge under every time. tom platt, of course, could not keep his oar out of the business, but ranged alongside with enormous and unnecessary descriptions of sails and spars on the old ohio. "niver mind fwhat he says; attind to me, innocince. tom platt, this bally-hoo's not the ohio, an' you're mixing the bhoy bad." "he'll be ruined for life, beginnin' on a fore-an'-after this way," tom platt pleaded. "give him a chance to know a few leadin' principles. sailin's an art, harvey, as i'd show you if i had ye in the foretop o' the--" "i know ut. ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. silince, tom platt! now, after all i've said, how'd you reef the foresail, harve'? take your time answerin'." "haul that in," said harvey, pointing to leeward. "fwhat? the north atlantuc?" "no, the boom. then run that rope you showed me back there--" "that's no way," tom platt burst in. "quiet! he's l'arnin', an' has not the names good yet. go on, harve." "oh, it's the reef-pennant. i'd hook the tackle on to the reef-pennant, and then let down--" "lower the sail, child! lower!" said tom platt, in a professional agony. "lower the throat-and peak-halyards," harvey went on. those names stuck in his head. "lay your hand on thim," said long jack. harvey obeyed. "lower till that rope-loop--on the after-leach--kris--no, it's cringle--till the cringle was down on the boom. then i'd tie her up the way you said, and then i'd hoist up the peak-and throat-halyards again." "you've forgot to pass the tack-earing, but wid time and help ye'll l'arn. there's good and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else 'twould be overboard. d'ye follow me? 'tis dollars an' cents i'm puttin' into your pocket, ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin ye've filled out ye can ship from boston to cuba an' tell thim long jack l'arned you. now i'll chase ye around a piece, callin' the ropes, an' you'll lay your hand on thim as i call." he began, and harvey, who was feeling rather tired, walked slowly to the rope named. a rope's end licked round his ribs, and nearly knocked the breath out of him. "when you own a boat," said tom platt, with severe eyes, "you can walk. till then, take all orders at the run. once more--to make sure!" harvey was in a glow with the exercise, and this last cut warmed him thoroughly. now, he was a singularly smart boy, the son of a very clever man and a very sensitive woman, with a fine resolute temper that systematic spoiling had nearly turned to mulish obstinacy. he looked at the other men, and saw that even dan did not smile. it was evidently all in the day's work, though it hurt abominably; so he swallowed the hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin. the same smartness that led him to take such advantage of his mother made him very sure that no one on the boat, except, maybe, penn, would stand the least nonsense. one learns a great deal from a mere tone. long jack called over half a dozen more ropes, and harvey danced over the deck like an eel at ebb-tide, one eye on tom platt. "ver' good. ver' good done," said manuel. "after supper i show you a little schooner i make, with all her ropes. so we shall learn." "fust-class fer--a passenger," said dan. "dad he's jest allowed you'll be wuth your salt maybe 'fore you're draownded. thet's a heap fer dad. i'll learn you more our next watch together." "taller!" grunted disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the bows. there was nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the surging jib-boom, while alongside rolled the endless procession of solemn, pale waves whispering and upping one to the other. "now i'll learn you something long jack can't," shouted tom platt, as from a locker by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea lead hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow from a saucer full of mutton tallow, and went forward. "i'll learn you how to fly the blue pigeon. shooo!" disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way, while manuel, with harvey to help (and a proud boy was harvey), let down the jib in a lump on the boom. the lead sung a deep droning song as tom platt whirled it round and round. "go ahead, man," said long jack, impatiently. "we're not drawin' twenty-five fut off fire island in a fog. there's no trick to ut." "don't be jealous, galway." the released lead plopped into the sea far ahead as the schooner surged slowly forward. "soundin' is a trick, though," said dan, "when your dipsey lead's all the eye you're like to hev for a week. what d'you make it, dad?" disko's face relaxed. his skill and honour were involved in the march he had stolen on the rest of the fleet, and he had his reputation as a master artist who knew the banks blindfold. "sixty, mebbe--ef i'm any judge," he replied, with a glance at the tiny compass in the window of the house. "sixty," sung out tom platt, hauling in great wet coils. the schooner gathered way once more. "heave!" said disko, after a quarter of an hour. "what d'you make it?" dan whispered, and he looked at harvey proudly. but harvey was too proud of his own performances to be impressed just then. "fifty," said the father. "i mistrust we're right over the nick o' green bank on old sixty-fifty." "fifty!" roared tom platt. they could scarcely see him through the fog. "she's bu'st within a yard--like the shells at fort macon." "bait up, harve," said dan, diving for a line on the reel. the schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother, her head-sail banging wildly. the men waited and looked at the boys, who began fishing. "heugh!" dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "now haow in thunder did dad know? help us here, harve. it's a big un. poke-hooked, too." they hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed twenty-pound cod. he had taken the bait right into his stomach. "why, he's all covered with little crabs," cried harvey, turning him over. "by the great hook-block, they're lousy already," said long jack. "disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the keel." splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man taking his own place at the bulwarks. "are they good to eat?" harvey panted, as he lugged in another crab-covered cod. "sure. when they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin' together by the thousand, and when they take the bait that way they're hungry. never mind how the bait sets. they'll bite on the bare hook." "say, this is great!" harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and splashing--nearly all poke-hooked, as dan had said. "why can't we always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?" "allus can, till we begin to dress-daown. efter thet, the heads and offals 'u'd scare the fish to fundy. boat-fishin' ain't reckoned progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows. guess we'll run aout aour trawl to-night. harder on the back, this, than frum the dory, ain't it?" it was rather back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is water-borne till the last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast of him; but the few feet of a schooner's free-board make so much extra dead-hauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the stomach. but it was wild and furious sport so long as it lasted; and a big pile lay aboard when the fish ceased biting. "where's penn and uncle salters?" harvey asked, slapping the slime off his oilskins, and reeling up the line in careful imitation of the others. "git's coffee and see." under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the fo'c'sle table down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two men, a checker-board between them, uncle salters snarling at penn's every move. "what's the matter naow?" said the former, as harvey, one hand in the leather loop at the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook. "big fish and lousy-heaps and heaps," harvey replied, quoting long jack. "how's the game?" little penn's jaw dropped. "tweren't none o' his fault," snapped uncle salters. "penn's deef." "checkers, weren't it?" said dan, as harvey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in a tin pail. "that lets us out o' cleanin' up to-night. dad's a jest man. they'll have to do it." "an' two young fellers i know'll bait up a tub or so o' trawl, while they're cleanin'," said disko, lashing the wheel to his taste. "urn! 'guess i'd ruther clean up, dad." "don't doubt it. ye wun't, though. dress-daown! dress-daown! penn'll pitch while you two bait up." "why in thunder didn't them blame boys tell us you'd struck on?" said uncle salters, shuffling to his place at the table. "this knife's gum-blunt, dan." "ef stickin' out cable don't wake ye, guess you'd better hire a boy o' your own," said dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of trawl-line lashed to windward of the house. "oh, harve, don't ye want to slip down an' git's bait?" "bait ez we are," said disko. "i mistrust shag-fishin' will pay better, ez things go." that meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the fish were cleaned--an improvement on paddling barehanded in the little bait-barrels below. the tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a big hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single hook, with the stowage of the baited line so that it should run clear when shot from the dory, was a scientific business. dan managed it in the dark without looking, while harvey caught his fingers on the barbs and bewailed his fate. but the hooks flew through dan's fingers like tatting on an old maid's lap. "i helped bait up trawl ashore 'fore i could well walk," he said. "but it's a putterin' job all the same. oh, dad!" this shouted towards the hatch, where disko and tom platt were salting. "how many skates you reckon we'll need?" "baout three. hurry!" "there's three hundred fathom to each tub," dan explained; "more'n enough to lay out tonight. ouch! 'slipped up there, i did." he stuck his finger in his mouth. "i tell you, harve, there ain't money in gloucester'u'd hire me to ship on a reg'lar trawler. it may be progressive, but, barrin' that, it's the putterin'est, slimjammest business top of earth." "i don't know what this is, if 'tisn't regular trawling," said harvey, sulkily. "my fingers are all cut to frazzles." "pshaw! this is jest one o' dad's blame experiments. he don't trawl 'less there's mighty good reason fer it. dad knows. thet's why he's baitin' ez he is. we'll hev her saggin' full when we take her up er we won't see a fin." penn and uncle salters cleaned up as disko had ordained, but the boys profited little. no sooner were the tubs furnished than tom platt and long jack, who had been exploring the inside of a dory with a lantern, snatched them away, loaded up the tubs and some small, painted trawl-buoys, and hove the boat overboard into what harvey regarded as an exceedingly rough sea. "they'll be drowned. why, the dory's loaded like a freight-car," he cried. "we'll be back," said long jack, "an' in case you'll not be lookin' for us, we'll lay into you both if the trawl's snarled." the dory surged up on the crest of a wave, and just when it seemed impossible that she could avoid smashing against the schooner's side, slid over the ridge, and was swallowed up in the damp dusk. "take a-hold here, an' keep ringin' steady," said dan, passing harvey the lanyard of a bell that hung just behind the windlass. harvey rang lustily, for he felt two lives depended on him. but disko in the cabin, scrawling in the log-book, did not look like a murderer, and when he went to supper he even smiled drily at the anxious harvey. "this ain't no weather," said dan. "why, you an' me could set thet trawl! they've only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our cable. they don't need no bell reelly." "clang! cling! clang!" harvey kept it up, varied with occasional rub-a-dubs, for another half-hour. there was a bellow and a bump alongside. manuel and dan raced to the hooks of the dory-tackle; long jack and tom platt arrived on deck together, it seemed, one half the north atlantic at their backs, and the dory followed them in the air, landing with a clatter. "nary snarl," said tom platt, as he dripped. "danny, you'll do yet." "the pleasure av your comp'ny to the banquit," said long jack, squelching the water from his boots as he capered like an elephant and stuck an oilskinned arm into harvey's face. "we do be condescending to honour the second half wid our presence." and off they all four rolled to supper, where harvey stuffed himself to the brim on fish-chowder and fried pies, and fell fast asleep just as manuel produced from a locker a lovely two-foot model of the lucy holmes, his first boat, and was going to show harvey the ropes. harvey never even twiddled his fingers as penn pushed him into his bunk. "it must be a sad thing--a very sad thing," said penn, watching the boy's face, "for his mother and his father, who think he is dead. to lose a child--to lose a man-child!" "git out o' this, penn," said dan. "go aft and finish your game with uncle salters. tell dad i'll stand harve's watch ef he don't keer. he's played aout." "ver' good boy," said manuel, slipping out of his boots and disappearing into the black shadows of the lower bunk. "expec' he make good man, danny. i no see he is any so mad as your parpa he says. eh, wha-at?" dan chuckled, but the chuckle ended in a snore. it was thick weather outside, with a rising wind, and the elder men stretched their watches. the hours struck clear in the cabin; the nosing bows slapped and scuffled with the seas; the fo'c'sle stovepipe hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept on, while disko, long jack, tom plait, and uncle salters, each in turn, stumped aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held, or to veer out a little more cable against chafing, with a glance at the dim anchor-light between each round. chapter iv harvey waked to find the "first half" at 'breakfast, the fo'c'sle door drawn to a crack, and every square inch of the schooner singing its own tune. the black bulk of the cook balanced behind the tiny galley over the glare of the stove, and the pots and pans in the pierced wooden board before it jarred and racketed to each plunge. up and up the fo'c'sle climbed, yearning and surging and quivering, and then, with a clear, sickle-like swoop, came down into the seas. he could hear the flaring bows cut and squelch, and there was a pause ere the divided waters came down on the deck above, like a volley of buck-shot. followed the woolly sound of the cable in the hawse-hole; a grunt and squeal of the windlass; a yaw, a punt, and a kick, and the "we're here" gathered herself together to repeat the motions. "now, ashore," he heard long jack saying, "ye've chores, an' ye must do thim in any weather. here we're well clear of the fleet, an' we've no chores--an' that's a blessin'. good night, all." he passed like a big snake from the table to his bunk, and began to smoke. tom platt followed his example; uncle salters, with penn, fought his way up the ladder to stand his watch, and the cook set for the "second half." it came out of its bunks as the others had entered theirs, with a shake and a yawn. it ate till it could eat no more; and then manuel filled his pipe with some terrible tobacco, crotched himself between the pawl-post and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table, and smiled tender and indolent smiles at the smoke. dan lay at length in his bunk, wrestling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion, whose tunes went up and down with the pitching of the "we're here". the cook, his shoulders against the locker where he kept the fried pies (dan was fond of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with one eye on the stove in event of too much water finding its way down the pipe; and the general smell and smother were past all description. harvey considered affairs, wondered that he was not deathly sick, and crawled into his bunk again, as the softest and safest place, while dan struck up, "i don't want to play in your yard," as accurately as the wild jerks allowed. "how long is this for?" harvey asked of manuel. "till she get a little quiet, and we can row to trawl. perhaps to-night. perhaps two days more. you do not like? eh, wha-at?" "i should have been crazy sick a week ago, but it doesn't seem to upset me now--much." "that is because we make you fisherman, these days. if i was you, when i come to gloucester i would give two, three big candles for my good luck." "give who?" "to be sure--the virgin of our church on the hill. she is very good to fishermen all the time. that is why so few of us portugee men ever are drowned." "you're a roman catholic, then?" "i am a madeira man. i am not a porto pico boy. shall i be baptist, then? eh, wha-at? i always give candles--two, three more when i come to gloucester. the good virgin she never forgets me, manuel." "i don't sense it that way," tom platt put in from his bunk, his scarred face lit up by the glare of a match as he sucked at his pipe. "it stands to reason the sea's the sea; and you'll git jest about what's goin', candles or kerosene, fer that matter." "tis a mighty good thing," said long jack, "to have a fri'nd at coort, though. i'm o' manuel's way o' thinkin'. about tin years back i was crew to a sou' boston market-boat. we was off minot's ledge wid a northeaster, butt first, atop of us, thicker'n burgoo. the ould man was dhrunk, his chin waggin' on the tiller, an' i sez to myself, 'if iver i stick my boat-huk into t-wharf again, i'll show the saints fwhat manner o' craft they saved me out av.' now, i'm here, as ye can well see, an' the model of the dhirty ould kathleen, that took me a month to make, i gave ut to the priest, an' he hung ut up forninst the altar. there's more sense in givin' a model that's by way o' bein' a work av art than any candle. ye can buy candles at store, but a model shows the good saints ye've tuk trouble an' are grateful." "d'you believe that, irish?" said tom platt, turning on his elbow. "would i do ut if i did not, ohio?" "wa-al, enoch fuller he made a model o' the old ohio, and she's to salem museum now. mighty pretty model, too, but i guess enoch he never done it fer no sacrifice; an' the way i take it is--" there were the makings of an hour-long discussion of the kind that fishermen love, where the talk runs in shouting circles and no one proves anything at the end, had not dan struck up this cheerful rhyme: "up jumped the mackerel with his striped back. reef in the mainsail, and haul on the tack; for it's windy weather--" here long jack joined in: "and it's blowy weather; when the winds begin to blow, pipe all hands together!" dan went on, with a cautious look at tom plait, holding the accordion low in the bunk: "up jumped the cod with his chuckle-head, went to the main-chains to heave at the lead; for it's windy weather," etc. tom platt seemed to be hunting for something. dan crouched lower, but sang louder: "up jumped the flounder that swims to the ground. chuckle-head! chuckle-head! mind where ye sound!" tom platt's huge rubber boot whirled across the fo'c'sle and caught dan's uplifted arm. there was war between the man and the boy ever since dan had discovered that the mere whistling of that tune would make him angry as he heaved the lead. "thought i'd fetch yer," said dan, returning the gift with precision. "ef you don't like my music, git out your fiddle. i ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' long jack arguin' 'baout candles. fiddle, tom platt; or i'll learn harve here the tune!" tom platt leaned down to a locker and brought up an old white fiddle. manuel's eye glistened, and from somewhere behind the pawl-post he drew out a tiny, guitar-like thing with wire strings, which he called a _machette_. "'tis a concert," said long jack, beaming through the smoke. "a reg'lar boston concert." there was a burst of spray as the hatch opened, and disko, in yellow oilskins, descended. "ye're just in time, disko. fwhat's she doin' outside?" "jest this!" he dropped on to the lockers with the push and heave of the "we're here". "we're singin' to kape our breakfasts down. ye'll lead, av course, disko," said long jack. "guess there ain't more'n 'baout two old songs i know, an' ye've heerd them both." his excuses were cut short by tom platt launching into a most dolorous tune, like unto the moaning of winds and the creaking of masts. with his eyes fixed on the beams above, disko began this ancient, ancient ditty, tom platt flourishing all round him to make the tune and words fit a little: "there is a crack packet--crack packet o' fame, she hails from noo york, an' the dreadnought's her name. you may talk o' your fliers--swallow-tail and black ball-- but the dreadnought's the packet that can beat them all. "now the dreadnought she lies in the river mersey, because of the tugboat to take her to sea; but when she's off soundings you shortly will know (chorus.) she's the liverpool packet--o lord, let her go! "now the dreadnought she's howlin' 'crost the banks o' newfoundland, where the water's all shallow and the bottom's all sand. sez all the little fishes that swim to an' fro: (chorus.) 'she's the liverpool packet--o lord, let her go!'" there were scores of verses, for he worked the dreadnought every mile of the way between liverpool and new york as conscientiously as though he were on her deck, and the accordion pumped and the fiddle squeaked beside him. tom platt followed with something about "the rough and tough mcginn, who would pilot the vessel in." then they called on harvey, who felt very flattered, to contribute to the entertainment; but all that he could remember were some pieces of "skipper ireson's ride" that he had been taught at the camp-school in the adirondacks. it seemed that they might be appropriate to the time and place, but he had no more than mentioned the title when disko brought down one foot with a bang, and cried, "don't go on, young feller. that's a mistaken jedgment--one o' the worst kind, too, becaze it's catchin' to the ear." "i orter ha' warned you," said dan. "thet allus fetches dad." "what's wrong?" said harvey, surprised and a little angry. "all you're goin' to say," said disko. "all dead wrong from start to finish, an' whittier he's to blame. i have no special call to right any marblehead man, but 'tweren't no fault o' ireson's. my father he told me the tale time an' again, an' this is the way 'twuz." "for the wan hundreth time," put in long jack, under his breath. "ben ireson he was skipper o' the betty, young feller, comin' home frum the banks--that was before the war of , but jestice is jestice at all times. they f'und the active o' portland, an' gibbons o' that town he was her skipper; they f'und her leakin' off cape cod light. there was a terr'ble gale on, an' they was gettin' the betty home's fast as they could craowd her. well, ireson he said there warn't any sense to reskin' a boat in that sea; the men they wouldn't hev it; and he laid it before them to stay by the active till the sea run daown a piece. they wouldn't hev that either, hangin' araound the cape in any sech weather, leak or no leak. they jest up stays'l an' quit, nat'rally takin' ireson with 'em. folks to marblehead was mad at him not runnin' the risk, and becaze nex' day, when the sea was ca'am (they never stopped to think o' that), some of the active's folk was took off by a truro man. they come into marblehead with their own tale to tell, sayin' how ireson had shamed his town, an' so forth an' so on; an' ireson's men they was scared, seem' public feelin' ag'in' 'em, an' they went back on ireson, an' swore he was respons'ble for the hull act. 'tweren't the women neither that tarred and feathered him--marblehead women don't act that way--'twas a passel o' men an' boys, an' they carted him araound town in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, an' ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it some day. well, the facts came aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest man; an' whittier he come along an' picked up the slack eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered ben ireson all over onct more after he was dead. 'twas the only time whittier ever slipped up, an' 'tweren't fair. i whaled dan good when he brought that piece back from school. you don't know no better, o' course; but i've give you the facts, hereafter an' evermore to be remembered. ben ireson weren't no sech kind o' man as whittier makes aout; my father he knew him well, before an' after that business, an' you beware o' hasty jedgments, young feller. next!" harvey had never heard disko talk so long, and collapsed with burning cheeks; but, as dan said promptly, a boy could only learn what he was taught at school, and life was too short to keep track of every lie along the coast. then manuel touched the jangling, jarring little _machette_ to a queer tune, and sang something in portuguese about "nina, innocente!" ending with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. then disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. this is one stanza: "now aprile is over and melted the snow, and outer noo bedford we shortly must tow; yes, out o' noo bedford we shortly must clear, we're the whalers that never see wheat in the ear." here the fiddle went very softly for a while by itself, and then: "wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love's posy blowin'; wheat-in-the-ear, we're goin' off to sea; wheat-in-the-ear, i left you fit for sowin'; when i come back a loaf o' bread you'll be!" that made harvey almost weep, though he could not tell why. but it was much worse when the cook dropped the potatoes and held out his hands for the fiddle. still leaning against the locker door, he struck into a tune that was like something very bad but sure to happen whatever you did. after a little he sang in an unknown tongue, his big chin down on the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs glaring in the lamplight. harvey swung out of his bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of the timbers and the wash of the waters the tune crooned and moaned on, like lee surf in a blind fog, till it ended with a wail. "jimmy christmas! thet gives me the blue creevles," said dan. "what in thunder is it?" "the song of fin mccoul," said the cook, "when he wass going to norway." his english was not thick, but all clear-cut, as though it came from a phonograph. "faith, i've been to norway, but i didn't make that unwholesim noise. 'tis like some of the old songs, though," said long jack, sighing. "don't let's hev another 'thout somethin' between," said dan; and the accordion struck up a rattling, catchy tune that ended: "it's six an' twenty sundays sence las' we saw the land, with fifteen hunder quintal, an' fifteen hunder quintal, 'teen hunder toppin' quintal, 'twix' old 'queereau an' grand!" "hold on!" roared tom plait "d'ye want to nail the trip, dan? that's jonah sure, 'less you sing it after all our salt's wet." "no, 'tain't. is it, dad? not unless you sing the very las' verse. you can't learn me anything on jonahs!" "what's that?" said harvey. "what's a jonah?" "a jonah's anything that spoils the luck. sometimes it's a man--sometimes it's a boy--or a bucket. i've known a splittin'-knife jonah two trips till we was on to her," said tom plait. "there's all sorts o' jonahs. jim bourke was one till he was drowned on georges. i'd never ship with jim bourke, not if i was starvin'. there wuz a green dory on the ezra flood. thet was a jonah too, the worst sort o' jonah. drowned four men she did, an' used to shine fiery o' nights in the nest." "and you believe that?" said harvey, remembering what tom platt had said about candles and models. "haven't we all got to take what's served?" a mutter of dissent ran round the bunks. "outboard, yes; inboard, things can happen," said disko. "don't you go makin' a mock of jonahs, young feller." "well, harve ain't no jonah. day after we catched him," dan cut in, "we had a toppin' good catch." the cook threw up his head and laughed suddenly--a queer, thin laugh. he was a most disconcerting nigger. "murder!" said long jack. "don't do that again, doctor. we ain't used to ut." "what's wrong?" said dan. "ain't he our mascot, and didn't they strike on good after we'd struck him?" "oh! yess," said the cook. "i know that, but the catch iss not finish yet." "he ain't goin' to do us any harm," said dan, hotly. "where are ye hintin' an' edgin' to? he's all right." "no harm. no. but one day he will be your master, danny." "that all?" said dan, placidly. "he wun't--not by a jugful." "master!" said the cook, pointing to harvey. "man!" and he pointed to dan. "that's news. haow soon?" said dan, with a laugh. "in some years, and i shall see it. master and man--man and master." "how in thunder d'ye work that out?" said tom platt. "in my head, where i can see." "haow?" this from all the others at once. "i do not know, but so it will be." he dropped his head, and went on peeling the potatoes, and not another word could they get out of him. "well," said dan, "a heap o' things'll hev to come abaout 'fore harve's any master o' mine; but i'm glad the doctor ain't choosen to mark him for a jonah. now, i mistrust uncle salters fer the jonerest jonah in the fleet regardin' his own special luck. dunno ef it's spreadin' same's smallpox. he ought to be on the carrie pitman. that boat's her own jonah, sure--crews an' gear make no differ to her driftin'. jimmy christmas! she'll etch loose in a flat ca'am." "we're well dear o' the fleet, anyway," said disko, "carrie pitman an' all." there was a rapping on the deck. "uncle salters has catched his luck," said dan, as his father departed. "it's blown clear," disko cried, and all the fo'c'sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. the fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it. the "we're here" slid, as it were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand grey hills, while the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes. far away a sea would burst in a sheet of foam, and the others would follow suit as at a signal, till harvey's eyes swam with the vision of interlacing whites and greys. four or five mother carey's chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. a rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down wind and back again, and melted away. "'seems to me i saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said uncle salters, pointing to the northeast. "can't be any of the fleet," said disko, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the fo'c'sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the troughs. "sea's oilin' over dretful fast. danny, don't you want to skip up a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays?" danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging (this consumed harvey with envy), hitched himself around the reeling crosstrees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell. "she's all right," he hailed. "sail o! dead to the no'th'ard, comin' down like smoke! schooner she be, too." they waited yet another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches, with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of olive-green water. then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with old-fashioned wooden snail's-horn davits. the sails were red-tanned. "frenchmen!" shouted dan. "no, 'tain't, neither. da-ad!" "that's no french," said disko. "salters, your blame luck holds tighter'n a screw in a keg-head." "i've eyes. it's uncle abishai." "you can't nowise tell fer sure." "the head-king of all jonahs," groaned tom platt. "oh, salters, salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep? "how could i tell?" said poor salters, as the schooner swung up. she might have been the very flying dutchman, so foul, draggled, and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. her old-style quarter-deck was some four or five feet high, and her rigging flew knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end. she was running before the wind--yawing frightfully--her staysail let down to act as a sort of extra foresail,--"scandalised," they call it,--and her fore-boom guyed out over the side. her bowsprit cocked up like an old-fashioned frigate's; her jib-boom had been fished and spliced and nailed and clamped beyond further repair; and as she hove herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked for all the world like a blowzy, frousy, bad old woman sneering at a decent girl. "that's abishai," said salters. "full o' gin an' judique men, an' the judgments o' providence layin' fer him an' never takin' good holt. he's run in to bait, miquelon way." "he'll run her under," said long jack. "that's no rig fer this weather." "not he, 'r he'd 'a' done it long ago," disko replied. "looks's if he cal'lated to run us under. ain't she daown by the head more'n natural, tom platt?" "ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't safe," said the sailor, slowly. "ef she's spewed her oakum he'd better git to his pumps mighty quick." the creature thrashed up, wore round with a clatter and rattle, and lay head to wind within ear-shot. a greybeard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled something harvey could not understand. but disko's face darkened. "he'd resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. says we're in fer a shift o' wind. he's in fer worse. abishai! abishai!" he waved his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the pumps, and pointed forward. the crew mocked him and laughed. "jounce ye, an' strip ye, an' trip ye!" yelled uncle abishai. "a livin' gale--a livin' gale. yah! cast up fer your last trip, all you gloucester haddocks. you won't see gloucester no more, no more!" "crazy full--as usual," said tom platt. "wish he hadn't spied us, though." she drifted out of hearing while the greyhead yelled something about a dance at the bay of bulls and a dead man in the fo'c'sle. harvey shuddered. he had seen the sloven tilled decks and the savage-eyed crew. "an' that's a fine little floatin' hell fer her draught," said long jack. "i wondher what mischief he's been at ashore." "he's a trawler," dan explained to harvey, "an' he runs in fer bait all along the coast. oh, no, not home, he don't go. he deals along the south an' east shore up yonder." he nodded in the direction of the pitiless newfoundland beaches. "dad won't never take me ashore there. they're a mighty tough crowd--an' abishai's the toughest. you saw his boat? well, she's nigh seventy year old, they say; the last o' the old marblehead heel-tappers. they don't make them quarter-decks any more. abishai don't use marblehead, though. he ain't wanted there. he jes' drif's araound, in debt, trawlin' an' cussin' like you've heard. bin a jonah fer years an' years, he hez. 'gits liquor frum the feecamp boats fer makin' spells an' selling winds an' such truck. crazy, i guess." "twon't be any use underrunnin' the trawl to-night," said tom platt, with quiet despair. "he come alongside special to cuss us. i'd give my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old ohio 'fore we quit floggin'. jest abaout six dozen, an' sam mocatta layin' 'em on crisscross!" the dishevelled "heel-tapper" danced drunkenly down wind, and all eyes followed her. suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph voice: "it wass his own death made him speak so! he iss fey--fey, i tell you! look!" she sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or four miles distant. the patch dulled and faded out, and even as the light passed so did the schooner. she dropped into a hollow and--was not. "run under, by the great hook-block!" shouted disko, jumping aft. "drunk or sober, we've got to help 'em. heave short and break her out! smart!" harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving in as they moved away. this is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to except in matters of life and death, and the little "we're here" complained like a human. they ran down to where abishai's craft had vanished; found two or three trawl-tubs, a gin-bottle, and a stove-in dory, but nothing more. "let 'em go," said disko, though no one had hinted at picking them up. "i wouldn't hev a match that belonged to abishai aboard. 'guess she run clear under. 'must ha' been spewin' her oakum fer a week, an' they never thought to pump her. that's one more boat gone along o' leavin' port all hands drunk." "glory be!" said long jack. "we'd ha' been obliged to help 'em if they was top o' water." "'thinkin' o' that myself," said tom platt. "fey! fey!" said the cook, rolling his eyes. "he hass taken his own luck with him." "ver' good thing, i think, to tell the fleet when we see. eh, wha-at'?" said manuel. "if you runna that way before the wind, and she work open her seams--" he threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture, while penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all. harvey could not realise that he had seen death on the open waters, but he felt very sick. then dan went up the crosstrees, and disko steered them back to within sight of their own trawl-buoys just before the fog blanketed the sea once again. "we go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go," was all he said to harvey. "you think on that for a spell, young feller. that was liquor." after dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks,--penn and uncle salters were very zealous this time,--and the catch was large and large fish. "abishai has shorely took his luck with him," said salters. "the wind hain't backed ner riz ner nothin'. how abaout the trawl? i despise superstition, anyway." tom platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and make a new berth. but the cook said: "the luck iss in two pieces. you will find it so when you look. i know." this so tickled long jack that he overbore tom platt, and the two went out together. underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line. it is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. but when they heard, "and naow to thee, o capting," booming out of the fog, the crew of the "we're here" took heart. the dory swirled alongside well loaded, tom platt yelling for manuel to act as relief-boat. "the luck's cut square in two pieces," said long jack, forking in the fish, while harvey stood open-mouthed at the skill with which the plunging dory was saved from destruction. "one half was jest punkins. tom platt wanted to haul her an' ha' done wid ut; but i said, 'i'll back the doctor that has the second sight,' an' the other half come up sagging full o' big uns. hurry, man'nle, an' bring's a tub o' bait. there's luck afloat tonight." the fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren had just been taken, and tom platt and long jack moved methodically up and down the length of the trawl, the boat's nose surging under the wet line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers that they called pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod against the gunwale, rebaiting, and loading manuel's dory till dusk. "i'll take no risks," said disko, then--"not with him floatin' around so near. abishai won't sink fer a week. heave in the dories, an' we'll dressdaown after supper." that was a mighty dressing-down, attended by three or four blowing grampuses. it lasted till nine o'clock, and disko was thrice heard to chuckle as harvey pitched the split fish into the hold. "say, you're haulin' ahead dretful fast," said dan, when they ground the knives after the men had turned in. "there's somethin' of a sea tonight, an' i hain't heard you make no remarks on it." "too busy," harvey replied, testing a blade's edge. "come to think of it, she is a high-kicker." the little schooner was gambolling all around her anchor among the silver-tipped waves. backing with a start of affected surprise at the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with the report of a gun. shaking her head, she would say: "well, i'm sorry i can't stay any longer with you. i'm going north," and would sidle off, halting suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging. "as i was just going to observe," she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man addressing a lamp-post. the rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the sea took her. "see her sayin' her piece. she's patrick henry naow," said dan. she swung sideways on a roller, and gesticulated with her jib-boom from port to starboard. "but-ez---fer-me, give me liberty--er give me-death!" wop! she sat down in the moon-path on the water, courtesying with a flourish of pride impressive enough had not the wheel-gear sniggered mockingly in its box. harvey laughed aloud. "why, it's just as if she was alive," he said. "she's as stiddy as a haouse an' as dry as a herrin'," said dan, enthusiastically, as he was stung across the deck in a batter of spray. "fends 'em off an 'fends 'em off, an' 'don't ye come anigh me,' she sez. look at her--jest look at her! sakes! you should see one o' them toothpicks h'istin' up her anchor on her spike outer fifteen-fathom water." "what's a toothpick, dan?" "them new haddockers an' herrin'-boats. fine's a yacht forward, with yacht sterns to 'em, an' spike bowsprits, an' a haouse that u'd take our hold. i've heard that burgess himself he made the models fer three or four of 'em, dad's sot ag'in' 'em on account o' their pitchin' an' joltin', but there's heaps o' money in 'em. dad can find fish, but he ain't no ways progressive--he don't go with the march o' the times. they're chock-full o' labour-savin' jigs an' sech all. 'ever seed the elector o' gloucester? she's a daisy, ef she is a toothpick." "what do they cost, dan?" "hills o' dollars. fifteen thousand, p'haps; more, mebbe. there's gold-leaf an' everything you kin think of." then to himself, half under his breath "guess i'd call her hattie s., too." chapter v that was the first of many talks with dan, who told harvey why he would transfer his dory's name to the imaginary burgess-modelled haddocker. harvey heard a good deal about the real hattie at gloucester; saw a lock of her hair--which dan, finding fair words of no avail, had "hooked" as she sat in front of him at school that winter--and a photograph. hattie was about fourteen years old, with an awful contempt for boys, and had been trampling on dan's heart through the winter. all this was revealed under oath of solemn secrecy on moonlit decks, in the dead dark, or in choking fog; the whining wheel behind them, the climbing deck before, and without, the unresting, clamorous sea. once, of course, as the boys came to know each other, there was a fight, which raged from bow to stern till penn came up and separated them, but promised not to tell disko, who thought fighting on watch rather worse than sleeping. harvey was no match for dan physically, but it says a great deal for his new training that he took his defeat and did not try to get even with his conqueror by underhand methods. that was after he had been cured of a string of boils between his elbows and wrists, where the wet jersey and oilskins cut into the flesh. the salt water stung them unpleasantly, but when they were ripe dan treated them with disko's razor, and assured harvey that now he was a "blooded banker"; the affliction of gurry-sores being the mark of the caste that claimed him. since he was a boy and very busy, he did not bother his head with too much thinking. he was exceedingly sorry for his mother, and often longed to see her and above all to tell her of his wonderful new life, and how brilliantly he was acquitting himself in it. otherwise he preferred not to wonder too much how she was bearing the shock of his supposed death. but one day, as he stood on the fo'c'sle ladder, guying the cook, who had accused him and dan of hooking fried pies, it occurred to him that this was a vast improvement on being snubbed by strangers in the smoking-room of a hired liner. he was a recognised part of the scheme of things on the "we're here"; had his place at the table and among the bunks; and could hold his own in the long talks on stormy days, when the others were always ready to listen to what they called his "fairy-tales" of his life ashore. it did not take him more than two days and a quarter to feel that if he spoke of his own life--it seemed very far away--no one except dan (and even dan's belief was sorely tried) credited him. so he invented a friend, a boy he had heard of, who drove a miniature four-pony drag in toledo, ohio, and ordered five suits of clothes at a time, and led things called "germans" at parties where the oldest girl was not quite fifteen, but all the presents were solid silver. salters protested that this kind of yarn was desperately wicked, if not indeed positively blasphemous, but he listened as greedily as the others; and their criticisms at the end gave harvey entirely new notions on "germans," clothes, cigarettes with gold-leaf tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinner-parties, champagne, card-playing, and hotel accommodation. little by little he changed his tone when speaking of his "friend," whom long jack had christened "the crazy kid," "the gilt-edged baby," "the suckin' vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with his sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories about silk pajamas and specially imported neckwear, to the "friend's" discredit. harvey was a very adaptable person, with a keen eye and ear for every face and tone about him. before long he knew where disko kept the old green-crusted quadrant that they called the "hog-yoke"--under the bed-bag in his bunk. when he 'took the sun, and with the help of "the old farmer's" almanac found the latitude, harvey would jump down into the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date with a nail on the rust of the stove-pipe. now, the chief engineer of the liner could have done no more, and no engineer of thirty years' service could have assumed one half of the ancient-mariner air with which harvey, first careful to spit over the side, made public the schooner's position for that day, and then and not till then relieved disko of the quadrant. there is an etiquette in all these things. the said "hog-yoke," an eldridge chart, the farming almanac, blunt's "coast pilot," and bowditch's "navigator" were all the weapons disko needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that was his spare eye. harvey nearly slew penn with it when tom platt taught him first how to "fly the blue pigeon"; and, though his strength was not equal to continuous sounding in any sort of a sea, for calm weather with a seven-pound lead on shoal water disko used him freely. as dan said: "'tain't soundin's dad wants. it's samples. grease her up good, harve." harvey would tallow the cup at the end, and carefully bring the sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to disko, who fingered and smelt it and gave judgment. as has been said, when disko thought of cod he thought as a cod; and by some long-tested mixture of instinct and experience, moved the "we're here" from berth to berth, always with the fish, as a blindfolded chess-player moves on the unseen board. but disko's board was the grand bank--a triangle two hundred and fifty miles on each side a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the tracks of the reckless liners, and dotted with the sails of the fishing-fleet. for days they worked in fog--harvey at the bell--till, grown familiar with the thick airs, he went out with tom platt, his heart rather in his mouth. but the fog would not lift, and the fish were biting, and no one can stay helplessly afraid for six hours at a time. harvey devoted himself to his lines and the gaff or gob-stick as tom platt called for them; and they rowed back to the schooner guided by the bell and tom's instinct; manuel's conch sounding thin and faint beside them. but it was an unearthly experience, and, for the first time in a month, harvey dreamed of the shifting, smoking floors of water round the dory, the lines that strayed away into nothing, and the air above that melted on the sea below ten feet from his straining eyes. a few days later he was out with manuel on what should have been forty-fathom bottom, but the whole length of the roding ran out, and still the anchor found nothing, and harvey grew mortally afraid, for that his last touch with earth was lost. "whale-hole," said manuel, hauling in. "that is good joke on disko. come!" and he rowed to the schooner to find tom platt and the others jeering at the skipper because, for once, he had led them to the edge of the barren whale-deep, the blank hole of the grand bank. they made another berth through the fog, and that time the hair of harvey's head stood up when he went out in manuel's dory. a whiteness moved in the whiteness of the fog with a breath like the breath of the grave, and there was a roaring, a plunging, and spouting. it was his first introduction to the dread summer berg of the banks, and he cowered in the bottom of the boat while manuel laughed. there were days, though, clear and soft and warm, when it seemed a sin to do anything but loaf over the hand-lines and spank the drifting "sun-scalds" with an oar; and there were days of light airs, when harvey was taught how to steer the schooner from one berth to another. it thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his hand on the spokes and slide over the long hollows as the foresail scythed back and forth against the blue sky. that was magnificent, in spite of disko saying that it would break a snake's back to follow his wake. but, as usual, pride ran before a fall. they were sailing on the wind with the staysail--an old one, luckily--set, and harvey jammed her right into it to show dan how completely he had mastered the art. the foresail went over with a bang, and the foregaff stabbed and ripped through the stay-sail, which, was of course, prevented from going over by the mainstay. they lowered the wreck in awful silence, and harvey spent his leisure hours for the next few days under tom platt's lee, learning to use a needle and palm. dan hooted with joy, for, as he said, he had made the very same blunder himself in his early days. boylike, harvey imitated all the men by turns, till he had combined disko's peculiar stoop at the wheel, long jack's swinging overhand when the lines were hauled, manuel's round-shouldered but effective stroke in a dory, and tom platt's generous ohio stride along the deck. "'tis beautiful to see how he takes to ut," said long jack, when harvey was looking out by the windlass one thick noon. "i'll lay my wage an' share 'tis more'n half play-actin' to him, an' he consates himself he's a bowld mariner. 'watch his little bit av a back now!" "that's the way we all begin," said tom platt. "the boys they make believe all the time till they've cheated 'emselves into bein' men, an' so till they die--pretendin' an' pretendin'. i done it on the old ohio, i know. stood my first watch--harbor-watch--feelin' finer'n farragut. dan's full o' the same kind o' notions. see 'em now, actin' to be genewine moss-backs--every hair a rope-yarn an' blood stockholm tar." he spoke down the cabin stairs. "'guess you're mistook in your judgments fer once, disko. what in rome made ye tell us all here the kid was crazy?" "he wuz," disko replied. "crazy ez a loon when he come aboard; but i'll say he's sobered up consid'ble sence. i cured him." "he yarns good," said tom platt. "t'other night he told us abaout a kid of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little rig an' four ponies up an' down toledo, ohio, i think 'twas, an' givin' suppers to a crowd o' sim'lar kids. cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame interestin'. he knows scores of 'em." "'guess he strikes 'em outen his own head," disko called from the cabin, where he was busy with the log-book. "'stands to reason that sort is all made up. it don't take in no one but dan, an' he laughs at it. i've heard him, behind my back." "y'ever hear what sim'on peter ca'houn said when they whacked up a match 'twix' his sister hitty an' lorin' jerauld, an' the boys put up that joke on him daown to georges?" drawled uncle salters, who was dripping peaceably under the lee of the starboard dory-nest. tom platt puffed at his pipe in scornful silence: he was a cape cod man, and had not known that tale more than twenty years. uncle salters went on with a rasping chuckle: "sim'on peter ca'houn he said, an' he was jest right, abaout lorin', 'ha'af on the taown,' he said, 'an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' they told me she's married a 'ich man.' sim'on peter ca'houn he hedn't no roof to his mouth, an' talked that way." "he didn't talk any pennsylvania dutch," tom platt replied. "you'd better leave a cape man to tell that tale. the ca'houns was gipsies frum 'way back." "wal, i don't profess to be any elocutionist," salters said. "i'm comin' to the moral o' things. that's jest abaout what aour harve be! ha'af on the taown, an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' there's some'll believe he's a rich man. yah!" "did ye ever think how sweet 'twould be to sail wid a full crew o' salterses?" said long jack. "ha'af in the furrer an' other ha'af in the muck-heap, as ca'houn did not say, an' makes out he's a fisherman!" a little laugh went round at salters's expense. disko held his tongue, and wrought over the log-book that he kept in a hatchet-faced, square hand; this was the kind of thing that ran on, page after soiled page: "july . this day thick fog and few fish. made berth to northward. so ends this day. "july . this day comes in with thick fog. caught a few fish. "july . this day comes in with light breeze from n. e. and fine weather. made a berth to eastward. caught plenty fish. "july . this, the sabbath, comes in with fog and light winds. so ends this day. total fish caught this week, , ." they never worked on sundays, but shaved, and washed themselves if it were fine, and pennsylvania sang hymns. once or twice he suggested that, if it was not an impertinence, he thought he could preach a little. uncle salters nearly jumped down his throat at the mere notion, reminding him that he was not a preacher and mustn't think of such things. we'd hev him rememberin' johnstown next," salters explained, "an' what would happen then?" so they compromised on his reading aloud from a book called "josephus." it was an old leather-bound volume, smelling of a hundred voyages, very solid and very like the bible, but enlivened with accounts of battles and sieges; and they read it nearly from cover to cover. otherwise penn was a silent little body. he would not utter a word for three days on end sometimes, though he played checkers, listened to the songs, and laughed at the stories. when they tried to stir him up, he would answer. "i don't wish to seem unneighbourly, but it is because i have nothing to say. my head feels quite empty. i've almost forgotten my name." he would turn to uncle salters with an expectant smile. "why, pennsylvania pratt," salters would shout. "you'll fergit me next!" "no--never," penn would say, shutting his lips firmly. "pennsylvania pratt, of course," he would repeat over and over. sometimes it was uncle salters who forgot, and told him he was haskins or rich or mcvitty; but penn was equally content--till next time. he was always very tender with harvey, whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a lunatic; and when salters saw that penn liked the boy, he relaxed, too. salters was not an amiable person (he esteemed it his business to keep the boys in order); and the first time harvey, in fear and trembling, on a still day, managed to shin up to the main-truck (dan was behind him ready to help), he esteemed it his duty to hang salters's big sea-boots up there--a sight of shame and derision to the nearest schooner. with disko, harvey took no liberties; not even when the old man dropped direct orders, and treated him, like the rest of the crew, to "don't you want to do so and so?" and "guess you'd better," and so forth. there was something about the clean-shaven lips and the puckered corners of the eyes that was mightily sobering to young blood. disko showed him the meaning of the thumbed and pricked chart, which, he said, laid over any government publication whatsoever; led him, pencil in hand, from berth to berth over the whole string of banks--le have, western, banquereau, st. pierre, green, and grand--talking "cod" meantime. taught him, too, the principle on which the "hog-yoke" was worked. in this harvey excelled dan, for he had inherited a head for figures, and the notion of stealing information from one glimpse of the sullen bank sun appealed to all his keen wits. for other sea-matters his age handicapped him. as disko said, he should have begun when he was ten. dan could bait up trawl or lay his hand on any rope in the dark; and at a pinch, when uncle salters had a gurry-sore on his palm, could dress down by sense of touch. he could steer in anything short of half a gale from the feel of the wind on his face, humouring the "we're here" just when she needed it. these things he did as automatically as he skipped about the rigging, or made his dory a part of his own will and body. but he could not communicate his knowledge to harvey. still there was a good deal of general information flying about the schooner on stormy days, when they lay up in the fo'c'sle or sat on the cabin lockers, while spare eye-bolts, leads, and rings rolled and rattled in the pauses of the talk. disko spoke of whaling voyages in the fifties; of great she-whales slain beside their young; of death agonies on the black, tossing seas, and blood that spurted forty feet in the air; of boats smashed to splinters; of patent rockets that went off wrong-end-first and bombarded the trembling crews; of cutting-in and boiling-down, and that terrible "nip" of ' , when twelve hundred men were made homeless on the ice in three days--wonderful tales, all true. but more wonderful still were his stories of the cod, and how they argued and reasoned on their private businesses deep down below the keel. long jack's tastes ran more to the supernatural. he held them silent with ghastly stories of the "yo-hoes" on monomoy beach, that mock and terrify lonely clam-diggers; of sand-walkers and dune-haunters who were never properly buried; of hidden treasure on fire island guarded by the spirits of kidd's men; of ships that sailed in the fog straight over truro township; of that harbour in maine where no one but a stranger will lie at anchor twice in a certain place because of a dead crew who row alongside at midnight with the anchor in the bow of their old-fashioned boat, whistling--not calling, but whistling--for the soul of the man who broke their rest. harvey had a notion that the east coast of his native land, from mount desert south, was populated chiefly by people who took their horses there in the summer and entertained in country-houses with hardwood floors and vantine portieres. he laughed at the ghost-tales,--not as much as he would have done a month before,--but ended by sitting still and shuddering. tom platt dealt with his interminable trip round the horn on the old ohio in the flogging days, with a navy more extinct than the dodo--the navy that passed away in the great war. he told them how red-hot shot are dropped into a cannon, a wad of wet clay between them and the cartridge; how they sizzle and reek when they strike wood, and how the little ship-boys of the miss jim buck hove water over them and shouted to the fort to try again. and he told tales of blockade--long weeks of swaying at anchor, varied only by the departure and return of steamers that had used up their coal (there was no change for the sailing-ships); of gales and cold--cold that kept two hundred men, night and day, pounding and chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and rigging, when the galley was as red-hot as the fort's shot, and men drank cocoa by the bucket. tom platt had no use for steam. his service closed when that thing was comparatively new. he admitted that it was a specious invention in time of peace, but looked hopefully for the day when sails should come back again on ten-thousand-ton frigates with hundred-and-ninety-foot booms. manuel's talk was slow and gentle--all about pretty girls in madeira washing clothes in the dry beds of streams, by moonlight, under waving bananas; legends of saints, and tales of queer dances or fights away in the cold newfoundland baiting-ports. salters was mainly agricultural; for, though he read "josephus" and expounded it, his mission in life was to prove the value of green manures, and specially of clover, against every form of phosphate whatsoever. he grew libellous about phosphates; he dragged greasy "orange judd" books from his bunk and intoned them, wagging his finger at harvey, to whom it was all greek. little penn was so genuinely pained when harvey made fun of salters's lectures that the boy gave it up, and suffered in polite silence. that was very good for harvey. the cook naturally did not join in these conversations. as a rule, he spoke only when it was absolutely necessary; but at times a queer gift of speech descended on him, and he held forth, half in gaelic, half in broken english, an hour at a time. he was specially communicative with the boys, and he never withdrew his prophecy that one day harvey would be dan's master, and that he would see it. he told them of mail-carrying in the winter up cape breton way, of the dog-train that goes to coudray, and of the ram-steamer arctic, that breaks the ice between the mainland and prince edward island. then he told them stories that his mother had told him, of life far to the southward, where water never froze; and he said that when he died his soul would go to lie down on a warm white beach of sand with palm-trees waving above. that seemed to the boys a very odd idea for a man who had never seen a palm in his life. then, too, regularly at each meal, he would ask harvey, and harvey alone, whether the cooking was to his taste; and this always made the "second half" laugh. yet they had a great respect for the cook's judgment, and in their hearts considered harvey something of a mascot by consequence. and while harvey was taking in knowledge of new things at each pore and hard health with every gulp of the good air, the "we're here" went her ways and did her business on the bank, and the silvery-grey kenches of well-pressed fish mounted higher and higher in the hold. no one day's work was out of the common, but the average days were many and close together. naturally, a man of disko's reputation was closely watched--"scrowged upon," dan called it--by his neighbours, but he had a very pretty knack of giving them the slip through the curdling, glidy fog-banks. disko avoided company for two reasons. he wished to make his own experiments, in the first place; and in the second, he objected to the mixed gatherings of a fleet of all nations. the bulk of them were mainly gloucester boats, with a scattering from provincetown, harwich, chatham, and some of the maine ports, but the crews drew from goodness knows where. risk breeds recklessness, and when greed is added there are fine chances for every kind of accident in the crowded fleet, which, like a mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrecognised leader. "let the two jeraulds lead 'em," said disko. "we're baound to lay among 'em fer a spell on the eastern shoals; though ef luck holds, we won't hev to lay long. where we are naow, harve, ain't considered noways good graound." "ain't it?" said harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned just how to wiggle the bucket), after an unusually long dressing-down. "shouldn't mind striking some poor ground for a change, then." "all the graound i want to see--don't want to strike her--is eastern point," said dan. "say, dad, it looks 's if we wouldn't hev to lay more'n two weeks on the shoals. you'll meet all the comp'ny you want then, harve. that's the time we begin to work. no reg'lar meals fer no one then. 'mug-up when ye're hungry, an' sleep when ye can't keep awake. good job you wasn't picked up a month later than you was, or we'd never ha' had you dressed in shape fer the old virgin." harvey understood from the eldridge chart that the old virgin and a nest of curiously named shoals were the turning-point of the cruise, and that with good luck they would wet the balance of their salt there. but seeing the size of the virgin (it was one tiny dot), he wondered how even disko with the hog-yoke and the lead could find her. he learned later that disko was entirely equal to that and any other business, and could even help others. a big four-by-five blackboard hung in the cabin, and harvey never understood the need of it till, after some blinding thick days, they heard the unmelodious tooting of a foot-power fog-horn--a machine whose note is as that of a consumptive elephant. they were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their foot to save trouble. "squarerigger bellowin' fer his latitude," said long jack. the dripping red headsails of a bark glided out of the fog, and the "we're here" rang her bell thrice, using sea shorthand. the larger boat backed her topsail with shrieks and shoutings. "frenchman," said uncle salters, scornfully. "miquelon boat from st. malo." the farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. "i'm most outer 'baccy, too, disko." "same here," said tom platt. "hi! backez vouz--backez vouz! standez awayez, you butt-ended mucho-bono! where you from--st. malo, eh?" ah, ha! mucho bono! oui! oui! clos poulet--st. malo! st. pierre et miquelon," cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and laughing. then all together, "bord! bord!" "bring up the board, danny. beats me how them frenchmen fetch anywheres, exceptin' america's fairish broadly. forty-six forty-nine's good enough fer them; an' i guess it's abaout right, too." dan chalked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the main-rigging to a chorus of mercis from the bark. "seems kinder unneighbourly to let 'em swedge off like this," salters suggested, feeling in his pockets. "hev ye learned french then sence last trip'?" said disko. "i don't want no more stone-ballast hove at us 'long o' your calm' miquelon boats 'footy cochins,' same's you did off le have." "harmon rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. plain united states is good enough fer me. we're all dretful short on terbakker. young feller, don't you speak french?" "oh, yes," said harvey, valiantly; and he bawled: "hi! say! arretez vous! attendez! nous sommes venant pour tabac." "ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed again. "that hit 'em. let's heave a dory over, anyway," said tom platt. "i don't exactly hold no certificates on french, but i know another lingo that goes, i guess. come on, harve, an' interpret." the raffle and confusion when he and harvey were hauled up the bark's black side was indescribable. her cabin was all stuck round with glaring coloured prints of the virgin--the virgin of newfoundland, they called her. harvey found his french of no recognised bank brand, and his conversation was limited to nods and grins. but tom platt waved his arms and got along swimmingly. the captain gave him a drink of unspeakable gin, and the opera-comique crew, with their hairy throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted him as a brother. then the trade began. they had tobacco, plenty of it--american, that had never paid duty to france. they wanted chocolate and crackers. harvey rowed back to arrange with the cook and disko, who owned the stores, and on his return the cocoa-tins and cracker-bags were counted out by the frenchman's wheel. it looked like a piratical division of loot; but tom platt came out of it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of chewing and smoking tobacco. then those jovial mariners swung off into the mist, and the last harvey heard was a gay chorus: "par derriere chez ma tante, il y a un bois joli, et le rossignol y chante et le jour et la nuit... que donneriez vous, belle, qui l'amènerait ici? je donnerai québec, sorel et saint denis." "how was it my french didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" harvey demanded when the barter had been distributed among the "we're heres". "sign-talk!" platt guffawed. "well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a heap older'n your french, harve. them french boats are chock-full o' freemasons, an' that's why." "are you a freemason, then?" "looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'war's man, stuffing his pipe; and harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood upon. chapter vi the thing that struck him most was the exceedingly casual way in which some craft loafed about the broad atlantic. fishing-boats, as dan said, were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of their neighbours; but one expected better things of steamers. that was after another interesting interview, when they had been chased for three miles by a big lumbering old cattle-boat, all boarded over on the upper deck, that smelt like a thousand cattle-pens. a very excited officer yelled at them through a speaking-trumpet, and she lay and lollopped helplessly on the water while disko ran the "we're here" under her lee and gave the skipper a piece of his mind. "where might ye be--eh? ye don't deserve to be anywheres. you barn-yard tramps go hoggin' the road on the high seas with no blame consideration fer your neighbours, an' your eyes in your coffee-cups instid o' in your silly heads." at this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about disko's own eyes. "we haven't had an observation for three days. d'you suppose we can run her blind?" he shouted. "wa-al, i can," disko retorted. "what's come to your lead'? et it'? can't ye smell bottom, or are them cattle too rank?" "what d'ye feed 'em?" said uncle salters with intense seriousness, for the smell of the pens woke all the farmer in him. "they say they fall off dretful on a v'yage. dunno as it's any o' my business, but i've a kind o' notion that oil-cake broke small an' sprinkled--" "thunder!" said a cattle-man in a red jersey as he looked over the side. "what asylum did they let his whiskers out of?" "young feller," salters began, standing up in the fore-rigging, "let me tell yeou 'fore we go any further that i've--" the officer on the bridge took off his cap with immense politeness. "excuse me," he said, "but i've asked for my reckoning. if the agricultural person with the hair will kindly shut his head, the sea-green barnacle with the wall-eye may perhaps condescend to enlighten us." "naow you've made a show o' me, salters," said disko, angrily. he could not stand up to that particular sort of talk, and snapped out the latitude and longitude without more lectures. "'well, that's a boat-load of lunatics, sure," said the skipper, as he rang up the engine-room and tossed a bundle of newspapers into the schooner. "of all the blamed fools, next to you, salters, him an' his crowd are abaout the likeliest i've ever seen," said disko as the "we're here" slid away. "i was jest givin' him my jedgment on lullsikin' round these waters like a lost child, an' you must cut in with your fool farmin'. can't ye never keep things sep'rate?" harvey, dan, and the others stood back, winking one to the other and full of joy; but disko and salters wrangled seriously till evening, salters arguing that a cattle-boat was practically a barn on blue water, and disko insisting that, even if this were the case, decency and fisher-pride demanded that he should have kept "things sep'rate." long jack stood it in silence for a time,--an angry skipper makes an unhappy crew,--and then he spoke across the table after supper: "fwhat's the good o' bodderin' fwhat they'll say?" said he. "they'll tell that tale ag'in' us fer years--that's all," said disko. "oil-cake sprinkled!" "with salt, o' course," said salters, impenitent, reading the farming reports from a week-old new york paper. "it's plumb mortifyin' to all my feelin's," the skipper went on. "can't see ut that way," said long jack, the peacemaker. "look at here, disko! is there another packet afloat this day in this weather c'u'd ha' met a tramp an', over an' above givin' her her reckonin',--over an' above that, i say,--c'u'd ha' discoorsed wid her quite intelligent on the management av steers an' such at sea'? forgit ut! av coorse they will not. 'twas the most compenjus conversation that iver accrued. double game an' twice runnin'--all to us." dan kicked harvey under the table, and harvey choked in his cup. "'well," said salters, who felt that his honour had been somewhat plastered, "i said i didn't know as 'twuz any business o' mine, 'fore i spoke." "an' right there," said tom platt, experienced in discipline and etiquette--"right there, i take it, disko, you should ha' asked him to stop ef the conversation wuz likely, in your jedgment, to be anyways--what it shouldn't." "dunno but that's so," said disko, who saw his way to an honourable retreat from a fit of the dignities. "'why, o' course it was so," said salters, "you bein' skipper here; an' i'd cheerful hev stopped on a hint--not from any leadin' or conviction, but fer the sake o' bearin' an example to these two blame boys of aours." "didn't i tell you, harve, 'twould come araound to us 'fore we'd done'? always those blame boys. but i wouldn't have missed the show fer a half-share in a halibutter," dan whispered. "still, things should ha' been kep' sep'rate," said disko, and the light of new argument lit in salters's eye as he crumbled cut plug into his pipe. "there's a power av vartue in keepin' things sep'rate," said long jack, intent on stilling the storm. "that's fwhat steyning of steyning and hare's f'und when he sent counahan fer skipper on the marilla d. kuhn, instid o' cap. newton that was took with inflam't'ry rheumatism an' couldn't go. counahan the navigator we called him." "nick counahan he never went aboard fer a night 'thout a pond o' rum somewheres in the manifest," said tom platt, playing up to the lead. "he used to bum araound the c'mission houses to boston lookin' fer the lord to make him captain of a towboat on his merits. sam coy, up to atlantic avenoo, give him his board free fer a year or more on account of his stories. counahan the navigator! tck! tck! dead these fifteen year, ain't he?" "seventeen, i guess. he died the year the caspar mcveagh was built; but he could niver keep things sep'rate. steyning tuk him fer the reason the thief tuk the hot stove--bekaze there was nothin' else that season. the men was all to the banks, and counahan he whacked up an iverlastin' hard crowd fer crew. rum! ye c'u'd ha' floated the marilla, insurance and all, in fwhat they stowed aboard her. they lef' boston harbour for the great grand bank wid a roarin' nor'wester behind 'em an' all hands full to the bung. an' the hivens looked after thim, for divil a watch did they set, an' divil a rope did they lay hand to, till they'd seen the bottom av a fifteen-gallon cask o' bug-juice. that was about wan week, so far as counahan remembered. (if' i c'u'd only tell the tale as he told ut!) all that whoile the wind blew like ould glory, an' the marilla--'twas summer, and they'd give her a foretopmast--struck her gait and kept ut. then counahan tuk the hog-yoke an' thrembled over it for a whoile, an' made out, betwix' that an' the chart an' the singin' in his head, that they was to the south'ard o' sable island, gettin' along glorious, but speakin' nothin'. then they broached another keg, an' quit speculatin' about anythin' fer another spell. the marilla she lay down whin she dropped boston light, and she never lufted her lee-rail up to that time--hustlin' on one an' the same slant. but they saw no weed, nor gulls, nor schooners; an' prisintly they obsarved they'd been out a matter o' fourteen days, and they mistrusted the bank had suspinded payment. so they sounded, an' got sixty fathom. 'that's me,' sez counahan. 'that's me iv'ry time! i've run her slat on the bank fer you, an' when we get thirty fathom we'll turn in like little men. counahan is the b'y,' sez he. 'counahan the navigator!' "nex' cast they got ninety. sez counahan: 'either the lead-line's tuk too stretchin' or else the bank's sunk.' "they hauled ut up, bein' just about in that state when ut seemed right an' reasonable, and sat down on the deck countin' the knots, an' gettin' her snarled up hijjus. the marilla she'd struck her gait, and she hild ut, an' prisintly along come a tramp, an' counahan spoke her. "'hey ye seen any fishin'-boats now?' sez he, quite casual. "'there's lashin's av them off the irish coast,' sez the tramp. "aah! go shake yerself,' sez counahan. 'fwhat have i to do wid the irish coast?' "'then fwhat are ye doin' here?' sez the tramp. "'sufferin' christianity!' sez counahan (he always said that whin his pumps sucked an' he was not feelin' good)--'sufferin' christianity!' he sez, 'where am i at?' "'thirty-five mile west-sou'west o' cape clear,' sez the tramp, 'if that's any consolation to you.' "counahan fetched wan jump, four feet sivin inches, measured by the cook. "'consolation!' sez he, bould ez brass. 'd'ye take me fer a dialect? thirty-five mile from cape clear, an' fourteen days from boston light. sufferin' christianity, 'tis a record, an' by the same token i've a mother to skibbereen!' think av ut! the gall av um! but ye see he could niver keep things sep'rate. "the crew was mostly cork an' kerry men, barrin' one marylander that wanted to go back, but they called him a mutineer, an' they ran the ould marilla into skibbereen, an' they had an illigant time visitin' around with frinds on the ould sod fer a week. thin they wint back, an' it cost 'em two an' thirty days to beat to the banks again. 'twas gettin' on towards fall, and grub was low, so counahan ran her back to boston, wid no more bones to ut." "and what did the firm say?" harvey demanded. "fwhat could they'? the fish was on the banks, an' counahan was at t-wharf talkin' av his record trip east! they tuk their satisfaction out av that, an' ut all came av not keepin' the crew and the rum sep'rate in the first place; an' confusin' skibbereen wid 'queereau, in the second. counahan the navigator, rest his sowl! he was an imprompju citizen! "once i was in the lucy holmes," said manuel, in his gentle voice. "they not want any of her feesh in gloucester. eh, wha-at? give us no price. so we go across the water, and think to sell to some fayal man. then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. eh, wha-at? then it blow some more fresh, and we go down below and drive very fast--no one know where. by-and-by we see a land, and it get some hot. then come two, three nigger in a brick. eh, wha-at? we ask where we are, and they say--now, what you all think?" "grand canary," said disko, after a moment. manuel shook his head, smiling. "blanco," said tom platt. "no. worse than that. we was below bezagos, and the brick she was from liberia! so we sell our feesh there! not bad, so? eh, wha-at?" "can a schooner like this go right across to africa?" said harvey. "go araound the horn ef there's anythin' worth goin' fer, and the grub holds aout," said disko. "my father he run his packet, an' she was a kind o' pinkey, abaout fifty ton, i guess,--the rupert,--he run her over to greenland's icy mountains the year ha'af our fleet was tryin' after cod there. an' what's more, he took my mother along with him,--to show her haow the money was earned, i presoom,--an' they was all iced up, an' i was born at disko. don't remember nothin' abaout it, o' course. we come back when the ice eased in the spring, but they named me fer the place. kinder mean trick to put up on a baby, but we're all baound to make mistakes in aour lives." "sure! sure!" said salters, wagging his head. "all baound to make mistakes, an' i tell you two boys here thet after you've made a mistake--ye don't make fewer'n a hundred a day--the next best thing's to own up to it like men." long jack winked one tremendous wink that embraced all hands except disko and salters, and the incident was closed. then they made berth after berth to the northward, the dories out almost every day, running along the east edge of the grand bank in thirty-to forty-fathom water, and fishing steadily. it was here harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. they were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "squid o!" from salters, and for an hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid-jig--a piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. the squid--for some unknown reason--likes, and wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he can escape from the pins. but as he leaves his home he squirts first water and next ink into his captor's face; and it was curious to see the men weaving their heads from side to side to dodge the shot. they were as black as sweeps when the flurry ended; but a pile of fresh squid lay on the deck, and the large cod thinks very well of a little shiny piece of squid-tentacle at the tip of a clam-baited hook. next day they caught many fish, and met the carrie pitman, to whom they shouted their luck, and she wanted to trade--seven cod for one fair-sized squid; but disko would not agree at the price, and the carrie dropped sullenly to leeward and anchored half a mile away, in the hope of striking on to some for herself. disko said nothing till after supper, when he sent dan and manuel out to buoy the "we're here's" cable and announced his intention of turning in with the broad-axe. dan naturally repeated these remarks to a dory from the carrie, who wanted to know why they were buoying their cable, since they were not on rocky bottom. "dad sez he wouldn't trust a ferryboat within five mile o' you," dan howled cheerfully. "why don't he git out, then'? who's hinderin'?" said the other. "cause you've jest the same ez lee-bowed him, an' he don't take that from any boat, not to speak o' sech a driftin' gurry-butt as you be." "she ain't driftin' any this trip," said the man, angrily, for the carrie pitman had an unsavoury reputation for breaking her ground-tackle. "then haow d'you make berths?" said dan. "it's her best p'int o' sailin'. an' ef she's quit driftin', what in thunder are you doin' with a new jib-boom?" that shot went home. "hey, you portugoosy organ-grinder, take your monkey back to gloucester. go back to school, dan troop," was the answer. "o-ver-alls! o-ver-alls!" yelled dan, who knew that one of the carrie's crew had worked in an overall factory the winter before. "shrimp! gloucester shrimp! git aout, you novy!" to call a gloucester man a nova scotian is not well received. dan answered in kind. "novy yourself, ye scrabble-towners! ye chatham wreckers' git aout with your brick in your stock in'!" and the forces separated, but chatham had the worst of it. "i knew haow 'twould be," said disko. "she's drawed the wind raound already. some one oughter put a deesist on thet packet. she'll snore till midnight, an' jest when we're gittin' our sleep she'll strike adrift. good job we ain't crowded with craft hereaways. but i ain't goin' to up anchor fer chatham. she may hold." the wind, which had hauled round, rose at sundown and blew steadily. there was not enough sea, though, to disturb even a dory's tackle, but the carrie pitman was a law unto herself. at the end of the boys' watch they heard the crack-crack-crack of a huge muzzle-loading revolver aboard her. "glory, glory, hallelujah!" sung dan. "here she comes, dad; butt-end first, walkin' in her sleep same's she done on 'queereau." had she been any other boat disko would have taken his chances, but now he cut the cable as the carrie pitman, with all the north atlantic to play in, lurched down directly upon them. the "we're here", under jib and riding-sail, gave her no more room than was absolutely necessary,--disko did not wish to spend a week hunting for his cable,--but scuttled up into the wind as the carrie passed within easy hail, a silent and angry boat, at the mercy of a raking broadside of bank chaff. "good evenin'," said disko, raising his headgear, "an' haow does your garden grow?" "go to ohio an' hire a mule," said uncle salters. "we don't want no farmers here." "will i lend you my dory-anchor?" cried long jack. "unship your rudder an' stick it in the mud," said tom platt. "say!" dan's voice rose shrill and high, as he stood on the wheel-box. "sa-ay! is there a strike in the o-ver-all factory; or hev they hired girls, ye shackamaxons?" "veer out the tiller-lines," cried harvey, "and nail 'em to the bottom." that was a salt-flavoured jest he had been put up to by tom platt. manuel leaned over the stern and yelled; "johnna morgan play the organ! ahaaaa!" he flourished his broad thumb with a gesture of unspeakable contempt and derision, while little penn covered himself with glory by piping up: "gee a little! hssh! come here. haw!" they rode on their chain for the rest of the night, a short, snappy, uneasy motion, as harvey found, and wasted half the forenoon recovering the cable. but the boys agreed the trouble was cheap at the price of triumph and glory, and they thought with grief over all the beautiful things that they might have said to the discomfited carrie. chapter vii next day they fell in with more sails, all circling slowly from the east northerly towards the west. but just when they expected to make the shoals by the virgin the fog shut down, and they anchored, surrounded by the tinklings of invisible bells. there was not much fishing, but occasionally dory met dory in the fog and exchanged news. that night, a little before dawn, dan and harvey, who had been sleeping most of the day, tumbled out to "hook" fried pies. there was no reason why they should not have taken them openly; but they tasted better so, and it made the cook angry. the heat and smell below drove them on deck with their plunder, and they found disko at the bell, which he handed over to harvey. "keep her goin'," said he. "i mistrust i hear somethin'. ef it's anything, i'm best where i am so's to get at things." it was a forlorn little jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off; and in the pauses harvey heard the muffled shriek of a liner's siren, and he knew enough of the banks to know what that meant. it came to him, with horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherry-coloured jersey--he despised fancy blazers now with all a fisherman's contempt--how an ignorant, rowdy boy had once said it would be "great" if a steamer ran down a fishing-boat. that boy had a state-room with a hot and cold bath, and spent ten minutes each morning picking over a gilt-edged bill of fare. and that same boy--no, his very much older brother--was up at four of the dim dawn in streaming, crackling oilskins, hammering, literally for the dear life, on a bell smaller than the steward's breakfast-bell, while somewhere close at hand a thirty-foot steel stem was storming along at twenty miles an hour! the bitterest thought of all was that there were folks asleep in dry, upholstered cabins who would never learn that they had massacred a boat before breakfast. so harvey rang the bell. "yes, they slow daown one turn o' their blame propeller," said dan, applying himself to manuel's conch, "fer to keep inside the law, an' that's consolin' when we're all at the bottom. hark to her' she's a humper!" "aoooo--whoooo--whupp!" went the siren. "wingle--tingle--tink," went the bell. "graaa--ouch!" went the conch, while sea and sky were all milled up in milky fog. then harvey felt that he was near a moving body, and found himself looking up and up at the wet edge of a cliff-like bow, leaping, it seemed, directly over the schooner. a jaunty little feather of water curled in front of it, and as it lifted it showed a long ladder of roman numerals--xv., xvi., xvii., xviii., and so forth--on a salmon-coloured, gleaming side. it tilted forward and downward with a heart-stilling "ssssooo"; the ladder disappeared; a line of brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in harvey's helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail of the "we're here", and the little schooner staggered and shook in a rush of screw-torn water, as a liner's stern vanished in the fog. harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or both, when he heard a crack like a trunk thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in his ear, a far-away telephone voice drawling: "heave to! you've sunk us!" "is it us?" he gasped. "no! boat out yonder. ring! we're goin' to look," said dan, running out a dory. in half a minute all except harvey, penn, and the cook were overside and away. presently a schooner's stump-foremast, snapped clean across, drifted past the bows. then an empty green dory came by, knocking on the 'we're here's' side, as though she wished to be taken in. then followed something, face down, in a blue jersey, but it was not the whole of a man. penn changed colour and caught his breath with a click. harvey pounded despairingly at the bell, for he feared they might be sunk at any minute, and he jumped at dan's hail as the crew came back. "the jennie cushman," said dan, hysterically, "cut clean in half--graound up an' trompled on at that! not a quarter of a mile away. dad's got the old man. there ain't any one else, and--there was his son, too. oh, harve, harve, i can't stand it! i've seen--" he dropped his head on his arms and sobbed while the others dragged a grey-headed man aboard. "what did you pick me up for?" the stranger groaned. "disko, what did you pick me up for?" disko dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, for the man's eyes were wild and his lips trembled as he stared at the silent crew. then up and spoke pennsylvania pratt, who was also haskins or rich or mcvitty when uncle salters forgot; and his face was changed on him from the face of a fool to the countenance of an old, wise man, and he said in a strong voice: "the lord gave, and the lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the lord! i was--i am a minister of the gospel. leave him to me." "oh, you be, be you?" said the man. "then pray my son back to me! pray back a nine-thousand-dollar boat an' a thousand quintal of fish. if you'd left me alone my widow could ha' gone on to the provident an' worked fer her board, an' never known--an' never known. now i'll hev to tell her." "there ain't nothin' to say," said disko. "better lie down a piece, jason olley." when a man has lost his only son, his summer's work, and his means of livelihood, in thirty counted seconds, it is hard to give consolation. "all gloucester men, wasn't they," said tom platt, fiddling helplessly with a dory-becket. "oh, that don't make no odds," said jason, wringing the wet from his beard. "i'll be rowin' summer boarders araound east gloucester this fall." he rolled heavily to the rail, singing. "happy birds that sing and fly round thine altars, o most high!" "come with me. come below!" said penn, as though he had a right to give orders. their eyes met and fought for a quarter of a minute. "i dunno who you be, but i'll come," said jason, submissively. "mebbe i'll get back some o' the--some o' the--nine thousand dollars." penn led him into the cabin and slid the door behind. "that ain't penn," cried uncle salters. "it's jacob boiler, an'--he's remembered johnstown! i never seed such eyes in any livin' man's head. what's to do naow? what'll i do naow?" they could hear penn's voice and jason's together. then penn's went on alone, and salters slipped off his hat, for penn was praying. presently the little man came up the steps, huge drops of sweat on his face, and looked at the crew. dan was still sobbing by the wheel. "he don't know us," salters groaned. "it's all to do over again, checkers and everything--an' what'll he say to me?" penn spoke; they could hear that it was to strangers. "i have prayed," said he. "our people believe in prayer. i have prayed for the life of this man's son. mine were drowned before my eyes--she and my eldest and--the others. shall a man be more wise than his maker? i prayed never for their lives, but i have prayed for this man's son, and he will surely be sent him." salters looked pleadingly at penn to see if he remembered. "how long have i been mad?" penn asked suddenly. his mouth was twitching. "pshaw, penn! you weren't never mad," salters began. "only a little distracted like." "i saw the houses strike the bridge before the fires broke out. i do not remember any more. how long ago is that?" "i can't stand it! i can't stand it!" cried dan, and harvey whimpered in sympathy. "abaout five year," said disko, in a shaking voice. "then i have been a charge on some one for every day of that time. who was the man?" disko pointed to salters. "ye hain't--ye hain't!" cried the sea-farmer, twisting his hands together. "ye've more'n earned your keep twice-told; an' there's money owin' you, penn, besides ha'af o' my quarter-share in the boat, which is yours fer value received." "you are good men. i can see that in your faces. but--" "mother av mercy," whispered long jack, "an' he's been wid us all these trips! he's clean bewitched." a schooner's bell struck up alongside, and a voice hailed through the fog: "o disko! 'heard abaout the jennie cushman?" "they have found his son," cried penn. "stand you still and see the salvation of the lord!" "got jason aboard here," disko answered, but his voice quavered. "there--warn't any one else?" "we've f'und one, though. 'run acrost him snarled up in a mess o' lumber thet might ha' bin a fo'c'sle. his head's cut some." "who is he?" the "we're heres'" heart-beats answered one another. "guess it's young olley," the voice drawled. penn raised his hands and said something in german. harvey could have sworn that a bright sun was shining upon his lifted face; but the drawl went on: "sa-ay! you fellers guyed us consid'rable t'other night." "we don't feel like guyin' any now," said disko. "i know it; but to tell the honest truth we was kinder--kinder driftin' when we run ag'in' young olley." it was the irrepressible carrie pitman, and a roar of unsteady laughter went up from the deck of the "we're here". "hedn't you 'baout's well send the old man aboard? we're runnin' in fer more bait an' graound-tackle. 'guess you won't want him, anyway, an' this blame windlass work makes us short-handed. we'll take care of him. he married my woman's aunt." "i'll give you anything in the boat," said troop. "don't want nothin', 'less, mebbe, an anchor that'll hold. say! young olley's gittin' kinder baulky an' excited. send the old man along." penn waked him from his stupor of despair, and tom platt rowed him over. he went away without a word of thanks, not knowing what was to come; and the fog closed over all. "and now," said penn, drawing a deep breath as though about to preach. "and now"--the erect body sank like a sword driven home into the scabbard; the light faded from the overbright eyes; the voice returned to its usual pitiful little titter--"and now," said pennsylvania pratt, "do you think it's too early for a little game of checkers, mr. salters?" "the very thing--the very thing i was goin' to say myself," cried salters, promptly. "it beats all, penn, how you git on to what's in a man's mind." the little fellow blushed and meekly followed salters forward. "up anchor! hurry! let's quit these crazy waters," shouted disko, and never was he more swiftly obeyed. "now what in creation d'ye suppose is the meanin' o' that all?" said long jack, when they were working through the fog once more, damp, dripping, and bewildered. "the way i sense it," said disko, at the wheel, "is this: the jennie cushman business comin' on an empty stummick--" "he--we saw one of them go by," sobbed harvey. "an' that, o' course, kinder hove him outer water, julluk runnin' a craft ashore; hove him right aout, i take it, to rememberin' johnstown an' jacob boiler an' such-like reminiscences. well, consolin' jason there held him up a piece, same's shorin' up a boat. then, bein' weak, them props slipped an' slipped, an' he slided down the ways, an' naow he's water-borne ag'in. that's haow i sense it." they decided that disko was entirely correct. "'twould ha' bruk salters all up," said long jack, "if penn had stayed jacob bollerin'. did ye see his face when penn asked who he'd been charged on all these years'? how is ut, salters?" "asleep--dead asleep. turned in like a child," salters replied, tiptoeing aft. "there won't be no grub till he wakes, natural. did ye ever see sech a gift in prayer? he everlastin'ly hiked young olley outer the ocean. thet's my belief. jason was tur'ble praoud of his boy, an' i mistrusted all along 'twas a jedgment on worshippin' vain idols." "there's others jest as sot," said disko. "that's dif'runt," salters retorted quickly. "penn's not all caulked, an' i ain't only but doin' my duty by him." they waited, those hungry men, three hours, till penn reappeared with a smooth face and a blank mind. he said he believed that he had been dreaming. then he wanted to know why they were so silent, and they could not tell him. disko worked all hands mercilessly for the next three or four days; and when they could not go out, turned them into the hold to stack the ship's stores into smaller compass, to make more room for the fish. the packed mass ran from the cabin partition to the sliding door behind the fo'c'sle stove; and disko showed how there is great art in stowing cargo so as to bring a schooner to her best draft. the crew were thus kept lively till they recovered their spirits; and harvey was tickled with a rope's end by long jack for being, as the galway man said, "sorrowful as a sick cat over fwhat couldn't be helped." he did a great deal of thinking in those dreary days; and told dan what he thought, and dan agreed with him--even to the extent of asking for fried pies instead of hooking them. but a week later the two nearly upset the hattie s. in a wild attempt to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. the grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three of them it was a mercy they all got off alive. at last, after playing blindman's-buff in the fog, there came a morning when disko shouted down the fo'c'sle: "hurry, boys! we're in taown!" chapter viii to the end of his days, harvey will never forget that sight. the sun was just clear of the horizon they had not seen for nearly a week, and his low red light struck into the riding-sails of three fleets of anchored schooners--one to the north, one to the westward, and one to the south. there must have been nearly a hundred of them, of every possible make and build, with, far away, a square-rigged frenchman, all bowing and courtesying one to the other. from every boat dories were dropping away like bees from a crowded hive; and the clamour of voices, the rattling of ropes and blocks, and the splash of the oars carried for miles across the heaving water. the sails turned all colours, black, pearly-grey, and white, as the sun mounted; and more boats swung up through the mists to the southward. the dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke again, all heading one way; while men hailed and whistled and cat-called and sang, and the water was speckled with rubbish thrown overboard. "it's a town," said harvey. "disko was right. it is a town!" "i've seen smaller," said disko. "there's about a thousand men here; an' yonder's the virgin." he pointed to a vacant space of greenish sea, where there were no dories. the "we're here" skirted round the northern squadron, disko waving his hand to friend after friend, and anchored as neatly as a racing yacht at the end of the season. the bank fleet pass good seamanship in silence; but a bungler is jeered all along the line. "jest in time fer the caplin," cried the mary chilton. "'salt 'most wet?" asked the king philip. "hey, tom platt! come t' supper to-night?" said the henry clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth. men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the bank fleet. they all seemed to know about harvey's rescue, and asked if he were worth his salt yet. the young bloods jested with dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town--nicknames they least liked. manuel's countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting gaelic to a friend as black as himself. after they had buoyed the cable--all around the virgin is rocky bottom, and carelessness means chafed ground-tackle and danger from drifting--after they had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of boats anchored about a mile away. the schooners rocked and dipped at a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood, while the dories behaved like mannerless ducklings. as they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, harvey's ears tingled at the comments on his rowing. every dialect from labrador to long island, with portuguese, neapolitan, lingua franca, french, and gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all. for the first time in his life he felt shy--perhaps that came from living so long with only the "we're heres"--among the scores of wild faces that rose and fell with the reeling small craft. a gentle, breathing swell, three furlongs from trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of variously painted dories. they hung for an instant, a wonderful frieze against the sky-line, and their men pointed and hailed, next moment the open mouths, waving arms, and bare chests disappeared, while on another swell came up an entirely new line of characters like paper figures in a toy theatre. so harvey stared. "watch out!" said dan, flourishing a dip-net. "when i tell you dip, you dip. the caplin'll school any time from naow on. where'll we lay, tom platt?" pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and warning old enemies there, commodore tom platt led his little fleet well to leeward of the general crowd, and immediately three or four men began to haul on their anchors with intent to lee-bow the "we're heres". but a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her station with exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the roding. "give her slack!" roared twenty voices. "let him shake it out." "what's the matter?" said harvey, as the boat flashed away to the southward. "he's anchored, isn't he?" "anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle's kinder shifty," said dan, laughing. "whale's fouled it. . . . dip, harve! here they come!" the sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod began to leap like trout in may; while behind the cod three or four broad grey-black backs broke the water into boils. then everybody shouted and tried to haul up his anchor to get among the school, and fouled his neighbour's line and said what was in his heart, and dipped furiously with his dip-net, and shrieked cautions and advice to his companions, while the deep fizzed like freshly opened soda-water, and cod, men, and whales together flung in upon the luckless bait. harvey was nearly knocked overboard by the handle of dan's net. but in all the wild tumult he noticed, and never forgot, the wicked, set little eye--something like a circus elephant's eye--of a whale that drove along almost level with the water, and, so he said, winked at him. three boats found their rodings fouled by these reckless mid-sea hunters, and were towed half a mile ere their horses shook the line free. then the caplin moved off and five minutes later there was no sound except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the cod, and the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them. it was wonderful fishing. harvey could see the glimmering cod below, swimming slowly in droves, biting as steadily as they swam. bank law strictly forbids more than one hook on one line when the dories are on the virgin or the eastern shoals; but so close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy newfoundlander on one side and a howling portuguese on the other. worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the dory-rodings below water. each man had anchored where it seemed good to him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point. as the fish struck on less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get to better ground; but every third man found himself intimately connected with some four or five neighbours. to cut another's roding is crime unspeakable on the banks; yet it was done, and done without detection, three or four times that day. tom platt caught a maine man in the black act and knocked him over the gunwale with an oar, and manuel served a fellow-countryman in the same way. but harvey's anchor-line was cut, and so was penn's, and they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the "we're here" as the dories filled. the caplin schooled once more at twilight, when the mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they rowed back to dress down by the light of kerosene-lamps on the edge of the pen. it was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing. next day several boats fished right above the cap of the virgin; and harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that lonely rock, which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. the cod were there in legions, marching solemnly over the leathery kelp. when they bit, they bit all together; and so when they stopped. there was a slack time at noon, and the dories began to search for amusement. it was dan who sighted the hope of prague just coming up, and as her boats joined the company they were greeted with the question: "who's the meanest man in the fleet?" three hundred voices answered cheerily: "nick bra-ady." it sounded an organ chant. "who stole the lamp-wicks?" that was dan's contribution. "nick bra-ady," sang the boats. "who biled the salt bait fer soup?" this was an unknown backbiter a quarter of a mile away. again the joyful chorus. now, brady was not especially mean, but he had that reputation, and the fleet made the most of it. then they discovered a man from a truro boat who, six years before, had been convicted of using a tackle with five or six hooks--a "scrowger," they call it--on the shoals. naturally, he had been christened "scrowger jim"; and though he had hidden himself on the georges ever since, he found his honours waiting for him full blown. they took it up in a sort of fire-cracker chorus: "jim! o jim! jim! o jim! sssscrowger jim!" that pleased everybody. and when a poetical beverly man--he had been making it up all day, and talked about it for weeks--sang, "the carrie pitman's anchor doesn't hold her for a cent!" the dories felt that they were indeed fortunate. then they had to ask that beverly man how he was off for beans, because even poets must not have things all their own way. every schooner and nearly every man got it in turn. was there a careless or dirty cook anywhere? the dories sang about him and his food. was a schooner badly found? the fleet was told at full length. had a man hooked tobacco from a messmate? he was named in meeting; the name tossed from roller to roller. disko's infallible judgments, long jack's market-boat that he had sold years ago, dan's sweetheart (oh, but dan was an angry boy!), penn's bad luck with dory-anchors, salters's views on manure, manuel's little slips from virtue ashore, and harvey's ladylike handling of the oar--all were laid before the public; and as the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the voices sounded like a bench of invisible judges pronouncing sentence. the dories roved and fished and squabbled till a swell underran the sea. then they drew more apart to save their sides, and some one called that if the swell continued the virgin would break. a reckless galway man with his nephew denied this, hauled up anchor, and rowed over the very rock itself. many voices called them to come away, while others dared them to hold on. as the smooth-backed rollers passed to the south-ward, they hove the dory high and high into the mist, and dropped her in ugly, sucking, dimpled water, where she spun round her anchor, within a foot or two of the hidden rock. it was playing with death for mere bravado; and the boats looked on in uneasy silence till long jack rowed up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roding. "can't ye hear ut knockin'?" he cried. "pull for your miserable lives! pull!" the men swore and tried to argue as the boat drifted; but the next swell checked a little, like a man tripping on a carpet. there was a deep sob and a gathering roar, and the virgin flung up a couple of acres of foaming water, white, furious, and ghastly over the shoal sea. then all the boats greatly applauded long jack, and the galway men held their tongue. "ain't it elegant?" said dan, bobbing like a young seal at home. "she'll break about once every ha'af hour now, 'less the swell piles up good. what's her reg'lar time when she's at work, tom platt?" "once ivry fifteen minutes, to the tick. harve, you've seen the greatest thing on the banks; an' but for long jack you'd seen some dead men too." there came a sound of merriment where the fog lay thicker and the schooners were ringing their bells. a big bark nosed cautiously out of the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, "come along, darlin'," from the irishry. "another frenchman?" said harvey. "hain't you eyes? she's a baltimore boat; goin' in fear an' tremblin'," said dan. "we'll guy the very sticks out of her. 'guess it's the fust time her skipper ever met up with the fleet this way." she was a black, buxom, eight-hundred-ton craft. her mainsail was looped up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind was moving. now a bark is feminine beyond all other daughters of the sea, and this tall, hesitating creature, with her white and gilt figurehead, looked just like a bewildered woman half lifting her skirts to cross a muddy street under the jeers of bad little boys. that was very much her situation. she knew she was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the virgin, had caught the roar of it, and was, therefore, asking her way. this is a small part of what she heard from the dancing dories: "the virgin? fwhat are you talk in' of'? this is le have on a sunday mornin'. go home an' sober up." "go home, ye tarrapin! go home an' tell 'em we're comin'." half a dozen voices together, in a most tuneful chorus, as her stern went down with a roll and a bubble into the troughs: "thay-aah--she--strikes!" "hard up! hard up fer your life! you're on top of her now." "daown! hard daown! let go everything!" "all hands to the pumps!" "daown jib an' pole her!" here the skipper lost his temper and said things. instantly fishing was suspended to answer him, and he heard many curious facts about his boat and her next port of call. they asked him if he were insured; and whence he had stolen his anchor, because, they said, it belonged to the carrie pitman; they called his boat a mud-scow, and accused him of dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they offered to tow him and charge it to his wife; and one audacious youth slipped almost under the counter, smacked it with his open palm, and yelled: "gid up, buck!" the cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with cod-heads. the bark's crew fired small coal from the galley, and the dories threatened to come aboard and "razee" her. they would have warned her at once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her well clear of the virgin, they made the most of their chances. the fun was spoilt when the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward, and the tormented bark set everything that would draw and went her ways; but the dories felt that the honours lay with them. all that night the virgin roared hoarsely and next morning, over an angry, white-headed sea, harvey saw the fleet with flickering masts waiting for a lead. not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock, when the two jeraulds of the 'day's eye', imagining a lull which did not exist, set the example. in a minute half the boats were out and bobbing in the cockly swells, but troop kept the "we're heres" at work dressing-down. he saw no sense in "dares"; and as the storm grew that evening they had the pleasure of receiving wet strangers only too glad to make any refuge in the gale. the boys stood by the dory-tackles with lanterns, the men ready to haul, one eye cocked for the sweeping wave that would make them drop everything and hold on for the dear life. out of the dark would come a yell of "dory, dory!" they would hook up and haul in a drenched man and a half-sunk boat, till their decks were littered down with nests of dories and the bunks were full. five times in their watch did harvey, with dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the boom, and cling with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and sodden canvas as a big wave filled the decks. one dory was smashed to pieces, and the sea pitched the man head first on to the decks, cutting his forehead open; and about dawn, when the racing seas glimmered white all along their cold edges, another man, blue and ghastly, crawled in with a broken hand, asking news of his brother. seven extra mouths sat down to breakfast: a swede; a chatham skipper; a boy from hancock, maine; one duxbury, and three provincetown men. there was a general sorting out among the fleet next day; and though no one said anything, all ate with better appetites when boat after boat reported full crews aboard. only a couple of portuguese and an old man from gloucester were drowned, but many were cut or bruised; and two schooners had parted their tackle and been blown to the southward, three days' sail. a man died on a frenchman--it was the same bark that had traded tobacco with the "we're heres". she slipped away quite quietly one wet, white morning, moved to a patch of deep water, her sails all hanging anyhow, and harvey saw the funeral through disko's spy-glass. it was only an oblong bundle slid overside. they did not seem to have any form of service, but in the night, at anchor, harvey heard them across the star-powdered black water, singing something that sounded like a hymn. it went to a very slow tune. la brigantine qui va tourner, roule et s'incline pour m'entrainer. oh, vierge marie, pour moi priez dieu! adieu, patrie; québec, adieu! tom platt visited her, because, he said, the dead man was his brother as a freemason. it came out that a wave had doubled the poor fellow over the heel of the bowsprit and broken his back. the news spread like a flash, for, contrary to general custom, the frenchman held an auction of the dead man's kit,--he had no friends at st. malo or miquelon,--and everything was spread out on the top of the house, from his red knitted cap to the leather belt with the sheath-knife at the back. dan and harvey were out on twenty-fathom water in the hattie s., and naturally rowed over to join the crowd. it was a long pull, and they stayed some little time while dan bought the knife, which had a curious brass handle. when they dropped overside and pushed off into a drizzle of rain and a lop of sea, it occurred to them that they might get into trouble for neglecting the lines. "guess 'twon't hurt us any to be warmed up," said dan, shivering under his oilskins, and they rowed on into the heart of a white fog, which, as usual, dropped on them without warning. "there's too much blame tide hereabouts to trust to your instinks," he said. "heave over the anchor, harve, and we'll fish a piece till the thing lifts. bend on your biggest lead. three pound ain't any too much in this water. see how she's tightened on her rodin' already." there was quite a little bubble at the bows, where some irresponsible bank current held the dory full stretch on her rope; but they could not see a boat's length in any direction. harvey turned up his collar and bunched himself over his reel with the air of a wearied navigator. fog had no special terrors for him now. they fished awhile in silence, and found the cod struck on well. then dan drew the sheath-knife and tested the edge of it on the gunwale. "that's a daisy," said harvey. "how did you get it so cheap?" "on account o' their blame cath'lic superstitions," said dan, jabbing with the bright blade. "they don't fancy takin' iron frum off of a dead man, so to speak. 'see them arichat frenchmen step back when i bid?" "but an auction ain't taking anything off a dead man. it's business." "we know it ain't, but there's no goin' in the teeth o' superstition. that's one o' the advantages o' livin' in a progressive country." and dan began whistling: "oh, double thatcher, how are you? now eastern point comes inter view. the girls an' boys we soon shall see, at anchor off cape ann!" "why didn't that eastport man bid, then? he bought his boots. ain't maine progressive?" "maine? pshaw! they don't know enough, or they hain't got money enough, to paint their haouses in maine. i've seen 'em. the eastport man he told me that the knife had been used--so the french captain told him--used up on the french coast last year." "cut a man? heave's the muckle." harvey hauled in his fish, rebaited, and threw over. "killed him! 'course, when i heard that i was keener 'n ever to get it." "christmas! i didn't know it," said harvey, turning round. "i'll give you a dollar for it when i--get my wages. say, i'll give you two dollars." "honest? d'you like it as much as all that?" said dan, flushing. "well, to tell the truth, i kinder got it for you--to give; but i didn't let on till i saw how you'd take it. it's yours and welcome, harve, because we're dory-mates, and so on and so forth, an' so followin'. catch a-holt!" he held it out, belt and all. "but look at here. dan, i don't see--" "take it. 'tain't no use to me. i wish you to hev it." the temptation was irresistible. "dan, you're a white man," said harvey. "i'll keep it as long as i live." "that's good hearin'," said dan, with a pleasant laugh; and then, anxious to change the subject: "look's if your line was fast to somethin'." "fouled, i guess," said harve, tugging. before he pulled up he fastened the belt round him, and with deep delight heard the tip of the sheath click on the thwart. "concern the thing!" he cried. "she acts as though she were on strawberry-bottom. it's all sand here, ain't it'?" dan reached over and gave a judgmatic tweak. "holibut'll act that way 'f he's sulky. thet's no strawberry-bottom. yank her once or twice. she gives, sure. 'guess we'd better haul up an' make certain." they pulled together, making fast at each turn on the cleats, and the hidden weight rose sluggishly. "prize, oh! haul!" shouted dan, but the shout ended in a shrill, double shriek of horror, for out of the sea came--the body of the dead frenchman buried two days before! the hook had caught him under the right armpit, and he swayed, erect and horrible, head and shoulders above water. his arms were tied to his side, and--he had no face. the boys fell over each other in a heap at the bottom of the dory, and there they lay while the thing bobbed alongside, held on the shortened line. "the tide--the tide brought him!" said harvey, with quivering lips, as he fumbled at the clasp of the belt. "oh, lord! oh, harve!" groaned dan, "be quick. he's come for it. let him have it. take it off." "i don't want it! i don't want it!" cried harvey. "i can't find the bu-buckle." "quick, harve! he's on your line!" harvey sat up to unfasten the belt, facing the head that had no face under its streaming hair. "he's fast still," he whispered to dan, who slipped out his knife and cut the line, as harvey flung the belt far overside. the body shot down with a plop, and dan cautiously rose to his knees, whiter than the fog. "he come for it. he come for it. i've seen a stale one hauled up on a trawl and i didn't much care, but he come to us special." "i wish--i wish i hadn't taken the knife. then he'd have come on your line." "dunno as thet would ha' made any differ. we're both scared out o' ten years' growth. oh, harve, did ye see his head?" "did i'? i'll never forget it. but look at here, dan; it couldn't have been meant. it was only the tide." "tide! he come for it, harve. why, they sunk him six mile to south'ard o' the fleet, an' we're two miles from where she's lyin' now. they told me he was weighted with a fathom an' a half o' chain-cable." "wonder what he did with the knife--up on the french coast?" "something bad. 'guess he's bound to take it with him to the judgment, an' so--what are you doin' with the fish?" "heaving 'em overboard," said harvey. "what for? we sha'n't eat 'em." "i don't care. i had to look at his face while i was takin' the belt off. you can keep your catch if you like. i've no use for mine." dan said nothing, but threw his fish over again. "'guess it's best to be on the safe side," he murmured at last. "i'd give a month's pay if this fog 'u'd lift. things go abaout in a fog that ye don't see in clear weather--yo-hoes an' hollerers and such like. i'm sorter relieved he come the way he did instid o' walkin'. he might ha' walked." "do-on't, dan! we're right on top of him now. 'wish i was safe aboard, bein' pounded by uncle salters." "they'll be lookin' fer us in a little. gimme the tooter." dan took the tin dinner-horn, but paused before he blew. "go on," said harvey. "i don't want to stay here all night." "question is, haow he'd take it. there was a man frum down the coast told me once he was in a schooner where they darsen't ever blow a horn to the dories, becaze the skipper--not the man he was with, but a captain that had run her five years before--he'd drownded a boy alongside in a drunk fit; an' ever after, that boy he'd row alongside too and shout, 'dory! dory!' with the rest." "dory! dory!" a muffled voice cried through the fog. they cowered again, and the horn dropped from dan's hand. "hold on!" cried harvey; "it's the cook." "dunno what made me think o' thet fool tale, either," said dan. "it's the doctor, sure enough." "dan! danny! oooh, dan! harve! harvey! oooh, haarveee!" "we're here," sung both boys together. they heard oars, but could see nothing till the cook, shining and dripping, rowed into them. "what iss happened?" said he. "you will be beaten at home." "thet's what we want. thet's what we're sufferin' for," said dan. "anything homey's good enough fer us. we've had kinder depressin' company." as the cook passed them a line, dan told him the tale. "yess! he come for hiss knife," was all he said at the end. never had the little rocking "we're here" looked so deliciously home--like as when the cook, born and bred in fogs, rowed them back to her. there was a warm glow of light from the cabin and a satisfying smell of food forward, and it was heavenly to hear disko and the others, all quite alive and solid, leaning over the rail and promising them a first-class pounding. but the cook was a black master of strategy. he did not get the dories aboard till he had given the more striking points of the tale, explaining as he backed and bumped round the counter how harvey was the mascot to destroy any possible bad luck. so the boys came overside as rather uncanny heroes, and every one asked them questions instead of pounding them for making trouble. little penn delivered quite a speech on the folly of superstitions; but public opinion was against him and in favour of long jack, who told the most excruciating ghost-stories to nearly midnight. under that influence no one except salters and penn said anything about "idolatry" when the cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour and water, and a pinch of salt on a shingle, and floated them out astern to keep the frenchman quiet in case he was still restless. dan lit the candle because he had bought the belt, and the cook grunted and muttered charms as long as he could see the ducking point of flame. said harvey to dan, as they turned in after watch: "how about progress and catholic superstitions?" "huh! i guess i'm as enlightened and progressive as the next man, but when it comes to a dead st. malo deck-hand scarin' a couple o' pore boys stiff fer the sake of a thirty-cent knife, why, then, the cook can take hold fer all o' me. i mistrust furriners, livin' or dead." next morning all, except the cook, were rather ashamed of the ceremonies, and went to work double tides, speaking gruffly to one another. the "we're here" was racing neck and neck for her last few loads against the "parry norman"; and so close was the struggle that the fleet took sides and betted tobacco. all hands worked at the lines or dressing-down till they fell asleep where they stood--beginning before dawn and ending when it was too dark to see. they even used the cook as pitcher, and turned harvey into the hold to pass salt, while dan helped to dress down. luckily a "parry norman" man sprained his ankle falling down the fo'c'sle, and the "we're heres" gained. harvey could not see how one more fish could be crammed into her, but disko and tom platt stowed and stowed, and planked the mass down with big stones from the ballast, and there was always "jest another day's work." disko did not tell them when all the salt was wetted. he rolled to the lazarette aft the cabin and began hauling out the big mainsail. this was at ten in the morning. the riding-sail was down and the main- and top-sail were up by noon, and dories came alongside with letters for home, envying their good fortune. at last she cleared decks, hoisted her flag,--as is the right of the first boat off the banks,--up-anchored, and began to move. disko pretended that he wished to accommodate folk who had not sent in their mail, and so worked her gracefully in and out among the schooners. in reality, that was his little triumphant procession, and for the fifth year running it showed what kind of mariner he was. dan's accordion and tom platt's fiddle supplied the music of the magic verse you must not sing till all the salt is wet: "hih! yih! yoho! send your letters raound! all our salt is wetted, an' the anchor's off the graound! bend, oh, bend your mains'l!, we're back to yankeeland-- with fifteen hunder' quintal, an' fifteen hunder' quintal, 'teen hunder' toppin' quintal, 'twix' old 'queereau an' grand." the last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and the gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and womenfolk and owners, while the "we're here" finished the musical ride through the fleet, her head-sails quivering like a man's hand when he raises it to say good-bye. harvey very soon discovered that the "we're here", with her riding-sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the "we're here" headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different boats. there was a bite and kick to the wheel even in "boy's" weather; he could feel the dead weight in the hold flung forward mightily across the surges, and the streaming line of bubbles overside made his eyes dizzy. disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were flattened like a racing yacht's, dan had to wait on the big topsail, which was put over by hand every time she went about. in spare moments they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which does not improve a cargo. but since there was no fishing, harvey had time to look at the sea from another point of view. the low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings. they saw little of the horizon save when she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coaxing her steadfast way through grey, grey-blue, or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water-hill. it was as if she said: "you wouldn't hurt me, surely? i'm only the little 'we're here'." then she would slide away chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle. the dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through long days without noticing it; and harvey, being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave-tops turning over with a sound of incessant tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors; the salty glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of everything at the day's end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook. but the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel together, tom platt within hail, and she cuddled her lee-rail down to the crashing blue, and kept a little home-made rainbow arching unbroken over her windlass. then the jaws of the booms whined against the masts, and the sheets creaked, and the sails filled with roaring; and when she slid into a hollow she trampled like a woman tripped in her own silk dress, and came out, her jib wet half-way up, yearning and peering for the tall twin-lights of thatcher's island. they left the cold grey of the bank sea, saw the lumber-ships making for quebec by the straits of st. lawrence, with the jersey salt-brigs from spain and sicily; found a friendly northeaster off artimon bank that drove them within view of the east light of sable island,--a sight disko did not linger over,--and stayed with them past western and le have, to the northern fringe of george's. from there they picked up the deeper water, and let her go merrily. "hattie's pulling on the string," dan confided to harvey. "hattie an' ma. next sunday you'll be hirin' a boy to throw water on the windows to make ye go to sleep. 'guess you'll keep with us till your folks come. do you know the best of gettin' ashore again?" "hot bath'?" said harvey. his eyebrows were all white with dried spray. "that's good, but a night-shirt's better. i've been dreamin' o' night-shirts ever since we bent our mainsail. ye can wiggle your toes then. ma'll hev a new one fer me, all washed soft. it's home, harve. it's home! ye can sense it in the air. we're runnin' into the aidge of a hot wave naow, an' i can smell the bayberries. wonder if we'll get in fer supper. port a trifle." the hesitating sails flapped and lurched in the close air as the deep smoothed out, blue and oily, round them. when they whistled for a wind only the rain came in spiky rods, bubbling and drumming, and behind the rain the thunder and the lightning of mid-august. they lay on the deck with bare feet and arms, telling one another what they would order at their first meal ashore; for now the land was in plain sight. a gloucester swordfish-boat drifted alongside, a man in the little pulpit on the bowsprit flourishing his harpoon, his bare head plastered down with the wet. "and all's well!" he sang cheerily, as though he were watch on a big liner. "wouverman's waiting fer you, disko. what's the news o' the fleet?" disko shouted it and passed on, while the wild summer storm pounded overhead and the lightning flickered along the capes from four different quarters at once. it gave the low circle of hills round gloucester harbour, ten pound island, the fish-sheds, with the broken line of house-roofs, and each spar and buoy on the water, in blinding photographs that came and went a dozen times to the minute as the "we're here" crawled in on half-flood, and the whistling-buoy moaned and mourned behind her. then the storm died out in long, separated, vicious dags of blue-white flame, followed by a single roar like the roar of a mortar-battery, and the shaken air tingled under the stars as it got back to silence. "the flag, the flag!" said disko, suddenly, pointing upward. "what is ut?" said long jack. "otto! ha'af mast. they can see us frum shore now." "i'd clean forgot. he's no folk to gloucester, has he?" "girl he was goin' to be married to this fall." "mary pity her!" said long jack, and lowered the little flag half-mast for the sake of otto, swept overboard in a gale off le have three months before. disko wiped the wet from his eyes and led the "we're here" to wouverman's wharf, giving his orders in whispers, while she swung round moored tugs and night-watchmen hailed her from the ends of inky-black piers. over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession, harvey could feel the land close round him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise of a switching-engine coughing to herself in a freight-yard; and all those things made his heart beat and his throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet. they heard the anchor-watch snoring on a lighthouse-tug, nosed into a pocket of darkness where a lantern glimmered on either side; somebody waked with a grunt, threw them a rope, and they made fast to a silent wharf flanked with great iron-roofed sheds full of warm emptiness, and lay there without a sound. then harvey sat down by the wheel, and sobbed and sobbed as though his heart would break, and a tall woman who had been sitting on a weigh-scale dropped down into the schooner and kissed dan once on the cheek; for she was his mother, and she had seen the "we're here" by the lightning-flashes. she took no notice of harvey till he had recovered himself a little and disko had told her his story. then they went to disko's house together as the dawn was breaking; and until the telegraph office was open and he could wire to his folk, harvey cheyne was perhaps the loneliest boy in all america. but the curious thing was that disko and dan seemed to think none the worse of him for crying. wouverman was not ready for disko's prices till disko, sure that the "we're here" was at least a week ahead of any other gloucester boat, had given him a few days to swallow them; so all hands played about the streets, and long jack stopped the rocky neck trolley, on principle, as he said, till the conductor let him ride free. but dan went about with his freckled nose in the air, bungful of mystery and most haughty to his family. "dan, i'll hev to lay inter you ef you act this way," said troop, pensively. "sence we've come ashore this time you've bin a heap too fresh." "i'd lay into him naow ef he was mine," said uncle salters, sourly. he and penn boarded with the troops. "oho!" said dan, shuffling with the accordion round the back-yard, ready to leap the fence if the enemy advanced. "dad, you're welcome to your own jedgment, but remember i've warned ye. your own flesh an' blood ha' warned ye! 'tain't any o' my fault ef you're mistook, but i'll be on deck to watch ye. an' ez fer yeou, uncle salters, pharaoh's chief butler ain't in it 'longside o' you! you watch aout an' wait. you'll be ploughed under like your own blamed clover; but me--dan troop--i'll flourish like a green bay-tree because i warn't stuck on my own opinion." disko was smoking in all his shore dignity and a pair of beautiful carpet-slippers. "you're gettin' ez crazy as poor harve. you two go araound gigglin' an' squinchin' an' kickin' each other under the table till there's no peace in the haouse," said he. "there's goin' to be a heap less--fer some folks," dan replied. "you wait an' see." he and harvey went out on the trolley to east gloucester, where they tramped through the bayberry-bushes to the lighthouse, and lay down on the big red boulders and laughed themselves hungry. harvey had shown dan a telegram, and the two swore to keep silence till the shell burst. "harve's folk?" said dan, with an unruffled face after supper. "well, i guess they don't amount to much of anything, or we'd ha' heard frum 'em by naow. his pop keeps a kind o' store out west. maybe he'll give you's much as five dollars, dad." "what did i tell ye?" said salters. "don't sputter over your vittles, dan." chapter ix whatever his private sorrows may be, a multimillionaire, like any other workingman, should keep abreast of his business. harvey cheyne, senior, had gone east late in june to meet a woman broken down, half mad, who dreamed day and night of her son drowning in the grey seas. he had surrounded her with doctors, trained nurses, massage-women, and even faith-cure companions, but they were useless. mrs. cheyne lay still and moaned, or talked of her boy by the hour together to any one who would listen. hope she had none, and who could offer it? all she needed was assurance that drowning did not hurt; and her husband watched to guard lest she should make the experiment. of his own sorrow he spoke little--hardly realised the depth of it till he caught himself asking the calendar on his writing-desk, "what's the use of going on?" there had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head that, some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy had left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into his possessions. then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there would follow splendid years of great works carried out together--the old head backing the young fire. now his boy was dead--lost at sea, as it might have been a swede sailor from one of cheyne's big tea-ships; the wife was dying, or worse; he himself was trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no heart to meet his many enemies. he had taken the wife to his raw new palace in san diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and cheyne, in a verandah-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day. there was a war of rates among four western railroads in which he was supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had developed in his lumber-camps in oregon, and the legislature of the state of california, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open war against him. ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign. but now he sat limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big body shrunk inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary's questions as he opened the saturday mail. cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and pull out. he carried huge insurances, could buy himself royal annuities, and between one of his places in colorado and a little society (that would do the wife good), say in washington and the south carolina islands, a man might forget plans that had come to nothing. on the other hand... the click of the typewriter stopped; the girl was looking at the secretary, who had turned white. he passed cheyne a telegram repeated from san francisco: picked up by fishing schooner "we're here" having fallen off boat great times on banks fishing all well waiting gloucester mass care disko troop for money or orders wire what shall do and how is mama harvey n. cheyne. the father let it fall, laid his head down on the roller-top of the shut desk, and breathed heavily. the secretary ran for mrs. cheyne's doctor, who found cheyne pacing to and fro. "what-what d'you think of it? is it possible? is there any meaning to it? i can't quite make it out," he cried. "i can," said the doctor. "i lose seven thousand a year--that's all." he thought of the struggling new york practice he had dropped at cheyne's imperious bidding, and returned the telegram with a sigh. "you mean you'd tell her? 'maybe a fraud?" "what's the motive?" said the doctor, coolly. "detection's too certain. it's the boy sure enough." enter a french maid, impudently, as an indispensable one who is kept on only by large wages. "mrs. cheyne she say you must come at once. she think you are seek." the master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed suzanne; and a thin, high voice on the upper landing of the great white-wood square staircase cried: "what is it? what has happened?" no doors could keep out the shriek that rang through the echoing house a moment later, when her husband blurted out the news. "and that's all right," said the doctor, serenely, to the typewriter. "about the only medical statement in novels with any truth to it is that joy don't kill, miss kinzey." "i know it; but we've a heap to do first." miss kinzey was from milwaukee, somewhat direct of speech; and as her fancy leaned towards the secretary, she divined there was work in hand. he was looking earnestly at the vast roller-map of america on the wall. "milsom, we're going right across. private car straight through--boston. fix the connections," shouted cheyne down the staircase. "i thought so." the secretary turned to the typewriter, and their eyes met (out of that was born a story--nothing to do with this story). she looked inquiringly, doubtful of his resources. he signed to her to move to the morse as a general brings brigades into action. then he swept his hand. musician-wise through his hair, regarded the ceiling, and set to work, while miss kinzey's white fingers called up the continent of america. "k. h. wade, los angeles--the 'constance' is at los angeles, isn't she, miss kinzey?" "yep." miss kinzey nodded between clicks as the secretary looked at his watch. "ready? send 'constance,' private car, here, and arrange for special to leave here sunday in time to connect with new york limited at sixteenth street, chicago, tuesday next." click--click--click! "couldn't you better that'?" "not on those grades. that gives 'em sixty hours from here to chicago. they won't gain anything by taking a special east of that. ready? also arrange with lake shore and michigan southern to take 'constance' on new york central and hudson river buffalo to albany, and b. and a. the same albany to boston. indispensable i should reach boston wednesday evening. be sure nothing prevents. have also wired canniff, toucey, and barnes.--sign, cheyne." miss kinzey nodded, and the secretary went on. "now then. canniff, toucey, and barnes, of course. ready? canniff chicago. please take my private car 'constance 'from santa fe at sixteenth street next tuesday p. m. on n. y. limited through to buffalo and deliver n. y. c. for albany.--ever bin to n' york, miss kinzey? we'll go some day. ready? take car buffalo to albany on limited tuesday p. m. that's for toucey." "haven't bin to noo york, but i know that!" with a toss of the head. "beg pardon. now, boston and albany, barnes, same instructions from albany through to boston. leave three-five p. m. (you needn't wire that); arrive nine-five p. m. wednesday. that covers everything wade will do, but it pays to shake up the managers." "it's great," said miss kinzey, with a look of admiration. this was the kind of man she understood and appreciated. "'tisn't bad," said milsom, modestly. "now, any one but me would have lost thirty hours and spent a week working out the run, instead of handing him over to the santa fe straight through to chicago." "but see here, about that noo york limited. chauncey depew himself couldn't hitch his car to her," miss kinzey suggested, recovering herself. "yes, but this isn't chauncey. it's cheyne--lightning. it goes." "even so. guess we'd better wire the boy. you've forgotten that, anyhow." "i'll ask." when he returned with the father's message bidding harvey meet them in boston at an appointed hour, he found miss kinzey laughing over the keys. then milsom laughed too, for the frantic clicks from los angeles ran: "we want to know why--why--why? general uneasiness developed and spreading." ten minutes later chicago appealed to miss kinzey in these words: "if crime of century is maturing please warn friends in time. we are all getting to cover here." this was capped by a message from topeka (and wherein topeka was concerned even milsom could not guess): "don't shoot, colonel. we'll come down." cheyne smiled grimly at the consternation of his enemies when the telegrams were laid before him. "they think we're on the war-path. tell 'em we don't feel like fighting just now, milsom. tell 'em what we're going for. i guess you and miss kinzey had better come along, though it isn't likely i shall do any business on the road. tell 'em the truth--for once." so the truth was told. miss kinzey clicked in the sentiment while the secretary added the memorable quotation, "let us have peace," and in board-rooms two thousand miles away the representatives of sixty-three million dollars' worth of variously manipulated railroad interests breathed more freely. cheyne was flying to meet the only son, so miraculously restored to him. the bear was seeking his cub, not the bulls. hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and wished him god-speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot roads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful things they would have done had not cheyne buried the hatchet. it was a busy week-end among the wires; for, now that their anxiety was removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate. los angeles called to san diego and barstow that the southern california engineers might know and be ready in their lonely round-houses; barstow passed the word to the atlantic and pacific; the albuquerque flung it the whole length of the atchison, topeka, and santa fe management, even into chicago. an engine, combination-car with crew, and the great and gilded "constance" private car were to be "expedited" over those two thousand three hundred and fifty miles. the train would take precedence of one hundred and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; despatches and crews of every one of those said trains must be notified. sixteen locomotives, sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be needed--each and every one the best available. two and one half minutes would be allowed for changing engines, three for watering, and two for coaling. "warn the men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; for harvey cheyne is in a hurry, a hurry-a hurry," sang the wires. "forty miles an hour will be expected, and division superintendents will accompany this special over their respective divisions. from san diego to sixteenth street, chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. hurry! oh, hurry!" "it will be hot," said cheyne, as they rolled out of san diego in the dawn of sunday. "we're going to hurry, mama, just as fast as ever we can; but i really don't think there's any good of your putting on your bonnet and gloves yet. you'd much better lie down and take your medicine. i'd play you a game o' dominoes, but it's sunday." "i'll be good. oh, i will be good. only--taking off my bonnet makes me feel as if we'd never get there." "try to sleep a little, mama, and we'll be in chicago before you know." "but it's boston, father. tell them to hurry." the six-foot drivers were hammering their way to san bernardino and the mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. that would come later. the heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned east to the needles and the colorado river. the car cracked in the utter drought and glare, and they put crushed ice to mrs. cheyne's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past ash fork, towards flagstaff, where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. the needle of the speed-indicator flicked and wagged to and fro; the cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling wheels, the crew of the combination sat on their bunks, panting in their shirt-sleeves, and cheyne found himself among them shouting old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows, above the roar of the car. he told them about his son, and how the sea had given up its dead, and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him; asked after "her, back there," and whether she could stand it if the engineer "let her out a piece," and cheyne thought she could. accordingly, the great fire-horse was "let out" from flagstaff to winslow, till a division superintendent protested. but mrs. cheyne, in the boudoir state-room, where the french maid, sallow-white with fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only moaned a little and begged her husband to bid them "hurry." and so they dropped the dry sands and moon-struck rocks of arizona behind them, and grilled on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-hose told them they were at coolidge by the continental divide. three bold and experienced men--cool, confident, and dry when they began; white, quivering, and wet when they finished their trick at those terrible wheels--swung her over the great lift from albuquerque to glorietta and beyond springer, up and up to the raton tunnel on the state line, whence they dropped rocking into la junta, had sight of the arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to dodge city, where cheyne took comfort once again from setting his watch an hour ahead. there was very little talk in the car. the secretary and typewriter sat together on the stamped spanish-leather cushions by the plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their best to entertain him. at night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the emptiness of abject desolation. now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a china-man, the clink-clink of hammers that tested the krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. now they looked out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out half the stars. now scaur and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last came the true plains. at dodge city an unknown hand threw in a copy of a kansas paper containing some sort of an interview with harvey, who had evidently fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on from boston. the joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond question their boy, and it soothed mrs. cheyne for a while. her one word "hurry" was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at nickerson, topeka, and marceline, where the grades are easy, and they brushed the continent behind them. towns and villages were close together now, and a man could feel here that he moved among people. "i can't see the dial, and my eyes ache so. what are we doing?" "the very best we can, mama. there's no sense in getting in before the limited. we'd only have to wait." "i don't care. i want to feel we're moving. sit down and tell me the miles." cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles which stand for records to this day), but the seventy-foot car never changed its long, steamer-like roll, moving through the heat with the hum of a giant bee. yet the speed was not enough for mrs. cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless august heat, was making her giddy; the clock-hands would not move, and when, oh, when would they be in chicago? it is not true that, as they changed engines at fort madison, cheyne passed over to the amalgamated brotherhood of locomotive engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. he paid his obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved, and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had sympathised with him. it is on record that the last crew took entire charge of switching operations at sixteenth street, because "she" was in a doze at last, and heaven was to help any one who bumped her. now the highly paid specialist who conveys the lake shore and michigan southern limited from chicago to elkhart is something of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back up to a car. none the less he handled the "constance" as if she might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him, they did it in whispers and dumb show. "pshaw!" said the atchison, topeka, and santa fe men, discussing life later, "we weren't runnin' for a record. harvey cheyne's wife, she were sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce her. 'come to think of it, our runnin' time from san diego to chicago was . . you can tell that to them eastern way-trains. when we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you know." to the western man (though this would not please either city) chicago and boston are cheek by jowl, and some railroads encourage the delusion. the limited whirled the "constance" into buffalo and the arms of the new york central and hudson river (illustrious magnates with white whiskers and gold charms on their watch-chains boarded her here to talk a little business to cheyne), who slid her gracefully into albany, where the boston and albany completed the run from tide-water to tide-water--total time, eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days, fifteen hours and one half. harvey was waiting for them. after violent emotion most people and all boys demand food. they feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around them. harvey ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it. his voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms were rough and hard, his wrists dotted with the marks of gurry-sores; and a fine full flavour of cod-fish hung round rubber boots and blue jersey. the father, well used to judging men, looked at him keenly. he did not know what enduring harm the boy might have taken. indeed, he caught himself thinking that he knew very little whatever of his son; but he distinctly remembered an unsatisfied, dough-faced youth who took delight in "calling down the old man" and reducing his mother to tears--such a person as adds to the gaiety of public rooms and hotel piazzas, where the ingenuous young of the wealthy play with or revile the bell-boys. but this well set-up fisher-youth did not wriggle, looked at him with eyes steady, clear, and unflinching, and spoke in a tone distinctly, even startlingly, respectful. there was that in his voice, too, which seemed to promise that the change might be permanent, and that the new harvey had come to stay. "some one's been coercing him," thought cheyne. "now constance would never have allowed that. don't see as europe could have done it any better." "but why didn't you tell this man, troop, who you were?" the mother repeated, when harvey had expanded his story at least twice. "disko troop, dear. the best man that ever walked a deck. i don't care who the next is." "why didn't you tell him to put you ashore? you know papa would have made it up to him ten times over." "i know it; but he thought i was crazy. i'm afraid i called him a thief because i couldn't find the bills in my pocket." "a sailor found them by the flagstaff that--that night," sobbed mrs. cheyne. "that explains it, then. i don't blame troop any. i just said i wouldn't work--on a banker, too--and of course he hit me on the nose, and oh! i bled like a stuck hog." "my poor darling! they must have abused you horribly." "dunno quite. well, after that, i saw a light." cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. this was going to be a boy after his own hungry heart. he had never seen precisely that twinkle in harvey's eye before. "and the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he's paid me half now; and i took hold with dan and pitched right in. i can't do a man's work yet. but i can handle a dory 'most as well as dan, and i don't get rattled in a fog--much; and i can take my trick in light winds--that's steering, dear--and i can 'most bait up a trawl, and i know my ropes, of course; and i can pitch fish till the cows come home, and i'm great on old josephus, and i'll show you how i can clear coffee with a piece of fish-skin, and--i think i'll have another cup, please. say, you've no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!" "i began with eight and a half, my son," said cheyne. "'that so? you never told me, sir." "you never asked, harve. i'll tell you about it some day, if you care to listen. try a stuffed olive." "troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles. it's great to have a trimmed-up meal again. we were well fed, though. best mug on the banks. disko fed us first-class. he's a great man. and dan--that's his son--dan's my partner. and there's uncle salters and his manures, an' he reads josephus. he's sure i'm crazy yet. and there's poor little penn, and he is crazy. you mustn't talk to him about johnstown, because--and, oh, you must know tom platt and long jack and manuel. manuel saved my life. i'm sorry he's a portugee. he can't talk much, but he's an everlasting musician. he found me struck adrift and drifting, and hauled me in." "i wonder your nervous system isn't completely wrecked," said mrs. cheyne. "what for, mama? i worked like a horse and i ate like a hog and i slept like a dead man." that was too much for mrs. cheyne, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. she went to her state-room, and harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness. "you can depend upon me to do everything i can for the crowd, harve. they seem to be good men on your showing." "best in the fleet, sir. ask at gloucester," said harvey. "but disko believes still he's cured me of being crazy. dan's the only one i've let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and i'm not quite sure dan believes. i want to paralyse 'em to-morrow. say, can't they run the 'constance' over to gloucester? mama don't look fit to be moved, anyway, and we're bound to finish cleaning out by to-morrow. wouverman takes our fish. you see, we're first off the banks this season, and it's four twenty-five a quintal. we held out till he paid it. they want it quick." "you mean you'll have to work to-morrow, then?" "i told troop i would. i'm on the scales. i've brought the tallies with me." he looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that made his father choke. "there isn't but three--no--two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning." "hire a substitute," suggested cheyne, to see what harvey would say. "can't, sir. i'm tally-man for the schooner. troop says i've a better head for figures than dan. troop's a mighty just man." "well, suppose i don't move the 'constance' to-night, how'll you fix it?" harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven. "then i'll sleep here till three and catch the four o'clock freight. they let us men from the fleet ride free, as a rule." "that's a notion. but i think we can get the 'constance' around about as soon as your men's freight. better go to bed now." harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep before his father could shade the electrics. cheyne sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a father. "one never knows when one's taking one's biggest risks," he said. "it might have been worse than drowning; but i don't think it has--i don't think it has. if it hasn't, i haven't enough to pay troop, that's all; and i don't think it has." morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the "constance" was side-tracked among freight-cars at gloucester, and harvey had gone to his business. "then he'll fall overboard again and be drowned," the mother said bitterly. "we'll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case. you've never seen him working for his bread," said the father. "what nonsense! as if any one expected--" "well, the man that hired him did. he's about right, too." they went down between the stores full of fishermen's oilskins to wouverman's wharf, where the "we're here" rode high, her bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. disko stood by the main hatch superintending manuel, penn, and uncle salters at the tackle. dan was swinging the loaded baskets inboard as long jack and tom platt filled them, and harvey, with a notebook, represented the skipper's interests before the clerk of the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf-edge. "ready!" cried the voices below. "haul!" cried disko. "hi!" said manuel. "here!" said dan, swinging the basket. then they heard harvey's voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights. the last of the fish had been whipped out, and harvey leaped from the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand disko the tally, shouting, "two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!" "what's total, harve?" said disko. "eight sixty-five. three thousand six hundred and seventy-six dollars and a quarter. 'wish i'd share as well as wage." "well, i won't go so far as to say you hevn't deserved it, harve. don't you want to slip up to wouverman's office and take him our tallies?" "who's that boy?" said cheyne to dan, well used to all manner of questions from those idle imbeciles called summer boarders. "well, he's a kind o' supercargo," was the answer. "we picked him up struck adrift on the banks. fell overboard from a liner, he sez. he was a passenger. he's by way o' bein' a fisherman now." "is he worth his keep?" "ye-ep. dad, this man wants to know ef harve's worth his keep. say, would you like to go aboard? we'll fix a ladder for her." "i should very much, indeed. 'twon't hurt you, mama, and you'll be able to see for yourself." the woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft. "be you anyways interested in harve?" said disko. "well, ye-es." "he's a good boy, an' ketches right hold jest as he's bid. you've heard haow we found him? he was sufferin' from nervous prostration, i guess, 'r else his head had hit somethin', when we hauled him aboard. he's all over that naow. yes, this is the cabin. 'tain't anyways in order, but you're quite welcome to look around. those are his figures on the stove-pipe, where we keep the reckonin' mostly." "did he sleep here?" said mrs. cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the disorderly bunks. "no. he berthed forward, madam, an' only fer him an' my boy hookin' fried pies an' muggin' up when they ought to ha' been asleep, i dunno as i've any special fault to find with him." "there weren't nothin' wrong with harve," said uncle salters, descending the steps. "he hung my boots on the main-truck, and he ain't over an' above respectful to such as knows more'n he do, especially about farmin'; but he were mostly misled by dan." dan, in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from harvey early that morning, was executing a war-dance on deck. "tom, tom!" he whispered down the hatch. "his folks has come, an' dad hain't caught on yet, an' they're pow-wowin' in the cabin. she's a daisy, an' he's all harve claimed he was, by the looks of him." "howly smoke!" said long jack, climbing out covered with salt and fish-skin. "d'ye belave his tale av the kid an' the little four-horse rig was thrue?" "i knew it all along," said dan. "come an' see dad mistook in his judgments." they came delightedly, just in time to hear cheyne say: "i'm glad he has a good character, because--he's my son." disko's jaw fell,--long jack always vowed that he heard the click of it,--and he stared alternately at the man and the woman. "i got his telegram in san diego four days ago, and we came over." "in a private car?" said dan. "he said ye might." "in a private car, of course." dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks. "there was a tale he tould us av drivin' four little ponies in a rig av his own," said long jack. "was that thrue now?" "very likely," said cheyne. "was it, mama?" "he had a little drag when we were in toledo, i think," said the mother. long jack whistled. "oh, disko!" said he, and that was all. "i wuz--i am mistook in my jedgments--worse'n the men o' marblehead," said disko, as though the words were being windlassed out of him. "i don't mind ownin' to you, mister cheyne, as i mistrusted the boy to be crazy. he talked kinder odd about money." "so he told me." "did he tell ye anything else? 'cause i pounded him once." this with a somewhat anxious glance at mrs. cheyne. "oh, yes," cheyne replied. "i should say it probably did him more good than anything else in the world." "i jedged 'twuz necessary, er i wouldn't ha' done it. i don't want you to think we abuse our boys any on this packet." "i don't think you do, mr. troop." mrs. cheyne had been looking at the faces--disko's ivory-yellow, hairless, iron countenance; uncle salters's, with its rim of agricultural hair; penn's bewildered simplicity; manuel's quiet smile; long jack's grin of delight; and tom platt's scar. rough, by her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother's wits in her eyes, and she rose with outstretched hands. "oh, tell me, which is who?" said she, half sobbing. "i want to thank you and bless you--all of you." "faith, that pays me a hunder time," said long jack. disko introduced them all in due form. the captain of an old-time chinaman could have done no better, and mrs. cheyne babbled incoherently. she nearly threw herself into manuel's arms when she understood that he had first found harvey. "but how shall i leave him dreeft?" said poor manuel. "what do you yourself if you find him so? eh, wha-at'? we are in one good boy, and i am ever so pleased he come to be your son." "and he told me dan was his partner!" she cried. dan was already sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich crimson when mrs. cheyne kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. then they led her forward to show her the fo'c'sle, at which she wept again, and must needs go down to see harvey's identical bunk, and there she found the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though she were some one he had expected to meet for years. they tried, two at a time, to explain the boat's daily life to her, and she sat by the pawl-post, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes. "and who's ever to use the "we're here" after this?" said long jack to tom platt. "i feel it as if she'd made a cathedral av ut all." "cathedral!" sneered tom platt. "oh, ef it had bin even the fish c'mmission boat instid o' this bally-hoo o' blazes. ef we only hed some decency an' order an' side-boys when she goes over! she'll have to climb that ladder like a hen, an' we--we ought to be mannin' the yards!" "then harvey was not mad," said penn, slowly, to cheyne. "no, indeed--thank god," the big millionaire replied, stooping down tenderly. "it must be terrible to be mad. except to lose your child, i do not know anything more terrible. but your child has come back? let us thank god for that." "hello!" said harvey, looking down upon them benignly from the wharf. "i wuz mistook, harve. i wuz mistook," said disko, swiftly, holding up a hand. "i wuz mistook in my jedgments. ye needn't rub it in any more." "'guess i'll take care o' that," said dan, under his breath. "you'll be goin' off naow, won't ye?" "well, not without the balance of my wages, 'less you want to have the "we're here" attached." "thet's so; i'd clean forgot"; and he counted out the remaining dollars. "you done all you contracted to do, harve; and you done it 'baout's well as ef you'd been brought up--" here disko brought himself up. he did not quite see where the sentence was going to end. "outside of a private car?" suggested dan, wickedly. "come on, and i'll show her to you," said harvey. cheyne stayed to talk to disko, but the others made a procession to the depot, with mrs. cheyne at the head. the french maid shrieked at the invasion; and harvey laid the glories of the "constance" before them without a word. they took them in in equal silence--stamped leather, silver door-handles and rails, cut velvet, plate-glass, nickel, bronze, hammered iron, and the rare woods of the continent inlaid. "i told you," said harvey; "i told you." this was his crowning revenge, and a most ample one. mrs. cheyne decreed a meal; and that nothing might be lacking to the tale long jack told afterwards in his boarding-house, she waited on them herself. men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling gales have curiously neat and finished table-manners; but mrs. cheyne, who did not know this, was surprised. she longed to have manuel for a butler; so silently and easily did he comport himself among the frail glassware and dainty silver. tom platt remembered great days on the ohio and the manners of foreign potentates who dined with the officers; and long jack, being irish, supplied the small talk till all were at their ease. in the "we're here's" cabin the fathers took stock of each other behind their cigars. cheyne knew well enough when he dealt with a man to whom he could not offer money; equally well he knew that no money could pay for what disko had done. he kept his own counsel and waited for an opening. "i hevn't done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep' make him work a piece an' learn him how to handle the hog-yoke," said disko. "he has twice my boy's head for figgers." "by the way," cheyne answered casually, "what d'you calculate to make of your boy?" disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin. "dan's jest plain boy, an' he don't allow me to do any of his thinkin'. he'll hev this able little packet when i'm laid by. he ain't noways anxious to quit the business. i know that." "mmm! 'ever been west, mr. troop?" "bin's fer ez noo york once in a boat. i've no use for railroads. no more hez dan. salt water's good enough fer the troops. i've been 'most everywhere--in the nat'ral way, o' course." "i can give him all the salt water he's likely to need--till he's a skipper." "haow's that? i thought you wuz a kinder railroad king. harve told me so when--i was mistook in my jedgments." "we're all apt to be mistaken. i fancied perhaps you might know i own a line of tea-clippers--san francisco to yokohama--six of 'em--iron-built, about seventeen hundred and eighty tons apiece." "blame that boy! he never told. i'd ha' listened to that, instid o' his truck abaout railroads an' pony-carriages." "he didn't know." "'little thing like that slipped his mind, i guess." "no, i only capt--took hold of the 'blue m.' freighters--morgan and mcquade's old line--this summer." disko collapsed where he sat, beside the stove. "great caesar almighty! i mistrust i've bin fooled from one end to the other. why, phil airheart he went from this very town six year back--no, seven--an' he's mate on the san josé now--twenty-six days was her time out. his sister she's livin' here yet, an' she reads his letters to my woman. an' you own the 'blue m.' freighters?" cheyne nodded. "if i'd known that i'd ha' jerked the "we're here" back to port all standin', on the word." "perhaps that wouldn't have been so good for harvey." "ef i'd only known! ef he'd only said about the cussed line, i'd ha' understood! i'll never stand on my own jedgments again--never. they're well-found packets, phil airheart he says so." "i'm glad to have a recommend from that quarter. airheart's skipper of the san josé now. what i was getting at is to know whether you'd lend me dan for a year or two, and we'll see if we can't make a mate of him. would you trust him to airheart?" "it's a resk taking a raw boy--" "i know a man who did more for me." "that's diff'runt. look at here naow, i ain't recommendin' dan special because he's my own flesh an' blood. i know bank ways ain't clipper ways, but he hain't much to learn. steer he can--no boy better, ef i say it--an' the rest's in our blood an' get; but i could wish he warn't so cussed weak on navigation." "airheart will attend to that. he'll ship as a boy for a voyage or two, and then we can put him in the way of doing better. suppose you take him in hand this winter, and i'll send for him early in the spring. i know the pacific's a long ways off--" "pshaw! we troops, livin' an' dead, are all around the earth an' the seas thereof." "but i want you to understand--and i mean this--any time you think you'd like to see him, tell me, and i'll attend to the transportation. 'twon't cost you a cent." "ef you'll walk a piece with me, we'll go to my house an' talk this to my woman. i've bin so crazy mistook in all my jedgments, it don't seem to me this was like to be real." they went over to troop's eighteen-hundred-dollar, blue-trimmed white house, with a retired dory full of nasturtiums in the front yard and a shuttered parlor which was a museum of oversea plunder. there sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved. cheyne addressed himself to her, and she gave consent wearily. "we lose one hundred a year from gloucester only, mr. cheyne," she said--"one hundred boys an' men; and i've come so's to hate the sea as if 'twuz alive an' listenin'. god never made it fer humans to anchor on. these packets o' yours they go straight out, i take it, and straight home again?" "as straight as the winds let 'em, and i give a bonus for record passages. tea don't improve by being at sea." "when he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an' i had hopes he might follow that up. but soon's he could paddle a dory i knew that were goin' to be denied me." "they're square-riggers, mother; iron-built an' well found. remember what phil's sister reads you when she gits his letters." "i've never known as phil told lies, but he's too venturesome (like most of 'em that use the sea). ef dan sees fit, mr. cheyne, he can go--fer all o' me." "she jest despises the ocean," disko explained, "an' i--i dunno haow to act polite, i guess, er i'd thank you better." "my father--my own eldest brother--two nephews--an' my second sister's man," she said, dropping her head on her hand. "would you care fer any one that took all those?" cheyne was relieved when dan turned up and accepted with more delight than he was able to put into words. indeed, the offer meant a plain and sure road to all desirable things; but dan thought most of commanding watch on broad decks, and looking into far-away harbours. mrs. cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable manuel in the matter of harvey's rescue. he seemed to have no desire for money. pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars, because he wanted to buy something for a girl. otherwise--"how shall i take money when i make so easy my eats and smokes? you will giva some if i like or no? eh, wha-at? then you shall giva me money, but not that way. you shall giva all you can think." he introduced her to a snuffy portuguese priest with a list of semi-destitute widows as long as his cassock. as a strict unitarian, mrs. cheyne could not sympathise with the creed, but she ended by respecting the brown, voluble little man. manuel, faithful son of the church, appropriated all the blessings showered on her for her charity. "that letta me out," said he. "i have now ver' good absolutions for six months"; and he strolled forth to get a handkerchief for the girl of the hour and to break the hearts of all the others. salters went west for a season with penn, and left no address behind. he had a dread that these millionary people, with wasteful private cars, might take undue interest in his companion. it was better to visit inland relatives till the coast was clear. "never you be adopted by rich folk, penn," he said in the cars, "or i'll take 'n' break this checker-board over your head. ef you forgit your name agin--which is pratt--you remember you belong with salters troop, an' set down right where you are till i come fer you. don't go taggin' araound after them whose eyes bung out with fatness, accordin' to scripcher." chapter x but it was otherwise with the "we're here's" silent cook, for he came up, his kit in a handkerchief, and boarded the "constance." pay was no particular object, and he did not in the least care where he slept. his business, as revealed to him in dreams, was to follow harvey for the rest of his days. they tried argument and, at last, persuasion; but there is a difference between one cape breton and two alabama negroes, and the matter was referred to cheyne by the cook and porter. the millionaire only laughed. he presumed harvey might need a body-servant some day or other, and was sure that one volunteer was worth five hirelings. let the man stay, therefore; even though he called himself macdonald and swore in gaelic. the car could go back to boston, where, if he were still of the same mind, they would take him west. with the "constance," which in his heart of hearts he loathed, departed the last remnant of cheyne's millionairedom, and he gave himself up to an energetic idleness. this gloucester was a new town in a new land, and he purposed to "take it in," as of old he had taken in all the cities from snohomish to san diego of that world whence he hailed. they made money along the crooked street which was half wharf and half ship's store: as a leading professional he wished to learn how the noble game was played. men said that four out of every five fish-balls served at new england's sunday breakfast came from gloucester, and overwhelmed him with figures in proof--statistics of boats, gear, wharf-frontage, capital invested, salting, packing, factories, insurance, wages, repairs, and profits. he talked with the owners of the large fleets whose skippers were little more than hired men, and whose crews were almost all swedes or portuguese. then he conferred with disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and compared notes in his vast head. he coiled himself away on chain-cables in marine junk-shops, asking questions with cheerful, unslaked western curiosity, till all the water-front wanted to know "what in thunder that man was after, anyhow." he prowled into the mutual insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of every fisherman's widow and orphan aid society within the city limits. they begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other institution's record, and cheyne tugged at his beard and handed them all over to mrs. cheyne. she was resting in a boarding-house near eastern point--a strange establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered, and the population, who seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose up at midnight to make welsh rare-bits if it felt hungry. on the second morning of her stay mrs. cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before she came down to breakfast. "they're most delightful people," she confided to her husband; "so friendly and simple, too, though they are all boston, nearly." "that isn't simpleness, mama," he said, looking across the boulders behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung. "it's the other thing, that we--that i haven't got." "it can't be," said mrs. cheyne, quietly. "there isn't a woman here owns a dress that cost a hundred dollars. why, we--" "i know it, dear. we have--of course we have. i guess it's only the style they wear east. are you having a good time?" "i don't see very much of harvey; he's always with you; but i ain't near as nervous as i was." "i haven't had such a good time since willie died. i never rightly understood that i had a son before this. harve's got to be a great boy. 'anything i can fetch you, dear? 'cushion under your head? well, we'll go down to the wharf again and look around." harvey was his father's shadow in those days, and the two strolled along side by side, cheyne using the grades as an excuse for laying his hand on the boy's square shoulder. it was then that harvey noticed and admired what had never struck him before--his father's curious power of getting at the heart of new matters as learned from men in the street. "how d'you make 'em tell you everything without opening your head?" demanded the son, as they came out of a rigger's loft. "i've dealt with quite a few men in my time, harve, and one sizes 'em up somehow, i guess. i know something about myself, too." then, after a pause, as they sat down on a wharf-edge: "men can 'most always tell when a man has handled things for himself, and then they treat him as one of themselves." "same as they treat me down at wouverman's wharf. i'm one of the crowd now. disko has told every one i've earned my pay." harvey spread out his hands and rubbed the palms together. "they're all soft again," he said dolefully. "keep 'em that way for the next few years, while you're getting your education. you can harden 'em up after." "ye-es, i suppose so," was the reply, in no delighted voice. "it rests with you, harve. you can take cover behind your mama, of course, and put her on to fussing about your nerves and your highstrungness and all that kind of poppycock." "have i ever done that?" said harvey, uneasily. his father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand. "you know as well as i do that i can't make anything of you if you don't act straight by me. i can handle you alone if you'll stay alone, but i don't pretend to manage both you and mama. life's too short, anyway." "don't make me out much of a fellow, does it?" "i guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you haven't been much of anything up to date. now, have you?" "umm! disko thinks . . . say, what d'you reckon it's cost you to raise me from the start--first, last, and all over?" cheyne smiled. "i've never kept track, but i should estimate, in dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty. the young generation comes high. it has to have things, and it tires of 'em, and--the old man foots the bill." harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that his upbringing had cost so much. "and all that's sunk capital, isn't it?" "invested, harve. invested, i hope." "making it only thirty thousand, the thirty i've earned is about ten cents on the hundred. that's a mighty poor catch." harvey wagged his head solemnly. cheyne laughed till he nearly fell off the pile into the water. "disko has got a heap more than that out of dan since he was ten; and dan's at school half the year, too." "oh, that's what you're after, is it?" "no. i'm not after anything. i'm not stuck on myself any just now--that's all . . . . i ought to be kicked." "i can't do it, old man; or i would, i presume, if i'd been made that way." "then i'd have remembered it to the last day i lived--and never forgiven you," said harvey, his chin on his doubled fists. "exactly. that's about what i'd do. you see?" "i see. the fault's with me and no one else. all the samey, something's got to be done about it." cheyne drew a cigar from his vest-pocket, bit off the end, and fell to smoking. father and son were very much alike; for the beard hid cheyne's mouth, and harvey had his father's slightly aquiline nose, close-set black eyes, and narrow, high cheek-bones. with a touch of brown paint he would have made up very picturesquely as a red indian of the story-books. "now you can go on from here," said cheyne, slowly, "costing me between six or eight thousand a year till you're a voter. well, we'll call you a man then. you can go right on from that, living on me to the tune of forty or fifty thousand, besides what your mother will give you, with a valet and a yacht or a fancy-ranch where you can pretend to raise trotting stock and play cards with your own crowd." "like lorry tuck?" harvey put in. "yep; or the two de vitré boys or old man mcquade's son. california's full of 'em, and here's an eastern sample while we're talking." a shiny black steam-yacht, with mahogany deck-house, nickel-plated binnacles, and pink-and-white-striped awnings, puffed up the harbour, flying the burgee of some new york club. two young men, in what they conceived to be sea costumes, were playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a couple of women with red and blue parasols looked on and laughed noisily. "shouldn't care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. no, beam," said harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her mooring-buoy. "they're having what stands them for a good time. i can give you that, and twice as much as that, harve. how'd you like it?" "caesar! that's no way to get a dinghy over-side," said harvey, still intent on the yacht. "if i couldn't slip a tackle better than that i'd stay ashore. . . . what if i don't?" "stay ashore--or what?" "yacht and ranch and live on 'the old man,' and--get behind mama when there's trouble," said harvey, with a twinkle in his eye. "why, in that case, you come right in with me, my son." "ten dollars a month?" another twinkle. "not a cent more until you're worth it, and you won't begin to touch that for a few years." "i'd sooner begin sweeping out the office--isn't that how the big bugs start?--and touch something now than--" "i know it; we all feel that way. but i guess we can hire any sweeping we need. i made the same mistake myself of starting in too soon." "thirty million dollars' worth o' mistake, wasn't it? i'd risk it for that." "i lost some; and i gained some. i'll tell you." cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still water, and spoke away from harvey, who presently began to be aware that his father was telling the story of his life. he talked in a low, even voice, without gesture and without expression; and it was a history for which a dozen leading journals would cheerfully have paid many dollars--the story of forty years that was at the same time the story of the new west, whose story is yet to be written. it began with a kinless boy turned loose in texas, and went on fantastically through a hundred changes and chops of life, the scenes shifting from state after western state, from cities that sprang up in a month and in a season utterly withered away, to wild ventures in wilder camps that are now laborious, paved municipalities. it covered the building of three railroads and the deliberate wreck of a fourth. it told of steamers, townships, forests, and mines, and the men of every nation under heaven, manning, creating, hewing, and digging these. it touched on chances of gigantic wealth flung before eyes that could not see, or missed by the merest accident of time and travel; and through the mad shift of things, sometimes on horseback, more often afoot, now rich, now poor, in and out, and back and forth, deck-hand, train-hand, contractor, boardinghouse keeper, journalist, engineer, drummer, real-estate agent, politician, dead-beat, rumseller, mine-owner, speculator, cattle-man, or tramp, moved harvey cheyne, alert and quiet, seeking his own ends, and, so he said, the glory and advancement of his country. he told of the faith that never deserted him even when he hung on the ragged edge of despair the faith that comes of knowing men and things. he enlarged, as though he were talking to himself, on his very great courage and resource at all times. the thing was so evident in the man's mind that he never even changed his tone. he described how he had bested his enemies, or forgiven them, exactly as they had bested or forgiven him in those careless days; how he had entreated, cajoled, and bullied towns, companies, and syndicates, all for their enduring good; crawled round, through, or under mountains and ravines, dragging a string and hoop-iron railroad after him, and in the end, how he had sat still while promiscuous communities tore the last fragments of his character to shreds. the tale held harvey almost breathless, his head a little cocked to one side, his eyes fixed on his father's face, as the twilight deepened and the red cigar-end lit up the furrowed cheeks and heavy eyebrows. it seemed to him like watching a locomotive storming across country in the dark--a mile between each glare of the opened fire-door: but this locomotive could talk, and the words shook and stirred the boy to the core of his soul. at last cheyne pitched away the cigar-butt, and the two sat in the dark over the lapping water. "i've never told that to any one before," said the father. harvey gasped. "it's just the greatest thing that ever was!" said he. "that's what i got. now i'm coming to what i didn't get. it won't sound much of anything to you, but i don't wish you to be as old as i am before you find out. i can handle men, of course, and i'm no fool along my own lines, but--but i can't compete with the man who has been taught! i've picked up as i went along, and i guess it sticks out all over me." "i've never seen it," said the son, indignantly. "you will, though, harve. you will--just as soon as you're through college. don't i know it? don't i know the look on men's faces when they think me a--a 'mucker,' as they call it out here? i can break them to little pieces--yes--but i can't get back at 'em to hurt 'em where they live. i don't say they're 'way, 'way up, but i feel i'm 'way, 'way, 'way off, somehow. now you've got your chance. you've got to soak up all the learning that's around, and you'll live with a crowd that are doing the same thing. they'll be doing it for a few thousand dollars a year at most; but remember you'll be doing it for millions. you'll learn law enough to look after your own property when i'm out o' the light, and you'll have to be solid with the best men in the market (they are useful later); and above all, you'll have to stow away the plain, common, sit-down-with-your-chin-on-your-elbows book-learning. nothing pays like that, harve, and it's bound to pay more and more each year in our country--in business and in politics. you'll see." "there's no sugar my end of the deal," said harvey. "four years at college! wish i'd chosen the valet and the yacht!" "never mind, my son," cheyne insisted. "you're investing your capital where it'll bring in the best returns; and i guess you won't find our property shrunk any when you're ready to take hold. think it over, and let me know in the morning. hurry! we'll be late for supper!" as this was a business talk, there was no need for harvey to tell his mother about it; and cheyne naturally took the same point of view. but mrs. cheyne saw and feared, and was a little jealous. her boy, who rode rough-shod over her, was gone, and in his stead reigned a keen-faced youth, abnormally silent, who addressed most of his conversation to his father. she understood it was business, and therefore a matter beyond her premises. if she had any doubts, they were resolved when cheyne went to boston and brought back a new diamond marquise-ring. "what have you two men been doing now?" she said, with a weak little smile, as she turned it in the light. "talking--just talking, mama; there's nothing mean about harvey." there was not. the boy had made a treaty on his own account. railroads, he explained gravely, interested him as little as lumber, real estate, or mining. what his soul yearned after was control of his father's newly purchased sailing-ships. if that could be promised him within what he conceived to be a reasonable time, he, for his part, guaranteed diligence and sobriety at college for four or five years. in vacation he was to be allowed full access to all details connected with the line,--he had asked not more than two thousand questions about it,--from his father's most private papers in the safe to the tug in san francisco harbour. "it's a deal," said cheyne at the last. "you'll alter your mind twenty times before you leave college, o' course; but if you take hold of it in proper shape, and if you don't tie it up before you're twenty-three, i'll make the thing over to you. how's that, harve?" "nope; never pays to split up a going concern there's too much competition in the world anyway, and disko says 'blood-kin hev to stick together.' his crowd never go back on him. that's one reason, he says, why they make such big fares. say, the "we're here" goes off to the georges on monday. they don't stay long ashore, do they?" "well, we ought to be going, too, i guess. i've left my business hung up at loose ends between two oceans, and it's time to connect again. i just hate to do it, though; haven't had a holiday like this for twenty years." "we can't go without seeing disko off," said harvey; "and monday's memorial day. let's stay over that, anyway." "what is this memorial business? they were talking about it at the boarding-house," said cheyne, weakly. he, too, was not anxious to spoil the golden days. "well, as far as i can make out, this business is a sort of song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders. disko don't think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the widows and orphans. disko's independent. haven't you noticed that?" "well--yes. a little. in spots. is it a town show, then?" "the summer convention is. they read out the names of the fellows drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make speeches, and recite, and all. then, disko says, the secretaries of the aid societies go into the back yard and fight over the catch. the real show, he says, is in the spring. the ministers all take a hand then, and there aren't any summer boarders around." "i see," said cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension of one born into and bred up to city pride. "we'll stay over for memorial day, and get off in the afternoon." "guess i'll go down to disko's and make him bring his crowd up before they sail. i'll have to stand with them, of course." "oh, that's it, is it," said cheyne. "i'm only a poor summer boarder, and you're--" "a banker--full-blooded banker," harvey called back as he boarded a trolley, and cheyne went on with his blissful dreams for the future. disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made for charity, but harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be lost, so far as he was concerned, if the "we're heres" absented themselves. then disko made conditions. he had heard--it was astonishing how all the world knew all the world's business along the waterfront--he had heard that a "philadelphia actress-woman" was going to take part in the exercises; and he mistrusted that she would deliver "skipper ireson's ride." personally, he had as little use for actresses as for summer boarders; but justice was justice, and though he himself (here dan giggled) had once slipped up on a matter of judgment, this thing must not be. so harvey came back to east gloucester, and spent half a day explaining to an amused actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of the mistake she contemplated; and she admitted that it was justice, even as disko had said. cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything of the nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the man's soul. he saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside the post-office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk. "mother," he said suddenly, "don't you remember--after seattle was burned out--and they got her going again?" mrs. cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street. like her husband, she understood these gatherings, all the west over, and compared them one against another. the fishermen began to mingle with the crowd about the town-hall doors--blue-jowled portuguese, their women bare-headed or shawled for the most part; clear-eyed nova scotians, and men of the maritime provinces; french, italians, swedes, and danes, with outside crews of coasting schooners; and everywhere women in black, who saluted one another with a gloomy pride, for this was their day of great days. and there were ministers of many creeds,--pastors of great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with shepherds of the regular work,--from the priests of the church on the hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor lutherans, hail-fellow with the men of a score of boats. there were owners of lines of schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers, salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of the water-front. they drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of the summer boarders, and one of the town officials patrolled and perspired till he shone all over with pure civic pride. cheyne had met him for five minutes a few days before, and between the two there was entire understanding. "well, mr. cheyne, and what d'you think of our city?--yes, madam, you can sit anywhere you please.--you have this kind of thing out west, i presume?" "yes, but we aren't as old as you." "that's so, of course. you ought to have been at the exercises when we celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth birthday. i tell you, mr. cheyne, the old city did herself credit." "so i heard. it pays, too. what's the matter with the town that it don't have a first-class hotel, though?" "right over there to the left, pedro. heaps o' room for you and your crowd.--why, that's what i tell 'em all the time, mr. cheyne. there's big money in it, but i presume that don't affect you any. what we want is--" a heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed skipper of a portland coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round. "what in thunder do you fellows mean by clappin' the law on the town when all decent men are at sea this way? heh? town's dry's a bone, an' smells a sight worse sence i quit. 'might ha' left us one saloon for soft drinks, anyway." "don't seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning, carsen. i'll go into the politics of it later. sit down by the door and think over your arguments till i come back." "what good's arguments to me? in miquelon champagne's eighteen dollars a case, and--" the skipper lurched into his seat as an organ-prelude silenced him. "our new organ," said the official proudly to cheyne. "cost us four thousand dollars, too. we'll have to get back to high-licence next year to pay for it. i wasn't going to let the ministers have all the religion at their convention. those are some of our orphans standing up to sing. my wife taught 'em. see you again later, mr. cheyne. i'm wanted on the platform." high, clear, and true, children's voices bore down the last noise of those settling into their places. "o all ye works of the lord, bless ye the lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!" the women throughout the hall leaned forward to look as the reiterated cadences filled the air. mrs. cheyne, with some others, began to breathe short; she had hardly imagined there were so many widows in the world; and instinctively searched for harvey. he had found the "we're heres" at the back of the audience, and was standing, as by right, between dan and disko. uncle salters, returned the night before with penn, from pamlico sound, received him suspiciously. "hain't your folk gone yet?" he grunted. "what are you doin' here, young feller?" "o ye seas and floods, bless ye the lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!" "hain't he good right?" said dan. "he's bin there, same as the rest of us." "not in them clothes," salters snarled. "shut your head, salters," said disko. "your bile's gone back on you. stay right where ye are, harve." then up and spoke the orator of the occasion, another pillar of the municipality, bidding the world welcome to gloucester, and incidentally pointing out wherein gloucester excelled the rest of the world. then he turned to the sea-wealth of the city, and spoke of the price that must be paid for the yearly harvest. they would hear later the names of their lost dead--one hundred and seventeen of them. (the widows stared a little, and looked at one another here.) gloucester could not boast any overwhelming mills or factories. her sons worked for such wage as the sea gave; and they all knew that neither georges nor the banks were cow-pastures. the utmost that folk ashore could accomplish was to help the widows and the orphans; and after a few general remarks he took this opportunity of thanking, in the name of the city, those who had so public-spiritedly consented to participate in the exercises of the occasion. "i jest despise the beggin' pieces in it," growled disko. "it don't give folk a fair notion of us." "ef folk won't be fore-handed an' put by when they've the chance," returned salters, "it stands in the nature o' things they hev to be 'shamed. you take warnin' by that, young feller. riches endureth but for a season, ef you scatter them araound on lugsuries--" "but to lose everything--everything," said penn. "what can you do then? once!"--the watery blue eyes stared up and down, as looking for something to steady them--"once i read--in a book, i think--of a boat where every one was run down--except some one--and he said to me--" "shucks!" said salters, cutting in. "you read a little less an' take more int'rust in your vittles, and you'll come nearer earnin' your keep, penn." harvey, jammed among the fishermen, felt a creepy, crawly, tingling thrill that began in the back of his neck and ended at his boots. he was cold, too, though it was a stifling day. "'that the actress from philadelphia?" said disko troop, scowling at the platform. "you've fixed it about old man ireson, hain't ye, harve? ye know why naow." it was not "ireson's ride" that the woman delivered, but some sort of poem about a fishing-port called brixham and a fleet of trawlers beating in against storm by night, while the women made a guiding fire at the head of the quay with everything they could lay hands on. "they took the grandam's blanket, who shivered and bade them go; they took the baby's cradle, who could not say them no." "whew!" said dan, peering over long jack's shoulder. "that's great! must ha' bin expensive, though." "ground-hog case," said the galway man. "badly lighted port, danny." "and knew not all the while if they were lighting a bonfire or only a funeral pile." the wonderful voice took hold of people by their heartstrings; and when she told how the drenched crews were flung ashore, living and dead, and they carried the bodies to the glare of the fires, asking: "child, is this your father?" or "wife, is this your man?" you could hear hard breathing all over the benches. "and when the boats of brixham go out to face the gales, think of the love that travels like light upon their sails!" there was very little applause when she finished. the women were looking for their handkerchiefs, and many of the men stared at the ceiling with shiny eyes. "h'm," said salters; "that 'u'd cost ye a dollar to hear at any theater--maybe two. some folk, i presoom, can afford it. 'seems downright waste to me. . . . naow, how in jerusalem did cap bart edwardes strike adrift here?" "no keepin' him under," said an eastport man behind. "he's a poet, an' he's baound to say his piece. 'comes from daown aour way, too." he did not say that captain b. edwardes had striven for five consecutive years to be allowed to recite a piece of his own composition on gloucester memorial day. an amused and exhausted committee had at last given him his desire. the simplicity and utter happiness of the old man, as he stood up in his very best sunday clothes, won the audience ere he opened his mouth. they sat unmurmuring through seven-and-thirty hatchet-made verses describing at fullest length the loss of the schooner joan hasken off the georges in the gale of , and when he came to an end they shouted with one kindly throat. a far-sighted boston reporter slid away for a full copy of the epic and an interview with the author; so that earth had nothing more to offer captain bart edwardes, ex-whaler, shipwright, master-fisherman, and poet, in the seventy-third year of his age. "naow, i call that sensible," said an eastport man. "i've bin over that graound with his writin', jest as he read it, in my two hands, and i can testify that he's got it all in." "if dan here couldn't do better'n that with one hand before breakfast, he ought to be switched," said salters, upholding the honour of massachusetts on general principles. "not but what i'm free to own he's considerable litt'ery--fer maine. still--" "guess uncle salters's goin' to die this trip. fust compliment he's ever paid me," dan sniggered. "what's wrong with you, harve? you act all quiet and you look greenish. feelin' sick?" "don't know what's the matter with me," harvey replied. "seems if my insides were too big for my outsides. i'm all crowded up and shivery." "dispepsy? pshaw-too bad. we'll wait for the readin', an' then we'll quit, an' catch the tide." the widows--they were nearly all of that season's making--braced themselves rigidly like people going to be shot in cold blood, for they knew what was coming. the summer-boarder girls in pink and blue shirt-waists stopped tittering over captain edwardes's wonderful poem, and looked back to see why all was silent. the fishermen pressed forward as that town official who had talked with cheyne bobbed up on the platform and began to read the year's list of losses, dividing them into months. last september's casualties were mostly single men and strangers, but his voice rang very loud in the stillness of the hall. "september th.--schooner "florrie anderson" lost, with all aboard, off the georges. "reuben pitman, master, , single, main street, city. "emil olsen, , single, hammond street, city; denmark. "oscar stanberg, single, , sweden. "carl stanberg, single, , main street, city. "pedro, supposed madeira, single, keene's boarding-house, city. "joseph welsh, alias joseph wright, , st. john's, newfoundland." "no--augusty, maine," a voice cried from the body of the hall. "he shipped from st. john's," said the reader, looking to see. "i know it. he belongs in augusty. my nevvy." the reader made a pencilled correction on the margin of the list, and resumed: "same schooner, charlie ritchie, liverpool, nova scotia, , single. "albert may, rogers street, city, , single. "september th.--orvin dollard, , married, drowned in dory off eastern point." that shot went home, for one of the widows flinched where she sat, clasping and unclasping her hands. mrs. cheyne, who had been listening with wide-opened eyes, threw up her head and choked. dan's mother, a few seats to the right, saw and heard and quickly moved to her side. the reading went on. by the time they reached the january and february wrecks the shots were falling thick and fast, and the widows drew breath between their teeth. "february th.--schooner "harry randolph" dismasted on the way home from newfoundland; asa musie, married, , main street, city, lost overboard. "february d.--schooner "gilbert hope"; went astray in dory, robert beavon, , married, native of pubnico, nova scotia." but his wife was in the hall. they heard a low cry, as though a little animal had been hit. it was stifled at once, and a girl staggered out of the hall. she had been hoping against hope for months, because some who have gone adrift in dories have been miraculously picked up by deep-sea sailing-ships. now she had her certainty, and harvey could see the policeman on the sidewalk hailing a hack for her. "it's fifty cents to the depot"--the driver began, but the policeman held up his hand--"but i'm goin' there anyway. jump right in. look at here, alf; you don't pull me next time my lamps ain't lit. see?" the side-door closed on the patch of bright sunshine, and harvey's eyes turned again to the reader and his endless list. "april th.--schooner "mamie douglas" lost on the banks with all hands. "edward canton," , master, married, city. "d. hawkins," alias williams, , married, shelbourne, nova scotia. "g. w. clay," coloured, , married, city." and so on, and so on. great lumps were rising in harvey's throat, and his stomach reminded him of the day when he fell from the liner. "may th.--schooner "we're here" [the blood tingled all over him]. otto svendson, , single, city, lost overboard." once more a low, tearing cry from somewhere at the back of the hall. "she shouldn't ha' come. she shouldn't ha' come," said long jack, with a cluck of pity. "don't scrowge, harve," grunted dan. harvey heard that much, but the rest was all darkness spotted with fiery wheels. disko leaned forward and spoke to his wife, where she sat with one arm round mrs. cheyne, and the other holding down the snatching, catching, ringed hands. "lean your head daown--right daown!" she whispered. "it'll go off in a minute." "i ca-an't! i do-don't! oh, let me--" mrs. cheyne did not at all know what she said. "you must," mrs. troop repeated. "your boy's jest fainted dead away. they do that some when they're gettin' their growth. 'wish to tend to him? we can git aout this side. quite quiet. you come right along with me. psha', my dear, we're both women, i guess. we must tend to aour men-folk. come!" the "we're heres" promptly went through the crowd as a body-guard, and it was a very white and shaken harvey that they propped up on a bench in an anteroom. "favours his ma," was mrs. troop's only comment, as the mother bent over her boy. "how d'you suppose he could ever stand it?" she cried indignantly to cheyne, who had said nothing at all. "it was horrible--horrible! we shouldn't have come. it's wrong and wicked! it--it isn't right! why--why couldn't they put these things in the papers, where they belong? are you better, darling?" that made harvey very properly ashamed. "oh, i'm all right, i guess," he said, struggling to his feet, with a broken giggle. "must ha' been something i ate for breakfast." "coffee, perhaps," said cheyne, whose face was all in hard lines, as though it had been cut out of bronze. "we won't go back again." "guess 'twould be 'baout's well to git daown to the wharf," said disko. "it's close in along with them dagoes, an' the fresh air will fresh mrs. cheyne up." harvey announced that he never felt better in his life; but it was not till he saw the "we're here", fresh from the lumper's hands, at wouverman's wharf, that he lost his all-overish feelings in a queer mixture of pride and sorrowfulness. other people--summer boarders and such-like--played about in cat-boats or looked at the sea from pier-heads; but he understood things from the inside--more things than he could begin to think about. none the less, he could have sat down and howled because the little schooner was going off. mrs. cheyne simply cried and cried every step of the way, and said most extraordinary things to mrs. troop, who "babied" her till dan, who had not been "babied" since he was six, whistled aloud. and so the old crowd--harvey felt like the most ancient of mariners--dropped into the old schooner among the battered dories, while harvey slipped the stern-fast from the pier-head, and they slid her along the wharf-side with their hands. every one wanted to say so much that no one said anything in particular. harvey bade dan take care of uncle salters's sea-boots and penn's dory-anchor, and long jack entreated harvey to remember his lessons in seamanship; but the jokes fell flat in the presence of the two women, and it is hard to be funny with green harbour-water widening between good friends. "up jib and fores'l!" shouted disko, getting to the wheel, as the wind took her. "see you later, harve. dunno but i come near thinkin' a heap o' you an' your folks." then she glided beyond ear-shot, and they sat down to watch her up the harbour. and still mrs. cheyne wept. "psha', my dear," said mrs. troop; "we're both women, i guess. like's not it'll ease your heart to hev your cry aout. god he knows it never done me a mite o' good; but then he knows i've had something to cry fer!" now it was a few years later, and upon the other edge of america, that a young man came through the clammy sea-fog up a windy street which is flanked with most expensive houses built of wood to imitate stone. to him, as he was standing by a hammered iron gate, entered on horseback--and the horse would have been cheap at a thousand dollars--another young man. and this is what they said: "hello, dan!" "hello, harve!" "what's the best with you?" "well, i'm so's to be that kind o' animal called second mate this trip. ain't you most through with that triple-invoiced college o' yours?" "getting that way. i tell you, the leland stanford junior isn't a circumstance to the old "we're here"; but i'm coming into the business for keeps next fall." "meanin' aour packets?" "nothing else. you just wait till i get my knife into you, dan. i'm going to make the old line lie down and cry when i take hold." "i'll resk it," said dan, with a brotherly grin, as harvey dismounted and asked whether he were coming in. "that's what i took the cable fer; but, say, is the doctor anywheres araound? i'll draown that crazy nigger some day, his one cussed joke an' all." there was a low, triumphant chuckle, as the ex-cook of the "we're here" came out of the fog to take the horse's bridle. he allowed no one but himself to attend to any of harvey's wants. "thick as the banks, ain't it, doctor?" said dan, propitiatingly. but the coal-black celt with the second-sight did not see fit to reply till he had tapped dan on the shoulder, and for the twentieth time croaked the old, old prophecy in his ear: "master--man. man--master," said he. "you remember, dan troop, what i said? on the 'we're here'?" "well, i won't go so far as to deny that it do look like it as things stand at present," said dan. "she was an able packet, and one way an' another i owe her a heap--her and dad." "me too," quoth harvey cheyne. none puck of pook's hill by rudyard kipling contents weland's sword puck's song a tree song young men at the manor sir richard's song the knights of the joyous venture harp song of the dane women thorkild's song old men at pevensey the runes on weland's sword a centurion of the thirtieth 'cities and thrones and powers' a british-roman song on the great wall a song to mithras the winged hats a pict song hal o' the draft 'prophets have honour all over the earth' a smugglers' song 'dymchurch flit' the bee boy's song a three-part song the treasure and the law song of the fifth river the children's song weland's sword puck's song see you the dimpled track that runs, all hollow through the wheat? o that was where they hauled the guns that smote king philip's fleet! see you our little mill that clacks, so busy by the brook? she has ground her corn and paid her tax ever since domesday book. see you our stilly woods of oak, and the dread ditch beside? o that was where the saxons broke, on the day that harold died! see you the windy levels spread about the gates of rye? o that was where the northmen fled, when alfred's ships came by! see you our pastures wide and lone, where the red oxen browse? o there was a city thronged and known, ere london boasted a house! and see you, after rain, the trace of mound and ditch and wall? o that was a legion's camping-place, when caesar sailed from gaul! and see you marks that show and fade, like shadows on the downs? o they are the lines the flint men made, to guard their wondrous towns! trackway and camp and city lost, salt marsh where now is corn; old wars, old peace, old arts that cease, and so was england born! she is not any common earth, water or wood or air, but merlin's isle of gramarye, where you and i will fare. the children were at the theatre, acting to three cows as much as they could remember of midsummer night's dream. their father had made them a small play out of the big shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. they began when nick bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey's head on his shoulders, and finds titania, queen of the fairies, asleep. then they skipped to the part where bottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he falls asleep in titania's arms. dan was puck and nick bottom, as well as all three fairies. he wore a pointy-cloth cap for puck, and a paper donkey's head out of a christmas cracker--but it tore if you were not careful--for bottom. una was titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand. the theatre lay in a meadow called the long slip. a little mill-stream, carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old fairy ring of darkened grass, which was the stage. the millstream banks, overgrown with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient places to wait in till your turn came; and a grown-up who had seen it said that shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his play. they were not, of course, allowed to act on midsummer night itself, but they went down after tea on midsummer eve, when the shadows were growing, and they took their supper--hard-boiled eggs, bath oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope--with them. three cows had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing noise that one could hear all down the meadow; and the noise of the mill at work sounded like bare feet running on hard ground. a cuckoo sat on a gate-post singing his broken june tune, 'cuckoo-cuck', while a busy kingfisher crossed from the mill-stream, to the brook which ran on the other side of the meadow. everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass. their play went beautifully. dan remembered all his parts--puck, bottom, and the three fairies--and una never forgot a word of titania--not even the difficult piece where she tells the fairies how to feed bottom with 'apricocks, green figs, and dewberries', and all the lines end in 'ies'. they were both so pleased that they acted it three times over from beginning to end before they sat down in the unthistly centre of the ring to eat eggs and bath olivers. this was when they heard a whistle among the alders on the bank, and they jumped. the bushes parted. in the very spot where dan had stood as puck they saw a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting blue eyes, and a grin that ran right across his freckled face. he shaded his forehead as though he were watching quince, snout, bottom, and the others rehearsing pyramus and thisbe, and, in a voice as deep as three cows asking to be milked, he began: 'what hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, so near the cradle of the fairy queen?' he stopped, hollowed one hand round his ear, and, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, went on: 'what, a play toward? i'll be an auditor; an actor, too, perhaps, if i see cause.' the children looked and gasped. the small thing--he was no taller than dan's shoulder--stepped quietly into the ring. 'i'm rather out of practice,' said he; 'but that's the way my part ought to be played.' still the children stared at him--from his dark-blue cap, like a big columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. at last he laughed. 'please don't look like that. it isn't my fault. what else could you expect?' he said. 'we didn't expect any one,' dan answered slowly. 'this is our field.' 'is it?' said their visitor, sitting down. 'then what on human earth made you act midsummer night's dream three times over, on midsummer eve, in the middle of a ring, and under--right under one of my oldest hills in old england? pook's hill--puck's hill--puck's hill--pook's hill! it's as plain as the nose on my face.' he pointed to the bare, fern-covered slope of pook's hill that runs up from the far side of the mill-stream to a dark wood. beyond that wood the ground rises and rises for five hundred feet, till at last you climb out on the bare top of beacon hill, to look over the pevensey levels and the channel and half the naked south downs. 'by oak, ash, and thorn!' he cried, still laughing. 'if this had happened a few hundred years ago you'd have had all the people of the hills out like bees in june!' 'we didn't know it was wrong,' said dan. 'wrong!' the little fellow shook with laughter. 'indeed, it isn't wrong. you've done something that kings and knights and scholars in old days would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out. if merlin himself had helped you, you couldn't have managed better! you've broken the hills--you've broken the hills! it hasn't happened in a thousand years.' 'we--we didn't mean to,' said una. 'of course you didn't! that's just why you did it. unluckily the hills are empty now, and all the people of the hills are gone. i'm the only one left. i'm puck, the oldest old thing in england, very much at your service if--if you care to have anything to do with me. if you don't, of course you've only to say so, and i'll go.' he looked at the children, and the children looked at him for quite half a minute. his eyes did not twinkle any more. they were very kind, and there was the beginning of a good smile on his lips. una put out her hand. 'don't go,' she said. 'we like you.' 'have a bath oliver,' said dan, and he passed over the squashy envelope with the eggs. 'by oak, ash and thorn,' cried puck, taking off his blue cap, 'i like you too. sprinkle a plenty salt on the biscuit, dan, and i'll eat it with you. that'll show you the sort of person i am. some of us'--he went on, with his mouth full--'couldn't abide salt, or horse-shoes over a door, or mountain-ash berries, or running water, or cold iron, or the sound of church bells. but i'm puck!' he brushed the crumbs carefully from his doublet and shook hands. 'we always said, dan and i,' una stammered, 'that if it ever happened we'd know ex-actly what to do; but--but now it seems all different somehow.' 'she means meeting a fairy,'said dan. 'i never believed in 'em--not after i was six, anyhow.' 'i did,' said una. 'at least, i sort of half believed till we learned "farewell, rewards". do you know "farewell, rewards and fairies"?' 'do you mean this?' said puck. he threw his big head back and began at the second line: 'good housewives now may say, for now foul sluts in dairies do fare as well as they; and though they sweep their hearths no less ('join in, una!') than maids were wont to do, yet who of late for cleanliness finds sixpence in her shoe?' the echoes flapped all along the flat meadow. 'of course i know it,' he said. 'and then there's the verse about the rings,' said dan. 'when i was little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.' "'witness those rings and roundelays", do you mean?' boomed puck, with a voice like a great church organ. 'of theirs which yet remain, were footed in queen mary's days on many a grassy plain, but since of late elizabeth, and, later, james came in, are never seen on any heath as when the time hath been. 'it's some time since i heard that sung, but there's no good beating about the bush: it's true. the people of the hills have all left. i saw them come into old england and i saw them go. giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits; heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes, and the rest--gone, all gone! i came into england with oak, ash and thorn, and when oak, ash and thorn are gone i shall go too.' dan looked round the meadow--at una's oak by the lower gate; at the line of ash trees that overhang otter pool where the millstream spills over when the mill does not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where three cows scratched their necks. 'it's all right,' he said; and added, 'i'm planting a lot of acorns this autumn too.' 'then aren't you most awfully old?' said una. 'not old--fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. let me see--my friends used to set my dish of cream for me o' nights when stonehenge was new. yes, before the flint men made the dewpond under chanctonbury ring.' una clasped her hands, cried 'oh!' and nodded her head. 'she's thought a plan,' dan explained. 'she always does like that when she thinks a plan.' 'i was thinking--suppose we saved some of our porridge and put it in the attic for you? they'd notice if we left it in the nursery.' 'schoolroom,' said dan quickly, and una flushed, because they had made a solemn treaty that summer not to call the schoolroom the nursery any more. 'bless your heart o' gold!' said puck. 'you'll make a fine considering wench some market-day. i really don't want you to put out a bowl for me; but if ever i need a bite, be sure i'll tell you.' he stretched himself at length on the dry grass, and the children stretched out beside him, their bare legs waving happily in the air. they felt they could not be afraid of him any more than of their particular friend old hobden the hedger. he did not bother them with grown-up questions, or laugh at the donkey's head, but lay and smiled to himself in the most sensible way. 'have you a knife on you?' he said at last. dan handed over his big one-bladed outdoor knife, and puck began to carve out a piece of turf from the centre of the ring. 'what's that for--magic?' said una, as he pressed up the square of chocolate loam that cut like so much cheese. 'one of my little magics,' he answered, and cut another. 'you see, i can't let you into the hills because the people of the hills have gone; but if you care to take seisin from me, i may be able to show you something out of the common here on human earth. you certainly deserve it.' 'what's taking seisin?' said dan, cautiously. 'it's an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. they used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren't lawfully seised of your land--it didn't really belong to you--till the other fellow had actually given you a piece of it--'like this.' he held out the turves. 'but it's our own meadow,' said dan, drawing back. 'are you going to magic it away?' puck laughed. 'i know it's your meadow, but there's a great deal more in it than you or your father ever guessed. try!' he turned his eyes on una. 'i'll do it,' she said. dan followed her example at once. 'now are you two lawfully seised and possessed of all old england,' began puck, in a sing-song voice. 'by right of oak, ash, and thorn are you free to come and go and look and know where i shall show or best you please. you shall see what you shall see and you shall hear what you shall hear, though it shall have happened three thousand year; and you shall know neither doubt nor fear. fast! hold fast all i give you.' the children shut their eyes, but nothing happened. 'well?' said una, disappointedly opening them. 'i thought there would be dragons.' "'though it shall have happened three thousand year,"' said puck, and counted on his fingers. 'no; i'm afraid there were no dragons three thousand years ago.' 'but there hasn't happened anything at all,' said dan. 'wait awhile,' said puck. 'you don't grow an oak in a year--and old england's older than twenty oaks. let's sit down again and think. i can do that for a century at a time.' 'ah, but you're a fairy,' said dan. 'have you ever heard me say that word yet?' said puck quickly. 'no. you talk about "the people of the hills", but you never say "fairies",' said una. 'i was wondering at that. don't you like it?' 'how would you like to be called "mortal" or "human being" all the time?' said puck; 'or "son of adam" or "daughter of eve"?' 'i shouldn't like it at all,' said dan. 'that's how the djinns and afrits talk in the arabian nights.' 'and that's how i feel about saying--that word that i don't say. besides, what you call them are made-up things the people of the hills have never heard of--little buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze petticoats, and shiny stars in their hair, and a wand like a schoolteacher's cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ones. i know 'em!' 'we don't mean that sort,'said dan. 'we hate 'em too.' 'exactly,' said puck. 'can you wonder that the people of the hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? butterfly wings, indeed! i've seen sir huon and a troop of his people setting off from tintagel castle for hy-brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the castle, and the horses of the hills wild with fright. out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. butterfly-wings! it was magic--magic as black as merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. and the horses of the hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! that was how it was in the old days!' 'splendid,' said dan, but una shuddered. 'i'm glad they're gone, then; but what made the people of the hills go away?' una asked. 'different things. i'll tell you one of them some day--the thing that made the biggest flit of any,' said puck. 'but they didn't all flit at once. they dropped off, one by one, through the centuries. most of them were foreigners who couldn't stand our climate. they flitted early.' 'how early?' said dan. 'a couple of thousand years or more. the fact is they began as gods. the phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the gauls, and the jutes, and the danes, and the frisians, and the angles brought more when they landed. they were always landing in those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they always brought their gods with them. england is a bad country for gods. now, i began as i mean to go on. a bowl of porridge, a dish of milk, and a little quiet fun with the country folk in the lanes was enough for me then, as it is now. i belong here, you see, and i have been mixed up with people all my days. but most of the others insisted on being gods, and having temples, and altars, and priests, and sacrifices of their own.' 'people burned in wicker baskets?' said dan. 'like miss blake tells us about?' 'all sorts of sacrifices,' said puck. 'if it wasn't men, it was horses, or cattle, or pigs, or metheglin--that's a sticky, sweet sort of beer. i never liked it. they were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the old things. but what was the result? men don't like being sacrificed at the best of times; they don't even like sacrificing their farm-horses. after a while, men simply left the old things alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the old things had to scuttle out and pick up a living as they could. some of them took to hanging about trees, and hiding in graves and groaning o' nights. if they groaned loud enough and long enough they might frighten a poor countryman into sacrificing a hen, or leaving a pound of butter for them. i remember one goddess called belisama. she became a common wet water-spirit somewhere in lancashire. and there were hundreds of other friends of mine. first they were gods. then they were people of the hills, and then they flitted to other places because they couldn't get on with the english for one reason or another. there was only one old thing, i remember, who honestly worked for his living after he came down in the world. he was called weland, and he was a smith to some gods. i've forgotten their names, but he used to make them swords and spears. i think he claimed kin with thor of the scandinavians.' 'heroes of asgard thor?' said una. she had been reading the book. 'perhaps,' answered puck. 'none the less, when bad times came, he didn't beg or steal. he worked; and i was lucky enough to be able to do him a good turn.' 'tell us about it,' said dan. 'i think i like hearing of old things.' they rearranged themselves comfortably, each chewing a grass stem. puck propped himself on one strong arm and went on: 'let's think! i met weland first on a november afternoon in a sleet storm, on pevensey level.' 'pevensey? over the hill, you mean?' dan pointed south. 'yes; but it was all marsh in those days, right up to horsebridge and hydeneye. i was on beacon hill--they called it brunanburgh then--when i saw the pale flame that burning thatch makes, and i went down to look. some pirates--i think they must have been peor's men--were burning a village on the levels, and weland's image--a big, black wooden thing with amber beads round his neck--lay in the bows of a black thirty-two-oar galley that they had just beached. bitter cold it was! there were icicles hanging from her deck and the oars were glazed over with ice, and there was ice on weland's lips. when he saw me he began a long chant in his own tongue, telling me how he was going to rule england, and how i should smell the smoke of his altars from lincolnshire to the isle of wight. i didn't care! i'd seen too many gods charging into old england to be upset about it. i let him sing himself out while his men were burning the village, and then i said (i don't know what put it into my head), "smith of the gods," i said, "the time comes when i shall meet you plying your trade for hire by the wayside."' 'what did weland say?' said una. 'was he angry?' 'he called me names and rolled his eyes, and i went away to wake up the people inland. but the pirates conquered the country, and for centuries weland was a most important god. he had temples everywhere--from lincolnshire to the isle of wight, as he said--and his sacrifices were simply scandalous. to do him justice, he preferred horses to men; but men or horses, i knew that presently he'd have to come down in the world--like the other old things. i gave him lots of time--i gave him about a thousand years--and at the end of 'em i went into one of his temples near andover to see how he prospered. there was his altar, and there was his image, and there were his priests, and there were the congregation, and everybody seemed quite happy, except weland and the priests. in the old days the congregation were unhappy until the priests had chosen their sacrifices; and so would you have been. when the service began a priest rushed out, dragged a man up to the altar, pretended to hit him on the head with a little gilt axe, and the man fell down and pretended to die. then everybody shouted: "a sacrifice to weland! a sacrifice to weland!"' 'and the man wasn't really dead?' said una. 'not a bit. all as much pretence as a dolls' tea-party. then they brought out a splendid white horse, and the priest cut some hair from its mane and tail and burned it on the altar, shouting, "a sacrifice!" that counted the same as if a man and a horse had been killed. i saw poor weland's face through the smoke, and i couldn't help laughing. he looked so disgusted and so hungry, and all he had to satisfy himself was a horrid smell of burning hair. just a dolls' tea-party! 'i judged it better not to say anything then ('twouldn't have been fair), and the next time i came to andover, a few hundred years later, weland and his temple were gone, and there was a christian bishop in a church there. none of the people of the hills could tell me anything about him, and i supposed that he had left england.' puck turned, lay on his other elbow, and thought for a long time. 'let's see,' he said at last. 'it must have been some few years later--a year or two before the conquest, i think--that i came back to pook's hill here, and one evening i heard old hobden talking about weland's ford.' 'if you mean old hobden the hedger, he's only seventy-two. he told me so himself,' said dan. 'he's a intimate friend of ours.' 'you're quite right,' puck replied. 'i meant old hobden's ninth great-grandfather. he was a free man and burned charcoal hereabouts. i've known the family, father and son, so long that i get confused sometimes. hob of the dene was my hobden's name, and he lived at the forge cottage. of course, i pricked up my ears when i heard weland mentioned, and i scuttled through the woods to the ford just beyond bog wood yonder.' he jerked his head westward, where the valley narrows between wooded hills and steep hop-fields. 'why, that's willingford bridge,' said una. 'we go there for walks often. there's a kingfisher there.' 'it was weland's ford then, dearie. a road led down to it from the beacon on the top of the hill--a shocking bad road it was--and all the hillside was thick, thick oak-forest, with deer in it. there was no trace of weland, but presently i saw a fat old farmer riding down from the beacon under the greenwood tree. his horse had cast a shoe in the clay, and when he came to the ford he dismounted, took a penny out of his purse, laid it on a stone, tied the old horse to an oak, and called out: "smith, smith, here is work for you!" then he sat down and went to sleep. you can imagine how i felt when i saw a white-bearded, bent old blacksmith in a leather apron creep out from behind the oak and begin to shoe the horse. it was weland himself. i was so astonished that i jumped out and said: "what on human earth are you doing here, weland?"' 'poor weland!' sighed una. 'he pushed the long hair back from his forehead (he didn't recognize me at first). then he said: "you ought to know. you foretold it, old thing. i'm shoeing horses for hire. i'm not even weland now," he said. "they call me wayland-smith."' 'poor chap!' said dan. 'what did you say?' 'what could i say? he looked up, with the horse's foot on his lap, and he said, smiling, "i remember the time when i wouldn't have accepted this old bag of bones as a sacrifice, and now i'm glad enough to shoe him for a penny." "'isn't there any way for you to get back to valhalla, or wherever you come from?" i said. "'i'm afraid not," he said, rasping away at the hoof. he had a wonderful touch with horses. the old beast was whinnying on his shoulder. "you may remember that i was not a gentle god in my day and my time and my power. i shall never be released till some human being truly wishes me well." "'surely," said i, "the farmer can't do less than that. you're shoeing the horse all round for him." "'yes," said he, "and my nails will hold a shoe from one full moon to the next. but farmers and weald clay," said he, "are both uncommon cold and sour." 'would you believe it, that when that farmer woke and found his horse shod he rode away without one word of thanks? i was so angry that i wheeled his horse right round and walked him back three miles to the beacon, just to teach the old sinner politeness.' 'were you invisible?' said una. puck nodded, gravely. 'the beacon was always laid in those days ready to light, in case the french landed at pevensey; and i walked the horse about and about it that lee-long summer night. the farmer thought he was bewitched--well, he was, of course--and began to pray and shout. i didn't care! i was as good a christian as he any fair-day in the county, and about four o'clock in the morning a young novice came along from the monastery that used to stand on the top of beacon hill.' 'what's a novice?' said dan. 'it really means a man who is beginning to be a monk, but in those days people sent their sons to a monastery just the same as a school. this young fellow had been to a monastery in france for a few months every year, and he was finishing his studies in the monastery close to his home here. hugh was his name, and he had got up to go fishing hereabouts. his people owned all this valley. hugh heard the farmer shouting, and asked him what in the world he meant. the old man spun him a wonderful tale about fairies and goblins and witches; and i know he hadn't seen a thing except rabbits and red deer all that night. (the people of the hills are like otters--they don't show except when they choose.) but the novice wasn't a fool. he looked down at the horse's feet, and saw the new shoes fastened as only weland knew how to fasten 'em. (weland had a way of turning down the nails that folks called the smith's clinch.) "'h'm!" said the novice. "where did you get your horse shod?" 'the farmer wouldn't tell him at first, because the priests never liked their people to have any dealings with the old things. at last he confessed that the smith had done it. "what did you pay him?" said the novice. "penny," said the farmer, very sulkily. "that's less than a christian would have charged," said the novice. "i hope you threw a 'thank you' into the bargain." "no," said the farmer; "wayland-smith's a heathen." "heathen or no heathen," said the novice, "you took his help, and where you get help there you must give thanks." "what?" said the farmer--he was in a furious temper because i was walking the old horse in circles all this time--"what, you young jackanapes?" said he. "then by your reasoning i ought to say 'thank you' to satan if he helped me?" "don't roll about up there splitting reasons with me," said the novice. "come back to the ford and thank the smith, or you'll be sorry." 'back the farmer had to go. i led the horse, though no one saw me, and the novice walked beside us, his gown swishing through the shiny dew and his fishing-rod across his shoulders, spear-wise. when we reached the ford again--it was five o'clock and misty still under the oaks--the farmer simply wouldn't say "thank you." he said he'd tell the abbot that the novice wanted him to worship heathen gods. then hugh the novice lost his temper. he just cried, "out!" put his arm under the farmer's fat leg, and heaved him from his saddle on to the turf, and before he could rise he caught him by the back of the neck and shook him like a rat till the farmer growled, "thank you, wayland-smith."' 'did weland see all this?' said dan. 'oh yes, and he shouted his old war-cry when the farmer thudded on to the ground. he was delighted. then the novice turned to the oak tree and said, "ho, smith of the gods! i am ashamed of this rude farmer; but for all you have done in kindness and charity to him and to others of our people, i thank you and wish you well." then he picked up his fishing-rod--it looked more like a tall spear than ever--and tramped off down your valley.' 'and what did poor weland do?' said una. 'he laughed and he cried with joy, because he had been released at last, and could go away. but he was an honest old thing. he had worked for his living and he paid his debts before he left. "i shall give that novice a gift," said weland. "a gift that shall do him good the wide world over and old england after him. blow up my fire, old thing, while i get the iron for my last task." then he made a sword--a dark-grey, wavy-lined sword--and i blew the fire while he hammered. by oak, ash and thorn, i tell you, weland was a smith of the gods! he cooled that sword in running water twice, and the third time he cooled it in the evening dew, and he laid it out in the moonlight and said runes (that's charms) over it, and he carved runes of prophecy on the blade. "old thing," he said to me, wiping his forehead, "this is the best blade that weland ever made. even the user will never know how good it is. come to the monastery." 'we went to the dormitory where the monks slept, we saw the novice fast asleep in his cot, and weland put the sword into his hand, and i remember the young fellow gripped it in his sleep. then weland strode as far as he dared into the chapel and threw down all his shoeing-tools--his hammers and pincers and rasps--to show that he had done with them for ever. it sounded like suits of armour falling, and the sleepy monks ran in, for they thought the monastery had been attacked by the french. the novice came first of all, waving his new sword and shouting saxon battle-cries. when they saw the shoeing-tools they were very bewildered, till the novice asked leave to speak, and told what he had done to the farmer, and what he had said to wayland-smith, and how, though the dormitory light was burning, he had found the wonderful rune-carved sword in his cot. 'the abbot shook his head at first, and then he laughed and said to the novice: "son hugh, it needed no sign from a heathen god to show me that you will never be a monk. take your sword, and keep your sword, and go with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and courteous. we will hang up the smith's tools before the altar," he said, "because, whatever the smith of the gods may have been, in the old days, we know that he worked honestly for his living and made gifts to mother church." then they went to bed again, all except the novice, and he sat up in the garth playing with his sword. then weland said to me by the stables: "farewell, old thing; you had the right of it. you saw me come to england, and you see me go. farewell!" 'with that he strode down the hill to the corner of the great woods--woods corner, you call it now--to the very place where he had first landed--and i heard him moving through the thickets towards horsebridge for a little, and then he was gone. that was how it happened. i saw it.' both children drew a long breath. 'but what happened to hugh the novice?' said una. 'and the sword?' said dan. puck looked down the meadow that lay all quiet and cool in the shadow of pook's hill. a corncrake jarred in a hay-field near by, and the small trouts of the brook began to jump. a big white moth flew unsteadily from the alders and flapped round the children's heads, and the least little haze of water-mist rose from the brook. 'do you really want to know?' puck said. 'we do,' cried the children. 'awfully!' 'very good. i promised you that you shall see what you shall see, and you shall hear what you shall hear, though it shall have happened three thousand year; but just now it seems to me that, unless you go back to the house, people will be looking for you. i'll walk with you as far as the gate.' 'will you be here when we come again?' they asked. 'surely, sure-ly,' said puck. 'i've been here some time already. one minute first, please.' he gave them each three leaves--one of oak, one of ash and one of thorn. 'bite these,' said he. 'otherwise you might be talking at home of what you've seen and heard, and--if i know human beings--they'd send for the doctor. bite!' they bit hard, and found themselves walking side by side to the lower gate. their father was leaning over it. 'and how did your play go?' he asked. 'oh, splendidly,' said dan. 'only afterwards, i think, we went to sleep. it was very hot and quiet. don't you remember, una?' una shook her head and said nothing. 'i see,' said her father. 'late--late in the evening kilmeny came home, for kilmeny had been she could not tell where, and kilmeny had seen what she could not declare. but why are you chewing leaves at your time of life, daughter? for fun?' 'no. it was for something, but i can't exactly remember,' said una. and neither of them could till-- a tree song of all the trees that grow so fair, old england to adorn, greater are none beneath the sun, than oak and ash and thorn. sing oak and ash and thorn, good sirs (all of a midsummer morn)! surely we sing no little thing, in oak and ash and thorn! oak of the clay lived many a day, or ever aeneas began; ash of the loam was a lady at home, when brut was an outlaw man; thorn of the down saw new troy town (from which was london born); witness hereby the ancientry of oak and ash and thorn! yew that is old in churchyard mould, he breedeth a mighty bow; alder for shoes do wise men choose, and beech for cups also. but when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled, and your shoes are clean outworn, back ye must speed for all that ye need, to oak and ash and thorn! ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth till every gust be laid, to drop a limb on the head of him that anyway trusts her shade: but whether a lad be sober or sad, or mellow with ale from the horn, he will take no wrong when he lieth along 'neath oak and ash and thorn! oh, do not tell the priest our plight, or he would call it a sin; but--we have been out in the woods all night, a-conjuring summer in! and we bring you news by word of mouth-- good news for cattle and corn-- now is the sun come up from the south, with oak and ash and thorn! sing oak and ash and thorn, good sirs (all of a midsummer morn)! england shall bide till judgement tide, by oak and ash and thorn! young men at the manor they were fishing, a few days later, in the bed of the brook that for centuries had cut deep into the soft valley soil. the trees closing overhead made long tunnels through which the sunshine worked in blobs and patches. down in the tunnels were bars of sand and gravel, old roots and trunks covered with moss or painted red by the irony water; foxgloves growing lean and pale towards the light; clumps of fern and thirsty shy flowers who could not live away from moisture and shade. in the pools you could see the wave thrown up by the trouts as they charged hither and yon, and the pools were joined to each other--except in flood-time, when all was one brown rush--by sheets of thin broken water that poured themselves chuckling round the darkness of the next bend. this was one of the children's most secret hunting-grounds, and their particular friend, old hobden the hedger, had shown them how to use it. except for the click of a rod hitting a low willow, or a switch and tussle among the young ash leaves as a line hung up for the minute, nobody in the hot pasture could have guessed what game was going on among the trouts below the banks. 'we've got half a dozen,' said dan, after a warm, wet hour. 'i vote we go up to stone bay and try long pool.' una nodded--most of her talk was by nods--and they crept from the gloom of the tunnels towards the tiny weir that turns the brook into the mill-stream. here the banks are low and bare, and the glare of the afternoon sun on the long pool below the weir makes your eyes ache. when they were in the open they nearly fell down with astonishment. a huge grey horse, whose tail-hairs crinkled the glassy water, was drinking in the pool, and the ripples about his muzzle flashed like melted gold. on his back sat an old, white-haired man dressed in a loose glimmery gown of chain-mail. he was bare-headed, and a nut-shaped iron helmet hung at his saddle-bow. his reins were of red leather five or six inches deep, scalloped at the edges, and his high padded saddle with its red girths was held fore and aft by a red leather breastband and crupper. 'look!' said una, as though dan were not staring his very eyes out. 'it's like the picture in your room--"sir isumbras at the ford".' the rider turned towards them, and his thin, long face was just as sweet and gentle as that of the knight who carries the children in that picture. 'they should be here now, sir richard,' said puck's deep voice among the willow-herb. 'they are here,' the knight said, and he smiled at dan with the string of trouts in his hand. 'there seems no great change in boys since mine fished this water.' 'if your horse has drunk, we shall be more at ease in the ring,' said puck; and he nodded to the children as though he had never magicked away their memories a week before. the great horse turned and hoisted himself into the pasture with a kick and a scramble that tore the clods down rattling. 'your pardon!' said sir richard to dan. 'when these lands were mine, i never loved that mounted men should cross the brook except by the paved ford. but my swallow here was thirsty, and i wished to meet you.' 'we're very glad you've come, sir,'said dan.'it doesn't matter in the least about the banks.' he trotted across the pasture on the sword side of the mighty horse, and it was a mighty iron-handled sword that swung from sir richard's belt. una walked behind with puck. she remembered everything now. 'i'm sorry about the leaves,' he said, 'but it would never have done if you had gone home and told, would it?' 'i s'pose not,' una answered. 'but you said that all the fair--people of the hills had left england.' 'so they have; but i told you that you should come and go and look and know, didn't i? the knight isn't a fairy. he's sir richard dalyngridge, a very old friend of mine. he came over with william the conqueror, and he wants to see you particularly.' 'what for?' said una. 'on account of your great wisdom and learning,' puck replied, without a twinkle. 'us?' said una. 'why, i don't know my nine times--not to say it dodging, and dan makes the most awful mess of fractions. he can't mean us!' 'una!' dan called back. 'sir richard says he is going to tell what happened to weland's sword. he's got it. isn't it splendid?' 'nay--nay,' said sir richard, dismounting as they reached the ring, in the bend of the mill-stream bank. 'it is you that must tell me, for i hear the youngest child in our england today is as wise as our wisest clerk.' he slipped the bit out of swallow's mouth, dropped the ruby-red reins over his head, and the wise horse moved off to graze. sir richard (they noticed he limped a little) unslung his great sword. 'that's it,' dan whispered to una. 'this is the sword that brother hugh had from wayland-smith,' sir richard said. 'once he gave it me, but i would not take it; but at the last it became mine after such a fight as never christened man fought. see!' he half drew it from its sheath and turned it before them. on either side just below the handle, where the runic letters shivered as though they were alive, were two deep gouges in the dull, deadly steel. 'now, what thing made those?' said he. 'i know not, but you, perhaps, can say.' 'tell them all the tale, sir richard,' said puck. 'it concerns their land somewhat.' 'yes, from the very beginning,' una pleaded, for the knight's good face and the smile on it more than ever reminded her of 'sir isumbras at the ford'. they settled down to listen, sir richard bare-headed to the sunshine, dandling the sword in both hands, while the grey horse cropped outside the ring, and the helmet on the saddle-bow clinged softly each time he jerked his head. 'from the beginning, then,' sir richard said, 'since it concerns your land, i will tell the tale. when our duke came out of normandy to take his england, great knights (have ye heard?) came and strove hard to serve the duke, because he promised them lands here, and small knights followed the great ones. my folk in normandy were poor; but a great knight, engerrard of the eagle--engenulf de aquila--who was kin to my father, followed the earl of mortain, who followed william the duke, and i followed de aquila. yes, with thirty men-at-arms out of my father's house and a new sword, i set out to conquer england three days after i was made knight. i did not then know that england would conquer me. we went up to santlache with the rest--a very great host of us.' 'does that mean the battle of hastings--ten sixty-six?' una whispered, and puck nodded, so as not to interrupt. 'at santlache, over the hill yonder'--he pointed south-eastward towards fairlight--'we found harold's men. we fought. at the day's end they ran. my men went with de aquila's to chase and plunder, and in that chase engerrard of the eagle was slain, and his son gilbert took his banner and his men forward. this i did not know till after, for swallow here was cut in the flank, so i stayed to wash the wound at a brook by a thorn. there a single saxon cried out to me in french, and we fought together. i should have known his voice, but we fought together. for a long time neither had any advantage, till by pure ill-fortune his foot slipped and his sword flew from his hand. now i had but newly been made knight, and wished, above all, to be courteous and fameworthy, so i forbore to strike and bade him get his sword again. "a plague on my sword," said he. "it has lost me my first fight. you have spared my life. take my sword." he held it out to me, but as i stretched my hand the sword groaned like a stricken man, and i leaped back crying, "sorcery!"' (the children looked at the sword as though it might speak again.) 'suddenly a clump of saxons ran out upon me and, seeing a norman alone, would have killed me, but my saxon cried out that i was his prisoner, and beat them off. thus, see you, he saved my life. he put me on my horse and led me through the woods ten long miles to this valley.' 'to here, d'you mean?' said una. 'to this very valley. we came in by the lower ford under the king's hill yonder'--he pointed eastward where the valley widens. 'and was that saxon hugh the novice?' dan asked. 'yes, and more than that. he had been for three years at the monastery at bec by rouen, where'--sir richard chuckled--'the abbot herluin would not suffer me to remain.' 'why wouldn't he?' said dan. 'because i rode my horse into the refectory, when the scholars were at meat, to show the saxon boys we normans were not afraid of an abbot. it was that very saxon hugh tempted me to do it, and we had not met since that day. i thought i knew his voice even inside my helmet, and, for all that our lords fought, we each rejoiced we had not slain the other. he walked by my side, and he told me how a heathen god, as he believed, had given him his sword, but he said he had never heard it sing before. i remember i warned him to beware of sorcery and quick enchantments.' sir richard smiled to himself. 'i was very young--very young! 'when we came to his house here we had almost forgotten that we had been at blows. it was near midnight, and the great hall was full of men and women waiting news. there i first saw his sister, the lady aelueva, of whom he had spoken to us in france. she cried out fiercely at me, and would have had me hanged in that hour, but her brother said that i had spared his life--he said not how he saved mine from the saxons--and that our duke had won the day; and even while they wrangled over my poor body, of a sudden he fell down in a swoon from his wounds. "'this is thy fault," said the lady aelueva to me, and she kneeled above him and called for wine and cloths. "'if i had known," i answered, "he should have ridden and i walked. but he set me on my horse; he made no complaint; he walked beside me and spoke merrily throughout. i pray i have done him no harm." "'thou hast need to pray," she said, catching up her underlip. "if he dies, thou shalt hang." 'they bore off hugh to his chamber; but three tall men of the house bound me and set me under the beam of the great hall with a rope round my neck. the end of the rope they flung over the beam, and they sat them down by the fire to wait word whether hugh lived or died. they cracked nuts with their knife-hilts the while.' 'and how did you feel?' said dan. 'very weary; but i did heartily pray for my schoolmate hugh his health. about noon i heard horses in the valley, and the three men loosed my ropes and fled out, and de aquila's men rode up. gilbert de aquila came with them, for it was his boast that, like his father, he forgot no man that served him. he was little, like his father, but terrible, with a nose like an eagle's nose and yellow eyes like an eagle. he rode tall warhorses--roans, which he bred himself--and he could never abide to be helped into the saddle. he saw the rope hanging from the beam and laughed, and his men laughed, for i was too stiff to rise. "'this is poor entertainment for a norman knight," he said, "but, such as it is, let us be grateful. show me, boy, to whom thou owest most, and we will pay them out of hand."' 'what did he mean? to kill 'em?' said dan. 'assuredly. but i looked at the lady aelueva where she stood among her maids, and her brother beside her. de aquila's men had driven them all into the great hall.' 'was she pretty?' said una. 'in all my long life i have never seen woman fit to strew rushes before my lady aelueva,' the knight replied, quite simply and quietly. 'as i looked at her i thought i might save her and her house by a jest. "'seeing that i came somewhat hastily and without warning," said i to de aquila, "i have no fault to find with the courtesy that these saxons have shown me." but my voice shook. it is--it was not good to jest with that little man. 'all were silent awhile, till de aquila laughed. "look, men--a miracle," said he. "the fight is scarce sped, my father is not yet buried, and here we find our youngest knight already set down in his manor, while his saxons--ye can see it in their fat faces--have paid him homage and service! by the saints," he said, rubbing his nose, "i never thought england would be so easy won! surely i can do no less than give the lad what he has taken. this manor shall be thine, boy," he said, "till i come again, or till thou art slain. now, mount, men, and ride. we follow our duke into kent to make him king of england." 'he drew me with him to the door while they brought his horse--a lean roan, taller than my swallow here, but not so well girthed. "'hark to me," he said, fretting with his great war-gloves. "i have given thee this manor, which is a saxon hornets' nest, and i think thou wilt be slain in a month--as my father was slain. yet if thou canst keep the roof on the hall, the thatch on the barn, and the plough in the furrow till i come back, thou shalt hold the manor from me; for the duke has promised our earl mortain all the lands by pevensey, and mortain will give me of them what he would have given my father. god knows if thou or i shall live till england is won; but remember, boy, that here and now fighting is foolishness and"--he reached for the reins--"craft and cunning is all." "'alas, i have no cunning," said i. "'not yet," said he, hopping abroad, foot in stirrup, and poking his horse in the belly with his toe. "not yet, but i think thou hast a good teacher. farewell! hold the manor and live. lose the manor and hang," he said, and spurred out, his shield-straps squeaking behind him. 'so, children, here was i, little more than a boy, and santlache fight not two days old, left alone with my thirty men-at-arms, in a land i knew not, among a people whose tongue i could not speak, to hold down the land which i had taken from them.' 'and that was here at home?' said una. 'yes, here. see! from the upper ford, weland's ford, to the lower ford, by the belle allee, west and east it ran half a league. from the beacon of brunanburgh behind us here, south and north it ran a full league--and all the woods were full of broken men from santlache, saxon thieves, norman plunderers, robbers, and deer-stealers. a hornets' nest indeed! 'when de aquila had gone, hugh would have thanked me for saving their lives; but the lady aelueva said that i had done it only for the sake of receiving the manor. "'how could i know that de aquila would give it me?" i said. "if i had told him i had spent my night in your halter he would have burned the place twice over by now." "'if any man had put my neck in a rope," she said, "i would have seen his house burned thrice over before i would have made terms." "'but it was a woman," i said; and i laughed, and she wept and said that i mocked her in her captivity. "'lady," said i, "there is no captive in this valley except one, and he is not a saxon." 'at this she cried that i was a norman thief, who came with false, sweet words, having intended from the first to turn her out in the fields to beg her bread. into the fields! she had never seen the face of war! 'i was angry, and answered, "this much at least i can disprove, for i swear"--and on my sword-hilt i swore it in that place--"i swear i will never set foot in the great hall till the lady aelueva herself shall summon me there." 'she went away, saying nothing, and i walked out, and hugh limped after me, whistling dolorously (that is a custom of the english), and we came upon the three saxons that had bound me. they were now bound by my men-at-arms, and behind them stood some fifty stark and sullen churls of the house and the manor, waiting to see what should fall. we heard de aquila's trumpets blow thin through the woods kentward. "'shall we hang these?" said my men. "'then my churls will fight," said hugh, beneath his breath; but i bade him ask the three what mercy they hoped for. "'none," said they all. "she bade us hang thee if our master died. and we would have hanged thee. there is no more to it." 'as i stood doubting, a woman ran down from the oak wood above the king's hill yonder, and cried out that some normans were driving off the swine there. "'norman or saxon," said i, "we must beat them back, or they will rob us every day. out at them with any arms ye have!" so i loosed those three carles and we ran together, my men-at-arms and the saxons with bills and axes which they had hidden in the thatch of their huts, and hugh led them. half-way up the king's hill we found a false fellow from picardy--a sutler that sold wine in the duke's camp--with a dead knight's shield on his arm, a stolen horse under him, and some ten or twelve wastrels at his tail, all cutting and slashing at the pigs. we beat them off, and saved our pork. one hundred and seventy pigs we saved in that great battle.' sir richard laughed. 'that, then, was our first work together, and i bade hugh tell his folk that so would i deal with any man, knight or churl, norman or saxon, who stole as much as one egg from our valley. said he to me, riding home: "thou hast gone far to conquer england this evening." i answered: "england must be thine and mine, then. help me, hugh, to deal aright with these people. make them to know that if they slay me de aquila will surely send to slay them, and he will put a worse man in my place." "that may well be true," said he, and gave me his hand. "better the devil we know than the devil we know not, till we can pack you normans home." and so, too, said his saxons; and they laughed as we drove the pigs downhill. but i think some of them, even then, began not to hate me.' 'i like brother hugh,' said una, softly. 'beyond question he was the most perfect, courteous, valiant, tender, and wise knight that ever drew breath,' said sir richard, caressing the sword. 'he hung up his sword--this sword--on the wall of the great hall, because he said it was fairly mine, and never he took it down till de aquila returned, as i shall presently show. for three months his men and mine guarded the valley, till all robbers and nightwalkers learned there was nothing to get from us save hard tack and a hanging. side by side we fought against all who came--thrice a week sometimes we fought--against thieves and landless knights looking for good manors. then we were in some peace, and i made shift by hugh's help to govern the valley--for all this valley of yours was my manor--as a knight should. i kept the roof on the hall and the thatch on the barn, but ... the english are a bold people. his saxons would laugh and jest with hugh, and hugh with them, and--this was marvellous to me--if even the meanest of them said that such and such a thing was the custom of the manor, then straightway would hugh and such old men of the manor as might be near forsake everything else to debate the matter--i have seen them stop the mill with the corn half ground--and if the custom or usage were proven to be as it was said, why, that was the end of it, even though it were flat against hugh, his wish and command. wonderful!' 'aye,' said puck, breaking in for the first time. 'the custom of old england was here before your norman knights came, and it outlasted them, though they fought against it cruel.' 'not i,' said sir richard. 'i let the saxons go their stubborn way, but when my own men-at-arms, normans not six months in england, stood up and told me what was the custom of the country, then i was angry. ah, good days! ah, wonderful people! and i loved them all.' the knight lifted his arms as though he would hug the whole dear valley, and swallow, hearing the chink of his chain-mail, looked up and whinnied softly. 'at last,' he went on, 'after a year of striving and contriving and some little driving, de aquila came to the valley, alone and without warning. i saw him first at the lower ford, with a swineherd's brat on his saddle-bow. "'there is no need for thee to give any account of thy stewardship," said he. "i have it all from the child here." and he told me how the young thing had stopped his tall horse at the ford, by waving of a branch, and crying that the way was barred. "and if one bold, bare babe be enough to guard the ford in these days, thou hast done well," said he, and puffed and wiped his head. 'he pinched the child's cheek, and looked at our cattle in the flat by the river. "'both fat," said he, rubbing his nose. "this is craft and cunning such as i love. what did i tell thee when i rode away, boy?" "'hold the manor or hang," said i. i had never forgotten it. "'true. and thou hast held." he clambered from his saddle and with his sword's point cut out a turf from the bank and gave it me where i kneeled.' dan looked at una, and una looked at dan. 'that's seisin,' said puck, in a whisper. "'now thou art lawfully seised of the manor, sir richard," said he--'twas the first time he ever called me that--"thou and thy heirs for ever. this must serve till the king's clerks write out thy title on a parchment. england is all ours--if we can hold it." "'what service shall i pay?" i asked, and i remember i was proud beyond words. "'knight's fee, boy, knight's fee!" said he, hopping round his horse on one foot. (have i said he was little, and could not endure to be helped to his saddle?) "six mounted men or twelve archers thou shalt send me whenever i call for them, and--where got you that corn?" said he, for it was near harvest, and our corn stood well. "i have never seen such bright straw. send me three bags of the same seed yearly, and furthermore, in memory of our last meeting--with the rope round thy neck--entertain me and my men for two days of each year in the great hall of thy manor." "'alas!" said i, "then my manor is already forfeit. i am under vow not to enter the great hall." and i told him what i had sworn to the lady aelueva.' 'and hadn't you ever been into the house since?' said una. 'never,' sir richard answered, smiling. 'i had made me a little hut of wood up the hill, and there i did justice and slept ... de aquila wheeled aside, and his shield shook on his back. "no matter, boy," said he. "i will remit the homage for a year."' 'he meant sir richard needn't give him dinner there the first year,' puck explained. 'de aquila stayed with me in the hut, and hugh, who could read and write and cast accounts, showed him the roll of the manor, in which were written all the names of our fields and men, and he asked a thousand questions touching the land, the timber, the grazing, the mill, and the fish-ponds, and the worth of every man in the valley. but never he named the lady aelueva's name, nor went he near the great hall. by night he drank with us in the hut. yes, he sat on the straw like an eagle ruffled in her feathers, his yellow eyes rolling above the cup, and he pounced in his talk like an eagle, swooping from one thing to another, but always binding fast. yes; he would lie still awhile, and then rustle in the straw, and speak sometimes as though he were king william himself, and anon he would speak in parables and tales, and if at once we saw not his meaning he would yerk us in the ribs with his scabbarded sword. "'look you, boys," said he, "i am born out of my due time. five hundred years ago i would have made all england such an england as neither dane, saxon, nor norman should have conquered. five hundred years hence i should have been such a counsellor to kings as the world hath never dreamed of. 'tis all here," said he, tapping his big head, "but it hath no play in this black age. now hugh here is a better man than thou art, richard." he had made his voice harsh and croaking, like a raven's. "'truth," said i. "but for hugh, his help and patience and long-suffering, i could never have kept the manor." "'nor thy life either," said de aquila. "hugh has saved thee not once, but a hundred times. be still, hugh!" he said. "dost thou know, richard, why hugh slept, and why he still sleeps, among thy norman men-at-arms?" "'to be near me," said i, for i thought this was truth. "'fool!" said de aquila. "it is because his saxons have begged him to rise against thee, and to sweep every norman out of the valley. no matter how i know. it is truth. therefore hugh hath made himself an hostage for thy life, well knowing that if any harm befell thee from his saxons thy normans would slay him without remedy. and this his saxons know. is it true, hugh?" "'in some sort," said hugh shamefacedly; "at least, it was true half a year ago. my saxons would not harm richard now. i think they know him--but i judged it best to make sure." 'look, children, what that man had done--and i had never guessed it! night after night had he lain down among my men-at-arms, knowing that if one saxon had lifted knife against me, his life would have answered for mine. "'yes," said de aquila. "and he is a swordless man." he pointed to hugh's belt, for hugh had put away his sword--did i tell you?---the day after it flew from his hand at santlache. he carried only the short knife and the long-bow. "swordless and landless art thou, hugh; and they call thee kin to earl godwin." (hugh was indeed of godwin's blood.) "the manor that was thine is given to this boy and to his children for ever. sit up and beg, for he can turn thee out like a dog, hugh." 'hugh said nothing, but i heard his teeth grind, and i bade de aquila, my own overlord, hold his peace, or i would stuff his words down his throat. then de aquila laughed till the tears ran down his face. "'i warned the king," said he, "what would come of giving england to us norman thieves. here art thou, richard, less than two days confirmed in thy manor, and already thou hast risen against thy overlord. what shall we do to him, sir hugh?" "'i am a swordless man," said hugh. "do not jest with me," and he laid his head on his knees and groaned. "'the greater fool thou," said de aquila, and all his voice changed; "for i have given thee the manor of dallington up the hill this half-hour since," and he yerked at hugh with his scabbard across the straw. "'to me?" said hugh. "i am a saxon, and, except that i love richard here, i have not sworn fealty to any norman." "'in god's good time, which because of my sins i shall not live to see, there will be neither saxon nor norman in england," said de aquila. "if i know men, thou art more faithful unsworn than a score of normans i could name. take dallington, and join sir richard to fight me tomorrow, if it please thee!" "'nay," said hugh. "i am no child. where i take a gift, there i render service"; and he put his hands between de aquila's, and swore to be faithful, and, as i remember, i kissed him, and de aquila kissed us both. 'we sat afterwards outside the hut while the sun rose, and de aquila marked our churls going to their work in the fields, and talked of holy things, and how we should govern our manors in time to come, and of hunting and of horse-breeding, and of the king's wisdom and unwisdom; for he spoke to us as though we were in all sorts now his brothers. anon a churl stole up to me--he was one of the three i had not hanged a year ago--and he bellowed--which is the saxon for whispering--that the lady aelueva would speak to me at the great house. she walked abroad daily in the manor, and it was her custom to send me word whither she went, that i might set an archer or two behind and in front to guard her. very often i myself lay up in the woods and watched on her also. 'i went swiftly, and as i passed the great door it opened from within, and there stood my lady aelueva, and she said to me: "sir richard, will it please you enter your great hall?" then she wept, but we were alone.' the knight was silent for a long time, his face turned across the valley, smiling. 'oh, well done!' said una, and clapped her hands very softly. 'she was sorry, and she said so.' 'aye, she was sorry, and she said so,' said sir richard, coming back with a little start. 'very soon--but he said it was two full hours later--de aquila rode to the door, with his shield new scoured (hugh had cleansed it), and demanded entertainment, and called me a false knight, that would starve his overlord to death. then hugh cried out that no man should work in the valley that day, and our saxons blew horns, and set about feasting and drinking, and running of races, and dancing and singing; and de aquila climbed upon a horse-block and spoke to them in what he swore was good saxon, but no man understood it. at night we feasted in the great hall, and when the harpers and the singers were gone we four sat late at the high table. as i remember, it was a warm night with a full moon, and de aquila bade hugh take down his sword from the wall again, for the honour of the manor of dallington, and hugh took it gladly enough. dust lay on the hilt, for i saw him blow it off. 'she and i sat talking a little apart, and at first we thought the harpers had come back, for the great hall was filled with a rushing noise of music. de aquila leaped up; but there was only the moonlight fretty on the floor. "'hearken!" said hugh. "it is my sword," and as he belted it on the music ceased. "'over gods, forbid that i should ever belt blade like that," said de aquila. "what does it foretell?" "'the gods that made it may know. last time it spoke was at hastings, when i lost all my lands. belike it sings now that i have new lands and am a man again," said hugh. 'he loosed the blade a little and drove it back happily into the sheath, and the sword answered him low and crooningly, as--as a woman would speak to a man, her head on his shoulder. 'now that was the second time in all my life i heard this sword sing.' ... 'look!' said una. 'there's mother coming down the long slip. what will she say to sir richard? she can't help seeing him.' 'and puck can't magic us this time,' said dan. 'are you sure?' said puck; and he leaned forward and whispered to sir richard, who, smiling, bowed his head. 'but what befell the sword and my brother hugh i will tell on another time,' said he, rising. 'ohe, swallow!' the great horse cantered up from the far end of the meadow, close to mother. they heard mother say: 'children, gleason's old horse has broken into the meadow again. where did he get through?' 'just below stone bay,' said dan. 'he tore down simple flobs of the bank! we noticed it just now. and we've caught no end of fish. we've been at it all the afternoon.' and they honestly believed that they had. they never noticed the oak, ash and thorn leaves that puck had slyly thrown into their laps. sir richard's song i followed my duke ere i was a lover, to take from england fief and fee; but now this game is the other way over-- but now england hath taken me! i had my horse, my shield and banner, and a boy's heart, so whole and free; but now i sing in another manner-- but now england hath taken me! as for my father in his tower, asking news of my ship at sea; he will remember his own hour-- tell him england hath taken me! as for my mother in her bower, that rules my father so cunningly; she will remember a maiden's power-- tell her england hath taken me! as for my brother in rouen city, a nimble and naughty page is he; but he will come to suffer and pity-- tell him england hath taken me! as for my little sister waiting in the pleasant orchards of normandie; tell her youth is the time of mating-- tell her england hath taken me! as for my comrades in camp and highway, that lift their eyebrows scornfully; tell them their way is not my way-- tell them england hath taken me! kings and princes and barons famed, knights and captains in your degree; hear me a little before i am blamed-- seeing england hath taken me! howso great man's strength be reckoned, there are two things he cannot flee; love is the first, and death is the second-- and love, in england, hath taken me! the knights of the joyous venture harp song of the dane women what is a woman that you forsake her, and the hearth-fire and the home-acre, to go with the old grey widow-maker? she has no house to lay a guest in-- but one chill bed for all to rest in, that the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in. she has no strong white arms to fold you, but the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you bound on the rocks where the tide has rolled you. yet, when the signs of summer thicken, and the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken, yearly you turn from our side, and sicken-- sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters,-- and steal away to the lapping waters, and look at your ship in her winter quarters. you forget our mirth, and talk at the tables, the kine in the shed and the horse in the stables-- to pitch her sides and go over her cables! then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow: and the sound of your oar-blades falling hollow is all we have left through the months to follow. ah, what is a woman that you forsake her, and the hearth-fire and the home-acre, to go with the old grey widow-maker? it was too hot to run about in the open, so dan asked their friend, old hobden, to take their own dinghy from the pond and put her on the brook at the bottom of the garden. her painted name was the daisy, but for exploring expeditions she was the golden hind or the long serpent, or some such suitable name. dan hiked and howked with a boat-hook (the brook was too narrow for sculls), and una punted with a piece of hop-pole. when they came to a very shallow place (the golden hind drew quite three inches of water) they disembarked and scuffled her over the gravel by her tow-rope, and when they reached the overgrown banks beyond the garden they pulled themselves upstream by the low branches. that day they intended to discover the north cape like 'othere, the old sea-captain', in the book of verses which una had brought with her; but on account of the heat they changed it to a voyage up the amazon and the sources of the nile. even on the shaded water the air was hot and heavy with drowsy scents, while outside, through breaks in the trees, the sunshine burned the pasture like fire. the kingfisher was asleep on his watching-branch, and the blackbirds scarcely took the trouble to dive into the next bush. dragonflies wheeling and clashing were the only things at work, except the moorhens and a big red admiral, who flapped down out of the sunshine for a drink. when they reached otter pool the golden hind grounded comfortably on a shallow, and they lay beneath a roof of close green, watching the water trickle over the flood-gates down the mossy brick chute from the mill-stream to the brook. a big trout--the children knew him well--rolled head and shoulders at some fly that sailed round the bend, while, once in just so often, the brook rose a fraction of an inch against all the wet pebbles, and they watched the slow draw and shiver of a breath of air through the tree-tops. then the little voices of the slipping water began again. 'it's like the shadows talking, isn't it?' said una. she had given up trying to read. dan lay over the bows, trailing his hands in the current. they heard feet on the gravel-bar that runs half across the pool and saw sir richard dalyngridge standing over them. 'was yours a dangerous voyage?' he asked, smiling. 'she bumped a lot, sir,' said dan. 'there's hardly any water this summer.' 'ah, the brook was deeper and wider when my children played at danish pirates. are you pirate-folk?' 'oh no. we gave up being pirates years ago,'explained una. 'we're nearly always explorers now. sailing round the world, you know.' 'round?' said sir richard. he sat him in the comfortable crotch of an old ash-root on the bank. 'how can it be round?' 'wasn't it in your books?' dan suggested. he had been doing geography at his last lesson. 'i can neither write nor read,' he replied. 'canst thou read, child?' 'yes,' said dan, 'barring the very long words.' 'wonderful! read to me, that i may hear for myself.' dan flushed, but opened the book and began--gabbling a little--at 'the discoverer of the north cape.' 'othere, the old sea-captain, who dwelt in helgoland, to king alfred, the lover of truth, brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, which he held in his brown right hand.' 'but--but--this i know! this is an old song! this i have heard sung! this is a miracle,' sir richard interrupted. 'nay, do not stop!' he leaned forward, and the shadows of the leaves slipped and slid upon his chain-mail. "'i ploughed the land with horses, but my heart was ill at ease, for the old seafaring men came to me now and then with their sagas of the seas."' his hand fell on the hilt of the great sword. 'this is truth,' he cried, 'for so did it happen to me,' and he beat time delightedly to the tramp of verse after verse. "'and now the land," said othere, "bent southward suddenly, and i followed the curving shore, and ever southward bore into a nameless sea."' 'a nameless sea!' he repeated. 'so did i--so did hugh and i.' 'where did you go? tell us,' said una. 'wait. let me hear all first.' so dan read to the poem's very end. 'good,' said the knight. 'that is othere's tale--even so i have heard the men in the dane ships sing it. not those same valiant words, but something like to them.' 'have you ever explored north?' dan shut the book. 'nay. my venture was south. farther south than any man has fared, hugh and i went down with witta and his heathen.' he jerked the tall sword forward, and leaned on it with both hands; but his eyes looked long past them. 'i thought you always lived here,' said una, timidly. 'yes; while my lady aelueva lived. but she died. she died. then, my eldest son being a man, i asked de aquila's leave that he should hold the manor while i went on some journey or pilgrimage--to forget. de aquila, whom the second william had made warden of pevensey in earl mortain's place, was very old then, but still he rode his tall, roan horses, and in the saddle he looked like a little white falcon. when hugh, at dallington, over yonder, heard what i did, he sent for my second son, whom being unmarried he had ever looked upon as his own child, and, by de aquila's leave, gave him the manor of dallington to hold till he should return. then hugh came with me.' 'when did this happen?' said dan. 'that i can answer to the very day, for as we rode with de aquila by pevensey--have i said that he was lord of pevensey and of the honour of the eagle?---to the bordeaux ship that fetched him his wines yearly out of france, a marsh man ran to us crying that he had seen a great black goat which bore on his back the body of the king, and that the goat had spoken to him. on that same day red william our king, the conqueror's son, died of a secret arrow while he hunted in a forest. "this is a cross matter," said de aquila, "to meet on the threshold of a journey. if red william be dead i may have to fight for my lands. wait a little." 'my lady being dead, i cared nothing for signs and omens, nor hugh either. we took that wine-ship to go to bordeaux; but the wind failed while we were yet in sight of pevensey, a thick mist hid us, and we drifted with the tide along the cliffs to the west. our company was, for the most part, merchants returning to france, and we were laden with wool and there were three couple of tall hunting-dogs chained to the rail. their master was a knight of artois. his name i never learned, but his shield bore gold pieces on a red ground, and he limped, much as i do, from a wound which he had got in his youth at mantes siege. he served the duke of burgundy against the moors in spain, and was returning to that war with his dogs. he sang us strange moorish songs that first night, and half persuaded us to go with him. i was on pilgrimage to forget--which is what no pilgrimage brings. i think i would have gone, but... 'look you how the life and fortune of man changes! towards morning a dane ship, rowing silently, struck against us in the mist, and while we rolled hither and yon hugh, leaning over the rail, fell outboard. i leaped after him, and we two tumbled aboard the dane, and were caught and bound ere we could rise. our own ship was swallowed up in the mist. i judge the knight of the gold pieces muzzled his dogs with his cloak, lest they should give tongue and betray the merchants, for i heard their baying suddenly stop. 'we lay bound among the benches till morning, when the danes dragged us to the high deck by the steering-place, and their captain--witta, he was called--turned us over with his foot. bracelets of gold from elbow to armpit he wore, and his red hair was long as a woman's, and came down in plaited locks on his shoulder. he was stout, with bowed legs and long arms. he spoiled us of all we had, but when he laid hand on hugh's sword and saw the runes on the blade hastily he thrust it back. yet his covetousness overcame him and he tried again and again, and the third time the sword sang loud and angrily, so that the rowers leaned on their oars to listen. here they all spoke together, screaming like gulls, and a yellow man, such as i have never seen, came to the high deck and cut our bonds. he was yellow--not from sickness, but by nature--yellow as honey, and his eyes stood endwise in his head.' 'how do you mean?' said una, her chin on her hand. 'thus,' said sir richard. he put a finger to the corner of each eye, and pushed it up till his eyes narrowed to slits. 'why, you look just like a chinaman!' cried dan. 'was the man a chinaman?' 'i know not what that may be. witta had found him half dead among ice on the shores of muscovy. we thought he was a devil. he crawled before us and brought food in a silver dish which these sea-wolves had robbed from some rich abbey, and witta with his own hands gave us wine. he spoke a little in french, a little in south saxon, and much in the northman's tongue. we asked him to set us ashore, promising to pay him better ransom than he would get price if he sold us to the moors--as once befell a knight of my acquaintance sailing from flushing. "'not by my father guthrum's head," said he. "the gods sent ye into my ship for a luck-offering." 'at this i quaked, for i knew it was still the danes' custom to sacrifice captives to their gods for fair weather. "'a plague on thy four long bones!" said hugh. "what profit canst thou make of poor old pilgrims that can neither work nor fight?" "'gods forbid i should fight against thee, poor pilgrim with the singing sword," said he. "come with us and be poor no more. thy teeth are far apart, which is a sure sign thou wilt travel and grow rich." "'what if we will not come?" said hugh. "'swim to england or france," said witta. "we are midway between the two. unless ye choose to drown yourselves no hair of your head will be harmed here aboard. we think ye bring us luck, and i myself know the runes on that sword are good." he turned and bade them hoist sail. 'hereafter all made way for us as we walked about the ship, and the ship was full of wonders.' 'what was she like?' said dan. 'long, low, and narrow, bearing one mast with a red sail, and rowed by fifteen oars a side,' the knight answered. 'at her bows was a deck under which men might lie, and at her stern another shut off by a painted door from the rowers' benches. here hugh and i slept, with witta and the yellow man, upon tapestries as soft as wool. i remember'--he laughed to himself--'when first we entered there a loud voice cried, "out swords! out swords! kill, kill!" seeing us start witta laughed, and showed us it was but a great-beaked grey bird with a red tail. he sat her on his shoulder, and she called for bread and wine hoarsely, and prayed him to kiss her. yet she was no more than a silly bird. but--ye knew this?' he looked at their smiling faces. 'we weren't laughing at you,' said una. 'that must have been a parrot. it's just what pollies do.' 'so we learned later. but here is another marvel. the yellow man, whose name was kitai, had with him a brown box. in the box was a blue bowl with red marks upon the rim, and within the bowl, hanging from a fine thread, was a piece of iron no thicker than that grass stem, and as long, maybe, as my spur, but straight. in this iron, said witta, abode an evil spirit which kitai, the yellow man, had brought by art magic out of his own country that lay three years' journey southward. the evil spirit strove day and night to return to his country, and therefore, look you, the iron needle pointed continually to the south.' 'south?' said dan suddenly, and put his hand into his pocket. 'with my own eyes i saw it. every day and all day long, though the ship rolled, though the sun and the moon and the stars were hid, this blind spirit in the iron knew whither it would go, and strained to the south. witta called it the wise iron, because it showed him his way across the unknowable seas.' again sir richard looked keenly at the children. 'how think ye? was it sorcery?' 'was it anything like this?' dan fished out his old brass pocket-compass, that generally lived with his knife and key-ring. 'the glass has got cracked, but the needle waggles all right, sir.' the knight drew a long breath of wonder. 'yes, yes! the wise iron shook and swung in just this fashion. now it is still. now it points to the south.' 'north,' said dan. 'nay, south! there is the south,'said sir richard. then they both laughed, for naturally when one end of a straight compass-needle points to the north, the other must point to the south. 'te,' said sir richard, clicking his tongue. 'there can be no sorcery if a child carries it. wherefore does it point south--or north?' 'father says that nobody knows,' said una. sir richard looked relieved. 'then it may still be magic. it was magic to us. and so we voyaged. when the wind served we hoisted sail, and lay all up along the windward rail, our shields on our backs to break the spray. when it failed, they rowed with long oars; the yellow man sat by the wise iron, and witta steered. at first i feared the great white-flowering waves, but as i saw how wisely witta led his ship among them i grew bolder. hugh liked it well from the first. my skill is not upon the water; and rocks and whirlpools such as we saw by the west isles of france, where an oar caught on a rock and broke, are much against my stomach. we sailed south across a stormy sea, where by moonlight, between clouds, we saw a flanders ship roll clean over and sink. again, though hugh laboured with witta all night, i lay under the deck with the talking bird, and cared not whether i lived or died. there is a sickness of the sea which for three days is pure death! when we next saw land witta said it was spain, and we stood out to sea. that coast was full of ships busy in the duke's war against the moors, and we feared to be hanged by the duke's men or sold into slavery by the moors. so we put into a small harbour which witta knew. at night men came down with loaded mules, and witta exchanged amber out of the north against little wedges of iron and packets of beads in earthen pots. the pots he put under the decks, and the wedges of iron he laid on the bottom of the ship after he had cast out the stones and shingle which till then had been our ballast. wine, too, he bought for lumps of sweet-smelling grey amber--a little morsel no bigger than a thumb-nail purchased a cask of wine. but i speak like a merchant.' 'no, no! tell us what you had to eat,' cried dan. 'meat dried in the sun, and dried fish and ground beans, witta took in; and corded frails of a certain sweet, soft fruit, which the moors use, which is like paste of figs, but with thin, long stones. aha! dates is the name. "'now," said witta, when the ship was loaded, "i counsel you strangers to pray to your gods, for, from here on, our road is no man's road." he and his men killed a black goat for sacrifice on the bows; and the yellow man brought out a small, smiling image of dull-green stone and burned incense before it. hugh and i commended ourselves to god, and saint barnabas, and our lady of the assumption, who was specially dear to my lady. we were not young, but i think no shame to say whenas we drove out of that secret harbour at sunrise over a still sea, we two rejoiced and sang as did the knights of old when they followed our great duke to england. yet was our leader an heathen pirate; all our proud fleet but one galley perilously overloaded; for guidance we leaned on a pagan sorcerer; and our port was beyond the world's end. witta told us that his father guthrum had once in his life rowed along the shores of africa to a land where naked men sold gold for iron and beads. there had he bought much gold, and no few elephants' teeth, and thither by help of the wise iron would witta go. witta feared nothing--except to be poor. "'my father told me," said witta, "that a great shoal runs three days' sail out from that land, and south of the shoal lies a forest which grows in the sea. south and east of the forest my father came to a place where the men hid gold in their hair; but all that country, he said, was full of devils who lived in trees, and tore folk limb from limb. how think ye?" "'gold or no gold," said hugh, fingering his sword, "it is a joyous venture. have at these devils of thine, witta!" "'venture!" said witta sourly. "i am only a poor sea-thief. i do not set my life adrift on a plank for joy, or the venture. once i beach ship again at stavanger, and feel the wife's arms round my neck, i'll seek no more ventures. a ship is heavier care than a wife or cattle." 'he leaped down among the rowers, chiding them for their little strength and their great stomachs. yet witta was a wolf in fight, and a very fox in cunning. 'we were driven south by a storm, and for three days and three nights he took the stern-oar, and threddled the longship through the sea. when it rose beyond measure he brake a pot of whale's oil upon the water, which wonderfully smoothed it, and in that anointed patch he turned her head to the wind and threw out oars at the end of a rope, to make, he said, an anchor at which we lay rolling sorely, but dry. this craft his father guthrum had shown him. he knew, too, all the leech-book of bald, who was a wise doctor, and he knew the ship-book of hlaf the woman, who robbed egypt. he knew all the care of a ship. 'after the storm we saw a mountain whose top was covered with snow and pierced the clouds. the grasses under this mountain, boiled and eaten, are a good cure for soreness of the gums and swelled ankles. we lay there eight days, till men in skins threw stones at us. when the heat increased witta spread a cloth on bent sticks above the rowers, for the wind failed between the island of the mountain and the shore of africa, which is east of it. that shore is sandy, and we rowed along it within three bowshots. here we saw whales, and fish in the shape of shields, but longer than our ship. some slept, some opened their mouths at us, and some danced on the hot waters. the water was hot to the hand, and the sky was hidden by hot, grey mists, out of which blew a fine dust that whitened our hair and beards of a morning. here, too, were fish that flew in the air like birds. they would fall on the laps of the rowers, and when we went ashore we would roast and eat them.' the knight paused to see if the children doubted him, but they only nodded and said, 'go on.' 'the yellow land lay on our left, the grey sea on our right. knight though i was, i pulled my oar amongst the rowers. i caught seaweed and dried it, and stuffed it between the pots of beads lest they should break. knighthood is for the land. at sea, look you, a man is but a spurless rider on a bridleless horse. i learned to make strong knots in ropes--yes, and to join two ropes end to end, so that even witta could scarcely see where they had been married. but hugh had tenfold more sea-cunning than i. witta gave him charge of the rowers of the left side. thorkild of borkum, a man with a broken nose, that wore a norman steel cap, had the rowers of the right, and each side rowed and sang against the other. they saw that no man was idle. truly, as hugh said, and witta would laugh at him, a ship is all more care than a manor. 'how? thus. there was water to fetch from the shore when we could find it, as well as wild fruit and grasses, and sand for scrubbing of the decks and benches to keep them sweet. also we hauled the ship out on low islands and emptied all her gear, even to the iron wedges, and burned off the weed, that had grown on her, with torches of rush, and smoked below the decks with rushes dampened in salt water, as hlaf the woman orders in her ship-book. once when we were thus stripped, and the ship lay propped on her keel, the bird cried, "out swords!" as though she saw an enemy. witta vowed he would wring her neck.' 'poor polly! did he?' said una. 'nay. she was the ship's bird. she could call all the rowers by name... those were good days--for a wifeless man--with witta and his heathen--beyond the world's end... after many weeks we came on the great shoal which stretched, as witta's father had said, far out to sea. we skirted it till we were giddy with the sight and dizzy with the sound of bars and breakers, and when we reached land again we found a naked black people dwelling among woods, who for one wedge of iron loaded us with fruits and grasses and eggs. witta scratched his head at them in sign he would buy gold. they had no gold, but they understood the sign (all the gold-traders hide their gold in their thick hair), for they pointed along the coast. they beat, too, on their chests with their clenched hands, and that, if we had known it, was an evil sign.' 'what did it mean?' said dan. 'patience. ye shall hear. we followed the coast eastward sixteen days (counting time by sword-cuts on the helm-rail) till we came to the forest in the sea. trees grew there out of mud, arched upon lean and high roots, and many muddy waterways ran allwhither into darkness, under the trees. here we lost the sun. we followed the winding channels between the trees, and where we could not row we laid hold of the crusted roots and hauled ourselves along. the water was foul, and great glittering flies tormented us. morning and evening a blue mist covered the mud, which bred fevers. four of our rowers sickened, and were bound to their benches, lest they should leap overboard and be eaten by the monsters of the mud. the yellow man lay sick beside the wise iron, rolling his head and talking in his own tongue. only the bird throve. she sat on witta's shoulder and screamed in that noisome, silent darkness. yes; i think it was the silence we most feared.' he paused to listen to the comfortable home noises of the brook. 'when we had lost count of time among those black gullies and swashes we heard, as it were, a drum beat far off, and following it we broke into a broad, brown river by a hut in a clearing among fields of pumpkins. we thanked god to see the sun again. the people of the village gave the good welcome, and witta scratched his head at them (for gold), and showed them our iron and beads. they ran to the bank--we were still in the ship--and pointed to our swords and bows, for always when near shore we lay armed. soon they fetched store of gold in bars and in dust from their huts, and some great blackened elephants' teeth. these they piled on the bank, as though to tempt us, and made signs of dealing blows in battle, and pointed up to the tree-tops, and to the forest behind. their captain or chief sorcerer then beat on his chest with his fists, and gnashed his teeth. 'said thorkild of borkum: "do they mean we must fight for all this gear?" and he half drew sword. "'nay," said hugh. "i think they ask us to league against some enemy." "'i like this not," said witta, of a sudden. "back into mid-stream." 'so we did, and sat still all, watching the black folk and the gold they piled on the bank. again we heard drums beat in the forest, and the people fled to their huts, leaving the gold unguarded. 'then hugh, at the bows, pointed without speech, and we saw a great devil come out of the forest. he shaded his brows with his hand, and moistened his pink tongue between his lips--thus.' 'a devil!' said dan, delightfully horrified. 'yea. taller than a man; covered with reddish hair. when he had well regarded our ship, he beat on his chest with his fists till it sounded like rolling drums, and came to the bank swinging all his body between his long arms, and gnashed his teeth at us. hugh loosed arrow, and pierced him through the throat. he fell roaring, and three other devils ran out of the forest and hauled him into a tall tree out of sight. anon they cast down the blood-stained arrow, and lamented together among the leaves. witta saw the gold on the bank; he was loath to leave it. "sirs," said he (no man had spoken till then), "yonder is what we have come so far and so painfully to find, laid out to our very hand. let us row in while these devils bewail themselves, and at least bear off what we may." 'bold as a wolf, cunning as a fox was witta! he set four archers on the fore-deck to shoot the devils if they should leap from the tree, which was close to the bank. he manned ten oars a side, and bade them watch his hand to row in or back out, and so coaxed he them toward the bank. but none would set foot ashore, though the gold was within ten paces. no man is hasty to his hanging! they whimpered at their oars like beaten hounds, and witta bit his fingers for rage. 'said hugh of a sudden, "hark!" at first we thought it was the buzzing of the glittering flies on the water; but it grew loud and fierce, so that all men heard.' 'what?' said dan and una. 'it was the sword.' sir richard patted the smooth hilt. 'it sang as a dane sings before battle. "i go," said hugh, and he leaped from the bows and fell among the gold. i was afraid to my four bones' marrow, but for shame's sake i followed, and thorkild of borkum leaped after me. none other came. "blame me not," cried witta behind us, "i must abide by my ship." we three had no time to blame or praise. we stooped to the gold and threw it back over our shoulders, one hand on our swords and one eye on the tree, which nigh overhung us. 'i know not how the devils leaped down, or how the fight began. i heard hugh cry: "out! out!" as though he were at santlache again; i saw thorkild's steel cap smitten off his head by a great hairy hand, and i felt an arrow from the ship whistle past my ear. they say that till witta took his sword to the rowers he could not bring his ship inshore; and each one of the four archers said afterwards that he alone had pierced the devil that fought me. i do not know. i went to it in my mail-shirt, which saved my skin. with long-sword and belt-dagger i fought for the life against a devil whose very feet were hands, and who whirled me back and forth like a dead branch. he had me by the waist, my arms to my side, when an arrow from the ship pierced him between the shoulders, and he loosened grip. i passed my sword twice through him, and he crutched himself away between his long arms, coughing and moaning. next, as i remember, i saw thorkild of borkum, bare-headed and smiling, leaping up and down before a devil that leaped and gnashed his teeth. then hugh passed, his sword shifted to his left hand, and i wondered why i had not known that hugh was a left-handed man; and thereafter i remembered nothing till i felt spray on my face, and we were in sunshine on the open sea. that was twenty days after.' 'what had happened? did hugh die?'the children asked. 'never was such a fight fought by christened man,' said sir richard. 'an arrow from the ship had saved me from my devil, and thorkild of borkum had given back before his devil, till the bowmen on the ship could shoot it all full of arrows from near by; but hugh's devil was cunning, and had kept behind trees, where no arrow could reach. body to body there, by stark strength of sword and hand, had hugh slain him, and, dying, the thing had clenched his teeth on the sword. judge what teeth they were!' sir richard turned the sword again that the children might see the two great chiselled gouges on either side of the blade. 'those same teeth met in hugh's right arm and side,' sir richard went on. 'i? oh, i had no more than a broken foot and a fever. thorkild's ear was bitten, but hugh's arm and side clean withered away. i saw him where he lay along, sucking a fruit in his left hand. his flesh was wasted off his bones, his hair was patched with white, and his hand was blue-veined like a woman's. he put his left arm round my neck and whispered, "take my sword. it has been thine since hastings, o my brother, but i can never hold hilt again." we lay there on the high deck talking of santlache, and, i think, of every day since santlache, and it came so that we both wept. i was weak, and he little more than a shadow. "'nay--nay," said witta, at the helm-rail. "gold is a good right arm to any man. look--look at the gold!" he bade thorkild show us the gold and the elephants' teeth, as though we had been children. he had brought away all the gold on the bank, and twice as much more, that the people of the village gave him for slaying the devils. they worshipped us as gods, thorkild told me: it was one of their old women healed up hugh's poor arm.' 'how much gold did you get?'asked dan. 'how can i say? where we came out with wedges of iron under the rowers' feet we returned with wedges of gold hidden beneath planks. there was dust of gold in packages where we slept and along the side, and cross-wise under the benches we lashed the blackened elephants' teeth. "'i had sooner have my right arm," said hugh, when he had seen all. "'ahai! that was my fault," said witta. "i should have taken ransom and landed you in france when first you came aboard, ten months ago." "'it is over-late now," said hugh, laughing. 'witta plucked at his long shoulder-lock. "but think!" said he. "if i had let ye go--which i swear i would never have done, for i love ye more than brothers--if i had let ye go, by now ye might have been horribly slain by some mere moor in the duke of burgundy's war, or ye might have been murdered by land-thieves, or ye might have died of the plague at an inn. think of this and do not blame me overmuch, hugh. see! i will only take a half of the gold." "'i blame thee not at all, witta," said hugh. "it was a joyous venture, and we thirty-five here have done what never men have done. if i live till england, i will build me a stout keep over dallington out of my share." "'i will buy cattle and amber and warm red cloth for the wife," said witta, "and i will hold all the land at the head of stavanger fiord. many will fight for me now. but first we must turn north, and with this honest treasure aboard i pray we meet no pirate ships." 'we did not laugh. we were careful. we were afraid lest we should lose one grain of our gold, for which we had fought devils. "'where is the sorcerer?" said i, for witta was looking at the wise iron in the box, and i could not see the yellow man. "'he has gone to his own country," said he. "he rose up in the night while we were beating out of that forest in the mud, and said that he could see it behind the trees. he leaped out on the mud, and did not answer when we called; so we called no more. he left the wise iron, which is all that i care for--and see, the spirit still points to the south." 'we were troubled for fear that the wise iron should fail us now that its yellow man had gone, and when we saw the spirit still served us we grew afraid of too strong winds, and of shoals, and of careless leaping fish, and of all the people on all the shores where we landed.' 'why?' said dan. 'because of the gold--because of our gold. gold changes men altogether. thorkild of borkum did not change. he laughed at witta for his fears, and at us for our counselling witta to furl sail when the ship pitched at all. "'better be drowned out of hand," said thorkild of borkum, "than go tied to a deck-load of yellow dust." 'he was a landless man, and had been slave to some king in the east. he would have beaten out the gold into deep bands to put round the oars, and round the prow. 'yet, though he vexed himself for the gold, witta waited upon hugh like a woman, lending him his shoulder when the ship rolled, and tying of ropes from side to side that hugh might hold by them. but for hugh, he said--and so did all his men--they would never have won the gold. i remember witta made a little, thin gold ring for our bird to swing in. 'three months we rowed and sailed and went ashore for fruits or to clean the ship. when we saw wild horsemen, riding among sand-dunes, flourishing spears, we knew we were on the moors' coast, and stood over north to spain; and a strong south-west wind bore us in ten days to a coast of high red rocks, where we heard a hunting-horn blow among the yellow gorse and knew it was england. "'now find ye pevensey yourselves," said witta. "i love not these narrow ship-filled seas." 'he set the dried, salted head of the devil, which hugh had killed, high on our prow, and all boats fled from us. yet, for our gold's sake, we were more afraid than they. we crept along the coast by night till we came to the chalk cliffs, and so east to pevensey. witta would not come ashore with us, though hugh promised him wine at dallington enough to swim in. he was on fire to see his wife, and ran into the marsh after sunset, and there he left us and our share of gold, and backed out on the same tide. he made no promise; he swore no oath; he looked for no thanks; but to hugh, an armless man, and to me, an old cripple whom he could have flung into the sea, he passed over wedge upon wedge, packet upon packet of gold and dust of gold, and only ceased when we would take no more. as he stooped from the rail to bid us farewell he stripped off his right-arm bracelets and put them all on hugh's left, and he kissed hugh on the cheek. i think when thorkild of borkum bade the rowers give way we were near weeping. it is true that witta was an heathen and a pirate; true it is he held us by force many months in his ship, but i loved that bow-legged, blue-eyed man for his great boldness, his cunning, his skill, and, beyond all, for his simplicity.' 'did he get home all right?' said dan. 'i never knew. we saw him hoist sail under the moon-track and stand away. i have prayed that he found his wife and the children.' 'and what did you do?' 'we waited on the marsh till the day. then i sat by the gold, all tied in an old sail, while hugh went to pevensey, and de aquila sent us horses.' sir richard crossed hands on his sword-hilt, and stared down stream through the soft warm shadows. 'a whole shipload of gold!' said una, looking at the little golden hind. 'but i'm glad i didn't see the devils.' 'i don't believe they were devils,'dan whispered back. 'eh?' said sir richard. 'witta's father warned him they were unquestionable devils. one must believe one's father, and not one's children. what were my devils, then?' dan flushed all over. 'i--i only thought,' he stammered; 'i've got a book called the gorilla hunters--it's a continuation of coral island, sir--and it says there that the gorillas (they're big monkeys, you know) were always chewing iron up.' 'not always,' said una. 'only twice.' they had been reading the gorilla hunters in the orchard. 'well, anyhow, they always drummed on their chests, like sir richard's did, before they went for people. and they built houses in trees, too.' 'ha!' sir richard opened his eyes. 'houses like flat nests did our devils make, where their imps lay and looked at us. i did not see them (i was sick after the fight), but witta told me, and, lo, ye know it also? wonderful! were our devils only nest-building apes? is there no sorcery left in the world?' 'i don't know,' answered dan, uncomfortably. 'i've seen a man take rabbits out of a hat, and he told us we could see how he did it, if we watched hard. and we did.' 'but we didn't,' said una, sighing. 'oh! there's puck!' the little fellow, brown and smiling, peered between two stems of an ash, nodded, and slid down the bank into the cool beside them. 'no sorcery, sir richard?' he laughed, and blew on a full dandelion head he had picked. 'they tell me that witta's wise iron was a toy. the boy carries such an iron with him. they tell me our devils were apes, called gorillas!' said sir richard, indignantly. 'that is the sorcery of books,' said puck. 'i warned thee they were wise children. all people can be wise by reading of books.' 'but are the books true?' sir richard frowned. 'i like not all this reading and writing.' 'ye-es,' said puck, holding the naked dandelion head at arm's length. 'but if we hang all fellows who write falsely, why did de aquila not begin with gilbert the clerk? he was false enough.' 'poor false gilbert. yet, in his fashion, he was bold,' said sir richard. 'what did he do?' said dan. 'he wrote,' said sir richard. 'is the tale meet for children, think you?' he looked at puck; but 'tell us! tell us!' cried dan and una together. thorkild's song there's no wind along these seas, out oars for stavanger! forward all for stavanger! so we must wake the white-ash breeze, let fall for stavanger! a long pull for stavanger! oh, hear the benches creak and strain! (a long pull for stavanger!) she thinks she smells the northland rain! (a long pull for stavanger!) she thinks she smells the northland snow, and she's as glad as we to go. she thinks she smells the northland rime, and the dear dark nights of winter-time. her very bolts are sick for shore, and we--we want it ten times more! so all you gods that love brave men, send us a three-reef gale again! send us a gale, and watch us come, with close-cropped canvas slashing home! but--there's no wind in all these seas. a long pull for stavanger! so we must wake the white-ash breeze, a long pull for stavanger! old men at pevensey 'it has naught to do with apes or devils,'sir richard went on, in an undertone. 'it concerns de aquila, than whom there was never bolder nor craftier, nor more hardy knight born. and remember he was an old, old man at that time.' 'when?' said dan. 'when we came back from sailing with witta.' 'what did you do with your gold?' said dan. 'have patience. link by link is chain-mail made. i will tell all in its place. we bore the gold to pevensey on horseback--three loads of it--and then up to the north chamber, above the great hall of pevensey castle, where de aquila lay in winter. he sat on his bed like a little white falcon, turning his head swiftly from one to the other as we told our tale. jehan the crab, an old sour man-at-arms, guarded the stairway, but de aquila bade him wait at the stair-foot, and let down both leather curtains over the door. it was jehan whom de aquila had sent to us with the horses, and only jehan had loaded the gold. when our story was told, de aquila gave us the news of england, for we were as men waked from a year-long sleep. the red king was dead--slain (ye remember?) the day we set sail--and henry, his younger brother, had made himself king of england over the head of robert of normandy. this was the very thing that the red king had done to robert when our great william died. then robert of normandy, mad, as de aquila said, at twice missing of this kingdom, had sent an army against england, which army had been well beaten back to their ships at portsmouth. a little earlier, and witta's ship would have rowed through them. "'and now," said de aquila, "half the great barons of the north and west are out against the king between salisbury and shrewsbury, and half the other half wait to see which way the game shall go. they say henry is overly english for their stomachs, because he hath married an english wife and she hath coaxed him to give back their old laws to our saxons. (better ride a horse on the bit he knows, i say!) but that is only a cloak to their falsehood." he cracked his finger on the table, where the wine was spilt, and thus he spoke: "'william crammed us norman barons full of good english acres after santlache. i had my share too," he said, and clapped hugh on the shoulder; "but i warned him--i warned him before odo rebelled--that he should have bidden the barons give up their lands and lordships in normandy if they would be english lords. now they are all but princes both in england and normandy--trencher-fed hounds, with a foot in one trough and both eyes on the other! robert of normandy has sent them word that if they do not fight for him in england he will sack and harry out their lands in normandy. therefore clare has risen, fitzosborne has risen, montgomery has risen--whom our first william made an english earl. even d'arcy is out with his men, whose father i remember--a little hedge-sparrow knight near by caen. if henry wins, the barons can still flee to normandy, where robert will welcome them. if henry loses, robert, he says, will give them more lands in england. oh, a pest--a pest on normandy, for she will be our england's curse this many a long year!" "'amen," said hugh. "but will the war come our ways, think you?" "'not from the north," said de aquila. "but the sea is always open. if the barons gain the upper hand robert will send another army into england for sure, and this time i think he will land here--where his father, the conqueror, landed. ye have brought your pigs to a pretty market! half england alight, and gold enough on the ground"--he stamped on the bars beneath the table--"to set every sword in christendom fighting." "'what is to do?" said hugh. "i have no keep at dallington; and if we buried it, whom could we trust?" "'me," said de aquila. "pevensey walls are strong. no man but jehan, who is my dog, knows what is between them." he drew a curtain by the shot-window and showed us the shaft of a well in the thickness of the wall. "'i made it for a drinking-well," he said, "but we found salt water, and it rises and falls with the tide. hark!" we heard the water whistle and blow at the bottom. "will it serve?" said he. "'needs must," said hugh. "our lives are in thy hands." so we lowered all the gold down except one small chest of it by de aquila's bed, which we kept as much for his delight in its weight and colour as for any of our needs. 'in the morning, ere we rode to our manors, he said: "i do not say farewell; because ye will return and bide here. not for love nor for sorrow, but to be with the gold. have a care," he said, laughing, "lest i use it to make myself pope. trust me not, but return!"' sir richard paused and smiled sadly. 'in seven days, then, we returned from our manors--from the manors which had been ours.' 'and were the children quite well?' said una. 'my sons were young. land and governance belong by right to young men.' sir richard was talking to himself. 'it would have broken their hearts if we had taken back our manors. they made us great welcome, but we could see--hugh and i could see--that our day was done. i was a cripple and he a one-armed man. no!' he shook his head. 'and therefore'--he raised his voice--'we rode back to pevensey.' 'i'm sorry,' said una, for the knight seemed very sorrowful. 'little maid, it all passed long ago. they were young; we were old. we let them rule the manors. "aha!" cried de aquila from his shot-window, when we dismounted. "back again to earth, old foxes?" but when we were in his chamber above the hall he puts his arms about us and says, "welcome, ghosts! welcome, poor ghosts!" thus it fell out that we were rich beyond belief, and lonely. and lonely!' 'what did you do?' said dan. 'we watched for robert of normandy,' said the knight. 'de aquila was like witta. he suffered no idleness. in fair weather we would ride along between bexlei on the one side, to cuckmere on the other--sometimes with hawk, sometimes with hound (there are stout hares both on the marsh and the downland), but always with an eye to the sea, for fear of fleets from normandy. in foul weather he would walk on the top of his tower, frowning against the rain--peering here and pointing there. it always vexed him to think how witta's ship had come and gone without his knowledge. when the wind ceased and ships anchored, to the wharf's edge he would go and, leaning on his sword among the stinking fish, would call to the mariners for their news from france. his other eye he kept landward for word of henry's war against the barons. 'many brought him news--jongleurs, harpers, pedlars, sutlers, priests and the like; and, though he was secret enough in small things, yet, if their news misliked him, then, regarding neither time nor place nor people, he would curse our king henry for a fool or a babe. i have heard him cry aloud by the fishing boats: "if i were king of england i would do thus and thus"; and when i rode out to see that the warning-beacons were laid and dry, he hath often called to me from the shot-window: "look to it, richard! do not copy our blind king, but see with thine own eyes and feel with thine own hands." i do not think he knew any sort of fear. and so we lived at pevensey, in the little chamber above the hall. 'one foul night came word that a messenger of the king waited below. we were chilled after a long riding in the fog towards bexlei, which is an easy place for ships to land. de aquila sent word the man might either eat with us or wait till we had fed. anon jehan, at the stair-head, cried that he had called for horse, and was gone. "pest on him!" said de aquila. "i have more to do than to shiver in the great hall for every gadling the king sends. left he no word?" "'none," said jehan, "except"--he had been with de aquila at santlache--"except he said that if an old dog could not learn new tricks it was time to sweep out the kennel." "'oho!" said de aquila, rubbing his nose, "to whom did he say that?" "'to his beard, chiefly, but some to his horse's flank as he was girthing up. i followed him out," said jehan the crab. "'what was his shield-mark?" "'gold horseshoes on black," said the crab. "'that is one of fulke's men," said de aquila.' puck broke in very gently, 'gold horseshoes on black is not the fulkes' shield. the fulkes' arms are--' the knight waved one hand statelily. 'thou knowest that evil man's true name,' he replied, 'but i have chosen to call him fulke because i promised him i would not tell the story of his wickedness so that any man might guess it. i have changed all the names in my tale. his children's children may be still alive.' 'true--true,' said puck, smiling softly. 'it is knightly to keep faith--even after a thousand years.' sir richard bowed a little and went on: "'gold horseshoes on black?" said de aquila. "i had heard fulke had joined the barons, but if this is true our king must be of the upper hand. no matter, all fulkes are faithless. still, i would not have sent the man away empty." "'he fed," said jehan. "gilbert the clerk fetched him meat and wine from the kitchens. he ate at gilbert's table." 'this gilbert was a clerk from battle abbey, who kept the accounts of the manor of pevensey. he was tall and pale-coloured, and carried those new-fashioned beads for counting of prayers. they were large brown nuts or seeds, and hanging from his girdle with his pen and ink-horn they clashed when he walked. his place was in the great fireplace. there was his table of accounts, and there he lay o' nights. he feared the hounds in the hall that came nosing after bones or to sleep on the warm ashes, and would slash at them with his beads--like a woman. when de aquila sat in hall to do justice, take fines, or grant lands, gilbert would so write it in the manor-roll. but it was none of his work to feed our guests, or to let them depart without his lord's knowledge. 'said de aquila, after jehan was gone down the stair: "hugh, hast thou ever told my gilbert thou canst read latin hand-of-write?" "'no," said hugh. "he is no friend to me, or to odo my hound either." "'no matter," said de aquila. "let him never know thou canst tell one letter from its fellow, and"--there he yerked us in the ribs with his scabbard--"watch him, both of ye. there be devils in africa, as i have heard, but by the saints, there be greater devils in pevensey!" and that was all he would say. 'it chanced, some small while afterwards, a norman man-at-arms would wed a saxon wench of the manor, and gilbert (we had watched him well since de aquila spoke) doubted whether her folk were free or slave. since de aquila would give them a field of good land, if she were free, the matter came up at the justice in great hall before de aquila. first the wench's father spoke; then her mother; then all together, till the hall rang and the hounds bayed. de aquila held up his hands. "write her free," he called to gilbert by the fireplace. "a' god's name write her free, before she deafens me! yes, yes," he said to the wench that was on her knees at him; "thou art cerdic's sister, and own cousin to the lady of mercia, if thou wilt be silent. in fifty years there will be neither norman nor saxon, but all english," said he, "and these are the men that do our work!" he clapped the man-at-arms that was jehan's nephew on the shoulder, and kissed the wench, and fretted with his feet among the rushes to show it was finished. (the great hall is always bitter cold.) i stood at his side; hugh was behind gilbert in the fireplace making to play with wise rough odo. he signed to de aquila, who bade gilbert measure the new field for the new couple. out then runs our gilbert between man and maid, his beads clashing at his waist, and the hall being empty, we three sit by the fire. 'said hugh, leaning down to the hearthstones, "i saw this stone move under gilbert's foot when odo snuffed at it. look!" de aquila digged in the ashes with his sword; the stone tilted; beneath it lay a parchment folden, and the writing atop was: "words spoken against the king by our lord of pevensey--the second part." 'here was set out (hugh read it us whispering) every jest de aquila had made to us touching the king; every time he had called out to me from the shot-window, and every time he had said what he would do if he were king of england. yes, day by day had his daily speech, which he never stinted, been set down by gilbert, tricked out and twisted from its true meaning, yet withal so cunningly that none could deny who knew him that de aquila had in some sort spoken those words. ye see?' dan and una nodded. 'yes,' said una gravely. 'it isn't what you say so much. it's what you mean when you say it. like calling dan a beast in fun. only grown-ups don't always understand.' "'he hath done this day by day before our very face?" said de aquila. "'nay, hour by hour," said hugh. "when de aquila spoke even now, in the hall, of saxons and normans, i saw gilbert write on a parchment, which he kept beside the manor-roll, that de aquila said soon there would be no normans left in england if his men-at-arms did their work aright." "'bones of the saints!" said de aquila. "what avail is honour or a sword against a pen? where did gilbert hide that writing? he shall eat it." "'in his breast when he ran out," said hugh. "which made me look to see where he kept his finished stuff. when odo scratched at this stone here, i saw his face change. so i was sure." "'he is bold," said de aquila. "do him justice. in his own fashion, my gilbert is bold." "'overbold," said hugh. "hearken here," and he read: "upon the feast of st agatha, our lord of pevensey, lying in his upper chamber, being clothed in his second fur gown reversed with rabbit--" "'pest on him! he is not my tire-woman!" said de aquila, and hugh and i laughed. "'reversed with rabbit, seeing a fog over the marshes, did wake sir richard dalyngridge, his drunken cup-mate" (here they laughed at me) "and said, 'peer out, old fox, for god is on the duke of normandy's side."' "'so did i. it was a black fog. robert could have landed ten thousand men, and we none the wiser. does he tell how we were out all day riding the marsh, and how i near perished in a quicksand, and coughed like a sick ewe for ten days after?" cried de aquila. "'no," said hugh. "but here is the prayer of gilbert himself to his master fulke." "'ah," said de aquila. "well i knew it was fulke. what is the price of my blood?" "'gilbert prayeth that when our lord of pevensey is stripped of his lands on this evidence which gilbert hath, with fear and pains, collected--" "'fear and pains is a true word," said de aquila, and sucked in his cheeks. "but how excellent a weapon is a pen! i must learn it." "'he prays that fulke will advance him from his present service to that honour in the church which fulke promised him. and lest fulke should forget, he has written below, 'to be sacristan of battle'." 'at this de aquila whistled. "a man who can plot against one lord can plot against another. when i am stripped of my lands fulke will whip off my gilbert's foolish head. none the less battle needs a new sacristan. they tell me the abbot henry keeps no sort of rule there." "'let the abbot wait," said hugh. "it is our heads and our lands that are in danger. this parchment is the second part of the tale. the first has gone to fulke, and so to the king, who will hold us traitors." "assuredly," said de aquila. "fulke's man took the first part that evening when gilbert fed him, and our king is so beset by his brother and his barons (small blame, too!) that he is mad with mistrust. fulke has his ear, and pours poison into it. presently the king gives him my land and yours. this is old," and he leaned back and yawned. "'and thou wilt surrender pevensey without word or blow?" said hugh. "we saxons will fight your king then. i will go warn my nephew at dallington. give me a horse!" "'give thee a toy and a rattle," said de aquila. "put back the parchment, and rake over the ashes. if fulke is given my pevensey, which is england's gate, what will he do with it? he is norman at heart, and his heart is in normandy, where he can kill peasants at his pleasure. he will open england's gate to our sleepy robert, as odo and mortain tried to do, and then there will be another landing and another santlache. therefore i cannot give up pevensey." "'good," said we two. "'ah, but wait! if my king be made, on gilbert's evidence, to mistrust me, he will send his men against me here, and while we fight, england's gate is left unguarded. who will be the first to come through thereby? even robert of normandy. therefore i cannot fight my king." he nursed his sword--thus. "'this is saying and unsaying like a norman," said hugh. "what of our manors?" "'i do not think for myself," said de aquila, "nor for our king, nor for your lands. i think for england, for whom neither king nor baron thinks. i am not norman, sir richard, nor saxon, sir hugh. english am i." "'saxon, norman or english," said hugh, "our lives are thine, however the game goes. when do we hang gilbert?" "'never," said de aquila. "who knows, he may yet be sacristan of battle, for, to do him justice, he is a good writer. dead men make dumb witnesses. wait." "'but the king may give pevensey to fulke. and our manors go with it," said i. "shall we tell our sons?" "'no. the king will not wake up a hornets' nest in the south till he has smoked out the bees in the north. he may hold me a traitor; but at least he sees i am not fighting against him; and every day that i lie still is so much gain to him while he fights the barons. if he were wise he would wait till that war were over before he made new enemies. but i think fulke will play upon him to send for me, and if i do not obey the summons, that will, to henry's mind, be proof of my treason. but mere talk, such as gilbert sends, is no proof nowadays. we barons follow the church, and, like anselm, we speak what we please. let us go about our day's dealings, and say naught to gilbert." "'then we do nothing?" said hugh. "'we wait," said de aquila. "i am old, but still i find that the most grievous work i know." 'and so we found it, but in the end de aquila was right. 'a little later in the year, armed men rode over the hill, the golden horseshoes flying behind the king's banner. said de aquila, at the window of our chamber: "how did i tell you? here comes fulke himself to spy out his new lands which our king hath promised him if he can bring proof of my treason." "'how dost thou know?" said hugh. "'because that is what i would do if i were fulke, but i should have brought more men. my roan horse to your old shoes," said he, "fulke brings me the king's summons to leave pevensey and join the war." he sucked in his cheeks and drummed on the edge of the well-shaft, where the water sounded all hollow. "'shall we go?" said i. "'go! at this time of year? stark madness," said he. "take me from pevensey to fisk and flyte through fern and forest, and in three days robert's keels would be lying on pevensey mud with ten thousand men! who would stop them--fulke?" 'the horns blew without, and anon fulke cried the king's summons at the great door, that de aquila with all men and horse should join the king's camp at salisbury. "'how did i tell you?" said de aquila. "there are twenty barons 'twixt here and salisbury could give king henry good land service, but he has been worked upon by fulke to send south and call me--me!---off the gate of england, when his enemies stand about to batter it in. see that fulke's men lie in the big south barn," said he. "give them drink, and when fulke has eaten we will drink in my chamber. the great hall is too cold for old bones." 'as soon as he was off-horse fulke went to the chapel with gilbert to give thanks for his safe coming, and when he had eaten--he was a fat man, and rolled his eyes greedily at our good roast sussex wheat-ears--we led him to the little upper chamber, whither gilbert had already gone with the manor-roll. i remember when fulke heard the tide blow and whistle in the shaft he leaped back, and his long down-turned stirrup-shoes caught in the rushes and he stumbled, so that jehan behind him found it easy to knock his head against the wall.' 'did you know it was going to happen?' said dan. 'assuredly,' said sir richard, with a sweet smile. 'i put my foot on his sword and plucked away his dagger, but he knew not whether it was day or night for awhile. he lay rolling his eyes and bubbling with his mouth, and jehan roped him like a calf. he was cased all in that newfangled armour which we call lizard-mail. not rings like my hauberk here'--sir richard tapped his chest--but little pieces of dagger-proof steel overlapping on stout leather. we stripped it off (no need to spoil good harness by wetting it), and in the neck-piece de aquila found the same folden piece of parchment which we had put back under the hearth-stone. 'at this gilbert would have run out. i laid my hand on his shoulder. it sufficed. he fell to trembling and praying on his beads. "'gilbert," said de aquila, "here be more notable sayings and doings of our lord of pevensey for thee to write down. take pen and ink-horn, gilbert. we cannot all be sacristans of battle." 'said fulke from the floor, "ye have bound a king's messenger. pevensey shall burn for this." "'maybe. i have seen it besieged once," said de aquila, "but heart up, fulke. i promise thee that thou shalt be hanged in the middle of the flames at the end of that siege, if i have to share my last loaf with thee; and that is more than odo would have done when we starved out him and mortain." 'then fulke sat up and looked long and cunningly at de aquila. "'by the saints," said he, "why didst thou not say thou wast on the duke robert's side at the first?" "'am i?" said de aquila. 'fulke laughed and said, "no man who serves king henry dare do this much to his messenger. when didst thou come over to the duke? let me up and we can smooth it out together." and he smiled and becked and winked. "'yes, we will smooth it out," said de aquila. he nodded to me, and jehan and i heaved up fulke--he was a heavy man--and lowered him into the shaft by a rope, not so as to stand on our gold, but dangling by his shoulders a little above. it was turn of ebb, and the water came to his knees. he said nothing, but shivered somewhat. 'then jehan of a sudden beat down gilbert's wrist with his sheathed dagger. "stop!" he said. "he swallows his beads." "'poison, belike," said de aquila. "it is good for men who know too much. i have carried it these thirty years. give me!" 'then gilbert wept and howled. de aquila ran the beads through his fingers. the last one--i have said they were large nuts--opened in two halves on a pin, and there was a small folded parchment within. on it was written: "the old dog goes to salisbury to be beaten. i have his kennel. come quickly. "'this is worse than poison," said de aquila very softly, and sucked in his cheeks. then gilbert grovelled in the rushes, and told us all he knew. the letter, as we guessed, was from fulke to the duke (and not the first that had passed between them); fulke had given it to gilbert in the chapel, and gilbert thought to have taken it by morning to a certain fishing boat at the wharf, which trafficked between pevensey and the french shore. gilbert was a false fellow, but he found time between his quakings and shakings to swear that the master of the boat knew nothing of the matter. "'he hath called me shaved-head," said gilbert, "and he hath thrown haddock-guts at me; but for all that, he is no traitor." "'i will have no clerk of mine mishandled or miscalled," said de aquila. "that seaman shall be whipped at his own mast. write me first a letter, and thou shalt bear it, with the order for the whipping, tomorrow to the boat." 'at this gilbert would have kissed de aquila's hand--he had not hoped to live until the morning--and when he trembled less he wrote a letter as from fulke to the duke, saying that the kennel, which signified pevensey, was shut, and that the old dog (which was de aquila) sat outside it, and, moreover, that all had been betrayed. "'write to any man that all is betrayed," said de aquila, "and even the pope himself would sleep uneasily. eh, jehan? if one told thee all was betrayed, what wouldst thou do?" "'i would run away," said jehan. "it might be true." "'well said," quoth de aquila. "write, gilbert, that montgomery, the great earl, hath made his peace with the king, and that little d'arcy, whom i hate, hath been hanged by the heels. we will give robert full measure to chew upon. write also that fulke himself is sick to death of a dropsy." "'nay!" cried fulke, hanging in the well-shaft. "drown me out of hand, but do not make a jest of me." "'jest? i?" said de aquila. "i am but fighting for life and lands with a pen, as thou hast shown me, fulke." 'then fulke groaned, for he was cold, and, "let me confess," said he. "'now, this is right neighbourly," said de aquila, leaning over the shaft. "thou hast read my sayings and doings--or at least the first part of them--and thou art minded to repay me with thy own doings and sayings. take pen and inkhorn, gilbert. here is work that will not irk thee." "'let my men go without hurt, and i will confess my treason against the king," said fulke. "'now, why has he grown so tender of his men of a sudden?" said hugh to me; for fulke had no name for mercy to his men. plunder he gave them, but pity, none. "'te! te!" said de aquila. "thy treason was all confessed long ago by gilbert. it would be enough to hang montgomery himself." "'nay; but spare my men," said fulke; and we heard him splash like a fish in a pond, for the tide was rising. "'all in good time," said de aquila. "the night is young; the wine is old; and we need only the merry tale. begin the story of thy life since when thou wast a lad at tours. tell it nimbly!" "'ye shame me to my soul," said fulke. "'then i have done what neither king nor duke could do," said de aquila. "but begin, and forget nothing." "'send thy man away," said fulke. "'that much can i do," said de aquila. 'but, remember, i am like the danes' king. i cannot turn the tide.' "'how long will it rise?" said fulke, and splashed anew. "'for three hours," said de aquila. "time to tell all thy good deeds. begin, and, gilbert,--i have heard thou art somewhat careless--do not twist his words from his true meaning." 'so--fear of death in the dark being upon him--fulke began, and gilbert, not knowing what his fate might be, wrote it word by word. i have heard many tales, but never heard i aught to match the tale of fulke his black life, as fulke told it hollowly, hanging in the shaft.' 'was it bad?' said dan, awestruck. 'beyond belief,' sir richard answered. 'none the less, there was that in it which forced even gilbert to laugh. we three laughed till we ached. at one place his teeth so chattered that we could not well hear, and we reached him down a cup of wine. then he warmed to it, and smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries, his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also inconceivably a coward); his lack of gear and honour; his despair at their loss; his remedies, and well-coloured contrivances. yes, he waved the filthy rags of his life before us, as though they had been some proud banner. when he ceased, we saw by torches that the tide stood at the corners of his mouth, and he breathed strongly through his nose. 'we had him out, and rubbed him; we wrapped him in a cloak, and gave him wine, and we leaned and looked upon him, the while he drank. he was shivering, but shameless. 'of a sudden we heard jehan at the stairway wake, but a boy pushed past him, and stood before us, the hall-rushes in his hair, all slubbered with sleep. "my father! my father! i dreamed of treachery," he cried, and babbled thickly. "'there is no treachery here," said fulke. "go!" and the boy turned, even then not fully awake, and jehan led him by the hand to the great hall. "'thy only son!" said de aquila. "why didst thou bring the child here?" "'he is my heir. i dared not trust him to my brother," said fulke, and now he was ashamed. de aquila said nothing, but sat weighing a wine-cup in his two hands--thus. anon, fulke touched him on the knee. "'let the boy escape to normandy," said he, "and do with me at thy pleasure. yea, hang me tomorrow, with my letter to robert round my neck, but let the boy go." "'be still," said de aquila. "i think for england." 'so we waited what our lord of pevensey should devise; and the sweat ran down fulke's forehead. 'at last said de aquila: "i am too old to judge, or to trust any man. i do not covet thy lands, as thou hast coveted mine; and whether thou art any better or any worse than any other black angevin thief, it is for thy king to find out. therefore, go back to thy king, fulke." "'and thou wilt say nothing of what has passed?" said fulke. "'why should i? thy son will stay with me. if the king calls me again to leave pevensey, which i must guard against england's enemies; if the king sends his men against me for a traitor; or if i hear that the king in his bed thinks any evil of me or my two knights, thy son will be hanged from out this window, fulke."' 'but it hadn't anything to do with his son,' cried una, startled. 'how could we have hanged fulke?' said sir richard. 'we needed him to make our peace with the king. he would have betrayed half england for the boy's sake. of that we were sure.' 'i don't understand,' said una. 'but i think it was simply awful.' 'so did not fulke. he was well pleased.' 'what? because his son was going to be killed?' 'nay. because de aquila had shown him how he might save the boy's life and his own lands and honours. "i will do it," he said. "i swear i will do it. i will tell the king thou art no traitor, but the most excellent, valiant, and perfect of us all. yes, i will save thee." 'de aquila looked still into the bottom of the cup, rolling the wine-dregs to and fro. "'ay," he said. "if i had a son, i would, i think, save him. but do not by any means tell me how thou wilt go about it." "'nay, nay," said fulke, nodding his bald head wisely. "that is my secret. but rest at ease, de aquila, no hair of thy head nor rood of thy land shall be forfeited," and he smiled like one planning great good deeds. "'and henceforward," said de aquila, "i counsel thee to serve one master--not two." "'what?" said fulke. "can i work no more honest trading between the two sides these troublous times?" "'serve robert or the king--england or normandy," said de aquila. "i care not which it is, but make thy choice here and now." "'the king, then," said fulke, "for i see he is better served than robert. shall i swear it?" "'no need," said de aquila, and he laid his hand on the parchments which gilbert had written. "it shall be some part of my gilbert's penance to copy out the savoury tale of thy life, till we have made ten, twenty, an hundred, maybe, copies. how many cattle, think you, would the bishop of tours give for that tale? or thy brother? or the monks of blois? minstrels will turn it into songs which thy own saxon serfs shall sing behind their plough-stilts, and men-at-arms riding through thy norman towns. from here to rome, fulke, men will make very merry over that tale, and how fulke told it, hanging in a well, like a drowned puppy. this shall be thy punishment, if ever i find thee double-dealing with thy king any more. meantime, the parchments stay here with thy son. him i will return to thee when thou hast made my peace with the king. the parchments never." 'fulke hid his face and groaned. "'bones of the saints!" said de aquila, laughing. "the pen cuts deep. i could never have fetched that grunt out of thee with any sword." "'but so long as i do not anger thee, my tale will be secret?" said fulke. "'just so long. does that comfort thee, fulke?" said de aquila. "'what other comfort have ye left me?" he said, and of a sudden he wept hopelessly like a child, dropping his face on his knees.' 'poor fulke,' said una. 'i pitied him also,' said sir richard. "'after the spur, corn," said de aquila, and he threw fulke three wedges of gold that he had taken from our little chest by the bedplace. "'if i had known this," said fulke, catching his breath, "i would never have lifted hand against pevensey. only lack of this yellow stuff has made me so unlucky in my dealings." 'it was dawn then, and they stirred in the great hall below. we sent down fulke's mail to be scoured, and when he rode away at noon under his own and the king's banner, very splendid and stately did he show. he smoothed his long beard, and called his son to his stirrup and kissed him. de aquila rode with him as far as the new mill landward. we thought the night had been all a dream.' 'but did he make it right with the king?' dan asked. 'about your not being traitors, i mean.' sir richard smiled. 'the king sent no second summons to pevensey, nor did he ask why de aquila had not obeyed the first. yes, that was fulke's work. i know not how he did it, but it was well and swiftly done.' 'then you didn't do anything to his son?' said una. 'the boy? oh, he was an imp! he turned the keep doors out of dortoirs while we had him. he sang foul songs, learned in the barons' camps--poor fool; he set the hounds fighting in hall; he lit the rushes to drive out, as he said, the fleas; he drew his dagger on jehan, who threw him down the stairway for it; and he rode his horse through crops and among sheep. but when we had beaten him, and showed him wolf and deer, he followed us old men like a young, eager hound, and called us "uncle". his father came the summer's end to take him away, but the boy had no lust to go, because of the otter-hunting, and he stayed on till the fox-hunting. i gave him a bittern's claw to bring him good luck at shooting. an imp, if ever there was!' 'and what happened to gilbert?' said dan. 'not even a whipping. de aquila said he would sooner a clerk, however false, that knew the manor-roll than a fool, however true, that must be taught his work afresh. moreover, after that night i think gilbert loved as much as he feared de aquila. at least he would not leave us--not even when vivian, the king's clerk, would have made him sacristan of battle abbey. a false fellow, but, in his fashion, bold.' 'did robert ever land in pevensey after all?' dan went on. 'we guarded the coast too well while henry was fighting his barons; and three or four years later, when england had peace, henry crossed to normandy and showed his brother some work at tenchebrai that cured robert of fighting. many of henry's men sailed from pevensey to that war. fulke came, i remember, and we all four lay in the little chamber once again, and drank together. de aquila was right. one should not judge men. fulke was merry. yes, always merry--with a catch in his breath.' 'and what did you do afterwards?' said una. 'we talked together of times past. that is all men can do when they grow old, little maid.' the bell for tea rang faintly across the meadows. dan lay in the bows of the golden hind; una in the stern, the book of verses open in her lap, was reading from 'the slave's dream': 'again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, he saw his native land.' 'i don't know when you began that,' said dan, sleepily. on the middle thwart of the boat, beside una's sun-bonnet, lay an oak leaf, an ash leaf, and a thorn leaf, that must have dropped down from the trees above; and the brook giggled as though it had just seen some joke. the runes on weland's sword a smith makes me to betray my man in my first fight. to gather gold at the world's end i am sent. the gold i gather comes into england out of deep water. like a shining fish then it descends into deep water. it is not given for goods or gear, but for the thing. the gold i gather a king covets for an ill use. the gold i gather is drawn up out of deep water. like a shining fish then it descends into deep water. it is not given for goods or gear, but for the thing. a centurion of the thirtieth cities and thrones and powers stand in time's eye, almost as long as flowers, which daily die. but, as new buds put forth to glad new men, out of the spent and unconsidered earth the cities rise again. this season's daffodil, she never hears what change, what chance, what chill, cut down last year's: but with bold countenance, and knowledge small, esteems her seven days' continuance to be perpetual. so time that is o'er-kind to all that be, ordains us e'en as blind, as bold as she: that in our very death, and burial sure, shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith, 'see how our works endure!' dan had come to grief over his latin, and was kept in; so una went alone to far wood. dan's big catapult and the lead bullets that hobden had made for him were hidden in an old hollow beech-stub on the west of the wood. they had named the place out of the verse in lays of ancient rome: from lordly volaterrae, where scowls the far-famed hold piled by the hands of giants for godlike kings of old. they were the 'godlike kings', and when old hobden piled some comfortable brushwood between the big wooden knees of volaterrae, they called him 'hands of giants'. una slipped through their private gap in the fence, and sat still awhile, scowling as scowlily and lordlily as she knew how; for volaterrae is an important watch-tower that juts out of far wood just as far wood juts out of the hillside. pook's hill lay below her and all the turns of the brook as it wanders out of the willingford woods, between hop-gardens, to old hobden's cottage at the forge. the sou'-west wind (there is always a wind by volaterrae) blew from the bare ridge where cherry clack windmill stands. now wind prowling through woods sounds like exciting things going to happen, and that is why on blowy days you stand up in volaterrae and shout bits of the lays to suit its noises. una took dan's catapult from its secret place, and made ready to meet lars porsena's army stealing through the wind-whitened aspens by the brook. a gust boomed up the valley, and una chanted sorrowfully: 'verbenna down to ostia hath wasted all the plain: astur hath stormed janiculum, and the stout guards are slain.' but the wind, not charging fair to the wood, started aside and shook a single oak in gleason's pasture. here it made itself all small and crouched among the grasses, waving the tips of them as a cat waves the tip of her tail before she springs. 'now welcome--welcome, sextus,' sang una, loading the catapult-- 'now welcome to thy home! why dost thou stay, and turn away? here lies the road to rome.' she fired into the face of the lull, to wake up the cowardly wind, and heard a grunt from behind a thorn in the pasture. 'oh, my winkie!' she said aloud, and that was something she had picked up from dan. 'i b'lieve i've tickled up a gleason cow.' 'you little painted beast!' a voice cried. 'i'll teach you to sling your masters!' she looked down most cautiously, and saw a young man covered with hoopy bronze armour all glowing among the late broom. but what una admired beyond all was his great bronze helmet with a red horse-tail that flicked in the wind. she could hear the long hairs rasp on his shimmery shoulder-plates. 'what does the faun mean,' he said, half aloud to himself, 'by telling me that the painted people have changed?' he caught sight of una's yellow head. 'have you seen a painted lead-slinger?' he called. 'no-o,' said una. 'but if you've seen a bullet--' 'seen?' cried the man. 'it passed within a hair's--breadth of my ear.' 'well, that was me. i'm most awfully sorry.' 'didn't the faun tell you i was coming?' he smiled. 'not if you mean puck. i thought you were a gleason cow. i--i didn't know you were a--a--what are you?' he laughed outright, showing a set of splendid teeth. his face and eyes were dark, and his eyebrows met above his big nose in one bushy black bar. 'they call me parnesius. i have been a centurion of the seventh cohort of the thirtieth legion--the ulpia victrix. did you sling that bullet?' 'i did. i was using dan's catapult,' said una. 'catapults!' said he. 'i ought to know something about them. show me!' he leaped the rough fence with a rattle of spear, shield, and armour, and hoisted himself into volaterrae as quickly as a shadow. 'a sling on a forked stick. i understand!' he cried, and pulled at the elastic. 'but what wonderful beast yields this stretching leather?' 'it's laccy--elastic. you put the bullet into that loop, and then you pull hard.' the man pulled, and hit himself square on his thumbnail. 'each to his own weapon,' he said gravely, handing it back. 'i am better with the bigger machine, little maiden. but it's a pretty toy. a wolf would laugh at it. aren't you afraid of wolves?' 'there aren't any,' said una. 'never believe it! a wolf's like a winged hat. he comes when he isn't expected. don't they hunt wolves here?' 'we don't hunt,'said una, remembering what she had heard from grown-ups. 'we preserve--pheasants. do you know them?' 'i ought to,' said the young man, smiling again, and he imitated the cry of the cock-pheasant so perfectly that a bird answered out of the wood. 'what a big painted clucking fool is a pheasant!' he said. 'just like some romans.' 'but you're a roman yourself, aren't you?' said una. 'ye-es and no. i'm one of a good few thousands who have never seen rome except in a picture. my people have lived at vectis for generations. vectis--that island west yonder that you can see from so far in clear weather.' 'do you mean the isle of wight? it lifts up just before rain, and you see it from the downs.' 'very likely. our villa's on the south edge of the island, by the broken cliffs. most of it is three hundred years old, but the cow-stables, where our first ancestor lived, must be a hundred years older. oh, quite that, because the founder of our family had his land given him by agricola at the settlement. it's not a bad little place for its size. in springtime violets grow down to the very beach. i've gathered sea-weeds for myself and violets for my mother many a time with our old nurse.' 'was your nurse a--a romaness too?' 'no, a numidian. gods be good to her! a dear, fat, brown thing with a tongue like a cowbell. she was a free woman. by the way, are you free, maiden?' 'oh, quite,' said una. 'at least, till tea-time; and in summer our governess doesn't say much if we're late.' the young man laughed again--a proper understanding laugh. 'i see,' said he. 'that accounts for your being in the wood. we hid among the cliffs.' 'did you have a governess, then?' 'did we not? a greek, too. she had a way of clutching her dress when she hunted us among the gorse-bushes that made us laugh. then she'd say she'd get us whipped. she never did, though, bless her! aglaia was a thorough sportswoman, for all her learning.' 'but what lessons did you do--when--when you were little?' 'ancient history, the classics, arithmetic and so on,'he answered. 'my sister and i were thickheads, but my two brothers (i'm the middle one) liked those things, and, of course, mother was clever enough for any six. she was nearly as tall as i am, and she looked like the new statue on the western road--the demeter of the baskets, you know. and funny! roma dea! how mother could make us laugh!' 'what at?' 'little jokes and sayings that every family has. don't you know?' 'i know we have, but i didn't know other people had them too,' said una. 'tell me about all your family, please.' 'good families are very much alike. mother would sit spinning of evenings while aglaia read in her corner, and father did accounts, and we four romped about the passages. when our noise grew too loud the pater would say, "less tumult! less tumult! have you never heard of a father's right over his children? he can slay them, my loves--slay them dead, and the gods highly approve of the action!" then mother would prim up her dear mouth over the wheel and answer: "h'm! i'm afraid there can't be much of the roman father about you!" then the pater would roll up his accounts, and say, "i'll show you!" and then--then, he'd be worse than any of us!' 'fathers can--if they like,' said una, her eyes dancing. 'didn't i say all good families are very much the same?' 'what did you do in summer?' said una. 'play about, like us?' 'yes, and we visited our friends. there are no wolves in vectis. we had many friends, and as many ponies as we wished.' 'it must have been lovely,' said una. 'i hope it lasted for ever.' 'not quite, little maid. when i was about sixteen or seventeen, the father felt gouty, and we all went to the waters.' 'what waters?' 'at aquae sulis. every one goes there. you ought to get your father to take you some day.' 'but where? i don't know,' said una. the young man looked astonished for a moment. 'aquae sulis,' he repeated. 'the best baths in britain. just as good, i'm told, as rome. all the old gluttons sit in hot water, and talk scandal and politics. and the generals come through the streets with their guards behind them; and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and goldsmiths, and merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, and ultra-roman britons, and ultra-british romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be civilised, and jew lecturers, and--oh, everybody interesting. we young people, of course, took no interest in politics. we had not the gout. there were many of our age like us. we did not find life sad. 'but while we were enjoying ourselves without thinking, my sister met the son of a magistrate in the west--and a year afterwards she was married to him. my young brother, who was always interested in plants and roots, met the first doctor of a legion from the city of the legions, and he decided that he would be an army doctor. i do not think it is a profession for a well-born man, but then--i'm not my brother. he went to rome to study medicine, and now he's first doctor of a legion in egypt--at antinoe, i think, but i have not heard from him for some time. 'my eldest brother came across a greek philosopher, and told my father that he intended to settle down on the estate as a farmer and a philosopher. you see,'--the young man's eyes twinkled--'his philosopher was a long-haired one!' 'i thought philosophers were bald,' said una. 'not all. she was very pretty. i don't blame him. nothing could have suited me better than my eldest brother's doing this, for i was only too keen to join the army. i had always feared i should have to stay at home and look after the estate while my brother took this.' he rapped on his great glistening shield that never seemed to be in his way. 'so we were well contented--we young people--and we rode back to clausentum along the wood road very quietly. but when we reached home, aglaia, our governess, saw what had come to us. i remember her at the door, the torch over her head, watching us climb the cliff-path from the boat. "aie! aie!" she said. "children you went away. men and a woman you return!" then she kissed mother, and mother wept. thus our visit to the waters settled our fates for each of us, maiden.' he rose to his feet and listened, leaning on the shield-rim. 'i think that's dan--my brother,' said una. 'yes; and the faun is with him,'he replied, as dan with puck stumbled through the copse. 'we should have come sooner,' puck called, 'but the beauties of your native tongue, o parnesius, have enthralled this young citizen.' parnesius looked bewildered, even when una explained. 'dan said the plural of "dominus" was "dominoes", and when miss blake said it wasn't he said he supposed it was "backgammon", and so he had to write it out twice--for cheek, you know.' dan had climbed into volaterrae, hot and panting. 'i've run nearly all the way,'he gasped, 'and then puck met me. how do you do, sir?' 'i am in good health,' parnesius answered. 'see! i have tried to bend the bow of ulysses, but--' he held up his thumb. 'i'm sorry. you must have pulled off too soon,' said dan. 'but puck said you were telling una a story.' 'continue, o parnesius,' said puck, who had perched himself on a dead branch above them. 'i will be chorus. has he puzzled you much, una?' 'not a bit, except--i didn't know where ak--ak something was,' she answered. 'oh, aquae sulis. that's bath, where the buns come from. let the hero tell his own tale.' parnesius pretended to thrust his spear at puck's legs, but puck reached down, caught at the horse-tail plume, and pulled off the tall helmet. 'thanks, jester,' said parnesius, shaking his curly dark head. 'that is cooler. now hang it up for me. 'i was telling your sister how i joined the army,' he said to dan. 'did you have to pass an exam?' dan asked eagerly. 'no. i went to my father, and said i should like to enter the dacian horse (i had seen some at aquae sulis); but he said i had better begin service in a regular legion from rome. now, like many of our youngsters, i was not too fond of anything roman. the roman-born officers and magistrates looked down on us british-born as though we were barbarians. i told my father so. "'i know they do," he said; "but remember, after all, we are the people of the old stock, and our duty is to the empire." "'to which empire?" i asked. "we split the eagle before i was born." "'what thieves' talk is that?" said my father. he hated slang. "'well, sir," i said, "we've one emperor in rome, and i don't know how many emperors the outlying provinces have set up from time to time. which am i to follow?" "'gratian," said he. "at least he's a sportsman." "'he's all that," i said. "hasn't he turned himself into a raw-beef-eating scythian?" "'where did you hear of it?" said the pater. "'at aquae sulis," i said. it was perfectly true. this precious emperor gratian of ours had a bodyguard of fur-cloaked scythians, and he was so crazy about them that he dressed like them. in rome of all places in the world! it was as bad as if my own father had painted himself blue! "'no matter for the clothes," said the pater. "they are only the fringe of the trouble. it began before your time or mine. rome has forsaken her gods, and must be punished. the great war with the painted people broke out in the very year the temples of our gods were destroyed. we beat the painted people in the very year our temples were rebuilt. go back further still." he went back to the time of diocletian; and to listen to him you would have thought eternal rome herself was on the edge of destruction, just because a few people had become a little large-minded. 'i knew nothing about it. aglaia never taught us the history of our own country. she was so full of her ancient greeks. "'there is no hope for rome," said the pater, at last. "she has forsaken her gods, but if the gods forgive us here, we may save britain. to do that, we must keep the painted people back. therefore, i tell you, parnesius, as a father, that if your heart is set on service, your place is among men on the wall--and not with women among the cities."' 'what wall?' asked dan and una at once. 'father meant the one we call hadrian's wall. i'll tell you about it later. it was built long ago, across north britain, to keep out the painted people--picts, you call them. father had fought in the great pict war that lasted more than twenty years, and he knew what fighting meant. theodosius, one of our great generals, had chased the little beasts back far into the north before i was born. down at vectis, of course, we never troubled our heads about them. but when my father spoke as he did, i kissed his hand, and waited for orders. we british-born romans know what is due to our parents.' 'if i kissed my father's hand, he'd laugh,' said dan. 'customs change; but if you do not obey your father, the gods remember it. you may be quite sure of that. 'after our talk, seeing i was in earnest, the pater sent me over to clausentum to learn my foot-drill in a barrack full of foreign auxiliaries--as unwashed and unshaved a mob of mixed barbarians as ever scrubbed a breastplate. it was your stick in their stomachs and your shield in their faces to push them into any sort of formation. when i had learned my work the instructor gave me a handful--and they were a handful!---of gauls and iberians to polish up till they were sent to their stations up-country. i did my best, and one night a villa in the suburbs caught fire, and i had my handful out and at work before any of the other troops. i noticed a quiet-looking man on the lawn, leaning on a stick. he watched us passing buckets from the pond, and at last he said to me: "who are you?" "'a probationer, waiting for a command," i answered. i didn't know who he was from deucalion! "'born in britain?" he said. "'yes, if you were born in spain," i said, for he neighed his words like an iberian mule. "'and what might you call yourself when you are at home?" he said, laughing. "'that depends," i answered; "sometimes one thing and sometimes another. but now i'm busy." 'he said no more till we had saved the family gods (they were respectable householders), and then he grunted across the laurels: "listen, young sometimes-one-thing-and-sometimes-another. in future call yourself centurion of the seventh cohort of the thirtieth, the ulpia victrix. that will help me to remember you. your father and a few other people call me maximus." 'he tossed me the polished stick he was leaning on, and went away. you might have knocked me down with it!' 'who was he?' said dan. 'maximus himself, our great general! the general of britain who had been theodosius's right hand in the pict war! not only had he given me my centurion's stick direct, but three steps in a good legion as well! a new man generally begins in the tenth cohort of his legion, and works up.' 'and were you pleased?' said una. 'very. i thought maximus had chosen me for my good looks and fine style in marching, but, when i went home, the pater told me he had served under maximus in the great pict war, and had asked him to befriend me.' 'a child you were!' said puck, from above. 'i was,' said parnesius. 'don't begrudge it me, faun. afterwards--the gods know i put aside the games!' and puck nodded, brown chin on brown hand, his big eyes still. 'the night before i left we sacrificed to our ancestors--the usual little home sacrifice--but i never prayed so earnestly to all the good shades, and then i went with my father by boat to regnum, and across the chalk eastwards to anderida yonder.' 'regnum? anderida?' the children turned their faces to puck. 'regnum's chichester,' he said, pointing towards cherry clack, 'and'--he threw his arm south behind him--'anderida's pevensey.' 'pevensey again!' said dan. 'where weland landed?' 'weland and a few others,' said puck. 'pevensey isn't young--even compared to me!' 'the headquarters of the thirtieth lay at anderida in summer, but my own cohort, the seventh, was on the wall up north. maximus was inspecting auxiliaries--the abulci, i think--at anderida, and we stayed with him, for he and my father were very old friends. i was only there ten days when i was ordered to go up with thirty men to my cohort.' he laughed merrily. 'a man never forgets his first march. i was happier than any emperor when i led my handful through the north gate of the camp, and we saluted the guard and the altar of victory there.' 'how? how?' said dan and una. parnesius smiled, and stood up, flashing in his armour. 'so!' said he; and he moved slowly through the beautiful movements of the roman salute, that ends with a hollow clang of the shield coming into its place between the shoulders. 'hai!' said puck. 'that sets one thinking!' 'we went out fully armed,' said parnesius, sitting down; 'but as soon as the road entered the great forest, my men expected the pack-horses to hang their shields on. "no!" i said; "you can dress like women in anderida, but while you're with me you will carry your own weapons and armour." "'but it's hot," said one of them, "and we haven't a doctor. suppose we get sunstroke, or a fever?" "'then die," i said, "and a good riddance to rome! up shield--up spears, and tighten your foot-wear!" "'don't think yourself emperor of britain already," a fellow shouted. i knocked him over with the butt of my spear, and explained to these roman-born romans that, if there were any further trouble, we should go on with one man short. and, by the light of the sun, i meant it too! my raw gauls at clausentum had never treated me so. 'then, quietly as a cloud, maximus rode out of the fern (my father behind him), and reined up across the road. he wore the purple, as though he were already emperor; his leggings were of white buckskin laced with gold. 'my men dropped like--like partridges. 'he said nothing for some time, only looked, with his eyes puckered. then he crooked his forefinger, and my men walked--crawled, i mean--to one side. "'stand in the sun, children," he said, and they formed up on the hard road. "'what would you have done," he said to me, "if i had not been here?" "'i should have killed that man," i answered. "'kill him now," he said. "he will not move a limb." "'no," i said. "you've taken my men out of my command. i should only be your butcher if i killed him now." do you see what i meant?' parnesius turned to dan. 'yes,'said dan. 'it wouldn't have been fair, somehow.' 'that was what i thought,' said parnesius. 'but maximus frowned. "you'll never be an emperor," he said. "not even a general will you be." 'i was silent, but my father seemed pleased. "'i came here to see the last of you," he said. "'you have seen it," said maximus. "i shall never need your son any more. he will live and he will die an officer of a legion--and he might have been prefect of one of my provinces. now eat and drink with us," he said. "your men will wait till you have finished." 'my miserable thirty stood like wine-skins glistening in the hot sun, and maximus led us to where his people had set a meal. himself he mixed the wine. "'a year from now," he said, "you will remember that you have sat with the emperor of britain--and gaul." "'yes," said the pater, "you can drive two mules--gaul and britain." "'five years hence you will remember that you have drunk"--he passed me the cup and there was blue borage in it--"with the emperor of rome!" "'no; you can't drive three mules. they will tear you in pieces," said my father. "'and you on the wall, among the heather, will weep because your notion of justice was more to you than the favour of the emperor of rome." 'i sat quite still. one does not answer a general who wears the purple. "'i am not angry with you," he went on; "i owe too much to your father--" "'you owe me nothing but advice that you never took," said the pater. "'--to be unjust to any of your family. indeed, i say you may make a good tribune, but, so far as i am concerned, on the wall you will live, and on the wall you will die," said maximus. "'very like," said my father. "but we shall have the picts and their friends breaking through before long. you cannot move all troops out of britain to make you emperor, and expect the north to sit quiet." "'i follow my destiny," said maximus. "'follow it, then," said my father, pulling up a fern root; "and die as theodosius died." "'ah!" said maximus. "my old general was killed because he served the empire too well. i may be killed, but not for that reason," and he smiled a little pale grey smile that made my blood run cold. "'then i had better follow my destiny," i said, "and take my men to the wall." 'he looked at me a long time, and bowed his head slanting like a spaniard. "follow it, boy," he said. that was all. i was only too glad to get away, though i had many messages for home. i found my men standing as they had been put--they had not even shifted their feet in the dust, and off i marched, still feeling that terrific smile like an east wind up my back. i never halted them till sunset, and'--he turned about and looked at pook's hill below him--'then i halted yonder.' he pointed to the broken, bracken-covered shoulder of the forge hill behind old hobden's cottage. 'there? why, that's only the old forge--where they made iron once,' said dan. 'very good stuff it was too,' said parnesius calmly. 'we mended three shoulder-straps here and had a spear-head riveted. the forge was rented from the government by a one-eyed smith from carthage. i remember we called him cyclops. he sold me a beaver-skin rug for my sister's room.' 'but it couldn't have been here,' dan insisted. 'but it was! from the altar of victory at anderida to the first forge in the forest here is twelve miles seven hundred paces. it is all in the road book. a man doesn't forget his first march. i think i could tell you every station between this and--! he leaned forward, but his eye was caught by the setting sun. it had come down to the top of cherry clack hill, and the light poured in between the tree trunks so that you could see red and gold and black deep into the heart of far wood; and parnesius in his armour shone as though he had been afire. 'wait!' he said, lifting a hand, and the sunlight jinked on his glass bracelet. 'wait! i pray to mithras!' he rose and stretched his arms westward, with deep, splendid-sounding words. then puck began to sing too, in a voice like bells tolling, and as he sang he slipped from volaterrae to the ground, and beckoned the children to follow. they obeyed; it seemed as though the voices were pushing them along; and through the goldy-brown light on the beech leaves they walked, while puck between them chanted something like this: 'cur mundus militat sub vana gloria cujus prosperitas est transitoria? tam cito labitur ejus potentia quam vasa figuli quae sunt fragilia.' they found themselves at the little locked gates of the wood. 'quo caesar abiit celsus imperio? vel dives splendidus totus in prandio? dic ubi tullius--' still singing, he took dan's hand and wheeled him round to face una as she came out of the gate. it shut behind her, at the same time as puck threw the memory-magicking oak, ash and thorn leaves over their heads. 'well, you are jolly late,' said una. 'couldn't you get away before?' 'i did,' said dan. 'i got away in lots of time, but--but i didn't know it was so late. where've you been?' 'in volaterrae--waiting for you.' 'sorry,' said dan. 'it was all that beastly latin.' a british-roman song (a.d. ) my father's father saw it not, and i, belike, shall never come to look on that so-holy spot-- the very rome-- crowned by all time, all art, all might, the equal work of gods and man, city beneath whose oldest height-- the race began! soon to send forth again a brood, unshakeable, we pray, that clings to rome's thrice-hammered hardihood-- in arduous things. strong heart with triple armour bound, beat strongly, for thy life-blood runs, age after age, the empire round-- in us thy sons, who, distant from the seven hills, loving and serving much, require thee--thee to guard 'gainst home-born ills the imperial fire! on the great wall 'when i left rome for lalage's sake by the legions' road to rimini, she vowed her heart was mine to take with me and my shield to rimini-- (till the eagles flew from rimini!) and i've tramped britain, and i've tramped gaul, and the pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall as white as the neck of lalage-- (as cold as the heart of lalage!) and i've lost britain, and i've lost gaul,' (the voice seemed very cheerful about it), 'and i've lost rome, and, worst of all, i've lost lalage!' they were standing by the gate to far wood when they heard this song. without a word they hurried to their private gap and wriggled through the hedge almost atop of a jay that was feeding from puck's hand. 'gently!' said puck. 'what are you looking for?' 'parnesius, of course,' dan answered. 'we've only just remembered yesterday. it isn't fair.' puck chuckled as he rose. 'i'm sorry, but children who spend the afternoon with me and a roman centurion need a little settling dose of magic before they go to tea with their governess. ohe, parnesius!' he called. 'here, faun!' came the answer from volaterrae. they could see the shimmer of bronze armour in the beech-crotch, and the friendly flash of the great shield uplifted. 'i have driven out the britons.' parnesius laughed like a boy. 'i occupy their high forts. but rome is merciful! you may come up.'and up they three all scrambled. 'what was the song you were singing just now?' said una, as soon as she had settled herself. 'that? oh, rimini. it's one of the tunes that are always being born somewhere in the empire. they run like a pestilence for six months or a year, till another one pleases the legions, and then they march to that.' 'tell them about the marching, parnesius. few people nowadays walk from end to end of this country,' said puck. 'the greater their loss. i know nothing better than the long march when your feet are hardened. you begin after the mists have risen, and you end, perhaps, an hour after sundown.' 'and what do you have to eat?' dan asked promptly. 'fat bacon, beans, and bread, and whatever wine happens to be in the rest-houses. but soldiers are born grumblers. their very first day out, my men complained of our water-ground british corn. they said it wasn't so filling as the rough stuff that is ground in the roman ox-mills. however, they had to fetch and eat it.' 'fetch it? where from?' said una. 'from that newly invented water-mill below the forge.' 'that's forge mill--our mill!' una looked at puck. 'yes; yours,' puck put in. 'how old did you think it was?' 'i don't know. didn't sir richard dalyngridge talk about it?' 'he did, and it was old in his day,' puck answered. 'hundreds of years old.' 'it was new in mine,' said parnesius. 'my men looked at the flour in their helmets as though it had been a nest of adders. they did it to try my patience. but i--addressed them, and we became friends. to tell the truth, they taught me the roman step. you see, i'd only served with quick-marching auxiliaries. a legion's pace is altogether different. it is a long, slow stride, that never varies from sunrise to sunset. "rome's race--rome's pace," as the proverb says. twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither more nor less. head and spear up, shield on your back, cuirass-collar open one handsbreadth--and that's how you take the eagles through britain.' 'and did you meet any adventures?' said dan. 'there are no adventures south the wall,' said parnesius. 'the worst thing that happened me was having to appear before a magistrate up north, where a wandering philosopher had jeered at the eagles. i was able to show that the old man had deliberately blocked our road; and the magistrate told him, out of his own book, i believe, that, whatever his gods might be, he should pay proper respect to caesar.' 'what did you do?' said dan. 'went on. why should i care for such things, my business being to reach my station? it took me twenty days. 'of course, the farther north you go the emptier are the roads. at last you fetch clear of the forests and climb bare hills, where wolves howl in the ruins of our cities that have been. no more pretty girls; no more jolly magistrates who knew your father when he was young, and invite you to stay with them; no news at the temples and way-stations except bad news of wild beasts. there's where you meet hunters, and trappers for the circuses, prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves. your pony shies at them, and your men laugh. 'the houses change from gardened villas to shut forts with watch-towers of grey stone, and great stone-walled sheepfolds, guarded by armed britons of the north shore. in the naked hills beyond the naked houses, where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry charging, you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. the hard road goes on and on--and the wind sings through your helmet-plume--past altars to legions and generals forgotten, and broken statues of gods and heroes, and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you. red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, is that big, purple heather country of broken stone. 'just when you think you are at the world's end, you see a smoke from east to west as far as the eye can turn, and then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind--always behind--one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. and that is the wall!' 'ah!' said the children, taking breath. 'you may well,' said parnesius. 'old men who have followed the eagles since boyhood say nothing in the empire is more wonderful than first sight of the wall!' 'is it just a wall? like the one round the kitchen-garden?' said dan. 'no, no! it is the wall. along the top are towers with guard-houses, small towers, between. even on the narrowest part of it three men with shields can walk abreast, from guard-house to guard-house. a little curtain wall, no higher than a man's neck, runs along the top of the thick wall, so that from a distance you see the helmets of the sentries sliding back and forth like beads. thirty feet high is the wall, and on the picts' side, the north, is a ditch, strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads set in wood, and tyres of wheels joined by chains. the little people come there to steal iron for their arrow-heads. 'but the wall itself is not more wonderful than the town behind it. long ago there were great ramparts and ditches on the south side, and no one was allowed to build there. now the ramparts are partly pulled down and built over, from end to end of the wall; making a thin town eighty miles long. think of it! one roaring, rioting, cock-fighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from ituna on the west to segedunum on the cold eastern beach! on one side heather, woods and ruins where picts hide, and on the other, a vast town--long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. yes, a snake basking beside a warm wall! 'my cohort, i was told, lay at hunno, where the great north road runs through the wall into the province of valentia.'parnesius laughed scornfully. 'the province of valentia! we followed the road, therefore, into hunno town, and stood astonished. the place was a fair--a fair of peoples from every corner of the empire. some were racing horses: some sat in wine-shops: some watched dogs baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see cocks fight. a boy not much older than myself, but i could see he was an officer, reined up before me and asked what i wanted. "'my station," i said, and showed him my shield.' parnesius held up his broad shield with its three x's like letters on a beer-cask. "'lucky omen!" said he. "your cohort's the next tower to us, but they're all at the cock-fight. this is a happy place. come and wet the eagles." he meant to offer me a drink. "'when i've handed over my men," i said. i felt angry and ashamed. "'oh, you'll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense," he answered. "but don't let me interfere with your hopes. go on to the statue of roma dea. you can't miss it. the main road into valentia!" and he laughed and rode off. i could see the statue not a quarter of a mile away, and there i went. at some time or other the great north road ran under it into valentia; but the far end had been blocked up because of the picts, and on the plaster a man had scratched, "finish!" it was like marching into a cave. we grounded spears together, my little thirty, and it echoed in the barrel of the arch, but none came. there was a door at one side painted with our number. we prowled in, and i found a cook asleep, and ordered him to give us food. then i climbed to the top of the wall, and looked out over the pict country, and i--thought,' said parnesius. 'the bricked-up arch with "finish!" on the plaster was what shook me, for i was not much more than a boy.' 'what a shame!'said una. 'but did you feel happy after you'd had a good--'dan stopped her with a nudge. 'happy?' said parnesius. 'when the men of the cohort i was to command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight, their birds under their arms, and asked me who i was? no, i was not happy; but i made my new cohort unhappy too... i wrote my mother i was happy, but, oh, my friends'--he stretched arms over bare knees--'i would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as i suffered through my first months on the wall. remember this: among the officers was scarcely one, except myself (and i thought i had lost the favour of maximus, my general), scarcely one who had not done something of wrong or folly. either he had killed a man, or taken money, or insulted the magistrates, or blasphemed the gods, and so had been sent to the wall as a hiding-place from shame or fear. and the men were as the officers. remember, also, that the wall was manned by every breed and race in the empire. no two towers spoke the same tongue, or worshipped the same gods. in one thing only we were all equal. no matter what arms we had used before we came to the wall, on the wall we were all archers, like the scythians. the pict cannot run away from the arrow, or crawl under it. he is a bowman himself. he knows!' 'i suppose you were fighting picts all the time,' said dan. 'picts seldom fight. i never saw a fighting pict for half a year. the tame picts told us they had all gone north.' 'what is a tame pict?' said dan. 'a pict--there were many such--who speaks a few words of our tongue, and slips across the wall to sell ponies and wolf-hounds. without a horse and a dog, and a friend, man would perish. the gods gave me all three, and there is no gift like friendship. remember this'--parnesius turned to dan--'when you become a young man. for your fate will turn on the first true friend you make.' 'he means,' said puck, grinning, 'that if you try to make yourself a decent chap when you're young, you'll make rather decent friends when you grow up. if you're a beast, you'll have beastly friends. listen to the pious parnesius on friendship!' 'i am not pious,'parnesius answered, 'but i know what goodness means; and my friend, though he was without hope, was ten thousand times better than i. stop laughing, faun!' 'oh, youth eternal and all-believing,' cried puck, as he rocked on the branch above. 'tell them about your pertinax.' 'he was that friend the gods sent me--the boy who spoke to me when i first came. little older than myself, commanding the augusta victoria cohort on the tower next to us and the numidians. in virtue he was far my superior.' 'then why was he on the wall?' una asked, quickly. 'they'd all done something bad. you said so yourself.' 'he was the nephew, his father had died, of a great rich man in gaul who was not always kind to his mother. when pertinax grew up, he discovered this, and so his uncle shipped him off, by trickery and force, to the wall. we came to know each other at a ceremony in our temple in the dark. it was the bull-killing,'parnesius explained to puck. 'i see, said puck, and turned to the children. 'that's something you wouldn't quite understand. parnesius means he met pertinax in church.' 'yes--in the cave we first met, and we were both raised to the degree of gryphons together.' parnesius lifted his hand towards his neck for an instant. 'he had been on the wall two years, and knew the picts well. he taught me first how to take heather.' 'what's that?' said dan. 'going out hunting in the pict country with a tame pict. you are quite safe so long as you are his guest, and wear a sprig of heather where it can be seen. if you went alone you would surely be killed, if you were not smothered first in the bogs. only the picts know their way about those black and hidden bogs. old allo, the one-eyed, withered little pict from whom we bought our ponies, was our special friend. at first we went only to escape from the terrible town, and to talk together about our homes. then he showed us how to hunt wolves and those great red deer with horns like jewish candlesticks. the roman-born officers rather looked down on us for doing this, but we preferred the heather to their amusements. believe me,' parnesius turned again to dan, 'a boy is safe from all things that really harm when he is astride a pony or after a deer. do you remember, o faun,'--he turned to puck--'the little altar i built to the sylvan pan by the pine-forest beyond the brook?' 'which? the stone one with the line from xenophon?' said puck, in quite a new voice. 'no! what do i know of xenophon? that was pertinax--after he had shot his first mountain-hare with an arrow--by chance! mine i made of round pebbles, in memory of my first bear. it took me one happy day to build.' parnesius faced the children quickly. 'and that was how we lived on the wall for two years--a little scuffling with the picts, and a great deal of hunting with old allo in the pict country. he called us his children sometimes, and we were fond of him and his barbarians, though we never let them paint us pict-fashion. the marks endure till you die.' 'how's it done?' said dan. 'anything like tattooing?' 'they prick the skin till the blood runs, and rub in coloured juices. allo was painted blue, green, and red from his forehead to his ankles. he said it was part of his religion. he told us about his religion (pertinax was always interested in such things), and as we came to know him well, he told us what was happening in britain behind the wall. many things took place behind us in those days. and by the light of the sun,' said parnesius, earnestly, 'there was not much that those little people did not know! he told me when maximus crossed over to gaul, after he had made himself emperor of britain, and what troops and emigrants he had taken with him. we did not get the news on the wall till fifteen days later. he told me what troops maximus was taking out of britain every month to help him to conquer gaul; and i always found the numbers were as he said. wonderful! and i tell another strange thing!' he joined his hands across his knees, and leaned his head on the curve of the shield behind him. 'late in the summer, when the first frosts begin and the picts kill their bees, we three rode out after wolf with some new hounds. rutilianus, our general, had given us ten days' leave, and we had pushed beyond the second wall--beyond the province of valentia--into the higher hills, where there are not even any of old rome's ruins. we killed a she-wolf before noon, and while allo was skinning her he looked up and said to me, "when you are captain of the wall, my child, you won't be able to do this any more!" 'i might as well have been made prefect of lower gaul, so i laughed and said, "wait till i am captain." "'no, don't wait," said allo. "take my advice and go home--both of you." "'we have no homes," said pertinax. "you know that as well as we do. we're finished men--thumbs down against both of us. only men without hope would risk their necks on your ponies." the old man laughed one of those short pict laughs--like a fox barking on a frosty night. "i'm fond of you two," he said. "besides, i've taught you what little you know about hunting. take my advice and go home." "'we can't," i said. "i'm out of favour with my general, for one thing; and for another, pertinax has an uncle." "'i don't know about his uncle," said allo, "but the trouble with you, parnesius, is that your general thinks well of you." "'roma dea!" said pertinax, sitting up. "what can you guess what maximus thinks, you old horse-coper?" 'just then (you know how near the brutes creep when one is eating?) a great dog-wolf jumped out behind us, and away our rested hounds tore after him, with us at their tails. he ran us far out of any country we'd ever heard of, straight as an arrow till sunset, towards the sunset. we came at last to long capes stretching into winding waters, and on a grey beach below us we saw ships drawn up. forty-seven we counted--not roman galleys but the raven-winged ships from the north where rome does not rule. men moved in the ships, and the sun flashed on their helmets--winged helmets of the red-haired men from the north where rome does not rule. we watched, and we counted, and we wondered, for though we had heard rumours concerning these winged hats, as the picts called them, never before had we looked upon them. "'come away! come away!" said allo. "my heather won't protect you here. we shall all be killed!" his legs trembled like his voice. back we went--back across the heather under the moon, till it was nearly morning, and our poor beasts stumbled on some ruins. 'when we woke, very stiff and cold, allo was mixing the meal and water. one does not light fires in the pict country except near a village. the little men are always signalling to each other with smokes, and a strange smoke brings them out buzzing like bees. they can sting, too! "'what we saw last night was a trading-station," said allo. "nothing but a trading-station." "'i do not like lies on an empty stomach," said pertinax. "i suppose" (he had eyes like an eagle's)--"i suppose that is a trading-station also?" he pointed to a smoke far off on a hill-top, ascending in what we call the picts' call:---puff--double-puff: double-puff--puff! they make it by raising and dropping a wet hide on a fire. "'no," said allo, pushing the platter back into the bag. "that is for you and me. your fate is fixed. come." 'we came. when one takes heather, one must obey one's pict--but that wretched smoke was twenty miles distant, well over on the east coast, and the day was as hot as a bath. "'whatever happens," said allo, while our ponies grunted along, "i want you to remember me." "'i shall not forget," said pertinax. "you have cheated me out of my breakfast." "what is a handful of crushed oats to a roman?" he said. then he laughed his laugh that was not a laugh. "what would you do if you were a handful of oats being crushed between the upper and lower stones of a mill?" "'i'm pertinax, not a riddle-guesser," said pertinax. "'you're a fool," said allo. "your gods and my gods are threatened by strange gods, and all you can do is to laugh." "'threatened men live long," i said. "'i pray the gods that may be true," he said. "but i ask you again not to forget me." 'we climbed the last hot hill and looked out on the eastern sea, three or four miles off. there was a small sailing-galley of the north gaul pattern at anchor, her landing-plank down and her sail half up; and below us, alone in a hollow, holding his pony, sat maximus, emperor of britain! he was dressed like a hunter, and he leaned on his little stick; but i knew that back as far as i could see it, and i told pertinax. "'you're madder than allo!" he said. "it must be the sun!" 'maximus never stirred till we stood before him. then he looked me up and down, and said: "hungry again? it seems to be my destiny to feed you whenever we meet. i have food here. allo shall cook it." "'no," said allo. "a prince in his own land does not wait on wandering emperors. i feed my two children without asking your leave." he began to blow up the ashes. "'i was wrong," said pertinax. "we are all mad. speak up, o madman called emperor!" 'maximus smiled his terrible tight-lipped smile, but two years on the wall do not make a man afraid of mere looks. so i was not afraid. "'i meant you, parnesius, to live and die a centurion of the wall," said maximus. "but it seems from these,"--he fumbled in his breast--"you can think as well as draw." he pulled out a roll of letters i had written to my people, full of drawings of picts, and bears, and men i had met on the wall. mother and my sister always liked my pictures. 'he handed me one that i had called "maximus's soldiers". it showed a row of fat wine-skins, and our old doctor of the hunno hospital snuffing at them. each time that maximus had taken troops out of britain to help him to conquer gaul, he used to send the garrisons more wine--to keep them quiet, i suppose. on the wall, we always called a wine-skin a "maximus". oh, yes; and i had drawn them in imperial helmets. "'not long since," he went on, "men's names were sent up to caesar for smaller jokes than this." "'true, caesar," said pertinax; "but you forget that was before i, your friend's friend, became such a good spear-thrower." 'he did not actually point his hunting-spear at maximus, but balanced it on his palm--so! "'i was speaking of time past," said maximus, never fluttering an eyelid. "nowadays one is only too pleased to find boys who can think for themselves, and their friends." he nodded at pertinax. "your father lent me the letters, parnesius, so you run no risk from me." "'none whatever," said pertinax, and rubbed the spear-point on his sleeve. "'i have been forced to reduce the garrisons in britain, because i need troops in gaul. now i come to take troops from the wall itself," said he. "'i wish you joy of us," said pertinax. "we're the last sweepings of the empire--the men without hope. myself, i'd sooner trust condemned criminals." "'you think so?" he said, quite seriously. "but it will only be till i win gaul. one must always risk one's life, or one's soul, or one's peace--or some little thing." 'allo passed round the fire with the sizzling deer's meat. he served us two first. "'ah!" said maximus, waiting his turn. "i perceive you are in your own country. well, you deserve it. they tell me you have quite a following among the picts, parnesius." "'i have hunted with them," i said. "maybe i have a few friends among the heather." "'he is the only armoured man of you all who understands us," said allo, and he began a long speech about our virtues, and how we had saved one of his grandchildren from a wolf the year before.' 'had you?' said una. 'yes; but that was neither here nor there. the little green man orated like a--like cicero. he made us out to be magnificent fellows. maximus never took his eyes off our faces. "'enough," he said. "i have heard allo on you. i wish to hear you on the picts." 'i told him as much as i knew, and pertinax helped me out. there is never harm in a pict if you but take the trouble to find out what he wants. their real grievance against us came from our burning their heather. the whole garrison of the wall moved out twice a year, and solemnly burned the heather for ten miles north. rutilianus, our general, called it clearing the country. the picts, of course, scampered away, and all we did was to destroy their bee-bloom in the summer, and ruin their sheep-food in the spring. "'true, quite true," said allo. "how can we make our holy heather-wine, if you burn our bee-pasture?" 'we talked long, maximus asking keen questions that showed he knew much and had thought more about the picts. he said presently to me: "if i gave you the old province of valentia to govern, could you keep the picts contented till i won gaul? stand away, so that you do not see allo's face; and speak your own thoughts." "'no," i said. "you cannot remake that province. the picts have been free too long." "'leave them their village councils, and let them furnish their own soldiers," he said. "you, i am sure, would hold the reins very lightly." "even then, no," i said. "at least not now. they have been too oppressed by us to trust anything with a roman name for years and years." 'i heard old allo behind me mutter: "good child!" "'then what do you recommend," said maximus, "to keep the north quiet till i win gaul?" "'leave the picts alone," i said. "stop the heather-burning at once, and--they are improvident little animals--send them a shipload or two of corn now and then." "'their own men must distribute it--not some cheating greek accountant," said pertinax. "'yes, and allow them to come to our hospitals when they are sick," i said. "'surely they would die first," said maximus. "'not if parnesius brought them in," said allo. "i could show you twenty wolf-bitten, bear-clawed picts within twenty miles of here. but parnesius must stay with them in hospital, else they would go mad with fear." "'i see," said maximus. "like everything else in the world, it is one man's work. you, i think, are that one man." "'pertinax and i are one," i said. "'as you please, so long as you work. now, allo, you know that i mean your people no harm. leave us to talk together," said maximus. "'no need!" said allo. "i am the corn between the upper and lower millstones. i must know what the lower millstone means to do. these boys have spoken the truth as far as they know it. i, a prince, will tell you the rest. i am troubled about the men of the north." he squatted like a hare in the heather, and looked over his shoulder. "'i also," said maximus, "or i should not be here." "'listen," said allo. "long and long ago the winged hats"--he meant the northmen--"came to our beaches and said, 'rome falls! push her down!' we fought you. you sent men. we were beaten. after that we said to the winged hats, 'you are liars! make our men alive that rome killed, and we will believe you.' they went away ashamed. now they come back bold, and they tell the old tale, which we begin to believe--that rome falls!" "'give me three years' peace on the wall," cried maximus, "and i will show you and all the ravens how they lie!" "'ah, i wish it too! i wish to save what is left of the corn from the millstones. but you shoot us picts when we come to borrow a little iron from the iron ditch; you burn our heather, which is all our crop; you trouble us with your great catapults. then you hide behind the wall, and scorch us with greek fire. how can i keep my young men from listening to the winged hats--in winter especially, when we are hungry? my young men will say, 'rome can neither fight nor rule. she is taking her men out of britain. the winged hats will help us to push down the wall. let us show them the secret roads across the bogs.' do i want that? no!" he spat like an adder. "i would keep the secrets of my people though i were burned alive. my two children here have spoken truth. leave us picts alone. comfort us, and cherish us, and feed us from far off--with the hand behind the back. parnesius understands us. let him have rule on the wall, and i will hold my young men quiet for"--he ticked it off on his fingers--"one year easily: the next year not so easily: the third year, perhaps! see, i give you three years. if then you do not show us that rome is strong in men and terrible in arms, the winged hats, i tell you, will sweep down the wall from either sea till they meet in the middle, and you will go. i shall not grieve over that, but well i know tribe never helps tribe except for one price. we picts will go too. the winged hats will grind us to this!" he tossed a handful of dust in the air. "'oh, roma dea!" said maximus, half aloud. "it is always one man's work--always and everywhere!" "and one man's life," said allo. "you are emperor, but not a god. you may die." "'i have thought of that too," said he. "very good. if this wind holds, i shall be at the east end of the wall by morning. tomorrow, then, i shall see you two when i inspect, and i will make you captains of the wall for this work." "'one instant, caesar," said pertinax. "all men have their price. i am not bought yet." "'do you also begin to bargain so early?" said maximus. "well?" "'give me justice against my uncle icenus, the duumvir of divio in gaul," he said. "'only a life? i thought it would be money or an office. certainly you shall have him. write his name on these tablets--on the red side; the other is for the living!" and maximus held out his tablets. "'he is of no use to me dead," said pertinax. "my mother is a widow. i am far off. i am not sure he pays her all her dowry." "'no matter. my arm is reasonably long. we will look through your uncle's accounts in due time. now, farewell till tomorrow, o captains of the wall!" 'we saw him grow small across the heather as he walked to the galley. there were picts, scores, each side of him, hidden behind stones. he never looked left or right. he sailed away southerly, full spread before the evening breeze, and when we had watched him out to sea, we were silent. we understood that earth bred few men like to this man. 'presently allo brought the ponies and held them for us to mount--a thing he had never done before. "'wait awhile," said pertinax, and he made a little altar of cut turf, and strewed heather-bloom atop, and laid upon it a letter from a girl in gaul. "'what do you do, o my friend?" i said. "'i sacrifice to my dead youth," he answered, and, when the flames had consumed the letter, he ground them out with his heel. then we rode back to that wall of which we were to be captains.' parnesius stopped. the children sat still, not even asking if that were all the tale. puck beckoned, and pointed the way out of the wood. 'sorry,' he whispered, 'but you must go now.' 'we haven't made him angry, have we?' said una. 'he looks so far off, and--and--thinky.' 'bless your heart, no. wait till tomorrow. it won't be long. remember, you've been playing lays of ancient rome.' and as soon as they had scrambled through their gap where oak, ash and thorn grew, that was all they remembered. a song to mithras mithras, god of the morning, our trumpets waken the wall! 'rome is above the nations, but thou art over all!' now as the names are answered, and the guards are marched away, mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day! mithras, god of the noontide, the heather swims in the heat, our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet. now in the ungirt hour, now ere we blink and drowse, mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows! mithras, god of the sunset, low on the western main, thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again! now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn, mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn! mithras, god of the midnight, here where the great bull dies, look on thy children in darkness. oh, take our sacrifice! many roads thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the light! mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright! the winged hats the next day happened to be what they called a wild afternoon. father and mother went out to pay calls; miss blake went for a ride on her bicycle, and they were left all alone till eight o'clock. when they had seen their dear parents and their dear preceptress politely off the premises they got a cabbage-leaf full of raspberries from the gardener, and a wild tea from ellen. they ate the raspberries to prevent their squashing, and they meant to divide the cabbage-leaf with three cows down at the theatre, but they came across a dead hedgehog which they simply had to bury, and the leaf was too useful to waste. then they went on to the forge and found old hobden the hedger at home with his son, the bee boy, who is not quite right in his head, but who can pick up swarms of bees in his naked hands; and the bee boy told them the rhyme about the slow-worm: 'if i had eyes as i could see, no mortal man would trouble me.' they all had tea together by the hives, and hobden said the loaf-cake which ellen had given them was almost as good as what his wife used to make, and he showed them how to set a wire at the right height for hares. they knew about rabbits already. then they climbed up long ditch into the lower end of far wood. this is sadder and darker than the volaterrae end because of an old marl-pit full of black water, where weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the willows and alders. but the birds come to perch on the dead branches, and hobden says that the bitter willow-water is a sort of medicine for sick animals. they sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires hobden had given them, when they saw parnesius. 'how quietly you came!'said una, moving up to make room. 'where's puck?' 'the faun and i have disputed whether it is better that i should tell you all my tale, or leave it untold,' he replied. 'i only said that if he told it as it happened you wouldn't understand it,' said puck, jumping up like a squirrel from behind the log. 'i don't understand all of it,' said una, 'but i like hearing about the little picts.' 'what i can't understand,' said dan, 'is how maximus knew all about the picts when he was over in gaul.' 'he who makes himself emperor anywhere must know everything, everywhere,' said parnesius. 'we had this much from maximus's mouth after the games.' 'games? what games?' said dan. parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed to the ground. 'gladiators! that sort of game,' he said. 'there were two days' games in his honour when he landed all unexpected at segedunum on the east end of the wall. yes, the day after we had met him we held two days' games; but i think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor wretches on the sand, but by maximus. in the old days the legions kept silence before their emperor. so did not we! you could hear the solid roar run west along the wall as his chair was carried rocking through the crowds. the garrison beat round him--clamouring, clowning, asking for pay, for change of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads. that chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling, but always rising again after one had shut the eyes.' parnesius shivered. 'were they angry with him?' said dan. 'no more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer walks among them. if he had turned his back an instant, or for an instant had ceased to hold their eyes, there would have been another emperor made on the wall that hour. was it not so, faun?' 'so it was. so it always will be,' said puck. 'late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we followed to the temple of victory, where he lodged with rutilianus, the general of the wall. i had hardly seen the general before, but he always gave me leave when i wished to take heather. he was a great glutton, and kept five asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in oracles. we could smell his good dinner when we entered, but the tables were empty. he lay snorting on a couch. maximus sat apart among long rolls of accounts. then the doors were shut. "'these are your men," said maximus to the general, who propped his eye-corners open with his gouty fingers, and stared at us like a fish. "'i shall know them again, caesar," said rutilianus. "very good," said maximus. "now hear! you are not to move man or shield on the wall except as these boys shall tell you. you will do nothing, except eat, without their permission. they are the head and arms. you are the belly!" "'as caesar pleases," the old man grunted. "if my pay and profits are not cut, you may make my ancestors' oracle my master. rome has been! rome has been!" then he turned on his side to sleep. "'he has it," said maximus. "we will get to what i need." 'he unrolled full copies of the number of men and supplies on the wall--down to the sick that very day in hunno hospital. oh, but i groaned when his pen marked off detachment after detachment of our best--of our least worthless men! he took two towers of our scythians, two of our north british auxiliaries, two numidian cohorts, the dacians all, and half the belgians. it was like an eagle pecking a carcass. "'and now, how many catapults have you?" he turned up a new list, but pertinax laid his open hand there. "'no, caesar," said he. "do not tempt the gods too far. take men, or engines, but not both; else we refuse."' 'engines?' said una. 'the catapults of the wall--huge things forty feet high to the head--firing nets of raw stone or forged bolts. nothing can stand against them. he left us our catapults at last, but he took a caesar's half of our men without pity. we were a shell when he rolled up the lists! "'hail, caesar! we, about to die, salute you!" said pertinax, laughing. "if any enemy even leans against the wall now, it will tumble." "'give me the three years allo spoke of," he answered, "and you shall have twenty thousand men of your own choosing up here. but now it is a gamble--a game played against the gods, and the stakes are britain, gaul, and perhaps rome. you play on my side?" "'we will play, caesar," i said, for i had never met a man like this man. "good. tomorrow," said he, "i proclaim you captains of the wall before the troops." 'so we went into the moonlight, where they were cleaning the ground after the games. we saw great roma dea atop of the wall, the frost on her helmet, and her spear pointed towards the north star. we saw the twinkle of night-fires all along the guard-towers, and the line of the black catapults growing smaller and smaller in the distance. all these things we knew till we were weary; but that night they seemed very strange to us, because the next day we knew we were to be their masters. 'the men took the news well; but when maximus went away with half our strength, and we had to spread ourselves into the emptied towers, and the townspeople complained that trade would be ruined, and the autumn gales blew--it was dark days for us two. here pertinax was more than my right hand. being born and bred among the great country houses in gaul, he knew the proper words to address to all--from roman-born centurions to those dogs of the third--the libyans. and he spoke to each as though that man were as high-minded as himself. now i saw so strongly what things were needed to be done, that i forgot things are only accomplished by means of men. that was a mistake. 'i feared nothing from the picts, at least for that year, but allo warned me that the winged hats would soon come in from the sea at each end of the wall to prove to the picts how weak we were. so i made ready in haste, and none too soon. i shifted our best men to the ends of the wall, and set up screened catapults by the beach. the winged hats would drive in before the snow-squalls--ten or twenty boats at a time--on segedunum or ituna, according as the wind blew. 'now a ship coming in to land men must furl her sail. if you wait till you see her men gather up the sail's foot, your catapults can jerk a net of loose stones (bolts only cut through the cloth) into the bag of it. then she turns over, and the sea makes everything clean again. a few men may come ashore, but very few... it was not hard work, except the waiting on the beach in blowing sand and snow. and that was how we dealt with the winged hats that winter. 'early in the spring, when the east winds blow like skinning-knives, they gathered again off segedunum with many ships. allo told me they would never rest till they had taken a tower in open fight. certainly they fought in the open. we dealt with them thoroughly through a long day: and when all was finished, one man dived clear of the wreckage of his ship, and swam towards shore. i waited, and a wave tumbled him at my feet. 'as i stooped, i saw he wore such a medal as i wear.' parnesius raised his hand to his neck. 'therefore, when he could speak, i addressed him a certain question which can only be answered in a certain manner. he answered with the necessary word--the word that belongs to the degree of gryphons in the science of mithras my god. i put my shield over him till he could stand up. you see i am not short, but he was a head taller than i. he said: "what now?" i said: "at your pleasure, my brother, to stay or go." 'he looked out across the surf. there remained one ship unhurt, beyond range of our catapults. i checked the catapults and he waved her in. she came as a hound comes to a master. when she was yet a hundred paces from the beach, he flung back his hair, and swam out. they hauled him in, and went away. i knew that those who worship mithras are many and of all races, so i did not think much more upon the matter. 'a month later i saw allo with his horses--by the temple of pan, o faun--and he gave me a great necklace of gold studded with coral. 'at first i thought it was a bribe from some tradesman in the town--meant for old rutilianus. "nay," said allo. "this is a gift from amal, that winged hat whom you saved on the beach. he says you are a man." "'he is a man, too. tell him i can wear his gift," i answered. "'oh, amal is a young fool; but 'speaking as sensible men, your emperor is doing such great things in gaul that the winged hats are anxious to be his friends, or, better still, the friends of his servants. they think you and pertinax could lead them to victories." allo looked at me like a one-eyed raven. "'allo," i said, "you are the corn between the two millstones. be content if they grind evenly, and don't thrust your hand between them." "'i?" said allo. "i hate rome and the winged hats equally; but if the winged hats thought that some day you and pertinax might join them against maximus, they would leave you in peace while you considered. time is what we need--you and i and maximus. let me carry a pleasant message back to the winged hats--something for them to make a council over. we barbarians are all alike. we sit up half the night to discuss anything a roman says. eh?" "'we have no men. we must fight with words," said pertinax. "leave it to allo and me." 'so allo carried word back to the winged hats that we would not fight them if they did not fight us; and they (i think they were a little tired of losing men in the sea) agreed to a sort of truce. i believe allo, who being a horse-dealer loved lies, also told them we might some day rise against maximus as maximus had risen against rome. 'indeed, they permitted the corn-ships which i sent to the picts to pass north that season without harm. therefore the picts were well fed that winter, and since they were in some sort my children, i was glad of it. we had only two thousand men on the wall, and i wrote many times to maximus and begged--prayed--him to send me only one cohort of my old north british troops. he could not spare them. he needed them to win more victories in gaul. 'then came news that he had defeated and slain the emperor gratian, and thinking he must now be secure, i wrote again for men. he answered: "you will learn that i have at last settled accounts with the pup gratian. there was no need that he should have died, but he became confused and lost his head, which is a bad thing to befall any emperor. tell your father i am content to drive two mules only; for unless my old general's son thinks himself destined to destroy me, i shall rest emperor of gaul and britain, and then you, my two children, will presently get all the men you need. just now i can spare none."' 'what did he mean by his general's son?' said dan. 'he meant theodosius emperor of rome, who was the son of theodosius the general under whom maximus had fought in the old pict war. the two men never loved each other, and when gratian made the younger theodosius emperor of the east (at least, so i've heard), maximus carried on the war to the second generation. it was his fate, and it was his fall. but theodosius the emperor is a good man. as i know.' parnesius was silent for a moment and then continued. 'i wrote back to maximus that, though we had peace on the wall, i should be happier with a few more men and some new catapults. he answered: "you must live a little longer under the shadow of my victories, till i can see what young theodosius intends. he may welcome me as a brother-emperor, or he may be preparing an army. in either case i cannot spare men just now." 'but he was always saying that,' cried una. 'it was true. he did not make excuses; but thanks, as he said, to the news of his victories, we had no trouble on the wall for a long, long time. the picts grew fat as their own sheep among the heather, and as many of my men as lived were well exercised in their weapons. yes, the wall looked strong. for myself, i knew how weak we were. i knew that if even a false rumour of any defeat to maximus broke loose among the winged hats, they might come down in earnest, and then--the wall must go! for the picts i never cared, but in those years i learned something of the strength of the winged hats. they increased their strength every day, but i could not increase my men. maximus had emptied britain behind us, and i felt myself to be a man with a rotten stick standing before a broken fence to turn bulls. 'thus, my friends, we lived on the wall, waiting--waiting--waiting for the men that maximus never sent. 'presently he wrote that he was preparing an army against theodosius. he wrote--and pertinax read it over my shoulder in our quarters: "tell your father that my destiny orders me to drive three mules or be torn in pieces by them. i hope within a year to finish with theodosius, son of theodosius, once and for all. then you shall have britain to rule, and pertinax, if he chooses, gaul. today i wish strongly you were with me to beat my auxiliaries into shape. do not, i pray you, believe any rumour of my sickness. i have a little evil in my old body which i shall cure by riding swiftly into rome." 'said pertinax: "it is finished with maximus. he writes as a man without hope. i, a man without hope, can see this. what does he add at the bottom of the roll? 'tell pertinax i have met his late uncle, the duumvir of divio, and that he accounted to me quite truthfully for all his mother's monies. i have sent her with a fitting escort, for she is the mother of a hero, to nicaea, where the climate is warm.' "'that is proof," said pertinax. "nicaea is not far by sea from rome. a woman there could take ship and fly to rome in time of war. yes, maximus foresees his death, and is fulfilling his promises one by one. but i am glad my uncle met him."' "'you think blackly today?" i asked. "'i think truth. the gods weary of the play we have played against them. theodosius will destroy maximus. it is finished!" "'will you write him that?" i said. "'see what i shall write," he answered, and he took pen and wrote a letter cheerful as the light of day, tender as a woman's and full of jests. even i, reading over his shoulder, took comfort from it till--i saw his face! "'and now," he said, sealing it, "we be two dead men, my brother. let us go to the temple." 'we prayed awhile to mithras, where we had many times prayed before. after that, we lived day by day among evil rumours till winter came again. 'it happened one morning that we rode to the east shore, and found on the beach a fair-haired man, half frozen, bound to some broken planks. turning him over, we saw by his belt-buckle that he was a goth of an eastern legion. suddenly he opened his eyes and cried loudly, "he is dead! the letters were with me, but the winged hats sank the ship." so saying, he died between our hands. 'we asked not who was dead. we knew! we raced before the driving snow to hunno, thinking perhaps allo might be there. we found him already at our stables, and he saw by our faces what we had heard. "'it was in a tent by the sea," he stammered. "he was beheaded by theodosius. he sent a letter to you, written while he waited to be slain. the winged hats met the ship and took it. the news is running through the heather like fire. blame me not! i cannot hold back my young men any more." "'i would we could say as much for our men," said pertinax, laughing. "but, gods be praised, they cannot run away." "'what do you do?" said allo. "i bring an order--a message--from the winged hats that you join them with your men, and march south to plunder britain." "'it grieves me," said pertinax, "but we are stationed here to stop that thing." "'if i carry back such an answer they will kill me," said allo. "i always promised the winged hats that you would rise when maximus fell. i--i did not think he could fall." "'alas! my poor barbarian," said pertinax, still laughing. "well, you have sold us too many good ponies to be thrown back to your friends. we will make you a prisoner, although you are an ambassador." "'yes, that will be best," said allo, holding out a halter. we bound him lightly, for he was an old man. "'presently the winged hats may come to look for you, and that will give us more time. see how the habit of playing for time sticks to a man!" said pertinax, as he tied the rope. "'no," i said. "time may help. if maximus wrote us a letter while he was a prisoner, theodosius must have sent the ship that brought it. if he can send ships, he can send men." "'how will that profit us?" said pertinax. "we serve maximus, not theodosius. even if by some miracle of the gods theodosius down south sent and saved the wall, we could not expect more than the death maximus died." "'it concerns us to defend the wall, no matter what emperor dies, or makes die," i said. "'that is worthy of your brother the philosopher," said pertinax. "myself i am without hope, so i do not say solemn and stupid things! rouse the wall!" 'we armed the wall from end to end; we told the officers that there was a rumour of maximus's death which might bring down the winged hats, but we were sure, even if it were true, that theodosius, for the sake of britain, would send us help. therefore, we must stand fast... my friends, it is above all things strange to see how men bear ill news! often the strongest till then become the weakest, while the weakest, as it were, reach up and steal strength from the gods. so it was with us. yet my pertinax by his jests and his courtesy and his labours had put heart and training into our poor numbers during the past years--more than i should have thought possible. even our libyan cohort--the third--stood up in their padded cuirasses and did not whimper. 'in three days came seven chiefs and elders of the winged hats. among them was that tall young man, amal, whom i had met on the beach, and he smiled when he saw my necklace. we made them welcome, for they were ambassadors. we showed them allo, alive but bound. they thought we had killed him, and i saw it would not have vexed them if we had. allo saw it too, and it vexed him. then in our quarters at hunno we came to council. 'they said that rome was falling, and that we must join them. they offered me all south britain to govern after they had taken a tribute out of it. 'i answered, "patience. this wall is not weighed off like plunder. give me proof that my general is dead." "'nay," said one elder, "prove to us that he lives"; and another said cunningly, "what will you give us if we read you his last words?" "'we are not merchants to bargain," cried amal. "moreover, i owe this man my life. he shall have his proof." he threw across to me a letter (well i knew the seal) from maximus. "'we took this out of the ship we sank," he cried. "i cannot read, but i know one sign, at least, which makes me believe." he showed me a dark stain on the outer roll that my heavy heart perceived was the valiant blood of maximus. "'read!" said amal. "read, and then let us hear whose servants you are!" 'said pertinax, very softly, after he had looked through it: "i will read it all. listen, barbarians!" he read that which i have carried next my heart ever since.' parnesius drew from his neck a folded and spotted piece of parchment, and began in a hushed voice: "'to parnesius and pertinax, the not unworthy captains of the wall, from maximus, once emperor of gaul and britain, now prisoner waiting death by the sea in the camp of theodosius--greeting and goodbye!" "'enough," said young amal; "there is your proof! you must join us now!" 'pertinax looked long and silently at him, till that fair man blushed like a girl. then read pertinax: "'i have joyfully done much evil in my life to those who have wished me evil, but if ever i did any evil to you two i repent, and i ask your forgiveness. the three mules which i strove to drive have torn me in pieces as your father prophesied. the naked swords wait at the tent door to give me the death i gave to gratian. therefore i, your general and your emperor, send you free and honourable dismissal from my service, which you entered, not for money or office, but, as it makes me warm to believe, because you loved me!" "'by the light of the sun," amal broke in. "this was in some sort a man! we may have been mistaken in his servants!" 'and pertinax read on: "you gave me the time for which i asked. if i have failed to use it, do not lament. we have gambled very splendidly against the gods, but they hold weighted dice, and i must pay the forfeit. remember, i have been; but rome is; and rome will be. tell pertinax his mother is in safety at nicaea, and her monies are in charge of the prefect at antipolis. make my remembrances to your father and to your mother, whose friendship was great gain to me. give also to my little picts and to the winged hats such messages as their thick heads can understand. i would have sent you three legions this very day if all had gone aright. do not forget me. we have worked together. farewell! farewell! farewell!" 'now, that was my emperor's last letter.' (the children heard the parchment crackle as parnesius returned it to its place.) "'i was mistaken," said amal. "the servants of such a man will sell nothing except over the sword. i am glad of it." he held out his hand to me. "'but maximus has given you your dismissal," said an elder. "you are certainly free to serve--or to rule--whom you please. join--do not follow--join us!" "'we thank you," said pertinax. "but maximus tells us to give you such messages as--pardon me, but i use his words--your thick heads can understand." he pointed through the door to the foot of a catapult wound up. "'we understand," said an elder. "the wall must be won at a price?" "'it grieves me," said pertinax, laughing, "but so it must be won," and he gave them of our best southern wine. 'they drank, and wiped their yellow beards in silence till they rose to go. 'said amal, stretching himself (for they were barbarians): "we be a goodly company; i wonder what the ravens and the dogfish will make of some of us before this snow melts." "'think rather what theodosius may send," i answered; and though they laughed, i saw that my chance shot troubled them. 'only old allo lingered behind a little. "'you see," he said, winking and blinking, "i am no more than their dog. when i have shown their men the secret short ways across our bogs, they will kick me like one." "'then i should not be in haste to show them those ways," said pertinax, "till i was sure that rome could not save the wall." "'you think so? woe is me!" said the old man. "i only wanted peace for my people," and he went out stumbling through the snow behind the tall winged hats. 'in this fashion then, slowly, a day at a time, which is very bad for doubting troops, the war came upon us. at first the winged hats swept in from the sea as they had done before, and there we met them as before--with the catapults; and they sickened of it. yet for a long time they would not trust their duck-legs on land, and i think, when it came to revealing the secrets of the tribe, the little picts were afraid or ashamed to show them all the roads across the heather. i had this from a pict prisoner. they were as much our spies as our enemies, for the winged hats oppressed them, and took their winter stores. ah, foolish little people! 'then the winged hats began to roll us up from each end of the wall. i sent runners southward to see what the news might be in britain, but the wolves were very bold that winter, among the deserted stations where the troops had once been, and none came back. we had trouble, too, with the forage for the ponies along the wall. i kept ten, and so did pertinax. we lived and slept in the saddle, riding east or west, and we ate our worn-out ponies. the people of the town also made us some trouble till i gathered them all in one quarter behind hunno. we broke down the wall on either side of it to make as it were a citadel. our men fought better in close order. 'by the end of the second month we were deep in the war as a man is deep in a snowdrift, or in a dream. i think we fought in our sleep. at least i know i have gone on the wall and come off again, remembering nothing between, though my throat was harsh with giving orders, and my sword, i could see, had been used. 'the winged hats fought like wolves--all in a pack. where they had suffered most, there they charged in most hotly. this was hard for the defenders, but it held them from sweeping on into britain. 'in those days pertinax and i wrote on the plaster of the bricked archway into valentia the names of the towers, and the days on which they fell one by one. we wished for some record. 'and the fighting? the fight was always hottest to left and right of the great statue of roma dea, near to rutilianus's house. by the light of the sun, that old fat man, whom we had not considered at all, grew young again among the trumpets! i remember he said his sword was an oracle! "let us consult the oracle," he would say, and put the handle against his ear, and shake his head wisely. "and this day is allowed rutilianus to live," he would say, and, tucking up his cloak, he would puff and pant and fight well. oh, there were jests in plenty on the wall to take the place of food! 'we endured for two months and seventeen days--always being pressed from three sides into a smaller space. several times allo sent in word that help was at hand. we did not believe it, but it cheered our men. 'the end came not with shootings of joy, but, like the rest, as in a dream. the winged hats suddenly left us in peace for one night and the next day; which is too long for spent men. we slept at first lightly, expecting to be roused, and then like logs, each where he lay. may you never need such sleep! when i waked our towers were full of strange, armed men, who watched us snoring. i roused pertinax, and we leaped up together. "'what?" said a young man in clean armour. "do you fight against theodosius? look!" 'north we looked over the red snow. no winged hats were there. south we looked over the white snow, and behold there were the eagles of two strong legions encamped. east and west we saw flame and fighting, but by hunno all was still. "'trouble no more," said the young man. "rome's arm is long. where are the captains of the wall?" 'we said we were those men. "'but you are old and grey-haired," he cried. "maximus said that they were boys." "'yes, that was true some years ago," said pertinax. "what is our fate to be, you fine and well-fed child?" "'i am called ambrosius, a secretary of the emperor," he answered. "show me a certain letter which maximus wrote from a tent at aquileia, and perhaps i will believe." 'i took it from my breast, and when he had read it he saluted us, saying: "your fate is in your own hands. if you choose to serve theodosius, he will give you a legion. if it suits you to go to your homes, we will give you a triumph." "'i would like better a bath, wine, food, razors, soaps, oils, and scents," said pertinax, laughing. "'oh, i see you are a boy," said ambrosius. "and you?" turning to me. "'we bear no ill-will against theodosius, but in war-" i began. "'in war it is as it is in love," said pertinax. "whether she be good or bad, one gives one's best once, to one only. that given, there remains no second worth giving or taking." "'that is true," said ambrosius. "i was with maximus before he died. he warned theodosius that you would never serve him, and frankly i say i am sorry for my emperor." "'he has rome to console him," said pertinax. "i ask you of your kindness to let us go to our homes and get this smell out of our nostrils." 'none the less they gave us a triumph!' 'it was well earned,' said puck, throwing some leaves into the still water of the marlpit. the black, oily circles spread dizzily as the children watched them. 'i want to know, oh, ever so many things,' said dan. 'what happened to old allo? did the winged hats ever come back? and what did amal do?' 'and what happened to the fat old general with the five cooks?' said una. 'and what did your mother say when you came home? ...' 'she'd say you're settin' too long over this old pit, so late as 'tis already,' said old hobden's voice behind them. 'hst!' he whispered. he stood still, for not twenty paces away a magnificent dog-fox sat on his haunches and looked at the children as though he were an old friend of theirs. 'oh, mus' reynolds, mus' reynolds!' said hobden, under his breath. 'if i knowed all was inside your head, i'd know something wuth knowin'. mus' dan an' miss una, come along o' me while i lock up my liddle henhouse.' a pict song rome never looks where she treads, always her heavy hooves fall on our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; and rome never heeds when we bawl. her sentries pass on--that is all, and we gather behind them in hordes, and plot to reconquer the wall, with only our tongues for our swords. we are the little folk--we! too little to love or to hate. leave us alone and you'll see how we can drag down the great! we are the worm in the wood! we are the rot in the root! we are the germ in the blood! we are the thorn in the foot! mistletoe killing an oak-- rats gnawing cables in two-- moths making holes in a cloak-- how they must love what they do! yes--and we little folk too, we are as busy as they-- working our works out of view-- watch, and you'll see it some day! no indeed! we are not strong, but we know peoples that are. yes, and we'll guide them along, to smash and destroy you in war! we shall be slaves just the same? yes, we have always been slaves, but you--you will die of the shame, and then we shall dance on your graves! we are the little folk, we, etc. hal o' the draft prophets have honour all over the earth, except in the village where they were born, where such as knew them boys from birth nature-ally hold 'em in scorn. when prophets are naughty and young and vain, they make a won'erful grievance of it; (you can see by their writings how they complain), but oh, 'tis won'erful good for the prophet! there's nothing nineveh town can give (nor being swallowed by whales between), makes up for the place where a man's folk live, that don't care nothing what he has been. he might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this, but they love and they hate him for what he is. a rainy afternoon drove dan and una over to play pirates in the little mill. if you don't mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes, the mill-attic, with its trap-doors and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts, is a splendid place. it is lighted by a foot-square window, called duck window, that looks across to little lindens farm, and the spot where jack cade was killed. when they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it 'the mainmast tree', out of the ballad of sir andrew barton, and dan 'swarved it with might and main', as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on duck window-sill. he was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book. 'sit ye! sit ye!' puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'see what it is to be beautiful! sir harry dawe--pardon, hal--says i am the very image of a head for a gargoyle.' the man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the children, and his grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy fringe. he was old--forty at least--but his eyes were young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. a satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt, which looked interesting. 'may we see?' said una, coming forward. 'surely--sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window-seat, and returned to his work with a silver-pointed pencil. puck sat as though the grin were fixed for ever on his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain fingers that copied it. presently the man took a reed pen from his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife, carved in the semblance of a fish. 'oh, what a beauty!' cried dan. ''ware fingers! that blade is perilous sharp. i made it myself of the best low country cross-bow steel. and so, too, this fish. when his back-fin travels to his tail--so--he swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed gaffer jonah ... yes, and that's my inkhorn. i made the four silver saints round it. press barnabas's head. it opens, and then--'he dipped the trimmed pen, and with careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of puck's rugged face, that had been but faintly revealed by the silver-point. the children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page. as he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked--now clearly, now muttering, now breaking off to frown or smile at his work. he told them he was born at little lindens farm, and his father used to beat him for drawing things instead of doing things, till an old priest called father roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich people's books, coaxed the parents to let him take the boy as a sort of painter's apprentice. then he went with father roger to oxford, where he cleaned plates and carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a college called merton. 'didn't you hate that?' said dan after a great many other questions. 'i never thought on't. half oxford was building new colleges or beautifying the old, and she had called to her aid the master-craftsmen of all christendie--kings in their trade and honoured of kings. i knew them. i worked for them: that was enough. no wonder--' he stopped and laughed. 'you became a great man, hal,' said puck. 'they said so, robin. even bramante said so.' 'why? what did you do?' dan asked. the artist looked at him queerly. 'things in stone and such, up and down england. you would not have heard of 'em. to come nearer home, i rebuilded this little st barnabas' church of ours. it cost me more trouble and sorrow than aught i've touched in my life. but 'twas a sound lesson.' 'um,' said dan. 'we've had lessons this morning.' 'i'll not afflict ye, lad,' said hal, while puck roared. 'only 'tis strange to think how that little church was rebuilt, re-roofed, and made glorious, thanks to some few godly sussex ironmasters, a bristow sailor lad, a proud ass called hal o' the draft because, d'you see, he was always drawing and drafting; and'--he dragged the words slowly--'and a scotch pirate.' 'pirate?' said dan. he wriggled like a hooked fish. 'even that andrew barton you were singing of on the stair just now.' he dipped again in the inkwell, and held his breath over a sweeping line, as though he had forgotten everything else. 'pirates don't build churches, do they?' said dan. 'or do they?' 'they help mightily,' hal laughed. 'but you were at your lessons this morn, jack scholar.' 'oh, pirates aren't lessons. it was only bruce and his silly old spider,' said una. 'why did sir andrew barton help you?' 'i question if he ever knew it,' said hal, twinkling. 'robin, how a' mischief's name am i to tell these innocents what comes of sinful pride?' 'oh, we know all about that,' said una pertly. 'if you get too beany--that's cheeky--you get sat upon, of course.' hal considered a moment, pen in air, and puck said some long words. 'aha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'beany--you say--but certainly i did not conduct myself well. i was proud of--of such things as porches--a galilee porch at lincoln for choice--proud of one torrigiano's arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when i made the gilt scroll-work for the sovereign--our king's ship. but father roger sitting in merton college library, he did not forget me. at the top of my pride, when i and no other should have builded the porch at lincoln, he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my sussex clays and rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us dawes have been buried for six generations. "out! son of my art!" said he. "fight the devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman." and i quaked, and i went... how's yon, robin?' he flourished the finished sketch before puck. 'me! me past peradventure,' said puck, smirking like a man at a mirror. 'ah, see! the rain has took off! i hate housen in daylight.' 'whoop! holiday!' cried hal, leaping up. 'who's for my little lindens? we can talk there.' they tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by the sunny mill-dam. 'body o' me,' said hal, staring at the hop-garden, where the hops were just ready to blossom. 'what are these? vines? no, not vines, and they twine the wrong way to beans.' he began to draw in his ready book. 'hops. new since your day,' said puck. 'they're an herb of mars, and their flowers dried flavour ale. we say-- 'turkeys, heresy, hops, and beer came into england all in one year.' 'heresy i know. i've seen hops--god be praised for their beauty! what is your turkis?' the children laughed. they knew the lindens turkeys, and as soon as they reached lindens orchard on the hill the full flock charged at them. out came hal's book at once. 'hoity-toity!' he cried. 'here's pride in purple feathers! here's wrathy contempt and the pomps of the flesh! how d'you call them?' 'turkeys! turkeys!' the children shouted, as the old gobbler raved and flamed against hal's plum-coloured hose. 'save your magnificence!' he said. 'i've drafted two good new things today.' and he doffed his cap to the bubbling bird. then they walked through the grass to the knoll where little lindens stands. the old farmhouse, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-ruby in the afternoon light. the pigeons pecked at the mortar in the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built filled the hot august air with their booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke. the farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard. the old spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was in charge of the empty house. puck clicked back the garden-gate. 'd'you marvel that i love it?' said hal, in a whisper. 'what can town folk know of the nature of housen--or land?' they perched themselves arow on the old hacked oak bench in lindens garden, looking across the valley of the brook at the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the forge behind hobden's cottage. the old man was cutting a faggot in his garden by the hives. it was quite a second after his chopper fell that the chump of the blow reached their lazy ears. 'eh--yeh!' said hal. 'i mind when where that old gaffer stands was nether forge--master john collins's foundry. many a night has his big trip-hammer shook me in my bed here. boom-bitty! boom-bitty! if the wind was east, i could hear master tom collins's forge at stockens answering his brother, boom-oop! boom-oop! and midway between, sir john pelham's sledgehammers at brightling would strike in like a pack o' scholars, and "hic-haec-hoc" they'd say, "hic-haec-hoc," till i fell asleep. yes. the valley was as full o' forges and fineries as a may shaw o' cuckoos. all gone to grass now!' 'what did they make?' said dan. 'guns for the king's ships--and for others. serpentines and cannon mostly. when the guns were cast, down would come the king's officers, and take our plough-oxen to haul them to the coast. look! here's one of the first and finest craftsmen of the sea!' he fluttered back a page of his book, and showed them a young man's head. underneath was written: 'sebastianus.' 'he came down with a king's order on master john collins for twenty serpentines (wicked little cannon they be!) to furnish a venture of ships. i drafted him thus sitting by our fire telling mother of the new lands he'd find the far side the world. and he found them, too! there's a nose to cleave through unknown seas! cabot was his name--a bristol lad--half a foreigner. i set a heap by him. he helped me to my church-building.' 'i thought that was sir andrew barton,' said dan. 'ay, but foundations before roofs,' hal answered. 'sebastian first put me in the way of it. i had come down here, not to serve god as a craftsman should, but to show my people how great a craftsman i was. they cared not, and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. what a murrain call had i, they said, to mell with old st barnabas'? ruinous the church had been since the black death, and ruinous she would remain; and i could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! gentle and simple, high and low--the hayes, the fowles, the fenners, the collinses--they were all in a tale against me. only sir john pelham up yonder at brightling bade me heart-up and go on. yet how could i? did i ask master collins for his timber-tug to haul beams? the oxen had gone to lewes after lime. did he promise me a set of iron cramps or ties for the roof? they never came to hand, or else they were spaulty or cracked. so with everything. nothing said, but naught done except i stood by them, and then done amiss. i thought the countryside was fair bewitched.' 'it was, sure-ly,' said puck, knees under chin. 'did you never suspect ary one?' 'not till sebastian came for his guns, and john collins played him the same dog's tricks as he'd played me with my ironwork. week in, week out, two of three serpentines would be flawed in the casting, and only fit, they said, to be re-melted. then john collins would shake his head, and vow he could pass no cannon for the king's service that were not perfect. saints! how sebastian stormed! i know, for we sat on this bench sharing our sorrows inter-common. 'when sebastian had fumed away six weeks at lindens and gotten just six serpentines, dirk brenzett, master of the cygnet hoy, sends me word that the block of stone he was fetching me from france for our new font he'd hove overboard to lighten his ship, chased by andrew barton up to rye port.' 'ah! the pirate!' said dan. 'yes. and while i am tearing my hair over this, ticehurst will, my best mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the devil, horned, tailed, and chained, has run out on him from the church-tower, and the men would work there no more. so i took 'em off the foundations, which we were strengthening, and went into the bell tavern for a cup of ale. says master john collins: "have it your own way, lad; but if i was you, i'd take the sinnification o' the sign, and leave old barnabas' church alone!" and they all wagged their sinful heads, and agreed. less afraid of the devil than of me--as i saw later. 'when i brought my sweet news to lindens, sebastian was limewashing the kitchen-beams for mother. he loved her like a son. "'cheer up, lad," he says. "god's where he was. only you and i chance to be pure pute asses. we've been tricked, hal, and more shame to me, a sailor, that i did not guess it before! you must leave your belfry alone, forsooth, because the devil is adrift there; and i cannot get my serpentines because john collins cannot cast them aright. meantime andrew barton hawks off the port of rye. and why? to take those very serpentines which poor cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines, i'll wager my share of new continents, being now hid away in st barnabas' church-tower. clear as the irish coast at noonday!" "they'd sure never dare to do it," i said; "and, for another thing, selling cannon to the king's enemies is black treason--hanging and fine." "'it is sure, large profit. men'll dare any gallows for that. i have been a trader myself," says he. "we must be upsides with 'em for the honour of bristol." 'then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash bucket. we gave out to ride o' tuesday to london and made a show of taking farewells of our friends--especially of master john collins. but at wadhurst woods we turned; rode home to the water-meadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and, come night, stole a-tiptoe uphill to barnabas' church again. a thick mist, and a moon striking through. 'i had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than over goes sebastian full length in the dark. "'pest!" he says. "step high and feel low, hal. i've stumbled over guns before." 'i groped, and one by one--the tower was pitchy dark--i counted the lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pease straw. no conceal at all! "'there's two demi-cannon my end," says sebastian, slapping metal. "they'll be for andrew barton's lower deck. honest--honest john collins! so this is his ware-house, his arsenal, his armoury! now see you why your pokings and pryings have raised the devil in sussex? you've hindered john's lawful trade for months," and he laughed where he lay. 'a clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry stairs, and there sebastian trips over a cow-hide with its horns and tail. "'aha! your devil has left his doublet! does it become me, hal?" he draws it on and capers in the shafts of window-moonlight--won'erful devilish-like. then he sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a board, and his back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit in, and screeched at the horns of him. "'if you'd keep out the devil, shut the door," he whispered. "and that's another false proverb, hal, for i can hear your tower-door opening." "'i locked it. who a-plague has another key, then?" i said. "'all the congregation, to judge by their feet," he says, and peers into the blackness. "still! still, hal! hear 'em grunt! that's more o' my serpentines, i'll be bound. one--two--three--four they bear in! faith, andrew equips himself like an admiral! twenty-four serpentines in all!" 'as if it had been an echo, we heard john collins's voice come up all hollow: "twenty-four serpentines and two demi-cannon. that's the full tally for sir andrew barton." "'courtesy costs naught," whispers sebastian. "shall i drop my dagger on his head?" "'they go over to rye o' thursday in the wool-wains, hid under the wool-packs. dirk brenzett meets them at udimore, as before," says john. "'lord! what a worn, handsmooth trade it is!" says sebastian. "i lay we are the sole two babes in the village that have not our lawful share in the venture." 'there was a full score folk below, talking like all robertsbridge market. we counted them by voice. 'master john collins pipes: "the guns for the french carrack must lie here next month. will, when does your young fool" (me, so please you!) "come back from lunnon?" "'no odds," i heard ticehurst will answer. "lay 'em just where you've a mind, mus' collins. we're all too afraid o' the devil to mell with the tower now." and the long knave laughed. "'ah! 'tis easy enow for you to raise the devil, will," says another--ralph hobden of the forge. "'aaa-men!" roars sebastian, and ere i could hold him, he leaps down the stairs--won'erful devilish-like howling no bounds. he had scarce time to lay out for the nearest than they ran. saints, how they ran! we heard them pound on the door of the bell tavern, and then we ran too. "'what's next?" says sebastian, looping up his cow-tail as he leaped the briars. "i've broke honest john's face." "'ride to sir john pelham's," i said. "he is the only one that ever stood by me." 'we rode to brightling, and past sir john's lodges, where the keepers would have shot at us for deer-stealers, and we had sir john down into his justice's chair, and when we had told him our tale and showed him the cow-hide which sebastian wore still girt about him, he laughed till the tears ran. "'wel-a-well!" he says. "i'll see justice done before daylight. what's your complaint? master collins is my old friend." "'he's none of mine," i cried. "when i think how he and his likes have baulked and dozened and cozened me at every turn over the church"--and i choked at the thought. "'ah, but ye see now they needed it for another use," says he smoothly. "also they did my serpentines," sebastian cries. "i should be half across the western ocean by now if my guns had been ready. but they're sold to a scotch pirate by your old friend--" "'where's your proof?" says sir john, stroking his beard. "'i broke my shins over them not an hour since, and i heard john give order where they were to be taken," says sebastian. "'words! words only," says sir john. "master collins is somewhat of a liar at best." 'he carried it so gravely that, for the moment, i thought he was dipped in this secret traffick too, and that there was not an honest ironmaster in sussex. "'name o' reason!" says sebastian, and raps with his cow-tail on the table, "whose guns are they, then?" "'yours, manifestly," says sir john. "you come with the king's order for 'em, and master collins casts them in his foundry. if he chooses to bring them up from nether forge and lay 'em out in the church-tower, why, they are e'en so much the nearer to the main road and you are saved a day's hauling. what a coil to make of a mere act of neighbourly kindness, lad!" "'i fear i have requited him very scurvily," says sebastian, looking at his knuckles. "but what of the demi-cannon? i could do with 'em well, but they are not in the king's order." "'kindness--loving-kindness," says sir john. "questionless, in his zeal for the king and his love for you, john adds those two cannon as a gift. 'tis plain as this coming daylight, ye stockfish!" "'so it is," says sebastian. "oh, sir john, sir john, why did you never use the sea? you are lost ashore." and he looked on him with great love. "'i do my best in my station." sir john strokes his beard again and rolls forth his deep drumming justice's voice thus: "but--suffer me!---you two lads, on some midnight frolic into which i probe not, roystering around the taverns, surprise master collins at his"--he thinks a moment--"at his good deeds done by stealth. ye surprise him, i say, cruelly." "'truth, sir john. if you had seen him run!" says sebastian. "'on this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of pirates, and wool-wains, and cow-hides, which, though it hath moved my mirth as a man, offendeth my reason as a magistrate. so i will e'en accompany you back to the tower with, perhaps, some few of my own people, and three-four wagons, and i'll be your warrant that master john collins will freely give you your guns and your demi-cannon, master sebastian." he breaks into his proper voice--"i warned the old tod and his neighbours long ago that they'd come to trouble with their side-sellings and bye-dealings; but we cannot have half sussex hanged for a little gun-running. are ye content, lads?" "'i'd commit any treason for two demi-cannon,' said sebastian, and rubs his hands. "ye have just compounded with rank treason-felony for the same bribe," says sir john. "wherefore to horse, and get the guns."' 'but master collins meant the guns for sir andrew barton all along, didn't he?' said dan. 'questionless, that he did,' said hal. 'but he lost them. we poured into the village on the red edge of dawn, sir john horsed, in half-armour, his pennon flying; behind him thirty stout brightling knaves, five abreast; behind them four wool-wains, and behind them four trumpets to triumph over the jest, blowing: our king went forth to normandie. when we halted and rolled the ringing guns out of the tower, 'twas for all the world like friar roger's picture of the french siege in the queen's missal-book.' 'and what did we--i mean, what did our village do?' said dan. 'oh! bore it nobly--nobly,' cried hal. 'though they had tricked me, i was proud of them. they came out of their housen, looked at that little army as though it had been a post, and went their shut-mouthed way. never a sign! never a word! they'd ha' perished sooner than let brightling overcrow us. even that villain, ticehurst will, coming out of the bell for his morning ale, he all but runs under sir john's horse. "''ware, sirrah devil!" cries sir john, reining back. "'oh!" says will. "market-day, is it? and all the bullocks from brightling here?" 'i spared him his belting for that--the brazen knave! 'but john collins was our masterpiece! he happened along-street (his jaw tied up where sebastian had clouted him) when we were trundling the first demi-cannon through the lych-gate. "'i reckon you'll find her middlin' heavy," he says. "if you've a mind to pay, i'll loan ye my timber-tug. she won't lie easy on ary wool-wain." 'that was the one time i ever saw sebastian taken flat aback. he opened and shut his mouth, fishy-like. "'no offence," says master john. "you've got her reasonable good cheap. i thought ye might not grudge me a groat if i helped move her." ah, he was a masterpiece! they say that morning's work cost our john two hundred pounds, and he never winked an eyelid, not even when he saw the guns all carted off to lewes.' 'neither then nor later?' said puck. 'once. 'twas after he gave st barnabas' the new chime of bells. (oh, there was nothing the collinses, or the hayes, or the fowles, or the fenners would not do for the church then! "ask and have" was their song.) we had rung 'em in, and he was in the tower with black nick fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. the old man pinches the bell-rope one hand and scratches his neck with t'other. "sooner she was pulling yon clapper than my neck, he says. that was all! that was sussex seely sussex for everlasting.' 'and what happened after?' said una. 'i went back into england,' said hal, slowly. 'i'd had my lesson against pride. but they tell me i left st barnabas' a jewel--just about a jewel! wel-a-well! 'twas done for and among my own people, and--father roger was right--i never knew such trouble or such triumph since. that's the nature o' things. a dear--dear land.' he dropped his chin on his chest. 'there's your father at the forge. what's he talking to old hobden about?' said puck, opening his hand with three leaves in it. dan looked towards the cottage. 'oh, i know. it's that old oak lying across the brook. pater always wants it grubbed.' in the still valley they could hear old hobden's deep tones. 'have it as you've a mind to,' he was saying. 'but the vivers of her roots they hold the bank together. if you grub her out, the bank she'll all come tearin' down, an' next floods the brook'll swarve up. but have it as you've a mind. the mistuss she sets a heap by the ferns on her trunk. 'oh! i'll think it over,' said the pater. una laughed a little bubbling chuckle. 'what devil's in that belfry?' said hal, with a lazy laugh. 'that should be a hobden by his voice.' 'why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits between the three acre and our meadow. the best place for wires on the farm, hobden says. he's got two there now,' una answered. 'he won't ever let it be grubbed!' 'ah, sussex! seely sussex for everlastin',' murmured hal; and the next moment their father's voice calling across to little lindens broke the spell as little st barnabas' clock struck five. a smugglers' song if you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street, them that asks no questions isn't told a lie. watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark-- brandy for the parson, 'baccy for the clerk; laces for a lady; letters for a spy, and watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! running round the woodlump if you chance to find little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine; don't you shout to come and look, nor take 'em for your play; put the brushwood back again,--and they'll be gone next day! if you see the stable-door setting open wide; if you see a tired horse lying down inside; if your mother mends a coat cut about and tore; if the lining's wet and warm--don't you ask no more! if you meet king george's men, dressed in blue and red, you be careful what you say, and mindful what is said. if they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin, don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been! knocks and footsteps round the house--whistles after dark-- you've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark. trusty's here, and pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie-- they don't fret to follow when the gentlemen go by! if you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance you'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from france, with a cap of valenciennes, and a velvet hood-- a present from the gentlemen, along o' being good! five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark-- brandy for the parson, 'baccy for the clerk. them that asks no questions isn't told a lie-- watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by! 'dymchurch flit' the bee boy's song bees! bees! hark to your bees! 'hide from your neighbours as much as you please, but all that has happened, to us you must tell, or else we will give you no honey to sell!' a maiden in her glory, upon her wedding-day, must tell her bees the story, or else they'll fly away. fly away--die away-- dwindle down and leave you! but if you don't deceive your bees, your bees will not deceive you. marriage, birth or buryin', news across the seas, all you're sad or merry in, you must tell the bees. tell 'em coming in an' out, where the fanners fan, 'cause the bees are justabout as curious as a man! don't you wait where trees are, when the lightnings play; nor don't you hate where bees are, or else they'll pine away. pine away--dwine away-- anything to leave you! but if you never grieve your bees, your bees'll never grieve you! just at dusk, a soft september rain began to fall on the hop-pickers. the mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators out of the gardens; bins were put away, and tally-books made up. the young couples strolled home, two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind them laughing. dan and una, who had been picking after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the oast-house, where old hobden, with blue-eyed bess, his lurcher dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops. they settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn cot in front of the fires, and, when hobden drew up the shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned roundel. slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal, packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly where they would do most good; slowly he reached behind him till dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and then stood for a moment, black against the glare. as he closed the shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before the day's end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. the children liked all these things because they knew them so well. the bee boy, hobden's son, who is not quite right in his head, though he can do anything with bees, slipped in like a shadow. they only guessed it when bess's stump-tail wagged against them. a big voice began singing outside in the drizzle: 'old mother laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead, she heard the hops were doin' well, and then popped up her head.' 'there can't be two people made to holler like that!' cried old hobden, wheeling round. 'for, says she, "the boys i've picked with when i was young and fair, they're bound to be at hoppin', and i'm--' a man showed at the doorway. 'well, well! they do say hoppin' 'll draw the very deadest, and now i belieft 'em. you, tom? tom shoesmith?' hobden lowered his lanthorn. 'you're a hem of a time makin' your mind to it, ralph!' the stranger strode in--three full inches taller than hobden, a grey-whiskered, brown-faced giant with clear blue eyes. they shook hands, and the children could hear the hard palms rasp together. 'you ain't lost none o' your grip,' said hobden. 'was it thirty or forty year back you broke my head at peasmarsh fair?' 'only thirty, an' no odds 'tween us regardin' heads, neither. you had it back at me with a hop-pole. how did we get home that night? swimmin'?' 'same way the pheasant come into gubbs's pocket--by a little luck an' a deal o' conjurin'.' old hobden laughed in his deep chest. see you've not forgot your way about the woods. d'ye do any o' this still?' the stranger pretended to look along a gun. hobden answered with a quick movement of the hand as though he were pegging down a rabbit-wire. 'no. that's all that's left me now. age she must as age she can. an' what's your news since all these years?' 'oh, i've bin to plymouth, i've bin to dover-- i've bin ramblin', boys, the wide world over,' the man answered cheerily. 'i reckon i know as much of old england as most.' he turned towards the children and winked boldly. 'i lay they told you a sight o' lies, then. i've been into england fur as wiltsheer once. i was cheated proper over a pair of hedgin'-gloves,' said hobden. 'there's fancy-talkin' everywhere. you've cleaved to your own parts pretty middlin' close, ralph.' 'can't shift an old tree 'thout it dyin',' hobden chuckled. 'an' i be no more anxious to die than you look to be to help me with my hops tonight.' the great man leaned against the brickwork of the roundel, and swung his arms abroad. 'hire me!' was all he said, and they stumped upstairs laughing. the children heard their shovels rasp on the cloth where the yellow hops lie drying above the fires, and all the oast-house filled with the sweet, sleepy smell as they were turned. 'who is it?' una whispered to the bee boy. 'dunno, no more'n you--if you dunno,' said he, and smiled. the voices on the drying-floor talked and chuckled together, and the heavy footsteps moved back and forth. presently a hop-pocket dropped through the press-hole overhead, and stiffened and fattened as they shovelled it full. 'clank!' went the press, and rammed the loose stuff into tight cake. 'gentle!' they heard hobden cry. 'you'll bust her crop if you lay on so. you be as careless as gleason's bull, tom. come an' sit by the fires. she'll do now.' they came down, and as hobden opened the shutter to see if the potatoes were done tom shoesmith said to the children, 'put a plenty salt on 'em. that'll show you the sort o' man i be.'again he winked, and again the bee boy laughed and una stared at dan. 'i know what sort o' man you be,'old hobden grunted, groping for the potatoes round the fire. 'do ye?' tom went on behind his back. 'some of us can't abide horseshoes, or church bells, or running water; an', talkin' o' runnin' water'--he turned to hobden, who was backing out of the roundel--'d'you mind the great floods at robertsbridge, when the miller's man was drowned in the street?' 'middlin' well.' old hobden let himself down on the coals by the fire-door. 'i was courtin' my woman on the marsh that year. carter to mus' plum i was, gettin' ten shillin's week. mine was a marsh woman.' 'won'erful odd-gates place--romney marsh,' said tom shoesmith. 'i've heard say the world's divided like into europe, ashy, afriky, ameriky, australy, an' romney marsh.' 'the marsh folk think so,' said hobden. 'i had a hem o' trouble to get my woman to leave it.' 'where did she come out of? i've forgot, ralph.' 'dymchurch under the wall,' hobden answered, a potato in his hand. 'then she'd be a pett--or a whitgift, would she?' 'whitgift.' hobden broke open the potato and ate it with the curious neatness of men who make most of their meals in the blowy open. 'she growed to be quite reasonable-like after livin' in the weald awhile, but our first twenty year or two she was odd-fashioned, no bounds. and she was a won'erful hand with bees.' he cut away a little piece of potato and threw it out to the door. 'ah! i've heard say the whitgifts could see further through a millstone than most,' said shoesmith. 'did she, now?' 'she was honest-innocent of any nigromancin',' said hobden. 'only she'd read signs and sinnifications out o' birds flyin', stars fallin', bees hivin', and such. an, she'd lie awake--listenin' for calls, she said.' 'that don't prove naught,' said tom. 'all marsh folk has been smugglers since time everlastin'. 'twould be in her blood to listen out o' nights.' 'nature-ally,' old hobden replied, smiling. 'i mind when there was smugglin' a sight nearer us than what the marsh be. but that wasn't my woman's trouble. 'twas a passel o' no-sense talk'--he dropped his voice--'about pharisees.' 'yes. i've heard marsh men belieft in 'em.'tom looked straight at the wide-eyed children beside bess. 'pharisees,' cried una. 'fairies? oh, i see!' 'people o' the hills,' said the bee boy, throwing half of his potato towards the door. 'there you be!' said hobden, pointing at him. my boy--he has her eyes and her out-gate sense. that's what she called 'em!' 'and what did you think of it all?' 'um--um,' hobden rumbled. 'a man that uses fields an' shaws after dark as much as i've done, he don't go out of his road excep' for keepers.' 'but settin' that aside?' said tom, coaxingly. 'i saw ye throw the good piece out-at-doors just now. do ye believe or--do ye?' 'there was a great black eye to that tater,' said hobden indignantly. 'my liddle eye didn't see un, then. it looked as if you meant it for--for any one that might need it. but settin' that aside, d'ye believe or--do ye?' 'i ain't sayin' nothin', because i've heard naught, an' i've see naught. but if you was to say there was more things after dark in the shaws than men, or fur, or feather, or fin, i dunno as i'd go far about to call you a liar. now turn again, tom. what's your say?' 'i'm like you. i say nothin'. but i'll tell you a tale, an' you can fit it as how you please.' 'passel o' no-sense stuff,' growled hobden, but he filled his pipe. 'the marsh men they call it dymchurch flit,'tom went on slowly. 'hap you have heard it?' 'my woman she've told it me scores o' times. dunno as i didn't end by belieftin' it--sometimes. hobden crossed over as he spoke, and sucked with his pipe at the yellow lanthorn flame. tom rested one great elbow on one great knee, where he sat among the coal. 'have you ever bin in the marsh?' he said to dan. 'only as far as rye, once,' dan answered. 'ah, that's but the edge. back behind of her there's steeples settin' beside churches, an' wise women settin' beside their doors, an' the sea settin' above the land, an' ducks herdin' wild in the diks' (he meant ditches). 'the marsh is just about riddled with diks an' sluices, an' tide-gates an' water-lets. you can hear 'em bubblin' an' grummelin' when the tide works in 'em, an' then you hear the sea rangin' left and right-handed all up along the wall. you've seen how flat she is--the marsh? you'd think nothin' easier than to walk eend-on acrost her? ah, but the diks an' the water-lets, they twists the roads about as ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles. so ye get all turned round in broad daylight.' 'that's because they've dreened the waters into the diks,' said hobden. 'when i courted my woman the rushes was green--eh me! the rushes was green--an' the bailiff o' the marshes he rode up and down as free as the fog.' 'who was he?' said dan. 'why, the marsh fever an' ague. he've clapped me on the shoulder once or twice till i shook proper. but now the dreenin' off of the waters have done away with the fevers; so they make a joke, like, that the bailiff o' the marshes broke his neck in a dik. a won'erful place for bees an' ducks 'tis too.' 'an' old,' tom went on. 'flesh an' blood have been there since time everlastin' beyond. well, now, speakin' among themselves, the marsh men say that from time everlastin' beyond, the pharisees favoured the marsh above the rest of old england. i lay the marsh men ought to know. they've been out after dark, father an' son, smugglin' some one thing or t'other, since ever wool grew to sheep's backs. they say there was always a middlin' few pharisees to be seen on the marsh. impident as rabbits, they was. they'd dance on the nakid roads in the nakid daytime; they'd flash their liddle green lights along the diks, comin' an' goin', like honest smugglers. yes, an' times they'd lock the church doors against parson an' clerk of sundays.' 'that 'ud be smugglers layin' in the lace or the brandy till they could run it out o' the marsh. i've told my woman so,' said hobden. 'i'll lay she didn't belieft it, then--not if she was a whitgift. a won'erful choice place for pharisees, the marsh, by all accounts, till queen bess's father he come in with his reformatories.' 'would that be a act of parliament like?' hobden asked. 'sure-ly. can't do nothing in old england without act, warrant an' summons. he got his act allowed him, an', they say, queen bess's father he used the parish churches something shameful. just about tore the gizzards out of i dunnamany. some folk in england they held with 'en; but some they saw it different, an' it eended in 'em takin' sides an' burnin' each other no bounds, accordin' which side was top, time bein'. that tarrified the pharisees: for goodwill among flesh an' blood is meat an' drink to 'em, an' ill-will is poison.' 'same as bees,' said the bee boy. 'bees won't stay by a house where there's hating.' 'true,' said tom. 'this reformatories tarrified the pharisees same as the reaper goin' round a last stand o' wheat tarrifies rabbits. they packed into the marsh from all parts, and they says, "fair or foul, we must flit out o' this, for merry england's done with, an' we're reckoned among the images."' 'did they all see it that way?' said hobden. 'all but one that was called robin--if you've heard of him. what are you laughin' at?'tom turned to dan. 'the pharisees's trouble didn't tech robin, because he'd cleaved middlin' close to people, like. no more he never meant to go out of old england--not he; so he was sent messagin' for help among flesh an' blood. but flesh an' blood must always think of their own concerns, an' robin couldn't get through at 'em, ye see. they thought it was tide-echoes off the marsh.' 'what did you--what did the fai--pharisees want?' una asked. 'a boat, to be sure. their liddle wings could no more cross channel than so many tired butterflies. a boat an' a crew they desired to sail 'em over to france, where yet awhile folks hadn't tore down the images. they couldn't abide cruel canterbury bells ringin' to bulverhithe for more pore men an' women to be burnded, nor the king's proud messenger ridin' through the land givin' orders to tear down the images. they couldn't abide it no shape. nor yet they couldn't get their boat an' crew to flit by without leave an' good-will from flesh an' blood; an' flesh an' blood came an' went about its own business the while the marsh was swarvin' up, an' swarvin' up with pharisees from all england over, strivin' all means to get through at flesh an' blood to tell 'em their sore need... i don't know as you've ever heard say pharisees are like chickens?' 'my woman used to say that too,'said hobden, folding his brown arms. 'they be. you run too many chickens together, an' the ground sickens, like, an' you get a squat, an' your chickens die. same way, you crowd pharisees all in one place--they don't die, but flesh an' blood walkin' among 'em is apt to sick up an' pine off. they don't mean it, an' flesh an' blood don't know it, but that's the truth--as i've heard. the pharisees through bein' all stenched up an' frighted, an' trying' to come through with their supplications, they nature-ally changed the thin airs an' humours in flesh an' blood. it lay on the marsh like thunder. men saw their churches ablaze with the wildfire in the windows after dark; they saw their cattle scatterin' an' no man scarin'; their sheep flockin' an' no man drivin'; their horses latherin' an' no man leadin'; they saw the liddle low green lights more than ever in the dik-sides; they heard the liddle feet patterin' more than ever round the houses; an' night an' day, day an' night, 'twas all as though they were bein' creeped up on, an' hinted at by some one or other that couldn't rightly shape their trouble. oh, i lay they sweated! man an' maid, woman an' child, their nature done 'em no service all the weeks while the marsh was swarvin' up with pharisees. but they was flesh an' blood, an' marsh men before all. they reckoned the signs sinnified trouble for the marsh. or that the sea 'ud rear up against dymchurch wall an' they'd be drownded like old winchelsea; or that the plague was comin'. so they looked for the meanin' in the sea or in the clouds--far an' high up. they never thought to look near an' knee-high, where they could see naught. 'now there was a poor widow at dymchurch under the wall, which, lacking man or property, she had the more time for feeling; and she come to feel there was a trouble outside her doorstep bigger an' heavier than aught she'd ever carried over it. she had two sons--one born blind, an' t'other struck dumb through fallin' off the wall when he was liddle. they was men grown, but not wage-earnin', an' she worked for 'em, keepin' bees and answerin' questions.' 'what sort of questions?' said dan. 'like where lost things might be found, an' what to put about a crooked baby's neck, an' how to join parted sweethearts. she felt the trouble on the marsh same as eels feel thunder. she was a wise woman.' 'my woman was won'erful weather-tender, too,' said hobden. 'i've seen her brish sparks like off an anvil out of her hair in thunderstorms. but she never laid out to answer questions.' 'this woman was a seeker, like, an' seekers they sometimes find. one night, while she lay abed, hot an' achin', there come a dream an' tapped at her window, an' "widow whitgift," it said, "widow whitgift!" 'first, by the wings an' the whistlin', she thought it was peewits, but last she arose an' dressed herself, an' opened her door to the marsh, an' she felt the trouble an' the groanin' all about her, strong as fever an' ague, an' she calls: "what is it? oh, what is it?" 'then 'twas all like the frogs in the diks peepin'; then 'twas all like the reeds in the diks clip-clappin'; an' then the great tide-wave rummelled along the wall, an' she couldn't hear proper. 'three times she called, an' three times the tide-wave did her down. but she catched the quiet between, an' she cries out, "what is the trouble on the marsh that's been lying down with my heart an' arising with my body this month gone?" she felt a liddle hand lay hold on her gown-hem, an' she stooped to the pull o' that liddle hand.' tom shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire and smiled at it as he went on. "'will the sea drown the marsh?" she says. she was a marsh woman first an' foremost. "'no," says the liddle voice. "sleep sound for all o' that." "'is the plague comin' to the marsh?" she says. them was all the ills she knowed. "'no. sleep sound for all o' that," says robin. 'she turned about, half mindful to go in, but the liddle voices grieved that shrill an' sorrowful she turns back, an' she cries: "if it is not a trouble of flesh an' blood, what can i do?" 'the pharisees cried out upon her from all round to fetch them a boat to sail to france, an' come back no more. "'there's a boat on the wall," she says, "but i can't push it down to the sea, nor sail it when 'tis there." "'lend us your sons," says all the pharisees. "give 'em leave an' good-will to sail it for us, mother--o mother!" "'one's dumb, an' t'other's blind," she says. "but all the dearer me for that; and you'll lose them in the big sea." the voices just about pierced through her; an' there was children's voices too. she stood out all she could, but she couldn't rightly stand against that. so she says: "if you can draw my sons for your job, i'd not hinder 'em. you can't ask no more of a mother." 'she saw them liddle green lights dance an' cross till she was dizzy; she heard them liddle feet patterin' by the thousand; she heard cruel canterbury bells ringing to bulverhithe, an' she heard the great tide-wave ranging along the wall. that was while the pharisees was workin' a dream to wake her two sons asleep: an' while she bit on her fingers she saw them two she'd bore come out an' pass her with never a word. she followed 'em, cryin' pitiful, to the old boat on the wall, an' that they took an' runned down to the sea. 'when they'd stepped mast an' sail the blind son speaks: "mother, we're waitin' your leave an' good-will to take them over."' tom shoesmith threw back his head and half shut his eyes. 'eh, me!' he said. 'she was a fine, valiant woman, the widow whitgift. she stood twistin' the eends of her long hair over her fingers, an' she shook like a poplar, makin' up her mind. the pharisees all about they hushed their children from cryin' an' they waited dumb-still. she was all their dependence. 'thout her leave an' good-will they could not pass; for she was the mother. so she shook like a aps-tree makin' up her mind. 'last she drives the word past her teeth, an' "go!" she says. "go with my leave an' goodwill." 'then i saw--then, they say, she had to brace back same as if she was wadin' in tide-water; for the pharisees just about flowed past her--down the beach to the boat, i dunnamany of 'em--with their wives an' childern an' valooables, all escapin' out of cruel old england. silver you could hear chinkin', an' liddle bundles hove down dunt on the bottom-boards, an' passels o' liddle swords an' shields raklin', an' liddle fingers an' toes scratchin' on the boatside to board her when the two sons pushed her off. that boat she sunk lower an' lower, but all the widow could see in it was her boys movin' hampered-like to get at the tackle. up sail they did, an' away they went, deep as a rye barge, away into the off-shore mists, an' the widow whitgift she sat down an' eased her grief till mornin' light.' 'i never heard she was all alone,' said hobden. 'i remember now. the one called robin, he stayed with her, they tell. she was all too grieevious to listen to his promises.' 'ah! she should ha' made her bargain beforehand. i allus told my woman so!'hobden cried. 'no. she loaned her sons for a pure love-loan, bein' as she sensed the trouble on the marshes, an' was simple good-willin' to ease it.' tom laughed softly. 'she done that. yes, she done that! from hithe to bulverhithe, fretty man an' maid, ailin' woman an' wailin' child, they took the advantage of the change in the thin airs just about as soon as the pharisees flitted. folks come out fresh an' shinin' all over the marsh like snails after wet. an' that while the widow whitgift sat grievin' on the wall. she might have belieft us--she might have trusted her sons would be sent back! she fussed, no bounds, when their boat come in after three days.' 'and, of course, the sons were both quite cured?' said una. 'no-o. that would have been out o' nature. she got 'em back as she sent 'em. the blind man he hadn't seen naught of anythin', an' the dumb man nature-ally he couldn't say aught of what he'd seen. i reckon that was why the pharisees pitched on 'em for the ferryin' job.' 'but what did you--what did robin promise the widow?' said dan. 'what did he promise, now?' tom pretended to think. 'wasn't your woman a whitgift, ralph? didn't she ever say?' 'she told me a passel o' no-sense stuff when he was born.' hobden pointed at his son. 'there was always to be one of 'em that could see further into a millstone than most.' 'me! that's me!'said the bee boy so suddenly that they all laughed. 'i've got it now!' cried tom, slapping his knee. 'so long as whitgift blood lasted, robin promised there would allers be one o' her stock that--that no trouble 'ud lie on, no maid 'ud sigh on, no night could frighten, no fright could harm, no harm could make sin, an' no woman could make a fool of.' 'well, ain't that just me?' said the bee boy, where he sat in the silver square of the great september moon that was staring into the oast-house door. 'they was the exact words she told me when we first found he wasn't like others. but it beats me how you known 'em,' said hobden. 'aha! there's more under my hat besides hair?' tom laughed and stretched himself. 'when i've seen these two young folk home, we'll make a night of old days, ralph, with passin' old tales--eh? an' where might you live?' he said, gravely, to dan. 'an' do you think your pa 'ud give me a drink for takin' you there, missy?' they giggled so at this that they had to run out. tom picked them both up, set one on each broad shoulder, and tramped across the ferny pasture where the cows puffed milky puffs at them in the moonlight. 'oh, puck! puck! i guessed you right from when you talked about the salt. how could you ever do it?' una cried, swinging along delighted. 'do what?'he said, and climbed the stile by the pollard oak. 'pretend to be tom shoesmith,' said dan, and they ducked to avoid the two little ashes that grow by the bridge over the brook. tom was almost running. 'yes. that's my name, mus' dan,' he said, hurrying over the silent shining lawn, where a rabbit sat by the big white-thorn near the croquet ground. 'here you be.' he strode into the old kitchen yard, and slid them down as ellen came to ask questions. 'i'm helping in mus' spray's oast-house,' he said to her. 'no, i'm no foreigner. i knowed this country 'fore your mother was born; an'--yes, it's dry work oastin', miss. thank you.' ellen went to get a jug, and the children went in--magicked once more by oak, ash, and thorn! a three-part song i'm just in love with all these three, the weald an' the marsh an' the down countrie; nor i don't know which i love the most, the weald or the marsh or the white chalk coast! i've buried my heart in a ferny hill, twix' a liddle low shaw an' a great high gill. oh, hop-bine yaller an' wood-smoke blue, i reckon you'll keep her middling true! i've loosed my mind for to out an' run on a marsh that was old when kings begun: oh, romney level an' brenzett reeds, i reckon you know what my mind needs! i've given my soul to the southdown grass, an' sheep-bells tinkled where you pass. oh, firle an' ditchling an' sails at sea, i reckon you keep my soul for me! the treasure and the law song of the fifth river when first by eden tree the four great rivers ran, to each was appointed a man her prince and ruler to be. but after this was ordained, (the ancient legends tell), there came dark israel, for whom no river remained. then he that is wholly just said to him: 'fling on the ground a handful of yellow dust, and a fifth great river shall run, mightier than these four, in secret the earth around; and her secret evermore shall be shown to thee and thy race. so it was said and done. and, deep in the veins of earth, and, fed by a thousand springs that comfort the market-place, or sap the power of kings, the fifth great river had birth, even as it was foretold-- the secret river of gold! and israel laid down his sceptre and his crown, to brood on that river bank, where the waters flashed and sank, and burrowed in earth and fell, and bided a season below; for reason that none might know, save only israel. he is lord of the last-- the fifth, most wonderful, flood. he hears her thunder past and her song is in his blood. he can foresay: 'she will fall,' for he knows which fountain dries behind which desert-belt a thousand leagues to the south. he can foresay: 'she will rise.' he knows what far snows melt along what mountain-wall a thousand leagues to the north. he snuffs the coming drouth as he snuffs the coming rain, he knows what each will bring forth, and turns it to his gain. a prince without a sword, a ruler without a throne; israel follows his quest. in every land a guest, of many lands a lord, in no land king is he. but the fifth great river keeps the secret of her deeps for israel alone, as it was ordered to be. now it was the third week in november, and the woods rang with the noise of pheasant-shooting. no one hunted that steep, cramped country except the village beagles, who, as often as not, escaped from their kennels and made a day of their own. dan and una found a couple of them towling round the kitchen-garden after the laundry cat. the little brutes were only too pleased to go rabbiting, so the children ran them all along the brook pastures and into little lindens farm-yard, where the old sow vanquished them--and up to the quarry-hole, where they started a fox. he headed for far wood, and there they frightened out all the pheasants, who were sheltering from a big beat across the valley. then the cruel guns began again, and they grabbed the beagles lest they should stray and get hurt. 'i wouldn't be a pheasant--in november--for a lot,' dan panted, as he caught folly by the neck. 'why did you laugh that horrid way?' 'i didn't,' said una, sitting on flora, the fat lady-dog. 'oh, look! the silly birds are going back to their own woods instead of ours, where they would be safe.' 'safe till it pleased you to kill them.' an old man, so tall he was almost a giant, stepped from behind the clump of hollies by volaterrae. the children jumped, and the dogs dropped like setters. he wore a sweeping gown of dark thick stuff, lined and edged with yellowish fur, and he bowed a bent-down bow that made them feel both proud and ashamed. then he looked at them steadily, and they stared back without doubt or fear. 'you are not afraid?' he said, running his hands through his splendid grey beard. 'not afraid that those men yonder'--he jerked his head towards the incessant pop-pop of the guns from the lower woods--'will do you hurt?' 'we-ell'--dan liked to be accurate, especially when he was shy--'old hobd--a friend of mine told me that one of the beaters got peppered last week--hit in the leg, i mean. you see, mr meyer will fire at rabbits. but he gave waxy garnett a quid--sovereign, i mean--and waxy told hobden he'd have stood both barrels for half the money.' 'he doesn't understand,'una cried, watching the pale, troubled face. 'oh, i wish--' she had scarcely said it when puck rustled out of the hollies and spoke to the man quickly in foreign words. puck wore a long cloak too--the afternoon was just frosting down--and it changed his appearance altogether. 'nay, nay!'he said at last. 'you did not understand the boy. a freeman was a little hurt, by pure mischance, at the hunting.' 'i know that mischance! what did his lord do? laugh and ride over him?' the old man sneered. 'it was one of your own people did the hurt, kadmiel.' puck's eyes twinkled maliciously. 'so he gave the freeman a piece of gold, and no more was said.' 'a jew drew blood from a christian and no more was said?' kadmiel cried. 'never! when did they torture him?' 'no man may be bound, or fined, or slain till he has been judged by his peers,' puck insisted. 'there is but one law in old england for jew or christian--the law that was signed at runnymede.' 'why, that's magna charta!' dan whispered. it was one of the few history dates that he could remember. kadmiel turned on him with a sweep and a whirr of his spicy-scented gown. 'dost thou know of that, babe?' he cried, and lifted his hands in wonder. 'yes,' said dan firmly. 'magna charta was signed by john, that henry the third put his heel upon. and old hobden says that if it hadn't been for her (he calls everything "her", you know), the keepers would have him clapped in lewes jail all the year round.' again puck translated to kadmiel in the strange, solemn-sounding language, and at last kadmiel laughed. 'out of the mouths of babes do we learn,' said he. 'but tell me now, and i will not call you a babe but a rabbi, why did the king sign the roll of the new law at runnymede? for he was a king.' dan looked sideways at his sister. it was her turn. 'because he jolly well had to,' said una softly. 'the barons made him.' 'nay,' kadmiel answered, shaking his head. 'you christians always forget that gold does more than the sword. our good king signed because he could not borrow more money from us bad jews.' he curved his shoulders as he spoke. 'a king without gold is a snake with a broken back, and'--his nose sneered up and his eyebrows frowned down--'it is a good deed to break a snake's back. that was my work,' he cried, triumphantly, to puck. 'spirit of earth, bear witness that that was my work!' he shot up to his full towering height, and his words rang like a trumpet. he had a voice that changed its tone almost as an opal changes colour--sometimes deep and thundery, sometimes thin and waily, but always it made you listen. 'many people can bear witness to that,' puck answered. 'tell these babes how it was done. remember, master, they do not know doubt or fear.' 'so i saw in their faces when we met,' said kadmiel. 'yet surely, surely they are taught to spit upon jews?' 'are they?' said dan, much interested. 'where at?' puck fell back a pace, laughing. 'kadmiel is thinking of king john's reign,' he explained. 'his people were badly treated then.' 'oh, we know that.' they answered, and (it was very rude of them, but they could not help it) they stared straight at kadmiel's mouth to see if his teeth were all there. it stuck in their lesson-memory that king john used to pull out jews' teeth to make them lend him money. kadmiel understood the look and smiled bitterly. 'no. your king never drew my teeth: i think, perhaps, i drew his. listen! i was not born among christians, but among moors--in spain--in a little white town under the mountains. yes, the moors are cruel, but at least their learned men dare to think. it was prophesied of me at my birth that i should be a lawgiver to a people of a strange speech and a hard language. we jews are always looking for the prince and the lawgiver to come. why not? my people in the town (we were very few) set me apart as a child of the prophecy--the chosen of the chosen. we jews dream so many dreams. you would never guess it to see us slink about the rubbish-heaps in our quarter; but at the day's end--doors shut, candles lit--aha! then we became the chosen again.' he paced back and forth through the wood as he talked. the rattle of the shot-guns never ceased, and the dogs whimpered a little and lay flat on the leaves. 'i was a prince. yes! think of a little prince who had never known rough words in his own house handed over to shouting, bearded rabbis, who pulled his ears and filliped his nose, all that he might learn--learn--learn to be king when his time came. he! such a little prince it was! one eye he kept on the stone-throwing moorish boys, and the other it roved about the streets looking for his kingdom. yes, and he learned to cry softly when he was hunted up and down those streets. he learned to do all things without noise. he played beneath his father's table when the great candle was lit, and he listened as children listen to the talk of his father's friends above the table. they came across the mountains, from out of all the world, for my prince's father was their counsellor. they came from behind the armies of sala-ud-din: from rome: from venice: from england. they stole down our alley, they tapped secretly at our door, they took off their rags, they arrayed themselves, and they talked to my father at the wine. all over the world the heathen fought each other. they brought news of these wars, and while he played beneath the table, my prince heard these meanly dressed ones decide between themselves how, and when, and for how long king should draw sword against king, and people rise up against people. why not? there can be no war without gold, and we jews know how the earth's gold moves with the seasons, and the crops, and the winds; circling and looping and rising and sinking away like a river--a wonderful underground river. how should the foolish kings know that while they fight and steal and kill?' the children's faces showed that they knew nothing at all as, with open eyes, they trotted and turned beside the long-striding old man. he twitched his gown over his shoulders, and a square plate of gold, studded with jewels, gleamed for an instant through the fur, like a star through flying snow. 'no matter,' he said. 'but, credit me, my prince saw peace or war decided not once, but many times, by the fall of a coin spun between a jew from bury and a jewess from alexandria, in his father's house, when the great candle was lit. such power had we jews among the gentiles. ah, my little prince! do you wonder that he learned quickly? why not?' he muttered to himself and went on: 'my trade was that of a physician. when i had learned it in spain i went to the east to find my kingdom. why not? a jew is as free as a sparrow--or a dog. he goes where he is hunted. in the east i found libraries where men dared to think--schools of medicine where they dared to learn. i was diligent in my business. therefore i stood before kings. i have been a brother to princes and a companion to beggars, and i have walked between the living and the dead. there was no profit in it. i did not find my kingdom. so, in the tenth year of my travels, when i had reached the uttermost eastern sea, i returned to my father's house. god had wonderfully preserved my people. none had been slain, none even wounded, and only a few scourged. i became once more a son in my father's house. again the great candle was lit; again the meanly apparelled ones tapped on our door after dusk; and again i heard them weigh out peace and war, as they weighed out the gold on the table. but i was not rich--not very rich. therefore, when those that had power and knowledge and wealth talked together, i sat in the shadow. why not? 'yet all my wanderings had shown me one sure thing, which is, that a king without money is like a spear without a head. he cannot do much harm. i said, therefore, to elias of bury, a great one among our people: "why do our people lend any more to the kings that oppress us?" "because," said elias, "if we refuse they stir up their people against us, and the people are tenfold more cruel than kings. if thou doubtest, come with me to bury in england and live as i live." 'i saw my mother's face across the candle flame, and i said, "i will come with thee to bury. maybe my kingdom shall be there." 'so i sailed with elias to the darkness and the cruelty of bury in england, where there are no learned men. how can a man be wise if he hate? at bury i kept his accounts for elias, and i saw men kill jews there by the tower. no--none laid hands on elias. he lent money to the king, and the king's favour was about him. a king will not take the life so long as there is any gold. this king--yes, john--oppressed his people bitterly because they would not give him money. yet his land was a good land. if he had only given it rest he might have cropped it as a christian crops his beard. but even that little he did not know, for god had deprived him of all understanding, and had multiplied pestilence, and famine, and despair upon the people. therefore his people turned against us jews, who are all people's dogs. why not? lastly the barons and the people rose together against the king because of his cruelties. nay--nay--the barons did not love the people, but they saw that if the king cut up and destroyed the common people, he would presently destroy the barons. they joined then, as cats and pigs will join to slay a snake. i kept the accounts, and i watched all these things, for i remembered the prophecy. 'a great gathering of barons (to most of whom we had lent money) came to bury, and there, after much talk and a thousand runnings-about, they made a roll of the new laws that they would force on the king. if he swore to keep those laws, they would allow him a little money. that was the king's god--money--to waste. they showed us the roll of the new laws. why not? we had lent them money. we knew all their counsels--we jews shivering behind our doors in bury.' he threw out his hands suddenly. 'we did not seek to be paid all in money. we sought power--power--power! that is our god in our captivity. power to use! 'i said to elias: "these new laws are good. lend no more money to the king: so long as he has money he will lie and slay the people." "'nay," said elias. "i know this people. they are madly cruel. better one king than a thousand butchers. i have lent a little money to the barons, or they would torture us, but my most i will lend to the king. he hath promised me a place near him at court, where my wife and i shall be safe." "'but if the king be made to keep these new laws," i said, "the land will have peace, and our trade will grow. if we lend he will fight again." "'who made thee a lawgiver in england?" said elias. "i know this people. let the dogs tear one another! i will lend the king ten thousand pieces of gold, and he can fight the barons at his pleasure." "'there are not two thousand pieces of gold in all england this summer," i said, for i kept the accounts, and i knew how the earth's gold moved--that wonderful underground river. elias barred home the windows, and, his hands about his mouth, he told me how, when he was trading with small wares in a french ship, he had come to the castle of pevensey.' 'oh!' said dan. 'pevensey again!' and looked at una, who nodded and skipped. 'there, after they had scattered his pack up and down the great hall, some young knights carried him to an upper room, and dropped him into a well in a wall, that rose and fell with the tide. they called him joseph, and threw torches at his wet head. why not?' 'why, of course!'cried dan. 'didn't you know it was--' puck held up his hand to stop him, and kadmiel, who never noticed, went on. 'when the tide dropped he thought he stood on old armour, but feeling with his toes, he raked up bar on bar of soft gold. some wicked treasure of the old days put away, and the secret cut off by the sword. i have heard the like before.' 'so have we,' una whispered. 'but it wasn't wicked a bit.' 'elias took a little of the stuff with him, and thrice yearly he would return to pevensey as a chapman, selling at no price or profit, till they suffered him to sleep in the empty room, where he would plumb and grope, and steal away a few bars. the great store of it still remained, and by long brooding he had come to look on it as his own. yet when we thought how we should lift and convey it, we saw no way. this was before the word of the lord had come to me. a walled fortress possessed by normans; in the midst a forty-foot tide-well out of which to remove secretly many horse-loads of gold! hopeless! so elias wept. adah, his wife, wept too. she had hoped to stand beside the queen's christian tiring-maids at court when the king should give them that place at court which he had promised. why not? she was born in england--an odious woman. 'the present evil to us was that elias, out of his strong folly, had, as it were, promised the king that he would arm him with more gold. wherefore the king in his camp stopped his ears against the barons and the people. wherefore men died daily. adah so desired her place at court, she besought elias to tell the king where the treasure lay, that the king might take it by force, and--they would trust in his gratitude. why not? this elias refused to do, for he looked on the gold as his own. they quarrelled, and they wept at the evening meal, and late in the night came one langton--a priest, almost learned--to borrow more money for the barons. elias and adah went to their chamber.' kadmiel laughed scornfully in his beard. the shots across the valley stopped as the shooting party changed their ground for the last beat. 'so it was i, not elias,' he went on quietly, 'that made terms with langton touching the fortieth of the new laws.' 'what terms?' said puck quickly. 'the fortieth of the great charter says: "to none will we sell, refuse, or delay right or justice."' 'true, but the barons had written first: to no free man. it cost me two hundred broad pieces of gold to change those narrow words. langton, the priest, understood. "jew though thou art," said he, "the change is just, and if ever christian and jew came to be equal in england thy people may thank thee." then he went out stealthily, as men do who deal with israel by night. i think he spent my gift upon his altar. why not? i have spoken with langton. he was such a man as i might have been if--if we jews had been a people. but yet, in many things, a child. 'i heard elias and adah abovestairs quarrel, and, knowing the woman was the stronger, i saw that elias would tell the king of the gold and that the king would continue in his stubbornness. therefore i saw that the gold must be put away from the reach of any man. of a sudden, the word of the lord came to me saying, "the morning is come, o thou that dwellest in the land."' kadmiel halted, all black against the pale green sky beyond the wood--a huge robed figure, like the moses in the picture-bible. 'i rose. i went out, and as i shut the door on that house of foolishness, the woman looked from the window and whispered, "i have prevailed on my husband to tell the king!" i answered: "there is no need. the lord is with me." 'in that hour the lord gave me full understanding of all that i must do; and his hand covered me in my ways. first i went to london, to a physician of our people, who sold me certain drugs that i needed. you shall see why. thence i went swiftly to pevensey. men fought all around me, for there were neither rulers nor judges in the abominable land. yet when i walked by them they cried out that i was one ahasuerus, a jew, condemned, as they believe, to live for ever, and they fled from me every-ways. thus the lord saved me for my work, and at pevensey i bought me a little boat and moored it on the mud beneath the marsh-gate of the castle. that also god showed me.' he was as calm as though he were speaking of some stranger, and his voice filled the little bare wood with rolling music. 'i cast'--his hand went to his breast, and again the strange jewel gleamed--'i cast the drugs which i had prepared into the common well of the castle. nay, i did no harm. the more we physicians know, the less do we do. only the fool says: "i dare." i caused a blotched and itching rash to break out upon their skins, but i knew it would fade in fifteen days. i did not stretch out my hand against their life. they in the castle thought it was the plague, and they ran out, taking with them their very dogs. 'a christian physician, seeing that i was a jew and a stranger, vowed that i had brought the sickness from london. this is the one time i have ever heard a christian leech speak truth of any disease. thereupon the people beat me, but a merciful woman said: "do not kill him now. push him into our castle with his plague, and if, as he says, it will abate on the fifteenth day, we can kill him then." why not? they drove me across the drawbridge of the castle, and fled back to their booths. thus i came to be alone with the treasure.' 'but did you know this was all going to happen just right?' said una. 'my prophecy was that i should be a lawgiver to a people of a strange land and a hard speech. i knew i should not die. i washed my cuts. i found the tide-well in the wall, and from sabbath to sabbath i dove and dug there in that empty, christian-smelling fortress. he! i spoiled the egyptians! he! if they had only known! i drew up many good loads of gold, which i loaded by night into my boat. there had been gold dust too, but that had been washed out by the tides.' 'didn't you ever wonder who had put it there?' said dan, stealing a glance at puck's calm, dark face under the hood of his gown. puck shook his head and pursed his lips. 'often; for the gold was new to me,' kadmiel replied. 'i know the golds. i can judge them in the dark; but this was heavier and redder than any we deal in. perhaps it was the very gold of parvaim. eh, why not? it went to my heart to heave it on to the mud, but i saw well that if the evil thing remained, or if even the hope of finding it remained, the king would not sign the new laws, and the land would perish.' 'oh, marvel!' said puck, beneath his breath, rustling in the dead leaves. 'when the boat was loaded i washed my hands seven times, and pared beneath my nails, for i would not keep one grain. i went out by the little gate where the castle's refuse is thrown. i dared not hoist sail lest men should see me; but the lord commanded the tide to bear me carefully, and i was far from land before the morning.' 'weren't you afraid?' said una. 'why? there were no christians in the boat. at sunrise i made my prayer, and cast the gold--all--all that gold--into the deep sea! a king's ransom--no, the ransom of a people! when i had loosed hold of the last bar, the lord commanded the tide to return me to a haven at the mouth of a river, and thence i walked across a wilderness to lewes, where i have brethren. they opened the door to me, and they say--i had not eaten for two days--they say that i fell across the threshold, crying: "i have sunk an army with horsemen in the sea!"' 'but you hadn't,' said una. 'oh, yes! i see! you meant that king john might have spent it on that?' 'even so,' said kadmiel. the firing broke out again close behind them. the pheasants poured over the top of a belt of tall firs. they could see young mr meyer, in his new yellow gaiters, very busy and excited at the end of the line, and they could hear the thud of the falling birds. 'but what did elias of bury do?' puck demanded. 'he had promised money to the king.' kadmiel smiled grimly. 'i sent him word from london that the lord was on my side. when he heard that the plague had broken out in pevensey, and that a jew had been thrust into the castle to cure it, he understood my word was true. he and adah hurried to lewes and asked me for an accounting. he still looked on the gold as his own. i told them where i had laid it, and i gave them full leave to pick it up... eh, well! the curses of a fool and the dust of a journey are two things no wise man can escape... but i pitied elias! the king was wroth with him because he could not lend; the barons were wroth too because they heard that he would have lent to the king; and adah was wroth with him because she was an odious woman. they took ship from lewes to spain. that was wise!' 'and you? did you see the signing of the law at runnymede?' said puck, as kadmiel laughed noiselessly. 'nay. who am i to meddle with things too high for me? i returned to bury, and lent money on the autumn crops. why not?' there was a crackle overhead. a cock-pheasant that had sheered aside after being hit spattered down almost on top of them, driving up the dry leaves like a shell. flora and folly threw themselves at it; the children rushed forward, and when they had beaten them off and smoothed down the plumage kadmiel had disappeared. 'well,' said puck calmly, 'what did you think of it? weland gave the sword! the sword gave the treasure, and the treasure gave the law. it's as natural as an oak growing.' 'i don't understand. didn't he know it was sir richard's old treasure?' said dan. 'and why did sir richard and brother hugh leave it lying about? and--and--' 'never mind,' said una politely. 'he'll let us come and go and look and know another time. won't you, puck?' 'another time maybe,' puck answered. 'brr! it's cold--and late. i'll race you towards home!' they hurried down into the sheltered valley. the sun had almost sunk behind cherry clack, the trodden ground by the cattle-gates was freezing at the edges, and the new-waked north wind blew the night on them from over the hills. they picked up their feet and flew across the browned pastures, and when they halted, panting in the steam of their own breath, the dead leaves whirled up behind them. there was oak and ash and thorn enough in that year-end shower to magic away a thousand memories. so they trotted to the brook at the bottom of the lawn, wondering why flora and folly had missed the quarry-hole fox. old hobden was just finishing some hedge-work. they saw his white smock glimmer in the twilight where he faggoted the rubbish. 'winter, he's come, i reckon, mus' dan,' he called. 'hard times now till heffle cuckoo fair. yes, we'll all be glad to see the old woman let the cuckoo out o' the basket for to start lawful spring in england.' they heard a crash, and a stamp and a splash of water as though a heavy old cow were crossing almost under their noses. hobden ran forward angrily to the ford. 'gleason's bull again, playin' robin all over the farm! oh, look, mus' dan--his great footmark as big as a trencher. no bounds to his impidence! he might count himself to be a man or--or somebody--' a voice the other side of the brook boomed: 'i wonder who his cloak would turn when puck had led him round, or where those walking fires would burn--' then the children went in singing 'farewell, rewards and fairies' at the tops of their voices. they had forgotten that they had not even said good-night to puck. the children's song land of our birth, we pledge to thee our love and toil in the years to be; when we are grown and take our place as men and women with our race. father in heaven who lovest all, oh, help thy children when they call; that they may build from age to age an undefiled heritage. teach us to bear the yoke in youth, with steadfastness and careful truth; that, in our time, thy grace may give the truth whereby the nations live. teach us to rule ourselves alway, controlled and cleanly night and day; that we may bring, if need arise, no maimed or worthless sacrifice. teach us to look in all our ends, on thee for judge, and not our friends; that we, with thee, may walk uncowed by fear or favour of the crowd. teach us the strength that cannot seek, by deed or thought, to hurt the weak; that, under thee, we may possess man's strength to comfort man's distress. teach us delight in simple things, and mirth that has no bitter springs; forgiveness free of evil done, and love to all men 'neath the sun! land of our birth, our faith, our pride, for whose dear sake our fathers died; o motherland, we pledge to thee head, heart and hand through the years to be! france at war on the frontier of civilization by rudyard kipling contents poem: france i. on the frontier of civilization ii. the nation's spirit and a new inheritance iii. battle spectacle and a review iv. the spirit of the people v. life in trenches on the mountain side vi. the common task of a great people france at war on the frontier of civilization france* by rudyard kipling _broke to every known mischance, lifted over all by the light sane joy of life, the buckler of the gaul, furious in luxury, merciless in toil, terrible with strength that draws from her tireless soil, strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of men's mind, first to follow truth and last to leave old truths behind-- france beloved of every soul that loves its fellow-kind._ ere our birth (rememberest thou?) side by side we lay fretting in the womb of rome to begin the fray. ere men knew our tongues apart, our one taste was known-- each must mould the other's fate as he wrought his own. to this end we stirred mankind till all earth was ours, till our world-end strifes began wayside thrones and powers, puppets that we made or broke to bar the other's path-- necessary, outpost folk, hirelings of our wrath. to this end we stormed the seas, tack for tack, and burst through the doorways of new worlds, doubtful which was first. hand on hilt (rememberest thou?), ready for the blow. sure whatever else we met we should meet our foe. spurred or baulked at ev'ry stride by the other's strength, so we rode the ages down and every ocean's length; where did you refrain from us or we refrain from you? ask the wave that has not watched war between us two. others held us for a while, but with weaker charms, these we quitted at the call for each other's arms. eager toward the known delight, equally we strove, each the other's mystery, terror, need, and love. to each other's open court with our proofs we came, where could we find honour else or men to test the claim? from each other's throat we wrenched valour's last reward, that extorted word of praise gasped 'twixt lunge and guard. in each other's cup we poured mingled blood and tears, brutal joys, unmeasured hopes, intolerable fears, all that soiled or salted life for a thousand years. proved beyond the need of proof, matched in every clime, o companion, we have lived greatly through all time: yoked in knowledge and remorse now we come to rest, laughing at old villainies that time has turned to jest, pardoning old necessity no pardon can efface-- that undying sin we shared in rouen market-place. now we watch the new years shape, wondering if they hold fiercer lighting in their hearts than we launched of old. now we hear new voices rise, question, boast or gird, as we raged (rememberest thou?) when our crowds were stirred. now we count new keels afloat, and new hosts on land, massed liked ours (rememberest thou?) when our strokes were planned. we were schooled for dear life sake, to know each other's blade: what can blood and iron make more than we have made? we have learned by keenest use to know each other's mind: what shall blood and iron loose that we cannot bind? we who swept each other's coast, sacked each other's home, since the sword of brennus clashed on the scales at rome, listen, court and close again, wheeling girth to girth, in the strained and bloodless guard set for peace on earth. _broke to every known mischance, lifted over all by the light sane joy of life, the buckler of the gaul, furious in luxury, merciless in toil, terrible with strength renewed from a tireless soil, strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of men's mind, first to follow truth and last to leave old truths behind, france beloved of every soul that loves or serves its kind._ *first published june , . i on the frontier of civilization "it's a pretty park," said the french artillery officer. "we've done a lot for it since the owner left. i hope he'll appreciate it when he comes back." the car traversed a winding drive through woods, between banks embellished with little chalets of a rustic nature. at first, the chalets stood their full height above ground, suggesting tea-gardens in england. further on they sank into the earth till, at the top of the ascent, only their solid brown roofs showed. torn branches drooping across the driveway, with here and there a scorched patch of undergrowth, explained the reason of their modesty. the chateau that commanded these glories of forest and park sat boldly on a terrace. there was nothing wrong with it except, if one looked closely, a few scratches or dints on its white stone walls, or a neatly drilled hole under a flight of steps. one such hole ended in an unexploded shell. "yes," said the officer. "they arrive here occasionally." something bellowed across the folds of the wooded hills; something grunted in reply. something passed overhead, querulously but not without dignity. two clear fresh barks joined the chorus, and a man moved lazily in the direction of the guns. "well. suppose we come and look at things a little," said the commanding officer. an observation post there was a specimen tree--a tree worthy of such a park--the sort of tree visitors are always taken to admire. a ladder ran up it to a platform. what little wind there was swayed the tall top, and the ladder creaked like a ship's gangway. a telephone bell tinkled foot overhead. two invisible guns spoke fervently for half a minute, and broke off like terriers choked on a leash. we climbed till the topmost platform swayed sicklily beneath us. here one found a rustic shelter, always of the tea-garden pattern, a table, a map, and a little window wreathed with living branches that gave one the first view of the devil and all his works. it was a stretch of open country, with a few sticks like old tooth-brushes which had once been trees round a farm. the rest was yellow grass, barren to all appearance as the veldt. "the grass is yellow because they have used gas here," said an officer. "their trenches are------. you can see for yourself." the guns in the woods began again. they seemed to have no relation to the regularly spaced bursts of smoke along a little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away--no connection at all with the strong voices overhead coming and going. it was as impersonal as the drive of the sea along a breakwater. thus it went: a pause--a gathering of sound like the race of an incoming wave; then the high-flung heads of breakers spouting white up the face of a groyne. suddenly, a seventh wave broke and spread the shape of its foam like a plume overtopping all the others. "that's one of our torpilleurs--what you call trench-sweepers," said the observer among the whispering leaves. some one crossed the platform to consult the map with its ranges. a blistering outbreak of white smokes rose a little beyond the large plume. it was as though the tide had struck a reef out yonder. then a new voice of tremendous volume lifted itself out of a lull that followed. somebody laughed. evidently the voice was known. "that is not for us," a gunner said. "they are being waked up from------" he named a distant french position. "so and so is attending to them there. we go on with our usual work. look! another torpilleur." "the barbarian" again a big plume rose; and again the lighter shells broke at their appointed distance beyond it. the smoke died away on that stretch of trench, as the foam of a swell dies in the angle of a harbour wall, and broke out afresh half a mile lower down. in its apparent laziness, in its awful deliberation, and its quick spasms of wrath, it was more like the work of waves than of men; and our high platform's gentle sway and glide was exactly the motion of a ship drifting with us toward that shore. "the usual work. only the usual work," the officer explained. "sometimes it is here. sometimes above or below us. i have been here since may." a little sunshine flooded the stricken landscape and made its chemical yellow look more foul. a detachment of men moved out on a road which ran toward the french trenches, and then vanished at the foot of a little rise. other men appeared moving toward us with that concentration of purpose and bearing shown in both armies when--dinner is at hand. they looked like people who had been digging hard. "the same work. always the same work!" the officer said. "and you could walk from here to the sea or to switzerland in that ditch--and you'll find the same work going on everywhere. it isn't war." "it's better than that," said another. "it's the eating-up of a people. they come and they fill the trenches and they die, and they die; and they send more and _those_ die. we do the same, of course, but--look!" he pointed to the large deliberate smoke-heads renewing themselves along that yellowed beach. "that is the frontier of civilization. they have all civilization against them --those brutes yonder. it's not the local victories of the old wars that we're after. it's the barbarian--all the barbarian. now, you've seen the whole thing in little. come and look at our children." soldiers in caves we left that tall tree whose fruits are death ripened and distributed at the tingle of small bells. the observer returned to his maps and calculations; the telephone-boy stiffened up beside his exchange as the amateurs went out of his life. some one called down through the branches to ask who was attending to--belial, let us say, for i could not catch the gun's name. it seemed to belong to that terrific new voice which had lifted itself for the second or third time. it appeared from the reply that if belial talked too long he would be dealt with from another point miles away. the troops we came down to see were at rest in a chain of caves which had begun life as quarries and had been fitted up by the army for its own uses. there were underground corridors, ante-chambers, rotundas, and ventilating shafts with a bewildering play of cross lights, so that wherever you looked you saw goya's pictures of men-at-arms. every soldier has some of the old maid in him, and rejoices in all the gadgets and devices of his own invention. death and wounding come by nature, but to lie dry, sleep soft, and keep yourself clean by forethought and contrivance is art, and in all things the frenchman is gloriously an artist. moreover, the french officers seem as mother-keen on their men as their men are brother-fond of them. maybe the possessive form of address: "mon general," "mon capitaine," helps the idea, which our men cloke in other and curter phrases. and those soldiers, like ours, had been welded for months in one furnace. as an officer said: "half our orders now need not be given. experience makes us think together." i believe, too, that if a french private has an idea--and they are full of ideas--it reaches his c. . quicker than it does with us. the sentinel hounds the overwhelming impression was the brilliant health and vitality of these men and the quality of their breeding. they bore themselves with swing and rampant delight in life, while their voices as they talked in the side-caverns among the stands of arms were the controlled voices of civilization. yet, as the lights pierced the gloom they looked like bandits dividing the spoil. one picture, though far from war, stays with me. a perfectly built, dark-skinned young giant had peeled himself out of his blue coat and had brought it down with a swish upon the shoulder of a half-stripped comrade who was kneeling at his feet with some footgear. they stood against a background of semi-luminous blue haze, through which glimmered a pile of coppery straw half covered by a red blanket. by divine accident of light and pose it st. martin giving his cloak to the beggar. there were scores of pictures in these galleries--notably a rock-hewn chapel where the red of the cross on the rough canvas altar-cloth glowed like a ruby. further inside the caves we found a row of little rock-cut kennels, each inhabited by one wise, silent dog. their duties begin in at night with the sentinels and listening-posts. "and believe me," a proud instructor, "my fellow here knows the difference between the noise of our shells and the boche shells." when we came out into the open again there were good opportunities for this study. voices and wings met and passed in the air, and, perhaps, one strong young tree had not been bending quite so far across the picturesque park-drive when we first went that way. "oh, yes," said an officer, "shells have to fall somewhere, and," he added with fine toleration, "it is, after all, against us that the boche directs them. but come you and look at my dug-out. it's the most superior of all possible dug-outs." "no. come and look at our mess. it's the ritz of these parts." and they joyously told how they had got, or procured, the various fittings and elegancies, while hands stretched out of the gloom to shake, and men nodded welcome and greeting all through that cheery brotherhood in the woods. work in the fields the voices and the wings were still busy after lunch, when the car slipped past the tea-houses in the drive, and came into a country where women and children worked among the crops. there were large raw shell holes by the wayside or in the midst of fields, and often a cottage or a villa had been smashed as a bonnet-box is smashed by an umbrella. that must be part of belial's work when he bellows so truculently among the hills to the north. we were looking for a town that lives under shell-fire. the regular road to it was reported unhealthy--not that the women and children seemed to care. we took byways of which certain exposed heights and corners were lightly blinded by wind-brakes of dried tree-tops. here the shell holes were rather thick on the ground. but the women and the children and the old men went on with their work with the cattle and the crops; and where a house had been broken by shells the rubbish was collected in a neat pile, and where a room or two still remained usable, it was inhabited, and the tattered window-curtains fluttered as proudly as any flag. and time was when i used to denounce young france because it tried to kill itself beneath my car wheels; and the fat old women who crossed roads without warning; and the specially deaf old men who slept in carts on the wrong side of the road! now, i could take off my hat to every single soul of them, but that one cannot traverse a whole land bareheaded. the nearer we came to our town the fewer were the people, till at last we halted in a well-built suburb of paved streets where there was no life at all. . . . a wrecked town the stillness was as terrible as the spread of the quick busy weeds between the paving-stones; the air smelt of pounded mortar and crushed stone; the sound of a footfall echoed like the drop of a pebble in a well. at first the horror of wrecked apartment-houses and big shops laid open makes one waste energy in anger. it is not seemly that rooms should be torn out of the sides of buildings as one tears the soft heart out of english bread; that villa roofs should lie across iron gates of private garages, or that drawing-room doors should flap alone and disconnected between two emptinesses of twisted girders. the eye wearies of the repeated pattern that burst shells make on stone walls, as the mouth sickens of the taste of mortar and charred timber. one quarter of the place had been shelled nearly level; the facades of the houses stood doorless, roofless, and windowless like stage scenery. this was near the cathedral, which is always a favourite mark for the heathen. they had gashed and ripped the sides of the cathedral itself, so that the birds flew in and out at will; they had smashed holes in the roof; knocked huge cantles out of the buttresses, and pitted and starred the paved square outside. they were at work, too, that very afternoon, though i do not think the cathedral was their objective for the moment. we walked to and fro in the silence of the streets and beneath the whirring wings overhead. presently, a young woman, keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. an old woman opened a shutter (how it jarred!), and spoke to her. the silence closed again, but it seemed to me that i heard a sound of singing--the sort of chant one hears in nightmare-cities of voices crying from underground. in the cathedral "nonsense," said an officer. "who should be singing here?" we circled the cathedral again, and saw what pavement-stones can do against their own city, when the shell jerks them upward. but there _was_ singing after all--on the other side of a little door in the flank of the cathedral. we looked in, doubting, and saw at least a hundred folk, mostly women, who knelt before the altar of an unwrecked chapel. we withdrew quietly from that holy ground, and it was not only the eyes of the french officers that filled with tears. then there came an old, old thing with a prayer-book in her hand, pattering across the square, evidently late for service. "and who are those women?" i asked. "some are caretakers; people who have still little shops here. (there is one quarter where you can buy things.) there are many old people, too, who will not go away. they are of the place, you see." "and this bombardment happens often?" i said. "it happens always. would you like to look at the railway station? of course, it has not been so bombarded as the cathedral." we went through the gross nakedness of streets without people, till we reached the railway station, which was very fairly knocked about, but, as my friends said, nothing like as much as the cathedral. then we had to cross the end of a long street down which the boche could see clearly. as one glanced up it, one perceived how the weeds, to whom men's war is the truce of god, had come back and were well established the whole length of it, watched by the long perspective of open, empty windows. ii the nation's spirit and a new inheritance we left that stricken but undefeated town, dodged a few miles down the roads beside which the women tended their cows, and dropped into a place on a hill where a moroccan regiment of many experiences was in billets. they were mohammedans bafflingly like half a dozen of our indian frontier types, though they spoke no accessible tongue. they had, of course, turned the farm buildings where they lay into a little bit of africa in colour and smell. they had been gassed in the north; shot over and shot down, and set up to be shelled again; and their officers talked of north african wars that we had never heard of--sultry days against long odds in the desert years ago. "afterward--is it not so with you also?--we get our best recruits from the tribes we have fought. these men are children. they make no trouble. they only want to go where cartridges are burnt. they are of the few races to whom fighting is a pleasure." "and how long have you dealt with them?" "a long time--a long time. i helped to organize the corps. i am one of those whose heart is in africa." he spoke slowly, almost feeling for his french words, and gave some order. i shall not forget his eyes as he turned to a huge, brown, afreedee-like mussulman hunkering down beside his accoutrements. he had two sides to his head, that bearded, burned, slow-spoken officer, met and parted with in an hour. the day closed--(after an amazing interlude in the chateau of a dream, which was all glassy ponds, stately trees, and vistas of white and gold saloons. the proprietor was somebody's chauffeur at the front, and we drank to his excellent health) --at a little village in a twilight full of the petrol of many cars and the wholesome flavour of healthy troops. there is no better guide to camp than one's own thoughtful nose; and though i poked mine everywhere, in no place then or later did it strike that vile betraying taint of underfed, unclean men. and the same with the horses. the line that never sleeps it is difficult to keep an edge after hours of fresh air and experiences; so one does not get the most from the most interesting part of the day--the dinner with the local headquarters. here the professionals meet--the line, the gunners, the intelligence with stupefying photo-plans of the enemy's trenches; the supply; the staff, who collect and note all things, and are very properly chaffed; and, be sure, the interpreter, who, by force of questioning prisoners, naturally develops into a sadducee. it is their little asides to each other, the slang, and the half-words which, if one understood, instead of blinking drowsily at one's plate, would give the day's history in little. but tire and the difficulties of a sister (not a foreign) tongue cloud everything, and one goes to billets amid a murmur of voices, the rush of single cars through the night, the passage of battalions, and behind it all, the echo of the deep voices calling one to the other, along the line that never sleeps. . . . . . . . the ridge with the scattered pines might have hidden children at play. certainly a horse would have been quite visible, but there was no hint of guns, except a semaphore which announced it was forbidden to pass that way, as the battery was firing. the boches must have looked for that battery, too. the ground was pitted with shell holes of all calibres--some of them as fresh as mole-casts in the misty damp morning; others where the poppies had grown from seed to flower all through the summer. "and where are the guns?" i demanded at last. they were almost under one's hand, their ammunition in cellars and dug-outs beside them. as far as one can make out, the gun has no pet name. the bayonet is rosalie the virgin of bayonne, but the , the watchful nurse of the trenches and little sister of the line, seems to be always "soixante- quinze." even those who love her best do not insist that she is beautiful. her merits are french--logic, directness, simplicity, and the supreme gift of "occasionality." she is equal to everything on the spur of the moment. one sees and studies the few appliances which make her do what she does, and one feels that any one could have invented her. famous french 's "as a matter of fact," says a commandant, "anybody--or, rather, everybody did. the general idea is after such-and-such system, the patent of which had expired, and we improved it; the breech action, with slight modification, is somebody else's; the sighting is perhaps a little special; and so is the traversing, but, at bottom, it is only an assembly of variations and arrangements." that, of course, is all that shakespeare ever got out of the alphabet. the french artillery make their own guns as he made his plays. it is just as simple as that. "there is nothing going on for the moment; it's too misty," said the commandant. (i fancy that the boche, being, as a rule methodical, amateurs are introduced to batteries in the boche's intervals. at least, there are hours healthy and unhealthy which vary with each position.) "but," the commandant reflected a moment, "there is a place--and a distance. let us say . . . " he gave a range. the gun-servers stood back with the bored contempt of the professional for the layman who intrudes on his mysteries. other civilians had come that way before--had seen, and grinned, and complimented and gone their way, leaving the gunners high up on the bleak hillside to grill or mildew or freeze for weeks and months. then she spoke. her voice was higher pitched, it seemed, than ours--with a more shrewish tang to the speeding shell. her recoil was as swift and as graceful as the shrug of a french-woman's shoulders; the empty case leaped forth and clanged against the trail; the tops of two or three pines fifty yards away nodded knowingly to each other, though there was no wind. "they'll be bothered down below to know the meaning of our single shot. we don't give them one dose at a time as a rule," somebody laughed. we waited in the fragrant silence. nothing came back from the mist that clogged the lower grounds, though no shell of this war was ever launched with more earnest prayers that it might do hurt. then they talked about the lives of guns; what number of rounds some will stand and others will not; how soon one can make two good guns out of three spoilt ones, and what crazy luck sometimes goes with a single shot or a blind salvo. lesson from the "boche" a shell must fall somewhere, and by the law of averages occasionally lights straight as a homing pigeon on the one spot where it can wreck most. then earth opens for yards around, and men must be dug out,--some merely breathless, who shake their ears, swear, and carry on, and others whose souls have gone loose among terrors. these have to be dealt with as their psychology demands, and the french officer is a good psychologist. one of them said: "our national psychology has changed. i do not recognize it myself." "what made the change?" "the boche. if he had been quiet for another twenty years the world must have been his--rotten, but all his. now he is saving the world." "how?" "because he has shown us what evil is. we--you and i, england and the rest--had begun to doubt the existence of evil. the boche is saving us." then we had another look at the animal in its trench--a little nearer this time than before, and quieter on account of the mist. pick up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find the same observation-post, table, map, observer, and telephonist; the same always-hidden, always-ready guns; and same vexed foreshore of trenches, smoking and shaking from switzerland to the sea. the handling of the war varies with the nature of the country, but the tools are unaltered. one looks upon them at last with the same weariness of wonder as the eye receives from endless repetitions of egyptian hieroglyphics. a long, low profile, with a lump to one side, means the field-gun and its attendant ammunition-case; a circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the great guns of position, coming and going on their motors, repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or watching and running among all these terrific symbols. tragedy of rheims but there is no hieroglyphic for rheims, no blunting of the mind at the abominations committed on the cathedral there. the thing peers upward, maimed and blinded, from out of the utter wreckage of the archbishop's palace on the one side and dust-heaps of crumbled houses on the other. they shelled, as they still shell it, with high explosives and with incendiary shells, so that the statues and the stonework in places are burned the colour of raw flesh. the gargoyles are smashed; statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. wherever one looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement, and yet it had never more of a soul than it has to-day. inside--("cover yourselves, gentlemen," said the sacristan, "this place is no longer consecrated")--everything is swept clear or burned out from end to end, except two candlesticks in front of the niche where joan of arc's image used to stand. there is a french flag there now. [and the last time i saw rheims cathedral was in a spring twilight, when the great west window glowed, and the only lights within were those of candles which some penitent english had lit in joan's honour on those same candlesticks.] the high altar was covered with floor-carpets; the pavement tiles were cracked and jarred out by the rubbish that had fallen from above, the floor was gritty with dust of glass and powdered stone, little twists of leading from the windows, and iron fragments. two great doors had been blown inwards by the blast of a shell in the archbishop's garden, till they had bent grotesquely to the curve of a cask. there they had jammed. the windows--but the record has been made, and will be kept by better hands than mine. it will last through the generation in which the teuton is cut off from the fellowship of mankind--all the long, still years when this war of the body is at an end, and the real war begins. rheims is but one of the altars which the heathen have put up to commemorate their own death throughout all the world. it will serve. there is a mark, well known by now, which they have left for a visible seal of their doom. when they first set the place alight some hundreds of their wounded were being tended in the cathedral. the french saved as many as they could, but some had to be left. among them was a major, who lay with his back against a pillar. it has been ordained that the signs of his torments should remain--an outline of both legs and half a body, printed in greasy black upon the stones. there are very many people who hope and pray that the sign will be respected at least by our children's children. iron nerve and faith and, in the meantime, rheims goes about what business it may have with that iron nerve and endurance and faith which is the new inheritance of france. there is agony enough when the big shells come in; there is pain and terror among the people; and always fresh desecration to watch and suffer. the old men and the women and the children drink of that cup daily, and yet the bitterness does not enter into their souls. mere words of admiration are impertinent, but the exquisite quality of the french soul has been the marvel to me throughout. they say themselves, when they talk: "we did not know what our nation was. frankly, we did not expect it ourselves. but the thing came, and--you see, we go on." or as a woman put it more logically, "what else can we do? remember, _we_ knew the boche in ' when _you_ did not. we know what he has done in the last year. this is not war. it is against wild beasts that we fight. there is no arrangement possible with wild beasts." this is the one vital point which we in england _must_ realize. we are dealing with animals who have scientifically and philosophically removed themselves inconceivably outside civilization. when you have heard a few--only a few--tales of their doings, you begin to understand a little. when you have seen rheims, you understand a little more. when you have looked long enough at the faces of the women, you are inclined to think that the women will have a large say in the final judgment. they have earned it a thousand times. iii battle spectacle and a review travelling with two chauffeurs is not the luxury it looks; since there is only one of you and there is always another of those iron men to relieve the wheel. nor can i decide whether an ex-professor of the german tongue, or an ex-roadracer who has lived six years abroad, or a marechal des logis, or a brigadier makes the most thrusting driver through three-mile stretches of military traffic repeated at half-hour intervals. sometimes it was motor-ambulances strung all along a level; or supply; or those eternal big guns coming round corners with trees chained on their long backs to puzzle aeroplanes, and their leafy, big-shell limbers snorting behind them. in the rare breathing-spaces men with rollers and road metal attacked the road. in peace the roads of france, thanks to the motor, were none too good. in war they stand the incessant traffic far better than they did with the tourist. my impression --after some seven hundred miles printed off on me at between and kilometres--was of uniform excellence. nor did i come upon any smashes or breakdowns in that distance, and they were certainly trying them hard. nor, which is the greater marvel, did _we_ kill anybody; though we did miracles down the streets to avoid babes, kittens, and chickens. the land is used to every detail of war, and to its grime and horror and make-shifts, but also to war's unbounded courtesy, kindness, and long-suffering, and the gaiety that comes, thank god, to balance overwhelming material loss. farm life amidst war there was a village that had been stamped flat, till it looked older than pompeii. there were not three roofs left, nor one whole house. in most places you saw straight into the cellars. the hops were ripe in the grave-dotted fields round about. they had been brought in and piled in the nearest outline of a dwelling. women sat on chairs on the pavement, picking the good-smelling bundles. when they had finished one, they reached back and pulled out another through the window-hole behind them, talking and laughing the while. a cart had to be maneuvered out of what had been a farmyard, to take the hops to market. a thick, broad, fair-haired wench, of the sort that millet drew, flung all her weight on a spoke and brought the cart forward into the street. then she shook herself, and, hands on hips, danced a little defiant jig in her sabots as she went back to get the horse. another girl came across a bridge. she was precisely of the opposite type, slender, creamy-skinned, and delicate-featured. she carried a brand-new broom over her shoulder through that desolation, and bore herself with the pride and grace of queen iseult. the farm-girl came out leading the horse, and as the two young things passed they nodded and smiled at each other, with the delicate tangle of the hop-vines at their feet. the guns spoke earnestly in the north. that was the argonne, where the crown prince was busily getting rid of a few thousands of his father's faithful subjects in order to secure himself the reversion of his father's throne. no man likes losing his job, and when at long last the inner history of this war comes to be written, we may find that the people we mistook for principals and prime agents were only average incompetents moving all hell to avoid dismissal. (for it is absolutely true that when a man sells his soul to the devil he does it for the price of half nothing.) watching the gun-fire it must have been a hot fight. a village, wrecked as is usual along this line, opened on it from a hillside that overlooked an italian landscape of carefully drawn hills studded with small villages--a plain with a road and a river in the foreground, and an all-revealing afternoon light upon everything. the hills smoked and shook and bellowed. an observation-balloon climbed up to see; while an aeroplane which had nothing to do with the strife, but was merely training a beginner, ducked and swooped on the edge of the plain. two rose-pink pillars of crumbled masonry, guarding some carefully trimmed evergreens on a lawn half buried in rubbish, represented an hotel where the crown prince had once stayed. all up the hillside to our right the foundations of houses lay out, like a bit of tripe, with the sunshine in their square hollows. suddenly a band began to play up the hill among some trees; and an officer of local guards in the new steel anti-shrapnel helmet, which is like the seventeenth century sallet, suggested that we should climb and get a better view. he was a kindly man, and in speaking english had discovered (as i do when speaking french) that it is simpler to stick to one gender. his choice was the feminine, and the boche described as "she" throughout made me think better of myself, which is the essence of friendship. we climbed a flight of old stone steps, for generations the playground of little children, and found a ruined church, and a battalion in billets, recreating themselves with excellent music and a little horseplay on the outer edge of the crowd. the trouble in the hills was none of their business for that day. still higher up, on a narrow path among the trees, stood a priest and three or four officers. they watched the battle and claimed the great bursts of smoke for one side or the other, at the same time as they kept an eye on the flickering aeroplane. "ours," they said, half under their breath. "theirs." "no, not ours that one--theirs! . . . that fool is banking too steep . . . that's boche shrapnel. they always burst it high. that's our big gun behind that outer hill . . . he'll drop his machine in the street if he doesn't take care . . . there goes a trench-sweeper. those last two were theirs, but _that_"--it was a full roar --"was ours." behind the german lines the valley held and increased the sounds till they seemed to hit our hillside like a sea. a change of light showed a village, exquisitely pencilled atop of a hill, with reddish haze at its feet. "what is that place?" i asked. the priest replied in a voice as deep as an organ: "that is saint------ it is in the boche lines. its condition is pitiable." the thunders and the smokes rolled up and diminished and renewed themselves, but the small children romped up and down the old stone steps; the beginner's aeroplane unsteadily chased its own shadow over the fields; and the soldiers in billet asked the band for their favourite tunes. said the lieutenant of local guards as the cars went on: "she--play--tipperary." and she did--to an accompaniment of heavy pieces in the hills, which followed us into a town all ringed with enormous searchlights, french and boche together, scowling at each other beneath the stars. . . . . it happened about that time that lord kitchener with general joffre reviewed a french army corps. we came on it in a vast dip of ground under grey clouds, as one comes suddenly on water; for it lay out in misty blue lakes of men mixed with darker patches, like osiers and undergrowth, of guns, horses, and wagons. a straight road cut the landscape in two along its murmuring front. veterans of the war it was as though cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth, not in orderly furrows but broadcast, till, horrified by what arose, he had emptied out the whole bag and fled. but these were no new warriors. the record of their mere pitched battles would have satiated a napoleon. their regiments and batteries had learnt to achieve the impossible as a matter of routine, and in twelve months they had scarcely for a week lost direct contact with death. we went down the line and looked into the eyes of those men with the used bayonets and rifles; the packs that could almost stow themselves on the shoulders that would be strange without them; at the splashed guns on their repaired wheels, and the easy-working limbers. one could feel the strength and power of the mass as one feels the flush of heat from off a sunbaked wall. when the generals' cars arrived there, there was no loud word or galloping about. the lakes of men gathered into straight-edged battalions; the batteries aligned a little; a squadron reined back or spurred up; but it was all as swiftly smooth as the certainty with which a man used to the pistol draws and levels it at the required moment. a few peasant women saw the generals alight. the aeroplanes, which had been skimming low as swallows along the front of the line (theirs must have been a superb view) ascended leisurely, and "waited on" like hawks. then followed the inspection, and one saw the two figures, tall and short, growing smaller side by side along the white road, till far off among the cavalry they entered their cars again, and moved along the horizon to another rise of grey-green plain. "the army will move across where you are standing. get to a flank," some one said. an army in motion we were no more than well clear of that immobile host when it all surged forward, headed by massed bands playing a tune that sounded like the very pulse of france. the two generals, with their staff, and the french minister for war, were on foot near a patch of very green lucerne. they made about twenty figures in all. the cars were little grey blocks against the grey skyline. there was nothing else in all that great plain except the army; no sound but the changing notes of the aeroplanes and the blunted impression, rather than noise, of feet of men on soft ground. they came over a slight ridge, so that one saw the curve of it first furred, then grassed, with the tips of bayonets, which immediately grew to full height, and then, beneath them, poured the wonderful infantry. the speed, the thrust, the drive of that broad blue mass was like a tide-race up an arm of the sea; and how such speed could go with such weight, and how such weight could be in itself so absolutely under control, filled one with terror. all the while, the band, on a far headland, was telling them and telling them (as if they did not know!) of the passion and gaiety and high heart of their own land in the speech that only they could fully understand. (to hear the music of a country is like hearing a woman think aloud.) "what _is_ the tune?" i asked of an officer beside me. "my faith, i can't recall for the moment. i've marched to it often enough, though. 'sambre-et-meuse,' perhaps. look! there goes my battalion! those chasseurs yonder." _he_ knew, of course; but what could a stranger identify in that earth-shaking passage of thirty thousand? artillery and cavalry the note behind the ridge changed to something deeper. "ah! our guns," said an artillery officer, and smiled tolerantly on the last blue waves of the line already beating toward the horizon. they came twelve abreast--one hundred and fifty guns free for the moment to take the air in company, behind their teams. and next week would see them, hidden singly or in lurking confederacies, by mountain and marsh and forest, or the wrecked habitations of men--where? the big guns followed them, with that long-nosed air of detachment peculiar to the breed. the gunner at my side made no comment. he was content to let his arm speak for itself, but when one big gun in a sticky place fell out of alignment for an instant i saw his eyebrows contract. the artillery passed on with the same inhuman speed and silence as the line; and the cavalry's shattering trumpets closed it all. they are like our cavalry in that their horses are in high condition, and they talk hopefully of getting past the barbed wire one of these days and coming into their own. meantime, they are employed on "various work as requisite," and they all sympathize with our rough-rider of dragoons who flatly refused to take off his spurs in the trenches. if he had to die as a damned infantryman, he wasn't going to be buried as such. a troop-horse of a flanking squadron decided that he had had enough of war, and jibbed like lot's wife. his rider (we all watched him) ranged about till he found a stick, which he used, but without effect. then he got off and led the horse, which was evidently what the brute wanted, for when the man remounted the jibbing began again. the last we saw of him was one immensely lonely figure leading one bad but happy horse across an absolutely empty world. think of his reception--the sole man of , who had fallen out! the boche as mr. smith the commander of that army corps came up to salute. the cars went away with the generals and the minister for war; the army passed out of sight over the ridges to the north; the peasant women stooped again to their work in the fields, and wet mist shut down on all the plain; but one tingled with the electricity that had passed. now one knows what the solidarity of civilization means. later on the civilized nations will know more, and will wonder and laugh together at their old blindness. when lord kitchener went down the line, before the march past, they say that he stopped to speak to a general who had been marchand's chief of staff at the time of fashoda. and fashoda was one of several cases when civilization was very nearly maneuvered into fighting with itself "for the king of prussia," as the saying goes. the all-embracing vileness of the boche is best realized from french soil, where they have had large experience of it. "and yet," as some one observed, "we ought to have known that a race who have brought anonymous letter-writing to its highest pitch in their own dirty court affairs would certainly use the same methods in their foreign politics. _why_ didn't we realize?" "for the same reason," another responded, "that society did not realize that the late mr. smith, of your england, who married three wives, bought baths in advance for each of them, and, when they had left him all their money, drowned them one by one." "and were the baths by any chance called denmark, austria, and france in ?" a third asked. "no, they were respectable british tubs. but until mr. smith had drowned his third wife people didn't get suspicious. they argued that 'men don't do such things.' that sentiment is the criminal's best protection." iv the spirit of the people we passed into the zone of another army and a hillier country, where the border villages lay more sheltered. here and there a town and the fields round it gave us a glimpse of the furious industry with which france makes and handles material and troops. with her, as with us, the wounded officer of experience goes back to the drill-ground to train the new levies. but it was always the little crowded, defiant villages, and the civil population waiting unweariedly and cheerfully on the unwearied, cheerful army, that went closest to the heart. take these pictures, caught almost anywhere during a journey: a knot of little children in difficulties with the village water-tap or high-handled pump. a soldier, bearded and fatherly, or young and slim and therefore rather shy of the big girls' chaff, comes forward and lifts the pail or swings the handle. his reward, from the smallest babe swung high in air, or, if he is an older man, pressed against his knees, is a kiss. then nobody laughs. or a fat old lady making oration against some wicked young soldiers who, she says, know what has happened to a certain bottle of wine. "and i meant it for all--yes, for all of you --this evening, instead of the thieves who stole it. yes, i tell you--stole it!" the whole street hears her; so does the officer, who pretends not to, and the amused half-battalion up the road. the young men express penitence; she growls like a thunderstorm, but, softening at last, cuffs and drives them affectionately before her. they are all one family. or a girl at work with horses in a ploughed field that is dotted with graves. the machine must avoid each sacred plot. so, hands on the plough-stilts, her hair flying forward, she shouts and wrenches till her little brother runs up and swings the team out of the furrow. every aspect and detail of life in france seems overlaid with a smooth patina of long-continued war--everything except the spirit of the people, and that is as fresh and glorious as the sight of their own land in sunshine. a city and woman we found a city among hills which knew itself to be a prize greatly coveted by the kaiser. for, truly, it was a pleasant, a desirable, and an insolent city. its streets were full of life; it boasted an establishment almost as big as harrod's and full of buyers, and its women dressed and shod themselves with care and grace, as befits ladies who, at any time, may be ripped into rags by bombs from aeroplanes. and there was another city whose population seemed to be all soldiers in training; and yet another given up to big guns and ammunition --an extraordinary sight. after that, we came to a little town of pale stone which an army had made its headquarters. it looked like a plain woman who had fainted in public. it had rejoiced in many public institutions that were turned into hospitals and offices; the wounded limped its wide, dusty streets, detachments of infantry went through it swiftly; and utterly bored motor-lorries cruised up and down roaring, i suppose, for something to look at or to talk to. in the centre of it i found one janny, or rather his marble bust, brooding over a minute iron-railed garden of half-dried asters opposite a shut-up school, which it appeared from the inscription janny had founded somewhere in the arid thirties. it was precisely the sort of school that janny, by the look of him, would have invented. not even french adaptability could make anything of it. so janny had his school, with a faint perfume of varnish, all to himself in a hot stillness of used-up air and little whirls of dust. and because that town seemed so barren, i met there a french general whom i would have gone very far to have encountered. he, like the others, had created and tempered an army for certain work in a certain place, and its hand had been heavy on the boche. we talked of what the french woman was, and had done, and was doing, and extolled her for her goodness and her faith and her splendid courage. when we parted, i went back and made my profoundest apologies to janny, who must have had a mother. the pale, overwhelmed town did not now any longer resemble a woman who had fainted, but one who must endure in public all manner of private woe and still, with hands that never cease working, keeps her soul and is cleanly strong for herself and for her men. french officers the guns began to speak again among the hills that we dived into; the air grew chillier as we climbed; forest and wet rocks closed round us in the mist, to the sound of waters trickling alongside; there was a tang of wet fern, cut pine, and the first breath of autumn when the road entered a tunnel and a new world--alsace. said the governor of those parts thoughtfully: "the main thing was to get those factory chimneys smoking again." (they were doing so in little flats and villages all along.) "you won't see any girls, because they're at work in the textile factories. yes, it isn't a bad country for summer hotels, but i'm afraid it won't do for winter sports. we've only a metre of snow, and it doesn't lie, except when you are hauling guns up mountains. then, of course, it drifts and freezes like davos. that's our new railway below there. pity it's too misty to see the view." but for his medals, there was nothing in the governor to show that he was not english. he might have come straight from an indian frontier command. one notices this approximation of type in the higher ranks, and many of the juniors are cut out of the very same cloth as ours. they get whatever fun may be going: their performances are as incredible and outrageous as the language in which they describe them afterward is bald, but convincing, and--i overheard the tail-end of a yarn told by a child of twenty to some other babes. it was veiled in the obscurity of the french tongue, and the points were lost in shouts of laughter --but i imagine the subaltern among his equals displays just as much reverence for his elders and betters as our own boys do. the epilogue, at least, was as old as both armies: "and what did he say then?" "oh, the usual thing. he held his breath till i thought he'd burst. then he damned me in heaps, and i took good care to keep out of his sight till next day." but officially and in the high social atmosphere of headquarters their manners and their meekness are of the most admirable. there they attend devoutly on the wisdom of their seniors, who treat them, so it seemed, with affectionate confidence. front that never sleeps when the day's reports are in, all along the front, there is a man, expert in the meaning of things, who boils them down for that cold official digest which tells us that "there was the usual grenade fighting at------. we made appreciable advance at------," &c. the original material comes in sheaves and sheaves, where individual character and temperament have full and amusing play. it is reduced for domestic consumption like an overwhelming electric current. otherwise we could not take it in. but at closer range one realizes that the front never sleeps; never ceases from trying new ideas and weapons which, so soon as the boche thinks he has mastered them, are discarded for newer annoyances and bewilderments. "the boche is above all things observant and imitative," said one who counted quite a few boches dead on the front of his sector. "when you present him with a new idea, he thinks it over for a day or two. then he presents his riposte." "yes, my general. that was exactly what he did to me when i --did so and so. he was quite silent for a day. then--he stole my patent." "and you?" "i had a notion that he'd do that, so i had changed the specification." thus spoke the staff, and so it is among the junior commands, down to the semi-isolated posts where boy-napoleons live on their own, through unbelievable adventures. they are inventive young devils, these veterans of , possessed of the single ideal--to kill--which they follow with men as single-minded as themselves. battlefield tactics do not exist; when a whole nation goes to ground there can be none of the "victories" of the old bookish days. but there is always the killing--the well-schemed smashing of a full trench, the rushing out and the mowing down of its occupants; the unsuspicious battalion far in the rear, located after two nights' extreme risk alone among rubbish of masonry, and wiped out as it eats or washes itself; and, more rarely, the body to body encounter with animals removed from the protection of their machinery, when the bayonets get their chance. the boche does not at all like meeting men whose womenfolk he has dishonoured or mutilated, or used as a protection against bullets. it is not that these men are angry or violent. they do not waste time in that way. they kill him. the business of war the french are less reticent than we about atrocities committed by the boche, because those atrocities form part of their lives. they are not tucked away in reports of commissions, and vaguely referred to as "too awful." later on, perhaps, we shall be unreserved in our turn. but they do not talk of them with any babbling heat or bleat or make funny little appeals to a "public opinion" that, like the boche, has gone underground. it occurs to me that this must be because every frenchman has his place and his chance, direct or indirect, to diminish the number of boches still alive. whether he lies out in a sandwich of damp earth, or sweats the big guns up the crests behind the trees, or brings the fat, loaded barges into the very heart of the city, where the shell-wagons wait, or spends his last crippled years at the harvest, he is doing his work to that end. if he is a civilian he may--as he does--say things about his government, which, after all, is very like other popular governments. (a lifetime spent in watching how the cat jumps does not make lion-tamers.) but there is very little human rubbish knocking about france to hinder work or darken counsel. above all, there is a thing called the honour of civilization, to which france is attached. the meanest man feels that he, in his place, is permitted to help uphold it, and, i think, bears himself, therefore, with new dignity. a contrast in types this is written in a garden of smooth turf, under a copper beech, beside a glassy mill-stream, where soldiers of alpine regiments are writing letters home, while the guns shout up and down the narrow valleys. a great wolf-hound, who considers himself in charge of the old-fashioned farmhouse, cannot understand why his master, aged six, should be sitting on the knees of the marechal des logis, the iron man who drives the big car. "but you _are_ french, little one?" says the giant, with a yearning arm round the child. "yes," very slowly mouthing the french words; "i--can't --speak--french--but--i--am--french." the small face disappears in the big beard. somehow, i can't imagine the marechal des logis killing babies--even if his superior officer, now sketching the scene, were to order him! . . . . . . . the great building must once have been a monastery. twilight softened its gaunt wings, in an angle of which were collected fifty prisoners, picked up among the hills behind the mists. they stood in some sort of military formation preparatory to being marched off. they were dressed in khaki, the colour of gassed grass, that might have belonged to any army. two wore spectacles, and i counted eight faces of the fifty which were asymmetrical--out of drawing on one side. "some of their later drafts give us that type," said the interpreter. one of them had been wounded in the head and roughly bandaged. the others seemed all sound. most of them looked at nothing, but several were vividly alive with terror that cannot keep the eyelids still, and a few wavered on the grey edge of collapse. they were the breed which, at the word of command, had stolen out to drown women and children; had raped women in the streets at the word of command; and, always at the word of command, had sprayed petrol, or squirted flame; or defiled the property and persons of their captives. they stood there outside all humanity. yet they were made in the likeness of humanity. one realized it with a shock when the bandaged creature began to shiver, and they shuffled off in response to the orders of civilized men. v life in trenches on the mountain side very early in the morning i met alan breck, with a half-healed bullet-scrape across the bridge of his nose, and an alpine cap over one ear. his people a few hundred years ago had been scotch. he bore a scotch name, and still recognized the head of his clan, but his french occasionally ran into german words, for he was an alsatian on one side. "this," he explained, "is the very best country in the world to fight in. it's picturesque and full of cover. i'm a gunner. i've been here for months. it's lovely." it might have been the hills under mussoorie, and what our cars expected to do in it i could not understand. but the demon-driver who had been a road-racer took the h.p. mercedes and threaded the narrow valleys, as well as occasional half-swiss villages full of alpine troops, at a restrained thirty miles an hour. he shot up a new-made road, more like mussoorie than ever, and did not fall down the hillside even once. an ammunition-mule of a mountain-battery met him at a tight corner, and began to climb a tree. "see! there isn't another place in france where that could happen," said alan. "i tell you, this is a magnificent country." the mule was hauled down by his tail before he had reached the lower branches, and went on through the woods, his ammunition-boxes jinking on his back, for all the world as though he were rejoining his battery at jutogh. one expected to meet the little hill people bent under their loads under the forest gloom. the light, the colour, the smell of wood smoke, pine-needles, wet earth, and warm mule were all himalayan. only the mercedes was violently and loudly a stranger. "halt!" said alan at last, when she had done everything except imitate the mule. "the road continues," said the demon-driver seductively. "yes, but they will hear you if you go on. stop and wait. we've a mountain battery to look at." they were not at work for the moment, and the commandant, a grim and forceful man, showed me some details of their construction. when we left them in their bower--it looked like a hill priest's wayside shrine--we heard them singing through the steep-descending pines. they, too, like the 's, seem to have no pet name in the service. it was a poisonously blind country. the woods blocked all sense of direction above and around. the ground was at any angle you please, and all sounds were split up and muddled by the tree-trunks, which acted as silencers. high above us the respectable, all-concealing forest had turned into sparse, ghastly blue sticks of timber--an assembly of leper-trees round a bald mountain top. "that's where we're going," said alan. "isn't it an adorable country?" trenches a machine-gun loosed a few shots in the fumbling style of her kind when they feel for an opening. a couple of rifle shots answered. they might have been half a mile away or a hundred yards below. an adorable country! we climbed up till we found once again a complete tea-garden of little sunk houses, almost invisible in the brown-pink recesses of the thick forest. here the trenches began, and with them for the next few hours life in two dimensions--length and breadth. you could have eaten your dinner almost anywhere off the swept dry ground, for the steep slopes favoured draining, there was no lack of timber, and there was unlimited labour. it had made neat double-length dug-outs where the wounded could be laid in during their passage down the mountain side; well-tended occasional latrines properly limed; dug-outs for sleeping and eating; overhead protections and tool-sheds where needed, and, as one came nearer the working face, very clever cellars against trench-sweepers. men passed on their business; a squad with a captured machine-gun which they tested in a sheltered dip; armourers at their benches busy with sick rifles; fatigue-parties for straw, rations, and ammunition; long processions of single blue figures turned sideways between the brown sunless walls. one understood after a while the nightmare that lays hold of trench-stale men, when the dreamer wanders for ever in those blind mazes till, after centuries of agonizing flight, he finds himself stumbling out again into the white blaze and horror of the mined front--he who thought he had almost reached home! in the front line there were no trees above us now. their trunks lay along the edge of the trench, built in with stones, where necessary, or sometimes overhanging it in ragged splinters or bushy tops. bits of cloth, not french, showed, too, in the uneven lines of debris at the trench lip, and some thoughtful soul had marked an unexploded boche trench-sweeper as "not to be touched." it was a young lawyer from paris who pointed that out to me. we met the colonel at the head of an indescribable pit of ruin, full of sunshine, whose steps ran down a very steep hillside under the lee of an almost vertically plunging parapet. to the left of that parapet the whole hillside was one gruel of smashed trees, split stones, and powdered soil. it might have been a rag-picker's dump-heap on a colossal scale. alan looked at it critically. i think he had helped to make it not long before. "we're on the top of the hill now, and the boches are below us," said he. "we gave them a very fair sickener lately." "this," said the colonel, "is the front line." there were overhead guards against hand-bombs which disposed me to believe him, but what convinced me most was a corporal urging us in whispers not to talk so loud. the men were at dinner, and a good smell of food filled the trench. this was the first smell i had encountered in my long travels uphill--a mixed, entirely wholesome flavour of stew, leather, earth, and rifle-oil. front line professionals a proportion of men were standing to arms while others ate; but dinner-time is slack time, even among animals, and it was close on noon. "the boches got _their_ soup a few days ago," some one whispered. i thought of the pulverized hillside, and hoped it had been hot enough. we edged along the still trench, where the soldiers stared, with justified contempt, i thought, upon the civilian who scuttled through their life for a few emotional minutes in order to make words out of their blood. somehow it reminded me of coming in late to a play and incommoding a long line of packed stalls. the whispered dialogue was much the same: "pardon!" "i beg your pardon, monsieur." "to the right, monsieur." "if monsieur will lower his head." "one sees best from here, monsieur," and so on. it was their day and night-long business, carried through without display or heat, or doubt or indecision. those who worked, worked; those off duty, not five feet behind them in the dug-outs, were deep in their papers, or their meals or their letters; while death stood ready at every minute to drop down into the narrow cut from out of the narrow strip of unconcerned sky. and for the better part of a week one had skirted hundreds of miles of such a frieze! the loopholes not in use were plugged rather like old-fashioned hives. said the colonel, removing a plug: "here are the boches. look, and you'll see their sandbags." through the jumble of riven trees and stones one saw what might have been a bit of green sacking. "they're about seven metres distant just here," the colonel went on. that was true, too. we entered a little fortalice with a cannon in it, in an embrasure which at that moment struck me as unnecessarily vast, even though it was partly closed by a frail packing-case lid. the colonel sat him down in front of it, and explained the theory of this sort of redoubt. "by the way," he said to the gunner at last, "can't you find something better than _that?"_ he twitched the lid aside. "i think it's too light. get a log of wood or something." handy trench-sweepers i loved that colonel! he knew his men and he knew the boches --had them marked down like birds. when he said they were beside dead trees or behind boulders, sure enough there they were! but, as i have said, the dinner-hour is always slack, and even when we came to a place where a section of trench had been bashed open by trench-sweepers, and it was recommended to duck and hurry, nothing much happened. the uncanny thing was the absence of movement in the boche trenches. sometimes one imagined that one smelt strange tobacco, or heard a rifle-bolt working after a shot. otherwise they were as still as pig at noonday. we held on through the maze, past trench-sweepers of a handy light pattern, with their screw-tailed charge all ready; and a grave or so; and when i came on men who merely stood within easy reach of their rifles, i knew i was in the second line. when they lay frankly at ease in their dug-outs, i knew it was the third. a shot-gun would have sprinkled all three. "no flat plains," said alan. "no hunting for gun positions --the hills are full of them--and the trenches close together and commanding each other. you see what a beautiful country it is." the colonel confirmed this, but from another point of view. war was his business, as the still woods could testify--but his hobby was his trenches. he had tapped the mountain streams and dug out a laundry where a man could wash his shirt and go up and be killed in it, all in a morning; had drained the trenches till a muddy stretch in them was an offence; and at the bottom of the hill (it looked like a hydropathic establishment on the stage) he had created baths where half a battalion at a time could wash. he never told me how all that country had been fought over as fiercely as ypres in the west; nor what blood had gone down the valleys before his trenches pushed over the scalped mountain top. no. he sketched out new endeavours in earth and stones and trees for the comfort of his men on that populous mountain. and there came a priest, who was a sub-lieutenant, out of a wood of snuff-brown shadows and half-veiled trunks. would it please me to look at a chapel? it was all open to the hillside, most tenderly and devoutly done in rustic work with reedings of peeled branches and panels of moss and thatch--st. hubert's own shrine. i saw the hunters who passed before it, going to the chase on the far side of the mountain where their game lay. . . . . . . . a bombarded town alan carried me off to tea the same evening in a town where he seemed to know everybody. he had spent the afternoon on another mountain top, inspecting gun positions; whereby he had been shelled a little--_marmite_ is the slang for it. there had been no serious _marmitage,_ and he had spotted a boche position which was _marmitable._ "and we may get shelled now," he added, hopefully. "they shell this town whenever they think of it. perhaps they'll shell us at tea." it was a quaintly beautiful little place, with its mixture of french and german ideas; its old bridge and gentle-minded river, between the cultivated hills. the sand-bagged cellar doors, the ruined houses, and the holes in the pavement looked as unreal as the violences of a cinema against that soft and simple setting. the people were abroad in the streets, and the little children were playing. a big shell gives notice enough for one to get to shelter, if the shelter is near enough. that appears to be as much as any one expects in the world where one is shelled, and that world has settled down to it. people's lips are a little firmer, the modelling of the brows is a little more pronounced, and, maybe, there is a change in the expression of the eyes; but nothing that a casual afternoon caller need particularly notice. cases for hospital the house where we took tea was the "big house" of the place, old and massive, a treasure house of ancient furniture. it had everything that the moderate heart of man could desire --gardens, garages, outbuildings, and the air of peace that goes with beauty in age. it stood over a high cellarage, and opposite the cellar door was a brand-new blindage of earth packed between timbers. the cellar was a hospital, with its beds and stores, and under the electric light the orderly waited ready for the cases to be carried down out of the streets. "yes, they are all civil cases," said he. they come without much warning--a woman gashed by falling timber; a child with its temple crushed by a flying stone; an urgent amputation case, and so on. one never knows. bombardment, the boche text-books say, "is designed to terrify the civil population so that they may put pressure on their politicians to conclude peace." in real life, men are very rarely soothed by the sight of their women being tortured. we took tea in the hall upstairs, with a propriety and an interchange of compliments that suited the little occasion. there was no attempt to disguise the existence of a bombardment, but it was not allowed to overweigh talk of lighter matters. i know one guest who sat through it as near as might be inarticulate with wonder. but he was english, and when alan asked him whether he had enjoyed himself, he said: "oh, yes. thank you very much." "nice people, aren't they?" alan went on. "oh, very nice. and--and such good tea." he managed to convey a few of his sentiments to alan after dinner. "but what else could the people have done?" said he. "they are french." vi the common task of a great people "this is the end of the line," said the staff officer, kindest and most patient of chaperons. it buttressed itself on a fortress among hills. beyond that, the silence was more awful than the mixed noise of business to the westward. in mileage on the map the line must be between four and five hundred miles; in actual trench-work many times that distance. it is too much to see at full length; the mind does not readily break away from the obsession of its entirety or the grip of its detail. one visualizes the thing afterwards as a white-hot gash, worming all across france between intolerable sounds and lights, under ceaseless blasts of whirled dirt. nor is it any relief to lose oneself among wildernesses of piling, stoning, timbering, concreting, and wire-work, or incalculable quantities of soil thrown up raw to the light and cloaked by the changing seasons--as the unburied dead are cloaked. yet there are no words to give the essential simplicity of it. it is the rampart put up by man against the beast, precisely as in the stone age. if it goes, all that keeps us from the beast goes with it. one sees this at the front as clearly as one sees the french villages behind the german lines. sometimes people steal away from them and bring word of what they endure. where the rifle and the bayonet serve, men use those tools along the front. where the knife gives better results, they go in behind the hand-grenades with the naked twelve-inch knife. each race is supposed to fight in its own way, but this war has passed beyond all the known ways. they say that the belgians in the north settle accounts with a certain dry passion which has varied very little since their agony began. some sections of the english line have produced a soft-voiced, rather reserved type, which does its work with its mouth shut. the french carry an edge to their fighting, a precision, and a dreadful knowledge coupled with an insensibility to shock, unlike anything one has imagined of mankind. to be sure, there has never been like provocation, for never since the aesir went about to bind the fenris wolf has all the world united to bind the beast. the last i saw of the front was alan breck speeding back to his gun-positions among the mountains; and i wondered what delight of what household the lad must have been in the old days. supports and reserves then we had to work our way, department by department, against the tides of men behind the line--supports and their supports, reserves and reserves of reserves, as well as the masses in training. they flooded towns and villages, and when we tried short-cuts we found them in every by-lane. have you seen mounted men reading their home letters with the reins thrown on the horses' necks, moving in absorbed silence through a street which almost said "hush!" to its dogs; or met, in a forest, a procession of perfectly new big guns, apparently taking themselves from the foundry to the front? in spite of their love of drama, there is not much "window-dressing" in the french character. the boche, who is the priest of the higher counter-jumpery, would have had half the neutral press out in cars to advertise these vast spectacles of men and material. but the same instinct as makes their rich farmers keep to their smocks makes the french keep quiet. "this is our affair," they argue. "everybody concerned is taking part in it. like the review you saw the other day, there are no spectators." "but it might be of advantage if the world knew." mine was a foolish remark. there is only one world to-day, the world of the allies. each of them knows what the others are doing and--the rest doesn't matter. this is a curious but delightful fact to realize at first hand. and think what it will be later, when we shall all circulate among each other and open our hearts and talk it over in a brotherhood more intimate than the ties of blood! i lay that night at a little french town, and was kept awake by a man, somewhere in the hot, still darkness, howling aloud from the pain of his wounds. i was glad that he was alone, for when one man gives way the others sometimes follow. yet the single note of misery was worse than the baying and gulping of a whole ward. i wished that a delegation of strikers could have heard it. . . . . . . . that a civilian should be in the war zone at all is a fair guarantee of his good faith. it is when he is outside the zone unchaperoned that questions begin, and the permits are looked into. if these are irregular--but one doesn't care to contemplate it. if regular, there are still a few counter-checks. as the sergeant at the railway station said when he helped us out of an impasse: "you will realize that it is the most undesirable persons whose papers are of the most regular. it is their business you see. the commissary of police is at the hotel de ville, if you will come along for the little formality. myself, i used to keep a shop in paris. my god, these provincial towns are desolating!" paris--and no foreigners he would have loved his paris as we found it. life was renewing itself in the streets, whose drawing and proportion one could never notice before. people's eyes, and the women's especially, seemed to be set to a longer range, a more comprehensive gaze. one would have said they came from the sea or the mountains, where things are few and simple, rather than from houses. best of all, there were no foreigners--the beloved city for the first time was french throughout from end to end. it felt like coming back to an old friend's house for a quiet talk after he had got rid of a houseful of visitors. the functionaries and police had dropped their masks of official politeness, and were just friendly. at the hotels, so like school two days before the term begins, the impersonal valet, the chambermaid of the set two-franc smile, and the unbending head-waiter had given place to one's own brothers and sisters, full of one's own anxieties. "my son is an aviator, monsieur. i could have claimed italian nationality for him at the beginning, but he would not have it." . . . "both my brothers, monsieur, are at the war. one is dead already. and my fiance, i have not heard from him since march. he is cook in a battalion." . . . "here is the wine-list, monsieur. yes, both my sons and a nephew, and--i have no news of them, not a word of news. my god, we all suffer these days." and so, too, among the shops--the mere statement of the loss or the grief at the heart, but never a word of doubt, never a whimper of despair. "now why," asked a shopkeeper, "does not our government, or your government, or both our governments, send some of the british army to paris? i assure you we should make them welcome." "perhaps," i began, "you might make them too welcome." he laughed. "we should make them as welcome as our own army. they would enjoy themselves." i had a vision of british officers, each with ninety days' pay to his credit, and a damsel or two at home, shopping consumedly. "and also," said the shopkeeper, "the moral effect on paris to see more of your troops would be very good." but i saw a quite english provost-marshal losing himself in chase of defaulters of the new army who knew their paris! still, there is something to be said for the idea--to the extent of a virtuous brigade or so. at present, the english officer in paris is a scarce bird, and he explains at once why he is and what he is doing there. he must have good reasons. i suggested teeth to an acquaintance. "no good," he grumbled. "they've thought of that, too. behind our lines is simply crawling with dentists now!" a people transfigured if one asked after the people that gave dinners and dances last year, where every one talked so brilliantly of such vital things, one got in return the addresses of hospitals. those pleasant hostesses and maidens seemed to be in charge of departments or on duty in wards, or kitchens, or sculleries. some of the hospitals were in paris. (their staffs might have one hour a day in which to see visitors.) others were up the line, and liable to be shelled or bombed. i recalled one frenchwoman in particular, because she had once explained to me the necessities of civilized life. these included a masseuse, a manicurist, and a maid to look after the lapdogs. she is employed now, and has been for months past, on the disinfection and repair of soldiers' clothes. there was no need to ask after the men one had known. still, there was no sense of desolation. they had gone on; the others were getting ready. all france works outward to the front--precisely as an endless chain of fire-buckets works toward the conflagration. leave the fire behind you and go back till you reach the source of supplies. you will find no break, no pause, no apparent haste, but never any slackening. everybody has his or her bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be used. it is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training, and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance. you know, when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom till then we conceived we knew, how the man's nature sometimes changes past knowledge or belief. he who was altogether such an one as ourselves goes forward simply, even lightly, to heights we thought unattainable. though he is the very same comrade that lived our small life with us, yet in all things he has become great. so it is with france to-day. she has discovered the measure of her soul. the new war one sees this not alone in the--it is more than contempt of death--in the godlike preoccupation of her people under arms which makes them put death out of the account, but in the equal passion and fervour with which her people throughout give themselves to the smallest as well as the greatest tasks that may in any way serve their sword. i might tell you something that i saw of the cleaning out of certain latrines; of the education and antecedents of the cleaners; what they said in the matter and how perfectly the work was done. there was a little rabelais in it, naturally, but the rest was pure devotion, rejoicing to be of use. similarly with stables, barricades, and barbed-wire work, the clearing and piling away of wrecked house-rubbish, the serving of meals till the service rocks on its poor tired feet, but keeps its temper; and all the unlovely, monotonous details that go with war. the women, as i have tried to show, work stride for stride with the men, with hearts as resolute and a spirit that has little mercy for short-comings. a woman takes her place wherever she can relieve a man--in the shop, at the posts, on the tramways, the hotels, and a thousand other businesses. she is inured to field-work, and half the harvest of france this year lies in her lap. one feels at every turn how her men trust her. she knows, for she shares everything with her world, what has befallen her sisters who are now in german hands, and her soul is the undying flame behind the men's steel. neither men nor women have any illusion as to miracles presently to be performed which shall "sweep out" or "drive back" the boche. since the army is the nation, they know much, though they are officially told little. they all recognize that the old-fashioned "victory" of the past is almost as obsolete as a rifle in a front-line trench. they all accept the new war, which means grinding down and wearing out the enemy by every means and plan and device that can be compassed. it is slow and expensive, but as deadly sure as the logic that leads them to make it their one work, their sole thought, their single preoccupation. a nation's confidence the same logic saves them a vast amount of energy. they knew germany in ' , when the world would not believe in their knowledge; they knew the german mind before the war; they know what she has done (they have photographs) during this war. they do not fall into spasms of horror and indignation over atrocities "that cannot be mentioned," as the english papers say. they mention them in full and book them to the account. they do not discuss, nor consider, nor waste an emotion over anything that germany says or boasts or argues or implies or intrigues after. they have the heart's ease that comes from all being at work for their country; the knowledge that the burden of work is equally distributed among all; the certainty that the women are working side by side with the men; the assurance that when one man's task is at the moment ended, another takes his place. out of these things is born their power of recuperation in their leisure; their reasoned calm while at work; and their superb confidence in their arms. even if france of to-day stood alone against the world's enemy, it would be almost inconceivable to imagine her defeat now; wholly so to imagine any surrender. the war will go on till the enemy is finished. the french do not know when that hour will come; they seldom speak of it; they do not amuse themselves with dreams of triumphs or terms. their business is war, and they do their business. "captains courageous" a story of the grand banks by rudyard kipling to james conland, m.d., brattleboro, vermont i ploughed the land with horses, but my heart was ill at ease, for the old sea-faring men came to me now and then, with their sagas of the seas. longfellow. chapter i the weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the north atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the fishing-fleet. "that cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "he isn't wanted here. he's too fresh." a white-haired german reached for a sandwich, and grunted between bites: "i know der breed. ameriga is full of dot kind. i dell you you should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff." "pshaw! there isn't any real harm to him. he's more to be pitied than anything," a man from new york drawled, as he lay at full length along the cushions under the wet skylight. "they've dragged him around from hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. i was talking to his mother this morning. she's a lovely lady, but she don't pretend to manage him. he's going to europe to finish his education." "education isn't begun yet." this was a philadelphian, curled up in a corner. "that boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he told me. he isn't sixteen either." "railroads, his father, aind't it?" said the german. "yep. that and mines and lumber and shipping. built one place at san diego, the old man has; another at los angeles; owns half a dozen railroads, half the lumber on the pacific slope, and lets his wife spend the money," the philadelphian went on lazily. "the west don't suit her, she says. she just tracks around with the boy and her nerves, trying to find out what'll amuse him, i guess. florida, adirondacks, lakewood, hot springs, new york, and round again. he isn't much more than a second-hand hotel clerk now. when he's finished in europe he'll be a holy terror." "what's the matter with the old man attending to him personally?" said a voice from the frieze ulster. "old man's piling up the rocks. 'don't want to be disturbed, i guess. he'll find out his error a few years from now. 'pity, because there's a heap of good in the boy if you could get at it." "mit a rope's end; mit a rope's end!" growled the german. once more the door banged, and a slight, slim-built boy perhaps fifteen years old, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth, leaned in over the high footway. his pasty yellow complexion did not show well on a person of his years, and his look was a mixture of irresolution, bravado, and very cheap smartness. he was dressed in a cherry-coloured blazer, knickerbockers, red stockings, and bicycle shoes, with a red flannel cap at the back of the head. after whistling between his teeth, as he eyed the company, he said in a loud, high voice: "say, it's thick outside. you can hear the fish-boats squawking all around us. say, wouldn't it be great if we ran down one?" "shut the door, harvey," said the new yorker. "shut the door and stay outside. you're not wanted here." "who'll stop me?" he answered, deliberately. "did you pay for my passage, mister martin? 'guess i've as good right here as the next man." he picked up some dice from a checkerboard and began throwing, right hand against left. "say, gen'elmen, this is deader'n mud. can't we make a game of poker between us?" there was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs, and drummed on the table with rather dirty fingers. then he pulled out a roll of bills as if to count them. "how's your mamma this afternoon?" a man said. "i didn't see her at lunch." "in her state-room, i guess. she's 'most always sick on the ocean. i'm going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking after her. i don't go down more 'n i can avoid. it makes me feel mysterious to pass that butler's-pantry place. say, this is the first time i've been on the ocean." "oh, don't apologize, harvey." "who's apologizing? this is the first time i've crossed the ocean, gen'elmen, and, except the first day, i haven't been sick one little bit. no, sir!" he brought down his fist with a triumphant bang, wetted his finger, and went on counting the bills. "oh, you're a high-grade machine, with the writing in plain sight," the philadelphian yawned. "you'll blossom into a credit to your country if you don't take care." "i know it. i'm an american--first, last, and all the time. i'll show 'em that when i strike europe. piff! my cig's out. i can't smoke the truck the steward sells. any gen'elman got a real turkish cig on him?" the chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet. "say, mac," cried harvey cheerfully, "how are we hitting it?" "vara much in the ordinary way," was the grave reply. "the young are as polite as ever to their elders, an' their elders are e'en tryin' to appreciate it." a low chuckle came from a corner. the german opened his cigar-case and handed a skinny black cigar to harvey. "dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt," he said. "you vill dry it? yes? den you vill be efer so happy." harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was getting on in grownup society. "it would take more 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that he was lighting that terrible article, a wheeling "stogie". "dot we shall bresently see," said the german. "where are we now, mr. mactonal'?" "just there or thereabouts, mr. schaefer," said the engineer. "we'll be on the grand bank to-night; but in a general way o' speakin', we're all among the fishing-fleet now. we've shaved three dories an' near scalped the boom off a frenchman since noon, an' that's close sailing', ye may say." "you like my cigar, eh?" the german asked, for harvey's eyes were full of tears. "fine, full flavor," he answered through shut teeth. "guess we've slowed down a little, haven't we? i'll skip out and see what the log says." "i might if i vhas you," said the german. harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. he was very unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together, and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the stern, which was finished in a turtle-back. the deck was deserted, and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the flag-pole. there he doubled up in limp agony, for the wheeling "stogie" joined with the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out his soul. his head swelled; sparks of fire danced before his eyes; his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels wavered in the breeze. he was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the turtle-back. then a low, gray mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked harvey under one arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and away to leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep. he was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to blow at a summer-school he had once attended in the adirondacks. slowly he remembered that he was harvey cheyne, drowned and dead in mid-ocean, but was too weak to fit things together. a new smell filled his nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and he was helplessly full of salt water. when he opened his eyes, he perceived that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him in silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a pile of half-dead fish, looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey. "it's no good," thought the boy. "i'm dead, sure enough, and this thing is in charge." he groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little gold rings half hidden in curly black hair. "aha! you feel some pretty well now?" it said. "lie still so: we trim better." with a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy pit beyond. but this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey's talk. "fine good job, i say, that i catch you. eh, wha-at? better good job, i say, your boat not catch me. how you come to fall out?" "i was sick," said harvey; "sick, and couldn't help it." "just in time i blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. then i see you come all down. eh, wha-at? i think you are cut into baits by the screw, but you dreeft--dreeft to me, and i make a big fish of you. so you shall not die this time." "where am i?" said harvey, who could not see that life was particularly safe where he lay. "you are with me in the dory--manuel my name, and i come from schooner _we're here_ of gloucester. i live to gloucester. by-and-by we get supper. eh, wha-at?" he seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. how long this entertainment lasted, harvey could not remember, for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. he fancied he heard a gun and a horn and shouting. something bigger than the dory, but quite as lively, loomed alongside. several voices talked at once; he was dropped into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink and took off his clothes, and he fell asleep. when he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the steamer, wondering why his state-room had grown so small. turning, he looked into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge square beam. a three-cornered table within arm's reach ran from the angle of the bows to the foremast. at the after end, behind a well-used plymouth stove, sat a boy about his own age, with a flat red face and a pair of twinkling gray eyes. he was dressed in a blue jersey and high rubber boots. several pairs of the same sort of foot-wear, an old cap, and some worn-out woollen socks lay on the floor, and black and yellow oilskins swayed to and fro beside the bunks. the place was packed as full of smells as a bale is of cotton. the oilskins had a peculiarly thick flavor of their own which made a sort of background to the smells of fried fish, burnt grease, paint, pepper, and stale tobacco; but these, again, were all hooped together by one encircling smell of ship and salt water. harvey saw with disgust that there were no sheets on his bed-place. he was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of lumps and nubbles. then, too, the boat's motion was not that of a steamer. she was neither sliding nor rolling, but rather wriggling herself about in a silly, aimless way, like a colt at the end of a halter. water-noises ran by close to his ear, and beams creaked and whined about him. all these things made him grunt despairingly and think of his mother. "feelin' better?" said the boy, with a grin. "hev some coffee?" he brought a tin cup full and sweetened it with molasses. "isn't there milk?" said harvey, looking round the dark double tier of bunks as if he expected to find a cow there. "well, no," said the boy. "ner there ain't likely to be till 'baout mid-september. 'tain't bad coffee. i made it." harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of pieces of crisp fried pork, which he ate ravenously. "i've dried your clothes. guess they've shrunk some," said the boy. "they ain't our style much--none of 'em. twist round an' see if you're hurt any." harvey stretched himself in every direction, but could not report any injuries. "that's good," the boy said heartily. "fix yerself an' go on deck. dad wants to see you. i'm his son,--dan, they call me,--an' i'm cook's helper an' everything else aboard that's too dirty for the men. there ain't no boy here 'cep' me sence otto went overboard--an' he was only a dutchy, an' twenty year old at that. how'd you come to fall off in a dead flat ca'am?" "'twasn't a calm," said harvey, sulkily. "it was a gale, and i was seasick. guess i must have rolled over the rail." "there was a little common swell yes'day an' last night," said the boy. "but ef thet's your notion of a gale----" he whistled. "you'll know more 'fore you're through. hurry! dad's waitin'." like many other unfortunate young people, harvey had never in all his life received a direct order--never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. mrs. cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. he could not see why he should be expected to hurry for any man's pleasure, and said so. "your dad can come down here if he's so anxious to talk to me. i want him to take me to new york right away. it'll pay him." dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him. "say, dad!" he shouted up the foc'sle hatch, "he says you kin slip down an' see him ef you're anxious that way. 'hear, dad?" the answer came back in the deepest voice harvey had ever heard from a human chest: "quit foolin', dan, and send him to me." dan sniggered, and threw harvey his warped bicycle shoes. there was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father's wealth on the voyage home. this rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for life. he hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck. the swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. the schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof--"house" they call it--she was deserted. "mornin'--good afternoon, i should say. you've nigh slep' the clock round, young feller," was the greeting. "mornin'," said harvey. he did not like being called "young feller"; and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy. his mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this mariner did not seem excited. "naow let's hear all abaout it. it's quite providential, first an' last, fer all concerned. what might be your name? where from (we mistrust it's noo york), an' where baound (we mistrust it's europe)?" harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history of the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back immediately to new york, where his father would pay anything any one chose to name. "h'm," said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of harvey's speech. "i can't say we think special of any man, or boy even, that falls overboard from that kind o' packet in a flat ca'am. least of all when his excuse is that he's seasick." "excuse!" cried harvey. "d'you suppose i'd fall overboard into your dirty little boat for fun?" "not knowin' what your notions o' fun may be, i can't rightly say, young feller. but if i was you, i wouldn't call the boat which, under providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. in the first place, it's blame irreligious. in the second, it's annoyin' to my feelin's--an' i'm disko troop o' the _we're here_ o' gloucester, which you don't seem rightly to know." "i don't know and i don't care," said harvey. "i'm grateful enough for being saved and all that, of course! but i want you to understand that the sooner you take me back to new york the better it'll pay you." "meanin'--haow?" troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a suspiciously mild blue eye. "dollars and cents," said harvey, delighted to think that he was making an impression. "cold dollars and cents." he thrust a hand into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his way of being grand. "you've done the best day's work you ever did in your life when you pulled me in. i'm all the son harvey cheyne has." "he's bin favoured," said disko, dryly. "and if you don't know who harvey cheyne is, you don't know much--that's all. now turn her around and let's hurry." harvey had a notion that the greater part of america was filled with people discussing and envying his father's dollars. "mebbe i do, an' mebbe i don't. take a reef in your stummick, young feller. it's full o' my vittles." harvey heard a chuckle from dan, who was pretending to be busy by the stump-foremast, and blood rushed to his face. "we'll pay for that too," he said. "when do you suppose we shall get to new york?" "i don't use noo york any. ner boston. we may see eastern point about september; an' your pa--i'm real sorry i hain't heerd tell of him--may give me ten dollars efter all your talk. then o' course he mayn't." "ten dollars! why, see here, i--" harvey dived into his pocket for the wad of bills. all he brought up was a soggy packet of cigarettes. "not lawful currency; an' bad for the lungs. heave 'em overboard, young feller, and try agin." "it's been stolen!" cried harvey, hotly. "you'll hev to wait till you see your pa to reward me, then?" "a hundred and thirty-four dollars--all stolen," said harvey, hunting wildly through his pockets. "give them back." a curious change flitted across old troop's hard face. "what might you have been doin' at your time o' life with one hundred an' thirty-four dollars, young feller?" "it was part of my pocket-money--for a month." this harvey thought would be a knock-down blow, and it was--indirectly. "oh! one hundred and thirty-four dollars is only part of his pocket-money--for one month only! you don't remember hittin' anything when you fell over, do you? crack agin a stanchion, le's say. old man hasken o' the east wind"--troop seemed to be talking to himself--"he tripped on a hatch an' butted the mainmast with his head--hardish. 'baout three weeks afterwards, old man hasken he would hev it that the "east wind" was a commerce-destroyin' man-o'-war, an' so he declared war on sable island because it was bridish, an' the shoals run aout too far. they sewed him up in a bed-bag, his head an' feet appearin', fer the rest o' the trip, an' now he's to home in essex playin' with little rag dolls." harvey choked with rage, but troop went on consolingly: "we're sorry fer you. we're very sorry fer you--an' so young. we won't say no more abaout the money, i guess." "'course you won't. you stole it." "suit yourself. we stole it ef it's any comfort to you. naow, abaout goin' back. allowin' we could do it, which we can't, you ain't in no fit state to go back to your home, an' we've jest come on to the banks, workin' fer our bread. we don't see the ha'af of a hundred dollars a month, let alone pocket-money; an' with good luck we'll be ashore again somewheres abaout the first weeks o' september." "but--but it's may now, and i can't stay here doin' nothing just because you want to fish. i can't, i tell you!" "right an' jest; jest an' right. no one asks you to do nothin'. there's a heap as you can do, for otto he went overboard on le have. i mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we f'und there. anyways, he never come back to deny it. you've turned up, plain, plumb providential for all concerned. i mistrust, though, there's ruther few things you kin do. ain't thet so?" "i can make it lively for you and your crowd when we get ashore," said harvey, with a vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about "piracy," at which troop almost--not quite--smiled. "excep' talk. i'd forgot that. you ain't asked to talk more'n you've a mind to aboard the _we're here_. keep your eyes open, an' help dan to do ez he's bid, an' sechlike, an' i'll give you--you ain't wuth it, but i'll give--ten an' a ha'af a month; say thirty-five at the end o' the trip. a little work will ease up your head, and you kin tell us all abaout your dad an' your ma an' your money afterwards." "she's on the steamer," said harvey, his eyes filling with tears. "take me to new york at once." "poor woman--poor woman! when she has you back she'll forgit it all, though. there's eight of us on the _we're here_, an' ef we went back naow--it's more'n a thousand mile--we'd lose the season. the men they wouldn't hev it, allowin' i was agreeable." "but my father would make it all right." "he'd try. i don't doubt he'd try," said troop; "but a whole season's catch is eight men's bread; an' you'll be better in your health when you see him in the fall. go forward an' help dan. it's ten an' a ha'af a month, e i said, an' o' course, all f'und, same e the rest o' us." "do you mean i'm to clean pots and pans and things?" said harvey. "an' other things. you've no call to shout, young feller." "i won't! my father will give you enough to buy this dirty little fish-kettle"--harvey stamped on the deck--"ten times over, if you take me to new york safe; and--and--you're in a hundred and thirty by me, anyhow." "haow?" said troop, the iron face darkening. "how? you know how, well enough. on top of all that, you want me to do menial work"--harvey was very proud of that adjective--"till the fall. i tell you i will not. you hear?" troop regarded the top of the mainmast with deep interest for a while, as harvey harangued fiercely all around him. "hsh!" he said at last. "i'm figurin' out my responsibilities in my own mind. it's a matter o' jedgment." dan stole up and plucked harvey by the elbow. "don't go to tamperin' with dad any more," he pleaded. "you've called him a thief two or three times over, an' he don't take that from any livin' bein'." "i won't!" harvey almost shrieked, disregarding the advice, and still troop meditated. "seems kinder unneighbourly," he said at last, his eye travelling down to harvey. "i--don't blame you, not a mite, young feeler, nor you won't blame me when the bile's out o' your systim. be sure you sense what i say? ten an' a ha'af fer second boy on the schooner--an' all found--fer to teach you an' fer the sake o' your health. yes or no?" "no!" said harvey. "take me back to new york or i'll see you--" he did not exactly remember what followed. he was lying in the scuppers, holding on to a nose that bled while troop looked down on him serenely. "dan," he said to his son, "i was sot agin this young feeler when i first saw him on account o' hasty jedgments. never you be led astray by hasty jedgments, dan. naow i'm sorry for him, because he's clear distracted in his upper works. he ain't responsible fer the names he's give me, nor fer his other statements--nor fer jumpin' overboard, which i'm abaout ha'af convinced he did. you be gentle with him, dan, 'r i'll give you twice what i've give him. them hemmeridges clears the head. let him sluice it off!" troop went down solemnly into the cabin, where he and the older men bunked, leaving dan to comfort the luckless heir to thirty millions. chapter ii "i warned ye," said dan, as the drops fell thick and fast on the dark, oiled planking. "dad ain't noways hasty, but you fair earned it. pshaw! there's no sense takin' on so." harvey's shoulders were rising and falling in spasms of dry sobbing. "i know the feelin'. first time dad laid me out was the last--and that was my first trip. makes ye feel sickish an' lonesome. i know." "it does," moaned harvey. "that man's either crazy or drunk, and--and i can't do anything." "don't say that to dad," whispered dan. "he's set agin all liquor, an'--well, he told me you was the madman. what in creation made you call him a thief? he's my dad." harvey sat up, mopped his nose, and told the story of the missing wad of bills. "i'm not crazy," he wound up. "only--your father has never seen more than a five-dollar bill at a time, and my father could buy up this boat once a week and never miss it." "you don't know what the _we're here's_ worth. your dad must hev a pile o' money. how did he git it? dad sez loonies can't shake out a straight yarn. go ahead." "in gold mines and things, west." "i've read o' that kind o' business. out west, too? does he go around with a pistol on a trick-pony, same ez the circus? they call that the wild west, and i've heard that their spurs an' bridles was solid silver." "you are a chump!" said harvey, amused in spite of himself. "my father hasn't any use for ponies. when he wants to ride he takes his car." "haow? lobster-car?" "no. his own private car, of course. you've seen a private car some time in your life?" "slatin beeman he hez one," said dan, cautiously. "i saw her at the union depot in boston, with three niggers hoggin' her run." (dan meant cleaning the windows.) "but slatin beeman he owns 'baout every railroad on long island, they say, an' they say he's bought 'baout ha'af noo hampshire an' run a line fence around her, an' filled her up with lions an' tigers an' bears an' buffalo an' crocodiles an' such all. slatin beeman he's a millionaire. i've seen his car. yes?" "well, my father's what they call a multi-millionaire, and he has two private cars. one's named for me, the 'harvey', and one for my mother, the 'constance'." "hold on," said dan. "dad don't ever let me swear, but i guess you can. 'fore we go ahead, i want you to say hope you may die if you're lyin'." "of course," said harvey. "the ain't 'niff. say, 'hope i may die if i ain't speaking' truth.'" "hope i may die right here," said harvey, "if every word i've spoken isn't the cold truth." "hundred an' thirty-four dollars an' all?" said dan. "i heard ye talkin' to dad, an' i ha'af looked you'd be swallered up, same's jonah." harvey protested himself red in the face. dan was a shrewd young person along his own lines, and ten minutes' questioning convinced him that harvey was not lying--much. besides, he had bound himself by the most terrible oath known to boyhood, and yet he sat, alive, with a red-ended nose, in the scuppers, recounting marvels upon marvels. "gosh!" said dan at last from the very bottom of his soul when harvey had completed an inventory of the car named in his honour. then a grin of mischievous delight overspread his broad face. "i believe you, harvey. dad's made a mistake fer once in his life." "he has, sure," said harvey, who was meditating an early revenge. "he'll be mad clear through. dad jest hates to be mistook in his jedgments." dan lay back and slapped his thigh. "oh, harvey, don't you spile the catch by lettin' on." "i don't want to be knocked down again. i'll get even with him, though." "never heard any man ever got even with dad. but he'd knock ye down again sure. the more he was mistook the more he'd do it. but gold-mines and pistols--" "i never said a word about pistols," harvey cut in, for he was on his oath. "thet's so; no more you did. two private cars, then, one named fer you an' one fer her; an' two hundred dollars a month pocket-money, all knocked into the scuppers fer not workin' fer ten an' a ha'af a month! it's the top haul o' the season." he exploded with noiseless chuckles. "then i was right?" said harvey, who thought he had found a sympathiser. "you was wrong; the wrongest kind o' wrong! you take right hold an' pitch in 'longside o' me, or you'll catch it, an' i'll catch it fer backin' you up. dad always gives me double helps 'cause i'm his son, an' he hates favourin' folk. 'guess you're kinder mad at dad. i've been that way time an' again. but dad's a mighty jest man; all the fleet says so." "looks like justice, this, don't it?" harvey pointed to his outraged nose. "thet's nothin'. lets the shore blood outer you. dad did it for yer health. say, though, i can't have dealin's with a man that thinks me or dad or any one on the _we're here's_ a thief. we ain't any common wharf-end crowd by any manner o' means. we're fishermen, an' we've shipped together for six years an' more. don't you make any mistake on that! i told ye dad don't let me swear. he calls 'em vain oaths, and pounds me; but ef i could say what you said 'baout your pap an' his fixin's, i'd say that 'baout your dollars. i dunno what was in your pockets when i dried your kit, fer i didn't look to see; but i'd say, using the very same words ez you used jest now, neither me nor dad--an' we was the only two that teched you after you was brought aboard--knows anythin' 'baout the money. thet's my say. naow?" the bloodletting had certainly cleared harvey's brain, and maybe the loneliness of the sea had something to do with it. "that's all right," he said. then he looked down confusedly. "'seems to me that for a fellow just saved from drowning i haven't been over and above grateful, dan." "well, you was shook up and silly," said dan. "anyway, there was only dad an' me aboard to see it. the cook he don't count." "i might have thought about losing the bills that way," harvey said, half to himself, "instead of calling everybody in sight a thief. where's your father?" "in the cabin. what d' you want o' him again?" "you'll see," said harvey, and he stepped, rather groggily, for his head was still singing, to the cabin steps where the little ship's clock hung in plain sight of the wheel. troop, in the chocolate-and-yellow painted cabin, was busy with a note-book and an enormous black pencil which he sucked hard from time to time. "i haven't acted quite right," said harvey, surprised at his own meekness. "what's wrong naow?" said the skipper. "walked into dan, hev ye?" "no; it's about you." "i'm here to listen." "well, i--i'm here to take things back," said harvey very quickly. "when a man's saved from drowning--" he gulped. "ey? you'll make a man yet ef you go on this way." "he oughtn't begin by calling people names." "jest an' right--right an' jest," said troop, with the ghost of a dry smile. "so i'm here to say i'm sorry." another big gulp. troop heaved himself slowly off the locker he was sitting on and held out an eleven-inch hand. "i mistrusted 'twould do you sights o' good; an' this shows i weren't mistook in my jedgments." a smothered chuckle on deck caught his ear. "i am very seldom mistook in my jedgments." the eleven-inch hand closed on harvey's, numbing it to the elbow. "we'll put a little more gristle to that 'fore we've done with you, young feller; an' i don't think any worse of ye fer anythin' the's gone by. you wasn't fairly responsible. go right abaout your business an' you won't take no hurt." "you're white," said dan, as harvey regained the deck, flushed to the tips of his ears. "i don't feel it," said he. "i didn't mean that way. i heard what dad said. when dad allows he don't think the worse of any man, dad's give himself away. he hates to be mistook in his jedgments too. ho! ho! onct dad has a jedgment, he'd sooner dip his colours to the british than change it. i'm glad it's settled right eend up. dad's right when he says he can't take you back. it's all the livin' we make here--fishin'. the men'll be back like sharks after a dead whale in ha'af an hour." "what for?" said harvey. "supper, o' course. don't your stummick tell you? you've a heap to learn." "guess i have," said harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of ropes and blocks overhead. "she's a daisy," said dan, enthusiastically, misunderstanding the look. "wait till our mainsail's bent, an' she walks home with all her salt wet. there's some work first, though." he pointed down into the darkness of the open main-hatch between the two masts. "what's that for? it's all empty," said harvey. "you an' me an' a few more hev got to fill it," said dan. "that's where the fish goes." "alive?" said harvey. "well, no. they're so's to be ruther dead--an' flat--an' salt. there's a hundred hogshead o' salt in the bins, an' we hain't more'n covered our dunnage to now." "where are the fish, though?" "'in the sea they say, in the boats we pray,'" said dan, quoting a fisherman's proverb. "you come in last night with 'baout forty of 'em." he pointed to a sort of wooden pen just in front of the quarter-deck. "you an' me we'll sluice that out when they're through. 'send we'll hev full pens to-night! i've seen her down ha'af a foot with fish waitin' to clean, an' we stood to the tables till we was splittin' ourselves instid o' them, we was so sleepy. yes, they're comm' in naow." dan looked over the low bulwarks at half a dozen dories rowing towards them over the shining, silky sea. "i've never seen the sea from so low down," said harvey. "it's fine." the low sun made the water all purple and pinkish, with golden lights on the barrels of the long swells, and blue and green mackerel shades in the hollows. each schooner in sight seemed to be pulling her dories towards her by invisible strings, and the little black figures in the tiny boats pulled like clockwork toys. "they've struck on good," said dan, between his half-shut eyes. "manuel hain't room fer another fish. low ez a lily-pad in still water, aeneid he?" "which is manuel? i don't see how you can tell 'em 'way off, as you do." "last boat to the south'ard. he fund you last night," said dan, pointing. "manuel rows portugoosey; ye can't mistake him. east o' him--he's a heap better'n he rows--is pennsylvania. loaded with saleratus, by the looks of him. east o' him--see how pretty they string out all along--with the humpy shoulders, is long jack. he's a galway man inhabitin' south boston, where they all live mostly, an' mostly them galway men are good in a boat. north, away yonder--you'll hear him tune up in a minute is tom platt. man-o'-war's man he was on the old ohio first of our navy, he says, to go araound the horn. he never talks of much else, 'cept when he sings, but he has fair fishin' luck. there! what did i tell you?" a melodious bellow stole across the water from the northern dory. harvey heard something about somebody's hands and feet being cold, and then: "bring forth the chart, the doleful chart, see where them mountings meet! the clouds are thick around their heads, the mists around their feet." "full boat," said dan, with a chuckle. "if he give us 'o captain' it's topping' too!" the bellow continued: "and naow to thee, o capting, most earnestly i pray, that they shall never bury me in church or cloister gray." "double game for tom platt. he'll tell you all about the old ohio tomorrow. 'see that blue dory behind him? he's my uncle,--dad's own brother,--an' ef there's any bad luck loose on the banks she'll fetch up agin uncle salters, sure. look how tender he's rowin'. i'll lay my wage and share he's the only man stung up to-day--an' he's stung up good." "what'll sting him?" said harvey, getting interested. "strawberries, mostly. pumpkins, sometimes, an' sometimes lemons an' cucumbers. yes, he's stung up from his elbows down. that man's luck's perfectly paralyzin'. naow we'll take a-holt o' the tackles an' hist 'em in. is it true what you told me jest now, that you never done a hand's turn o' work in all your born life? must feel kinder awful, don't it?" "i'm going to try to work, anyway," harvey replied stoutly. "only it's all dead new." "lay a-holt o' that tackle, then. behind ye!" harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron hook dangling from one of the stays of the mainmast, while dan pulled down another that ran from something he called a "topping-lift," as manuel drew alongside in his loaded dory. the portuguese smiled a brilliant smile that harvey learned to know well later, and with a short-handled fork began to throw fish into the pen on deck. "two hundred and thirty-one," he shouted. "give him the hook," said dan, and harvey ran it into manuel's hands. he slipped it through a loop of rope at the dory's bow, caught dan's tackle, hooked it to the stern-becket, and clambered into the schooner. "pull!" shouted dan, and harvey pulled, astonished to find how easily the dory rose. "hold on, she don't nest in the crosstrees!" dan laughed; and harvey held on, for the boat lay in the air above his head. "lower away," dan shouted, and as harvey lowered, dan swayed the light boat with one hand till it landed softly just behind the mainmast. "they don't weigh nothin' empty. thet was right smart fer a passenger. there's more trick to it in a sea-way." "ah ha!" said manuel, holding out a brown hand. "you are some pretty well now? this time last night the fish they fish for you. now you fish for fish. eh, wha-at?" "i'm--i'm ever so grateful," harvey stammered, and his unfortunate hand stole to his pocket once more, but he remembered that he had no money to offer. when he knew manuel better the mere thought of the mistake he might have made would cover him with hot, uneasy blushes in his bunk. "there is no to be thankful for to me!" said manuel. "how shall i leave you dreeft, dreeft all around the banks? now you are a fisherman eh, wha-at? ouh! auh!" he bent backward and forward stiffly from the hips to get the kinks out of himself. "i have not cleaned boat to-day. too busy. they struck on queek. danny, my son, clean for me." harvey moved forward at once. here was something he could do for the man who had saved his life. dan threw him a swab, and he leaned over the dory, mopping up the slime clumsily, but with great good-will. "hike out the foot-boards; they slide in them grooves," said dan. "swab 'em an' lay 'em down. never let a foot-board jam. ye may want her bad some day. here's long jack." a stream of glittering fish flew into the pen from a dory alongside. "manuel, you take the tackle. i'll fix the tables. harvey, clear manuel's boat. long jack's nestin' on the top of her." harvey looked up from his swabbing at the bottom of another dory just above his head. "jest like the injian puzzle-boxes, ain't they?" said dan, as the one boat dropped into the other. "takes to ut like a duck to water," said long jack, a grizzly-chinned, long-lipped galway man, bending to and fro exactly as manuel had done. disko in the cabin growled up the hatchway, and they could hear him suck his pencil. "wan hunder an' forty-nine an' a half-bad luck to ye, discobolus!" said long jack. "i'm murderin' meself to fill your pockuts. slate ut for a bad catch. the portugee has bate me." whack came another dory alongside, and more fish shot into the pen. "two hundred and three. let's look at the passenger!" the speaker was even larger than the galway man, and his face was made curious by a purple cut running slant-ways from his left eye to the right corner of his mouth. not knowing what else to do, harvey swabbed each dory as it came down, pulled out the foot-boards, and laid them in the bottom of the boat. "he's caught on good," said the scarred man, who was tom platt, watching him critically. "there are two ways o' doin' everything. one's fisher-fashion--any end first an' a slippery hitch over all--an' the other's--" "what we did on the old ohio!" dan interrupted, brushing into the knot of men with a long board on legs. "get out o' here, tom platt, an' leave me fix the tables." he jammed one end of the board into two nicks in the bulwarks, kicked out the leg, and ducked just in time to avoid a swinging blow from the man-o'-war's man. "an' they did that on the ohio, too, danny. see?" said tom platt, laughing. "guess they was swivel-eyed, then, fer it didn't git home, and i know who'll find his boots on the main-truck ef he don't leave us alone. haul ahead! i'm busy, can't ye see?" "danny, ye lie on the cable an' sleep all day," said long jack. "you're the hoight av impidence, an' i'm persuaded ye'll corrupt our supercargo in a week." "his name's harvey," said dan, waving two strangely shaped knives, "an' he'll be worth five of any sou' boston clam-digger 'fore long." he laid the knives tastefully on the table, cocked his head on one side, and admired the effect. "i think it's forty-two," said a small voice overside, and there was a roar of laughter as another voice answered, "then my luck's turned fer onct, 'caze i'm forty-five, though i be stung outer all shape." "forty-two or forty-five. i've lost count," the small voice said. "it's penn an' uncle salters caountin' catch. this beats the circus any day," said dan. "jest look at 'em!" "come in--come in!" roared long jack. "it's wet out yondher, children." "forty-two, ye said." this was uncle salters. "i'll count again, then," the voice replied meekly. the two dories swung together and bunted into the schooner's side. "patience o' jerusalem!" snapped uncle salters, backing water with a splash. "what possest a farmer like you to set foot in a boat beats me. you've nigh stove me all up." "i am sorry, mr. salters. i came to sea on account of nervous dyspepsia. you advised me, i think." "you an' your nervis dyspepsy be drowned in the whale-hole," roared uncle salters, a fat and tubby little man. "you're comin' down on me agin. did ye say forty-two or forty-five?" "i've forgotten, mr. salters. let's count." "don't see as it could be forty-five. i'm forty-five," said uncle salters. "you count keerful, penn." disko troop came out of the cabin. "salters, you pitch your fish in naow at once," he said in the tone of authority. "don't spile the catch, dad," dan murmured. "them two are on'y jest beginnin'." "mother av delight! he's forkin' them wan by wan," howled long jack, as uncle salters got to work laboriously; the little man in the other dory counting a line of notches on the gunwale. "that was last week's catch," he said, looking up plaintively, his forefinger where he had left off. manuel nudged dan, who darted to the after-tackle, and, leaning far overside, slipped the hook into the stern-rope as manuel made her fast forward. the others pulled gallantly and swung the boat in--man, fish, and all. "one, two, four-nine," said tom platt, counting with a practised eye. "forty-seven. penn, you're it!" dan let the after-tackle run, and slid him out of the stern on to the deck amid a torrent of his own fish. "hold on!" roared uncle salters, bobbing by the waist. "hold on, i'm a bit mixed in my caount." he had no time to protest, but was hove inboard and treated like "pennsylvania." "forty-one," said tom platt. "beat by a farmer, salters. an' you sech a sailor, too!" "'tweren't fair caount," said he, stumbling out of the pen; "an' i'm stung up all to pieces." his thick hands were puffy and mottled purply white. "some folks will find strawberry-bottom," said dan, addressing the newly risen moon, "ef they hev to dive fer it, seems to me." "an' others," said uncle salters, "eats the fat o' the land in sloth, an' mocks their own blood-kin." "seat ye! seat ye!" a voice harvey had not heard called from the foc'sle. disko troop, tom platt, long jack, and salters went forward on the word. little penn bent above his square deep-sea reel and the tangled cod-lines; manuel lay down full length on the deck, and dan dropped into the hold, where harvey heard him banging casks with a hammer. "salt," he said, returning. "soon as we're through supper we git to dressing-down. you'll pitch to dad. tom platt an' dad they stow together, an' you'll hear 'em arguin'. we're second ha'af, you an' me an' manuel an' penn--the youth an' beauty o' the boat." "what's the good of that?" said harvey. "i'm hungry." "they'll be through in a minute. suff! she smells good to-night. dad ships a good cook ef he do suffer with his brother. it's a full catch today, aeneid it?" he pointed at the pens piled high with cod. "what water did ye hev, manuel?" "twenty-fife father," said the portuguese, sleepily. "they strike on good an' queek. some day i show you, harvey." the moon was beginning to walk on the still sea before the elder men came aft. the cook had no need to cry "second half." dan and manuel were down the hatch and at table ere tom platt, last and most deliberate of the elders, had finished wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. harvey followed penn, and sat down before a tin pan of cod's tongues and sounds, mixed with scraps of pork and fried potato, a loaf of hot bread, and some black and powerful coffee. hungry as they were, they waited while "pennsylvania" solemnly asked a blessing. then they stoked in silence till dan drew a breath over his tin cup and demanded of harvey how he felt. "'most full, but there's just room for another piece." the cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and dumb-show invitations to eat more. "see, harvey," said dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's jest as i said. the young an' handsome men--like me an' pennsy an' you an' manuel--we're second ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are through. they're the old fish; an' they're mean an' humpy, an' their stummicks has to be humoured; so they come first, which they don't deserve. aeneid that so, doctor?" the cook nodded. "can't he talk?" said harvey in a whisper. "'nough to get along. not much o' anything we know. his natural tongue's kinder curious. comes from the innards of cape breton, he does, where the farmers speak homemade scotch. cape breton's full o' niggers whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an' they talk like farmers--all huffy-chuffy." "that is not scotch," said "pennsylvania." "that is gaelic. so i read in a book." "penn reads a heap. most of what he says is so--'cep' when it comes to a caount o' fish--eh?" "does your father just let them say how many they've caught without checking them?" said harvey. "why, yes. where's the sense of a man lyin' fer a few old cod?" "was a man once lied for his catch," manuel put in. "lied every day. fife, ten, twenty-fife more fish than come he say there was." "where was that?" said dan. "none o' aour folk." "frenchman of anguille." "ah! them west shore frenchmen don't caount anyway. stands to reason they can't caount. ef you run acrost any of their soft hooks, harvey, you'll know why," said dan, with an awful contempt. "always more and never less, every time we come to dress," long jack roared down the hatch, and the "second ha'af" scrambled up at once. the shadow of the masts and rigging, with the never-furled riding-sail, rolled to and fro on the heaving deck in the moonlight; and the pile of fish by the stern shone like a dump of fluid silver. in the hold there were tramplings and rumblings where disko troop and tom platt moved among the salt-bins. dan passed harvey a pitchfork, and led him to the inboard end of the rough table, where uncle salters was drumming impatiently with a knife-haft. a tub of salt water lay at his feet. "you pitch to dad an' tom platt down the hatch, an' take keer uncle salters don't cut yer eye out," said dan, swinging himself into the hold. "i'll pass salt below." penn and manuel stood knee deep among cod in the pen, flourishing drawn knives. long jack, a basket at his feet and mittens on his hands, faced uncle salters at the table, and harvey stared at the pitchfork and the tub. "hi!" shouted manuel, stooping to the fish, and bringing one up with a finger under its gill and a finger in its eyes. he laid it on the edge of the pen; the knife-blade glimmered with a sound of tearing, and the fish, slit from throat to vent, with a nick on either side of the neck, dropped at long jack's feet. "hi!" said long jack, with a scoop of his mittened hand. the cod's liver dropped in the basket. another wrench and scoop sent the head and offal flying, and the empty fish slid across to uncle salters, who snorted fiercely. there was another sound of tearing, the backbone flew over the bulwarks, and the fish, headless, gutted, and open, splashed in the tub, sending the salt water into harvey's astonished mouth. after the first yell, the men were silent. the cod moved along as though they were alive, and long ere harvey had ceased wondering at the miraculous dexterity of it all, his tub was full. "pitch!" grunted uncle salters, without turning his head, and harvey pitched the fish by twos and threes down the hatch. "hi! pitch 'em bunchy," shouted dan. "don't scatter! uncle salters is the best splitter in the fleet. watch him mind his book!" indeed, it looked a little as though the round uncle were cutting magazine pages against time. manuel's body, cramped over from the hips, stayed like a statue; but his long arms grabbed the fish without ceasing. little penn toiled valiantly, but it was easy to see he was weak. once or twice manuel found time to help him without breaking the chain of supplies, and once manuel howled because he had caught his finger in a frenchman's hook. these hooks are made of soft metal, to be rebent after use; but the cod very often get away with them and are hooked again elsewhere; and that is one of the many reasons why the gloucester boats despise the frenchmen. down below, the rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the whirring of a grindstone--steady undertune to the "click-nick" of knives in the pen; the wrench and shloop of torn heads, dropped liver, and flying offal; the "caraaah" of uncle salters's knife scooping away backbones; and the flap of wet, open bodies falling into the tub. at the end of an hour harvey would have given the world to rest; for fresh, wet cod weigh more than you would think, and his back ached with the steady pitching. but he felt for the first time in his life that he was one of the working gang of men, took pride in the thought, and held on sullenly. "knife oh!" shouted uncle salters at last. penn doubled up, gasping among the fish, manuel bowed back and forth to supple himself, and long jack leaned over the bulwarks. the cook appeared, noiseless as a black shadow, collected a mass of backbones and heads, and retreated. "blood-ends for breakfast an' head-chowder," said long jack, smacking his lips. "knife oh!" repeated uncle salters, waving the flat, curved splitter's weapon. "look by your foot, harve," cried dan below. harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a cleat in the hatch combing. he dealt these around, taking over the dulled ones. "water!" said disko troop. "scuttle-butt's for'ard an' the dipper's alongside. hurry, harve," said dan. he was back in a minute with a big dipperful of stale brown water which tasted like nectar, and loosed the jaws of disko and tom platt. "these are cod," said disko. "they ain't damarskus figs, tom platt, nor yet silver bars. i've told you that ever single time since we've sailed together." "a matter o' seven seasons," returned tom platt coolly. "good stowin's good stowin' all the same, an' there's a right an' a wrong way o' stowin' ballast even. if you'd ever seen four hundred ton o' iron set into the--" "hi!" with a yell from manuel the work began again, and never stopped till the pen was empty. the instant the last fish was down, disko troop rolled aft to the cabin with his brother; manuel and long jack went forward; tom platt only waited long enough to slide home the hatch ere he too disappeared. in half a minute harvey heard deep snores in the cabin, and he was staring blankly at dan and penn. "i did a little better that time, danny," said penn, whose eyelids were heavy with sleep. "but i think it is my duty to help clean." "'wouldn't hev your conscience fer a thousand quintal," said dan. "turn in, penn. you've no call to do boy's work. draw a bucket, harvey. oh, penn, dump these in the gurry-butt 'fore you sleep. kin you keep awake that long?" penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers, emptied them into a cask with a hinged top lashed by the foc'sle; then he too dropped out of sight in the cabin. "boys clean up after dressin' down an' first watch in ca'am weather is boy's watch on the _we're here_." dan sluiced the pen energetically, unshipped the table, set it up to dry in the moonlight, ran the red knife-blades through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen them on a tiny grindstone, as harvey threw offal and backbones overboard under his direction. at the first splash a silvery-white ghost rose bolt upright from the oily water and sighed a weird whistling sigh. harvey started back with a shout, but dan only laughed. "grampus," said he. "beggin' fer fish-heads. they up-eend the way when they're hungry. breath on him like the doleful tombs, hain't he?" a horrible stench of decayed fish filled the air as the pillar of white sank, and the water bubbled oilily. "hain't ye never seen a grampus up-eend before? you'll see 'em by hundreds 'fore ye're through. say, it's good to hev a boy aboard again. otto was too old, an' a dutchy at that. him an' me we fought consid'ble. 'wouldn't ha' keered fer that ef he'd hed a christian tongue in his head. sleepy?" "dead sleepy," said harvey, nodding forward. "mustn't sleep on watch. rouse up an' see ef our anchor-light's bright an' shinin'. you're on watch now, harve." "pshaw! what's to hurt us? bright's day. sn-orrr!" "jest when things happen, dad says. fine weather's good sleepin', an' 'fore you know, mebbe, you're cut in two by a liner, an' seventeen brass-bound officers, all gen'elmen, lift their hand to it that your lights was aout an' there was a thick fog. harve, i've kinder took to you, but ef you nod onct more i'll lay into you with a rope's end." the moon, who sees many strange things on the banks, looked down on a slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering around the cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between the blows he dealt. the lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the riding-sail slatted a little in the shifts of the light wind, the windlass creaked, and the miserable procession continued. harvey expostulated, threatened, whimpered, and at last wept outright, while dan, the words clotting on his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchfulness and slashed away with the rope's end, punishing the dories as often as he hit harvey. at last the clock in the cabin struck ten, and upon the tenth stroke little penn crept on deck. he found two boys in two tumbled heaps side by side on the main hatch, so deeply asleep that he actually rolled them to their berths. chapter iii it was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. they emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish--the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. they cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. it was another perfect day--soft, mild, and clear; and harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs. more schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were full of sails and dories. far away on the horizon, the smoke of some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a big ship's top-gallant sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it. disko troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin--one eye on the craft around, and the other on the little fly at the main-mast-head. "when dad kerflummoxes that way," said dan in a whisper, "he's doin' some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. i'll lay my wage an' share we'll make berth soon. dad he knows the cod, an' the fleet they know dad knows. 'see 'em comm' up one by one, lookin' fer nothin' in particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the time? there's the _prince leboo_; she's a chat-ham boat. she's crep' up sence last night. an' see that big one with a patch in her foresail an' a new jib? she's the _carrie pitman_ from west chat-ham. she won't keep her canvas long onless her luck's changed since last season. she don't do much 'cep' drift. there ain't an anchor made 'll hold her. . . . when the smoke puffs up in little rings like that, dad's studyin' the fish. ef we speak to him now, he'll git mad. las' time i did, he jest took an' hove a boot at me." disko troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that saw nothing. as his son said, he was studying the fish--pitting his knowledge and experience on the banks against the roving cod in his own sea. he accepted the presence of the inquisitive schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his powers. but now that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make his berth alone, till it was time to go up to the virgin and fish in the streets of that roaring town upon the waters. so disko troop thought of recent weather, and gales, currents, food-supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view of a twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked remarkably like one. then he removed the pipe from his teeth. "dad," said dan, "we've done our chores. can't we go overside a piece? it's good catchin' weather." "not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'af baked brown shoes. give him suthin' fit to wear." "dad's pleased--that settles it," said dan, delightedly, dragging harvey into the cabin, while troop pitched a key down the steps. "dad keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause ma sez i'm keerless." he rummaged through a locker, and in less than three minutes harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber boots that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of nippers, and a sou'wester. "naow ye look somethin' like," said dan. "hurry!" "keep nigh an' handy," said troop "an' don't go visitin' raound the fleet. if any one asks you what i'm cal'latin' to do, speak the truth--fer ye don't know." a little red dory, labelled hattie s., lay astern of the schooner. dan hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards, while harvey tumbled clumsily after. "that's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said dan. "ef there was any sea you'd go to the bottom, sure. you got to learn to meet her." dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart and watched harvey's work. the boy had rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and well-balanced ruflocks--light sculls and stubby, eight-foot sea-oars. they stuck in the gentle swell, and harvey grunted. "short! row short!" said dan. "ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea you're liable to turn her over. ain't she a daisy? mine, too." the little dory was specklessly clean. in her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding. a tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under harvey's right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick. a couple of lines, with very heavy leads and double cod-hooks, all neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck in their place by the gunwale. "where's the sail and mast?" said harvey, for his hands were beginning to blister. dan chuckled. "ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. ye pull; but ye needn't pull so hard. don't you wish you owned her?" "well, i guess my father might give me one or two if i asked 'em," harvey replied. he had been too busy to think much of his family till then. "that's so. i forgot your dad's a millionaire. you don't act millionary any, naow. but a dory an' craft an' gear"--dan spoke as though she were a whaleboat--"costs a heap. think your dad 'u'd give you one fer--fer a pet like?" "shouldn't wonder. it would be 'most the only thing i haven't stuck him for yet." "must be an expensive kinder kid to home. don't slitheroo thet way, harve. short's the trick, because no sea's ever dead still, an' the swells 'll--" crack! the loom of the oar kicked harvey under the chin and knocked him backwards. "that was what i was goin' to say. i hed to learn too, but i wasn't more than eight years old when i got my schoolin'." harvey regained his seat with aching jaws and a frown. "no good gettin' mad at things, dad says. it's our own fault ef we can't handle 'em, he says. le's try here. manuel 'll give us the water." the "portugee" was rocking fully a mile away, but when dan up-ended an oar he waved his left arm three times. "thirty fathom," said dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. "over with the doughboys. bait same's i do, harvey, an' don't snarl your reel." dan's line was out long before harvey had mastered the mystery of baiting and heaving out the leads. the dory drifted along easily. it was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground. "here we come!" dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on harvey's shoulders as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside. "muckle, harvey, muckle! under your hand! quick!" evidently "muckle" could not be the dinner-horn, so harvey passed over the maul, and dan scientifically stunned the fish before he pulled it inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short wooden stick he called a "gob-stick." then harvey felt a tug, and pulled up zealously. "why, these are strawberries!" he shouted. "look!" the hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and white on the other--perfect reproductions of the land fruit, except that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy. "don't tech 'em. slat 'em off. don't--" the warning came too late. harvey had picked them from the hook, and was admiring them. "ouch!" he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped many nettles. "now ye know what strawberry-bottom means. nothin' 'cep' fish should be teched with the naked fingers, dad says. slat 'em off agin the gunnel, an' bait up, harve. lookin' won't help any. it's all in the wages." harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and wondered what his mother would say if she could see him hanging over the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean. she suffered agonies whenever he went out on saranac lake; and, by the way, harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her anxieties. suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the "nippers," the woolen circlets supposed to protect it. "he's a logy. give him room accordin' to his strength," cried dan. "i'll help ye." "no, you won't," harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "it's my first fish. is--is it a whale?" "halibut, mebbe." dan peered down into the water alongside, and flourished the big "muckle," ready for all chances. something white and oval flickered and fluttered through the green. "i'll lay my wage an' share he's over a hundred. are you so everlastin' anxious to land him alone?" harvey's knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been banged against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was half-blinded from staring at the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line. the boys were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them and the dory for the next twenty minutes. but the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last. "beginner's luck," said dan, wiping his forehead. "he's all of a hundred." harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with unspeakable pride. he had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with fatigue. "ef dad was along," said dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs plain's print. the fish are runnin' smaller an' smaller, an' you've took 'baout as logy a halibut's we're apt to find this trip. yesterday's catch--did ye notice it?--was all big fish an' no halibut. dad he'd read them signs right off. dad says everythin' on the banks is signs, an' can be read wrong er right. dad's deeper'n the whale-hole." even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the _we're here_, and a potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging. "what did i say, naow? that's the call fer the whole crowd. dad's onter something, er he'd never break fishin' this time o' day. reel up, harve, an' we'll pull back." they were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to penn, who was careering around a fixed point for all the world like a gigantic water-bug. the little man backed away and came down again with enormous energy, but at the end of each maneuver his dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope. "we'll hev to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said dan. "what's the matter?" said harvey. this was a new world, where he could not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions humbly. and the sea was horribly big and unexcited. "anchor's fouled. penn's always losing 'em. lost two this trip a'ready--on sandy bottom too--an' dad says next one he loses, sure's fishin', he'll give him the kelleg. that 'u'd break penn's heart." "what's a 'kelleg'?" said harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in the storybooks. "big stone instid of an anchor. you kin see a kelleg ridin' in the bows fur's you can see a dory, an' all the fleet knows what it means. they'd guy him dreadful. penn couldn't stand that no more'n a dog with a dipper to his tail. he's so everlastin' sensitive. hello, penn! stuck again? don't try any more o' your patents. come up on her, and keep your rodin' straight up an' down." "it doesn't move," said the little man, panting. "it doesn't move at all, and instead i tried everything." "what's all this hurrah's-nest for'ard?" said dan, pointing to a wild tangle of spare oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the hand of inexperience. "oh, that," said penn proudly, "is a spanish windlass. mr. salters showed me how to make it; but even that doesn't move her." dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice on the roding, and, behold, the anchor drew at once. "haul up, penn," he said laughing, "er she'll git stuck again." they left him regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor with big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking them profusely. "oh, say, while i think of it, harve," said dan when they were out of ear-shot, "penn ain't quite all caulked. he ain't nowise dangerous, but his mind's give out. see?" "is that so, or is it one of your father's judgments?" harvey asked as he bent to his oars. he felt he was learning to handle them more easily. "dad ain't mistook this time. penn's a sure 'nuff loony." "no, he ain't thet exactly, so much ez a harmless ijut. it was this way (you're rowin' quite so, harve), an' i tell you 'cause it's right you orter know. he was a moravian preacher once. jacob boiler wuz his name, dad told me, an' he lived with his wife an' four children somewheres out pennsylvania way. well, penn he took his folks along to a moravian meetin'--camp-meetin' most like--an' they stayed over jest one night in johns-town. you've heered talk o' johnstown?" harvey considered. "yes, i have. but i don't know why. it sticks in my head same as ashtabula." "both was big accidents--thet's why, harve. well, that one single night penn and his folks was to the hotel johnstown was wiped out. 'dam bust an' flooded her, an' the houses struck adrift an' bumped into each other an' sunk. i've seen the pictures, an' they're dretful. penn he saw his folk drowned all'n a heap 'fore he rightly knew what was comin'. his mind give out from that on. he mistrusted somethin' hed happened up to johnstown, but for the poor life of him he couldn't remember what, an' he jest drifted araound smilin' an' wonderin'. he didn't know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an' thet way he run agin uncle salters, who was visitin' 'n allegheny city. ha'af my mother's folks they live scattered inside o' pennsylvania, an' uncle salters he visits araound winters. uncle salters he kinder adopted penn, well knowin' what his trouble wuz; an' he brought him east, an' he give him work on his farm." "why, i heard him calling penn a farmer last night when the boats bumped. is your uncle salters a farmer?" "farmer!" shouted dan. "there ain't water enough 'tween here an' hatt'rus to wash the furrer-mold off'n his boots. he's jest everlastin' farmer. why, harve, i've seen thet man hitch up a bucket, long towards sundown, an' set twiddlin' the spigot to the scuttle-butt same's ef 'twas a cow's bag. he's thet much farmer. well, penn an' he they ran the farm--up exeter way 'twur. uncle salters he sold it this spring to a jay from boston as wanted to build a summer-haouse, an' he got a heap for it. well, them two loonies scratched along till, one day, penn's church--he'd belonged to the moravians--found out where he wuz drifted an' layin', an' wrote to uncle salters. 'never heerd what they said exactly; but uncle salters was mad. he's a 'piscopolian mostly--but he jest let 'em hev it both sides o' the bow, 's if he was a baptist; an' sez he warn't goin' to give up penn to any blame moravian connection in pennsylvania or anywheres else. then he come to dad, towin' penn,--thet was two trips back,--an' sez he an' penn must fish a trip fer their health. 'guess he thought the moravians wouldn't hunt the banks fer jacob boiler. dad was agreeable, fer uncle salters he'd been fishin' off an' on fer thirty years, when he warn't inventin' patent manures, an' he took quarter-share in the _we're here_; an' the trip done penn so much good, dad made a habit o' takin' him. some day, dad sez, he'll remember his wife an' kids an' johnstown, an' then, like as not, he'll die, dad sez. don't ye talk abaout johnstown ner such things to penn, 'r uncle salters he'll heave ye overboard." "poor penn!" murmured harvey. "i shouldn't ever have thought uncle salters cared for him by the look of 'em together." "i like penn, though; we all do," said dan. "we ought to ha' give him a tow, but i wanted to tell ye first." they were close to the schooner now, the other boats a little behind them. "you needn't heave in the dories till after dinner," said troop from the deck. "we'll dress daown right off. fix table, boys!" "deeper'n the whale-deep," said dan, with a wink, as he set the gear for dressing down. "look at them boats that hev edged up sence mornin'. they're all waitin' on dad. see 'em, harve?" "they are all alike to me." and indeed to a landsman, the nodding schooners around seemed run from the same mold. "they ain't, though. that yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit steeved that way, she's the hope of prague. nick brady's her skipper, the meanest man on the banks. we'll tell him so when we strike the main ledge. 'way off yonder's the day's eye. the two jeraulds own her. she's from harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good luck; but dad he'd find fish in a graveyard. them other three, side along, they're the margie smith, rose, and edith s. walen, all from home. 'guess we'll see the abbie m. deering to-morrer, dad, won't we? they're all slippin' over from the shaol o' 'oueereau." "you won't see many boats to-morrow, danny." when troop called his son danny, it was a sign that the old man was pleased. "boys, we're too crowded," he went on, addressing the crew as they clambered inboard. "we'll leave 'em to bait big an' catch small." he looked at the catch in the pen, and it was curious to see how little and level the fish ran. save for harvey's halibut, there was nothing over fifteen pounds on deck. "i'm waitin' on the weather," he added. "ye'll have to make it yourself, disko, for there's no sign i can see," said long jack, sweeping the clear horizon. and yet, half an hour later, as they were dressing down, the bank fog dropped on them, "between fish and fish," as they say. it drove steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless water. the men stopped dressing-down without a word. long jack and uncle salters slipped the windlass brakes into their sockets, and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the barrel. manuel and tom platt gave a hand at the last. the anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as troop steadied her at the wheel. "up jib and foresail," said he. "slip 'em in the smother," shouted long jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the _we're here_ looked up into the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white. "there's wind behind this fog," said troop. it was wonderful beyond words to harvey; and the most wonderful part was that he heard no orders except an occasional grunt from troop, ending with, "that's good, my son!" "never seen anchor weighed before?" said tom platt, to harvey gaping at the damp canvas of the foresail. "no. where are we going?" "fish and make berth, as you'll find out 'fore you've been a week aboard. it's all new to you, but we never know what may come to us. now, take me--tom platt--i'd never ha' thought--" "it's better than fourteen dollars a month an' a bullet in your belly," said troop, from the wheel. "ease your jumbo a grind." "dollars an' cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "but we didn't think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the miss jim buck, i outside beau-fort harbor, with fort macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. where was you then, disko?" "jest here, or hereabouts," disko replied, "earnin' my bread on the deep waters, an' dodgin' reb privateers. sorry i can't accommodate you with red-hot shot, tom platt; but i guess we'll come aout all right on wind 'fore we see eastern point." there was an incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by a solid thud and a little spout of spray that clattered down on the foc'sle. the rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along the lee of the house--all save uncle salters, who sat stiffly on the main-hatch nursing his stung hands. "guess she'd carry stays'l," said disko, rolling one eye at his brother. "guess she wouldn't to any sorter profit. what's the sense o' wastin' canvas?" the farmer-sailor replied. the wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in disko's hands. a few seconds later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote uncle salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to foot. he rose sputtering, and went forward only to catch another. "see dad chase him all around the deck," said dan. "uncle salters he thinks his quarter share's our canvas. dad's put this duckin' act up on him two trips runnin'. hi! that found him where he feeds." uncle salters had taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave slapped him over the knees. disko's face was as blank as the circle of the wheel. "guess she'd lie easier under stays'l, salters," said disko, as though he had seen nothing. "set your old kite, then," roared the victim through a cloud of spray; "only don't lay it to me if anything happens. penn, you go below right off an' git your coffee. you ought to hev more sense than to bum araound on deck this weather." "now they'll swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come home," said dan, as uncle salters hustled penn into the fore-cabin. "'looks to me like's if we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. there's nothin' in creation deader-limpsey-idler'n a banker when she ain't on fish." "i'm glad ye spoke, danny," cried long jack, who had been casting round in search of amusement. "i'd clean forgot we'd a passenger under that t-wharf hat. there's no idleness for thim that don't know their ropes. pass him along, tom platt, an' we'll larn him." "'tain't my trick this time," grinned dan. "you've got to go it alone. dad learned me with a rope's end." for an hour long jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as he said, "things at the sea that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk, or asleep." there is not much gear to a seventy-ton schooner with a stump-foremast, but long jack had a gift of expression. when he wished to draw harvey's attention to the peak-halyards, he dug his knuckles into the back of the boy's neck and kept him at gaze for half a minute. he emphasized the difference between fore and aft generally by rubbing harvey's nose along a few feet of the boom, and the lead of each rope was fixed in harvey's mind by the end of the rope itself. the lesson would have been easier had the deck been at all free; but there appeared to be a place on it for everything and anything except a man. forward lay the windlass and its tackle, with the chain and hemp cables, all very unpleasant to trip over; the foc'sle stovepipe, and the gurry-butts by the foc'sle hatch to hold the fish-livers. aft of these the foreboom and booby of the main-hatch took all the space that was not needed for the pumps and dressing-pens. then came the nests of dories lashed to ring-bolts by the quarter-deck; the house, with tubs and oddments lashed all around it; and, last, the sixty-foot main-boom in its crutch, splitting things length-wise, to duck and dodge under every time. tom platt, of course, could not keep his oar out of the business, but ranged alongside with enormous and unnecessary descriptions of sails and spars on the old ohio. "niver mind fwhat he says; attind to me, innocince. tom platt, this bally-hoo's not the ohio, an' you're mixing the bhoy bad." "he'll be ruined for life, beginnin' on a fore-an'-after this way," tom platt pleaded. "give him a chance to know a few leadin' principles. sailin's an art, harvey, as i'd show you if i had ye in the fore-top o' the--" "i know ut. ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. silince, tom platt! now, after all i've said, how'd you reef the foresail, harve? take your time answerin'." "haul that in," said harvey, pointing to leeward. "fwhat? the north atlantuc?" "no, the boom. then run that rope you showed me back there--" "that's no way," tom platt burst in. "quiet! he's larnin', an' has not the names good yet. go on, harve." "oh, it's the reef-pennant. i'd hook the tackle on to the reef-pennant, and then let down--" "lower the sail, child! lower!" said tom platt, in a professional agony. "lower the throat and peak halyards," harvey went on. those names stuck in his head. "lay your hand on thim," said long jack. harvey obeyed. "lower till that rope-loop--on the after-leach-kris--no, it's cringle--till the cringle was down on the boom. then i'd tie her up the way you said, and then i'd hoist up the peak and throat halyards again." "you've forgot to pass the tack-earing, but wid time and help ye'll larn. there's good and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else 'twould be overboard. d'ye follow me? 'tis dollars an' cents i'm puttin' into your pocket, ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin ye've filled out ye can ship from boston to cuba an' tell thim long jack larned you. now i'll chase ye around a piece, callin' the ropes, an' you'll lay your hand on thim as i call." he began, and harvey, who was feeling rather tired, walked slowly to the rope named. a rope's end licked round his ribs, and nearly knocked the breath out of him. "when you own a boat," said tom platt, with severe eyes, "you can walk. till then, take all orders at the run. once more--to make sure!" harvey was in a glow with the exercise, and this last cut warmed him thoroughly. now he was a singularly smart boy, the son of a very clever man and a very sensitive woman, with a fine resolute temper that systematic spoiling had nearly turned to mulish obstinacy. he looked at the other men, and saw that even dan did not smile. it was evidently all in the day's work, though it hurt abominably; so he swallowed the hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin. the same smartness that led him to take such advantage of his mother made him very sure that no one on the boat, except, maybe, penn, would stand the least nonsense. one learns a great deal from a mere tone. long jack called over half a dozen ropes, and harvey danced over the deck like an eel at ebb-tide, one eye on tom platt. "ver' good. ver' good don," said manuel. "after supper i show you a little schooner i make, with all her ropes. so we shall learn." "fust-class fer--a passenger," said dan. "dad he's jest allowed you'll be wuth your salt maybe 'fore you're draownded. thet's a heap fer dad. i'll learn you more our next watch together." "taller!" grunted disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the bows. there was nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the surging jib-boom, while alongside rolled the endless procession of solemn, pale waves whispering and lipping one to the other. "now i'll learn you something long jack can't," shouted tom platt, as from a locker by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea lead hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow from a saucer full of mutton tallow, and went forward. "i'll learn you how to fly the blue pigeon. shooo!" disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way, while manuel, with harvey to help (and a proud boy was harvey), let down the jib in a lump on the boom. the lead sung a deep droning song as tom platt whirled it round and round. "go ahead, man," said long jack, impatiently. "we're not drawin' twenty-five fut off fire island in a fog. there's no trick to ut." "don't be jealous, galway." the released lead plopped into the sea far ahead as the schooner surged slowly forward. "soundin' is a trick, though," said dan, "when your dipsey lead's all the eye you're like to hev for a week. what d'you make it, dad?" disko's face relaxed. his skill and honour were involved in the march he had stolen on the rest of the fleet, and he had his reputation as a master artist who knew the banks blindfold. "sixty, mebbe--ef i'm any judge," he replied, with a glance at the tiny compass in the window of the house. "sixty," sung out tom platt, hauling in great wet coils. the schooner gathered way once more. "heave!" said disko, after a quarter of an hour. "what d'you make it?" dan whispered, and he looked at harvey proudly. but harvey was too proud of his own performances to be impressed just then. "fifty," said the father. "i mistrust we're right over the nick o' green bank on old sixty-fifty." "fifty!" roared tom platt. they could scarcely see him through the fog. "she's bust within a yard--like the shells at fort macon." "bait up, harve," said dan, diving for a line on the reel. the schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother, her headsail banging wildly. the men waited and looked at the boys who began fishing. "heugh!" dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "now haow in thunder did dad know? help us here, harve. it's a big un. poke-hooked, too." they hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed twenty-pound cod. he had taken the bait right into his stomach. "why, he's all covered with little crabs," cried harvey, turning him over. "by the great hook-block, they're lousy already," said long jack. "disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the keel." splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man taking his own place at the bulwarks. "are they good to eat?" harvey panted, as he lugged in another crab-covered cod. "sure. when they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin' together by the thousand, and when they take the bait that way they're hungry. never mind how the bait sets. they'll bite on the bare hook." "say, this is great!" harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and splashing--nearly all poke-hooked, as dan had said. "why can't we always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?" "allus can, till we begin to dress daown. efter thet, the heads and offals 'u'd scare the fish to fundy. boatfishin' ain't reckoned progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows. guess we'll run aout aour trawl to-night. harder on the back, this, than frum the dory, ain't it?" it was rather back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is water-borne till the last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast of him; but the few feet of a schooner's freeboard make so much extra dead-hauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the stomach. but it was wild and furious sport so long as it lasted; and a big pile lay aboard when the fish ceased biting. "where's penn and uncle salters?" harvey asked, slapping the slime off his oilskins, and reeling up the line in careful imitation of the others. "git 's coffee and see." under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the foc'sle table down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two men, a checker-board between them, uncle salters snarling at penn's every move. "what's the matter naow?" said the former, as harvey, one hand in the leather loop at the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook. "big fish and lousy--heaps and heaps," harvey replied, quoting long jack. "how's the game?" little penn's jaw dropped. "'tweren't none o' his fault," snapped uncle salters. "penn's deef." "checkers, weren't it?" said dan, as harvey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in a tin pail. "that lets us out o' cleanin' up to-night. dad's a jest man. they'll have to do it." "an' two young fellers i know'll bait up a tub or so o' trawl, while they're cleanin'," said disko, lashing the wheel to his taste. "um! guess i'd ruther clean up, dad." "don't doubt it. ye wun't, though. dress daown! dress daown! penn'll pitch while you two bait up." "why in thunder didn't them blame boys tell us you'd struck on?" said uncle salters, shuffling to his place at the table. "this knife's gum-blunt, dan." "ef stickin' out cable don't wake ye, guess you'd better hire a boy o' your own," said dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of trawl-line lashed to windward of the house. "oh, harve, don't ye want to slip down an' git 's bait?" "bait ez we are," said disko. "i mistrust shag-fishin' will pay better, ez things go." that meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the fish were cleaned--an improvement on paddling bare-handed in the little bait-barrels below. the tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a big hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single hook, with the stowage of the baited line so that it should run clear when shot from the dory, was a scientific business. dan managed it in the dark, without looking, while harvey caught his fingers on the barbs and bewailed his fate. but the hooks flew through dan's fingers like tatting on an old maid's lap. "i helped bait up trawl ashore 'fore i could well walk," he said. "but it's a putterin' job all the same. oh, dad!" this shouted towards the hatch, where disko and tom platt were salting. "how many skates you reckon we'll need?" "'baout three. hurry!" "there's three hundred fathom to each tub," dan explained; "more'n enough to lay out to-night. ouch! 'slipped up there, i did." he stuck his finger in his mouth. "i tell you, harve, there ain't money in gloucester 'u'd hire me to ship on a reg'lar trawler. it may be progressive, but, barrin' that, it's the putterin'est, slimjammest business top of earth." "i don't know what this is, if 'tisn't regular trawling," said harvey sulkily. "my fingers are all cut to frazzles." "pshaw! this is just one o' dad's blame experiments. he don't trawl 'less there's mighty good reason fer it. dad knows. thet's why he's baitin' ez he is. we'll hev her saggin' full when we take her up er we won't see a fin." penn and uncle salters cleaned up as disko had ordained, but the boys profited little. no sooner were the tubs furnished than tom platt and long jack, who had been exploring the inside of a dory with a lantern, snatched them away, loaded up the tubs and some small, painted trawl-buoys, and hove the boat overboard into what harvey regarded as an exceedingly rough sea. "they'll be drowned. why, the dory's loaded like a freight-car," he cried. "we'll be back," said long jack, "an' in case you'll not be lookin' for us, we'll lay into you both if the trawl's snarled." the dory surged up on the crest of a wave, and just when it seemed impossible that she could avoid smashing against the schooner's side, slid over the ridge, and was swallowed up in the damp dusk. "take ahold here, an' keep ringin' steady," said dan, passing harvey the lanyard of a bell that hung just behind the windlass. harvey rang lustily, for he felt two lives depended on him. but disko in the cabin, scrawling in the log-book, did not look like a murderer, and when he went to supper he even smiled dryly at the anxious harvey. "this ain't no weather," said dan. "why, you an' me could set thet trawl! they've only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our cable. they don't need no bell reelly." "clang! clang! clang!" harvey kept it up, varied with occasional rub-a-dubs, for another half-hour. there was a bellow and a bump alongside. manuel and dan raced to the hooks of the dory-tackle; long jack and tom platt arrived on deck together, it seemed, one half the north atlantic at their backs, and the dory followed them in the air, landing with a clatter. "nary snarl," said tom platt as he dripped. "danny, you'll do yet." "the pleasure av your comp'ny to the banquit," said long jack, squelching the water from his boots as he capered like an elephant and stuck an oil-skinned arm into harvey's face. "we do be condescending to honour the second half wid our presence." and off they all four rolled to supper, where harvey stuffed himself to the brim on fish-chowder and fried pies, and fell fast asleep just as manuel produced from a locker a lovely two-foot model of the lucy holmes, his first boat, and was going to show harvey the ropes. harvey never even twiddled his fingers as penn pushed him into his bunk. "it must be a sad thing--a very sad thing," said penn, watching the boy's face, "for his mother and his father, who think he is dead. to lose a child--to lose a man-child!" "git out o' this, penn," said dan. "go aft and finish your game with uncle salters. tell dad i'll stand harve's watch ef he don't keer. he's played aout." "ver' good boy," said manuel, slipping out of his boots and disappearing into the black shadows of the lower bunk. "expec' he make good man, danny. i no see he is any so mad as your parpa he says. eh, wha-at?" dan chuckled, but the chuckle ended in a snore. it was thick weather outside, with a rising wind, and the elder men stretched their watches. the hour struck clear in the cabin; the nosing bows slapped and scuffed with the seas; the foc'sle stove-pipe hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept on, while disko, long jack, tom platt, and uncle salters, each in turn, stumped aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held, or to veer out a little more cable against chafing, with a glance at the dim anchor-light between each round. chapter iv harvey waked to find the "first half" at breakfast, the foc'sle door drawn to a crack, and every square inch of the schooner singing its own tune. the black bulk of the cook balanced behind the tiny galley over the glare of the stove, and the pots and pans in the pierced wooden board before it jarred and racketed to each plunge. up and up the foc'sle climbed, yearning and surging and quivering, and then, with a clear, sickle-like swoop, came down into the seas. he could hear the flaring bows cut and squelch, and there was a pause ere the divided waters came down on the deck above, like a volley of buckshot. followed the woolly sound of the cable in the hawse-hole; and a grunt and squeal of the windlass; a yaw, a punt, and a kick, and the _we're here_ gathered herself together to repeat the motions. "now, ashore," he heard long jack saying, "ye've chores, an' ye must do thim in any weather. here we're well clear of the fleet, an' we've no chores--an' that's a blessin'. good night, all." he passed like a big snake from the table to his bunk, and began to smoke. tom platt followed his example; uncle salters, with penn, fought his way up the ladder to stand his watch, and the cook set for the "second half." it came out of its bunks as the others had entered theirs, with a shake and a yawn. it ate till it could eat no more; and then manuel filled his pipe with some terrible tobacco, crotched himself between the pawl-post and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table, and smiled tender and indolent smiles at the smoke. dan lay at length in his bunk, wrestling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion, whose tunes went up and down with the pitching of the _we're here_. the cook, his shoulders against the locker where he kept the fried pies (dan was fond of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with one eye on the stove in event of too much water finding its way down the pipe; and the general smell and smother were past all description. harvey considered affairs, wondered that he was not deathly sick, and crawled into his bunk again, as the softest and safest place, while dan struck up, "i don't want to play in your yard," as accurately as the wild jerks allowed. "how long is this for?" harvey asked of manuel. "till she get a little quiet, and we can row to trawl. perhaps to-night. perhaps two days more. you do not like? eh, wha-at?" "i should have been crazy sick a week ago, but it doesn't seem to upset me now--much." "that is because we make you fisherman, these days. if i was you, when i come to gloucester i would give two, three big candles for my good luck." "give who?" "to be sure--the virgin of our church on the hill. she is very good to fishermen all the time. that is why so few of us portugee men ever are drowned." "you're a roman catholic, then?" "i am a madeira man. i am not a porto pico boy. shall i be baptist, then? eh, wha-at? i always give candles--two, three more when i come to gloucester. the good virgin she never forgets me, manuel." "i don't sense it that way," tom platt put in from his bunk, his scarred face lit up by the glare of a match as he sucked at his pipe. "it stands to reason the sea's the sea; and you'll get jest about what's goin', candles or kerosene, fer that matter." "'tis a mighty good thing," said long jack, "to have a frind at coort, though. i'm o' manuel's way o' thinkin'. about tin years back i was crew to a sou' boston market-boat. we was off minot's ledge wid a northeaster, butt first, atop of us, thicker'n burgoo. the ould man was dhrunk, his chin waggin' on the tiller, an' i sez to myself, 'if iver i stick my boat-huk into t-wharf again, i'll show the saints fwhat manner o' craft they saved me out av.' now, i'm here, as ye can well see, an' the model of the dhirty ould kathleen, that took me a month to make, i gave ut to the priest, an' he hung ut up forninst the altar. there's more sense in givin' a model that's by way o' bein' a work av art than any candle. ye can buy candles at store, but a model shows the good saints ye've tuk trouble an' are grateful." "d'you believe that, irish?" said tom platt, turning on his elbow. "would i do ut if i did not, ohio?" "wa-al, enoch fuller he made a model o' the old ohio, and she's to calem museum now. mighty pretty model, too, but i guess enoch he never done it fer no sacrifice; an' the way i take it is--" there were the makings of an hour-long discussion of the kind that fishermen love, where the talk runs in shouting circles and no one proves anything at the end, had not dan struck up this cheerful rhyme: "up jumped the mackerel with his stripe'd back. reef in the mainsail, and haul on the tack; _for_ it's windy weather--" here long jack joined in: "_and_ it's blowy weather; _when_ the winds begin to blow, pipe all hands together!" dan went on, with a cautious look at tom platt, holding the accordion low in the bunk: "up jumped the cod with his chuckle-head, went to the main-chains to heave at the lead; _for_ it's windy weather," etc. tom platt seemed to be hunting for something. dan crouched lower, but sang louder: "up jumped the flounder that swims to the ground. chuckle-head! chuckle-head! mind where ye sound!" tom platt's huge rubber boot whirled across the foc'sle and caught dan's uplifted arm. there was war between the man and the boy ever since dan had discovered that the mere whistling of that tune would make him angry as he heaved the lead. "thought i'd fetch yer," said dan, returning the gift with precision. "ef you don't like my music, git out your fiddle. i ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' long jack arguin' 'baout candles. fiddle, tom platt; or i'll learn harve here the tune!" tom platt leaned down to a locker and brought up an old white fiddle. manuel's eye glistened, and from somewhere behind the pawl-post he drew out a tiny, guitar-like thing with wire strings, which he called a machette. "'tis a concert," said long jack, beaming through the smoke. "a reg'lar boston concert." there was a burst of spray as the hatch opened, and disko, in yellow oilskins, descended. "ye're just in time, disko. fwhat's she doin' outside?" "jest this!" he dropped on to the lockers with the push and heave of the _we're here_. "we're singin' to kape our breakfasts down. ye'll lead, av course, disko," said long jack. "guess there ain't more'n 'baout two old songs i know, an' ye've heerd them both." his excuses were cut short by tom platt launching into a most dolorous tune, like unto the moaning of winds and the creaking of masts. with his eyes fixed on the beams above, disko began this ancient, ancient ditty, tom platt flourishing all round him to make the tune and words fit a little: "there is a crack packet--crack packet o' fame, she hails from noo york, an' the _dreadnought's_ her name. you may talk o' your fliers--swallowtail and black ball-- but the _dreadnought's_ the packet that can beat them all. "now the _dreadnought_ she lies in the river mersey, because of the tug-boat to take her to sea; but when she's off soundings you shortly will know (chorus.) she's the liverpool packet--o lord, let her go! "now the _dreadnought_ she's howlin' crost the banks o' newfoundland, where the water's all shallow and the bottom's all sand. sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro: (chorus.) 'she's the liverpool packet--o lord, let her go!'", there were scores of verses, for he worked the _dreadnought_ every mile of the way between liverpool and new york as conscientiously as though he were on her deck, and the accordion pumped and the fiddle squeaked beside him. tom platt followed with something about "the rough and tough mcginn, who would pilot the vessel in." then they called on harvey, who felt very flattered, to contribute to the entertainment; but all that he could remember were some pieces of "skipper ireson's ride" that he had been taught at the camp-school in the adirondacks. it seemed that they might be appropriate to the time and place, but he had no more than mentioned the title when disko brought down one foot with a bang, and cried, "don't go on, young feller. that's a mistaken jedgment--one o' the worst kind, too, becaze it's catchin' to the ear." "i orter ha' warned you," said dan. "thet allus fetches dad." "what's wrong?" said harvey, surprised and a little angry. "all you're goin' to say," said disko. "all dead wrong from start to finish, an' whittier he's to blame. i have no special call to right any marblehead man, but 'tweren't no fault o' ireson's. my father he told me the tale time an' again, an' this is the way 'twuz." "for the wan hundredth time," put in long jack under his breath "ben ireson he was skipper o' the betty, young feller, comin' home frum the banks--that was before the war of , but jestice is jestice at all times. they fund the active o' portland, an' gibbons o' that town he was her skipper; they fund her leakin' off cape cod light. there was a terr'ble gale on, an' they was gettin' the betty home 's fast as they could craowd her. well, ireson he said there warn't any sense to reskin' a boat in that sea; the men they wouldn't hev it; and he laid it before them to stay by the active till the sea run daown a piece. they wouldn't hev that either, hangin' araound the cape in any sech weather, leak or no leak. they jest up stays'l an' quit, nat'rally takin' ireson with 'em. folks to marblehead was mad at him not runnin' the risk, and becaze nex' day, when the sea was ca'am (they never stopped to think o' that), some of the active's folks was took off by a truro man. they come into marblehead with their own tale to tell, sayin' how ireson had shamed his town, an' so forth an' so on, an' ireson's men they was scared, seein' public feelin' agin' 'em, an' they went back on ireson, an' swore he was respons'ble for the hull act. 'tweren't the women neither that tarred and feathered him--marblehead women don't act that way--'twas a passel o' men an' boys, an' they carted him araound town in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, and ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it some day. well, the facts come aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest man; an' whittier he come along an' picked up the slack eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered ben ireson all over onct more after he was dead. 'twas the only tune whittier ever slipped up, an' 'tweren't fair. i whaled dan good when he brought that piece back from school. you don't know no better, o' course; but i've give you the facts, hereafter an' evermore to be remembered. ben ireson weren't no sech kind o' man as whittier makes aout; my father he knew him well, before an' after that business, an' you beware o' hasty jedgments, young feller. next!" harvey had never heard disko talk so long, and collapsed with burning cheeks; but, as dan said promptly, a boy could only learn what he was taught at school, and life was too short to keep track of every lie along the coast. then manuel touched the jangling, jarring little machette to a queer tune, and sang something in portuguese about "nina, innocente!" ending with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. then disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. this is one stanza: "now aprile is over and melted the snow, and outer noo bedford we shortly must tow; yes, out o' noo bedford we shortly must clear, we're the whalers that never see wheat in the ear." here the fiddle went very softly for a while by itself, and then: "wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love's posy blowin, wheat-in-the-ear, we're goin' off to sea; wheat-in-the-ear, i left you fit for sowin, when i come back a loaf o' bread you'll be!" that made harvey almost weep, though he could not tell why. but it was much worse when the cook dropped the potatoes and held out his hands for the fiddle. still leaning against the locker door, he struck into a tune that was like something very bad but sure to happen whatever you did. after a little he sang, in an unknown tongue, his big chin down on the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs glaring in the lamplight. harvey swung out of his bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of the timbers and the wash of the waters the tune crooned and moaned on, like lee surf in a blind fog, till it ended with a wail. "jimmy christmas! thet gives me the blue creevles," said dan. "what in thunder is it?" "the song of fin mccoul," said the cook, "when he wass going to norway." his english was not thick, but all clear-cut, as though it came from a phonograph. "faith, i've been to norway, but i didn't make that unwholesim noise. 'tis like some of the old songs, though," said long jack, sighing. "don't let's hev another 'thout somethin' between," said dan; and the accordion struck up a rattling, catchy tune that ended: "it's six an' twenty sundays sence las' we saw the land, with fifteen hunder quintal, an' fifteen hunder quintal, 'teen hunder toppin' quintal, 'twix' old 'queereau an' grand!" "hold on!" roared tom platt. "d'ye want to nail the trip, dan? that's jonah sure, 'less you sing it after all our salt's wet." "no, 'tain't, is it, dad? not unless you sing the very las' verse. you can't learn me anything on jonahs!" "what's that?" said harvey. "what's a jonah?" "a jonah's anything that spoils the luck. sometimes it's a man--sometimes it's a boy--or a bucket. i've known a splittin'-knife jonah two trips till we was on to her," said tom platt. "there's all sorts o' jonahs. jim bourke was one till he was drowned on georges. i'd never ship with jim bourke, not if i was starvin'. there wuz a green dory on the ezra flood. thet was a jonah, too, the worst sort o' jonah. drowned four men, she did, an' used to shine fiery o, nights in the nest." "and you believe that?" said harvey, remembering what tom platt had said about candles and models. "haven't we all got to take what's served?" a mutter of dissent ran round the bunks. "outboard, yes; inboard, things can happen," said disko. "don't you go makin' a mock of jonahs, young feller." "well, harve ain't no jonah. day after we catched him," dan cut in, "we had a toppin' good catch." the cook threw up his head and laughed suddenly--a queer, thin laugh. he was a most disconcerting nigger. "murder!" said long jack. "don't do that again, doctor. we ain't used to ut." "what's wrong?" said dan. "ain't he our mascot, and didn't they strike on good after we'd struck him?" "oh! yess," said the cook. "i know that, but the catch iss not finish yet." "he ain't goin' to do us any harm," said dan, hotly. "where are ye hintin' an' edgin' to? he's all right." "no harm. no. but one day he will be your master, danny." "that all?" said dan, placidly. "he wun't--not by a jugful." "master!" said the cook, pointing to harvey. "man!" and he pointed to dan. "that's news. haow soon?" said dan, with a laugh. "in some years, and i shall see it. master and man--man and master." "how in thunder d'ye work that out?" said tom platt. "in my head, where i can see." "haow?" this from all the others at once. "i do not know, but so it will be." he dropped his head, and went on peeling the potatoes, and not another word could they get out of him. "well," said dan, "a heap o' things'll hev to come abaout 'fore harve's any master o' mine; but i'm glad the doctor ain't choosen to mark him for a jonah. now, i mistrust uncle salters fer the jonerest jonah in the fleet regardin' his own special luck. dunno ef it's spreadin' same's smallpox. he ought to be on the _carrie pitman_. that boat's her own jonah, sure--crews an' gear made no differ to her driftin'. jiminy christmas! she'll etch loose in a flat ca'am." "we're well clear o' the fleet, anyway," said disko. "_carrie pitman_ an' all." there was a rapping on the deck. "uncle salters has catched his luck," said dan as his father departed. "it's blown clear," disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. the fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it. the _we're here_ slid, as it were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes. far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others would follow suit as at a signal, till harvey's eyes swam with the vision of interlacing whites and grays. four or five mother carey's chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. a rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down 'wind and back again, and melted away. "seems to me i saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said uncle salters, pointing to the northeast. "can't be any of the fleet," said disko, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the foc'sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the troughs. "sea's oilin' over dretful fast. danny, don't you want to skip up a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays?" danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging (this consumed harvey with envy), hitched himself around the reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell. "she's all right," he hailed. "sail o! dead to the no'th'ard, comin' down like smoke! schooner she be, too." they waited yet another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches, with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of olive-green water. then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with old-fashioned wooden snail's-horn davits. the snails were red-tanned. "frenchmen!" shouted dan. "no, 'tain't, neither. da-ad!" "that's no french," said disko. "salters, your blame luck holds tighter'n a screw in a keg-head." "i've eyes. it's uncle abishai." "you can't nowise tell fer sure." "the head-king of all jonahs," groaned tom platt. "oh, salters, salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep?" "how could i tell?" said poor salters, as the schooner swung up. she might have been the very flying dutchman, so foul, draggled, and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. her old-style quarterdeck was some or five feet high, and her rigging flew knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end. she was running before the wind--yawing frightfully--her staysail let down to act as a sort of extra foresail,--"scandalized," they call it,--and her foreboom guyed out over the side. her bowsprit cocked up like an old-fashioned frigate's; her jib-boom had been fished and spliced and nailed and clamped beyond further repair; and as she hove herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked for all the world like a blouzy, frouzy, bad old woman sneering at a decent girl. "that's abishai," said salters. "full o' gin an' judique men, an' the judgments o' providence layin' fer him an' never takin' good holt he's run in to bait, miquelon way." "he'll run her under," said long jack. "that's no rig fer this weather." "not he, 'r he'd'a done it long ago," disko replied. "looks 's if he cal'lated to run us under. ain't she daown by the head more 'n natural, tom platt?" "ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't safe," said the sailor slowly. "ef she's spewed her oakum he'd better git to his pumps mighty quick." the creature threshed up, wore round with a clatter and raffle, and lay head to wind within ear-shot. a gray-beard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled something harvey could not understand. but disko's face darkened. "he'd resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. says we're in fer a shift o' wind. he's in fer worse. abishai! abi-shai!" he waved his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the pumps, and pointed forward. the crew mocked him and laughed. "jounce ye, an' strip ye an' trip ye!" yelled uncle abishai. "a livin' gale--a livin' gale. yab! cast up fer your last trip, all you gloucester haddocks. you won't see gloucester no more, no more!" "crazy full--as usual," said tom platt. "wish he hadn't spied us, though." she drifted out of hearing while the gray-head yelled something about a dance at the bay of bulls and a dead man in the foc'sle. harvey shuddered. he had seen the sloven tilled decks and the savage-eyed crew. "an' that's a fine little floatin' hell fer her draught," said long jack. "i wondher what mischief he's been at ashore." "he's a trawler," dan explained to harvey, "an' he runs in fer bait all along the coast. oh, no, not home, he don't go. he deals along the south an' east shore up yonder." he nodded in the direction of the pitiless newfoundland beaches. "dad won't never take me ashore there. they're a mighty tough crowd--an' abishai's the toughest. you saw his boat? well, she's nigh seventy year old, they say; the last o' the old marblehead heel-tappers. they don't make them quarterdecks any more. abishai don't use marblehead, though. he ain't wanted there. he jes' drif's araound, in debt, trawlin' an' cussin' like you've heard. bin a jonah fer years an' years, he hez. 'gits liquor frum the feecamp boats fer makin' spells an' selling winds an' such truck. crazy, i guess." "'twon't be any use underrunnin' the trawl to-night," said tom platt, with quiet despair. "he come alongside special to cuss us. i'd give my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old ohio 'fore we quit floggin'. jest abaout six dozen, an' sam mocatta layin' 'em on criss-cross!" the disheveled "heel-tapper" danced drunkenly down wind, and all eyes followed her. suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph voice: "it wass his own death made him speak so! he iss fey--fey, i tell you! look!" she sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or four miles distant. the patch dulled and faded out, and even as the light passed so did the schooner. she dropped into a hollow and--was not. "run under, by the great hook-block!" shouted disko, jumping aft. "drunk or sober, we've got to help 'em. heave short and break her out! smart!" harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving in as they moved away. this is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to except in matters of life and death, and the little _we're here_ complained like a human. they ran down to where abishai's craft had vanished; found two or three trawl-tubs, a gin-bottle, and a stove-in dory, but nothing more. "let 'em go," said disko, though no one had hinted at picking them up. "i wouldn't hev a match that belonged to abishai aboard. guess she run clear under. must ha' been spewin' her oakum fer a week, an' they never thought to pump her. that's one more boat gone along o' leavin' port all hands drunk." "glory be!" said long jack. "we'd ha' been obliged to help 'em if they was top o' water." "'thinkin' o' that myself," said tom platt. "fey! fey!" said the cook, rolling his eyes. "he haas taken his own luck with him." "ver' good thing, i think, to tell the fleet when we see. eh, wha-at?" said manuel. "if you runna that way before the 'wind, and she work open her seams--" he threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture, while penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all. harvey could not realize that he had seen death on the open waters, but he felt very sick. then dan went up the cross-trees, and disko steered them back to within sight of their own trawl-buoys just before the fog blanketed the sea once again. "we go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go," was all he said to harvey. "you think on that fer a spell, young feller. that was liquor." "after dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks,--penn and uncle salters were very zealous this time,--and the catch was large and large fish. "abishai has shorely took his luck with him," said salters. "the wind hain't backed ner riz ner nothin'. how abaout the trawl? i despise superstition, anyway." tom platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and make a new berth. but the cook said: "the luck iss in two pieces. you will find it so when you look. i know." this so tickled long jack that he overbore tom platt and the two went out together. underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again--something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line. it is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. but when they heard, "and naow to thee, o capting," booming out of the fog, the crew of the _we're here_ took heart. the dory swirled alongside well loaded, tom platt yelling for manuel to act as relief-boat. "the luck's cut square in two pieces," said long jack, forking in the fish, while harvey stood open-mouthed at the skill with which the plunging dory was saved from destruction. "one half was jest punkins. tom platt wanted to haul her an' ha' done wid ut; but i said, "i'll back the doctor that has the second sight, an' the other half come up sagging full o' big uns. hurry, man'nle, an' bring's a tub o' bait. there's luck afloat to-night." the fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren had just been taken, and tom platt and long jack moved methodically up and down the length of the trawl, the boat's nose surging under the wet line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers that they called pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod against the gunwale, rebaiting, and loading manuel's dory till dusk. "i'll take no risks," said disko then--"not with him floatin' around so near. abishai won't sink fer a week. heave in the dories an' we'll dress daown after supper." that was a mighty dressing-down, attended by three or four blowing grampuses. it lasted till nine o'clock, and disko was thrice heard to chuckle as harvey pitched the split fish into the hold. "say, you're haulin' ahead dretful fast," said dan, when they ground the knives after the men had turned in. "there's somethin' of a sea to-night, an' i hain't heard you make no remarks on it." "too busy," harvey replied, testing a blade's edge. "come to think of it, she is a high-kicker." the little schooner was gambolling all around her anchor among the silver-tipped waves. backing with a start of affected surprise at the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with the report of a gun. shaking her head, she would say: "well, i'm sorry i can't stay any longer with you. i'm going north," and would sidle off, halting suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging. "as i was just going to observe," she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man addressing a lamp-post. the rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the sea took her. "see her sayin' her piece. she's patrick henry naow," said dan. she swung sideways on a roller, and gesticulated with her jib-boom from port to starboard. "but-ez-fer me, give me liberty-er give me-death!" wop! she sat down in the moon-path on the water, courtesying with a flourish of pride impressive enough had not the wheel-gear sniggered mockingly in its box. harvey laughed aloud. "why, it's just as if she was alive," he said. "she's as stiddy as a haouse an' as dry as a herrin'," said dan enthusiastically, as he was slung across the deck in a batter of spray. "fends 'em off an' fends 'em off, an' 'don't ye come anigh me,' she sez. look at her--jest look at her! sakes! you should see one o' them toothpicks histin' up her anchor on her spike outer fifteen-fathom water." "what's a toothpick, dan?" "them new haddockers an' herrin'-boats. fine's a yacht forward, with yacht sterns to 'em, an' spike bowsprits, an' a haouse that 'u'd take our hold. i've heard that burgess himself he made the models fer three or four of 'em. dad's sot agin 'em on account o' their pitchin' an' joltin', but there's heaps o' money in 'em. dad can find fish, but he ain't no ways progressive--he don't go with the march o' the times. they're chock-full o' labour-savin' jigs an' sech all. 'ever seed the elector o' gloucester? she's a daisy, ef she is a toothpick." "what do they cost, dan?" "hills o' dollars. fifteen thousand, p'haps; more, mebbe. there's gold-leaf an' everything you kin think of." then to himself, half under his breath, "guess i'd call her hattie s., too." chapter v that was the first of many talks with dan, who told harvey why he would transfer his dory's name to the imaginary burgess-modelled haddocker. harvey heard a good deal about the real hattie at gloucester; saw a lock of her hair--which dan, finding fair words of no avail, had "hooked" as she sat in front of him at school that winter--and a photograph. hattie was about fourteen years old, with an awful contempt for boys, and had been trampling on dan's heart through the winter. all this was revealed under oath of solemn secrecy on moonlit decks, in the dead dark, or in choking fog; the whining wheel behind them, the climbing deck before, and without, the unresting, clamorous sea. once, of course, as the boys came to know each other, there was a fight, which raged from bow to stern till penn came up and separated them, but promised not to tell disko, who thought fighting on watch rather worse than sleeping. harvey was no match for dan physically, but it says a great deal for his new training that he took his defeat and did not try to get even with his conqueror by underhand methods. that was after he had been cured of a string of boils between his elbows and wrists, where the wet jersey and oilskins cut into the flesh. the salt water stung them unpleasantly, but when they were ripe dan treated them with disko's razor, and assured harvey that now he was a "blooded banker"; the affliction of gurry-sores being the mark of the caste that claimed him. since he was a boy and very busy, he did not bother his head with too much thinking. he was exceedingly sorry for his mother, and often longed to see her and above all to tell her of this wonderful new life, and how brilliantly he was acquitting himself in it. otherwise he preferred not to wonder too much how she was bearing the shock of his supposed death. but one day, as he stood on the foc'sle ladder, guying the cook, who had accused him and dan of hooking fried pies, it occurred to him that this was a vast improvement on being snubbed by strangers in the smoking-room of a hired liner. he was a recognized part of the scheme of things on the we're here; had his place at the table and among the bunks; and could hold his own in the long talks on stormy days, when the others were always ready to listen to what they called his "fairy-tales" of his life ashore. it did not take him more than two days and a quarter to feel that if he spoke of his own life--it seemed very far away--no one except dan (and even dan's belief was sorely tried) credited him. so he invented a friend, a boy he had heard of, who drove a miniature four-pony drag in toledo, ohio, and ordered five suits of clothes at a time and led things called "germans" at parties where the oldest girl was not quite fifteen, but all the presents were solid silver. salters protested that this kind of yarn was desperately wicked, if not indeed positively blasphemous, but he listened as greedily as the others; and their criticisms at the end gave harvey entirely new notions on "germans," clothes, cigarettes with gold-leaf tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinner-parties, champagne, card-playing, and hotel accommodation. little by little he changed his tone when speaking of his "friend," whom long jack had christened "the crazy kid," "the gilt-edged baby," "the suckin' vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with his sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories about silk pajamas and specially imported neckwear, to the "friend's" discredit. harvey was a very adaptable person, with a keen eye and ear for every face and tone about him. before long he knew where disko kept the old greencrusted quadrant that they called the "hog-yoke"--under the bed-bag in his bunk. when he took the sun, and with the help of "the old farmer's" almanac found the latitude, harvey would jump down into the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date with a nail on the rust of the stove-pipe. now, the chief engineer of the liner could have done no more, and no engineer of thirty years' service could have assumed one half of the ancient-mariner air with which harvey, first careful to spit over the side, made public the schooner's position for that day, and then and not till then relieved disko of the quadrant. there is an etiquette in all these things. the said "hog-yoke," an eldridge chart, the farming almanac, blunt's "coast pilot," and bowditch's "navigator" were all the weapons disko needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that was his spare eye. harvey nearly slew penn with it when tom platt taught him first how to "fly the blue pigeon"; and, though his strength was not equal to continuous sounding in any sort of a sea, for calm weather with a seven-pound lead on shoal water disko used him freely. as dan said: "'tain't soundin's dad wants. it's samples. grease her up good, harve." harvey would tallow the cup at the end, and carefully bring the sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to disko, who fingered and smelt it and gave judgment as has been said, when disko thought of cod he thought as a cod; and by some long-tested mixture of instinct and experience, moved the we're here from berth to berth, always with the fish, as a blindfolded chess-player moves on the unseen board. but disko's board was the grand bank--a triangle two hundred and fifty miles on each side--a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the tracks of the reckless liners, and dotted with the sails of the fishing-fleet. for days they worked in fog--harvey at the bell--till, grown familiar with the thick airs, he went out with tom platt, his heart rather in his mouth. but the fog would not lift, and the fish were biting, and no one can stay helplessly afraid for six hours at a time. harvey devoted himself to his lines and the gaff or gob-stick as tom platt called for them; and they rowed back to the schooner guided by the bell and tom's instinct; manuel's conch sounding thin and faint beside them. but it was an unearthly experience, and, for the first time in a month, harvey dreamed of the shifting, smoking floors of water round the dory, the lines that strayed away into nothing, and the air above that melted on the sea below ten feet from his straining eyes. a few days later he was out with manuel on what should have been forty-fathom bottom, but the whole length of the roding ran out, and still the anchor found nothing, and harvey grew mortally afraid, for that his last touch with earth was lost. "whale-hole," said manuel, hauling in. "that is good joke on disko. come!" and he rowed to the schooner to find tom platt and the others jeering at the skipper because, for once, he had led them to the edge of the barren whale-deep, the blank hole of the grand bank. they made another berth through the fog, and that time the hair of harvey's head stood up when he went out in manuel's dory. a whiteness moved in the whiteness of the fog with a breath like the breath of the grave, and there was a roaring, a plunging, and spouting. it was his first introduction to the dread summer berg of the banks, and he cowered in the bottom of the boat while manuel laughed. there were days, though, clear and soft and warm, when it seemed a sin to do anything but loaf over the hand-lines and spank the drifting "sun-scalds" with an oar; and there were days of light airs, when harvey was taught how to steer the schooner from one berth to another. it thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his band on the spokes and slide over the long hollows as the foresail scythed back and forth against the blue sky. that was magnificent, in spite of disko saying that it would break a snake's back to follow his wake. but, as usual, pride ran before a fall. they were sailing on the wind with the staysail--an old one, luckily--set, and harvey jammed her right into it to show dan how completely he had mastered the art. the foresail went over with a bang, and the foregaff stabbed and ripped through the staysail, which was, of course, prevented from going over by the mainstay. they lowered the wreck in awful silence, and harvey spent his leisure hours for the next few days under tom platt's lee, learning to use a needle and palm. dan hooted with joy, for, as he said, he had made the very same blunder himself in his early days. boylike, harvey imitated all the men by turns, till he had combined disko's peculiar stoop at the wheel, long jack's swinging overhand when the lines were hauled, manuel's round-shouldered but effective stroke in a dory, and tom platt's generous ohio stride along the deck. "'tis beautiful to see how he takes to ut," said long jack, when harvey was looking out by the windlass one thick noon. "i'll lay my wage an' share 'tis more'n half play-actin' to him, an' he consates himself he's a bowld mariner. watch his little bit av a back now!" "that's the way we all begin," said tom platt. "the boys they make believe all the time till they've cheated 'emselves into bein' men, an' so till they die--pretendin' an' pretendin'. i done it on the old ohio, i know. stood my first watch--harbor-watch--feelin' finer'n farragut. dan's full o' the same kind o' notions. see 'em now, actin' to be genewine moss-backs--very hair a rope-yarn an' blood stockholm tar." he spoke down the cabin stairs. "guess you're mistook in your judgments fer once, disko. what in rome made ye tell us all here the kid was crazy?" "he wuz," disko replied. "crazy ez a loon when he come aboard; but i'll say he's sobered up consid'ble sence. i cured him." "he yarns good," said tom platt. "t'other night he told us abaout a kid of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little rig an' four ponies up an' down toledo, ohio, i think 'twas, an' givin' suppers to a crowd o' sim'lar kids. cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame interestin'. he knows scores of 'em." "guess he strikes 'em outen his own head," disko called from the cabin, where he was busy with the logbook. "stands to reason that sort is all made up. it don't take in no one but dan, an' he laughs at it. i've heard him, behind my back." "yever hear what sim'on peter ca'houn said when they whacked up a match 'twix' his sister hitty an' lorin' jerauld, an' the boys put up that joke on him daown to georges?" drawled uncle salters, who was dripping peaceably under the lee of the starboard dory-nest. tom platt puffed at his pipe in scornful silence: he was a cape cod man, and had not known that tale more than twenty years. uncle salters went on with a rasping chuckie: "sim'on peter ca'houn he said, an' he was jest right, abaout lorin', 'ha'af on the taown,' he said, 'an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' they told me she's married a 'ich man.' sim'on peter ca'houn he hedn't no roof to his mouth, an' talked that way." "he didn't talk any pennsylvania dutch," tom platt replied. "you'd better leave a cape man to tell that tale. the ca'houns was gypsies frum 'way back." "wal, i don't profess to be any elocutionist," salters said. "i'm comin' to the moral o' things. that's jest abaout what aour harve be! ha'af on the taown, an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' there's some'll believe he's a rich man. yah!" "did ye ever think how sweet 'twould be to sail wid a full crew o' salterses?" said long jack. "ha'af in the furrer an' other ha'af in the muck-heap, as ca'houn did not say, an' makes out he's a fisherman!" a little laugh went round at salters's expense. disko held his tongue, and wrought over the log-book that he kept in a hatchet-faced, square hand; this was the kind of thing that ran on, page after soiled page: "july . this day thick fog and few fish. made berth to northward. so ends this day. "july . this day comes in with thick fog. caught a few fish. "july . this day comes in with light breeze from n.e. and fine weather. made a berth to eastward. caught plenty fish. "july . this, the sabbath, comes in with fog and light winds. so ends this day. total fish caught this week, , ." they never worked on sundays, but shaved, and washed themselves if it were fine, and pennsylvania sang hymns. once or twice he suggested that, if it was not an impertinence, he thought he could preach a little. uncle salters nearly jumped down his throat at the mere notion, reminding him that he was not a preacher and mustn't think of such things. "we'd hev him rememberin' johns-town next," salters explained, "an' what would happen then?" so they compromised on his reading aloud from a book called "josephus." it was an old leather-bound volume, smelling of a hundred voyages, very solid and very like the bible, but enlivened with accounts of battles and sieges; and they read it nearly from cover to cover. otherwise penn was a silent little body. he would not utter a word for three days on end sometimes, though he played checkers, listened to the songs, and laughed at the stories. when they tried to stir him up, he would answer: "i don't wish to seem unneighbourly, but it is because i have nothing to say. my head feels quite empty. i've almost forgotten my name." he would turn to uncle salters with an expectant smile. "why, pennsylvania pratt," salters would shout "you'll fergit me next!" "no--never," penn would say, shutting his lips firmly. "pennsylvania pratt, of course," he would repeat over and over. sometimes it was uncle salters who forgot, and told him he was haskins or rich or mcvitty; but penn was equally content--till next time. he was always very tender with harvey, whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a lunatic; and when salters saw that penn liked the boy, he relaxed, too. salters was not an amiable person (he esteemed it his business to keep the boys in order); and the first time harvey, in fear and trembling, on a still day, managed to shin up to the main-truck (dan was behind him ready to help), he esteemed it his duty to hang salters's big sea-boots up there--a sight of shame and derision to the nearest schooner. with disko, harvey took no liberties; not even when the old man dropped direct orders, and treated him, like the rest of the crew, to "don't you want to do so and so?" and "guess you'd better," and so forth. there was something about the clean-shaven lips and the puckered corners of the eyes that was mightily sobering to young blood. disko showed him the meaning of the thumbed and pricked chart, which, he said, laid over any government publication whatsoever; led him, pencil in hand, from berth to berth over the whole string of banks--le have, western, banquereau, st. pierre, green, and grand--talking "cod" meantime. taught him, too, the principle on which the "hog-yoke" was worked. in this harvey excelled dan, for he had inherited a head for figures, and the notion of stealing information from one glimpse of the sullen bank sun appealed to all his keen wits. for other sea-matters his age handicapped him. as disko said, he should have begun when he was ten. dan could bait up trawl or lay his hand on any rope in the dark; and at a pinch, when uncle salters had a gurry-score on his palm, could dress down by sense of touch. he could steer in anything short of half a gale from the feel of the wind on his face, humouring the _we're here_ just when she needed it. these things he did as automatically as he skipped about the rigging, or made his dory a part of his own will and body. but he could not communicate his knowledge to harvey. still there was a good deal of general information flying about the schooner on stormy days, when they lay up in the foc'sle or sat on the cabin lockers, while spare eye-bolts, leads, and rings rolled and rattled in the pauses of the talk. disko spoke of whaling voyages in the fifties; of great she-whales slain beside their young; of death agonies on the black tossing seas, and blood that spurted forty feet in the air; of boats smashed to splinters; of patent rockets that went off wrong-end-first and bombarded the trembling crews; of cutting-in and boiling-down, and that terrible "nip" of ' , when twelve hundred men were made homeless on the ice in three days--wonderful tales, all true. but more wonderful still were his stories of the cod, and how they argued and reasoned on their private businesses deep down below the keel. long jack's tastes ran more to the supernatural. he held them silent with ghastly stories of the "yo-hoes" on monomoy beach, that mock and terrify lonely clam-diggers; of sand-walkers and dune-haunters who were never properly buried; of hidden treasure on fire island guarded by the spirits of kidd's men; of ships that sailed in the fog straight over truro township; of that harbor in maine where no one but a stranger will lie at anchor twice in a certain place because of a dead crew who row alongside at midnight with the anchor in the bow of their old-fashioned boat, whistling--not calling, but whistling--for the soul of the man who broke their rest. harvey had a notion that the east coast of his native land, from mount desert south, was populated chiefly by people who took their horses there in the summer and entertained in country-houses with hardwood floors and vantine portires. he laughed at the ghost-tales,--not as much as he would have done a month before,--but ended by sitting still and shuddering. tom platt dealt with his interminable trip round the horn on the old ohio in flogging days, with a navy more extinct than the dodo--the navy that passed away in the great war. he told them how red-hot shot are dropped into a cannon, a wad of wet clay between them and the cartridge; how they sizzle and reek when they strike wood, and how the little ship-boys of the miss jim buck hove water over them and shouted to the fort to try again. and he told tales of blockade--long weeks of swaying at anchor, varied only by the departure and return of steamers that had used up their coal (there was no chance for the sailing-ships); of gales and cold that kept two hundred men, night and day, pounding and chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and rigging, when the galley was as red-hot as the fort's shot, and men drank cocoa by the bucket. tom platt had no use for steam. his service closed when that thing was comparatively new. he admitted that it was a specious invention in time of peace, but looked hopefully for the day when sails should come back again on ten-thousand-ton frigates with hundred-and-ninety-foot booms. manuel's talk was slow and gentle--all about pretty girls in madeira washing clothes in the dry beds of streams, by moonlight, under waving bananas; legends of saints, and tales of queer dances or fights away in the cold newfoundland baiting-ports. salters was mainly agricultural; for, though he read "josephus" and expounded it, his mission in life was to prove the value of green manures, and specially of clover, against every form of phosphate whatsoever. he grew libellous about phosphates; he dragged greasy "orange judd" books from his bunk and intoned them, wagging his finger at harvey, to whom it was all greek. little penn was so genuinely pained when harvey made fun of salters's lectures that the boy gave it up, and suffered in polite silence. that was very good for harvey. the cook naturally did not join in these conversations. as a rule, he spoke only when it was absolutely necessary; but at times a queer gift of speech descended on him, and he held forth, half in gaelic, half in broken english, an hour at a time. he was especially communicative with the boys, and he never withdrew his prophecy that one day harvey would be dan's master, and that he would see it. he told them of mail-carrying in the winter up cape breton way, of the dog-train that goes to coudray, and of the ram-steamer _arctic_, that breaks the ice between the mainland and prince edward island. then he told them stories that his mother had told him, of life far to the southward, where water never froze; and he said that when he died his soul would go to lie down on a warm white beach of sand with palm-trees waving above. that seemed to the boys a very odd idea for a man who had never seen a palm in his life. then, too, regularly at each meal, he would ask harvey, and harvey alone, whether the cooking was to his taste; and this always made the "second half" laugh. yet they had a great respect for the cook's judgment, and in their hearts considered harvey something of a mascot by consequence. and while harvey was taking in knowledge of new things at each pore and hard health with every gulp of the good air, the we're here went her ways and did her business on the bank, and the silvery-gray kenches of well-pressed fish mounted higher and higher in the hold. no one day's work was out of common, but the average days were many and close together. naturally, a man of disko's reputation was closely watched--"scrowged upon," dan called it--by his neighbours, but he had a very pretty knack of giving them the slip through the curdling, glidy fog-banks. disko avoided company for two reasons. he wished to make his own experiments, in the first place; and in the second, he objected to the mixed gatherings of a fleet of all nations. the bulk of them were mainly gloucester boats, with a scattering from provincetown, harwich, chatham, and some of the maine ports, but the crews drew from goodness knows where. risk breeds recklessness, and when greed is added there are fine chances for every kind of accident in the crowded fleet, which, like a mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrecognized leader. "let the two jeraulds lead 'em," said disko. "we're baound to lay among 'em for a spell on the eastern shoals; though ef luck holds, we won't hev to lay long. where we are naow, harve, ain't considered noways good graound." "ain't it?" said harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned just how to wiggle the bucket), after an unusually long dressing-down. "shouldn't mind striking some poor ground for a change, then." "all the graound i want to see--don't want to strike her--is eastern point," said dan. "say, dad, it looks's if we wouldn't hev to lay more'n two weeks on the shoals. you'll meet all the comp'ny you want then, harve. that's the time we begin to work. no reg'lar meals fer no one then. 'mug-up when ye're hungry, an' sleep when ye can't keep awake. good job you wasn't picked up a month later than you was, or we'd never ha' had you dressed in shape fer the old virgin." harvey understood from the eldridge chart that the old virgin and a nest of curiously named shoals were the turning-point of the cruise, and that with good luck they would wet the balance of their salt there. but seeing the size of the virgin (it was one tiny dot), he wondered how even disko with the hog-yoke and the lead could find her. he learned later that disko was entirely equal to that and any other business and could even help others. a big four-by-five blackboard hung in the cabin, and harvey never understood the need of it till, after some blinding thick days, they heard the unmelodious tooting of a foot-power fog-horn--a machine whose note is as that of a consumptive elephant. they were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their foot to save trouble. "square-rigger bellowin' fer his latitude," said long jack. the dripping red head-sails of a bark glided out of the fog, and the _we're here_ rang her bell thrice, using sea shorthand. the larger boat backed her topsail with shrieks and shoutings. "frenchman," said uncle salters, scornfully. "miquelon boat from st. malo." the farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. "i'm 'most outer 'baccy, too, disko." "same here," said tom platt. "hi! backez vous--backez vous! standez awayez, you butt-ended mucho-bono! where you from--st. malo, eh?" "ah, ha! mucho bono! oui! oui! clos poulet--st. malo! st. pierre et miquelon," cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and laughing. then all together, "bord! bord!" "bring up the board, danny. beats me how them frenchmen fetch anywheres, exceptin' america's fairish broadly. forty-six forty-nine's good enough fer them; an' i guess it's abaout right, too." dan chalked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the main-rigging to a chorus of mercis from the bark. "seems kinder uneighbourly to let 'em swedge off like this," salters suggested, feeling in his pockets. "hev ye learned french then sence last trip?" said disko. "i don't want no more stone-ballast hove at us 'long o' your callin' miquelon boats 'footy cochins,' same's you did off le have." "harmon rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. plain united states is good enough fer me. we're all dretful short on terbakker. young feller, don't you speak french?" "oh, yes," said harvey valiantly; and he bawled: "hi! say! arretez vous! attendez! nous sommes venant pour tabac." "ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed again. "that hit 'em. let's heave a dory over, anyway," said tom platt. "i don't exactly hold no certificates on french, but i know another lingo that goes, i guess. come on, harve, an' interpret." the raffle and confusion when he and harvey were hauled up the bark's black side was indescribable. her cabin was all stuck round with glaring coloured prints of the virgin--the virgin of newfoundland, they called her. harvey found his french of no recognized bank brand, and his conversation was limited to nods and grins. but tom platt waved his arms and got along swimmingly. the captain gave him a drink of unspeakable gin, and the opera-comique crew, with their hairy throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted him as a brother. then the trade began. they had tobacco, plenty of it--american, that had never paid duty to france. they wanted chocolate and crackers. harvey rowed back to arrange with the cook and disko, who owned the stores, and on his return the cocoa-tins and cracker-bags were counted out by the frenchman's wheel. it looked like a piratical division of loot; but tom platt came out of it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of chewing and smoking tobacco. then those jovial mariners swung off into the mist, and the last harvey heard was a gay chorus: "par derriere chez ma tante, il'y a un bois joli, et le rossignol y chante et le jour et la nuit.... que donneriez vous, belle, qui l'amenerait ici? je donnerai quebec, sorel et saint denis." "how was it my french didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" harvey demanded when the barter had been distributed among the we're heres. "sign-talk!" platt guffawed. "well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a heap older'n your french, harve. them french boats are chockfull o' freemasons, an' that's why." "are you a freemason, then?" "looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'-war's man, stuffing his pipe; and harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood upon. chapter vi the thing that struck him most was the exceedingly casual way in which some craft loafed about the broad atlantic. fishing-boats, as dan said, were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of their neighbours; but one expected better things of steamers. that was after another interesting interview, when they had been chased for three miles by a big lumbering old cattle-boat, all boarded over on the upper deck, that smelt like a thousand cattle-pens. a very excited officer yelled at them through a speaking-trumpet, and she lay and lollopped helplessly on the water while disko ran the _we're here_ under her lee and gave the skipper a piece of his mind. "where might ye be--eh? ye don't deserve to be anywheres. you barn-yard tramps go hoggin' the road on the high seas with no blame consideration fer your neighbours, an' your eyes in your coffee-cups instid o' in your silly heads." at this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about disko's own eyes. "we haven't had an observation for three days. d'you suppose we can run her blind?" he shouted. "wa-al, i can," disko retorted. "what's come to your lead? et it? can't ye smell bottom, or are them cattle too rank?" "what d' ye feed 'em?" said uncle salters with intense seriousness, for the smell of the pens woke all the farmer in him. "they say they fall off dretful on a v'yage. dunno as it's any o' my business, but i've a kind o' notion that oil-cake broke small an' sprinkled--" "thunder!" said a cattle-man in a red jersey as he looked over the side. "what asylum did they let his whiskers out of?" "young feller," salters began, standing up in the fore-rigging, "let me tell yeou 'fore we go any further that i've--" the officer on the bridge took off his cap with immense politeness. "excuse me," he said, "but i've asked for my reckoning. if the agricultural person with the hair will kindly shut his head, the sea-green barnacle with the wall-eye may per-haps condescend to enlighten us." "naow you've made a show o' me, salters," said disko, angrily. he could not stand up to that particular sort of talk, and snapped out the latitude and longitude without more lectures. "well, that's a boat-load of lunatics, sure," said the skipper, as he rang up the engine-room and tossed a bundle of newspapers into the schooner. "of all the blamed fools, next to you, salters, him an' his crowd are abaout the likeliest i've ever seen," said disko as the _we're here_ slid away. "i was jest givin' him my jedgment on lullsikin' round these waters like a lost child, an' you must cut in with your fool farmin'. can't ye never keep things sep'rate?" harvey, dan, and the others stood back, winking one to the other and full of joy; but disko and salters wrangled seriously till evening, salters arguing that a cattle-boat was practically a barn on blue water, and disko insisting that, even if this were the case, decency and fisher-pride demanded that he should have kept "things sep'rate." long jack stood it in silence for a time,--an angry skipper makes an unhappy crew,--and then he spoke across the table after supper: "fwhat's the good o' bodderin' fwhat they'll say?" said he. "they'll tell that tale agin us fer years--that's all," said disko. "oil-cake sprinkled!" "with salt, o' course," said salters, impenitent, reading the farming reports from a week-old new york paper. "it's plumb mortifyin' to all my feelin's," the skipper went on. "can't see ut that way," said long jack, the peacemaker "look at here, disko! is there another packet afloat this day in this weather cud ha' met a tramp an' over an' above givin' her her reckonin',--over an' above that, i say,--cud ha' discoorsed wid her quite intelligent on the management av steers an' such at sea? forgit ut! av coorse they will not. 'twas the most compenjus conversation that iver accrued. double game an' twice runnin'--all to us." dan kicked harvey under the table, and harvey choked in his cup. "well," said salters, who felt that his honour had been somewhat plastered, "i said i didn't know as 'twuz any business o' mine, 'fore i spoke." "an' right there," said tom platt, experienced in discipline and etiquette--"right there, i take it, disko, you should ha' asked him to stop ef the conversation wuz likely, in your jedgment, to be anyways--what it shouldn't." "dunno but that's so," said disko, who saw his way to an honourable retreat from a fit of the dignities. "why, o' course it was so," said salters, "you bein' skipper here; an' i'd cheerful hev stopped on a hint--not from any leadin' or conviction, but fer the sake o' bearin' an example to these two blame boys of aours." "didn't i tell you, harve, 'twould come araound to us 'fore we'd done? always those blame boys. but i wouldn't have missed the show fer a half-share in a halibutter," dan whispered. "still, things should ha' been kep' sep'rate," said disko, and the light of new argument lit in salters's eye as he crumbled cut plug into his pipe. "there's a power av vartue in keepin' things sep'rate," said long jack, intent on stilling the storm. "that's fwhat steyning of steyning and hare's f'und when he sent counahan fer skipper on the _marilla d. kuhn_, instid o' cap. newton that was took with inflam'try rheumatism an' couldn't go. counahan the navigator we called him." "nick counahan he never went aboard fer a night 'thout a pond o' rum somewheres in the manifest," said tom platt, playing up to the lead. "he used to bum araound the c'mission houses to boston lookin' fer the lord to make him captain of a tow-boat on his merits. sam coy, up to atlantic avenoo, give him his board free fer a year or more on account of his stories. "counahan the navigator! tck! tck! dead these fifteen year, ain't he?" "seventeen, i guess. he died the year the _caspar mcveagh_ was built; but he could niver keep things sep'rate. steyning tuk him fer the reason the thief tuk the hot stove--bekaze there was nothin' else that season. the men was all to the banks, and counahan he whacked up an iverlastin' hard crowd fer crew. rum! ye cud ha' floated the _marilla_, insurance an' all, in fwhat they stowed aboard her. they lef' boston harbour for the great grand bank wid a roarin' nor'wester behind 'em an' all hands full to the bung. an' the hivens looked after thim, for divil a watch did they set, an' divil a rope did they lay hand to, till they'd seen the bottom av a fifteen-gallon cask o' bug-juice. that was about wan week, so far as counahan remembered. (if i cud only tell the tale as he told ut!) all that whoile the wind blew like ould glory, an' the _marilla_--'twas summer, and they'd give her a foretopmast--struck her gait and kept ut. then counahan tuk the hog-yoke an' thrembled over it for a whoile, an' made out, betwix' that an' the chart an' the singin' in his head, that they was to the south'ard o' sable island, gettin' along glorious, but speakin' nothin'. then they broached another keg, an' quit speculatin' about anythin' fer another spell. the _marilla_ she lay down whin she dropped boston light, and she never lufted her lee-rail up to that time--hustlin' on one an' the same slant. but they saw no weed, nor gulls, nor schooners; an' prisintly they obsarved they'd bin out a matter o' fourteen days and they mis-trusted the bank has suspinded payment. so they sounded, an' got sixty fathom. 'that's me,' sez counahan. 'that's me iv'ry time! i've run her slat on the bank fer you, an' when we get thirty fathom we'll turn in like little men. counahan is the b'y,' sez he. 'counahan the navigator!' "nex' cast they got ninety. sez counahan: 'either the lead-line's tuk to stretchin' or else the bank's sunk.' "they hauled ut up, bein' just about in that state when ut seemed right an' reasonable, and sat down on the deck countin' the knots, an' gettin' her snarled up hijjus. the _marilla_ she'd struck her gait, an' she hild ut, an' prisintly along came a tramp, an' counahan spoke her. "'hev ye seen any fishin'-boats now?' sez he, quite casual. "'there's lashin's av them off the irish coast,' sez the tramp. "'aah! go shake yerself,' sez counahan. 'fwhat have i to do wid the irish coast?' "'then fwhat are ye doin' here?' sez the tramp. "'sufferin' christianity!' sez counahan (he always said that whin his pumps sucked an' he was not feelin' good)--'sufferin' christianity!' he sez, 'where am i at?' "'thirty-five mile west-sou'west o' cape clear,' sez the tramp, 'if that's any consolation to you.' "counahan fetched wan jump, four feet sivin inches, measured by the cook. "'consolation!' sez he, bould as brass. 'd'ye take me fer a dialect? thirty-five mile from cape clear, an' fourteen days from boston light. sufferin' christianity, 'tis a record, an' by the same token i've a mother to skibbereen!' think av ut! the gall av um! but ye see he could niver keep things sep'rate. "the crew was mostly cork an' kerry men, barrin' one marylander that wanted to go back, but they called him a mutineer, an' they ran the ould _marilla_ into skibbereen, an' they had an illigant time visitin' around with frinds on the ould sod fer a week. thin they wint back, an' it cost 'em two an' thirty days to beat to the banks again. 'twas gettin' on towards fall, and grub was low, so counahan ran her back to boston, wid no more bones to ut." "and what did the firm say?" harvey demanded. "fwhat could they? the fish was on the banks, an' counahan was at t-wharf talkin' av his record trip east! they tuk their satisfaction out av that, an' ut all came av not keepin' the crew and the rum sep'rate in the first place; an' confusin' skibbereen wid 'queereau, in the second. counahan the navigator, rest his sowl! he was an imprompju citizen!" "once i was in the lucy holmes," said manuel, in his gentle voice. "they not want any of her feesh in gloucester. eh, wha-at? give us no price. so we go across the water, and think to sell to some fayal man. then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. eh, wha-at? then it blow some more fresh, and we go down below and drive very fast--no one know where. by and by we see a land, and it get some hot. then come two, three nigger in a brick. eh, wha-at? we ask where we are, and they say--now, what you all think?" "grand canary," said disko, after a moment. manuel shook his head, smiling. "blanco," said tom platt. "no. worse than that. we was below bezagos, and the brick she was from liberia! so we sell our feesh there! not bad, so? eh, wha-at?" "can a schooner like this go right across to africa?" said harvey. "go araound the horn ef there's anythin' worth goin' fer, and the grub holds aout," said disko. "my father he run his packet, an' she was a kind o' pinkey, abaout fifty ton, i guess,--the rupert,--he run her over to greenland's icy mountains the year ha'af our fleet was tryin' after cod there. an' what's more, he took my mother along with him,--to show her haow the money was earned, i presoom,--an' they was all iced up, an' i was born at disko. don't remember nothin' abaout it, o' course. we come back when the ice eased in the spring, but they named me fer the place. kinder mean trick to put up on a baby, but we're all baound to make mistakes in aour lives." "sure! sure!" said salters, wagging his head. "all baound to make mistakes, an' i tell you two boys here thet after you've made a mistake--ye don't make fewer'n a hundred a day--the next best thing's to own up to it like men." long jack winked one tremendous wink that embraced all hands except disko and salters, and the incident was closed. then they made berth after berth to the northward, the dories out almost every day, running along the east edge of the grand bank in thirty- to forty-fathom water, and fishing steadily. it was here harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. they were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "squid o!" from salters, and for an hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid-jig--a piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. the squid--for some unknown reason--likes, and wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he can escape from the pins. but as he leaves his home he squirts first water and next ink into his captor's face; and it was curious to see the men weaving their heads from side to side to dodge the shot. they were as black as sweeps when the flurry ended; but a pile of fresh squid lay on the deck, and the large cod thinks very well of a little shiny piece of squid tentacle at the tip of a clam-baited hook. next day they caught many fish, and met the _carrie pitman_, to whom they shouted their luck, and she wanted to trade--seven cod for one fair-sized squid; but disko would not agree at the price, and the _carrie_ dropped sullenly to leeward and anchored half a mile away, in the hope of striking on to some for herself. disco said nothing till after supper, when he sent dan and manuel out to buoy the _we're here's_ cable and announced his intention of turning in with the broad-axe. dan naturally repeated these remarks to the dory from the _carrie_, who wanted to know why they were buoying their cable, since they were not on rocky bottom. "dad sez he wouldn't trust a ferryboat within five mile o' you," dan howled cheerfully. "why don't he git out, then? who's hinderin'?" said the other. "'cause you've jest the same ez lee-bowed him, an' he don't take that from any boat, not to speak o' sech a driftin' gurry-butt as you be." "she ain't driftin' any this trip," said the man angrily, for the _carrie pitman_ had an unsavory reputation for breaking her ground-tackle. "then haow d'you make berths?" said dan. "it's her best p'int o' sailin'. an' ef she's quit driftin', what in thunder are you doin' with a new jib-boom?" that shot went home. "hey, you portugoosy organ-grinder, take your monkey back to gloucester. go back to school, dan troop," was the answer. "o-ver-alls! o-ver-alls!" yelled dan, who knew that one of the _carrie's_ crew had worked in an overall factory the winter before. "shrimp! gloucester shrimp! git aout, you novy!" to call a gloucester man a nova scotian is not well received. dan answered in kind. "novy yourself, ye scrabble-towners! ye chatham wreckers! git aout with your brick in your stockin'!" and the forces separated, but chatham had the worst of it. "i knew haow 'twould be," said disko. "she's drawed the wind raound already. some one oughter put a deesist on thet packet. she'll snore till midnight, an' jest when we're gettin' our sleep she'll strike adrift. good job we ain't crowded with craft hereaways. but i ain't goin' to up anchor fer chatham. she may hold." the wind, which had hauled round, rose at sundown and blew steadily. there was not enough sea, though, to disturb even a dory's tackle, but the _carrie pitman_ was a law unto herself. at the end of the boys' watch they heard the crack-crack-crack of a huge muzzle-loading revolver aboard her. "glory, glory, hallelujah!" sung dan. "here she comes, dad; butt-end first, walkin' in her sleep same's she done on 'queereau." had she been any other boat disko would have taken his chances, but now he cut the cable as the _carrie pitman_, with all the north atlantic to play in, lurched down directly upon them. the _we're here_, under jib and riding-sail, gave her no more room than was absolutely necessary,--disko did not wish to spend a week hunting for his cable,--but scuttled up into the wind as the _carrie_ passed within easy hail, a silent and angry boat, at the mercy of a raking broadside of bank chaff. "good evenin'," said disko, raising his head-gear, "an' haow does your garden grow?" "go to ohio an' hire a mule," said uncle salters. "we don't want no farmers here." "will i lend you my dory-anchor?" cried long jack. "unship your rudder an' stick it in the mud," bawled tom platt. "say!" dan's voice rose shrill and high, as he stood on the wheel-box. "sa-ay! is there a strike in the o-ver-all factory; or hev they hired girls, ye shackamaxons?" "veer out the tiller-lines," cried harvey, "and nail 'em to the bottom!" that was a salt-flavoured jest he had been put up to by tom platt. manuel leaned over the stern and yelled: "johanna morgan play the organ! ahaaaa!" he flourished his broad thumb with a gesture of unspeakable contempt and derision, while little penn covered himself with glory by piping up: "gee a little! hssh! come here. haw!" they rode on their chain for the rest of the night, a short, snappy, uneasy motion, as harvey found, and wasted half the forenoon recovering the cable. but the boys agreed the trouble was cheap at the price of triumph and glory, and they thought with grief over all the beautiful things that they might have said to the discomfited _carrie_. chapter vii next day they fell in with more sails, all circling slowly from the east northerly towards the west. but just when they expected to make the shoals by the virgin the fog shut down, and they anchored, surrounded by the tinklings of invisible bells. there was not much fishing, but occasionally dory met dory in the fog and exchanged news. that night, a little before dawn, dan and harvey, who had been sleeping most of the day, tumbled out to "hook" fried pies. there was no reason why they should not have taken them openly; but they tasted better so, and it made the cook angry. the heat and smell below drove them on deck with their plunder, and they found disko at the bell, which he handed over to harvey. "keep her goin'," said he. "i mistrust i hear somethin'. ef it's anything, i'm best where i am so's to get at things." it was a forlorn little jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off, and in the pauses harvey heard the muffled shriek of a liner's siren, and he knew enough of the banks to know what that meant. it came to him, with horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherry-coloured jersey--he despised fancy blazers now with all a fisher-man's contempt--how an ignorant, rowdy boy had once said it would be "great" if a steamer ran down a fishing-boat. that boy had a stateroom with a hot and cold bath, and spent ten minutes each morning picking over a gilt-edged bill of fare. and that same boy--no, his very much older brother--was up at four of the dim dawn in streaming, crackling oilskins, hammering, literally for the dear life, on a bell smaller than the steward's breakfast-bell, while somewhere close at hand a thirty-foot steel stem was storming along at twenty miles an hour! the bitterest thought of all was that there were folks asleep in dry, upholstered cabins who would never learn that they had massacred a boat before breakfast. so harvey rang the bell. "yes, they slow daown one turn o' their blame propeller," said dan, applying himself to manuel's conch, "fer to keep inside the law, an' that's consolin' when we're all at the bottom. hark to her! she's a humper!" "aooo-whoo-whupp!" went the siren. "wingle-tingle-tink," went the bell. "graaa-ouch!" went the conch, while sea and sky were all mired up in milky fog. then harvey felt that he was near a moving body, and found himself looking up and up at the wet edge of a cliff-like bow, leaping, it seemed, directly over the schooner. a jaunty little feather of water curled in front of it, and as it lifted it showed a long ladder of roman numerals-xv., xvi., xvii., xviii., and so forth--on a salmon-coloured gleaming side. it tilted forward and downward with a heart-stilling "ssssooo"; the ladder disappeared; a line of brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in harvey's helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail of the _we're here_, and the little schooner staggered and shook in a rush of screw-torn water, as a liner's stern vanished in the fog. harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or both, when he heard a crack like a trunk thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in his ear, a far-away telephone voice drawling: "heave to! you've sunk us!" "is it us?" he gasped. "no! boat out yonder. ring! we're goin' to look," said dan, running out a dory. in half a minute all except harvey, penn, and the cook were overside and away. presently a schooner's stump-foremast, snapped clean across, drifted past the bows. then an empty green dory came by, knocking on the _we're here's_ side, as though she wished to be taken in. then followed something, face down, in a blue jersey, but--it was not the whole of a man. penn changed colour and caught his breath with a click. harvey pounded despairingly at the bell, for he feared they might be sunk at any minute, and he jumped at dan's hail as the crew came back. "the jennie cushman," said dan, hysterically, "cut clean in half--graound up an' trompled on at that! not a quarter of a mile away. dad's got the old man. there ain't any one else, and--there was his son, too. oh, harve, harve, i can't stand it! i've seen--" he dropped his head on his arms and sobbed while the others dragged a gray-headed man aboard. "what did you pick me up for?" the stranger groaned. "disko, what did you pick me up for?" disko dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, for the man's eyes were wild and his lips trembled as he stared at the silent crew. then up and spoke pennsylvania pratt, who was also haskins or rich or mcvitty when uncle salters forgot; and his face was changed on him from the face of a fool to the countenance of an old, wise man, and he said in a strong voice: "the lord gave, and the lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the lord! i was--i am a minister of the gospel. leave him to me." "oh, you be, be you?" said the man. "then pray my son back to me! pray back a nine-thousand-dollar boat an' a thousand quintal of fish. if you'd left me alone my widow could ha' gone on to the provident an' worked fer her board, an' never known--an' never known. now i'll hev to tell her." "there ain't nothin' to say," said disko. "better lie down a piece, jason olley." when a man has lost his only son, his summer's work, and his means of livelihood, in thirty counted seconds, it is hard to give consolation. "all gloucester men, wasn't they?" said tom platt, fiddling helplessly with a dory-becket. "oh, that don't make no odds," said jason, wringing the wet from his beard. "i'll be rowin' summer boarders araound east gloucester this fall." he rolled heavily to the rail, singing: "happy birds that sing and fly round thine altars, o most high!" "come with me. come below!" said penn, as though he had a right to give orders. their eyes met and fought for a quarter of a minute. "i dunno who you be, but i'll come," said jason submissively. "mebbe i'll get back some o' the--some o' the-nine thousand dollars." penn led him into the cabin and slid the door behind. "that ain't penn," cried uncle salters. "it's jacob boiler, an'--he's remembered johnstown! i never seed such eyes in any livin' man's head. what's to do naow? what'll i do naow?" they could hear penn's voice and jason's together. then penn's went on alone, and salters slipped off his hat, for penn was praying. presently the little man came up the steps, huge drops of sweat on his face, and looked at the crew. dan was still sobbing by the wheel. "he don't know us," salters groaned. "it's all to do over again, checkers and everything--an' what'll he say to me?" penn spoke; they could hear that it was to strangers. "i have prayed," said he. "our people believe in prayer. i have prayed for the life of this man's son. mine were drowned before my eyes--she and my eldest and--the others. shall a man be more wise than his maker? i prayed never for their lives, but i have prayed for this man's son, and he will surely be sent him." salters looked pleadingly at penn to see if he remembered. "how long have i been mad?" penn asked suddenly. his mouth was twitching. "pshaw, penn! you weren't never mad," salters began "only a little distracted like." "i saw the houses strike the bridge before the fires broke out. i do not remember any more. how long ago is that?" "i can't stand it! i can't stand it!" cried dan, and harvey whimpered in sympathy. "abaout five year," said disko, in a shaking voice. "then i have been a charge on some one for every day of that time. who was the man?" disko pointed to salters. "ye hain't--ye hain't!" cried the sea-farmer, twisting his hands together. "ye've more'n earned your keep twice-told; an' there's money owin' you, penn, besides ha'af o' my quarter-share in the boat, which is yours fer value received." "you are good men. i can see that in your faces. but--" "mother av mercy," whispered long jack, "an' he's been wid us all these trips! he's clean bewitched." a schooner's bell struck up alongside, and a voice hailed through the fog: "o disko! 'heard abaout the jennie cushman?" "they have found his son," cried penn. "stand you still and see the salvation of the lord!" "got jason aboard here," disko answered, but his voice quavered. "there--warn't any one else?" "we've fund one, though. 'run acrost him snarled up in a mess o' lumber thet might ha' bin a foc'sle. his head's cut some." "who is he?" the _we're here's_ heart-beats answered one another. "guess it's young olley," the voice drawled. penn raised his hands and said something in german. harvey could have sworn that a bright sun was shining upon his lifted face; but the drawl went on: "sa-ay! you fellers guyed us consid'rable t'other night." "we don't feel like guyin' any now," said disko. "i know it; but to tell the honest truth we was kinder--kinder driftin' when we run agin young olley." it was the irrepressible _carrie pitman_, and a roar of unsteady laughter went up from the deck of the _we're here_. "hedn't you 'baout's well send the old man aboard? we're runnin' in fer more bait an' graound-tackle. guess you won't want him, anyway, an' this blame windlass work makes us short-handed. we'll take care of him. he married my woman's aunt." "i'll give you anything in the boat," said troop. "don't want nothin', 'less, mebbe, an anchor that'll hold. say! young olley's gittin' kinder baulky an' excited. send the old man along." penn waked him from his stupor of despair, and tom platt rowed him over. he went away without a word of thanks, not knowing what was to come; and the fog closed over all. "and now," said penn, drawing a deep breath as though about to preach. "and now"--the erect body sank like a sword driven home into the scabbard; the light faded from the overbright eyes; the voice returned to its usual pitiful little titter--"and now," said pennsylvania pratt, "do you think it's too early for a little game of checkers, mr. salters?" "the very thing--the very thing i was goin' to say myself," cried salters promptly. "it beats all, penn, how ye git on to what's in a man's mind." the little fellow blushed and meekly followed salters forward. "up anchor! hurry! let's quit these crazy waters," shouted disko, and never was he more swiftly obeyed. "now what in creation d'ye suppose is the meanin' o' that all?" said long jack, when they were working through the fog once more, damp, dripping, and bewildered. "the way i sense it," said disko, at the wheel, "is this: the jennie cushman business comin' on an empty stummick--" "h-he saw one of them go by," sobbed harvey. "an' that, o' course, kinder hove him outer water, julluk runnin' a craft ashore; hove him right aout, i take it, to rememberin' johnstown an' jacob boiler an' such-like reminiscences. well, consolin' jason there held him up a piece, same's shorin' up a boat. then, bein' weak, them props slipped an' slipped, an' he slided down the ways, an' naow he's water-borne agin. that's haow i sense it." they decided that disko was entirely correct. "'twould ha' bruk salters all up," said long jack, "if penn had stayed jacob boilerin'. did ye see his face when penn asked who he'd been charged on all these years? how is ut, salters?" "asleep--dead asleep. turned in like a child," salters replied, tiptoeing aft. "there won't be no grub till he wakes, natural. did ye ever see sech a gift in prayer? he everlastin'ly hiked young olley outer the ocean. thet's my belief. jason was tur'ble praoud of his boy, an' i mistrusted all along 'twas a jedgment on worshippin' vain idols." "there's others jes as sot," said disko. "that's difrunt," salters retorted quickly. "penn's not all caulked, an' i ain't only but doin' my duty by him." they waited, those hungry men, three hours, till penn reappeared with a smooth face and a blank mind. he said he believed that he had been dreaming. then he wanted to know why they were so silent, and they could not tell him. disko worked all hands mercilessly for the next three or four days; and when they could not go out, turned them into the hold to stack the ship's stores into smaller compass, to make more room for the fish. the packed mass ran from the cabin partition to the sliding door behind the foc'sle stove; and disko showed how there is great art in stowing cargo so as to bring a schooner to her best draft. the crew were thus kept lively till they recovered their spirits; and harvey was tickled with a rope's end by long jack for being, as the galway man said, "sorrowful as a sick cat over fwhat couldn't be helped." he did a great deal of thinking in those weary days, and told dan what he thought, and dan agreed with him--even to the extent of asking for fried pies instead of hooking them. but a week later the two nearly upset the hattie s. in a wild attempt to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. the grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three of them it was a mercy they all got off alive. at last, after playing blindman's-buff in the fog, there came a morning when disko shouted down the foc'sle: "hurry, boys! we're in taown!" chapter viii to the end of his days, harvey will never forget that sight. the sun was just clear of the horizon they had not seen for nearly a week, and his low red light struck into the riding-sails of three fleets of anchored schooners--one to the north, one to the westward, and one to the south. there must have been nearly a hundred of them, of every possible make and build, with, far away, a square-rigged frenchman, all bowing and courtesying one to the other. from every boat dories were dropping away like bees from a crowded hive, and the clamour of voices, the rattling of ropes and blocks, and the splash of the oars carried for miles across the heaving water. the sails turned all colours, black, pearly-gray, and white, as the sun mounted; and more boats swung up through the mists to the southward. the dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke again, all heading one way; while men hailed and whistled and cat-called and sang, and the water was speckled with rubbish thrown overboard. "it's a town," said harvey. "disko was right. it is a town!" "i've seen smaller," said disko. "there's about a thousand men here; an' yonder's the virgin." he pointed to a vacant space of greenish sea, where there were no dories. the _we're here_ skirted round the northern squadron, disko waving his hand to friend after friend, and anchored as nearly as a racing yacht at the end of the season. the bank fleet pass good seamanship in silence; but a bungler is jeered all along the line. "jest in time fer the caplin," cried the mary chilton. "'salt 'most wet?" asked the king philip. "hey, tom platt! come t' supper to-night?" said the henry clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth. men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the bank fleet. they all seemed to know about harvey's rescue, and asked if he were worth his salt yet. the young bloods jested with dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town-nicknames they least liked. manuel's countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting gaelic to a friend as black as himself. after they had buoyed the cable--all around the virgin is rocky bottom, and carelessness means chafed ground-tackle and danger from drifting--after they had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of boats anchored about a mile away. the schooners rocked and dipped at a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood, while the dories behaved like mannerless ducklings. as they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, harvey's ears tingled at the comments on his rowing. every dialect from labrador to long island, with portuguese, neapolitan, lingua franca, french, and gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all. for the first time in his life he felt shy--perhaps that came from living so long with only the _we're heres_--among the scores of wild faces that rose and fell with the reeling small craft. a gentle, breathing swell, three furlongs from trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of variously painted dories. they hung for an instant, a wonderful frieze against the sky-line, and their men pointed and hailed. next moment the open mouths, waving arms, and bare chests disappeared, while on another swell came up an entirely new line of characters like paper figures in a toy theatre. so harvey stared. "watch out!" said dan, flourishing a dip-net "when i tell you dip, you dip. the caplin'll school any time from naow on. where'll we lay, tom platt?" pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and warning old enemies there, commodore tom platt led his little fleet well to leeward of the general crowd, and immediately three or four men began to haul on their anchors with intent to lee-bow the _we're heres_. but a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her station with exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the roding. "give her slack!" roared twenty voices. "let him shake it out." "what's the matter?" said harvey, as the boat flashed away to the southward. "he's anchored, isn't he?" "anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle's kinder shifty," said dan, laughing. "whale's fouled it. . . . dip harve! here they come!" the sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod began to leap like trout in may; while behind the cod three or four broad gray-backs broke the water into boils. then everybody shouted and tried to haul up his anchor to get among the school, and fouled his neighbour's line and said what was in his heart, and dipped furiously with his dip-net, and shrieked cautions and advice to his companions, while the deep fizzed like freshly opened soda-water, and cod, men, and whales together flung in upon the luckless bait. harvey was nearly knocked overboard by the handle of dan's net. but in all the wild tumult he noticed, and never forgot, the wicked, set little eye--something like a circus elephant's eye--of a whale that drove along almost level with the water, and, so he said, winked at him. three boats found their rodings fouled by these reckless mid-sea hunters, and were towed half a mile ere their horses shook the line free. then the caplin moved off, and five minutes later there was no sound except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the cod, and the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them. it was wonderful fishing. harvey could see the glimmering cod below, swimming slowly in droves, biting as steadily as they swam. bank law strictly forbids more than one hook on one line when the dories are on the virgin or the eastern shoals; but so close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy newfoundlander on one side and a howling portuguese on the other. worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the dory-rodings below water. each man had anchored where it seemed good to him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point. as the fish struck on less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get to better ground; but every third man found himself intimately connected with some four or five neighbours. to cut another's roding is crime unspeakable on the banks; yet it was done, and done without detection, three or four times that day. tom platt caught a maine man in the black act and knocked him over the gunwale with an oar, and manuel served a fellow-countryman in the same way. but harvey's anchor-line was cut, and so was penn's, and they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the _we're here_ as the dories filled. the caplin schooled once more at twilight, when the mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they rowed back to dress down by the light of kerosene-lamps on the edge of the pen. it was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing. next day several boats fished right above the cap of the virgin; and harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that lonely rock, which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. the cod were there in legions, marching solemnly over the leathery kelp. when they bit, they bit all together; and so when they stopped. there was a slack time at noon, and the dories began to search for amusement. it was dan who sighted the hope of prague just coming up, and as her boats joined the company they were greeted with the question: "who's the meanest man in the fleet?" three hundred voices answered cheerily: "nick bra-ady." it sounded like an organ chant. "who stole the lampwicks?" that was dan's contribution. "nick bra-ady," sang the boats. "who biled the salt bait fer soup?" this was an unknown backbiter a quarter of a mile away. again the joyful chorus. now, brady was not especially mean, but he had that reputation, and the fleet made the most of it. then they discovered a man from a truro boat who, six years before, had been convicted of using a tackle with five or six hooks--a "scrowger," they call it--in the shoals. naturally, he had been christened "scrowger jim"; and though he had hidden himself on the georges ever since, he found his honours waiting for him full blown. they took it up in a sort of firecracker chorus: "jim! o jim! jim! o jim! sssscrowger jim!" that pleased everybody. and when a poetical beverly man--he had been making it up all day, and talked about it for weeks--sang, "the _carrie pitman's_ anchor doesn't hold her for a cent" the dories felt that they were indeed fortunate. then they had to ask that beverly man how he was off for beans, because even poets must not have things all their own way. every schooner and nearly every man got it in turn. was there a careless or dirty cook anywhere? the dories sang about him and his food. was a schooner badly found? the fleet was told at full length. had a man hooked tobacco from a mess-mate? he was named in meeting; the name tossed from roller to roller. disko's infallible judgments, long jack's market-boat that he had sold years ago, dan's sweetheart (oh, but dan was an angry boy!), penn's bad luck with dory-anchors, salter's views on manure, manuel's little slips from virtue ashore, and harvey's ladylike handling of the oar--all were laid before the public; and as the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the voices sounded like a bench of invisible judges pronouncing sentence. the dories roved and fished and squabbled till a swell underran the sea. then they drew more apart to save their sides, and some one called that if the swell continued the virgin would break. a reckless galway man with his nephew denied this, hauled up anchor, and rowed over the very rock itself. many voices called them to come away, while others dared them to hold on. as the smooth-backed rollers passed to the southward, they hove the dory high and high into the mist, and dropped her in ugly, sucking, dimpled water, where she spun round her anchor, within a foot or two of the hidden rock. it was playing with death for mere bravado; and the boats looked on in uneasy silence till long jack rowed up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roding. "can't ye hear ut knockin'?" he cried. "pull for you miserable lives! pull!" the men swore and tried to argue as the boat drifted; but the next swell checked a little, like a man tripping on a carpet. there was a deep sob and a gathering roar, and the virgin flung up a couple of acres of foaming water, white, furious, and ghastly over the shoal sea. then all the boats greatly applauded long jack, and the galway men held their tongue. "ain't it elegant?" said dan, bobbing like a young seal at home. "she'll break about once every ha'af hour now, 'les the swell piles up good. what's her reg'lar time when she's at work, tom platt?" "once ivry fifteen minutes, to the tick. harve, you've seen the greatest thing on the banks; an' but for long jack you'd seen some dead men too." there came a sound of merriment where the fog lay thicker and the schooners were ringing their bells. a big bark nosed cautiously out of the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, "come along, darlin'," from the irishry. "another frenchman?" said harvey. "hain't you eyes? she's a baltimore boat; goin' in fear an' tremblin'," said dan. "we'll guy the very sticks out of her. guess it's the fust time her skipper ever met up with the fleet this way." she was a black, buxom, eight-hundred-ton craft. her mainsail was looped up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind was moving. now a bark is feminine beyond all other daughters of the sea, and this tall, hesitating creature, with her white and gilt figurehead, looked just like a bewildered woman half lifting her skirts to cross a muddy street under the jeers of bad little boys. that was very much her situation. she knew she was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the virgin, had caught the roar of it, and was, therefore, asking her way. this is a small part of what she heard from the dancing dories: "the virgin? fwhat are you talkin' of? 'this is le have on a sunday mornin'. go home an' sober up." "go home, ye tarrapin! go home an' tell 'em we're comin'." half a dozen voices together, in a most tuneful chorus, as her stern went down with a roll and a bubble into the troughs: "thay-aah-she-strikes!" "hard up! hard up fer your life! you're on top of her now." "daown! hard daown! let go everything!" "all hands to the pumps!" "daown jib an' pole her!" here the skipper lost his temper and said things. instantly fishing was suspended to answer him, and he heard many curious facts about his boat and her next port of call. they asked him if he were insured; and whence he had stolen his anchor, because, they said, it belonged to the _carrie pitman_; they called his boat a mud-scow, and accused him of dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they offered to tow him and charge it to his wife; and one audacious youth slipped up almost under the counter, smacked it with his open palm, and yelled: "gid up, buck!" the cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with cod-heads. the bark's crew fired small coal from the galley, and the dories threatened to come aboard and "razee" her. they would have warned her at once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her well clear of the virgin, they made the most of their chances. the fun was spoilt when the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward, and the tormented bark set everything that would draw and went her ways; but the dories felt that the honours lay with them. all that night the virgin roared hoarsely; and next morning, over an angry, white-headed sea, harvey saw the fleet with flickering masts waiting for a lead. not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock, when the two jeraulds of the day's eye, imagining a lull which did not exist, set the example. in a minute half the boats were out and bobbing in the cockly swells, but troop kept the _we're heres_ at work dressing down. he saw no sense in "dares"; and as the storm grew that evening they had the pleasure of receiving wet strangers only too glad to make any refuge in the gale. the boys stood by the dory-tackles with lanterns, the men ready to haul, one eye cocked for the sweeping wave that would make them drop everything and hold on for dear life. out of the dark would come a yell of "dory, dory!" they would hook up and haul in a drenched man and a half-sunk boat, till their decks were littered down with nests of dories and the bunks were full. five times in their watch did harvey, with dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the boom, and cling with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and sodden canvas as a big wave filled the decks. one dory was smashed to pieces, and the sea pitched the man head first on to the decks, cutting his forehead open; and about dawn, when the racing seas glimmered white all along their cold edges, another man, blue and ghastly, crawled in with a broken hand, asking news of his brother. seven extra mouths sat down to breakfast: a swede; a chatham skipper; a boy from hancock, maine; one duxbury, and three provincetown men. there was a general sorting out among the fleet next day; and though no one said anything, all ate with better appetites when boat after boat reported full crews aboard. only a couple of portuguese and an old man from gloucester were drowned, but many were cut or bruised; and two schooners had parted their tackle and been blown to the southward, three days' sail. a man died on a frenchman--it was the same bark that had traded tobacco with the _we're heres_. she slipped away quite quietly one wet, white morning, moved to a patch of deep water, her sails all hanging anyhow, and harvey saw the funeral through disko's spy-glass. it was only an oblong bundle slid overside. they did not seem to have any form of service, but in the night, at anchor, harvey heard them across the star-powdered black water, singing something that sounded like a hymn. it went to a very slow tune. "la brigantine qui va tourner, roule et s'incline pour m'entrainer. oh, vierge marie, pour moi priez dieu! adieu, patrie; quebec, adieu!" tom platt visited her, because, he said, the dead man was his brother as a freemason. it came out that a wave had doubled the poor fellow over the heel of the bowsprit and broken his back. the news spread like a flash, for, contrary to general custom, the frenchman held an auction of the dead man's kit,--he had no friends at st malo or miquelon,--and everything was spread out on the top of the house, from his red knitted cap to the leather belt with the sheath-knife at the back. dan and harvey were out on twenty-fathom water in the hattie s., and naturally rowed over to join the crowd. it was a long pull, and they stayed some little time while dan bought the knife, which had a curious brass handle. when they dropped overside and pushed off into a drizzle of rain and a lop of sea, it occurred to them that they might get into trouble for neglecting the lines. "guess 'twon't hurt us any to be warmed up," said dan, shivering under his oilskins, and they rowed on into the heart of a white fog, which, as usual, dropped on them without warning. "there's too much blame tide hereabouts to trust to your instinks," he said. "heave over the anchor, harve, and we'll fish a piece till the thing lifts. bend on your biggest lead. three pound ain't any too much in this water. see how she's tightened on her rodin' already." there was quite a little bubble at the bows, where some irresponsible bank current held the dory full stretch on her rope; but they could not see a boat's length in any direction. harvey turned up his collar and bunched himself over his reel with the air of a wearied navigator. fog had no special terrors for him now. they fished a while in silence, and found the cod struck on well. then dan drew the sheath-knife and tested the edge of it on the gunwale. "that's a daisy," said harvey. "how did you get it so cheap?" "on account o' their blame cath'lic superstitions," said dan, jabbing with the bright blade. "they don't fancy takin' iron from off a dead man, so to speak. 'see them arichat frenchmen step back when i bid?" "but an auction ain't taking anythink off a dead man. it's business." "we know it ain't, but there's no goin' in the teeth o' superstition. that's one o' the advantages o' livin' in a progressive country." and dan began whistling: "oh, double thatcher, how are you? now eastern point comes inter view. the girls an' boys we soon shall see, at anchor off cape ann!" "why didn't that eastport man bid, then? he bought his boots. ain't maine progressive?" "maine? pshaw! they don't know enough, or they hain't got money enough, to paint their haouses in maine. i've seen 'em. the eastport man he told me that the knife had been used--so the french captain told him--used up on the french coast last year." "cut a man? heave 's the muckle." harvey hauled in his fish, rebaited, and threw over. "killed him! course, when i heard that i was keener'n ever to get it." "christmas! i didn't know it," said harvey, turning round. "i'll give you a dollar for it when i--get my wages. say, i'll give you two dollars." "honest? d'you like it as much as all that?" said dan, flushing. "well, to tell the truth, i kinder got it for you--to give; but i didn't let on till i saw how you'd take it. it's yours and welcome, harve, because we're dory-mates, and so on and so forth, an' so followin'. catch a-holt!" he held it out, belt and all. "but look at here. dan, i don't see--" "take it. 'tain't no use to me. i wish you to hev it." the temptation was irresistible. "dan, you're a white man," said harvey. "i'll keep it as long as i live." "that's good hearin'," said dan, with a pleasant laugh; and then, anxious to change the subject: "'look's if your line was fast to somethin'." "fouled, i guess," said harve, tugging. before he pulled up he fastened the belt round him, and with deep delight heard the tip of the sheath click on the thwart. "concern the thing!" he cried. "she acts as though she were on strawberry-bottom. it's all sand here, ain't it?" dan reached over and gave a judgmatic tweak. "hollbut'll act that way 'f he's sulky. thet's no strawberry-bottom. yank her once or twice. she gives, sure. guess we'd better haul up an' make certain." they pulled together, making fast at each turn on the cleats, and the hidden weight rose sluggishly. "prize, oh! haul!" shouted dan, but the shout ended in a shrill, double shriek of horror, for out of the sea came the body of the dead frenchman buried two days before! the hook had caught him under the right armpit, and he swayed, erect and horrible, head and shoulders above water. his arms were tied to his side, and--he had no face. the boys fell over each other in a heap at the bottom of the dory, and there they lay while the thing bobbed alongside, held on the shortened line. "the tide--the tide brought him!" said harvey with quivering lips, as he fumbled at the clasp of the belt. "oh, lord! oh, harve!" groaned dan, "be quick. he's come for it. let him have it. take it off." "i don't want it! i don't want it!" cried harvey. "i can't find the bu-buckle." "quick, harve! he's on your line!" harvey sat up to unfasten the belt, facing the head that had no face under its streaming hair. "he's fast still," he whispered to dan, who slipped out his knife and cut the line, as harvey flung the belt far overside. the body shot down with a plop, and dan cautiously rose to his knees, whiter than the fog. "he come for it. he come for it. i've seen a stale one hauled up on a trawl and i didn't much care, but he come to us special." "i wish--i wish i hadn't taken the knife. then he'd have come on your line." "dunno as thet would ha' made any differ. we're both scared out o' ten years' growth. oh, harve, did ye see his head?" "did i? i'll never forget it. but look at here, dan; it couldn't have been meant. it was only the tide." "tide! he come for it, harve. why, they sunk him six miles to south'ard o' the fleet, an' we're two miles from where she's lyin' now. they told me he was weighted with a fathom an' a half o' chain-cable." "wonder what he did with the knife--up on the french coast?" "something bad. 'guess he's bound to take it with him to the judgment, an' so-- what are you doin' with the fish?" "heaving 'em overboard," said harvey. "what for? we sha'n't eat 'em." "i don't care. i had to look at his face while i was takin' the belt off. you can keep your catch if you like. i've no use for mine." dan said nothing, but threw his fish over again. "guess it's best to be on the safe side," he murmured at last. "i'd give a month's pay if this fog 'u'd lift. things go abaout in a fog that ye don't see in clear weather--yo-hoes an' hollerers and such like. i'm sorter relieved he come the way he did instid o' walkin'. he might ha' walked." "don't, dan! we're right on top of him now. 'wish i was safe aboard, hem' pounded by uncle salters." "they'll be lookin' fer us in a little. gimme the tooter." dan took the tin dinner-horn, but paused before he blew. "go on," said harvey. "i don't want to stay here all night" "question is, haow he'd take it. there was a man frum down the coast told me once he was in a schooner where they darsen't ever blow a horn to the dories, becaze the skipper--not the man he was with, but a captain that had run her five years before--he'd drowned a boy alongside in a drunk fit; an' ever after, that boy he'd row along-side too and shout, 'dory! dory!' with the rest." "dory! dory!" a muffled voice cried through the fog. they cowered again, and the horn dropped from dan's hand. "hold on!" cried harvey; "it's the cook." "dunno what made me think o' thet fool tale, either," said dan. "it's the doctor, sure enough." "dan! danny! oooh, dan! harve! harvey! oooh, haarveee!" "we're here," sung both boys together. they heard oars, but could see nothing till the cook, shining and dripping, rowed into them. "what iss happened?" said he. "you will be beaten at home." "thet's what we want. thet's what we're sufferin' for" said dan. "anything homey's good enough fer us. we've had kinder depressin' company." as the cook passed them a line, dan told him the tale. "yess! he come for hiss knife," was all he said at the end. never had the little rocking _we're here_ looked so deliciously home-like as when the cook, born and bred in fogs, rowed them back to her. there was a warm glow of light from the cabin and a satisfying smell of food forward, and it was heavenly to hear disko and the others, all quite alive and solid, leaning over the rail and promising them a first-class pounding. but the cook was a black; master of strategy. he did not get the dories aboard till he had given the more striking points of the tale, explaining as he backed and bumped round the counter how harvey was the mascot to destroy any possible bad luck. so the boys came override as rather uncanny heroes, and every one asked them questions instead of pounding them for making trouble. little penn delivered quite a speech on the folly of superstitions; but public opinion was against him and in favour of long jack, who told the most excruciating ghost-stories, till nearly midnight. under that influence no one except salters and penn said anything about "idolatry," when the cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour and water, and a pinch of salt on a shingle, and floated them out astern to keep the frenchman quiet in case he was still restless. dan lit the candle because he had bought the belt, and the cook grunted and muttered charms as long as he could see the ducking point of flame. said harvey to dan, as they turned in after watch: "how about progress and catholic superstitions?" "huh! i guess i'm as enlightened and progressive as the next man, but when it comes to a dead st. malo deck-hand scarin' a couple o' pore boys stiff fer the sake of a thirty-cent knife, why, then, the cook can take hold fer all o' me. i mistrust furriners, livin' or dead." next morning all, except the cook, were rather ashamed of the ceremonies, and went to work double tides, speaking gruffly to one another. the _we're here_ was racing neck and neck for her last few loads against the parry norman; and so close was the struggle that the fleet took side and betted tobacco. all hands worked at the lines or dressing-down till they fell asleep where they stood--beginning before dawn and ending when it was too dark to see. they even used the cook as pitcher, and turned harvey into the hold to pass salt, while dan helped to dress down. luckily a parry norman man sprained his ankle falling down the foc'sle, and the _we're heres_ gained. harvey could not see how one more fish could be crammed into her, but disko and tom platt stowed and stowed, and planked the mass down with big stones from the ballast, and there was always "jest another day's work." disko did not tell them when all the salt was wetted. he rolled to the lazarette aft the cabin and began hauling out the big mainsail. this was at ten in the morning. the riding-sail was down and the main- and topsail were up by noon, and dories came alongside with letters for home, envying their good fortune. at last she cleared decks, hoisted her flag,--as is the right of the first boat off the banks,--up-anchored, and began to move. disko pretended that he wished to accomodate folk who had not sent in their mail, and so worked her gracefully in and out among the schooners. in reality, that was his little triumphant procession, and for the fifth year running it showed what kind of mariner he was. dan's accordion and tom platt's fiddle supplied the music of the magic verse you must not sing till all the salt is wet: "hih! yih! yoho! send your letters raound! all our salt is wetted, an' the anchor's off the graound! bend, oh, bend your mains'l, we're back to yankeeland-- with fifteen hunder' quintal, an' fifteen hunder' quintal, 'teen hunder' toppin' quintal, 'twix' old 'queereau an' grand." the last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and the gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and womenfolks and owners, while the _we're here_ finished the musical ride through the fleet, her headsails quivering like a man's hand when he raises it to say good-by. harvey very soon discovered that the _we're here_, with her riding-sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the _we're here_ headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different boats. there was a bite and kick to the wheel even in "boy's" weather; he could feel the dead weight in the hold flung forward mightily across the surges, and the streaming line of bubbles overside made his eyes dizzy. disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were flattened like a racing yacht's, dan had to wait on the big topsail, which was put over by hand every time she went about. in spare moments they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which does not improve a cargo. but since there was no fishing, harvey had time to look at the sea from another point of view. the low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings. they saw little of the horizon save when she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coasting her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water-hill. it was as if she said: "you wouldn't hurt me, surely? i'm only the little _we're here_." then she would slide away chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle. the dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through long days without noticing it; and harvey, being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave-tops turning over with a sound of incessant tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors; the salty glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of everything at the day's end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook. but the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel together, tom platt within hail, and she cuddled her lee-rail down to the crashing blue, and kept a little home-made rainbow arching unbroken over her windlass. then the jaws of the booms whined against the masts, and the sheets creaked, and the sails filled with roaring; and when she slid into a hollow she trampled like a woman tripped in her own silk dress, and came out, her jib wet half-way up, yearning and peering for the tall twin-lights of thatcher's island. they left the cold gray of the bank sea, saw the lumber-ships making for quebec by the straits of st. lawrence, with the jersey salt-brigs from spain and sicily; found a friendly northeaster off artimon bank that drove them within view of the east light of sable island,--a sight disko did not linger over,--and stayed with them past western and le have, to the northern fringe of george's. from there they picked up the deeper water, and let her go merrily. "hattie's pulling on the string," dan confided to harvey. "hattie an' ma. next sunday you'll be hirin' a boy to throw water on the windows to make ye go to sleep. 'guess you'll keep with us till your folks come. do you know the best of gettin' ashore again?" "hot bath?" said harvey. his eyebrows were all white with dried spray. "that's good, but a night-shirt's better. i've been dreamin' o' night-shirts ever since we bent our mainsail. ye can wiggle your toes then. ma'll hev a new one fer me, all washed soft. it's home, harve. it's home! ye can sense it in the air. we're runnin' into the aidge of a hot wave naow, an' i can smell the bayberries. wonder if we'll get in fer supper. port a trifle." the hesitating sails flapped and lurched in the close air as the deep smoothed out, blue and oily, round them. when they whistled for a wind only the rain came in spiky rods, bubbling and drumming, and behind the rain the thunder and the lightning of mid-august. they lay on the deck with bare feet and arms, telling one another what they would order at their first meal ashore; for now the land was in plain sight. a gloucester swordfish-boat drifted alongside, a man in the little pulpit on the bowsprit flourished his harpoon, his bare head plastered down with the wet. "and all's well!" he sang cheerily, as though he were watch on a big liner. "wouverman's waiting fer you, disko. what's the news o' the fleet?" disko shouted it and passed on, while the wild summer storm pounded overhead and the lightning flickered along the capes from four different quarters at once. it gave the low circle of hills round gloucester harbor, ten pound island, the fish-sheds, with the broken line of house-roofs, and each spar and buoy on the water, in blinding photographs that came and went a dozen times to the minute as the _we're here_ crawled in on half-flood, and the whistling-buoy moaned and mourned behind her. then the storm died out in long, separated, vicious dags of blue-white flame, followed by a single roar like the roar of a mortar-battery, and the shaken air tingled under the stars as it got back to silence. "the flag, the flag!" said disko, suddenly, pointing upward. "what is ut?" said long jack. "otto! ha'af mast. they can see us frum shore now." "i'd clean forgot. he's no folk to gloucester, has he?" "girl he was goin' to be married to this fall." "mary pity her!" said long jack, and lowered the little flag half-mast for the sake of otto, swept overboard in a gale off le have three months before. disko wiped the wet from his eyes and led the _we're here_ to wouverman's wharf, giving his orders in whispers, while she swung round moored tugs and night-watchmen hailed her from the ends of inky-black piers. over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession, harvey could feel the land close round him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise of a switching-engine coughing to herself in a freight-yard; and all those things made his heart beat and his throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet. they heard the anchor-watch snoring on a lighthouse-tug, nosed into a pocket of darkness where a lantern glimmered on either side; somebody waked with a grunt, threw them a rope, and they made fast to a silent wharf flanked with great iron-roofed sheds fall of warm emptiness, and lay there without a sound. then harvey sat down by the wheel, and sobbed and sobbed as though his heart would break, and a tall woman who had been sitting on a weigh-scale dropped down into the schooner and kissed dan once on the cheek; for she was his mother, and she had seen the _we're here_ by the lightning flashes. she took no notice of harvey till he had recovered himself a little and disko had told her his story. then they went to disko's house together as the dawn was breaking; and until the telegraph office was open and he could wire his folk, harvey cheyne was perhaps the loneliest boy in all america. but the curious thing was that disko and dan seemed to think none the worse of him for crying. wouverman was not ready for disko's prices till disko, sure that the _we're here_ was at least a week ahead of any other gloucester boat, had given him a few days to swallow them; so all hands played about the streets, and long jack stopped the rocky neck trolley, on principle, as he said, till the conductor let him ride free. but dan went about with his freckled nose in the air, bung-full of mystery and most haughty to his family. "dan, i'll hev to lay inter you ef you act this way," said troop, pensively. "sence we've come ashore this time you've bin a heap too fresh." "i'd lay into him naow ef he was mine," said uncle salters, sourly. he and penn boarded with the troops. "oho!" said dan, shuffling with the accordion round the backyard, ready to leap the fence if the enemy advanced. "dad, you're welcome to your own judgment, but remember i've warned ye. your own flesh an' blood ha' warned ye! 'tain't any o' my fault ef you're mistook, but i'll be on deck to watch ye. an' ez fer yeou, uncle salters, pharaoh's chief butler ain't in it 'longside o' you! you watch aout an' wait. you'll be plowed under like your own blamed clover; but me--dan troop--i'll flourish like a green bay-tree because i warn't stuck on my own opinion." disko was smoking in all his shore dignity and a pair of beautiful carpet-slippers. "you're gettin' ez crazy as poor harve. you two go araound gigglin' an' squinchin' an' kickin' each other under the table till there's no peace in the haouse," said he. "there's goin' to be a heap less--fer some folks," dan replied. "you wait an' see." he and harvey went out on the trolley to east gloucester, where they tramped through the bayberry bushes to the lighthouse, and lay down on the big red boulders and laughed themselves hungry. harvey had shown dan a telegram, and the two swore to keep silence till the shell burst. "harve's folk?" said dan, with an unruffled face after supper. "well, i guess they don't amount to much of anything, or we'd ha' heard from 'em by naow. his pop keeps a kind o' store out west. maybe he'll give you 's much as five dollars, dad." "what did i tell ye?" said salters. "don't sputter over your vittles, dan." chapter ix whatever his private sorrows may be, a multimillionaire, like any other workingman, should keep abreast of his business. harvey cheyne, senior, had gone east late in june to meet a woman broken down, half mad, who dreamed day and night of her son drowning in the gray seas. he had surrounded her with doctors, trained nurses, massage-women, and even faith-cure companions, but they were useless. mrs. cheyne lay still and moaned, or talked of her boy by the hour together to any one who would listen. hope she had none, and who could offer it? all she needed was assurance that drowning did not hurt; and her husband watched to guard lest she should make the experiment. of his own sorrow he spoke little--hardly realized the depth of it till he caught himself asking the calendar on his writing-desk, "what's the use of going on?" there had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head that, some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy had left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into his possessions. then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there would follow splendid years of great works carried out together--the old head backing the young fire. now his boy was dead--lost at sea, as it might have been a swede sailor from one of cheyne's big teaships; the wife dying, or worse; he himself was trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no heart to meet his many enemies. he had taken the wife to his raw new palace in san diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and cheyne, in a veranda-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day. there was a war of rates among four western railroads in which he was supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had developed in his lumber camps in oregon, and the legislature of the state of california, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open war against him. ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign. but now he sat limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big body shrunk inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary's questions as he opened the saturday mail. cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and pull out. he carried huge insurances, could buy himself royal annuities, and between one of his places in colorado and a little society (that would do the wife good), say in washington and the south carolina islands, a man might forget plans that had come to nothing. on the other hand-- the click of the typewriter stopped; the girl was looking at the secretary, who had turned white. he passed cheyne a telegram repeated from san francisco: picked up by fishing schooner _we're here_ having fallen off boat great times on banks fishing all well waiting gloucester mass care disko troop for money or orders wire what shall do and how is mama harvey n. cheyne. the father let it fall, laid his head down on the roller-top of the shut desk, and breathed heavily. the secretary ran for mrs. cheyne's doctor who found cheyne pacing to and fro. "what--what d' you think of it? is it possible? is there any meaning to it? i can't quite make it out," he cried. "i can," said the doctor. "i lose seven thousand a year--that's all." he thought of the struggling new york practice he had dropped at cheyne's imperious bidding, and returned the telegram with a sigh. "you mean you'd tell her? 'may be a fraud?" "what's the motive?" said the doctor, coolly. "detection's too certain. it's the boy sure enough." enter a french maid, impudently, as an indispensable one who is kept on only by large wages. "mrs. cheyne she say you must come at once. she think you are seek." the master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed suzanne; and a thin, high voice on the upper landing of the great white-wood square staircase cried: "what is it? what has happened?" no doors could keep out the shriek that rang through the echoing house a moment later, when her husband blurted out the news. "and that's all right," said the doctor, serenely, to the typewriter. "about the only medical statement in novels with any truth to it is that joy don't kill, miss kinzey." "i know it; but we've a heap to do first." miss kinzey was from milwaukee, somewhat direct of speech; and as her fancy leaned towards the secretary, she divined there was work in hand. he was looking earnestly at the vast roller-map of america on the wall. "milsom, we're going right across. private car--straight through--boston. fix the connections," shouted cheyne down the staircase. "i thought so." the secretary turned to the typewriter, and their eyes met (out of that was born a story--nothing to do with this story). she looked inquiringly, doubtful of his resources. he signed to her to move to the morse as a general brings brigades into action. then he swept his hand musician-wise through his hair, regarded the ceiling, and set to work, while miss kinzey's white fingers called up the continent of america. "_k. h. wade, los angeles--_ the 'constance' is at los angeles, isn't she, miss kinzey?" "yep." miss kinzey nodded between clicks as the secretary looked at his watch. "ready? _send 'constance,' private car, here, and arrange for special to leave here sunday in time to connect with new york limited at sixteenth street, chicago, tuesday next_." click-click-click! "couldn't you better that?" "not on those grades. that gives 'em sixty hours from here to chicago. they won't gain anything by taking a special east of that. ready? _also arrange with lake shore and michigan southern to take 'constance' on new york central and hudson river buffalo to albany, and b. and a. the same albany to boston. indispensable i should reach boston wednesday evening. be sure nothing prevents. have also wired canniff, toucey, and barnes._--sign, cheyne." miss kinzey nodded, and the secretary went on. "now then. canniff, toucey, and barnes, of course. ready? _canniff, chicago. please take my private car 'constance' from santa fe at sixteenth street next tuesday p. m. on n. y. limited through to buffalo and deliver n. y. c. for albany._--ever bin to n' york, miss kinzey? we'll go some day.--ready? _take car buffalo to albany on limited tuesday p. m._ that's for toucey." "haven't bin to noo york, but i know that!" with a toss of the head. "beg pardon. now, boston and albany, barnes, same instructions from albany through to boston. leave three-five p. m. (you needn't wire that); arrive nine-five p. m. wednesday. that covers everything wade will do, but it pays to shake up the managers." "it's great," said miss kinzey, with a look of admiration. this was the kind of man she understood and appreciated. "'tisn't bad," said milsom, modestly. "now, any one but me would have lost thirty hours and spent a week working out the run, instead of handing him over to the santa fe straight through to chicago." "but see here, about that noo york limited. chauncey depew himself couldn't hitch his car to her," miss kinzey suggested, recovering herself. "yes, but this isn't chauncey. it's cheyne--lightning. it goes." "even so. guess we'd better wire the boy. you've forgotten that, anyhow." "i'll ask." when he returned with the father's message bidding harvey meet them in boston at an appointed hour, he found miss kinzey laughing over the keys. then milsom laughed too, for the frantic clicks from los angeles ran: "we want to know why-why-why? general uneasiness developed and spreading." ten minutes later chicago appealed to miss kinzey in these words: "if crime of century is maturing please warn friends in time. we are all getting to cover here." this was capped by a message from topeka (and wherein topeka was concerned even milsom could not guess): "don't shoot, colonel. we'll come down." cheyne smiled grimly at the consternation of his enemies when the telegrams were laid before him. "they think we're on the warpath. tell 'em we don't feel like fighting just now, milsom. tell 'em what we're going for. i guess you and miss kinsey had better come along, though it isn't likely i shall do any business on the road. tell 'em the truth--for once." so the truth was told. miss kinzey clicked in the sentiment while the secretary added the memorable quotation, "let us have peace," and in board rooms two thousand miles away the representatives of sixty-three million dollars' worth of variously manipulated railroad interests breathed more freely. cheyne was flying to meet the only son, so miraculously restored to him. the bear was seeking his cub, not the bulls. hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and wished him god-speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot toads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful things they would have done had not cheyne buried the hatchet. it was a busy week-end among the wires; for now that their anxiety was removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate. los angeles called to san diego and barstow that the southern california engineers might know and be ready in their lonely roundhouses; barstow passed the word to the atlantic and pacific; and albuquerque flung it the whole length of the atchinson, topeka, and santa fe management, even into chicago. an engine, combination-car with crew, and the great and gilded "constance" private car were to be "expedited" over those two thousand three hundred and fifty miles. the train would take precedence of one hundred and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; despatchers and crews of every one of those said trains must be notified. sixteen locomotives, sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be needed--each and every one the best available. two and one half minutes would be allowed for changing engines, three for watering, and two for coaling. "warn the men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; for harvey cheyne is in a hurry, a hurry, a hurry," sang the wires. "forty miles an hour will be expected, and division superintendents will accompany this special over their respective divisions. from san diego to sixteenth street, chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. hurry! oh, hurry!" "it will be hot," said cheyne, as they rolled out of san diego in the dawn of sunday. "we're going to hurry, mama, just as fast as ever we can; but i really don't think there's any good of your putting on your bonnet and gloves yet. you'd much better lie down and take your medicine. i'd play you a game of dominoes, but it's sunday." "i'll be good. oh, i will be good. only--taking off my bonnet makes me feel as if we'd never get there." "try to sleep a little, mama, and we'll be in chicago before you know." "but it's boston, father. tell them to hurry." the six-foot drivers were hammering their way to san bernardino and the mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. that would come later. the heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned east to the needles and the colorado river. the car cracked in the utter drouth and glare, and they put crushed ice to mrs. cheyne's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past ash fork, towards flagstaff, where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. the needle of the speed-indicator flicked and wagged to and fro; the cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling wheels. the crew of the combination sat on their bunks, panting in their shirtsleeves, and cheyne found himself among them shouting old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows, above the roar of the car. he told them about his son, and how the sea had given up its dead, and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him; asked after "her, back there," and whether she could stand it if the engineer "let her out a piece," and cheyne thought she could. accordingly, the great fire-horse was "let 'ut" from flagstaff to winslow, till a division superintendent protested. but mrs. cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom, where the french maid, sallow-white with fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only moaned a little and begged her husband to bid them "hurry." and so they dropped the dry sands and moon-struck rocks of arizona behind them, and grilled on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-hose told them they were at coolidge by the continental divide. three bold and experienced men--cool, confident, and dry when they began; white, quivering, and wet when they finished their trick at those terrible wheels--swung her over the great lift from albuquerque to glorietta and beyond springer, up and up to the raton tunnel on the state line, whence they dropped rocking into la junta, had sight of the arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to dodge city, where cheyne took comfort once again from setting his watch an hour ahead. there was very little talk in the car. the secretary and typewriter sat together on the stamped spanish-leather cushions by the plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their best to entertain him. at night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the emptiness of abject desolation. now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. now they looked out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out half the stars. now scour and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last came the true plains. at dodge city an unknown hand threw in a copy of a kansas paper containing some sort of an interview with harvey, who had evidently fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on from boston. the joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond question their boy, and it soothed mrs. cheyne for a while. her one word "hurry" was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at nickerson, topeka, and marceline, where the grades are easy, and they brushed the continent behind them. towns and villages were close together now, and a man could feel here that he moved among people. "i can't see the dial, and my eyes ache so. what are we doing?" "the very best we can, mama. there's no sense in getting in before the limited. we'd only have to wait." "i don't care. i want to feel we're moving. sit down and tell me the miles." cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles which stand for records to this day), but the seventy-foot car never changed its long steamer-like roll, moving through the heat with the hum of a giant bee. yet the speed was not enough for mrs. cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless august heat, was making her giddy; the clock-hands would not move, and when, oh, when would they be in chicago? it is not true that, as they changed engines at fort madison, cheyne passed over to the amalgamated brotherhood of locomotive engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. he paid his obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved, and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had sympathized with him. it is on record that the last crew took entire charge of switching operations at sixteenth street, because "she" was in a doze at last, and heaven was to help any one who bumped her. now the highly paid specialist who conveys the lake shore and michigan southern limited from chicago to elkhart is something of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back up to a car. none the less he handled the "constance" as if she might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him, they did it in whispers and dumb show. "pshaw!" said the atchinson, topeka, and santa fe men, discussing life later, "we weren't runnin' for a record. harvey cheyne's wife, she were sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce her. 'come to think of it, our runnin' time from san diego to chicago was . . you can tell that to them eastern way-trains. when we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you know." to the western man (though this would not please either city) chicago and boston are cheek by jowl, and some railroads encourage the delusion. the limited whirled the "constance" into buffalo and the arms of the new york central and hudson river (illustrious magnates with white whiskers and gold charms on their watch-chains boarded her here to talk a little business to cheyne), who slid her gracefully into albany, where the boston and albany completed the run from tide-water to tide-water--total time, eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days, fifteen hours and one half. harvey was waiting for them. after violent emotion most people and all boys demand food. they feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around them. harvey ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it. his voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms were rough and hard, his wrists dotted with marks of gurrysores; and a fine full flavour of codfish hung round rubber boots and blue jersey. the father, well used to judging men, looked at him keenly. he did not know what enduring harm the boy might have taken. indeed, he caught himself thinking that he knew very little whatever of his son; but he distinctly remembered an unsatisfied, dough-faced youth who took delight in "calling down the old man," and reducing his mother to tears--such a person as adds to the gaiety of public rooms and hotel piazzas, where the ingenuous young of the wealthy play with or revile the bell-boys. but this well set-up fisher-youth did not wriggle, looked at him with eyes steady, clear, and unflinching, and spoke in a tone distinctly, even startlingly, respectful. there was that in his voice, too, which seemed to promise that the change might be permanent, and that the new harvey had come to stay. "some one's been coercing him," thought cheyne. "now constance would never have allowed that. don't see as europe could have done it any better." "but why didn't you tell this man, troop, who you were?" the mother repeated, when harvey had expanded his story at least twice. "disko troop, dear. the best man that ever walked a deck. i don't care who the next is." "why didn't you tell him to put you ashore? you know papa would have made it up to him ten times over." "i know it; but he thought i was crazy. i'm afraid i called him a thief because i couldn't find the bills in my pocket." "a sailor found them by the flagstaff that--that night," sobbed mrs. cheyne. "that explains it, then. i don't blame troop any. i just said i wouldn't work--on a banker, too--and of course he hit me on the nose, and oh! i bled like a stuck hog." "my poor darling! they must have abused you horribly." "dunno quite. well, after that, i saw a light." cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. this was going to be a boy after his own hungry heart. he had never seen precisely that twinkle in harvey's eye before. "and the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he's paid me half now; and i took hold with dan and pitched right in. i can't do a man's work yet. but i can handle a dory 'most as well as dan, and i don't get rattled in a fog--much; and i can take my trick in light winds--that's steering, dear--and i can 'most bait up a trawl, and i know my ropes, of course; and i can pitch fish till the cows come home, and i'm great on old josephus, and i'll show you how i can clear coffee with a piece of fish-skin, and--i think i'll have another cup, please. say, you've no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!" "i began with eight and a half, my son," said cheyne. "that so? you never told me, sir." "you never asked, harve. i'll tell you about it some day, if you care to listen. try a stuffed olive." "troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles. it's great to have a trimmed-up meal again. we were well fed, though. but mug on the banks. disko fed us first-class. he's a great man. and dan--that's his son--dan's my partner. and there's uncle salters and his manures, an' he reads josephus. he's sure i'm crazy yet. and there's poor little penn, and he is crazy. you mustn't talk to him about johnstown, because-- "and, oh, you must know tom platt and long jack and manuel. manuel saved my life. i'm sorry he's a portuguee. he can't talk much, but he's an everlasting musician. he found me struck adrift and drifting, and hauled me in." "i wonder your nervous system isn't completely wrecked," said mrs. cheyne. "what for, mama? i worked like a horse and i ate like a hog and i slept like a dead man." that was too much for mrs. cheyne, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. she went to her stateroom, and harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness. "you can depend upon me to do everything i can for the crowd, harve. they seem to be good men on your showing." "best in the fleet, sir. ask at gloucester," said harvey. "but disko believes still he's cured me of being crazy. dan's the only one i've let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and i'm not quite sure dan believes. i want to paralyze 'em to-morrow. say, can't they run the 'constance' over to gloucester? mama don't look fit to be moved, anyway, and we're bound to finish cleaning out by tomorrow. wouverman takes our fish. you see, we're the first off the banks this season, and it's four twenty-five a quintal. we held out till he paid it. they want it quick." "you mean you'll have to work to-morrow, then?" "i told troop i would. i'm on the scales. i've brought the tallies with me." he looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that made his father choke. "there isn't but three--no--two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning." "hire a substitute," suggested cheyne, to see what harvey would say. "can't, sir. i'm tally-man for the schooner. troop says i've a better head for figures than dan. troop's a mighty just man." "well, suppose i don't move the 'constance' to-night, how'll you fix it?" harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven. "then i'll sleep here till three and catch the four o'clock freight. they let us men from the fleet ride free as a rule." "that's a notion. but i think we can get the 'constance' around about as soon as your men's freight. better go to bed now." harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep before his father could shade the electrics. cheyne sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a father. "one never knows when one's taking one's biggest risks," he said. "it might have been worse than drowning; but i don't think it has--i don't think it has. if it hasn't, i haven't enough to pay troop, that's all; and i don't think it has." morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the "constance" was side-tracked among freight-cars at gloucester, and harvey had gone to his business. "then he'll fall overboard again and be drowned," the mother said bitterly. "we'll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case. you've never seen him working for his bread," said the father. "what nonsense! as if any one expected--" "well, the man that hired him did. he's about right, too." they went down between the stores full of fishermen's oilskins to wouverman's wharf where the _we're here_ rode high, her bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. disko stood by the main hatch superintending manuel, penn, and uncle salters at the tackle. dan was swinging the loaded baskets inboard as long jack and tom platt filled them, and harvey, with a notebook, represented the skipper's interests before the clerk of the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf-edge. "ready!" cried the voices below. "haul!" cried disko. "hi!" said manuel. "here!" said dan, swinging the basket. then they heard harvey's voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights. the last of the fish had been whipped out, and harvey leaped from the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand disko the tally, shouting, "two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!" "what's the total, harve?" said disko. "eight sixty-five. three thousand six hundred and seventy-six dollars and a quarter. 'wish i'd share as well as wage." "well, i won't go so far as to say you hevn't deserved it, harve. don't you want to slip up to wouverman's office and take him our tallies?" "who's that boy?" said cheyne to dan, well used to all manner of questions from those idle imbeciles called summer boarders. "well, he's kind o' supercargo," was the answer. "we picked him up struck adrift on the banks. fell overboard from a liner, he sez. he was a passenger. he's by way o' hem' a fisherman now." "is he worth his keep?" "ye-ep. dad, this man wants to know ef harve's worth his keep. say, would you like to go aboard? we'll fix up a ladder for her." "i should very much, indeed. 'twon't hurt you, mama, and you'll be able to see for yourself." the woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft. "be you anyways interested in harve?" said disko. "well, ye-es." "he's a good boy, an' ketches right hold jest as he's bid. you've heard haow we found him? he was sufferin' from nervous prostration, i guess, 'r else his head had hit somethin', when we hauled him aboard. he's all over that naow. yes, this is the cabin. 'tain't in order, but you're quite welcome to look araound. those are his figures on the stove-pipe, where we keep the reckonin' mostly." "did he sleep here?" said mrs. cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the disorderly bunks. "no. he berthed forward, madam, an' only fer him an' my boy hookin' fried pies an muggin' up when they ought to ha' been asleep, i dunno as i've any special fault to find with him." "there weren't nothin' wrong with harve," said uncle salters, descending the steps. "he hung my boots on the main-truck, and he ain't over an' above respectful to such as knows more'n he do, specially about farmin'; but he were mostly misled by dan." dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from harvey early that morning, was executing a war-dance on deck. "tom, tom!" he whispered down the hatch. "his folks has come, an' dad hain't caught on yet, an' they're pow-wowin' in the cabin. she's a daisy, an' he's all harve claimed he was, by the looks of him." "howly smoke!" said long jack, climbing out covered with salt and fish-skin. "d'ye belave his tale av the kid an' the little four-horse rig was thrue?" "i knew it all along," said dan. "come an' see dad mistook in his judgments." they came delightedly, just in time to hear cheyne say: "i'm glad he has a good character, because--he's my son." disko's jaw fell,--long jack always vowed that he heard the click of it,--and he stared alternately at the man and the woman. "i got his telegram in san diego four days ago, and we came over." "in a private car?" said dan. "he said ye might." "in a private car, of course." dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks. "there was a tale he told us av drivin' four little ponies in a rig av his own," said long jack. "was that thrue now?" "very likely," said cheyne. "was it, mama?" "he had a little drag when we were in toledo, i think," said the mother. long jack whistled. "oh, disko!" said he, and that was all. "i wuz--i am mistook in my jedgments--worse'n the men o' marblehead," said disko, as though the words were being windlassed out of him. "i don't mind ownin' to you, mr. cheyne, as i mistrusted the boy to be crazy. he talked kinder odd about money." "so he told me." "did he tell ye anything else? 'cause i pounded him once." this with a somewhat anxious glance at mrs. cheyne. "oh, yes," cheyne replied. "i should say it probably did him more good than anything else in the world." "i jedged 'twuz necessary, er i wouldn't ha' done it. i don't want you to think we abuse our boys any on this packet." "i don't think you do, mr. troop." mrs. cheyne had been looking at the faces--disko's ivory-yellow, hairless, iron countenance; uncle salters's, with its rim of agricultural hair; penn's bewildered simplicity; manuel's quiet smile; long jack's grin of delight, and tom platt's scar. rough, by her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother's wits in her eyes, and she rose with out-stretched hands. "oh, tell me, which is who?" said she, half sobbing. "i want to thank you and bless you--all of you." "faith, that pays me a hunder time," said long jack. disko introduced them all in due form. the captain of an old-time chinaman could have done no better, and mrs. cheyne babbled incoherently. she nearly threw herself into manuel's arms when she understood that he had first found harvey. "but how shall i leave him dreeft?" said poor manuel. "what do you yourself if you find him so? eh, wha-at? we are in one good boy, and i am ever so pleased he come to be your son." "and he told me dan was his partner!" she cried. dan was already sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich crimson when mrs. cheyne kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. then they led her forward to show her the foc'sle, at which she wept again, and must needs go down to see harvey's identical bunk, and there she found the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though she were some one he had expected to meet for years. they tried, two at a time, to explain the boat's daily life to her, and she sat by the pawl-post, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes. "and who's ever to use the _we're here_ after this?" said long jack to tom platt. "i feel as if she'd made a cathedral av ut all." "cathedral!" sneered tom platt. "oh, if it had bin even the fish c'mmission boat instid of this bally-hoo o' blazes. if we only hed some decency an' order an' side-boys when she goes over! she'll have to climb that ladder like a hen, an' we--we ought to be mannin' the yards!" "then harvey was not mad," said penn, slowly, to cheyne. "no, indeed--thank god," the big millionaire replied, stooping down tenderly. "it must be terrible to be mad. except to lose your child, i do not know anything more terrible. but your child has come back? let us thank god for that." "hello!" cried harvey, looking down upon them benignly from the wharf. "i wuz mistook, harve. i wuz mistook," said disko, swiftly, holding up a hand. "i wuz mistook in my jedgments. ye needn't rub in any more." "guess i'll take care o' that," said dan, under his breath. "you'll be goin' off naow, won't ye?" "well, not without the balance of my wages, 'less you want to have the _we're here_ attached." "thet's so; i'd clean forgot"; and he counted out the remaining dollars. "you done all you contracted to do, harve; and you done it 'baout's well as if you'd been brought up--" here disko brought himself up. he did not quite see where the sentence was going to end. "outside of a private car?" suggested dan, wickedly. "come on, and i'll show her to you," said harvey. cheyne stayed to talk with disko, but the others made a procession to the depot, with mrs. cheyne at the head. the french maid shrieked at the invasion; and harvey laid the glories of the "constance" before them without a word. they took them in in equal silence--stamped leather, silver door-handles and rails, cut velvet, plate-glass, nickel, bronze, hammered iron, and the rare woods of the continent inlaid. "i told you," said harvey; "i told you." this was his crowning revenge, and a most ample one. mrs. cheyne decreed a meal, and that nothing might be lacking to the tale long jack told afterwards in his boarding-house, she waited on them herself. men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling gales have curiously neat and finished manners; but mrs. cheyne, who did not know this, was surprised. she longed to have manuel for a butler; so silently and easily did he comport himself among the frail glassware and dainty silver. tom platt remembered the great days on the ohio and the manners of foreign potentates who dined with the officers; and long jack, being irish, supplied the small talk till all were at their ease. in the _we're here's_ cabin the fathers took stock of each other behind their cigars. cheyne knew well enough when he dealt with a man to whom he could not offer money; equally well he knew that no money could pay for what disko had done. he kept his own counsel and waited for an opening. "i hevn't done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep' make him work a piece an' learn him how to handle the hog-yoke," said disko. "he has twice my boy's head for figgers." "by the way," cheyne answered casually, "what d'you calculate to make of your boy?" disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin. "dan's jest plain boy, an' he don't allow me to do any of his thinkin'. he'll hev this able little packet when i'm laid by. he ain't noways anxious to quit the business. i know that." "mmm! 'ever been west, mr. troop?" "'bin's fer ez noo york once in a boat. i've no use for railroads. no more hez dan. salt water's good enough fer the troops. i've been 'most everywhere--in the nat'ral way, o' course." "i can give him all the salt water he's likely to need--till he's a skipper." "haow's that? i thought you wuz a kinder railroad king. harve told me so when--i was mistook in my jedgments." "we're all apt to be mistaken. i fancied perhaps you might know i own a line of tea-clippers--san francisco to yokohama--six of 'em--iron-built, about seventeen hundred and eighty tons apiece. "blame that boy! he never told. i'd ha' listened to that, instid o' his truck abaout railroads an' pony-carriages." "he didn't know." "'little thing like that slipped his mind, i guess." "no, i only capt--took hold of the 'blue m.' freighters--morgan and mcquade's old line--this summer." disko collapsed where he sat, beside the stove. "great caesar almighty! i mistrust i've been fooled from one end to the other. why, phil airheart he went from this very town six year back--no, seven--an' he's mate on the san jose--now--twenty-six days was her time out. his sister she's livin' here yet, an' she reads his letters to my woman. an' you own the 'blue m.' freighters?" cheyne nodded. "if i'd known that i'd ha' jerked the _we're here_ back to port all standin', on the word." "perhaps that wouldn't have been so good for harvey." "if i'd only known! if he'd only said about the cussed line, i'd ha' understood! i'll never stand on my own jedgments again--never. they're well-found packets. phil airheart he says so." "i'm glad to have a recommend from that quarter. airheart's skipper of the san jose now. what i was getting at is to know whether you'd lend me dan for a year or two, and we'll see if we can't make a mate of him. would you trust him to airheart?" "it's a resk taking a raw boy--" "i know a man who did more for me." "that's diff'runt. look at here naow, i ain't recommendin' dan special because he's my own flesh an' blood. i know bank ways ain't clipper ways, but he hain't much to learn. steer he can--no boy better, if i say it--an' the rest's in our blood an' get; but i could wish he warn't so cussed weak on navigation." "airheart will attend to that. he'll ship as boy for a voyage or two, and then we can put him in the way of doing better. suppose you take him in hand this winter, and i'll send for him early in the spring. i know the pacific's a long ways off--" "pshaw! we troops, livin' an' dead, are all around the earth an' the seas thereof." "but i want you to understand--and i mean this--any time you think you'd like to see him, tell me, and i'll attend to the transportation. 'twon't cost you a cent." "if you'll walk a piece with me, we'll go to my house an' talk this to my woman. i've bin so crazy mistook in all my jedgments, it don't seem to me this was like to be real." they went blue-trimmed of nasturtiums over to troop's eighteen-hundred-dollar, white house, with a retired dory full in the front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of oversea plunder. there sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved. cheyne addressed himself to her, and she gave consent wearily. "we lose one hundred a year from gloucester only, mr. cheyne," she said--"one hundred boys an' men; and i've come so's to hate the sea as if 'twuz alive an' listenin'. god never made it fer humans to anchor on. these packets o' yours they go straight out, i take it' and straight home again?" "as straight as the winds let 'em, and i give a bonus for record passages. tea don't improve by being at sea." "when he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an' i had hopes he might follow that up. but soon's he could paddle a dory i knew that were goin' to be denied me." "they're square-riggers, mother; iron-built an' well found. remember what phil's sister reads you when she gits his letters." "i've never known as phil told lies, but he's too venturesome (like most of 'em that use the sea). if dan sees fit, mr. cheyne, he can go--fer all o' me." "she jest despises the ocean," disko explained, "an' i--i dunno haow to act polite, i guess, er i'd thank you better." "my father--my own eldest brother--two nephews--an' my second sister's man," she said, dropping her head on her hand. "would you care fer any one that took all those?" cheyne was relieved when dan turned up and accepted with more delight than he was able to put into words. indeed, the offer meant a plain and sure road to all desirable things; but dan thought most of commanding watch on broad decks, and looking into far-away harbours. mrs. cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable manuel in the matter of harvey's rescue. he seemed to have no desire for money. pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars, because he wanted to buy something for a girl. otherwise--"how shall i take money when i make so easy my eats and smokes? you will giva some if i like or no? eh, wha-at? then you shall giva me money, but not that way. you shall giva all you can think." he introduced her to a snuffy portuguese priest with a list of semi-destitute widows as long as his cassock. as a strict unitarian, mrs. cheyne could not sympathize with the creed, but she ended by respecting the brown, voluble little man. manuel, faithful son of the church, appropriated all the blessings showered on her for her charity. "that letta me out," said he. "i have now ver' good absolutions for six months"; and he strolled forth to get a handkerchief for the girl of the hour and to break the hearts of all the others. salters went west for a season with penn, and left no address behind. he had a dread that these millionary people, with wasteful private cars, might take undue interest in his companion. it was better to visit inland relatives till the coast was clear. "never you be adopted by rich folk, penn," he said in the cars, "or i'll take 'n' break this checker-board over your head. ef you forgit your name agin--which is pratt--you remember you belong with salters troop, an' set down right where you are till i come fer you. don't go taggin' araound after them whose eyes bung out with fatness, accordin' to scripcher." chapter x but it was otherwise with the _we're here's_ silent cook, for he came up, his kit in a handkerchief, and boarded the "constance." pay was no particular object, and he did not in the least care where he slept. his business, as revealed to him in dreams, was to follow harvey for the rest of his days. they tried argument and, at last, persuasion; but there is a difference between one cape breton and two alabama negroes, and the matter was referred to cheyne by the cook and porter. the millionaire only laughed. he presumed harvey might need a body-servant some day or other, and was sure that one volunteer was worth five hirelings. let the man stay, therefore; even though he called himself macdonald and swore in gaelic. the car could go back to boston, where, if he were still of the same mind, they would take him west. with the "constance," which in his heart of hearts he loathed, departed the last remnant of cheyne's millionairedom, and he gave himself up to an energetic idleness. this gloucester was a new town in a new land, and he purposed to "take it in," as of old he had taken in all the cities from snohomish to san diego of that world whence he hailed. they made money along the crooked street which was half wharf and half ship's store: as a leading professional he wished to learn how the noble game was played. men said that four out of every five fish-balls served at new england's sunday breakfast came from gloucester, and overwhelmed him with figures in proof--statistics of boats, gear, wharf-frontage, capital invested, salting, packing, factories, insurance, wages, repairs, and profits. he talked with the owners of the large fleets whose skippers were little more than hired men, and whose crews were almost all swedes or portuguese. then he conferred with disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and compared notes in his vast head. he coiled himself away on chain-cables in marine junk-shops, asking questions with cheerful, unslaked western curiosity, till all the water-front wanted to know "what in thunder that man was after, anyhow." he prowled into the mutual insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of every fisherman's widow and orphan aid society within the city limits. they begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other institution's record, and cheyne tugged at his beard and handed them all over to mrs. cheyne. she was resting in a boarding-house near eastern point--a strange establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered and the population, who seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose up at midnight to make welsh rarebits if it felt hungry. on the second morning of her stay mrs. cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before she came down to breakfast. "they're most delightful people," she confided to her husband; "so friendly and simple, too, though they are all boston, nearly." "that isn't simpleness, mama," he said, looking across the boulders behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung. "it's the other thing, that what i haven't got." "it can't be," said mrs. cheyne quietly. "there isn't a woman here owns a dress that cost a hundred dollars. why, we--" "i know it, dear. we have--of course we have. i guess it's only the style they wear east. are you having a good time?" "i don't see very much of harvey; he's always with you; but i ain't near as nervous as i was." "i haven't had such a good time since willie died. i never rightly understood that i had a son before this. harve's got to be a great boy. 'anything i can fetch you, dear? 'cushion under your head? well, we'll go down to the wharf again and look around." harvey was his father's shadow in those days, and the two strolled along side by side, cheyne using the grades as an excuse for laying his hand on the boy's square shoulder. it was then that harvey noticed and admired what had never struck him before--his father's curious power of getting at the heart of new matters as learned from men in the street. "how d'you make 'em tell you everything without opening your head?" demanded the son, as they came out of a rigger's loft. "i've dealt with quite a few men in my time, harve, and one sizes 'em up somehow, i guess. i know something about myself, too." then, after a pause, as they sat down on a wharf-edge: "men can 'most always tell when a man has handled things for himself, and then they treat him as one of themselves." "same as they treat me down at wouverman's wharf. i'm one of the crowd now. disko has told every one i've earned my pay." harvey spread out his hands and rubbed the palms together. "they're all soft again," he said dolefully. "keep 'em that way for the next few years, while you're getting your education. you can harden 'em up after." "ye-es, i suppose so," was the reply, in no delighted voice. "it rests with you, harve. you can take cover behind your mama, of course, and put her on to fussing about your nerves and your high-strungness and all that kind of poppycock." "have i ever done that?" said harvey, uneasily. his father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand. "you know as well as i do that i can't make anything of you if you don't act straight by me. i can handle you alone if you'll stay alone, but i don't pretend to manage both you and mama. life's too short, anyway." "don't make me out much of a fellow, does it?" "i guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you haven't been much of anything up to date. now, have you?" "umm! disko thinks . . . say, what d'you reckon it's cost you to raise me from the start--first, last and all over?" cheyne smiled. "i've never kept track, but i should estimate, in dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty. the young generation comes high. it has to have things, and it tires of 'em, and--the old man foots the bill." harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that his upbringing had cost so much. "and all that's sunk capital, isn't it?" "invested, harve. invested, i hope." "making it only thirty thousand, the thirty i've earned is about ten cents on the hundred. that's a mighty poor catch." harvey wagged his head solemnly. cheyne laughed till he nearly fell off the pile into the water. "disko has got a heap more than that out of dan since he was ten; and dan's at school half the year, too." "oh, that's what you're after, is it?" "no. i'm not after anything. i'm not stuck on myself any just now--that's all. . . . i ought to be kicked." "i can't do it, old man; or i would, i presume, if i'd been made that way." "then i'd have remembered it to the last day i lived--and never forgiven you," said harvey, his chin on his doubled fists. "exactly. that's about what i'd do. you see?" "i see. the fault's with me and no one else. all the same, something's got to be done about it." cheyne drew a cigar from his vest-pocket, bit off the end, and fell to smoking. father and son were very much alike; for the beard hid cheyne's mouth, and harvey had his father's slightly aquiline nose, close-set black eyes, and narrow, high cheek-bones. with a touch of brown paint he would have made up very picturesquely as a red indian of the story-books. "now you can go on from here," said cheyne, slowly, "costing me between six or eight thousand a year till you're a voter. well, we'll call you a man then. you can go right on from that, living on me to the tune of forty or fifty thousand, besides what your mother will give you, with a valet and a yacht or a fancy-ranch where you can pretend to raise trotting-stock and play cards with your own crowd." "like lorry tuck?" harvey put in. "yep; or the two de vitre boys or old man mcquade's son. california's full of 'em, and here's an eastern sample while we're talking." a shiny black steam-yacht, with mahogany deck-house, nickel-plated binnacles, and pink-and-white-striped awnings puffed up the harbour, flying the burgee of some new york club. two young men in what they conceived to be sea costumes were playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a couple of women with red and blue parasols looked on and laughed noisily. "shouldn't care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. no beam," said harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her mooring-buoy. "they're having what stands them for a good time. i can give you that, and twice as much as that, harve. how'd you like it?" "caesar! that's no way to get a dinghy overside," said harvey, still intent on the yacht. "if i couldn't slip a tackle better than that i'd stay ashore. . . . what if i don't?" "stay ashore--or what?" "yacht and ranch and live on 'the old man,' and--get behind mama where there's trouble," said harvey, with a twinkle in his eye. "why, in that case, you come right in with me, my son." "ten dollars a month?" another twinkle. "not a cent more until you're worth it, and you won't begin to touch that for a few years." "i'd sooner begin sweeping out the office--isn't that how the big bugs start?--and touch something now than--" "i know it; we all feel that way. but i guess we can hire any sweeping we need. i made the same mistake myself of starting in too soon." "thirty million dollars' worth o' mistake, wasn't it? i'd risk it for that." "i lost some; and i gained some. i'll tell you." cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still water, and spoke away from harvey, who presently began to be aware that his father was telling the story of his life. he talked in a low, even voice, without gesture and without expression; and it was a history for which a dozen leading journals would cheerfully have paid many dollars--the story of forty years that was at the same time the story of the new west, whose story is yet to be written. it began with a kinless boy turned loose in texas, and went on fantastically through a hundred changes and chops of life, the scenes shifting from state after western state, from cities that sprang up in a month and--in a season utterly withered away, to wild ventures in wilder camps that are now laborious, paved municipalities. it covered the building of three railroads and the deliberate wreck of a fourth. it told of steamers, townships, forests, and mines, and the men of every nation under heaven, manning, creating, hewing, and digging these. it touched on chances of gigantic wealth flung before eyes that could not see, or missed by the merest accident of time and travel; and through the mad shift of things, sometimes on horseback, more often afoot, now rich, now poor, in and out, and back and forth, deck-hand, train-hand, contractor, boarding-house keeper, journalist, engineer, drummer, real-estate agent, politician, dead-beat, rum-seller, mine-owner, speculator, cattle-man, or tramp, moved harvey cheyne, alert and quiet, seeking his own ends, and, so he said, the glory and advancement of his country. he told of the faith that never deserted him even when he hung on the ragged edge of despair--the faith that comes of knowing men and things. he enlarged, as though he were talking to himself, on his very great courage and resource at all times. the thing was so evident in the man's mind that he never even changed his tone. he described how he had bested his enemies, or forgiven them, exactly as they had bested or forgiven him in those careless days; how he had entreated, cajoled, and bullied towns, companies, and syndicates, all for their enduring good; crawled round, through, or under mountains and ravines, dragging a string and hoop-iron railroad after him, and in the end, how he had sat still while promiscuous communities tore the last fragments of his character to shreds. the tale held harvey almost breathless, his head a little cocked to one side, his eyes fixed on his father's face, as the twilight deepened and the red cigar-end lit up the furrowed cheeks and heavy eyebrows. it seemed to him like watching a locomotive storming across country in the dark--a mile between each glare of the open fire-door: but this locomotive could talk, and the words shook and stirred the boy to the core of his soul. at last cheyne pitched away the cigar-butt, and the two sat in the dark over the lapping water. "i've never told that to any one before," said the father. harvey gasped. "it's just the greatest thing that ever was!" said he. "that's what i got. now i'm coming to what i didn't get. it won't sound much of anything to you, but i don't wish you to be as old as i am before you find out. i can handle men, of course, and i'm no fool along my own lines, but--but--i can't compete with the man who has been taught! i've picked up as i went along, and i guess it sticks out all over me." "i've never seen it," said the son, indignantly. "you will, though, harve. you will--just as soon as you're through college. don't i know it? don't i know the look on men's faces when they think me a--a 'mucker,' as they call it out here? i can break them to little pieces--yes--but i can't get back at 'em to hurt 'em where they live. i don't say they're 'way 'way up, but i feel i'm 'way, 'way, 'way off, somehow. now you've got your chance. you've got to soak up all the learning that's around, and you'll live with a crowd that are doing the same thing. they'll be doing it for a few thousand dollars a year at most; but remember you'll be doing it for millions. you'll learn law enough to look after your own property when i'm out o' the light, and you'll have to be solid with the best men in the market (they are useful later); and above all, you'll have to stow away the plain, common, sit-down-with-your chin-on your-elbows book-learning. nothing pays like that, harve, and it's bound to pay more and more each year in our country--in business and in politics. you'll see." "there's no sugar in my end of the deal," said harvey. "four years at college! 'wish i'd chosen the valet and the yacht!" "never mind, my son," cheyne insisted. "you're investing your capital where it'll bring in the best returns; and i guess you won't find our property shrunk any when you're ready to take hold. think it over, and let me know in the morning. hurry! we'll be late for supper!" as this was a business talk, there was no need for harvey to tell his mother about it; and cheyne naturally took the same point of view. but mrs. cheyne saw and feared, and was a little jealous. her boy, who rode rough-shod over her, was gone, and in his stead reigned a keen-faced youth, abnormally silent, who addressed most of his conversation to his father. she understood it was business, and therefore a matter beyond her premises. if she had any doubts, they were resolved when cheyne went to boston and brought back a new diamond marquise ring. "what have you two been doing now?" she said, with a weak little smile, as she turned it in the light. "talking--just talking, mama; there's nothing mean about harvey." there was not. the boy had made a treaty on his own account. railroads, he explained gravely, interested him as little as lumber, real estate, or mining. what his soul yearned after was control of his father's newly purchased sailing-ship. if that could be promised him within what he conceived to be a reasonable time, he, for his part, guaranteed diligence and sobriety at college for four or five years. in vacation he was to be allowed full access to all details connected with the line--he had not asked more than two thousand questions about it,--from his father's most private papers in the safe to the tug in san francisco harbour. "it's a deal," said cheyne at the last. "you'll alter your mind twenty times before you leave college, o' course; but if you take hold of it in proper shape, and if you don't tie it up before you're twenty-three, i'll make the thing over to you. how's that, harve?" "nope; never pays to split up a going concern. there's too much competition in the world anyway, and disko says 'blood-kin hev to stick together.' his crowd never go back on him. that's one reason, he says, why they make such big fares. say, the _we're here_ goes off to the georges on monday. they don't stay long ashore, do they?" "well, we ought to be going, too, i guess. i've left my business hung up at loose ends between two oceans, and it's time to connect again. i just hate to do it, though; haven't had a holiday like this for twenty years." "we can't go without seeing disko off," said harvey; "and monday's memorial day. let's stay over that, anyway." "what is this memorial business? they were talking about it at the boarding-house," said cheyne weakly. he, too, was not anxious to spoil the golden days. "well, as far as i can make out, this business is a sort of song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders. disko don't think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the widows and orphans. disko's independent. haven't you noticed that?" "well--yes. a little. in spots. is it a town show, then?" "the summer convention is. they read out the names of the fellows drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make speeches, and recite, and all. then, disko says, the secretaries of the aid societies go into the back yard and fight over the catch. the real show, he says, is in the spring. the ministers all take a hand then, and there aren't any summer boarders around." "i see," said cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension of one born into and bred up to city pride. "we'll stay over for memorial day, and get off in the afternoon." "guess i'll go down to disko's and make him bring his crowd up before they sail. i'll have to stand with them, of course." "oh, that's it, is it," said cheyne. "i'm only a poor summer boarder, and you're--" "a banker--full-blooded banker," harvey called back as he boarded a trolley, and cheyne went on with his blissful dreams for the future. disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made for charity, but harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be lost, so far as he was concerned, if the _we're heres_ absented themselves. then disko made conditions. he had heard--it was astonishing how all the world knew all the world's business along the water-front--he had heard that a "philadelphia actress-woman" was going to take part in the exercises; and he mistrusted that she would deliver "skipper ireson's ride." personally, he had as little use for actresses as for summer boarders; but justice was justice, and though he himself (here dan giggled) had once slipped up on a matter of judgment, this thing must not be. so harvey came back to east gloucester, and spent half a day explaining to an amused actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of the mistake she contemplated; and she admitted that it was justice, even as disko had said. cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything of the nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the man's soul. he saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside the post office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk. "mother," he said suddenly, "don't you remember--after seattle was burned out--and they got her going again?" mrs. cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street. like her husband, she understood these gatherings, all the west over, and compared them one against another. the fishermen began to mingle with the crowd about the town-hall doors--blue-jowled portuguese, their women bare-headed or shawled for the most part; clear-eyed nova scotians, and men of the maritime provinces; french, italians, swedes, and danes, with outside crews of coasting schooners; and everywhere women in black, who saluted one another with gloomy pride, for this was their day of great days. and there were ministers of many creeds,--pastors of great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with shepherds of the regular work,--from the priests of the church on the hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor lutherans, hail-fellow with the men of a score of boats. there were owners of lines of schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers, salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of the water-front. they drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of the summer boarders, and one of the town officials patrolled and perspired till he shone all over with pure civic pride. cheyne had met him for five minutes a few days before, and between the two there was entire understanding. "well, mr. cheyne, and what d'you think of our city?--yes, madam, you can sit anywhere you please.--you have this kind of thing out west, i presume?" "yes, but we aren't as old as you." "that's so, of course. you ought to have been at the exercises when we celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth birthday. i tell you, mr. cheyne, the old city did herself credit." "so i heard. it pays, too. what's the matter with the town that it don't have a first-class hotel, though?" "--right over there to the left, pedro. heaps o' room for you and your crowd.--why, that's what i tell 'em all the time, mr. cheyne. there's big money in it, but i presume that don't affect you any. what we want is--" a heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed skipper of a portland coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round. "what in thunder do you fellows mean by clappin' the law on the town when all decent men are at sea this way? heh? town's dry as a bone, an' smells a sight worse sence i quit. 'might ha' left us one saloon for soft drinks, anyway." "don't seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning, carsen. i'll go into the politics of it later. sit down by the door and think over your arguments till i come back." "what good is arguments to me? in miquelon champagne's eighteen dollars a case and--" the skipper lurched into his seat as an organ-prelude silenced him. "our new organ," said the official proudly to cheyne. "cost us four thousand dollars, too. we'll have to get back to high-license next year to pay for it. i wasn't going to let the ministers have all the religion at their convention. those are some of our orphans standing up to sing. my wife taught 'em. see you again later, mr. cheyne. i'm wanted on the platform." high, clear, and true, children's voices bore down the last noise of those settling into their places. "o all ye works of the lord, bless ye the lord: praise him and magnify him for ever!" the women throughout the hall leaned forward to look as the reiterated cadences filled the air. mrs. cheyne, with some others, began to breathe short; she had hardly imagined there were so many widows in the world; and instinctively searched for harvey. he had found the _we're heres_ at the back of the audience, and was standing, as by right, between dan and disko. uncle salters, returned the night before with penn, from pamlico sound, received him suspiciously. "hain't your folk gone yet?" he grunted. "what are you doin' here, young feller?" "o ye seas and floods, bless ye the lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!" "hain't he good right?" said dan. "he's bin there, same as the rest of us." "not in them clothes," salters snarled. "shut your head, salters," said disko. "your bile's gone back on you. stay right where ye are, harve." then up and spoke the orator of the occasion, another pillar of the municipality, bidding the world welcome to gloucester, and incidentally pointing out wherein gloucester excelled the rest of the world. then he turned to the sea-wealth of the city, and spoke of the price that must be paid for the yearly harvest. they would hear later the names of their lost dead one hundred and seventeen of them. (the widows stared a little, and looked at one another here.) gloucester could not boast any overwhelming mills or factories. her sons worked for such wage as the sea gave; and they all knew that neither georges nor the banks were cow-pastures. the utmost that folk ashore could accomplish was to help the widows and the orphans, and after a few general remarks he took this opportunity of thanking, in the name of the city, those who had so public-spiritedly consented to participate in the exercises of the occasion. "i jest despise the beggin' pieces in it," growled disko. "it don't give folk a fair notion of us." "ef folk won't be fore-handed an' put by when they've the chance," returned salters, "it stands in the nature o' things they hev to be 'shamed. you take warnin' by that, young feller. riches endureth but for a season, ef you scatter them araound on lugsuries--" "but to lose everything, everything," said penn. "what can you do then? once i"--the watery blue eyes stared up and down as if looking for something to steady them--"once i read--in a book, i think--of a boat where every one was run down--except some one--and he said to me--" "shucks!" said salters, cutting in. "you read a little less an' take more int'rust in your vittles, and you'll come nearer earnin' your keep, penn." harvey, jammed among the fishermen, felt a creepy, crawly, tingling thrill that began in the back of his neck and ended at his boots. he was cold, too, though it was a stifling day. "that the actress from philadelphia?" said disko troop, scowling at the platform. "you've fixed it about old man ireson, hain't ye, harve? ye know why naow." it was not "ireson's ride" that the woman delivered, but some sort of poem about a fishing-port called brixham and a fleet of trawlers beating in against storm by night, while the women made a guiding fire at the head of the quay with everything they could lay hands on. "they took the grandma's blanket, who shivered and bade them go; they took the baby's cradle, who could not say them no." "whew!" said dan, peering over long jack's shoulder. "that's great! must ha' bin expensive, though." "ground-hog case," said the galway man. "badly lighted port, danny." * * * * * * "and knew not all the while if they were lighting a bonfire or only a funeral pile." the wonderful voice took hold of people by their heartstrings; and when she told how the drenched crews were flung ashore, living and dead, and they carried the bodies to the glare of the fires, asking: "child, is this your father?" or "wife, is this your man?" you could hear hard breathing all over the benches. "and when the boats of brixham go out to face the gales, think of the love that travels like light upon their sails!" there was very little applause when she finished. the women were looking for their handkerchiefs, and many of the men stared at the ceiling with shiny eyes. "h'm," said salters; "that 'u'd cost ye a dollar to hear at any theatre--maybe two. some folk, i presoom, can afford it. 'seems downright waste to me. . . . naow, how in jerusalem did cap. bart edwardes strike adrift here?" "no keepin' him under," said an eastport man behind. "he's a poet, an' he's baound to say his piece. 'comes from daown aour way, too." he did not say that captain b. edwardes had striven for five consecutive years to be allowed to recite a piece of his own composition on gloucester memorial day. an amused and exhausted committee had at last given him his desire. the simplicity and utter happiness of the old man, as he stood up in his very best sunday clothes, won the audience ere he opened his mouth. they sat unmurmuring through seven-and-thirty hatchet-made verses describing at fullest length the loss of the schooner _joan hasken_ off the georges in the gale of , and when he came to an end they shouted with one kindly throat. a far-sighted boston reporter slid away for a full copy of the epic and an interview with the author; so that earth had nothing more to offer captain bart edwardes, ex-whaler, shipwright, master-fisherman, and poet, in the seventy-third year of his age. "naow, i call that sensible," said the eastport man. "i've bin over that graound with his writin', jest as he read it, in my two hands, and i can testify that he's got it all in." "if dan here couldn't do better'n that with one hand before breakfast, he ought to be switched," said salters, upholding the honor of massachusetts on general principles. "not but what i'm free to own he's considerable litt'ery--fer maine. still--" "guess uncle salters's goin' to die this trip. fust compliment he's ever paid me," dan sniggered. "what's wrong with you, harve? you act all quiet and you look greenish. feelin' sick?" "don't know what's the matter with me," harvey implied. "seems if my insides were too big for my outsides. i'm all crowded up and shivery." "dispepsy? pshaw--too bad. we'll wait for the readin', an' then we'll quit, an' catch the tide." the widows--they were nearly all of that season's making--braced themselves rigidly like people going to be shot in cold blood, for they knew what was coming. the summer-boarder girls in pink and blue shirt-waists stopped tittering over captain edwardes's wonderful poem, and looked back to see why all was silent. the fishermen pressed forward as that town official who had talked to cheyne bobbed up on the platform and began to read the year's list of losses, dividing them into months. last september's casualties were mostly single men and strangers, but his voice rang very loud in the stillness of the hall. "september th. schooner _florrie anderson_ lost, with all aboard, off the georges. "reuben pitman, master, , single, main street, city. "emil olsen, , single, hammond street, city. denmark. "oscar standberg, single, . sweden. "carl stanberg, single, , main street. city. "pedro, supposed madeira, single, keene's boardinghouse. city. "joseph welsh, alias joseph wright, , st. john's, newfoundland." "no--augusty, maine," a voice cried from the body of the hall. "he shipped from st. john's," said the reader, looking to see. "i know it. he belongs in augusty. my nevvy." the reader made a pencilled correction on the margin of the list, and resumed. "same schooner, charlie ritchie, liverpool, nova scotia, , single. "albert may, rogers street, city, , single. "september th.--orvin dollard, , married, drowned in dory off eastern point." that shot went home, for one of the widows flinched where she sat, clasping and unclasping her hands. mrs. cheyne, who had been listening with wide-opened eyes, threw up her head and choked. dan's mother, a few seats to the right, saw and heard and quickly moved to her side. the reading went on. by the time they reached the january and february wrecks the shots were falling thick and fast, and the widows drew breath between their teeth. "february th.--schooner _harry randolph_ dismasted on the way home from newfoundland; asa musie, married, , main street, city, lost overboard. "february d.--schooner _gilbert hope_; went astray in dory, robert beavon, , married, native of pubnico, nova scotia." but his wife was in the hall. they heard a low cry, as though a little animal had been hit. it was stifled at once, and a girl staggered out of the hall. she had been hoping against hope for months, because some who have gone adrift in dories have been miraculously picked up by deep-sea sailing-ships. now she had her certainty, and harvey could see the policeman on the sidewalk hailing a hack for her. "it's fifty cents to the depot"--the driver began, but the policeman held up his hand--"but i'm goin' there anyway. jump right in. look at here, al; you don't pull me next time my lamps ain't lit. see?" the side-door closed on the patch of bright sunshine, and harvey's eyes turned again to the reader and his endless list. "april th.--schooner _mamie douglas_ lost on the banks with all hands. "edward canton, , master, married, city. "d. hawkins, alias williams, , married, shelbourne, nova scotia. "g. w. clay, coloured, , married, city." and so on, and so on. great lumps were rising in harvey's throat, and his stomach reminded him of the day when he fell from the liner. "may th.--schooner _we're here_ [the blood tingled all over him] otto svendson, , single, city, lost overboard." once more a low, tearing cry from somewhere at the back of the hall. "she shouldn't ha' come. she shouldn't ha' come," said long jack, with a cluck of pity. "don't scrowge, harve," grunted dan. harvey heard that much, but the rest was all darkness spotted with fiery wheels. disko leaned forward and spoke to his wife, where she sat with one arm round mrs. cheyne, and the other holding down the snatching, catching, ringed hands. "lean your head daown--right daown!" he whispered. "it'll go off in a minute." "i ca-an't! i do-don't! oh, let me--" mrs. cheyne did not at all know what she said. "you must," mrs. troop repeated. "your boy's jest fainted dead away. they do that some when they're gettin' their growth. 'wish to tend to him? we can git aout this side. quite quiet. you come right along with me. psha', my dear, we're both women, i guess. we must tend to aour men-folk. come!" the _we're heres_ promptly went through the crowd as a body-guard, and it was a very white and shaken harvey that they propped up on a bench in an anteroom. "favours his ma," was mrs. troop's only comment, as the mother bent over her boy. "how d'you suppose he could ever stand it?" she cried indignantly to cheyne, who had said nothing at all. "it was horrible--horrible! we shouldn't have come. it's wrong and wicked! it--it isn't right! why--why couldn't they put these things in the papers, where they belong? are you better, darling?" that made harvey very properly ashamed. "oh, i'm all right, i guess," he said, struggling to his feet, with a broken giggle. "must ha' been something i ate for breakfast." "coffee, perhaps," said cheyne, whose face was all in hard lines, as though it had been cut out of bronze. "we won't go back again." "guess 'twould be 'baout's well to git daown to the wharf," said disko. "it's close in along with them dagoes, an' the fresh air will fresh mrs. cheyne up." harvey announced that he never felt better in his life; but it was not till he saw the _we're here_, fresh from the lumper's hands, at wouverman's wharf, that he lost his all-overish feelings in a queer mixture of pride and sorrowfulness. other people--summer boarders and such-like--played about in cat-boats or looked at the sea from pier-heads; but he understood things from the inside--more things than he could begin to think about. none the less, he could have sat down and howled because the little schooner was going off. mrs. cheyne simply cried and cried every step of the way and said most extraordinary things to mrs. troop, who "babied" her till dan, who had not been "babied" since he was six, whistled aloud. and so the old crowd--harvey felt like the most ancient of mariners dropped into the old schooner among the battered dories, while harvey slipped the stern-fast from the pier-head, and they slid her along the wharf-side with their hands. every one wanted to say so much that no one said anything in particular. harvey bade dan take care of uncle salters's sea-boots and penn's dory-anchor, and long jack entreated harvey to remember his lessons in seamanship; but the jokes fell flat in the presence of the two women, and it is hard to be funny with green harbour-water widening between good friends. "up jib and fores'l!" shouted disko, getting to the wheel, as the wind took her. "see you later, harve. dunno but i come near thinkin' a heap o' you an' your folks." then she glided beyond ear-shot, and they sat down to watch her up the harbour, and still mrs. cheyne wept. "pshaw, my dear," said mrs. troop: "we're both women, i guess. like's not it'll ease your heart to hev your cry aout. god he knows it never done me a mite o' good, but then he knows i've had something to cry fer!" now it was a few years later, and upon the other edge of america, that a young man came through the clammy sea fog up a windy street which is flanked with most expensive houses built of wood to imitate stone. to him, as he was standing by a hammered iron gate, entered on horseback--and the horse would have been cheap at a thousand dollars--another young man. and this is what they said: "hello, dan!" "hello, harve!" "what's the best with you?" "well, i'm so's to be that kind o' animal called second mate this trip. ain't you most through with that triple invoiced college of yours?" "getting that way. i tell you, the leland stanford junior, isn't a circumstance to the old _we're here_; but i'm coming into the business for keeps next fall." "meanin' aour packets?" "nothing else. you just wait till i get my knife into you, dan. i'm going to make the old line lie down and cry when i take hold." "i'll resk it," said dan, with a brotherly grin, as harvey dismounted and asked whether he were coming in. "that's what i took the cable fer; but, say, is the doctor anywheres araound? i'll draown that crazy nigger some day, his one cussed joke an' all." there was a low, triumphant chuckle, as the ex-cook of the _we're here_ came out of the fog to take the horse's bridle. he allowed no one but himself to attend to any of harvey's wants. "thick as the banks, ain't it, doctor?" said dan, propitiatingly. but the coal-black celt with the second-sight did not see fit to reply till he had tapped dan on the shoulder, and for the twentieth time croaked the old, old prophecy in his ear. "master--man. man--master," said he. "you remember, dan troop, what i said? on the _we're here_?" "well, i won't go so far as to deny that it do look like it as things stand at present," said dan. "she was a noble packet, and one way an' another i owe her a heap--her and dad." "me too," quoth harvey cheyne. indian tales by rudyard kipling contents "the finest story in the world" with the main guard wee willie winkie the rout of the white hussars at twenty-two the courting of dinah shadd the story of muhammad din in flood time my own true ghost story the big drunk draf' by word of mouth the drums of the fore and aft the sending of dana da on the city wall the broken-link handicap on greenhow hill to be filed for reference the man who would be king the gate of the hundred sorrows the incarnation of krishna mulvaney his majesty the king the strange ride of morrowbie jukes in the house of suddhoo black jack the taking of lungtungpen the phantom rickshaw on the strength of a likeness private learoyd's story wressley of the foreign office the solid muldoon the three musketeers beyond the pale the god from the machine the daughter of the regiment the madness of private ortheris l'envoi "the finest story in the world" "or ever the knightly years were gone with the old world to the grave, i was a king in babylon and you were a christian slave," --_w.e. henley_. his name was charlie mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a widow, and he lived in the north of london, coming into the city every day to work in a bank. he was twenty years old and suffered from aspirations. i met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his given name, and he called the marker "bullseyes." charlie explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, i suggested that charlie should go back to his mother. that was our first step toward better acquaintance. he would call on me sometimes in the evenings instead of running about london with his fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a young man must, he told me of his aspirations, which were all literary. he desired to make himself an undying name chiefly through verse, though he was not above sending stories of love and death to the drop-a-penny-in-the-slot journals. it was my fate to sit still while charlie read me poems of many hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the world. my reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self-revelations and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden. charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honorable, but, at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he knew his way about the world as befitted a bank clerk on twenty-five shillings a week. he rhymed "dove" with "love" and "moon" with "june," and devoutly believed that they had never so been rhymed before. the long lame gaps in his plays he filled up with hasty words of apology and description and swept on, seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already done, and turned to me for applause. i fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations, and i know that his writing-table at home was the edge of his washstand. this he told me almost at the outset of our acquaintance; when he was ravaging my bookshelves, and a little before i was implored to speak the truth as to his chances of "writing something really great, you know." maybe i encouraged him too much, for, one night, he called on me, his eyes flaming with excitement, and said breathlessly: "do you mind--can you let me stay here and write all this evening? i won't interrupt you, i won't really. there's no place for me to write in at my mother's." "what's the trouble?" i said, knowing well what that trouble was. "i've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written. do let me write it out here. it's _such_ a notion!" there was no resisting the appeal. i set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. for half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. then charlie sighed and tugged his hair. the scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. the finest story in the world would not come forth. "it looks such awful rot now," he said, mournfully. "and yet it seemed so good when i was thinking about it. what's wrong?" i could not dishearten him by saying the truth. so i answered: "perhaps you don't feel in the mood for writing." "yes i do--except when i look at this stuff. ugh!" "read me what you've done," i said. he read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as i knew he would be. "it needs compression," i suggested, cautiously. "i hate cutting my things down. i don't think you could alter a word here without spoiling the sense. it reads better aloud than when i was writing it." "charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous class. put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week." "i want to do it at once. what do you think of it?" "how can i judge from a half-written tale? tell me the story as it lies in your head." charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. i looked at him, and wondering whether it were possible that he did not know the originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way? it was distinctly a notion among notions. men had been puffed up with pride by notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable. but charlie babbled on serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible sentences that he purposed to use. i heard him out to the end. it would be folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands, when i could do so much with it. not all that could be done indeed; but, oh so much! "what do you think?" he said, at last. "i fancy i shall call it 'the story of a ship.'" "i think the idea's pretty good; but you won't be able to handle it for ever so long. now i"---- "would it be of any use to you? would you care to take it? i should be proud," said charlie, promptly. there are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless, hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech with his pet oaths. and charlie did all these things. still it was necessary to salve my conscience before i possessed myself of charlie's thoughts. "let's make a bargain. i'll give you a fiver for the notion," i said. charlie became a bank-clerk at once. "oh, that's impossible. between two pals, you know, if i may call you so, and speaking as a man of the world, i couldn't. take the notion if it's any use to you. i've heaps more." he had--none knew this better than i--but they were the notions of other men. "look at it as a matter of business--between men of the world," i returned. "five pounds will buy you any number of poetry-books. business is business, and you may be sure i shouldn't give that price unless"---- "oh, if you put it _that_ way," said charlie, visibly moved by the thought of the books. the bargain was clinched with an agreement that he should at unstated intervals come to me with all the notions that he possessed, should have a table of his own to write at, and unquestioned right to inflict upon me all his poems and fragments of poems. then i said, "now tell me how you came by this idea." "it came by itself," charlie's eyes opened a little. "yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have read before somewhere." "i haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and on sundays i'm on my bicycle or down the river all day. there's nothing wrong about the hero, is there?" "tell me again and i shall understand clearly. you say that your hero went pirating. how did he live?" "he was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that i was telling you about." "what sort of ship?" "it was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the oar-holes and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. then there's a bench running down between the two lines of oars and an overseer with a whip walks up and down the bench to make the men work." "how do you know that?" "it's in the tale. there's a rope running overhead, looped to the upper deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. when the overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember the hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. he's chained to his oar of course--the hero." "how is he chained?" "with an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. he's on the lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes from the hatchways and through the oar-holes. can't you imagine the sunlight just squeezing through between the handle and the hole and wobbling about as the ship moves?" "i can, but i can't imagine your imagining it." "how could it be any other way? now you listen to me. the long oars on the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones by three, and the lowest of all by two. remember, it's quite dark on the lowest deck and all the men there go mad. when a man dies at his oar on that deck he isn't thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and stuffed through the oar-hole in little pieces." "why?" i demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as the tone of command in which it was flung out. "to save trouble and to frighten the others. it needs two overseers to drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck oars were left alone, of course they'd stop rowing and try to pull up the benches by all standing up together in their chains." "you've a most provident imagination. where have you been reading about galleys and galley-slaves?" "nowhere that i remember. i row a little when i get the chance. but, perhaps, if you say so, i may have read something." he went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and i wondered how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas. he had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you know"; and, delighted with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy the notions of other men, that these might teach him how to write. i had the consolation of knowing that this notion was mine by right of purchase, and i thought that i could make something of it. when next he came to me he was drunk--royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. his pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations. most of all was he drunk with longfellow. "isn't it splendid? isn't it superb?" he cried, after hasty greetings. "listen to this-- "'wouldst thou,'--so the helmsman answered, 'know the secret of the sea? only those who brave its dangers comprehend its mystery.'" by gum! "'only those who brave its dangers comprehend its mystery,'" he repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and forgetting me. "but _i_ can understand it too," he said to himself. "i don't know how to thank you for that fiver, and this; listen-- "'i remember the black wharves and the ships and the sea-tides tossing free, and the spanish sailors with bearded lips, and the beauty and mystery of the ships, and the magic of the sea.'" i haven't braved any dangers, but i feel as if i knew all about it." "you certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. have you ever seen it?" "when i was a little chap i went to brighton once; we used to live in coventry, though, before we came to london. i never saw it, "'when descends on the atlantic the gigantic storm-wind of the equinox.'" he shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion that was shaking himself. "when that storm comes," he continued, "i think that all the oars in the ship that i was talking about get broken, and the rowers have their chests smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. by the way, have you done anything with that notion of mine yet?" "no. i was waiting to hear more of it from you. tell me how in the world you're so certain about the fittings of the ship. you know nothing of ships." "i don't know. it's as real as anything to me until i try to write it down. i was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had loaned me 'treasure island'; and i made up a whole lot of new things to go into the story." "what sort of things?" "about the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine in a skin bag, passed from bench to bench." "was the ship built so long ago as _that_?" "as what? i don't know whether it was long ago or not. it's only a notion, but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. do i bother you with talking about it?" "not in the least. did you make up anything else?" "yes, but it's nonsense." charlie flushed a little. "never mind; let's hear about it." "well, i was thinking over the story, and after awhile i got out of bed and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. it seemed to make the thing more lifelike. it _is_ so real to me, y'know." "have you the paper on you?" "ye-es, but what's the use of showing it? it's only a lot of scratches. all the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the book on the front page." "i'll attend to those details. show me what your men wrote." he pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper, with a single line of scratches upon it, and i put this carefully away. "what is it supposed to mean in english?" i said. "oh, i don't know. perhaps it means 'i'm beastly tired.' it's great nonsense," he repeated, "but all those men in the ship seem as real as people to me. do do something to the notion soon; i should like to see it written and printed." "but all you've told me would make a long book." "make it then. you've only to sit down and write it out." "give me a little time. have you any more notions?" "not just now. i'm reading all the books i've bought. they're splendid." when he had left i looked at the sheet of note-paper with the inscription upon it. then i took my head tenderly between both hands, to make certain that it was not coming off or turning round. then ... but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked _private_ in a corridor of the british museum. all i demanded, as politely as possible, was "the greek antiquity man." the policeman knew nothing except the rules of the museum, and it became necessary to forage through all the houses and offices inside the gates. an elderly gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my search by holding the note-paper between finger and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully. "what does this mean? h'mm," said he. "so far as i can ascertain it is an attempt to write extremely corrupt greek on the part"--here he glared at me with intention--"of an extremely illiterate--ah--person." he read slowly from the paper, "_pollock, erckmann, tauchnitz, henniker_"-four names familiar to me. "can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean--the gist of the thing?" i asked. "i have been--many times--overcome with weariness in this particular employment. that is the meaning." he returned me the paper, and i fled without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology. i might have been excused for forgetting much. to me of all men had been given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the world, nothing less than the story of a greek galley-slave, as told by himself. small wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to charlie. the fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since time began. above all, he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial education does not include greek. he would supply me--here i capered among the dumb gods of egypt and laughed in their battered faces--with material to make my tale sure--so sure that the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped fiction. and i--i alone would know that it was absolutely and literally true. i--i alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing. therefore i danced again among the gods till a policeman saw me and took steps in my direction. it remained now only to encourage charlie to talk, and here there was no difficulty. but i had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. he came to me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph--drunk on byron, shelley, or keats. knowing now what the boy had been in his past lives, and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, i could not hide from him my respect and interest. he misconstrued both into respect for the present soul of charlie mears, to whom life was as new as it was to adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my patience to breaking point by reciting poetry--not his own now, but that of others. i wished every english poet blotted out of the memory of mankind. i blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they had drawn charlie from the path of direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to imitate them; but i choked down my impatience until the first flood of enthusiasm should have spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams. "what's the use of my telling you what _i_ think, when these chaps wrote things for the angels to read?" he growled, one evening. "why don't you write something like theirs?" "i don't think you're treating me quite fairly," i said, speaking under strong restraint. "i've given you the story," he said, shortly, replunging into "lara." "but i want the details." "the things i make up about that damned ship that you call a galley? they're quite easy. you can just make 'em up yourself. turn up the gas a little, i want to go on reading." i could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing stupidity. i could indeed make up things for myself did i only know what charlie did not know that he knew. but since the doors were shut behind me i could only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him in good temper. one minute's want of guard might spoil a priceless revelation; now and again he would toss his books aside--he kept them in my rooms, for his mother would have been shocked at the waste of good money had she seen them--and launched into his sea dreams, again i cursed all the poets of england. the plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid, colored and distorted by that which he had read, and the result as delivered was a confused tangle of other voices most like the muttered song through a city telephone in the busiest part of the day. he talked of the galley--his own galley had he but known it--with illustrations borrowed from the "bride of abydos." he pointed the experiences of his hero with quotations from "the corsair," and threw in deep and desperate moral reflections from "cain" and "manfred," expecting me to use them all. only when the talk turned on longfellow were the jarring cross-currents dumb, and i knew that charlie was speaking the truth as he remembered it. "what do you think of this?" i said one evening, as soon as i understood the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could expostulate, read him the whole of "the saga of king olaf!" he listened open-mouthed, flushed, his hands drumming on the back of the sofa where he lay, till i came to the song of einar tamberskelver and the verse: "einar then, the arrow taking from the loosened string, answered: 'that was norway breaking 'neath thy hand, o king.'" he gasped with pure delight of sound. "that's better than byron, a little," i ventured. "better? why it's _true!_ how could he have known?" i went back and repeated: "what was that?' said olaf, standing on the quarter-deck, 'something heard i like the stranding of a shattered wreck?'" "how could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out and go _z-zzp_ all along the line? why only the other night.... but go back please and read 'the skerry of shrieks' again." "no, i'm tired. let's talk. what happened the other night?" "i had an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. i dreamed i was drowned in a fight. you see we ran alongside another ship in harbor. the water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. you know where i always sit in the galley?" he spoke haltingly at first, under a fine english fear of being laughed at, "no. that's news to me," i answered, meekly, my heart beginning to beat. "on the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper deck. there were four of us at that oar, all chained. i remember watching the water and trying to get my handcuffs off before the row began. then we closed up on the other ship, and all their fighting men jumped over our bulwarks, and my bench broke and i was pinned down with the three other fellows on top of me, and the big oar jammed across our backs." "well?" charlie's eyes were alive and alight. he was looking at the wall behind my chair. "i don't know how we fought. the men were trampling all over my back, and i lay low. then our rowers on the left side--tied to their oars, you know--began to yell and back water. i could hear the water sizzle, and we spun round like a cockchafer and i knew, lying where i was, that there was a galley coming up bow-on, to ram us on the left side. i could just lift up my head and see her sail over the bulwarks. we wanted to meet her bow to bow, but it was too late. we could only turn a little bit because the galley on our right had hooked herself on to us and stopped our moving. then, by gum! there was a crash! our left oars began to break as the other galley, the moving one y'know, stuck her nose into them. then the lower-deck oars shot up through the deck planking, butt first, and one of them jumped clean up into the air and came down again close to my head." "how was that managed?" "the moving galley's bow was plunking them back through their own oar-holes, and i could hear the devil of a shindy in the decks below. then her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways, and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck--arrows, and hot pitch or something that stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side, and the right side dipped, and i twisted my head round and saw the water stand still as it topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right side, and i felt it hit my back, and i woke." "one minute, charlie. when the sea topped the bulwarks, what did it look like?" i had my reasons for asking. a man of my acquaintance had once gone down with a leaking ship in a still sea, and had seen the water-level pause for an instant ere it fell on the deck. "it looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay there for years," said charlie. exactly! the other man had said: "it looked like a silver wire laid down along the bulwarks, and i thought it was never going to break." he had paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of knowledge, and i had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him and take his knowledge at second hand. but charlie, the bank-clerk on twenty-five shillings a week, he who had never been out of sight of a london omnibus, knew it all. it was no consolation to me that once in his lives he had been forced to die for his gains. i also must have died scores of times, but behind me, because i could have used my knowledge, the doors were shut. "and then?" i said, trying to put away the devil of envy. "the funny thing was, though, in all the mess i didn't feel a bit astonished or frightened. it seemed as if i'd been in a good many fights, because i told my next man so when the row began. but that cad of an overseer on my deck wouldn't unloose our chains and give us a chance. he always said that we'd all be set free after a battle, but we never were; we never were." charlie shook his head mournfully. "what a scoundrel!" "i should say he was. he never gave us enough to eat, and sometimes we were so thirsty that we used to drink salt-water. i can taste that salt-water still." "now tell me something about the harbor where the fight was fought." "i didn't dream about that. i know it was a harbor, though; because we were tied up to a ring on a white wall and all the face of the stone under water was covered with wood to prevent our ram getting chipped when the tide made us rock." "that's curious. our hero commanded the galley, didn't he?" "didn't he just! he stood by the bows and shouted like a good 'un. he was the man who killed the overseer." "but you were all drowned together, charlie, weren't you?" "i can't make that fit quite," he said, with a puzzled look. "the galley must have gone down with all hands, and yet i fancy that the hero went on living afterward. perhaps he climbed into the attacking ship. i wouldn't see that, of course. i was dead, you know." he shivered slightly and protested that he could remember no more. i did not press him further, but to satisfy myself that he lay in ignorance of the workings of his own mind, deliberately introduced him to mortimer collins's "transmigration," and gave him a sketch of the plot before he opened the pages. "what rot it all is!" he said, frankly, at the end of an hour. "i don't understand his nonsense about the red planet mars and the king, and the rest of it. chuck me the longfellow again." i handed him the book and wrote out as much as i could remember of his description of the sea-fight, appealing to him from time to time for confirmation of fact or detail. he would answer without raising his eyes from the book, as assuredly as though all his knowledge lay before him on the printed page. i spoke under the normal key of my voice that the current might not be broken, and i know that he was not aware of what he was saying, for his thoughts were out on the sea with longfellow. "charlie," i asked, "when the rowers on the gallies mutinied how did they kill their overseers?" "tore up the benches and brained 'em. that happened when a heavy sea was running. an overseer on the lower deck slipped from the centre plank and fell among the rowers. they choked him to death against the side of the ship with their chained hands quite quietly, and it was too dark for the other overseer to see what had happened. when he asked, he was pulled down too and choked, and the lower deck fought their way up deck by deck, with the pieces of the broken benches banging behind 'em. how they howled!" "and what happened after that?" "i don't know. the hero went away--red hair and red beard and all. that was after he had captured our galley, i think." the sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with his left hand as a man does when interruption jars. "you never told me he was red-headed before, or that he captured your galley," i said, after a discreet interval. charlie did not raise his eyes. "he was as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "he came from the north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers--not slaves, but free men. afterward--years and years afterward--news came from another ship, or else he came back"-- his lips moved in silence. he was rapturously retasting some poem before him. "where had he been, then?" i was almost whispering that the sentence might come gentle to whichever section of charlie's brain was working on my behalf. "to the beaches--the long and wonderful beaches!" was the reply, after a minute of silence. "to furdurstrandi?" i asked, tingling from head to foot. "yes, to furdurstrandi," he pronounced the word in a new fashion. "and i too saw"----the voice failed. "do you know what you have said?" i shouted, incautiously. he lifted his eyes, fully roused now, "no!" he snapped. "i wish you'd let a chap go on reading. hark to this: "'but othere, the old sea captain, he neither paused nor stirred till the king listened, and then once more took up his pen and wrote down every word, "'and to the king of the saxons in witness of the truth, raising his noble head, he stretched his brown hand and said, "behold this walrus tooth."' by jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the shop never knowing where they'd fetch the land! hah!" "charlie," i pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two i'll make our hero in our tale every inch as good as othere." "umph! longfellow wrote that poem. i don't care about writing things any more. i want to read." he was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging over my own ill-luck, i left him. conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a child--an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones--on whose favor depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one half my torment. till that evening charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the experiences of a greek galley-slave. but now, or there was no virtue in books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the vikings, of thorfin karlsefne's sailing to wineland, which is america, in the ninth or tenth century. the battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own death he had described. but this was a much more startling plunge into the past. was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand years later? it was a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that charlie mears in his normal condition was the last person in the world to clear it up. i could only wait and watch, but i went to bed that night full of the wildest imaginings. there was nothing that was not possible if charlie's detestable memory only held good. i might rewrite the saga of thorfin karlsefne as it had never been written before, might tell the story of the first discovery of america, myself the discoverer. but i was entirely at charlie's mercy, and so long as there was a three-and-six-penny bohn volume within his reach charlie would not tell. i dared not curse him openly; i hardly dared jog his memory, for i was dealing with the experiences of a thousand years ago, told through the mouth of a boy of to-day; and a boy of to-day is affected by every change of tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies even when he desires to speak the truth. i saw no more of him for nearly a week. when next i met him it was in gracechurch street with a billhook chained to his waist. business took him over london bridge and i accompanied him. he was very full of the importance of that book and magnified it. as we passed over the thames we paused to look at a steamer unloading great slabs of white and brown marble. a barge drifted under the steamer's stern and a lonely cow in that barge bellowed. charlie's face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to that of an unknown and--though he would not have believed this--a much shrewder man. he flung out his arm across the parapet of the bridge and laughing very loudly, said: "when they heard _our_ bulls bellow the skroelings ran away!" i waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared under the bows of the steamer before i answered. "charlie, what do you suppose are skroelings?" "never heard of 'em before. they sound like a new kind of seagull. what a chap you are for asking questions!" he replied. "i have to go to the cashier of the omnibus company yonder. will you wait for me and we can lunch somewhere together? i've a notion for a poem." "no, thanks. i'm off. you're sure you know nothing about skroelings?" "not unless he's been entered for the liverpool handicap." he nodded and disappeared in the crowd. now it is written in the saga of eric the red or that of thorfin karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when karlsefne's galleys came to leif's booths, which leif had erected in the unknown land called markland, which may or may not have been rhode island, the skroelings--and the lord he knows who these may or may not have been--came to trade with the vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which thorfin had brought with him in the ships. but what in the world could a greek slave know of that affair? i wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more i considered it, the more baffling it grew. one thing only seemed certain, and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. if i came to full knowledge of anything at all it would not be one life of the soul in charlie mears's body, but half a dozen--half a dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water in the morning of the world! then i walked round the situation. obviously if i used my knowledge i should stand alone and unapproachable until all men were as wise as myself. that would be something, but manlike i was ungrateful. it seemed bitterly unfair that charlie's memory should fail me when i needed it most. great powers above--i looked up at them through the fog smoke--did the lords of life and death know what this meant to me? nothing less than eternal fame of the best kind, that comes from one, and is shared by one alone. i would be content--remembering clive, i stood astounded at my own moderation,--with the mere right to tell one story, to work out one little contribution to the light literature of the day. if charlie were permitted full recollection for one hour--for sixty short minutes--of existences that had extended over a thousand years--i would forego all profit and honor from all that i should make of his speech. i would take no share in the commotion that would follow throughout the particular corner of the earth that calls itself "the world." the thing should be put forth anonymously. nay, i would make other men believe that they had written it. they would hire bull-hided self-advertising englishmen to bellow it abroad. preachers would found a fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was new and that they had lifted the fear of death from all mankind. every orientalist in europe would patronize it discursively with sanskrit and pali texts. terrible women would invent unclean variants of the men's belief for the elevation of their sisters. churches and religions would war over it. between the hailing and re-starting of an omnibus i foresaw the scuffles that would arise among half a dozen denominations all professing "the doctrine of the true metempsychosis as applied to the world and the new era"; and saw, too, the respectable english newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. the mind leaped forward a hundred--two hundred--a thousand years. i saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it seemed altogether new. upon this i changed the terms of the bargain that i would make with the lords of life and death. only let me know, let me write, the story with sure knowledge that i wrote the truth, and i would burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice. five minutes after the last line was written i would destroy it all. but i must be allowed to write it with absolute certainty. there was no answer. the flaming colors of an aquarium poster caught my eye and i wondered whether it would be wise or prudent to lure charlie into the hands of the professional mesmerist, and whether, if he were under his power, he would speak of his past lives. if he did, and if people believed him ... but charlie would be frightened and flustered, or made conceited by the interviews. in either case he would begin to lie, through fear or vanity. he was safest in my own hands, "they are very funny fools, your english," said a voice at my elbow, and turning round i recognized a casual acquaintance, a young bengali law student, called grish chunder, whose father had sent him to england to become civilized. the old man was a retired native official, and on an income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son two hundred pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he could pretend to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the brutal indian bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor. grish chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied bengali dressed with scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers and tan gloves. but i had known him in the days when the brutal indian government paid for his university education, and he contributed cheap sedition to _sachi durpan_, and intrigued with the wives of his schoolmates. "that is very funny and very foolish," he said, nodding at the poster. "i am going down to the northbrook club. will you come too?" i walked with him for some time. "you are not well," he said. "what is there in your mind? you do not talk." "grish chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a god, haven't you?" "oah, yes, _here!_ but when i go home i must conciliate popular superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will anoint idols." "and hang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into caste again and make a good _khuttri_ of you again, you advanced social free-thinker. and you'll eat _desi_ food, and like it all, from the smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you." "i shall very much like it," said grish chunder, unguardedly, "once a hindu--always a hindu. but i like to know what the english think they know." "i'll tell you something that one englishman knows. it's an old tale to you." i began to tell the story of charlie in english, but grish chunder put a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the tongue best suited for its telling. after all it could never have been told in english. grish chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and then came up to my rooms where i finished the tale. "_beshak,_" he said, philosophically. "_lekin darwaza band hai_. (without doubt, but the door is shut.) i have heard of this remembering of previous existences among my people. it is of course an old tale with us, but, to happen to an englishman--a cow-fed _malechh_--an outcast. by jove, that is most peculiar!" "outcast yourself, grish chunder! you eat cow-beef every day. let's think the thing over. the boy remembers his incarnations." "does he know that?" said grish chunder, quietly, swinging his legs as he sat on my table. he was speaking in english now. "he does not know anything. would i speak to you if he did? go on!" "there is no going on at all. if you tell that to your friends they will say you are mad and put it in the papers. suppose, now, you prosecute for libel." "let's leave that out of the question entirely. is there any chance of his being made to speak?" "there is a chance. oah, yess! but _if_ he spoke it would mean that all this world would end now--_instanto_--fall down on your head. these things are not allowed, you know. as i said, the door is shut." "not a ghost of a chance?" "how can there be? you are a christian, and it is forbidden to eat, in your books, of the tree of life, or else you would never die. how shall you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he knows? i am afraid to be kicked, but i am not afraid to die, because i know what i know. you are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. if you were not, by god! you english would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. it would not be good. but no fear. he will remember a little and a little less, and he will call it dreams. then he will forget altogether. when i passed my first arts examination in calcutta that was all in the cram-book on wordsworth. trailing clouds of glory, you know." "this seems to be an exception to the rule." "there are no exceptions to rules. some are not so hard-looking as others, but they are all the same when you touch. if this friend of yours said so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered all his lost lives, or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the bank another hour. he would be what you called sack because he was mad, and they would send him to an asylum for lunatics. you can see that, my friend." "of course i can, but i wasn't thinking of him. his name need never appear in the story," "ah! i see. that story will never be written. you can try," "i am going to." "for your own credit and for the sake of money, _of_ course?" "no. for the sake of writing the story. on my honor that will be all." "even then there is no chance. you cannot play with the gods. it is a very pretty story now. as they say, let it go on that--i mean at that. be quick; he will not last long." "how do you mean?" "what i say. he has never, so far, thought about a woman." "hasn't he, though!" i remembered some of charlie's confidences. "i mean no woman has thought about him. when that comes; _bus_--_hogya_--all up! i know. there are millions of women here. housemaids, for instance." i winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid. and yet nothing was more probable. grish chunder grinned. "yes--also pretty girls--cousins of his house, and perhaps _not_ of his house. one kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all this nonsense, or else"-- "or else what? remember he does not know that he knows." "i know that. or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the trade and the financial speculations like the rest. it must be so. you can see that it must be so. but the woman will come first, _i_ think." there was a rap at the door, and charlie charged in impetuously. he had been released from office, and by the look in his eyes i could see that he had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his pockets. charlie's poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him to talk about the galley. grish chunder looked at him keenly for a minute. "i beg your pardon," charlie said, uneasily; "i didn't know you had any one with you." "i am going," said grish chunder, he drew me into the lobby as he departed. "that is your man," he said, quickly. "i tell you he will never speak all you wish. that is rot--bosh. but he would be most good to make to see things. suppose now we pretend that it was only play"--i had never seen grish chunder so excited--"and pour the ink-pool into his hand. eh, what do you think? i tell you that he could see _anything_ that a man could see. let me get the ink and the camphor. he is a seer and he will tell us very many things." "he may be all you say, but i'm not going to trust him to your gods and devils." "it will not hurt him. he will only feel a little stupid and dull when he wakes up. you have seen boys look into the ink-pool before." "that is the reason why i am not going to see it any more. you'd better go, grish chunder." he went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my only chance of looking into the future. this left me unmoved, for i was concerned for the past, and no peering of hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me to that. but i recognized grish chunder's point of view and sympathized with it. "what a big black brute that was!" said charlie, when i returned to him. "well, look here, i've just done a poem; did it instead of playing dominoes after lunch. may i read it?" "let me read it to myself." "then you miss the proper expression. besides, you always make my things sound as if the rhymes were all wrong." "read it aloud, then. you're like the rest of 'em." charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average of his verses. he had been reading his books faithfully, but he was not pleased when i told him that i preferred my longfellow undiluted with charlie. then we began to go through the ms. line by line; charlie parrying every objection and correction with: "yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what i'm driving at." charles was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet. there was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "what's that?" i said. "oh that's not poetry at all. it's some rot i wrote last night before i went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so i made it a sort of blank verse instead." here is charlie's "blank verse": "we pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low. _will you never let us go?_ we ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when you were beaten back by the foe, the captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs, but we were below, we fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were idle for we still swung to and fro. _will you never let us go?_ the salt made the oar bandies like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row, _will you never let us go?_ but in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in the belly of the sail. aho! _will you never let us go?_" "h'm. what's oar-thresh, charlie?" "the water washed up by the oars. that's the sort of song they might sing in the galley, y'know. aren't you ever going to finish that story and give me some of the profits?" "it depends on yourself. if you had only told me more about your hero in the first instance it might have been finished by now. you're so hazy in your notions." "i only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking about from place to place and the fighting and all that. can't you fill in the rest yourself? make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do something." "you're a really helpful collaborator. i suppose the hero went through some few adventures before he married." "well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began." "but you said the other day that he was red-haired." "i couldn't have. make him black-haired of course. you've no imagination." seeing that i had just discovered the entire principles upon which the half-memory falsely called imagination is based, i felt entitled to laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale. "you're right _you're_ the man with imagination. a black-haired chap in a decked ship," i said. "no, an open ship--like a big boat." this was maddening. "your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said so yourself," i protested. "no, no, not that ship. that was open, or half decked because--by jove you're right you made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap. of course if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted sails," surely, i thought, he would remember now that he had served in two galleys at least--in a three-decked greek one under the black-haired "political man," and again in a viking's open sea-serpent under the man "red as a red bear" who went to markland. the devil prompted me to speak. "why, 'of course,' charlie?" said i. "i don't know. are you making fun of me?" the current was broken for the time being. i took up a notebook and pretended to make many entries in it. "it's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," i said, after a pause. "the way that you've brought out the character of the hero is simply wonderful." "do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush. "i often tell myself that there's more in me than my mo--than people think." "there's an enormous amount in you." "then, won't you let me send an essay on the ways of bank clerks to _tit-bits_, and get the guinea prize?" "that wasn't exactly what i meant, old fellow; perhaps it would be better to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story." "ah, but i sha'n't get the credit of that. _tit-bits_ would publish my name and address if i win. what are you grinning at? they _would_." "i know it. suppose you go for a walk. i want to look through my notes about our story." now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back, might for aught he or i knew have been one of the crew of the _argo_--had been certainly slave or comrade to thorfin karlsefne. therefore he was deeply interested in guinea competitions. remembering what grish chunder had said i laughed aloud. the lords of life and death would never allow charlie mears to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and i must even piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while charlie wrote of the ways of bank clerks. i got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result was not cheering. i read them a second time. there was nothing that might not have been compiled at secondhand from other people's books--except, perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbor. the adventures of a viking had been written many times before; the history of a greek galley-slave was no new thing, and though i wrote both, who could challenge or confirm the accuracy of my details? i might as well tell a tale of two thousand years hence. the lords of life and death were as cunning as grish chunder had hinted. they would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make easy the minds of men. though i was convinced of this, yet i could not leave the tale alone. exaltation followed reaction, not once, but twenty times in the next few weeks. my moods varied with the march sunlight and flying clouds. by night or in the beauty of a spring morning i perceived that i could write that tale and shift continents thereby. in the wet, windy afternoons, i saw that the tale might indeed be written, but would be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of wardour street work at the end. then i blessed charlie in many ways--though it was no fault of his. he seemed to be busy with prize competitions, and i saw less and less of him as the weeks went by and the earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and the buds swelled in their sheaths. he did not care to read or talk of what he had read, and there was a new ring of self-assertion in his voice. i hardly cared to remind him of the galley when we met; but charlie alluded to it on every occasion, always as a story from which money was to be made. "i think i deserve twenty-five per cent., don't i, at least," he said, with beautiful frankness. "i supplied all the ideas, didn't i?" this greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. i assumed that it had been developed in the city, where charlie was picking up the curious nasal drawl of the underbred city man. "when the thing's done we'll talk about it. i can't make anything of it at present. red-haired or black-haired hero are equally difficult." he was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "i can't understand what you find so difficult. it's all as clear as mud to me," he replied. a jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light and whistled softly. "suppose we take the red-haired hero's adventures first, from the time that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to the beaches." i knew better now than to interrupt charlie. i was out of reach of pen and paper, and dared not move to get them lest i should break the current. the gas-jet puffed and whinnied, charlie's voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth charlie. he spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods, where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under the pines. their ghosts, charlie said, followed the galley, swimming and choking in the water, and the crew cast lots and threw one of their number overboard as a sacrifice to the strange gods whom they had offended. then they ate sea-weed when their provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their leader, the red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a year spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a wind that never failed carried them back so safely that they all slept at night. this, and much more charlie told. sometimes the voice fell so low that i could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain, he spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his god; for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail with us," said charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the oars." the gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. charlie ceased speaking, and i said no word, "by jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "i've been staring at the fire till i'm dizzy. what was i going to say?" "something about the galley." "i remember now. it's per cent. of the profits, isn't it?" "it's anything you like when i've done the tale." "i wanted to be sure of that. i must go now. i've--i've an appointment." and he left me. had my eyes not been held i might have known that that broken muttering over the fire was the swan-song of charlie mears. but i thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. at last and at last i should cheat the lords of life and death! when next charlie came to me i received him with rapture. he was nervous and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a little parted. "i've done a poem," he said; and then, quickly: "it's the best i've ever done. read it." he thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window. i groaned inwardly. it would be the work of half an hour to criticise--that is to say praise--the poem sufficiently to please charlie. then i had good reason to groan, for charlie, discarding his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. this is what i read: "the day is most fair, the cheery wind halloos behind the hill, where he bends the wood as seemeth good, and the sapling to his will! riot o wind; there is that in my blood that would not have thee still! "she gave me herself, o earth, o sky; grey sea, she is mine alone! let the sullen boulders hear my cry, and rejoice tho' they be but stone! "mine! i have won her o good brown earth, make merry! 'tis hard on spring; make merry; my love is doubly worth all worship your fields can bring! let the hind that tills you feel my mirth at the early harrowing," "yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," i said, with a dread at my heart, charlie smiled, but did not answer. "red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad; i am victor. greet me o sun, dominant master and absolute lord over the soul of one!" "well?" said charlie, looking over my shoulder. i thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper--the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a foolish slack mouth. "isn't it--isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "i didn't know; i didn't think--it came like a thunderclap." "yes. it comes like a thunderclap. are you very happy, charlie?" "my god--she--she loves me!" he sat down repeating the last words to himself. i looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past lives. "what will your mother say?" i asked, cheerfully. "i don't care a damn what she says." at twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. i told him this gently; and he described her, even as adam must have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of eve. incidentally i learned that she was a tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already that she had never been kissed by a man before. charlie spoke on and on, and on; while i, separated from him by thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things. now i understood why the lords of life and death shut the doors so carefully behind us. it is that we may not remember our first wooings. were it not so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years. "now, about that galley-story," i said, still more cheerfully, in a pause in the rush of the speech. charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "the galley--what galley? good heavens, don't joke, man! this is serious! you don't know how serious it is!" grish chunder was right, charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written. with the main guard der jungere uhlanen sit round mit open mouth while breitmann tell dem stories of fightin' in the south; und gif dem moral lessons, how before der battle pops, take a little prayer to himmel und a goot long drink of schnapps. _hans breitmann's ballads_. "mary, mother av mercy, fwhat the divil possist us to take an' kepe this melancolius counthry? answer me that, sorr." it was mulvaney who was speaking. the time was one o'clock of a stifling june night, and the place was the main gate of fort amara, most desolate and least desirable of all fortresses in india. what i was doing there at that hour is a question which only concerns m'grath the sergeant of the guard, and the men on the gate. "slape," said mulvaney, "is a shuparfluous necessity. this gyard'll shtay lively till relieved." he himself was stripped to the waist; learoyd on the next bedstead was dripping from the skinful of water which ortheris, clad only in white trousers, had just sluiced over his shoulders; and a fourth private was muttering uneasily as he dozed open-mouthed in the glare of the great guard-lantern. the heat under the bricked archway was terrifying. "the worrst night that iver i remimber. eyah! is all hell loose this tide?" said mulvaney. a puff of burning wind lashed through the wicket-gate like a wave of the sea, and ortheris swore. "are ye more heasy, jock?" he said to learoyd. "put yer 'ead between your legs. it'll go orf in a minute." "ah don't care. ah would not care, but ma heart is plaayin' tivvy-tivvy on ma ribs. let me die! oh, leave me die!" groaned the huge yorkshireman, who was feeling the heat acutely, being of fleshly build. the sleeper under the lantern roused for a moment and raised himself on his elbow,--"die and be damned then!" he said. "_i_'m damned and i can't die!" "who's that?" i whispered, for the voice was new to me. "gentleman born," said mulvaney; "corp'ril wan year, sargint nex'. red-hot on his c'mission, but dhrinks like a fish. he'll be gone before the cowld weather's here. so!" he slipped his boot, and with the naked toe just touched the trigger of his martini. ortheris misunderstood the movement, and the next instant the irishman's rifle was dashed aside, while ortheris stood before him, his eyes blazing with reproof. "you!" said ortheris. "my gawd, _you!_ if it was you, wot would _we_ do?" "kape quiet, little man," said mulvaney, putting him aside, but very gently; "'tis not me, nor will ut be me whoile dina shadd's here. i was but showin' something." learoyd, bowed on his bedstead, groaned, and the gentleman-ranker sighed in his sleep. ortheris took mulvaney's tendered pouch, and we three smoked gravely for a space while the dust-devils danced on the glacis and scoured the red-hot plain. "pop?" said ortheris, wiping his forehead. "don't tantalize wid talkin' av dhrink, or i'll shtuff you into your own breech-block an'--fire you off!" grunted mulvaney. ortheris chuckled, and from a niche in the veranda produced six bottles of ginger ale. "where did ye get ut, ye machiavel?" said mulvaney. "'tis no bazar pop." "'ow do _hi_ know wot the orf'cers drink?" answered ortheris. "arst the mess-man." "ye'll have a disthrict coort-martial settin' on ye yet, me son," said mulvaney, "but"--he opened a bottle--"i will not report ye this time. fwhat's in the mess-kid is mint for the belly, as they say, 'specially whin that mate is dhrink, here's luck! a bloody war or a--no, we've got the sickly season. war, thin!"--he waved the innocent "pop" to the four quarters of heaven. "bloody war! north, east, south, an' west! jock, ye quakin' hayrick, come an' dhrink." but learoyd, half mad with the fear of death presaged in the swelling veins of his neck, was pegging his maker to strike him dead, and fighting for more air between his prayers. a second time ortheris drenched the quivering body with water, and the giant revived. "an' ah divn't see thot a mon is i' fettle for gooin' on to live; an' ah divn't see thot there is owt for t' livin' for. hear now, lads! ah'm tired--tired. there's nobbut watter i' ma bones, let me die!" the hollow of the arch gave back learoyd's broken whisper in a bass boom. mulvaney looked at me hopelessly, but i remembered how the madness of despair had once fallen upon ortheris, that weary, weary afternoon in the banks of the khemi river, and how it had been exorcised by the skilful magician mulvaney. "talk, terence!" i said, "or we shall have learoyd slinging loose, and he'll be worse than ortheris was. talk! he'll answer to your voice." almost before ortheris had deftly thrown all the rifles of the guard on mulvaney's bedstead, the irishman's voice was uplifted as that of one in the middle of a story, and, turning to me, he said-- "in barricks or out of it, as _you_ say, sorr, an oirish rig'mint is the divil an' more. 'tis only fit for a young man wid eddicated fistesses. oh the crame av disruption is an oirish rig'mint, an' rippin', tearin', ragin' scattherers in the field av war! my first rig'mint was oirish--faynians an' rebils to the heart av their marrow was they, an' _so_ they fought for the widdy betther than most, bein' contrairy--oirish. they was the black tyrone. you've heard av thim, sorr?" heard of them! i knew the black tyrone for the choicest collection of unmitigated blackguards, dog-stealers, robbers of hen-roosts, assaulters of innocent citizens, and recklessly daring heroes in the army list. half europe and half asia has had cause to know the black tyrone--good luck be with their tattered colors as glory has ever been! "they _was_ hot pickils an' ginger! i cut a man's head tu deep wid my belt in the days av my youth, an', afther some circumstances which i will oblitherate, i came to the ould rig'mint, bearin' the character av a man wid hands an' feet. but, as i was goin' to tell you, i fell acrost the black tyrone agin wan day whin we wanted thim powerful bad, orth'ris, me son, fwhat was the name av that place where they sint wan comp'ny av us an' wan av the tyrone roun' a hill an' down again, all for to tache the paythans something they'd niver learned before? afther ghuzni 'twas." "don't know what the bloomin' paythans called it. we call it silver's theayter. you know that, sure!" "silver's theatre--so 'twas, a gut betune two hills, as black as a bucket, an' as thin as a girl's waist. there was over-many paythans for our convaynience in the gut, an' begad they called thimselves a reserve--bein' impident by natur! our scotchies an' lashins av gurkys was poundin' into some paythan rig'mints, i think 'twas. scotchies an' gurkys are twins bekaze they're so onlike, an' they get dhrunk together whin god plazes. as i was sayin', they sint wan comp'ny av the ould an wan av the tyrone to double up the hill an' clane out the paythan reserve. orf'cers was scarce in thim days, fwhat with dysintry an' not takin' care av thimselves, an' we was sint out wid only wan orf'cer for the comp'ny; but he was a man that had his feet beneath him, an' all his teeth in their sockuts." "who was he?" i asked, "captain o'neil--old crook--cruikna-bulleen--him that i tould ye that tale av whin he was in burma.[ ] hah! he was a man. the tyrone tuk a little orf'cer bhoy, but divil a bit was he in command, as i'll dimonstrate presintly. we an' they came over the brow av the hill, wan on each side av the gut, an' there was that ondacint reserve waitin' down below like rats in a pit. [footnote : now first of the foemen of boh da thone was captain o'neil of the black tyrone. _the ballad of boh da thone. _] "'howld on, men,' sez crook, who tuk a mother's care av us always. 'rowl some rocks on thim by way av visitin'-kyards.' we hadn't rowled more than twinty bowlders, an' the paythans was beginnin' to swear tremenjus, whin the little orf'cer bhoy av the tyrone shqueaks out acrost the valley:--'fwhat the devil an' all are you doin', shpoilin' the fun for my men? do ye not see they'll stand?' "'faith, that's a rare pluckt wan!' sez crook. 'niver mind the rocks, men. come along down an' take tay wid thim!' "'there's damned little sugar in ut!' sez my rear-rank man; but crook heard. "'have ye not all got spoons?' he sez, laughin', an' down we wint as fast as we cud. learoyd bein' sick at the base, he, av coorse, was not there." "thot's a lie!" said learoyd, dragging his bedstead nearer. "ah gotten _thot_ theer, an' you knaw it, mulvaney." he threw up his arms, and from the right arm-pit ran, diagonally through the fell of his chest, a thin white line terminating near the fourth left rib. "my mind's goin'," said mulvaney, the unabashed. "ye were there. fwhat i was thinkin' of! twas another man, av coorse. well, you'll remimber thin, jock, how we an' the tyrone met wid a bang at the bottom an' got jammed past all movin' among the paythans." "ow! it _was_ a tight 'ole. i was squeezed till i thought i'd bloomin' well bust," said ortheris, rubbing his stomach meditatively, "'twas no place for a little man, but _wan_ little man"--mulvaney put his hand on ortheris's shoulder--"saved the life av me. there we shtuck, for divil a bit did the paythans flinch, an' divil a bit dare we: our business bein' to clear 'em out. an' the most exthryordinar' thing av all was that we an' they just rushed into each other's arrums, an' there was no firing for a long time. nothin' but knife an' bay'nit when we cud get our hands free: an' that was not often. we was breast-on to thim, an' the tyrone was yelpin' behind av us in a way i didn't see the lean av at first but i knew later, an' so did the paythans. "'knee to knee!' sings out crook, wid a laugh whin the rush av our comin' into the gut shtopped, an' he was huggin' a hairy great paythan, neither bein' able to do anything to the other, tho' both was wishful. "'breast to breast!' he sez, as the tyrone was pushin' us forward closer an' closer. "'an' hand over back!' sez a sargint that was behin'. i saw a sword lick out past crook's ear, an' the paythan was tuk in the apple av his throat like a pig at dromeen fair. "'thank ye, brother inner guard,' sez crook, cool as a cucumber widout salt. 'i wanted that room.' an' he wint forward by the thickness av a man's body, havin' turned the paythan undher him. the man bit the heel off crook's boot in his death-bite. "'push, men!' sez crook. 'push, ye paper-backed beggars!' he sez. 'am i to pull ye through?' so we pushed, an' we kicked, an' we swung, an' we swore, an' the grass bein' slippery, our heels wouldn't bite, an' god help the front-rank man that wint down that day!" "'ave you ever bin in the pit hentrance o' the vic. on a thick night?" interrupted ortheris. "it was worse nor that, for they was goin' one way an' we wouldn't 'ave it. leastaways, i 'adn't much to say." "faith, me son, ye said ut, thin. i kep' the little man betune my knees as long as i cud, but he was pokin' roun' wid his bay'nit, blindin' an' stiffin' feroshus. the devil of a man is orth'ris in a ruction--aren't ye?" said mulvaney. "don't make game!" said the cockney. "i knowed i wasn't no good then, but i gev 'em compot from the lef' flank when we opened out. no!" he said, bringing down his hand with a thump on the bedstead, "a bay'nit ain't no good to a little man--might as well 'ave a bloomin' fishin'-rod! i 'ate a clawin', maulin' mess, but gimme a breech that's wore out a bit, an' hamminition one year in store, to let the powder kiss the bullet, an' put me somewheres where i ain't trod on by 'ulkin swine like you, an' s'elp me gawd, i could bowl you over five times outer seven at height 'undred. would yer try, you lumberin' hirishman." "no, ye wasp, i've seen ye do ut. i say there's nothin' better than the bay'nit, wid a long reach, a double twist av ye can, an' a slow recover." "dom the bay'nit," said learoyd, who had been listening intently, "look a-here!" he picked up a rifle an inch below the foresight with an underhand action, and used it exactly as a man would use a dagger. "sitha," said he, softly, "thot's better than owt, for a mon can bash t' faace wi' thot, an', if he divn't, he can breeak t' forearm o' t' gaard, 'tis not i' t' books, though. gie me t' butt" "each does ut his own way, like makin' love," said mulvaney, quietly; "the butt or the bay'nit or the bullet accordin' to the natur' av the man. well, as i was sayin', we shtuck there breathin' in each other's faces and swearin' powerful; orth'ris cursin' the mother that bore him bekaze he was not three inches taller. "prisintly he sez:--'duck, ye lump, an' i can get at a man over your shouldher!' "'you'll blow me head off,' i sez, throwin' my arm clear; 'go through under my arm-pit, ye bloodthirsty little scutt,' sez i, 'but don't shtick me or i'll wring your ears round.' "fwhat was ut ye gave the paythan man for-ninst me, him that cut at me whin i cudn't move hand or foot? hot or cowld was ut?" "cold," said ortheris, "up an' under the rib-jint. 'e come down flat. best for you 'e did." "thrue, my son! this jam thing that i'm talkin' about lasted for five minutes good, an' thin we got our arms clear an' wint in. i misremimber exactly fwhat i did, but i didn't want dinah to be a widdy at the depôt. thin, after some promishkuous hackin' we shtuck again, an' the tyrone behin' was callin' us dogs an' cowards an' all manner av names; we barrin' their way. "'fwhat ails the tyrone?' thinks i; 'they've the makin's av a most convanient fight here.' "a man behind me sez beseechful an' in a whisper:--'let me get at thim! for the love av mary give me room beside ye, ye tall man!" "'an' who are you that's so anxious to be kilt?' sez i, widout turnin' my head, for the long knives was dancin' in front like the sun on donegal bay whin ut's rough. "'we've seen our dead,' he sez, squeezin' into me; 'our dead that was men two days gone! an' me that was his cousin by blood could not bring tim coulan off! let me get on,' he sez, 'let me get to thim or i'll run ye through the back!' "'my troth,' thinks i, 'if the tyrone have seen their dead, god help the paythans this day!' an' thin i knew why the oirish was ragin' behind us as they was. "i gave room to the man, an' he ran forward wid the haymaker's lift on his bay'nit an' swung a paythan clear off his feet by the belly-band av the brute, an' the iron bruk at the lockin'-ring. "'tim coulan 'll slape easy to-night,' sez he, wid a grin; an' the next minut his head was in two halves and he wint down grinnin' by sections. "the tyrone was pushin' an' pushin' in, an' our men was swearin' at thim, an' crook was workin' away in front av us all, his sword-arm swingin' like a pump-handle an' his revolver spittin' like a cat. but the strange thing av ut was the quiet that lay upon. 'twas like a fight in a drame--except for thim that was dead. "whin i gave room to the oirishman i was expinded an' forlorn in my inside. 'tis a way i have, savin' your presince, sorr, in action. 'let me out, bhoys,' sez i, backin' in among thim. 'i'm goin' to be onwell!' faith they gave me room at the wurrud, though they would not ha' given room for all hell wid the chill off. when i got clear, i was, savin' your presince, sorr, outragis sick bekaze i had dhrunk heavy that day. "well an' far out av harm was a sargint av the tyrone sittin' on the little orf'cer bhoy who had stopped crook from rowlin' the rocks. oh, he was a beautiful bhoy, an' the long black curses was slidin' out av his innocint mouth like mornin'-jew from a rose! "'fwhat have you got there?' sez i to the sargint. "'wan av her majesty's bantams wid his spurs up,' sez he. 'he's goin' to coort-martial me.' "'let me go!' sez the little orf'cer bhoy. 'let me go and command my men!' manin' thereby the black tyrone which was beyond any command--ay, even av they had made the divil a field orf'cer. "'his father howlds my mother's cow-feed in clonmel,' sez the man that was sittin' on him. 'will i go back to _his_ mother an' tell her that i've let him throw himself away? lie still, ye little pinch av dynamite, an' coort-martial me aftherward.' "'good,' sez i; ''tis the likes av him makes the likes av the commandher-in-chief, but we must presarve thim. fwhat d'you want to do, sorr?' sez i, very politeful. "'kill the beggars--kill the beggars!' he shqueaks; his big blue eyes brimmin' wid tears. "'an' how'll ye do that?' sez i. 'you've shquibbed off your revolver like a child wid a cracker; you can make no play wid that fine large sword av yours; an' your hand's shakin' like an asp on a leaf. lie still an' grow,' sez i. "'get back to your comp'ny,' sez he; 'you're insolint!' "'all in good time,' sez i, 'but i'll have a dhrink first.' "just thin crook comes up, blue an' white all over where he wasn't red. "'wather!' sez he; 'i'm dead wid drouth! oh, but it's a gran' day!' "he dhrank half a skinful, and the rest he tilts into his chest, an' it fair hissed on the hairy hide av him. he sees the little orf'cer bhoy undher the sargint. "'fwhat's yonder?' sez he. "'mutiny, sorr,' sez the sargint, an' the orf'cer bhoy begins pleadin' pitiful to crook to be let go: but divil a bit wud crook budge. "'kape him there,' he sez, ''tis no child's work this day. by the same token,' sez he, 'i'll confishcate that iligant nickel-plated scent-sprinkler av yours, for my own has been vomitin' dishgraceful!' "the fork av his hand was black wid the backspit av the machine. so he tuk the orf'cer bhoy's revolver. ye may look, sorr, but, by my faith, _there's a dale more done in the field than iver gets into field ordhers!_ "'come on, mulvaney,' sez crook; 'is this a coort-martial?' the two av us wint back together into the mess an' the paythans were still standin' up. they was not _too_ impart'nint though, for the tyrone was callin' wan to another to remimber tim coulan. "crook stopped outside av the strife an' looked anxious, his eyes rowlin' roun'. "'fwhat is ut, sorr?' sez i; 'can i get ye anything?' "'where's a bugler?' sez he. "i wint into the crowd--our men was dhrawin' breath behin' the tyrone who was fightin' like sowls in tormint--an' prisintly i came acrost little frehan, our bugler bhoy, pokin' roun' among the best wid a rifle an' bay'nit. "'is amusin' yoursilf fwhat you're paid for, ye limb?' sez i, catchin' him by the scruff. 'come out av that an' attind to your duty.' i sez; but the bhoy was not pleased. "'i've got wan,' sez he, grinnin', 'big as you, mulvaney, an' fair half as ugly. let me go get another.' "i was dishpleased at the personability av that remark, so i tucks him under my arm an' carries him to crook who was watchin' how the fight wint. crook cuffs him till the bhoy cries, an' thin sez nothin' for a whoile. "the paythans began to flicker onaisy, an' our men roared. 'opin ordher! double!' sez crook. 'blow, child, blow for the honor av the british arrmy!' "that bhoy blew like a typhoon, an' the tyrone an' we opined out as the paythans broke, an' i saw that fwhat had gone before wud be kissin' an' huggin' to fwhat was to come. we'd dhruv thim into a broad part av the gut whin they gave, an' thin we opined out an' fair danced down the valley, dhrivin' thim before us. oh, 'twas lovely, an' stiddy, too! there was the sargints on the flanks av what was left av us, kapin' touch, an' the fire was runnin' from flank to flank, an' the paythans was dhroppin'. we opined out wid the widenin' av the valley, an' whin the valley narrowed we closed again like the shticks on a lady's fan, an' at the far ind av the gut where they thried to stand, we fair blew them off their feet, for we had expinded very little ammunition by reason av the knife work." "hi used thirty rounds goin' down that valley," said ortheris, "an' it was gentleman's work. might 'a' done it in a white 'andkerchief an' pink silk stockin's, that part. hi was on in that piece." "you could ha' heard the tyrone yellin' a mile away," said mulvaney, "an' 'twas all their sargints cud do to get thim off. they was mad--mad--mad! crook sits down in the quiet that fell whin we had gone down the valley, an' covers his face wid his hands. prisintly we all came back again accordin' to our natures and disposishins, for they, mark you, show through the hide av a man in that hour. "'bhoys! bhoys!' sez crook to himself. 'i misdoubt we could ha' engaged at long range an' saved betther men than me.' he looked at our dead an' said no more. "'captain dear,' sez a man av the tyrone, comin' up wid his mouth bigger than iver his mother kissed ut, spittin' blood like a whale; 'captain dear,' sez he, 'if wan or two in the shtalls have been discommoded, the gallery have enjoyed the performinces av a roshus.' "thin i knew that man for the dublin dockrat he was--wan av the bhoys that made the lessee av silver's theatre grey before his time wid tearin' out the bowils av the benches an' t'rowin' thim into the pit. so i passed the wurrud that i knew when i was in the tyrone an' we lay in dublin. 'i don't know who 'twas,' i whispers, 'an' i don't care, but anyways i'll knock the face av you, tim kelly.' "'eyah!' sez the man, 'was you there too? we'll call ut silver's theatre.' half the tyrone, knowin' the ould place, tuk ut up: so we called ut silver's theatre. "the little orf'cer bhoy av the tyrone was thremblin' an' cryin', he had no heart for the coort-martials that he talked so big upon. 'ye'll do well later,' sez crook, very quiet, 'for not bein' allowed to kill yourself for amusemint.' "'i'm a dishgraced man!' sez the little orf'cer bhoy. "put me undher arrest, sorr, if you will, but by my sowl, i'd do ut again sooner than face your mother wid you dead,' sez the sargint that had sat on his head, standin' to attention an' salutin'. but the young wan only cried as tho' his little heart was breakin'. "thin another man av the tyrone came up, wid the fog av fightin' on him." "the what, mulvaney?" "fog av fightin'. you know, sorr, that, like makin' love, ut takes each man diff'rint. now i can't help bein' powerful sick whin i'm in action. orth'ris, here, niver stops swearin' from ind to ind, an' the only time that learoyd opins his mouth to sing is whin he is messin' wid other people's heads; for he's a dhirty fighter is jock. recruities sometime cry, an' sometime they don't know fwhat they do, an' sometime they are all for cuttin' throats an' such like dirtiness; but some men get heavy-dead-dhrunk on the fightin'. this man was. he was staggerin', an' his eyes were half shut, an' we cud hear him dhraw breath twinty yards away. he sees the little orf'cer bhoy, an' comes up, talkin' thick an' drowsy to himsilf. 'blood the young whelp!' he sez; 'blood the young whelp;' an' wid that he threw up his arms, shpun roun', an' dropped at our feet, dead as a paythan, an' there was niver sign or scratch on him. they said 'twas his heart was rotten, but oh, 'twas a quare thing to see! "thin we wint to bury our dead, for we wud not lave thim to the paythans, an' in movin' among the haythen we nearly lost that little orf'cer bhoy. he was for givin' wan divil wather and layin' him aisy against a rock. 'be careful, sorr,' sez i; 'a wounded paythan's worse than a live wan.' my troth, before the words was out of my mouth, the man on the ground fires at the orf'cer bhoy lanin' over him, an' i saw the helmit fly. i dropped the butt on the face av the man an' tuk his pistol. the little orf'cer bhoy turned very white, for the hair av half his head was singed away. "'i tould you so, sorr!' sez i; an', afther that, whin he wanted to help a paythan i stud wid the muzzle contagious to the ear. they dare not do anythin' but curse. the tyrone was growlin' like dogs over a bone that had been taken away too soon, for they had seen their dead an' they wanted to kill ivry sowl on the ground. crook tould thim that he'd blow the hide off any man that misconducted himself; but, seeing that ut was the first time the tyrone had iver seen their dead, i do not wondher they were on the sharp. 'tis a shameful sight! whin i first saw ut i wud niver ha' given quarter to any man north of the khaibar--no, nor woman either, for the women used to come out afther dhark--auggrh! "well, evenshually we buried our dead an' tuk away our wounded, an' come over the brow av the hills to see the scotchies an' the gurkys taking tay with the paythans in bucketsfuls. we were a gang av dissolute ruffians, for the blood had caked the dust, an' the sweat had cut the cake, an' our bay'nits was hangin' like butchers' steels betune ur legs, an' most av us were marked one way or another. "a staff orf'cer man, clean as a new rifle, rides up an' sez: 'what damned scarecrows are you?' "'a comp'ny av her majesty's black tyrone an' wan av the ould rig'mint,' sez crook very quiet, givin' our visitors the flure as 'twas. "'oh!' sez the staff orf'cer; 'did you dislodge that reserve?' "'no!' sez crook, an' the tyrone laughed. "'thin fwhat the divil have ye done?' "'disthroyed ut,' sez crook, an' he took us on, but not before toomey that was in the tyrone sez aloud, his voice somewhere in his stummick: 'fwhat in the name av misfortune does this parrit widout a tail mane by shtoppin' the road av his betthers?' "the staff orf'cer wint blue, an' toomey makes him pink by changin' to the voice av a minowderin' woman an' sayin': 'come an' kiss me, major dear, for me husband's at the wars an' i'm all alone at the depot.' "the staff orf'cer wint away, an' i cud see crook's shoulthers shakin'. "his corp'ril checks toomey. 'lave me alone,' sez toomey, widout a wink. 'i was his batman before he was married an' he knows fwhat i mane, av you don't. there's nothin' like livin' in the hoight av society.' d'you remimber that, orth'ris!" "hi do. toomey, 'e died in 'orspital, next week it was, 'cause i bought 'arf his kit; an' i remember after that"-- "guarrd, turn out!" the relief had come; it was four o'clock. "i'll catch a kyart for you, sorr," said mulvaney, diving hastily into his accoutrements. "come up to the top av the fort an' we'll pershue our invistigations into m'grath's shtable." the relieved guard strolled round the main bastion on its way to the swimming-bath, and learoyd grew almost talkative. ortheris looked into the fort ditch and across the plain. "ho! it's weary waitin' for ma-ary!" he hummed; "but i'd like to kill some more bloomin' paythans before my time's up. war! bloody war! north, east, south, and west." "amen," said learoyd, slowly. "fwhat's here?" said mulvaney, checking at a blurr of white by the foot of the old sentry-box. he stooped and touched it. "it's norah--norah m'taggart! why, nonie, darlin', fwhat are ye doin' out av your mother's bed at this time?" the two-year-old child of sergeant m'taggart must have wandered for a breath of cool air to the very verge of the parapet of the fort ditch, her tiny night-shift was gathered into a wisp round her neck and she moaned in her sleep. "see there!" said mulvaney; "poor lamb! look at the heat-rash on the innocint skin av her. 'tis hard--crool hard even for us. fwhat must it be for these? wake up, nonie, your mother will be woild about you. begad, the child might ha' fallen into the ditch!" he picked her up in the growing light, and set her on his shoulder, and her fair curls touched the grizzled stubble of his temples. ortheris and learoyd followed snapping their fingers, while norah smiled at them a sleepy smile. then carolled mulvaney, clear as a lark, dancing the baby on his arm-- "if any young man should marry you, say nothin' about the joke; that iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box, wrapped up in a soldier's cloak." "though, on my sowl, nonie," he said, gravely, "there was not much cloak about you. niver mind, you won't dhress like this ten years to come. kiss your friends an' run along to your mother." nonie, set down close to the married quarters, nodded with the quiet obedience of the soldier's child, but, ere she pattered off over the flagged path, held up her lips to be kissed by the three musketeers. ortheris wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swore sentimentally; learoyd turned pink; and the two walked away together. the yorkshireman lifted up his voice and gave in thunder the chorus of _the sentry-box_, while ortheris piped at his side. "'bin to a bloomin' sing-song, you two?" said the artilleryman, who was taking his cartridge down to the morning gun, "you're over merry for these dashed days." "i bid ye take care o' the brat," said he, "for it comes of a noble race" learoyd bellowed. the voices died out in the swimming-bath. "oh, terence!" i said, dropping into mulvaney's speech, when we were alone, "it's you that have the tongue!" he looked at me wearily; his eyes were sunk in his head, and his face was drawn and white, "eyah!" said he; "i've blandandhered thim through the night somehow, but can thim that helps others help thimselves? answer me that, sorr!" and over the bastions of fort amara broke the pitiless day. wee willie winkie "an officer and a gentleman." his full name was percival william williams, but he picked up the other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. his mother's _ayah_ called him willie-_baba_, but as he never paid the faintest attention to anything that the _ayah_ said, her wisdom did not help matters. his father was the colonel of the th, and as soon as wee willie winkie was old enough to understand what military discipline meant, colonel williams put him under it. there was no other way of managing the child. when he was good for a week, he drew good-conduct pay; and when he was bad, he was deprived of his good-conduct stripe. generally he was bad, for india offers so many chances to little six-year-olds of going wrong. children resent familiarity from strangers, and wee willie winkie was a very particular child. once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. he accepted brandis, a subaltern of the th, on sight. brandis was having tea at the colonel's, and wee willie winkie entered strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. he regarded brandis with gravity for at least ten minutes, and then delivered himself of his opinion. "i like you," said he, slowly, getting off his chair and coming over to brandis. "i like you. i shall call you coppy, because of your hair. do you _mind_ being called coppy? it is because of ve hair, you know." here was one of the most embarrassing of wee willie winkie's peculiarities. he would look at a stranger for some time, and then, without warning or explanation, would give him a name. and the name stuck. no regimental penalties could break wee willie winkie of this habit. he lost his good-conduct badge for christening the commissioner's wife "pobs"; but nothing that the colonel could do made the station forego the nickname, and mrs. collen remained mrs. "pobs" till the end of her stay. so brandis was christened "coppy," and rose, therefore, in the estimation of the regiment. if wee willie winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. and in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. "the colonel's son" was idolized on his own merits entirely. yet wee willie winkie was not lovely. his face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. "i want my hair like sergeant tummil's," said wee willie winkie, and, his father abetting, the sacrifice was accomplished. three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on lieutenant brandis--henceforward to be called "coppy" for the sake of brevity--wee willie winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond his comprehension. coppy returned his liking with interest. coppy had let him wear for five rapturous minutes his own big sword--just as tall as wee willie winkie. coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. nay, more--coppy had said that even he, wee willie winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and a silver-handled "sputter-brush," as wee willie winkie called it. decidedly, there was no one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as coppy with the afghan and egyptian medals on his breast. why, then, should coppy be guilty of the unmanly weakness of kissing--vehemently kissing--a "big girl," miss allardyce to wit? in the course of a morning ride, wee willie winkie had seen coppy so doing, and, like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round and cantered back to his groom, lest the groom should also see. under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to his father, but he felt instinctively that this was a matter on which coppy ought first to be consulted. "coppy," shouted wee willie winkie, reining up outside that subaltern's bungalow early one morning--"i want to see you, coppy!" "come in, young 'un," returned coppy, who was at early breakfast in the midst of his dogs. "what mischief have you been getting into now?" wee willie winkie had done nothing notoriously bad for three days, and so stood on a pinnacle of virtue. "i've been doing nothing bad," said he, curling himself into a long chair with a studious affectation of the colonel's languor after a hot parade. he buried his freckled nose in a tea-cup and, with eyes staring roundly over the rim, asked:--"i say, coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls?" "by jove! you're beginning early. who do you want to kiss?" "no one. my muvver's always kissing me if i don't stop her. if it isn't pwoper, how was you kissing major allardyce's big girl last morning, by ve canal?" coppy's brow wrinkled. he and miss allardyce had with great craft managed to keep their engagement secret for a fortnight. there were urgent and imperative reasons why major allardyce should not know how matters stood for at least another month, and this small marplot had discovered a great deal too much. "i saw you," said wee willie winkie, calmly. "but ve groom didn't see. i said, '_hut jao_.'" "oh, you had that much sense, you young rip," groaned poor coppy, half amused and half angry. "and how many people may you have told about it?" "only me myself. you didn't tell when i twied to wide ve buffalo ven my pony was lame; and i fought you wouldn't like." "winkie," said coppy, enthusiastically, shaking the small hand, "you're the best of good fellows. look here, you can't understand all these things. one of these days--hang it, how can i make you see it!--i'm going to marry miss allardyce, and then she'll be mrs. coppy, as you say. if your young mind is so scandalized at the idea of kissing big girls, go and tell your father." "what will happen?" said wee willie winkie, who firmly believed that his father was omnipotent. "i shall get into trouble." said coppy, playing his trump card with an appealing look at the holder of the ace. "ven i won't," said wee willie winkie, briefly. "but my faver says it's un-man-ly to be always kissing, and i didn't fink _you'd_ do vat, coppy." "i'm not always kissing, old chap. it's only now and then, and when you're bigger you'll do it too. your father meant it's not good for little boys." "ah!" said wee willie winkie, now fully enlightened. "it's like ve sputter-brush?" "exactly," said coppy, gravely. "but i don't fink i'll ever want to kiss big girls, nor no one, 'cept my muvver. and i _must_ vat, you know." there was a long pause, broken by wee willie winkie, "are you fond of vis big girl, coppy?" "awfully!" said coppy. "fonder van you are of bell or ve butcha--or me?" "it's in a different way," said coppy. "you see, one of these days miss allardyce will belong to me, but you'll grow up and command the regiment and--all sorts of things. it's quite different, you see." "very well," said wee willie winkie, rising. "if you're fond of ve big girl, i won't tell any one. i must go now." coppy rose and escorted his small guest to the door, adding: "you're the best of little fellows, winkie. i tell you what. in thirty days from now you can tell if you like--tell any one you like." thus the secret of the brandis-allardyce engagement was dependent on a little child's word. coppy, who knew wee willie winkie's idea of truth, was at ease, for he felt that he would not break promises. wee willie winkie betrayed a special and unusual interest in miss allardyce, and, slowly revolving round that embarrassed young lady, was used to regard her gravely with unwinking eye. he was trying to discover why coppy should have kissed her. she was not half so nice as his own mother. on the other hand, she was coppy's property, and would in time belong to him. therefore it behooved him to treat her with as much respect as coppy's big sword or shiny pistol. the idea that he shared a great secret in common with coppy kept wee willie winkie unusually virtuous for three weeks. then the old adam broke out, and he made what he called a "camp-fire" at the bottom of the garden. how could he have foreseen that the flying sparks would have lighted the colonel's little hayrick and consumed a week's store for the horses? sudden and swift was the punishment--deprivation of the good-conduct badge and, most sorrowful of all, two days confinement to barracks--the house and veranda--coupled with the withdrawal of the light of his father's countenance. he took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew himself up with a quivering under-lip, saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran to weep bitterly in his nursery--called by him "my quarters," coppy came in the afternoon and attempted to console the culprit. "i'm under awwest," said wee willie winkie, mournfully, "and i didn't ought to speak to you." very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof of the house--that was not forbidden--and beheld miss allardyce going for a ride. "where are you going?" cried wee willie winkie. "across the river," she answered, and trotted forward. now the cantonment in which the th lay was bounded on the north by a river--dry in the winter. from his earliest years, wee willie winkie had been forbidden to go across the river, and had noted that even coppy--the almost almighty coppy--had never set foot beyond it. wee willie winkie had once been read to, out of a big blue book, the history of the princess and the goblins--a most wonderful tale of a land where the goblins were always warring with the children of men until they were defeated by one curdie. ever since that date it seemed to him that the bare black and purple hills across the river were inhabited by goblins, and, in truth, every one had said that there lived the bad men. even in his own house the lower halves of the windows were covered with green paper on account of the bad men who might, if allowed clear view, fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and comfortable bedrooms. certainly, beyond the river, which was the end of all the earth, lived the bad men. and here was major allardyce's big girl, coppy's property, preparing to venture into their borders! what would coppy say if anything happened to her? if the goblins ran off with her as they did with curdie's princess? she must at all hazards be turned back. the house was still. wee willie winkie reflected for a moment on the very terrible wrath of his father; and then--broke his arrest! it was a crime unspeakable. the low sun threw his shadow, very large and very black, on the trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables and ordered his pony. it seemed to him in the hush of the dawn that all the big world had been bidden to stand still and look at wee willie winkie guilty of mutiny. the drowsy groom handed him his mount, and, since the one great sin made all others insignificant, wee willie winkie said that he was going to ride over to coppy sahib, and went out at a foot-pace, stepping on the soft mould of the flower-borders. the devastating track of the pony's feet was the last misdeed that cut him off from all sympathy of humanity, he turned into the road, leaned forward; and rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground in the direction of the river. but the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do little against the long canter of a waler. miss allardyce was far ahead, had passed through the crops, beyond the police-post when all the guards were asleep, and her mount was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as wee willie winkie left the cantonment and british india behind him. bowed forward and still flogging, wee willie winkie shot into afghan territory, and could just see miss allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. the reason of her wandering was simple enough. coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her over night, that she must not ride out by the river. and she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach coppy a lesson. almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills, wee willie winkie saw the waler blunder and come down heavily. miss allardyce struggled clear, but her ankle had been severely twisted, and she could not stand. having thus demonstrated her spirit, she wept copiously, and was surprised by the apparition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, on a nearly spent pony. "are you badly, badly hurted?" shouted wee willie winkie, as soon as he was within range. "you didn't ought to be here." "i don't know," said miss allardyce, ruefully, ignoring the reproof. "good gracious, child, what are _you_ doing here?" "you said you was going acwoss ve wiver," panted wee willie winkie, throwing himself off his pony. "and nobody--not even coppy--must go acwoss ve wiver, and i came after you ever so hard, but you wouldn't stop, and now you've hurted yourself, and coppy will be angwy wiv me, and--i've bwoken my awwest! i've bwoken my awwest!" the future colonel of the th sat down and sobbed. in spite of the pain in her ankle the girl was moved. "have you ridden all the way from cantonments, little man? what for?" "you belonged to coppy. coppy told me so!" wailed wee willie winkie, disconsolately. "i saw him kissing you, and he said he was fonder of you van bell or ve butcha or me. and so i came. you must get up and come back. you didn't ought to be here. vis is a bad place, and i've bwoken my awwest." "i can't move, winkie," said miss allardyce, with a groan. "i've hurt my foot. what shall i do?" she showed a readiness to weep afresh, which steadied wee willie winkie, who had been brought up to believe that tears were the depth of unmanliness. still, when one is as great a sinner as wee willie winkie, even a man may be permitted to break down, "winkie," said miss allardyce, "when you've rested a little, ride back and tell them to send out something to carry me back in. it hurts fearfully." the child sat still for a little time and miss allardyce closed her eyes; the pain was nearly making her faint. she was roused by wee willie winkie tying up the reins on his pony's neck and setting it free with a vicious cut of his whip that made it whicker. the little animal headed toward the cantonments. "oh, winkie! what are you doing?" "hush!" said wee willie winkie. "vere's a man coming--one of ve bad men. i must stay wiv you. my faver says a man must _always_ look after a girl. jack will go home, and ven vey'll come and look for us. vat's why i let him go." not one man but two or three had appeared from behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart of wee willie winkie sank within him, for just in this manner were the goblins wont to steal out and vex curdie's soul. thus had they played in curdie's garden, he had seen the picture, and thus had they frightened the princess's nurse. he heard them talking to each other, and recognized with joy the bastard pushto that he had picked up from one of his father's grooms lately dismissed. people who spoke that tongue could not be the bad men. they were only natives after all. they came up to the bowlders on which miss allardyce's horse had blundered. then rose from the rock wee willie winkie, child of the dominant race, aged six and three-quarters, and said briefly and emphatically "_jao!_" the pony had crossed the river-bed. the men laughed, and laughter from natives was the one thing wee willie winkie could not tolerate. he asked them what they wanted and why they did not depart. other men with most evil faces and crooked-stocked guns crept out of the shadows of the hills, till, soon, wee willie winkie was face to face with an audience some twenty strong, miss allardyce screamed. "who are you?" said one of the men. "i am the colonel sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once. you black men are frightening the miss sahib. one of you must run into cantonments and take the news that miss sahib has hurt herself, and that the colonel's son is here with her." "put our feet into the trap?" was the laughing reply. "hear this boy's speech!" "say that i sent you--i, the colonel's son. they will give you money." "what is the use of this talk? take up the child and the girl, and we can at least ask for the ransom. ours are the villages on the heights," said a voice in the background. these _were_ the bad men--worse than goblins--and it needed all wee willie winkie's training to prevent him from bursting into tears. but he felt that to cry before a native, excepting only his mother's _ayah_, would be an infamy greater than any mutiny. moreover, he, as future colonel of the th, had that grim regiment at his back. "are you going to carry us away?" said wee willie winkie, very blanched and uncomfortable. "yes, my little _sahib bahadur_," said the tallest of the men, "and eat you afterward." "that is child's talk," said wee willie winkie. "men do not eat men." a yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on firmly,--"and if you do carry us away, i tell you that all my regiment will come up in a day and kill you all without leaving one. who will take my message to the colonel sahib?" speech in any vernacular--and wee willie winkie had a colloquial acquaintance with three--was easy to the boy who could not yet manage his "r's" and "th's" aright. another man joined the conference, crying:--"o foolish men! what this babe says is true. he is the heart's heart of those white troops. for the sake of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment will break loose and gut the valley. _our_ villages are in the valley, and we shall not escape. that regiment are devils. they broke khoda yar's breast-bone with kicks when he tried to take the rifles; and if we touch this child they will fire and rape and plunder for a month, till nothing remains. better to send a man back to take the message and get a reward. i say that this child is their god, and that they will spare none of us, nor our women, if we harm him." it was din mahommed, the dismissed groom of the colonel, who made the diversion, and an angry and heated discussion followed. wee willie winkie, standing over miss allardyce, waited the upshot. surely his "wegiment," his own "wegiment," would not desert him if they knew of his extremity. * * * * * the riderless pony brought the news to the th, though there had been consternation in the colonel's household for an hour before. the little beast came in through the parade ground in front of the main barracks, where the men were settling down to play spoil-five till the afternoon. devlin, the color sergeant of e company, glanced at the empty saddle and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each room corporal as he passed. "up, ye beggars! there's something happened to the colonel's son," he shouted. "he couldn't fall off! s'elp me, 'e _couldn't_ fall off," blubbered a drummer-boy, "go an' hunt acrost the river. he's over there if he's anywhere, an' maybe those pathans have got 'im. for the love o' gawd don't look for 'im in the nullahs! let's go over the river." "there's sense in mott yet," said devlin. "e company, double out to the river--sharp!" so e company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, doubled for the dear life, and in the rear toiled the perspiring sergeant, adjuring it to double yet faster. the cantonment was alive with the men of the th hunting for wee willie winkie, and the colonel finally overtook e company, far too exhausted to swear, struggling in the pebbles of the river-bed. up the hill under which wee willie winkie's bad men were discussing the wisdom of carrying off the child and the girl, a look-out fired two shots. "what have i said?" shouted din mahommed. "there is the warning! the _pulton_ are out already and are coming across the plain! get away! let us not be seen with the boy!" the men waited for an instant, and then, as another shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, silently as they had appeared. "the wegiment is coming," said wee willie winkie, confidently, to miss allardyce, "and it's all wight. don't cwy!" he needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later, when his father came up, he was weeping bitterly with his head in miss allardyce's lap. and the men of the th carried him home with shouts and rejoicings; and coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men. but there was balm for his dignity. his father assured him that not only would the breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the good-conduct badge would be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on his blouse-sleeve. miss allardyce had told the colonel a story that made him proud of his son. "she belonged to you, coppy," said wee willie winkie, indicating miss allardyce with a grimy forefinger. "i _knew_ she didn't ought to go acwoss ve wiver, and i knew ve wegiment would come to me if i sent jack home." "you're a hero, winkie," said coppy--"a _pukka_ hero!" "i don't know what vat means," said wee willie winkie, "but you mustn't call me winkie any no more, i'm percival will'am will'ams." and in this manner did wee willie winkie enter into his manhood. the rout of the white hussars it was not in the open fight we threw away the sword, but in the lonely watching in the darkness by the ford. the waters lapped, the night-wind blew, full-armed the fear was born and grew. and we were flying ere we knew from panic in the night. --_beoni bar>/i>. some people hold that an english cavalry regiment cannot run. this is a mistake. i have seen four hundred and thirty-seven sabres flying over the face of the country in abject terror--have seen the best regiment that ever drew bridle wiped off the army list for the space of two hours. if you repeat this tale to the white hussars they will, in all probability, treat you severely. they are not proud of the incident. you may know the white hussars by their "side," which is greater than that of all the cavalry regiments on the roster. if this is not a sufficient mark, you may know them by their old brandy. it has been sixty years in the mess and is worth going far to taste. ask for the "mcgaire" old brandy, and see that you get it. if the mess sergeant thinks that you are uneducated, and that the genuine article will be lost on you, he will treat you accordingly. he is a good man. but, when you are at mess, you must never talk to your hosts about forced marches or long-distance rides. the mess are very sensitive; and, if they think that you are laughing at them, will tell you so. as the white hussars say, it was all the colonel's fault. he was a new man, and he ought never to have taken the command. he said that the regiment was not smart enough. this to the white hussars, who knew that they could walk round any horse and through any guns, and over any foot on the face of the earth! that insult was the first cause of offence. then the colonel cast the drum-horse--the drum-horse of the white hussars! perhaps you do not see what an unspeakable crime he had committed. i will try to make it clear. the soul of the regiment lives in the drum-horse who carries the silver kettle-drums. he is nearly always a big piebald waler. that is a point of honor; and a regiment will spend anything you please on a piebald. he is beyond the ordinary laws of casting. his work is very light, and he only manoeuvres at a foot-pace. wherefore, so long as he can step out and look handsome, his well-being is assured. he knows more about the regiment than the adjutant, and could not make a mistake if he tried. the drum-horse of the white hussars was only eighteen years old, and perfectly equal to his duties. he had at least six years' more work in him, and carried himself with all the pomp and dignity of a drum-major of the guards. the regiment had paid rs. for him. but the colonel said that he must go, and he was cast in due form and replaced by a washy, bay beast, as ugly as a mule, with a ewe-neck, rat-tail, and cow-hocks. the drummer detested that animal, and the best of the band-horses put back their ears and showed the whites of their eyes at the very sight of him. they knew him for an upstart and no gentleman. i fancy that the colonel's ideas of smartness extended to the band, and that he wanted to make it take part in the regular parade movements. a cavalry band is a sacred thing. it only turns out for commanding officers' parades, and the band master is one degree more important than the colonel. he is a high priest and the "keel row" is his holy song. the "keel row" is the cavalry trot; and the man who has never heard that tune rising, high and shrill, above the rattle of the regiment going past the saluting-base, has something yet to hear and understand. when the colonel cast the drum-horse of the white hussars, there was nearly a mutiny. the officers were angry, the regiment were furious, and the bandsmen swore--like troopers. the drum-horse was going to be put up to auction--public auction--to be bought, perhaps, by a parsee and put into a cart! it was worse than exposing the inner life of the regiment to the whole world, or selling the mess plate to a jew--a black jew. the colonel was a mean man and a bully. he knew what the regiment thought about his action; and, when the troopers offered to buy the drum-horse, he said that their offer was mutinous and forbidden by the regulations. but one of the subalterns--hogan-yale, an irishman--bought the drum-horse for rs. at the sale, and the colonel was wroth. yale professed repentance--he was unnaturally submissive--and said that, as he had only made the purchase to save the horse from possible ill-treatment and starvation, he would now shoot him and end the business. this appeared to soothe the colonel, for he wanted the drum-horse disposed of. he felt that he had made a mistake, and could not of course acknowledge it. meantime, the presence of the drum-horse was an annoyance to him. yale took to himself a glass of the old brandy, three cheroots, and his friend martyn; and they all left the mess together. yale and martyn conferred for two hours in yale's quarters; but only the bull-terrier who keeps watch over yale's boot-trees knows what they said. a horse, hooded and sheeted to his ears, left yale's stables and was taken, very unwillingly, into the civil lines. yale's groom went with him. two men broke into the regimental theatre and took several paint-pots and some large scenery-brushes. then night fell over the cantonments, and there was a noise as of a horse kicking his loose-box to pieces in yale's stables. yale had a big, old, white waler trap-horse. the next day was a thursday, and the men, hearing that yale was going to shoot the drum-horse in the evening, determined to give the beast a regular regimental funeral--a finer one than they would have given the colonel had he died just then. they got a bullock-cart and some sacking, and mounds and mounds of roses, and the body, under sacking, was carried out to the place where the anthrax cases were cremated; two-thirds of the regiment following. there was no band, but they all sang "the place where the old horse died" as something respectful and appropriate to the occasion. when the corpse was dumped into the grave and the men began throwing down armfuls of roses to cover it, the farrier-sergeant ripped out an oath and said aloud, "why, it ain't the drum-horse any more than it's me!" the troop sergeant-majors asked him whether he had left his head in the canteen. the farrier-sergeant said that he knew the drum-horse's feet as well as he knew his own; but he was silenced when he saw the regimental number burned in on the poor stiff, upturned near-fore. thus was the drum-horse of the white hussars buried; the farrier-sergeant grumbling. the sacking that covered the corpse was smeared in places with black paint; and the farrier-sergeant drew attention to this fact. but the troop sergeant-major of e troop kicked him severely on the shin, and told him that he was undoubtedly drunk. on the monday following the burial, the colonel sought revenge on the white hussars. unfortunately, being at that time temporarily in command of the station, he ordered a brigade field-day. he said that he wished to make the regiment "sweat for their damned insolence," and he carried out his notion thoroughly. that monday was one of the hardest days in the memory of the white hussars. they were thrown against a skeleton-enemy, and pushed forward, and withdrawn, and dismounted, and "scientifically handled" in every possible fashion over dusty country, till they sweated profusely. their only amusement came late in the day when they fell upon the battery of horse artillery and chased it for two miles. this was a personal question, and most of the troopers had money on the event; the gunners saying openly that they had the legs of the white hussars. they were wrong. a march-past concluded the campaign, and when the regiment got back to their lines, the men were coated with dirt from spur to chin-strap. the white hussars have one great and peculiar privilege. they won it at fontenoy, i think. many regiments possess special rights such as wearing collars with undress uniform, or a bow of riband between the shoulders, or red and white roses in their helmets on certain days of the year. some rights are connected with regimental saints, and some with regimental successes. all are valued highly; but none so highly as the right of the white hussars to have the band playing when their horses are being watered in the lines. only one tune is played, and that tune never varies. i don't know its real name, but the white hussars call it, "take me to london again." it sounds very pretty. the regiment would sooner be struck off the roster than forego their distinction. after the "dismiss" was sounded, the officers rode off home to prepare for stables; and the men filed into the lines riding easy. that is to say, they opened their tight buttons, shifted their helmets, and began to joke or to swear as the humor took them; the more careful slipping off and easing girths and curbs. a good trooper values his mount exactly as much as he values himself, and believes, or should believe, that the two together are irresistible where women or men, girls or guns, are concerned. then the orderly-officer gave the order, "water horses," and the regiment loafed off to the squadron-troughs which were in rear of the stables and between these and the barracks. there were four huge troughs, one for each squadron, arranged _en échelon_, so that the whole regiment could water in ten minutes if it liked. but it lingered for seventeen, as a rule, while the band played. the band struck up as the squadrons filed off to the troughs, and the men slipped their feet out of the stirrups and chaffed each other. the sun was just setting in a big, hot bed of red cloud, and the road to the civil lines seemed to run straight into the sun's eye. there was a little dot on the road. it grew and grew till it showed as a horse, with a sort of gridiron-thing on his back. the red cloud glared through the bars of the gridiron. some of the troopers shaded their eyes with their hands and said--"what the mischief 'as that there 'orse got on 'im?" in another minute they heard a neigh that every soul--horse and man--in the regiment knew, and saw, heading straight toward the band, the dead drum-horse of the white hussars! on his withers banged and bumped the kettledrums draped in crape, and on his back, very stiff and soldierly, sat a bareheaded skeleton. the band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there was a hush. then some one in e troop--men said it was the troop-sergeant-major--swung his horse round and yelled. no one can account exactly for what happened afterward; but it seems that, at least, one man in each troop set an example of panic, and the rest followed like sheep. the horses that had barely put their muzzles into the troughs reared and capered; but as soon as the band broke, which it did when the ghost of the drum-horse was about a furlong distant, all hooves followed suit, and the clatter of the stampede--quite different from the orderly throb and roar of a movement on parade, or the rough horse-play of watering in camp--made them only more terrified. they felt that the men on their backs were afraid of something. when horses once know that, all is over except the butchery. troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran--anywhere and everywhere--like spilled quicksilver. it was a most extraordinary spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and the carbine-buckets flopping against their sides urged the horses on. men were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the band which was being chased by the drum-horse whose rider had fallen forward and seemed to be spurring for a wager. the colonel had gone over to the mess for a drink. most of the officers were with him, and the subaltern of the day was preparing to go down to the lines, and receive the watering reports from the troop-sergeant- majors. when "take me to london again" stopped, after twenty bars, every one in the mess said, "what on earth has happened?" a minute later, they heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the white hussars scattered, and broken, and flying. the colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the regiment had risen against him or was unanimously drunk. the band, a disorganized mob, tore past, and at its heels labored the drum-horse--the dead and buried drum-horse--with the jolting, clattering skeleton, hogan-yale whispered softly to martyn--"no wire will stand that treatment," and the band, which had doubled like a hare, came back again. but the rest of the regiment was gone, was rioting all over the province, for the dusk had shut in and each man was howling to his neighbor that the drum-horse was on his flank. troop-horses are far too tenderly treated as a rule. they can, on emergencies, do a great deal, even with seventeen stone on their backs. as the troopers found out. how long this panic lasted i cannot say. i believe that when the moon rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes and half-troops, crept back into cantonments very much ashamed of themselves. meantime, the drum-horse, disgusted at his treatment by old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the mess veranda-steps for bread. no one liked to run; but no one cared to go forward till the colonel made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton's foot. the band had halted some distance away, and now came back slowly. the colonel called it, individually and collectively, every evil name that occurred to him at the time; for he had set his hand on the bosom of the drum-horse and found flesh and blood. then he beat the kettle-drums with his clenched fist, and discovered that they were but made of silvered paper and bamboo. next, still swearing, he tried to drag the skeleton out of the saddle, but found that it had been wired into the cantle. the sight of the colonel, with his arms round the skeleton's pelvis and his knee in the old drum-horse's stomach, was striking. not to say amusing. he worried the thing off in a minute or two, and threw it down on the ground, saying to the band--"here, you curs, that's what you're afraid of." the skeleton did not look pretty in the twilight the band-sergeant seemed to recognize it, for he began to chuckle and choke. "shall i take it away, sir?" said the band-sergeant. "yes," said the colonel, "take it to hell, and ride there yourselves!" the band-sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton across his saddle-bow, and led off to the stables. then the colonel began to make inquiries for the rest of the regiment, and the language he used was wonderful, he would disband the regiment--he would court-martial every soul in it--he would not command such a set of rabble, and so on, and so on. as the men dropped in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded the utmost limits of free speech allowed even to a colonel of horse. martyn took hogan-yale aside and suggested compulsory retirement from the service as a necessity when all was discovered. martyn was the weaker man of the two. hogan-yale put up his eyebrows and remarked, firstly, that he was the son of a lord, and, secondly, that he was as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical resurrection of the drum-horse. "my instructions," said yale, with a singularly sweet smile, "were that the drum-horse should be sent back as impressively as possible. i ask you, _am_ i responsible if a mule-headed friend sends him back in such a manner as to disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of her majesty's cavalry?" martyn said, "you are a great man, and will in time become a general; but i'd give my chance of a troop to be safe out of this affair." providence saved martyn and hogan-yale. the second-in-command led the colonel away to the little curtained alcove wherein the subalterns of the white hussars were accustomed to play poker of nights; and there, after many oaths on the colonel's part, they talked together in low tones. i fancy that the second-in-command must have represented the scare as the work of some trooper whom it would be hopeless to detect; and i know that he dwelt upon the sin and the shame of making a public laughing-stock of the scare. "they will call us," said the second-in-command, who had really a fine imagination--"they will call us the 'fly-by-nights'; they will call us the 'ghost hunters'; they will nickname us from one end of the army list to the other. all the explanation in the world won't make outsiders understand that the officers were away when the panic began. for the honor of the regiment and for your own sake keep this thing quiet." the colonel was so exhausted with anger that soothing him down was not so difficult as might be imagined. he was made to see, gently and by degrees, that it was obviously impossible to court-martial the whole regiment and equally impossible to proceed against any subaltern who, in his belief, had any concern in the hoax. "but the beast's alive! he's never been shot at all!" shouted the colonel. "it's flat flagrant disobedience! i've known a man broke for less--dam sight less. they're mocking me, i tell you, mutman! they're mocking me!" once more, the second-in-command set himself to soothe the colonel, and wrestled with him for half an hour. at the end of that time, the regimental sergeant-major reported himself. the situation was rather novel to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances. he saluted and said, "regiment all comeback, sir." then, to propitiate the colonel--"an' none of the 'orses any the worse, sir," the colonel only snorted and answered--"you'd better tuck the men into their cots, then, and see that they don't wake up and cry in the night" the sergeant withdrew. his little stroke of humor pleased the colonel, and, further, he felt slightly ashamed of the language he had been using. the second-in-command worried him again, and the two sat talking far into the night. next day but one, there was a commanding officer's parade, and the colonel harangued the white hussars vigorously. the pith of his speech was that, since the drum-horse in his old age had proved himself capable of cutting up the whole regiment, he should return to his post of pride at the head of the band, _but_ the regiment were a set of ruffians with bad consciences. the white hussars shouted, and threw everything movable about them into the air, and when the parade was over, they cheered the colonel till they couldn't speak. no cheers were put up for lieutenant hogan-yale, who smiled very sweetly in the background. said the second-in-command to the colonel, unofficially-- "these little things ensure popularity, and do not the least affect discipline." "but i went back on my word," said the colonel. "never mind," said the second-in-command. "the white hussars will follow you anywhere from to-day. regiments are just like women. they will do anything for trinketry." a week later, hogan-yale received an extraordinary letter from some one who signed himself "secretary, _charity and zeal,_ , e. c.," and asked for "the return of our skeleton which we have reason to believe is in your possession." "who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in bones?" said hogan-yale. "beg your pardon, sir," said the band-sergeant, "but the skeleton is with me, an' i'll return it if you'll pay the carriage into the civil lines. there's a coffin with it, sir." hogan-yale smiled and handed two rupees to the band-sergeant, saying, "write the date on the skull, will you?" if you doubt this story, and know where to go, you can see the date on the skeleton. but don't mention the matter to the white hussars. i happened to know something about it, because i prepared the drum-horse for his resurrection. he did not take kindly to the skeleton at all. at twenty-two narrow as the womb, deep as the pit, and dark as the heart of a man.--_sonthal miner's proverb_. "a weaver went out to reap but stayed to unravel the corn-stalks. ha! ha! ha! is there any sense in a weaver?" janki meah glared at kundoo, but, as janki meah was blind, kundoo was not impressed. he had come to argue with janki meah, and, if chance favored, to make love to the old man's pretty young wife. this was kundoo's grievance, and he spoke in the name of all the five men who, with janki meah, composed the gang in number seven gallery of twenty-two. janki meah had been blind for the thirty years during which he had served the jimahari collieries with pick and crowbar. all through those thirty years he had regularly, every morning before going down, drawn from the overseer his allowance of lamp-oil--just as if he had been an eyed miner. what kundoo's gang resented, as hundreds of gangs had resented before, was janki meah's selfishness. he would not add the oil to the common stock of his gang, but would save and sell it. "i knew these workings before you were born," janki meah used to reply; "i don't want the light to get my coal out by, and i am not going to help you. the oil is mine, and i intend to keep it." a strange man in many ways was janki meah, the white-haired, hot tempered, sightless weaver who had turned pitman. all day long--except on sundays and mondays when he was usually drunk--he worked in the twenty-two shaft of the jimahari colliery as cleverly as a man with all the senses. at evening he went up in the great steam-hauled cage to the pit-bank, and there called for his pony--a rusty, coal-dusty beast, nearly as old as janki meah. the pony would come to his side, and janki meah would clamber on to its back and be taken at once to the plot of land which he, like the other miners, received from the jimahari company. the pony knew that place, and when, after six years, the company changed all the allotments to prevent the miners from acquiring proprietary rights, janki meah represented, with tears in his eyes, that were his holdings shifted, he would never be able to find his way to the new one. "my horse only knows that place," pleaded janki meah, and so he was allowed to keep his land. on the strength of this concession and his accumulated oil-savings, janki meah took a second wife--a girl of the jolaha main stock of the meahs, and singularly beautiful. janki meah could not see her beauty; wherefore he took her on trust, and forbade her to go down the pit. he had not worked for thirty years in the dark without knowing that the pit was no place for pretty women. he loaded her with ornaments--not brass or pewter, but real silver ones--and she rewarded him by flirting outrageously with kundoo of number seven gallery gang. kundoo was really the gang-head, but janki meah insisted upon all the work being entered in his own name, and chose the men that he worked with. custom--stronger even than the jimahari company--dictated that janki, by right of his years, should manage these things, and should, also, work despite his blindness. in indian mines where they cut into the solid coal with the pick and clear it out from floor to ceiling, he could come to no great harm. at home, where they undercut the coal and bring it down in crashing avalanches from the roof, he would never have been allowed to set foot in a pit. he was not a popular man, because of his oil-savings; but all the gangs admitted that janki knew all the _khads,_ or workings, that had ever been sunk or worked since the jimahari company first started operations on the tarachunda fields. pretty little unda only knew that her old husband was a fool who could be managed. she took no interest in the collieries except in so far as they swallowed up kundoo five days out of the seven, and covered him with coal-dust. kundoo was a great workman, and did his best not to get drunk, because, when he had saved forty rupees, unda was to steal everything that she could find in janki's house and run with kundoo to a land where there were no mines, and every one kept three fat bullocks and a milch-buffalo. while this scheme ripened it was his custom to drop in upon janki and worry him about the oil savings. unda sat in a corner and nodded approval. on the night when kundoo had quoted that objectionable proverb about weavers, janki grew angry. "listen, you pig," said he, "blind i am, and old i am, but, before ever you were born, i was grey among the coal. even in the days when the twenty-two _khad_ was unsunk and there were not two thousand men here, i was known to have all knowledge of the pits. what _khad_ is there that i do not know, from the bottom of the shaft to the end of the last drive? is it the baromba _khad_, the oldest, or the twenty-two where tibu's gallery runs up to number five?" "hear the old fool talk!" said kundoo, nodding to unda. "no gallery of twenty-two will cut into five before the end of the rains. we have a month's solid coal before us. the babuji says so." "babuji! pigji! dogji! what do these fat slugs from calcutta know? he draws and draws and draws, and talks and talks and talks, and his maps are all wrong. i, janki, know that this is so. when a man has been shut up in the dark for thirty years, god gives him knowledge. the old gallery that tibu's gang made is not six feet from number five." "without doubt god gives the blind knowledge," said kundoo, with a look at unda. "let it be as you say. i, for my part, do not know where lies the gallery of tibu's gang, but _i_ am not a withered monkey who needs oil to grease his joints with." kundoo swung out of the hut laughing, and unda giggled. janki turned his sightless eyes toward his wife and swore. "i have land, and i have sold a great deal of lamp-oil," mused janki; "but i was a fool to marry this child." a week later the rains set in with a vengeance, and the gangs paddled about in coal-slush at the pit-banks. then the big mine-pumps were made ready, and the manager of the colliery ploughed through the wet toward the tarachunda river swelling between its soppy banks. "lord send that this beastly beck doesn't misbehave," said the manager, piously, and he went to take counsel with his assistant about the pumps. but the tarachunda misbehaved very much indeed. after a fall of three inches of rain in an hour it was obliged to do something. it topped its bank and joined the flood water that was hemmed between two low hills just where the embankment of the colliery main line crossed. when a large part of a rain-fed river, and a few acres of flood-water, made a dead set for a nine-foot culvert, the culvert may spout its finest, but the water cannot _all_ get out. the manager pranced upon one leg with excitement, and his language was improper. he had reason to swear, because he knew that one inch of water on land meant a pressure of one hundred tons to the acre; and here were about five feet of water forming, behind the railway embankment, over the shallower workings of twenty-two. you must understand that, in a coal-mine, the coal nearest the surface is worked first from the central shaft. that is to say, the miners may clear out the stuff to within ten, twenty, or thirty feet of the surface, and, when all is worked out, leave only a skin of earth upheld by some few pillars of coal. in a deep mine where they know that they have any amount of material at hand, men prefer to get all their mineral out at one shaft, rather than make a number of little holes to tap the comparatively unimportant surface-coal. and the manager watched the flood. the culvert spouted a nine-foot gush; but the water still formed, and word was sent to clear the men out of twenty-two. the cages came up crammed and crammed again with the men nearest the pit-eye, as they call the place where you can see daylight from the bottom of the main shaft. all away and away up the long black galleries the flare-lamps were winking and dancing like so many fireflies, and the men and the women waited for the clanking, rattling, thundering cages to come down and fly up again. but the outworkings were very far off, and word could not be passed quickly, though the heads of the gangs and the assistant shouted and swore and tramped and stumbled. the manager kept one eye on the great troubled pool behind the embankment, and prayed that the culvert would give way and let the water through in time. with the other eye he watched the cages come up and saw the headmen counting the roll of the gangs. with all his heart and soul he swore at the winder who controlled the iron drum that wound up the wire rope on which hung the cages. in a little time there was a down-draw in the water behind the embankment--a sucking whirlpool, all yellow and yeasty. the water had smashed through the skin of the earth and was pouring into the old shallow workings of twenty-two. deep down below, a rush of black water caught the last gang waiting for the cage, and as they clambered in, the whirl was about their waists. the cage reached the pit-bank, and the manager called the roll. the gangs were all safe except gang janki, gang mogul, and gang rahim, eighteen men, with perhaps ten basket-women who loaded the coal into the little iron carriages that ran on the tramways of the main galleries. these gangs were in the out-workings, three-quarters of a mile away, on the extreme fringe of the mine. once more the cage went down, but with only two english men in it, and dropped into a swirling, roaring current that had almost touched the roof of some of the lower side-galleries. one of the wooden balks with which they had propped the old workings shot past on the current, just missing the cage. "if we don't want our ribs knocked out, we'd better go," said the manager. "we can't even save the company's props." the cage drew out of the water with a splash, and a few minutes later, it was officially reported that there were at least ten feet of water in the pit's eye. now ten feet of water there meant that all other places in the mine were flooded except such galleries as were more than ten feet above the level of the bottom of the shaft. the deep workings would be full, the main galleries would be full, but in the high workings reached by inclines from the main roads, there would be a certain amount of air cut off, so to speak, by the water and squeezed up by it. the little science-primers explain how water behaves when you pour it down test-tubes. the flooding of twenty-two was an illustration on a large scale. * * * * * "by the holy grove, what has happened to the air!" it was a sonthal gangman of gang mogul in number nine gallery, and he was driving a six-foot way through the coal. then there was a rush from the other galleries, and gang janki and gang rahim stumbled up with their basket-women. "water has come in the mine," they said, "and there is no way of getting out." "i went down," said janki--"down the slope of my gallery, and i felt the water." "there has been no water in the cutting in our time," clamored the women, "why cannot we go away?" "be silent!" said janki, "long ago, when my father was here, water came to ten--no, eleven--cutting, and there was great trouble. let us get away to where the air is better." the three gangs and the basket-women left number nine gallery and went further up number sixteen. at one turn of the road they could see the pitchy black water lapping on the coal. it had touched the roof of a gallery that they knew well--a gallery where they used to smoke their _huqas_ and manage their flirtations. seeing this, they called aloud upon their gods, and the mehas, who are thrice bastard muhammadans, strove to recollect the name of the prophet. they came to a great open square whence nearly all the coal had been extracted. it was the end of the out-workings, and the end of the mine. far away down the gallery a small pumping-engine, used for keeping dry a deep working and fed with steam from above, was throbbing faithfully. they heard it cease. "they have cut off the steam," said kundoo, hopefully. "they have given the order to use all the steam for the pit-bank pumps. they will clear out the water." "if the water has reached the smoking-gallery," said janki, "all the company's pumps can do nothing for three days." "it is very hot," moaned jasoda, the meah basket-woman. "there is a very bad air here because of the lamps." "put them out," said janki; "why do you want lamps?" the lamps were put out and the company sat still in the utter dark. somebody rose quietly and began walking over the coals. it was janki, who was touching the walls with his hands. "where is the ledge?" he murmured to himself. "sit, sit!" said kundoo. "if we die, we die. the air is very bad." but janki still stumbled and crept and tapped with his pick upon the walls. the women rose to their feet. "stay all where you are. without the lamps you cannot see, and i--i am always seeing," said janki. then he paused, and called out: "oh, you who have been in the cutting more than ten years, what is the name of this open place? i am an old man and i have forgotten." "bullia's room," answered the sonthal, who had complained of the vileness of the air. "again," said janki. "bullia's room." "then i have found it," said janki. "the name only had slipped my memory. tibu's gang's gallery is here." "a lie," said kundoo. "there have been no galleries in this place since my day." "three paces was the depth of the ledge," muttered janki, without heeding--"and--oh, my poor bones!--i have found it! it is here, up this ledge, come all you, one by one, to the place of my voice, and i will count you," there was a rush in the dark, and janki felt the first man's face hit his knees as the sonthal scrambled up the ledge. "who?" cried janki. "i, sunua manji." "sit you down," said janki, "who next?" one by one the women and the men crawled up the ledge which ran along one side of "bullia's room." degraded muhammadan, pig-eating musahr and wild sonthal, janki ran his hand over them all. "now follow after," said he, "catching hold of my heel, and the women catching the men's clothes." he did not ask whether the men had brought their picks with them. a miner, black or white, does not drop his pick. one by one, janki leading, they crept into the old gallery--a six-foot way with a scant four feet from hill to roof. "the air is better here," said jasoda. they could hear her heart beating in thick, sick bumps. "slowly, slowly," said janki. "i am an old man, and i forget many things. this is tibu's gallery, but where are the four bricks where they used to put their _huqa_ fire on when the sahibs never saw? slowly, slowly, o you people behind." they heard his hands disturbing the small coal on the floor of the gallery and then a dull sound. "this is one unbaked brick, and this is another and another. kundoo is a young man--let him come forward. put a knee upon this brick and strike here. when tibu's gang were at dinner on the last day before the good coal ended, they heard the men of five on the other side, and five worked _their_ gallery two sundays later--or it may have been one. strike there, kundoo, but give me room to go back." kundoo, doubting, drove the pick, but the first soft crush of the coal was a call to him. he was fighting for his life and for unda--pretty little unda with rings on all her toes--for unda and the forty rupees. the women sang the song of the pick--the terrible, slow, swinging melody with the muttered chorus that repeats the sliding of the loosened coal, and, to each cadence, kundoo smote in the black dark. when he could do no more, sunua manji took the pick, and struck for his life and his wife, and his village beyond the blue hills over the tarachunda river. an hour the men worked, and then the women cleared away the coal. "it is farther than i thought," said janki. "the air is very bad; but strike, kundoo, strike hard," for the fifth time kundoo took up the pick as the sonthal crawled back. the song had scarcely recommenced when it was broken by a yell from kundoo that echoed down the gallery: "_par hua! par hua!_ we are through, we are through!" the imprisoned air in the mine shot through the opening, and the women at the far end of the gallery heard the water rush through the pillars of "bullia's room" and roar against the ledge. having fulfilled the law under which it worked, it rose no farther. the women screamed and pressed forward, "the water has come--we shall be killed! let us go." kundoo crawled through the gap and found himself in a propped gallery by the simple process of hitting his head against a beam. "do i know the pits or do i not?" chuckled janki. "this is the number five; go you out slowly, giving me your names. ho! rahim, count your gang! now let us go forward, each catching hold of the other as before." they formed a line in the darkness and janki led them--for a pit-man in a strange pit is only one degree less liable to err than an ordinary mortal underground for the first time. at last they saw a flare-lamp, and gangs janki, mogul, and rahim of twenty-two stumbled dazed into the glare of the draught-furnace at the bottom of five; janki feeling his way and the rest behind. "water has come into twenty-two. god knows where are the others. i have brought these men from tibu's gallery in our cutting; making connection through the north side of the gallery. take us to the cage," said janki meah. * * * * * at the pit-bank of twenty-two, some thousand people clamored and wept and shouted. one hundred men--one thousand men--had been drowned in the cutting. they would all go to their homes to-morrow. where were their men? little unda, her cloth drenched with the rain, stood at the pit-mouth calling down the shaft for kundoo. they had swung the cages clear of the mouth, and her only answer was the murmur of the flood in the pit's eye two hundred and sixty feet below. "look after that woman! she'll chuck herself down the shaft in a minute," shouted the manager. but he need not have troubled; unda was afraid of death. she wanted kundoo. the assistant was watching the flood and seeing how far he could wade into it. there was a lull in the water, and the whirlpool had slackened. the mine was full, and the people at the pit-bank howled. "my faith, we shall be lucky if we have five hundred hands on the place to-morrow!" said the manager. "there's some chance yet of running a temporary dam across that water. shove in anything--tubs and bullock-carts if you haven't enough bricks. make them work _now_ if they never worked before. hi! you gangers, make them work." little by little the crowd was broken into detachments, and pushed toward the water with promises of overtime. the dam-making began, and when it was fairly under way, the manager thought that the hour had come for the pumps. there was no fresh inrush into the mine. the tall, red, iron-clamped pump-beam rose and fell, and the pumps snored and guttered and shrieked as the first water poured out of the pipe. "we must run her all to-night," said the manager, wearily, "but there's no hope for the poor devils down below. look here, gur sahai, if you are proud of your engines, show me what they can do now." gur sahai grinned and nodded, with his right hand upon the lever and an oil-can in his left. he could do no more than he was doing, but he could keep that up till the dawn. were the company's pumps to be beaten by the vagaries of that troublesome tarachunda river? never, never! and the pumps sobbed and panted: "never, never!" the manager sat in the shelter of the pit-bank roofing, trying to dry himself by the pump-boiler fire, and, in the dreary dusk, he saw the crowds on the dam scatter and fly. "that's the end," he groaned. "'twill take us six weeks to persuade 'em that we haven't tried to drown their mates on purpose. oh, for a decent, rational geordie!" but the flight had no panic in it. men had run over from five with astounding news, and the foremen could not hold their gangs together. presently, surrounded by a clamorous crew, gangs rahim, mogul, and janki, and ten basket-women, walked up to report themselves, and pretty little unda stole away to janki's hut to prepare his evening meal. "alone i found the way," explained janki meah, "and now will the company give me pension?" the simple pit-folk shouted and leaped and went back to the dam, reassured in their old belief that, whatever happened, so great was the power of the company whose salt they ate, none of them could be killed. but gur sahai only bared his white teeth and kept his hand upon the lever and proved his pumps to the uttermost. * * * * * "i say," said the assistant to the manager, a week later, "do you recollect _germinal?_" "yes. 'queer thing, i thought of it in the cage when that balk went by. why?" "oh, this business seems to be _germinal_ upside down. janki was in my veranda all this morning, telling me that kundoo had eloped with his wife--unda or anda, i think her name was." "hillo! and those were the cattle that you risked your life to clear out of twenty-two!" "no--i was thinking of the company's props, not the company's men." "sounds better to say so _now_; but i don't believe you, old fellow." the courting of dinah shadd what did the colonel's lady think? nobody never knew. somebody asked the sergeant's wife an' she told 'em true. when you git to a man in the case they're like a row o' pins, for the colonel's lady an' judy o'grady are sisters under their skins. _barrack room ballad._ all day i had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. thirty thousand troops had by the wisdom of the government of india been turned loose over a few thousand square miles of country to practice in peace what they would never attempt in war. consequently cavalry charged unshaken infantry at the trot. infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks delivered in line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up to the wheels of an armored train which carried nothing more deadly than a twenty-five pounder armstrong, two nordenfeldts, and a few score volunteers all cased in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. yet it was a very lifelike camp. operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew the country and nobody spared man or horse. there was unending cavalry scouting and almost unending forced work over broken ground. the army of the south had finally pierced the centre of the army of the north, and was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. its front extended fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the line of route backward to the divisional transport columns and all the lumber that trails behind an army on the move. on its right the broken left of the army of the north was flying in mass, chased by the southern horse and hammered by the southern guns till these had been pushed far beyond the limits of their last support. then the flying sat down to rest, while the elated commandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held all in check and observation. unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a flying column of northern horse with a detachment of ghoorkhas and british troops had been pushed round, as fast as the failing light allowed, to cut across the entire rear of the southern army, to break, as it were, all the ribs of the fan where they converged by striking at the transport, reserve ammunition, and artillery supplies. their instructions were to go in, avoiding the few scouts who might not have been drawn off by the pursuit, and create sufficient excitement to impress the southern army with the wisdom of guarding their own flank and rear before they captured cities. it was a pretty manoeuvre, neatly carried out. speaking for the second division of the southern army, our first intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were laboring in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them out, and the main body of the infantry had gone on. a noah's ark of elephants, camels, and the mixed menagerie of an indian transport-train bubbled and squealed behind the guns, when there appeared from nowhere in particular british infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang to the heads of the gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid oaths and cheers. "how's that, umpire?" said the major commanding the attack, and with one voice the drivers and limber gunners answered "hout!" while the colonel of artillery sputtered. "all your scouts are charging our main body," said the major. "your flanks are unprotected for two miles. i think we've broken the back of this division. and listen,--there go the ghoorkhas!" a weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was answered by cheerful howlings. the ghoorkhas, who should have swung clear of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but drawing off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost parallel to us five or six miles away. our column swayed and surged irresolutely,--three batteries, the divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the hospital and bearer corps. the commandant ruefully promised to report himself "cut up" to the nearest umpires and commending his cavalry and all other cavalry to the special care of eblis, toiled on to resume touch with the rest of the division. "we'll bivouac here to-night," said the major, "i have a notion that the ghoorkhas will get caught. they may want us to re-form on. stand easy till the transport gets away," a hand caught my beast's bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest hands in the world received me sliding. pleasant is the lot of the special correspondent who falls into such hands as those of privates mulvaney, ortheris, and learoyd. "an' that's all right," said the irishman, calmly. "we thought we'd find you somewheres here by. is there anything av yours in the transport? orth'ris 'll fetch ut out." ortheris did "fetch ut out," from under the trunk of an elephant, in the shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts. the little man's eyes sparkled. "if the brutil an' licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the thruck," said mulvaney, making practiced investigation, "they'll loot ev'rything. they're bein' fed on iron-filin's an' dog-biscuit these days, but glory's no compensation for a belly-ache. praise be, we're here to protect you, sorr. beer, sausage, bread (soft an' that's a cur'osity), soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an' fowls! mother av moses, but ye take the field like a confectioner! 'tis scand'lus." "'ere's a orficer," said ortheris, significantly. "when the sergent's done lushin' the privit may clean the pot." i bundled several things into mulvaney's haversack before the major's hand fell on my shoulder and he said, tenderly, "requisitioned for the queen's service. wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents: they are the soldier's best friends. come and take pot-luck with us to-night." and so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a waterproof sheet spread on the ground. the flying column had taken three days' rations with it, and there be few things nastier than government rations--especially when government is experimenting with german toys. erbsenwurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what thomas atkins needs is bulk in his inside. the major, assisted by his brother officers, purchased goats for the camp and so made the experiment of no effect. long before the fatigue-party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the men were settled down by their valises, kettles and pots had appeared from the surrounding country and were dangling over fires as the kid and the compressed vegetable bubbled together; there rose a cheerful clinking of mess-tins; outrageous demands for "a little more stuffin' with that there liver-wing;" and gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as delicate as a gun-butt. "the boys are in a good temper," said the major. "they'll be singing presently. well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy." over our heads burned the wonderful indian stars, which are not all pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of heaven itself. the earth was a grey shadow more unreal than the sky. we could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. a native woman from some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. then there was a belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded earth took up the story. the men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,--their officers with them. the subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical critics in his regiment, and is honored among the more intricate step-dancers. by him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, thomas atkins will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer go on alone. the ruined tombs of forgotten mussulman saints heard the ballad of _agra town, the buffalo battery, marching to kabul, the long, long indian day, the place where the punkah-coolie died_, and that crashing chorus which announces, youth's daring spirit, manhood's fire, firm hand and eagle eye, must he acquire who would aspire to see the grey boar die. to-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and lay and laughed round that waterproof sheet, not one remains. they went to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. burmah, the soudan, and the frontier,--fever and fight,--took them in their time. i drifted across to the men's fires in search of mulvaney, whom i found strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. there is nothing particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long day's march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the "might, majesty, dominion, and power" of the british empire which stands on those feet you take an interest in the proceedings. "there's a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel," said mulvaney. "i can't touch ut. prick ut out, little man," ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked into the fire. "i've bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin' child av disruption," said mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet; then seeing me, "oh, ut's you, sorr! be welkim, an' take that maraudin' scutt's place, jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit." but ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as i took possession of the hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. learoyd on the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast asleep. "there's the height av politeness for you," said mulvaney, lighting his pipe with a flaming branch. "but jock's eaten half a box av your sardines at wan gulp, an' i think the tin too. what's the best wid you, sorr, an' how did you happen to be on the losin' side this day whin we captured you?" "the army of the south is winning all along the line," i said. "then that line's the hangman's rope, savin' your presence. you'll learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble, an' that's what a woman does. by the same tokin, we'll be attacked before the dawnin' an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots. how do i know that? by the light av pure reason. here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. mark my words. i am av the opinion av polonius whin he said, 'don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint.'. we ought to ha' gone on an' helped the ghoorkhas." "but what do you know about polonius?" i demanded. this was a new side of mulvaney's character. "all that shakespeare iver wrote an' a dale more that the gallery shouted," said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. "did i not tell you av silver's theatre in dublin, whin i was younger than i am now an' a patron av the drama? ould silver wud never pay actor-man or woman their just dues, an' by consequince his comp'nies was collapsible at the last minut. thin the bhoys wud clamor to take a part, an' oft as not ould silver made them pay for the fun. faith, i've seen hamlut played wid a new black eye an' the queen as full as a cornucopia. i remimber wanst hogin that 'listed in the black tyrone an' was shot in south africa, he sejuced ould silver into givin' him hamlut's part instid av me that had a fine fancy for rhetoric in those days. av course i wint into the gallery an' began to fill the pit wid other people's hats, an' i passed the time av day to hogin walkin' through denmark like a hamstrung mule wid a pall on his back, 'hamlut,' sez i, 'there's a hole in your heel. pull up your shtockin's, hamlut,' sez i, 'hamlut, hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop that skull an' pull up your shtockin's.' the whole house begun to tell him that. he stopped his soliloquishms mid-between. 'my shtockin's may be comin' down or they may not,' sez he, screwin' his eye into the gallery, for well he knew who i was. 'but afther this performince is over me an' the ghost 'll trample the tripes out av you, terence, wid your ass's bray!' an' that's how i come to know about hamlut. eyah! those days, those days! did you iver have onendin' devilmint an' nothin' to pay for it in your life, sorr?" "never, without having to pay," i said. "that's thrue! 'tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut's the same wid horse or fut. a headache if you dhrink, an' a belly-ache if you eat too much, an' a heart-ache to kape all down. faith, the beast only gets the colic, an' he's the lucky man." he dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache the while. from the far side of the bivouac the voice of corbet-nolan, senior subaltern of b company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much appreciated song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him. the north wind blew coldly, she dropped from that hour, my own little kathleen, my sweet little kathleen, kathleen, my kathleen, kathleen o'moore! with forty-five o's in the last word: even at that distance you might have cut the soft south irish accent with a shovel. "for all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high," murmured mulvaney when the chorus had ceased. "what's the trouble?" i said gently, for i knew that he was a man of an inextinguishable sorrow. "hear now," said he. "ye know what i am now. _i_ know what i mint to be at the beginnin' av my service. i've tould you time an' again, an' what i have not dinah shadd has. an' what am i? oh, mary mother av hiven, an ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg'ment change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores av times! ay, scores! an' me not so near gettin' promotion as in the first! an' me livin' on an' kapin' clear av clink, not by my own good conduck, but the kindness av some orf'cer-bhoy young enough to be son to me! do i not know ut? can i not tell whin i'm passed over at p'rade, tho' i'm rockin' full av liquor an' ready to fall all in wan piece, such as even a suckin' child might see, bekaze, 'oh, 'tis only ould mulvaney!' an' whin i'm let off in ord'ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an' a ready answer an' the ould man's mercy, is ut smilin' i feel whin i fall away an' go back to dinah shadd, thryin' to carry ut all off as a joke? not i! 'tis hell to me, dumb hell through ut all; an' next time whin the fit comes i will be as bad again. good cause the reg'ment has to know me for the best soldier in ut. better cause have i to know mesilf for the worst man. i'm only fit to tache the new drafts what i'll niver learn mesilf; an' i am sure, as tho' i heard ut, that the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities gets away from my 'mind ye now,' an' 'listen to this, jim, bhoy,'--sure i am that the sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin'. so i tache, as they say at musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. lord be good to me, for i have stud some throuble!" "lie down and go to sleep," said i, not being able to comfort or advise. "you're the best man in the regiment, and, next to ortheris, the biggest fool. lie down and wait till we're attacked. what force will they turn out? guns, think you?" "try that wid your lorrds an' ladies, twistin' an' turnin' the talk, tho' you mint ut well. ye cud say nothin' to help me, an' yet ye niver knew what cause i had to be what i am." "begin at the beginning and go on to the end," i said, royally. "but rake up the fire a bit first." i passed ortheris's bayonet for a poker. "that shows how little we know what we do," said mulvaney, putting it aside. "fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an' the next time, may be, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl 'll break, an' so you'll ha' killed him, manin' no more than to kape yourself warm. 'tis a recruity's thrick that. pass the clanin'-rod, sorr." i snuggled down abased; and after an interval the voice of mulvaney began. "did i iver tell you how dinah shadd came to be wife av mine?" i dissembled a burning anxiety that i had felt for some months--ever since dinah shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender, had of her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in a barren land where washing was not. "i can't remember," i said, casually. "was it before or after you made love to annie bragin, and got no satisfaction?" the story of annie bragin is written in another place. it is one of the many less respectable episodes in mulvaney's checkered career. "before--before--long before, was that business av annie bragin an' the corp'ril's ghost. niver woman was the worse for me whin i had married dinah. there's a time for all things, an' i know how to kape all things in place--barrin' the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no hope av comin' to be aught else." "begin at the beginning," i insisted. "mrs. mulvaney told me that you married her when you were quartered in krab bokhar barracks." "an' the same is a cess-pit," said mulvaney, piously. "she spoke thrue, did dinah. 'twas this way. talkin' av that, have ye iver fallen in love, sorr?" i preserved the silence of the damned. mulvaney continued-- "thin i will assume that ye have not. _i_ did. in the days av my youth, as i have more than wanst tould you, i was a man that filled the eye an' delighted the sowl av women. niver man was hated as i have bin. niver man was loved as i--no, not within half a day's march av ut! for the first five years av my service, whin i was what i wud give my sowl to be now, i tuk whatever was within my reach an' digested ut--an' that's more than most men can say. dhrink i tuk, an' ut did me no harm. by the hollow av hiven, i cud play wid four women at wanst, an' kape them from findin' out anythin' about the other three, an' smile like a fullblown marigold through ut all. dick coulhan, av the battery we'll have down on us to-night, could drive his team no better than i mine, an' i hild the worser cattle! an' so i lived, an' so i was happy till afther that business wid annie bragin--she that turned me off as cool as a meat-safe, an' taught me where i stud in the mind av an honest woman. 'twas no sweet dose to swallow. "afther that i sickened awhile an' tuk thought to my reg'mental work; conceiting mesilf i wud study an' be a sargint, an' a major-gineral twinty minutes afther that. but on top av my ambitiousness there was an empty place in my sowl, an' me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut. sez i to mesilf, 'terence, you're a great man an' the best set-up in the reg'mint. go on an' get promotion.' sez mesilf to me, 'what for?' sez i to mesilf, 'for the glory av ut!' sez mesilf to me, 'will that fill these two strong arrums av yours, terence?' 'go to the devil,' sez i to mesilf, 'go to the married lines,' sez mesilf to me. 'tis the same thing,' sez i to mesilf. 'av you're the same man, ut is,' said mesilf to me; an' wid that i considhered on ut a long while. did you iver feel that way, sorr?" i snored gently, knowing that if mulvaney were uninterrupted he would go on. the clamor from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the rival singers of the companies were pitted against each other. "so i felt that way an' a bad time ut was. wanst, bein' a fool, i wint into the married lines more for the sake av spakin' to our ould color-sergint shadd than for any thruck wid womenfolk. i was a corp'ril then--rejuced aftherward, but a corp'ril then. i've got a photograft av mesilf to prove ut. 'you'll take a cup av tay wid us?' sez shadd. 'i will that,' i sez, 'tho' tay is not my divarsion.' "''twud be better for you if ut were,' sez ould mother shadd, an' she had ought to know, for shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bung-full each night. "wid that i tuk off my gloves--there was pipe-clay in thim, so that they stud alone--an' pulled up my chair, lookin' round at the china ornaments an' bits av things in the shadds' quarters. they were things that belonged to a man, an' no camp-kit, here to-day an' dishipated next. 'you're comfortable in this place, sergint,' sez i. ''tis the wife that did ut, boy,' sez he, pointin' the stem av his pipe to ould mother shadd, an' she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment. 'that manes you want money,' sez she. "an' thin--an' thin whin the kettle was to be filled, dinah came in--my dinah--her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an' her hair in a winkin' glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin' like stars on a frosty night, an' the tread av her two feet lighter than wastepaper from the colonel's basket in ord'ly-room whin ut's emptied. bein' but a shlip av a girl she went pink at seein' me, an' i twisted me moustache an' looked at a picture forninst the wall. niver show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an' begad she'll come bleatin' to your boot-heels!" "i suppose that's why you followed annie bragin till everybody in the married quarters laughed at you," said i, remembering that unhallowed wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness. "i'm layin' down the gin'ral theory av the attack," said mulvaney, driving his boot into the dying fire. "if you read the _soldier's pocket book_, which niver any soldier reads, you'll see that there are exceptions. whin dinah was out av the door (an' 'twas as tho' the sunlight had shut too)--'mother av hiven, sergint,' sez i, 'but is that your daughter?'--'i've believed that way these eighteen years,' sez ould shadd, his eyes twinklin'; 'but mrs. shadd has her own opinion, like iv'ry woman,'--'tis wid yours this time, for a mericle,' sez mother shadd. 'thin why in the name av fortune did i niver see her before?' sez i. 'bekaze you've been thrapesin' round wid the married women these three years past. she was a bit av a child till last year, an' she shot up wid the spring,' sez ould mother shadd, 'i'll thrapese no more,' sez i. 'd'you mane that?' sez ould mother shadd, lookin' at me side-ways like a hen looks at a hawk whin the chickens are runnin' free. 'try me, an' tell,' sez i. wid that i pulled on my gloves, dhrank off the tay, an' went out av the house as stiff as at gin'ral p'rade, for well i knew that dinah shadd's eyes were in the small av my back out av the scullery window. faith! that was the only time i mourned i was not a cav'lry man for the pride av the spurs to jingle. "i wint out to think, an' i did a powerful lot av thinkin', but ut all came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the blue eyes an' the sparkil in them. thin i kept off canteen, an' i kept to the married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin' dinah. did i meet her? oh, my time past, did i not; wid a lump in my throat as big as my valise an' my heart goin' like a farrier's forge on a saturday morning? 'twas 'good day to ye, miss dinah,' an' 'good day t'you, corp'ril,' for a week or two, and divil a bit further could i get bekaze av the respect i had to that girl that i cud ha' broken betune finger an' thumb." here i giggled as i recalled the gigantic figure of dinah shadd when she handed me my shirt. "ye may laugh," grunted mulvaney. "but i'm speakin' the trut', an' 'tis you that are in fault. dinah was a girl that wud ha' taken the imperiousness out av the duchess av clonmel in those days. flower hand, foot av shod air, an' the eyes av the livin' mornin' she had that is my wife to-day--ould dinah, and niver aught else than dinah shadd to me. "'twas after three weeks standin' off an' on, an' niver makin' headway excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer boy grinned in me face whin i had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin' all over the place, 'an' i'm not the only wan that doesn't kape to barricks,' sez he. i tuk him by the scruff av his neck,--my heart was hung on a hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand--an' 'out wid ut,' sez i, 'or i'll lave no bone av you unbreakable,'--'speak to dempsey,' sez he howlin'. 'dempsey which?' sez i, 'ye unwashed limb av satan.'--'av the bob-tailed dhragoons,' sez he, 'he's seen her home from her aunt's house in the civil lines four times this fortnight,'--'child!' sez i, dhroppin' him, 'your tongue's stronger than your body. go to your quarters. i'm sorry i dhressed you down.' "at that i went four ways to wanst huntin' dempsey. i was mad to think that wid all my airs among women i shud ha' been chated by a basin-faced fool av a cav'lryman not fit to trust on a trunk. presintly i found him in our lines--the bobtails was quartered next us--an' a tallowy, topheavy son av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an' his plastrons on his epigastrons an' all. but he niver flinched a hair. "'a word wid you, dempsey,' sez i. 'you've walked wid dinah shadd four times this fortnight gone.' "'what's that to you?' sez he. 'i'll walk forty times more, an' forty on top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin' infantry lance-corp'ril.' "before i cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down i went full-sprawl. 'will that content you?' sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a scots greys orf'cer. 'content!' sez i. 'for your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'tis the beginnin' av the overture; stand up!' "he stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jacket, an' his shoulders had no fair play. i was fightin' for dinah shadd an' that cut on my cheek. what hope had he forninst me? 'stand up,' sez i, time an' again whin he was beginnin' to quarter the ground an' gyard high an' go large. 'this isn't ridin'-school,' i sez. 'o man, stand up an' let me get in at ye.' but whin i saw he wud be runnin' about, i grup his shtock in my left an' his waist-belt in my right an' swung him clear to my right front, head undher, he hammerin' my nose till the wind was knocked out av him on the bare ground. 'stand up,' sez i, 'or i'll kick your head into your chest!' and i wud ha' done ut too, so ragin' mad i was. "'my collar-bone's bruk,' sez he. 'help me back to lines. i'll walk wid her no more.' so i helped him back." "and was his collar-bone broken?" i asked, for i fancied that only learoyd could neatly accomplish that terrible throw. "he pitched on his left shoulder point. ut was. next day the news was in both barricks, an' whin i met dinah shadd wid a cheek on me like all the reg'mintal tailor's samples there was no 'good mornin', corp'ril,' or aught else. 'an' what have i done, miss shadd,' sez i, very bould, plantin' mesilf forninst her, 'that ye should not pass the time of day?' "'ye've half-killed rough-rider dempsey,' sez she, her dear blue eyes fillin' up. "'may be,' sez i. 'was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times in the fortnight?' "'yes,' sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners, 'an'--an' what's that to you?' she sez. "'ask dempsey,' sez i, purtendin' to go away. "'did you fight for me then, ye silly man?' she sez, tho' she knew ut all along. "'who else?' sez i, an' i tuk wan pace to the front. "'i wasn't worth ut,' sez she, fingerin' in her apron. "'that's for me to say,' sez i. 'shall i say ut?' "'yes,' sez she, in a saint's whisper, an' at that i explained mesilf; and she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an' many that is a woman, hears wanst in his life. "'but what made ye cry at startin', dinah, darlin'?' sez i. "'your--your bloody cheek,' sez she, duckin' her little head down on my sash (i was on duty for the day) an' whimperin' like a sorrowful angil. "now a man cud take that two ways. i tuk ut as pleased me best an' my first kiss wid ut. mother av innocence! but i kissed her on the tip av the nose and undher the eye; an' a girl that let's a kiss come tumble-ways like that has never been kissed before. take note av that, sorr. thin we wint hand in hand to ould mother shadd like two little childher, an' she said 'twas no bad thing, an' ould shadd nodded behind his pipe, an' dinah ran away to her own room. that day i throd on rollin' clouds. all earth was too small to hould me. begad, i cud ha' hiked the sun out av the sky for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent i was. but i tuk recruities at squad-drill instid, an' began wid general battalion advance whin i shud ha' been balance-steppin' them. eyah! that day! that day!" a very long pause. "well?" said i. "'twas all wrong," said mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. "an' i know that ev'ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. that night i tuk maybe the half av three pints--not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural senses. but i was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an' that canteen beer was so much whisky to me, i can't tell how it came about, but _bekaze_ i had no thought for anywan except dinah, _bekaze_ i hadn't slipped her little white arms from my neck five minuts, _bekaze_ the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, i must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' i must stay talkin' to a red-headed mullingar heifer av a girl, judy sheehy, that was daughter to mother sheehy, the wife of nick sheehy, the canteen-sergint--the black curse av shielygh be on the whole brood that are above groun' this day! "'an' what are ye houldin' your head that high for, corp'ril?' sez judy. 'come in an' thry a cup av tay,' she sez, standin' in the doorway. bein' an ontrustable fool, an' thinkin' av anything but tay, i wint. "'mother's at canteen,' sez judy, smoothin' the hair av hers that was like red snakes, an' lookin' at me corner-ways out av her green cats' eyes. 'ye will not mind, corp'ril?' "'i can endure,' sez i; ould mother sheehy bein' no divarsion av mine, nor her daughter too. judy fetched the tea things an' put thim on the table, leanin' over me very close to get thim square. i dhrew back, thinkin' av dinah. "'is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?' sez judy. "'no,' sez i. 'why should i be?' "'that rests wid the girl,' sez judy, dhrawin' her chair next to mine. "'thin there let ut rest,' sez i; an' thinkin' i'd been a trifle onpolite, i sez, 'the tay's not quite sweet enough for my taste. put your little finger in the cup, judy. 'twill make ut necthar.' "'what's necthar?' sez she. "'somethin' very sweet,' sez i; an' for the sinful life av me i cud not help lookin' at her out av the corner av my eye, as i was used to look at a woman. "'go on wid ye, corp'ril,' sez she. 'you're a flirrt.' "'on me sowl i'm not,' sez i. "'then you're a cruel handsome man, an' that's worse,' sez she, heaving big sighs an' lookin' crossways. "'you know your own mind,' sez i. "''twud be better for me if i did not,' she sez. "'there's a dale to be said on both sides av that,' sez i, unthinkin'. "'say your own part av ut, then, terence, darlin',' sez she; 'for begad i'm thinkin' i've said too much or too little for an honest girl,' an' wid that she put her arms round my neck an' kissed me. "'there's no more to be said afther that,' sez i, kissin' her back again--oh the mane scutt that i was, my head ringin' wid dinah shadd! how does ut come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on wan woman, he's sure bound to put it on another? 'tis the same thing at musketry, wan day ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an' the next, lay high lay low, sight or snap, ye can't get off the bull's-eye for ten shots runnin'." "that only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. he does it without thinking," i replied. "thankin' you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. but i'm doubtful whether you mint ut for a complimint. hear now; i sat there wid judy on my knee tellin' me all manner av nonsinse an' only sayin' 'yes' an' 'no,' when i'd much better ha' kept tongue betune teeth. an' that was not an hour afther i had left dinah! what i was thinkin' av i cannot say, presintly. quiet as a cat, ould mother sheehy came in velvet-dhrunk. she had her daughter's red hair, but 'twas bald in patches, an' i cud see in her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin', what judy wud be twenty years to come. i was for jumpin' up, but judy niver moved. "'terence has promust, mother,' sez she, an' the could sweat bruk out all over me. ould mother sheehy sat down of a heap an' began playin' wid the cups. 'thin you're a well-matched pair,' she sez, very thick. 'for he's the biggest rogue that iver spoiled the queen's shoe-leather,' an'-- "'i'm off, judy,' sez i. 'ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother. get her to bed, girl.' "'nonsinse!' sez the ould woman, prickin' up her ears like a cat an' grippin' the table-edge. ''twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for you, ye grinnin' badger, if nonsinse 'tis. git clear, you. i'm goin' to bed.' "i ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an' my heart sick, but i had sinse enough to see that i'd brought ut all on mysilf. 'it's this to pass the time av day to a panjandhrum av hellcats,' sez i. 'what i've said, an' what i've not said do not matther. judy an' her dam will hould me for a promust man, an' dinah will give me the go, an' i desarve ut. i will go an' get dhrunk,' sez i, 'an' forget about ut, for 'tis plain i'm not a marrin' man.' "on my way to canteen i ran against lascelles, color-sergeant that was av e comp'ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. 'you've the head av a drowned man on your shoulders,' sez he; 'an' you're goin' where you'll get a worse wan. 'come back,' sez he. 'let me go,' sez i. 'i've thrown my luck over the wall wid my own hand!'--'then that's not the way to get ut back again,' sez he. 'have out wid your throuble, ye fool-bhoy.' an' i tould him how the matther was. "he sucked in his lower lip. 'you've been thrapped,' sez he. 'ju sheehy wud be the betther for a man's name to hers as soon as can. an' ye thought ye'd put the comether on her,--that's the natural vanity of the baste. terence, you're a big born fool, but you're not bad enough to marry into that comp'ny. if you said anythin', an' for all your protestations i'm sure ye did--or did not, which is worse,--eat ut all--lie like the father of all lies, but come out av ut free av judy. do i not know what ut is to marry a woman that was the very spit an' image av judy whin she was young? i'm gettin' old an' i've larnt patience, but you, terence, you'd raise hand on judy an' kill her in a year. never mind if dinah gives you the go, you've desarved ut; never mind if the whole reg'mint laughs you all day. get shut av judy an' her mother. they can't dhrag you to church, but if they do, they'll dhrag you to hell. go back to your quarters and lie down,' sez he. thin over his shoulder, 'you _must_ ha' done with thim,' "next day i wint to see dinah, but there was no tucker in me as i walked. i knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin' av mine, an' i dreaded ut sore. "i heard judy callin' me, but i hild straight on to the shadds' quarthers, an' dinah wud ha' kissed me but i put her back. "'whin all's said, darlin',' sez i, 'you can give ut me if ye will, tho' i misdoubt 'twill be so easy to come by then.' "i had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before judy an' her mother came to the door. i think there was a veranda, but i'm forgettin'. "'will ye not step in?' sez dinah, pretty and polite, though the shadds had no dealin's with the sheehys. old mother shadd looked up quick, an' she was the fust to see the throuble; for dinah was her daughter. "'i'm pressed for time to-day,' sez judy as bould as brass; 'an' i've only come for terence,--my promust man. tis strange to find him here the day afther the day.' "dinah looked at me as though i had hit her, an' i answered straight. "'there was some nonsinse last night at the sheehys' quarthers, an' judy's carryin' on the joke, darlin',' sez i. "'at the sheehys' quarthers?' sez dinah very slow, an' judy cut in wid: 'he was there from nine till ten, dinah shadd, an' the betther half av that time i was sittin' on his knee, dinah shadd. ye may look and ye may look an' ye may look me up an' down, but ye won't look away that terence is my promust man, terence, darlin', 'tis time for us to be comin' home.' "dinah shadd niver said word to judy. 'ye left me at half-past eight,' she sez to me, 'an' i niver thought that ye'd leave me for judy,--promises, or no promises. go back wid her, you that have to be fetched by a girl! i'm done with you,' sez she, and she ran into her own room, her mother followin'. so i was alone wid those two women and at liberty to spake my sentiments. "'judy sheehy,' sez i, 'if you made a fool av me betune the lights you shall not do ut in the day. i niver promised you words or lines.' "'you lie,' sez ould mother sheehy, 'an' may ut choke you waere you stand!' she was far gone in dhrink. "'an' tho' ut choked me where i stud i'd not change,' sez i. 'go home, judy. i take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin' your mother out bareheaded on this errand. hear now, and have ut for an answer. i gave my word to dinah shadd yesterday, an', more blame to me, i was wid you last night talkin' nonsinse but nothin' more. you've chosen to thry to hould me on ut. i will not be held thereby for anythin' in the world. is that enough?' "judy wint pink all over. 'an' i wish you joy av the perjury,' sez she, duckin' a curtsey. 'you've lost a woman that would ha' wore her hand to the bone for your pleasure; an' 'deed, terence, ye were not thrapped....' lascelles must ha' spoken plain to her. 'i am such as dinah is--'deed i am! ye've lost a fool av a girl that'll niver look at you again, an' ye've lost what ye niver had,--your common honesty. if you manage your men as you manage your love-makin', small wondher they call you the worst corp'ril in the comp'ny. come away, mother,' sez she. "but divil a fut would the ould woman budge! 'd'you hould by that?' sez she, peerin' up under her thick grey eyebrows. "'ay, an wud,' sez i, 'tho' dinah give me the go twinty times. i'll have no thruck with you or yours,' sez i. 'take your child away, ye shameless woman.' "'an' am i shameless?' sez she, bringin' her hands up above her head. 'thin what are you, ye lyin', schamin', weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son av a sutler? am _i_ shameless? who put the open shame on me an' my child that we shud go beggin' through the lines in the broad daylight for the broken word of a man? double portion of my shame be on you, terence mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! by mary and the saints, by blood and water an' by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the beginnin', the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be free from pain for another when ut's not your own! may your heart bleed in your breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin' at the bleedin'! strong you think yourself? may your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into the divil's hands against your own will! clear-eyed you are? may your eyes see dear evry step av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers av hell put thim out! may the ragin' dry thirst in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. god preserve the light av your onder-standin' to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an' do, whin you're wallowin' in the muck! may ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there's breath in your body; an' may ye die quick in a strange land; watchin' your death before ut takes you, an' onable to stir hand or foot!' "i heard a scufflin' in the room behind, and thin dinah shadd's hand dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road. "'the half av that i'll take,' sez she, 'an' more too if i can. go home, ye silly talkin' woman,--go home an' confess.' "'come away! come away!' sez judy, pullin' her mother by the shawl. ''twas none av terence's fault. for the love av mary stop the talkin'!' "'an' you!' said ould mother sheehy, spinnin' round forninst dinah. 'will ye take the half av that man's load? stand off from him, dinah shadd, before he takes you down too--you that look to be a quarther-master- sergeant's wife in five years. you look too high, child. you shall _wash_ for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give you the job out av charity; but a privit's wife you shall be to the end, an' evry sorrow of a privit's wife you shall know and nivir a joy but wan, that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. the pain av bearin' you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast; an' you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid never a priest to say a prayer over him, an' on that man-child ye shall think ivry day av your life. think long, dinah shadd, for you'll niver have another tho' you pray till your knees are bleedin'. the mothers av childer shall mock you behind your back when you're wringing over the washtub. you shall know what ut is to help a dhrunken husband home an' see him go to the gyard-room. will that plase you, dinah shadd, that won't be seen talkin' to my daughter? you shall talk to worse than judy before all's over. the sergints' wives shall look down on you contemptuous, daughter av a sergint, an' you shall cover ut all up wid a smiling face when your heart's burstin'. stand off av him, dinah shadd, for i've put the black curse of shielygh upon him an' his own mouth shall make ut good." "she pitched forward on her head an' began foamin' at the mouth. dinah shadd ran out wid water, an' judy dhragged the ould woman into the veranda till she sat up. "'i'm old an' forlore,' she sez, thremblin' an' cryin', 'and 'tis like i say a dale more than i mane.' "'when you're able to walk,--go,' says ould mother shadd. 'this house has no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter.' "'eyah!' said the ould woman. 'hard words break no bones, an' dinah shadd 'll keep the love av her husband till my bones are green corn, judy darlin', i misremember what i came here for. can you lend us the bottom av a taycup av tay, mrs. shadd?' "but judy dhragged her off cryin' as tho' her heart wud break. an' dinah shadd an' i, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all." "then why do you remember it now?" said i. "is ut like i'd forget? ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell thrue in my life aftherward, an' i cud ha' stud ut all--stud ut all--excipt when my little shadd was born. that was on the line av march three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. we were betune umballa an' kalka thin, an' i was on picket. whin i came off duty the women showed me the child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as i looked. we buried him by the road, an' father victor was a day's march behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp'ny captain read a prayer. an' since then i've been a childless man, an' all else that ould mother sheehy put upon me an' dinah shadd. what do you think, sorr?" i thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for mulvaney's hand. the demonstration nearly cost me the use of three fingers. whatever he knows of his weaknesses, mulvaney is entirely ignorant of his strength. "but what do you think?" he repeated, as i was straightening out the crushed fingers. my reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where ten men were shouting for "orth'ris," "privit orth'ris," "mistah or--ther--ris!" "deah boy," "cap'n orth'ris," "field-marshal orth'ris," "stanley, you pen'north o' pop, come 'ere to your own comp'ny!" and the cockney, who had been delighting another audience with recondite and rabelaisian yarns, was shot down among his admirers by the major force. "you've crumpled my dress-shirt 'orrid," said he, "an' i shan't sing no more to this 'ere bloomin' drawin'-room." learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind ortheris, and slung him aloft on his shoulders. "sing, ye bloomin' hummin' bird!" said he, and ortheris, beating time on learoyd's skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the ratcliffe highway, of this song:-- my girl she give me the go onst, when i was a london lad, an' i went on the drink for a fortnight, an' then i went to the bad. the queen she give me a shillin' to fight for 'er over the seas; but guv'ment built me a fever-trap, an' injia give me disease. _chorus._ ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says, an' don't you go for the beer; but i was an ass when i was at grass, an' that is why i'm here. i fired a shot at a afghan, the beggar 'e fired again, an' i lay on my bed with a 'ole in my 'ed, an' missed the next campaign! i up with my gun at a burman who carried a bloomin' _dah_, but the cartridge stuck and the bay'nit bruk, an' all i got was the scar. _chorus._ ho! don't you aim at a afghan when you stand on the sky-line clear; an' don't you go for a burman if none o' your friends is near. i served my time for a corp'ral, an' wetted my stripes with pop, for i went on the bend with a intimate friend, an' finished the night in the "shop." i served my time for a sergeant; the colonel 'e sez "no! the most you'll see is a full c.b." [ ] an' ... very next night 'twas so. [footnote : confined to barracks.] _chorus._ ho! don't you go for a corp'ral unless your 'ed is clear; but i was an ass when i was at grass, an' that is why i'm 'ere. i've tasted the luck o' the army in barrack an' camp an' clink, an' i lost my tip through the bloomin' trip along o' the women an' drink. i'm down at the heel o' my service an' when i am laid on the shelf, my very wust friend from beginning to end by the blood of a mouse was myself! _chorus_. ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says, an' don't you go for the beer: but i was an ass when i was at grass, an' that is why i'm 'ere, "ay, listen to our little man now, singin' an' shoutin' as tho' trouble had niver touched him. d' you remember when he went mad with the homesickness?" said mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season when ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved abominably. "but he's talkin' bitter truth, though. eyah! "my very worst frind from beginnin' to ind by the blood av a mouse was mesilf!" * * * * * when i woke i saw mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as prometheus on his rock, with i know not what vultures tearing his liver. the story of muhammad din who is the happy man? he that sees in his own house at home, little children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying. --_munichandra_, translated by professor peterson. the polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. it stood on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which imam din, _khitmatgar_, was cleaning for me. "does the heaven-born want this ball?" said imam din, deferentially. the heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a polo-ball to a _khitmatgar_? "by your honor's favor, i have a little son. he has seen this ball, and desires it to play with. i do not want it for myself." no one would for an instant accuse portly old imam din of wanting to play with polo-balls. he carried out the battered thing into the veranda; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of small feet, and the _thud-thud-thud_ of the ball rolling along the ground. evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his treasure. but how had he managed to see that polo-ball? next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, i was aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. it wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. undoubtedly this was the "little son." he had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. i stepped into the room and startled him nearly into a fit. he sat down on the ground with a gasp. his eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. i knew what was coming, and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the servants' quarters far more quickly than any command of mine had ever done. in ten seconds imam din was in the dining-room. then despairing sobs arose, and i returned to find imam din admonishing the small sinner who was using most of his shirt as a handkerchief. "this boy," said imam din, judicially, "is a _budmash_--a big _budmash_. he will, without doubt, go to the _jail-khana_ for his behavior." renewed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to myself from imam din. "tell the baby," said i, "that the _sahib_ is not angry, and take him away." imam din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had now gathered all his shirt round his neck, stringwise, and the yell subsided into a sob. the two set off for the door. "his name," said imam din, as though the name were part of the crime, "is muhammad din, and he is a _budmash_." freed from present danger, muhammad din turned round in his father's arms, and said gravely, "it is true that my name is muhammad din, _tahib_, but i am not a _budmash_. i am a _man!_" from that day dated my acquaintance with muhammad din. never again did he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the garden, we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was confined to "_talaam, tahib_" from his side, and "_salaam, muhammad din_" from mine. daily on my return from office, the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid; and daily i checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly. muhammad din never had any companions. he used to trot about the compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands of his own. one day i stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down the grounds. he had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six shriveled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. outside that circle again was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. the water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure my garden. heaven knows that i had no intention of touching the child's work then or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me unawares full on it; so that i trampled, before i knew, marigold-heads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past all hope of mending. next morning, i came upon muhammad din crying softly to himself over the ruin i had wrought. some one had cruelly told him that the _sahib_ was very angry with him for spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish, using bad language the while. muhammad din labored for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful and apologetic face that he said "_talaam, tahib_," when i came home from office. a hasty inquiry resulted in imam din informing muhammad din that, by my singular favor, he was permitted to disport himself as he pleased. whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation. for some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, i fancy, from my fowls--always alone, and always crooning to himself. a gaily-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his little buildings; and i looked that muhammad din should build something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. nor was i disappointed. he meditated for the better part of an hour, and his crooning rose to a jubilant song. then he began tracing in the dust. it would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. but the palace was never completed. next day there was no muhammad din at the head of the carriage-drive, and no "_talaam, tahib_" to welcome my return. i had grown accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me. next day imam din told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine. he got the medicine, and an english doctor. "they have no stamina, these brats," said the doctor, as he left imam din's quarters. a week later, though i would have given much to have avoided it, i met on the road to the mussulman burying-ground imam din, accompanied by one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that was left of little muhammad din. in flood time tweed said tae till: "what gars ye rin sae still?" till said tae tweed: "though ye rin wi' speed an' i rin slaw-- yet where ye droon ae man i droon twa." there is no getting over the river to-night, sahib. they say that a bullock-cart has been washed down already, and the _ekka_ that went over a half hour before you came, has not yet reached the far side. is the sahib in haste? i will drive the ford-elephant in to show him. _ohé, mahout_ there in the shed! bring out ram pershad, and if he will face the current, good. an elephant never lies, sahib, and ram pershad is separated from his friend kala nag. he, too, wishes to cross to the far side. well done! well done! my king! go half way across, _mahoutji_, and see what the river says. well done, ram pershad! pearl among elephants, go into the river! hit him on the head, fool! was the goad made only to scratch thy own fat back with, bastard? strike! strike! what are the boulders to thee, ram pershad, my rustum, my mountain of strength? go in! go in! no, sahib! it is useless. you can hear him trumpet. he is telling kala nag that he cannot come over. see! he has swung round and is shaking his head. he is no fool. he knows what the barhwi means when it is angry. aha! indeed, thou art no fool, my child! _salaam_, ram pershad, bahadur! take him under the trees, _mahout_, and see that he gets his spices. well done, thou chiefest among tuskers. _salaam_ to the sirkar and go to sleep. what is to be done? the sahib must wait till the river goes down. it will shrink to-morrow morning, if god pleases, or the day after at the latest. now why does the sahib get so angry? i am his servant. before god, _i_ did not create this stream! what can i do? my hut and all that is therein is at the service of the sahib, and it is beginning to rain. come away, my lord, how will the river go down for your throwing abuse at it? in the old days the english people were not thus. the fire-carriage has made them soft. in the old days, when they drave behind horses by day or by night, they said naught if a river barred the way, or a carriage sat down in the mud. it was the will of god--not like a fire-carriage which goes and goes and goes, and would go though all the devils in the land hung on to its tail. the fire-carriage hath spoiled the english people. after all, what is a day lost, or, for that matter, what are two days? is the sahib going to his own wedding, that he is so mad with haste? ho! ho! ho! i am an old man and see few sahibs. forgive me if i have forgotten the respect that is due to them. the sahib is not angry? his own wedding! ho! ho! ho! the mind of an old man is like the _numah_-tree. fruit, bud, blossom, and the dead leaves of all the years of the past flourish together. old and new and that which is gone out of remembrance, all three are there! sit on the bedstead, sahib, and drink milk. or--would the sahib in truth care to drink my tobacco? it is good. it is the tobacco of nuklao. my son, who is in service there sent it to me. drink, then, sahib, if you know how to handle the tube. the sahib takes it like a musalman. wah! wah! where did he learn that? his own wedding! ho! ho! ho! the sahib says that there is no wedding in the matter at all? now _is_ it likely that the sahib would speak true talk to me who am only a black man? small wonder, then, that he is in haste. thirty years have i beaten the gong at this ford, but never have i seen a sahib in such haste. thirty years, sahib! that is a very long time. thirty years ago this ford was on the track of the _bunjaras_, and i have seen two thousand pack-bullocks cross in one night. now the rail has come, and the fire-carriage says _buz-buz-buz_, and a hundred lakhs of maunds slide across that big bridge. it is very wonderful; but the ford is lonely now that there are no _bunjaras_ to camp under the trees. nay, do not trouble to look at the sky without. it will rain till the dawn. listen! the boulders are talking to-night in the bed of the river. hear them! they would be husking your bones, sahib, had you tried to cross. see, i will shut the door and no rain can enter. _wahi! ahi! ugh!_ thirty years on the banks of the ford! an old man am i and--where is the oil for the lamp? * * * * * your pardon, but, because of my years, i sleep no sounder than a dog; and you moved to the door. look then, sahib. look and listen. a full half _kos_ from bank to bank is the stream now--you can see it under the stars--and there are ten feet of water therein. it will not shrink because of the anger in your eyes, and it will not be quiet on account of your curses. which is louder, sahib--your voice or the voice of the river? call to it--perhaps it will be ashamed. lie down and sleep afresh, sahib. i know the anger of the barhwi when there has fallen rain in the foot-hills. i swam the flood, once, on a night tenfold worse than this, and by the favor of god i was released from death when i had come to the very gates thereof. may i tell the tale? very good talk. i will fill the pipe anew. thirty years ago it was, when i was a young man and had but newly come to the ford. i was strong then, and the _bunjaras_ had no doubt when i said "this ford is clear." i have toiled all night up to my shoulder-blades in running water amid a hundred bullocks mad with fear, and have brought them across losing not a hoof. when all was done i fetched the shivering men, and they gave me for reward the pick of their cattle--the bell-bullock of the drove. so great was the honor in which i was held! but, to-day when the rain falls and the river rises, i creep into my hut and whimper like a dog. my strength is gone from me. i am an old man and the fire-carriage has made the ford desolate. they were wont to call me the strong one of the barhwi. behold my face, sahib--it is the face of a monkey. and my arm--it is the arm of an old woman. i swear to you, sahib, that a woman has loved this face and has rested in the hollow of this arm. twenty years ago, sahib. believe me, this was true talk--twenty years ago. come to the door and look across. can you see a thin fire very far away down the stream? that is the temple-fire, in the shrine of hanuman, of the village of pateera. north, under the big star, is the village itself, but it is hidden by a bend of the river. is that far to swim, sahib? would you take off your clothes and adventure? yet i swam to pateera--not once but many times; and there are _muggers_ in the river too. love knows no caste; else why should i, a musalman and the son of a musalman, have sought a hindu woman--a widow of the hindus--the sister of the headman of pateera? but it was even so. they of the headman's household came on a pilgrimage to muttra when she was but newly a bride. silver tires were upon the wheels of the bullock-cart, and silken curtains hid the woman. sahib, i made no haste in their conveyance, for the wind parted the curtains and i saw her. when they returned from pilgrimage the boy that was her husband had died, and i saw her again in the bullock-cart. by god, these hindus are fools! what was it to me whether she was hindu or jain--scavenger, leper, or whole? i would have married her and made her a home by the ford. the seventh of the nine bars says that a man may not marry one of the idolaters? is that truth? both shiahs and sunnis say that a musalman may not marry one of the idolaters? is the sahib a priest, then, that he knows so much? i will tell him something that he does not know. there is neither shiah nor sunni, forbidden nor idolater, in love; and the nine bars are but nine little fagots that the flame of love utterly burns away. in truth, i would have taken her; but what could i do? the headman would have sent his men to break my head with staves. i am not--i was not--afraid of any five men; but against half a village who can prevail? therefore it was my custom, these things having been arranged between us twain, to go by night to the village of pateera, and there we met among the crops; no man knowing aught of the matter. behold, now! i was wont to cross here, skirting the jungle to the river bend where the railway bridge is, and thence across the elbow of land to pateera. the light of the shrine was my guide when the nights were dark. that jungle near the river is very full of snakes--little _karaits_ that sleep on the sand--and moreover, her brothers would have slain me had they found me in the crops. but none knew--none knew save she and i; and the blown sand of the river-bed covered the track of my feet. in the hot months it was an easy thing to pass from the ford to pateera, and in the first rains, when the river rose slowly, it was an easy thing also. i set the strength of my body against the strength of the stream, and nightly i ate in my hut here and drank at pateera yonder. she had said that one hirnam singh, a thief, had sought her, and he was of a village up the river but on the same bank. all sikhs are dogs, and they have refused in their folly that good gift of god--tobacco. i was ready to destroy hirnam singh that ever he had come nigh her; and the more because he had sworn to her that she had a lover, and that he would lie in wait and give the name to the headman unless she went away with him. what curs are these sikhs! after that news, i swam always with a little sharp knife in my belt, and evil would it have been for a man had he stayed me, i knew not the face of hirnam singh, but i would have killed any who came between me and her. upon a night in the beginning of the rains, i was minded to go across to pateera, albeit the river was angry. now the nature of the barhwi is this, sahib. in twenty breaths it comes down from the hills, a wall three feet high, and i have seen it, between the lighting of a fire and the cooking of a _chupatty_, grow from a runnel to a sister of the jumna. when i left this bank there was a shoal a half mile down, and i made shift to fetch it and draw breath there ere going forward; for i felt the hands of the river heavy upon my heels. yet what will a young man not do for love's sake? there was but little light from the stars, and midway to the shoal a branch of the stinking deodar tree brushed my mouth as i swam. that was a sign of heavy rain in the foot-hills and beyond, for the deodar is a strong tree, not easily shaken from the hillsides. i made haste, the river aiding me, but ere i had touched the shoal, the pulse of the stream beat, as it were, within me and around, and, behold, the shoal was gone and i rode high on the crest of a wave that ran from bank to bank. has the sahib ever been cast into much water that fights and will not let a man use his limbs? to me, my head upon the water, it seemed as though there were naught but water to the world's end, and the river drave me with its driftwood. a man is a very little thing in the belly of a flood. and _this_ flood, though i knew it not, was the great flood about which men talk still. my liver was dissolved and i lay like a log upon my back in the fear of death. there were living things in the water, crying and howling grievously--beasts of the forest and cattle, and once the voice of a man asking for help. but the rain came and lashed the water white, and i heard no more save the roar of the boulders below and the roar of the rain above. thus i was whirled down-stream, wrestling for the breath in me. it is very hard to die when one is young. can the sahib, standing here, see the railway bridge? look, there are the lights of the mail-train going to peshawur! the bridge is now twenty feet above the river, but upon that night the water was roaring against the lattice-work and against the lattice came i feet first, but much driftwood was piled there and upon the piers, and i took no great hurt. only the river pressed me as a strong man presses a weaker. scarcely could i take hold of the lattice-work and crawl to the upper boom. sahib, the water was foaming across the rails a foot deep! judge therefore what manner of flood it must have been. i could not hear, i could not see. i could but lie on the boom and pant for breath. after a while the rain ceased and there came out in the sky certain new washed stars, and by their light i saw that there was no end to the black water as far as the eye could travel, and the water had risen upon the rails. there were dead beasts in the driftwood on the piers, and others caught by the neck in the lattice-work, and others not yet drowned who strove to find a foothold on the lattice-work--buffaloes and kine, and wild pig, and deer one or two, and snakes and jackals past all counting. their bodies were black upon the left side of the bridge, but the smaller of them were forced through the lattice-work and whirled down-stream. thereafter the stars died and the rain came down afresh and the river rose yet more, and i felt the bridge begin to stir under me as a man stirs in his sleep ere he wakes. but i was not afraid, sahib. i swear to you that i was not afraid, though i had no power in my limbs. i knew that i should not die till i had seen her once more. but i was very cold, and i felt that the bridge must go. there was a trembling in the water, such a trembling as goes before the coming of a great wave, and the bridge lifted its flank to the rush of that coming so that the right lattice dipped under water and the left rose clear. on my beard, sahib, i am speaking god's truth! as a mirzapore stone-boat careens to the wind, so the barhwi bridge turned. thus and in no other manner. i slid from the boom into deep water, and behind me came the wave of the wrath of the river. i heard its voice and the scream of the middle part of the bridge as it moved from the piers and sank, and i knew no more till i rose in the middle of the great flood. i put forth my hand to swim, and lo! it fell upon the knotted hair of the head of a man. he was dead, for no one but i, the strong one of barhwi, could have lived in that race. he had been dead full two days, for he rode high, wallowing, and was an aid to me, i laughed then, knowing for a surety that i should yet see her and take no harm; and i twisted my fingers in the hair of the man, for i was far spent, and together we went down the stream--he the dead and i the living. lacking that help i should have sunk: the cold was in my marrow, and my flesh was ribbed and sodden on my bones. but _he_ had no fear who had known the uttermost of the power of the river; and i let him go where he chose. at last we came into the power of a side-current that set to the right bank, and i strove with my feet to draw with it. but the dead man swung heavily in the whirl, and i feared that some branch had struck him and that he would sink. the tops of the tamarisk brushed my knees, so i knew we were come into flood-water above the crops, and, after, i let down my legs and felt bottom--the ridge of a field--and, after, the dead man stayed upon a knoll under a fig-tree, and i drew my body from the water rejoicing. does the sahib know whither the backwash of the flood had borne me? to the knoll which is the eastern boundary-mark of the village of pateera! no other place. i drew the dead man up on the grass for the service that he had done me, and also because i knew not whether i should need him again. then i went, crying thrice like a jackal, to the appointed place which was near the byre of the headman's house. but my love was already there, weeping. she feared that the flood had swept my hut at the barhwi ford. when i came softly through the ankle-deep water, she thought it was a ghost and would have fled, but i put my arms round her, and--i was no ghost in those days, though i am an old man now. ho! ho! dried corn, in truth. maize without juice. ho! ho! [footnote: i grieve to say that the warden of barhwi ford is responsible here for two very bad puns in the vernacular.--_r.k._] i told her the story of the breaking of the barhwi bridge, and she said that i was greater than mortal man, for none may cross the barhwi in full flood, and i had seen what never man had seen before. hand in hand we went to the knoll where the dead lay, and i showed her by what help i had made the ford. she looked also upon the body under the stars, for the latter end of the night was clear, and hid her face in her hands, crying: "it is the body of hirnam singh!" i said: "the swine is of more use dead than living, my beloved," and she said: "surely, for he has saved the dearest life in the world to my love. none the less, he cannot stay here, for that would bring shame upon me." the body was not a gunshot from her door. then said i, rolling the body with my hands: "god hath judged between us, hirnam singh, that thy blood might not be upon my head. now, whether i have done thee a wrong in keeping thee from the burning-ghat, do thou and the crows settle together." so i cast him adrift into the flood-water, and he was drawn out to the open, ever wagging his thick black beard like a priest under the pulpit-board. and i saw no more of hirnam singh. before the breaking of the day we two parted, and i moved toward such of the jungle as was not flooded. with the full light i saw what i had done in the darkness, and the bones of my body were loosened in my flesh, for there ran two _kos_ of raging water between the village of pateera and the trees of the far bank, and, in the middle, the piers of the barhwi bridge showed like broken teeth in the jaw of an old man. nor was there any life upon the waters--neither birds nor boats, but only an army of drowned things--bullocks and horses and men--and the river was redder than blood from the clay of the foot-hills. never had i seen such a flood--never since that year have i seen the like--and, o sahib, no man living had done what i had done. there was no return for me that day. not for all the lands of the headman would i venture a second time without the shield of darkness that cloaks danger. i went a _kos_ up the river to the house of a blacksmith, saying that the flood had swept me from my hut, and they gave me food. seven days i stayed with the blacksmith, till a boat came and i returned to my house. there was no trace of wall, or roof, or floor--naught but a patch of slimy mud. judge, therefore, sahib, how far the river must have risen. it was written that i should not die either in my house, or in the heart of the barhwi, or under the wreck of the barhwi bridge, for god sent down hirnam singh two days dead, though i know not how the man died, to be my buoy and support. hirnam singh has been in hell these twenty years, and the thought of that night must be the flower of his torment. listen, sahib! the river has changed its voice. it is going to sleep before the dawn, to which there is yet one hour. with the light it will come down afresh. how do i know? have i been here thirty years without knowing the voice of the river as a father knows the voice of his son? every moment it is talking less angrily. i swear that there will be no danger for one hour or, perhaps, two. i cannot answer for the morning. be quick, sahib! i will call ram pershad, and he will not turn back this time. is the paulin tightly corded upon all the baggage? _ohé, mahout_ with a mud head, the elephant for the sahib, and tell them on the far side that there will be no crossing after daylight. money? nay, sahib. i am not of that kind. no, not even to give sweetmeats to the baby-folk. my house, look you, is empty, and i am an old man. _dutt_, ram pershad! _dutt! dutt! dutt!_ good luck go with you, sahib. my own true ghost story as i came through the desert thus it was-- as i came through the desert. --_the city of dreadful night_. somewhere in the other world, where there are books and pictures and plays and shop-windows to look at, and thousands of men who spend their lives in building up all four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories about the real insides of people; and his name is mr. walter besant. but he will insist upon treating his ghosts--he has published half a workshopful of them--with levity. he makes his ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. you may treat anything, from a viceroy to a vernacular paper, with levity; but you must behave reverently toward a ghost, and particularly an indian one. there are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler passes. then they drop upon his neck and remain. there are also terrible ghosts of women who have died in child-bed. these wander along the pathways at dusk, or hide in the crops near a village, and call seductively. but to answer their call is death in this world and the next. their feet are turned backward that all sober men may recognize them. there are ghosts of little children who have been thrown into wells. these haunt well-curbs and the fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. these and the corpse-ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack sahibs. no native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an englishman; but many english ghosts have scared the life out of both white and black. nearly every other station owns a ghost. there are said to be two at simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at syree dâk-bungalow on the old road; mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively thing; a white lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a house in lahore; dalhousie says that one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are officers quarters in mian mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of june but with the weight of invisibles who come to lounge in the chair; peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something--not fever--wrong with a big bungalow in allahabad. the older provinces simply bristle with haunted houses, and march phantom armies along their main thoroughfares. some of the dâk-bungalows on the grand trunk road have handy little cemeteries in their compound--witnesses to the "changes and chances of this mortal life" in the days when men drove from calcutta to the northwest. these bungalows are objectionable places to put up in. they are generally very old, always dirty, while the _khansamah_ is as ancient as the bungalow. he either chatters senilely, or falls into the long trances of age. in both moods he is useless. if you get angry with him, he refers to some sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and says that when he was in that sahib's service not a _khansamah_ in the province could touch him. then he jabbers and mows and trembles and fidgets among the dishes, and you repent of your irritation. in these dâk-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and when found, they should be made a note of. not long ago it was my business to live in dâk-bungalows. i never inhabited the same house for three nights running, and grew to be learned in the breed. i lived in government-built ones with red brick walls and rail ceilings, an inventory of the furniture posted in every room, and an excited snake at the threshold to give welcome. i lived in "converted" ones--old houses officiating as dâk-bungalows--where nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even a fowl for dinner. i lived in second-hand palaces where the wind blew through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as through a broken pane. i lived in dâk-bungalows where the last entry in the visitors' book was fifteen months old, and where they slashed off the curry-kid's head with a sword. it was my good-luck to meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling missionaries and deserters flying from british regiments, to drunken loafers who threw whiskey bottles at all who passed; and my still greater good-fortune just to escape a maternity case. seeing that a fair proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dâk-bungalows, i wondered that i had met no ghosts. a ghost that would voluntarily hang about a dâk-bungalow would be mad of course; but so many men have died mad in dâk-bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts. in due time i found my ghost, or ghosts rather, for there were two of them. up till that hour i had sympathized with mr. besant's method of handling them, as shown in "_the strange case of mr. lucraft and other stories._" i am now in the opposition. we will call the bungalow katmal dâk-bungalow. but _that_ was the smallest part of the horror. a man with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in dâk-bungalows. he should marry. katmal dâk-bungalow was old and rotten and unrepaired. the floor was of worn brick, the walls were filthy, and the windows were nearly black with grime. it stood on a bypath largely used by native sub-deputy assistants of all kinds, from finance to forests; but real sahibs were rare. the _khansamah_, who was nearly bent double with old age, said so. when i arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a noise like the rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy-palms outside. the _khansamah_ completely lost his head on my arrival. he had served a sahib once. did i know that sahib? he gave me the name of a well-known man who has been buried for more than a quarter of a century, and showed me an ancient daguerreotype of that man in his prehistoric youth. i had seen a steel engraving of him at the head of a double volume of memoirs a month before, and i felt ancient beyond telling. the day shut in and the _khansamah_ went to get me food. he did not go through the pretence of calling it "_khana_"--man's victuals. he said "_ratub_," and that means, among other things, "grub"--dog's rations. there was no insult in his choice of the term. he had forgotten the other word, i suppose. while he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, i settled myself down, after exploring the dâk-bungalow. there were three rooms, beside my own, which was a corner kennel, each giving into the other through dingy white doors fastened with long iron bars. the bungalow was a very solid one, but the partition-walls of the rooms were almost jerry-built in their flimsiness. every step or bang of a trunk echoed from my room down the other three, and every footfall came back tremulously from the far walls. for this reason i shut the door. there were no lamps--only candles in long glass shades. an oil wick was set in the bath-room. for bleak, unadulterated misery that dâk-bungalow was the worst of the many that i had ever set foot in. there was no fireplace, and the windows would not open; so a brazier of charcoal would have been useless. the rain and the wind splashed and gurgled and moaned round the house, and the toddy-palms rattled and roared. half a dozen jackals went through the compound singing, and a hyena stood afar off and mocked them. a hyena would convince a sadducee of the resurrection of the dead--the worst sort of dead. then came the _ratub_--a curious meal, half native and half english in composition--with the old _khansamah_ babbling behind my chair about dead and gone english people, and the wind-blown candles playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains. it was just the sort of dinner and evening to make a man think of every single one of his past sins, and of all the others that he intended to commit if he lived. sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy. the lamp in the bath-room threw the most absurd shadows into the room, and the wind was beginning to talk nonsense. just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-sucking i heard the regular--"let-us-take-and-heave-him-over" grunt of doolie-bearers in the compound. first one doolie came in, then a second, and then a third. i heard the doolies dumped on the ground, and the shutter in front of my door shook. "that's some one trying to come in," i said. but no one spoke, and i persuaded myself that it was the gusty wind. the shutter of the room next to mine was attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened, "that's some sub-deputy assistant," i said, "and he has brought his friends with him. now they'll talk and spit and smoke for an hour." but there were no voices and no footsteps, no one was putting his luggage into the next room. the door shut, and i thanked providence that i was to be left in peace. but i was curious to know where the doolies had gone. i got out of bed and looked into the darkness. there was never a sign of a doolie. just as i was getting into bed again, i heard, in the next room, the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake--the whir of a billiard ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing for break. no other sound is like it. a minute afterward there was another whir, and i got into bed. i was not frightened--indeed i was not. i was very curious to know what had become of the doolies. i jumped into bed for that reason. next minute i heard the double click of a cannon and my hair sat up. it is a mistake to say that hair stands up. the skin of the head tightens and you can feel a faint, prickly bristling all ever the scalp. that is the hair sitting up. there was a whir and a click, and both sounds could only have been made by one thing--a billiard ball. i argued the matter out at great length with myself; and the more i argued the less probable it seemed that one bed, one table, and two chairs--all the furniture of the room next to mine--could so exactly duplicate the sounds of a game of billiards. after another cannon, a three-cushion one to judge by the whir, i argued no more. i had found my ghost and would have given worlds to have escaped from that dâk-bungalow. i listened, and with each listen the game grew clearer. there was whir on whir and click on click. sometimes there was a double click and a whir and another click. beyond any sort of doubt, people were playing billiards in the next room. and the next room was not big enough to hold a billiard table! between the pauses of the wind i heard the game go forward--stroke after stroke. i tried to believe that i could not hear voices; but that attempt was a failure. do you know what fear is? not ordinary fear of insult, injury or death, but abject, quivering dread of something that you cannot see--fear that dries the inside of the mouth and half of the throat--fear that makes you sweat on the palms of the hands, and gulp in order to keep the uvula at work? this is a fine fear--a great cowardice, and must be felt to be appreciated. the very improbability of billiards in a dâk-bungalow proved the reality of the thing. no man--drunk or sober--could imagine a game a billiards, or invent the spitting crack of a "screw-cannon." a severe course of dâk-bungalows has this disadvantage--it breeds infinite credulity. if a man said to a confirmed dâk-bungalow-haunter:--"there is a corpse in the next room, and there's a mad girl in the next but one, and the woman and man on that camel have just eloped from a place sixty miles away," the hearer would not disbelieve because he would know that nothing is too wild, grotesque, or horrible to happen in a dâk-bungalow. this credulity, unfortunately extends to ghosts. a rational person fresh from his own house would have turned on his side and slept. i did not. so surely as i was given up as a bad carcass by the scores of things in the bed because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, so surely did i hear every stroke of a long game at billiards played in the echoing room behind the iron-barred door. my dominant fear was that the players might want a marker. it was an absurd fear; because creatures who could play in the dark would be above such superfluities. i only know that that was my terror; and it was real. after a long long while, the game stopped, and the door banged, i slept because i was dead tired. otherwise i should have preferred to have kept awake. not for everything in asia would i have dropped the door-bar and peered into the dark of the next room. when the morning came, i considered that i had done well and wisely, and inquired for the means of departure. "by the way, _khansamah_," i said, "what were those three doolies doing in my compound in the night?" "there were no doolies," said the _khansamah_. i went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open door. i was immensely brave. i would, at that hour, have played black pool with the owner of the big black pool down below. "has this place always been a dâk-bungalow?" i asked. "no," said the _khansamah_. "ten or twenty years ago, i have forgotten how long, it was a billiard-room." "a how much?" "a billiard-room for the sahibs who built the railway. i was _khansamah_ then in the big house where all the railway-sahibs lived, and i used to come across with brandy-_shrab_. these three rooms were all one, and they held a big table on which the sahibs played every evening. but the sahibs are all dead now, and the railway runs, you say, nearly to kabul." "do you remember anything about the sahibs?" "it is long ago, but i remember that one sahib, a fat man and always angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:--'mangal khan, brandy-_pani do_,' and i filled the glass, and he bent over the table to strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table, and his spectacles came off, and when we--the sahibs and i myself--ran to lift him he was dead. i helped to carry him out. aha, he was a strong sahib! but he is dead and i, old mangal khan, am still living, by your favor." that was more than enough! i had my ghost--a first-hand, authenticated article. i would write to the society for psychical research--i would paralyze the empire with the news! but i would, first of all, put eighty miles of assessed crop-land between myself and that dâk-bungalow before nightfall. the society might send their regular agent to investigate later on. i went into my own room and prepared to pack after noting down the facts of the case. as i smoked i heard the game begin again--with a miss in balk this time, for the whir was a short one. the door was open and i could see into the room. _click-click!_ that was a cannon. i entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. the unseen game was going on at a tremendous rate. and well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the breeze! impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls! impossible to mistake the whir of a ball over the slate! but i was to be excused. even when i shut my enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously like that of a fast game. entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, kadir baksh. "this bungalow is very bad and low-caste! no wonder the presence was disturbed and is speckled. three sets of doolie-bearers came to the bungalow late last night when i was sleeping outside, and said that it was their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for the english people! what honor has the _khansamah_? they tried to enter, but i told them to go. no wonder, if these _oorias_ have been here, that the presence is sorely spotted. it is shame, and the work of a dirty man!" kadir baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for rent in advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them with the big green umbrella whose use i could never before divine. but kadir baksh has no notions of morality. there was an interview with the _khansamah_, but as he promptly lost his head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in the course of which he put the fat engineer-sahib's tragic death in three separate stations--two of them fifty miles away. the third shift was to calcutta, and there the sahib died while driving a dog-cart. if i had encouraged him the _khansamah_ would have wandered all through bengal with his corpse. i did not go away as soon as i intended. i stayed for the night, while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding-dong "hundred and fifty up." then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped, and i felt that i had ruined my one genuine, hall-marked ghost story. had i only stopped at the proper time, i could have made _anything_ out of it. that was the bitterest thought of all! the big drunk draf' we're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome-- our ship is _at_ the shore, an' you mus' pack your 'aversack, for we won't come back no more. ho, don't you grieve for me, my lovely mary ann, for i'll marry you yet on a fourp'ny bit, as a time-expired ma-a-an! _barrack room ballad_. an awful thing has happened! my friend, private mulvaney, who went home in the _serapis_, time-expired, not very long ago, has come back to india as a civilian! it was all dinah shadd's fault. she could not stand the poky little lodgings, and she missed her servant abdullah more than words could tell. the fact was that the mulvaneys had been out here too long, and had lost touch of england. mulvaney knew a contractor on one of the new central india lines, and wrote to him for some sort of work. the contractor said that if mulvaney could pay the passage he would give him command of a gang of coolies for old sake's sake. the pay was eighty-five rupees a month, and dinah shadd said that if terence did not accept she would make his life a "basted purgathory." therefore the mulvaneys came out as "civilians," which was a great and terrible fall; though mulvaney tried to disguise it, by saying that he was "ker'nel on the railway line, an' a consequinshal man." he wrote me an invitation, on a tool-indent form, to visit him; and i came down to the funny little "construction" bungalow at the side of the line. dinah shadd had planted peas about and about, and nature had spread all manner of green stuff round the place. there was no change in mulvaney except the change of clothing, which was deplorable, but could not be helped. he was standing upon his trolly, haranguing a gang-man, and his shoulders were as well drilled, and his big, thick chin was as clean-shaven as ever. "i'm a civilian now," said mulvaney. "cud you tell that i was iver a martial man? don't answer, sorr, av you're strainin' betune a complimint an' a lie. there's no houldin' dinah shadd now she's got a house av her own. go inside, an' dhrink tay out av chiny in the drrrrawin'-room, an' thin we'll dhrink like christians undher the tree here. scutt, ye naygur-folk! there's a sahib come to call on me, an' that's more than he'll iver do for you onless you run! get out, an' go on pilin' up the earth, quick, till sundown." when we three were comfortably settled under the big _sisham_ in front of the bungalow, and the first rush of questions and answers about privates ortheris and learoyd and old times and places had died away, mulvaney said, reflectively--"glory be there's no p'rade to-morrow, an' no bun-headed corp'ril-bhoy to give you his lip. an' yit i don't know. tis harrd to be something ye niver were an' niver meant to be, an' all the ould days shut up along wid your papers. eyah! i'm growin' rusty, an' 'tis the will av god that a man mustn't serve his quane for time an' all." he helped himself to a fresh peg, and sighed furiously. "let your beard grow, mulvaney," said i, "and then you won't be troubled with those notions. you'll be a real civilian." dinah shadd had told me in the drawing-room of her desire to coax mulvaney into letting his beard grow. "twas so civilian-like," said poor dinah, who hated her husband's hankering for his old life. "dinah shadd, you're a dishgrace to an honust, clane-scraped man!" said mulvaney, without replying to me. "grow a beard on your own chin, darlint, and lave my razors alone. they're all that stand betune me and dis-ris-pect-ability. av i didn't shave, i wud be torminted wid an outrajis thurrst; for there's nothin' so dhryin' to the throat as a big billy-goat beard waggin' undher the chin. ye wudn't have me dhrink _always,_ dinah shadd? by the same token, you're kapin' me crool dhry now. let me look at that whiskey." the whiskey was lent and returned, but dinah shadd, who had been just as eager as her husband in asking after old friends, rent me with-- "i take shame for you, sorr, coming down here--though the saints know you're as welkim as the daylight whin you _do_ come--an' upsettin' terence's head wid your nonsense about--about fwhat's much better forgotten. he bein' a civilian now, an' you niver was aught else. can you not let the arrmy rest? 'tis not good for terence." i took refuge by mulvaney, for dinah shadd has a temper of her own. "let be--let be," said mulvaney, "'tis only wanst in a way i can talk about the ould days." then to me:--"ye say dhrumshticks is well, an' his lady tu? i niver knew how i liked the grey garron till i was shut av him an' asia."--"dhrumshticks" was the nickname of the colonel commanding mulvaney's old regiment.--"will you be seein' him again? you will. thin tell him"--mulvaney's eyes began to twinkle--"tell him wid privit"--"_mister_, terence," interrupted dinah shadd. "now the divil an' all his angils an' the firmament av hiven fly away wid the 'mister,' an' the sin av making me swear be on your confession, dinah shadd! _privit_, i tell ye. wid _privit_ mulvaney's best obedience, that but for me the last time-expired wud be still pullin' hair on their way to the sea." he threw himself back in the chair, chuckled, and was silent. "mrs. mulvaney," i said, "please take up the whiskey, and don't let him have it until he has told the story." dinah shadd dexterously whipped the bottle away, saying at the same time, "'tis nothing to be proud av," and thus captured by the enemy, mulvaney spake:-- "'twas on chuseday week. i was behaderin' round wid the gangs on the 'bankmint--i've taught the hoppers how to kape step an' stop screechin'--whin a head-gangman comes up to me, wid about two inches av shirt-tail hanging round his neck an' a disthressful light in his oi. 'sahib,' sez he, 'there's a reg'mint an' a half av soldiers up at the junction, knockin' red cinders out av ivrything an' ivrybody! they thried to hang me in my cloth,' he sez, 'an' there will be murder an' ruin an' rape in the place before nightfall! they say they're comin' down here to wake us up. what will we do wid our womenfolk?' "'fetch my throlly!' sez i; 'my heart's sick in my ribs for a wink at anything wid the quane's uniform on ut, fetch my throlly, an' six av the jildiest men, and run me up in shtyle.'" "he tuk his best coat," said dinah shadd, reproachfully. "'twas to do honor to the widdy. i cud ha' done no less, dinah shadd. you and your digresshins interfere wid the coorse av the narrative. have you iver considhered fwhat i wud look like wid me _head_ shaved as well as my chin? you bear that in your mind, dinah darlin'. "i was throllied up six miles, all to get a shquint at that draf'. i _knew_ 'twas a spring draf' goin' home, for there's no rig'mint hereabouts, more's the pity." "praise the virgin!" murmured dinah shadd. but mulvaney did not hear. "whin i was about three-quarters av a mile off the rest-camp, powtherin' along fit to burrst, i heard the noise av the men an', on my sowl, sorr, i cud catch the voice av peg barney bellowin' like a bison wid the belly-ache. you remimber peg barney that was in d comp'ny--a red, hairy scraun, wid a scar on his jaw? peg barney that cleared out the blue lights' jubilee meeting wid the cook-room mop last year? "thin i knew ut was a draf' of the ould rig'mint, an' i was conshumed wid sorrow for the bhoy that was in charge. we was harrd scrapin's at any time. did i iver tell you how horker kelley went into clink nakid as phoebus apollonius, wid the shirts av the corp'ril an' file undher his arrum? an' _he_ was a moild man! but i'm digreshin'. 'tis a shame both to the rig'mints and the arrmy sendin' down little orf'cer bhoys wid a draf' av strong men mad wid liquor an' the chanst av gettin' shut av india, an' _niver a punishment that's fit to be given right down an' away from cantonmints to the dock!_ 'tis this nonsince. whin i am servin' my time, i'm undher the articles av war, an' can be whipped on the peg for _thim_. but whin i've _served_ my time, i'm a reserve man, an' the articles av war haven't any hould on me. an orf'cer _can't_ do anythin' to a time-expired savin' confinin' him to barricks. 'tis a wise rig'lation bekaze a time-expired does not have any barricks; bein' on the move all the time. 'tis a solomon av a rig'lation, is that. i wud like to be inthroduced to the man that made ut. 'tis easier to get colts from a kibbereen horse-fair into galway than to take a bad draf' over ten miles av country. consiquintly that rig'lation--for fear that the men wud be hurt by the little orf'cer bhoy. no matther. the nearer my throlly came to the rest-camp, the woilder was the shine, an' the louder was the voice av peg barney. ''tis good i am here,' thinks i to myself, 'for peg alone is employment for two or three.' he bein', i well knew, as copped as a dhrover. "faith, that rest-camp was a sight! the tent-ropes was all skew-nosed, an' the pegs looked as dhrunk as the men--fifty av thim--the scourin's, an' rinsin's, an' divil's lavin's av the ould rig'mint. i tell you, sorr, they were dhrunker than any men you've ever seen in your mortial life. _how_ does a draf' get dhrunk? how does a frog get fat? they suk ut in through their shkins. "there was peg barney sittin' on the groun' in his shirt--wan shoe off an' wan shoe on--whackin' a tent-peg over the head wid his boot, an' singin' fit to wake the dead. 'twas no clane song that he sung, though. 'twas the divil's mass." "what's that?" i asked. "whin a bad egg is shut av the army, he sings the divil's mass for a good riddance; an' that manes swearin' at ivrything from the commandher-in-chief down to the room-corp'ril, such as you niver in your days heard. some men can swear so as to make green turf crack! have you iver heard the curse in an orange lodge? the divil's mass is ten times worse, an' peg barney was singin' ut, whackin' the tent-peg on the head wid his boot for each man that he cursed. a powerful big voice had peg barney, an' a hard swearer he was whin sober. i stood forninst him, an' 'twas not me oi alone that cud tell peg was dhrunk as a coot. "'good mornin', peg,' i sez, whin he dhrew breath afther cursin' the adj'tint gen'ral; 'i've put on my best coat to see you, peg barney,' sez i. "'thin take ut off again,' sez peg barney, latherin' away wid the boot; 'take ut off an' dance, ye lousy civilian!' "wid that he begins cursin' ould dhrumshticks, being so full he clean disremimbers the brigade-major an' the judge advokit gen'ral. "'do you not know me, peg?' sez i, though me blood was hot in me wid being called a civilian." "an' him a decent married man!" wailed dinah shadd. "'i do not,' sez peg, 'but dhrunk or sober i'll tear the hide off your back wid a shovel whin i've stopped singin'.' "'say you so, peg barney?' sez i. 'tis clear as mud you've forgotten me. i'll assist your autobiography.' wid that i stretched peg barney, boot an' all, an' wint into the camp. an awful sight ut was! "'where's the orf'cer in charge av the detachment?' sez i to scrub greene--the manest little worm that ever walked. "'there's no orf'cer, ye ould cook,' sez scrub; 'we're a bloomin' republic.' "'are you that?' sez i; 'thin i'm o'connell the dictator, an' by this you will larn to kape a civil tongue in your rag-box.' "wid that i stretched scrub greene an' wint to the orf'cer's tent. 'twas a new little bhoy--not wan i'd iver seen before. he was sittin' in his tent, purtendin' not to 'ave ear av the racket. "i saluted--but for the life av me! mint to shake hands whin i went in. twas the sword hangin' on the tent-pole changed my will. "'can't i help, sorr?' sez i; ''tis a strong man's job they've given you, an' you'll be wantin' help by sundown.' he was a bhoy wid bowils, that child, an' a rale gintleman. "'sit down,' sez he. "'not before my orf'cer,' sez i; an' i tould him fwhat my service was. "'i've heard av you,' sez he. 'you tuk the town av lungtungpen nakid.' "'faith,' thinks i, 'that's honor an' glory, for 'twas lift'nint brazenose did that job. 'i'm wid ye, sorr,' sez i, 'if i'm av use. they shud niver ha' sent you down wid the draf'. savin' your presince, sorr,' i sez, 'tis only lift'nint hackerston in the ould rig'mint can manage a home draf'.' "'i've niver had charge of men like this before,' sez he, playin' wid the pens on the table; 'an' i see by the rig'lations'-- "'shut your oi to the rig'lations, sorr,' i sez, 'till the throoper's into blue wather. by the rig'lations you've got to tuck thim up for the night, or they'll be runnin' foul av my coolies an' makin' a shiverarium half through the country. can you trust your noncoms, sorr?' "'yes,' sez he. "'good,' sez i; 'there'll be throuble before the night. are you marchin', sorr?' "'to the next station,' sez he. "'better still,' sez i; 'there'll be big throuble.' "'can't be too hard on a home draf',' sez he; 'the great thing is to get thim in-ship.' "'faith you've larnt the half av your lesson, sorr,' sez i, 'but av you shtick to the rig'lations you'll niver get thim in-ship at all, at all. or there won't be a rag av kit betune thim whin you do.' "'twas a dear little orf'cer bhoy, an' by way av kapin' his heart up, i tould him fwhat i saw wanst in a draf' in egypt." "what was that, mulvaney?" said i. "sivin an' fifty men sittin' on the bank av a canal, laughin' at a poor little squidgereen av an orf'cer that they'd made wade into the slush an' pitch the things out av the boats for their lord high mightinesses. that made me orf'cer bhoy woild wid indignation. "'soft an' aisy, sorr,' sez i; 'you've niver had your draf' in hand since you left cantonmints. wait till the night, an' your work will be ready to you. wid your permission, sorr, i will investigate the camp, an' talk to my ould friends. tis no manner av use thryin' to shtop the divilmint _now_.' "wid that i wint out into the camp an' inthrojuced mysilf to ivry man sober enough to remimber me. i was some wan in the ould days, an' the bhoys was glad to see me--all excipt peg barney wid a eye like a tomata five days in the bazar, an' a nose to match. they come round me an' shuk me, an' i tould thim i was in privit employ wid an income av me own, an' a drrrawin'-room fit to bate the quane's; an' wid me lies an' me shtories an' nonsinse gin'rally, i kept 'em quiet in wan way an' another, knockin' roun' the camp. twas _bad_ even thin whin i was the angil av peace. "i talked to me ould non-coms--_they_ was sober--an' betune me an' thim we wore the draf' over into their tents at the proper time. the little orf'cer bhoy he comes round, decint an' civil-spoken as might be. "'rough quarters, men,' sez he, 'but you can't look to be as comfortable as in barricks. we must make the best av things. i've shut my eyes to a dale av dog's tricks to-day, an' now there must be no more av ut.' "'no more we will. come an' have a dhrink, me son,' sez peg barney, staggerin' where he stud. me little orf'cer bhoy kep' his timper. "'you're a sulky swine, you are,' sez peg barney, an' at that the men in the tent began to laugh. "i tould you me orf'cer bhoy had bowils. he cut peg barney as near as might be on the oi that i'd squshed whin we first met. peg wint spinnin' acrost the tent. "'peg him out, sorr,' sez i, in a whishper. "'peg him out!' sez me orf'cer bhoy, up loud, just as if 'twas battalion-p'rade an' he pickin' his wurrds from the sargint. "the non-coms tuk peg barney--a howlin' handful he was--an' in three minuts he was pegged out--chin down, tight-dhrawn--on his stummick, a tent-peg to each arm an' leg, swearin' fit to turn a naygur white. "i tuk a peg an' jammed ut into his ugly jaw.--'bite on that, peg barney,' i sez; 'the night is settin' frosty, an' you'll be wantin' divarsion before the mornin'. but for the rig'lations you'd be bitin' on a bullet now at the thriangles, peg barney,' sez i. "all the draf' was out av their tents watchin' barney bein' pegged. "''tis agin the rig'lations! he strook him!' screeches out scrub greene, who was always a lawyer; an' some of the men tuk up the shoutin'. "'peg out that man!' sez my orf'cer bhoy, niver losin' his timper; an' the non-coms wint in and pegged out scrub greene by the side av peg barney. "i cud see that the draf' was comin' roun'. the men stud not knowin' fwhat to do. "'get to your tents!' sez me orf'cer bhoy. 'sargint, put a sintry over these two men.' "the men wint back into the tents like jackals, an' the rest av the night there was no noise at all excipt the stip av the sintry over the two, an' scrub greene blubberin' like a child. 'twas a chilly night, an' faith, ut sobered peg barney. "just before revelly, my orf'cer bhoy comes out an' sez: 'loose those men an' send thim to their tents!' scrub greene wint away widout a word, but peg barney, stiff wid the cowld, stud like a sheep, thryin' to make his orf'cer understhand he was sorry for playin' the goat. "there was no tucker in the draf' whin ut fell in for the march, an' divil a wurrd about 'illegality' cud i hear. "i wint to the ould color sargint and i sez:--'let me die in glory,' sez i. 'i've seen a man this day!' "'a man he is,' sez ould hother; 'the draf's as sick as a herrin'. they'll all go down to the sea like lambs. that bhoy has the bowils av a cantonmint av gin'rals.' "'amin,' sez i, 'an' good luck go wid him, wheriver he be, by land or by sea. let me know how the draf' gets clear.' "an' do you know how they _did_? that bhoy, so i was tould by letter from bombay, bullydamned 'em down to the dock, till they cudn't call their sowls their own. from the time they left me oi till they was 'tween decks, not wan av thim was more than dacintly dhrunk. an', by the holy articles av war, whin they wint aboard they cheered him till they cudn't spake, an' _that_, mark you, has not come about wid a draf' in the mim'ry av livin' man! you look to that little orf'cer bhoy. he has bowils. 'tis not ivry child that wud chuck the rig'lations to flanders an' stretch peg barney on a wink from a brokin an' dilapidated ould carkiss like mesilf. i'd be proud to serve"-- "terrence, you're a civilian," said dinah shadd, warningly. "so i am--so i am. is ut likely i wud forget ut? but he was a gran' bhoy all the same, an' i'm only a mudtipper wid a hod on my shoulthers. the whiskey's in the heel av your hand, sorr. wid your good lave we'll dhrink to the ould rig'mint--three fingers--standin' up!" and we drank. by word of mouth not though you die to-night, o sweet, and wail, a spectre at my door, shall mortal fear make love immortal fail-- i shall but love you more, who, from death's house returning, give me still one moment's comfort in my matchless ill. --_shadow houses_. this tale may be explained by those who know how souls are made, and where the bounds of the possible are put down. i have lived long enough in this india to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only write the story as it happened. dumoise was our civil surgeon at meridki, and we called him "dormouse," because he was a round little, sleepy little man. he was a good doctor and never quarreled with any one, not even with our deputy commissioner who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. he married a girl as round and as sleepy-looking as himself. she was a miss hillardyce, daughter of "squash" hillardyce of the berars, who married his chief's daughter by mistake. but that is another story. * * * * * a honeymoon in india is seldom more than a week long; but there is nothing to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years. india is a delightful country for married folk who are wrapped up in one another. they can live absolutely alone and without interruption--just as the dormice did. those two little people retired from the world after their marriage, and were very happy. they were forced, of course, to give occasional dinners, but they made no friends thereby, and the station went its own way and forgot them; only saying, occasionally, that dormouse was the best of good fellows though dull. a civil surgeon who never quarrels is a rarity, appreciated as such. few people can afford to play robinson crusoe anywhere--least of all in india, where we are few in the land and very much dependent on each other's kind offices. dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the world for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid broke out in the station in the heart of the cold weather, and his wife went down. he was a shy little man, and five days were wasted before he realized that mrs. dumoise was burning with something worse than simple fever, and three days more passed before he ventured to call on mrs. shute, the engineer's wife, and timidly speak about his trouble. nearly every household in india knows that doctors are very helpless in typhoid. the battle must be fought out between death and the nurses minute by minute and degree by degree. mrs. shute almost boxed dumoise's ears for what she called his "criminal delay," and went off at once to look after the poor girl. we had seven cases of typhoid in the station that winter and, as the average of death is about one in every five cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose somebody. but all did their best. the women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned to and tended the bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and brought them through the valley of the shadow in triumph. but, just when we thought all was over, and were going to give a dance to celebrate the victory, little mrs. dumoise got a relapse and died in a week and the station went to the funeral. dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to be taken away. after the death, dumoise crept into his own house and refused to be comforted. he did his duties perfectly, but we all felt that he should go on leave, and the other men of his own service told him so. dumoise was very thankful for the suggestion--he was thankful for anything in those days--and went to chini on a walking-tour. chini is some twenty marches from simla, in the heart of the hills, and the scenery is good if you are in trouble. you pass through big, still deodar-forests, and under big, still cliffs, and over big, still grass-downs swelling like a woman's breasts; and the wind across the grass, and the rain among the deodars says--"hush--hush--hush." so little dumoise was packed off to chini, to wear down his grief with a full-plate camera and a rifle. he took also a useless bearer, because the man had been his wife's favorite servant. he was idle and a thief, but dumoise trusted everything to him. on his way back from chini, dumoise turned aside to bagi, through the forest reserve which is on the spur of mount huttoo. some men who have traveled more than a little say that the march from kotegarh to bagi is one of the finest in creation. it runs through dark wet forest, and ends suddenly in bleak, nipped hillside and black rocks. bagi dâk-bungalow is open to all the winds and is bitterly cold. few people go to bagi. perhaps that was the reason why dumoise went there. he halted at seven in the evening, and his bearer went down the hillside to the village to engage coolies for the next day's march. the sun had set, and the night-winds were beginning to croon among the rocks. dumoise leaned on the railing of the veranda, waiting for his bearer to return. the man came back almost immediately after he had disappeared, and at such a rate that dumoise fancied he must have crossed a bear. he was running as hard as he could up the face of the hill. but there was no bear to account for his terror. he raced to the veranda and fell down, the blood spurting from his nose and his face iron-grey. then he gurgled--"i have seen the _memsahib_! i have seen the _memsahib_!" "where?" said dumoise. "down there, walking on the road to the village. she was in a blue dress, and she lifted the veil of her bonnet and said--'ram dass, give my _salaams_ to the _sahib_, and tell him that i shall meet him next month at nuddea.' then i ran away, because i was afraid." what dumoise said or did i do not know. ram dass declares that he said nothing, but walked up and down the veranda all the cold night, waiting for the _memsahib_ to come up the hill and stretching out his arms into the dark like a madman. but no _memsahib_ came, and, next day, he went on to simla cross-questioning the bearer every hour. ram dass could only say that he had met mrs. dumoise and that she had lifted up her veil and given him the message which he had faithfully repeated to dumoise. to this statement ram dass adhered. he did not know where nuddea was, had no friends at nuddea, and would most certainly never go to nuddea; even though his pay were doubled, nuddea is in bengal and has nothing whatever to do with a doctor serving in the punjab. it must be more than twelve hundred miles south of meridki. dumoise went through simla without halting, and returned to meridki, there to take over charge from the man who had been officiating for him during his tour. there were some dispensary accounts to be explained, and some recent orders of the surgeon-general to be noted, and, altogether, the taking-over was a full day's work, in the evening, dumoise told his _locum tenens_, who was an old friend of his bachelor days, what had happened at bagi; and the man said that ram dass might as well have chosen tuticorin while he was about it. at that moment, a telegraph-peon came in with a telegram from simla, ordering dumoise not to take over charge at meridki, but to go at once to nuddea on special duty. there was a nasty outbreak of cholera at nuddea, and the bengal government, being short-handed, as usual, had borrowed a surgeon from the punjab. dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said--"well?" the other doctor said nothing. it was all that he could say. then he remembered that dumoise had passed through simla on his way from bagi; and thus might, possibly, have heard first news of the impending transfer. he tried to put the question, and the implied suspicion into words, but dumoise stopped him with--"if i had desired _that_, i should never have come back from chini. i was shooting there. i wish to live, for i have things to do ... but i shall not be sorry." the other man bowed his head, and helped, in the twilight, to pack up dumoise's just opened trunks. ram dass entered with the lamps. "where is the _sahib_ going?" he asked. "to nuddea," said dumoise, softly. ram dass clawed dumoise's knees and boots and begged him not to go. ram dass wept and howled till he was turned out of the room. then he wrapped up all his belongings and came back to ask for a character. he was not going to nuddea to see his _sahib_ die and, perhaps, to die himself. so dumoise gave the man his wages and went down to nuddea alone; the other doctor bidding him good-bye as one under sentence of death. eleven days later he had joined his _memsahib_; and the bengal government had to borrow a fresh doctor to cope with that epidemic at nuddea, the first importation lay dead in chooadanga dâk bungalow. the drums of the fore and aft "and a little child shall lead them." in the army list they still stand as "the fore and fit princess hohenzollern-sigmaringen-auspach's merther-tydfilshire own royal loyal light infantry, regimental district a," but the army through all its barracks and canteens knows them now as the "fore and aft." they may in time do something that shall make their new title honorable, but at present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them "fore and aft" does so at the risk of the head which is on his shoulders. two words breathed into the stables of a certain cavalry regiment will bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language; but a whisper of "fore and aft" will bring out this regiment with rifles. their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish the job in style. but for a time all their world knows that they were openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking and afraid. the men know it; their officers know it; the horse guards know it, and when the next war comes the enemy will know it also. there are two or three regiments of the line that have a black mark against their names which they will then wipe out, and it will be excessively inconvenient for the troops upon whom they do their wiping. the courage of the british soldier is officially supposed to be above proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. the exceptions are decently shoveled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshet of unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a mess-table at midnight. then one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them, and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the british army, might have ended in brilliant disaster. these are unpleasant stories to listen to, and the messes tell them under their breath, sitting by the big wood fires, and the young officer bows his head and thinks to himself, please god, his men shall never behave unhandily, the british soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional lapses; but this verdict he should not know. a moderately intelligent general will waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular war that he may be waging; a colonel may utterly misunderstand the capacity of his regiment for three months after it has taken the field; and even a company commander may err and be deceived as to the temper and temperament of his own handful: wherefore the soldier, and the soldier of to-day more particularly, should not be blamed for falling back. he should be shot or hanged afterward--_pour encourager les autres_; but he should not be vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact and waste of space. he has, let us say, been in the service of the empress for, perhaps, four years. he will leave in another two years. he has no inherited morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his regiment. he wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself--in india he wants to save money--and he does not in the least like getting hurt. he has received just sufficient education to make him understand half the purport of the orders he receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and shattering wounds. thus, if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. he may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline under which he has lain for four years. armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes, and unsupported, by any regimental associations, this young man is suddenly introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly, generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. if he looks to the right and the left and sees old soldiers--men of twelve years' service, who, he knows, know what they are about--taking a charge, rush, or demonstration without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his shoulder to the butt of his rifle with a stout heart. his peace is the greater if he hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and broken his head on occasion, whispering:--"they'll shout and carry on like this for five minutes. then they'll rush in, and then we've got 'em by the short hairs!" but, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of service, turning white and playing with their triggers and saying:--"what the hell's up now?" while the company commanders are sweating into their sword-hilts and shouting:--"front-rank, fix bayonets. steady there--steady! sight for three hundred--no, for five! lie down, all! steady! front-rank, kneel!" and so forth, he becomes unhappy; and grows acutely miserable when he hears a comrade turn over with the rattle of fire-irons falling into the fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. if he can be moved about a little and allowed to watch the effect of his own fire on the enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to the blind passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief, controlled by a chilly devil and shakes men like ague. if he is not moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the stomach, and in that crisis is badly mauled and hears orders that were never given, he will break, and he will break badly; and of all things under the sight of the sun there is nothing more terrible than a broken british regiment. when the worst comes to the worst and the panic is really epidemic, the men must be e'en let go, and the company commanders had better escape to the enemy and stay there for safety's sake. if they can be made to come again they are not pleasant men to meet, because they will not break twice. about thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in half-educating everything that wears trousers, our army will be a beautifully unreliable machine. it will know too much and it will do too little. later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer of to-day it will sweep the earth. speaking roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and despatch. the ideal soldier should, of course, think for himself--the _pocketbook_ says so. unfortunately, to attain this virtue, he has to pass through the phase of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. a blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate another's. a powerfully prayerful highland regiment, officered by rank presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible irish ruffians led by most improper young unbelievers. but these things prove the rule--which is that the midway men are not to be trusted alone. they have ideas about the value of life and an upbringing that has not taught them to go on and take the chances. they are carefully unprovided with a backing of comrades who have been shot over, and until that backing is re-introduced, as a great many regimental commanders intend it shall be, they are more liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the empire or the dignity of the army allows. their officers are as good as good can be, because their training begins early, and god has arranged that a clean-run youth of the british middle classes shall, in the matter of backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. for this reason a child of eighteen will stand up, doing nothing, with a tin sword in his hand and joy in his heart until he is dropped. if he dies, he dies like a gentleman. if he lives, he writes home that he has been "potted," "sniped," "chipped" or "cut over," and sits down to besiege government for a wound-gratuity until the next little war breaks out, when he perjures himself before a medical board, blarneys his colonel, burns incense round his adjutant, and is allowed to go to the front once more. which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the band of a british regiment. they ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. their names were jakin and lew--piggy lew--and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the drum-major of the fore and aft. jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and lew was about the same age. when not looked after, they smoked and drank. they swore habitually after the manner of the barrack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes from between clinched teeth; and they fought religiously once a week. jakin had sprung from some london gutter and may or may not have passed through dr. barnado's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of drummer-boy. lew could remember nothing except the regiment and the delight of listening to the band from his earliest years. he hid somewhere in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch that beautiful ladies who watched the regiment in church were wont to speak of him as a "darling." they never heard his vitriolic comments on their manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the band and matured fresh causes of offence against jakin. the other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical conduct. jakin might be pounding lew, or lew might be rubbing jakin's head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an outsider was met by the combined forces of lew and jakin; and the consequences were painful. the boys were the ishmaels of the corps, but wealthy ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate weeks for the sport of the barracks when they were not pitted against other boys; and thus amassed money. on this particular day there was dissension in the camp. they had just been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys who use plug-tobacco, and lew's contention was that jakin had "stunk so 'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket," that he and he alone was responsible for the birching they were both tingling under. "i tell you i 'id the pipe back o' barricks," said jakin, pacifically. "you're a bloomin' liar," said lew, without heat. "you're a bloomin' little barstard," said jakin, strong in the knowledge that his own ancestry was unknown. now there is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse that cannot pass without comment. you may call a man a thief and risk nothing. you may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are prepared to prove it on his front teeth. "you might ha' kep' that till i wasn't so sore," said lew, sorrowfully, dodging round jakin's guard. "i'll make you sorer," said jakin, genially, and got home on lew's alabaster forehead. all would have gone well and this story, as the books say, would never have been written, had not his evil fate prompted the bazar-sergeant's son, a long, employless man of five and twenty, to put in an appearance after the first round. he was eternally in need of money, and knew that the boys had silver. "fighting again," said he. "i'll report you to my father, and he'll report you to the color-sergeant." "what's that to you?" said jakin, with an unpleasant dilation of the nostrils. "oh! nothing to _me_. you'll get into trouble, and you've been up too often to afford that." "what the hell do you know about what we've done?" asked lew the seraph. "_you_ aren't in the army, you lousy, cadging civilian." he closed in on the man's left flank. "jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin' their differences with their fistes you stick in your ugly nose where you aren't wanted. run 'ome to your 'arf-caste slut of a ma--or we'll give you what-for," said jakin. the man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys' heads together. the scheme would have succeeded had not jakin punched him vehemently in the stomach, or had lew refrained from kicking his shins. they fought together, bleeding and breathless, for half an hour, and after heavy punishment, triumphantly pulled down their opponent as terriers pull down a jackal. "now," gasped jakin, "i'll give you what-for." he proceeded to pound the man's features while lew stamped on the outlying portions of his anatomy. chivalry is not a strong point in the composition of the average drummer-boy. he fights, as do his betters, to make his mark. ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the wrath of the bazar-sergeant. awful too was the scene in orderly-room when the two reprobates appeared to answer the charge of half-murdering a "civilian." the bazar-sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and his son lied. the boys stood to attention while the black clouds of evidence accumulated. "you little devils are more trouble than the rest of the regiment put together," said the colonel, angrily. "one might as well admonish thistledown, and i can't well put you in cells or under stoppages. you must be flogged again." "beg y' pardon, sir. can't we say nothin' in our own defence, sir?" shrilled jakin. "hey! what? are you going to argue with me?" said the colonel. "no, sir," said lew. "but if a man come to you, sir, and said he was going to report you, sir, for 'aving a bit of a turn-up with a friend, sir, an' wanted to get money out o' _you_, sir"-- the orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter. "well?" said the colonel. "that was what that measly _jarnwar_ there did, sir, and 'e'd 'a' _done_ it, sir, if we 'adn't prevented 'im. we didn't 'it 'im much, sir. 'e 'adn't no manner o' right to interfere with us, sir. i don't mind bein' flogged by the drum-major, sir, nor yet reported by _any_ corp'ral, but i'm--but i don't think it's fair, sir, for a civilian to come an' talk over a man in the army." a second shout of laughter shook the orderly-room, but the colonel was grave. "what sort of characters have these boys?" he asked of the regimental sergeant-major. "accordin' to the bandmaster, sir," returned that revered official--the only soul in the regiment whom the boys feared--"they do everything _but_ lie, sir." "is it like we'd go for that man for fun, sir?" said lew, pointing to the plaintiff. "oh, admonished,--admonished!" said the colonel, testily, and when the boys had gone he read the bazar-sergeant's son a lecture on the sin of unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the bandmaster should keep the drums in better discipline. "if either of you come to practice again with so much as a scratch on your two ugly little faces," thundered the bandmaster, "i'll tell the drum-major to take the skin off your backs. understand that, you young devils." then he repented of his speech for just the length of time that lew, looking like a seraph in red worsted embellishments, took the place of one of the trumpets--in hospital--and rendered the echo of a battle-piece. lew certainly was a musician, and had often in his more exalted moments expressed a yearning to master every instrument of the band. "there's nothing to prevent your becoming a bandmaster, lew," said the bandmaster, who had composed waltzes of his own, and worked day and night in the interests of the band. "what did he say?" demanded jakin, after practice. "'said i might be a bloomin' bandmaster, an' be asked in to 'ave a glass o' sherry-wine on mess-nights." "ho! 'said you might be a bloomin' non-combatant, did 'e! that's just about wot 'e would say. when i've put in my boy's service--it's a bloomin' shame that doesn't count for pension--i'll take on a privit. then i'll be a lance in a year--knowin' what i know about the ins an' outs o' things. in three years i'll be a bloomin' sergeant. i won't marry then, not i! i'll 'old on and learn the orf'cers' ways an' apply for exchange into a reg'ment that doesn't know all about me. then i'll be a bloomin' orf'cer. then i'll ask you to 'ave a glass o' sherry-wine, _mister_ lew, an' you'll bloomin' well 'ave to stay in the hanty-room while the mess-sergeant brings it to your dirty 'ands." "'s'pose _i_'m going to be a bandmaster? not i, quite. i'll be a orf'cer too. there's nothin' like taking to a thing an' stickin' to it, the schoolmaster says. the reg'ment don't go 'ome for another seven years. i'll be a lance then or near to." thus the boys discussed their futures, and conducted themselves with exemplary piety for a week. that is to say, lew started a flirtation with the color-sergeant's daughter, aged thirteen,--"not," as he explained to jakin, "with any intention o' matrimony, but by way o' keepin' my 'and in." and the black-haired cris delighan enjoyed that flirtation more than previous ones, and the other drummer-boys raged furiously together, and jakin preached sermons on the dangers of "bein' tangled along o' petticoats." but neither love nor virtue would have held lew long in the paths of propriety had not the rumor gone abroad that the regiment was to be sent on active service, to take part in a war which, for the sake of brevity, we will call "the war of the lost tribes." the barracks had the rumor almost before the mess-room, and of all the nine hundred men in barracks not ten had seen a shot fired in anger. the colonel had, twenty years ago, assisted at a frontier expedition; one of the majors had seen service at the cape; a confirmed deserter in e company had helped to clear streets in ireland; but that was all. the regiment had been put by for many years. the overwhelming mass of its rank and file had from three to four years' service; the non-commissioned officers were under thirty years old; and men and sergeants alike had forgotten to speak of the stories written in brief upon the colors--the new colors that had been formally blessed by an archbishop in england ere the regiment came away. they wanted to go to the front--they were enthusiastically anxious to go--but they had no knowledge of what war meant, and there was none to tell them. they were an educated regiment, the percentage of school-certificates in their ranks was high, and most of the men could do more than read and write. they had been recruited in loyal observance of the territorial idea; but they themselves had no notion of that idea. they were made up of drafts from an over-populated manufacturing district. the system had put flesh and muscle upon their small bones, but it could not put heart into the sons of those who for generations had done overmuch work for overscanty pay, had sweated in drying-rooms, stooped over looms, coughed among white-lead and shivered on lime-barges. the men had found food and rest in the army, and now they were going to fight "niggers"--people who ran away if you shook a stick at them. wherefore they cheered lustily when the rumor ran, and the shrewd, clerkly non-commissioned officers speculated on the chances of batta and of saving their pay. at headquarters, men said:--"the fore and fit have never been under fire within the last generation. let us, therefore, break them in easily by setting them to guard lines of communication." and this would have been done but for the fact that british regiments were wanted--badly wanted--at the front, and there were doubtful native regiments that could fill the minor duties, "brigade 'em with two strong regiments," said headquarters. "they may be knocked about a bit, but they'll learn their business before they come through. nothing like a night-alarm and a little cutting-up of stragglers to make a regiment smart in the field. wait till they've had half a dozen sentries' throats cut." the colonel wrote with delight that the temper of his men was excellent, that the regiment was all that could be wished and as sound as a bell. the majors smiled with a sober joy, and the subalterns waltzed in pairs down the mess-room after dinner and nearly shot themselves at revolver practice. but there was consternation in the hearts of jakin and lew. what was to be done with the drums? would the band go to the front? how many of the drums would accompany the regiment? they took council together, sitting in a tree and smoking. "it's more than a bloomin' toss-up they'll leave us be'ind at the depot with the women. you'll like that," said jakin, sarcastically. "'cause o' cris, y' mean? wot's a woman, or a 'ole bloomin' depôt o' women, 'longside o' the chanst of field-service? you know i'm as keen on goin' as you," said lew. "wish i was a bloomin' bugler," said jakin, sadly. "they'll take tom kidd along, that i can plaster a wall with, an' like as not they won't take us." "then let's go an' make tom kidd so bloomin' sick 'e can't bugle no more. you 'old 'is 'ands an' i'll kick him," said lew, wriggling on the branch. "that ain't no good neither. we ain't the sort o' characters to presoom on our rep'tations--they're bad. if they have the band at the depot we don't go, and no error _there_. if they take the band we may get cast for medical unfitness. are you medical fit, piggy?" said jakin, digging lew in the ribs with force. "yus," said lew, with an oath. "the doctor says your 'eart's weak through smokin' on an empty stummick. throw a chest an' i'll try yer." jakin threw out his chest, which lew smote with all his might, jakin turned very pale, gasped, crowed, screwed up his eyes and said,--"that's all right." "you'll do," said lew. "i've 'eard o' men dyin' when you 'it 'em fair on the breast-bone." "don't bring us no nearer goin', though," said jakin. "do you know where we're ordered?" "gawd knows, an' 'e won't split on a pal. somewheres up to the front to kill paythans--hairy big beggars that turn you inside out if they get 'old o' you. they say their women are good-looking, too." "any loot?" asked the abandoned jakin. "not a bloomin' anna, they say, unless you dig up the ground an' see what the niggers 'ave 'id. they're a poor lot." jakin stood upright on the branch and gazed across the plain. "lew," said he, "there's the colonel coming, 'colonel's a good old beggar. let's go an' talk to 'im." lew nearly fell out of the tree at the audacity of the suggestion. like jakin he feared not god neither regarded he man, but there are limits even to the audacity of drummer-boy, and to speak to a colonel was ... but jakin had slid down the trunk and doubled in the direction of the colonel. that officer was walking wrapped in thought and visions of a c. b.--yes, even a k.c.b., for had he not at command one of the best regiments of the line--the fore and fit? and he was aware of two small boys charging down upon him. once before it had been solemnly reported to him that "the drums were in a state of mutiny"; jakin and lew being the ringleaders. this looked like an organized conspiracy. the boys halted at twenty yards, walked to the regulation four paces, and saluted together, each as well set-up as a ramrod and little taller. the colonel was in a genial mood; the boys appeared very forlorn and unprotected on the desolate plain, and one of them was handsome. "well!" said the colonel, recognizing them. "are you going to pull me down in the open? i'm sure i never interfere with you, even though"--he sniffed suspiciously--"you have been smoking." it was time to strike while the iron was hot. their hearts beat tumultuously. "beg y' pardon, sir," began jakin. "the reg'ment's ordered on active service, sir?" "so i believe," said the colonel, courteously. "is the band goin', sir?" said both together. then, without pause, "we're goin', sir, ain't we?" "you!" said the colonel, stepping back the more fully to take in the two small figures. "you! you'd die in the first march." "no, we wouldn't, sir. we can march with the regiment anywheres--p'rade an' anywhere else," said jakin. "if tom kidd goes 'ell shut up like a clasp-knife," said lew, "tom 'as very close veins in both 'is legs, sir." "very how much?" "very close veins, sir. that's why they swells after long p'rade, sir, if 'e can go, we can go, sir." again the colonel looked at them long and intently. "yes, the band is going," he said, as gravely as though, he had been addressing a brother officer. "have you any parents, either of you two?" "no, sir," rejoicingly from lew and jakin. "we're both orphans, sir. there's no one to be considered of on our account, sir." "you poor little sprats, and you want to go up to the front with the regiment, do you? why?" "i've wore the queen's uniform for two years," said jakin. "it's very 'ard, sir, that a man don't get no recompense for doin' 'is dooty, sir." "an'--an' if i don't go, sir," interrupted lew, "the bandmaster 'e says 'e'll catch an' make a bloo--a blessed musician o' me, sir. before i've seen any service, sir." the colonel made no answer for a long time. then he said quietly:--"if you're passed by the doctor i dare say you can go. i shouldn't smoke if i were you." the boys saluted and disappeared. the colonel walked home and told the story to his wife, who nearly cried over it. the colonel was well pleased. if that was the temper of the children, what would not the men do? jakin and lew entered the boys' barrack-room with great stateliness, and refused to hold any conversation with their comrades for at least ten minutes. then, bursting with pride, jakin drawled:--"i've bin intervooin' the colonel. good old beggar is the colonel. says i to 'im, 'colonel,' says i, 'let me go the front, along o' the reg'ment.' 'to the front you shall go,' says 'e, 'an' i only wish there was more like you among the dirty little devils that bang the bloomin' drums.' kidd, if you throw your 'coutrements at me for tellin' you the truth to your own advantage, your legs 'll swell." none the less there was a battle-royal in the barrack-room, for the boys were consumed with envy and hate, and neither jakin nor lew behaved in conciliatory wise. "i'm goin' out to say adoo to my girl," said lew, to cap the climax. "don't none o' you touch my kit because it's wanted for active service, me bein' specially invited to go by the colonel" he strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees at the back of the married quarters till cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses being given and taken, lew began to explain the situation. "i'm goin' to the front with the reg'ment," he said, valiantly, "piggy, you're a little liar," said cris, but her heart misgave her, for lew was not in the habit of lying. "liar yourself, cris," said lew. slipping an arm round her. "i'm goin' when the reg'ment marches out you'll see me with 'em, all galliant and gay. give us another kiss, cris, on the strength of it." "if you'd on'y a-stayed at the depôt--where you _ought_ to ha' bin--you could get as many of 'em as--as you dam please," whimpered cris, putting up her mouth. "it's 'ard, cris. i grant you it's 'ard. but what's a man to do? if i'd a-stayed at the depôt, you wouldn't think anything of me," "like as not, but i'd 'ave you with me, piggy, an' all the thinkin' in the world isn't like kissin'." "an' all the kissin' in the world isn't like 'avin' a medal to wear on the front o' your coat." "_you_ won't get no medal." "oh, yus, i shall though. me an' jakin are the only acting-drummers that'll be took along. all the rest is full men, an' we'll get our medals with them." "they might ha' taken anybody but you, piggy. you'll get killed--you're so venturesome. stay with me, piggy, darlin', down at the depôt, an' i'll love you true forever." "ain't you goin' to do that _now_, cris? you said you was." "o' course i am, but th' other's more comfortable. wait till you've growed a bit, piggy. you aren't no taller than me now." "i've bin in the army for two years an' i'm not goin' to get out of a chanst o' seein' service an' don't you try to make me do so. i'll come back, cris, an' when i take on as a man i'll marry you--marry you when i'm a lance." "promise, piggy?" lew reflected on the future as arranged by jakin a short time previously, but cris's mouth was very near to his own. "i promise, s'elp me gawd!" said he. cris slid an arm round his neck. "i won't 'old you back no more, piggy. go away an' get your medal, an' i'll make you a new button-bag as nice as i know how," she whispered. "put some o' your 'air into it, cris, an' i'll keep it in my pocket so long's i'm alive." then cris wept anew, and the interview ended. public feeling among the drummer-boys rose to fever pitch and the lives of jakin and lew became unenviable. not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before the regulation boy's age--fourteen--but, by virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the front--which thing had not happened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of boy. the band which was to accompany the regiment had been cut down to the regulation twenty men, the surplus returning to the ranks. jakin and lew were attached to the band as supernumeraries, though they would much have preferred being company buglers. "'don't matter much," said jakin, after the medical inspection, "be thankful that we're 'lowed to go at all. the doctor 'e said that if we could stand what we took from the bazar-sergeant's son we'd stand pretty nigh anything." "which we will," said lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill-made house-wife that cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling "l" upon the cover. "it was the best i could," she sobbed. "i wouldn't let mother nor the sergeant's tailor 'elp me. keep it always, piggy, an' remember i love you true." they marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong, and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. the drummers gnashed their teeth at jakin and lew marching with the band, the married women wept upon the platform, and the regiment cheered its noble self black in the face. "a nice level lot," said the colonel to the second-in-command, as they watched the first four companies entraining. "fit to do anything," said the second-in-command, enthusiastically. "but it seems to me they're a thought too young and tender for the work in hand. it's bitter cold up at the front now." "they're sound enough," said the colonel. "we must take our chance of sick casualties." so they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of camels, armies of camp followers, and legions of laden mules, the throng thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at a hopelessly congested junction where six lines of temporary track accommodated six forty-wagon trains; where whistles blew, babus sweated and commissariat officers swore from dawn till far into the night amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of a thousand steers. "hurry up--you're badly wanted at the front," was the message that greeted the fore and aft, and the occupants of the red cross carriages told the same tale. "tisn't so much the bloomin' fighting," gasped a headbound trooper of hussars to a knot of admiring fore and afts. "tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin', though there's enough o' that. it's the bloomin' food an' the bloomin' climate. frost all night 'cept when it hails, and biling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. i got my 'ead chipped like a egg; i've got pneumonia too, an' my guts is all out o' order. tain't no bloomin' picnic in those parts, i can tell you." "wot are the niggers like?" demanded a private. "there's some prisoners in that train yonder. go an' look at 'em. they're the aristocracy o' the country. the common folk are a dashed sight uglier. if you want to know what they fight with, reach under my seat an' pull out the long knife that's there." they dragged out and beheld for the first time the grim, bone-handled, triangular afghan knife. it was almost as long as lew. "that's the thing to jint ye," said the trooper, feebly. "it can take off a man's arm at the shoulder as easy as slicing butter. i halved the beggar that used that 'un, but there's more of his likes up above. they don't understand thrustin', but they're devils to slice." the men strolled across the tracks to inspect the afghan prisoners. they were unlike any "niggers" that the fore and aft had ever met--these huge, black-haired, scowling sons of the beni-israel. as the men stared the afghans spat freely and muttered one to another with lowered eyes. "my eyes! wot awful swine!" said jakin, who was in the rear of the procession. "say, old man, how you got _puckrowed_, eh? _kiswasti_ you wasn't hanged for your ugly face, hey?" the tallest of the company turned, his leg-irons, clanking at the movement, and stared at the boy. "see!" he cried to his fellows in pushto. "they send children against us. what a people, and what fools!" "_hya!_" said jakin, nodding his head cheerily. "you go down-country. _khana_ get, _peenikapanee_ get--live like a bloomin' raja _ke marfik_. that's a better _bandobust_ than baynit get it in your innards. good-bye, ole man. take care o' your beautiful figure-'ed, an' try to look _kushy_." the men laughed and fell in for their first march when they began to realize that a soldier's life was not all beer and skittles. they were much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they had now learned to call "paythans," and more with the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings. twenty old soldiers in the corps would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night, but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march said, "they lived like pigs." they learned the heart-breaking cussedness of camp-kitchens and camels and the depravity of an e.p. tent and a wither-wrung mule. they studied animalculae in water, and developed a few cases of dysentery in their study. at the end of their third march they were disagreeably surprised by the arrival in their camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired from a steady rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated by the fire. this robbed them of their peace for a night, and was the beginning of a long-range fire carefully calculated to that end. in the daytime they saw nothing except an occasional puff of smoke from a crag above the line of march. at night there were distant spurts of flame and occasional casualties, which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom, and, occasionally, into opposite tents. then they swore vehemently and vowed that this was magnificent but not war. indeed it was not. the regiment could not halt for reprisals against the _franctireurs_ of the country side. its duty was to go forward and make connection with the scotch and gurkha troops with which it was brigaded. the afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment. thereafter they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the fore and aft on the strain. not for anything would they have taken equal liberties with a seasoned corps--with the wicked little gurkhas, whose delight it was to lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers--with the terrible, big men dressed in women's clothes, who could be heard praying to their god in the night-watches, and whose peace of mind no amount of "sniping" could shake--or with those vile sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. this white regiment was different--quite different. it slept like a hog, and, like a hog, charged in every direction when it was roused. its sentries walked with a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile; would fire at anything that moved--even a driven donkey--and when they had once fired, could be scientifically "rushed" and laid out a horror and an offence against the morning sun. then there were camp-followers who straggled and could be cut up without fear. their shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their services would inconvenience them sorely. thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the regiment writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. the crowning triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas and a glorious knifing of the men who struggled and kicked below. it was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the fore and aft. all the courage that they had been required to exercise up to this point was the "two o'clock in the morning courage"; and they, so far, had only succeeded in shooting their comrades and losing their sleep. sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uniforms dulled and unclean, the "fore and aft" joined their brigade. "i hear you had a tough time of it coming up," said the brigadier. but when he saw the hospital-sheets his face fell. "this is bad," said he to himself. "they're as rotten as sheep." and aloud to the colonel,--"i'm afraid we can't spare you just yet. we want all we have, else i should have given you ten days to recruit in." the colonel winced. "on my honor, sir," he returned, "there is not the least necessity to think of sparing us. my men have been rather mauled and upset without a fair return. they only want to go in somewhere where they can see what's before them." "'can't say i think much of the fore and fit," said the brigadier, in confidence, to his brigade-major. "they've lost all their soldiering, and, by the trim of them, might have marched through the country from the other side. a more fagged-out set of men i never put eyes on." "oh, they'll improve as the work goes on. the parade gloss has been rubbed off a little, but they'll put on field polish before long," said the brigade-major. "they've been mauled, and they don't quite understand it." they did not. all the hitting was on one side, and it was cruelly hard hitting with accessories that made them sick. there was also the real sickness that laid hold of a strong man and dragged him howling to the grave. worst of all, their officers knew just as little of the country as the men themselves, and looked as if they did. the fore and aft were in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, but they believed that all would be well if they could once get a fair go-in at the enemy. pot-shots up and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, and the bayonet never seemed to get a chance. perhaps it was as well, for a long-limbed afghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, and could carry away enough lead to disable three englishmen, the fore and fit would like some rifle-practice at the enemy--all seven hundred rifles blazing together. that wish showed the mood of the men. the gurkhas walked into their camp, and in broken, barrack-room english strove to fraternize with them; offered them pipes of tobacco and stood them treat at the canteen. but the fore and aft, not knowing much of the nature of the gurkhas, treated them as they would treat any other "niggers," and the little men in green trotted back to their firm friends the highlanders, and with many grins confided to them:--"that dam white, regiment no dam use. sulky--ugh! dirty--ugh! hya, any tot for johnny?" whereat the highlanders smote the gurkhas as to the head, and told them not to vilify a british regiment, and the gurkhas grinned cavernously, for the highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled to the privileges of kinship. the common soldier who touches a gurkha is more than likely to have his head sliced open. three days later the brigadier arranged a battle according to the rules of war and the peculiarity of the afghan temperament. the enemy were massing in inconvenient strength among the hills, and the moving of many green standards warned him that the tribes were "up" in aid of the afghan regular troops. a squadron and a half of bengal lancers represented the available cavalry, and two screw-guns borrowed from a column thirty miles away, the artillery at the general's disposal. "if they stand, as i've a very strong notion that they will, i fancy we shall see an infantry fight that will be worth watching," said the brigadier. "we'll do it in style. each regiment shall be played into action by its band, and we'll hold the cavalry in reserve." "for _all_ the reserve?" somebody asked. "for all the reserve; because we're going to crumple them up," said the brigadier, who was an extraordinary brigadier, and did not believe in the value of a reserve when dealing with asiatics. and, indeed, when you come to think of it, had the british army consistently waited for reserves in all its little affairs, the boundaries of our empire would have stopped at brighton beach. that battle was to be a glorious battle. the three regiments debouching from three separate gorges, after duly crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left and right upon what we will call the afghan army, then stationed toward the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. thus it will be seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to the english, while the fourth was strictly afghan property. in the event of defeat the afghans had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerilla tribes in aid would cover their retreat. in the event of victory these same tribes would rush down and lend their weight to the rout of the british. the screw-guns were to shell the head of each afghan rush that was made in close formation, and the cavalry, held in reserve in the right valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on the combined attack. the brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. the fore and aft would debouch from the central gorge, the gurkhas from the left, and the highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left flank of the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. it was not every day that an afghan force would take ground in the open, and the brigadier was resolved to make the most of it. "if we only had a few more men," he said, plaintively, "we could surround the creatures and crumble 'em up thoroughly. as it is, i'm afraid we can only cut them up as they run. it's a great pity." the fore and aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. but they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known, would not have known how to do it. throughout those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they discussed together their misadventures in the past--how such an one was alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles such another had given up his soul under the afghan knife. death was a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die decently of zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in barracks had done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread. very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the fore and aft, filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting for a cup of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared for the fray. all the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off a highlander. it is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is convinced of the necessity for haste. the fore and aft awaited, leaning upon their rifles and listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. the colonel did his best to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was borne in upon him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well did he succeed that the coffee was just ready when--the men moved off, their band leading. even then there had been a mistake in time, and the fore and aft came out into the valley ten minutes before the proper hour. their band wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and retired behind a little rocky knoll still playing while the regiment went past. it was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view, for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in position--real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and--of this there was no doubt--firing martini-henri bullets which cut up the ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company. over that pock-marked ground the regiment had to pass, and it opened the ball with a general and profound courtesy to the piping pickets; ducking in perfect time, as though it had been brazed on a rod. being half-capable of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the simple process of pitching its rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger. the bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers on the hillside, but they certainly did not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles drowned any orders that might have been given. "good god!" said the brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all. "that regiment has spoiled the whole show. hurry up the others, and let the screw-guns get off." but the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision. the fore and aft continued to go forward but with shortened stride. where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers use martinis? they took open order instinctively, lying down and firing at random, rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to the regulations. once in this formation, each man felt himself desperately alone, and edged in toward his fellow for comfort's sake. then the crack of his neighbor's rifle at his ear led him to fire as rapidly as he could--again for the sake of the comfort of the noise. the reward was not long delayed. five volleys plunged the files in banked smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of the bayonet dragged down, and to the right arms wearied with holding the kick of the leaping martini. the company commanders peered helplessly through the smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying to fan it away with their helmets. "high and to the left!" bawled a captain till he was hoarse. "no good! cease firing, and let it drift away a bit." three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it was obeyed the fore and aft looked that their foe should be lying before them in mown swaths of men. a light wind drove the smoke to leeward, and showed the enemy still in position and apparently unaffected. a quarter of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front of them, as the ragged earth attested. that was not demoralizing to the afghans, who have not european nerves. they were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. a private of the fore and aft spun up his company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of his pain. these were the casualties, and they were not soothing to hear or see. the smoke cleared to a dull haze. then the foe began to shout with a great shouting and a mass--a black mass--detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground at horrid speed. it was composed of, perhaps, three hundred men, who would shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades who were determined to die carried home. the fifty were ghazis, half-maddened with drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticism. when they rushed the british fire ceased, and in the lull the order was given to close ranks and meet them with the bayonet. any one who knew the business could have told the fore and aft that the only way of dealing with a ghazi rush is by volleys at long ranges; because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a lingering prejudice in favor of life if he can close with the latter. where they should have closed and gone forward, the fore and aft opened out and skirmished, and where they should have opened out and fired, they closed and waited. a man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a pleasant frame of mind. nor does his happiness increase when he watches the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends upon whose beards the foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath, and in whose hands are three-foot knives. the fore and aft heard the gurkha bugles bringing that regiment forward at the double, while the neighing of the highland pipes came from the left. they strove to stay where they were, though the bayonets wavered down the line like the oars of a ragged boat. then they felt body to body the amazing physical strength of their foes; a shriek of pain ended the rush, and the knives fell amid scenes not to be told. the men clubbed together and smote blindly--as often as not at their own fellows. their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty ghazis passed on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they. then the rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew--alone. for the rear-rank had heard the clamor in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. they were not going to stay. it was the rushing of the camps over again. let their officers go to hell, if they chose; they would get away from the knives. "come on!" shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them, drew back, each closing into his neighbor and wheeling round. charteris and devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their death alone in the belief that their men would follow. "you've killed me, you cowards," sobbed devlin and dropped, cut from the shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest, and a fresh detachment of his men retreating, always retreating, trampled him under foot as they made for the pass whence they had emerged. i kissed her in the kitchen and i kissed her in the hall. child'un, child'un, follow me! oh golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all? halla-halla-halla hallelujah! the gurkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the heights at the double to the invitation of their regimental quickstep. the black rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the bugles gave tongue jubilantly: in the morning! in the morning by the bright light! when gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning! the gurkha rear-companies tripped and blundered over loose stones. the front-files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to settle stray boot-laces. then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold there below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the gurkhas had doubled so hastily. there was much enemy. there would be amusement. the little men hitched their _kukris_ well to hand, and gaped expectantly at their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch. the gurkhas' ground sloped downward to the valley, and they enjoyed a fair view of the proceedings. they sat upon the bowlders to watch, for their officers were not going to waste their wind in assisting to repulse a ghazi rush more than half a mile away. let the white men look to their own front. "hi! yi!" said the subadar-major, who was sweating profusely, "dam fools yonder, stand close-order! this is no time for close order, it's the time for volleys. ugh!" horrified, amused, and, indignant, the gurkhas beheld the retirement--let us be gentle--of the fore and aft with a running chorus of oaths and commentaries. "they run! the white men run! colonel sahib, may _we_ also do a little running?" murmured runbir thappa, the senior jemadar. but the colonel would have none of it. "let the beggars be cut up a little," said he wrathfully. "'serves 'em right they'll be prodded into facing round in a minute." he looked through his field-glasses, and caught the glint of an officer's sword. "beating 'em with the flat--damned conscripts! how the ghazis are walking into them!" said he. the fore and aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. the narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and the rear-rank delivered some sort of a wavering volley. the ghazis drew off, for they did not know what reserves the gorge might hide. moreover, it was never wise to chase white men too far. they returned as wolves return to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they had done, and only stopping to slash at the wounded on the ground. a quarter of a mile had the fore and aft retreated, and now, jammed in the pass, was quivering with pain, shaken and demoralized with fear, while the officers, maddened beyond control, smote the men with the hilts and the flats of their swords. "get back! get back, you cowards--you women! right about face--column of companies, form--you hounds!" shouted the colonel, and the subalterns swore aloud. but the regiment wanted to go--to go anywhere out of the range of those merciless knives. it swayed to and fro irresolutely with shouts and outcries, while from the right the gurkhas dropped volley after volley of cripple-stopper snider bullets at long range into the mob of the ghazis returning to their own troops. the fore and aft band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush. jakin and lew would have fled also, but their short legs left them fifty yards in the rear, and by the time the band had mixed with the regiment, they were painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and unsupported. "get back to that rock," gasped jakin. "they won't see us there." and they returned to the scattered instruments of the band; their hearts nearly bursting their ribs. "here's a nice show for _us_," said jakin, throwing himself full length on the ground. "a bloomin' fine show for british infantry! oh, the devils! they've gone an' left us alone here! wot 'll we do?" lew took possession of a cast-off water bottle, which naturally was full of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again. "drink," said he, shortly. "they'll come back in a minute or two--you see." jakin drank, but there was no sign of the regiment's return. they could hear a dull clamor from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the gurkhas fired at them. "we're all that's left of the band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as death," said jakin. "i'll die game, then," said lew, thickly, fumbling with his tiny drummer's sword. the drink was working on his brain as it was on jakin's. "'old on! i know something better than fightin'," said jakin, stung by the splendor of a sudden thought due chiefly to rum. "tip our bloomin' cowards yonder the word to come back. the paythan beggars are well away. come on, lew! we won't get hurt. take the fife an' give me the drum. the old step for all your bloomin' guts are worth! there's a few of our men coming back now. stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. by your right--quick march!" he slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the "british grenadiers." as lew had said, a few of the fore and aft were coming back sullenly and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their red coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets. but between this shattered line and the enemy, who with afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush, and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of a level ground dotted only by the wounded. the tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder, jakin banging the drum as one possessed. the one fife made a thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the gurkhas. "come on, you dogs!" muttered jakin, to himself, "are we to play forhever?" lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more stiffly than ever he had done on parade. and in bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the old line shrilled and rattled: some talk of alexander, and some of hercules; of hector and lysander, and such great names as these! there was a far-off clapping of hands from the gurkhas, and a roar from the highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was fired by british or afghan. the two little red dots moved forward in the open parallel to the enemy's front. but of all the world's great heroes there's none that can compare, with a tow-row-row-row-row-row to the british grenadier! the men of the fore and aft were gathering thick at the entrance into the plain. the brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with rage. still no movement from the enemy. the day stayed to watch the children. jakin halted and beat the long roll of the assembly, while the fife squealed despairingly. "right about face! hold up, lew, you're drunk," said jakin. they wheeled and marched back: those heroes of antiquity ne'er saw a cannon-ball, nor knew the force o' powder, "here they come!" said jakin. "go on, lew:" to scare their foes withal! the fore and aft were pouring out of the valley. what officers had said to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known; for neither officers nor men speak of it now. "they are coming anew!" shouted a priest among the afghans. "do not kill the boys! take them alive, and they shall be of our faith." but the first volley had been fired, and lew dropped on his face. jakin stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the fore and aft came forward, the maledictions of their officers in their ears, and in their hearts the shame of open shame. half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. they did not even shout. they doubled out straight across the plain in open order, and they did not fire. "this," said the colonel of gurkhas, softly, "is the real attack, as it ought to have been delivered. come on, my children." "ulu-lu-lu-lu!" squealed the gurkhas, and came down with a joyful clicking of _kukris_--those vicious gurkha knives. on the right there was no rush. the highlanders, cannily commending their souls to god (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he has been shot in a border scuffle or at waterloo) opened out and fired according to their custom, that is to say without heat and without intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into the clusters round the flickering green standards on the heights. "charrging is an unfortunate necessity," murmured the color-sergeant of the right company of the highlanders. "it makes the men sweer so, but i am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if these black devils stand much longer. stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the sun, and he'll not take any harm for government ammuneetion. a foot lower and a great deal slower! what are the english doing? they're very quiet there in the centre. running again?" the english were not running. they were hacking and hewing and stabbing, for though one white man is seldom physically a match for an afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of many white men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart, he becomes capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. the fore and aft held their fire till one bullet could drive through five or six men, and the front of the afghan force gave on the volley. they then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and realized for the first time that an afghan attacked is far less formidable than an afghan attacking; which fact old soldiers might have told them. but they had no old soldiers in their ranks. the gurkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were engaged--to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block--with the _kukri_, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the afghan hates the half-moon blade. as the afghans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved down to assist them in a last rally. which was unwise. the lancers chafing in the right gorge had thrice despatched their only subaltern as galloper to report on the progress of affairs. on the third occasion he returned, with a bullet-graze on his knee, swearing strange oaths in hindoostani, and saying that all things were ready. so that squadron swung round the right of the highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pennons of its lances, and fell upon the remnant just when, according to all the rules of war, it should have waited for the foe to show more signs of wavering. but it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the afghans intended to retreat; and down the track that the lances had made streamed two companies of the highlanders, which was never intended by the brigadier. the new development was successful. it detached the enemy from his base as a sponge is torn from a rock, and left him ringed about with fire in that pitiless plain. and as a sponge is chased round the bath-tub by the hand of the bather, so were the afghans chased till they broke into little detachments much more difficult to dispose of than large masses. "see!" quoth the brigadier. "everything has come as i arranged. we've cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces." a direct hammering was all that the brigadier had dared to hope for, considering the size of the force at his disposal; but men who stand or fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven for turning chance into design. the bucketing went forward merrily. the afghan forces were upon the run--the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. the red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. the lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. the highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards' law, and then brought them down, gasping and choking ere they could reach the protection of the bowlders above. the gurkhas followed suit; but the fore and aft were killing on their own account, for they had penned a mass of men between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and the flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded coats. "we cannot hold them, captain sahib!" panted a ressaldar of lancers. "let us try the carbine. the lance is good, but it wastes time." they tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away--fled up the hills by hundreds when there were only twenty bullets to stop them. on the heights the screw-guns ceased firing--they had run out of ammunition--and the brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not sufficiently smash the retreat. long before the last volleys were fired, the litters were out in force looking for the wounded. the battle was over, and, but for want of fresh troops, the afghans would have been wiped off the earth. as it was they counted their dead by hundreds, and nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of the fore and aft. but the regiment did not cheer with the highlanders, nor did they dance uncouth dances with the gurkhas among the dead. they looked under their brows at the colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and panted. "get back to camp, you. haven't you disgraced yourself enough for one day! go and look to the wounded. it's all you're fit for," said the colonel. yet for the past hour the fore and aft had been doing all that mortal commander could expect. they had lost heavily because they did not know how to set about their business with proper skill, but they had borne themselves gallantly, and this was their reward. a young and sprightly color-sergeant, who had begun to imagine himself a hero, offered his water-bottle to a highlander, whose tongue was black with thirst. "i drink with no cowards," answered the youngster, huskily, and, turning to a gurkha, said, "hya, johnny! drink water got it?" the gurkha grinned and passed his bottle. the fore and aft said no word. they went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little mopped up and made presentable, and the brigadier, who saw himself a knight in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to them. the colonel was heart-broken and the officers were savage and sullen. "well," said the brigadier, "they are young troops of course, and it was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a bit." "oh, my only aunt maria!" murmured a junior staff officer. "retire in disorder! it was a bally run!" "but they came again as we all know," cooed the brigadier, the colonel's ashy-white face before him, "and they behaved as well as could possibly be expected. behaved beautifully, indeed. i was watching them. it's not a matter to take to heart, colonel. as some german general said of his men, 'they wanted to be shooted over a little, that was all.' to himself he said: 'now they're blooded i can give 'em responsible work. it's as well that they got what they did. 'teach 'em more than half a dozen rifle flirtations, that will--later--run alone and bite. poor old colonel, though.'" all that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away. and in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while. "let's have the details somehow--as full as ever you can, please. it's the first time i've ever been left this campaign," said the correspondent to the brigadier; and the brigadier, nothing loath, told him how an army of communication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of the brigadier, but some say, and among these be the gurkhas who watched on the hillside, that that battle was won by jakin and lew, whose little bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of jagai. the sending of dana da when the devil rides on your chest remember the _chamar.--native proverb_. once upon a time, some people in india made a new heaven and a new earth out of broken tea-cups, a missing brooch or two, and a hair-brush. these were hidden under brushes, or stuffed into holes in the hillside, and an entire civil service of subordinate gods used to find or mend them again; and every one said: "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy." several other things happened also, but the religion never seemed to get much beyond its first manifestations; though it added an air-line postal service, and orchestral effects in order to keep abreast of the times, and choke off competition. this religion was too elastic for ordinary use. it stretched itself and embraced pieces of everything that the medicine-men of all ages have manufactured. it approved of and stole from freemasonry; looted the latter-day rosicrucians of half their pet words; took any fragments of egyptian philosophy that it found in the _encyclopaedia britannica_; annexed as many of the vedas as had been translated into french or english, and talked of all the rest; built in the german versions of what is left of the zend avesta; encouraged white, grey and black magic, including spiritualism, palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, hot chestnuts, double-kerneled nuts and tallow droppings; would have adopted voodoo and oboe had it known anything about them, and showed itself, in every way, one of the most accommodating arrangements that had ever been invented since the birth of the sea. when it was in thorough working order, with all the machinery, down to the subscriptions, complete, dana da came from nowhere, with nothing in his hands, and wrote a chapter in its history which has hitherto been unpublished. he said that his first name was dana, and his second was da. now, setting aside dana of the new york _sun_, dana is a bhil name, and da fits no native of india unless you except the bengali dé as the original spelling. da is lap or finnish; and dana da was neither finn, chin, bhil, bengali, lap, nair, gond, romaney, magh, bokhariot, kurd, armenian, levantine, jew, persian, punjabi, madrasi, parsee, nor anything else known to ethnologists. he was simply dana da, and declined to give further information. for the sake of brevity and as roughly indicating his origin, he was called "the native." he might have been the original old man of the mountains, who is said to be the only authorized head of the tea-cup creed. some people said that he was; but dana da used to smile and deny any connection with the cult; explaining that he was an "independent experimenter." as i have said, he came from nowhere, with his hands behind his back, and studied the creed for three weeks; sitting at the feet of those best competent to explain its mysteries. then he laughed aloud and went away, but the laugh might have been either of devotion or derision. when he returned he was without money, but his pride was unabated. he declared that he knew more about the things in heaven and earth than those who taught him, and for this contumacy was abandoned altogether. his next appearance in public life was at a big cantonment in upper india, and he was then telling fortunes with the help of three leaden dice, a very dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of opium pills. he told better fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of whiskey; but the things which he invented on the opium were quite worth the money. he was in reduced circumstances. among other people's he told the fortune of an englishman who had once been interested in the simla creed, but who, later on, had married and forgotten all his old knowledge in the study of babies and things. the englishman allowed dana da to tell a fortune for charity's sake, and gave him five rupees, a dinner, and some old clothes. when he had eaten, dana da professed gratitude, and asked if there were anything he could do for his host--in the esoteric line. "is there any one that you love?" said dana da. the englishman loved his wife, but had no desire to drag her name into the conversation. he therefore shook his head. "is there any one that you hate?" said dana da. the englishman said that there were several men whom he hated deeply. "very good," said dana da, upon whom the whiskey and the opium were beginning to tell. "only give me their names, and i will despatch a sending to them and kill them." now a sending is a horrible arrangement, first invented, they say, in iceland. it is a thing sent by a wizard, and may take any form, but, most generally, wanders about the land in the shape of a little purple cloud till it finds the sendee, and him it kills by changing into the form of a horse, or a cat, or a man without a face. it is not strictly a native patent, though _chamars_ of the skin and hide castes can, if irritated, despatch a sending which sits on the breast of their enemy by night and nearly kills him, very few natives care to irritate _chamars_ for this reason. "let me despatch a sending," said dana da; "i am nearly dead now with want, and drink, and opium; but i should like to kill a man before i die. i can send a sending anywhere you choose, and in any form except in the shape of a man." the englishman had no friends that he wished to kill, but partly to soothe dana da, whose eyes were rolling, and partly to see what would be done, he asked whether a modified sending could not be arranged for--such a sending as should make a man's life a burden to him, and yet do him no harm. if this were possible, he notified his willingness to give dana da ten rupees for the job. "i am not what i was once," said dana da, "and i must take the money because i am poor. to what englishman shall i send it?" "send a sending to lone sahib," said the englishman, naming a man who had been most bitter in rebuking him for his apostasy from the tea-cup creed. dana da laughed and nodded. "i could have chosen no better man myself," said he. "i will see that he finds the sending about his path and about his bed." he lay down on the hearth-rug, turned up the whites of his eyes, shivered all over and began to snort. this was magic, or opium, or the sending, or all three. when he opened his eyes he vowed that the sending had started upon the war-path, and was at that moment flying up to the town where lone sahib lives, "give me my ten rupees," said dana da, wearily, "and write a letter to lone sahib, telling him, and all who believe with him, that you and a friend are using a power greater than theirs. they will see that you are speaking the truth." he departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more rupees if anything came of the sending, the englishman sent a letter to lone sahib, couched in what he remembered of the terminology of the creed. he wrote: "i also, in the days of what you held to be my backsliding, have obtained enlightenment, and with enlightenment has come power." then he grew so deeply mysterious that the recipient of the letter could make neither head nor tail of it, and was proportionately impressed; for he fancied that his friend had become a "fifth-rounder." when a man is a "fifth-rounder" he can do more than slade and houdin combined, lone sahib read the letter in five different fashions, and was beginning a sixth interpretation when his bearer dashed in with the news that there was a cat on the bed. now if there was one thing that lone sahib hated more than another, it was a cat. he scolded the bearer for not turning it out of the house. the bearer said that he was afraid. all the doors of the bedroom had been shut throughout the morning, and no _real_ cat could possibly have entered the room. he would prefer not to meddle with the creature. lone sahib entered the room gingerly, and there, on the pillow of his bed, sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten; not a jumpsome, frisky little beast, but a slug-like crawler with its eyes barely opened and its paws lacking strength or direction--a kitten that ought to have been in a basket with its mamma. lone sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck, handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned, and fined the bearer four annas. that evening, as he was reading in his room, he fancied that he saw something moving about on the hearth-rug, outside the circle of light from his reading-lamp. when the thing began to myowl, he realized that it was a kitten--a wee white kitten, nearly blind and very miserable. he was seriously angry, and spoke bitterly to his bearer, who said that there was no kitten in the room when he brought in the lamp, and _real_ kittens of tender age generally had mother-cats in attendance. "if the presence will go out into the veranda and listen," said the bearer, "he will hear no cats. how, therefore, can the kitten on the bed and the kitten on the hearth-rug be real kittens?" lone sahib went out to listen, and the bearer followed him, but there was no sound of any one mewing for her children. he returned to his room, having hurled the kitten down the hillside, and wrote out the incidents of the day for the benefit of his co-religionists. those people were so absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out of the common to agencies. as it was their business to know all about the agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with manifestations of every kind. their letters dropped from the ceiling--unstamped--and spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases all night; but they had never come into contact with kittens. lone sahib wrote out the facts, noting the hour and the minute, as every psychical observer is bound to do, and appending the englishman's letter because it was the most mysterious document and might have had a bearing upon anything in this world or the next. an outsider would have translated all the tangle thus: "look out! you laughed at me once, and now i am going to make you sit up," lone sahib's co-religionists found that meaning in it; but their translation was refined and full of four-syllable words. they held a sederunt, and were filled with tremulous joy, for, in spite of their familiarity with all the other worlds and cycles, they had a very human awe of things sent from ghost-land. they met in lone sahib's room in shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by clinking among the photo-frames on the mantelpiece. a wee white kitten, nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks. that stopped all investigations or doubtings. here was the manifestation in the flesh. it was, so far as could be seen, devoid of purpose, but it was a manifestation of undoubted authenticity. they drafted a round robin to the englishman, the backslider of old days, adjuring him in the interests of the creed to explain whether there was any connection between the embodiment of some egyptian god or other (i have forgotten the name) and his communication. they called the kitten ra, or toth, or tum, or some thing; and when lone sahib confessed that the first one had, at his most misguided instance, been drowned by the sweeper, they said consolingly that in his next life he would be a "bounder," and not even a "rounder" of the lowest grade. these words may not be quite correct, but they accurately express the sense of the house. when the englishman received the round robin--it came by post--he was startled and bewildered. he sent into the bazar for dana da, who read the letter and laughed, "that is my sending," said he. "i told you i would work well. now give me another ten rupees." "but what in the world is this gibberish about egyptian gods?" asked the englishman, "cats," said dana da, with a hiccough, for he had discovered the englishman's whiskey bottle. "cats, and cats, and cats! never was such a sending. a hundred of cats. now give me ten more rupees and write as i dictate." dana da's letter was a curiosity. it bore the englishman's signature, and hinted at cats--at a sending of cats. the mere words on paper were creepy and uncanny to behold. "what have you done, though?" said the englishman; "i am as much in the dark as ever. do you mean to say that you can actually send this absurd sending you talk about?" "judge for yourself," said dana da. "what does that letter mean? in a little time they will all be at my feet and yours, and i--o glory!--will be drugged or drunk all day long." dana da knew his people. when a man who hates cats wakes up in the morning and finds a little squirming kitten on his breast, or puts his hands into his ulster-pocket and finds a little half-dead kitten where his gloves should be, or opens his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his dress-shirts, or goes for a long ride with his mackintosh strapped on his saddle-bow and shakes a little squawling kitten from its folds when he opens it, or goes out to dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair, or stays at home and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt, or wriggling among his boots, or hanging, head downward, in his tobacco-jar, or being mangled by his terrier in the veranda,--when such a man finds one kitten, neither more nor less, once a day in a place where no kitten rightly could or should be, he is naturally upset. when he dare not murder his daily trove because he believes it to be a manifestation, an emissary, an embodiment, and half a dozen other things all out of the regular course of nature, he is more than upset. he is actually distressed. some of lone sahib's co-religionists thought that he was a highly favored individual; but many said that if he had treated the first kitten with proper respect--as suited a toth-ra-tum-sennacherib embodiment--all this trouble would have been averted. they compared him to the ancient mariner, but none the less they were proud of him and proud of the englishman who had sent the manifestation. they did not call it a sending because icelandic magic was not in their programme. after sixteen kittens, that is to say after one fortnight, for there were three kittens on the first day to impress the fact of the sending, the whole camp was uplifted by a letter--it came flying through a window--from the old man of the mountains--the head of all the creed--explaining the manifestation in the most beautiful language and soaking up all the credit of it for himself. the englishman, said the letter, was not there at all. he was a backslider without power or asceticism, who couldn't even raise a table by force of volition, much less project an army of kittens through space. the entire arrangement, said the letter, was strictly orthodox, worked and sanctioned by the highest authorities within the pale of the creed. there was great joy at this, for some of the weaker brethren seeing that an outsider who had been working on independent lines could create kittens, whereas their own rulers had never gone beyond crockery--and broken at best--were showing a desire to break line on their own trail. in fact, there was the promise of a schism. a second round robin was drafted to the englishman, beginning: "o scoffer," and ending with a selection of curses from the rites of mizraim and memphis and the commination of jugana, who was a "fifth-rounder," upon whose name an upstart "third-rounder" once traded. a papal excommunication is a _billet-doux_ compared to the commination of jugana. the englishman had been proved, under the hand and seal of the old man of the mountains, to have appropriated virtue and pretended to have power which, in reality, belonged only to the supreme head. naturally the round robin did not spare him. he handed the letter to dana da to translate into decent english. the effect on dana da was curious. at first he was furiously angry, and then he laughed for five minutes. "i had thought," he said, "that they would have come to me. in another week i would have shown that i sent the sending, and they would have discrowned the old man of the mountains who has sent this sending of mine. do you do nothing. the time has come for me to act. write as i dictate, and i will put them to shame. but give me ten more rupees." at dana da's dictation the englishman wrote nothing less than a formal challenge to the old man of the mountains. it wound up: "and if this manifestation be from your hand, then let it go forward; but if it be from my hand, i will that the sending shall cease in two days' time. on that day there shall be twelve kittens and thenceforward none at all. the people shall judge between us." this was signed by dana da, who added pentacles and pentagrams, and a _crux ansaia_, and half a dozen _swastikas_, and a triple tau to his name, just to show that he was all he laid claim to be. the challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies, and they remembered then that dana da had laughed at them some years ago. it was officially announced that the old man of the mountains would treat the matter with contempt; dana da being an independent investigator without a single "round" at the back of him. but this did not soothe his people. they wanted to see a fight. they were very human for all their spirituality. lone sahib, who was really being worn out with kittens, submitted meekly to his fate. he felt that he was being "kittened to prove the power of dana da," as the poet says. when the stated day dawned, the shower of kittens began. some were white and some were tabby, and all were about the same loathsome age. three were on his hearth-rug, three in his bath-room, and the other six turned up at intervals among the visitors who came to see the prophecy break down. never was a more satisfactory sending. on the next day there were no kittens, and the next day and all the other days were kittenless and quiet. the people murmured and looked to the old man of the mountains for an explanation. a letter, written on a palm-leaf, dropped from the ceiling, but every one except lone sahib felt that letters were not what the occasion demanded. there should have been cats, there should have been cats,--full-grown ones. the letter proved conclusively that there had been a hitch in the psychic current which, colliding with a dual identity, had interfered with the percipient activity all along the main line. the kittens were still going on, but owing to some failure in the developing fluid, they were not materialized. the air was thick with letters for a few days afterward. unseen hands played glück and beethoven on finger-bowls and clock-shades; but all men felt that psychic life was a mockery without materialized kittens. even lone sahib shouted with the majority on this head. dana da's letters were very insulting, and if he had then offered to lead a new departure, there is no knowing what might not have happened. but dana da was dying of whiskey and opium in the englishman's godown, and had small heart for honors. "they have been put to shame," said he. "never was such a sending. it has killed me." "nonsense," said the englishman, "you are going to die, dana da, and that sort of stuff must be left behind. i'll admit that you have made some queer things come about. tell me honestly, now, how was it done?" "give me ten more rupees," said dana da, faintly, "and if i die before i spend them, bury them with me." the silver was counted out while dana da was fighting with death. his hand closed upon the money and he smiled a grim smile. "bend low," he whispered. the englishman bent. "_bunnia_--mission--school--expelled--_box-wallah_ (peddler)--ceylon pearl-merchant--all mine english education--out-casted, and made up name dana da--england with american thought-reading man and--and--you gave me ten rupees several times--i gave the sahib's bearer two-eight a month for cats--little, little cats. i wrote, and he put them about--very clever man. very few kittens now in the _bazar_. ask lone sahib's sweeper's wife." so saying, dana da gasped and passed away into a land where, if all be true, there are no materializations and the making of new creeds is discouraged. but consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all! on the city wall then she let them down by a cord through the window; for her house was upon the town-wall, and she dwelt upon the wall.--_joshua_ ii. . lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. lilith was her very-great-grandmamma, and that was before the days of eve as every one knows. in the west, people say rude things about lalun's profession, and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young persons in order that morality may be preserved. in the east where the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes lectures or takes any notice; and that is a distinct proof of the inability of the east to manage its own affairs. lalun's real husband, for even ladies of lalun's profession in the east must have husbands, was a big jujube-tree. her mamma, who had married a fig-tree, spent ten thousand rupees on lalun's wedding, which was blessed by forty-seven clergymen of mamma's church, and distributed five thousand rupees in charity to the poor. and that was the custom of the land. the advantages of having a jujube-tree for a husband are obvious. you cannot hurt his feelings, and he looks imposing. lalun's husband stood on the plain outside the city walls, and lalun's house was upon the east wall facing the river. if you fell from the broad window-seat you dropped thirty feet sheer into the city ditch. but if you stayed where you should and looked forth, you saw all the cattle of the city being driven down to water, the students of the government college playing cricket, the high grass and trees that fringed the river-bank, the great sand bars that ribbed the river, the red tombs of dead emperors beyond the river, and very far away through the blue heat-haze, a glint of the snows of the himalayas. wali dad used to lie in the window-seat for hours at a time watching this view. he was a young muhammadan who was suffering acutely from education of the english variety and knew it. his father had sent him to a mission-school to get wisdom, and wali dad had absorbed more than ever his father or the missionaries intended he should. when his father died, wali dad was independent and spent two years experimenting with the creeds of the earth and reading books that are of no use to anybody. after he had made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the roman catholic church and the presbyterian fold at the same time (the missionaries found him out and called him names, but they did not understand his trouble), he discovered lalun on the city wall and became the most constant of her few admirers. he possessed a head that english artists at home would rave over and paint amid impossible surroundings--a face that female novelists would use with delight through nine hundred pages. in reality he was only a clean-bred young muhammadan, with penciled eyebrows, small-cut nostrils, little feet and hands, and a very tired look in his eyes. by virtue of his twenty-two years he had grown a neat black beard which he stroked with pride and kept delicately scented. his life seemed to be divided between borrowing books from me and making love to lalun in the window-seat. he composed songs about her, and some of the songs are sung to this day in the city from the street of the mutton-butchers to the copper-smiths' ward. one song, the prettiest of all, says that the beauty of lalun was so great that it troubled the hearts of the british government and caused them to lose their peace of mind. that is the way the song is sung in the streets; but, if you examine it carefully and know the key to the explanation, you will find that there are three puns in it--on "beauty," "heart," and "peace of mind,"--so that it runs: "by the subtlety of lalun the administration of the government was troubled and it lost such and such a man." when wali dad sings that song his eyes glow like hot coals, and lalun leans back among the cushions and throws bunches of jasmine-buds at wali dad. but first it is necessary to explain something about the supreme government which is above all and below all and behind all. gentlemen come from england, spend a few weeks in india, walk round this great sphinx of the plains, and write books upon its ways and its works, denouncing or praising it as their own ignorance prompts. consequently all the world knows how the supreme government conducts itself, but no one, not even the supreme government, knows everything about the administration of the empire. year by year england sends out fresh drafts for the first fighting-line, which is officially called the indian civil service. these die, or kill themselves by overwork, or are worried to death or broken in health and hope in order that the land may be protected from death and sickness, famine and war, and may eventually become capable of standing alone. it will never stand alone, but the idea is a pretty one, and men are willing to die for it, and yearly the work of pushing and coaxing and scolding and petting the country into good living goes forward. if an advance be made all credit is given to the native, while the englishmen stand back and wipe their foreheads. if a failure occurs the englishmen step forward and take the blame. overmuch tenderness of this kind has bred a strong belief among many natives that the native is capable of administering the country, and many devout englishmen believe this also, because the theory is stated in beautiful english with all the latest political color. there be other men who, though uneducated, see visions and dream dreams, and they, too, hope to administer the country in their own way--that is to say, with a garnish of red sauce. such men must exist among two hundred million people, and, if they are not attended to, may cause trouble and even break the great idol called _pax britannic_, which, as the newspapers say, lives between peshawur and cape comorin. were the day of doom to dawn to-morrow, you would find the supreme government "taking measures to allay popular excitement" and putting guards upon the graveyards that the dead might troop forth orderly. the youngest civilian would arrest gabriel on his own responsibility if the archangel could not produce a deputy commissioner's permission to "make music or other noises" as the license says. whence it is easy to see that mere men of the flesh who would create a tumult must fare badly at the hands of the supreme government. and they do. there is no outward sign of excitement; there is no confusion; there is no knowledge. when due and sufficient reasons have been given, weighed and approved, the machinery moves forward, and the dreamer of dreams and the seer of visions is gone from his friends and following. he enjoys the hospitality of government; there is no restriction upon his movements within certain limits; but he must not confer any more with his brother dreamers. once in every six months the supreme government assures itself that he is well and takes formal acknowledgment of his existence. no one protests against his detention, because the few people who know about it are in deadly fear of seeming to know him; and never a single newspaper "takes up his case" or organizes demonstrations on his behalf, because the newspapers of india have got behind that lying proverb which says the pen is mightier than the sword, and can walk delicately. so now you know as much as you ought about wali dad, the educational mixture, and the supreme government. lalun has not yet been described. she would need, so wali dad says, a thousand pens of gold and ink scented with musk. she has been variously compared to the moon, the dil sagar lake, a spotted quail, a gazelle, the sun on the desert of kutch, the dawn, the stars, and the young bamboo. these comparisons imply that she is beautiful exceedingly according to the native standards, which are practically the same as those of the west. her eyes are black and her hair is black, and her eyebrows are black as leeches; her mouth is tiny and says witty things; her hands are tiny and have saved much money; her feet are tiny and have trodden on the naked hearts of many men. but, as wali dad sings: "lalun _is_ lalun, and when you have said that, you have only come to the beginnings of knowledge." the little house on the city wall was just big enough to hold lalun, and her maid, and a pussy-cat with a silver collar. a big pink and blue cut-glass chandelier hung from the ceiling of the reception room. a petty nawab had given lalun the horror, and she kept it for politeness' sake. the floor of the room was of polished chunam, white as curds. a latticed window of carved wood was set in one wall; there was a profusion of squabby pluffy cushions and fat carpets everywhere, and lalun's silver _huqa_, studded with turquoises, had a special little carpet all to its shining self. wali dad was nearly as permanent a fixture as the chandelier. as i have said, he lay in the window-seat and meditated on life and death and lalun--specially lalun. the feet of the young men of the city tended to her doorways and then--retired, for lalun was a particular maiden, slow of speech, reserved of mind, and not in the least inclined to orgies which were nearly certain to end in strife. "if i am of no value, i am unworthy of this honor," said lalun. "if i am of value, they are unworthy of me," and that was a crooked sentence. in the long hot nights of latter april and may all the city seemed to assemble in lalun's little white room to smoke and to talk. shiahs of the grimmest and most uncompromising persuasion; sufis who had lost all belief in the prophet and retained but little in god; wandering hindu priests passing southward on their way to the central india fairs and other affairs; pundits in black gowns, with spectacles on their noses and undigested wisdom in their insides; bearded headmen of the wards; sikhs with all the details of the latest ecclesiastical scandal in the golden temple; red-eyed priests from beyond the border, looking like trapped wolves and talking like ravens; m.a.'s of the university, very superior and very voluble--all these people and more also you might find in the white room. wali dad lay in the window-seat and listened to the talk. "it is lalun's salon," said wali dad to me, "and it is electic--is not that the word? outside of a freemason's lodge i have never seen such gatherings. _there_ i dined once with a jew--a yahoudi!" he spat into the city ditch with apologies for allowing national feelings to overcome him. "though i have lost every belief in the world," said he, "and try to be proud of my losing, i cannot help hating a jew. lalun admits no jews here." "but what in the world do all these men do?" i asked. "the curse of our country," said wali dad. "they talk. it is like the athenians--always hearing and telling some new thing. ask the pearl and she will show you how much she knows of the news of the city and the province. lalun knows everything." "lalun," i said at random--she was talking to a gentleman of the kurd persuasion who had come in from god-knows-where--"when does the th regiment go to agra?" "it does not go at all," said lalun, without turning her head. "they have ordered the th to go in its stead. that regiment goes to lucknow in three months, unless they give a fresh order." "that is so," said wali dad without a shade of doubt. "can you, with your telegrams and your newspapers, do better? always hearing and telling some new thing," he went on. "my friend, has your god ever smitten a european nation for gossiping in the bazars? india has gossiped for centuries--always standing in the bazars until the soldiers go by. therefore--you are here to-day instead of starving in your own country, and i am not a muhammadan--i am a product--a demnition product. that also i owe to you and yours: that i cannot make an end to my sentence without quoting from your authors." he pulled at the _huqa_ and mourned, half feelingly, half in earnest, for the shattered hopes of his youth. wali dad was always mourning over something or other--the country of which he despaired, or the creed in which he had lost faith, or the life of the english which he could by no means understand. lalun never mourned. she played little songs on the _sitar_, and to hear her sing, "_o peacock, cry again_," was always a fresh pleasure. she knew all the songs that have ever been sung, from the war-songs of the south that make the old men angry with the young men and the young men angry with the state, to the love-songs of the north where the swords whinny-whicker like angry kites in the pauses between the kisses, and the passes fill with armed men, and the lover is torn from his beloved and cries, _ai, ai, ai!_ evermore. she knew how to make up tobacco for the _huqa_ so that it smelled like the gates of paradise and wafted you gently through them. she could embroider strange things in gold and silver, and dance softly with the moonlight when it came in at the window. also she knew the hearts of men, and the heart of the city, and whose wives were faithful and whose untrue, and more of the secrets of the government offices than are good to be set down in this place. nasiban, her maid, said that her jewelry was worth ten thousand pounds, and that, some night, a thief would enter and murder her for its possession; but lalun said that all the city would tear that thief limb from limb, and that he, whoever he was, knew it. so she took her _sitar_ and sat in the windowseat and sang a song of old days that had been sung by a girl of her profession in an armed camp on the eve of a great battle--the day before the fords of the jumna ran red and sivaji fled fifty miles to delhi with a toorkh stallion at his horse's tail and another lalun on his saddle-bow. it was what men call a mahratta _laonee_, and it said: their warrior forces chimnajee before the peishwa led, the children of the sun and fire behind him turned and fled. and the chorus said: with them there fought who rides so free with sword and turban red, the warrior-youth who earns his fee at peril of his head, "at peril of his head," said wali dad in english to me, "thanks to your government, all our heads are protected, and with the educational facilities at my command"--his eyes twinkled wickedly--"i might be a distinguished member of the local administration. perhaps, in time, i might even be a member of a legislative council." "don't speak english," said lalun, bending over her _sitar_ afresh. the chorus went out from the city wall to the blackened wall of fort amara which dominates the city. no man knows the precise extent of fort amara. three kings built it hundreds of years ago, and they say that there are miles of underground rooms beneath its walls. it is peopled with many ghosts, a detachment of garrison artillery and a company of infantry. in its prime it held ten thousand men and filled its ditches with corpses. "at peril of his head," sang lalun, again and again. a head moved on one of the ramparts--the grey head of an old man--and a voice, rough as shark-skin on a sword-hilt, sent back the last line of the chorus and broke into a song that i could not understand, though lalun and wali dad listened intently. "what is it?" i asked. "who is it?" "a consistent man," said wali dad. "he fought you in ' , when he was a warrior-youth; refought you in ' , and he tried to fight you in ' , but you had learned the trick of blowing men from guns too well. now he is old; but he would still fight if he could." "is he a wahabi, then? why should he answer to a mahratta _laonee_ if he be wahabi--or sikh?" said i. "i do not know," said wali dad. "he has lost perhaps, his religion. perhaps he wishes to be a king. perhaps he is a king. i do not know his name." "that is a lie, wali dad. if you know his career you must know his name." "that is quite true. i belong to a nation of liars. i would rather not tell you his name. think for yourself." lalun finished her song, pointed to the fort, and said simply: "khem singh." "hm," said wali dad. "if the pearl chooses to tell you the pearl is a fool." i translated to lalun, who laughed. "i choose to tell what i choose to tell. they kept khem singh in burma," said she. "they kept him there for many years until his mind was changed in him. so great was the kindness of the government. finding this, they sent him back to his own country that he might look upon it before he died. he is an old man, but when he looks upon this his country his memory will come. moreover, there be many who remember him." "he is an interesting survival," said wali dad, pulling at the _huqa_. "he returns to a country now full of educational and political reform, but, as the pearl says, there are many who remember him. he was once a great man. there will never he any more great men in india. they will all, when they are boys, go whoring after strange gods, and they will become citizens--'fellow-citizens'--'illustrious fellow-citizens.' what is it that the native papers call them?" wali dad seemed to be in a very bad temper. lalun looked out of the window and smiled into the dust-haze. i went away thinking about khem singh who had once made history with a thousand followers, and would have been a princeling but for the power of the supreme government aforesaid. the senior captain commanding fort amara was away on leave, but the subaltern, his deputy, drifted down to the club, where i found him and inquired of him whether it was really true that a political prisoner had been added to the attractions of the fort. the subaltern explained at great length, for this was the first time that he had held command of the fort, and his glory lay heavy upon him. "yes," said he, "a man was sent in to me about a week ago from down the line--a thorough gentleman whoever he is. of course i did all i could for him. he had his two servants and some silver cooking-pots, and he looked for all the world like a native officer. i called him subadar sahib; just as well to be on the safe side, y'know. 'look here, subadar sahib,' i said, 'you're handed over to my authority, and i'm supposed to guard you. now i don't want to make your life hard, but you must make things easy for me. all the fort is at your disposal, from the flagstaff to the dry ditch, and i shall be happy to entertain you in any way i can, but you mustn't take advantage of it. give me your word that you won't try to escape, subadar sahib, and i'll give you my word that you shall have no heavy guard put over you.' i thought the best way of getting him was by going at him straight, y'know, and it was, by jove! the old man gave me his word, and moved about the fort as contented as a sick crow. he's a rummy chap--always asking to be told where he is and what the buildings about him are. i had to sign a slip of blue paper when he turned up, acknowledging receipt of his body and all that, and i'm responsible, y'know, that he doesn't get away. queer thing, though, looking after a johnnie old enough to be your grandfather, isn't it? come to the fort one of these days and see him?" for reasons which will appear, i never went to the fort while khem singh was then within its walls. i knew him only as a grey head seen from lalun's window--a grey head and a harsh voice. but natives told me that, day by day, as he looked upon the fair lands round amara, his memory came back to him and, with it, the old hatred against the government that had been nearly effaced in far-off burma. so he raged up and down the west face of the fort from morning till noon and from evening till the night, devising vain things in his heart, and croaking war-songs when lalun sang on the city wall. as he grew more acquainted with the subaltern he unburdened his old heart of some of the passions that had withered it. "sahib," he used to say, tapping his stick against the parapet, "when i was a young man i was one of twenty thousand horsemen who came out of the city and rode round the plain here. sahib, i was the leader of a hundred, then of a thousand, then of five thousand, and now!"--he pointed to his two servants. "but from the beginning to to-day i would cut the throats of all the sahibs in the land if i could. hold me fast, sahib, lest i get away and return to those who would follow me. i forgot them when i was in burma, but now that i am in my own country again, i remember everything." "do you remember that you have given me your honor not to make your tendance a hard matter?" said the subaltern. "yes, to you, only to you, sahib," said khem singh. "to you, because you are of a pleasant countenance. if my turn comes again, sahib, i will not hang you nor cut your throat." "thank you," said the subaltern, gravely, as he looked along the line of guns that could pound the city to powder in half an hour. "let us go into our own quarters, khem singh. come and talk with me after dinner." khem singh would sit on his own cushion at the subaltern's feet, drinking heavy, scented anise-seed brandy in great gulps, and telling strange stories of fort amara, which had been a palace in the old days, of begums and ranees tortured to death--aye, in the very vaulted chamber that now served as a mess-room; would tell stories of sobraon that made the subaltern's cheeks flush and tingle with pride of race, and of the kuka rising from which so much was expected and the foreknowledge of which was shared by a hundred thousand souls. but he never told tales of ' because, as he said, he was the subaltern's guest, and ' is a year that no man, black or white, cares to speak of. once only, when the anise-seed brandy had slightly affected his head, he said: "sahib, speaking now of a matter which lay between sobraon and the affair of the kukas, it was ever a wonder to us that you stayed your hand at all, and that, having stayed it, you did not make the land one prison. now i hear from without that you do great honor to all men of our country and by your own hands are destroying the terror of your name which is your strong rock and defence. this is a foolish thing. will oil and water mix? now in ' "-- "i was not born then, subadar sahib," said the subaltern, and khem singh reeled to his quarters, the subaltern would tell me of these conversations at the club, and my desire to see khem singh increased. but wali dad, sitting in the window-seat of the house on the city wall, said that it would be a cruel thing to do, and lalun pretended that i preferred the society of a grizzled old sikh to hers. "here is tobacco, here is talk, here are many friends and all the news of the city, and, above all, here is myself. i will tell you stories and sing you songs, and wali dad will talk his english nonsense in your ears. is that worse than watching the caged animal yonder? go to-morrow then, if you must, but to-day such and such an one will be here, and he will speak of wonderful things." it happened that to-morrow never came, and the warm heat of the latter rains gave place to the chill of early october almost before i was aware of the flight of the year. the captain commanding the fort returned from leave and took over charge of khem singh according to the laws of seniority. the captain was not a nice man. he called all natives "niggers," which, besides being extreme bad form, shows gross ignorance. "what's the use of telling off two tommies to watch that old nigger?" said he. "i fancy it soothes his vanity," said the subaltern. "the men are ordered to keep well out of his way, but he takes them as a tribute to his importance, poor old wretch." "i won't have line men taken off regular guards in this way. put on a couple of native infantry." "sikhs?" said the subaltern, lifting his eyebrows. "sikhs, pathans, dogras--they're all alike, these black vermin," and the captain talked to khem singh in a manner which hurt that old gentleman's feelings. fifteen years before, when he had been caught for the second time, every one looked upon him as a sort of tiger. he liked being regarded in this light. but he forgot that the world goes forward in fifteen years, and many subalterns are promoted to captaincies, "the captain-pig is in charge of the fort?" said khem singh to his native guard every morning. and the native guard said: "yes, subadar sahib," in deference to his age and his air of distinction; but they did not know who he was. in those days the gathering in lalun's little white room was always large and talked more than before, "the greeks," said wali dad who had been borrowing my books, "the inhabitants of the city of athens, where they were always hearing and telling some new thing, rigorously secluded their women--who were fools. hence the glorious institution of the heterodox women--is it not?--who were amusing and _not_ fools. all the greek philosophers delighted in their company. tell me, my friend, how it goes now in greece and the other places upon the continent of europe. are your women-folk also fools?" "wali dad," i said, "you never speak to us about your women-folk and we never speak about ours to you. that is the bar between us." "yes," said wali dad, "it is curious to think that our common meeting-place should be here, in the house of a common--how do you call _her_?" he pointed with the pipe-mouth to lalun. "lalun is nothing but lalun," i said, and that was perfectly true. "but if you took your place in the world, wali dad, and gave up dreaming dreams"-- "i might wear an english coat and trouser. i might be a leading muhammadan pleader. i might be received even at the commissioner's tennis-parties where the english stand on one side and the natives on the other, in order to promote social intercourse throughout the empire. heart's heart," said he to lalun quickly, "the sahib says that i ought to quit you." "the sahib is always talking stupid talk," returned lalun, with a laugh. "in this house i am a queen and thou art a king. the sahib"--she put her arms above her head and thought for a moment--"the sahib shall be our vizier--thine and mine, wali dad--because he has said that thou shouldst leave me." wali dad laughed immoderately, and i laughed too. "be it so," said he. "my friend, are you willing to take this lucrative government appointment? lalun, what shall his pay be?" but lalun began to sing, and for the rest of the time there was no hope of getting a sensible answer from her or wall dad. when the one stopped, the other began to quote persian poetry with a triple pun in every other line. some of it was not strictly proper, but it was all very funny, and it only came to an end when a fat person in black, with gold _pince-nez_, sent up his name to lalun, and wali dad dragged me into the twinkling night to walk in a big rose-garden and talk heresies about religion and governments and a man's career in life. the mohurrum, the great mourning-festival of the muhammadans, was close at hand, and the things that wali dad said about religious fanaticism would have secured his expulsion from the loosest-thinking muslim sect. there were the rose-bushes round us, the stars above us, and from every quarter of the city came the boom of the big mohurrum drums, you must know that the city is divided in fairly equal proportions between the hindus and the musalmans, and where both creeds belong to the fighting races, a big religious festival gives ample chance for trouble. when they can--that is to say when the authorities are weak enough to allow it--the hindus do their best to arrange some minor feast-day of their own in time to clash with the period of general mourning for the martyrs hasan and hussain, the heroes of the mohurrum. gilt and painted paper presentations of their tombs are borne with shouting and wailing, music, torches, and yells, through the principal thoroughfares of the city, which fakements are called _tazias_. their passage is rigorously laid down beforehand by the police, and detachments of police accompany each _tazias_, lest the hindus should throw bricks at it and the peace of the queen and the heads of her loyal subjects should thereby be broken. mohurrum time in a "fighting" town means anxiety to all the officials, because, if a riot breaks out, the officials and not the rioters are held responsible. the former must foresee everything, and while not making their precautions ridiculously elaborate, must see that they are at least adequate. "listen to the drums!" said wali dad. "that is the heart of the people--empty and making much noise. how, think you, will the mohurrum go this year? i think that there will be trouble." he turned down a side-street and left me alone with the stars and a sleepy police patrol. then i went to bed and dreamed that wali dad had sacked the city and i was made vizier, with lalun's silver _huqa_ for mark of office. all day the mohurrum drums beat in the city, and all day deputations of tearful hindu gentlemen besieged the deputy commissioner with assurances that they would be murdered ere next dawning by the muhammadans. "which," said the deputy commissioner, in confidence to the head of police, "is a pretty fair indication that the hindus are going to make 'emselves unpleasant. i think we can arrange a little surprise for them. i have given the heads of both creeds fair warning. if they choose to disregard it, so much the worse for them." there was a large gathering in lalun's house that night, but of men that i had never seen before, if i except the fat gentleman in black with the gold _pince-nez_. wali dad lay in the window-seat, more bitterly scornful of his faith and its manifestations than i had ever known him. lalun's maid was very busy cutting up and mixing tobacco for the guests. we could hear the thunder of the drums as the processions accompanying each _tazia_ marched to the central gathering-place in the plain outside the city, preparatory to their triumphant reentry and circuit within the walls. all the streets seemed ablaze with torches, and only fort amara was black and silent. when the noise of the drums ceased, no one in the white room spoke for a time. "the first _tazia_ has moved off," said wali dad, looking to the plain. "that is very early," said the man with the _pince-nez_. "it is only half-past eight." the company rose and departed. "some of them were men from ladakh," said lalun, when the last had gone. "they brought me brick-tea such as the russians sell, and a tea-turn from peshawur. show me, now, how the english _memsahibs_ make tea." the brick-tea was abominable. when it was finished wali dad suggested going into the streets. "i am nearly sure that there will be trouble to-night," he said. "all the city thinks so, and _vox populi_ is _vox dei_, as the babus say. now i tell you that at the corner of the padshahi gate you will find my horse all this night if you want to go about and to see things. it is a most disgraceful exhibition. where is the pleasure of saying '_ya hasan, ya hussain_,' twenty thousand times in a night?" all the processions--there were two and twenty of them--were now well within the city walls. the drums were beating afresh, the crowd were howling "_ya hasan! ya hussain!_" and beating their breasts, the brass bands were playing their loudest, and at every corner where space allowed, muhammadan preachers were telling the lamentable story of the death of the martyrs. it was impossible to move except with the crowd, for the streets were not more than twenty feet wide. in the hindu quarters the shutters of all the shops were up and cross-barred. as the first _tazia_, a gorgeous erection ten feet high, was borne aloft on the shoulders of a score of stout men into the semi-darkness of the gully of the horsemen, a brickbat crashed through its talc and tinsel sides. "into thy hands, o lord?" murmured wali dad. profanely, as a yell went up from behind, and a native officer of police jammed his horse through the crowd. another brickbat followed, and the _tazia_ staggered and swayed where it had stopped. "go on! in the name of the _sirkar_, go forward!" shouted the policeman; but there was an ugly cracking and splintering of shutters, and the crowd halted, with oaths and growlings, before the house whence the brickbat had been thrown. then, without any warning, broke the storm--not only in the gully of the horsemen, but in half a dozen other places. the _tazias_ rocked like ships at sea, the long pole-torches dipped and rose round them while the men shouted: "the hindus are dishonoring the _tazias!_ strike! strike! into their temples for the faith!" the six or eight policemen with each _tazia_ drew their batons, and struck as long as they could in the hope of forcing the mob forward, but they were overpowered, and as contingents of hindus poured into the streets, the fight became general. half a mile away where the _tazias_ were yet untouched the drums and the shrieks of "_ya hasan! ya hussain!_" continued, but not for long. the priests at the corners of the streets knocked the legs from the bedsteads that supported their pulpits and smote for the faith, while stones fell from the silent houses upon friend and foe, and the packed streets bellowed: "_din! din! din!_" a _tazia_ caught fire, and was dropped for a flaming barrier between hindu and musalman at the corner of the gully. then the crowd surged forward, and wali dad drew me close to the stone pillar of a well. "it was intended from the beginning!" he shouted in my ear, with more heat than blank unbelief should be guilty of. "the bricks were carried up to the houses beforehand. these swine of hindus! we shall be gutting kine in their temples to-night!" _tazia_ after _tazia_, some burning, others torn to pieces, hurried past us and the mob with them, howling, shrieking, and striking at the house doors in their flight. at last we saw the reason of the rush. hugonin, the assistant district superintendent of police, a boy of twenty, had got together thirty constables and was forcing the crowd through the streets. his old grey police-horse showed no sign of uneasiness as it was spurred breast-on into the crowd, and the long dog-whip with which he had armed himself was never still. "they know we haven't enough police to hold 'em," he cried as he passed me, mopping a cut on his face, "they _know_ we haven't! aren't any of the men from the club coming down to help? get on, you sons of burned fathers!" the dog-whip cracked across the writhing backs, and the constables smote afresh with baton and gun-butt. with these passed the lights and the shouting, and wali dad began to swear under his breath. from fort amara shot up a single rocket; then two side by side. it was the signal for troops. petitt, the deputy commissioner, covered with dust and sweat, but calm and gently smiling, cantered up the clean-swept street in rear of the main body of the rioters, "no one killed yet," he shouted. "i'll keep 'em on the run till dawn! don't let 'em halt, hugonin! trot 'em about till the troops come." the science of the defence lay solely in keeping the mob on the move. if they had breathing-space they would halt and fire a house, and then the work of restoring order would be more difficult, to say the least of it. flames have the same effect on a crowd as blood has on a wild beast. word had reached the club and men in evening-dress were beginning to show themselves and lend a hand in heading off and breaking up the shouting masses with stirrup-leathers, whips, or chance-found staves. they were not very often attacked, for the rioters had sense enough to know that the death of a european would not mean one hanging but many, and possibly the appearance of the thrice-dreaded artillery. the clamor in the city redoubled. the hindus had descended into the streets in real earnest and ere long the mob returned. it was a strange sight. there were no _tazias_--only their riven platforms--and there were no police. here and there a city dignitary, hindu or muhammadan, was vainly imploring his co-religionists to keep quiet and behave themselves--advice for which his white beard was pulled. then a native officer of police, unhorsed but still using his spurs with effect, would be borne along, warning all the crowd of the danger of insulting the government. everywhere men struck aimlessly with sticks, grasping each other by the throat, howling and foaming with rage, or beat with their bare hands on the doors of the houses. "it is a lucky thing that they are fighting with natural weapons," i said to wali dad, "else we should have half the city killed." i turned as i spoke and looked at his face. his nostrils were distended, his eyes were fixed, and he was smiting himself softly on the breast. the crowd poured by with renewed riot--a gang of musalmans hard-pressed by some hundred hindu fanatics. wali dad left my side with an oath, and shouting: "_ya hasan! ya hussain!_" plunged into the thick of the fight where i lost sight of him. i fled by a side alley to the padshahi gate where i found wali dad's house, and thence rode to the fort. once outside the city wall, the tumult sank to a dull roar, very impressive under the stars and reflecting great credit on the fifty thousand angry able-bodied men who were making it. the troops who, at the deputy commissioner's instance, had been ordered to rendezvous quietly near the fort, showed no signs of being impressed. two companies of native infantry, a squadron of native cavalry and a company of british infantry were kicking their heels in the shadow of the east face, waiting for orders to march in. i am sorry to say that they were all pleased, unholily pleased, at the chance of what they called "a little fun." the senior officers, to be sure, grumbled at having been kept out of bed, and the english troops pretended to be sulky, but there was joy in the hearts of all the subalterns, and whispers ran up and down the line: "no ball-cartridge--what a beastly shame!" "d'you think the beggars will really stand up to us?" "'hope i shall meet my money-lender there. i owe him more than i can afford." "oh, they won't let us even unsheathe swords." "hurrah! up goes the fourth rocket. fall in, there!" the garrison artillery, who to the last cherished a wild hope that they might be allowed to bombard the city at a hundred yards' range, lined the parapet above the east gateway and cheered themselves hoarse as the british infantry doubled along the road to the main gate of the city. the cavalry cantered on to the padshahi gate, and the native infantry marched slowly to the gate of the butchers. the surprise was intended to be of a distinctly unpleasant nature, and to come on top of the defeat of the police who had been just able to keep the muhammadans from firing the houses of a few leading hindus. the bulk of the riot lay in the north and northwest wards. the east and southeast were by this time dark and silent, and i rode hastily to lalun's house for i wished to tell her to send some one in search of wali dad. the house was unlighted, but the door was open, and i climbed upstairs in the darkness. one small lamp in the white room showed lalun and her maid leaning half out of the window, breathing heavily and evidently pulling at something that refused to come. "thou art late--very late," gasped lalun, without turning her head. "help us now, o fool, if thou hast not spent thy strength howling among the _tazias_. pull! nasiban and i can do no more! o sahib, is it you? the hindus have been hunting an old muhammadan round the ditch with clubs. if they find him again they will kill him. help us to pull him up." i put my hands to the long red silk waist-cloth that was hanging out of the window, and we three pulled and pulled with all the strength at our command. there was something very heavy at the end, and it swore in an unknown tongue as it kicked against the city wall. "pull, oh, pull!" said lalun, at the last. a pair of brown hands grasped the window-sill and a venerable muhammadan tumbled upon the floor, very much out of breath. his jaws were tied up, his turban had fallen over one eye, and he was dusty and angry. lalun hid her face in her hands for an instant and said something about wali dad that i could not catch, then, to my extreme gratification, she threw her arms round my neck and murmured pretty things. i was in no haste to stop her; and nasiban, being a handmaiden of tact, turned to the big jewel-chest that stands in the corner of the white room and rummaged among the contents. the muhammadan sat on the floor and glared. "one service more, sahib, since thou hast come so opportunely," said lalun. "wilt thou"--it is very nice to be thou-ed by lalun--"take this old man across the city--the troops are everywhere, and they might hurt him for he is old--to the kumharsen gate? there i think he may find a carriage to take him to his house. he is a friend of mine, and thou art--more than a friend--therefore i ask this." nasiban bent over the old man, tucked something into his belt, and i raised him up, and led him into the streets. in crossing from the east to the west of the city there was no chance of avoiding the troops and the crowd. long before i reached the gully of the horsemen i heard the shouts of the british infantry crying cheeringly: "hutt, ye beggars! hutt, ye devils! get along! go forward, there!" then followed the ringing of rifle-butts and shrieks of pain. the troops were banging the bare toes of the mob with their gun-butts--for not a bayonet had been fixed. my companion mumbled and jabbered as we walked on until we were carried back by the crowd and had to force our way to the troops. i caught him by the wrist and felt a bangle there--the iron bangle of the sikhs--but i had no suspicions, for lalun had only ten minutes before put her arms round me. thrice we were carried back by the crowd, and when we made our way past the british infantry it was to meet the sikh cavalry driving another mob before them with the butts of their lances. "what are these dogs?" said the old man. "sikhs of the cavalry, father," i said, and we edged our way up the line of horses two abreast and found the deputy commissioner, his helmet smashed on his head, surrounded by a knot of men who had come down from the club as amateur constables and had helped the police mightily. "we'll keep 'em on the run till dawn," said petitt, "who's your villainous friend?" i had only time to say: "the protection of the _sirkar!_" when a fresh crowd flying before the native infantry carried us a hundred yards nearer to the kumharsen gate, and petitt was swept away like a shadow. "i do not know--i cannot see--this is all new to me!" moaned my companion. "how many troops are there in the city?" "perhaps five hundred," i said. "a lakh of men beaten by five hundred--and sikhs among them! surely, surely, i am an old man, but--the kumharsen gate is new. who pulled down the stone lions? where is the conduit? sahib, i am a very old man, and, alas, i--i cannot stand." he dropped in the shadow of the kumharsen gate where there was no disturbance. a fat gentleman wearing gold _pince-nez_ came out of the darkness. "you are most kind to bring my old friend," he said, suavely. "he is a landholder of akala. he should not be in a big city when there is religious excitement. but i have a carriage here. you are quite truly kind. will you help me to put him into the carriage? it is very late." we bundled the old man into a hired victoria that stood close to the gate, and i turned back to the house on the city wall. the troops were driving the people to and fro, while the police shouted, "to your houses! get to your houses!" and the dog-whip of the assistant district superintendent cracked remorselessly. terror-stricken _bunnias_ clung to the stirrups of the cavalry, crying that their houses had been robbed (which was a lie), and the burly sikh horsemen patted them on the shoulder, and bade them return to those houses lest a worse thing should happen. parties of five or six british soldiers, joining arms, swept down the side-gullies, their rifles on their backs, stamping, with shouting and song, upon the toes of hindu and musalman. never was religious enthusiasm more systematically squashed; and never were poor breakers of the peace more utterly weary and footsore. they were routed out of holes and corners, from behind well-pillars and byres, and bidden to go to their houses. if they had no houses to go to, so much the worse for their toes. on returning to lalun's door i stumbled over a man at the threshold. he was sobbing hysterically and his arms flapped like the wings of a goose. it was wali dad, agnostic and unbeliever, shoeless, turbanless, and frothing at the mouth, the flesh on his chest bruised and bleeding from the vehemence with which he had smitten himself. a broken torch-handle lay by his side, and his quivering lips murmured, "ya hasan! ya hussain!" as i stooped over him. i pushed him a few steps up the staircase, threw a pebble at lalun's city window and hurried home. most of the streets were very still, and the cold wind that comes before the dawn whistled down them. in the centre of the square of the mosque a man was bending over a corpse. the skull had been smashed in by gun-butt or bamboo-stave. "it is expedient that one man should die for the people," said petitt, grimly, raising the shapeless head. "these brutes were beginning to show their teeth too much." and from afar we could hear the soldiers singing "two lovely black eyes," as they drove the remnant of the rioters within doors. * * * * * of course you can guess what happened? i was not so clever. when the news went abroad that khem singh had escaped from the fort, i did not, since i was then living this story, not writing it, connect myself, or lalun, or the fat gentleman of the gold _pince-nez_, with his disappearance. nor did it strike me that wali dad was the man who should have convoyed him across the city, or that lalun's arms round my neck were put there to hide the money that nasiban gave to kehm singh, and that lalun had used me and my white face as even a better safeguard than wali dad who proved himself so untrustworthy. all that i knew at the time was that, when fort amara was taken up with the riots, khem singh profited by the confusion to get away, and that his two sikh guards also escaped. but later on i received full enlightenment; and so did khem singh. he fled to those who knew him in the old days, but many of them were dead and more were changed, and all knew something of the wrath of the government. he went to the young men, but the glamour of his name had passed away, and they were entering native regiments of government offices, and khem singh could give them neither pension, decorations, nor influence--nothing but a glorious death with their backs to the mouth of a gun. he wrote letters and made promises, and the letters fell into bad hands, and a wholly insignificant subordinate officer of police tracked them down and gained promotion thereby. moreover, khem singh was old, and anise-seed brandy was scarce, and he had left his silver cooking-pots in fort amara with his nice warm bedding, and the gentleman with the gold _pince-nez_ was told by those who had employed him that khem singh as a popular leader was not worth the money paid. "great is the mercy of these fools of english!" said khem singh when the situation was put before him. "i will go back to fort amara of my own free will and gain honor. give me good clothes to return in," so, at his own time, khem singh knocked at the wicket-gate of the fort and walked to the captain and the subaltern, who were nearly grey-headed on account of correspondence that daily arrived from simla marked "private," "i have come back, captain sahib," said khem singh, "put no more guards over me. it is no good out yonder." a week later i saw him for the first time to my knowledge, and he made as though there were an understanding between us. "it was well done, sahib," said he, "and greatly i admired your astuteness in thus boldly facing the troops when i, whom they would have doubtless torn to pieces, was with you. now there is a man in fort ooltagarh whom a bold man could with ease help to escape. this is the position of the fort as i draw it on the sand"-- but i was thinking how i had become lalun's vizier after all. the broken-link handicap while the snaffle holds, or the long-neck slings, while the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings, while horses are horses to train and to race. then women and wine take a second place for me--for me-- while a short "ten-three" has a field to squander or fence to face! _--song of the. g. r._ there are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than pulling his head off in the straight. some men forget this. understand clearly that all racing is rotten--as everything connected with losing money must be. in india, in addition to its inherent rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham; looking pretty on paper only. every one knows every one else far too well for business purposes. how on earth can you rack and harry and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his wife, and live in the same station with him? he says, "on the monday following," "i can't settle just yet." you say, "all right, old man," and think yourself lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of a two-thousand-rupee debt. any way you look at it, indian racing is immoral, and expensively immoral. which is much worse. if a man wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round a subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an australian larrikin; a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a brace of _chumars_ in gold-laced caps; three or four _ekka_-ponies with hogged manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called arab because she has a kink in her flag. racing leads to the _shroff_ quicker than anything else. but if you have no conscience and no sentiments, and good hands, and some knowledge of pace, and ten years' experience of horses, and several thousand rupees a month, i believe that you can occasionally contrive to pay your shoeing-bills. did you ever know shackles--b. w. g., . - / --coarse, loose, mule-like ears--barrel as long as a gatepost--tough as a telegraph-wire--and the queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? he was of no brand, being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the _bucephalus_ at £ : s., a head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at calcutta for rs. . people who lost money on him called him a "brumby"; but if ever any horse had harpoon's shoulders and the gin's temper, shackles was that horse. two miles was his own particular distance. he trained himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. he objected to dictation. two or three of his owners did not understand this, and lost money in consequence. at last he was bought by a man who discovered that, if a race was to be won, shackles, and shackles only, would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still. this man had a riding-boy called brunt--a lad from perth, west australia--and he taught brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest thing a jock can learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting still. when brunt fairly grasped this truth, shackles devastated the country. no weight could stop him at his own distance; and the fame of shackles spread from ajmir in the south, to chedputter in the north. there was no horse like shackles, so long as he was allowed to do his work in his own way. but he was beaten in the end; and the story of his fall is enough to make angels weep. at the lower end of the chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. the big end of the funnel is not six feet from the railings on the off-side. the astounding peculiarity of the course is that, if you stand at one particular place, about half a mile away, inside the course, and speak at ordinary pitch, your voice just hits the funnel of the brick-mounds and makes a curious whining echo there. a man discovered this one morning by accident while out training with a friend. he marked the place to stand and speak from with a couple of bricks, and he kept his knowledge to himself. _every_ peculiarity of a course is worth remembering in a country where rats play the mischief with the elephant-litter, and stewards build jumps to suit their own stables. this man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering seraph--a drifty, glidy stretch. the mare was, as a delicate tribute to mrs. reiver, called "the lady regula baddun"--or for short, regula baddun. shackles' jockey, brunt, was a quite well-behaved boy, but his nerve had been shaken. he began his career by riding jump-races in melbourne, where a few stewards want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will recollect it--of the maribyrnong plate. the walls were colonial ramparts--logs of _jarrah_ spiked into masonry--with wings as strong as church buttresses. once in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. he couldn't run out. in the maribyrnong plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. red hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out the gled, and the ruck came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking shambles. four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very badly hurt, and brunt was among the three. he told the story of the maribyrnong plate sometimes; and when he described how whalley on red hat, said, as the mare fell under him--"god ha' mercy, i'm done for!" and how, next instant, sithee there and white otter had crushed the life out of poor whalley, and the dust hid a small hell of men and horses, no one marveled that brunt had dropped jump-races and australia together. regula baddun's owner knew that story by heart. brunt never varied it in the telling. he had no education. shackles came to the chedputter autumn races one year, and his owner walked about insulting the sportsmen of chedputter generally, till they went to the honorary secretary in a body and said, "appoint handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break shackles and humble the pride of his owner." the districts rose against shackles and sent up of their best; ousel, who was supposed to be able to do his mile in - ; petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry regiment who knew how to train; gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the th; bobolink, the pride of peshawar; and many others. they called that race the broken-link handicap, because it was to smash shackles; and the handicappers piled on the weights, and the fund gave eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the course for all horses." shackles' owner said, "you can arrange the race with regard to shackles only. so long as you don't bury him under weight-cloths, i don't mind." regula baddun's owner said, "i throw in my mare to fret ousel. six furlongs is regula's distance, and she will then lie down and die. so also will ousel, for his jockey doesn't understand a waiting race." now, this was a lie, for regula had been in work for two months at dehra, and her chances were good, always supposing that shackles broke a blood-vessel--or brunt moved on him. the plunging in the lotteries was fine. they filled eight thousand-rupee lotteries on the broken-link handicap, and the account in the _pioneer_ said that "favoritism was divided." in plain english, the various contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the handicappers had done their work well. the honorary secretary shouted himself hoarse through the din; and the smoke of the cheroots was like the smoke, and the rattling of the dice-boxes like the rattle of small-arm fire. ten horses started--very level--and regula baddun's owner cantered out on his hack to a place inside the circle of the course, where two bricks had been thrown. he faced toward the brick-mounds at the lower end of the course and waited. the story of the running is in the _pioneer_. at the end of the first mile, shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to get round the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight before the others knew he had got away. brunt was sitting still, perfectly happy, listening to the "drum-drum-drum" of the hoofs behind, and knowing that, in about twenty strides, shackles would draw one deep breath and go up the last half-mile like the "flying dutchman." as shackles went short to take the turn and came abreast of the brick-mound, brunt heard, above the noise of the wind in his ears, a whining, wailing voice on the offside, saying--"god ha' mercy, i'm done for!" in one stride. brunt saw the whole seething smash of the maribyrnong plate before him, started in his saddle and gave a yell of terror. the start brought the heels into shackles' side, and the scream hurt shackles' feelings. he couldn't stop dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards, and then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off brunt--a shaking, terror-stricken lump, while regula baddun made a neck-and-neck race with bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--petard a bad third. shackles' owner, in the stand, tried to think that his field-glasses had gone wrong. regula baddun's owner, waiting by the two bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the stand. he had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand. it was a broken-link handicap with a vengeance. it broke nearly all the men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of shackles' owner. he went down to interview brunt. the boy lay, livid and gasping with fright, where he had tumbled off. the sin of losing the race never seemed to strike him. all he knew was that whalley had "called" him, that the "call" was a warning; and, were he cut in two for it, he would never get up again. his nerve had gone altogether, and he only asked his master to give him a good thrashing, and let him go. he was fit for nothing, he said. he got his dismissal, and crept up to the paddock, white as chalk, with blue lips, his knees giving way under him. people said nasty things in the paddock; but brunt never heeded. he changed into tweeds, took his stick and went down the road, still shaking with fright, and muttering over and over again--"god ha' mercy, i'm done for!" to the best of my knowledge and belief he spoke the truth. so now you know how the broken-link handicap was run and won. of course you don't believe it. you would credit anything about russia's designs on india, or the recommendations of the currency commission; but a little bit of sober fact is more than you can stand. on greenhow hill to love's low voice she lent a careless ear; her hand within his rosy fingers lay, a chilling weight. she would not turn or hear; but with averted face went on her way. but when pale death, all featureless and grim, lifted his bony hand, and beckoning held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him, and love was left forlorn and wondering, that she who for his bidding would not stay, at death's first whisper rose and went away. _rivals,_ "_ohé, ahmed din! shafiz ulla ahoo!_ bahadur khan, where are you? come out of the tents, as i have done, and fight against the english. don't kill your own kin! come out to me!" the deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades. misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the english wing of the camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. they had been making roads all day, and were tired. ortheris was sleeping at learoyd's feet. "wot's all that?" he said thickly. learoyd snored, and a snider bullet ripped its way through the tent wall. the men swore, "it's that bloomin' deserter from the aurangabadis," said ortheris. "git up, some one, an' tell 'im 'e's come to the wrong shop," "go to sleep, little man," said mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the door. "i can't arise and expaytiate with him. tis rainin' entrenchin' tools outside." "'tain't because you bloomin' can't. it's 'cause you bloomin' won't, ye long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. 'ark to 'im 'owlin'!" "wot's the good of argifying? put a bullet into the swine! 'e's keepin' us awake!" said another voice. a subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the darkness-- "'tain't no good, sir. i can't see 'im. 'e's 'idin' somewhere down 'ill." ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. "shall i try to get 'im, sir?" said he. "no," was the answer. "lie down. i won't have the whole camp shooting all round the clock. tell him to go and pot his friends." ortheris considered for a moment. then, putting his head under the tent wall, he called, as a 'bus conductor calls in a block, "'igher up, there! 'igher up!" the men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter, who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own regiment half a mile away. he was received with shots; the aurangabadis were very angry with him for disgracing their colors. "an' that's all right," said ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard the hiccough of the sniders in the distance. "s'elp me gawd, tho', that man's not fit to live--messin' with my beauty-sleep this way." "go out and shoot him in the morning, then," said the subaltern incautiously. "silence in the tents now. get your rest, men." ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental snoring of learoyd. the camp lay on a bare ridge of the himalayas, and for a week had been waiting for a flying column to make connection. the nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance. in the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their grimy accoutrements. the native regiment was to take its turn of road-making that day while the old regiment loafed. "i'm goin' to lay for a shot at that man," said ortheris, when he had finished washing out his rifle, "'e comes up the watercourse every evenin' about five o'clock. if we go and lie out on the north 'ill a bit this afternoon we'll get 'im." "you're a bloodthirsty little mosquito," said mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the air. "but i suppose i will have to come wid you. pwhere's jock?" "gone out with the mixed pickles, 'cause 'e thinks 'isself a bloomin' marksman," said ortheris, with scorn, the "mixed pickles" were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent. this taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much harm. mulvaney and ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the aurangabadis going to their road-making, "you've got to sweat to-day," said ortheris, genially. "we're going to get your man. you didn't knock 'im out last night by any chance, any of you?" "no. the pig went away mocking us. i had one shot at him," said a private, "he's my cousin, and _i_ ought to have cleared our dishonor. but good luck to you." they went cautiously to the north hill, ortheris leading, because, as he explained, "this is a long-range show, an' i've got to do it." his was an almost passionate devotion to his rifle, which, by barrack-room report, he was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. charges and scuffles he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between mulvaney and learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their own. they never failed him. he trotted along, questing like a hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. at last he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needle slope that commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare hillside beyond it. the trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without. "'ere's the tail o' the wood," said ortheris. "'e's got to come up the watercourse, 'cause it gives 'im cover. we'll lay 'ere. 'tain't not arf so bloomin' dusty neither." he buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. no one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines. "this is something like," he said, luxuriously. "wot a 'evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost! how much d'you make it, mulvaney?" "seven hunder. maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air's so thin." _wop! wop! wop!_ went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north hill. "curse them mixed pickles firin' at nothin'! they'll scare arf the country." "thry a sightin' shot in the middle of the row," said mulvaney, the man of many wiles. "there's a red rock yonder he'll be sure to pass. quick!" ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. the bullet threw up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock. "good enough!" said ortheris, snapping the scale down. "you snick your sights to mine or a little lower. you're always firin' high. but remember, first shot to me, o lordy! but it's a lovely afternoon." the noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in the wood. the two lay very quiet, for they knew that the british soldier is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. then learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed of himself. he flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in snorts. "one o' them damned gardeners o' th' pickles," said he, fingering the rent. "firin' to th' right flank, when he knowed i was there. if i knew who he was i'd 'a' rippen the hide offan him. look at ma tunic!" "that's the spishil trustability av a marksman. train him to hit a fly wid a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an' he loose on anythin' he sees or hears up to th' mile. you're well out av that fancy-firin' gang, jock. stay here." "bin firin' at the bloomin' wind in the bloomin' treetops," said ortheris, with a chuckle. "i'll show you some firin' later on." they wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they lay. the mixed pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the wood to a few scared apes. the watercourse lifted up its voice in the silence, and talked foolishly to the rocks. now and again the dull thump of a blasting charge three miles away told that the aurangabadis were in difficulties with their road-making. the men smiled as they listened and lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. presently learoyd, between the whiffs of his pipe-- "seems queer--about 'im yonder--desertin' at all." "'e'll be a bloomin' side queerer when i've done with 'im," said ortheris. they were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them. "i make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin'; but, my faith! i make less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin' him," said mulvaney. "happen there was a lass tewed up wi'it. men do more than more for th' sake of a lass." "they make most av us 'list. they've no manner av right to make us desert." "ah; they make us 'list, or their fathers do," said learoyd, softly, his helmet over his eyes. ortheris's brows contracted savagely. he was watching the valley, "if it's a girl i'll shoot the beggar twice over, an' second time for bein' a fool. you're blasted sentimental all of a sudden, thinkin' o' your last near shave?" "nay, lad; ah was but thinkin' o' what had happened," "an' fwhat has happened, ye lumberin' child av calamity, that you're lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an' suggestin' invidious excuses for the man stanley's goin' to kill. ye'll have to wait another hour yet, little man. spit it out, jock, an' bellow melojus to the moon. it takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you. discourse, don juan! the a-moors av lotharius learoyd! stanley, kape a rowlin' rig'mental eye on the valley." "it's along o' yon hill there," said learoyd, watching the bare sub-himalayan spur that reminded him of his yorkshire moors. he was speaking more to himself than his fellows. "ay," said he, "rumbolds moor stands up ower skipton town, an' greenhow hill stands up ower pately brig. i reckon you've never heeard tell o' greenhow hill, but yon bit o' bare stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin' is like ut; strangely like. moors an' moors an' moors, wi' never a tree for shelter, an' grey houses wi' flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin', an' a windhover goin' to and fro just like these kites. and cold! a wind that cuts you like a knife. you could tell greenhow hill folk by the red-apple color o' their cheeks an' nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven into pin-points by the wind. miners mostly, burrowin' for lead i' th' hillsides, followin' the trail of th' ore vein same as a field-rat. it was the roughest minin' i ever seen. yo'd come on a bit o' creakin' wood windlass like a well-head, an' you was let down i' th' bight of a rope, fendin' yoursen off the side wi' one hand, carryin' a candle stuck in a lump o' clay with t'other, an' clickin' hold of a rope with t'other hand." "an' that's three of them," said mulvaney. "must be a good climate in those parts." learoyd took no heed. "an' then yo' came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees through a mile o' windin' drift, 'an' you come out into a cave-place as big as leeds townhall, with a engine pumpin' water from workin's 'at went deeper still. it's a queer country, let alone minin', for the hill is full of those natural caves, an' the rivers an' the becks drops into what they call pot-holes, an' come out again miles away." "wot was you doin' there?" said ortheris. "i was a young chap then, an' mostly went wi' 'osses, leadin' coal and lead ore; but at th' time i'm tellin' on i was drivin' the waggon-team i' th' big sumph. i didn't belong to that countryside by rights. i went there because of a little difference at home, an' at fust i took up wi' a rough lot. one night we'd been drinkin', an' i must ha' hed more than i could stand, or happen th' ale was none so good. though i' them days, by for god, i never seed bad ale." he flung his arms over his head, and gripped a vast handful of white violets. "nah," said he, "i never seed the ale i could not drink, the bacca i could not smoke, nor the lass i could not kiss. well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. i lost all th' others, an' when i was climbin' ower one of them walls built o' loose stones, i comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an' broke my arm. not as i knawed much about it, for i fell on th' back of my head, an' was knocked stupid like. an' when i come to mysen it were mornin', an' i were lyin' on the settle i' jesse roantree's house-place, an' 'liza roantree was settin' sewin'. i ached all ower, and my mouth were like a limekiln. she gave me a drink out of a china mug wi' gold letters--'a present from leeds'--as i looked at many and many a time at after. 'yo're to lie still while dr. warbottom comes, because your arm's broken, and father has sent a lad to fetch him. he found yo' when he was goin' to work, an' carried you here on his back,' sez she. 'oa!' sez i; an' i shet my eyes, for i felt ashamed o' mysen. 'father's gone to his work these three hours, an' he said he' tell 'em to get somebody to drive the tram.' the clock ticked, an' a bee comed in the house, an' they rung i' my head like mill-wheels. an' she give me another drink an' settled the pillow. 'eh, but yo're young to be getten drunk an' such like, but yo' won't do it again, will yo'?'--'noa,' sez i, 'i wouldn't if she'd not but stop they mill-wheels clatterin'.'" "faith, it's a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you're sick!" said mulvaney. "dir' cheap at the price av twenty broken heads." ortheris turned to frown across the valley. he had not been nursed by many women in his life. "an' then dr. warbottom comes ridin' up, an' jesse roantree along with 'im. he was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi' poor folk same as theirsens. 'what's ta bin agaate on naa?' he sings out. 'brekkin' tha thick head?' an' he felt me all ovver. 'that's none broken. tha' nobbut knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an' that's daaft eneaf.' an' soa he went on, callin' me all the names he could think on, but settin' my arm, wi' jesse's help, as careful as could be. 'yo' mun let the big oaf bide here a bit, jesse,' he says, when he hed strapped me up an' given me a dose o' physic; 'an' you an' 'liza will tend him, though he's scarcelins worth the trouble. an' tha'll lose tha work,' sez he, 'an' tha'll be upon th' sick club for a couple o' months an' more. doesn't tha think tha's a fool?'" "but whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, i'd like to know?" said mulvaney, "sure, folly's the only safe way to wisdom, for i've thried it." "wisdom!" grinned ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin. "you're bloomin' solomons, you two, ain't you?" learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud. "and that was how i come to know 'liza roantree. there's some tunes as she used to sing--aw, she were always singin'--that fetches greenhow hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow across there. and she would learn me to sing bass, an' i was to go to th' chapel wi' 'em where jesse and she led the singin', th' old man playin' the fiddle. he was a strange chap, old jesse, fair mad wi' music, an' he made me promise to learn the big fiddle when my arm was better. it belonged to him, and it stood up in a big case alongside o' th' eight-day clock, but willie satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi' th' fiddle-stick to make him give ower sawin' at th' right time. "but there was a black drop in it all, an' it was a man in a black coat that brought it. when th' primitive methodist preacher came to greenhow, he would always stop wi' jesse roantree, an' he laid hold of me from th' beginning. it seemed i wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it. at th' same time i jealoused 'at he were keen o' savin' 'liza roantree's soul as well, and i could ha' killed him many a time. an' this went on till one day i broke out, an' borrowed th' brass for a drink from 'liza. after fower days i come back, wi' my tail between my legs, just to see 'liza again. but jesse were at home an' th' preacher--th' reverend amos barraclough. 'liza said naught, but a bit o' red come into her face as were white of a regular thing. says jesse, tryin' his best to be civil, 'nay, lad, it's like this. you've getten to choose which way it's goin' to be. i'll ha' nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin', an' borrows my lass's money to spend i' their drink. ho'd tha tongue, 'liza,' sez he, when she wanted to put in a word 'at i were welcome to th' brass, and she were none afraid that i wouldn't pay it back. then the reverend cuts in, seein' as jesse were losin' his temper, an' they fair beat me among them. but it were 'liza, as looked an' said naught, as did more than either o' their tongues, an' soa i concluded to get converted." "fwhat?" shouted mulvaney. then, checking himself, he said softly, "let be! let be! sure the blessed virgin is the mother of all religion an' most women; an' there's a dale av piety in a girl if the men would only let ut stay there. i'd ha' been converted myself under the circumstances." "nay, but," pursued learoyd with a blush, "i meaned it." ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at the time. "ay, ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn't know yon preacher barraclough--a little white-faced chap, wi' a voice as 'ud wile a bird off an a bush, and a way o' layin' hold of folks as made them think they'd never had a live man for a friend before. you never saw him, an'--an'--you never seed 'liza roantree--never seed 'liza roantree.... happen it was as much 'liza as th' preacher and her father, but anyways they all meaned it, an' i was fair shamed o' mysen, an' so i become what they call a changed character. and when i think on, it's hard to believe as yon chap going to prayermeetin's, chapel, and class-meetin's were me. but i never had naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o' shoutin', and old sammy strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, 'joyful! joyful!' and 'at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i' a coach an' six. and he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin', 'doesn't tha feel it, tha great lump? doesn't tha feel it?' an' sometimes i thought i did, and then again i thought i didn't, an' how was that?" "the iverlastin' nature av mankind," said mulvaney. "an', furthermore, i misdoubt you were built for the primitive methodians. they're a new corps anyways. i hold by the ould church, for she's the mother of them all--ay, an' the father, too. i like her bekase she's most remarkable regimental in her fittings. i may die in honolulu, nova zambra, or cape cayenne, but wherever i die, me bein' fwhat i am, an' a priest handy, i go under the same orders an' the same words an' the same unction as tho' the pope himself come down from the roof av st. peter's to see me off. there's neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor between wid her, an' that's what i like. but mark you, she's no manner av church for a wake man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has his proper work to do. i remember when my father died that was three months comin' to his grave; begad he'd ha' sold the shebeen above our heads for ten minutes' quittance of purgathory. an' he did all he could. that's why i say ut takes a strong man to deal with the ould church, an' for that reason you'll find so many women go there. an' that same's a conundrum." "wot's the use o' worritin' 'bout these things?" said ortheris. "you're bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any'ow." he jerked the cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. "ere's my chaplain," he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a marionette. "'e's goin' to teach a man all about which is which, an' wot's true, after all, before sundown. but wot 'appened after that, jock?" "there was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th' gate i' my face for, and that were my dog blast, th' only one saved out o' a litter o' pups as was blowed up when a keg o' minin' powder loosed off in th' storekeeper's hut. they liked his name no better than his business, which were fightin' every dog he comed across; a rare good dog, wi' spots o' black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o' one side wi' being driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a mile. "they said i mun give him up 'cause he were worldly and low; and would i let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? 'nay,' says i, 'if th' door isn't wide enough for th' pair on us, we'll stop outside, for we'll none be parted.' and th' preacher spoke up for blast, as had a likin' for him from th' first--i reckon that was why i come to like th' preacher--and wouldn't hear o' changin' his name to bless, as some o' them wanted. so th' pair on us became reg'lar chapel-members. but it's hard for a young chap o' my build to cut traces from the world, th' flesh, an' the devil all uv a heap. yet i stuck to it for a long time, while th' lads as used to stand about th' town-end an' lean ower th' bridge, spittin' into th' beck o' a sunday, would call after me, 'sitha, learoyd, when's ta bean to preach, 'cause we're comin' to hear tha.'--'ho'd tha jaw. he hasn't getten th' white choaker on ta morn,' another lad would say, and i had to double my fists hard i' th' bottom of my sunday coat, and say to mysen, 'if 'twere monday and i warn't a member o' the primitive methodists, i'd leather all th' lot of yond'.' that was th' hardest of all--to know that i could fight and i mustn't fight." sympathetic grunts from mulvaney. "so what wi' singin', practicin', and class-meetin's, and th' big fiddle, as he made me take between my knees, i spent a deal o' time i' jesse roantree's house-place. but often as i was there, th' preacher fared to me to go oftener, and both th' old man an' th' young woman were pleased to have him. he lived i' pately brig, as were a goodish step off, but he come. he come all the same. i liked him as well or better as any man i'd ever seen i' one way, and yet i hated him wi' all my heart i' t'other, and we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please, for i was on my best behavior, and he was that fair and open that i was bound to be fair with him. rare good company he was, if i hadn't wanted to wring his cliver little neck half of the time. often and often when he was goin' from jesse's i'd set him a bit on the road." "see 'im 'ome, you mean?" said ortheris, "ay. it's a way we have i' yorkshire o' seein' friends off. you was a friend as i didn't want to come back, and he didn't want me to come back neither, and so we'd walk together toward pately, and then he'd set me back again, and there we'd be wal two o'clock i' the mornin' settin' each other to an' fro like a blasted pair o' pendulums twixt hill and valley, long after th' light had gone out i' 'liza's window, as both on us had been looking at, pretending to watch the moon." "ah!" broke in mulvaney, "ye'd no chanst against the maraudin' psalm-singer. they'll take the airs an' the graces instid av the man nine times out av ten, an' they only find the blunder later--the wimmen." "that's just where yo're wrong," said learoyd, reddening under the freckled tan of his cheeks. "i was th' first wi' 'liza, an' yo'd think that were enough. but th' parson were a steady-gaited sort o' chap, and jesse were strong o' his side, and all th' women i' the congregation dinned it to 'liza 'at she were fair fond to take up wi' a wastrel ne'er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an' a fighting dog at his heels. it was all very well for her to be doing me good and saving my soul, but she must mind as she didn't do herself harm. they talk o' rich folk bein' stuck up an' genteel, but for cast-iron pride o' respectability there's naught like poor chapel folk. it's as cold as th' wind o' greenhow hill--ay, and colder, for 'twill never change. and now i come to think on it, one at strangest things i know is 'at they couldn't abide th' thought o' soldiering. there's a vast o' fightin' i' th' bible, and there's a deal of methodists i' th' army; but to hear chapel folk talk yo'd think that soldierin' were next door, an' t'other side, to hangin'. i' their meetin's all their talk is o' fightin'. when sammy strother were stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he'd sing out, 'th' sword o' th' lord and o' gideon. they were allus at it about puttin' on th' whole armor o' righteousness, an' fightin' the good fight o' faith. and then, atop o' 't all, they held a prayer-meetin' ower a young chap as wanted to 'list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. and they'd tell tales in th' sunday-school o' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o' sundays and playin' truant o' week days, and how they took to wrestlin', dog-fightin', rabbit-runnin', and drinkin', till at last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th' moors wi', 'an' then he went and 'listed for a soldier,' an' they'd all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like a hen drinkin'." "fwhy is ut?" said mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a crack, "in the name av god, fwhy is ut? i've seen ut, tu. they cheat an' they swindle an' they lie an' they slander, an' fifty things fifty times worse; but the last an' the worst by their reckonin' is to serve the widdy honest. it's like the talk av childer--seein' things all round." "plucky lot of fightin' good fights of whatsername they'd do if we didn't see they had a quiet place to fight in. and such fightin' as theirs is! cats on the tiles. t'other callin' to which to come on. i'd give a month's pay to get some o' them broad-backed beggars in london sweatin' through a day's road-makin' an' a night's rain. they'd carry on a deal afterward--same as we're supposed to carry on. i've bin turned out of a measly arf-license pub down lambeth way, full o' greasy kebmen, 'fore now," said ortheris with an oath. "maybe you were dhrunk," said mulvaney, soothingly. "worse nor that. the forders were drunk. _i_ was wearin' the queen's uniform." "i'd no particular thought to be a soldier i' them days," said learoyd, still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, "but this sort o' talk put it i' my head. they was so good, th' chapel folk, that they tumbled ower t'other side. but i stuck to it for 'liza's sake, specially as she was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as jesse were gettin' up. she sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practicin's night after night for a matter of three months." "i know what a horotorio is," said ortheris, pertly. "it's a sort of chaplain's sing-song--words all out of the bible, and hullabaloojah choruses." "most greenhow hill folks played some instrument or t'other, an' they all sung so you mignt have heard them miles away, and they were so pleased wi' the noise they made they didn't fair to want anybody to listen. the preacher sung high seconds when he wasn't playin' the flute, an' they set me, as hadn't got far with big fiddle, again willie satterthwaite, to jog his elbow when he had to get a' gate playin'. old jesse was happy if ever a man was, for he were th' conductor an' th' first fiddle an' th' leadin' singer, beatin' time wi' his fiddle-stick, till at times he'd rap with it on the table, and cry out, 'now, you mun all stop; it's my turn,' and he'd face round to his front, fair sweating wi' pride, to sing th' tenor solos. but he were grandest i' th' choruses, waggin' his head, flinging his arms round like a windmill, and singin' hisself black in the face. a rare singer were jesse. "yo' see, i was not o' much account wi' 'em all exceptin' to 'liza roantree, and i had a deal o' time settin' quiet at meetings and horotorio practices to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me at beginnin', it got stranger still at after, when i was shut on it, and could study what it meaned. "just after th' horotorios come off, 'liza, as had allus been weakly like, was took very bad. i walked dr. warbottom's horse up and down a deal of times while he were inside, where they wouldn't let me go, though i fair ached to see her. "'she'll be better i' noo, lad--better i' noo,' he used to say. 'tha mun ha' patience.' then they said if i was quiet i might go in, and th' reverend amos barraclough used to read to her lyin' propped up among th' pillows. then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on to th' settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. th' preacher and me and blast was a deal together i' them days, and i' one way we was rare good comrades. but i could ha' stretched him time and again with a good will. i mind one day he said he would like to go down into th' bowels o' th' earth, and see how th' lord had builded th' framework o' th' everlastin' hills. he were one of them chaps as had a gift o' sayin' things. they rolled off the tip of his clever tongue, same as mulvaney here, as would ha' made a rare good preacher if he had nobbut given his mind to it. i lent him a suit o' miner's kit as almost buried th' little man, and his white face down i' th' coat-collar and hat-flap looked like the face of a boggart, and he cowered down i' th' bottom o' the waggon. i was drivin' a tram as led up a bit of an incline up to th' cave where the engine was pumpin', and where th' ore was brought up and put into th' waggons as went down o' themselves, me puttin' th' brake on and th' horses a-trottin' after. long as it was daylight we were good friends, but when we got fair into th' dark, and could nobbut see th' day shinin' at the hole like a lamp at a street-end, i feeled downright wicked. ma religion dropped all away from me when i looked back at him as were always comin' between me and 'liza. the talk was 'at they were to be wed when she got better, an' i couldn't get her to say yes or nay to it. he began to sing a hymn in his thin voice, and i came out wi' a chorus that was all cussin' an' swearin' at my horses, an' i began to know how i hated him. he were such a little chap, too. i could drop him wi' one hand down garstang's copper-hole--a place where th' beck slithered ower th' edge on a rock, and fell wi' a bit of a whisper into a pit as no rope i' greenhow could plump." again learoyd rooted up the innocent violets. "ay, he should see th' bowels o' th' earth an' never naught else. i could take him a mile or two along th' drift, and leave him wi' his candle doused to cry hallelujah, wi' none to hear him and say amen. i was to lead him down th' ladder-way to th' drift where jesse roantree was workin', and why shouldn't he slip on th' ladder, wi' my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and i put him down wi' my heel? if i went fust down th' ladder i could click hold on him and chuck him over my head, so as he should go squshin' down the shaft breakin' his bones at ev'ry timberin' as bill appleton did when he was fresh, and hadn't a bone left when he wrought to th' bottom. niver a blasted leg to walk from pately. niver an arm to put round 'liza roantree's waist. niver no more--niver no more." the thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face was not pretty to look upon. mulvaney nodded sympathy, and ortheris, moved by his comrade's passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow, a spout, and a thunderstorm. the voice of the watercourse supplied the necessary small talk till learoyd picked up his story, "but it's none so easy to kill a man like yon. when i'd given up my horses to th' lad as took my place and i was showin' th' preacher th' workin's, shoutin' into his ear across th' clang o' th' pumpin' engines, i saw he were afraid o' naught; and when the lamplight showed his black eyes, i could feel as he was masterin' me again. i were no better nor blast chained up short and growlin' i' the depths of him while a strange dog went safe past. "'th' art a coward and a fool,' i said to mysen; an' i wrestled i' my mind again' him till, when we come to garstang's copper-hole, i laid hold o' the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into the darkest on it. 'now, lad,' i says, 'it's to be one or t'other on us--thee or me--for 'liza roantree. why, isn't thee afraid for thysen?' i says, for he were still i' my arms as a sack. 'nay; i'm but afraid for thee, my poor lad, as knows naught,' says he. i set him down on th' edge, an' th' beck run stiller, an' there was no more buzzin' in my head like when th' bee come through th' window o' jesse's house. 'what dost tha mean?' says i. "'i've often thought as thou ought to know,' says he, 'but 'twas hard to tell thee. 'liza roantree's for neither on us, nor for nobody o' this earth, dr. warbottom says--and he knows her, and her mother before her--that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer. he's known it for many a day. steady, john! steady!' says he. and that weak little man pulled me further back and set me again' him, and talked it all over quiet and still, me turnin' a bunch o' candles in my hand, and counting them ower and ower again as i listened. a deal on it were th' regular preachin' talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin to think as he were more of a man than i'd ever given him credit for, till i were cut as deep for him as i were for mysen. "six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they lasted, and i said to mysen, ''liza roantree hasn't six months to live.' and when we came into th' daylight again we were like dead men to look at, an' blast come behind us without so much as waggin' his tail. when i saw 'liza again she looked at me a minute and says, 'who's telled tha? for i see tha knows.' and she tried to smile as she kissed me, and i fair broke down. "yo' see, i was a young chap i' them days, and had seen naught o' life, let alone death, as is allus a-waitin'. she telled me as dr. warbottom said as greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin' to bradford, to jesse's brother david, as worked i' a mill, and i mun hold up like a man and a christian, and she'd pray for me. well, and they went away, and the preacher that same back end o' th' year were appointed to another circuit, as they call it, and i were left alone on greenhow hill. "i tried, and i tried hard, to stick to th' chapel, but 'tweren't th' same thing at after. i hadn't 'liza's voice to follow i' th' singin', nor her eyes a-shinin' acrost their heads. and i' th' class-meetings they said as i mun have some experiences to tell, and i hadn't a word to say for mysen. "blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn't behave ourselves over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they'd come to take us up. i can't tell how we got through th' time, while i' th' winter i gave up my job and went to bradford. old jesse were at th' door o' th' house, in a long street o' little houses. he'd been sendin' th' children 'way as were clatterin' their clogs in th' causeway, for she were asleep. "'is it thee?' he says; 'but you're not to see her. i'll none have her wakened for a nowt like thee. she's goin' fast, and she mun go in peace. thou 'lt never be good for naught i' th' world, and as long as thou lives thou'll never play the big fiddle. get away, lad, get away!' so he shut the door softly i' my face. "nobody never made jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about right, and i went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting sergeant. the old tales o' th' chapel folk came buzzin' into my head. i was to get away, and this were th' regular road for the likes o' me, i listed there and then, took th' widow's shillin', and had a bunch o' ribbons pinned i' my hat. "but next day i found my way to david roantree's door, and jesse came to open it. says he, 'thou's come back again wi' th' devil's colors flyin'--thy true colors, as i always telled thee.' "but i begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say good-bye, till a woman calls down th' stairway, 'she says john learoyd's to come up.' th' old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on my arm, quite gentle like. 'but thou'lt be quiet, john,' says he, 'for she's rare and weak. thou was allus a good lad.' "her eyes were all alive wi' light, and her hair was thick on the pillow round her, but her cheeks were thin--thin to frighten a man that's strong. 'nay, father, yo mayn't say th' devil's colors. them ribbons is pretty.' an' she held out her hands for th' hat, an' she put all straight as a woman will wi' ribbons. 'nay, but what they're pretty,' she says. 'eh, but i'd ha' liked to see thee i' thy red coat, john, for thou was allus my own lad--my very own lad, and none else.' "she lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i' a gentle grip, and they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. 'now yo' mun get away, lad,' says jesse, and i picked up my hat and i came downstairs. "th' recruiting sergeant were waitin' for me at th' corner public-house. 'you've seen your sweetheart?' says he. 'yes, i've seen her,' says i. 'well, we'll have a quart now, and you'll do your best to forget her,' says he, bein' one o' them smart, bustlin' chaps. 'ay, sergeant,' says i. 'forget her.' and i've been forgettin' her ever since." he threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. ortheris suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. his chin cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted: private stanley ortheris was engaged on his business, a speck of white crawled up the watercourse. "see that beggar? ... got 'im," seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation. "that's a clean shot, little man," said mulvaney. learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away. "happen there was a lass tewed up wi' him, too," said he. ortheris did not reply. he was staring across the valley, with the smile of the artist who looks on the completed work. to be filed for reference by the hoof of the wild goat up-tossed from the cliff where she lay in the sun, fell the stone to the tarn where the daylight is lost; so she fell from the light of the sun, and alone. now the fall was ordained from the first, with the goat and the cliff and the tarn, but the stone knows only her life is accursed, as she sinks in the depths of the tarn, and alone. oh, thou who hast builded the world! oh, thou who hast lighted the sun! oh, thou who hast darkened the tarn! judge thou the sin of the stone that was hurled by the goat from the light of the sun, as she sinks in the mire of the tarn, even now--even now--even now! --_from the unpublished papers of mcintosh jellaluidin_. "say is it dawn, is it dusk in thy bower, thou whom i long for, who longest for me? oh, be it night--be it"--here he fell over a little camel-colt that was sleeping in the serai where the horse-traders and the best of the blackguards from central asia live; and, because he was very drunk indeed and the night was dark, he could not rise again till i helped him. that was the beginning of my acquaintance with mcintosh jellaludin, when a loafer, and drunk, sings "the song of the bower," he must be worth cultivating. he got off the camel's back and said, rather thickly, "i--i--i'm a bit screwed, but a dip in loggerhead will put me right again; and, i say, have you spoken to symonds about the mare's knees?" now loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away from us, close to mesopotamia, where you mustn't fish and poaching is impossible, and charley symonds' stable a half mile farther across the paddocks. it was strange to hear all the old names, on a may night, among the horses and camels of the sultan caravanserai. then the man seemed to remember himself and sober down at the same time. we leaned against the camel and pointed to a corner of the serai where a lamp was burning. "i live there," said he, "and i should be extremely obliged if you would be good enough to help my mutinous feet thither; for i am more than usually drunk--most--most phenomenally tight but not in respect to my head. 'my brain cries out against'--how does it go? but my head rides on the--rolls on the dunghill i should have said, and controls the qualm." i helped him through the gangs of tethered horses and he collapsed on the edge of the veranda in front of the line of native quarters. "thanks--a thousand thanks! o moon and little, little stars! to think that a man should so shamelessly ... infamous liquor too. ovid in exile drank no worse. better. it was frozen. alas! i had no ice. good-night. i would introduce you to my wife were i sober--or she civilized." a native woman came out of the darkness of the room, and began calling the man names; so i went away. he was the most interesting loafer that i had had the pleasure of knowing for a long time; and later on, he became a friend of mine. he was a tall, well-built, fair man, fearfully shaken with drink, and he looked nearer fifty than the thirty-five which, he said, was his real age. when a man begins to sink in india, and is not sent home by his friends as soon as may be, he falls very low from a respectable point of view. by the time that he changes his creed, as did mcintosh, he is past redemption. in most big cities, natives will tell you of two or three _sahibs_, generally low-caste, who have turned hindu or mussulman, and who live more or less as such, but it is not often that you can get to know them. as mcintosh himself used to say, "if i change my religion for my stomach's sake, i do not seek to become a martyr to missionaries, nor am i anxious for notoriety." at the outset of acquaintance mcintosh warned me, "remember this. i am not an object for charity, i require neither your money, your food, nor your cast-off raiment. i am that rare animal, a self-supporting drunkard. if you choose, i will smoke with you, for the tobacco of the bazars does not, i admit, suit my palate; and i will borrow any books which you may not specially value. it is more than likely that i shall sell them for bottles of excessively filthy country liquors, in return, you shall share such hospitality as my house affords. here is a charpoy on which two can sit, and it is possible that there may, from time to time, be food in that platter. drink, unfortunately, you will find on the premises at any hour: and thus i make you welcome to all my poor establishment." i was admitted to the mcintosh household--i and my good tobacco. but nothing else. unluckily, one cannot visit a loafer in the serai by day. friends buying horses would not understand it. consequently, i was obliged to see mcintosh after dark. he laughed at this, and said simply, "you are perfectly right. when i enjoyed a position in society, rather higher than yours, i should have done exactly the same thing. good heavens! i was once"--he spoke as though he had fallen from the command of a regiment--"an oxford man!" this accounted for the reference to charley symonds' stable. "you," said mcintosh, slowly, "have not had that advantage; but, to outward appearance, you do not seem possessed of a craving for strong drinks. on the whole, i fancy that you are the luckier of the two. yet i am not certain. you are--forgive my saying so even while i am smoking your excellent tobacco--painfully ignorant of many things." we were sitting together on the edge of his bedstead, for he owned no chairs, watching the horses being watered for the night, while the native woman was preparing dinner. i did not like being patronized by a loafer, but i was his guest for the time being, though he owned only one very torn alpaca-coat and a pair of trousers made out of gunny-bags. he took the pipe out of his mouth, and went on judicially, "all things considered, i doubt whether you are the luckier. i do not refer to your extremely limited classical attainments, or your excruciating quantities, but to your gross ignorance of matters more immediately under your notice. that, for instance," he pointed to a woman cleaning a samovar near the well in the centre of the serai. she was flicking the water out of the spout in regular cadenced jerks. "there are ways and ways of cleaning samovars. if you knew why she was doing her work in that particular fashion, you would know what the spanish monk meant when he said-- i the trinity illustrate, drinking watered orange-pulp-- in three sips the arian frustrate, while he drains his at one gulp-- and many other things which now are hidden from your eyes. however, mrs. mcintosh has prepared dinner. let us come and eat after the fashion of the people of the country--of whom, by the way, you know nothing." the native woman dipped her hand in the dish with us. this was wrong. the wife should always wait until the husband has eaten. mcintosh jellaludin apologized, saying-- "it is an english prejudice which i have not been able to overcome; and she loves me. why, i have never been able to understand. i foregathered with her at jullundur, three years ago, and she has remained with me ever since. i believe her to be moral, and know her to be skilled in cookery." he patted the woman's head as he spoke, and she cooed softly. she was not pretty to look at. mcintosh never told me what position he had held before his fall. he was, when sober, a scholar and a gentleman. when drunk, he was rather more of the first than the second. he used to get drunk about once a week for two days. on those occasions the native woman tended him while he raved in all tongues except his own. one day, indeed, he began reciting _atalanta in calydon_, and went through it to the end, beating time to the swing of the verse with a bedstead-leg. but he did most of his ravings in greek or german. the man's mind was a perfect rag-bag of useless things. once, when he was beginning to get sober, he told me that i was the only rational being in the inferno into which he had descended--a virgil in the shades, he said--and that, in return for my tobacco, he would, before he died, give me the materials of a new inferno that should make me greater than dante. then he fell asleep on a horse-blanket and woke up quite calm. "man," said he, "when you have reached the uttermost depths of degradation, little incidents which would vex a higher life, are to you of no consequence. last night, my soul was among the gods; but i make no doubt that my bestial body was writhing down here in the garbage." "you were abominably drunk if that's what you mean," i said, "i _was_ drunk--filthily drunk. i who am the son of a man with whom you have no concern--i who was once fellow of a college whose buttery-hatch you have not seen. i was loathsomely drunk. but consider how lightly i am touched. it is nothing to me. less than nothing; for i do not even feel the headache which should be my portion. now, in a higher life, how ghastly would have been my punishment, how bitter my repentance! believe me my friend with the neglected education, the highest is as the lowest--always supposing each degree extreme." he turned round on the blanket, put his head between his fists and continued-- "on the soul which i have lost and on the conscience which i have killed, i tell you that i cannot feel! i am as the gods, knowing good and evil, but untouched by either. is this enviable or is it not?" when a man has lost the warning of "next morning's head," he must be in a bad state. i answered, looking at mcintosh on the blanket, with his hair over his eyes and his lips blue-white, that i did not think the insensibility good enough. "for pity's sake, don't say that! i tell you, it _is_ good and most enviable. think of my consolations!" "have you so many, then, mcintosh?" "certainly; your attempts at sarcasm which is essentially the weapon of a cultured man, are crude. first, my attainments, my classical and literary knowledge, blurred, perhaps, by immoderate drinking--which reminds me that before my soul went to the gods last night, i sold the pickering horace you so kindly loaned me. ditta mull the clothesman has it. it fetched ten annas, and may be redeemed for a rupee--but still infinitely superior to yours. secondly, the abiding affection of mrs. mcintosh, best of wives. thirdly, a monument, more enduring than brass, which i have built up in the seven years of my degradation." he stopped here, and crawled across the room for a drink of water. he was very shaky and sick. he referred several times to his "treasure"--some great possession that he owned--but i held this to be the raving of drink. he was as poor and as proud as he could be. his manner was not pleasant, but he knew enough about the natives, among whom seven years of his life had been spent, to make his acquaintance worth having. he used actually to laugh at strickland as an ignorant man--"ignorant west and east"--he said. his boast was, first, that he was an oxford man of rare and shining parts, which may or may not have been true--i did not know enough to check his statements--and, secondly, that he "had his hand on the pulse of native life"--which was a fact. as an oxford man, he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his education about. as a mohammedan _faquir_--as mcintosh jellaludin--he was all that i wanted for my own ends. he smoked several pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things worth knowing; but he would never accept any gifts, not even when the cold weather came, and gripped the poor thin chest under the poor thin alpaca-coat. he grew very angry, and said that i had insulted him, and that he was not going into hospital. he had lived like a beast and he would die rationally, like a man. as a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia; and on the night of his death sent over a grubby note asking me to come and help him to die. the native woman was weeping by the side of the bed. mcintosh, wrapped in a cotton cloth, was too weak to resent a fur coat being thrown over him. he was very active as far as his mind was concerned, and his eyes were blazing. when he had abused the doctor who came with me, so foully that the indignant old fellow left, he cursed me for a few minutes and calmed down. then he told his wife to fetch out "the book" from a hole in the wall. she brought out a big bundle, wrapped in the tail of a petticoat, of old sheets of miscellaneous note-paper, all numbered and covered with fine cramped writing. mcintosh ploughed his hand through the rubbish and stirred it up lovingly. "this," he said, "is my work--the book of mcintosh jellaludin, showing what he saw and how he lived, and what befell him and others; being also an account of the life and sins and death of mother maturin. what mirza murad ali beg's book is to all other books on native life, will my work be to mirza murad ali beg's!" this, as will be conceded by any one who knows mirza murad ali beg's book, was a sweeping statement. the papers did not look specially valuable; but mcintosh handled them as if they were currency-notes. then said he slowly-- "in despite the many weaknesses of your education, you have been good to me. i will speak of your tobacco when i reach the gods. i owe you much thanks for many kindnesses. but i abominate indebtedness. for this reason, i bequeath to you now the monument more enduring than brass--my one book--rude and imperfect in parts, but oh how rare in others! i wonder if you will understand it. it is a gift more honorable than.... bah! where is my brain rambling to? you will mutilate it horribly. you will knock out the gems you call latin quotations, you philistine, and you will butcher the style to carve into your own jerky jargon; but you cannot destroy the whole of it. i bequeath it to you. ethel.... my brain again! ... mrs. mcintosh, bear witness that i give the _sahib_ all these papers. they would be of no use to you, heart of my heart; and i lay it upon you," he turned to me here, "that you do not let my book die in its present form. it is yours unconditionally--the story of mcintosh jellaludin, which is _not_ the story of mcintosh jellaludin, but of a greater man than he, and of a far greater woman. listen now! i am neither mad nor drunk! that book will make you famous." i said, "thank you," as the native woman put the bundle into my arms. "my only baby!" said mcintosh, with a smile. he was sinking fast, but he continued to talk as long as breath remained. i waited for the end; knowing that, in six cases out of ten a dying man calls for his mother. he turned on his side and said-- "say how it came into your possession. no one will believe you, but my name, at least, will live. you will treat it brutally, i know you will. some of it must go; the public are fools and prudish fools. i was their servant once. but do your mangling gently--very gently. it is a great work, and i have paid for it in seven years' damnation." his voice stopped for ten or twelve breaths, and then he began mumbling a prayer of some kind in greek. the native woman cried very bitterly. lastly, he rose in bed and said, as loudly as slowly--"not guilty, my lord!" then he fell back, and the stupor held him till he died. the native woman ran into the serai among the horses, and screamed and beat her breasts; for she had loved him. perhaps his last sentence in life told what mcintosh had once gone through; but, saving the big bundle of old sheets in the cloth, there was nothing in his room to say who or what he had been. the papers were in a hopeless muddle. strickland helped me to sort them, and he said that the writer was either an extreme liar or a most wonderful person. he thought the former. one of these days, you may be able to judge for yourselves. the bundle needed much expurgation and was full of greek nonsense, at the head of the chapters, which has all been cut out. if the thing is ever published, some one may perhaps remember this story, now printed as a safeguard to prove that mcintosh jellaludin and not i myself wrote the book of mother maturin. i don't want the _giant's robe_ to come true in my case. the man who would be king "brother to a prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy." the law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. i have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. i have still to be brother to a prince, though i once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable king and was promised the reversion of a kingdom--army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. but, to-day, i greatly fear that my king is dead, and if i want a crown i must go and hunt it for myself. the beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to mhow from ajmir. there had been a deficit in the budget, which necessitated traveling, not second-class, which is only half as dear as first-class, but by intermediate, which is very awful indeed. there are no cushions in the intermediate class, and the population are either intermediate, which is eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. they carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. that is why in the hot weather intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon. my particular intermediate happened to be empty till i reached nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of intermediates, passed the time of day. he was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. he told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food. "if india was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it isn't seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying--it's seven hundred millions," said he: and as i looked at his mouth and chin i was disposed to agree with him. we talked politics--the politics of loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off--and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to ajmir, which is the turning-off place from the bombay to the mhow line as you travel westward. my friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and i had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the budget before mentioned. further, i was going into a wilderness where, though i should resume touch with the treasury, there were no telegraph offices. i was, therefore, unable to help him in any way. "we might threaten a station-master, and make him send a wire on tick," said my friend, "but that'd mean inquiries for you and for me, and i've got my hands full these days. did you say you are traveling back along this line within any days?" "within ten," i said. "can't you make it eight?" said he. "mine is rather urgent business." "i can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you," i said. "i couldn't trust the wire to fetch him now i think of it. it's this way. he leaves delhi on the d for bombay. that means he'll be running through ajmir about the night of the d." "but i'm going into the indian desert," i explained. "well _and_ good," said he. "you'll be changing at marwar junction to get into jodhpore territory--you must do that--and he'll be coming through marwar junction in the early morning of the th by the bombay mail. can you be at marwar junction on that time? 'twon't be inconveniencing you because i know that there's precious few pickings to be got out of these central india states--even though you pretend to be correspondent of the _backwoodsman_." "have you ever tried that trick?" i asked. "again and again, but the residents find you out, and then you get escorted to the border before you've time to get your knife into them. but about my friend here. i _must_ give him a word o' mouth to tell him what's come to me or else he won't know where to go. i would take it more than kind of you if you was to come out of central india in time to catch him at marwar junction, and say to him:--'he has gone south for the week.' he'll know what that means. he's a big man with a red beard, and a great swell he is. you'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him in a second-class compartment. but don't you be afraid. slip down the window, and say:--'he has gone south for the week,' and he'll tumble. it's only cutting your time of stay in those parts by two days. i ask you as a stranger--going to the west," he said, with emphasis. "where have _you_ come from?" said i. "from the east," said he, "and i am hoping that you will give him the message on the square--for the sake of my mother as well as your own." englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers, but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, i saw fit to agree. "it's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why i ask you to do it--and now i know that i can depend on you doing it. a second-class carriage at marwar junction, and a red-haired man asleep in it. you'll be sure to remember. i get out at the next station, and i must hold on there till he comes or sends me what i want." "i'll give the message if i catch him," i said, "and for the sake of your mother as well as mine i'll give you a word of advice. don't try to run the central india states just now as the correspondent of the _backwoodsman_. there's a real one knocking about here, and it might lead to trouble." "thank you," said he, simply, "and when will the swine be gone? i can't starve because he's ruining my work. i wanted to get hold of the degumber rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump." "what did he do to his father's widow then?" "filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung from a beam. i found that out myself and i'm the only man that would dare going into the state to get hush-money for it. they'll try to poison me, same as they did in chortumna when i went on the loot there. but you'll give the man at marwar junction my message?" he got out at a little roadside station, and i reflected. i had heard, more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and bleeding small native states with threats of exposure, but i had never met any of the caste before. they lead a hard life, and generally die with great suddenness. the native states have a wholesome horror of english newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. they do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of native states so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. native states were created by providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers, and tall-writing. they are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the railway and the telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of harun-al-raschid. when i left the train i did business with divers kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life. sometimes i wore dress-clothes and consorted with princes and politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver. sometimes i lay out upon the ground and devoured what i could get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. it was all in the day's work. then i headed for the great indian desert upon the proper date, as i had promised, and the night mail set me down at marwar junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to jodhpore. the bombay mail from delhi makes a short halt at marwar. she arrived as i got in, and i had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. there was only one second-class on the train. i slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a railway rug. that was my man, fast asleep, and i dug him gently in the ribs. he woke with a grunt and i saw his face in the light of the lamps. it was a great and shining face. "tickets again?" said he. "no," said i. "i am to tell you that he is gone south for the week. he is gone south for the week!" the train had begun to move out. the red man rubbed his eyes. "he has gone south for the week," he repeated. "now that's just like his impidence. did he say that i was to give you anything?--'cause i won't." "he didn't," i said, and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out in the dark. it was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the sands. i climbed into my own train--not an intermediate carriage this time--and went to sleep. if the man with the beard had given me a rupee i should have kept it as a memento of a rather curious affair. but the consciousness of having done my duty was my only reward. later on i reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they "stuck up" one of the little rat-trap states of central india or southern rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties. i therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately as i could remember to people who would be interested in deporting them: and succeeded, so i was later informed, in having them headed back from the degumber borders. then i became respectable, and returned to an office where there were no kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a newspaper. a newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that the editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village; colonels who have been overpassed for commands sit down and sketch the outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on seniority _versus_ selection; missionaries wish to know why they have not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and swear at a brother-missionary under special patronage of the editorial we; stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain that they cannot pay for their advertisements, but on their return from new zealand or tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call with specifications in their pockets and hours at their disposal; tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the office pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have the glories of their last dance more fully expounded; strange ladies rustle in and say:--"i want a hundred lady's cards printed _at once_, please," which is manifestly part of an editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the grand trunk road makes it his business to ask for employment as a proofreader. and, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and kings are being killed on the continent, and empires are saying--"you're another," and mister gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the british dominions, and the little black copy-boys are whining, "_kaa-pi-chay-ha-yeh_" (copy wanted) like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as modred's shield, but that is the amusing part of the year. there are six other months wherein none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above reading-light, and the press machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody writes anything but accounts of amusements in the hill-stations or obituary notices. then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew intimately, and the prickly-heat covers you as with a garment, and you sit down and write:--"a slight increase of sickness is reported from the khuda janta khan district. the outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the district authorities, is now almost at an end. it is, however, with deep regret we record the death, etc." then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and reporting the better for the peace of the subscribers. but the empires and the kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and the foreman thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in twenty-four hours, and all the people at the hill-stations in the middle of their amusements say:--"good gracious! why can't the paper be sparkling? i'm sure there's plenty going on up here." that is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say, "must be experienced to be appreciated." it was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper began running the last issue of the week on saturday night, which is to say sunday morning, after the custom of a london paper. this was a great convenience, for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn would lower the thermometer from to almost for half an hour, and in that chill--you have no idea how cold is on the grass until you begin to pray for it--a very tired man could set off to sleep ere the heat roused him. one saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone. a king or courtier or a courtesan or a community was going to die or get a new constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram. it was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a june night can be, and the _loo_, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. it was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so i sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water. the thing that was keeping us back, whatever it was, would not come off, though the _loo_ dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. i drowsed, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man, or struggling people was aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing. there was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as the clock hands crept up to three o'clock and the machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was in order, before i said the word that would set them off, i could have shrieked aloud. then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little bits. i rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of me. the first one said:--"it's him!" the second said:--"so it is!" and they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped their foreheads. "we see there was a light burning across the road and we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and i said to my friend here, the office is open. let's come along and speak to him as turned us back from the degumber state," said the smaller of the two. he was the man i had met in the mhow train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of marwar junction. there was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the beard of the other. i was not pleased, because i wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with loafers. "what do you want?" i asked. "half an hour's talk with you cool and comfortable, in the office," said the red-bearded man. "we'd _like_ some drink--the contrack doesn't begin yet, peachey, so you needn't look--but what we really want is advice. we don't want money. we ask you as a favor, because you did us a bad turn about degumber." i led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. "that's something like," said he, "this was the proper shop to come to. now, sir, let me introduce to you brother peachey carnehan, that's him, and brother daniel dravot, that is _me_, and the less said about our professions the better, for we have been most things in our time. soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the _backwoodsman_ when we thought the paper wanted one. carnehan is sober, and so am i. look at us first and see that's sure. it will save you cutting into my talk. we'll take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us light." i watched the test. the men were absolutely sober, so i gave them each a tepid peg. "well _and_ good," said carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from his moustache. "let me talk now, dan, we have been all over india, mostly on foot. we have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that india isn't big enough for such as us." they certainly were too big for the office. dravot's beard seemed to fill half the room and carnehan's shoulders the other half, as they sat on the big table. carnehan continued:--"the country isn't half worked out because they that governs it won't let you touch it. they spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can't lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the government saying--'leave it alone and let us govern.' therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isn't crowded and can come to his own. we are not little men, and there is nothing that we are afraid of except drink, and we have signed a contrack on that. _therefore_, we are going away to be kings." "kings in our own right," muttered dravot. "yes, of course," i said. "you've been tramping in the sun, and it's a very warm night, and hadn't you better sleep over the notion? come to-morrow." "neither drunk nor sunstruck," said dravot. "we have slept over the notion half a year, and require to see books and atlases, and we have decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong men can sar-a-_whack_. they call it kafiristan. by my reckoning it's the top right-hand corner of afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from peshawur. they have two and thirty heathen idols there, and we'll be the thirty-third. it's a mountaineous country, and the women of those parts are very beautiful." "but that is provided against in the contrack," said carnehan. "neither women nor liquor, daniel." "and that's all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a king. we shall go to those parts and say to any king we find--'d'you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. then we will subvert that king and seize his throne and establish a dy-nasty." "you'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across the border," i said. "you have to travel through afghanistan to get to that country. it's one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no englishman has been through it. the people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn't do anything." "that's more like," said carnehan. "if you could think us a little more mad we would be more pleased. we have come to you to know about this country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. we want you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your books." he turned to the bookcases. "are you at all in earnest?" i said. "a little," said dravot, sweetly. "as big a map as you have got, even if it's all blank where kafiristan is, and any books you've got. we can read, though we aren't very educated." i uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of india, and two smaller frontier maps, hauled down volume inf-kan of the _encyclopaedia britannica_, and the men consulted them. "see here!" said dravot, his thumb on the map. "up to jagdallak, peachey and me know the road. we was there with roberts's army. we'll have to turn off to the right at jagdallak through laghmann territory. then we get among the hills--fourteen thousand feet--fifteen thousand--it will be cold work there, but it don't look very far on the map." i handed him wood on the _sources of the oxus_. carnehan was deep in the _encyclopaedia_. "they're a mixed lot," said dravot, reflectively; "and it won't help us to know the names of their tribes. the more tribes the more they'll fight, and the better for us. from jagdallak to ashang. h'mm!" "but all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be," i protested. "no one knows anything about it really. here's the file of the _united services institute_. read what bellew says." "blow bellew!" said carnehan. "dan, they're an all-fired lot of heathens, but this book here says they think they're related to us english." i smoked while the men pored over _raverty_, _wood_, the maps and the _encyclopaedia_. "there is no use your waiting," said dravot, politely, "it's about four o'clock now. we'll go before six o'clock if you want to sleep, and we won't steal any of the papers. don't you sit up. we're two harmless lunatics, and if you come, to-morrow evening, down to the serai we'll say good-bye to you." "you _are_ two fools," i answered, "you'll be turned back at the frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in afghanistan. do you want any money or a recommendation down-country? i can help you to the chance of work next week." "next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you," said dravot. "it isn't so easy being a king as it looks. when we've got our kingdom in going order we'll let you know, and you can come up and help us to govern it." "would two lunatics make a contrack like that?" said carnehan, with subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper on which was written the following. i copied it, then and there, as a curiosity: _this contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of god--amen and so forth. (one) that me and you will settle this matter together: _i.e._, to be kings of kafiristan. (two) that you and me will not, while this matter is being settled, look at any liquor, nor any woman, black, white or brown, so as to get mixed up with one or the other harmful. (three) that we conduct ourselves with dignity and discretion, and if one of us gets into trouble the other will stay by him. signed by you and me this day. peachey taliaferro carnehan. daniel dravot. both gentlemen at large._ "there was no need for the last article," said carnehan, blushing modestly; "but it looks regular. now you know the sort of men that loafers are--we _are_ loafers, dan, until we get out of india--and _do_ you think that we would sign a contrack like that unless we was in earnest? we have kept away from the two things that make life worth having." "you won't enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this idiotic adventure. don't set the office on fire," i said, "and go away before nine o'clock." i left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of the "contrack." "be sure to come down to the serai to-morrow," were their parting words. the kumharsen serai is the great four-square sink of humanity where the strings of camels and horses from the north load and unload. all the nationalities of central asia may be found there, and most of the folk of india proper. balkh and bokhara there meet bengal and bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. you can buy ponies, turquoises, persian pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the kumharsen serai, and get many strange things for nothing. in the afternoon i went down there to see whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying about drunk. a priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me, gravely twisting a child's paper whirligig. behind him was his servant bending under the load of a crate of mud toys, the two were loading up two camels, and the inhabitants of the serai watched them with shrieks of laughter. "the priest is mad," said a horse-dealer to me, "he is going up to kabul to sell toys to the amir. he will either be raised to honor or have his head cut off. he came in here this morning and has been behaving madly ever since." "the witless are under the protection of god," stammered a flat-cheeked usbeg in broken hindi. "they foretell future events." "would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up by the shinwaris almost within shadow of the pass!" grunted the eusufzai agent of a rajputana trading-house whose goods had been feloniously diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazar. "ohé, priest, whence come you and whither do you go?" "from roum have i come," shouted the priest, waving his whirligig; "from roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! o thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of pir khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurers! who will take the protected of god to the north to sell charms that are never still to the amir? the camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away, of the men who give me place in their caravan. who will assist me to slipper the king of the roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel? the protection of pir khan be upon his labors!" he spread out the skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses. "there starts a caravan from peshawur to kabul in twenty days, _huzrut_," said the eusufzai trader, "my camels go therewith. do thou also go and bring us good luck." "i will go even now!" shouted the priest, "i will depart upon my winged camels, and be at peshawur in a day! ho! hazar mir khan," he yelled to his servant, "drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own." he leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to me, cried:--"come thou also, sahib, a little along the road, and i will sell thee a charm--an amulet that shall make thee king of kafiristan." then the light broke upon me, and i followed the two camels out of the serai till we reached open road and the priest halted. "what d' you think o' that?" said he in english. "carnehan can't talk their patter, so i've made him my servant. he makes a handsome servant, 'tisn't for nothing that i've been knocking about the country for fourteen years. didn't i do that talk neat? we'll hitch on to a caravan at peshawur till we get to jagdallak, and then we'll see if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into kafiristan. whirligigs for the amir, o lor! put your hand under the camel-bags and tell me what you feel." i felt the butt of a martini, and another and another. "twenty of 'em," said dravot, placidly. "twenty of 'em, and ammunition to correspond, under the whirligigs and the mud dolls." "heaven help you if you are caught with those things!" i said. "a martini is worth her weight in silver among the pathans." "fifteen hundred rupees of capital--every rupee we could beg, borrow, or steal--are invested on these two camels," said dravot. "we won't get caught. we're going through the khaiber with a regular caravan. who'd touch a poor mad priest?" "have you got everything you want?" i asked, overcome with astonishment. "not yet, but we shall soon. give us a memento of your kindness, _brother_. you did me a service yesterday, and that time in marwar. half my kingdom shall you have, as the saying is." i slipped a small charm compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the priest. "good-bye," said dravot, giving me hand cautiously. "it's the last time we'll shake hands with an englishman these many days. shake hands with him, carnehan," he cried, as the second camel passed me. carnehan leaned down and shook hands. then the camels passed away along the dusty road, and i was left alone to wonder. my eye could detect no failure in the disguises. the scene in serai attested that they were complete to the native mind. there was just the chance, therefore, that carnehan and dravot would be able to wander through afghanistan without detection. but, beyond, they would find death, certain and awful death. ten days later a native friend of mine, giving me the news of the day from peshawur, wound up his letter with:--"there has been much laughter here on account of a certain mad priest who is going in his estimation to sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great charms to h.h. the amir of bokhara. he passed through peshawur and associated himself to the second summer caravan that goes to kabul. the merchants are pleased because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows bring good-fortune." the two, then, were beyond the border. i would have prayed for them, but, that night, a real king died in europe, and demanded on obituary notice. * * * * * the wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. the daily paper continued and i with it, and upon the third summer there fell a hot night, a night-issue, and a strained waiting for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened before. a few great men had died in the past two years, the machines worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the office garden were a few feet taller. but that was all the difference. i passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene as i have already described. the nervous tension was stronger than it had been two years before, and i felt the heat more acutely. at three o'clock i cried, "print off," and turned to go, when there crept to my chair what was left of a man. he was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other like a bear. i could hardly see whether he walked or crawled--this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he was come back. "can you give me a drink?" he whimpered. "for the lord's sake, give me a drink!" i went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain, and i turned up the lamp. "don't you know me?" he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his drawn face, surmounted by a shock of grey hair, to the light. i looked at him intently. once before had i seen eyebrows that met over the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me i could not tell where. "i don't know you," i said, handing him the whiskey. "what can i do for you?" he took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the suffocating heat. "i've come back," he repeated; "and i was the king of kafiristan--me and dravot--crowned kings we was! in this office we settled it--you setting there and giving us the books. i am peachey--peachey taliaferro carnehan, and you've been setting here ever since--o lord!" i was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings accordingly, "it's true," said carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which were wrapped in rags. "true as gospel. kings we were, with crowns upon our heads--me and dravot--poor dan--oh, poor, poor dan, that would never take advice, not though i begged of him!" "take the whiskey," i said, "and take your own time. tell me all you can recollect of everything from beginning to end. you got across the border on your camels, dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. do you remember that?" "i ain't mad--yet, but i shall be that way soon. of course i remember. keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. keep looking at me in my eyes and don't say anything." i leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as i could. he dropped one hand upon the table and i grasped it by the wrist. it was twisted like a bird's claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red, diamond-shaped scar. "no, don't look there. look at _me_," said carnehan. "that comes afterward, but for the lord's sake don't distrack me. we left with that caravan, me and dravot playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people we were with. dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all the people was cooking their dinners--cooking their dinners, and ... what did they do then? they lit little fires with sparks that went into dravot's beard, and we all laughed--fit to die. little red fires they was, going into dravot's big red beard--so funny." his eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly. "you went as far as jagdallak with that caravan," i said, at a venture, "after you had lit those fires. to jagdallak, where you turned off to try to get into kafiristan." "no, we didn't neither. what are you talking about? we turned off before jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. but they wasn't good enough for our two camels--mine and dravot's. when we left the caravan, dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we would be heathen, because the kafirs didn't allow mohammedans to talk to them. so we dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight as daniel dravot i never saw yet nor expect to see again. he burned half his beard, and slung a sheep-skin over his shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns. he shaved mine, too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like a heathen. that was in a most mountaineous country, and our camels couldn't go along any more because of the mountains. they were tall and black, and coming home i saw them fight like wild goats--there are lots of goats in kafiristan. and these mountains, they never keep still, no more than the goats. always fighting they are, and don't let you sleep at night." "take some more whiskey," i said, very slowly. "what did you and daniel dravot do when the camels could go no further because of the rough roads that led into kafiristan?" "what did which do? there was a party called peachey taliaferro carnehan that was with dravot. shall i tell you about him? he died out there in the cold. slap from the bridge fell old peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the amir.--no; they was two for three ha'pence, those whirligigs, or i am much mistaken and woful sore. and then these camels were no use, and peachey said to dravot--'for the lord's sake, let's get out of this before our heads are chopped off,' and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, but first they took off the boxes with the guns and the ammunition, till two men came along driving four mules. dravot up and dances in front of them, singing,--'sell me four mules.' says the first man,--'if you are rich enough to buy, you are rich enough to rob;' but before ever he could put his hand to his knife, dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. so carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken off the camels, and together we starts forward into those bitter cold mountaineous parts, and never a road broader than the back of your hand." he paused for a moment, while i asked him if he could remember the nature of the country through which he had journeyed. "i am telling you as straight as i can, but my head isn't as good as it might be. they drove nails through it to make me hear better how dravot died. the country was mountaineous and the mules were most contrary, and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. they went up and up, and down and down, and that other party, carnehan, was imploring of dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches. but dravot says that if a king couldn't sing it wasn't worth being king, and whacked the mules over the rump, and never took no heed for ten cold days. we came to a big level valley all among the mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having anything in special for them or us to eat. we sat upon the boxes, and played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out, "then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. they was fair men--fairer than you or me--with yellow hair and remarkable well built. says dravot, unpacking the guns--'this is the beginning of the business. we'll fight for the ten men,' and with that he fires two rifles at the twenty men, and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock where we was sitting. the other men began to run, but carnehan and dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up and down the valley. then we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too, and they fires a footy little arrow at us. dravot he shoots above their heads and they all falls down flat. then he walks over them and kicks them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all round to make them friendly like. he calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and waves his hand for all the world as though he was king already. they takes the boxes and him across the valley and up the hill into a pine wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big stone idols. dravot he goes to the biggest--a fellow they call imbra--and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose respectful with his own nose, patting him on the head, and saluting in front of it. he turns round to the men and nods his head, and says,--'that's all right. i'm in the know too, and all these old jim-jams are my friends.' then he opens his mouth and points down it, and when the first man brings him food, he says--'no;' and when the second man brings him food, he says--'no;' but when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings him food, he says--'yes;' very haughty, and eats it slow. that was how we came to our first village, without any trouble, just as though we had tumbled from the skies. but we tumbled from one of those damned rope-bridges, you see, and you couldn't expect a man to laugh much after that." "take some more whiskey and go on," i said. "that was the first village you came into. how did you get to be king?" "i wasn't king," said carnehan. "dravot he was the king, and a handsome man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. him and the other party stayed in that village, and every morning dravot sat by the side of old imbra, and the people came and worshipped. that was dravot's order. then a lot of men came into the valley, and carnehan and dravot picks them off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs down into the valley and up again the other side, and finds another village, same as the first one, and the people all falls down flat on their faces, and dravot says, 'now what is the trouble between you two villages?' and the people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried off, and dravot takes her back to the first village and counts up the dead--eight there was. for each dead man dravot pours a little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig and 'that's all right,' says he. then he and carnehan takes the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them down into the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides o' the line. then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and dravot says,--'go and dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,' which they did, though they didn't understand. then we asks the names of things in their lingo--bread and water and fire and idols and such, and dravot leads the priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot. "next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and told dravot in dumb show what it was about. 'that's just the beginning,' says dravot. 'they think we're gods.' he and carnehan picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and advance in line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of it. then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one village and one at the other, and off we two goes to see what was to be done in the next valley. that was all rock, and there was a little village there, and carnehan says,--'send 'em to the old valley to plant,' and takes 'em there and gives 'em some land that wasn't took before. they were a poor lot, and we blooded 'em with a kid before letting 'em into the new kingdom. that was to impress the people, and then they settled down quiet, and carnehan went back to dravot who had got into another valley, all snow and ice and most mountaineous. there was no people there and the army got afraid, so dravot shoots one of them, and goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the army explains that unless the people wants to be killed they had better not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had matchlocks. we makes friends with the priest and i stays there alone with two of the army, teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big chief comes across the snow with kettle-drums and horns twanging, because he heard there was a new god kicking about. carnehan sights for the brown of the men half a mile across the snow and wings one of them. then he sends a message to the chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. the chief comes alone first, and carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about, same as dravot used, and very much surprised that chief was, and strokes my eyebrows. then carnehan goes alone to the chief, and asks him in dumb show if he had an enemy he hated. 'i have,' says the chief. so carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as volunteers. so he marches with the chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the chief's men rushes into a village and takes it; we three martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. so we took that village too, and i gives the chief a rag from my coat and says, 'occupy till i come:' which was scriptural. by way of a reminder, when me and the army was eighteen hundred yards away, i drops a bullet near him standing on the snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. then i sends a letter to dravot, wherever he be by land or by sea." at the risk of throwing the creature out of train i interrupted,--"how could you write a letter up yonder?" "the letter?--oh!--the letter! keep looking at me between the eyes, please. it was a string-talk letter, that we'd learned the way of it from a blind beggar in the punjab." i remember that there had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cypher of his own. he could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. he had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his method, but failed. "i sent that letter to dravot," said carnehan; "and told him to come back because this kingdom was growing too big for me to handle, and then i struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were working. they called the village we took along with the chief, bashkai, and the first village we took, er-heb. the priests at er-heb was doing all right, but they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me, and some men from another village had been firing arrows at night. i went out and looked for that village and fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards. that used all the cartridges i cared to spend, and i waited for dravot, who had been away two or three months, and i kept my people quiet. "one morning i heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns, and dan dravot marches down the hill with his army and a tail of hundreds of men, and, which was the most amazing--a great gold crown on his head. 'my gord, carnehan,' says daniel, 'this is a tremenjus business, and we've got the whole country as far as it's worth having. i am the son of alexander by queen semiramis, and you're my younger brother and a god too! it's the biggest thing we've ever seen. i've been marching and fighting for six weeks with the army, and every footy little village for fifty miles has come in rejoiceful; and more than that, i've got the key of the whole show, as you'll see, and i've got a crown for you! i told 'em to make two of 'em at a place called shu, where the gold lies in the rock like suet in mutton. gold i've seen, and turquoise i've kicked out of the cliffs, and there's garnets in the sands of the river, and here's a chunk of amber that a man brought me. call up all the priests and, here, take your crown.' "one of the men opens a black hair bag and i slips the crown on. it was too small and too heavy, but i wore it for the glory. hammered gold it was--five pound weight, like a hoop of a barrel. "'peachey,' says dravot, 'we don't want to fight no more. the craft's the trick so help me!' and he brings forward that same chief that i left at bashkai--billy fish we called him afterward, because he was so like billy fish that drove the big tank-engine at mach on the bolan in the old days. 'shake hands with him,' says dravot, and i shook hands and nearly dropped, for billy fish gave me the grip. i said nothing, but tried him with the fellow craft grip. he answers, all right, and i tried the master's grip, but that was a slip. 'a fellow craft he is!' i says to dan. 'does he know the word?' 'he does,' says dan, 'and all the priests know. it's a miracle! the chiefs and the priests can work a fellow craft lodge in a way that's very like ours, and they've cut the marks on the rocks, but they don't know the third degree, and they've come to find out. it's gord's truth. i've known these long years that the afghans knew up to the fellow craft degree, but this is a miracle. a god and a grand-master of the craft am i, and a lodge in the third degree i will open, and we'll raise the head priests and the chiefs of the villages.' "'it's against all the law,' i says, 'holding a lodge without warrant from any one; and we never held office in any lodge.' "'it's a master-stroke of policy,' says dravot. 'it means running the country as easy as a four-wheeled bogy on a down grade. we can't stop to inquire now, or they'll turn against us. i've forty chiefs at my heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they shall be. billet these men on the villages and see that we run up a lodge of some kind. the temple of imbra will do for the lodge-room. the women must make aprons as you show them. i'll hold a levee of chiefs to-night and lodge to-morrow.' "i was fair run off my legs, but i wasn't such a fool as not to see what a pull this craft business gave us. i showed the priests' families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for dravot's apron, the blue border and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. we took a great square stone in the temple for the master's chair, and little stones for the officers' chairs, and painted the black pavement with white squares, and did what we could to make things regular. "at the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big bonfires, dravot gives out that him and me were gods and sons of alexander, and past grand-masters in the craft, and was come to make kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in quiet, and specially obey us. then the chiefs come round to shake hands, and they was so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends. we gave them names according as they was like men we had known in india--billy fish, holly dilworth, pikky kergan that was bazar-master when i was at mhow, and so on and so on. "_the_ most amazing miracle was at lodge next night. one of the old priests was watching us continuous, and i felt uneasy, for i knew we'd have to fudge the ritual, and i didn't know what the men knew. the old priest was a stranger come in from beyond the village of bashkai. the minute dravot puts on the master's apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that dravot was sitting on. 'it's all up now,' i says. 'that comes of meddling with the craft without warrant!' dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the grand-master's chair--which was to say the stone of imbra. the priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests the master's mark, same as was on dravot's apron, cut into the stone. not even the priests of the temple of imbra knew it was there. the old chap falls flat on his face at dravot's feet and kisses 'em. 'luck again,' says dravot, across the lodge to me, 'they say it's the missing mark that no one could understand the why of. we're more than safe now.' then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says:--'by virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of peachey, i declare myself grand-master of all freemasonry in kafiristan in this the mother lodge o' the country, and king of kafiristan equally with peachey!' at that he puts on his crown and i puts on mine--i was doing senior warden--and we opens the lodge in most ample form. it was a amazing miracle! the priests moved in lodge through the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the memory was coming back to them. after that, peachey and dravot raised such as was worthy--high priests and chiefs of far-off villages. billy fish was the first, and i can tell you we scared the soul out of him. it was not in any way according to ritual, but it served our turn. we didn't raise more than ten of the biggest men because we didn't want to make the degree common. and they was clamoring to be raised. "'in another six months,' says dravot, 'we'll hold another communication and see how you are working.' then he asks them about their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against the other and were fair sick and tired of it. and when they wasn't doing that they was fighting with the mohammedans. 'you can fight those when they come into our country,' says dravot. 'tell off every tenth man of your tribes for a frontier guard, and send two hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled. nobody is going to be shot or speared any more so long as he does well, and i know that you won't cheat me because you're white people--sons of alexander--and not like common, black mohammedans. you are _my_ people and by god,' says he, running off into english at the end--'i'll make a damned fine nation of you, or i'll die in the making!' "i can't tell all we did for the next six months because dravot did a lot i couldn't see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way i never could. my work was to help the people plough, and now and again go out with some of the army and see what the other villages were doing, and make 'em throw rope-bridges across the ravines which cut up the country horrid. dravot was very kind to me, but when he walked up and down in the pine wood pulling that bloody red beard of his with both fists i knew he was thinking plans i could not advise him about, and i just waited for orders. "but dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. they were afraid of me and the army, but they loved dan. he was the best of friends with the priests and the chiefs; but any one could come across the hills with a complaint and dravot would hear him out fair, and call four priests together and say what was to be done. he used to call in billy fish from bashkai, and pikky kergan from shu, and an old chief we called kafuzelum--it was like enough to his real name--and hold councils with 'em when there was any fighting to be done in small villages. that was his council of war, and the four priests of bashkai, shu, khawak, and madora was his privy council. between the lot of 'em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the ghorband country to buy those hand-made martini rifles, that come out of the amir's workshops at kabul, from one of the amir's herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises. "i stayed in ghorband a month, and gave the governor there the pick of my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the colonel of the regiment some more, and, between the two and the tribespeople, we got more than a hundred hand-made martinis, a hundred good kohat jezails that'll throw to six hundred yards, and forty man-loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. i came back with what i had, and distributed 'em among the men that the chiefs sent to me to drill. dravot was too busy to attend to those things, but the old army that we first made helped me, and we turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew how to hold arms pretty straight. even those cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to them. dravot talked big about powder-shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood when the winter was coming on. "'i won't make a nation,' says he. 'i'll make an empire! these men aren't niggers; they're english! look at their eyes--look at their mouths. look at the way they stand up. they sit on chairs in their own houses. they're the lost tribes, or something like it, and they've grown to be english. i'll take a census in the spring if the priests don't get frightened. there must be a fair two million of 'em in these hills. the villages are full o' little children. two million people--two hundred and fifty thousand fighting men--and all english! they only want the rifles and a little drilling. two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready to cut in on russia's right flank when she tries for india! peachey, man,' he says, chewing his beard in great hunks, 'we shall be emperors--emperors of the earth! rajah brooke will be a suckling to us. i'll treat with the viceroy on equal terms. i'll ask him to send me twelve picked english--twelve that i know of--to help us govern a bit. there's mackray, sergeant-pensioner at segowli--many's the good dinner he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. there's donkin, the warder of tounghoo jail; there's hundreds that i could lay my hand on if i was in india. the viceroy shall do it for me. i'll send a man through in the spring for those men, and i'll write for a dispensation from the grand lodge for what i've done as grand-master. that--and all the sniders that'll be thrown out when the native troops in india take up the martini. they'll be worn smooth, but they'll do for fighting in these hills. twelve english, a hundred thousand sniders run through the amir's country in driblets--i'd be content with twenty thousand in one year--and we'd be an empire. when everything was shipshape, i'd hand over the crown--this crown i'm wearing now--to queen victoria on my knees, and she'd say: "rise up, sir daniel dravot." oh, it's big! it's big, i tell you! but there's so much to be done in every place--bashkai, khawak, shu, and everywhere else.' "'what is it?' i says. 'there are no more men coming in to be drilled this autumn. look at those fat, black clouds. they're bringing the snow.' "'it isn't that,' says daniel, putting his hand very hard on my shoulder; 'and i don't wish to say anything that's against you, for no other living man would have followed me and made me what i am as you have done. you're a first-class commander-in-chief, and the people know you; but--it's a big country, and somehow you can't help me, peachey, in the way i want to be helped.' "'go to your blasted priests, then!' i said, and i was sorry when i made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find daniel talking so superior when i'd drilled all the men, and done all he told me. "'don't let's quarrel, peachey,' says daniel, without cursing. 'you're a king too, and the half of this kingdom is yours; but can't you see, peachey, we want cleverer men than us now--three or four of 'em, that we can scatter about for our deputies. it's a hugeous great state, and i can't always tell the right thing to do, and i haven't time for all i want to do, and here's the winter coming on and all.' he put half his beard into his mouth, and it was as red as the gold of his crown. "'i'm sorry, daniel,' says i, 'i've done all i could. i've drilled the men and shown the people how to stack their oats better; and i've brought in those tinware rifles from ghorband--but i know what you're driving at. i take it kings always feel oppressed that way.' "'there's another thing too,' says dravot, walking up and down, 'the winter's coming and these people won't be giving much trouble, and if they do we can't move about. i want a wife.' "'for gord's sake leave the women alone!' i says. 'we've both got all the work we can, though i _am_ a fool. remember the contrack, and keep clear o' women.' "'the contrack only lasted till such time as we was kings; and kings we have been these months past,' says dravot, weighing his crown in his hand. 'you go get a wife too, peachey--a nice, strappin', plump girl that'll keep you warm in the winter. they're prettier than english girls, and we can take the pick of 'em. boil 'em once or twice in hot water, and they'll come as fair as chicken and ham.' "'don't tempt me!' i says. 'i will not have any dealings with a woman not till we are a dam' side more settled than we are now. i've been doing the work o' two men, and you've been doing the work o' three. let's lie off a bit, and see if we can get some better tobacco from afghan country and run in some good liquor; but no women.' "'who's talking o' _women_?' says dravot. 'i said _wife_--a queen to breed a king's son for the king. a queen out of the strongest tribe, that'll make them your blood-brothers, and that'll lie by your side and tell you all the people thinks about you and their own affairs. that's what i want.' "'do you remember that bengali woman i kept at mogul serai when i was a plate-layer?' says i. 'a fat lot o' good she was to me. she taught me the lingo and one or two other things; but what happened? she ran away with the station master's servant and half my month's pay. then she turned up at dadur junction in tow of a half-caste, and had the impidence to say i was her husband--all among the drivers in the running-shed!' "'we've done with that,' says dravot. 'these women are whiter than you or me, and a queen i will have for the winter months.' "'for the last time o' asking, dan, do not,' i says. 'it'll only bring us harm. the bible says that kings ain't to waste their strength on women, 'specially when they've got a new raw kingdom to work over.' "'for the last time of answering i will,' said dravot, and he went away through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil. the low sun hit his crown and beard on one side and the two blazed like hot coals. "but getting a wife was not as easy as dan thought. he put it before the council, and there was no answer till billy fish said that he'd better ask the girls. dravot damned them all round. 'what's wrong with me?' he shouts, standing by the idol imbra. 'am i a dog or am i not enough of a man for your wenches? haven't i put the shadow of my hand over this country? who stopped the last afghan raid?' it was me really, but dravot was too angry to remember. 'who brought your guns? who repaired the bridges? who's the grand-master of the sign cut in the stone?' and he thumped his hand on the block that he used to sit on in lodge, and at council, which opened like lodge always. billy fish said nothing and no more did the others. 'keep your hair on, dan,' said i; 'and ask the girls. that's how it's done at home, and these people are quite english.' "'the marriage of the king is a matter of state,' says dan, in a white-hot rage, for he could feel, i hope, that he was going against his better mind. he walked out of the council-room, and the others sat still, looking at the ground. "'billy fish,' says i to the chief of bashkai, 'what's the difficulty here? a straight answer to a true friend.' 'you know,' says billy fish. 'how should a man tell you who know everything? how can daughters of men marry gods or devils? it's not proper.' "i remembered something like that in the bible; but if, after seeing us as long as they had, they still believed we were gods, it wasn't for me to undeceive them. "'a god can do anything,' says i. 'if the king is fond of a girl he'll not let her die.' 'she'll have to,' said billy fish. 'there are all sorts of gods and devils in these mountains, and now and again a girl marries one of them and isn't seen any more. besides, you two know the mark cut in the stone. only the gods know that. we thought you were men till you showed the sign of the master.' "i wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine secrets of a master-mason at the first go-off; but i said nothing. all that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-way down the hill, and i heard a girl crying fit to die. one of the priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the king. "'i'll have no nonsense of that kind,' says, dan. 'i don't want to interfere with your customs, but i'll take my own wife.' 'the girl's a little bit afraid,' says the priest. 'she thinks she's going to die, and they are a-heartening of her up down in the temple.' "'hearten her very tender, then,' says dravot, 'or i'll hearten you with the butt of a gun so that you'll never want to be heartened again.' he licked his lips, did dan, and stayed up walking about more than half the night, thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. i wasn't any means comfortable, for i knew that dealings with a woman in foreign parts, though you was a crowned king twenty times over, could not but be risky. i got up very early in the morning while dravot was asleep, and i saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the chiefs talking together too, and they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes. "'what is up, fish?' i says to the bashkai man, who was wrapped up in his furs and looking splendid to behold. "'i can't rightly say,' says he; 'but if you can induce the king to drop all this nonsense about marriage, you'll be doing him and me and yourself a great service.' "'that i do believe,' says i. 'but sure, you know, billy, as well as me, having fought against and for us, that the king and me are nothing more than two of the finest men that god almighty ever made. nothing more, i do assure you.' "'that may be,' says billy fish, 'and yet i should be sorry if it was.' he sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks. 'king,' says he, 'be you man or god or devil, i'll stick by you to-day. i have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me. we'll go to bashkai until the storm blows over.' "a little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white except the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the north. dravot came out with his crown on his head, swinging his arms and stamping his feet, and looking more pleased than punch. "'for the last time, drop it, dan,' says i, in a whisper. 'billy fish here says that there will be a row.' "'a row among my people!' says dravot. 'not much. peachey, you're a fool not to get a wife too. where's the girl?' says he, with a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. 'call up all the chiefs and priests, and let the emperor see if his wife suits him.' "there was no need to call anyone. they were all there leaning on their guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine wood. a deputation of priests went down to the little temple to bring up the girl, and the horns blew up fit to wake the dead. billy fish saunters round and gets as close to daniel as he could, and behind him stood his twenty men with matchlocks. not a man of them under six feet. i was next to dravot, and behind me was twenty men of the regular army. up comes the girl, and a strapping wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises but white as death, and looking back every minute at the priests. "'she'll do,' said dan, looking her over. 'what's to be afraid of, lass? come and kiss me.' he puts his arm round her. she shuts her eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and down goes her face in the side of dan's flaming red beard. "'the slut's bitten me!' says he, clapping his hand to his neck, and, sure enough, his hand was red with blood. billy fish and two of his matchlock-men catches hold of dan by the shoulders and drags him into the bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo,--'neither god nor devil but a man!' i was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in front, and the army behind began firing into the bashkai men. "'god a-mighty!' says dan, 'what is the meaning o' this?' "'come back! come away!' says billy fish. 'ruin and mutiny is the matter. we'll break for bashkai if we can.' "i tried to give some sort of orders to my men--the men o' the regular army--but it was no use, so i fired into the brown of 'em with an english martini and drilled three beggars in a line. the valley was full of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking, 'not a god nor a devil but only a man!' the bashkai troops stuck to billy fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't half as good as the kabul breech-loaders, and four of them dropped. dan was bellowing like a bull, for he was very wrathy; and billy fish had a hard job to prevent him running out at the crowd. "'we can't stand,' says billy fish. 'make a run for it down the valley! the whole place is against us.' the matchlock-men ran, and we went down the valley in spite of dravot's protestations. he was swearing horribly and crying out that he was a king. the priests rolled great stones on us, and the regular army fired hard, and there wasn't more than six men, not counting dan, billy fish, and me, that came down to the bottom of the valley alive. "then they stopped firing and the horns in the temple blew again. 'come away--for gord's sake come away!' says billy fish. 'they'll send runners out to all the villages before ever we get to bashkai. i can protect you there, but i can't do anything now.' "my own notion is that dan began to go mad in his head from that hour. he stared up and down like a stuck pig. then he was all for walking back alone and killing the priests with his bare hands; which he could have done. 'an emperor am i,' says daniel, 'and next year i shall be a knight of the queen.' "'all right, dan,' says i; 'but come along now while there's time.' "'it's your fault,' says he, 'for not looking after your army better. there was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know--you damned engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary's-pass-hunting hound!' he sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. i was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that brought the smash. "'i'm sorry, dan,' says i, 'but there's no accounting for natives. this business is our fifty-seven. maybe we'll make something out of it yet, when we've got to bashkai.' "'let's get to bashkai, then,' says dan, 'and, by god, when i come back here again i'll sweep the valley so there isn't a bug in a blanket left!' "we walked all that day, and all that night dan was stumping up and down on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to himself. "'there's no hope o' getting clear,' said billy fish. 'the priests will have sent runners to the villages to say that you are only men. why didn't you stick on as gods till things was more settled? i'm a dead man,' says billy fish, and he throws himself down on the snow and begins to pray to his gods. "next morning we was in a cruel bad country--all up and down, no level ground at all, and no food either. the six bashkai men looked at billy fish hungry-wise as if they wanted to ask something, but they said never a word. at noon we came to the top of a flat mountain all covered with snow, and when we climbed up into it, behold, there was an army in position waiting in the middle! "'the runners have been very quick,' says billy fish, with a little bit of a laugh. 'they are waiting for us.' "three or four men began to fire from the enemy's side, and a chance shot took daniel in the calf of the leg. that brought him to his senses. he looks across the snow at the army, and sees the rifles that we had brought into the country. "'we're done for,' says he. 'they are englishmen, these people,--and it's my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. get back, billy fish, and take your men away; you've done what you could, and now cut for it. carnehan,' says he, 'shake hands with me and go along with billy. maybe they won't kill you. i'll go and meet 'em alone. it's me that did it. me, the king!' "'go!' says i. 'go to hell, dan. i'm with you here. billy fish, you clear out, and we two will meet those folk.' "'i'm a chief,' says billy fish, quite quiet. 'i stay with you. my men can go.' "the bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word but ran off, and dan and me and billy fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and the horns were horning, it was cold--awful cold. i've got that cold in the back of my head now. there's a lump of it there." the punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. two kerosene lamps were blazing in the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the blotter as i leaned forward. carnehan was shivering, and i feared that his mind might go. i wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously mangled hands, and said:--"what happened after that?" the momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current. "what was you pleased to say?" whined carnehan. "they took them without any sound. not a little whisper all along the snow, not though the king knocked down the first man that set hand on him--not though old peachey fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em. not a single solitary sound did those swines make. they just closed up tight, and i tell you their furs stunk. there was a man called billy fish, a good friend of us all, and they cut his throat, sir, then and there, like a pig; and the king kicks up the bloody snow and says:--'we've had a dashed fine run for our money. what's coming next?' but peachey, peachey taliaferro, i tell you, sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, sir. no, he didn't neither. the king lost his head, so he did, all along o' one of those cunning rope-bridges. kindly let me have the paper-cutter, sir. it tilted this way. they marched him a mile across that snow to a rope-bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. you may have seen such. they prodded him behind like an ox. 'damn your eyes!' says the king. 'd'you suppose i can't die like a gentleman?' he turns to peachey--peachey that was crying like a child. 'i've brought you to this, peachey,' says he. 'brought you out of your happy life to be killed in kafiristan, where you was late commander-in-chief of the emperor's forces. say you forgive me, peachey.' 'i do,' says peachey. 'fully and freely do i forgive you, dan.' 'shake hands, peachey,' says he. 'i'm going now.' out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, 'cut, you beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old dan fell, turning round and round and round twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and i could see his body caught on a rock with the gold crown close beside. "but do you know what they did to peachey between two pine trees? they crucified him, sir, as peachey's hand will show. they used wooden pegs for his hands and his feet; and he didn't die. he hung there and screamed, and they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. they took him down--poor old peachey that hadn't done them any harm--that hadn't done them any...." he rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes. "they was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said he was more of a god than old daniel that was a man. then they turned him out on the snow, and told him to go home, and peachey came home in about a year, begging along the roads quite safe: for daniel dravot he walked before and said:--'come along, peachey. it's a big thing we're doing.' the mountains they danced at night, and the mountains they tried to fall on peachey's head, but dan he held up his hand, and peachey came along bent double. he never let go of dan's hand, and he never let go of dan's head. they gave it to him as a present in the temple, to remind him not to come again, and though the crown was pure gold, and peachey was starving, never would peachey sell the same. you knew dravot, sir! you knew right worshipful brother dravot! look at him now!" he fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my table--the dried, withered head of daniel dravot! the morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that carnehan placed tenderly on the battered temples. "you behold now," said carnehan, "the emperor in his habit as he lived--the king of kafiristan with his crown upon his head. poor old daniel that was a monarch once!" i shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, i recognized the head of the man of marwar junction. carnehan rose to go. i attempted to stop him. he was not fit to walk abroad. "let me take away the whiskey, and give me a little money," he gasped, "i was a king once. i'll go to the deputy commissioner and ask to set in the poorhouse till i get my health. no, thank you, i can't wait till you get a carriage for me, i've urgent private affairs--in the south--at marwar." he shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the deputy commissioner's house. that day at noon i had occasion to go down the blinding hot mall, and i saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at home. there was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. and he sang through his nose, turning his head from right to left: "the son of man goes forth to war, a golden crown to gain; his blood-red banner streams afar-- who follows in his train?" i waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage and drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the asylum. he repeated the hymn twice while he was with me whom he did not in the least recognize, and i left him singing it to the missionary. two days later i inquired after his welfare of the superintendent of the asylum. "he was admitted suffering from sunstroke. he died early yesterday morning," said the superintendent. "is it true that he was half an hour bareheaded in the sun at midday?" "yes," said i, "but do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by any chance when he died?" "not to my knowledge," said the superintendent. and there the matter rests. the gate of the hundred sorrows if i can attain heaven for a pice, why should you be envious?--_opium smoker's proverb_. this is no work of mine. my friend, gabral misquitta, the half-caste, spoke it all, between moonset and morning, six weeks before he died; and i took it down from his mouth as he answered my questions. so: it lies between the coppersmith's gully and the pipe-stem sellers' quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the mosque of wazir khan. i don't mind telling any one this much, but i defy him to find the gate, however well he may think he knows the city. you might even go through the very gully it stands in a hundred times, and be none the wiser. we used to call the gully, "the gully of the black smoke," but its native name is altogether different of course. a loaded donkey couldn't pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you reach the gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all sideways. it isn't really a gate though. it's a house. old fung-tching had it first five years ago. he was a boot-maker in calcutta. they say that he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. that was why he dropped bazar-rum and took to the black smoke instead. later on, he came up north and opened the gate as a house where you could get your smoke in peace and quiet. mind you, it was a _pukka_, respectable opium-house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering _chandoo-khanas_, that you can find all over the city. no; the old man knew his business thoroughly, and he was most clean for a chinaman. he was a one-eyed little chap, not much more than five feet high, and both his middle fingers were gone. all the same, he was the handiest man at rolling black pills i have ever seen. never seemed to be touched by the smoke, either; and what he took day and night, night and day, was a caution. i've been at it five years, and i can do my fair share of the smoke with any one; but i was a child to fung-tching that way. all the same, the old man was keen on his money: very keen; and that's what i can't understand. i heard he saved a good deal before he died, but his nephew has got all that now; and the old man's gone back to china to be buried. he kept the big upper room, where his best customers gathered, as neat as a new pin. in one corner used to stand fung-tching's joss--almost as ugly as fung-tching--and there were always sticks burning under his nose; but you never smelled 'em when the pipes were going thick. opposite the joss was fung-tching's coffin. he had spent a good deal of his savings on that, and whenever a new man came to the gate he was always introduced to it. it was lacquered black, with red and gold writings on it, and i've heard that fung-tching brought it out all the way from china. i don't know whether that's true or not, but i know that, if i came first in the evening, i used to spread my mat just at the foot of it. it was a quiet corner, you see, and a sort of breeze from the gully came in at the window now and then. besides the mats, there was no other furniture in the room--only the coffin, and the old joss all green and blue and purple with age and polish. fung-tching never told us why he called the place "the gate of the hundred sorrows." (he was the only chinaman i know who used bad-sounding fancy names. most of them are flowery. as you'll see in calcutta.) we used to find that out for ourselves. nothing grows on you so much, if you're white, as the black smoke. a yellow man is made different. opium doesn't tell on him scarcely at all; but white and black suffer a good deal. of course, there are some people that the smoke doesn't touch any more than tobacco would at first. they just doze a bit, as one would fall asleep naturally, and next morning they are almost fit for work. now, i was one of that sort when i began, but i've been at it for five years pretty steadily, and it's different now. there was an old aunt of mine, down agra way, and she left me a little at her death. about sixty rupees a month secured. sixty isn't much. i can recollect a time, 'seems hundreds and hundreds of years ago, that i was getting my three hundred a month, and pickings, when i was working on a big timber-contract in calcutta. i didn't stick to that work for long. the black smoke does not allow of much other business; and even though i am very little affected by it, as men go i couldn't do a day's work now to save my life. after all, sixty rupees is what i want. when old fung-tching was alive he used to draw the money for me, give me about half of it to live on (i eat very little), and the rest he kept himself. i was free of the gate at any time of the day and night, and could smoke and sleep there when i liked, so i didn't care. i know the old man made a good thing out of it; but that's no matter. nothing matters much to me; and besides, the money always came fresh and fresh each month. there was ten of us met at the gate when the place was first opened. me, and two baboos from a government office somewhere in anarkulli, but they got the sack and couldn't pay (no man who has to work in the daylight can do the black smoke for any length of time straight on); a chinaman that was fung-tching's nephew; a bazar-woman that had got a lot of money somehow; an english loafer--mac-somebody i think, but i have forgotten,--that smoked heaps, but never seemed to pay anything (they said he had saved fung-tching's life at some trial in calcutta when he was a barrister); another eurasian, like myself, from madras; a half-caste woman, and a couple of men who said they had come from the north. i think they must have been persians or afghans or something. there are not more than five of us living now, but we come regular. i don't know what happened to the baboos; but the bazar-woman she died after six months of the gate, and i think fung-tching took her bangles and nose-ring for himself. but i'm not certain. the englishman, he drank as well as smoked, and he dropped off. one of the persians got killed in a row at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air. they found him dead at the bottom of it. so you see, there is only me, the chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the _memsahib_ (she used to live with fung-tching), the other eurasian, and one of the persians. the _memsahib_ looks very old now. i think she was a young woman when the gate was opened; but we are all old for the matter of that. hundreds and hundreds of years old. it is very hard to keep count of time in the gate, and, besides, time doesn't matter to me. i draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month. a very, very long while ago, when i used to be getting three hundred and fifty rupees a month, and pickings, on a big timber-contract at calcutta, i had a wife of sorts. but she's dead now. people said that i killed her by taking to the black smoke. perhaps i did, but it's so long since that it doesn't matter. sometimes when i first came to the gate, i used to feel sorry for it; but that's all over and done with long ago, and i draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month, and am quite happy. not _drunk_ happy, you know, but always quiet and soothed and contented. how did i take to it? it began at calcutta. i used to try it in my own house, just to see what it was like. i never went very far, but i think my wife must have died then. anyhow, i found myself here, and got to know fung-tching. i don't remember rightly how that came about; but he told me of the gate and i used to go there, and, somehow, i have never got away from it since. mind you, though, the gate was a respectable place in fung-tching's time where you could be comfortable, and not at all like the _chandoo-khanas_ where the niggers go. no; it was clean and quiet, and not crowded. of course, there were others beside us ten and the man; but we always had a mat apiece, with a wadded woolen headpiece, all covered with black and red dragons and things; just like the coffin in the corner. at the end of one's third pipe the dragons used to move about and fight. i've watched 'em many and many a night through. i used to regulate my smoke that way, and now it takes a dozen pipes to make 'em stir. besides, they are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and old fung-tching is dead. he died a couple of years ago, and gave me the pipe i always use now--a silver one, with queer beasts crawling up and down the receiver-bottle below the cup. before that, i think, i used a big bamboo stem with a copper cup, a very small one, and a green jade mouthpiece. it was a little thicker than a walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet, very sweet. the bamboo seemed to suck up the smoke. silver doesn't, and i've got to clean it out now and then, that's a great deal of trouble, but i smoke it for the old man's sake. he must have made a good thing out of me, but he always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you could get anywhere. when he died, his nephew tsin-ling took up the gate, and he called it the "temple of the three possessions"; but we old ones speak of it as the "hundred sorrows," all the same. the nephew does things very shabbily, and i think the _memsahib_ must help him. she lives with him; same as she used to do with the old man. the two let in all sorts of low people, niggers and all, and the black smoke isn't as good as it used to be. i've found burned bran in my pipe over and over again. the old man would have died if that had happened in his time. besides, the room is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn and cut at the edges. the coffin is gone--gone to china again--with the old man and two ounces of smoke inside it, in case he should want 'em on the way. the joss doesn't get so many sticks burned under his nose as he used to; that's a sign of ill-luck, as sure as death. he's all brown, too, and no one ever attends to him. that's the _memsahib's_ work, i know; because, when tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the joss wouldn't know the difference. so now we've got the sticks mixed with a lot of glue, and they take half an hour longer to burn, and smell stinky. let alone the smell of the room by itself. no business can get on if they try that sort of thing. the joss doesn't like it. i can see that. late at night, sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors--blue and green and red--just as he used to do when old fung-tching was alive; and he rolls his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil. i don't know why i don't leave the place and smoke quietly in a little room of my own in the bazar. most like, tsin-ling would kill me if i went away--he draws my sixty rupees now--and besides, it's so much trouble, and i've grown to be very fond of the gate. it's not much to look at. not what it was in the old man's time, but i couldn't leave it. i've seen so many come in and out. and i've seen so many die here on the mats that i should be afraid of dying in the open now. i've seen some things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange when you're on the black smoke, except the black smoke. and if it was, it wouldn't matter. fung-tching used to be very particular about his people, and never got in any one who'd give trouble by dying messy and such. but the nephew isn't half so careful. he tells everywhere that he keeps a "first-chop" house. never tries to get men in quietly, and make them comfortable like fung-tching did. that's why the gate is getting a little bit more known than it used to be. among the niggers of course. the nephew daren't get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin into the place. he has to keep us three of course--me and the _memsahib_ and the other eurasian. we're fixtures. but he wouldn't give us credit for a pipeful--not for anything. one of these days, i hope, i shall die in the gate. the persian and the madras man are terribly shaky now. they've got a boy to light their pipes for them. i always do that myself. most like, i shall see them carried out before me. i don't think i shall ever outlive the _memsahib_ or tsin-ling. women last longer than men at the black smoke, and tsin-ling has a deal of the old man's blood in him, though he does smoke cheap stuff. the bazar-woman knew when she was going two days before her time; and she died on a clean mat with a nicely wadded pillow, and the old man hung up her pipe just above the joss. he was always fond of her, i fancy. but he took her bangles just the same. i should like to die like the bazar-woman--on a clean, cool mat with a pipe of good stuff between my lips. when i feel i'm going, i shall ask tsin-ling for them, and he can draw my sixty rupees a month, fresh and fresh, as long as he pleases. then i shall lie back, quiet and comfortable, and watch the black and red dragons have their last big fight together; and then.... well, it doesn't matter. nothing matters much to me--only i wish tsin-ling wouldn't put bran into the black smoke. the incarnation of krishna mulvaney wohl auf, my bully cavaliers, we ride to church to-day, the man that hasn't got a horse must steal one straight away. * * * * * be reverent, men, remember this is a gottes haus. du, conrad, cut along der aisle and schenck der whiskey aus. _hans breitmann's ride to church._ once upon a time, very far from england, there lived three men who loved each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them. they were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer-door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in her majesty's army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for self-culture. their duty is to keep themselves and their accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more often than is necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war. all these things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw in some fighting-work for which the army regulations did not call. their fate sent them to serve in india, which is not a golden country, though poets have sung otherwise. there men die with great swiftness, and those who live suffer many and curious things. i do not think that my friends concerned themselves much with the social or political aspects of the east. they attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier, another one on our western boundary, and a third in upper burma. then their regiment sat still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of cantonment life was their portion. they were drilled morning and evening on the same dusty parade-ground. they wandered up and down the same stretch of dusty white road, attended the same church and the same grog-shop, and slept in the same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two long years. there was mulvaney, the father in the craft, who had served with various regiments from bermuda to halifax, old in war, scarred, reckless, resourceful, and in his pious hours an unequalled soldier. to him turned for help and comfort six and a half feet of slow-moving, heavy-footed yorkshireman, born on the wolds, bred in the dales, and educated chiefly among the carriers' carts at the back of york railway-station. his name was learoyd, and his chief virtue an unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. how ortheris, a fox-terrier of a cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is a mystery which even to-day i cannot explain. "there was always three av us," mulvaney used to say. "an' by the grace av god, so long as our service lasts, three av us they'll always be. 'tis betther so." they desired no companionship beyond their own, and it was evil for any man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. physical argument was out of the question as regarded mulvaney and the yorkshireman; and assault on ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain--a business which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. therefore they flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of happiness from calicut in southern, to peshawur in northern india. through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure admitted to their friendship--frankly by mulvaney from the beginning, sullenly and with reluctance by learoyd, and suspiciously by ortheris, who held to it that no man not in the army could fraternize with a red-coat. "like to like," said he. "i'm a bloomin' sodger--he's a bloomin' civilian. 'tain't natural--that's all." but that was not all. they thawed progressively, and in the thawing told me more of their lives and adventures than i am ever likely to write. omitting all else, this tale begins with the lamentable thirst that was at the beginning of first causes. never was such a thirst--mulvaney told me so. they kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was only successful in the case of ortheris. he, whose talents were many, went forth into the highways and stole a dog from a "civilian"--_videlicet_, some one, he knew not who, not in the army. now that civilian was but newly connected by marriage with the colonel of the regiment, and outcry was made from quarters least anticipated by ortheris, and, in the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to dispose at ridiculously unremunerative rates of as promising a small terrier as ever graced one end of a leading string. the purchase-money was barely sufficient for one small outbreak which led him to the guard-room. he escaped, however, with nothing worse than a severe reprimand, and a few hours of punishment drill. not for nothing had he acquired the reputation of being "the best soldier of his inches" in the regiment. mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions' creed. "a dhirty man," he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, "goes to clink for a weakness in the knees, an' is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin'; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service--a man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an' whose 'coutrements are widout a speck--that man may, spakin' in reason, do fwhat he likes an' dhrink from day to divil. that's the pride av bein' dacint." we sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. behind us was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the grey wolves of the northwestern provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from central india, were supposed to dwell. in front lay the cantonment, glaring white under a glaring sun; and on either side ran the broad road that led to delhi. it was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of mulvaney taking a day's leave and going upon a shooting-tour. the peacock is a holy bird throughout india, and he who slays one is in danger of being mobbed by the nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that mulvaney had gone forth, he had contrived, without in the least offending local religious susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he sold to profit. it seemed just possible then-- "but fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin' out widout a dhrink? the ground's powdher-dhry underfoot, an' ut gets unto the throat fit to kill," wailed mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. "an' a peacock is not a bird you can catch the tail av onless ye run. can a man run on wather--an' jungle-wather too?" ortheris had considered the question in all its bearings. he spoke, chewing his pipe-stem meditatively the while: "go forth, return in glory, to clusium's royal 'ome: an' round these bloomin' temples 'ang the bloomin' shields o' rome. you better go. you ain't like to shoot yourself--not while there's a chanst of liquor. me an' learoyd 'll stay at 'ome an' keep shop--'case o' anythin' turnin' up. but you go out with a gas-pipe gun an' ketch the little peacockses or somethin'. you kin get one day's leave easy as winkin'. go along an' get it, an' get peacockses or somethin'." "jock," said mulvaney, turning to learoyd, who was half asleep under the shadow of the bank. he roused slowly. "sitha, mulvaaney, go," said he. and mulvaney went; cursing his allies with irish fluency and barrack-room point. "take note," said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed in his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling piece in his hand. "take note, jock, an' you orth'ris, i am goin' in the face av my own will--all for to please you. i misdoubt anythin' will come av permiscuous huntin' afther peacockses in a desolit lan'; an' i know that i will lie down an' die wid thirrrst. me catch peacockses for you, ye lazy scutts--an' be sacrificed by the peasanthry--ugh!" he waved a huge paw and went away. at twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed, much begrimed with dirt. "peacockses?" queried ortheris from the safe rest of a barrack-room table whereon he was smoking cross-legged, learoyd fast asleep on a bench. "jock," said mulvaney, without answering, as he stirred up the sleeper. "jock, can ye fight? will ye fight?" very slowly the meaning of the words communicated itself to the half-roused man. he understood--and again--what might these things mean? mulvaney was shaking him savagely. meantime the men in the room howled with delight. there was war in the confederacy at last--war and the breaking of bonds. barrack-room etiquette is stringent. on the direct challenge must follow the direct reply. this is more binding than the ties of tried friendship. once again mulvaney repeated the question. learoyd answered by the only means in his power, and so swiftly that the irishman had barely time to avoid the blow. the laughter around increased. learoyd looked bewilderedly at his friend--himself as greatly bewildered. ortheris dropped from the table because his world was falling. "come outside," said mulvaney, and as the occupants of the barrack-room prepared joyously to follow, he turned and said furiously, "there will be no fight this night--onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. the man that does, follows on." no man moved. the three passed out into the moonlight, learoyd fumbling with the buttons of his coat. the parade-ground was deserted except for the scurrying jackals. mulvaney's impetuous rush carried his companions far into the open ere learoyd attempted to turn round and continue the discussion. "be still now. 'twas my fault for beginnin' things in the middle av an end, jock. i should ha' comminst wid an explanation; but jock, dear, on your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that iver was--betther than fightin' me? considher before ye answer." more than ever puzzled, learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an arm, kicked tentatively, and answered, "ah'm fit." he was accustomed to fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind. they sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and mulvaney untangled himself in mighty words. "followin' your fools' scheme i wint out into the thrackless desert beyond the barricks. an' there i met a pious hindu dhriving a bullock-kyart. i tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted for to convoy me a piece, an' i jumped in"-- "you long, lazy, black-haired swine," drawled ortheris, who would have done the same thing under similar circumstances. "'twas the height av policy. that naygur-man dhruv miles an' miles--as far as the new railway line they're buildin' now back av the tavi river. ''tis a kyart for dhirt only,' says he now an' again timoreously, to get me out av ut. 'dhirt i am,' sez i, 'an' the dhryest that you iver kyarted. dhrive on, me son, an' glory be wid you.' at that i wint to slape, an' took no heed till he pulled up on the embankmmt av the line where the coolies were pilin' mud. there was a matther av two thousand coolies on that line--you remimber that. prisintly a bell rang, an' they throops off to a big pay-shed. 'where's the white man in charge?' sez i to my kyart-dhriver. 'in the shed,' sez he, 'engaged on a riffle,'--'a fwhat?' sez i. 'riffle,' sez he, 'you take ticket. he take money. you get nothin'.--'oho!' sez i, 'that's fwhat the shuperior an' cultivated man calls a raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an' sin. lead on to that raffle, though fwhat the mischief 'tis doin' so far away from uts home--which is the charity-bazaar at christmas, an' the colonel's wife grinnin' behind the tea-table--is more than i know.' wid that i wint to the shed an' found 'twas payday among the coolies. their wages was on a table forninst a big, fine, red buck av a man--sivun fut high, four fut wide, an' three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. he was payin' the coolies fair an' easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud raffle that month, an' each man sez, 'yes,' av course. thin he wud deduct from their wages accordin'. whin all was paid, he filled an ould cigar-box full av gun-wads an' scatthered ut among the coolies. they did not take much joy av that performince, an' small wondher. a man close to me picks up a black gun-wad an' sings out, 'i have ut,'--'good may ut do you.' sez i. the coolie wint forward to this big, fine, red man, who threw a cloth off av the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an' variously bedivilled sedan-chair i iver saw." "sedan-chair! put your 'ead in a bag. that was a palanquin. don't yer know a palanquin when you see it?" said ortheris with great scorn. "i chuse to call ut sedan chair, an' chair ut shall be, little man," continued the irishman. "twas a most amazin' chair--all lined wid pink silk an' fitted wid red silk curtains. 'here ut is,' sez the red man. 'here ut is,' sez the coolie, an' he grinned weakly-ways. 'is ut any use to you?' sez the red man. 'no,' sez the coolie; 'i'd like to make a presint av ut to you.'--'i am graciously pleased to accept that same,' sez the red man; an' at that all the coolies cried aloud in fwhat was mint for cheerful notes, an' wint back to their diggin', lavin' me alone in the shed. the red man saw me, an' his face grew blue on his big, fat neck. 'fwhat d'you want here?' sez he. 'standin'-room an' no more,' sez i, 'onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an' that's manners, ye rafflin' ruffian,' for i was not goin' to have the service throd upon. 'out of this,' sez he. 'i'm in charge av this section av construction.'--'i'm in charge av mesilf,' sez i, 'an' it's like i will stay a while. d'ye raffle much in these parts?'--'fwhat's that to you?' sez he. 'nothin',' sez i, 'but a great dale to you, for begad i'm thinkin' you get the full half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. is ut always raffled so?' i sez, an' wid that i wint to a coolie to ask questions. bhoys, that man's name is dearsley, an' he's been rafflin' that ould sedan-chair monthly this matther av nine months. ivry coolie on the section takes a ticket--or he gives 'em the go--wanst a month on pay-day. ivry coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him, for 'tis too big to carry away, an' he'd sack the man that thried to sell ut. that dearsley has been makin' the rowlin' wealth av roshus by nefarious rafflin'. think av the burnin' shame to the sufferin' coolie-man that the army in injia are bound to protect an' nourish in their bosoms! two thousand coolies defrauded wanst a month!" "dom t' coolies. has't gotten t' cheer, man?" said learoyd. "hould on. havin' onearthed this amazin' an' stupenjus fraud committed by the man dearsley, i hild a council av war; he thryin' all the time to sejuce me into a fight wid opprobrious language. that sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. 'tis a king's chair or a quane's. there's gold on ut an' silk an' all manner av trapesemints. bhoys, 'tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin'--me bein' the ould man--but--anyway he has had ut nine months, an' he dare not make throuble av ut was taken from him. five miles away, or ut may be six"-- there was a long pause, and the jackals howled merrily. learoyd bared one arm, and contemplated it in the moonlight. then he nodded partly to himself and partly to his friends. ortheris wriggled with suppressed emotion. "i thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut," said mulvaney. "i make bould to say as much to the man before. he was for a direct front attack--fut, horse, an' guns--an' all for nothin', seein' that i had no thransport to convey the machine away. 'i will not argue wid you,' sez i, 'this day, but subsequintly, mister dearsley, me rafflin' jool, we talk ut out lengthways. 'tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his hard-earned emolumints, an' by presint informa-shin'--'twas the kyart man that tould me--'ye've been perpethrating that same for nine months. but i'm a just man,' sez i, 'an' over-lookin' the presumpshin that yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust'--at that he turned sky-green, so i knew things was more thrue than tellable--'not come by honust. i'm willin' to compound the felony for this month's winnin's.'" "ah! ho!" from learoyd and ortheris. "that man dearsley's rushin' on his fate," continued mulvaney, solemnly wagging his head. "all hell had no name bad enough for me that tide. faith, he called me a robber! me! that was savin' him from continuin' in his evil ways widout a remonstrince--an' to a man av conscience a remonstrince may change the chune av his life. ''tis not for me to argue,' sez i, 'fwhatever ye are, mister dearsley, but, by my hand, i'll take away the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair.'--'you will have to fight me for ut,' sez he, 'for well i know you will never dare make report to any one.'--'fight i will,' sez i, 'but not this day, for i'm rejuced for want av nourishment.'--'ye're an ould bould hand,' sez he, sizin' me up an' down; 'an' a jool av a fight we will have. eat now an' dhrink, an' go your way.' wid that he gave me some hump an' whisky--good whisky--an' we talked av this an' that the while. 'it goes hard on me now,' sez i, wipin' my mouth, 'to confiscate that piece av furniture, but justice is justice.'--'ye've not got ut yet,' sez he; 'there's the fight between.'--'there is,' sez i, 'an' a good fight. ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my rigimint for the dinner you have given this day.' thin i came hot-foot to you two. hould your tongue, the both. 'tis this way. to-morrow we three will go there an' he shall have his pick betune me an' jock. jock's a deceivin' fighter, for he is all fat to the eye, an' he moves slow. now i'm all beef to the look, an' i move quick. by my reckonin' the dearsley man won't take me; so me an' orth'ris 'll see fair play. jock, i tell you, 'twill be big fightin'--whipped, wid the cream above the jam. afther the business 'twill take a good three av us--jock 'll be very hurt--to haul away that sedan-chair." "palanquin." this from ortheris. "fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. tis the only sellin' piece av property widin reach that we can get so cheap. an' fwhat's a fight afther all? he has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. we rob him honust for the sake av the whisky he gave me." "but wot'll we do with the bloomin' article when we've got it? them palanquins are as big as 'ouses, an' uncommon 'ard to sell, as mccleary said when ye stole the sentry-box from the curragh." "who's goin' to do t' fightin'?" said learoyd, and ortheris subsided. the three returned to barracks without a word. mulvaney's last argument clinched the matter. this palanquin was property, vendible, and to be attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. it would eventually become beer. great was mulvaney. next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. learoyd alone was without care, for mulvaney dived darkly into the future, and little ortheris feared the unknown, what befell at that interview in the lonely pay-shed by the side of the half-built embankment, only a few hundred coolies know, and their tale is a confusing one, running thus-- "we were at work. three men in red coats came. they saw the sahib--dearsley sahib. they made oration; and noticeably the small man among the red-coats. dearsley sahib also made oration, and used many very strong words, upon this talk they departed together to an open space, and there the fat man in the red coat fought with dearsley sahib after the custom of white men--with his hands, making no noise, and never at all pulling dearsley sahib's hair. such of us as were not afraid beheld these things for just so long a time as a man needs to cook the midday meal. the small man in the red coat had possessed himself of dearsley sahib's watch. no, he did not steal that watch. he held it in his hand, and at certain seasons made outcry, and the twain ceased their combat, which was like the combat of young bulls in spring. both men were soon all red, but dearsley sahib was much more red than the other. seeing this, and fearing for his life--because we greatly loved him--some fifty of us made shift to rush upon the red-coats. but a certain man--very black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused with the small man, or the fat man who fought--that man, we affirm, ran upon us, and of us he embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our heads together, so that our livers turned to water, and we ran away. it is not good to interfere in the fightings of white men. after that dearsley sahib fell and did not rise, these men jumped upon his stomach and despoiled him of all his money, and attempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed. is it true that dearsley sahib makes no complaint of these latter things having been done? we were senseless with fear, and do not at all remember. there was no palanquin near the pay-shed. what do we know about palanquins? is it true that dearsley sahib does not return to this place, on account of his sickness, for ten days? this is the fault of those bad men in the red coats, who should be severely punished; for dearsley sahib is both our father and mother, and we love him much. yet, if dearsley sahib does not return to this place at all, we will speak the truth. there was a palanquin, for the up-keep of which we were forced to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. on such mulctings dearsley sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before the palanquin. what could we do? we were poor men. he took a full half of our wages. will the government repay us those moneys? those three men in red coats bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and departed. all the money that dearsley sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that palanquin. therefore they stole it. thousands of rupees were there--all our money. it was our bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to dearsley sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. why does the white man look upon us with the eye of disfavor? before god, there was a palanquin, and now there is no palanquin; and if they send the police here to make inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin. why should a palanquin be near these works? we are poor men, and we know nothing." such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the descent upon dearsley. from the lips of the coolies i received it. dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and mulvaney preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of the lips. he had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech was taken from him. i respected that reserve until, three days after the affair, i discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of unchastened splendor--evidently in past days the litter of a queen. the pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich with the painted _papier-maché_ of cashmere. the shoulder-pads were of yellow silk. the panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all the gods and goddesses of the hindu pantheon--lacquer on cedar. the cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent jaipur enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. the cushions were of brocaded delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's palace were stiff with gold. closer investigation showed that the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discolored by time and wear; but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the threshold of a royal zenana. i found no fault with it, except that it was in my stable. then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder-pole, i laughed. the road from dearsley's pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment. still i did not quite recognize the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a "fence" for stolen property. "i'm askin' you to warehouse ut," said mulvaney when he was brought to consider the question. "there's no steal in ut. dearsley tould us we cud have ut if we fought. jock fought--an', oh, sorr, when the throuble was at uts finest an' jock was bleedin' like a stuck pig, an' little orth'ris was shquealin' on one leg chewin' big bites out av dearsley's watch, i wud ha' given my place at the fight to have had you see wan round. he tuk jock, as i suspicioned he would, an' jock was deceptive. nine roun's they were even matched, an' at the tenth--about that palanquin now, there's not the least throuble in the world, or we wud not ha' brought ut here. you will ondherstand that the queen--god bless her!--does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an' palanquins an' sich in barricks. afther we had dhragged ut down from dearsley's through that cruel scrub that near broke orth'ris's heart, we set ut in the ravine for a night; an' a thief av a porcupine an' a civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin'. i put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the natural abidin' place av all the vermin in cantonmints? we brought ut to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. do not let your conscience prick. think av the rejoicin' men in the pay-shed yonder--lookin' at dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel--an' well knowin' that they can dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for riffles. indirectly, sorr, you have rescued from an onprincipled son av a night-hawk the peasanthry av a numerous village. an' besides, will i let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? not i. tis not every day a piece av pure joolry comes into the market. there's not a king widin these forty miles"--he waved his hand round the dusty horizon--"not a king wud not be glad to buy ut. some day meself, whin i have leisure, i'll take ut up along the road an' dishpose av ut." "how?" said i, for i knew the man was capable of anything. "get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open through the curtains. whin i see a likely man av the native persuasion, i will descind blushin' from my canopy and say, 'buy a palanquin, ye black scutt?' i will have to hire four men to carry me first, though; and that's impossible till next pay-day." curiously enough, learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in the winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was altogether disposed to undervalue it, while ortheris openly said it would be better to break the thing up. dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided man, capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of setting in motion the machinery of the civil law--a thing much abhorred by the soldier. under any circumstances their fun had come and passed; the next pay-day was close at hand, when there would be beer for all. wherefore longer conserve the painted palanquin? "a first-class rifle-shot an' a good little man av your inches you are," said mulvaney. "but you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. 'tis me has to lie awake av nights schamin' an' plottin' for the three av us. orth'ris, me son, 'tis no matther av a few gallons av beer--no, nor twenty gallons--but tubs an' vats an' firkins in that sedan-chair. who ut was, an' what ut was, an' how ut got there, we do not know; but i know in my bones that you an' me an' jock wid his sprained thumb will get a fortune thereby. lave me alone, an' let me think." meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the key of which was in mulvaney's hands. pay-day came, and with it beer. it was not in experience to hope that mulvaney, dried by four weeks' drought, would avoid excess. next morning he and the palanquin had disappeared. he had taken the precaution of getting three days' leave "to see a friend on the railway," and the colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hoping it would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully gave him all he demanded. at this point mulvaney's history, as recorded in the mess-room, stopped. ortheris carried it not much further. "no, 'e wasn't drunk," said the little man loyally, "the liquor was no more than feelin' its way round inside of 'im; but 'e went an' filled that 'ole bloomin' palanquin with bottles 'fore 'e went off. 'e's gone an' 'ired six men to carry 'im, an' i 'ad to 'elp 'im into 'is nupshal couch, 'cause 'e wouldn't 'ear reason. 'e's gone off in 'is shirt an' trousies, swearin' tremenjus--gone down the road in the palanquin, wavin' 'is legs out o' windy." "yes," said i, "but where?" "now you arx me a question. 'e said 'e was goin' to sell that palanquin, but from observations what happened when i was stuffin' 'im through the door, i fancy 'e's gone to the new embankment to mock at dearsley. 'soon as jock's off duty i'm goin' there to see if 'e's safe--not mulvaney, but t'other man. my saints, but i pity 'im as 'elps terence out o' the palanquin when 'e's once fair drunk!" "he'll come back without harm," i said. "'corse 'e will. on'y question is, what 'll 'e be doin' on the road? killing dearsley, like as not. 'e shouldn't 'a gone without jock or me." reinforced by learoyd, ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang. dearsley's head was still embellished with towels. mulvaney, drunk or sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and dearsley indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated brave. "i had my pick o' you two," he explained to learoyd, "and you got my palanquin--not before i'd made my profit on it. why'd i do harm when everything's settled? your man _did_ come here--drunk as davy's sow on a frosty night--came a-purpose to mock me--stuck his head out of the door an' called me a crucified hodman. i made him drunker, an' sent him along. but i never touched him." to these things learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity, answered only, "if owt comes to mulvaaney 'long o' you, i'll gripple you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an' i'll draw t' throat twistyways, man. see there now." the embassy removed itself, and dearsley, the battered, laughed alone over his supper that evening. three days passed--a fourth and a fifth. the week drew to a close and mulvaney did not return. he, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants, had vanished into air. a very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to travel along the ways without comment. yet no man of all the country round had seen any such wonder. he was, and he was not; and learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of dearsley as a sacrifice to his ghost. ortheris insisted that all was well, and in the light of past experience his hopes seemed reasonable. "when mulvaney goes up the road," said he, "'e's like to go a very long ways up, specially when 'e's so blue drunk as 'e is now. but what gits me is 'is not bein' 'eard of pullin' wool off the niggers somewheres about. that don't look good. the drink must ha' died out in 'im by this, unless e's broke a bank, an' then--why don't 'e come back? 'e didn't ought to ha' gone off without us." even ortheris's heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the regiment were out scouring the countryside, and learoyd had been forced to fight two men who hinted openly that mulvaney had deserted. to do him justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward by his much-trusted adjutant. "mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would," said he. "no; he's either fallen into a mischief among the villagers--and yet that isn't likely, for he'd blarney himself out of the pit; or else he is engaged on urgent private affairs--some stupendous devilment that we shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms. the worst of it is that i shall have to give him twenty-eight days' confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when i most want him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. i never knew a man who could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as mulvaney can. how does he do it?" "with blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir," said the adjutant. "he is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with an irish draft, and the london lads seem to adore him. the worst of it is that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to bind till he comes out again. i believe ortheris preaches mutiny on those occasions, and i know that the mere presence of learoyd mourning for mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room, the sergeants tell me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. they are a queer gang." "for all that, i wish we had a few more of them. i like a well-conducted regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young slouchers from the depôt worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue. they don't seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and prowl round the married quarters. i believe i'd forgive that old villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that i could in decency accept." "not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir," said the adjutant. "mulvaney's explanations are only one degree less wonderful than his performances. they say that when he was in the black tyrone, before he came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the liffey trying to sell his colonel's charger to a donegal dealer as a perfect lady's hack. shackbolt commanded the tyrone then." "shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping war-horses answering to that description. he used to buy unbacked devils, and tame them on some pet theory of starvation. what did mulvaney say?" "that he was a member of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, anxious to 'sell the poor baste where he would get something to fill out his dimples.' shackbolt laughed, but i fancy that was why mulvaney exchanged to ours." "i wish he were back," said the colonel; "for i like him and believe he likes me." that evening, to cheer our souls, learoyd, ortheris, and i went into the waste to smoke out a porcupine. all the dogs attended, but even their clamor--and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before they left cantonments--could not take us out of ourselves. a large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted camel-thorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping devils. the smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent of dried roses and water. our fire once started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earths and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter. "this," said ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation of it all, "this is sanguinary. this is unusually sanguinary. sort o' mad country. like a grate when the fire's put out by the sun." he shaded his eyes against the moonlight. "an' there's a loony dancin' in the middle of it all. quite right. i'd dance too if i wasn't so downheart." there pranced a portent in the face of the moon--a huge and ragged spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. it had risen out of the earth; it was coming toward us, and its outline was never twice the same. the toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature wore, took a hundred shapes. once it stopped on a neighboring mound and flung all its legs and arms to the winds. "my, but that scarecrow 'as got 'em bad!" said ortheris. "seems like if 'e comes any furder we'll 'ave to argify with 'im." learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the wallow. and as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave tongue to the stars. "mulvaaney! mulvaaney! a-hoo!" oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow, till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! then learoyd and ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both swallowing a lump in the throat. "you damned fool!" said they, and severally pounded him with their fists. "go easy!" he answered; wrapping a huge arm around each. "i would have you to know that i am a god, to be treated as such--tho', by my faith, i fancy i've got to go to the guardroom just like a privit soldier." the latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the former. any one would have been justified in regarding mulvaney as mad. he was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off him. but he wore one wondrous garment--a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heel--of pale pink silk, wrought all over in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the hindu gods. the monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the fire as he settled the folds round him. ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while i was trying to remember where i had seen it before. then he screamed, "what _'ave_ you done with the palanquin? you're wearin' the linin'." "i am," said the irishman, "an' by the same token the 'broidery is scrapin' my hide off. i've lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four days. me son, i begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use, widout me boots, an' me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl's leg at a dance, i begin to feel like a naygur-man--all fearful an' timoreous. give me a pipe an' i'll tell on." he lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and fro in a gale of laughter. "mulvaney," said ortheris sternly, "'tain't no time for laughin'. you've given jock an' me more trouble than you're worth. you 'ave been absent without leave an' you'll go into cells for that; an' you 'ave come back disgustin'ly dressed an' most improper in the linin' o' that bloomin' palanquin, instid of which you laugh. an' we thought you was dead all the time." "bhoys," said the culprit, still shaking gently, "whin i've done my tale you may cry if you like, an' little orth'ris here can thrample my inside out. ha' done an' listen. my performinces have been stupenjus: my luck has been the blessed luck av the british army--an' there's no betther than that. i went out dhrunk an' dhrinkin' in the palanquin, and i have come back a pink god. did any of you go to dearsley afther my time was up? he was at the bottom of ut all." "ah said so," murmured learoyd. "tomorrow ah'll smash t' face in upon his heead." "ye will not. dearsley's a jool av a man. afther ortheris had put me into the palanquin an' the six bearer-men were gruntin' down the road, i tuk thought to mock dearsley for that fight. so i tould thim, 'go to the embankmint,' and there, bein' most amazin' full, i shtuck my head out av the concern an' passed compliments wid dearsley. i must ha' miscalled him outrageous, for whin i am that way the power av the tongue comes on me. i can bare remimber tellin' him that his mouth opened endways like the mouth av a skate, which was thrue afther learoyd had handled ut; an' i clear remimber his takin' no manner nor matter av offence, but givin' me a big dhrink of beer. twas the beer did the thrick, for i crawled back into the palanquin, steppin' on me right ear wid me left foot, an' thin slept like the dead. wanst i half-roused, an' begad the noise in my head was tremenjus--roarin' and rattlin' an' poundin', such as was quite new to me. 'mother av mercy,' thinks i, 'phwat a concertina i will have on my shoulders whin i wake!' an' wid that i curls mysilf up to sleep before ut should get hould on me. bhoys, that noise was not dhrink, 'twas the rattle av a thrain!" there followed an impressive pause. "yes, he had put me on a thrain--put me, palanquin an' all, an' six black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence, on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin' an' bowlin' along to benares. glory be that i did not wake up thin an' introjuce mysilf to the coolies. as i was sayin', i slept for the betther part av a day an' a night. but remimber you, that that man dearsley had packed me off on wan av his material-thrains to benares, all for to make me overstay my leave an' get me into the cells." the explanation was an eminently rational one. benares lay at least ten hours by rail from the cantonments, and nothing in the world could have saved mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the apparel of his orgies. dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge. learoyd, drawing back a little, began to place soft blows over selected portions of mulvaney's body. his thoughts were away on the embankment, and they meditated evil for dearsley. mulvaney continued-- "whin i was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, i suspicioned, for i cud hear people passin' an' talkin'. but i knew well i was far from home. there is a queer smell upon our cantonments--a smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable-litter. this place smelt marigold flowers an' bad water, an' wanst somethin' alive came an' blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. 'it's in a village i am,' thinks i to myself, 'an' the parochial buffalo is investigatin' the palanquin.' but anyways i had no desire to move. only lie still whin you're in foreign parts an' the standin' luck av the british army will carry ye through. that is an epigram. i made ut. "thin a lot av whishperin' divils surrounded the palanquin. 'take ut up,' sez wan man. 'but who'll pay us?' sez another. 'the maharanee's minister, av coorse,' sez the man. 'oho!' sez i to mysilf, 'i'm a quane in me own right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. i'll be an emperor if i lie still long enough; but this is no village i've found.' i lay quiet, but i gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an' i saw that the whole street was crammed wid palanquins an' horses, an' a sprinklin' av naked priests all yellow powder an' tigers' tails. but i may tell you, orth'ris, an' you, learoyd, that av all the palanquins ours was the most imperial an' magnificent now a palanquin means a native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the quane happens to be takin' a ride. 'women an' priests!' sez i. 'your father's son is in the right pew this time, terence. there will be proceedin's. six black divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an' oh! but the rowlin' an' the rockin' made me sick. thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins--not more than fifty av them--an' we grated an' bumped like queenstown potato-smacks in a runnin' tide. i cud hear the women gigglin' and squirkin' in their palanquins, but mine was the royal equipage. they made way for ut, an', begad, the pink muslin men o' mine were howlin', 'room for the maharanee av gokral-seetarun.' do you know aught av the lady, sorr?" "yes," said i, "she is a very estimable old queen of the central indian states, and they say she is fat. how on earth could she go to benares without all the city knowing her palanquin?" "'twas the eternal foolishness av the naygur-man. they saw the palanquin lying loneful an' forlornsome, an' the beauty av ut, after dearsley's men had dhropped ut and gone away, an' they gave ut the best name that occurred to thim. quite right too. for aught we know the ould lady was travelin' _incog_--like me. i'm glad to hear she's fat. i was no light weight mysilf, an' my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a great big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the most improper carvin's an' cuttin's i iver saw. begad! they made me blush--like a--like a maharanee." "the temple of prithi-devi," i murmured, remembering the monstrous horrors of that sculptured archway at benares. "pretty devilskins, savin' your presence, sorr! there was nothin' pretty about ut, except me. twas all half dhark, an' whin the coolies left they shut a big black gate behind av us, an' half a company av fat yellow priests began pully-haulin' the palanquins into a dharker place yet--a big stone hall full av pillars, an' gods, an' incense, an' all manner av similar thruck. the gate disconcerted me, for i perceived i wud have to go forward to get out, my retreat bein' cut off. by the same token a good priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. begad! they nearly turned me inside out draggin' the palanquin to the temple. now the disposishin av the forces inside was this way. the maharanee av gokral-seetarun--that was me--lay by the favor av providence on the far left flank behind the dhark av a pillar carved with elephints' heads, the remainder av the palanquins was in a big half circle facing in to the biggest, fattest, an' most amazin' she-god that iver i dreamed av. her head ran up into the black above us, an' her feet stuck out in the light av a little fire av melted butter that a priest was feedin' out av a butter-dish. thin a man began to sing an' play on somethin' back in the dhark, an' 'twas a queer song. ut made my hair lift on the back av my neck, thin the doors av all the palanquins slid back, an' the women bundled out, i saw what i'll niver see again. twas more glorious than transformations at a pantomime, for they was in pink an' blue an' silver an' red an' grass green, wid di'monds an' im'ralds an' great red rubies all over thim. but that was the least part av the glory. o bhoys, they were more lovely than the like av any loveliness in hiven; ay, their little bare feet were better than the white hands av a lord's lady, an' their mouths were like puckered roses, an' their eyes were bigger an' dharker than the eyes av any livin' women i've seen. ye may laugh, but i'm speakin' truth. i niver saw the like, an' niver i will again." "seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and daughters of most of the kings of india, the chances are that you won't," i said, for it was dawning on me that mulvaney had stumbled upon a big queens' praying at benares. "i niver will," he said, mournfully. "that sight doesn't come twist to any man. it made me ashamed to watch. a fat priest knocked at my door. i didn't think he'd have the insolince to disturb the maharanee av gokral-seetarun, so i lay still. 'the old cow's asleep,' sez he to another. 'let her be,' sez that. ''twill be long before she has a calf!' i might ha' known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in injia--an' for matter o' that in england too--is childher. that made me more sorry i'd come, me bein', as you well know, a childless man." he was silent for a moment, thinking of his little son, dead many years ago. "they prayed, an' the butter-fires blazed up an' the incense turned everything blue, an' between that an' the fires the women looked as tho' they were all ablaze an' twinklin'. they took hold av the she-god's knees, they cried out an' they threw themselves about, an' that world-without-end-amen music was dhrivin' thim mad. mother av hiven! how they cried, an' the ould she-god grinnin' above thim all so scornful! the dhrink was dyin' out in me fast, an' i was thinkin' harder than the thoughts wud go through my head-thinkin' how to get out, an' all manner of nonsense as well. the women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond belts clickin', an' the tears runnin' out betune their hands, an' the lights were goin' lower an' dharker. thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from the roof, an' that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an' at the end where my foot was, stood the livin' spit an' image o' mysilf worked on the linin'. this man here, ut was." he hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand under one, and thrust into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god krishna, playing on a flute. the heavy jowl, the staring eye, and the blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to mulvaney. "the blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin, i believe i was mad too. i slid the off-shutter open an' rowled out into the dhark behind the elephint-head pillar, tucked up my trousies to my knees, slipped off my boots an' tuk a general hould av all the pink linin' av the palanquin. glory be, ut ripped out like a woman's dhriss whin you tread on ut at a sergeants' ball, an' a bottle came with ut. i tuk the bottle an' the next minut i was out av the dhark av the pillar, the pink linin' wrapped round me most graceful, the music, thunderin' like kettledrums, an' a could draft blowin' round my bare legs. by this hand that did ut, i was khrishna tootlin' on the flute--the god that the rig'mental chaplain talks about. a sweet sight i must ha' looked. i knew my eyes were big, and my face was wax-white, an' at the worst i must ha' looked like a ghost. but they took me for the livin' god. the music stopped, and the women were dead dumb an' i crooked my legs like a shepherd on a china basin, an' i did the ghost-waggle with my feet as i had done ut at the rig'mental theatre many times, an' i slid acrost the width av that temple in front av the she-god tootlin' on the beer bottle." "wot did you toot?" demanded ortheris the practical. "me? oh!" mulvaney sprang up, suiting the action to the word, and sliding gravely in front of us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the half light. "i sang-- "only say you'll be mrs. brallaghan. don't say nay, charmin' judy callaghan." i didn't know me own voice when i sang. an' oh! 'twas pitiful to see the women. the darlin's were down on their faces. whin i passed the last wan i cud see her poor little fingers workin' one in another as if she wanted to touch my feet. so i dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over her head for the greater honor, an' i slid into the dhark on the other side av the temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. all i wanted was to get away clear. so i tak him by his greasy throat an' shut the speech out av him, 'out!' sez i. 'which way, ye fat heathen?'--'oh!' sez he. 'man,' sez i. 'white man, soldier man, common soldier man. where in the name av confusion is the back door?' the women in the temple were still on their faces, an' a young priest was holdin' out his arms above their heads. "'this way,' sez my fat friend, duckin' behind a big bull-god an' divin' into a passage, thin i remimbered that i must ha' made the miraculous reputation av that temple for the next fifty years. 'not so fast,' i sez, an' i held out both my hands wid a wink. that ould thief smiled like a father. i tuk him by the back av the neck in case he should be wishful to put a knife into me unbeknownst, an' i ran him up an' down the passage twice to collect his sensibilities! 'be quiet,' sez he, in english. 'now you talk sense,' i sez. 'fwhat'll you give me for the use av that most iligant palanquin i have no time to take away?'--'don't tell,' sez he, 'is ut like?' sez i, 'but ye might give me my railway fare. i'm far from my home an' i've done you a service.' bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. the ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. as i will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till i could hould no more." "you lie!" said ortheris. "you're mad or sunstrook. a native don't give coin unless you cut it out o' 'im. 'tain't nature." "then my lie an' my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod yonder," retorted mulvaney, unruffled, nodding across the scrub. "an' there's a dale more in nature than your squidgy little legs have iver taken you to, orth'ris, me son. four hundred an' thirty-four rupees by my reckoning _an'_ a big fat gold necklace that i took from him as a remimbrancer, was our share in that business." "an' 'e give it you for love?" said ortheris. "we were alone in that passage. maybe i was a trifle too pressin', but considher fwhat i had done for the good av the temple and the iverlastin' joy av those women. twas cheap at the price. i wud ha' taken more if i cud ha' found ut. i turned the ould man upside down at the last, but he was milked dhry. thin he opened a door in another passage an' i found mysilf up to my knees in benares river-water, an' bad smellin' ut is. more by token i had come out on the river-line close to the burnin' ghat and contagious to a cracklin' corpse. this was in the heart av the night, for i had been four hours in the temple. there was a crowd av boats tied up, so i tuk wan an' wint across the river, thin i came home acrost country, lyin' up by day." "how on earth did you manage?" i said. "how did sir frederick roberts get from cabul to candahar? he marched an' he niver tould how near he was to breakin' down. that's why he is fwhat he is. an' now"--mulvaney yawned portentously, "now i will go an' give myself up for absince widout leave. it's eight an' twenty days an' the rough end of the colonel's tongue in orderly room, any way you look at ut. but 'tis cheap at the price." "mulvaney," said i, softly. "if there happens to be any sort of excuse that the colonel can in any way accept, i have a notion that you'll get nothing more than the dressing-down, the new recruits are in, and"-- "not a word more, sorr. is ut excuses the old man wants? tis not my way, but he shall have thim. i'll tell him i was engaged in financial operations connected wid a church," and he flapped his way to cantonments and the cells, singing lustily-- "so they sent a corp'ril's file, and they put me in the gyard-room for conduck unbecomin' of a soldier." and when he was lost in the midst of the moonlight we could hear the refrain-- "bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals, as we go marchin' along, boys, oh! for although in this campaign there's no whisky nor champagne, we'll keep our spirits goin' with a song, boys!" therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard, and was made much of by his fellows. but to the colonel he said that he had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager's cot for untold hours; and between laughter and good-will the affair was smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to "fear god, honor the queen, shoot straight, and keep clean." his majesty the king "where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him--what doest thou?" "yeth! and chimo to sleep at ve foot of ve bed, and ve pink pikky-book, and ve bwead--'cause i will be hungwy in ve night--and vat's all, miss biddums. and now give me one kiss and i'll go to sleep.--so! kite quiet. ow! ve pink pikky-book has slidded under ve pillow and ve bwead is cwumbling! miss biddums! miss _bid_dums! i'm _so_ uncomfy! come and tuck me up, miss biddums." his majesty the king was going to bed; and poor, patient miss biddums, who had advertised herself humbly as a "young person, european, accustomed to the care of little children," was forced to wait upon his royal caprices. the going to bed was always a lengthy process, because his majesty had a convenient knack of forgetting which of his many friends, from the _mehter's_ son to the commissioner's daughter, he had prayed for, and, lest the deity should take offence, was used to toil through his little prayers, in all reverence, five times in one evening. his majesty the king believed in the efficacy of prayer as devoutly as he believed in chimo the patient spaniel, or miss biddums, who could reach him down his gun--"with cursuffun caps--_reel_ ones"--from the upper shelves of the big nursery cupboard. at the door of the nursery his authority stopped. beyond lay the empire of his father and mother--two very terrible people who had no time to waste upon his majesty the king. his voice was lowered when he passed the frontier of his own dominions, his actions were fettered, and his soul was filled with awe because of the grim man who lived among a wilderness of pigeon-holes and the most fascinating pieces of red tape, and the wonderful woman who was always getting into or stepping out of the big carriage. to the one belonged the mysteries of the "_duftar_-room"; to the other the great, reflected wilderness of the "memsahib's room" where the shiny, scented dresses hung on pegs, miles and miles up in the air, and the just-seen plateau of the toilet-table revealed an acreage of speckly combs, broidered "hanafitch bags," and "white-headed" brushes. there was no room for his majesty the king either in official reserve or mundane gorgeousness. he had discovered that, ages and ages ago--before even chimo came to the house, or miss biddums had ceased grizzling over a packet of greasy letters which appeared to be her chief treasure on earth. his majesty the king, therefore, wisely confined himself to his own territories, where only miss biddums, and she feebly, disputed his sway. from miss biddums he had picked up his simple theology and welded it to the legends of gods and devils that he had learned in the servants' quarters. to miss biddums he confided with equal trust his tattered garments and his more serious griefs. she would make everything whole. she knew exactly how the earth had been born, and had reassured the trembling soul of his majesty the king that terrible time in july when it rained continuously for seven days and seven nights, and--there was no ark ready and all the ravens had flown away! she was the most powerful person with whom he was brought into contact--always excepting the two remote and silent people beyond the nursery door. how was his majesty the king to know that, six years ago, in the summer of his birth, mrs. austell, turning over her husband's papers, had come upon the intemperate letter of a foolish woman who had been carried away by the silent man's strength and personal beauty? how could he tell what evil the overlooked slip of note-paper had wrought in the mind of a desperately jealous wife? how could he, despite his wisdom, guess that his mother had chosen to make of it excuse for a bar and a division between herself and her husband, that strengthened and grew harder to break with each year; that she, having unearthed this skeleton in the cupboard, had trained it into a household god which should be about their path and about their bed, and poison all their ways? these things were beyond the province of his majesty the king. he only knew that his father was daily absorbed in some mysterious work for a thing called the _sirkar_ and that his mother was the victim alternately of the _nautch_ and the _burrakhana_. to these entertainments she was escorted by a captain-man for whom his majesty the king had no regard. "he _doesn't_ laugh," he argued with miss biddums, who would fain have taught him charity. "he only makes faces wiv his mouf, and when he wants to o-muse me i am _not_ o-mused." and his majesty the king shook his head as one who knew the deceitfulness of this world. morning and evening it was his duty to salute his father and mother--the former with a grave shake of the hand, and the latter with an equally grave kiss. once, indeed, he had put his arms round his mother's neck, in the fashion he used toward miss biddums. the openwork of his sleeve-edge caught in an earring, and the last stage of his majesty's little overture was a suppressed scream and summary dismissal to the nursery. "it's w'ong," thought his majesty the king, "to hug memsahibs wiv fings in veir ears. i will amember." he never repeated the experiment. miss biddums, it must be confessed, spoiled him as much as his nature admitted, in some sort of recompense for what she called "the hard ways of his papa and mamma." she, like her charge, knew nothing of the trouble between man and wife--the savage contempt for a woman's stupidity on the one side, or the dull, rankling anger on the other. miss biddums had looked after many little children in her time, and served in many establishments. being a discreet woman, she observed little and said less, and, when her pupils went over the sea to the great unknown which she, with touching confidence in her hearers, called "home," packed up her slender belongings and sought for employment afresh, lavishing all her love on each successive batch of ingrates. only his majesty the king had repaid her affection with interest; and in his uncomprehending ears she had told the tale of nearly all her hopes, her aspirations, the hopes that were dead, and the dazzling glories of her ancestral home in "_cal_cutta, close to wellington square." everything above the average was in the eyes of his majesty the king "calcutta good." when miss biddums had crossed his royal will, he reversed the epithet to vex that estimable lady, and all things evil were, until the tears of repentance swept away spite, "calcutta bad." now and again miss biddums begged for him the rare pleasure of a day in the society of the commissioner's child--the wilful four-year-old patsie, who, to the intense amazement of his majesty the king, was idolized by her parents. on thinking the question out at length, by roads unknown to those who have left childhood behind, he came to the conclusion that patsie was petted because she wore a big blue sash and yellow hair. this precious discovery he kept to himself. the yellow hair was absolutely beyond his power, his own tousled wig being potato-brown; but something might be done toward the blue sash. he tied a large knot in his mosquito-curtains in order to remember to consult patsie on their next meeting. she was the only child he had ever spoken to, and almost the only one that he had ever seen. the little memory and the very large and ragged knot held good. "patsie, lend me your blue wiband," said his majesty the king. "you'll bewy it," said patsie, doubtfully, mindful of certain fearful atrocities committed on her doll. "no, i won't--twoofanhonor. it's for me to wear." "pooh!" said patsie. "boys don't wear sa-ashes. zey's only for dirls." "i didn't know." the face of his majesty the king fell. "who wants ribands? are you playing horses, chickabiddies?" said the commissioner's wife, stepping into the veranda. "toby wanted my sash," explained patsie. "i don't now," said his majesty the king, hastily, feeling that with one of these terrible "grown-ups" his poor little secret would be shamelessly wrenched from him, and perhaps--most burning desecration of all--laughed at. "i'll give you a cracker-cap," said the commissioner's wife. "come along with me, toby, and we'll choose it." the cracker-cap was a stiff, three-pointed vermilion-and-tinsel splendor. his majesty the king fitted it on his royal brow. the commissioner's wife had a face that children instinctively trusted, and her action, as she adjusted the toppling middle spike, was tender. "will it do as well?" stammered his majesty the king. "as what, little one?" "as ve wiban?" "oh, quite. go and look at yourself in the glass." the words were spoken in all sincerity and to help forward any absurd "dressing-up" amusement that the children might take into their minds. but the young savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. his majesty the king swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw his head crowned with the staring horror of a fool's cap--a thing which his father would rend to pieces if it ever came into his office. he plucked it off, and burst into tears. "toby," said the commissioner's wife, gravely, "you shouldn't give way to temper. i am very sorry to see it. it's wrong." his majesty the king sobbed inconsolably, and the heart of patsie's mother was touched. she drew the child on to her knee. clearly it was not temper alone. "what is it, toby? won't you tell me? aren't you well?" the torrent of sobs and speech met, and fought for a time, with chokings and gulpings and gasps. then, in a sudden rush, his majesty the king was delivered of a few inarticulate sounds, followed by the words:--"go a--way you--dirty--little debbil!" "toby! what do you mean?" "it's what he'd say. i _know_ it is! he said vat when vere was only a little, little eggy mess, on my t-t-unic; and he'd say it again, and laugh, if i went in wif vat on my head." "who would say that?" "m-m-my papa! and i fought if i had ve blue wiban, he'd let me play in ve waste-paper basket under ve table." "_what_ blue riband, childie?" "ve same vat patsie had--ve big blue wiban w-w-wound my t-ttummy!" "what is it, toby? there's something on your mind. tell me all about it, and perhaps i can help." "isn't anyfing," sniffed his majesty, mindful of his manhood, and raising his head from the motherly bosom upon which it was resting. "i only fought vat you--you petted patsie 'cause she had ve blue wiban, and--and if i'd had ve blue wiban too, m-my papa w-would pet me." the secret was out, and his majesty the king sobbed bitterly in spite of the arms round him, and the murmur of comfort on his heated little forehead. enter patsie tumultuously, embarrassed by several lengths of the commissioner's pet _mahseer_-rod. "tum along, toby! zere's a _chu-chu_ lizard in _ze chick_, and i've told chimo to watch him till we turn. if we poke him wiz zis his tail will go _wiggle-wiggle_ and fall off. tum along! i can't weach." "i'm comin'," said his majesty the king, climbing down from the commissioner's wife's knee after a hasty kiss. two minutes later, the _chu-chu_ lizard's tail was wriggling on the matting of the veranda, and the children were gravely poking it with splinters from the _chick_, to urge its exhausted vitality into "just one wiggle more, 'cause it doesn't hurt _chu-chu_." the commissioner's wife stood in the doorway and watched:--"poor little mite! a blue sash ... and my own precious patsie! i wonder if the best of us, or we who love them best, ever understand what goes on in their topsy-turvy little heads." a big tear splashed on the commissioner's wife's wedding-ring, and she went indoors to devise a tea for the benefit of his majesty the king. "their souls aren't in their tummies at that age in this climate," said the commissioner's wife, "but they are not far off. i wonder if i could make mrs. austell understand. poor little fellow!" with simple craft, the commissioner's wife called on mrs. austell and spoke long and lovingly about children; inquiring specially for his majesty the king. "he's with his governess," said mrs. austell, and the tone intimated that she was not interested. the commissioner's wife, unskilled in the art of war, continued her questionings. "i don't know," said mrs. austell. "these things are left to miss biddums, and, of course, she does not ill-treat the child." the commissioner's wife left hastily. the last sentence jarred upon her nerves. "doesn't _ill-treat_ the child! as if that were all! i wonder what tom would say if i only 'didn't ill-treat' patsie!" thenceforward, his majesty the king was an honored guest at the commissioner's house, and the chosen friend of patsie, with whom he blundered into as many scrapes as the compound and the servants' quarters afforded. patsie's mamma was always ready to give counsel, help, and sympathy, and, if need were and callers few, to enter into their games with an _abandon_ that would have shocked the sleek-haired subalterns who squirmed painfully in their chairs when they came to call on her whom they profanely nicknamed "mother bunch." yet, in spite of patsie and patsie's mamma, and the love that these two lavished upon him, his majesty the king fell grievously from grace, and committed no less a sin than that of theft--unknown, it is true, but burdensome. there came a man to the door one day, when his majesty was playing in the hall and the bearer had gone to dinner, with a packet for his majesty's mamma. and he put it upon the hall-table, said that there was no answer, and departed. presently, the pattern of the dado ceased to interest his majesty, while the packet, a white, neatly wrapped one of fascinating shape, interested him very much indeed. his mamma was out, so was miss biddums, and there was pink string round the packet. he greatly desired pink string. it would help him in many of his little businesses--the haulage across the floor of his small cane-chair, the torturing of chimo, who could never understand harness--and so forth. if he took the string it would be his own, and nobody would be any the wiser. he certainly could not pluck up sufficient courage to ask mamma for it. wherefore, mounting upon a chair, he carefully untied the string and, behold, the stiff white paper spread out in four directions, and revealed a beautiful little leather box with gold lines upon it! he tried to replace the string, but that was a failure. so he opened the box to get full satisfaction for his iniquity, and saw a most beautiful star that shone and winked, and was altogether lovely and desirable. "vat," said his majesty, meditatively, "is a 'parkle cwown, like what i will wear when i go to heaven. i will wear it on my head--miss biddums says so. i would like to wear it _now_. i would like to play wiv it. i will take it away and play wiv it, very careful, until mamma asks for it. i fink it was bought for me to play wiv--same as my cart." his majesty the king was arguing against his conscience, and he knew it, for he thought immediately after: "never mind. i will keep it to play wiv until mamma says where is it, and then i will say:--'i tookt it and i am sorry.' i will not hurt it because it is a 'parkle cwown. but miss biddums will tell me to put it back. i will not show it to miss biddums." if mamma had come in at that moment all would have gone well. she did not, and his majesty the king stuffed paper, case, and jewel into the breast of his blouse and marched to the nursery. "when mamma asks i will tell," was the salve that he laid upon his conscience. but mamma never asked, and for three whole days his majesty the king gloated over his treasure. it was of no earthly use to him, but it was splendid, and, for aught he knew, something dropped from the heavens themselves. still mamma made no inquiries, and it seemed to him, in his furtive peeps, as though the shiny stones grew dim. what was the use of a 'parkle cwown if it made a little boy feel all bad in his inside? he had the pink string as well as the other treasure, but greatly he wished that he had not gone beyond the string. it was his first experience of iniquity, and it pained him after the flush of possession and secret delight in the "'parkle cwown" had died away. each day that he delayed rendered confession to the people beyond the nursery doors more impossible. now and again he determined to put himself in the path of the beautifully attired lady as she was going out, and explain that he and no one else was the possessor of a "'parkle cwown," most beautiful and quite uninquired for. but she passed hurriedly to her carriage, and the opportunity was gone before his majesty the king could draw the deep breath which clinches noble resolve. the dread secret cut him off from miss biddums, patsie, and the commissioner's wife, and--doubly hard fate--when he brooded over it patsie said, and told her mother, that he was cross. the days were very long to his majesty the king, and the nights longer still. miss biddums had informed him, more than once, what was the ultimate destiny of "fieves," and when he passed the interminable mud flanks of the central jail, he shook in his little strapped shoes. but release came after an afternoon spent in playing boats by the edge of the tank at the bottom of the garden. his majesty the king went to tea, and, for the first time in his memory, the meal revolted him. his nose was very cold, and his cheeks were burning hot. there was a weight about his feet, and he pressed his head several times to make sure that it was not swelling as he sat. "i feel vevy funny," said his majesty the king, rubbing his nose. "vere's a buzz-buzz in my head." he went to bed quietly. miss biddums was out and the bearer undressed him. the sin of the "'parkle cwown" was forgotten in the acuteness of the discomfort to which he roused after a leaden sleep of some hours, he was thirsty, and the bearer had forgotten to leave the drinking-water. "miss biddums! miss biddums! i'm so kirsty!" no answer, miss biddums had leave to attend the wedding of a calcutta schoolmate. his majesty the king had forgotten that. "i want a dwink of water!" he cried, but his voice was dried up in his throat. "i want a dwink! vere is ve glass?" he sat up in bed and looked round. there was a murmur of voices from the other side of the nursery door. it was better to face the terrible unknown than to choke in the dark. he slipped out of bed, but his feet were strangely wilful, and he reeled once or twice. then he pushed the door open and staggered--a puffed and purple-faced little figure--into the brilliant light of the dining-room full of pretty ladies. "i'm vevy hot! i'm vevy uncomfitivle," moaned his majesty the king, clinging to the portière, "and vere's no water in ve glass, and i'm _so_ kirsty. give me a dwink of water." an apparition in black and white--his majesty the king could hardly see distinctly--lifted him up to the level of the table, and felt his wrists and forehead. the water came, and he drank deeply, his teeth chattering against the edge of the tumbler. then every one seemed to go away--every one except the huge man in black and white, who carried him back to his bed; the mother and father following. and the sin of the "'parkle cwown" rushed back and took possession of the terrified soul. "i'm a fief!" he gasped. "i want to tell miss biddums vat i'm a fief. vere is miss biddums?" miss biddums had come and was bending over him. "i'm a fief," he whispered. "a fief--like ve men in the pwison. but i'll tell now, i tookt ... i tookt ve 'parkle cwown when the man that came left it in ve hall. i bwoke ve paper and ve little bwown box, and it looked shiny, and i tookt it to play wif, and i was afwaid. it's in ve dooly-box at ve bottom. no one _never_ asked for it, but i was afwaid. oh, go an' get ve dooly-box!" miss biddums obediently stooped to the lowest shelf of the _almirah_ and unearthed the big paper box in which his majesty the king kept his dearest possessions. under the tin soldiers, and a layer of mud pellets for a pellet-bow, winked and blazed a diamond star, wrapped roughly in a half-sheet of note-paper whereon were a few words. somebody was crying at the head of the bed, and a man's hand touched the forehead of his majesty the king, who grasped the packet and spread it on the bed. "vat is ve 'parkle cwown," he said, and wept bitterly; for now that he had made restitution he would fain have kept the shining splendor with him. "it concerns you too," said a voice at the head of the bed. "read the note. this is not the time to keep back anything." the note was curt, very much to the point, and signed by a single initial. "_if you wear this to-morrow night i shall know what to expect._" the date was three weeks old. a whisper followed, and the deeper voice returned: "and you drifted as far apart as _that!_ i think it makes us quits now, doesn't it? oh, can't we drop this folly once and for all? is it worth it, darling?" "kiss me too," said his majesty the king, dreamily. "you isn't _vevy_ angwy, is you?" the fever burned itself out, and his majesty the king slept. when he waked, it was in a new world--peopled by his father and mother as well as miss biddums: and there was much love in that world and no morsel of fear, and more petting than was good for several little boys. his majesty the king was too young to moralize on the uncertainty of things human, or he would have been impressed with the singular advantages of crime--ay, black sin. behold, he had stolen the "'parkle cwown," and his reward was love, and the right to play in the waste-paper basket under the table "for always". * * * * * he trotted over to spend an afternoon with patsie, and the commissioner's wife would have kissed him. "no, not vere," said his majesty the king, with superb insolence, fencing one corner of his mouth with his hand, "vat's my mamma's place--vere _she_ kisses me," "oh!" said the commissioner's wife, briefly. then to herself: "well, i suppose i ought to be glad for his sake. children are selfish little grubs and--i've got my patsie." the strange ride of morrowbie jukes alive or dead--there is no other way.--_native proverb_. there is, as the conjurers say, no deception about this tale. jukes by accident stumbled upon a village that is well known to exist, though he is the only englishman who has been there. a somewhat similar institution used to flourish on the outskirts of calcutta, and there is a story that if you go into the heart of bikanir, which is in the heart of the great indian desert, you shall come across not a village but a town where the dead who did not die but may not live have established their headquarters. and, since it is perfectly true that in the same desert is a wonderful city where all the rich moneylenders retreat after they have made their fortunes (fortunes so vast that the owners cannot trust even the strong hand of the government to protect them, but take refuge in the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous c-spring barouches, and buy beautiful girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and minton tiles and mother-o'-pearl, i do not see why jukes's tale should not be true. he is a civil engineer, with a head for plans and distances and things of that kind, and he certainly would not take the trouble to invent imaginary traps. he could earn more by doing his legitimate work. he never varies the tale in the telling, and grows very hot and indignant when he thinks of the disrespectful treatment he received. he wrote this quite straightforwardly at first, but he has since touched it up in places and introduced moral reflections, thus: in the beginning it all arose from a slight attack of fever. my work necessitated my being in camp for some months between pakpattan and mubarakpur--a desolate sandy stretch of country as every one who has had the misfortune to go there may know. my coolies were neither more nor less exasperating than other gangs, and my work demanded sufficient attention to keep me from moping, had i been inclined to so unmanly a weakness. on the d december, , i felt a little feverish. there was a full moon at the time, and, in consequence, every dog near my tent was baying it. the brutes assembled in twos and threes and drove me frantic. a few days previously i had shot one loud-mouthed singer and suspended his carcass _in terrorem_ about fifty yards from my tent-door. but his friends fell upon, fought for, and ultimately devoured the body: and, as it seemed to me, sang their hymns of thanksgiving afterward with renewed energy. the light-headedness which accompanies fever acts differently on different men. my irritation gave way, after a short time, to a fixed determination to slaughter one huge black and white beast who had been foremost in song and first in flight throughout the evening. thanks to a shaking hand and a giddy head i had already missed him twice with both barrels of my shotgun, when it struck me that my best plan would be to ride him down in the open and finish him off with a hog-spear. this, of course, was merely the semi-delirious notion of a fever patient; but i remember that it struck me at the time as being eminently practical and feasible. i therefore ordered my groom to saddle pornic and bring him round quietly to the rear of my tent. when the pony was ready, i stood at his head prepared to mount and dash out as soon as the dog should again lift up his voice. pornic, by the way, had not been out of his pickets for a couple of days; the night air was crisp and chilly; and i was armed with a specially long and sharp pair of persuaders with which i had been rousing a sluggish cob that afternoon. you will easily believe, then, that when he was let go he went quickly. in one moment, for the brute bolted as straight as a die, the tent was left far behind, and we were flying over the smooth sandy soil at racing speed. in another we had passed the wretched dog, and i had almost forgotten why it was that i had taken horse and hog-spear. the delirium of fever and the excitement of rapid motion through the air must have taken away the remnant of my senses. i have a faint recollection of standing upright in my stirrups, and of brandishing my hog-spear at the great white moon that looked down so calmly on my mad gallop; and of shouting challenges to the camel-thorn bushes as they whizzed past. once or twice, i believe, i swayed forward on pornic's neck, and literally hung on by my spurs--as the marks next morning showed. the wretched beast went forward like a thing possessed, over what seemed to be a limitless expanse of moonlit sand. next, i remember, the ground rose suddenly in front of us, and as we topped the ascent i saw the waters of the sutlej shining like a silver bar below. then pornic blundered heavily on his nose, and we rolled together down some unseen slope. i must have lost consciousness, for when i recovered i was lying on my stomach in a heap of soft white sand, and the dawn was beginning to break dimly over the edge of the slope down which i had fallen. as the light grew stronger i saw that i was at the bottom of a horseshoe-shaped crater of sand, opening on one side directly on to the shoals of the sutlej. my fever had altogether left me, and, with the exception of a slight dizziness in the head, i felt no bad effects from the fall over night. pornic, who was standing a few yards away, was naturally a good deal exhausted, but had not hurt himself in the least. his saddle, a favorite polo one, was much knocked about, and had been twisted under his belly. it took me some time to put him to rights, and in the meantime i had ample opportunities of observing the spot into which i had so foolishly dropped. at the risk of being considered tedious, i must describe it at length; inasmuch as an accurate mental picture of its peculiarities will be of material assistance in enabling the reader to understand what follows. imagine then, as i have said before, a horseshoe-shaped crater of sand with steeply graded sand walls about thirty-five feet high. (the slope, i fancy, must have been about .) this crater enclosed a level piece of ground about fifty yards long by thirty at its broadest part, with a rude well in the centre. round the bottom of the crater, about three feet from the level of the ground proper, ran a series of eighty-three semi-circular, ovoid, square, and multilateral holes, all about three feet at the mouth. each hole on inspection showed that it was carefully shored internally with driftwood and bamboos, and over the mouth a wooden drip-board projected, like the peak of a jockey's cap, for two feet. no sign of life was visible in these tunnels, but a most sickening stench pervaded the entire amphitheatre--a stench fouler than any which my wanderings in indian villages have introduced me to. having remounted pornic, who was as anxious as i to get back to camp, i rode round the base of the horseshoe to find some place whence an exit would be practicable. the inhabitants, whoever they might be, had not thought fit to put in an appearance, so i was left to my own devices. my first attempt to "rush" pornic up the steep sand-banks showed me that i had fallen into a trap exactly on the same model as that which the ant-lion sets for its prey. at each step the shifting sand poured down from above in tons, and rattled on the drip-boards of the holes like small shot. a couple of ineffectual charges sent us both rolling down to the bottom, half choked with the torrents of sand; and i was constrained to turn my attention to the river-bank. here everything seemed easy enough. the sand hills ran down to the river edge, it is true, but there were plenty of shoals and shallows across which i could gallop pornic, and find my way back to _terra firma_ by turning sharply to the right or the left. as i led pornic over the sands i was startled by the faint pop of a rifle across the river; and at the same moment a bullet dropped with a sharp "_whit_" close to pornic's head. there was no mistaking the nature of the missile--a regulation martini-henry "picket." about five hundred yards away a country-boat was anchored in midstream; and a jet of smoke drifting away from its bows in the still morning air showed me whence the delicate attention had come. was ever a respectable gentleman in such an _impasse?_ the treacherous sand slope allowed no escape from a spot which i had visited most involuntarily, and a promenade on the river frontage was the signal for a bombardment from some insane native in a boat. i'm afraid that i lost my temper very much indeed. another bullet reminded me that i had better save my breath to cool my porridge; and i retreated hastily up the sands and back to the horseshoe, where i saw that the noise of the rifle had drawn sixty-five human beings from the badger-holes which i had up till that point supposed to be untenanted. i found myself in the midst of a crowd of spectators--about forty men, twenty women, and one child who could not have been more than five years old. they were all scantily clothed in that salmon-colored cloth which one associates with hindu mendicants, and, at first sight, gave me the impression of a band of loathsome _fakirs_. the filth and repulsiveness of the assembly were beyond all description, and i shuddered to think what their life in the badger-holes must be. even in these days, when local self-government has destroyed the greater part of a native's respect for a sahib, i have been accustomed to a certain amount of civility from my inferiors, and on approaching the crowd naturally expected that there would be some recognition of my presence. as a matter of fact there was; but it was by no means what i had looked for. the ragged crew actually laughed at me--such laughter i hope i may never hear again. they cackled, yelled, whistled, and howled as i walked into their midst: some of them literally throwing themselves down on the ground in convulsions of unholy mirth. in a moment i had let go pornic's head, and, irritated beyond expression at the morning's adventure, commenced cuffing those nearest to me with all the force i could. the wretches dropped under my blows like nine-pins, and the laughter gave place to wails for mercy; while those yet untouched clasped me round the knees, imploring me in all sorts of uncouth tongues to spare them. in the tumult, and just when i was feeling very much ashamed of myself for having thus easily given way to my temper, a thin, high voice murmured in english from behind my shoulder:--"sahib! sahib! do you not know me? sahib, it is gunga dass, the telegraph-master." i spun round quickly and faced the speaker. gunga dass (i have, of course, no hesitation in mentioning the man's real name) i had known four years before as a deccanee brahmin loaned by the punjab government to one of the khalsia states. he was in charge of a branch telegraph-office there, and when i had last met him was a jovial, full-stomached, portly government servant with a marvelous capacity for making bad puns in english--a peculiarity which made me remember him long after i had forgotten his services to me in his official capacity. it is seldom that a hindu makes english puns. now, however, the man was changed beyond all recognition. caste-mark, stomach, slate-colored continuations, and unctuous speech were all gone. i looked at a withered skeleton, turbanless and almost naked, with long matted hair and deep-set codfish-eyes. but for a crescent-shaped scar on the left cheek--the result of an accident for which i was responsible--i should never have known him. but it was indubitably gunga dass, and--for this i was thankful--an english-speaking native who might at least tell me the meaning of all that i had gone through that day. the crowd retreated to some distance as i turned toward the miserable figure, and ordered him to show me some method of escaping from the crater. he held a freshly plucked crow in his hand, and in reply to my question climbed slowly on a platform of sand which ran in front of the holes, and commenced lighting a fire there in silence. dried bents, sand-poppies, and driftwood burn quickly; and i derived much consolation from the fact that he lit them with an ordinary sulphur-match. when they were in a bright glow, and the crow was neatly spitted in front thereof, gunga dass began without a word of preamble: "there are only two kinds of men, sar. the alive and the dead. when you are dead, you are dead, but when you are alive you live." (here the crow demanded his attention for an instant as it twirled before the fire in danger of being burned to a cinder.) "if you die at home and do not die when you come to the ghât to be burned you come here." the nature of the reeking village was made plain now, and all that i had known or read of the grotesque and the horrible paled before the fact just communicated by the ex-brahmin. sixteen years ago, when i first landed in bombay, i had been told by a wandering armenian of the existence, somewhere in india, of a place to which such hindus as had the misfortune to recover from trance or catalepsy were conveyed and kept, and i recollect laughing heartily at what i was then pleased to consider a traveler's tale. sitting at the bottom of the sand-trap, the memory of watson's hotel, with its swinging punkahs, white-robed attendants, and the sallow-faced armenian, rose up in my mind as vividly as a photograph, and i burst into a loud fit of laughter. the contrast was too absurd! gunga dass, as he bent over the unclean bird, watched me curiously. hindus seldom laugh, and his surroundings were not such as to move gunga dass to any undue excess of hilarity. he removed the crow solemnly from the wooden spit and as solemnly devoured it. then he continued his story, which i give in his own words: "in epidemics of the cholera you are carried to be burned almost before you are dead. when you come to the riverside the cold air, perhaps, makes you alive, and then, if you are only little alive, mud is put on your nose and mouth and you die conclusively. if you are rather more alive, more mud is put; but if you are too lively they let you go and take you away. i was too lively, and made protestation with anger against the indignities that they endeavored to press upon me. in those days i was brahmin and proud man. now i am dead man and eat"--here he eyed the well-gnawed breast bone with the first sign of emotion that i had seen in him since we met--"crows, and other things. they took me from my sheets when they saw that i was too lively and gave me medicines for one week, and i survived successfully. then they sent me by rail from my place to okara station, with a man to take care of me; and at okara station we met two other men, and they conducted we three on camels, in the night, from okara station to this place, and they propelled me from the top to the bottom, and the other two succeeded, and i have been here ever since two and a half years. once i was brahmin and proud man, and now i eat crows." "there is no way of getting out?" "none of what kind at all. when i first came i made experiments frequently and all the others also, but we have always succumbed to the sand which is precipitated upon our heads." "but surely," i broke in at this point, "the river-front is open, and it is worth while dodging the bullets; while at night"-- i had already matured a rough plan of escape which a natural instinct of selfishness forbade me sharing with gunga dass. he, however, divined my unspoken thought almost as soon as it was formed; and, to my intense astonishment, gave vent to a long low chuckle of derision--the laughter, be it understood, of a superior or at least of an equal. "you will not"--he had dropped the sir completely after his opening sentence--"make any escape that way. but you can try. i have tried. once only." the sensation of nameless terror and abject fear which i had in vain attempted to strive against overmastered me completely. my long fast--it was now close upon ten o'clock, and i had eaten nothing since tiffin on the previous day--combined with the violent and unnatural agitation of the ride had exhausted me, and i verily believe that, for a few minutes, i acted as one mad. i hurled myself against the pitiless sand-slope. i ran round the base of the crater, blaspheming and praying by turns. i crawled out among the sedges of the river-front, only to be driven back each time in an agony of nervous dread by the rifle-bullets which cut up the sand round me--for i dared not face the death of a mad dog among that hideous crowd--and finally fell, spent and raving, at the curb of the well. no one had taken the slightest notice of an exhibition which makes me blush hotly even when i think of it now. two or three men trod on my panting body as they drew water, but they were evidently used to this sort of thing, and had no time to waste upon me. the situation was humiliating, gunga dass, indeed, when he had banked the embers of his fire with sand, was at some pains to throw half a cupful of fetid water over my head, an attention for which i could have fallen on my knees and thanked him, but he was laughing all the while in the same mirthless, wheezy key that greeted me on my first attempt to force the shoals. and so, in a semi-comatose condition, i lay till noon. then, being only a man after all, i felt hungry, and intimated as much to gunga dass, whom i had begun to regard as my natural protector. following the impulse of the outer world when dealing with natives, i put my hand into my pocket and drew out four annas. the absurdity of the gift struck me at once, and i was about to replace the money. gunga dass, however, was of a different opinion, "give me the money," said he; "all you have, or i will get help, and we will kill you!" all this as if it were the most natural thing in the world! a briton's first impulse, i believe, is to guard the contents of his pockets; but a moment's reflection convinced me of the futility of differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that i might eventually escape from the crater. i gave him all the money in my possession, rs. - - --nine rupees eight annas and five pie--for i always keep small change as _bakshish_ when i am in camp. gunga dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loin-cloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as he looked round to assure himself that no one had observed us. "_now_ i will give you something to eat," said he. what pleasure the possession of my money could have afforded him i am unable to say; but inasmuch as it did give him evident delight i was not sorry that i had parted with it so readily, for i had no doubt that he would have had me killed if i had refused. one does not protest against the vagaries of a den of wild beasts; and my companions were lower than any beasts. while i devoured what gunga dass had provided, a coarse _chapatti_ and a cupful of the foul well-water, the people showed not the faintest sign of curiosity--that curiosity which is so rampant, as a rule, in an indian village. i could even fancy that they despised me. at all events they treated me with the most chilling indifference, and gunga dass was nearly as bad. i plied him with questions about the terrible village, and received extremely unsatisfactory answers. so far as i could gather, it had been in existence from time immemorial--whence i concluded that it was at least a century old--and during that time no one had ever been known to escape from it. [i had to control myself here with both hands, lest the blind terror should lay hold of me a second time and drive me raving round the crater.] gunga dass took a malicious pleasure in emphasizing this point and in watching me wince. nothing that i could do would induce him to tell me who the mysterious "they" were. "it is so ordered," he would reply, "and i do not yet know any one who has disobeyed the orders." "only wait till my servants find that i am missing," i retorted, "and i promise you that this place shall be cleared off the face of the earth, and i'll give you a lesson in civility, too, my friend." "your servants would be torn in pieces before they came near this place; and, besides, you are dead, my dear friend. it is not your fault, of course, but none the less you are dead _and_ buried." at irregular intervals supplies of food, i was told, were dropped down from the land side into the amphitheatre, and the inhabitants fought for them like wild beasts. when a man felt his death coming on he retreated to his lair and died there. the body was sometimes dragged out of the hole and thrown on to the sand, or allowed to rot where it lay. the phrase "thrown on to the sand" caught my attention, and i asked gunga dass whether this sort of thing was not likely to breed a pestilence. "that," said he, with another of his wheezy chuckles, "you may see for yourself subsequently. you will have much time to make observations." whereat, to his great delight, i winced once more and hastily continued the conversation:--"and how do you live here from day to day? what do you do?" the question elicited exactly the same answer as before--coupled with the information that "this place is like your european heaven; there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage." gunga dass has been educated at a mission school, and, as he himself admitted, had he only changed his religion "like a wise man," might have avoided the living grave which was now his portion. but as long as i was with him i fancy he was happy. here was a sahib, a representative of the dominant race, helpless as a child and completely at the mercy of his native neighbors, in a deliberate lazy way he set himself to torture me as a schoolboy would devote a rapturous half-hour to watching the agonies of an impaled beetle, or as a ferret in a blind burrow might glue himself comfortably to the neck of a rabbit. the burden of his conversation was that there was no escape "of no kind whatever," and that i should stay here till i died and was "thrown on to the sand." if it were possible to forejudge the conversation of the damned on the advent of a new soul in their abode, i should say that they would speak as gunga dass did to me throughout that long afternoon. i was powerless to protest or answer; all my energies being devoted to a struggle against the inexplicable terror that threatened to overwhelm me again and again. i can compare the feeling to nothing except the struggles of a man against the overpowering nausea of the channel passage--only my agony was of the spirit and infinitely more terrible. as the day wore on, the inhabitants began to appear in full strength to catch the rays or the afternoon sun, which were now sloping in at the mouth of the crater. they assembled in little knots, and talked among themselves without even throwing a glance in my direction. about four o'clock, as far as i could judge, gunga dass rose and dived into his lair for a moment, emerging with a live crow in his hands. the wretched bird was in a most draggled and deplorable condition, but seemed to be in no way afraid of its master. advancing cautiously to the river front, gunga dass stepped from tussock to tussock until he had reached a smooth patch of sand directly in the line of the boat's fire. the occupants of the boat took no notice. here he stopped, and, with a couple of dexterous turns of the wrist, pegged the bird on its back with outstretched wings. as was only natural, the crow began to shriek at once and beat the air with its claws. in a few seconds the clamor had attracted the attention of a bevy of wild crows on a shoal a few hundred yards away, where they were discussing something that looked like a corpse. half a dozen crows flew over at once to see what was going on, and also, as it proved, to attack the pinioned bird. gunga dass, who had lain down on a tussock, motioned to me to be quiet, though i fancy this was a needless precaution. in a moment, and before i could see how it happened, a wild crow, who had grappled with the shrieking and helpless bird, was entangled in the latter's claws, swiftly disengaged by gunga dass, and pegged down beside its companion in adversity. curiosity, it seemed, overpowered the rest of the flock, and almost before gunga dass and i had time to withdraw to the tussock, two more captives were struggling in the upturned claws of the decoys. so the chase--if i can give it so dignified a name--continued until gunga dass had captured seven crows. five of them he throttled at once, reserving two for further operations another day. i was a good deal impressed by this, to me, novel method of securing food, and complimented gunga dass on his skill. "it is nothing to do," said he. "to-morrow you must do it for me. you are stronger than i am." this calm assumption of superiority upset me not a little, and i answered peremptorily;--"indeed, you old ruffian! what do you think i have given you money for?" "very well," was the unmoved reply. "perhaps not to-morrow, nor the day after, nor subsequently; but in the end, and for many years, you will catch crows and eat crows, and you will thank your european god that you have crows to catch and eat." i could have cheerfully strangled him for this; but judged it best under the circumstances to smother my resentment. an hour later i was eating one of the crows; and, as gunga dass had said, thanking my god that i had a crow to eat. never as long as i live shall i forget that evening meal. the whole population were squatting on the hard sand platform opposite their dens, huddled over tiny fires of refuse and dried rushes. death, having once laid his hand upon these men and forborne to strike, seemed to stand aloof from them now; for most of our company were old men, bent and worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all appearance as the fates themselves. they sat together in knots and talked--god only knows what they found to discuss--in low equable tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are accustomed to make day hideous. now and then an access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and imprecations the sufferer would attack the steep slope until, baffled and bleeding, he fell back on the platform incapable of moving a limb. the others would never even raise their eyes when this happened, as men too well aware of the futility of their fellows' attempts and wearied with their useless repetition. i saw four such outbursts in the course of that evening. gunga dass took an eminently business-like view of my situation, and while we were dining--i can afford to laugh at the recollection now, but it was painful enough at the time--propounded the terms on which he would consent to "do" for me. my nine rupees eight annas, he argued, at the rate of three annas a day, would provide me with food for fifty-one days, or about seven weeks; that is to say, he would be willing to cater for me for that length of time. at the end of it i was to look after myself. for a further consideration--_videlicet_ my boots--he would be willing to allow me to occupy the den next to his own, and would supply me with as much dried grass for bedding as he could spare. "very well, gunga dass," i replied; "to the first terms i cheerfully agree, but, as there is nothing on earth to prevent my killing you as you sit here and taking everything that you have" (i thought of the two invaluable crows at the time), "i flatly refuse to give you my boots and shall take whichever den i please." the stroke was a bold one, and i was glad when i saw that it had succeeded, gunga dass changed his tone immediately, and disavowed all intention of asking for my boots. at the time it did not strike me as at all strange that i, a civil engineer, a man of thirteen years' standing in the service, and, i trust, an average englishman, should thus calmly threaten murder and violence against the man who had, for a consideration it is true, taken me under his wing. i had left the world, it seemed, for centuries. i was as certain then as i am now of my own existence, that in the accursed settlement there was no law save that of the strongest; that the living dead men had thrown behind them every canon of the world which had cast them out; and that i had to depend for my own life on my strength and vigilance alone. the crew of the ill-fated mignonette are the only men who would understand my frame of mind. "at present," i argued to myself, "i am strong and a match for six of these wretches. it is imperatively necessary that i should, for my own sake, keep both health and strength until the hour of my release comes--if it ever does." fortified with these resolutions, i ate and drank as much as i could, and made gunga dass understand that i intended to be his master, and that the least sign of insubordination on his part would be visited with the only punishment i had it in my power to inflict--sudden and violent death. shortly after this i went to bed. that is to say, gunga dass gave me a double armful of dried bents which i thrust down the mouth of the lair to the right of his, and followed myself, feet foremost; the hole running about nine feet into the sand with a slight downward inclination, and being neatly shored with timbers. from my den, which faced the river-front, i was able to watch the waters of the sutlej flowing past under the light of a young moon and compose myself to sleep as best i might. the horrors of that night i shall never forget. my den was nearly as narrow as a coffin, and the sides had been worn smooth and greasy by the contact of innumerable naked bodies, added to which it smelled abominably. sleep was altogether out of question to one in my excited frame of mind. as the night wore on, it seemed that the entire amphitheatre was filled with legions of unclean devils that, trooping up from the shoals below, mocked the unfortunates in their lairs. personally i am not of an imaginative temperament,--very few engineers are,--but on that occasion i was as completely prostrated with nervous terror as any woman. after half an hour or so, however, i was able once more to calmly review my chances of escape. any exit by the steep sand walls was, of course, impracticable. i had been thoroughly convinced of this some time before. it was possible, just possible, that i might, in the uncertain moonlight, safely run the gauntlet of the rifle shots. the place was so full of terror for me that i was prepared to undergo any risk in leaving it. imagine my delight, then, when after creeping stealthily to the river-front i found that the infernal boat was not there. my freedom lay before me in the next few steps! by walking out to the first shallow pool that lay at the foot of the projecting left horn of the horseshoe, i could wade across, turn the flank of the crater, and make my way inland. without a moment's hesitation i marched briskly past the tussocks where gunga dass had snared the crows, and out in the direction of the smooth white sand beyond. my first step from the tufts of dried grass showed me how utterly futile was any hope of escape; for, as i put my foot down, i felt an indescribable drawing, sucking motion of the sand below. another moment and my leg was swallowed up nearly to the knee. in the moonlight the whole surface of the sand seemed to be shaken with devilish delight at my disappointment. i struggled clear, sweating with terror and exertion, back to the tussocks behind me and fell on my face. my only means of escape from the semicircle was protected with a quicksand! how long i lay i have not the faintest idea; but i was roused at last by the malevolent chuckle of gunga dass at my ear. "i would advise you, protector of the poor" (the ruffian was speaking english) "to return to your house. it is unhealthy to lie down here. moreover, when the boat returns, you will most certainly be rifled at." he stood over me in the dim light, of the dawn, chuckling and laughing to himself. suppressing my first impulse to catch the man by the neck and throw him on to the quicksand, i rose sullenly and followed him to the platform below the burrows. suddenly, and futilely as i thought while i spoke, i asked:--"gunga dass, what is the good of the boat if i can't get out _anyhow?_" i recollect that even in my deepest trouble i had been speculating vaguely on the waste of ammunition in guarding an already well protected foreshore. gunga dass laughed again and made answer:--"they have the boat only in daytime. it is for the reason that _there is a way_. i hope we shall have the pleasure of your company for much longer time. it is a pleasant spot when you have been here some years and eaten roast crow long enough." i staggered, numbed and helpless, toward the fetid burrow allotted to me, and fell asleep. an hour or so later i was awakened by a piercing scream--the shrill, high-pitched scream of a horse in pain. those who have once heard that will never forget the sound. i found some little difficulty in scrambling out of the burrow. when i was in the open, i saw pornic, my poor old pornic, lying dead on the sandy soil. how they had killed him i cannot guess. gunga dass explained that horse was better than crow, and "greatest good of greatest number is political maxim. we are now republic, mister jukes, and you are entitled to a fair share of the beast. if you like, we will pass a vote of thanks. shall i propose?" yes, we were a republic indeed! a republic of wild beasts penned at the bottom of a pit, to eat and fight and sleep till we died. i attempted no protest of any kind, but sat down and stared at the hideous sight in front of me. in less time almost than it takes me to write this, pornic's body was divided, in some unclean way or other; the men and women had dragged the fragments on to the platform and were preparing their morning meal. gunga dass cooked mine. the almost irresistible impulse to fly at the sand walls until i was wearied laid hold of me afresh, and i had to struggle against it with all my might. gunga dass was offensively jocular till i told him that if he addressed another remark of any kind whatever to me i should strangle him where he sat. this silenced him till silence became insupportable, and i bade him say something. "you will live here till you die like the other feringhi," he said, coolly, watching me over the fragment of gristle that he was gnawing. "what other sahib, you swine? speak at once, and don't stop to tell me a lie." "he is over there," answered gunga dass, pointing to a burrow-mouth about four doors to the left of my own. "you can see for yourself. he died in the burrow as you will die, and i will die, and as all these men and women and the one child will also die." "for pity's sake tell me all you know about him. who was he? when did he come, and when did he die?" this appeal was a weak step on my part. gunga dass only leered and replied:--"i will not--unless you give me something first." then i recollected where i was, and struck the man between the eyes, partially stunning him. he stepped down from the platform at once, and, cringing and fawning and weeping and attempting to embrace my feet, led me round to the burrow which he had indicated. "i know nothing whatever about the gentleman, your god be my witness that i do not he was as anxious to escape as you were, and he was shot from the boat, though we all did all things to prevent him from attempting. he was shot here." gunga dass laid his hand on his lean stomach and bowed, to the earth. "well, and what then? go on!" "and then--and then, your honor, we carried him into his house and gave him water, and put wet cloths on the wound, and he laid down in his house and gave up the ghost." "in how long? in how long?" "about half an hour, after he received his wound. i call vishnu to witness," yelled the wretched man, "that i did everything for him. everything which was possible, that i did!" he threw himself down on the ground and clasped my ankles. but i had my doubts about gunga dass's benevolence, and kicked him off as he lay protesting. "i believe you robbed him of everything he had. but i can find out in a minute or two. how long was the sahib here?" "nearly a year and a half. i think he must have gone mad. but hear me swear, protector of the poor! won't your honor hear me swear that i never touched an article that belonged to him? what is your worship going to do?" i had taken gunga dass by the waist and had hauled him on to the platform opposite the deserted burrow. as i did so i thought of my wretched fellow-prisoner's unspeakable misery among all these horrors for eighteen months, and the final agony of dying like a rat in a hole, with a bullet-wound in the stomach. gunga dass fancied i was going to kill him and howled pitifully. the rest of the population, in the plethora that follows a full flesh meal, watched us without stirring. "go inside, gunga dass," said i, "and fetch it out." i was feeling sick and faint with horror now. gunga dass nearly rolled off the platform and howled aloud. "but i am brahmin, sahib--a high-caste brahmin. by your soul, by your father's soul, do not make me do this thing!" "brahmin or no brahmin, by my soul and my father's soul, in you go!" i said, and, seizing him by the shoulders, i crammed his head into the mouth of the burrow, kicked the rest of him in, and, sitting down, covered my face with my hands. at the end of a few minutes i heard a rustle and a creak; then gunga dass in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking to himself; then a soft thud--and i uncovered my eyes. the dry sand had turned the corpse entrusted to its keeping into a yellow-brown mummy. i told gunga dass to stand off while i examined it. the body--clad in an olive-green hunting-suit much stained and worn, with leather pads on the shoulders--was that of a man between thirty and forty, above middle height, with light, sandy hair, long mustache, and a rough unkempt beard. the left canine of the upper jaw was missing, and a portion of the lobe of the right ear was gone. on the second finger of the left hand was a ring--a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "b.k." or "b.l." on the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. gunga dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, i turned to examine these. i give the full list in the hope that it may lead to the identification of the unfortunate man: . bowl of a briarwood pipe, serrated at the edge; much worn and blackened; bound with string at the screw. . two patent-lever keys; wards of both broken. . tortoise-shell-handled penknife, silver or nickel, name-plate, marked with monogram "b.k." . envelope, postmark undecipherable, bearing a victorian stamp, addressed to "miss mon----" (rest illegible)--"ham"--"nt." . imitation crocodile-skin notebook with pencil. first forty-five pages blank; four and a half illegible; fifteen others filled with private memoranda relating chiefly to three persons--a mrs. l. singleton, abbreviated several times to "lot single," "mrs. s. may," and "garmison," referred to in places as "jerry" or "jack." . handle of small-sized hunting-knife. blade snapped short. buck's horn, diamond cut, with swivel and ring on the butt; fragment of cotton cord attached. it must not be supposed that i inventoried all these things on the spot as fully as i have here written them down. the notebook first attracted my attention, and i put it in my pocket with a view to studying it later on. the rest of the articles i conveyed to my burrow for safety's sake, and there, being a methodical man, i inventoried them. i then returned to the corpse and ordered gunga dass to help me to carry it out to the river-front. while we were engaged in this, the exploded shell of an old brown cartridge dropped out of one of the pockets and rolled at my feet. gunga dass had not seen it; and i fell to thinking that a man does not carry exploded cartridge-cases, especially "browns," which will not bear loading twice, about with him when shooting. in other words, that cartridge-case has been fired inside the crater. consequently there must be a gun somewhere. i was on the verge of asking gunga dass, but checked myself, knowing that he would lie. we laid the body down on the edge of the quicksand by the tussocks. it was my intention to push it out and let it be swallowed up--the only possible mode of burial that i could think of. i ordered gunga dass to go away. then i gingerly put the corpse out on the quicksand. in doing so, it was lying face downward, i tore the frail and rotten khaki shooting-coat open, disclosing a hideous cavity in the back. i have already told you that the dry sand had, as it were, mummified the body. a moment's glance showed that the gaping hole had been caused by a gun-shot wound; the gun must have been fired with the muzzle almost touching the back. the shooting-coat, being intact, had been drawn over the body after death, which must have been instantaneous. the secret of the poor wretch's death was plain to me in a flash. some one of the crater, presumably gunga dass, must have shot him with his own gun--the gun that fitted the brown cartridges. he had never attempted to escape in the face of the rifle-fire from the boat. i pushed the corpse out hastily, and saw it sink from sight literally in a few seconds. i shuddered as i watched. in a dazed, half-conscious way i turned to peruse the notebook. a stained and discolored slip of paper had been inserted between the binding and the back, and dropped out as i opened the pages. this is what it contained:--_"four out from crow-clump: three left; nine out; two right; three back; two left; fourteen out; two left; seven out; one left; nine back; two right; six back; four right; seven back_." the paper had been burned and charred at the edges. what it meant i could not understand. i sat down on the dried bents turning it over and over between my fingers, until i was aware of gunga dass standing immediately behind me with glowing eyes and outstretched hands. "have you got it?" he panted. "will you not let me look at it also? i swear that i will return it." "got what? return what?" i asked. "that which you have in your hands. it will help us both." he stretched out his long, bird-like talons, trembling with eagerness, "i could never find it," he continued. "he had secreted it about his person. therefore i shot him, but nevertheless i was unable to obtain it." gunga dass had quite forgotten his little fiction about the rifle-bullet. i received the information perfectly calmly. morality is blunted by consorting with the dead who are alive. "what on earth are you raving about? what is it you want me to give you?" "the piece of paper in the notebook. it will help us both. oh, you fool! you fool! can you not see what it will do for us? we shall escape!" his voice rose almost to a scream, and he danced with excitement before me. i own i was moved at the chance of getting away. "don't skip! explain yourself. do you mean to say that this slip of paper will help us? what does it mean?" "read it aloud! read it aloud! i beg and i pray you to read it aloud." i did so. gunga dass listened delightedly, and drew an irregular line in the sand with his fingers. "see now! it was the length of his gun-barrels without the stock. i have those barrels. four gun-barrels out from the place where i caught crows. straight out; do you follow me? then three left--ah! how well i remember when that man worked it out night after night. then nine out, and so on. out is always straight before you across the quicksand. he told me so before i killed him." "but if you knew all this why didn't you get out before?" "i did _not_ know it. he told me that he was working it out a year and a half ago, and how he was working it out night after night when the boat had gone away, and he could get out near the quicksand safely. then he said that we would get away together. but i was afraid that he would leave me behind one night when he had worked it all out, and so i shot him. besides, it is not advisable that the men who once get in here should escape. only i, and _i_ am a brahmin." the prospect of escape had brought gunga dass's caste back to him. he stood up, walked about and gesticulated violently. eventually i managed to make him talk soberly, and he told me how this englishman had spent six months night after night in exploring, inch by inch, the passage across the quicksand; how he had declared it to be simplicity itself up to within about twenty yards of the river bank after turning the flank of the left horn of the horseshoe. this much he had evidently not completed when gunga dass shot him with his own gun, in my frenzy of delight at the possibilities of escape i recollect shaking hands effusively with gunga dass, after we had decided that we were to make an attempt to get away that very night. it was weary work waiting throughout the afternoon. about ten o'clock, as far as i could judge, when the moon had just risen above the lip of the crater, gunga dass made a move for his burrow to bring out the gun-barrels whereby to measure our path. all the other wretched inhabitants had retired to their lairs long ago. the guardian boat drifted down-stream some hours before, and we were utterly alone by the crow-clump. gunga dass, while carrying the gun-barrels, let slip the piece of paper which was to be our guide. i stooped down hastily to recover it, and, as i did so, i was aware that the diabolical brahmin was aiming a violent blow at the back of my head with the gun-barrels. it was too late to turn round. i must have received the blow somewhere on the nape of my neck. a hundred thousand fiery stars danced before my eyes, and i fell forward senseless at the edge of the quicksand. when i recovered consciousness, the moon was going down, and i was sensible of intolerable pain in the back of my head. gunga dass had disappeared and my mouth was full of blood. i lay down again and prayed that i might die without more ado. then the unreasoning fury which i have before mentioned laid hold upon me, and i staggered inland toward the walls of the crater. it seemed that some one was calling to me in a whisper--"sahib! sahib! sahib!" exactly as my bearer used to call me in the mornings. i fancied that i was delirious until a handful of sand fell at my feet, then i looked up and saw a head peering down into the amphitheatre--the head of dunnoo, my dog-boy, who attended to my collies. as soon as he had attracted my attention, he held up his hand and showed a rope. i motioned, staggering to and fro the while, that he should throw it down. it was a couple of leather punkah-ropes knotted together, with a loop at one end. i slipped the loop over my head and under my arms; heard dunnoo urge something forward; was conscious that i was being dragged, face downward, up the steep sand slope, and the next instant found myself choked and half fainting on the sand hills overlooking the crater. dunnoo, with his face ashy grey in the moonlight, implored me not to stay but to get back to my tent at once. it seems that he had tracked pornic's footprints fourteen miles across the sands to the crater; had returned and told my servants, who flatly refused to meddle with any one, white or black, once fallen into the hideous village of the dead; whereupon dunnoo had taken one of my ponies and a couple of punkah-ropes, returned to the crater, and hauled me out as i have described. to cut a long story short, dunnoo is now my personal servant on a gold mohur a month--a sum which i still think far too little for the services he has rendered. nothing on earth will induce me to go near that devilish spot again, or to reveal its whereabouts more clearly than i have done. of gunga dass i have never found a trace, nor do i wish to do. my sole motive in giving this to be published is the hope that some one may possibly identify, from the details and the inventory which i have given above, the corpse of the man in the olive-green hunting-suit. in the house of suddhoo a stone's throw out on either hand from that well-ordered road we tread, and all the world is wild and strange; _churel_ and ghoul and _djinn_ and sprite shall bear us company to-night, for we have reached the oldest land wherein the powers of darkness range. --_from the dusk to the dawn_. the house of suddhoo, near the taksali gate, is two-storied, with four carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. you may recognize it by five red hand-prints arranged like the five of diamonds on the whitewash between the upper windows. bhagwan dass the grocer and a man who says he gets his living by seal-cutting live in the lower story with a troop of wives, servants, friends, and retainers. the two upper rooms used to be occupied by janoo and azizun and a little black-and-tan terrier that was stolen from an englishman's house and given to janoo by a soldier. to-day, only janoo lives in the upper rooms. suddhoo sleeps on the roof generally, except when he sleeps in the street. he used to go to peshawar in the cold, weather to visit his son who sells curiosities near the edwardes' gate, and then he slept under a real mud roof. suddhoo is a great friend of mine, because his cousin had a son who secured, thanks to my recommendation, the post of head-messenger to a big firm in the station. suddhoo says that god will make me a lieutenant-governor one of these days. i dare say his prophecy will come true. he is very, very old, with white hair and no teeth worth showing, and he has outlived his wits--outlived nearly everything except his fondness for his son at peshawar. janoo and azizun are kashmiris, ladies of the city, and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable profession; but azizun has since married a medical student from the northwest and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere near bareilly. bhagwan dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. he is very rich. the man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting pretends to be very poor. this lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants in the house of suddhoo. then there is me of course; but i am only the chorus that comes in at the end to explain things. so i do not count. suddhoo was not clever. the man who pretended to cut seals was the cleverest of them all--bhagwan dass only knew how to lie--except janoo. she was also beautiful, but that was her own affair. suddhoo's son at peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old suddhoo was troubled. the seal-cutter man heard of suddhoo's anxiety and made capital out of it. he was abreast of the times. he got a friend in peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health. and here the story begins. suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that suddhoo wanted to see me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that i should be conferring an everlasting honor on the house of suddhoo if i went to him. i went; but i think, seeing how well off suddhoo was then, that he might have sent something better than an _ekka_, which jolted fearfully, to haul out a future lieutenant-governor to the city on a muggy april evening. the _ekka_ did not run quickly. it was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of ranjit singh's tomb near the main gate of the fort. here was suddhoo, and he said that, by reason of my condescension, it was absolutely certain that i should become a lieutenant-governor while my hair was yet black. then we talked about the weather and the state of my health, and the wheat crops, for fifteen minutes in the huzuri bagh, under the stars. suddhoo came to the point at last. he said that janoo had told him that there was an order of the _sirkar_ against magic, because it was feared that magic might one day kill the empress of india. i didn't know anything about the state of the law; but i fancied that something interesting was going to happen. i said that so far from magic being discouraged by the government it was highly commended. the greatest officials of the state practiced it themselves. (if the financial statement isn't magic, i don't know what is.) then, to encourage him further, i said that, if there was any _jadoo_ afoot, i had not the least objection to giving it my countenance and sanction, and to seeing that it was clean _jadoo_--white magic, as distinguished from the unclean _jadoo_ which kills folk. it took a long time before suddhoo admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for. then he told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he gave suddhoo news of the sick son in peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this news was always corroborated by the letters. further, that he had told suddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could be removed by clean _jadoo_; and, of course, heavy payment. i began to see exactly how the land lay, and told suddhoo that i also understood a little _jadoo_ in the western line, and would go to his house to see that everything was done decently and in order. we set off together; and on the way suddhoo told me that he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and two hundred rupees already; and the _jadoo_ of that night would cost two hundred more. which was cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his son's danger; but i do not think he meant it. the lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. i could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's shop-front, as if some one were groaning his soul out. suddhoo shook all over, and while we groped our way upstairs told me that the _jadoo_ had begun, janoo and azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us that the _jadoo_-work was coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. janoo is a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. she whispered that the _jadoo_ was an invention to get money out of suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would go to a hot place when he died. suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and old age. he kept walking up and down the room in the half-light, repeating his son's name over and over again, and asking azizun if the seal-cutter ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own landlord. janoo pulled me over to the shadow in the recess of the carved bow-windows. the boards were up, and the rooms were only lit by one tiny oil-lamp. there was no chance of my being seen if i stayed still. presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps on the staircase. that was the seal-cutter. he stopped outside the door as the terrier barked and azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told suddhoo to blow out the lamp. this left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow from the two _huqas_ that belonged to janoo and azizun. the seal-cutter came in, and i heard suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan. azizun caught her breath, and janoo backed on to one of the beds with a shudder. there was a clink of something metallic, and then shot up a pale blue-green flame near the ground. the light was just enough to show azizun, pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier between her knees; janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on the bed; suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter. i hope i may never see another man like that seal-cutter. he was stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my wrist round his forehead, a salmon colored loin-cloth round his middle, and a steel bangle on each ankle. this was not awe-inspiring. it was the face of the man that turned me cold. it was blue-grey in the first place. in the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of a demon--a ghoul--anything you please except of the sleek, oily old ruffian who sat in the daytime over his turning-lathe downstairs. he was lying on his stomach with his arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been thrown down pinioned. his head and neck were the only parts of him off the floor. they were nearly at right angles to the body, like the head of a cobra at spring. it was ghastly. in the centre of the room, on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light. round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. how he did it i do not know. i could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but i could not see any other motion. the head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles, janoo from the bed was breathing seventy to the minute; azizun held her hands before her eyes; and old suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into his white beard, was crying to himself. the horror of it was that the creeping, crawly thing made no sound--only crawled! and, remember, this lasted for ten minutes, while the terrier whined, and azizun shuddered, and janoo gasped, and suddhoo cried. i felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a thermantidote paddle. luckily, the seal-cutter betrayed himself by his most impressive trick and made me calm again. after he had finished that unspeakable triple crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils. now i knew how fire-spouting is done--i can do it myself--so i felt at ease. the business was a fraud. if he had only kept to that crawl without trying to raise the effect, goodness knows what i might not have thought. both the girls shrieked at the jet of fire and the head dropped, chin-down on the floor, with a thud; the whole body lying then like a corpse with its arms trussed. there was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the blue-green flame died down. janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets, while azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her arms. suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to janoo's _huqa_, and she slid it across the floor with her foot. directly above the body and on the wall, were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped-paper frames, of the queen and the prince of wales. they looked down on the performance, and to my thinking, seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all. just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned over and rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay stomach-up. there was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like the noise a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in the centre revived. i looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried, shrivelled, black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth, and shaved scalp. it was worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling exhibition. we had no time to say anything before it began to speak. read poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man, and you will realize less than one half of the horror of that head's voice. there was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a sort of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the timbre of a bell. it pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes before i got rid of my cold sweat. then the blessed solution struck me. i looked at the body lying near the doorway, and saw, just where the hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regular breathing twitching away steadily. the whole thing was a careful reproduction of the egyptian teraphin that one reads about sometimes; and the voice was as clever and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear. all this time the head was "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin, and speaking. it told suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illness and of the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night. i always shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time of the peshawar telegrams. it went on to say that skilled doctors were night and day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the head in the basin, were doubled. here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. to ask for twice your stipulated fee in a voice that lazarus might have used when he rose from the dead, is absurd. janoo, who is really a woman of masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as i did. i heard her say "_asli nahin! fareib!_" scornfully under her breath; and just as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the head stopped talking, and we heard the room door creak on its hinges. then janoo struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-cutter were gone. suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining to any one who cared to listen, that, if his chances of eternal salvation depended on it, he could not raise another two hundred rupees. azizun was nearly in hysterics in the corner; while janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss the probabilities of the whole thing being a _bunao_, or "make-up." i explained as much as i knew of the seal-cutter's way of _jadoo_; but her argument was much more simple--"the magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic," said she. "my mother told me that the only potent love-spells are those which are told you for love. this seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. i dare not tell, do anything, or get anything done, because i am in debt to bhagwan dass the bunnia for two gold rings and a heavy anklet. i must get my food from his shop. the seal-cutter is the friend of bhagwan dass, and he would poison my food. a fool's _jadoo_ has been going on for ten days, and has cost suddhoo many rupees each night. the seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and _mantras_ before. he never showed us anything like this till to-night. azizun is a fool, and will be a _purdahnashin_ soon. suddhoo has lost his strength and his wits. see now! i had hoped to get from suddhoo many rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; and behold, he is spending everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the seal-cutter!" here i said, "but what induced suddhoo to drag me into the business? of course i can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund. the whole thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless." "suddhoo _is_ an old child," said janoo. "he has lived on the roofs these seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. he brought you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the _sirkar_, whose salt he ate many years ago. he worships the dust off the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden him to go and see his son. what does suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? i have to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below." janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation; while suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and azizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth. * * * * * now, the case stands thus. unthinkingly, i have laid myself open to the charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining money under false pretences, which is forbidden by section of the indian penal code. i am helpless in the matter for these reasons. i cannot inform the police. what witnesses would support my statements? janoo refuses flatly, and azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near bareilly--lost in this big india of ours. i dare not again take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am i that, not only would suddhoo disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of janoo, who is bound hand and foot by her debt to the _bunnia_. suddhoo is an old dotard; and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the _sirkar_ rather patronizes the black art than otherwise. his son is well now; but suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life. janoo watches daily the money that she hoped to wheedle out of suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen. she will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something happens to prevent her, i am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of cholera--the white arsenic kind--about the middle of may. and thus i shall be privy to a murder in the house of suddhoo. black jack to the wake av tim o'hara came company, all st. patrick's alley was there to see. _robert buchanan._ as the three musketeers share their silver, tobacco, and liquor together, as they protect each other in barracks or camp, and as they rejoice together over the joy of one, so do they divide their sorrows. when ortheris's irrepressible tongue has brought him into cells for a season, or learoyd has run amok through his kit and accoutrements, or mulvaney has indulged in strong waters, and under their influence reproved his commanding officer, you can see the trouble in the faces of the untouched two. and the rest of the regiment know that comment or jest is unsafe. generally the three avoid orderly room and the corner shop that follows, leaving both to the young bloods who have not sown their wild oats; but there are occasions-- for instance, ortheris was sitting on the drawbridge of the main gate of fort amara, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe, bowl down, in his mouth. learoyd was lying at full length on the turf of the glacis, kicking his heels in the air, and i came round the corner and asked for mulvaney. ortheris spat into the ditch and shook his head. "no good seein' 'im now," said ortheris; "'e's a bloomin' camel. listen." i heard on the flags of the veranda opposite to the cells, which are close to the guard-room, a measured step that i could have identified in the tramp of an army. there were twenty paces _crescendo_, a pause, and then twenty _diminuendo_. "that's 'im," said ortheris; "my gawd, that's 'im! all for a bloomin' button you could see your face in an' a bit o' lip that a bloomin' hark-angel would 'a' guv back." mulvaney was doing pack-drill--was compelled, that is to say, to walk up and down for certain hours in full marching order, with rifle, bayonet, ammunition, knapsack, and overcoat. and his offence was being dirty on parade! i nearly fell into the fort ditch with astonishment and wrath, for mulvaney is the smartest man that ever mounted guard, and would as soon think of turning out uncleanly as of dispensing with his trousers. "who was the sergeant that checked him?" i asked. "mullins, o' course," said ortheris. "there ain't no other man would whip 'im on the peg so. but mullins ain't a man. 'e's a dirty little pigscraper, that's wot 'e is." "what did mulvaney say? he's not the make of man to take that quietly." "said! bin better for 'im if 'e'd shut 'is mouth. lord, 'ow we laughed! 'sargint,' 'e sez, 'ye say i'm dirty. well,' sez 'e, 'when your wife lets you blow your own nose for yourself, perhaps you'll know wot dirt is. you're himperfectly eddicated, sargint,' sez 'e, an' then we fell in. but after p'rade, 'e was up an' mullins was swearin' 'imself black in the face at ord'ly room that mulvaney 'ad called 'im a swine an' lord knows wot all. you know mullins. 'e'll 'ave 'is 'ead broke in one o' these days. 'e's too big a bloomin' liar for ord'nary consumption. 'three hours' can an' kit,' sez the colonel; 'not for bein' dirty on p'rade, but for 'avin' said somthin' to mullins, tho' i do not believe,' sez 'e, 'you said wot 'e said you said.' an' mulvaney fell away sayin' nothin'. you know 'e never speaks to the colonel for fear o' gettin' 'imself fresh copped." mullins, a very young and very much married sergeant, whose manners were partly the result of innate depravity and partly of imperfectly digested board school, came over the bridge, and most rudely asked ortheris what he was doing. "me?" said ortheris, "ow! i'm waiting for my c'mission. 'seed it comin' along yit?" mullins turned purple and passed on. there was the sound of a gentle chuckle from the glacis where learoyd lay. "'e expects to get 'is c'mission some day," explained orth'ris; "gawd 'elp the mess that 'ave to put their 'ands into the same kiddy as 'im! wot time d'you make it, sir? fower! mulvaney 'll be out in 'arf an hour. you don't want to buy a dorg, sir, do you? a pup you can trust--'arf rampore by the colonel's grey'ound." "ortheris," i answered, sternly, for i knew what was in his mind, "do you mean to say that"-- "i didn't mean to arx money o' you, any'ow," said ortheris; "i'd 'a' sold you the dorg good an' cheap, but--but--i know mulvaney 'll want somethin' after we've walked 'im orf, an' i ain't got nothin', nor 'e 'asn't neither, i'd sooner sell you the dorg, sir. 's'trewth! i would!" a shadow fell on the drawbridge, and ortheris began to rise into the air, lifted by a huge hand upon his collar. "onything but t' braass," said learoyd, quietly, as he held the londoner over the ditch. "onything but t' braass, orth'ris, ma son! ah've got one rupee eight annas of ma own." he showed two coins, and replaced ortheris on the drawbridge rail. "very good," i said; "where are you going to?" "goin' to walk 'im orf wen 'e comes out--two miles or three or fower," said ortheris. the footsteps within ceased. i heard the dull thud of a knapsack falling on a bedstead, followed by the rattle of arms. ten minutes later, mulvaney, faultlessly dressed, his lips tight and his face as black as a thunderstorm, stalked into the sunshine on the drawbridge. learoyd and ortheris sprang from my side and closed in upon him, both leaning toward as horses lean upon the pole. in an instant they had disappeared down the sunken road to the cantonments, and i was left alone. mulvaney had not seen fit to recognize me; so i knew that his trouble must be heavy upon him. i climbed one of the bastions and watched the figures of the three musketeers grow smaller and smaller across the plain. they were walking as fast as they could put foot to the ground, and their heads were bowed. they fetched a great compass round the parade-ground, skirted the cavalry lines, and vanished in the belt of trees that fringes the low land by the river. i followed slowly, and sighted them--dusty, sweating, but still keeping up their long, swinging tramp--on the river bank. they crashed through the forest reserve, headed toward the bridge of boats, and presently established themselves on the bow of one of the pontoons. i rode cautiously till i saw three puffs of white smoke rise and die out in the clear evening air, and knew that peace had come again. at the bridge-head they waved me forward with gestures of welcome. "tie up your 'orse," shouted ortheris, "an' come on, sir. we're all goin' 'ome in this 'ere bloomin' boat." from the bridge-head to the forest officer's bungalow is but a step. the mess-man was there, and would see that a man held my horse. did the sahib require aught else--a peg, or beer? ritchie sahib had left half a dozen bottles of the latter, but since the sahib was a friend of ritchie sahib, and he, the mess-man, was a poor man-- i gave my order quietly, and returned to the bridge. mulvaney had taken off his boots, and was dabbling his toes in the water; learoyd was lying on his back on the pontoon; and ortheris was pretending to row with a big bamboo. "i'm an ould fool," said mulvaney, reflectively, "dhraggin' you two out here bekaze i was undher the black dog--sulkin' like a child. me that was soldierin' when mullins, an' be damned to him, was shquealin' on a counterpin for five shillin' a week--an' that not paid! bhoys, i've took you five miles out av natural pervarsity. phew!" "wot's the odds so long as you're 'appy?" said ortheris, applying himself afresh to the bamboo. "as well 'ere as anywhere else." learoyd held up a rupee and an eight-anna bit, and shook his head sorrowfully. "five mile from t'canteen, all along o' mulvaney's blasted pride." "i know ut," said mulvaney, penitently. "why will ye come wid me? an' yet i wud be mortial sorry if ye did not--any time--though i am ould enough to know betther. but i will do penance. i will take a dhrink av wather." ortheris squeaked shrilly. the butler of the forest bungalow was standing near the railings with a basket, uncertain how to clamber down to the pontoon. "might 'a' know'd you'd 'a' got liquor out o' bloomin' desert, sir," said ortheris, gracefully, to me. then to the mess-man: "easy with them there bottles. they're worth their weight in gold. jock, ye long-armed beggar, get out o' that an' hike 'em down." learoyd had the basket on the pontoon in an instant, and the three musketeers gathered round it with dry lips. they drank my health in due and ancient form, and thereafter tobacco tasted sweeter than ever. they absorbed all the beer, and disposed themselves in picturesque attitudes to admire the setting sun--no man speaking for a while. mulvaney's head dropped upon his chest, and we thought that he was asleep. "what on earth did you come so far for?" i whispered to ortheris. "to walk 'im orf, o' course. when 'e's been checked we allus walks 'im orf, 'e ain't fit to be spoke to those times--nor 'e ain't fit to leave alone neither. so we takes 'im till 'e is." mulvaney raised his head, and stared straight into the sunset. "i had my rifle," said he, dreamily, "an' i had my bay'nit, an' mullins came round the corner, an' he looked in my face an' grinned dishpiteful. '_you_ can't blow your own nose,' sez he. now, i cannot tell fwhat mullins's expayrience may ha' been, but, mother av god, he was nearer to his death that minut' than i have iver been to mine--and that's less than the thicknuss av a hair!" "yes," said ortheris, calmly, "you'd look fine with all your buttons took orf, an' the band in front o' you, walkin' roun' slow time. we're both front-rank men, me an' jock, when the rig'ment's in 'ollow square, bloomin' fine you'd look. 'the lord giveth an' the lord taketh awai,--heasy with that there drop!--blessed be the naime o' the lord,'" he gulped in a quaint and suggestive fashion. "mullins! wot's mullins?" said learoyd, slowly. "ah'd take a coomp'ny o' mullinses--ma hand behind me. sitha, mulvaney, don't be a fool." "_you_ were not checked for fwhat you did not do, an' made a mock av afther. 'twas for less than that the tyrone wud ha' sent o'hara to hell, instid av lettin' him go by his own choosin', whin rafferty shot him," retorted mulvaney. "and who stopped the tyrone from doing it?" i asked. "that ould fool who's sorry he didn't stick the pig mullins." his head dropped again. when he raised it he shivered and put his hands on the shoulders of his two companions. "ye've walked the divil out av me, bhoys," said he. ortheris shot out the red-hot dottel of his pipe on the back of the hairy fist. "they say 'ell's 'otter than that," said he, as mulvaney swore aloud. "you be warned so. look yonder!"--he pointed across the river to a ruined temple--"me an' you an' _'im_"-he indicated me by a jerk of his head--"was there one day when hi made a bloomin' show o' myself. you an' 'im stopped me doin' such--an' hi was on'y wishful for to desert. you are makin' a bigger bloomin' show o' yourself now." "don't mind him, mulvaney," i said; "dinah shadd won't let you hang yourself yet awhile, and you don't intend to try it either. let's hear about the tyrone and o'hara. rafferty shot him for fooling with his wife. what happened before that?" "there's no fool like an ould fool. you know you can do anythin' wid me whin i'm talkin'. did i say i wud like to cut mullins's liver out? i deny the imputashin, for fear that orth'ris here wud report me--ah! you wud tip me into the river, wud you? sit quiet, little man. anyways, mullins is not worth the trouble av an extry p'rade, an' i will trate him wid outrajis contimpt. the tyrone an' o'hara! o'hara an' the tyrone, begad! ould days are hard to bring back into the mouth, but they're always inside the head." followed a long pause. "o'hara was a divil. though i saved him, for the honor av the rig'mint, from his death that time, i say it now. he was a divil--a long, bould, black-haired divil." "which way?" asked ortheris, "women." "then i know another." "not more than in reason, if you mane me, ye warped walkin'-shtick. i have been young, an' for why should i not have tuk what i cud? did i iver, whin i was corp'ril, use the rise av my rank--wan step an' that taken away, more's the sorrow an' the fault av me!--to prosecute a nefarious inthrigue, as o'hara did? did i, whin i was corp'ril, lay my spite upon a man an' make his life a dog's life from day to day? did i lie, as o'hara lied, till the young wans in the tyrone turned white wid the fear av the judgment av god killin' thim all in a lump, as ut killed the woman at devizes? i did not! i have sinned my sins an' i have made my confesshin, an' father victor knows the worst av me. o'hara was tuk, before he cud spake, on rafferty's doorstep, an' no man knows the worst av him. but this much i know! "the tyrone was recruited any fashion in the ould days. a draf from connemara--a draf from portsmouth--a draf from kerry, an' that was a blazin' bad draf--here, there and iverywhere--but the large av thim was oirish--black oirish. now there are oirish an' oirish. the good are good as the best, but the bad are wurrst than the wurrst. 'tis this way. they clog together in pieces as fast as thieves, an' no wan knows fwhat they will do till wan turns informer an' the gang is bruk. but ut begins again, a day later, meetin' in holes an' corners an' swearin' bloody oaths an' shtickin' a man in the back an' runnin' away, an' thin waitin' for the blood-money on the reward papers--to see if ut's worth enough. those are the black oirish, an' 'tis they that bring dishgrace upon the name av oireland, an' thim i wud kill--as i nearly killed wan wanst. "but to reshume. my room--'twas before i was married--was wid twelve av the scum av the earth--the pickin's av the gutter--mane men that wud neither laugh nor talk nor yet get dhrunk as a man shud. they thried some av their dog's thricks on me, but i dhrew a line round my cot, an' the man that thransgressed ut wint into hospital for three days good. "o'hara had put his spite on the room--he was my color sargint--an' nothin' cud we do to plaze him. i was younger than i am now, an' i tuk what i got in the way av dressing down and punishmint-dhrill wid my tongue in my cheek. but it was diff'rint wid the others, an' why i cannot say, excipt that some men are borrun mane an' go to dhirty murdher where a fist is more than enough. afther a whoile, they changed their chune to me an' was desp'rit frien'ly--all twelve av thim cursin' o'hara in chorus. "'eyah,' sez i, 'o'hara's a divil an' i'm not for denyin' ut, but is he the only man in the wurruld? let him go. he'll get tired av findin' our kit foul an' our 'coutrements onproperly kep'.' "'we will _not_ let him go,' sez they. "'thin take him,' sez i, 'an' a dashed poor yield you will get for your throuble.' "'is he not misconductin' himself wid slimmy's wife?' sez another. "'she's common to the rig'mint,' sez i. 'fwhat has made ye this partic'lar on a suddint?' "'has he not put his spite on the roomful av us? can we do anythin' that he will not check us for?' sez another. "'that's thrue,' sez i. "'will ye not help us to do aught,' sez another--'a big bould man like you?' "'i will break his head upon his shoulthers av he puts hand on me,' sez i. 'i will give him the lie av he says that i'm dhirty, an' i wud not mind duckin' him in the artillery troughs if ut was not that i'm thryin' for my shtripes.' "'is that all ye will do?' sez another. 'have ye no more spunk than that, ye blood-dhrawn calf?' "'blood-dhrawn i may be,' sez i, gettin' back to my cot an' makin' my line round ut; 'but ye know that the man who comes acrost this mark will be more blood-dhrawn than me. no man gives me the name in my mouth,' i sez. 'ondersthand, i will have no part wid you in anythin' ye do, nor will i raise my fist to my shuperior. is any wan comin' on?' sez i. "they made no move, tho' i gave them full time, but stud growlin' an' snarlin' together at wan ind av the room. i tuk up my cap and wint out to canteen, thinkin' no little av mesilf, and there i grew most ondacintly dhrunk in my legs. my head was all reasonable. "'houligan,' i sez to a man in e comp'ny that was by way av bein' a frind av mine; 'i'm overtuk from the belt down. do you give me the touch av your shoulther to presarve my formation an' march me acrost the ground into the high grass. i'll sleep ut off there,' sez i; an' houligan--he's dead now, but good he was while he lasted--walked wid me, givin' me the touch whin i wint wide, ontil we came to the high grass, an', my faith, the sky an' the earth was fair rowlin' undher me. i made for where the grass was thickust, an' there i slep' off my liquor wid an easy conscience. i did not desire to come on books too frequent; my characther havin' been shpotless for the good half av a year. "whin i roused, the dhrink was dyin' out in me, an' i felt as though a she-cat had littered in my mouth. i had not learned to hould my liquor wid comfort in thim days. 'tis little betther i am now. 'i will get houligan to pour a bucket over my head,' thinks i, an' i wud ha' risen, but i heard some wan say: 'mulvaney can take the blame av ut for the backslidin' hound he is.' "'oho!' sez i, an' my head rang like a guard-room gong: 'fwhat is the blame that this young man must take to oblige tim vulmea?' for 'twas tim vulmea that shpoke. "i turned on my belly an' crawled through the grass, a bit at a time, to where the spache came from. there was the twelve av my room sittin' down in a little patch, the dhry grass wavin' above their heads an' the sin av black murdher in their hearts. i put the stuff aside to get a clear view. "'fwhat's that?' sez wan man, jumpin' up. "'a dog,' says vulmea. 'you're a nice hand to this job! as i said, mulvaney will take the blame--av ut comes to a pinch.' "''tis harrd to swear a man's life away,' sez a young wan. "'thank ye for that,' thinks i. 'now, fwhat the divil are you paragins conthrivin' against me?' "''tis as easy as dhrinkin' your quart,' sez vulmea. 'at seven or thereon, o'hara will come acrost to the married quarters, goin' to call on slimmy's wife, the swine! wan av us'll pass the wurrd to the room an' we shtart the divil an' all av a shine--laughin' an' crackin' on an' t'rowin' our boots about. thin o'hara will come to give us the ordher to be quiet, the more by token bekaze the room-lamp will be knocked over in the larkin'. he will take the straight road to the ind door where there's the lamp in the veranda, an' that'll bring him clear against the light as he shtands. he will not be able to look into the dhark. wan av us will loose off, an' a close shot ut will be, an' shame to the man that misses. 'twill be mulvaney's rifle, she that that is at the head av the rack--there's no mistakin' long-shtocked, cross-eyed bitch even in the dhark.' "the thief misnamed my ould firin'-piece out av jealousy--i was pershuaded av that--an' ut made me more angry than all. "but vulmea goes on: 'o'hara will dhrop, an' by the time the light's lit again, there'll be some six av us on the chest av mulvaney, cryin' murdher an' rape. mulvaney's cot is near the ind door, an' the shmokin' rifle will be lyin' undher him whin we've knocked him over. we know, an' all the rig'mint knows, that mulvaney has given o'hara more lip than any man av us. will there be any doubt at the coort-martial? wud twelve honust sodger-bhoys swear away the life av a dear, quiet, swate-timpered man such as is mulvaney--wid his line av pipe-clay roun' his cot, threatenin' us wid murdher av we overshtepped ut, as we can truthful testify?' "'mary, mother av mercy!' thinks i to mesilf; 'it is this to have an unruly number an' fistes fit to use! oh the sneakin' hounds!' "the big dhrops ran down my face, for i was wake wid the liquor an' had not the full av my wits about me. i laid shtill an' heard thim workin' themselves up to swear my life by tellin' tales av ivry time i had put my mark on wan or another; an' my faith, they was few that was not so dishtinguished. 'twas all in the way av fair fight, though, for niver did i raise my hand excipt whin they had provoked me to ut. "'tis all well,' sez wan av thim, 'but who's to do this shootin'?' "'fwhat matther?' sez vulmea. 'tis mulvaney will do that--at the coort-martial.' "'he will so,' sez the man, 'but whose hand is put to the trigger--_in the room?'_ "'who'll do ut?' sez vulmea, lookin' round, but divil a man answeared. they began to dishpute till kiss, that was always playin' shpoil five, sez: 'thry the kyards!' wid that he opined his tunic an' tuk out the greasy palammers, an' they all fell in wid the notion. "'deal on!' sez vulmea, wid a big rattlin' oath, 'an' the black curse av shielygh come to the man that will not do his duty as the kyards say. amin!' "'black jack is the masther,' sez kiss, dealin'. 'black jack, sorr, i shud expaytiate to you, is the ace av shpades which from time immimorial has been intimately connect wid battle, murdher an' suddin death. "_wanst_ kiss dealt an' there was no sign, but the men was whoite wid the workin's av their sowls. _twice_ kiss dealt, an' there was a grey shine on their cheeks like the mess av an egg. _three_ times kiss dealt an' they was blue. 'have ye not lost him?' sez vulmea, wipin' the sweat on him; 'let's ha' done quick!' 'quick ut is,' sez kiss t'rowin' him the kyard; an' ut fell face up on his knee--black jack! "thin they all cackled wid laughin'. 'duty thrippence,' sez wan av thim, 'an' damned cheap at that price!' but i cud see they all dhrew a little away from vulmea an' lef' him sittin' playin' wid the kyard. vulmea sez no word for a whoile but licked his lips--cat-ways. thin he threw up his head an' made the men swear by ivry oath known to stand by him not alone in the room but at the coort-martial that was to set on _me!_ he tould off five av the biggest to stretch me on my cot whin the shot was fired, an' another man he tould off to put out the light, an' yet another to load my rifle. he wud not do that himself; an' that was quare, for 'twas but a little thing considerin'. "thin they swore over again that they wud not bethray wan another, an' crep' out av the grass in diff'rint ways, two by two. a mercy ut was that they did not come on me. i was sick wid fear in the pit av my stummick--sick, sick, sick! afther they was all gone, i wint back to canteen an' called for a quart to put a thought in me. vulmea was there, dhrinkin' heavy, an' politeful to me beyond reason. 'fwhat will i do--fwhat will i do?' thinks i to mesilf whin vulmea wint away. "presintly the arm'rer sargint comes in stiffin' an' crackin' on, not pleased wid any wan, bekaze the martini-henry bein' new to the rig'mint in those days we used to play the mischief wid her arrangemints. 'twas a long time before i cud get out av the way av thryin' to pull back the back-sight an' turnin' her over afther firin'--as if she was a snider. "'fwhat tailor-men do they give me to work wid?' sez the arm'rer sargint. 'here's hogan, his nose flat as a table, laid by for a week, an' ivry comp'ny sendin' their arrums in knocked to small shivreens.' "'fwhat's wrong wid hogan, sargint?' sez i. "'wrong!' sez the arm'rer sargint; 'i showed him, as though i had been his mother, the way av shtrippin' a 'tini, an' he shtrup her clane an' easy. i tould him to put her to again an' fire a blank into the blow-pit to show how the dirt hung on the groovin'. he did that, but he did not put in the pin av the fallin'-block, an' av coorse whin he fired he was strook by the block jumpin' clear. well for him 'twas but a blank--a full charge wud ha' cut his oi out," "i looked a thrifle wiser than a boiled sheep's head. 'how's that, sargint?' sez i. "'this way, ye blundherin' man, an' don't you be doin' ut,' sez he. wid that he shows me a waster action--the breech av her all cut away to show the inside--an' so plazed he was to grumble that he dimonstrated fwhat hogan had done twice over. 'an' that comes av not knowin' the wepping you're purvided wid,' sez he. "'thank ye, sargint,' sez i; 'i will come to you again for further information.' "'ye will not,' sez he, 'kape your clanin'-rod away from the breech-pin or you will get into throuble.' "i wint outside an' i could ha' danced wid delight for the grandeur av ut. 'they will load my rifle, good luck to thim, whoile i'm away,' thinks i, and back i wint to the canteen to give them their clear chanst. "the canteen was fillin' wid men at the ind av the day. i made feign to be far gone in dhrink, an', wan by wan, all my roomful came in wid vulmea. i wint away, walkin' thick an' heavy, but not so thick an' heavy that any wan cud ha' tuk me. sure and thrue, there was a kyartridge gone from my pouch an' lyin' snug in my rifle. i was hot wid rage against thim all, an' i worried the bullet out wid my teeth as fast as i cud, the room bein' empty. then i tuk my boot an' the clanin'-rod and knocked out the pin av the fallin'-block. oh, 'twas music when that pin rowled on the flure! i put ut into my pouch an' stuck a dab av dirt on the holes in the plate, puttin' the fallin'-block back. 'that'll do your business, vulmea,' sez i, lyin' easy on the cot. 'come an' sit on my chest the whole room av you, an' i will take you to my bosom for the biggest divils that iver cheated halter.' i would have no mercy on vulmea. his oi or his life--little i cared! "at dusk they came back, the twelve av thim, an' they had all been dhrinkin'. i was shammin' sleep on the cot. wan man wint outside in the veranda. whin he whishtled they began to rage roun' the room an' carry on tremenjus. but i niver want to hear men laugh as they did--sky-larkin' too! 'twas like mad jackals. "'shtop that blasted noise!' sez o'hara in the dark, an' pop goes the room lamp. i cud hear o'hara runnin' up an' the rattlin' av my rifle in the rack an' the men breathin' heavy as they stud roun' my cot. i cud see o'hara in the light av the veranda lamp, an' thin i heard the crack av my rifle. she cried loud, poor darlint, bein' mishandled. next minut' five men were houldin' me down. 'go easy,' i sez; 'fwhat's ut all about?' "thin vulmea, on the flure, raised a howl you cud hear from wan ind av cantonmints to the other. 'i'm dead, i'm butchered, i'm blind!' sez he. 'saints have mercy on my sinful sowl! sind for father constant! oh sind for father constant an' let me go clean!' by that i knew he was not so dead as i cud ha' wished. "o'hara picks up the lamp in the veranda wid a hand as stiddy as a rest. 'fwhat damned dog's thrick is this av yours?' sez he, and turns the light on tim vulmea that was shwimmin' in blood from top to toe. the fallin'-block had sprung free behin' a full charge av powther--good care i tuk to bite down the brass afther takin' out the bullet that there might be somethin' to give ut full worth--an' had cut tim from the lip to the corner av the right eye, lavin' the eyelid in tatthers, an' so up an' along by the forehead to the hair. 'twas more av a rakin' plough, if you will ondherstand, than a clean cut; an' niver did i see a man bleed as vulmea did, the dhrink an' the stew that he was in pumped the blood strong. the minut' the men sittin' on my chest heard o'hara spakin' they scatthered each wan to his cot, an' cried out very politeful: 'fwhat is ut, sargint?' "'fwhat is ut!' sez o'hara. shakin' tim. 'well an' good do you know fwhat ut is, ye skulkin' ditch-lurkin' dogs! get a _doolie_, an' take this whimperin' scutt away. there will be more heard av ut than any av you will care for.' "vulmea sat up rockin' his head in his hand an' moanin' for father constant. "'be done!' sez o'hara, dhraggin' him up by the hair. 'you're none so dead that you cannot go fifteen years for thryin' to shoot me.' "'i did not,' sez vulmea; 'i was shootin' mesilf.' "'that's quare,' sez o'hara, 'for the front av my jackut is black wid your powther.' he tuk up the rifle that was still warm an' began to laugh. 'i'll make your life hell to you,' sez he, 'for attempted murdher an' kapin' your rifle onproperly. you'll be hanged first an' thin put undher stoppages for four fifteen. the rifle's done for,' sez he. "'why, 'tis my rifle!' sez i, comin' up to look; 'vulmea, ye divil, fwhat were you doin' wid her--answer me that?' "'lave me alone,' sez vulmea; 'i'm dyin'!' "'i'll wait till you're betther,' sez i, 'an' thin we two will talk ut out umbrageous.' "o'hara pitched tim into the _doolie_, none too tinder, but all the bhoys kep' by their cots, which was not the sign av innocint men. i was huntin' ivrywhere for my fallin'-block, but not findin' ut at all. i niver found ut. "'_now_ fwhat will i do?' sez o'hara, swinging the veranda light in his hand an' lookin' down the room. i had hate and contimpt av o'hara an' i have now, dead tho' he is, but, for all that, will i say he was a brave man. he is baskin' in purgathory this tide, but i wish he cud hear that, whin he stud lookin' down the room an' the bhoys shivered before the oi av him, i knew him for a brave man an' i liked him _so_. "'fwhat will i do?' sez o'hara agin, an' we heard the voice av a woman low an' sof' in the veranda. 'twas slimmy's wife, come over at the shot, sittin' on wan av the benches an' scarce able to walk. "'o denny!--denny, dear,' sez she, 'have they kilt you?' "o'hara looked down the room again an' showed his teeth to the gum. then he spat on the flare. "'you're not worth ut,' sez he. 'light that lamp, ye dogs,' an' wid that he turned away, an' i saw him walkin' off wid slimmy's wife; she thryin' to wipe off the powther-black on the front av his jackut wid her handkerchief. 'a brave man you are,' thinks i--'a brave man an' a bad woman.' "no wan said a word for a time. they was all ashamed, past spache, "'fwhat d'you think he will do?' sez wan av thim at last. 'he knows we're all in ut.' "'are we so?' sez i from my cot. 'the man that sez that to me will be hurt. i do not know,' sez i, 'fwhat onderhand divilmint you have conthrived, but by what i've seen i know that you cannot commit murdher wid another man's rifle--such shakin' cowards you are. i'm goin' to slape,' i sez, 'an' you can blow my head off whoile i lay.' i did not slape, though, for a long time. can ye wonder? "next morn the news was through all the rig'mint, an' there was nothin' that the men did not tell. o'hara reports, fair an' easy, that vulmea was come to grief through tamperin' wid his rifle in barricks, all for to show the mechanism. an' by my sowl, he had the impart'nince to say that he was on the sphot at the time an' cud certify that ut was an accidint! you might ha' knocked my roomful down wid a straw whin they heard that. 'twas lucky for thim that the bhoys were always thryin' to find out how the new rifle was made, an' a lot av thim had come up for easin' the pull by shtickin' bits av grass an' such in the part av the lock that showed near the thrigger. the first issues of the 'tinis was not covered in, an' i mesilf have eased the pull av mine time an' agin. a light pull is ten points on the range to me. "'i will not have this foolishness!' sez the colonel, 'i will twist the tail off vulmea!' sez he; but whin he saw him, all tied up an' groanin' in hospital, he changed his will. 'make him an early convalescint' sez he to the doctor, an' vulmea was made so for a warnin'. his big bloody bandages an' face puckered up to wan side did more to kape the bhoys from messin' wid the insides av their rifles than any punishmint. "o'hara gave no reason for fwhat he'd said, an' all my roomful were too glad to inquire, tho' he put his spite upon thim more wearin' than before. wan day, howiver, he tuk me apart very polite, for he cud be that at the choosin'. "'you're a good sodger, tho' you're a damned insolint man,' sez he. "'fair words, sargint,' sez i, 'or i may be insolint again,' "'tis not like you,' sez he, 'to lave your rifle in the rack widout the breech-pin, for widout the breech-pin she was whin vulmea fired. i should ha' found the break av ut in the eyes av the holes, else,' he sez. "'sargint,' sez i, 'fwhat wud your life ha' been worth av the breech-pin had been in place, for, on my sowl, my life wud be worth just as much to me av i tould you whether ut was or was not. be thankful the bullet was not there,' i sez. "'that's thrue,' sez he, pulling his moustache; 'but i do not believe that you, for all your lip, was in that business.' "'sargint,' sez i, 'i cud hammer the life out av a man in ten minuts wid my fistes if that man dishpleased me; for i am a good sodger, an' i will be threated as such, an' whoile my fistes are my own they're strong enough for all work i have to do. they do not fly back toward me!' sez i, lookin' him betune the eyes. "'you're a good man,' sez he, lookin' me betune the eyes--an' oh he was a gran'-built man to see!--'you're a good man,' he sez, 'an' i cud wish, for the pure frolic av ut, that i was not a sargint, or that you were not a privit; an' you will think me no coward whin i say this thing.' "'i do not,' sez i. 'i saw you whin vulmea mishandled the rifle. but, sargint,' i sez, 'take the wurrd from me now, spakin' as man to man wid the shtripes off, tho' 'tis little right i have to talk, me being fwhat i am by natur'. this time ye tuk no harm, an' next time ye may not, but, in the ind, so sure as slimmy's wife came into the veranda, so sure will ye take harm--an' bad harm. have thought, sargint,' sez i. 'is ut worth ut?' "'ye're a bould man,' sez he, breathin' harrd. 'a very bould man. but i am a bould man tu. do you go your way, privit mulvaney, an' i will go mine.' "we had no further spache thin or afther, but, wan by another, he drafted the twelve av my room out into other rooms an' got thim spread among the comp'nies, for they was not a good breed to live together, an' the comp'ny orf'cers saw ut. they wud ha' shot me in the night av they had known fwhat i knew; but that they did not. "an', in the ind, as i said, o'hara met his death from rafferty for foolin' wid his wife. he wint his own way too well--eyah, too well! shtraight to that affair, widout turnin' to the right or to the lef', he wint, an' may the lord have mercy on his sowl. amin!" "'ear! 'ear!" said ortheris, pointing the moral with a wave of his pipe, "an' this is 'im 'oo would be a bloomin' vulmea all for the sake of mullins an' a bloomin' button! mullins never went after a woman in his life. mrs. mullins, she saw 'im one day"-- "ortheris," i said, hastily, for the romances of private ortheris are all too daring for publication, "look at the sun. it's quarter past six!" "o lord! three quarters of an hour for five an' a 'arf miles! we'll 'ave to run like jimmy-o." the three musketeers clambered on to the bridge, and departed hastily in the direction of the cantonment road. when i overtook them i offered them two stirrups and a tail, which they accepted enthusiastically. ortheris held the tail, and in this manner we trotted steadily through the shadows by an unfrequented road. at the turn into the cantonments we heard carriage wheels. it was the colonel's barouche, and in it sat the colonel's wife and daughter. i caught a suppressed chuckle, and my beast sprang forward with a lighter step. the three musketeers had vanished into the night. the taking of lungtungpen so we loosed a bloomin' volley, an' we made the beggars cut, an' when our pouch was emptied out. we used the bloomin' butt, ho! my! don't yer come anigh, when tommy is a playin' with the baynit an' the butt. _--barrack room ballad_. my friend private mulvaney told me this, sitting on the parapet of the road to dagshai, when we were hunting butterflies together. he had theories about the army, and colored clay pipes perfectly. he said that the young soldier is the best to work with, "on account av the surpassing innocinse av the child." "now, listen!" said mulvaney, throwing himself full length on the wall in the sun. "i'm a born scutt av the barrick-room! the army's mate an' dhrink to me, bekaze i'm wan av the few that can't quit ut. i've put in sivinteen years, an' the pipeclay's in the marrow av me. av i cud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, i wud have been a hon'ry lift'nint by this time--a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin'-shtock to my equils, an' a curse to meself. bein' fwhat i am, i'm privit mulvaney, wid no good-conduc' pay an' a devourin' thirst. always barrin' me little frind bobs bahadur, i know as much about the army as most men." i said something here. "wolseley be shot! betune you an' me an' that butterfly net, he's a ramblin', incoherint sort av a divil, wid wan oi on the quane an' the coort, an' the other on his blessed silf--everlastin'ly playing saysar an' alexandrier rowled into a lump. now bobs is a sinsible little man. wid bobs an' a few three-year-olds, i'd swape any army av the earth into a towel, an' throw it away aftherward. faith, i'm not jokin'! tis the bhoys--the raw bhoys--that don't know fwhat a bullut manes, an' wudn't care av they did--that dhu the work. they're crammed wid bull-mate till they fairly _ramps_ wid good livin'; and thin, av they don't fight, they blow each other's hids off. 'tis the trut' i'm tellin' you. they shud be kept on water an' rice in the hot weather; but there'd be a mut'ny av 'twas done. "did ye iver hear how privit mulvaney tuk the town av lungtungpen? i thought not! 'twas the lift'nint got the credit; but 'twas me planned the schame. a little before i was inviladed from burma, me an' four-an'-twenty young wans undher a lift'nint brazenose, was ruinin' our dijeshins thryin' to catch dacoits. an' such double-ended divils i niver knew! tis only a _dah_ an' a snider that makes a dacoit, widout thim, he's a paceful cultivator, an' felony for to shoot. we hunted, an' we hunted, an' tuk fever an' elephints now an' again; but no dacoits, evenshually, we _puckarowed_ wan man, 'trate him tinderly,' sez the lift'nint. so i tuk him away into the jungle, wid the burmese interprut'r an' my clanin'-rod. sez i to the man, 'my paceful squireen,' sez i, 'you shquot on your hunkers an' dimonstrate to _my_ frind here, where _your_ frinds are whin they're at home?' wid that i introjuced him to the clanin'-rod, an' he comminst to jabber; the interprut'r interprutin' in betweens, an' me helpin' the intilligince departmint wid my clanin'-rod whin the man misremimbered. "prisintly, i learn that, acrost the river, about nine miles away, was a town just dhrippin' wid dahs, an' bohs an' arrows, an' dacoits, and elephints, an' _jingles_. 'good!' sez i; 'this office will now close!' "that night, i went to the lift'nint an' communicates my information. i never thought much of lift'nint brazenose till that night. he was shtiff wid books an' theouries, an' all manner av thrimmin's no manner av use. 'town did ye say?' sez he. 'accordin' to the theouries av war, we shud wait for reinforcemints.'--'faith!' thinks i, 'we'd betther dig our graves thin;' for the nearest throops was up to their shtocks in the marshes out mimbu way. 'but,' says the lift'nint, 'since 'tis a speshil case, i'll make an excepshin. we'll visit this lungtungpen to-night.' "the bhoys was fairly woild wid deloight whin i tould 'em; an', by this an' that, they wint through the jungle like buck-rabbits. about midnight we come to the shtrame which i had clane forgot to minshin to my orficer. i was on, ahead, wid four bhoys, an' i thought that the lift'nint might want to theourise. 'shtrip boys!' sez i. 'shtrip to the buff, an' shwim in where glory waits!'--'but i _can't_ shwim!' sez two av thim. 'to think i should live to hear that from a bhoy wid a board-school edukashin!' sez i. 'take a lump av timber, an' me an' conolly here will ferry ye over, ye young ladies!' "we got an ould tree-trunk, an' pushed off wid the kits an' the rifles on it. the night was chokin' dhark, an' just as we was fairly embarked, i heard the lift'nint behind av me callin' out. 'there's a bit av a _nullah_ here, sorr,' sez i, 'but i can feel the bottom already.' so i cud, for i was not a yard from the bank. "'bit av a _nullah!_ bit av an eshtuary!' sez the lift'nint. 'go on, ye mad irishman! shtrip bhoys!' i heard him laugh; an' the bhoys begun shtrippin' an' rollin' a log into the wather to put their kits on. so me an' conolly shtruck out through the warm wather wid our log, an' the rest come on behind. "that shtrame was miles woide! orth'ris, on the rear-rank log, whispers we had got into the thames below sheerness by mistake. 'kape on shwimmin', ye little blayguard,' sez i, 'an' don't go pokin' your dirty jokes at the irriwaddy,'--'silince, men!' sings out the lift'nint. so we shwum on into the black dhark, wid our chests on the logs, trustin' in the saints an' the luck av the british army. "evenshually, we hit ground--a bit av sand--an' a man. i put my heel on the back av him. he skreeched an' ran. "'_now_ we've done it!' sez lift'nint brazenose. 'where the divil _is_ lungtungpen?' there was about a minute and a half to wait. the bhoys laid a hould av their rifles an' some thried to put their belts on; we was marchin' wid fixed baynits av coorse. thin we knew where lungtungpen was; for we had hit the river-wall av it in the dhark, an' the whole town blazed wid thim messin' _jingles_ an' sniders like a cat's back on a frosty night. they was firin' all ways at wanst, but over our hids into the shtrame. "'have you got your rifles?' sez brazenose. 'got 'em!' sez orth'ris. 'i've got that thief mulvaney's for all my back-pay, an' she'll kick my heart sick wid that blunderin' long shtock av hers.'--'go on!' yells brazenose, whippin' his sword out. 'go on an' take the town! an' the lord have mercy on our sowls!' "thin the bhoys gave wan divastatin' howl, an' pranced into the dhark, feelin' for the town, an' blindin' an' stiffin' like cavalry ridin' masters whin the grass pricked their bare legs. i hammered wid the butt at some bamboo-thing that felt wake, an' the rest come an' hammered contagious, while the _jingles_ was jingling, an' feroshus yells from inside was shplittin' our ears. we was too close under the wall for thim to hurt us. "evenshually, the thing, whatever ut was, bruk; an' the six-and-twinty av us tumbled, wan after the other, naked as we was borrun, into the town of lungtungpen. there was a _melly_ av a sumpshus kind for a whoile; but whether they tuk us, all white an' wet, for a new breed av divil, or a new kind av dacoit, i don't know. they ran as though we was both, an' we wint into thim, baynit an' butt, shriekin' wid laughin'. there was torches in the shtreets, an' i saw little orth'ris rubbin' his showlther ivry time he loosed my long-shtock martini; an' brazenose walkin' into the gang wid his sword, like diarmid av the gowlden collar--barring he hadn't a stitch av clothin' on him. we diskivered elephints wid dacoits under their bellies, an', what wid wan thing an' another, we was busy till mornin' takin' possession av the town of lungtungpen. "thin we halted an' formed up, the wimmen howlin' in the houses an' lift'nint brazenose blushin' pink in the light av the mornin' sun. 'twas the most ondasint p'rade i iver tuk a hand in. foive-and-twenty privits an' a orficer av the line in review ordher, an' not as much as wud dust a fife betune 'em all in the way of clothin'! eight av us had their belts an' pouches on; but the rest had gone in wid a handful av cartridges an' the skin god gave thim. _they_ was as nakid as vanus. "'number off from the right!' sez the lift'nint. 'odd numbers fall out to dress; even numbers pathrol the town till relieved by the dressing party.' let me tell you, pathrollin' a town wid nothing on is an ex_pay_rience. i pathrolled for tin minutes, an' begad, before 'twas over, i blushed. the women laughed so. i niver blushed before or since; but i blushed all over my carkiss thin. orth'ris didn't pathrol. he sez only, 'portsmith barricks an' the 'ard av a sunday! thin he lay down an' rowled any ways wid laughin'. "whin we was all dhressed, we counted the dead--sivinty-foive dacoits besides wounded. we tuk five elephints, a hunder' an' sivinty sniders, two hunder' dahs, and a lot av other burglarious thruck. not a man av us was hurt--excep' maybe the lift'nint, an' he from the shock to his dasincy. "the headman av lungtungpen, who surrinder'd himself, asked the interprut'r--''av the english fight like that wid their clo'es off, what in the wurruld do they do wid their clo'es on?' orth'ris began rowlin' his eyes an' crackin' his fingers an' dancin' a step-dance for to impress the headman. he ran to his house; an' we spint the rest av the day carryin' the lift'nint on our showlthers round the town, an' playin' wid the burmese babies--fat, little, brown little divils, as pretty as picturs. "whin i was inviladed for the dysent'ry to india, i sez to the lift'nint, 'sorr,' sez i, 'you've the makin's in you av a great man; but, av you'll let an ould sodger spake, you're too fond of the-ourisin'.' he shuk hands wid me and sez, 'hit high, hit low, there's no plasin' you, mulvaney. you've seen me waltzin' through lungtungpen like a red injin widout the warpaint, an' you say i'm too fond av the-ourisin'?'--'sorr,' sez i, for i loved the bhoy; 'i wud waltz wid you in that condishin through _hell_, an' so wud the rest av the men!' thin i wint downshtrame in the flat an' left him my blessin'. may the saints carry ut where ut shud go, for he was a fine upstandin' young orficer, "to reshume. fwhat i've said jist shows the use av three-year-olds. wud fifty seasoned sodgers have taken lungtungpen in the dhark that way? no! they'd know the risk av fever and chill. let alone the shootin'. two hundher' might have done ut. but the three-year-olds know little an' care less; an' where there's no fear, there's no danger. catch thim young, feed thim high, an' by the honor av that great, little man bobs, behind a good orficer 'tisn't only dacoits they'd smash wid their clo'es off--'tis con-ti-nental ar-r-r-mies! they tuk lungtungpen nakid; an' they'd take st. pethersburg in their dhrawers! begad, they would that! "here's your pipe, sorr. shmoke her tinderly wid honey-dew, afther letting the reek av the canteen plug die away. but 'tis no good, thanks to you all the same, fillin' my pouch wid your chopped hay. canteen baccy's like the army. it shpoils a man's taste for moilder things." so saying, mulvaney took up his butterfly-net, and returned to barracks. the phantom rickshaw may no ill dreams disturb my rest, nor powers of darkness me molest. --evening hymn. one of the few advantages that india has over england is a great knowability. after five years' service a man is directly or indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundred civilians in his province, all the messes of ten or twelve regiments and batteries, and some fifteen hundred other people of the non-official caste, in ten years his knowledge should be doubled, and at the end of twenty he knows, or knows something about, every englishman in the empire, and may travel anywhere and everywhere without paying hotel-bills. globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right, have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less to-day, if you belong to the inner circle and are neither a bear nor a black sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very kind and helpful. rickett of kamartha stayed with polder of kumaon some fifteen years ago. he meant to stay two nights, but was knocked down by rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganized polder's establishment, stopped polder's work, and nearly died in polder's bedroom. polder behaves as though he had been placed under eternal obligation by rickett, and yearly sends the little ricketts a box of presents and toys. it is the same everywhere. the men who do not take the trouble to conceal from you their opinion that you are an incompetent ass, and the women who blacken your character and misunderstand your wife's amusements, will work themselves to the bone in your behalf if you fall sick or into serious trouble, heatherlegh, the doctor, kept, in addition to his regular practice, a hospital on his private account--an arrangement of loose boxes for incurables, his friend called it--but it was really a sort of fitting-up shed for craft that had been damaged by stress of weather. the weather in india is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is always a fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permission to work overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally break down and become as mixed as the metaphors in this sentence. heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable prescription to all his patients is, "lie low, go slow, and keep cool." he says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies. he maintains that overwork slew pansay, who died under his hands about three years ago. he has, of course, the right to speak authoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in pansay's head and a little bit of the dark world came through and pressed him to death. "pansay went off the handle," says heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave at home. he may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to mrs. keith-wessington. my notion is that the work of the katabundi settlement ran him off his legs, and that he took to brooding and making much of an ordinary p. & o. flirtation. he certainly was engaged to miss mannering, and she certainly broke off the engagement. then he took a feverish chill and all that nonsense about ghosts developed. overwork started his illness, kept it alight, and killed him, poor devil. write him off to the system--one man to take the work of two and a half men." i do not believe this. i used to sit up with pansay sometimes when heatherlegh was called out to patients, and i happened to be within claim. the man would make me most unhappy by describing in a low, even voice, the procession that was always passing at the bottom of his bed. he had a sick man's command of language. when he recovered i suggested that he should write out the whole affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to ease his mind. when little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. and this also is literature. he was in a high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. i got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair, dated : my doctor tells me that i need rest and change of air. it is not improbable that i shall get both ere long--rest that neither the red-coated messenger nor the midday gun can break, and change of air far beyond that which any homeward-bound steamer can give me. in the meantime i am resolved to stay where i am; and, in flat defiance of my doctor's orders, to take all the world into my confidence. you shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of my malady; and shall, too, judge for yourselves whether any man born of woman on this weary earth was ever so tormented as i. speaking now as a condemned criminal might speak ere the drop-bolts are drawn, my story, wild and hideously improbable as it may appear, demands at least attention. that it will ever receive credence i utterly disbelieve. two months ago i should have scouted as mad or drunk the man who had dared tell me the like. two months ago i was the happiest man in india. to-day, from peshawur to the sea, there is no one more wretched. my doctor and i are the only two who know this. his explanation is, that my brain, digestion, and eyesight are all slightly affected; giving rise to my frequent and persistent "delusions." delusions, indeed! i call him a fool; but he attends me still with the same unwearied smile, the same bland professional manner, the same neatly trimmed red whiskers, till i begin to suspect that i am an ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid. but you shall judge for yourselves. three years ago it was my fortune--my great misfortune--to sail from gravesend to bombay, on return from long leave, with one agnes keith-wessington, wife of an officer on the bombay side. it does not in the least concern you to know what manner of woman she was. be content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had ended, both she and i were desperately and unreasoningly in love with one another. heaven knows that i can make the admission now without one particle of vanity. in matters of this sort there is always one who gives and another who accepts. from the first day of our ill-omened attachment, i was conscious that agnes's passion was a stronger, a more dominant, and--if i may use the expression--a purer sentiment than mine. whether she recognized the fact then, i do not know. afterward it was bitterly plain to both of as. arrived at bombay in the spring of the year, we went our respective ways, to meet no more for the next three or four months, when my leave and her love took us both to simla. there we spent the season together; and there my fire of straw burned itself out to a pitiful end with the closing year. i attempt no excuse. i make no apology. mrs. wessington had given up much for my sake, and was prepared to give up all. from my own lips, in august, , she learned that i was sick of her presence, tired of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice. ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have wearied of me as i wearied of them; seventy-five of that number would have promptly avenged themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation with other men. mrs. wessington was the hundredth. on her neither my openly expressed aversion nor the cutting brutalities with which i garnished our interviews had the least effect. "jack, darling!" was her one eternal cuckoo cry: "i'm sure it's all a mistake--a hideous mistake; and we'll be good friends again some day. _please_ forgive me, jack, dear." i was the offender, and i knew it. that knowledge transformed my pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hate--the same instinct, i suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp on the spider he has but half killed. and with this hate in my bosom the season of came to an end. next year we met again at simla--she with her monotonous face and timid attempts at reconciliation, and i with loathing of her in every fibre of my frame. several times i could not avoid meeting her alone; and on each occasion her words were identically the same. still the unreasoning wail that it was all a "mistake"; and still the hope of eventually "making friends." i might have seen had i cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. she grew more wan and thin month by month. you will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to despair. it was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly. i maintain that she was much to blame. and again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken night-watches, i have begun to think that i might have been a little kinder to her. but that really _is_ a "delusion." i could not have continued pretending to love her when i didn't, could i? it would have been unfair to us both. last year we met again--on the same terms as before. the same weary appeals, and the same curt answers from my lips. at least i would make her see how wholly wrong and hopeless were her attempts at resuming the old relationship. as the season wore on, we fell apart--that is to say, she found it difficult to meet me, for i had other and more absorbing interests to attend to. when i think it over quietly in my sick-room, the season of seems a confused nightmare wherein light and shade were fantastically intermingled--my courtship of little kitty mannering; my hopes, doubts, and fears; our long rides together; my trembling avowal of attachment; her reply; and now and again a vision of a white face flitting by in the 'rickshaw with the black and white liveries i once watched for so earnestly; the wave of mrs. wessington's gloved hand; and, when she met me alone, which was but seldom, the irksome monotony of her appeal. i loved kitty mannering; honestly, heartily loved her, and with my love for her grew my hatred for agnes. in august kitty and i were engaged. the next day i met those accursed "magpie" _jhampanies_ at the back of jakko, and, moved by some passing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell mrs. wessington everything. she knew it already. "so i hear you're engaged, jack dear." then, without a moment's pause:--"i'm sure it's all a mistake--a hideous mistake. we shall be as good friends some day, jack, as we ever were." my answer might have made even a man wince. it cut the dying woman before me like the blow of a whip. "please forgive me, jack; i didn't mean to make you angry; but it's true, it's true!" and mrs. wessington broke down completely. i turned away and left her to finish her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a moment or two, that i had been an unutterably mean hound. i looked back, and saw that she had turned her 'rickshaw with the idea, i suppose, of overtaking me. the scene and its surroundings were photographed on my memory. the rain-swept sky (we were at the end of the wet weather), the sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven cliffs formed a gloomy background against which the black and white liveries of the _jhampanies,_ the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and mrs. wessington's down-bowed golden head stood out clearly. she was holding her handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning back exhausted against the 'rickshaw cushions. i turned my horse up a bypath near the sanjowlie reservoir and literally ran away. once i fancied i heard a faint call of "jack!" this may have been imagination. i never stopped to verify it. ten minutes later i came across kitty on horseback; and, in the delight of a long ride with her, forgot all about the interview. a week later mrs. wessington died, and the inexpressible burden of her existence was removed from my life. i went plainsward perfectly happy. before three months were over i had forgotten all about her, except that at times the discovery of some of her old letters reminded me unpleasantly of our bygone relationship. by january i had disinterred what was left of our correspondence from among my scattered belongings and had burned it. at the beginning of april of this year, , i was at simla--semi-deserted simla--once more, and was deep in lover's talks and walks with kitty. it was decided that we should be married at the end of june. you will understand, therefore, that, loving kitty as i did, i am not saying too much when i pronounce myself to have been, at that time, the happiest man in india. fourteen delightful days passed almost before i noticed their flight. then, aroused to the sense of what was proper among mortals circumstanced as we were, i pointed out to kitty that an engagement ring was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as an engaged girl; and that she must forthwith come to hamilton's to be measured for one. up to that moment, i give you my word, we had completely forgotten so trivial a matter. to hamilton's we accordingly went on the th of april, . remember that--whatever my doctor may say to the contrary--i was then in perfect health, enjoying a well-balanced mind and an _absolutely_ tranquil spirit. kitty and i entered hamilton's shop together, and there, regardless of the order of affairs, i measured kitty for the ring in the presence of the amused assistant. the ring was a sapphire with two diamonds. we then rode out down the slope that leads to the combermere bridge and peliti's shop. while my waler was cautiously feeling his way over the loose shale, and kitty was laughing and chattering at my side--while all simla, that is to say as much of it as had then come from the plains, was grouped round the reading-room and peliti's veranda,--i was aware that some one, apparently at a vast distance, was calling me by my christian name. it struck me that i had heard the voice before, but when and where i could not at once determine. in the short space it took to cover the road between the path from hamilton's shop and the first plank of the combermere bridge i had thought over half a dozen people who might have committed such a solecism, and had eventually decided that it must have been singing in my ears. immediately opposite peliti's shop my eye was arrested by the sight of four _jhampanies_ in "magpie" livery, pulling a yellow-paneled, cheap, bazar 'rickshaw. in a moment my mind flew back to the previous season and mrs. wessington with a sense of irritation and disgust. was it not enough that the woman was dead and done with, without her black and white servitors reappearing to spoil the day's happiness? whoever employed them now i thought i would call upon, and ask as a personal favor to change her _jhampanies'_ livery. i would hire the men myself, and, if necessary, buy their coats from off their backs. it is impossible to say here what a flood of undesirable memories their presence evoked. "kitty," i cried, "there are poor mrs. wessington's _jhampanies_ turned up again! i wonder who has them now?" kitty had known mrs. wessington slightly last season, and had always been interested in the sickly woman. "what? where?" she asked. "i can't see them anywhere." even as she spoke, her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw himself directly in front of the advancing 'rickshaw. i had scarcely time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror, horse and rider passed _through_ men and carriage as if they had been thin air. "what's the matter?" cried kitty; "what made you call out so foolishly, jack? if i _am_ engaged i don't want all creation to know about it. there was lots of space between the mule and the veranda; and, if you think i can't ride--there!" whereupon wilful kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the direction of the band-stand; fully expecting, as she herself afterward told me, that i should follow her. what was the matter? nothing indeed. either that i was mad or drunk, or that simla was haunted with devils. i reined in my impatient cob, and turned round. the 'rickshaw had turned too, and now stood immediately facing me, near the left railing of the combermere bridge. "jack! jack, darling!" (there was no mistake about the words this time: they rang through my brain as if they had been shouted in my ear.) "it's some hideous mistake, i'm sure. _please_ forgive me, jack, and let's be friends again." the 'rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and inside, as i hope and pray daily for the death i dread by night, sat mrs. keith-wessington, handkerchief in hand, and golden head bowed on her breast, how long i stared motionless i do not know. finally, i was aroused by my syce taking the waler's bridle and asking whether i was ill. from the horrible to the commonplace is but a step. i tumbled off my horse and dashed, half fainting, into peliti's for a glass of cherry-brandy. there two or three couples were gathered round the coffee-tables discussing the gossip of the day. their trivialities were more comforting to me just then than the consolations of religion could have been. i plunged into the midst of the conversation at once; chatted, laughed, and jested with a face (when i caught a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white and drawn as that of a corpse. three or four men noticed my condition; and, evidently setting it down to the results of over-many pegs, charitably endeavored to draw me apart from the rest of the loungers. but i refused to be led away, i wanted the company of my kind--as a child rushes into the midst of the dinner-party after a fright in the dark. i must have talked for about ten minutes or so, though it seemed an eternity to me, when i heard kitty's clear voice outside inquiring for me. in another minute she had entered the shop, prepared to roundly upbraid me for failing so signally in my duties. something in my face stopped her. "why, jack," she cried, "what _have_ you been doing? what _has_ happened? are you ill?" thus driven into a direct lie, i said that the sun had been a little too much for me. it was close upon five o'clock of a cloudy april afternoon, and the sun had been hidden all day. i saw my mistake as soon as the words were out of my mouth: attempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed kitty in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my acquaintances. i made some excuse (i have forgotten what) on the score of my feeling faint; and cantered away to my hotel, leaving kitty to finish the ride by herself. in my room i sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter. here was i, theobald jack pansay, a well-educated bengal civilian in the year of grace , presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from my sweetheart's side by the apparition of a woman who had been dead and buried eight months ago. these were facts that i could not blink. nothing was further from my thought than any memory of mrs. wessington when kitty and i left hamilton's shop. nothing was more utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite peliti's. it was broad daylight. the road was full of people; and yet here, look you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of nature's ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave. kitty's arab had gone _through_ the 'rickshaw: so that my first hope that some woman marvelously like mrs. wessington had hired the carriage and the coolies with their old livery was lost. again and again i went round this treadmill of thought; and again and again gave up baffled and in despair. the voice was as inexplicable as the apparition, i had originally some wild notion of confiding it all to kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in her arms defying the ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw. "after all," i argued, "the presence of the 'rickshaw is in itself enough to prove the existence of a spectral illusion. one may see ghosts of men and women, but surely never of coolies and carriages. the whole thing is absurd. fancy the ghost of a hillman!" next morning i sent a penitent note to kitty, imploring her to overlook my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. my divinity was still very wroth, and a personal apology was necessary. i explained, with a fluency born of nightlong pondering over a falsehood, that i had been attacked with a sudden palpitation of the heart--the result of indigestion. this eminently practical solution had its effect; and kitty and i rode out that afternoon with the shadow of my first lie dividing us. nothing would please her save a canter round jakko. with my nerves still unstrung from the previous night i feebly protested against the notion, suggesting observatory hill, jutogh, the boileaugunge road--anything rather than the jakko round. kitty was angry and a little hurt: so i yielded from fear of provoking further misunderstanding, and we set out together toward chota simla. we walked a greater part of the way, and, according to our custom, cantered from a mile or so below the convent to the stretch of level road by the sanjowlie reservoir. the wretched horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as we neared the crest of the ascent. my mind had been full of mrs. wessington all the afternoon; and every inch of the jakko road bore witness to our old-time walks and talks. the bowlders were full of it; the pines sang it aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrents giggled and chuckled unseen over the shameful story; and the wind in my ears chanted the iniquity aloud. as a fitting climax, in the middle of the level men call the ladies' mile the horror was awaiting me. no other 'rickshaw was in sight--only the four black and white _jhampanies_, the yellow-paneled carriage, and the golden head of the woman within--all apparently just as i had left them eight months and one fortnight ago! for an instant i fancied that kitty _must_ see what i saw--we were so marvelously sympathetic in all things. her next words undeceived me--"not a soul in sight! come along, jack, and i'll race you to the reservoir buildings!" her wiry little arab was off like a bird, my waler following close behind, and in this order we dashed under the cliffs. half a minute brought us within fifty yards of the 'rickshaw, i pulled my waler and fell back a little. the 'rickshaw was directly in the middle of the road; and once more the arab passed through it, my horse following. "jack! jack dear! _please_ forgive me," rang with a wail in my ears, and, after an interval:--"it's all a mistake, a hideous mistake!" i spurred my horse like a man possessed. when i turned my head at the reservoir works, the black and white liveries were still waiting--patiently waiting--under the grey hillside, and the wind brought me a mocking echo of the words i had just heard. kitty bantered me a good deal on my silence throughout the remainder of the ride, i had been talking up till then wildly and at random. to save my life i could not speak afterward naturally, and from sanjowlie to the church wisely held my tongue. i was to dine with the mannerings that night, and had barely time to canter home to dress. on the road to elysium hill i overheard two men talking together in the dusk.--"it's a curious thing," said one, "how completely all trace of it disappeared. you know my wife was insanely fond of the woman ('never could see anything in her myself), and wanted me to pick up her old 'rickshaw and coolies if they were to be got for love or money. morbid sort of fancy i call it; but i've got to do what the _memsahib_ tells me. would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all four of the men--they were brothers--died of cholera on the way to hard-war, poor devils; and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. 'told me he never used a dead _memsahib's_ 'rickshaw. 'spoiled his luck. queer notion, wasn't it? fancy poor little mrs. wessington spoiling any one's luck except her own!" i laughed aloud at this point; and my laugh jarred on me as i uttered it. so there _were_ ghosts of 'rickshaws after all, and ghostly employments in the other world! how much did mrs. wessington give her men? what were their hours? where did they go? and for visible answer to my last question i saw the infernal thing blocking my path in the twilight. the dead travel fast, and by short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. i laughed aloud a second time and checked my laughter suddenly, for i was afraid i was going mad. mad to a certain extent i must have been, for i recollect that i reined in my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and politely wished mrs. wessington "good-evening," her answer was one i knew only too well. i listened to the end; and replied that i had heard it all before, but should be delighted if she had anything further to say. some malignant devil stronger than i must have entered into me that evening, for i have a dim recollection of talking the commonplaces of the day for five minutes to the thing in front of me. "mad as a hatter, poor devil--or drunk. max, try and get him to come home." surely _that_ was not mrs. wessington's voice! the two men had overheard me speaking to the empty air, and had returned to look after me. they were very kind and considerate, and from their words evidently gathered that i was extremely drunk, i thanked them confusedly and cantered away to my hotel, there changed, and arrived at the mannerings' ten minutes late. i pleaded the darkness of the night as an excuse; was rebuked by kitty for my unlover-like tardiness; and sat down. the conversation had already become general; and under cover of it, i was addressing some tender small talk to my sweetheart when i was aware that at the further end of the table a short red-whiskered man was describing, with much embroidery, his encounter with a mad unknown that evening. a few sentences convinced me that he was repeating the incident of half an hour ago. in the middle of the story he looked round for applause, as professional story-tellers do, caught my eye, and straightway collapsed. there was a moment's awkward silence, and the red-whiskered man muttered something to the effect that he had "forgotten the rest," thereby sacrificing a reputation as a good story-teller which he had built up for six seasons past. i blessed him from the bottom of my heart, and--went on with my fish. in the fulness of time that dinner came to an end; and with genuine regret i tore myself away from kitty--as certain as i was of my own existence that it would be waiting for me outside the door. the red-whiskered man, who had been introduced to me as doctor heatherlegh of simla, volunteered to bear me company as far as our roads lay together. i accepted his offer with gratitude. my instinct had not deceived me. it lay in readiness in the mall, and, in what seemed devilish mockery of our ways, with a lighted headlamp. the red-whiskered man went to the point at once, in a manner that showed he had been thinking over it all dinner time. "i say, pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the elysium road?" the suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from me before i was aware. "that!" said i, pointing to it. "_that_ may be either d.t. or eyes for aught i know. now you don't liquor. i saw as much at dinner, so it can't be _d.t_. there's nothing whatever where you're pointing, though you're sweating and trembling with fright like a scared pony. therefore, i conclude that it's eyes. and i ought to understand all about them. come along home with me. i'm on the blessington lower road." to my intense delight the 'rickshaw instead of waiting for us kept about twenty yards ahead--and this, too, whether we walked, trotted, or cantered. in the course of that long night ride i had told my companion almost as much as i have told you here. "well, you've spoiled one of the best tales i've ever laid tongue to," said he, "but i'll forgive you for the sake of what you've gone through. now come home and do what i tell you; and when i've cured you, young man, let this be a lesson to you to steer clear of women and indigestible food till the day of your death." the 'rickshaw kept steady in front; and my red-whiskered friend seemed to derive great pleasure from my account of its exact whereabouts. "eyes, pansay--all eyes, brain, and stomach. and the greatest of these three is stomach. you've too much conceited brain, too little stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy eyes. get your stomach straight and the rest follows. and all that's french for a liver pill. i'll take sole medical charge of you from this hour! for you're too interesting a phenomenon to be passed over." by this time we were deep in the shadow of the blessington lower road and the 'rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, overhanging shale cliff. instinctively i halted too, giving my reason. heatherlegh rapped out an oath. "now, if you think i'm going to spend a cold night on the hillside for the sake of a stomach-_cum_-brain-_cum_-eye illusion ... lord, ha' mercy! what's that?" there was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the cliff-side--pines, undergrowth, and all--slid down into the road below, completely blocking it up. the uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash. our two horses stood motionless and sweating with fear. as soon as the rattle of falling earth and stone had subsided, my companion muttered:--"man, if we'd gone forward we should have been ten feet deep in our graves by now. 'there are more things in heaven and earth.' ... come home, pansay, and thank god. i want a peg badly." we retraced our way over the church ridge, and i arrived at dr. heatherlegh's house shortly after midnight. his attempts toward my cure commenced almost immediately, and for a week i never left his sight. many a time in the course of that week did i bless the good-fortune which had thrown me in contact with simla's best and kindest doctor. day by day my spirits grew lighter and more equable. day by day, too, i became more and more inclined to fall in with heatherlegh's "spectral illusion" theory, implicating eyes, brain, and stomach. i wrote to kitty, telling her that a slight sprain caused by a fall from my horse kept me indoors for a few days; and that i should be recovered before she had time to regret my absence. heatherlegh's treatment was simple to a degree. it consisted of liver pills, cold-water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk or at early dawn--for, as he sagely observed:--"a man with a sprained ankle doesn't walk a dozen miles a day, and your young woman might be wondering if she saw you." at the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse, and strict injunctions as to diet and pedestrianism, heatherlegh dismissed me as brusquely as he had taken charge of me. here is his parting benediction:--"man, i certify to your mental cure, and that's as much as to say i've cured most of your bodily ailments. now, get your traps out of this as soon as you can; and be off to make love to miss kitty." i was endeavoring to express my thanks for his kindness. he cut me short. "don't think i did this because i like you. i gather that you've behaved like a blackguard all through. but, all the same, you're a phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard. no!"--checking me a second time--"not a rupee please. go out and see if you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach business again. i'll give you a lakh for each time you see it." half an hour later i was in the mannerings' drawing-room with kitty--drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the foreknowledge that i should never more be troubled with its hideous presence. strong in the sense of my new-found security, i proposed a ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round jakko. never had i felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere animal spirits, as i did on the afternoon of the th of april. kitty was delighted at the change in my appearance, and complimented me on it in her delightfully frank and outspoken manner. we left the mannerings' house together, laughing and talking, and cantered along the chota simla road as of old. i was in haste to reach the sanjowlie reservoir and there make my assurance doubly sure. the horses did their best, but seemed all too slow to my impatient mind, kitty was astonished at my boisterousness. "why, jack!" she cried at last, "you are behaving like a child, what are you doing?" we were just below the convent, and from sheer wantonness i was making my waler plunge and curvet across the road as i tickled it with the loop of my riding-whip. "doing?" i answered; "nothing, dear. that's just it. if you'd been doing nothing for a week except lie up, you'd be as riotous as i. "'singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth, joying to feel yourself alive; lord over nature, lord of the visible earth, lord of the senses five.'" my quotation was hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the corner above the convent; and a few yards further on could see across to sanjowlie. in the centre of the level road stood the black and white liveries, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw, and mrs. keith-wessington. i pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and, i believe, must have said something. the next thing i knew was that i was lying face downward on the road, with kitty kneeling above me in tears. "has it gone, child!" i gasped. kitty only wept more bitterly. "has what gone, jack dear? what does it all mean? there must be a mistake somewhere, jack. a hideous mistake." her last words brought me to my feet--mad--raving for the time being. "yes, there _is_ a mistake somewhere," i repeated, "a hideous mistake. come and look at it." i have an indistinct idea that i dragged kitty by the wrist along the road up to where it stood, and implored her for pity's sake to speak to it; to tell it that we were betrothed; that neither death nor hell could break the tie between us: and kitty only knows how much more to the same effect. now and again i appealed passionately to the terror in the 'rickshaw to bear witness to all i had said, and to release me from a torture that was killing me. as i talked i suppose i must have told kitty of my old relations with mrs. wessington, for i saw her listen intently with white face and blazing eyes. "thank you, mr. pansay," she said, "that's _quite_ enough. _syce ghora lao_." the syces, impassive as orientals always are, had come up with the recaptured horses; and as kitty sprang into her saddle i caught hold of the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive. my answer was the cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth to eye, and a word or two of farewell that even now i cannot write down. so i judged, and judged rightly, that kitty knew all; and i staggered back to the side of the 'rickshaw. my face was cut and bleeding, and the blow of the riding-whip had raised a livid blue wheal on it. i had no self-respect. just then, heatherlegh, who must have been following kitty and me at a distance, cantered up. "doctor," i said, pointing to my face, "here's miss mannering's signature to my order of dismissal and ... i'll thank you for that lakh as soon as convenient." heatherlegh's face, even in my abject misery, moved me to laughter. "i'll stake my professional reputation"--he began. "don't be a fool," i whispered. "i've lost my life's happiness and you'd better take me home." as i spoke the 'rickshaw was gone. then i lost all knowledge of what was passing. the crest of jakko seemed to heave and roll like the crest of a cloud and fall in upon me. seven days later (on the th of may, that is to say) i was aware that i was lying in heatherlegh's room as weak as a little child. heatherlegh was watching me intently from behind the papers on his writing-table. his first words were not encouraging; but i was too far spent to be much moved by them. "here's miss kitty has sent back your letters. you corresponded a good deal, you young people. here's a packet that looks like a ring, and a cheerful sort of a note from mannering papa, which i've taken the liberty of reading and burning. the old gentleman's not pleased with you." "and kitty?" i asked, dully. "rather more drawn than her father from what she says. by the same token you must have been letting out any number of queer reminiscences just before i met you. 'says that a man who would have behaved to a woman as you did to mrs. wessington ought to kill himself out of sheer pity for his kind. she's a hotheaded little virago, your mash. 'will have it too that you were suffering from d. t. when that row on the jakko road turned up, 'says she'll die before she ever speaks to you again." i groaned and turned over on the other side. "now you've got your choice, my friend. this engagement has to be broken off; and the mannerings don't want to be too hard on you. was it broken through d, t. or epileptic fits? sorry i can't offer you a better exchange unless you'd prefer hereditary insanity. say the word and i'll tell 'em it's fits. all simla knows about that scene on the ladies' mile. come! i'll give you five minutes to think over it." during those five minutes i believe that i explored thoroughly the lowest circles of the inferno which it is permitted man to tread on earth. and at the same time i myself was watching myself faltering through the dark labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair. i wondered, as heatherlegh in his chair might have wondered, which dreadful alternative i should adopt. presently i heard myself answering in a voice that i hardly recognized,-- "they're confoundedly particular about morality in these parts. give 'em fits, heatherlegh, and my love. now let me sleep a bit longer." then my two selves joined, and it was only i (half crazed, devil-driven i) that tossed in my bed, tracing step by step the history of the past month. "but i am in simla," i kept repeating to myself. "i, jack pansay, am in simla, and there are no ghosts here. it's unreasonable of that woman to pretend there are. why couldn't agnes have left me alone? i never did her any harm. it might just as well have been me as agnes. only i'd never have come back on purpose to kill _her_. why can't i be left alone--left alone and happy?" it was high noon when i first awoke: and the sun was low in the sky before i slept--slept as the tortured criminal sleeps on his rack, too worn to feel further pain. next day i could not leave my bed. heatherlegh told me in the morning that he had received an answer from mr. mannering, and that, thanks to his (heatherlegh's) friendly offices, the story of my affliction had traveled through the length and breadth of simla, where i was on all sides much pitied. "and that's rather more than you deserve," he concluded, pleasantly, "though the lord knows you've been going through a pretty severe mill. never mind; we'll cure you yet, you perverse phenomenon." i declined firmly to be cured, "you've been much too good to me already, old man," said i; "but i don't think i need trouble you further." in my heart i knew that nothing heatherlegh could do would lighten the burden that had been laid upon me. with that knowledge came also a sense of hopeless, impotent rebellion against the unreasonableness of it all. there were scores of men no better than i whose punishments had at least been reserved for another world; and i felt that it was bitterly, cruelly unfair that i alone should have been singled out for so hideous a fate. this mood would in time give place to another where it seemed that the 'rickshaw and i were the only realities in a world of shadows; that kitty was a ghost; that mannering, heatherlegh, and all the other men and women i knew were all ghosts; and the great, grey hills themselves but vain shadows devised to torture me. from mood to mood i tossed backward and forward for seven weary days; my body growing daily stronger and stronger, until the bedroom looking-glass told me that i had returned to everyday life, and was as other men once more. curiously enough my face showed no signs of the struggle i had gone through. it was pale indeed, but as expressionless and commonplace as ever. i had expected some permanent alteration--visible evidence of the disease that was eating me away. i found nothing. on the th of may i left heatherlegh's house at eleven o'clock in the morning; and the instinct of the bachelor drove me to the club. there i found that every man knew my story as told by heatherlegh, and was, in clumsy fashion, abnormally kind and attentive. nevertheless i recognized that for the rest of my natural life i should be among but not of my fellows; and i envied very bitterly indeed the laughing coolies on the mall below. i lunched at the club, and at four o'clock wandered aimlessly down the mall in the vague hope of meeting kitty. close to the band-stand the black and white liveries joined me; and i heard mrs. wessington's old appeal at my side. i had been expecting this ever since i came out; and was only surprised at her delay. the phantom 'rickshaw and i went side by side along the chota simla road in silence. close to the bazar, kitty and a man on horseback overtook and passed us. for any sign she gave i might have been a dog in the road. she did not even pay me the compliment of quickening her pace; though the rainy afternoon had served for an excuse. so kitty and her companion, and i and my ghostly light-o'-love, crept round jakko in couples. the road was streaming with water; the pines dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks below, and the air was full of fine, driving rain. two or three times i found myself saying to myself almost aloud: "i'm jack pansay on leave at simla--_at simla!_ everyday, ordinary simla. i mustn't forget that--i mustn't forget that." then i would try to recollect some of the gossip i had heard at the club: the prices of so-and-so's horses--anything, in fact, that related to the workaday anglo-indian world i knew so well. i even repeated the multiplication- table rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that i was not taking leave of my senses. it gave me much comfort; and must have prevented my hearing mrs. wessington for a time. once more i wearily climbed the convent slope and entered the level road. here kitty and the man started off at a canter, and i was left alone with mrs. wessington. "agnes," said i, "will you put back your hood and tell me what it all means?" the hood dropped noiselessly, and i was face to face with my dead and buried mistress. she was wearing the dress in which i had last seen her alive; carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right hand; and the same cardcase in her left. (a woman eight months dead with a cardcase!) i had to pin myself down to the multiplication-table, and to set both hands on the stone parapet of the road, to assure myself that that at least was real. "agnes," i repeated, "for pity's sake tell me what it all means." mrs. wessington leaned forward, with that odd, quick turn of the head i used to know so well, and spoke. if my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all human belief i should apologize to you now. as i know that no one--no, not even kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of justification of my conduct--will believe me, i will go on. mrs. wessington spoke and i walked with her from the sanjowlie road to the turning below the commander-in-chief's house as i might walk by the side of any living woman's 'rickshaw, deep in conversation. the second and most tormenting of my moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the prince in tennyson's poem, "i seemed to move amid a world of ghosts." there had been a garden-party at the commander-in-chief's, and we two joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. as i saw them then it seemed that _they_ were the shadows--impalpable, fantastic shadows--that divided for mrs. wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. what we said during the course of that weird interview i cannot--indeed, i dare not--tell. heatherlegh's comment would have been a short laugh and a remark that i had been "mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera." it was a ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear experience. could it be possible, i wondered, that i was in this life to woo a second time the woman i had killed by my own neglect and cruelty? i met kitty on the homeward road--a shadow among shadows. if i were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in their order, my story would never come to an end; and your patience would be exhausted. morning after morning and evening after evening the ghostly 'rickshaw and i used to wander through simla together. wherever i went there the four black and white liveries followed me and bore me company to and from my hotel. at the theatre i found them amid the crowd of yelling _jhampanies_; outside the club veranda, after a long evening of whist; at the birthday ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance; and in broad daylight when i went calling. save that it cast no shadow, the 'rickshaw was in every respect as real to look upon as one of wood and iron. more than once, indeed, i have had to check myself from warning some hard-riding friend against cantering over it. more than once i have walked down the mall deep in conversation with mrs. wessington to the unspeakable amazement of the passers-by. before i had been out and about a week i learned that the "fit" theory had been discarded in favor of insanity. however, i made no change in my mode of life. i called, rode, and dined out as freely as ever. i had a passion for the society of my kind which i had never felt before; i hungered to be among the realities of life; and at the same time i felt vaguely unhappy when i had been separated too long from my ghostly companion. it would be almost impossible to describe my varying moods from the th of may up to to-day. the presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. i dared not leave simla; and i knew that my stay there was killing me. i knew, moreover, that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. my only anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as might be. alternately i hungered for a sight of kitty and watched her outrageous flirtations with my successor--to speak more accurately, my successors--with amused interest. she was as much out of my life as i was out of hers. by day i wandered with mrs. wessington almost content. by night i implored heaven to let me return to the world as i used to know it. above all these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the seen and the unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one poor soul to its grave. * * * * * _august ._--heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance on me; and only yesterday told me that i ought to send in an application for sick leave. an application to escape the company of a phantom! a request that the government would graciously permit me to get rid of five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going to england! heatherlegh's proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. i told him that i should await the end quietly at simla; and i am sure that the end is not far off. believe me that i dread its advent more than any word can say; and i torture myself nightly with a thousand speculations as to the manner of my death. shall i die in my bed decently and as an english gentleman should die; or, in one last walk on the mall, will my soul be wrenched from me to take its place forever and ever by the side of that ghastly phantasm? shall i return to my old lost allegiance in the next world, or shall i meet agnes loathing her and bound to her side through all eternity? shall we two hover over the scene of our lives till the end of time? as the day of my death draws nearer, the intense horror that all living flesh feels toward escaped spirits from beyond the grave grows more and more powerful. it is an awful thing to go down quick among the dead with scarcely one-half of your life completed. it is a thousand times more awful to wait as i do in your midst, for i know not what unimaginable terror. pity me, at least on the score of my "delusion," for i know you will never believe what i have written here. yet as surely as ever a man was done to death by the powers of darkness i am that man. in justice, too, pity her. for as surely as ever woman was killed by man, i killed mrs. wessington. and the last portion of my punishment is even now upon me. on the strength of a likeness if your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care that you do not fall in.--_hindu proverb._ next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things that a young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his career, is an unrequited attachment. it makes him feel important and business-like, and _blasé_, and cynical; and whenever he has a touch of fever, or suffers from want of exercise, he can mourn over his lost love, and be very happy in a tender, twilight fashion, hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a godsend to him. it was four years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it. she had married and had many cares of her own. in the beginning, she had told hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything more than a sister to him, she would always take the deepest interest in his welfare." this startlingly new and original remark gave hannasyde something to think over for two years; and his own vanity filled in the other twenty-four months. hannasyde was quite different from phil garron, but, none the less, had several points in common with that far too lucky man. he kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the using. it brought him happily through one simla season. hannasyde was not lovely. there was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in the way in which he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not attract the other sex to him. even if he had cast about for their favor, which he did not. he kept his wounded heart all to himself for a while. then trouble came to him. all who go to simla know the slope from the telegraph to the public works office. hannasyde was loafing up the hill, one september morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the girl who had made him so happily unhappy. hannasyde leaned against the railings and gasped. he wanted to run downhill after the 'rickshaw, but that was impossible; so he went forward with most of his blood in his temples. it was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the 'rickshaw could be the girl he had known. she was, he discovered later, the wife of a man from dindigul, or coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way place, and she had come up to simla early in the season for the good of her health. she was going back to dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end of the season; and in all likelihood would never return to simla again; her proper hill-station being ootacamund. that night hannasyde, raw and savage from the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel with himself for one measured hour. what he decided upon was this; and you must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for the old love, and how much a very natural inclination to go abroad and enjoy himself, affected the decision. mrs. landys-haggert would never in all human likelihood cross his path again. so whatever he did didn't much matter. she was marvelously like the girl who "took a deep interest" and the rest of the formula. all things considered, it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance of mrs. landys-haggert, and for a little time--only a very little time--to make believe that he was with alice chisane again. every one is more or less mad on one point. hannasyde's particular monomania was his old love, alice chisane. he made it his business to get introduced to mrs. haggert, and the introduction prospered. he also made it his business to see as much as he could of that lady. when a man is in earnest as to interviews, the facilities which simla offers are startling. there are garden-parties, and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at annandale, and rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are matters of private arrangement. hannasyde had started with the intention of seeing a likeness, and he ended by doing much more. he wanted to be deceived, he meant to be deceived, and he deceived himself very thoroughly. not only were the face and figure the face and figure of alice chisane, but the voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and so were the turns of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman has, of gait and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the same. the turn of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes at the end of a long walk was the same; the stoop-and-wrench over the saddle to hold in a pulling horse was the same; and once, most marvelous of all, mrs. landys-haggert singing to herself in the next room, while hannasyde was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note for note, with a throaty quiver of the voice in the second line, "poor wandering one!" exactly as alice chisane had hummed it for hannasyde in the dusk of an english drawing-room. in the actual woman herself--in the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she and alice chisane being cast in different moulds. but all that hannasyde wanted to know and see and think about, was this maddening and perplexing likeness of face and voice and manner. he was bent on making a fool of himself that way; and he was in no sort disappointed. open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is always pleasant to any sort of woman; but mrs. landys-haggert, being a woman of the world, could make nothing of hannasyde's admiration. he would take any amount of trouble--he was a selfish man habitually--to meet and forestall, if possible, her wishes. anything she told him to do was law; and he was, there could be no doubting it, fond of her company so long as she talked to him, and kept on talking about trivialities. but when she launched into expression of her personal views and her wrongs, those small social differences that make the spice of simla life, hannasyde was neither pleased nor interested. he didn't want to know anything about mrs. landys-haggert, or her experiences in the past--she had traveled nearly all over the world, and could talk cleverly--he wanted the likeness of alice chisane before his eyes and her voice in his ears. anything outside that, reminding him of another personality, jarred, and he showed that it did. under the new post office, one evening, mrs. landys-haggert turned on him, and spoke her mind shortly and without warning. "mr. hannasyde," said she, "will you be good enough to explain why you have appointed yourself my special _cavalier servente?_ i don't understand it. but i am perfectly certain, somehow or other, that you don't care the least little bit in the world for _me_." this seems to support, by the way, the theory that no man can act or tell lies to a woman without being found out. hannasyde was taken off his guard. his defence never was a strong one, because he was always thinking of himself, and he blurted out, before he knew what he was saying, this inexpedient answer, "no more i do." the queerness of the situation and the reply, made mrs. landys-haggert laugh. then it all came out; and at the end of hannasyde's lucid explanation mrs. haggert said, with the least little touch of scorn in her voice, "so i'm to act as the lay-figure for you to hang the rags of your tattered affections on, am i?" hannasyde didn't see what answer was required, and he devoted himself generally and vaguely to the praise of alice chisane, which was unsatisfactory. now it is to be thoroughly made clear that mrs. haggert had not the shadow of a ghost of an interest in hannasyde. only ... only no woman likes being made love through instead of to--specially on behalf of a musty divinity of four years' standing. hannasyde did not see that he had made any very particular exhibition of himself. he was glad to find a sympathetic soul in the arid wastes of simla. when the season ended, hannasyde went down to his own place and mrs. haggert to hers, "it was like making love to a ghost," said hannasyde to himself, "and it doesn't matter; and now i'll get to my work." but he found himself thinking steadily of the haggert-chisane ghost; and he could not be certain whether it was haggert or chisane that made up the greater part of the pretty phantom. * * * * * he got understanding a month later. a peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in which a heartless government transfers men from one end of the empire to the other. you can never be sure of getting rid of a friend or an enemy till he or she dies. there was a case once--but that's another story. haggert's department ordered him up from dindigul to the frontier at two days' notice, and he went through, losing money at every step, from dindigul to his station. he dropped mrs. haggert at lucknow, to stay with some friends there, to take part in a big ball at the chutter munzil, and to come on when he had made the new home a little comfortable. lucknow was hannasyde's station, and mrs. haggert stayed a week there. hannasyde went to meet her. as the train came in, he discovered what he had been thinking of for the past month. the unwisdom of his conduct also struck him. the lucknow week, with two dances, and an unlimited quantity of rides together, clinched matters; and hannasyde found himself pacing this circle of thought:--he adored alice chisane, at least he _had_ adored her. _and_ he admired mrs. landys-haggert because she was like alice chisane. _but_ mrs. landys-haggert was not in the least like alice chisane, being a thousand times more adorable. _now_ alice chisane was "the bride of another," and so was mrs. landys-haggert, and a good and honest wife too. _therefore_ he, hannasyde, was ... here he called himself several hard names, and wished that he had been wise in the beginning. whether mrs. landys-haggert saw what was going on in his mind, she alone knows. he seemed to take an unqualified interest in everything connected with herself, as distinguished from the alice-chisane likeness, and he said one or two things which, if alice chisane had been still betrothed to him, could scarcely have been excused, even on the grounds of the likeness. but mrs. haggert turned the remarks aside, and spent a long time in making hannasyde see what a comfort and a pleasure she had been to him because of her strange resemblance to his old love. hannasyde groaned in his saddle and said, "yes, indeed," and busied himself with preparations for her departure to the frontier, feeling very small and miserable. the last day of her stay at lucknow came, and hannasyde saw her off at the railway station. she was very grateful for his kindness and the trouble he had taken, and smiled pleasantly and sympathetically as one who knew the alice-chisane reason of that kindness. and hannasyde abused the coolies with the luggage, and hustled the people on the platform, and prayed that the roof might fall in and slay him. as the train went out slowly, mrs. landys-haggert leaned out of the window to say good-bye--"on second thoughts _au revoir_, mr. hannasyde. i go home in the spring, and perhaps i may meet you in town." hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and adoringly--"i hope to heaven i shall never see your face again!" and mrs. haggert understood. private learoyd's story and he told a tale.--_chronicles of gautama buddha._ far from the haunts of company officers who insist upon kit-inspections, far from keen-nosed sergeants who sniff the pipe stuffed into the bedding-roll, two miles from the tumult of the barracks, lies the trap. it is an old dry well, shadowed by a twisted _pipal_ tree and fenced with high grass. here, in the years gone by, did private ortheris establish his depôt and menagerie for such possessions, dead and living, as could not safely be introduced to the barrack-room. here were gathered houdin pullets, and fox-terriers of undoubted pedigree and more than doubtful ownership, for ortheris was an inveterate poacher and preëminent among a regiment of neat-handed dog-stealers. never again will the long lazy evenings return wherein ortheris, whistling softly, moved surgeon-wise among the captives of his craft at the bottom of the well; when learoyd sat in the niche, giving sage counsel on the management of "tykes," and mulvaney, from the crook of the overhanging _pipal_, waved his enormous boots in benediction above our heads, delighting us with tales of love and war, and strange experiences of cities and men. ortheris--landed at last in the "little stuff bird-shop" for which your soul longed; learoyd--back again in the smoky, stone-ribbed north, amid the clang of the bradford looms; mulvaney--grizzled, tender, and very wise ulysses, sweltering on the earthwork of a central india line--judge if i have forgotten old days in the trap! orth'ris, as allus thinks he knaws more than other foaks, said she wasn't a real laady, but nobbut a hewrasian. i don't gainsay as her culler was a bit doosky like. but she _was_ a laady. why, she rode iv a carriage, an' good 'osses, too, an' her 'air was that oiled as you could see your faice in it, an' she wore di'mond rings an' a goold chain, an' silk an' satin dresses as mun 'a' cost a deal, for it isn't a cheap shop as keeps enough o' one pattern to fit a figure like hers. her name was mrs. desussa, an' t' waay i coom to be acquainted wi' her was along of our colonel's laady's dog rip. i've seen a vast o' dogs, but rip was t' prettiest picter of a cliver fox-tarrier 'at iver i set eyes on. he could do owt you like but speeak, an' t' colonel's laady set more store by him than if he hed been a christian. she hed bairns of her awn, but they was i' england, and rip seemed to get all t' coodlin' and pettin' as belonged to a bairn by good right. but rip were a bit on a rover, an' hed a habit o' breakin' out o' barricks like, and trottin' round t' plaice as if he were t' cantonment magistrate coom round inspectin'. the colonel leathers him once or twice, but rip didn't care an' kept on gooin' his rounds, wi' his taail a-waggin' as if he were flag-signallin' to t' world at large 'at he was "gettin' on nicely, thank yo', and how's yo'sen?" an' then t' colonel, as was noa sort of a hand wi' a dog, tees him oop. a real clipper of a dog, an' it's noa wonder yon laady, mrs. desussa, should tek a fancy tiv him. theer's one o' t' ten commandments says yo maun't cuvvet your neebor's ox nor his jackass, but it doesn't say nowt about his tarrier dogs, an' happen thot's t' reason why mrs. desussa cuvveted rip, tho' she went to church reg'lar along wi' her husband who was so mich darker 'at if he hedn't such a good coaat tiv his back yo' might ha' called him a black man and nut tell a lee nawther. they said he addled his brass i' jute, an' he'd a rare lot on it. well, you seen, when they teed rip up, t' poor awd lad didn't enjoy very good 'elth. so t' colonel's laady sends for me as 'ad a naame for bein' knowledgeable about a dog, an' axes what's ailin' wi' him. "why," says i, "he's getten t' mopes, an' what he wants is his libbaty an' coompany like t' rest on us; wal happen a rat or two 'ud liven him oop. it's low, mum," says i, "is rats, but it's t' nature of a dog; an' soa's cuttin' round an' meetin' another dog or two an' passin' t' time o' day, an' hevvin' a bit of a turn-up wi' him like a christian." so she says _her_ dog maun't niver fight an' noa christians iver fought. "then what's a soldier for?" says i; an' i explains to her t' contrairy qualities of a dog, 'at, when yo' coom to think on't, is one o' t' curusest things as is. for they larn to behave theirsens like gentlemen born, fit for t' fost o' coompany--they tell me t' widdy herself is fond of a good dog and knaws one when she sees it as well as onny body: then on t' other hand a-tewin' round after cats an' gettin' mixed oop i' all manners o' blackguardly street-rows, an' killin' rats, an' fightin' like divils. t' colonel's laady says:--"well, learoyd, i doan't agree wi' you, but you're right in a way o' speeakin', an' i should like yo' to tek rip out a-walkin' wi' you sometimes; but yo' maun't let him fight, nor chase cats, nor do nowt 'orrid;" an' them was her very wods. soa rip an' me gooes out a-walkin' o' evenin's, he bein' a dog as did credit tiv a man, an' i catches a lot o' rats an' we hed a bit of a match on in an awd dry swimmin'-bath at back o' t' cantonments, an' it was none so long afore he was as bright as a button again. he hed a way o' flyin' at them big yaller pariah dogs as if he was a harrow offan a bow, an' though his weight were nowt, he tuk 'em so suddint-like they rolled over like skittles in a halley, an' when they coot he stretched after 'em as if he were rabbit-runnin'. saame with cats when he cud get t' cat agaate o' runnin'. one evenin', him an' me was trespassin' ovver a compound wall after one of them mongooses 'at he'd started, an' we was busy grubbin' round a prickle-bush, an' when we looks up there was mrs. desussa wi' a parasel ovver her shoulder, a-watchin' us. "oh my!" she sings out; "there's that lovelee dog! would he let me stroke him, mister soldier?" "ay, he would, mum," sez i, "for he's fond o' laady's coompany. coom here, rip, an' speeak to this kind laady." an' rip, seein' 'at t' mongoose hed getten clean awaay, cooms up like t' gentleman he was, nivver a hauporth shy or okkord. "oh, you beautiful--you prettee dog!" she says, clippin' an' chantin' her speech in a way them sooart has o' their awn; "i would like a dog like you. you are so verree lovelee--so awfullee prettee," an' all thot sort o' talk, 'at a dog o' sense mebbe thinks nowt on, tho' he bides it by reason o' his breedin'. an' then i meks him joomp ovver my swagger-cane, an' shek hands, an' beg, an' lie dead, an' a lot o' them tricks as laadies teeaches dogs, though i doan't haud with it mysen, for it's makin' a fool o' a good dog to do such like. an' at lung length it cooms out 'at she'd been thrawin' sheep's eyes, as t' sayin' is, at rip for many a day. yo' see, her childer was grown up, an' she'd nowt mich to do, an' were allus fond of a dog. soa she axes me if i'd tek somethin' to dhrink. an' we goes into t' drawn-room wheer her 'usband was a-settin'. they meks a gurt fuss ovver t' dog an' i has a bottle o' aale, an' he gave me a handful o' cigars. soa i coomed away, but t' awd lass sings out--"oh, mister soldier, please coom again and bring that prettee dog." i didn't let on to t' colonel's laady about mrs. desussa, and rip, he says nowt nawther, an' i gooes again, an' ivry time there was a good dhrink an' a handful o' good smooaks. an' i telled t' awd lass a heeap more about rip than i'd ever heeared; how he tuk t' lost prize at lunnon dog-show and cost thotty-three pounds fower shillin' from t' man as bred him; 'at his own brother was t' propputty o' t' prince o' wailes, an' 'at he had a pedigree as long as a dook's. an' she lapped it all oop an' were niver tired o' admirin' him. but when t' awd lass took to givin' me money an' i seed 'at she were gettin' fair fond about t' dog, i began to suspicion summat. onny body may give a soldier t' price of a pint in a friendly way an' theer's no 'arm done, but when it cooms to five rupees slipt into your hand, sly like, why, it's what t' 'lectioneerin' fellows calls bribery an' corruption. specially when mrs. desussa threwed hints how t' cold weather would soon be ovver an' she was goin' to munsooree pahar an' we was goin' to rawalpindi, an' she would niver see rip any more onless somebody she knowed on would be kind tiv her. soa i tells mulvaney an' ortheris all t' taale thro', beginnin' to end. "'tis larceny that wicked ould laady manes," says t' irishman, "'tis felony she is sejuicin' ye into, my frind learoyd, but i'll purtect your innocince. i'll save ye from the wicked wiles av that wealthy ould woman, an' i'll go wid ye this evenin' and spake to her the wurrds av truth an' honesty. but jock," says he, waggin' his heead, "'twas not like ye to kape all that good dhrink an' thim fine cigars to yerself, while orth'ris here an' me have been prowlin' round wid throats as dry as lime-kilns, and nothin' to smoke but canteen plug. 'twas a dhirty thrick to play on a comrade, for why should you, learoyd, be balancin' yourself on the butt av a satin chair, as if terence mulvaney was not the aquil av anybody who thrades in jute!" "let alone me," sticks in orth'ris, "but that's like life. them wot's really fitted to decorate society get no show while a blunderin' yorkshireman like you"-- "nay," says i, "it's none o' t' blunderin' yorkshireman she wants; it's rip. he's t' gentleman this journey." soa t' next day, mulvaney an' rip an' me goes to mrs. desussa's, an' t' irishman bein' a strainger she wor a bit shy at fost. but yo've heeard mulvaney talk, an' yo' may believe as he fairly bewitched t' awd lass wal she let out 'at she wanted to tek rip away wi' her to munsooree pahar. then mulvaney changes his tune an' axes her solemn-like if she'd thought o' t' consequences o' gettin' two poor but honest soldiers sent t' andamning islands. mrs. desussa began to cry, so mulvaney turns round oppen t' other tack and smooths her down, allowin' 'at rip ud be a vast better off in t' hills than down i' bengal, and 'twas a pity he shouldn't go wheer he was so well beliked. and soa he went on, backin' an' fillin' an' workin' up t'awd lass wal she fell as if her life warn't worth nowt if she didn't hev t' dog. then all of a suddint he says:--"but ye _shall_ have him, marm, for i've a feelin' heart, not like this could-blooded yorkshireman; but 'twill cost ye not a penny less than three hundher rupees." "don't yo' believe him, mum," says i; "t' colonel's laady wouldn't tek five hundred for him." "who said she would?" says mulvaney; "it's not buyin' him i mane, but for the sake o' this kind, good laady, i'll do what i never dreamt to do in my life. i'll stale him!" "don't say steal," says mrs. desussa; "he shall have the happiest home. dogs often get lost, you know, and then they stray, an' he likes me and i like him as i niver liked a dog yet, an' i _must_ hev him. if i got him at t' last minute i could carry him off to munsooree pahar and nobody would niver knaw." now an' again mulvaney looked acrost at me, an' though i could mak nowt o' what he was after, i concluded to take his leead. "well, mum," i says, "i never thowt to coom down to dog-steealin', but if my comrade sees how it could be done to oblige a laady like yo'-sen, i'm nut t' man to hod back, tho' it's a bad business i'm thinkin', an' three hundred rupees is a poor set-off again t' chance of them damning islands as mulvaney talks on." "i'll mek it three fifty," says mrs. desussa; "only let me hev t' dog!" so we let her persuade us, an' she teks rip's measure theer an' then, an' sent to hamilton's to order a silver collar again t' time when he was to be her awn, which was to be t' day she set off for munsooree pahar. "sitha, mulvaney," says i, when we was outside, "you're niver goin' to let her hev rip!" "an' would ye disappoint a poor old woman?" says he; "she shall have _a_ rip." "an' wheer's he to come through?" says i. "learoyd, my man," he sings out, "you're a pretty man av your inches an' a good comrade, but your head is made av duff. isn't our friend orth'ris a taxidermist, an' a rale artist wid his nimble white fingers? an' what's a taxidermist but a man who can thrate shkins? do ye mind the white dog that belongs to the canteen sargint, bad cess to him---he that's lost half his time an' snarlin' the rest? he shall be lost for _good_ now; an' do ye mind that he's the very spit in shape an' size av the colonel's, barrin' that his tail is an inch too long, an' he has none av the color that divarsifies the rale rip, an' his timper is that av his masther an' worse. but fwhat is an inch on a dog's tail? an' fwhat to a professional like orth'ris is a few ringstraked shpots av black, brown, an' white? nothin' at all, at all." then we meets orth'ris, an' that little man, bein' sharp as a needle, seed his way through t' business in a minute. an' he went to work a-practicin' 'air-dyes the very next day, beginnin' on some white rabbits he had, an' then he drored all rip's markin's on t' back of a white commissariat bullock, so as to get his 'and in an' be sure of his colors; shadin' off brown into black as nateral as life. if rip _hed_ a fault it was too mich markin', but it was straingely reg'lar an' orth'ris settled himself to make a fost-rate job on it when he got haud o' t' canteen sargint's dog. theer niver was sich a dog as thot for bad temper, an' it did nut get no better when his tail hed to be fettled an inch an' a half shorter. but they may talk o' theer royal academies as they like. _i_ niver seed a bit o' animal paintin' to beat t' copy as orth'ris made of rip's marks, wal t' picter itself was snarlin' all t' time an' tryin' to get at rip standin' theer to be copied as good as goold. orth'ris allus hed as mich conceit on himsen as would lift a balloon, an' he wor so pleeased wi' his sham rip he wor for tekking him to mrs. desussa before she went away. but mulvaney an' me stopped thot, knowin' orth'ris's work, though niver so cliver, was nobbut skin-deep. an' at last mrs. desussa fixed t' day for startin' to munsooree pahar. we was to tek rip to t' stayshun i' a basket an' hand him ovver just when they was ready to start, an' then she'd give us t' brass--as was agreed upon. an' my wod! it were high time she were off, for them 'air-dyes upon t' cur's back took a vast of paintin' to keep t' reet culler, tho' orth'ris spent a matter o' seven rupees six annas i' t' best drooggist shops i' calcutta. an' t' canteen sargint was lookin' for 'is dog everywheer; an', wi' bein' tied up, t' beast's timper got waur nor ever. it wor i' t' evenin' when t' train started thro' howrah, an' we 'elped mrs. desussa wi' about sixty boxes, an' then we gave her t' basket. orth'ris, for pride av his work, axed us to let him coom along wi' us, an' he couldn't help liftin' t' lid an' showin' t' cur as he lay coiled oop. "oh!" says t' awd lass; "the beautee! how sweet he looks!" an' just then t' beauty snarled an' showed his teeth, so mulvaney shuts down t' lid and says: "ye'll be careful, marm, whin ye tek him out. he's disaccustomed to traveling by t' railway, an' he'll be sure to want his rale mistress an' his friend learoyd, so ye'll make allowance for his feelings at fost." she would do all thot an' more for the dear, good rip, an' she would nut oppen t' basket till they were miles away, for fear anybody should recognize him, an' we were real good and kind soldier-men, we were, an' she honds me a bundle o' notes, an' then cooms up a few of her relations an' friends to say good-bye--not more than seventy-five there wasn't--an' we cuts away. what coom to t' three hundred and fifty rupees? thot's what i can scarcelins tell yo', but we melted it--we melted it. it was share an' share alike, for mulvaney said: "if learoyd got hold of mrs. desussa first, sure, 'twas i that remimbered the sargint's dog just in the nick av time, an' orth'ris was the artist av janius that made a work av art out av that ugly piece av ill-nature. yet, by way av a thank-offerin' that i was not led into felony by that wicked ould woman, i'll send a thrifle to father victor for the poor people he's always beggin' for." but me an' orth'ris, he bein' cockney, an' i bein' pretty far north, did nut see it i' t' saame way. we'd getten t' brass, an' we meaned to keep it. an' soa we did--for a short time. noa, noa, we niver heeard a wod more o' t' awd lass. our rig'mint went to pindi, an' t' canteen sargint he got himself another tyke insteead o' t' one 'at got lost so reg'lar, an' was lost for good at last. wressley of the foreign office i closed and drew for my love's sake, that now is false to me, and i slew the riever of tarrant moss, and set dumeny free. and ever they give me praise and gold, and ever i moan my loss; for i struck the blow for my false love's sake, and not for the men of the moss! _--tarrant moss._ one of the many curses of our life in india is the want of atmosphere in the painter's sense. there are no half-tints worth noticing. men stand out all crude and raw, with nothing to tone them down, and nothing to scale them against. they do their work, and grow to think that there is nothing but their work, and nothing like their work, and that they are the real pivots on which the administration turns. here is an instance of this feeling. a half-caste clerk was ruling forms in a pay office. he said to me, "do you know what would happen if i added or took away one single line on this sheet?" then, with the air of a conspirator, "it would disorganize the whole of the treasury payments throughout the whole of the presidency circle! think of that!" if men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own particular employments, i suppose that they would sit down and kill themselves. but their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin. even the secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an over-driven executive officer to take a census of wheat-weevils through a district of five thousand square miles. there was a man once in the foreign office--a man who had grown middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by irreverent juniors, to be able to repeat aitchison's _treaties and sunnuds_ backward in his sleep. what he did with his stored knowledge only the secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news abroad. this man's name was wressley, and it was the shibboleth, in those days, to say--"wressley knows more about the central indian states than any living man." if you did not say this, you were considered one of mean understanding. nowadays, the man who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-tribal complications across the border is more of use; but, in wressley's time, much attention was paid to the central indian states. they were called "foci" and "factors," and all manner of imposing names. and here the curse of anglo-indian life fell heavily. when wressley lifted up his voice, and spoke about such-and-such a succession to such-and-such a throne, the foreign office were silent, and heads of departments repeated the last two or three words of wressley's sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on to them, and knew that they were assisting the empire to grapple with serious political contingencies. in most big undertakings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit near and talk till the ripe decorations begin to fall. wressley was the working-member of the foreign office firm, and, to keep him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he was made much of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was. he did not require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but what he received confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite so absolutely and imperatively necessary to the stability of india as wressley of the foreign office. there might be other good men, but the known, honored and trusted man among men was wressley of the foreign office. we had a viceroy in those days who knew exactly when to "gentle" a fractious big man, and to hearten-up a collar-galled little one, and so keep all his team level. he conveyed to wressley the impression which i have just set down; and even tough men are apt to be disorganized by a viceroy's praise. there was a case once--but that is another story. all india knew wressley's name and office--it was in thacker and spink's directory--but who he was personally, or what he did, or what his special merits were, not fifty men knew or cared. his work filled all his time, and he found no leisure to cultivate acquaintances beyond those of dead rajput chiefs with _ahir_ blots in their scutcheons. wressley would have made a very good clerk in the herald's college had he not been a bengal civilian. upon a day, between office and office, great trouble came to wressley--overwhelmed him, knocked him down, and left him gasping as though he had been a little schoolboy. without reason, against prudence, and at a moment's notice, he fell in love with a frivolous, golden-haired girl who used to tear about simla mall on a high, rough waler, with a blue velvet jockey-cap crammed over her eyes. her name was venner--tillie venner--and she was delightful. she took wressley's heart at a hand-gallop, and wressley found that it was not good for man to live alone; even with half the foreign office records in his presses. then simla laughed, for wressley in love was slightly ridiculous. he did his best to interest the girl in himself--that is to say, his work--and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear interested in what, behind his back, she called "mr. wressley's wajahs"; for she lisped very prettily. she did not understand one little thing about them, but she acted as if she did. men have married on that sort of error before now. providence, however, had care of wressley, he was immensely struck with miss venner's intelligence. he would have been more impressed had he heard her private and confidential accounts of his calls. he held peculiar notions as to the wooing of girls. he said that the best work of a man's career should be laid reverently at their feet. ruskin writes something like this somewhere, i think; but in ordinary life a few kisses are better and save time. about a month after he had lost his heart to miss venner, and had been doing his work vilely in consequence, the first idea of his _native rule in central india_ struck wressley and filled him with joy. it was, as he sketched it, a great thing--the work of his life--a really comprehensive survey of a most fascinating subject--to be written with all the special and laboriously acquired knowledge of wressley of the foreign office--a gift fit for an empress. he told miss venner that he was going to take leave, and hoped, on his return, to bring her a present worthy of her acceptance. would she wait? certainly she would. wressley drew seventeen hundred rupees a month. she would wait a year for that. her mamma would help her to wait. so wressley took one year's leave and all the available documents, about a truck-load, that he could lay hands on, and went down to central india with his notion hot in his head. he began his book in the land he was writing of. too much official correspondence had made him a frigid workman, and he must have guessed that he needed the white light of local color on his palette. this is a dangerous paint for amateurs to play with. heavens, how that man worked! he caught his rajahs, analyzed his rajahs, and traced them up into the mists of time and beyond, with their queens and their concubines. he dated and cross-dated, pedigreed and triple-pedigreed, compared, noted, connoted, wove, strung, sorted, selected, inferred, calendared and counter-calendared for ten hours a day. and, because this sudden and new light of love was upon him, he turned those dry bones of history and dirty records of misdeeds into things to weep or to laugh over as he pleased. his heart and soul were at the end of his pen, and they got into the ink. he was dowered with sympathy, insight, humor, and style for two hundred and thirty days and nights; and his book was a book. he had his vast special knowledge with him, so to speak; but the spirit, the woven-in human touch, the poetry and the power of the output, were beyond all special knowledge. but i doubt whether he knew the gift that was in him then, and thus he may have lost some happiness. he was toiling for tillie venner, not for himself. men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake. also, though this has nothing to do with the story, in india where every one knows every one else, you can watch men being driven, by the women who govern them, out of the rank-and-file and sent to take up points alone. a good man, once started, goes forward; but an average man, so soon as the woman loses interest in his success as a tribute to her power, comes back to the battalion and is no more heard of. wressley bore the first copy of his book to simla, and, blushing and stammering, presented it to miss venner. she read a little of it. i give her review _verbatim_--"oh your book? it's all about those howwid wajahs. i didn't understand it." * * * * * wressley of the foreign office was broken, smashed,--i am not exaggerating--by this one frivolous little girl. all that he could say feebly was--"but--but it's my _magnum opus!_ the work of my life." miss venner did not know what _magnum opus_ meant; but she knew that captain kerrington had won three races at the last gymkhana. wressley didn't press her to wait for him any longer. he had sense enough for that. then came the reaction after the year's strain, and wressley went back to the foreign office and his "wajahs," a compiling, gazetteering, report-writing hack, who would have been dear at three hundred rupees a month. he abided by miss venner's review. which proves that the inspiration in the book was purely temporary and unconnected with himself. nevertheless, he had no right to sink, in a hill-tarn, five packing-cases, brought up at enormous expense from bombay, of the best book of indian history ever written. when he sold off before retiring, some years later, i was turning over his shelves, and came across the only existing copy of _native rule in central india_--the copy that miss venner could not understand. i read it, sitting on his mule-trunks, as long as the light lasted, and offered him his own price for it. he looked over my shoulder for a few pages and said to himself drearily-- "now, how in the world did i come to write such damned good stuff as that?" then to me-- "take it and keep it. write one of your penny-farthing yarns about its birth. perhaps--perhaps--the whole business may have been ordained to that end." which, knowing what wressley of the foreign office was once, struck me as about the bitterest thing that i had ever heard a man say of his own work. the solid muldoon did ye see john malone, wid his shinin', brand-new hat? did ye see how he walked like a grand aristocrat? there was flags an' banners wavin' high, an' dhress and shtyle were shown, but the best av all the company was misther john malone. _john malone._ there had been a royal dog-fight in the ravine at the back of the rifle-butts, between learoyd's _jock_ and ortheris's _blue rot_--both mongrel rampur hounds, chiefly ribs and teeth. it lasted for twenty happy, howling minutes, and then blue rot collapsed and ortheris paid learoyd three rupees, and we were all very thirsty. a dog-fight is a most heating entertainment, quite apart from the shouting, because rampurs fight over a couple of acres of ground. later, when the sound of belt-badges clicking against the necks of beer-bottles had died away, conversation drifted from dog to man-fights of all kinds. humans resemble red-deer in some respects. any talk of fighting seems to wake up a sort of imp in their breasts, and they bell one to the other, exactly like challenging bucks. this is noticeable even in men who consider themselves superior to privates of the line: it shows the refining influence of civilization and the march of progress. tale provoked tale, and each tale more beer. even dreamy learoyd's eyes began to brighten, and he unburdened himself of a long history in which a trip to malham cove, a girl at pateley brigg, a ganger, himself and a pair of clogs were mixed in drawling tangle. "an' so ah coot's yead oppen from t' chin to t' hair, an' he was abed for t' matter o' a month," concluded learoyd, pensively. mulvaney came out of a revery--he was lying down--and flourished his heels in the air. "you're a man, learoyd," said he, critically, "but you've only fought wid men, an' that's an ivry-day expayrience; but i've stud up to a ghost, an' that was _not_ an ivry-day expayrience." "no?" said ortheris, throwing a cork at him. "you git up an' address the 'ouse--you an' yer expayriences. is it a bigger one nor usual?" "twas the livin' trut'!" answered mulvaney, stretching out a huge arm and catching ortheris by the collar. "now where are ye, me son? will ye take the wurrud av the lorrd out av my mouth another time?" he shook him to emphasize the question. "no, somethin' else, though," said ortheris, making a dash at mulvaney's pipe, capturing it and holding it at arm's length; "i'll chuck it acrost the ditch if you don't let me go!" "you maraudin' hathen! tis the only cutty i iver loved. handle her tinder or i'll chuck _you_ acrost the nullah. if that poipe was bruk--ah! give her back to me, sorr!" ortheris had passed the treasure to my hand. it was an absolutely perfect clay, as shiny as the black ball at pool. i took it reverently, but i was firm. "will you tell us about the ghost-fight if i do?" i said. "is ut the shtory that's troublin' you? av course i will. i mint to all along. i was only gettin' at ut my own way, as popp doggle said whin they found him thrying to ram a cartridge down the muzzle. orth'ris, fall away!" he released the little londoner, took back his pipe, filled it, and his eyes twinkled. he has the most eloquent eyes of any one that i know. "did i iver tell you," he began, "that i was wanst the divil of a man?" "you did," said learoyd, with a childish gravity that made ortheris yell with laughter, for mulvaney was always impressing upon us his great merits in the old days. "did i iver tell you," mulvaney continued, calmly, "that i was wanst more av a divil than i am now?" "mer--ria! you don't mean it?" said ortheris. "whin i was corp'ril--i was rejuced aftherward--but, as i say, _whin_ i was corp'ril, i was a divil of a man." he was silent for nearly a minute, while his mind rummaged among old memories and his eye glowed. he bit upon the pipe-stem and charged into his tale. "eyah! they was great times, i'm ould now; me hide's wore off in patches; sinthrygo has disconceited me, an' i'm a married man tu. but i've had my day--i've had my day, an' nothin' can take away the taste av that! oh my time past, whin i put me fut through ivry livin' wan av the tin commandmints between revelly and lights out, blew the froth off a pewter, wiped me moustache wid the back av me hand, an' slept on ut all as quiet as a little child! but ut's over--ut's over, an' 'twill niver come back to me; not though i prayed for a week av sundays. was there _any_ wan in the ould rig'mint to touch corp'ril terence mulvaney whin that same was turned out for sedukshin? i niver met him. ivry woman that was not a witch was worth the runnin' afther in those days, an' ivry man was my dearest frind or--i had stripped to him an' we knew which was the betther av the tu. "whin i was corp'ril i wud not ha' changed wid the colonel--no, nor yet the commandher-in-chief. i wud be a sargint. there was nothin' i wud not be! mother av hivin, look at me! fwhat am i _now?_ "we was quartered in a big cantonmint--'tis no manner av use namin' names, for ut might give the barricks disrepitation--an' i was the imperor av the earth to my own mind, an' wan or tu women thought the same. small blame to thim. afther we had lain there a year, bragin, the color sargint av e comp'ny, wint an' took a wife that was lady's maid to some big lady in the station. she's dead now is annie bragin--died in child-bed at kirpa tal, or ut may ha' been almorah--seven--nine years gone, an' bragin he married agin. but she was a pretty woman whin bragin inthrojuced her to cantonmint society. she had eyes like the brown av a buttherfly's wing whin the sun catches ut, an' a waist no thicker than my arm, an' a little sof button av a mouth i would ha' gone through all asia bristlin' wid bay'nits to get the kiss av. an' her hair was as long as the tail av the colonel's charger--forgive me mentionin' that blunderin' baste in the same mouthful with annie bragin--but 'twas all shpun gold, an' time was when ut was more than di'monds to me. there was niver pretty woman yet, an' i've had thruck wid a few, cud open the door to annie bragin. "'twas in the cath'lic chapel i saw her first, me oi roiling round as usual to see fwhat was to be seen, 'you're too good for bragin, my love,' thinks i to mesilf, 'but that's a mistake i can put straight, or my name is not terence mulvaney.' "now take my wurrd for ut, you orth'ris there an' learoyd, an' kape out av the married quarters--as i did not. no good iver comes av ut, an' there's always the chance av your bein' found wid your face in the dirt, a long picket in the back av your head, an' your hands playing the fifes on the tread av another man's doorstep. "twas so we found o'hara, he that rafferty killed six years gone, when he wint to his death wid his hair oiled, whistlin' _larry o'rourke_ betune his teeth. kape out av the married quarters, i say, as i did not, 'tis onwholesim, 'tis dangerous, an' 'tis ivrything else that's bad, but--o my sowl, 'tis swate while ut lasts! "i was always hangin' about there whin i was off duty an' bragin wasn't, but niver a sweet word beyon' ordinar' did i get from annie bragin. ''tis the pervarsity av the sect,' sez i to mesilf, an' gave my cap another cock on my head an' straightened my back--'twas the back av a dhrum major in those days--an' wint off as tho' i did not care, wid all the women in the married quarters laughin'. i was pershuaded--most bhoys _are_, i'm thinkin'--that no women born av woman cud stand against me av i hild up my little finger. i had reason fer thinkin' that way--till i met annie bragin. "time an' agin whin i was blandandherin' in the dusk a man wud go past me as quiet as a cat. 'that's quare,' thinks i, 'for i am, or i should be, the only man in these parts. now what divilment can annie be up to?' thin i called myself a blayguard for thinkin' such things; but i thought thim all the same. an' that, mark you, is the way av a man. "wan evenin' i said:--'mrs. bragin, manin' no disrespect to you, who is that corp'ril man'--i had seen the stripes though i cud niver get sight av his face--'_who_ is that corp'ril man that comes in always whin i'm goin' away?' "'mother av god!' sez she, turnin' as white as my belt; 'have _you_ seen him too?' "'seen him!' sez i; 'av coorse i have. did ye want me not to see him, for'--we were standin' talkin' in the dhark, outside the veranda av bragin's quarters--'you'd betther tell me to shut me eyes. onless i'm mistaken, he's come now.' "an', sure enough, the corp'ril man was walkin' to us, hangin' his head down as though he was ashamed av himsilf. "'good-night, mrs. bragin,' sez i, very cool; ''tis not for me to interfere wid your _a-moors;_ but you might manage some things wid more dacincy. i'm off to canteen', i sez. "i turned on my heel an' wint away, swearin' i wud give that man a dhressin' that wud shtop him messin' about the married quarters for a month an' a week. i had not tuk ten paces before annie bragin was hangin' on to my arm, an' i cud feel that she was shakin' all over. "'stay wid me, mister mulvaney,' sez she; 'you're flesh an' blood, at the least--are ye not?' "'i'm _all_ that,' sez i, an' my anger wint away in a flash. 'will i want to be asked twice, annie?' "wid that i slipped my arm round her waist, for, begad, i fancied she had surrindered at discretion, an' the honors av war were mine, "'fwhat nonsinse is this?' sez she, dhrawin' hersilf up on the tips av her dear little toes. 'wid the mother's milk not dhry on your impident mouth? let go!' she sez, "did ye not say just now that i was flesh and blood?' sez i. 'i have not changed since,' i sez; an' i kep' my arm where ut was. "'your arms to yoursilf!' sez she, an' her eyes sparkild. "'sure, 'tis only human nature,' sez i, an' i kep' my arm where ut was. "'nature or no nature,' sez she, 'you take your arm away or i'll tell bragin, an' he'll alter the nature av your head. fwhat d'you take me for?' she sez. "'a woman,' sez i; 'the prettiest in barricks.' "'a _wife_,' sez she; 'the straightest in cantonmints!' "wid that i dropped my arm, fell back tu paces, an' saluted, for i saw that she mint fwhat she said." "then you know something that some men would give a good deal to be certain of. how could you tell?" i demanded in the interests of science. "watch the hand," said mulvaney; "av she shut her hand tight, thumb down over the knuckle, take up your hat an' go. you'll only make a fool av yoursilf av you shtay. but av the hand lies opin on the lap, or av you see her thryin' to shut ut, an' she can't,--go on! she's not past reasonin' wid. "well, as i was sayin', i fell back, saluted, an' was goin' away. "'shtay wid me,' she sez. 'look! he's comin' again.' "she pointed to the veranda, an' by the hoight av impart'nince, the corp'ril man was comin' out av bragin's quarters. "'he's done that these five evenin's past,' sez annie bragin. 'oh, fwhat will i do!' "'he'll not do ut again,' sez i, for i was fightin' mad. "kape way from a man that has been a thrifle crossed in love till the fever's died down. he rages like a brute beast. "i wint up to the man in the veranda, manin', as sure as i sit, to knock the life out av him. he slipped into the open. 'fwhat are you doin' philanderin' about here, ye scum av the gutter?' sez i polite, to give him his warnin', for i wanted him ready. "he niver lifted his head, but sez, all mournful an' melancolius, as if he thought i wud be sorry for him: 'i can't find her,' sez he. "'my troth,' sez i, 'you've lived too long--you an' your seekin's an' findin's in a dacint married woman's quarters! hould up your head, ye frozen thief av genesis,' sez i, 'an' you'll find all you want an' more!' "but he niver hild up, an' i let go from the shoulder to where the hair is short over the eyebrows. "'that'll do your business," sez i, but it nearly did mine instid. i put my bodyweight behind the blow, but i hit nothing at all, an' near put my shoulther out. the corp'ril man was not there, an' annie bragin, who had been watchin' from the veranda, throws up her heels, an' carries on like a cock whin his neck's wrung by the dhrummer-bhoy. i wint back to her, for a livin' woman, an' a woman like annie bragin, is more than a p'rade-groun' full av ghosts. i'd never seen a woman faint before, an' i stud like a shtuck calf, askin' her whether she was dead, an' prayin' her for the love av me, an' the love av her husband, an' the love av the virgin, to opin her blessed eyes again, an' callin' mesilf all the names undher the canopy av hivin for plaguin' her wid my miserable _a-moors_ whin i ought to ha' stud betune her an' this corp'ril man that had lost the number av his mess. "i misremimber fwhat nonsinse i said, but i was not so far gone that i cud not hear a fut on the dirt outside. 'twas bragin comin' in, an' by the same token annie was comin' to. i jumped to the far end av the veranda an' looked as if butter wudn't melt in my mouth. but mrs. quinn, the quarter-master's wife that was, had tould bragin about my hangin' round annie. "'i'm not pleased wid you, mulvaney,' sez bragin, unbucklin' his sword, for he had been on duty. "'that's bad hearin',' i sez, an' i knew that the pickets were dhriven in. 'what for, sargint?' sez i. "'come outside,' sez he, 'an' i'll show you why.' "'i'm willin',' i sez; 'but my stripes are none so ould that i can afford to lose thim. tell me now, _who_ do i go out wid?' sez i. "he was a quick man an' a just, an' saw fwhat i wud be afther. 'wid mrs. bragin's husband,' sez he. he might ha' known by me askin' that favor that i had done him no wrong. "we wint to the back av the arsenal an' i stripped to him, an' for ten minutes 'twas all i cud do to prevent him killin' himself against my fistes. he was mad as a dumb dog--just frothing wid rage; but he had no chanst wid me in reach, or learnin', or anything else. "'will ye hear reason?' sez i, whin his first wind was run out. "'not whoile i can see,' sez he. wid that i gave him both, one after the other, smash through the low gyard that he'd been taught whin he was a boy, an' the eyebrow shut down on the cheek-bone like the wing av a sick crow. "'will you hear reason now, ye brave man?' sez i. "'not whoile i can speak,' sez he, staggerin' up blind as a stump. i was loath to do ut, but i wint round an' swung into the jaw side-on an' shifted ut a half pace to the lef'. "'will ye hear reason now?' sez i; 'i can't keep my timper much longer, an 'tis like i will hurt you.' "'not whoile i can stand,' he mumbles out av one corner av his mouth. so i closed an' threw him--blind, dumb, an' sick, an' jammed the jaw straight. "'you're an ould fool, _mister_ bragin,' sez i. "'you're a young thief,' sez he, 'an' you've bruk my heart, you an' annie betune you!' "thin he began cryin' like a child as he lay. i was sorry as i had niver been before. 'tis an awful thing to see a strong man cry. "'i'll swear on the cross!' sez i. "'i care for none av your oaths,' sez he. "'come back to your quarters,' sez i, 'an' if you don't believe the livin', begad, you shall listen to the dead,' i sez. "i hoisted him an' tuk him back to his quarters. 'mrs. bragin,' sez i, 'here's a man that you can cure quicker than me.' "'you've shamed me before my wife,' he whimpers. "'have i so?' sez i. 'by the look on mrs. bragin's face i think i'm for a dhressin'-down worse than i gave you.' "an' i was! annie bragin was woild wid indignation. there was not a name that a dacint woman cud use that was not given my way. i've had my colonel walk roun' me like a cooper roun' a cask for fifteen minutes in ord'ly room, bekaze i wint into the corner shop an unstrapped lewnatic; but all that i iver tuk from his rasp av a tongue was ginger-pop to fwhat annie tould me, an' that, mark you, is the way av a woman, "whin ut was done for want av breath, an' annie was bendin' over her husband, i sez; ''tis all thrue, an' i'm a blayguard an' you're an honest woman; but will you tell him of wan service that i did you?' "as i finished speakin' the corp'ril man came up to the veranda, an' annie bragin shquealed. the moon was up, an' we cud see his face. "'i can't find her,' sez the corp'ril man, an' wint out like the puff av a candle. "'saints stand betune us an' evil!' sez bragin, crossin' himself; 'that's flahy av the tyrone.' "'who was he?' i sez, 'for he has given me a dale av fightin' this day.' "bragin tould us that flahy was a corp'ril who lost his wife av cholera in those quarters three years gone, an' wint mad, an' _walked_ afther they buried him, huntin' for her. "'well,' sez i to bragin, 'he's been hookin' out av purgathory to kape company wid mrs. bragin ivry evenin' for the last fortnight. you may tell mrs. quinn, wid my love, for i know that she's been talkin' to you, an' you've been listenin', that she ought to ondherstand the differ 'twixt a man an' a ghost. she's had three husbands,' sez i, 'an' _you_'ve, got a wife too good for you. instid av which you lave her to be boddered by ghosts an'--an' all manner av evil spirruts. i'll niver go talkin' in the way av politeness to a man's wife again. good-night to you both,' sez i; an' wid that i wint away, havin' fought wid woman, man and divil all in the heart av an hour. by the same token i gave father victor wan rupee to say a mass for flahy's soul, me havin' discommoded him by shticking my fist into his systim." "your ideas of politeness seem rather large, mulvaney," i said. "that's as you look at ut," said mulvaney, calmly; "annie bragin niver cared for me. for all that, i did not want to leave anything behin' me that bragin could take hould av to be angry wid her about--whin an honust wurrd cud ha' cleared all up. there's nothing like opin-speakin'. orth'ris, ye scutt, let me put me oi to that bottle, for my throat's as dhry as whin i thought i wud get a kiss from annie bragin. an' that's fourteen years gone! eyah! cork's own city an' the blue sky above ut--an' the times that was--the times that was!" the three musketeers an' when the war began, we chased the bold afghan, an' we made the bloomin' ghazi for to flee, boys o! an' we marched into kabul, an' we tuk the balar 'issar an' we taught 'em to respec' the british soldier. _barrack room ballad._ mulvaney, ortheris and learoyd are privates in b company of a line regiment, and personal friends of mine. collectively i think, but am not certain, they are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial blackguardism goes. they told me this story, in the umballa refreshment room while we were waiting for an up-train. i supplied the beer. the tale was cheap at a gallon and a half. all men know lord benira trig. he is a duke, or an earl, or something unofficial; also a peer; also a globe-trotter. on all three counts, as ortheris says, "'e didn't deserve no consideration." he was out in india for three months collecting materials for a book on "our eastern impedimenta," and quartering himself upon everybody, like a cossack in evening-dress. his particular vice--because he was a radical, men said--was having garrisons turned out for his inspection. he would then dine with the officer commanding, and insult him, across the mess table, about the appearance of the troops. that was benira's way. he turned out troops once too often. he came to helanthami cantonment on a tuesday. he wished to go shopping in the bazars on wednesday, and he "desired" the troops to be turned out on a thursday. _on--a--thursday._ the officer commanding could not well refuse; for benira was a lord. there was an indignation-meeting of subalterns in the mess room, to call the colonel pet names. "but the rale dimonstrashin," said mulvaney, "was in b comp'ny barrick; we three headin' it." mulvaney climbed on to the refreshment-bar, settled himself comfortably by the beer, and went on, "whin the row was at ut's foinest an' b comp'ny was fur goin' out to murther this man thrigg on the p'rade-groun', learoyd here takes up his helmut an' sez--fwhat was ut ye said?" "ah said," said learoyd, "gie us t' brass. tak oop a subscripshun, lads, for to put off t' p'rade, an' if t' p'rade's not put off, ah'll gie t' brass back agean. thot's wot ah said. all b coomp'ny knawed me. ah took oop a big subscripshun--fower rupees eight annas 'twas--an' ah went oot to turn t' job over. mulvaney an' orth'ris coom with me." "we three raises the divil in couples gin'rally," explained mulvaney. here ortheris interrupted. "'ave you read the papers?" said he. "sometimes," i said, "we 'ad read the papers, an' we put hup a faked decoity, a--a sedukshun." "_ab_dukshin, ye cockney," said mulvaney. "_ab_dukshin or _se_dukshun--no great odds. any'ow, we arranged to taik an' put mister benhira out o' the way till thursday was hover, or 'e too busy to rux 'isself about p'raids. _hi_ was the man wot said, 'we'll make a few rupees off o' the business.'" "we hild a council av war," continued mulvaney, "walkin' roun' by the artill'ry lines. i was prisidint, learoyd was minister av finance, an' little orth'ris here was"-- "a bloomin' bismarck! _hi_ made the 'ole show pay." "this interferin' bit av a benira man," said mulvaney, "did the thrick for us himself; for, on me sowl, we hadn't a notion av what was to come afther the next minut. he was shoppin' in the bazar on fut. twas dhrawin' dusk thin, an' we stud watchin' the little man hoppin' in an' out av the shops, thryin' to injuce the naygurs to _mallum_ his _bat_. prisintly, he sthrols up, his arrums full av thruck, an' he sez in a consiquinshal way, shticking out his little belly, 'me good men,' sez he, 'have ye seen the kernel's b'roosh?'--'b'roosh?' says learoyd. 'there's no b'roosh here--nobbut a _hekka_.'--'fwhat's that?' sez thrigg. learoyd shows him wan down the sthreet, an' he sez, 'how thruly orientil! i will ride on a _hekka_.' i saw thin that our rigimintal saint was for givin' thrigg over to us neck an' brisket. i purshued a _hekka_, an' i sez to the dhriver-divil, i sez, 'ye black limb, there's a _sahib_ comin' for this _hekka_. he wants to go _jildi_ to the padsahi jhil'--'twas about tu moiles away--'to shoot snipe--_chirria_. you dhrive _jehannum ke marfik, mallum_--like hell? 'tis no manner av use _bukkin'_ to the _sahib_, bekaze he doesn't _samjao_ your talk. av he _bolos_ anything, just you _choop_ and _chel_. _dekker?_ go _arsty_ for the first _arder_-mile from cantonmints. thin _chel, shaitan ke marfik_, an' the _chooper_ you _choops_ an' the _jildier_ you _chels_ the better _kooshy_ will that _sahib_ be; an' here's a rupee for ye?' "the _hekka_-man knew there was somethin' out av the common in the air. he grinned an' sez, '_bote achee!_ i goin' damn fast.' i prayed that the kernel's b'roosh wudn't arrive till me darlin' benira by the grace av god was undher weigh. the little man puts his thruck into the _hekka_ an' scuttles in like a fat guinea-pig; niver offerin' us the price av a dhrink for our services in helpin' him home, 'he's off to the padsahi _jhil_,' sez i to the others." ortheris took up the tale-- "jist then, little buldoo kim up, 'oo was the son of one of the artillery grooms--'e would 'av made a 'evinly newspaper-boy in london, bein' sharp an' fly to all manner o' games, 'e 'ad bin watchin' us puttin' mister benhira into 'is temporary baroush, an' 'e sez, 'what _'ave_ you been a doin' of, _sahibs?_' sez 'e. learoyd 'e caught 'im by the ear an 'e sez"-- "ah says,' went on learoyd, 'young mon, that mon's gooin' to have t' goons out o' thursday--to-morrow--an' thot's more work for you, young mon. now, sitha, tak' a _tat_ an' a _lookri,_ an' ride tha domdest to t' padsahi jhil. cotch thot there _hekka_, and tell t' driver iv your lingo thot you've coorn to tak' his place. t' _sahib_ doesn't speak t' _bat_, an' he's a little mon. drive t' _hekka_ into t' padsahi jhil into t' waiter. leave t' _sahib_ theer an' roon hoam; an' here's a rupee for tha,'" then mulvaney and ortheris spoke together in alternate fragments: mulvaney leading [you must pick out the two speakers as best you can]:--"he was a knowin' little divil was bhuldoo,--'e sez _bote achee_ an' cuts--wid a wink in his oi--but _hi_ sez there's money to be made--an' i wanted to see the ind av the campaign--so _hi_ says we'll double hout to the padsahi jhil--an' save the little man from bein' dacoited by the murtherin' bhuldoo--an' turn hup like reskooers in a vic'oria melodrama-so we doubled for the _jhil_, an' prisintly there was the divil av a hurroosh behind us an' three bhoys on grasscuts' ponies come by, poundin' along for the dear life--s'elp me bob, hif buldoo 'adn't raised a rig'lar _harmy_ of decoits--to do the job in shtile. an' we ran, an' they ran, shplittin' with laughin', till we gets near the _jhil_--and 'ears sounds of distress floatin' molloncolly on the hevenin' hair." [ortheris was growing poetical under the influence of the beer. the duet recommenced: mulvaney leading again.] "thin we heard bhuldoo, the dacoit, shoutin' to the _hekka_ man, an' wan of the young divils brought his stick down on the top av the _hekka_-cover, an' benira thrigg inside howled 'murther an' death.' buldoo takes the reins and dhrives like mad for the _jhil_, havin' dishpersed the _hekka_-dhriver--'oo cum up to us an' 'e sez, sez 'e, 'that _sahib's_ nigh mad with funk! wot devil's work 'ave you led me into?'--'hall right,' sez we, 'you catch that there pony an' come along. this _sahib's_ been decoited, an' we're going to resky 'im!' says the driver, 'decoits! wot decoits? that's buldoo the _budmash_'--'bhuldoo be shot!' sez we, ''tis a woild dissolute pathan frum the hills. there's about eight av thim coercin' the _sahib_. you remimber that an you'll get another rupee!' thin we heard the _whop-whop-whop_ av the _hekka_ turnin' over, an' a splash av water an' the voice av benira thrigg callin' upon god to forgive his sins--an' buldoo an' 'is friends squotterin' in the water like boys in the serpentine." here the three musketeers retired simultaneously into the beer. "well? what came next?" said i. "fwhat nex'?" answered mulvaney, wiping his mouth. "wud ye let three bould sodger-bhoys lave the ornamint av the house av lords to be dhrowned an' dacoited in a _jhil?_ we formed line av quarther-column an' we discinded upon the inimy. for the better part av tin minutes you could not hear yerself spake. the _tattoo_ was screamin' in chune wid benira thrigg an' bhuldoo's army, an' the shticks was whistlin' roun' the _hekka_, an' orth'ris was beatin' the _hekka_-cover wid his fistes, an' learoyd yellin', 'look out for their knives!' an' me cuttin' into the dark, right an' lef', dishpersin' arrmy corps av pathans. holy mother av moses! 'twas more disp'rit than ahmid kheyl wid maiwund thrown in. afther a while bhuldoo an' his bhoys flees. have ye iver seen a rale live lord thryin' to hide his nobility undher a fut an' a half av brown swamp-wather? tis the livin' image av a water-carrier's goatskin wid the shivers. it tuk toime to pershuade me frind benira he was not disimbowilled: an' more toime to get out the _hekka_. the dhriver come up afther the battle, swearin' he tuk a hand in repulsin' the inimy. benira was sick wid the fear. we escorted him back, very slow, to cantonmints, for that an' the chill to soak into him. it suk! glory be to the rigimintil saint, but it suk to the marrow av lord benira thrigg!" here ortheris, slowly, with immense pride--"'e sez, 'you har my noble preservers,' sez 'e. 'you har a _h_onor to the british harmy,' sez 'e. with that e' describes the hawful band of dacoits wot set on 'im. there was about forty of 'em an' 'e was hoverpowered by numbers, so 'e was; but 'e never lorst 'is presence of mind, so 'e didn't. 'e guv the _hekka_-driver five rupees for 'is noble assistance, an' 'e said 'e would see to us after 'e 'ad spoken to the kernul. for we was a _h_onor to the regiment, we was." "an' we three," said mulvaney, with a seraphic smile, "have dhrawn the par-ti-cu-lar attinshin av bobs bahadur more than wanst. but he's a rale good little man is bobs. go on, orth'ris, my son." "then we leaves 'im at the kernul's 'ouse, werry sick, an' we cuts hover to b comp'ny barrick an' we sez we 'ave saved benira from a bloody doom, an' the chances was agin there bein' p'raid on thursday. about ten minutes later come three envelicks, one for each of us. s'elp me bob, if the old bloke 'adn't guv us a fiver apiece--sixty-four rupees in the bazar! on thursday 'e was in 'orspital recoverin' from 'is sanguinary encounter with a gang of pathans, an' b comp'ny was drinkin' 'emselves into clink by squads. so there never was no thursday p'raid. but the kernal, when 'e 'eard of our galliant conduct, 'e sez, 'hi know there's been some devilry somewheres,' sez 'e, 'but i can't bring it 'ome to you three.'" "an' my privit imprisshin is," said mulvaney, getting off the bar and turning his glass upside down, "that, av they had known they wudn't have brought ut home. 'tis flyin' in the face, firstly av nature, secon' av the rig'lations, an' third the will av terence mulvaney, to hold p'rades av thursdays." "good, ma son!" said learoyd; "but, young mon, what's t' notebook for?" "'let be," said mulvaney; "this time next month we're in the _sherapis_. 'tis immortial fame the gentleman's goin' to give us. but kape it dhark till we're out av the range av me little frind bobs bahadur." and i have obeyed mulvaney's order. beyond the pale love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. i went in search of love and lost myself.--_hindu proverb_. a man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed. let the white go to the white and the black to the black. then, whatever trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things--neither sudden, alien nor unexpected. this is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe limits of decent everyday society, and paid for it heavily. he knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the second. he took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never do so again. deep away in the heart of the city, behind jitha megji's _bustee_, lies amir nath's gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated window. at the head of the gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on either side of the gully are without windows. neither suchet singh nor gaur chand approve of their womenfolk looking into the world. if durga charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man to-day, and little bisesa would have been able to knead her own bread. her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark gully where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue slime. she was a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed the gods, day and night, to send her a lover; for she did not approve of living alone. one day, the man--trejago his name was--came into amir nath's gully on an aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over a big heap of cattle-food. then he saw that the gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh from behind the grated window. it was a pretty little laugh, and trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old _arabian nights_ are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that verse of "the love song of har dyal" which begins: can a man stand upright in the face of the naked sun; or a lover in the presence of his beloved? if my feet fail me, o heart of my heart, am i to blame, being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty? there came the faint _tchink_ of a woman's bracelets from behind the grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse: alas! alas! can the moon tell the lotus of her love when the gate of heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains? they have taken my beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses to the north. there are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart. call to the bowmen to make ready-- the voice stopped suddenly, and trejago walked out of amir nath's gully, wondering who in the world could have capped "the love song of har dyal" so neatly. next morning, as he was driving to office, an old woman threw a packet into his dog-cart. in the packet was the half of a broken glass-bangle, one flower of the blood-red _dhak_, a pinch of _bhusa_ or cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. that packet was a letter--not a clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent unintelligible lover's epistle. trejago knew far too much about these things, as i have said. no englishman should be able to translate object-letters. but trejago spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle them out. a broken glass-bangle stands for a hindu widow all india over; because, when her husband dies, a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists. trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. the flower of the _dhak_ means diversely "desire," "come," "write," or "danger," according to the other things with it. one cardamom means "jealousy"; but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter, it loses its symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number indicating time, or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. the message ran then--"a widow--_dhak_ flower and _bhusa_,--at eleven o'clock." the pinch of _bhusa_ enlightened trejago. he saw--this kind of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge--that the _bhusa_ referred to the big heap of cattle-food over which he had fallen in amir nath's gully, and that the message must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow. so the message ran then--"a widow, in the gully in which is the heap of _bhusa_, desires you to come at eleven o'clock." trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. he knew that men in the east do not make love under windows at eleven in the forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance. so he went, that very night at eleven, into amir nath's gully, clad in a _boorka_, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. directly the gongs of the city made the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up "the love song of har dyal" at the verse where the panthan girl calls upon har dyal to return. the song is really pretty in the vernacular. in english you miss the wail of it. it runs something like this-- alone upon the housetops, to the north i turn and watch the lightning in the sky,-- the glamour of thy footsteps in the north, _come back to me, beloved, or i die!_ below my feet the still bazar is laid far, far, below the weary camels lie,-- the camels and the captives of thy raid. _come back to me, beloved, or i die!_ my father's wife is old and harsh with years, and drudge of all my father's house am i.-- my bread is sorrow and my drink is tears, _come back to me, beloved, or i die!_ as the song stopped, trejago stepped up under the grating and whispered--"i am here." bisesa was good to look upon. that night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double life so wild that trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream. bisesa, or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter, had detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the window slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry into which an active man might climb. in the daytime, trejago drove through his routine of office-work, or put on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the station; wondering how long they would know him if they knew of poor little bisesa. at night, when all the city was still, came the walk under the evil-smelling _boorka_, the patrol through jitha megji's _bustee_, the quick turn into amir nath's gully between the sleeping cattle and the dead walls, and then, last of all, bisesa, and the deep, even breathing of the old woman who slept outside the door of the bare little room that durga charan allotted to his sister's daughter. who or what durga charan was, trejago never inquired; and why in the world he was not discovered and knifed never occurred to him till his madness was over, and bisesa ... but this comes later. bisesa was an endless delight to trejago. she was as ignorant as a bird; and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside world that had reached her in her room, amused trejago almost as much as her lisping attempts to pronounce his name--"christopher." the first syllable was always more than she could manage, and she made funny little gestures with her roseleaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and then, kneeling before trejago, asked him, exactly as an englishwoman would do, if he were sure he loved her. trejago swore that he loved her more than any one else in the world. which was true. after a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelled trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. you may take it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticed and discussed by a man's own race but by some hundred and fifty natives as well. trejago had to walk with this lady and talk to her at the band-stand, and once or twice to drive with her; never for an instant dreaming that this would affect his dearer, out-of-the-way life. but the news flew, in the usual mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till bisesa's duenna heard of it and told bisesa. the child was so troubled that she did the household work evilly, and was beaten by durga charan's wife in consequence. a week later, bisesa taxed trejago with the flirtation. she understood no gradations and spoke openly. trejago laughed and bisesa stamped her little feet--little feet, light as marigold flowers, that could lie in the palm of a man's one hand. much that is written about oriental passion and impulsiveness is exaggerated and compiled at second-hand, but a little of it is true; and when an englishman finds that little, it is quite as startling as any passion in his own proper life. bisesa raged and stormed, and finally threatened to kill herself if trejago did not at once drop the alien _memsahib_ who had come between them. trejago tried to explain, and to show her that she did not understand these things from a western standpoint. bisesa drew herself up, and said simply-- "i do not. i know only this--it is not good that i should have made you dearer than my own heart to me, _sahib_. you are an englishman. i am only a black girl"--she was fairer than bar-gold in the mint,--"and the widow of a black man." then she sobbed and said--"but on my soul and my mother's soul, i love you. there shall no harm come to you, whatever happens to me." trejago argued with the child, and tried to soothe her, but she seemed quite unreasonably disturbed. nothing would satisfy her save that all relations between them should end. he was to go away at once. and he went. as he dropped out of the window, she kissed his forehead twice, and he walked home wondering. a week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign from bisesa. trejago, thinking that the rupture had lasted quite long enough, went down to amir nath's gully for the fifth time in the three weeks, hoping that his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would be answered. he was not disappointed. there was a young moon, and one stream of light fell down into amir nath's gully, and struck the grating which was drawn away as he knocked. from the black dark, bisesa held out her arms into the moonlight. both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the stumps were nearly healed. then, as bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed, some one in the room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp--knife, sword, or spear,--thrust at trejago in his _boorka_. the stroke missed his body, but cut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he limped slightly from the wound for the rest of his days. the grating went into its place. there was no sign whatever from inside the house,--nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall, and the blackness of amir nath's gully behind. the next thing trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a madman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near the river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his _boorka_ and went home bareheaded. * * * * * what was the tragedy--whether bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether durga charan knew his name and what became of bisesa--trejago does not know to this day. something horrible had happened, and the thought of what it must have been, comes upon trejago in the night now and again, and keeps him company till the morning. one special feature of the case is that he does not know where lies the front of durga charan's house. it may open on to a courtyard common to two or more houses, or it may lie behind any one of the gates of jitha megji's _bustee_. trejago cannot tell. he cannot get bisesa--poor little bisesa--back again. he has lost her in the city where each man's house is as guarded and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens into amir nath's gully has been walled up. but trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent sort of man. there is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness, caused by a riding-strain, in the right leg. the god from the machine hit a man an' help a woman, an' ye can't be far wrong anyways.--_maxims of private mulvaney._ the inexpressibles gave a ball. they borrowed a seven-pounder from the gunners, and wreathed it with laurels, and made the dancing-floor plate-glass and provided a supper, the like of which had never been eaten before, and set two sentries at the door of the room to hold the trays of programme-cards. my friend, private mulvaney, was one of the sentries, because he was the tallest man in the regiment. when the dance was fairly started the sentries were released, and private mulvaney went to curry favor with the mess sergeant in charge of the supper. whether the mess sergeant gave or mulvaney took, i cannot say. all that i am certain of is that, at supper-time, i found mulvaney with private ortheris, two-thirds of a ham, a loaf of bread, half a _pâté-de-foie-gras_, and two magnums of champagne, sitting on the roof of my carriage. as i came up i heard him saying-- "praise be a danst doesn't come as often as ord'ly-room, or, by this an' that, orth'ris, me son, i wud be the dishgrace av the rig'mint instid av the brightest jool in uts crown." "_hand_ the colonel's pet noosance," said ortheris, "but wot makes you curse your rations? this 'ere fizzy stuff's good enough." "stuff, ye oncivilized pagin! 'tis champagne we're dhrinkin' now. 'tisn't that i am set ag'in. 'tis this quare stuff wid the little bits av black leather in it. i misdoubt i will be distressin'ly sick wid it in the mornin'. fwhat is ut?" "goose liver," i said, climbing on the top of the carriage, for i knew that it was better to sit out with mulvaney than to dance many dances. "goose liver is ut?" said mulvaney. "faith, i'm thinkin' thim that makes it wud do betther to cut up the colonel. he carries a power av liver undher his right arrum whin the days are warm an' the nights chill. he wud give thim tons an' tons av liver. 'tis he sez so. 'i'm all liver to-day,' sez he; an' wid that he ordhers me ten days c.b. for as moild a dhrink as iver a good sodger took betune his teeth." "that was when 'e wanted for to wash 'isself in the fort ditch," ortheris explained. "said there was too much beer in the barrack water-butts for a god-fearing man. you was lucky in gettin' orf with wot you did, mulvaney." "say you so? now i'm pershuaded i was cruel hard trated, seein' fwhat i've done for the likes av him in the days whin my eyes were wider opin than they are now. man alive, for the colonel to whip _me_ on the peg in that way! me that have saved the repitation av a ten times better man than him! twas ne-farious--an' that manes a power av evil!" "never mind the nefariousness," i said. "whose reputation did you save?" "more's the pity, 'twasn't my own, but i tuk more trouble wid ut than av ut was. 'twas just my way, messin' wid fwhat was no business av mine. hear now!" he settled himself at ease on the top of the carriage. "i'll tell you all about ut. av coorse i will name no names, for there's wan that's an orf'cer's lady now, that was in ut, and no more will i name places, for a man is thracked by a place." "eyah!" said ortheris, lazily, "but this is a mixed story wot's comin'." "wanst upon a time, as the childer-books say, i was a recruity." "was you though?" said ortheris; "now that's extryordinary!" "orth'ris," said mulvaney, "av you opin thim lips av yours again, i will, savin' your presince, sorr, take you by the slack av your trousers an' heave you." "i'm mum," said ortheris. "wot 'appened when you was a recruity?" "i was a betther recruity than you iver was or will be, but that's neither here nor there. thin i became a man, an' the divil of a man i was fifteen years ago. they called me buck mulvaney in thim days, an', begad, i tuk a woman's eye. i did that! ortheris, ye scrub, fwhat are ye sniggerin' at? do you misdoubt me?" "devil a doubt!" said ortheris; "but i've 'eard summat like that before!" mulvaney dismissed the impertinence with a lofty wave of his hand and continued-- "an' the orf'cers av the rig'mint i was in in thim days _was_ orfcers--gran' men, wid a manner on 'em, an' a way wid 'em such as is not made these days--all but wan--wan o' the capt'ns. a bad dhrill, a wake voice, an' a limp leg--thim three things are the signs av a bad man. you bear that in your mind, orth'ris, me son. "an' the colonel av the rig'mint had a daughter--wan av thim lamblike, bleatin', pick-me-up-an'-carry-me-or-i'll-die gurls such as was made for the natural prey av men like the capt'n, who was iverlastin' payin' coort to her, though the colonel he said time an' over, 'kape out av the brute's way, my dear.' but he niver had the heart for to send her away from the throuble, bein' as he was a widower, an' she their wan child." "stop a minute, mulvaney," said i; "how in the world did you come to know these things?" "how did i come?" said mulvaney, with a scornful grunt; "bekaze i'm turned durin' the quane's pleasure to a lump av wood, lookin' out straight forninst me, wid a--a--candelabbrum in my hand, for you to pick your cards out av, must i not see nor feel? av coorse i du! up my back, an' in my boots, an' in the short hair av the neck--that's where i kape my eyes whim i'm on duty an' the reg'lar wans are fixed. know! take my word for it, sorr, ivrything an' a great dale more is known in a rig'mint; or fwhat wud be the use av a mess sargint, or a sargint's wife doin' wet-nurse to the major's baby? to reshume. he was a bad dhrill was this capt'n--a rotten bad dhrill--an' whin first i ran me eye over him, i sez to myself: 'my militia bantam!' i sez, 'my cock av a gosport dunghill'--'twas from portsmouth he came to us--'there's combs to be cut,' sez i, 'an' by the grace av god, 'tis terence mulvaney will cut thim.' "so he wint menowderin', and minanderin', an' blandandhering roun' an' about the colonel's daughter, an' she, poor innocint, lookin' at him like a comm'ssariat bullock looks at the comp'ny cook. he'd a dhirty little scrub av a black moustache, an' he twisted an' turned ivry wurrd he used as av he found ut too sweet for to spit out. "eyah! he was a tricky man an' a liar by natur'. some are born so. he was wan. i knew he was over his belt in money borrowed from natives; besides a lot av other matthers which, in regard for your presince, sorr, i will oblitherate. a little av fwhat i knew, the colonel knew, for he wud have none av him, an' that, i'm thinkin', by fwhat happened aftherward, the capt'in knew. "wan day, bein' mortial idle, or they wud never ha' thried ut, the rig'mint gave amsure theatricals--orf'cers an' orfcers' ladies. you've seen the likes time an' again, sorr, an' poor fun 'tis for them that sit in the back row an' stamp wid their boots for the honor av the rig'mint. i was told off for to shif' the scenes, haulin' up this an' draggin' down that. light work ut was, wid lashins av beer and the gurl that dhressed the orf'cers' ladies--but she died in aggra twelve years gone, an' my tongue's gettin' the betther av me. they was actin' a play thing called _sweethearts_, which you may ha' heard av, an' the colonel's daughter she was a lady's maid. the capt'n was a boy called broom--spread broom was his name in the play. thin i saw--ut come out in the actin'--fwhat i niver saw before, an' that was that he was no gentleman. they was too much together, thim two, a-whishperin' behind the scenes i shifted, an' some av what they said i heard; for i was death--blue death an' ivy--on the comb-cuttin'. he was iverlastin'ly oppressing her to fall in wid some sneakin' schame av his, an' she was thryin' to stand out against him, but not as though she was set in her will. i wonder now in thim days that my ears did not grow a yard on me head wid list'nin'. but i looked straight forninst me an' hauled up this an' dragged down that, such as was my duty, an' the orf'cers' ladies sez one to another, thinkin' i was out av listen-reach: 'fwhat an obligin' young man is this corp'ril mulvaney!' i was a corp'ril then. i was rejuced aftherward, but, no matther, i was a corp'ril wanst. "well, this _sweethearts'_ business wint on like most amshure theatricals, an' barrin' fwhat i suspicioned, 'twasn't till the dhress-rehearsal that i saw for certain that thim two--he the blackguard, an' she no wiser than she should ha' been--had put up an evasion." "a what?" said i. "e-vasion! fwhat you call an elopemint. e-vasion i calls it, bekaze, exceptin' whin 'tis right an' natural an' proper, 'tis wrong an' dhirty to steal a man's wan child, she not knowin' her own mind. there was a sargint in the comm'ssariat who set my face upon e-vasions. i'll tell you about that"-- "stick to the bloomin' captains, mulvaney," said ortheris; "comm'ssariat sargints is low." mulvaney accepted the amendment and went on:-- "now i knew that the colonel was no fool, any more than me, for i was hild the smartest man in the rig'mint, an' the colonel was the best orf'cer commandin' in asia; so fwhat he said an' _i_ said was a mortial truth. we knew that the capt'n was bad, but, for reasons which i have already oblitherated, i knew more than me colonel. i wud ha' rolled out his face wid the butt av my gun before permittin' av him to steal the gurl. saints knew av he wud ha' married her, and av he didn't she wud be in great tormint, an' the divil av a 'scandal.' but i niver sthruck, niver raised me hand on my shuperior orf'cer; an' that was a merricle now i come to considher it." "mulvaney, the dawn's risin'," said ortheris, "an' we're no nearer 'ome than we was at the beginnin'. lend me your pouch. mine's all dust." mulvaney pitched his pouch over, and filled his pipe afresh. "so the dhress-rehearsal came to an end, an', bekaze i was curious, i stayed behind whin the scene-shiftin' was ended, an' i shud ha' been in barricks, lyin' as flat as a toad under a painted cottage thing. they was talkin' in whispers, an' she was shiverin' an' gaspin' like a fresh-hukked fish. 'are you sure you've got the hang av the manewvers?' sez he, or wurrds to that effec', as the coort-martial sez. 'sure as death,' sez she, 'but i misdoubt 'tis cruel hard on my father.' 'damn your father,' sez he, or anyways 'twas fwhat he thought, 'the arrangement is as clear as mud. jungi will drive the carri'ge afther all's over, an' you come to the station, cool an' aisy, in time for the two o'clock thrain, where i'll be wid your kit.' 'faith,' thinks i to myself, 'thin there's a ayah in the business tu!' "a powerful bad thing is a ayah. don't you niver have any thruck wid wan. thin he began sootherin' her, an' all the orfcers an' orfcers' ladies left, an' they put out the lights. to explain the theory av the flight, as they say at muskthry, you must understand that afther this _sweethearts'_ nonsinse was ended, there was another little bit av a play called _couples_--some kind av couple or another. the gurl was actin' in this, but not the man. i suspicioned he'd go to the station wid the gurl's kit at the end av the first piece. twas the kit that flusthered me, for i knew for a capt'n to go trapesing about the impire wid the lord knew what av a _truso_ on his arrum was nefarious, an' wud be worse than easin' the flag, so far as the talk aftherward wint." '"old on, mulvaney. wot's _truso_?" said ortheris. "you're an oncivilized man, me son. whin a gurl's married, all her kit an' 'coutrements are _truso_, which manes weddin'-portion. an' 'tis the same whin she's runnin' away, even wid the biggest blackguard on the arrmy list. "so i made my plan av campaign. the colonel's house was a good two miles away. 'dennis,' sez i to my color-sargint, 'av you love me lend me your kyart, for me heart is bruk an' me feet is sore wid trampin' to and from this foolishness at the gaff.' an' dennis lent ut, wid a rampin', stampin' red stallion in the shafts. whin they was all settled down to their _sweethearts_ for the first scene, which was a long wan, i slips outside and into the kyart. mother av hivin! but i made that horse walk, an' we came into the colonel's compound as the divil wint through athlone--in standin' leps. there was no one there excipt the sarvints, an' i wint round to the back an' found the girl's ayah. "'ye black brazen jezebel,' sez i, 'sellin' your masther's honor for five rupees--pack up all the miss sahib's kit an' look slippy! _capt'n sahib's_ order,' sez i, 'going to the station we are,' i sez, an' wid that i laid my finger to my nose an' looked the schamin' sinner i was. "'_bote acchy,_' says she; so i knew she was in the business, an' i piled up all the sweet talk i'd iver learned in the bazars on to this she-bullock, an' prayed av her to put all the quick she knew into the thing. while she packed, i stud outside an' sweated, for i was wanted for to shif' the second scene. i tell you, a young gurl's e-vasion manes as much baggage as a rig'mint on the line av march! 'saints help dennis's springs,' thinks i, as i bundled the stuff into the thrap, 'for i'll have no mercy!' "'i'm comin' too,' says the ayah. "'no, you don't,' sez i, 'later--_pechy_! you _baito_ where you are. i'll _pechy_ come an' bring you _sart_, along with me, you maraudin''--niver mind fwhat i called her. "thin i wint for the gaff, an' by the special ordher av providence, for i was doin' a good work you will ondersthand, dennis's springs hild toight. 'now, whin the capt'n goes for that kit,' thinks i, 'he'll be throubled.' at the end av _sweethearts_ off the capt'n runs in his kyart to the colonel's house, an' i sits down on the steps and laughs. wanst an' again i slipped in to see how the little piece was goin', an' whin ut was near endin' i stepped out all among the carriages an' sings out very softly, 'jungi!' wid that a carr'ge began to move, an' i waved to the dhriver. '_hitherao!_' sez i, an' he _hitheraoed_ till i judged he was at proper distance, an' thin i tuk him, fair an' square betune the eyes, all i knew for good or bad, an' he dhropped wid a guggle like the canteen beer-engine whin ut's runnin' low, thin i ran to the kyart an' tuk out all the kit an' piled it into the carr'ge, the sweat runnin' down my face in dhrops, 'go home,' sez i, to the _sais;_ 'you'll find a man close here. very sick he is. take him away, an' av you iver say wan wurrd about fwhat you've _dekkoed,_ i'll _marrow_ you till your own wife won't _sumjao_ who you are!' thin i heard the stampin' av feet at the ind av the play, an' i ran in to let down the curtain. whin they all came out the gurl thried to hide herself behind wan av the pillars, an' sez 'jungi' in a voice that wouldn't ha' scared a hare. i run over to jungi's carr'ge an' tuk up the lousy old horse-blanket on the box, wrapped my head an' the rest av me in ut, an' dhrove up to where she was. "'miss sahib,' sez i; 'going to the station? _captain sahib's_ order!' an' widout a sign she jumped in all among her own kit. "i laid to an' dhruv like steam to the colonel's house before the colonel was there, an' she screamed an' i thought she was goin' off. out comes the ayah, saying all sorts av things about the capt'n havin' come for the kit an' gone to the station. "'take out the luggage, you divil,' sez i, 'or i'll murther you!' "the lights av the thraps people comin' from the gaff was showin' across the parade ground, an', by this an' that, the way thim two women worked at the bundles an' thrunks was a caution! i was dyin' to help, but, seein' i didn't want to be known, i sat wid the blanket roun' me an' coughed an' thanked the saints there was no moon that night. "whin all was in the house again, i niver asked for _bukshish_ but dhruv tremenjus in the opp'site way from the other carr'ge an' put out my lights. presintly, i saw a naygur-man wallowin' in the road. i slipped down before i got to him, for i suspicioned providence was wid me all through that night. 'twas jungi, his nose smashed in flat, all dumb sick as you please. dennis's man must have tilted him out av the thrap. whin he came to, 'hutt!' sez i, but he began to howl. "'you black lump av dirt,' i sez, 'is this the way you dhrive your _gharri_? that _tikka_ has been _owin'_ an' _fere-owin'_ all over the bloomin' country this whole bloomin' night, an' you as _mut-walla_ as davey's sow. get up, you hog!' sez i, louder, for i heard the wheels av a thrap in the dark; 'get up an' light your lamps, or you'll be run into!' this was on the road to the railway station. "'fwhat the divil's this?' sez the capt'n's voice in the dhark, an' i could judge he was in a lather av rage. "'_gharri_ dhriver here, dhrunk, sorr,' sez i; 'i've found his _gharri_ sthrayin' about cantonmints, an' now i've found him.' "'oh!' sez the capt'n; 'fwhat's his name?' i stooped down an' pretended to listen. "'he sez his name's jungi, sorr,' sez i. "'hould my harse,' sez the capt'n to his man, an' wid that he gets down wid the whip an' lays into jungi, just mad wid rage an' swearin' like the scutt he was. "i thought, afther a while, he wud kill the man, so i sez:--'stop, sorr, or you'll murdher him!' that dhrew all his fire on me, an' he cursed me into blazes, an' out again. i stud to attenshin an' saluted:--'sorr,' sez i, 'av ivry man in this wurruld had his rights, i'm thinkin' that more than wan wud be beaten to a jelly for this night's work--that niver came off at all, sorr, as you see?' 'now,' thinks i to myself, 'terence mulvaney, you've cut your own throat, for he'll sthrike, an' you'll knock him down for the good av his sowl an' your own iverlastin' dishgrace!' "but the capt'n never said a single wurrd. he choked where he stud, an' thin he went into his thrap widout sayin' good-night, an' i wint back to barricks." "and then?" said ortheris and i together. "that was all," said mulvaney, "niver another word did i hear av the whole thing. all i know was that there was no e-vasion, an' that was fwhat i wanted. now, i put ut to you, sorr, is ten days' c.b. a fit an' a proper tratement for a man who has behaved as me?" "well, any'ow," said ortheris, "tweren't this 'ere colonel's daughter, an' you _was_ blazin' copped when you tried to wash in the fort ditch." "that," said mulvaney, finishing the champagne, "is a shuparfluous an' impert'nint observation." the daughter of the regiment jain 'ardin' was a sarjint's wife, a sarjint's wife wus she, she married of 'im in orldershort an' comed across the sea. (_chorus_) 'ave you never 'eard tell o' jain 'ardin'? jain 'ardin'? jain 'ardin'? 'ave you never 'eard tell o' jain 'ardin'? the pride o' the companee? _old barrack room ballad._ "a gentleman who doesn't know the circasian circle ought not to stand up for it--puttin' everybody out." that was what miss mckenna said, and the sergeant who was my _vis-à-vis_ looked the same thing. i was afraid of miss mckenna. she was six feet high, all yellow freckles and red hair, and was simply clad in white satin shoes, a pink muslin dress, an apple-green stuff sash, and black silk gloves, with yellow roses in her hair. wherefore i fled from miss mckenna and sought my friend private mulvaney, who was at the cant--refreshment-table. "so you've been dancin' with little jhansi mckenna, sorr--she that's goin' to marry corp'ril slane? whin you next conversh wid your lorruds an' your ladies, tell thim you've danced wid little jhansi. 'tis a thing to be proud av." but i wasn't proud. i was humble. i saw a story in private mulvaney's eye; and besides, if he stayed too long at the bar, he would, i knew, qualify for more pack-drill. now to meet an esteemed friend doing pack-drill outside the guardroom is embarrassing, especially if you happen to be walking with his commanding officer. "come on to the parade-ground, mulvaney, it's cooler there, and tell me about miss mckenna. what is she, and who is she, and why is she called 'jhansi'?" "d'ye mane to say you've niver heard av ould pummeloe's daughter? an' you thinkin' you know things! i'm wid ye in a minut whin me poipe's lit." we came out under the stars. mulvaney sat down on one of the artillery bridges, and began in the usual way: his pipe between his teeth, his big hands clasped and dropped between his knees, and his cap well on the back of his head-- "whin mrs. mulvaney, that is, was miss shadd that was, you were a dale younger than you are now, an' the army was dif'rint in sev'ril e-senshuls. bhoys have no call for to marry nowadays, an' that's why the army has so few rale good, honust, swearin', strapagin', tinder-hearted, heavy-futted wives as ut used to have whin i was a corp'ril. i was rejuced aftherward--but no matther--i was a corp'ril wanst. in thim times, a man lived _an'_ died wid his regiment; an' by natur', he married whin he was a _man_. whin i was corp'ril--mother av hivin, how the rigimint has died an' been borrun since that day!--my color-sar'jint was ould mckenna--an' a married man tu. an' his woife--his first woife, for he married three times did mckenna--was bridget mckenna, from portarlington, like mesilf. i've misremembered fwhat her first name was; but in b comp'ny we called her 'ould pummeloe,' by reason av her figure, which was entirely cir-cum-fe-renshill. like the big dhrum! now that woman--god rock her sowl to rest in glory!--was for everlastin' havin' childher; an' mckenna, whin the fifth or sixth come squallin' on to the musther-roll, swore he wud number thim off in future. but ould pummeloe she prayed av him to christen them after the names av the stations they was borrun in. so there was colaba mckenna, an' muttra mckenna, an' a whole presidincy av other mckennas, an' little jhansi, dancin' over yonder. whin the childher wasn't bornin', they was dying; for, av our childher die like sheep in these days, they died like flies thin, i lost me own little shadd--but no matther. 'tis long ago, and mrs. mulvaney niver had another. "i'm digresshin. wan divil's hot summer, there come an order from some mad ijjit, whose name i misremember, for the rigimint to go up-country. maybe they wanted to know how the new rail carried throops. they knew! on me sowl, they knew before they was done! old pummeloe had just buried muttra mckenna; an', the season bein' onwholesim, only little jhansi mckenna, who was four year ould thin, was left on hand. "five children gone in fourteen months. 'twas harrd, wasn't ut? "so we wint up to our new station in that blazin' heat--may the curse av saint lawrence conshume the man who gave the ordher! will i iver forget that move? they gave us two wake thrains to the rigimint; an' we was eight hundher' and sivinty strong. there was a, b, c, an' d companies in the secon' thrain, wid twelve women, no orficers' ladies, an' thirteen childher. we was to go six hundher' miles, an' railways was new in thim days. whin we had been a night in the belly av the thrain--the men ragin' in their shirts an' dhrinkin' anything they cud find, an' eatin' bad fruit-stuff whin they cud, for we cudn't stop 'em--i was a corp'ril thin--the cholera bruk out wid the dawnin' av the day. "pray to the saints, you may niver see cholera in a throop-thrain! 'tis like the judgmint av god hittin' down from the nakid sky! we run into a rest-camp--as ut might have been ludianny, but not by any means so comfortable. the orficer commandin' sent a telegrapt up the line, three hundher' mile up, askin' for help. faith, we wanted ut, for ivry sowl av the followers ran for the dear life as soon as the thrain stopped; an' by the time that telegrapt was writ, there wasn't a naygur in the station exceptin' the telegrapt-clerk--an' he only bekaze he was held down to his chair by the scruff av his sneakin' black neck. thin the day began wid the noise in the carr'ges, an' the rattle av the men on the platform fallin' over, arms an' all, as they stud for to answer the comp'ny muster-roll before goin' over to the camp. 'tisn't for me to say what like the cholera was like. maybe the doctor cud ha' tould, av he hadn't dropped on to the platform from the door av a carriage where we was takin' out the dead. he died wid the rest. some bhoys had died in the night. we tuk out siven, and twenty more was sickenin' as we tuk thim. the women was huddled up anyways, screamin' wid fear. "sez the commandin' orficer whose name i misremember, 'take the women over to that tope av trees yonder. get thim out av the camp. 'tis no place for thim.' "ould pummeloe was sittin' on her beddin'-rowl, thryin' to kape little jhansi quiet. 'go off to that tope!' sez the orficer. 'go out av the men's way!' "'be damned av i do!' sez ould pummeloe, an' little jhansi, squattin' by her mother's side, squeaks out, 'be damned av i do,' tu. thin ould pummeloe turns to the women an' she sez, 'are ye goin' to let the bhoys die while you're picnickin', ye sluts?' sez she. 'tis wather they want. come on an' help.' "wid that, she turns up her sleeves an' steps out for a well behind the rest-camp--little jhansi trottin' behind wid a _lotah_ an' string, an' the other women followin' like lambs, wid horse-buckets and cookin' pots. whin all the things was full, ould pummeloe marches back into camp--'twas like a battlefield wid all the glory missin'--at the hid av the rigimint av women. "'mckenna, me man!' she sez, wid a voice on her like grand-roun's challenge, 'tell the bhoys to be quiet. ould pummeloe's comin' to look afther thim--wid free dhrinks.' "thin we cheered, an' the cheerin' in the lines was louder than the noise av the poor divils wid the sickness on thim. but not much. "you see, we was a new an' raw rigimint in those days, an' we cud make neither head nor tail av the sickness; an' so we was useless. the men was goin' roun' an' about like dumb sheep, waitin' for the nex' man to fall over, an' sayin' undher their spache, 'fwhat is ut? in the name av god, _fwhat_ is ut?' 'twas horrible. but through ut all, up an' down, an' down an' up, wint ould pummeloe an' little jhansi--all we cud see av the baby, undher a dead man's helmut wid the chin-strap swingin' about her little stummick--up an' down wid the wather an' fwhat brandy there was. "now an' thin ould pummeloe, the tears runnin' down her fat, red face, sez, 'me bhoys, me poor, dead, darlin' bhoys!' but, for the most, she was thryin' to put heart into the men an' kape thim stiddy; and little jhansi was tellin' thim all they wud be 'betther in the mornin'.' 'twas a thrick she'd picked up from hearin' ould pummeloe whin muttra was burnin' out wid fever. in the mornin'! 'twas the iverlastin' mornin' at st. pether's gate was the mornin' for seven-an'-twenty good men; and twenty more was sick to the death in that bitter, burnin' sun. but the women worked like angils as i've said, an' the men like divils, till two doctors come down from above, and we was rescued. "but, just before that, ould pummeloe, on her knees over a bhoy in my squad--right-cot man to me he was in the barrick--tellin' him the worrud av the church that niver failed a man yet, sez, 'hould me up, bhoys! i'm feelin' bloody sick!' 'twas the sun, not the cholera, did ut. she mis-remembered she was only wearin' her ould black bonnet, an' she died wid 'mckenna, me man,' houldin' her up, an' the bhoys howled whin they buried her. "that night, a big wind blew, an' blew, an' blew, an' blew the tents flat. but it blew the cholera away an' niver another case there was all the while we was waitin'--ten days in quarintin'. av you will belave me, the thrack av the sickness in the camp was for all the wurruld the thrack av a man walkin' four times in a figur-av-eight through the tents. they say 'tis the wandherin' jew takes the cholera wid him. i believe ut. "an' _that_," said mulvaney, illogically, "is the cause why little jhansi mckenna is fwhat she is. she was brought up by the quartermaster sergeant's wife whin mckenna died, but she b'longs to b comp'ny; and this tale i'm tellin' you-_wid_ a proper appreciashin av jhansi mckenna--i've belted into ivry recruity av the comp'ny as he was drafted. 'faith, 'twas me belted corp'ril slane into askin' the girl!" "not really?" "man, i did! she's no beauty to look at, but she's ould pummeloe's daughter, an' 'tis my juty to provide for her. just before slane got his promotion i sez to him, 'slane,' sez i, 'to-morrow 'twill be insubordinashin av me to chastise you; but, by the sowl av ould pummeloe, who is now in glory, av you don't give me your wurrud to ask jhansi mckenna at wanst, i'll peel the flesh off yer bones wid a brass huk to-night, 'tis a dishgrace to b comp'ny she's been single so long!' sez i. was i goin' to let a three-year-ould preshume to discoorse wid me--my will bein' set? no! slane wint an' asked her. he's a good bhoy is slane. wan av these days he'll get into the com'ssariat an' dhrive a buggy wid his--savin's. so i provided for ould pummeloe's daughter; an' now you go along an' dance agin wid her." and i did. i felt a respect for miss jhansi mckenna; and i went to her wedding later on. perhaps i will tell you about that one of these days. the madness of private ortheris oh! where would i be when my froat was dry? oh! where would i be when the bullets fly? oh! where would i be when i come to die? why, somewheres anigh my chum. if 'e's liquor 'e'll give me some, if i'm dyin' 'e'll 'old my 'ead, an' 'e'll write 'em 'ome when i'm dead.-- gawd send us a trusty chum! _barrack room ballad._ my friends mulvaney and ortheris had gone on a shooting-expedition for one day. learoyd was still in hospital, recovering from fever picked up in burma. they sent me an invitation to join them, and were genuinely pained when i brought beer--almost enough beer to satisfy two privates of the line ... and me. "'twasn't for that we bid you welkim, sorr," said mulvaney, sulkily. "twas for the pleasure av your comp'ny." ortheris came to the rescue with--"well, 'e won't be none the worse for bringin' liquor with 'im. we ain't a file o' dooks. we're bloomin' tommies, ye cantankris hirishman; an' 'eres your very good 'ealth!" we shot all the forenoon, and killed two pariah-dogs, four green parrots, sitting, one kite by the burning-ghaut, one snake flying, one mud-turtle, and eight crows. game was plentiful. then we sat down to tiffin--"bull-mate an' bran-bread," mulvaney called it--by the side of the river, and took pot shots at the crocodiles in the intervals of cutting up the food with our only pocket-knife. then we drank up all the beer, and threw the bottles into the water and fired at them. after that, we eased belts and stretched ourselves on the warm sand and smoked. we were too lazy to continue shooting. ortheris heaved a big sigh, as he lay on his stomach with his head between his fists. then he swore quietly into the blue sky. "fwhat's that for?" said mulvaney, "have ye not drunk enough?" "tott'nim court road, an' a gal i fancied there. wot's the good of sodgerin'?" "orth'ris, me son," said mulvaney, hastily, "'tis more than likely you've got throuble in your inside wid the beer. i feel that way mesilf whin my liver gets rusty." ortheris went on slowly, not heeding the interruption-- "i'm a tommy--a bloomin', eight-anna, dog-stealin' tommy, with a number instead of a decent name. wot's the good o' me? if i 'ad a stayed at 'ome, i might a married that gal and a kep' a little shorp in the 'ammersmith 'igh.--'s. orth'ris, prac-ti-cal taxi-der-mist.' with a stuff' fox, like they 'as in the haylesbury dairies, in the winder, an' a little case of blue and yaller glass-heyes, an' a little wife to call 'shorp!' 'shorp!' when the door-bell rung. as it _his_, i'm on'y a tommy--a bloomin', gawd-forsaken, beer-swillin' tommy. 'rest on your harms--_'versed_, stan' at--_hease; 'shun_. 'verse--_harms_. right an' lef--_tarrn_. slow--_march_. 'alt--_front_. rest on your harms--_'versed_. with blank-cartridge--_load_.' an' that's the end o' me." he was quoting fragments from funeral parties' orders. "stop ut!" shouted mulvaney. "whin you've fired into nothin' as often as me, over a better man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. 'tis worse than whistlin' the _dead march_ in barricks. an' you full as a tick, an' the sun cool, an' all an' all! i take shame for you. you're no better than a pagin--you an' your firin'-parties an' your glass-eyes. won't _you_ stop ut, sorr?" what could i do? could i tell ortheris anything that he did not know of the pleasures of his life? i was not a chaplain nor a subaltern, and ortheris had a right to speak as he thought fit. "let him run, mulvaney," i said. "it's the beer." "'no! 'tisn't the beer," said mulvaney. "i know fwhat's comin'. he's tuk this way now an' agin, an' it's bad--it's bad--for i'm fond av the bhoy." indeed, mulvaney seemed needlessly anxious; but i knew that he looked after ortheris in a fatherly way. "let me talk, let me talk," said ortheris, dreamily. "d'you stop your parrit screamin' of a 'ot day, when the cage is a-cookin' 'is pore little pink toes orf, mulvaney?" "pink toes! d'ye mane to say you've pink toes undher your bullswools, ye blandanderin',"--mulvaney gathered himself together for a terrific denunciation--"school-misthress! pink toes! how much bass wid the label did that ravin' child dhrink?" "'tain't bass," said ortheris, "it's a bitterer beer nor that. it's 'omesickness!" "hark to him! an' he goin' home in the _sherapis_ in the inside av four months!" "i don't care. it's all one to me. 'ow d'you know i ain't 'fraid o' dyin' 'fore i gets my discharge paipers?" he recommenced, in a sing-song voice, the orders. i had never seen this side of ortheris' character before, but evidently mulvaney had, and attached serious importance to it. while ortheris babbled, with his head on his arms, mulvaney whispered to me-- "he's always tuk this way whin he's been checked overmuch by the childher they make sarjints nowadays. that an' havin' nothin' to do. i can't make ut out anyways." "well, what does it matter? let him talk himself through." ortheris began singing a parody of "the ramrod corps," full of cheerful allusions to battle, murder, and sudden death. he looked out across the river as he sang; and his face was quite strange to me. mulvaney caught me by the elbow to ensure attention. "matther? it matthers everything! 'tis some sort av fit that's on him. i've seen ut. 'twill hould him all this night, an' in the middle av it he'll get out av his cot an' go rakin' in the rack for his 'coutremints. thin he'll come over to me an' say, 'i'm goin' to bombay. answer for me in the mornin'.' thin me an' him will fight as we've done before--him to go an' me to hould him--an' so we'll both come on the books for disturbin' in barricks. i've belted him, an' i've bruk his head, an' i've talked to him, but 'tis no manner av use whin the fit's on him. he's as good a bhoy as ever stepped whin his mind's clear. i know fwhat's comin', though, this night in barricks. lord send he doesn't loose on me whin i rise to knock him down. 'tis that that's in my mind day an' night." this put the case in a much less pleasant light, and fully accounted for mulvaney's anxiety. he seemed to be trying to coax ortheris out of the fit; for he shouted down the bank where the boy was lying-- "listen now, you wid the 'pore pink toes' an' the glass eyes! did you shwim the irriwaddy at night, behin' me, as a bhoy shud; or were you hidin' under a bed, as you was at ahmid kheyl?" this was at once a gross insult and a direct lie, and mulvaney meant it to bring on a fight. but ortheris seemed shut up in some sort of trance. he answered slowly, without a sign of irritation, in the same cadenced voice as he had used for his firing-party orders-- "_hi_ swum the irriwaddy in the night, as you know, for to take the town of lungtungpen, nakid an' without fear. _hand_ where i was at ahmed kheyl you know, and four bloomin' pathans know too. but that was summat to do, an' didn't think o' dyin'. now i'm sick to go 'ome--go 'ome--go 'ome! no, i ain't mammy-sick, because my uncle brung me up, but i'm sick for london again; sick for the sounds of 'er, an' the sights of 'er, and the stinks of 'er; orange peel and hasphalte an' gas comin' in over vaux'all bridge. sick for the rail goin' down to box'ill, with your gal on your knee an' a new clay pipe in your face. that, an' the stran' lights where you knows ev'ry one, an' the copper that takes you up is a old friend that tuk you up before, when you was a little, smitchy boy lying loose 'tween the temple an' the dark harches. no bloomin' guard-mountin', no bloomin' rotten-stone, nor khaki, an' yourself your own master with a gal to take an' see the humaners practicin' a-hookin' dead corpses out of the serpentine o' sundays. an' i lef' all that for to serve the widder beyond the seas, where there ain't no women and there ain't no liquor worth 'avin', and there ain't nothin' to see, nor do, nor say, nor feel, nor think. lord love you, stanley orth'ris, but you're a bigger bloomin' fool than the rest o' the reg'ment and mulvaney wired together! there's the widder sittin' at 'ome with a gold crownd on 'er 'ead; and 'ere am hi, stanley orth'ris, the widder's property, a rottin' fool!" his voice rose at the end of the sentence, and he wound up with a six-shot anglo-vernacular oath. mulvaney said nothing, but looked at me as if he expected that i could bring peace to poor ortheris' troubled brain. i remembered once at rawal pindi having seen a man, nearly mad with drink, sobered by being made a fool of. some regiments may know what i mean. i hoped that we might slake off ortheris in the same way, though he was perfectly sober. so i said-- "what's the use of grousing there, and speaking against the widow?" "i didn't!" said ortheris, "s'elp me, gawd, i never said a word agin 'er, an' i wouldn't--not if i was to desert this minute!" here was my opening. "well, you meant to, anyhow. what's the use of cracking-on for nothing? would you slip it now if you got the chance?" "on'y try me!" said ortheris, jumping to his feet as if he had been stung. mulvaney jumped too. "fwhat are you going to do?" said he. "help ortheris down to bombay or karachi, whichever he likes. you can report that he separated from you before tiffin, and left his gun on the bank here!" "i'm to report that--am i?" said mulvaney, slowly. "very well. if orth'ris manes to desert now, and will desert now, an' you, sorr, who have been a frind to me an' to him, will help him to ut, i, terence mulvaney, on my oath which i've never bruk yet, will report as you say, but"--here he stepped up to ortheris, and shook the stock of the fowling-piece in his face--"your fists help you, stanley orth'ris, if ever i come across you agin!" "i don't care!" said ortheris. "i'm sick o' this dorg's life. give me a chanst. don't play with me. le' me go!" "strip," said i, "and change with me, and then i'll tell you what to do." i hoped that the absurdity of this would check ortheris; but he had kicked off his ammunition-boots and got rid of his tunic almost before i had loosed my shirt-collar. mulvaney gripped me by the arm-- "the fit's on him: the fit's workin' on him still! by my honor and sowl, we shall be accessiry to a desartion yet. only, twenty-eight days, as you say, sorr, or fifty-six, but think o' the shame--the black shame to him an' me!" i had never seen mulvaney so excited. but ortheris was quite calm, and, as soon as he had exchanged clothes with me, and i stood up a private of the line, he said shortly, "now! come on. what nex'? d'ye mean fair. what must i do to get out o' this 'ere a-hell?" i told him that, if he would wait for two or three hours near the river, i would ride into the station and come back with one hundred rupees. he would, with that money in his pocket, walk to the nearest side-station on the line, about five miles away, and would there take a first-class ticket for karachi. knowing that he had no money on him when he went out shooting, his regiment would not immediately wire to the seaports, but would hunt for him in the native villages near the river. further, no one would think of seeking a deserter in a first-class carriage. at karachi, he was to buy white clothes and ship, if he could, on a cargo-steamer. here he broke in. if i helped him to karachi, he would arrange all the rest. then i ordered him to wait where he was until it was dark enough for me to ride into the station without my dress being noticed. now god in his wisdom has made the heart of the british soldier, who is very often an unlicked ruffian, as soft as the heart of a little child, in order that he may believe in and follow his officers into tight and nasty places. he does not so readily come to believe in a "civilian," but, when he does, he believes implicitly and like a dog. i had had the honor of the friendship of private ortheris, at intervals, for more than three years, and we had dealt with each other as man by man, consequently, he considered that all my words were true, and not spoken lightly. mulvaney and i left him in the high grass near the river-bank, and went away, still keeping to the high grass, toward my horse. the shirt scratched me horribly. we waited nearly two hours for the dusk to fall and allow me to ride off. we spoke of ortheris in whispers, and strained our ears to catch any sound from the spot where we had left him. but we heard nothing except the wind in the plume-grass. "i've bruk his head," said mulvaney, earnestly, "time an' agin. i've nearly kilt him wid the belt, an' _yet_ i can't knock thim fits out av his soft head. no! an' he's not soft, for he's reasonable an' likely by natur'. fwhat is ut? is ut his breedin' which is nothin', or his edukashin which he niver got? you that think ye know things, answer me that." but i found no answer. i was wondering how long ortheris, in the bank of the river, would hold out, and whether i should be forced to help him to desert, as i had given my word. just as the dusk shut down and, with a very heavy heart, i was beginning to saddle up my horse, we heard wild shouts from the river. the devils had departed from private stanley ortheris, no. , b company. the loneliness, the dusk, and the waiting had driven them out as i had hoped. we set off at the double and found him plunging about wildly through the grass, with his coat off--my coat off, i mean. he was calling for us like a madman. when we reached him he was dripping with perspiration, and trembling like a startled horse. we had great difficulty in soothing him. he complained that he was in civilian kit, and wanted to tear my clothes off his body. i ordered him to strip, and we made a second exchange as quickly as possible. the rasp of his own "greyback" shirt and the squeak of his boots seemed to bring him to himself. he put his hands before his eyes and said-- "wot was it? i ain't mad, i ain't sunstrook, an' i've bin an' gone an' said, an' bin an' gone an' done.... _wot_ 'ave i bin an' done!" "fwhat have you done?" said mulvaney. "you've dishgraced yourself--though that's no matter. you've dishgraced b comp'ny, an' worst av all, you've dishgraced _me!_ me that taught you how for to walk abroad like a man--whin you was a dhirty little, fish-backed little, whimperin' little recruity. as you are now, stanley orth'ris!" ortheris said nothing for a while, then he unslung his belt, heavy with the badges of half a dozen regiments that his own had lain with, and handed it over to mulvaney. "i'm too little for to mill you, mulvaney," he, "an' you've strook me before; but you can take an' cut me in two with this 'ere if you like." mulvaney turned to me. "lave me to talk to him, sorr," said mulvaney. i left, and on my way home thought a good deal over ortheris in particular, and my friend private thomas atkins whom i love, in general. but i could not come to any conclusion of any kind whatever. l'envoi and they were stronger hands than mine that digged the ruby from the earth-- more cunning brains that made it worth the large desire of a king; and bolder hearts that through the brine went down the perfect pearl to bring. lo, i have wrought in common clay rude figures of a rough-hewn race; for pearls strew not the market-place in this my town of banishment, where with the shifting dust i play and eat the bread of discontent. yet is there life in that i make,-- oh, thou who knowest, turn and see. as thou hast power over me, so have i power over these, because i wrought them for thy sake, and breathe in them mine agonies. small mirth was in the making. now i lift the cloth that cloaks the clay, and, wearied, at thy feet i lay my wares ere i go forth to sell. the long bazar will praise--but thou-- heart of my heart, have i done well? letters of travel the dominions edition letters of travel ( - ) by rudyard kipling macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london the letters entitled 'from tideway to tideway' were published originally in _the times_; those entitled 'letters to the family' in _the morning post_; and those entitled 'egypt of the magicians' in _nash's magazine_. copyright _this edition is intended for circulation only in india and the british dominions over the seas_ contents from tideway to tideway ( )-- in sight of monadnock across a continent the edge of the east our overseas men some earthquakes half-a-dozen pictures 'captains courageous' on one side only leaves from a winter note-book letters to the family ( )-- the road to quebec a people at home cities and spaces newspapers and democracy labour the fortunate towns mountains and the pacific a conclusion egypt of the magicians ( )-- sea travel a return to the east a serpent of old nile up the river dead kings the face of the desert the riddle of empire * * * * * from tideway to tideway - in sight of monadnock. across a continent. the edge of the east. our overseas men. some earthquakes. half-a-dozen pictures. 'captains courageous.' on one side only. leaves from a winter note-book. * * * * * in sight of monadnock after the gloom of gray atlantic weather, our ship came to america in a flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the new yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, 'this isn't a sample of our really fine days. wait until such and such times come, or go to such and a such a quarter of the city.' we were content, and more than content, to drift aimlessly up and down the brilliant streets, wondering a little why the finest light should be wasted on the worst pavements in the world; to walk round and round madison square, because that was full of beautifully dressed babies playing counting-out games, or to gaze reverently at the broad-shouldered, pug-nosed irish new york policemen. wherever we went there was the sun, lavish and unstinted, working nine hours a day, with the colour and the clean-cut lines of perspective that he makes. that any one should dare to call this climate muggy, yea, even 'subtropical,' was a shock. there came such a man, and he said, 'go north if you want weather--weather that _is_ weather. go to new england.' so new york passed away upon a sunny afternoon, with her roar and rattle, her complex smells, her triply over-heated rooms, and much too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where the snow lay. it came in one sweep--almost, it seemed, in one turn of the wheels--covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools of ink. as the light closed in, a little wooden town, white, cloaked, and dumb, slid past the windows, and the strong light of the car lamps fell upon a sleigh (the driver furred and muffled to his nose) turning the corner of a street. now the sleigh of a picture-book, however well one knows it, is altogether different from the thing in real life, a means of conveyance at a journey's end; but it is well not to be over-curious in the matter, for the same american who has been telling you at length how he once followed a kilted scots soldier from chelsea to the tower, out of pure wonder and curiosity at his bare knees and sporran, will laugh at your interest in 'just a cutter.' the staff of the train--surely the great american nation would be lost if deprived of the ennobling society of brakeman, conductor, pullman-car conductor, negro porter, and newsboy--told pleasant tales, as they spread themselves at ease in the smoking compartments, of snowings up the line to montreal, of desperate attacks--four engines together and a snow-plough in front--on drifts thirty feet high, and the pleasures of walking along the tops of goods wagons to brake a train, with the thermometer thirty below freezing. 'it comes cheaper to kill men that way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman. thirty below freezing! it was inconceivable till one stepped out into it at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the breath as does a plunge into sea-water. a walrus sitting on a woolpack was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats, caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost as gracefully. the night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. but for the jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream, for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. only the connecticut river kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small bergs. elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon--snow drifted to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed, by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. it was beautiful beyond expression, nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to time by the restless pencils of the moon. in the morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours of the sunlight. there was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. hills of pure white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till the eyes ached. here and there on the exposed slopes the day's warmth--the thermometer was nearly forty degrees--and the night's cold had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and multiply it sevenfold. through this magnificence, and thinking nothing of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty breath. it is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is devoted to heavy work; and it is, i believe, a still greater sign of worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places, by scientific twisting of the tail. the driver with red mittens on his hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'gee, haw!' even as is written in american stories. and the speech of the driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its best is an infliction to many. now that i have heard the long, unhurried drawl of vermont, my wonder is, not that the new england tales should be printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call english and its type, but rather that they should not have appeared in swedish or russian. our alphabet is too limited. this part of the country belongs by laws unknown to the united states, but which obtain all the world over, to the new england story and the ladies who write it. you feel this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people--the men of the farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less enjoyment of life--the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed, that belong to judge this, lawyer that, and banker such an one; all powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway station. more acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying intimacy. the folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration, and there are insane people from the south--men and women from boston and the like--who actually build houses out in the open country, two, and even three miles from main street which is nearly yards long, and the centre of life and population. with the strangers, more particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows everything, and much more also, that goes on among them. their dresses, their cattle, their views, the manners of their children, their manner towards their servants, and every other conceivable thing, is reported, digested, discussed, and rediscussed up and down main street. now, the wisdom of vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the problems of everybody else's life with delicacy, sometimes makes pathetic mistakes, and the town is set by the ears. you will see, therefore, that towns of a certain size do not differ materially all the world over. the talk of the men of the farms is of their farms--purchase, mortgage, and sale, recorded rights, boundary lines, and road tax. it was in the middle of new zealand, on the edge of the wild horse plains, that i heard this talk last, when a man and his wife, twenty miles from the nearest neighbour, sat up half the night discussing just the same things that the men talked of in main street, vermont, u.s.a. there is one man in the state who is much exercised over this place. he is a farm-hand, raised in a hamlet fifteen or twenty miles from the nearest railway, and, greatly daring, he has wandered here. the bustle and turmoil of main street, the new glare of the electric lights and the five-storeyed brick business block, frighten and distress him much. he has taken service on a farm well away from these delirious delights, and, says he, 'i've been offered $ a month to work in a bakery at new york. but you don't get me to no new york, i've seen this place an' it just scares me,' his strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding of cattle. winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness that is so much written of. each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary; then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of hauling logs for firewood begins. new england depends for its fuel on the woods. the trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse. afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an arch, is never at rest. a little later will come maple-sugar time, when the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls together. even the introduction of patent sugar evaporators has not spoiled the love-making. there is a certain scarcity of men to make love with; not so much in towns which have their own manufactories and lie within a lover's sabbath-day journey of new york, but in the farms and villages. the men have gone away--the young men are fighting fortune further west, and the women remain--remain for ever as women must. on the farms, when the children depart, the old man and the old woman strive to hold things together without help, and the woman's portion is work and monotony. sometimes she goes mad to an extent which appreciably affects statistics and is put down in census reports. more often, let us hope, she dies. in the villages where the necessity for heavy work is not so urgent the women find consolation in the formation of literary clubs and circles, and so gather to themselves a great deal of wisdom in their own way. that way is not altogether lovely. they desire facts and the knowledge that they are at a certain page in a german or an italian book before a certain time, or that they have read the proper books in a proper way. at any rate, they have something to do that seems as if they were doing something. it has been said that the new england stories are cramped and narrow. even a far-off view of the iron-bound life whence they are drawn justifies the author. you can carve a nut in a thousand different ways by reason of the hardness of the shell. twenty or thirty miles across the hills, on the way to the green mountains, lie some finished chapters of pitiful stories--a few score abandoned farms, started in a lean land, held fiercely so long as there was any one to work them, and then left on the hill-sides. beyond this desolation are woods where the bear and the deer still find peace, and sometimes even the beaver forgets that he is persecuted and dares to build his lodge. these things were told me by a man who loved the woods for their own sake and not for the sake of slaughter--a quiet, slow-spoken man of the west, who came across the drifts on show-shoes and refrained from laughing when i borrowed his foot-gear and tried to walk. the gigantic lawn-tennis bats strung with hide are not easy to manoeuvre. if you forget to keep the long heels down and trailing in the snow you turn over and become as a man who fails into deep water with a life-belt tied to his ankles. if you lose your balance, do not attempt to recover it, but drop, half-sitting and half-kneeling, over as large an area as possible. when you have mastered the wolf-step, can slide one shoe above the other deftly, that is to say, the sensation of paddling over a ten-foot-deep drift and taking short cuts by buried fences is worth the ankle-ache. the man from the west interpreted to me the signs on the snow, showed how a fox (this section of the country is full of foxes, and men shoot them because riding is impossible) leaves one kind of spoor, walking with circumspection as becomes a thief, and a dog, who has nothing to be ashamed of, but widens his four legs and plunges, another; how coons go to sleep for the winter and squirrels too, and how the deer on the canada border trample down deep paths that are called yards and are caught there by inquisitive men with cameras, who hold them by their tails when the deer have blundered into deep snow, and so photograph their frightened dignity. he told me of people also--the manners and customs of new englanders here, and how they blossom and develop in the far west on the newer railway lines, when matters come very nearly to civil war between rival companies racing for the same cañon; how there is a country not very far away called caledonia, populated by the scotch, who can give points to a new englander in a bargain, and how these same scotch-americans by birth, name their townships still after the cities of their thrifty race. it was all as new and delightful as the steady 'scrunch' of the snow-shoes and the dazzling silence of the hills. beyond the very furthest range, where the pines turn to a faint blue haze against the one solitary peak--a real mountain and not a hill--showed like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward. 'and that's monadnock,' said the man from the west; 'all the hills have indian names. you left wantastiquet on your right coming out of town,' you know how it often happens that a word shuttles in and out of many years, waking all sorts of incongruous associations. i had met monadnock on paper in a shameless parody of emerson's style, before ever style or verse had interest for me. but the word stuck because of a rhyme, in which one was ... crowned coeval with monadnock's crest, and my wings extended touch the east and west. later the same word, pursued on the same principle as that blessed one mesopotamia, led me to and through emerson, up to his poem on the peak itself--the wise old giant 'busy with his sky affairs,' who makes us sane and sober and free from little things if we trust him. so monadnock came to mean everything that was helpful, healing, and full of quiet, and when i saw him half across new hampshire he did not fail. in that utter stillness a hemlock bough, overweighted with snow, came down a foot or two with a tired little sigh; the snow slid off and the little branch flew nodding back to its fellows. for the honour of monadnock there was made that afternoon an image of snow of gautama buddha, something too squat and not altogether equal on both sides, but with an imperial and reposeful waist. he faced towards the mountain, and presently some men in a wood-sledge came up the road and faced him. now, the amazed comments of two vermont farmers on the nature and properties of a swag-bellied god are worth hearing. they were not troubled about his race, for he was aggressively white; but rounded waists seem to be out of fashion in vermont. at least, they said so, with rare and curious oaths. next day all the idleness and trifling were drowned in a snowstorm that filled the hollows of the hills with whirling blue mist, bowed the branches of the woods till you ducked, but were powdered all the same when you drove through, and wiped out the sleighing tracks. mother nature is beautifully tidy if you leave her alone. she rounded off every angle, broke down every scarp, and tucked the white bedclothes, till not a wrinkle remained, up to the chine of the spruces and the hemlocks that would not go to sleep. 'now,' said the man of the west, as we were driving to the station, and alas! to new york, 'all my snow-tracks are gone; but when that snow melts, a week hence or a month hence, they'll all come up again and show where i've been.' curious idea, is it not? imagine a murder committed in the lonely woods, a snowstorm that covers the tracks of the flying man before the avenger of blood has buried the body, and then, a week later, the withdrawal of the traitorous snow, revealing step by step the path cain took--the six-inch dee-trail of his snow-shoes--each step a dark disk on the white till the very end. there is so much, so very much to write, if it were worth while, about that queer little town by the railway station, with its life running, to all outward seeming, as smoothly as the hack-coupés on their sleigh mounting, and within disturbed by the hatreds and troubles and jealousies that vex the minds of all but the gods. for instance--no, it is better to remember the lesson monadnock, and emerson has said, 'zeus hates busy-bodies and people who do too much.' that there are such folk, a long nasal drawl across main street attests. a farmer is unhitching his horses from a post opposite a store. he stands with the tie-rope in his hand and gives his opinion to his neighbour and the world generally--'but them there andersons, they ain't got no notion of etikwette!' across a continent it is not easy to escape from a big city. an entire continent was waiting to be traversed, and, for that reason, we lingered in new york till the city felt so homelike that it seemed wrong to leave it. and further, the more one studied it, the more grotesquely bad it grew--bad in its paving, bad in its streets, bad in its street-police, and but for the kindness of the tides would be worse than bad in its sanitary arrangements. no one as yet has approached the management of new york in a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. no one is likely to do so, because reflections on the long, narrow pig-trough are construed as malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the great american people, and lead to angry comparisons. yet, if all the streets of london were permanently up and all the lamps permanently down, this would not prevent the new york streets taken in a lump from being first cousins to a zanzibar foreshore, or kin to the approaches of a zulu kraal. gullies, holes, ruts, cobbles-stones awry, kerbstones rising from two to six inches above the level of the slatternly pavement; tram-lines from two to three inches above street level; building materials scattered half across the street; lime, boards, cut stone, and ash-barrels generally and generously everywhere; wheeled traffic taking its chances, dray _versus_ brougham, at cross roads; sway-backed poles whittled and unpainted; drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons; and, lastly, a generous scatter of filth and more mixed stinks than the winter wind can carry away, are matters which can be considered quite apart from the 'spirit of democracy' or 'the future of this great and growing country.' in any other land, they would be held to represent slovenliness, sordidness, and want of capacity. here it is explained, not once but many times, that they show the speed at which the city has grown and the enviable indifference of her citizens to matters of detail. one of these days, you are told, everything will be taken in hand and put straight. the unvirtuous rulers of the city will be swept away by a cyclone, or a tornado, or something big and booming, of popular indignation; everybody will unanimously elect the right men, who will justly earn the enormous salaries that are at present being paid to inadequate aliens for road sweepings, and all will be well. at the same time the lawlessness ingrained by governors among the governed during the last thirty, forty, or it may be fifty years; the brutal levity of the public conscience in regard to public duty; the toughening and suppling of public morals, and the reckless disregard for human life, bred by impotent laws and fostered by familiarity with needless accidents and criminal neglect, will miraculously disappear. if the laws of cause and effect that control even the freest people in the world say otherwise, so much the worse for the laws. america makes her own. behind her stands the ghost of the most bloody war of the century caused in a peaceful land by long temporising with lawlessness, by letting things slide, by shiftlessness and blind disregard for all save the material need of the hour, till the hour long conceived and let alone stood up full-armed, and men said, 'here is an unforeseen crisis,' and killed each other in the name of god for four years. in a heathen land the three things that are supposed to be the pillars of moderately decent government are regard for human life, justice, criminal and civil, as far as it lies in man to do justice, and good roads. in this christian city they think lightly of the first--their own papers, their own speech, and their own actions prove it; buy and sell the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently, content to do without the third. one would almost expect racial sense of humour would stay them from expecting only praise--slab, lavish, and slavish--from the stranger within their gates. but they do not. if he holds his peace, they forge tributes to their own excellence which they put into his mouth, thereby treating their own land which they profess to honour as a quack treats his pills. if he speaks--but you shall see for yourselves what happens then. and they cannot see that by untruth and invective it is themselves alone that they injure. the blame of their city evils is not altogether with the gentlemen, chiefly of foreign extraction, who control the city. these find a people made to their hand--a lawless breed ready to wink at one evasion of the law if they themselves may profit by another, and in their rare leisure hours content to smile over the details of a clever fraud. then, says the cultured american, 'give us time. give us time, and we shall arrive.' the otherwise american, who is aggressive, straightway proceeds to thrust a piece of half-hanged municipal botch-work under the nose of the alien as a sample of perfected effort. there is nothing more delightful than to sit for a strictly limited time with a child who tells you what he means to do when he is a man; but when that same child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn for something made and finished--say egypt and a completely dead mummy. it is neither seemly nor safe to hint that the government of the largest city in the states is a despotism of the alien by the alien for the alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of the decent folk. only the chinaman washes the dirty linen of other lands. st. paul, minnesota. yes, it is very good to get away once more and pick up the old and ever fresh business of the vagrant, loafing through new towns, learned in the manners of dogs, babies, and perambulators half the world over, and tracking the seasons by the up-growth of flowers in stranger-people's gardens. st. paul, standing at the barn-door of the dakota and minnesota granaries, is all things to all men except to minneapolis, eleven miles away, whom she hates and by whom she is patronised. she calls herself the capital of the north-west, the new north-west, and her citizens wear, not only the tall silk hat of trade, but the soft slouch of the west. she talks in another tongue than the new yorker, and--sure sign that we are far across the continent--her papers argue with the san francisco ones over rate wars and the competition of railway companies. st. paul has been established many years, and if one were reckless enough to go down to the business quarters one would hear all about her and more also. but the residential parts of the town are the crown of it. in common with scores of other cities, broad-crowned suburbs--using the word in the english sense--that make the stranger jealous. you get here what you do not get in the city--well-paved or asphalted roads, planted with trees, and trim side-walks, studded with houses of individuality, not boorishly fenced off from each other, but standing each on its plot of well-kept turf running down to the pavement. it is always sunday in these streets of a morning. the cable-car has taken the men down town to business, the children are at school, and the big dogs, three and a third to each absent child, lie nosing the winter-killed grass and wondering when the shoots will make it possible for a gentleman to take his spring medicine. in the afternoon, the children on tricycles stagger up and down the asphalt with due proportion of big dogs at each wheel; the cable-cars coming up hill begin to drop the men each at his own door--the door of the house that he builded for himself (though the architect incited him to that vile little attic tower and useless loggia), and, naturally enough, twilight brings the lovers walking two by two along the very quiet ways. you can tell from the houses almost the exact period at which they were built, whether in the jig-saw days, when if behoved respectability to use unlovely turned rails and pierced gable-ends, or during the colonial craze, which means white paint and fluted pillars, or in the latest domestic era, a most pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows, cunning verandas, and recessed doors. seeing these things, one begins to understand why the americans visiting england are impressed with the old and not with the new. he is not much more than a hundred years ahead of the english in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most important) labour-saving appliances in his house. from newport to san diego you will find the same thing to-day. last tribute of respect and admiration. one little brown house at the end of an avenue is shuttered down, and a doctor's buggy stands before it. on the door a large blue and white label says--' scarlet fever.' oh, most excellent municipality of st. paul. it is because of these little things, and not by rowdying and racketing in public places, that a nation becomes great and free and honoured. in the cars to-night they will be talking wheat, girding at minneapolis, and sneering at duluth's demand for twenty feet of water from duluth to the atlantic--matters of no great moment compared with those streets and that label. _a day later_. 'five days ago there wasn't a foot of earth to see. it was just naturally covered with snow,' says the conductor standing in the rear car of the great northern train. he speaks as though the snow had hidden something priceless. here is the view: one railway track and a line of staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. to the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses, ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, and mottled here and there with black patches to show that the early ploughing had begun. the snow lies in a last few streaks and whirls by the track; from sky-line to sky-line is black loam and prairie grass so dead that it seems as though no one year's sun would waken it. this is the granary of the land where the farmer who bears the burdens of the state--and who, therefore, ascribes last year's bumper crop to the direct action of the mckinley bill--has, also, to bear the ghastly monotony of earth and sky. he keeps his head, having many things to attend to, but his wife sometimes goes mad as the women do in vermont. there is little variety in nature's big wheat-field. they say that when the corn is in the ear, the wind, chasing shadows across it for miles on miles, breeds as it were a vertigo in those who must look and cannot turn their eyes away. and they tell a nightmare story of a woman who lived with her husband for fourteen years at an army post in just such a land as this. then they were transferred to west point, among the hills over the hudson, and she came to new york, but the terror of the tall houses grew upon her and grew till she went down with brain fever, and the dread of her delirium was that the terrible things would topple down and crush her. that is a true story. they work for harvest with steam-ploughs here. how could mere horses face the endless furrows? and they attack the earth with toothed, cogged, and spiked engines that would be monstrous in the shops, but here are only speckles on the yellow grass. even the locomotive is cowed. a train of freight cars is passing along a line that comes out of the blue and goes on till it meets the blue again. elsewhere the train would move off with a joyous, vibrant roar. here it steals away down the vista of the telegraph poles with an awed whisper--steals away and sinks into the soil. then comes a town deep in black mud--a straggly, inch-thick plank town, with dull red grain elevators. the open country refuses to be subdued even for a few score rods. each street ends in the illimitable open, and it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through it. towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of desolation. in the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly uninterested citizens who have flogged horses and raised wheat in their time, but to-day lie under chipped and weather-worn wooden headstones. surely burial here must be more awful to the newly-made ghost than burial at sea. there is more snow as we go north, and nature is hard at work breaking up the ground for the spring. the thaw has filled every depression with a sullen gray-black spate, and out on the levels the water lies six inches deep, in stretch upon stretch, as far as the eye can reach. every culvert is full, and the broken ice clicks against the wooden pier-guards of the bridges. somewhere in this flatness there is a refreshing jingle of spurs along the cars, and a man of the canadian mounted police swaggers through with his black fur cap and the yellow tab aside, his well-fitting overalls and his better set-up back. one wants to shake hands with him because he is clean and does not slouch nor spit, trims his hair, and walks as a man should. then a custom-house officer wants to know too much about cigars, whisky, and florida water. her majesty the queen of england and empress of india has us in her keeping. nothing has happened to the landscape, and winnipeg, which is, as it were, a centre of distribution for emigrants, stands up to her knees in the water of the thaw. the year has turned in earnest, and somebody is talking about the 'first ice-shove' at montreal, or miles east. they will not run trains on sunday at montreal, and this is wednesday. therefore, the canadian pacific makes up a train for vancouver at winnipeg. this is worth remembering, because few people travel in that train, and you escape any rush of tourists running westward to catch the yokohama boat. the car is your own, and with it the service of the porter. our porter, seeing things were slack, beguiled himself with a guitar, which gave a triumphal and festive touch to the journey, ridiculously out of keeping with the view. for eight-and-twenty long hours did the bored locomotive trail us through a flat and hairy land, powdered, ribbed, and speckled with snow, small snow that drives like dust-shot in the wind--the land of assiniboia. now and again, for no obvious reason to the outside mind, there was a town. then the towns gave place to 'section so and so'; then there were trails of the buffalo, where he once walked in his pride; then there was a mound of white bones, supposed to belong to the said buffalo, and then the wilderness took up the tale. some of it was good ground, but most of it seemed to have fallen by the wayside, and the tedium of it was eternal. at twilight--an unearthly sort of twilight--there came another curious picture. thus--a wooden town shut in among low, treeless, rolling ground, a calling river that ran unseen between scarped banks; barracks of a detachment of mounted police, a little cemetery where ex-troopers rested, a painfully formal public garden with pebble paths and foot-high fir trees, a few lines of railway buildings, white women walking up and down in the bitter cold with their bonnets off, some indians in red blanketing with buffalo horns for sale trailing along the platform, and, not ten yards from the track, a cinnamon bear and a young grizzly standing up with extended arms in their pens and begging for food. it was strange beyond anything that this bald telling can suggest--opening a door into a new world. the only commonplace thing about the spot was its name--medicine hat, which struck me instantly as the only possible name such a town could carry. this is that place which later became a town; but i had seen it three years before when it was even smaller and was reached by me in a freight-car, ticket unpaid for. that next morning brought us the canadian pacific railway as one reads about it. no pen of man could do justice to the scenery there. the guide-books struggle desperately with descriptions, adapted for summer reading, of rushing cascades, lichened rocks, waving pines, and snow-capped mountains; but in april these things are not there. the place is locked up--dead as a frozen corpse. the mountain torrent is a boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and the lichens together, and the dumb white lips curl up to the track cut in the side of the mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. you may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath or power among the hills. the snow has smothered the rivers, and the great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge wash-tub. the old snow near by is blackened and smirched with the smoke of locomotives, and its dulness is grateful to aching eyes. but the men who live upon the line have no consideration for these things. at a halting-place in a gigantic gorge walled in by the snows, one of them reels from a tiny saloon into the middle of the track where half-a-dozen dogs are chasing a pig off the metals. he is beautifully and eloquently drunk. he sings, waves his hands, and collapses behind a shunting engine, while four of the loveliest peaks that the almighty ever moulded look down upon him. the landslide that should have wiped that saloon into kindlings has missed its mark and has struck a few miles down the line. one of the hillsides moved a little in dreaming of the spring and caught a passing freight train. our cars grind cautiously by, for the wrecking engine has only just come through. the deceased engine is standing on its head in soft earth thirty or forty feet down the slide, and two long cars loaded with shingles are dropped carelessly atop of it. it looks so marvellously like a toy train flung aside by a child, that one cannot realise what it means till a voice cries, 'any one killed?' the answer comes back, 'no; all jumped'; and you perceive with a sense of personal insult that this slovenliness of the mountain is an affair which may touch your own sacred self. in which case.... but the train is out on a trestle, into a tunnel, and out on a trestle again. it was here that every one began to despair of the line when it was under construction, because there seemed to be no outlet. but a man came, as a man always will, and put a descent thus and a curve in this manner, and a trestle so; and behold, the line went on. it is in this place that we heard the story of the canadian pacific railway told as men tell a many-times-repeated tale, with exaggerations and omissions, but an imposing tale, none the less. in the beginning, when they would federate the dominion of canada, it was british columbia who saw objections to coming in, and the prime minister of those days promised it for a bribe, an iron band between tidewater and tidewater that should not break. then everybody laughed, which seems necessary to the health of most big enterprises, and while they were laughing, things were being done. the canadian pacific railway was given a bit of a line here and a bit of a line there and almost as much land as it wanted, and the laughter was still going on when the last spike was driven between east and west, at the very place where the drunken man sprawled behind the engine, and the iron band ran from tideway to tideway as the premier said, and people in england said 'how interesting,' and proceeded to talk about the 'bloated army estimates.' incidentally, the man who told us--he had nothing to do with the canadian pacific railway--explained how it paid the line to encourage immigration, and told of the arrival at winnipeg of a train-load of scotch crofters on a sunday. they wanted to stop then and there for the sabbath--they and all the little stock they had brought with them. it was the winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing (he was scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic. so their own minister held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner, cheering them in gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle at moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. of the manager, the head of the line from montreal to vancouver, our companion spoke with reverence that was almost awe. that manager lived in a palace at montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car and whirl over his miles at miles an hour. the regulation pace is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. few drivers cared for the honour of taking him over the road. a mysterious man he was, who 'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor travelled over. there is always one such man on every line. you can hear similar tales from drivers on the great western in england or eurasian stationmasters on the big north-western in india. then a fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of canadian union with the united states; and his language was not the language of mr. goldwin smith. it was brutal in places. summarised it came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty. 'we've picked up their ways of politics,' he said mournfully. 'that comes of living next door to them; but i don't think we're anxious to mix up with their other messes. they say they don't want us. they keep on saying it. there's a nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn't lie about it.' 'but does it follow that they are lying?' 'sure. i've lived among 'em. they can't go straight. there's some dam' fraud at the back of it.' from this belief he would not be shaken. he had lived among them--perhaps had been bested in trade. let them keep themselves and their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said. this is very sad and chilling. it seemed quite otherwise in new york, where canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into uncle sam's mouth when he should open it. the canadian has no special love for england--the mother of colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the affections of her own household by neglect--but, perhaps, he loves his own country. we ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch planking. in one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese. high up the hills men had built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept over everything, and lay five deep on the top of the sheds. when we woke it was on the banks of the muddy fraser river and the spring was hurrying to meet us. the snow had gone; the pink blossoms of the wild currant were open, the budding alders stood misty green against the blue black of the pines, the brambles on the burnt stumps were in tenderest leaf, and every moss on every stone was this year's work, fresh from the hand of the maker. the land opened into clearings of soft black earth. at one station a hen had laid an egg and was telling the world about it. the world answered with a breath of real spring--spring that flooded the stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet. god be thanked that in travel one can follow the year! this, my spring, i lost last november in new zealand. now i shall hold her fast through japan and the summer into new zealand again. here are the waters of the pacific, and vancouver (completely destitute of any decent defences) grown out of all knowledge in the last three years. at the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her, lies the _empress of india_--the japan boat--and what more auspicious name could you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains of empire? the edge of the east the mist was clearing off yokohama harbour and a hundred junks had their sails hoisted for the morning breeze, so that the veiled horizon was stippled with square blurs of silver. an english man-of-war showed blue-white on the haze, so new was the daylight, and all the water lay out as smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. two children in blue and white, their tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft to the shore across the stillness and the mother o' pearl levels. there are ways and ways of entering japan. the best is to descend upon it from america and the pacific--from the barbarians and the deep sea. coming from the east, the blaze of india and the insolent tropical vegetation of singapore dull the eye to half-colours and little tones. it is at bombay that the smell of all asia boards the ship miles off shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of asia again. that is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to shore--a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat--a homelike and comforting smell. then followed on shore the sound of an eastern tongue, that is beautiful or not as you happen to know it. the western races have many languages, but a crowd of europeans heard through closed doors talk with the western pitch and cadence. so it is with the east. a line of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming a return in speech that the listener must know as well as english. they talked and they talked, but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any clearer till presently the smell came down the open streets again, saying that this was the east where nothing matters, and trifles old as the tower of babel mattered less than nothing, and that there were old acquaintances waiting at every corner beyond the township. great is the smell of the east! railways, telegraphs, docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it will endure till the railways are dead. he who has not smelt that smell has never lived. three years ago yokohama was sufficiently europeanised in its shops to suit the worst and wickedest taste. to-day it is still worse if you keep to the town limits. ten steps beyond into the fields all the civilisation stops exactly as it does in another land a few thousand miles further west. the globe-trotting, millionaires anxious to spend money, with a nose on whatever caught their libertine fancies, had explained to us aboard-ship that they came to japan in haste, advised by their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. when they touched land they ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for them--mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. by this time they have a 'murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak and a yellow '_e pluribus unum_' embroidered on apple-green silk, under the other. we, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an azalea aching to burst into bloom. steep stone steps, of the colour that nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of clumps of bamboo grass. you see the smell was right when it talked of meeting old friends. half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo against a real sky--not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray dish-clout wrapped round the sun--but a blue sky. a cherry tree on a slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest green shoots in front of all. the sun sends for an ambassador through the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the english downs. the warmth of the east, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the light of the east--the splendid lavish light that clears but does not bewilder the eye. then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and glow as a hand glows held up against flame. little, warm sighs come up from the moist, warm earth, and the fallen petals stir on the ground, turn over, and go to sleep again. outside, beyond the foliage, where the sunlight lies on the slate-coloured roofs, the ridged rice-fields beyond the roofs, and the hills beyond the rice-fields, is all japan--only all japan; and this that they call the old french legation is the garden of eden that most naturally dropped down here after the fall. for some small hint of the beauties to be shown later there is the roof of a temple, ridged and fluted with dark tiles, flung out casually beyond the corner of the bluff on which the garden stands. any other curve of the eaves would not have consorted with the sweep of the pine branches; therefore, this curve was made, and being made, was perfect. the congregation of the globe-trotters are in the hotel, scuffling for guides, in order that they may be shown the sights of japan, which is all one sight. they must go to tokio, they must go to nikko; they must surely see all that is to be seen and then write home to their barbarian families that they are getting used to the sight of bare, brown legs. before this day is ended, they will all, thank goodness, have splitting headaches and burnt-out eyes. it is better to lie still and hear the grass grow--to soak in the heat and the smell and the sounds and the sights that come unasked. our garden overhangs the harbour, and by pushing aside one branch we look down upon a heavy-sterned fishing-boat, the straw-gold mats of the deck-house pushed back to show the perfect order and propriety of the housekeeping that is going forward. the father-fisher, sitting frog-fashion, is poking at a tiny box full of charcoal, and the light, white ash is blown back into the face of a largish japanese doll, price two shillings and threepence in bayswater. the doll wakes, turns into a japanese baby something more valuable than money could buy--a baby with a shaven head and aimless legs. it crawls to the thing in the polished brown box, is picked up just as it is ready to eat live coals, and is set down behind a thwart, where it drums upon a bucket, addressing the firebox from afar. half-a-dozen cherry blossoms slide off a bough, and waver down to the water close to the japanese doll, who in another minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. the father-fisher has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. being an oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the little fleet in the offing. then two sailors of a man-of-war come along the sea face, lean over the canal below the garden, spit, and roll away. the sailor in port is the only superior man. to him all matters rare and curious are either 'them things' or 'them other things.' he does not hurry himself, he does not seek adjectives other than those which custom puts into his mouth for all occasions; but the beauty of life penetrates his being insensibly till he gets drunk, falls foul of the local policeman, smites him into the nearest canal, and disposes of the question of treaty revision with a hiccup. all the same, jack says that he has a grievance against the policeman, who is paid a dollar for every strayed seaman he brings up to the consular courts for overstaying his leave, and so forth. jack says that the little fellows deliberately hinder him from getting back to his ship, and then with devilish art and craft of wrestling tricks--'there are about a hundred of 'em, and they can throw you with every qualified one'--carry him to justice. now when jack is softened with drink he does not tell lies. this is his grievance, and he says that them blanketed consuls ought to know. 'they plays into each other's hands, and stops you at the hatoba'--the policemen do. the visitor who is neither a seaman nor drunk, cannot swear to the truth of this, or indeed anything else. he moves not only among fascinating scenes and a lovely people but, as he is sure to find out before he has been a day ashore, between stormy questions. three years ago there were no questions that were not going to be settled off-hand in a blaze of paper lanterns. the constitution was new. it has a gray, pale cover with a chrysanthemum at the back, and a japanese told me then, 'now we have constitution same as other countries, and _so_ it is all right. now we are quite civilised because of constitution.' [a perfectly irrelevant story comes to mind here. do you know that in madeira once they had a revolution which lasted just long enough for the national poet to compose a national anthem, and then was put down? all that is left of the revolt now is the song that you hear on the twangling _nachettes_, the baby-banjoes, of a moonlight night under the banana fronds at the back of funchal. and the high-pitched nasal refrain of it is 'consti-tuci-_oun_!'] since that auspicious date it seems that the questions have impertinently come up, and the first and the last of them is that of treaty revision. says the japanese government, 'only obey our laws, our new laws that we have carefully compiled from all the wisdom of the west, and you shall go up country as you please and trade where you will, instead of living cooped up in concessions and being judged by consuls. treat us as you would treat france or germany, and we will treat you as our own subjects.' here, as you know, the matter rests between the two thousand foreigners and the forty million japanese--a god-send to all editors of tokio and yokohama, and the despair of the newly arrived in whose nose, remember, is the smell of the east, one and indivisible, immemorial, eternal, and, above all, instructive. indeed, it is only by walking out at least half a mile that you escape from the aggressive evidences of civilisation, and come out into the rice-fields at the back of the town. here men with twists of blue and white cloth round their heads are working knee deep in the thick black mud. the largest field may be something less than two tablecloths, while the smallest is, say, a speck of undercliff, on to which it were hard to back a 'rickshaw, wrested from the beach and growing its clump of barley within spray-shot of the waves. the field paths are the trodden tops of the irrigating cuts, and the main roads as wide as two perambulators abreast. from the uplands--the beautiful uplands planted in exactly the proper places with pine and maple--the ground comes down in terraced pocket on pocket of rich earth to the levels again, and it would seem that every heavily-thatched farmhouse was chosen with special regard to the view. if you look closely when the people go to work you will see that a household spreads itself over plots, maybe, a quarter of a mile apart. a revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is apparently designed, but the reason is not given. one thing at least is certain. the assessment of these patches can be no light piece of work--just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large number of small and variegated government officials, any one of whom, assuming that he was of an oriental cast of mind, might make the cultivator's life interesting. i remember now--a second-time-seen place brings back things that were altogether buried--seeing three years ago the pile of government papers required in the case of one farm. they were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither cultivators nor treasury officials. if one knew japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. his version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to be picturesque. failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three things that may or may not be facts of general application. they differ in a measure from statements in the books. the present land-tax is nominally - / per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a five, yearly settlement. but, according to certain officials, there has been no settlement since . land lying fallow for a season pays the same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood or calamity (read earthquake here). the government tax is calculated on the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about , square feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit. now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to see what the railways have paid for it. the very best rice land, taking the japanese dollar at three shillings, is about £ : s per acre. unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over £ : s., and forest £ : s. as these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to cover large areas. in private sales the prices may reasonably be higher. it is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear two crops of rice in the year. most soil will bear two crops, the first being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening at the end of may. then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop, to be harvested in october or thereabouts. land-tax is payable in two instalments. rice land pays between the st november and the middle of december and the st january and the last of february. other land pays between july and august and september and december. let us see what the average yield is. the gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth would shriek at the figures, but they are approximately accurate. rice naturally fluctuates a good deal, but it may be taken in the rough at five japanese dollars (fifteen shillings) per _koku_ of lbs. wheat and maize of the first spring crop is worth about eleven shillings per _koku_. the first crop gives nearly - / _koku_ per _tau_ (the quarter acre unit of measurement aforesaid), or eighteen shillings per quarter acre, or £ : s. per acre. the rice crop at two _koku_ or £ : s. the quarter acre gives £ an acre. total £ : s. this is not altogether bad if you reflect that the land in question is not the very best rice land, but ordinary no. , at £ : s. per acre, capital value. a son has the right to inherit his father's land on the father's assessment, so long as its term runs, or, when the term has expired, has a prior claim as against any one else. part of the taxes, it is said, lies by in the local prefecture's office as a reserve fund against inundations. yet, and this seems a little confusing, there are between five and seven other local, provincial, and municipal taxes which can reasonably be applied to the same ends. no one of these taxes exceeds a half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of - / per cent. in the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. there are those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it looks. beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on their nominal holdings. they could, and often did, hold more land than they were assessed on. today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. somewhat similar complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of india, for if there is one thing that the oriental detests more than another, it is the damnable western vice of accuracy. that leads to doing things by rule. still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so cunningly from level to level, the japanese cultivator must enjoy at least one excitement. if the villages up the valley tamper with the water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley--argument, protest, and the breaking of heads. the days of romance, therefore, are not all dead. * * * * * this that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields from yokohama, at kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by. he has been described again and again--his majesty, his aloofness, and every one of his dimensions, the smoky little shrine within him, and the plumed hill that makes the background to his throne. for that reason he remains, as he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description--as it might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. they sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. think for a moment of the indignity and the insult! imagine the ancient, orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the green-bronze image of the teacher of the law wavering there as it half seems through incense clouds. the earth is all one censer, and myriads of frogs are making the haze ring. it is too warm to do more than to sit on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no more--the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the colossal simplicity of the folds of the robe over arm and knee. thus, and in no other fashion, did buddha sit in the-old days when ananda asked questions and the dreamer began to dream of the lives that lay behind him ere the lips moved, and as the chronicles say: 'he told a tale.' this would be the way he began, for dreamers in the east tell something the same sort of tales to-day: 'long ago when devadatta was king of benares, there lived a virtuous elephant, a reprobate ox, and a king without understanding.' and the tale would end, after the moral had been drawn for ananda's benefit: 'now, the reprobate ox was such an one, and the king was such another, but the virtuous elephant was i, myself, ananda.' thus, then, he told the tales in the bamboo grove, and the bamboo grove is there to-day. little blue and gray and slate robed figures pass under its shadow, buy two or three joss-sticks, disappear into the shrine, that is, the body of the god, come out smiling, and drift away through the shrubberies. a fat carp in a pond sucks at a fallen leaf with just the sound of a wicked little worldly kiss. then the earth steams, and steams in silence, and a gorgeous butterfly, full six inches from wing to wing, cuts through the steam in a zigzag of colour and flickers up to the forehead of the god. and buddha said that a man must look on everything as illusion--even light and colour--the time-worn bronze of metal against blue-green of pine and pale emerald of bamboo--the lemon sash of the girl in the cinnamon dress, with coral pins in her hair, leaning against a block of weather-bleached stone--and, last, the spray of blood-red azalea that stands on the pale gold mats of the tea-house beneath the honey-coloured thatch. to overcome desire and covetousness of mere gold, which is often very vilely designed, that is conceivable; but why must a man give up the delight of the eye, colour that rejoices, light that cheers, and line that satisfies the innermost deeps of the heart? ah, if the bodhisat had only seen his own image! our overseas men all things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the world--those that stay at home and those that do not. the second are the most interesting. some day a man will bethink himself and write a book about the breed in a book called 'the book of the overseas club,' for it is at the clubhouses all the way from aden to yokohama that the life of the outside men is best seen and their talk is best heard. a strong family likeness runs through both buildings and members, and a large and careless hospitality is the note. there is always the same open-doored, high-ceiled house, with matting on the floors; the same come and go of dark-skinned servants, and the same assembly of men talking horse or business, in raiment that would fatally scandalise a london committee, among files of newspapers from a fortnight to five weeks old. the life of the outside men includes plenty of sunshine, and as much air as may be stirring. at the cape, where the dutch housewives distil and sell the very potent vanderhum, and the absurd home-made hansom cabs waddle up and down the yellow dust of adderley street, are the members of the big import and export firms, the shipping and insurance offices, inventors of mines, and exploiters of new territories with now and then an officer strayed from india to buy mules for the government, a government house aide-de-camp, a sprinkling of the officers of the garrison, tanned skippers of the union and castle lines, and naval men from the squadron at simon's town. here they talk of the sins of cecil rhodes, the insolence of natal, the beauties or otherwise of the solid boer vote, and the dates of the steamers. the _argot_ is dutch and kaffir, and every one can hum the national anthem that begins 'pack your kit and trek, johnny bowlegs.' in the stately hongkong clubhouse, which is to the further what the bengal club is to the nearer east, you meet much the same gathering, _minus_ the mining speculators and _plus_ men whose talk is of tea, silk, shortings, and shanghai ponies. the speech of the outside men at this point becomes fearfully mixed with pidgin-english and local chinese terms, rounded with corrupt portuguese. at melbourne, in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses after their kind. the older men talk of the days of the eureka stockade and the younger of 'shearing wars' in north queensland, while the traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every third word means. at wellington, overlooking the harbour (all right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, sort of men speak of sheep, the rabbits, the land-courts, and the ancient heresies of sir julius vogel; and their more expressive sentences borrow from the maori. and elsewhere, and elsewhere, and elsewhere among the outside men it is the same--the same mixture of every trade, calling, and profession under the sun; the same clash of conflicting interests touching the uttermost parts of the earth; the same intimate, and sometimes appalling knowledge of your neighbour's business and shortcomings; the same large-palmed hospitality, and the same interest on the part of the younger men in the legs of a horse. decidedly, it is at the overseas club all the world over that you get to know some little of the life of the community. london is egoistical, and the world for her ends with the four-mile cab radius. there is no provincialism like the provincialism of london. that big slack-water coated with the drift and rubbish of a thousand men's thoughts esteems itself the open sea because the waves of all the oceans break on her borders. to those in her midst she is terribly imposing, but they forget that there is more than one kind of imposition. look back upon her from ten thousand miles, when the mail is just in at the overseas club, and she is wondrous tiny. nine-tenths of her news--so vital, so epoch-making over there--loses its significance, and the rest is as the scuffling of ghosts in a back-attic. here in yokohama the overseas club has two mails and four sets of papers--english, french, german, and american, as suits the variety of its constitution--and the verandah by the sea, where the big telescope stands, is a perpetual feast of the pentecost. the population of the club changes with each steamer in harbour, for the sea-captains swing in, are met with 'hello! where did you come from?' and mix at the bar and billiard-tables for their appointed time and go to sea again. the white-painted warships supply their contingent of members also, and there are wonderful men, mines of most fascinating adventure, who have an interest in sealing-brigs that go to the kurile islands, and somehow get into trouble with the russian authorities. consuls and judges of the consular courts meet men over on leave from the china ports, or it may be manila, and they all talk tea, silk, banking, and exchange with its fixed residents. everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and everybody is on the verge of ruin. that is why, when they have decided that life is no longer worth living, they go down to the skittle-alley--to commit suicide. from the outside, when a cool wind blows among the papers and there is a sound of smashing ice in an inner apartment, and every third man is talking about the approaching races, the life seems to be a desirable one. 'what more could a man need to make him happy?' says the passer-by. a perfect climate, a lovely country, plenty of pleasant society, and the politest people on earth to deal with. the resident smiles and invites the passer-by to stay through july and august. further, he presses him to do business with the politest people on earth, and to continue so doing for a term of years. thus the traveller perceives beyond doubt that the resident is prejudiced by the very fact of his residence, and gives it as his matured opinion that japan is a faultless land, marred only by the presence of the foreign community. and yet, let us consider. it is the foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country. government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the overseas club that keep it open. their reward (not alone in japan) is the bland patronage or the scarcely-veiled contempt of those who profit by their labours. it is hopeless to explain to a traveller who has been 'ohayoed' into half-a-dozen shops and 'sayonaraed' out of half-a-dozen more and politely cheated in each one, that the japanese is an oriental, and, therefore, embarrassingly economical of the truth. 'that's his politeness,' says the traveller. 'he does not wish to hurt your feelings. love him and treat him like a brother, and he'll change.' to treat one of the most secretive of races on a brotherly basis is not very easy, and the natural politeness that enters into a signed and sealed contract and undulates out of it so soon as it does not sufficiently pay is more than embarrassing. it is almost annoying. the want of fixity or commercial honour may be due to some natural infirmity of the artistic temperament, or to the manner in which the climate has affected, and his ruler has ruled, the man himself for untold centuries. those who know the east know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these things must be so. those who do not know will not be persuaded till they have lived there. the overseas club puts up its collective nose scornfully when it hears of the new and regenerate japan sprung to life since the 'seventies. it grins, with shame be it written, at an imperial diet modelled on the german plan and a code napoléon à la japonaise. it is so far behind the new era as to doubt that an oriental country, ridden by etiquette of the sternest, and social distinctions almost as hard as those of caste, can be turned out to western gauge in the compass of a very young man's life. and it _must_ be prejudiced, because it is daily and hourly in contact with the japanese, except when it can do business with the chinaman whom it prefers. was there ever so disgraceful a club! just at present, a crisis, full blown as a chrysanthemum, has developed in the imperial diet. both houses accuse the government of improper interference--this japanese for 'plenty stick and some bank-note'--at the recent elections. they then did what was equivalent to passing a vote of censure on the ministry and refusing to vote government measures. so far the wildest advocate of representative government could have desired nothing better. afterwards, things took a distinctly oriental turn. the ministry refused to resign, and the mikado prorogued the diet for a week to think things over. the japanese papers are now at issue over the event. some say that representative government implies party government, and others swear at large. the overseas club says for the most part--'skittles!' it is a picturesque situation--one that suggests romances and extravaganzas. thus, imagine a dreaming court intrenched behind a triple line of moats where the lotus blooms in summer--a court whose outer fringe is aggressively european, but whose heart is japan of long ago, where a dreaming king sits among some wives or other things, amused from time to time with magic-lantern shows and performing fleas--a holy king whose sanctity is used to conjure with, and who twice a year gives garden-parties where every one must come in top-hat and frock coat. round this court, wavering between the splendours of the sleeping and the variety shows of the crystal palace, place in furious but carefully-veiled antagonism the fragments of newly shattered castes, their natural oriental eccentricities overlaid with borrowed western notions. imagine now, a large and hungry bureaucracy, french in its fretful insistence on detail where detail is of no earthly moment, oriental in its stress on etiquette and punctillo, recruited from a military caste accustomed for ages past to despise alike farmer and trader. this caste, we will suppose, is more or less imperfectly controlled by a syndicate of three clans, which supply their own nominees to the ministry. these are adroit, versatile, and unscrupulous men, hampered by no western prejudice in favour of carrying any plan to completion. through and at the bidding of these men, the holy monarch acts; and the acts are wonderful. to criticise these acts exists a wild-cat press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly sensitive to outside criticism as the american, and almost as childishly untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its unseasoned rashness. backers of this press in its wilder moments, lawless, ignorant, sensitive and vain, are the student class, educated in the main at government expense, and a thorn in the side of the state. judges without training handle laws without precedents, and new measures are passed and abandoned with almost inconceivable levity. out of the welter of classes and interests that are not those of the common folk is evolved the thing called japanese policy that has the proportion and the perspective of a japanese picture. finality and stability are absent from its councils. to-day, for reasons none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. to-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, and--the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply mysterious, is the rule of the land--stultified by intrigue and counter-intrigue, chequered with futile reforms begun on european lines and light-heartedly thrown aside; studded, as a bower-bird's run is studded with shells and shining pebbles, with plagiarisms from half the world--an operetta of administration, wherein the shadow of the king among his wives, samurai policemen, doctors who have studied under pasteur, kid-gloved cavalry officers from st. cyr, judges with university degrees, harlots with fiddles, newspaper correspondents, masters of the ancient ceremonies of the land, paid members of the diet, secret societies that borrow the knife and the dynamite of the irish, sons of dispossessed daimios returned from europe and waiting for what may turn up, with ministers of the syndicate who have wrenched japan from her repose of twenty years ago, circle, flicker, shift, and reform, in bewildering rings, round the foreign resident. is the extravaganza complete? somewhere in the background of the stage are the people of the land--of whom a very limited proportion enjoy the privileges of representative government. whether in the past few years they have learned what the thing means, or, learning, have the least intention of making any use of it, is not clear. meantime, the game of government goes forward as merrily as a game of puss-in-the-corner, with the additional joy that not more than half-a-dozen men know who is controlling it or what in the wide world it intends to do. in tokio live the steadily-diminishing staff of europeans employed by the emperor as engineers, railway experts, professors in the colleges and so forth. before many years they will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the nations alone and on its own responsibility. in fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive american first broke her peace, japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised from sandal to top-knot, play the _samisen_ in the march of modern progress. this is the great advantage of being born into the new era, when individual and community alike can get something for nothing--pay without work, education without effort, religion without thought, and free government without slow and bitter toil. the overseas club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age. it has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works for. nor can its members take ship and go home when they please. imagine for a little, the contented frame of mind that is bred in a man by the perpetual contemplation of a harbour full of steamers as a piccadilly cab-rank of hansoms. the weather is hot, we will suppose; something has gone wrong with his work that day, or his children are not looking so well as might be. pretty tiled bungalows, bowered in roses and wistaria, do not console him, and the voices of the politest people on earth jar sorely. he knows every soul in the club, has thoroughly talked out every subject of interest, and would give half a year's--oh, five years'--pay for one lung-filling breath of air that has life in it, one sniff of the haying grass, or half a mile of muddy london street where the muffin bell tinkles in the four o'clock fog. then the big liner moves out across the staring blue of the bay. so-and-so and such-an-one, both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by the french mail. he, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it is so maddeningly easy to go--for every one save himself. the boat's smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm wind and the white dust of the bund. now japan is a good place, a place that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. there are china ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed. tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of the overseas clubs. remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. perhaps it would not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from japanese officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock, stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a system that does not contemplate a free press, to a suspicious absolutism from which there is no appeal. truly, it might be interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy, that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at civilised government for a long time to come. in his concession, where he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident does no harm. he does not always sue for money due to him on the part of a japanese. once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when the trouble would begin. and in the long run it would not be the foreign resident that would suffer. the imaginative eye can see the most unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of japan by the chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the shelling of tokio by a joyous and bounding democracy, anxious to vindicate her national honour and to learn how her newly-made navy works. but there are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this somewhat gloomy view. the statistics of japan, for instance, are as beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. by these it would be possible to prove anything. some earthquakes a radical member of parliament at tokio has just got into trouble with his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof. among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of the stream.' nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before the wind.' 'your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true japanese spirit.' that member will very likely be mobbed in his 'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the constituencies are most enlightened. but how in the world can a man under these skies behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? it is in the air--the wobble and the legless drift an energetic tourist would have gone to hakodate, seen ainos at sapporo, ridden across the northern island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains of summer. now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the tide of the tourists ebbs westward. the permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let. in a little while the men from china will be coming over for their holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'packing' is a valid excuse for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. all along the sea face is an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. at the club men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. there never was a post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's sabbath into flinders. a fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six, or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. there is no overtime or eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. yonder are the ships; here is the stuff, and behind all is the american market. the rest is your own affair. the narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. some one must take delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse, and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing. more than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the quality of the stuff goes; but the markets insist on a good-looking leaf, with polish, face and curl to it, and in this, as in other businesses, the call of the markets is the law. the factory floors are made slippery with the tread of bare-footed coolies, who shout as the tea whirls through its transformations. the over-note to the clamour--an uncanny thing too--is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself--stacked in heaps, carried in baskets, dumped through chutes, rising and falling in the long troughs where it is polished, and disappearing at last into the heart of the firing-machine--always this insistent whisper of moving dead leaves. steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes and lies at peace. a few days ago the industry suffered a check which, lasting not more than two minutes, lost several hundred pounds of hand-fired tea. it was something after this way. into the stillness of a hot, stuffy morning came an unpleasant noise as of batteries of artillery charging up all the roads together, and at least one bewildered sleeper waking saw his empty boots where they 'sat and played toccatas stately at the clavicord.' it was the washstand really but the effect was awful. then a clock fell and a wall cracked, and heavy hands caught the house by the roof-pole and shook it furiously. to preserve an equal mind when things are hard is good, but he who has not fumbled desperately at bolted jalousies that will not open while a whole room is being tossed in a blanket does not know how hard it is to find any sort of mind at all. the end of the terror was inadequate--a rush into the still, heavy outside air, only to find the servants in the garden giggling (the japanese would giggle through the day of judgment) and to learn that the earthquake was over. then came the news, swift borne from the business quarters below the hill, that the coolies of certain factories had fled shrieking at the first shock, and that all the tea in the pans was burned to a crisp. that, certainly, was some consolation for undignified panic; and there remained the hope that a few tall chimneys up the line at tokio would have collapsed. they stood firm, however, and the local papers, used to this kind of thing, merely spoke of the shock as 'severe.' earthquakes are demoralising; but they bring out all the weaknesses of human nature. first is downright dread; the stage of--'only let me get into the open and i'll reform,' then the impulse to send news of the most terrible shock of modern times flying east and west among the cables. (did not your own hair stand straight on end, and, therefore, must not everybody else's have done likewise?) last, as fallen humanity picks itself together, comes the cry of the mean little soul: 'what! was _that_ all? i wasn't frightened from the beginning.' it is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the face of these little accidents. the heir of all the ages, the annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren. if the shock endures for twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. given a violent convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the ages is stark, raving mad--a brute among the dishevelled hills. set a hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that these attributes bring--set them to live through such a catastrophe as that which wiped out nagoya last october, and at the end of three days there would remain few whose souls might be called their own. so much for yesterday's shock. to-day there has come another; and a most comprehensive affair it is. it has broken nothing, unless maybe an old heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are saying that they predicted it from the first. none the less as an earthquake it deserves recording. it was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud, and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began. a knot of chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up. the notice on the door was interesting. with deep regret did the manager of the new oriental banking corporation, limited (most decidedly limited), announce that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment. said one chinaman to another in pidgin-japanese: 'it is shut,' and went away. the noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down the wet street. that was all. there must have been two or three men passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of their savings--comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin. in london, of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in the city, and people would have had warning. here banks are few, people are dependent on them, and this news came out of the sea unheralded, an evil born with all its teeth. after the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it. then some one whips a handkerchief round his hand--a splinter has torn it--and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead. then a man, overlooked till now and past help, groans to the death. everybody perceives with a start that this is no time for laughter, and the dead and wounded are attended to. even so at the overseas club when the men got out of office. the brokers had told them the news. in filed the english, and americans, and germans, and french, and 'here's a pretty mess!' they said one and all. many of them were hit, but, like good men, they did not say how severely. 'ah!' said a little p. and o. official, wagging his head sagaciously (he had lost a thousand dollars since noon), 'it's all right _now_. they're trying to make the best of it. in three or four days we shall hear more about it. i meant to draw my money just before i went down coast, but----' curiously enough, it was the same story throughout the club. everybody had intended to withdraw, and nearly everybody had--not done so. the manager of a bank which had _not_ failed was explaining how, in his opinion, the crash had come about. this was also very human. it helped none. entered a lean american, throwing back his waterproof all dripping with the rain; his face was calm and peaceful. 'boy, whisky and soda,' he said. 'how much haf you losd?' said a teuton bluntly. 'eight-fifty,' replied the son of george washington sweetly. 'don't see how that prevents me having a drink. my glass, sirr.' he continued an interrupted whistling of 'i owe ten dollars to o'grady' (which he very probably did), and his countenance departed not from its serenity. if there is anything that one loves an american for it is the way he stands certain kinds of punishment. an englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a scotchman whose account at the japan end of the line had been a trifle overdrawn. true, he would lose in england, but the thought of the few dollars saved here cheered him. more men entered, sat down by tables, stood in groups, or remained apart by themselves, thinking with knit brows. one must think quickly when one's bills are falling due. the murmur of voices thickened, and there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it. everybody knows everybody else at the overseas club, and everybody sympathises. a man passed stiffly and some one of a group turned to ask lightly, 'hit, old man?' 'like hell,' he said, and went on biting his unlit cigar. another man was telling, slowly and somewhat bitterly, how he had expected one of his children to join him out here, and how the passage had been paid with a draft on the o.b.c. but now ... _there_, ladies and gentlemen, is where it hurts, this little suspension out here. it destroys plans, pretty ones hoped for and prayed over, maybe for years; it knocks pleasant domestic arrangements galleywest over and above all the mere ruin that it causes. the curious thing in the talk was that there was no abuse of the bank. the men were in the eastern trade themselves and they knew. it was the yokohama manager and the clerks thrown out of employment (connection with a broken bank, by the way, goes far to ruin a young man's prospects) for whom they were sorry. 'we're doing ourselves well this year,' said a wit grimly. 'one free-shooting case, one thundering libel case, and a bank smash. showing off pretty before the globe-trotters, aren't we?' 'gad, think of the chaps at sea with letters of credit. eh? they'll land and get the best rooms at the hotels and find they're penniless,' said another. 'never mind the globe-trotters,' said a third. 'look nearer home. this does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every penny of theirs goes.' poor devils!' 'that reminds me of some one else,' said yet another voice, '_his_ wife's at home, too. whew!' and he whistled drearily. so did the tide of voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend, 'they went to the bank of england,' drawled an american, 'and the bank of england let them down; said their securities weren't good enough.' 'great scott!'--a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark--'i sailed half way up the mediterranean once with a bank of england director; wish i'd tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on his own security--if it was good enough.' 'baring's goes. the o.b.c. don't,' replied the american, blowing smoke through his nose. 'this business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal. what-at?' 'oh, they'll pay the depositors in full. don't you fret,' said a man who had lost nothing and was anxious to console. 'i'm a shareholder,' said the american, and smoked on. the rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling darkness. there was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want any more shocks. all the pain that in england would be taken home to be borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in line of company. surely the christians of old must have fought much better when they met the lions by fifties at a time. at last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the married men to take counsel. may heaven help him whose wife does not stand by him now! but the women of the overseas settlements are as thorough as the men. there will be tears for plans forgone, the changing of the little ones' schools and elder children's careers, unpleasant letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from relatives who 'told you so from the first.' there will be pinchings too, and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women will pull it through smiling. beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance--especially when anything goes wrong with the machine. to-night there will be trouble in india among the ceylon planters, the calcutta jute and the bombay cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings. in hongkong, singapore, and shanghai there will be trouble too, and goodness only knows what wreck at cheltenham, bath, st. leonards, torquay, and the other camps of the retired army officers. they are lucky in england who know what happens when it happens, but here the people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not good. only one thing seems certain. there is a notice on a shut door, in the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again. so all the work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened. it is a very sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be as sad ones the world over. let it be written, however, that of the sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or whimpered, or broke down. there was no chance of fighting. it was bitter defeat, but they took it standing. half-a-dozen pictures 'some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,' living, their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer. a better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as fate allows. then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for nothing, and--in spite of all that has been said of her crudeness--nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker. the knowledge that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary things that are called pictures. in the north pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a small study of no particular value as compared with some others. the mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated. in the foreground, all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell. a man in blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose pelt the wet drips in moonstones. now the artist who could paint the silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat, and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman. but my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present. three years since, i met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing horribly. he had been trying to paint one of my pictures--nothing more than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill for background. most naturally he failed, because there happened to be absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines about to make some for home consumption. no man can put the contents of a gallon jar into a pint mug. the protests of all uncomfortably-crowded mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect instruments, which are called rules of art. luckily, those who painted my gallery were born before man. therefore, my pictures, instead of being boxed up by lumbering bars of gold, are disposed generously between latitudes, equinoxes, monsoons, and the like, and, making all allowance for an owner's partiality, they are really not so bad. 'down in the south where the ships never go'--between the heel of new zealand and the south pole, there is a sea-piece showing a steamer trying to come round in the trough of a big beam sea. the wet light of the day's end comes more from the water than the sky, and the waves are colourless through the haze of the rain, all but two or three blind sea-horses swinging out of the mist on the ship's dripping weather side. a lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the rudder-chains. a big sea has got home. her stern flies up in the lather of a freed screw, and her deck from poop to the break of the foc's'le goes under in gray-green water level as a mill-race except where it spouts up above the donkey-engine and the stored derrick-booms. forward there is nothing but this glare; aft, the interrupted wake drives far to leeward, a cut kite-string dropped across the seas. the sole thing that has any rest in the turmoil is the jewelled, unwinking eye of an albatross, who is beating across wind leisurely and unconcerned, almost within hand's touch. it is the monstrous egotism of that eye that makes the picture. by all the rules of art there should be a lighthouse or a harbour pier in the background to show that everything will end happily. but there is not, and the red eye does not care whether the thing beneath its still wings stays or staves. the sister-panel hangs in the indian ocean and tells a story, but is none the worse for that. here you have hot tropical sunlight and a foreshore clothed in stately palms running out into a still and steamy sea burnished steel blue. along the foreshore, questing as a wounded beast quests for lair, hurries a loaded steamer never built for speed. consequently, she tears and threshes the water to pieces, and piles it under her nose and cannot put it under her cleanly. coir-coloured cargo bales are stacked round both masts, and her decks are crammed and double-crammed with dark-skinned passengers--from the foc's'le where they interfere with the crew to the stern where they hamper the wheel. the funnel is painted blue on yellow, giving her a holiday air, a little out of keeping with the yellow and black cholera flag at her main. she dare not stop; she must not communicate with any one. there are leprous streaks of lime-wash trickling down her plates for a sign of this. so she threshes on down the glorious coast, she and her swarming passengers, with the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday eating out her heart. yet another, the pick of all the east rooms, before we have done with blue water. most of the nations of the earth are at issue under a stretch of white awning above a crowded deck. the cause of the dispute, a deep copper bowl full of rice and fried onions, is upset in the foreground. malays, lascars, hindus, chinese, japanese, burmans--the whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black--are twisting and writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. pressed against the yellow ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. they are half protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper _hukas_, silver opium pipes, chinese playing cards, and properties enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. in the centre of the crowd of furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a burman, tattooed from collar-bone to waist-cloth with writhing patterns of red and blue devils, holds the eye first. it is a wicked back. beyond it is the flicker of a malay _kris_. a blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror. half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters. one pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. his owner, a bushy-bearded hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the muzzle-strap. the ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the butcher's shop, and a black zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink mouth. the officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin black revolver from his left hand to his right. the faithful sunlight that puts everything into place, gives his whiskers and the hair on the back of his tanned wrist just the colour of the copper pot, the bear's fur and the trampled pines. for the rest, there is the blue sea beyond the awnings. three years' hard work, beside the special knowledge of a lifetime, would be needed to copy--even to copy--this picture. mr. so-and-so, r.a., could undoubtedly draw the bird; mr. such-another (equally r.a.) the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing cataract of colour and life that it is? and when it was done, some middle-aged person from the provinces, who had never seen a pineapple out of a plate, or a _kris_ out of the south kensington, would say that it did not remind him of something that it ought to remind him of, and therefore that it was bad. if the gallery could be bequeathed to the nation, something might, perhaps, be gained, but the nation would complain of the draughts and the absence of chairs. but no matter. in another world we shall see certain gentlemen set to tickle the backs of circe's swine through all eternity. also, they will have to tickle with their bare hands. the japanese rooms, visited and set in order for the second time, hold more pictures than could be described in a month; but most of them are small and, excepting always the light, within human compass. one, however, might be difficult. it was an unexpected gift, picked up in a tokio bye-street after dark. half the town was out for a walk, and all the people's clothes were indigo, and so were the shadows, and most of the paper-lanterns were drops of blood red. by the light of smoking oil-lamps people were selling flowers and shrubs--wicked little dwarf pines, stunted peach and plum trees, wisteria bushes clipped and twisted out of all likeness to wholesome plants, leaning and leering out of green-glaze pots. in the flickering of the yellow flames, these forced cripples and the yellow faces above them reeled to and fro fantastically all together. as the light steadied they would return to the pretence of being green things till a puff of the warm night wind among the flares set the whole line off again in a crazy dance of dwergs, their shadows capering on the house fronts behind them. at a corner of a street, some rich men had got together and left unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the east; but when you came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in glass globes--yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. there were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened fish kicked up showers of little pearls with their tails. the children carried lanterns in the shape of small red paper fish bobbing at the end of slivers of bamboo, and these drifted through the crowd like a strayed constellation of baby stars. when the children stood at the edge of a canal and called down to unseen friends in boats the pink lights were all reflected orderly below. the light of the thousand small lights in the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a japanese fireman, wrapped up in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. he looked unpleasantly like a bulgarian atrocity or a burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' being very still and all huddled up in his roost. that was a superb picture and it arranged itself to admiration. now, disregarding these things and others--wonders and miracles all--men are content to sit in studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' their collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a first-class one, to new worlds where the 'props' are given away with the sunshine. to do anything because it is, or may not be, new on the market is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between the north cape, say, and algiers. for the sake of the pictures, putting aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and--see what happens. if a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw anything. at the most he can but fail, and there are several matters in the world worse than failure. betting on a certainty, for instance, or playing with nicked cards is immoral, and secures expulsion from clubs. keeping deliberately to one set line of work because you know you can do it and are certain to get money by so doing is, on the other hand, counted a virtue, and secures admission to clubs. there must be a middle way somewhere, as there must be somewhere an unmarried man with no position, reputation, or other vanity to lose, who most keenly wants to find out what his palette is set for in this life. he will pack his steamer-trunk and get into the open to wrestle with effects that he can never reproduce. all the same his will be a superb failure. 'captains courageous' from yokohama to montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is uninviting. in three voyages out of five, the north pacific, too big to lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from japan heat wither in the chill, and a clammy dew distils from the rigging. that gray monotony of sea is not at all homelike, being as yet new and not used to the procession of keels. it holds a very few pictures and the best of its stories--those relating to seal-poaching among the kuriles and the russian rookeries--are not exactly fit for publication. there is a man in yokohama who in a previous life burned galleons with drake. he is a gentleman adventurer of the largest and most resourceful--by instinct a carver of kingdoms, a ruler of men on the high seas, and an inveterate gambler against death. because he supplies nothing more than sealskins to the wholesale dealers at home, the fame of his deeds, his brilliant fights, his more brilliant escapes, and his most brilliant strategy will be lost among sixty-ton schooners, or told only in the mouths of drunken seamen whom none believe. now there sits a great spirit under the palm trees of the navigator group, a thousand leagues to the south, and he, crowned with roses and laurels, strings together the pearls of those parts. when he has done with this down there perhaps he will turn to the smoky seas and the wonderful adventures of captain--. then there will be a tale to listen to. but the first touch of dry land makes the sea and all upon it unreal. five minutes after the traveller is on the c.p.r, train at vancouver there is no romance of blue water, but another kind--the life of the train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship. a week on wheels turns a man into a part of the machine. he knows when the train will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the dining-car, slip into a siding to let the west-bound mail go by, or yell through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. the snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and he learns to distinguish between noises--between the rattle of a loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped embankment--between the 'hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. in england the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little outside daily life--a thing to be respected. here it strolls along, with its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the rough-hewn trail or log road--a platformless, regulationless necessity; and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate. there was a small maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the conductor, 'when do we change crews? i want to pick water-lilies--yellow ones.' a mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken off the rear car and a new gang came aboard. the big man bent down to little impudence--'want to pick lilies, eh? what would you do if the cars went on and took mama away, sis?' 'take the, next train,' she replied, 'and tell the conductor to send me to brooklyn. i live there.' 'but s'pose he wouldn't?' 'he'd have to,' said young america. 'i'd be a lost child.' now, from the province of alberta to brooklyn, u.s.a., may be three thousand miles. a great stretch of that distance is as new as the day before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a chinese camp somewhere in the foot-hills of the selkirks, to winnipeg with her league-long main street and her warring newspapers. just at present there is an epidemic of politics in manitoba, and brass bands and notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns. by reason of their closeness to the stages they have caught the contagion of foul-mouthedness, and accusations of bribery, corruption, and evil-living are many. it is sweet to find a little baby-city, with only three men in it who can handle type, cursing and swearing across the illimitable levels for all the world as though it were a grown-up christian centre. all the new towns have their own wants to consider, and the first of these is a railway. if the town is on a line already, then a new line to tap the back country; but at all costs a line. for this it will sell its corrupted soul, and then be very indignant because the railway before which it has grovelled rides rough-shod over the place. each new town believes itself to be a possible winnipeg until the glamour of the thing is a little worn off, and the local paper, sliding down the pole of pride with the hind legs of despair, says defiantly: 'at least, a veterinary surgeon and a drug store would meet with encouragement in our midst, and it is a fact that five new buildings have been erected in our midst since the spring.' from a distance nothing is easier than to smile at this sort of thing, but he must have a cool head who can keep his pulse level when just such a wildcat town--ten houses, two churches, and a line of rails--gets 'on the boom,' the reader at home says, 'yes, but it's all a lie.' it may be, but--did men lie about denver, leadville, ballarat, broken hill, portland, or winnipeg twenty years ago--or adelaide when town lots went begging within the memory of middle-aged men? did they lie about vancouver six years since, or creede not twenty months gone? hardly; and it is just this knowledge that leads the passer-by to give ear to the wildest statements of the wildest towns. anything is possible, especially among the rockies where the minerals lie over and above the mining towns, the centres of ranching country, and the supply towns to the farming districts. there are literally scores upon scores of lakelets in the hills, buried in woods now, that before twenty years are run will be crowded summer resorts. you in england have no idea of what 'summering' means in the states, and less of the amount of money that is spent on the yearly holiday. people have no more than just begun to discover the place called the banff hot springs, two days west of winnipeg.[ ] in a little time they will know half-a-dozen spots not a day's ride from montreal, and it is along that line that money will be made. in those days, too, wheat will be grown for the english market four hundred miles north of the present fields on the west side; and british columbia, perhaps the loveliest land in the world next to new zealand, will have her own line of six thousand ton steamers to australia, and the british investor will no longer throw away his money on hellicat south american republics, or give it as a hostage to the states. he will keep it in the family as a wise man should. then the towns that are to-day the only names in the wilderness, yes, and some of those places marked on the map as hudson bay ports, will be cities, because--but it is hopeless to make people understand that actually and indeed, we _do_ possess an empire of which canada is only one portion--an empire which is not bounded by election-returns on the north and eastbourne riots on the south--an empire that has not yet been scratched. [footnote : see pp. - .] let us return to the new towns. three times within one year did fortune come knocking to the door of a man i know. once at seattle, when that town was a gray blur after a fire; once at tacoma, in the days when the steam-tram ran off the rails twice a week; and once at spokane falls. but in the roar of the land-boom he did not hear her, and she went away leaving him only a tenderness akin to weakness for all new towns, and a desire, mercifully limited by lack of money, to gamble in every one of them. of all the excitements that life offers there are few to be compared with the whirl of a red-hot boom; also it is strictly moral, because you _do_ fairly earn your 'unearned increment' by labour and perspiration and sitting up far into the night--by working like a fiend, as all pioneers must do. and consider all that is in it! the headlong stampede to the new place; the money dashed down like counters for merest daily bread; the arrival of the piled cars whence the raw material of a city--men, lumber, and shingle--are shot on to the not yet nailed platform; the slashing out and pegging down of roads across the blank face of the wilderness; the heaving up amid shouts and yells of the city's one electric light--a raw sizzling arc atop of an unbarked pine pole; the sweating, jostling mob at the sale of town-lots; the roar of 'let the woman have it!' that stops all bidding when the one other woman in the place puts her price on a plot; the packed real-estate offices; the real-estate agents themselves, lost novelists of prodigious imagination; the gorgeous pink and blue map of the town, hung up in the bar-room, with every railroad from portland to portland meeting in its heart; the misspelled curse against 'this dam hole in the ground' scrawled on the flank of a strayed freight-car by some man who had lost his money and gone away; the conferences at street corners of syndicates six hours established by men not twenty-five years old; the outspoken contempt for the next town, also 'on the boom,' and, therefore, utterly vile; the unceasing tramp of heavy feet on the board pavement, where stranger sometimes turns on stranger in an agony of conviction, and, shaking him by the shoulder, shouts in his ear, 'by g--d! isn't it grand? isn't it glorious? 'and last, the sleep of utterly worn-out men, three in each room of the shanty hotel: 'all meals two dollars. all drinks thirty-five cents. no washing done here. the manager not responsible for anything.' does the bald catalogue of these recitals leave you cold? it is possible; but it is also possible after three days in a new town to set the full half of a truck-load of archbishops fighting for corner lots as they never fought for mitre or crozier. there is a contagion in a boom as irresistible as that of a panic in a theatre. after a while things settle down, and then the carpenter, who is also an architect, can lay his bare arms across the bar and sell them to the highest bidder, for the houses are coming up like toadstools after rain. the men who do not build cheer those who do, in that building means backing your belief in your town--yours to you and peculiarly. confound all other towns whatsoever. behind the crowd of business men the weekly town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. there is honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good--the employer of labour, the builder of stores, the spender of money; there is abuse, savage and outrageous, for the bad, the man who 'buys out of the town,' the man who intends to go, the sitter on the fence; with persuasion and invitation in prose, verse, and zincograph for all that outside world which prefers to live in cities other than ours. now the editor, as often as not, begins as a mercenary and ends as a patriot. this, too, is all of a piece with human nature. a few years later, if providence is good, comes the return for judicious investment. perhaps the town has stood the test of boom, and that which was clapboard is now milwaukee brick or dressed stone, vile in design but permanent. the shanty hotel is the something house, with accommodation for two hundred guests. the manager who served you in his shirt-sleeves as his own hotel clerk, is gorgeous in broadcloth, and needs to be reminded of the first meeting. suburban villas more or less adorn the flats, from which the liveliest fancy (and fancy was free in the early days) hung back. horse-cars jingle where the prairie schooner used to stick fast in the mud-hole, scooped to that end, opposite the saloon; and there is a belt electric service paying fabulous dividends. then, do you, feeling older than methuselah and twice as important, go forth and patronise things in general, while the manager tells you exactly what sort of millionaire you would have been if you had 'stayed by the town.' or else--the bottom has tumbled out of the boom, and the town new made is dead--dead as a young man's corpse laid out in the morning. success was not justified by success. of ten thousand not three hundred remain, and these live in huts on the outskirts of the brick streets. the hotel, with its suites of musty rooms, is a big tomb; the factory chimneys are cold; the villas have no glass in them, and the fire-weed glows in the centre of the driveways, mocking the arrogant advertisements in the empty shops. there is nothing to do except to catch trout in the stream that was to have been defiled by the city sewage. a two-pounder lies fanning himself just in the cool of the main culvert, where the alders have crept up to the city wall. you pay your money and, more or less, you take your choice. by the time that man has seen these things and a few others that go with a boom he may say that he has lived, and talk with his enemies in the gate. he has heard the arabian nights retold and knows the inward kernel of that romance, which some? little folk say is vanished. here they lie in their false teeth, for cortes is not dead, nor drake, and sir philip sidney dies every few months if you know where to look. the adventurers and captains courageous of old have only changed their dress a little and altered their employment to suit the world in which they move. clive came down from lobengula's country a few months ago protesting that there was an empire there, and finding very few that believed. hastings studied a map of south africa in a corrugated iron hut at johannesburg ten years ago. since then he has altered the map considerably to the advantage of the empire, but the heart of the empire is set on ballot-boxes and small lies. the illustrious don quixote to-day lives on the north coast of australia where he has found the treasure of a sunken spanish galleon. now and again he destroys black fellows who hide under his bed to spear him. young hawkins, with a still younger boscawen for his second, was till last year chasing slave-dhows round tajurrah; they have sent him now to the zanzibar coast to be grilled into an admiral; and the valorous sandoval has been holding the 'republic' of mexico by the throat any time these fourteen years gone. the others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the world. only people will not believe this when you tell them. they are too near things and a great deal too well fed. so they say of the most cold-blooded realism: 'this is romance. how interesting!' and of over-handled, thumb-marked realism: 'this is indeed romance!' it is the next century that, looking over its own, will see the heroes of our time clearly. meantime this earth of ours--we hold a fair slice of it so far--is full of wonders and miracles and mysteries and marvels, and, in default, it is good to go up and down seeing and hearing tell of them all. on one side only new oxford, u.s.a., _june-july_ . 'the truth is,' said the man in the train, 'that we live in a tropical country for three months of the year, only we won't recognise. look at this.' he handed over a long list of deaths from heat that enlivened the newspapers. all the cities where men live at breaking-strain were sending in their butcher-bills, and the papers of the cities, themselves apostles of the gospel of rush, were beseeching their readers to keep cool and not to overwork themselves while the hot wave was upon them. the rivers were patched and barred with sun-dried pebbles; the logs and loggers were drought-bound somewhere up the connecticut; and the grass at the side of the track was burned in a hundred places by the sparks from locomotives. men--hatless, coatless, and gasping--lay in the shade of that station where only a few months ago the glass stood at below zero. now the readings were degrees in the shade. main street--do you remember main street of a little village locked up in the snow this spring?[ ]--had given up the business of life, and an american flag with some politician's name printed across the bottom hung down across the street as stiff as a board. there were men with fans and alpaca coats curled up in splint chairs in the verandah of the one hotel--among them an ex-president of the united states. he completed the impression that the furniture of the entire country had been turned out of doors for summer cleaning in the absence of all the inhabitants. nothing looks so hopelessly 'ex' as a president 'returned to stores,' the stars and stripes signified that the presidential campaign had opened in main street--opened and shut up again. politics evaporate at summer heat when all hands are busy with the last of the hay, and, as the formers put it, 'vermont's bound to go republican.' the custom of the land is to drag the scuffle and dust of an election over several months--to the improvement of business and manners; but the noise of that war comes faintly up the valley of the connecticut and is lost among the fiddling of the locusts. their music puts, as it were, a knife edge upon the heat of the day. in truth, it is a tropical country for the time being. thunder-storms prowl and growl round the belted hills, spit themselves away in a few drops of rain, and leave the air more dead than before. in the woods, where even the faithful springs are beginning to run low, the pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and wait for the wind to bring news of the rain. the clematis, wild carrot, and all the gipsy-flowers camped by sufferance between fence line and road net are masked in white dust, and the golden-rod of the pastures that are burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. a pillar of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses flicker in the haze of their own heat. overhead the chicken-hawk is the only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. the red squirrel as usual feigns business of importance among the butternuts, but this is pure priggishness. when the passer-by is gone he ceases chattering and climbs back to where the little breezes can stir his tail-plumes. from somewhere under the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a mowing-machine among the hay--its _whurr-oo_ and the grunt of the tired horses. [footnote : see 'in sight of monadnock.'] houses are only meant to eat and sleep in. the rest of life is lived at full length in the verandah. when traffic is brisk three whole teams will pass that verandah in one day, and it is necessary to exchange news about the weather and the prospects for oats. when oats are in there will be slack time on the farm, and the farmers will seriously think of doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the summer. they will undertake this and that, 'when they get around to it.' the phrase translated is the exact equivalent to the _mañana_ of the spaniard, the _kul hojaiga_ of upper india, the _yuroshii_ of the japanese, and the long drawled _taihod_ of the maori. the only person who 'gets around' in this weather is the summer boarder--the refugee from the burning cities of the plain, and she is generally a woman. she walks, and botanizes, and kodaks, and strips the bark off the white birch to make blue-ribboned waste-paper baskets, and the farmer regards her with wonder. more does he wonder still at the city clerk in a blazer, who has two weeks' holiday in the year and, apparently, unlimited money, which he earns in the easiest possible way by 'sitting at a desk and writing,' the farmer's wife sees the fashions of the summer boarder, and between them man and woman get a notion of the beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them. the blazer and the town-made gown are innocent recruiting sergeants for the city brigades; and since one man's profession is ever a mystery to his fellow, blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and content. a summer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch the thousand aspects of life in the atlantic states. remember that between june and september it is the desire of all who can to get away from the big cities--not on account of wantonness, as people leave london--but because of actual heat. so they get away in their millions with their millions--the wives of the rich men for five clear months, the others for as long as they can; and, like drawing like, they make communities set by set, breed by breed, division by division, over the length and breadth of the land--from maine and the upper reaches of the saguenay, through the mountains and hot springs of half-a-dozen interior states, out and away to sitka in steamers. then they spend money on hotel bills, among ten thousand farms, on private companies who lease and stock land for sporting purposes, on yachts and canoes, bicycles, rods, châlets, cottages, reading circles, camps, tents, and all the luxuries they know. but the luxury of rest most of them do not know; and the telephone and telegraph are faithfully dragged after them, lest their men-folk should for a moment forget the ball and chain at foot. for sadness with laughter at bottom there are few things to compare with the sight of a coat-less, muddy-booted, millionaire, his hat adorned with trout-flies, and a string of small fish in his hand, clawing wildly at the telephone of some back-of-beyond 'health resort.' thus: 'hello! hello! yes. who's there? oh, all right. go ahead. yes, it's me! hey, what? repeat. sold for _how_ much? forty-four and a half? repeat. no! i _told_ you to hold on. what? what? _who_ bought at that? say, hold a minute. cable the other side. no. hold on. i'll come down. (_business with watch_.) tell schaefer i'll see him to-morrow.' (_over his shoulder to his wife, who wears half-hoop diamond rings at_ a.m.) 'lizzie, where's my grip? i've got to go down.' and he goes down to eat in a hotel and sleep in his shut-up house. men are as scarce at most of the summer places as they are in indian hill-stations in late april. the women tell you that they can't get away, and if they did they would only be miserable to get back. now whether this wholesale abandonment of husbands by wives is wholesome let those who know the beauties of the anglo-indian system settle for themselves. that both men and women need rest very badly a glance at the crowded hotel tables makes plain--so plain, indeed, that the foreigner who has not been taught that fuss and worry are in themselves honourable wishes sometimes he could put the whole unrestful crowd to sleep for seventeen hours a day. i have inquired of not less than five hundred men and women in various parts of the states why they broke down and looked so gash. and the men said: 'if you don't keep up with the procession in america you are left'; and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no outsider yet had discovered the real cause of their worry and strain, or why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of friction in the shortest given time. now, the men can be left to their own folly, but the cause of the women's trouble has been revealed to me. it is the thing called 'help' which is no help. in the multitude of presents that the american man has given to the american woman (for details see daily papers) he has forgotten or is unable to give her good servants, and that sordid trouble runs equally through the household of the millionaire or the flat of the small city man. 'yes, it's easy enough to laugh,' said one woman passionately, 'we are worn out, and our children are worn out too, and we're always worrying, i know it. what can we do? if you stay here you'll know that this is the land of all the luxuries and none of the necessities. you'll know and then you won't laugh. you'll know why women are said to take their husbands to boarding-houses and never have homes. you'll know what an irish catholic means. the men won't get up and attend to these things, but _we_ would. if _we_ had female suffrage, we'd shut the door to _all_ the irish and throw it open to _all_ the chinese, and let the women have a little protection.' it was the cry of a soul worn thin with exasperation, but it was truth. to-day i do not laugh any more at the race that depends on inefficient helot races for its inefficient service. when next you, housekeeping in england, differ with the respectable, amiable, industrious sixteen-pound maid, who wears a cap and says 'ma'am,' remember the pauper labour of america--the wives of the sixty million kings who have no subjects. no man could get a thorough knowledge of the problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the size and the import of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the swede and the dane and the german and the unspeakable celt. then he perceives how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. in india sometimes when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes in all its bareness and bitter stress. here, in spite of the trimmings and the frillings, it refuses to be subdued and the clamour and the clatter of it are loud above all other sounds--as sometimes the thunder of disorganised engines stops conversations along the decks of a liner, and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question--'this thing is made and paid to bear us to port quietly. why does it not do so?' only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling and making more noise. the machine is new. some day it is going to be the finest machine in the world. to the ranks of the amateur artificers, therefore, are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and bolthead, fiddling with the glands, registering revolutions, and crying out from time to time that this or that is or is not 'distinctively american.' meantime, men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels, and they are said to have fallen 'in the battle of life.' the god who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships lal-beg the glorified broom that is the incarnation of his craft. but the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud of it, with sweeping. a foreigner can do little good by talking of these things; for the same lean dry blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage parochial pride that squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger. among themselves the people of the eastern cities admit that they and their womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily, and that the consequences for the young stock are unpleasant indeed; but before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty continent (which has nothing to do with the case) and to call aloud on baal of the dollars--to catalogue their lines, mines, telephones, banks, and cities, and all the other shells, buttons, and counters that they have made their gods over them. now a nation does not progress upon its brain-pan, as some books would have us believe, but upon its belly as did the serpent of old; and in the very long run the work of the brain comes to be gathered in by a slow-footed breed that have unimaginative stomachs and the nerves that know their place. all this is very consoling from the alien's point of view. he perceives, with great comfort, that out of strain is bred impatience in the shape of a young bundle of nerves, who is about as undisciplined an imp as the earth can show. out of impatience, grown up, habituated to violent and ugly talk, and the impatience and recklessness of his neighbours, is begotten lawlessness, encouraged by laziness and suppressed by violence when it becomes insupportable. out of lawlessness is bred rebellion (and that fruit has been tasted once already), and out of rebellion comes profit to those who wait. he hears of the power of the people who, through rank slovenliness, neglect to see that their laws are soberly enforced from the beginning; and these people, not once or twice in a year, but many times within a month, go out in the open streets and, with a maximum waste of power and shouting, strangle other people with ropes. they are, he is told, law-abiding citizens who have executed 'the will of the people'; which is as though a man should leave his papers unsorted for a year and then smash his desk with an axe, crying, 'am i not orderly?' he hears lawyers, otherwise sane and matured, defend this pig-jobbing murder on the grounds that 'the people stand behind the law'--the law that they never administered. he sees a right, at present only half--but still half--conceded to anticipate the law in one's own interests; and nervous impatience (always nerves) forejudging the suspect in gaol, the prisoner in the dock, and the award between nation and nation ere it is declared. he knows that the maxim in london, yokohama, and hongkong in doing business with the pure-bred american is to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. he comes across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and thought--matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting friction--and they are all just the least little bit in the world lawless. no more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. they are all good--good for those who wait. on the other hand, to consider the matter more humanly, there are thousands of delightful men and women going to pieces for the pitiful reason that if they do not keep up with the procession, 'they are left.' and they are left--in clothes that have no back to them, among mounds of smilax. and young men--chance-met in the streets, talk to you about their nerves which are things no young man should know anything about; and the friends of your friends go down with nervous prostration, and the people overheard in the trains talk about their nerves and the nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no lie. atop of the fret and the stampede, the tingling self-consciousness of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile racket that sends up the death-rate--a child's delight in the blaze and the dust of the march of progress. is it not 'distinctively american'? it is, and it is not. if the cities were all america, as they pretend, fifty years would see the march of progress brought to a standstill, as a locomotive is stopped by heated bearings.... down in the meadow the mowing-machine has checked, and the horses are shaking themselves. the last of the sunlight leaves the top of monadnock, and four miles away main street lights her electric lamps. it is band-night in main street, and the folks from putney, from marlboro', from guildford, and even new fane will drive in their well-filled waggons to hear music and look at the ex-president. over the shoulder of the meadow two men come up very slowly, their hats off and their arms swinging loosely at their sides. they do not hurry, they have not hurried, and they never will hurry, for they are of country--bankers of the flesh and blood of the ever bankrupt cities. their children may yet be pale summer boarders; as the boarders, city-bred weeds, may take over their farms. from the plough to the pavement goes man, but to the plough he returns at last. 'going to supper?' 'ye-ep,' very slowly across the wash of the uncut grass. 'say, that corncrib wants painting.' ''do that when we get around to it.' they go off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as their own steers. and there are a few millions of them--unhandy men to cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as impenetrable as that other eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another land. they do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in the streets, and they tell very little in the outsider's estimate of america. and _they_ are the american. leaves from a winter note-book ( ) we had walked abreast of the year from the very beginning, and that was when the first blood-root came up between the patches of april snow, while yet the big drift at the bottom of the meadow held fast. in the shadow of the woods and under the blown pine-needles, clots of snow lay till far into may, but neither the season nor the flowers took any note of them, and, before we were well sure winter had gone, the lackeys of my lord baltimore in their new liveries came to tell us that summer was in the valley, and please might they nest at the bottom of the garden? followed, summer, angry, fidgety, and nervous, with the corn and tobacco to ripen in five short months, the pastures to reclothe, and the fallen leaves to hide away under new carpets. suddenly, in the middle of her work, on a stuffy-still july day, she called a wind out of the northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked bitter wind with a lacing of hail to it, a wind that came and was gone in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees, toppled over a barn, and--blew potatoes out of the ground! when that was done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring all alone by itself. a west indian hurricane could not have been quicker on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in three minutes, we felt that the new england summer had creole blood in her veins. she went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all the doors of the hills behind her, and autumn, who is a lady, took charge. no pen can describe the turning of the leaves--the insurrection of the tree-people against the waning year. a little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. three days later, the hill-sides as far as the eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could see into the most private heart of the woods. frost may be looked for till the middle of may and after the middle of september, so summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery. her sisters bring the gifts--spring, wind-flowers, solomon's-seal, dutchman's-breeches, quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as divinely as the true may. autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. when these go the curtain comes down, and whatever powers shift the scenery behind, work without noise. in tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and decay at the back of the night-silences. even in england the tides of the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb altogether. the very last piece of bench-work this season was the trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people came to look. the blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been lifted from the charcoal. it was a detail, evidently, of some invisible gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. in a week the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off the unfenced track. there the seasons stopped awhile. autumn was gone, winter was not. we had time dealt out to us--mere, clear, fresh time--grace-days to enjoy. the white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's stores of wood. now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects an artist. he makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one perfect piece of wood in all the world. this he never finds, but the likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal. one man i know has evolved very nearly the weapon of umslopogaas. it is almost straight, lapped at the butt with leather, amazingly springy, and carries a two-edged blade for splitting and chopping. if his demon be with him--and what artist can answer for all his moods?--he will cause a tree to fall upon any stick or stone that you choose, uphill or down, to the right or to the left. artist-like, however, he explains that that is nothing. any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. to see an eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. white pine, hemlock, and spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and beech. maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a neglected pasture on the first opportunity. there is no overcoat warmer than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the rock-ledges. the mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms. there are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps. wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead gold. the woods are full of colour, belts and blotches of it, the colours of the savage--red, yellow, and blue. yet in their lodges there is very little life, for the wood-people do not readily go into the shadows. the squirrels have their business among the beeches and hickories by the road-side, where they can watch the traffic and talk. we have no gray ones hereabouts (they are good to eat and suffer for it), but five reds live in a hickory hard by, and no weather puts them to sleep. the wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him. now and again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth crossing fields to watch. but the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will not be out till april. the coon lives--well, no one seems to know particularly where brer coon lives, but when the hunter's moon is large and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs for his fur, which makes the finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh, which tastes like chicken. he cries at night sorrowfully as though a child were lost. they seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in this land. hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and baltimore orioles because they are pretty, and the other small things for sport--french fashion. you can get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you naturally seek his woods. so the country is very silent and unalive. there are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this notice, picked up at the local tobacconist's: johnny get your gun! bear hunt! as bears are too numerous in the town of peltyville corners, vt., the hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand hunt to be held on blue mountains in the town of peltyville corners, vt., wednesday, nov. th, if pleasant. if not, first fine day. come one, come all! they went, but it was the bear that would not participate. the notice was printed at somebody's electric print establishment. queer mixture, isn't it? the bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine and calves which brings punishment. twelve hours' rail and a little marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live, and where there is a lost pond that many have found once but can never find again. men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and the railway along the river valleys where the towns are. across the hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their state, little known. they withdraw from society in november if they live on the uplands, coming down in may as the snow gives leave. not much more than a generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles, and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat still between-times. now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt biographies of presidents, and the twenty-pound family bibles, with illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates, and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best. here, too, off the main-travelled roads, the wandering quack--patent electric pills, nerve cures, etc.--divides the field with the seed and fruit man and the seller of cattle-boluses. they dose themselves a good deal, i fancy, for it is a poor family that does not know all about nervous prostration. so the quack drives a pair of horses and a gaily-painted waggon with a hood, and sometimes takes his wife with him. once only have i met a pedlar afoot. he was an old man, shaken with palsy, and he pushed a thing exactly like a pauper's burial-cart, selling pins, tape, scents, and flavourings. you helped yourself, for his hands had no direction, and he told a long tale in which the deeding away of a farm to one of his family was mixed up with pride at the distances he still could cover daily. as much as six miles sometimes. he was no lear, as the gift of the farm might suggest, but sealed of the tribe of the wandering jew--a tremulous old giddy-gaddy. there are many such rovers, gelders of colts and the like, who work a long beat, south to virginia almost, and north to the frontier, paying with talk and gossip for their entertainment. yet tramps are few, and that is well, for the american article answers almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of india, being a predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'bad place to beg in after dark--on a farm--very--is vermont. gypsies pitch their camp by the river in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. they have the gypsy look and some of the old gypsy names, but say that they are largely mixed with gentile blood. winter has chased all these really interesting people south, and in a few weeks, if we have anything of a snow, the back farms will be unvisited save by the doctor's hooded sleigh. it is no child's play to hold a practice here through the winter months, when the drifts are really formed, and a pair can drop in up to their saddle-pads. four horses a day some of them use, and use up--for they are good men. now in the big silence of the snow is born, perhaps, not a little of that new england conscience which her children write about. there is much time to think, and thinking is a highly dangerous business. conscience, fear, undigested reading, and, it may be, not too well cooked food, have full swing. a man, and more particularly a woman, can easily hear strange voices--the word of the lord rolling between the dead hills; may see visions and dream dreams; get revelations and an outpouring of the spirit, and end (such things have been) lamentably enough in those big houses by the connecticut river which have been tenderly christened the retreat. hate breeds as well as religion--the deep, instriking hate between neighbours, that is born of a hundred little things added up, brooded over, and hatched by the stove when two or three talk together in the long evenings. it would be very interesting to get the statistics of revivals and murders, and find how many of them have been committed in the spring. but for undistracted people winter is one long delight of the eye. in other lands one knows the snow as a nuisance that comes and goes, and is sorely man-handled and messed at the last. here it lies longer on the ground than any crop--from november to april sometimes--and for three months life goes to the tune of sleigh-bells, which are not, as a southern visitor once hinted, ostentation, but safeguards. the man who drives without them is not loved. the snow is a faithful barometer, foretelling good sleighing or stark confinement to barracks. it is all the manure the stony pastures receive; it cloaks the ground and prevents the frost bursting pipes; it is the best--i had almost written the only--road-maker in the states. on the other side it can rise up in the night and bid the people sit still as the egyptians. it can stop mails; wipe out all time-tables; extinguish the lamps of twenty towns, and kill man within sight of his own door-step or hearing of his cattle unfed. no one who has been through even so modified a blizzard as new england can produce talks lightly of the snow. imagine eight-and-forty hours of roaring wind, the thermometer well down towards zero, scooping and gouging across a hundred miles of newly fallen snow. the air is full of stinging shot, and at ten yards the trees are invisible. the foot slides on a reef, polished and black as obsidian, where the wind has skinned an exposed corner of road down to the dirt ice of early winter. the next step ends hip-deep and over, for here an unseen wall is banking back the rush of the singing drifts. a scarped slope rises sheer across the road. the wind shifts a point or two, and all sinks down, like sand in the hour-glass, leaving a pot-hole of whirling whiteness. there is a lull, and you can see the surface of the fields settling furiously in one direction--a tide that spurts from between the tree-boles. the hollows of the pasture fill while you watch; empty, fill, and discharge anew. the rock-ledges show the bare flank of a storm-chased liner for a moment, and whitening, duck under. irresponsible snow-devils dance by the lee of a barn where three gusts meet, or stagger out into the open till they are cut down by the main wind. at the worst of the storm there is neither heaven nor earth, but only a swizzle into which a man may be brewed. distances grow to nightmare scale, and that which in the summer was no more than a minute's bare-headed run, is half an hour's gasping struggle, each foot won between the lulls. then do the heavy-timbered barns talk like ships in a cross-sea, beam working against beam. the winter's hay is ribbed over with long lines of snow dust blown between the boards, and far below in the byre the oxen clash their horns and moan uneasily. the next day is blue, breathless, and most utterly still. the farmers shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as allah has given them. these they drive, and the dragging share makes a furrow in which a horse can walk, and the oxen, by force of repeatedly going in up to their bellies, presently find foothold. the finished road is a deep double gutter between three-foot walls of snow, where, by custom, the heavier vehicle has the right of way. the lighter man when he turns out must drop waist-deep and haul his unwilling beast into the drift, leaving providence to steady the sleigh. in the towns, where they choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns to horsepondine. with us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. rain makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are faintly reflected. heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. at twilight, again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on the likeness of wet sand--some huge and melancholy beach at the world's end--and when day meets night it is all goblin country. to westward; the last of the spent day--rust-red and pearl, illimitable levels of shore waiting for the tide to turn again. to eastward, black night among the valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much light as snail-slime from the moon. once or twice perhaps in the winter the northern lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the aurora borealis. in january or february come the great ice-storms, when every branch, blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch nothing truly. the spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. if you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch snaps off at the lightest tap. if wind and sun open the day together, the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. the woods are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight; the stampede of mailed feet up and down the glades; and a great dust of battle is puffed out into the open, till the last of the ice is beaten away and the cleared branches take up their regular chant. again the mercury drops twenty and more below zero, and the very trees swoon. the snow turns to french chalk, squeaking under the heel, and their breath cloaks the oxen in rime. at night a tree's heart will break in him with a groan. according to the books, the frost has split something, but it is a fearful sound, this grunt as of a man stunned. winter that is winter in earnest does not allow cattle and horses to play about the fields, so everything comes home; and since no share can break ground to any profit for some five months, there would seem to be very little to do. as a matter of fact, country interests at all seasons are extensive and peculiar, and the day is not long enough for them when you take out that time which a self-respecting man needs to turn himself round in. consider! the solid undisturbed hours stand about one like ramparts. at a certain time the sun will rise. at another hour, equally certain, he will set. this much we know. why, in the name of reason, therefore, should we vex ourselves with vain exertions? an occasional visitor from the cities of the plains comes up panting to do things. he is set down to listen to the normal beat of his own heart--a sound that very few men have heard. in a few days, when the lather of impatience has dried off, he ceases to talk of 'getting there' or 'being left.' he does not desire to accomplish matters 'right away,' nor does he look at his watch from force of habit, but keeps it where it should be--in his stomach. at the last he goes back to his beleaguered city, unwillingly, partially civilised, soon to be resavaged by the clash of a thousand wars whose echo does not reach here. the air which kills germs dries out the very newspapers. they might be of to-morrow or a hundred years ago. they have nothing to do with to-day--the long, full, sunlit to-day. our interests are not on the same scale as theirs, perhaps, but much more complex. the movement of a foreign power--an alien sleigh on this pontic shore--must be explained and accounted for, or this public's heart will burst with unsatisfied curiosity. if it be buck davis, with the white mare that he traded his colt for, and the practically new sleigh-robe that he bought at the sewell auction, _why_ does buck davis, who lives on the river flats, cross our hills, unless murder hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless he has turkeys for sale? _but_ buck davis with turkeys would surely have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. a wail from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. it is a winter calf, and buck davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the boston market where it will be turned into potted chicken. this leaves the mystery of his change of route unexplained. after two days' sitting on tenter-hooks it is discovered, obliquely, that buck went to pay a door-yard call on orson butler, who lives on the saeter where the wind and the bald granite scaurs fight it out together. kirk demming had brought orson news of a fox at the back of black mountain, and orson's eldest son, going to murder hollow with wood for the new barn floor that the widow amidon is laying down, told buck that he might as well come round to talk to his father about the pig. _but_ old man butler meant fox-hunting from the first, and what he wanted to do was to borrow buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on the mountain. no old man butler did _not_ go hunting alone, but waited till buck came back from town. buck sold the calf for a dollar and a quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by interested parties. _then_ the two went after the fox together. this much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings. five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites. letters to the family these letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of , after a trip to canada undertaken in the autumn of . they are now reprinted without alteration. the road to quebec. a people at home. cities and spaces. newspapers and democracy. labour. the fortunate towns. mountains and the pacific. a conclusion. * * * * * the road to quebec ( ) it must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross between canker and blight that has settled on england for the last couple of years. the effects of it are felt throughout the empire, but at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. so far as one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness, general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has combined in one big trust--a majority of all the minorities--to play the game of government. now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of the english who set these folk in power are crying, 'if we had only known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!' yet, as the rest of the empire perceived at the time, these men were always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. they said first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage to the empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the british working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions. incidentally they explained, so that all earth except england heard it, that the army was wicked; much of the navy unnecessary; that half the population of one of the colonies practised slavery, with torture, for the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of empire wearied and sickened them. on these grounds they stood to save england; on these grounds they were elected, with what seemed like clear orders to destroy the blood-stained fetish of empire as soon as possible. the present mellow condition of ireland, egypt, india, and south africa is proof of their honesty and obedience. over and above this, their mere presence in office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. paper pellets, books, and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the forms were loudest to profess noble sentiments, and most eloquent grief at being misjudged. still, the english are not happy, and the unrest and slackness increase. on the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the babu called 'all their naked _cui bono_.' these last are after satisfying the two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in scientific legislation. but how to get free food, and free--shall we say--love? within the four corners of an act of parliament without giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. it is easy enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every steamer. i went across to canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly to escape the blight, and also to see what our eldest sister was doing. have you ever noticed that canada has to deal in the lump with most of the problems that afflict us others severally? for example, she has the double-language, double-law, double-politics drawback in a worse form than south africa, because, unlike our dutch, her french cannot well marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from italy--less central, sometimes, than pretoria or stellenbosch. she has, too, something of australia's labour fuss, minus australia's isolation, but plus the open and secret influence of 'labour' entrenched, with arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. to complete the parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land called british columbia, which resembles new zealand; and new zealanders who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are drifting up to british columbia already. canada has in her time known calamity more serious than floods, frost, drought, and fire--and has macadamized some stretches of her road toward nationhood with the broken hearts of two generations. that is why one can discuss with canadians of the old stock matters which an australian or new zealander could no more understand than a wealthy child understands death. truly we are an odd family! australia and new zealand (the maori war not counted) got everything for nothing. south africa gave everything and got less than nothing. canada has given and taken all along the line for nigh on three hundred years, and in some respects is the wisest, as she should be the happiest, of us all. she seems to be curiously unconscious of her position in the empire, perhaps because she has lately been talked at, or down to, by her neighbours. you know how at any gathering of our men from all quarters it is tacitly conceded that canada takes the lead in the imperial game. to put it roughly, she saw the goal more than ten years ago, and has been working the ball toward it ever since. that is why her inaction at the last imperial conference made people who were interested in the play wonder why she, of all of us, chose to brigade herself with general botha and to block the forward rush. i, too, asked that question of many. the answer was something like this: 'we saw that england wasn't taking anything just then. why should we have laid ourselves open to be snubbed worse than we were? we sat still.' quite reasonable--almost too convincing. there was really no need that canada should have done other than she did--except that she was the eldest sister, and more was expected of her. she is a little too modest. we discussed this, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in mid-atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked at his damp tobacco. the passengers were nearly all unmixed canadian, mostly born in the maritime provinces, where their fathers speak of 'canada' as sussex speaks of 'england,' but scattered about their businesses throughout the wide dominion. they were at ease, too, among themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of our family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. a cape liner is all the sub-continent from the equator to simon's town; an orient boat is australasian throughout, and a c.p.r. steamer cannot be confused with anything except canada. it is a pity one may not be born in four places at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and the allusions of all our family life without waste of precious time. these big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in their tongues, and strength in their hearts. i used to think miserably of other boats at the south end of this ocean--a quarter full of people deprived of these things. a young man kindly explained to me how canada had suffered through what he called 'the imperial connection'; how she had been diversely bedevilled by english statesmen for political reasons. he did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when i tried to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew south africa) lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which astonished the patriotic young mind. the plaid finished his outburst with the uncontradicted statement that the english were mad. all our talks ended on that note. it was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. one understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the dutch, the hopeless anger of one's own race in south africa is also part of the burden; but the canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always polite contempt of the england of to-day cuts a little. you see, that late unfashionable war[ ] was very real to canada. she sent several men to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than a crowded one. when, from her point of view, they have died for no conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. i was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of the affair. some of them went so far as to discuss--on the ship and elsewhere--whether england would stay in the family or whether, as some eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would cut the painter to save expense. one man argued, without any heat, that she would not so much break out of the empire in one flurry, as politically vend her children one by one to the nearest power that threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. he quoted--really these people have viciously long memories!--the five-year campaign of abuse against south africans as a precedent and a warning. [footnote : boer 'war' of - .] our tobacco parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if this happened, canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led to one of the most curious talks i have ever heard. it seemed to be decided that she might--just might--pull through by the skin of her teeth as a nation--if (but this was doubtful) england did not help others to hammer her. now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any of this sort of thing. if it sounds a little mad, remember that the mother country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics. just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a confused and bitter cold sea. every horror in the world has its fitting ritual. for the fifth time--and four times in just such weather--i heard the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the poor head that had valued itself so lightly. a boat amid waves can see nothing. there was nothing to see from the first. we waited and quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily through the escapes. then we went ahead. the st. lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. the maples along its banks had turned--blood red and splendid as the banners of lost youth. even the oak is not more of a national tree than the maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more happy. a dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after point along their own beloved river--places where they played and fished and amused themselves in holiday time. it must be pleasant to have a country of one's very own to show off. understand, they did not in any way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and women. they were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they said: 'isn't it lovely? don't you think it's beautiful? we love it.' at quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a coal-chute, whence rise the heights that wolfe's men scaled on their way to the plains of abraham. perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands the affair of quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any other. everything meets there; france, the jealous partner of england's glory by land and sea for eight hundred years; england, bewildered as usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing pitt, who knew; those other people, destined to break from england as soon as the french peril was removed; montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; wolfe, the inevitable trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the background one james cook, master of h.m.s. _mercury_, making beautiful and delicate charts of the st. lawrence river. for these reasons the plains of abraham are crowned with all sorts of beautiful things--including a jail and a factory. montcalm's left wing is marked by the jail, and wolfe's right by the factory. there is, happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and association would be one of the most beautiful in our world. yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the thin black wreck of the quebec railway bridge, lying like a dumped car-load of tin cans in the river, the eastern gate to canada is noble with a dignity beyond words. we saw it very early, when the under sides of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding, dusky-purple city. just at the point of dawn, what looked like the sultan harun-al-raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into the darkness of a slip. she came out again in three minutes, but the full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold passengers. i spoke to a canadian about her. 'why, she's the old so-and-so, to port levis,' he answered, wondering as the cockney wonders when a stranger stares at an inner circle train. this was _his_ inner circle--the zion where he was all at ease. he drew my attention to stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be southampton water on a grey, wavy morning; sydney harbour with a regatta in full swing; or table mountain, radiant and new-washed after the christmas rains. he had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the river. (the north-wester in these parts is equivalent to the south-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.) then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. personally and politically he said he loathed the city--but it was his. 'well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? not so bad?' 'oh no. not at all so bad,' i answered; and it wasn't till much later that i realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear round the empire. a people at home an up-country proverb says, 'she was bidden to the wedding and set down to grind corn.' the same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little excursion. there is a crafty network of organisations of business men called canadian clubs. they catch people who look interesting, assemble their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. the idea might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the same time, does not hamper their work. it is safely short, too. the whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. the clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many interesting questions--from practical forestry to state mints--all set out by experts. not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work. till then i had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational whist, that any one could cut in at it. i perceive now that it is an art of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of colours hard to control. the canadians seem to like listening to speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make good oratory on occasion. you know the old belief that the white man on brown, red, or black lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to the type originally bred there? thus, a speech in the taal should carry the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial orators, the bantu. a new zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, hands clenched at the sides, as the old maoris used. what we know of first-class australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. i had half expected in canadian speeches some survival of the redskin's elaborate appeal to suns, moons, and mountains--touches of grandiosity and ceremonial invocations. but nothing that i heard was referable to any primitive stock. there was a dignity, a restraint, and, above all, a weight in it, rather curious when one thinks of the influences to which the land lies open. red it was not; french it was not; but a thing as much by itself as the speakers. so with the canadian's few gestures and the bearing of his body. during the (boer) war one watched the contingents from every point of view, and, most likely, drew wrong inferences. it struck me then that the canadian, even when tired, slacked off less than the men from the hot countries, and while resting did not lie on his back or his belly, but rather on his side, a leg doubled under him, ready to rise in one surge. this time while i watched assemblies seated, men in hotels and passers-by, i fancied that he kept this habit of semi-tenseness at home among his own; that it was the complement of the man's still countenance, and his even, lowered voice. looking at their footmarks on the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, rather like the australian's stealthy footfall. talking among themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. these things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything is worth while. a man told me once--but i never tried the experiment--that each of our four races light and handle fire in their own way. small wonder we differ! here is a people with no people at their backs, driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up over the shoulder of the world--a spectacle, as it might be, out of some tremendous norse legend. north of them lies niflheim's enduring cold, with the flick and crackle of the aurora for bifrost bridge that odin and the aesir visited. these people also go north year by year, and drag audacious railways with them. sometimes they burst into good wheat or timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the north is foil of voices--as south africa was once--telling discoveries and making prophecies. when their winter comes, over the greater part of this country outside the cities they must sit still, and eat and drink as the aesir did. in summer they cram twelve months' work into six, because between such and such dates certain far rivers will shut, and, later, certain others, till, at last, even the great eastern gate at quebec locks, and men must go in and out by the side-doors at halifax and st. john. these are conditions that make for extreme boldness, but not for extravagant boastings. the maples tell when it is time to finish, and all work in hand is regulated by their warning signal. some jobs can be put through before winter; others must be laid aside ready to jump forward without a lost minute in spring. thus, from quebec to calgary a note of drive--not hustle, but drive and finish-up--hummed like the steam-threshers on the still, autumn air. hunters and sportsmen were coming in from the north; prospectors with them, their faces foil of mystery, their pockets full of samples, like prospectors the world over. they had already been wearing wolf and coon skin coats. in the great cities which work the year round, carriage--shops exhibited one or two seductive nickel-plated sledges, as a hint; for the sleigh is 'the chariot at hand here of love.' in the country the farmhouses were stacking up their wood-piles within reach of the kitchen door, and taking down the fly-screens, (one leaves these on, as a rule, till the double windows are brought up from the cellar, and one has to hunt all over the house for missing screws.) sometimes one saw a few flashing lengths of new stovepipe in a backyard, and pitied the owner. there is no humour in the old, bitter-true stovepipe jests of the comic papers. but the railways--the wonderful railways--told the winter's tale most emphatically. the thirty-ton coal cars were moving over three thousand miles of track. they grunted and lurched against each other in the switch-yards, or thumped past statelily at midnight on their way to provident housekeepers of the prairie towns. it was not a clear way either; for the bacon, the lard, the apples, the butter, and the cheese, in beautiful whitewood barrels, were rolling eastwards toward the steamers before the wheat should descend on them. that is the fifth act of the great year-play for which the stage must be cleared. on scores of congested sidings lay huge girders, rolled beams, limbs, and boxes of rivets, once intended for the late quebec bridge--now so much mere obstruction--and the victuals had to pick their way through 'em; and behind the victuals was the lumber--clean wood out of the mountains--logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such sinful prices in england--all seeking the sea. there was housing, food, and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out in heaps as high as fifty-pound villas. add to this, that the railways were concerned for their own new developments--double-trackings, loops, cutoffs, taps, and feeder lines, and great swoops out into untouched lands soon to be filled with men. so the construction, ballast, and material trains, the grading machines, the wrecking cars with their camel-like sneering cranes--the whole plant of a new civilisation--had to find room somewhere in the general rally before nature cried, 'lay off!' does any one remember that joyful strong confidence after the war, when it seemed that, at last, south africa was to be developed--when men laid out railways, and gave orders for engines, and fresh rolling-stock, and labour, and believed gloriously in the future? it is true the hope was murdered afterward, but--multiply that good hour by a thousand, and you will have some idea of how it feels to be in canada--a place which even an 'imperial' government cannot kill. i had the luck to be shown some things from the inside--to listen to the details of works projected; the record of works done. above all, i saw what had actually been achieved in the fifteen years since i had last come that way. one advantage of a new land is that it makes you feel older than time. i met cities where there had been nothing--literally, absolutely nothing, except, as the fairy tales say, 'the birds crying, and the grass waving in the wind.' villages and hamlets had grown to great towns, and the great towns themselves had trebled and quadrupled. and the railways rubbed their hands and cried, like the afrites of old, 'shall we make a city where no city is; or render flourishing a city that is dasolate?' they do it too, while, across the water, gentlemen, never forced to suffer one day's physical discomfort in all their lives, pipe up and say, 'how grossly materialistic!' i wonder sometimes whether any eminent novelist, philosopher, dramatist, or divine of to-day has to exercise half the pure imagination, not to mention insight, endurance, and self-restraint, which is accepted without comment in what is called 'the material exploitation' of a new country. take only the question of creating a new city at the junction of two lines--all three in the air. the mere drama of it, the play of the human virtues, would fill a book. and when the work is finished, when the city is, when the new lines embrace a new belt of farms, and the tide of the wheat has rolled north another unexpected degree, the men who did it break off, without compliments, to repeat the joke elsewhere. i had some talk with a youngish man whose business it was to train avalanches to jump clear of his section of the track. thor went to jotunheim only once or twice, and he had his useful hammer miolnr with him. this thor lived in jotunheim among the green-ice-crowned peaks of the selkirks--where if you disturb the giants at certain seasons of the year, by making noises, they will sit upon you and all your fine emotions. so thor watches them glaring under the may sun, or dull and doubly dangerous beneath the spring rains. he wards off their strokes with enormous brattices of wood, wing-walls of logs bolted together, and such other contraptions as experience teaches. he bears the giants no malice; they do their work, he his. what bothers him a little is that the wind of their blows sometimes rips pines out of the opposite hill-sides--explodes, as it were, a whole valley. he thinks, however, he can fix things so as to split large avalanches into little ones. another man, to whom i did not talk, sticks in my memory. he had for years and years inspected trains at the head of a heavyish grade in the mountains--though not half so steep as the hex[ ]--where all brakes are jammed home, and the cars slither warily for ten miles. tire-troubles there would be inconvenient, so he, as the best man, is given the heaviest job--monotony and responsibility combined. he did me the honour of wanting to speak to me, but first he inspected his train--on all fours with a hammer. by the time he was satisfied of the integrity of the underpinnings it was time for us to go; and all that i got was a friendly wave of the hand--a master craftsman's sign, you might call it. [footnote : hex river, south africa.] canada seems full of this class of materialist. which reminds me that the other day i saw the lady herself in the shape of a tall woman of twenty-five or six, waiting for her tram on a street corner. she wore her almost flaxen-gold hair waved, and parted low on the forehead, beneath a black astrachan toque, with a red enamel maple-leaf hatpin in one side of it. this was the one touch of colour except the flicker of a buckle on the shoe. the dark, tailor-made dress had no trinkets or attachments, but fitted perfectly. she stood for perhaps a minute without any movement, both hands--right bare, left gloved--hanging naturally at her sides, the very fingers still, the weight of the superb body carried evenly on both feet, and the profile, which was that of gudrun or aslauga, thrown out against a dark stone column. what struck me most, next to the grave, tranquil eyes, was her slow, unhurried breathing in the hurry about her. she was evidently a regular fare, for when her tram stopped she smiled at the lucky conductor; and the last i saw of her was a flash of the sun on the red maple-leaf, the full face still lighted by that smile, and her hair very pale gold against the dead black fur. but the power of the mouth, the wisdom of the brow, the human comprehension of the eyes, and the outstriking vitality of the creature remained. that is how _i_ would have my country drawn, were i a canadian--and hung in ottawa parliament house, for the discouragement of prevaricators. cities and spaces what would you do with a magic carpet if one were lent you? i ask because for a month we had a private car of our very own--a trifling affair less than seventy foot long and thirty ton weight. 'you may find her useful,' said the donor casually, 'to knock about the country. hitch on to any train you choose and stop off where you choose.' so she bore us over the c.p.r. from the atlantic to the pacific and back, and when we had no more need of her, vanished like the mango tree after the trick. a private car, though many books have been written in it, is hardly the best place from which to study a country, unless it happen that you have kept house and seen the seasons round under normal conditions on the same continent. then you know how the cars look from the houses; which is not in the least as the houses look from the cars. then, the very porter's brush in its nickel clip, the long cathedral-like aisle between the well-known green seats, the toll of the bell and the deep organ-like note of the engine wake up memories; and every sight, smell, and sound outside are like old friends remembering old days together. a piano-top buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed boulders; a wisp of virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder have only touched the life of which they are part. what must they mean to the native-born? there was a prairie-bred girl on the train, coming back after a year on the continent, for whom the pine-belted hills, with real mountains behind, the solemn loops of the river, and the intimate friendly farm had nothing to tell. 'you can do these landscapes better in italy,' she explained, and, with the indescribable gesture of plains folk stifled in broken ground, 'i want to push these hills away and get into the open again! i'm winnipeg.' she would have understood that hanover road schoolmistress, back from a visit to cape town, whom i once saw drive off into thirty miles of mirage almost shouting, 'thank god, here's something like home at last.' other people ricochetted from side to side of the car, reviving this, rediscovering that, anticipating t'other thing, which, sure enough, slid round the next curve to meet them, caring nothing if all the world knew they were home again; and the newly arrived englishman with his large wooden packing-cases marked 'settlers' effects' had no more part in the show than a new boy his first day at school. but two years in canada and one run home will make him free of the brotherhood in canada as it does anywhere else. he may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament certain richnesses only to be found in england, but as surely as he grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. the failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman when it sees him.' they are quite right. the land suspends all judgment on all men till it has seen them work. thereafter as may be; but work they must because there is a very great deal to be done. unluckily the railroads which made the country are bringing in persons who are particular as to the nature and amenities of their work, and if so be they do not find precisely what they are looking for, they complain in print which makes all men seem equal. the special joy of our trip lay in having travelled the line when it was new and, like the canada of those days, not much believed in, when all the high and important officials, whose little fingers unhooked cars, were also small and disregarded. to-day, things, men, and cities were different, and the story of the line mixed itself up with the story of the country, the while the car-wheels clicked out, 'john kino--john kino! nagasaki, yokohama, hakodate, heh!' for we were following in the wake of the imperial limited, all full of hongkong and treaty ports men. there were old, known, and wonderfully grown cities to be looked at before we could get away to the new work out west, and, 'what d'you think of this building and that suburb?' they said, imperiously. 'come out and see what has been done in this generation.' the impact of a continent is rather overwhelming till you remind yourself that it is no more than your own joy and love and pride in your own patch of garden written a little large over a few more acres. again, as always, it was the dignity of the cities that impressed--an austere northern dignity of outline, grouping, and perspective, aloof from the rush of traffic in the streets. montreal, of the black-frocked priests and the french notices, had it; and ottawa, of the grey stone palaces and the st. petersburg-like shining water-frontages; and toronto, consumingly commercial, carried the same power in the same repose. men are always building better than they know, and perhaps this steadfast architecture is waiting for the race when their first flurry of newly-realised expansion shall have spent itself, and the present hurrah's-nest of telephone poles in the streets shall have been abolished. there are strong objections to any non-fusible, bi-lingual community within a nation, but however much the french are made to hang back in the work of development, their withdrawn and unconcerned cathedrals, schools, and convents, and one aspect of the spirit that breathes from them, make for good. says young canada: 'there are millions of dollars' worth of church property in the cities which aren't allowed to be taxed.' on the other hand, the catholic schools and universities, though they are reported to keep up the old medieval mistrust of greek, teach the classics as lovingly, tenderly, and intimately as the old church has always taught them. after all, it must be worth something to say your prayers in a dialect of the tongue that virgil handled; and a certain touch of insolence, more magnificent and more ancient than the insolence of present materialism, makes a good blend in a new land. i had the good fortune to see the cities through the eyes of an englishman out for the first time. 'have you been to the bank?' he cried. 'i've never seen anything like it!' 'what's the matter with the bank?' i asked: for the financial situation across the border was at that moment more than usual picturesque. 'it's wonderful!' said he; 'marble pillars--acres of mosaic--steel grilles--'might be a cathedral. no one ever told me.' 'i shouldn't worry over a bank that pays its depositors,' i replied soothingly. 'there are several like it in ottawa and toronto.' next he ran across some pictures in some palaces, and was downright angry because no one had told him that there were five priceless private galleries in one city. 'look here!' he explained. 'i've been seeing corots, and greuzes, and gainsboroughs, and a holbein, and--and hundreds of really splendid pictures!' 'why shouldn't you?' i said. 'they've given up painting their lodges with vermilion hereabouts.' 'yes, but what i mean is, have you seen the equipment of their schools and colleges--desks, libraries, and lavatories? it's miles ahead of anything we have and--no one ever told me.' 'what was the good of telling? you wouldn't have believed. there's a building in one of the cities, on the lines of the sheldonian, but better, and if you go as far as winnipeg, you'll see the finest hotel in all the world.' 'nonsense!' he said. 'you're pulling my leg! winnipeg's a prairie-town.' i left him still lamenting--about a club and a gymnasium this time--that no one had ever told him about; and still doubting all that he had heard of wonders to come. if we could only manacle four hundred members of parliament, like the chinese in the election cartoons, and walk them round the empire, what an all-comprehending little empire we should be when the survivors got home! certainly the cities have good right to be proud, and i waited for them to boast; but they were so busy explaining they were only at the beginning of things that, for the honour of the family, i had to do the boasting. in this praiseworthy game i credited melbourne (rightly, i hope, but the pace was too good to inquire) with acres of municipal buildings and leagues of art galleries; enlarged the borders of sydney harbour to meet a statement about toronto's, wharfage; and recommended folk to see cape town cathedral when it should be finished. but truth will out even on a visit. our eldest sister has more of beauty and strength inside her three cities alone than the rest of us put together. yet it would do her no harm to send a commission through the ten great cities of the empire to see what is being done there in the way of street cleaning, water-supply, and traffic-regulation. here and there the people are infected with the unworthy superstition of 'hustle,' which means half-doing your appointed job and applauding your own slapdasherie for as long a time as would enable you to finish off two clean pieces of work. little congestions of traffic, that an english rural policeman, in a country town, disentangles automatically, are allowed to develop into ten-minute blocks, where wagons and men bang, and back, and blaspheme, for no purpose except to waste time. the assembly and dispersal of crowds, purchase of tickets, and a good deal of the small machinery of life is clogged and hampered by this unstable, southern spirit which is own brother to panic. 'hustle' does not sit well on the national character any more than falsetto or fidgeting becomes grown men. 'drive,' a laudable and necessary quality, is quite different, and one meets it up the western road where the new country is being made. we got clean away from the three cities and the close-tilled farming and orchard districts, into the land of little lakes--a country of rushing streams, clear-eyed ponds, and boulders among berry-bushes; all crying 'trout' and 'bear.' not so very long ago only a few wise people kept holiday in that part of the world, and they did not give away their discoveries. now it has become a summer playground where people hunt and camp at large. the names of its further rivers are known in england, and men, otherwise sane, slip away from london into the birches, and come out again bearded and smoke-stained, when the ice is thick enough to cut a canoe. sometimes they go to look for game; sometimes for minerals--perhaps, even, oil. no one can prophesy. 'we are only at the beginning of things.' said an afrite of the railway as we passed in our magic carpet: 'you've no notion of the size of our tourist-traffic. it has all grown up since the early 'nineties. the trolley car teaches people in the towns to go for little picnics. when they get more money they go for long ones. all this continent will want playgrounds soon. we're getting them ready.' the girl from winnipeg saw the morning frost lie white on the long grass at the lake edges, and watched the haze of mellow golden birch leaves as they dropped. 'now that's the way trees ought to turn,' she said. 'don't you think our eastern maple is a little violent in colour?' then we passed through a country where for many hours the talk in the cars was of mines and the treatment of ores. men told one tales--prospectors' yarns of the sort one used to hear vaguely before klondike or nome were public property. they did not care whether one believed or doubted. they, too, were only at the beginning of things--silver perhaps, gold perhaps, nickel perhaps. if a great city did not arise at such a place--the very name was new since my day--it would assuredly be born within a few miles of it. the silent men boarded the cars, and dropped off, and disappeared beyond thickets and hills precisely as the first widely spaced line of skirmishers fans out and vanishes along the front of the day's battle. one old man sat before me like avenging time itself, and talked of prophecies of evil, that had been falsified. '_they_ said there wasn't nothing here excep' rocks an' snow. _they_ said there never _wouldn't_ be nothing here excep' the railroad. there's them that can't see _yit_,' and he gimleted me with a fierce eye. 'an' all the while, fortunes is made--piles is made--right under our noses.' 'have you made your pile?' i asked. he smiled as the artist smiles--all true prospectors have that lofty smile--'me? no. i've been a prospector most o' my time, but i haven't lost anything. i've had my fun out of the game. by god, i've had my fun out of it! i told him how i had once come through when land and timber grants could have been picked up for half less than nothing. 'yes,' he said placidly. 'i reckon if you'd had any kind of an education you could ha' made a quarter of a million dollars easy in those days. and it's to be made now if you could see where. how? can you tell me what the capital of the hudson bay district's goin' to be? you can't. nor i. nor yet where the six next new cities is going to arise, i get off here, but if i have my health i'll be out next summer again--prospectin' north.' imagine a country where men prospect till they are seventy, with no fear of fever, fly, horse-sickness, or trouble from the natives--a country where food and water always taste good! he told me curious things about some fabled gold--the eternal mother-lode--out in the north, which is to humble the pride of nome. and yet, so vast is the empire, he had never heard the name of johannesburg! as the train swung round the shores of lake superior the talk swung over to wheat. oh yes, men said, there were mines in the country--they were only at the beginning of mines--but that part of the world existed to clean and grade and handle and deliver the wheat by rail and steamer. the track was being duplicated by a few hundred miles to keep abreast of the floods of it. by and by it might be a four-track road. they were only at the beginning. meantime here was the wheat sprouting, tender green, a foot high, among a hundred sidings where it had spilled from the cars; there were the high-shouldered, tea-caddy grain-elevators to clean, and the hospitals to doctor the wheat; here was new, gaily painted machinery going forward to reap and bind and thresh the wheat, and all those car-loads of workmen had been slapping down more sidings against the year's delivery of the wheat. two towns stand on the shores of the lake less than a mile apart. what lloyd's is to shipping, or the college of surgeons to medicine, that they are to the wheat. its honour and integrity are in their hands; and they hate each other with the pure, poisonous, passionate hatred which makes towns grow. if providence wiped out one of them, the survivor would pine away and die--a mateless hate-bird. some day they must unite, and the question of the composite name they shall then carry already vexes them. a man there told me that lake superior was 'a useful piece of water,' in that it lay so handy to the c.p.r. tracks. there is a quiet horror about the great lakes which grows as one revisits them. fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze and sea-fog. lake superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully accredited ocean--a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. some people go sailing on it for pleasure, and it has produced a breed of sailors who bear the same relation to the salt-water variety as a snake-charmer does to a lion-tamer. yet it is undoubtedly a useful piece of water. newspapers and democracy let it be granted that, as the loud-voiced herald hired by the eolithic tribe to cry the news of the coming day along the caves, preceded the chosen tribal bard who sang the more picturesque history of the tribe, so is journalism senior to literature, in that journalism meets the first tribal need after warmth, food, and women. in new countries it shows clear trace of its descent from the tribal herald. a tribe thinly occupying large spaces feels lonely. it desires to hear the roll-call of its members cried often and loudly; to comfort itself with the knowledge that there are companions just below the horizon. it employs, therefore, heralds to name and describe all who pass. that is why newspapers of new countries seem often so outrageously personal. the tribe, moreover, needs quick and sure knowledge of everything that touches on its daily life in the big spaces--earth, air, and water news which the older peoples have put behind them. that is why its newspapers so often seem so laboriously trivial. for example, a red-nosed member of the tribe, pete o'halloran, comes in thirty miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. the tribal herald--a thin weekly, with a patent inside--connects the red nose and the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. but the tribal herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the tribe may use that road weekly. it concerns them to discover whether the accident was due to pete being drunk or, as pete protests, to the neglected state of the road. fifteen men happen to know that pete's nose is an affliction, not an indication. one of them loafs across and explains to the tribal herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road ought to be mended. meantime pete, warmed to the marrow at having focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after all the time) some tribal authority or other mends the road. this is only a big-scale diagram, but with a little attention you can see the tribal instinct of self-preservation quite logically underrunning all sorts of queer modern developments. as the tribe grows, and men do not behold the horizon from edge to unbroken edge, their desire to know all about the next man weakens a little--but not much. outside the cities are still the long distances, the 'vast, unoccupied areas' of the advertisements; and the men who come and go yearn to keep touch with and report themselves as of old to their lodges. a man stepping out of the dark into the circle of the fires naturally, if he be a true man, holds up his hands and says, 'i, so-and-so, am here.' you can watch the ritual in full swing at any hotel when the reporter (_pro_ tribal herald) runs his eyes down the list of arrivals, and before he can turn from the register is met by the newcomer, who, without special desire for notoriety, explains his business and intentions. observe, it is always at evening that the reporter concerns himself with strangers. by day he follows the activities of his own city and the doings of nearby chiefs; but when it is time to close the stockade, to laager the wagons, to draw the thorn-bush back into the gap, then in all lands he reverts to the tribal herald, who is also the tribal outer guard. there are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering heralds who bob their foul torches in his face till he is singed and smoked at once. in canada the necessary 'stand and deliver your sentiments' goes through with the large decency that stamps all the dominion. a stranger's words are passed on to the tribe quite accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they courteously explain why. it was always delightful to meet the reporters, for they were men interested in their land, with the keen, unselfish interest that one finds in young house-surgeons or civilians. thanks to the (boer) war, many of them had reached out to the ends of our earth, and spoke of the sister nations as it did one good to hear. consequently the interviews--which are as dreary for the reporter as the reported--often turned into pleasant and unpublished talks. one felt at every turn of the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the game--balanced men who believed in decencies not to be disregarded, confidences not to be violated, and honour not to be mocked. (this may explain what men and women have told me--that there is very little of the brutal domestic terrorism of the press in canada, and not much blackmailing.) they neither spat nor wriggled; they interpolated no juicy anecdotes of murder or theft among their acquaintance; and not once between either ocean did they or any other fellow-subjects volunteer that their country was 'law-abiding.' you know the first sign-post on the great main road? 'when a woman advertises that she is virtuous, a man that he is a gentleman, a community that it is loyal, or a country that it is law-abiding--go the other way!' yet, while the men's talk was so good and new, their written word seemed to be cast in conventional, not to say old-fashioned, moulds. a quarter of a century ago a sub-editor, opening his mail, could identify the melbourne _argus_, the sydney _morning herald_, or the cape _times_ as far as he could see them. even unheaded clippings from them declared their origin as a piece of hide betrays the beast that wore it. but he noticed then that canadian journals left neither spoor nor scent--might have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude--and had to be carefully identified by hand. to-day, the spacing, the headlines, the advertising of canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the railway cars of the continent. indeed, looking through a mass of canadian journals is like trying to find one's own sleeper in a corridor train. newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or assembly might be developed. i drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen. 'you mean,' said one straight-eyed youth, 'that we are a back-number copying back-numbers?' it was precisely what i did mean, so i made haste to deny it. 'we know that,' he said cheerfully. 'remember we haven't the sea all round us--and the postal rates to england have only just been lowered. it will all come right.' surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people using second-class words to express first-class emotions. and so naturally from journalism to democracy. every country is entitled to her reservations, and pretences, but the more 'democratic' a land is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect. some of the tribal heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me when it was time to duck in the house of rimmon. during their office hours they professed an unflinching belief in the blessed word 'democracy,' which means any crowd on the move--that is to say, the helpless thing which breaks through floors and falls into cellars; overturns pleasure-boats by rushing from port to starboard; stamps men into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in the doorways of blazing theatres. out of office, like every one else, they relaxed. many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that the only drawback to democracy was demos--a jealous god of primitive tastes and despotic tendencies. i received a faithful portrait of him from a politician who had worshipped him all his life. it was practically the epistle of jeremy--the sixth chapter of baruch--done into unquotable english. but canada is not yet an ideal democracy. for one thing she has had to work hard among rough-edged surroundings which carry inevitable consequences. for another, the law in canada exists and is administered, not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe, or a wrestling turk exhibition, but as an integral part of the national character--no more to be forgotten or talked about than one's trousers. if you kill, you hang. if you steal, you go to jail. this has worked toward peace, self-respect, and, i think, the innate dignity of the people. on the other hand--which is where the trouble will begin--railways and steamers make it possible nowadays to bring in persons who need never lose touch of hot and cold water-taps, spread tables, and crockery till they are turned out, much surprised, into the wilderness. they clean miss the long weeks of salt-water and the slow passage across the plains which pickled and tanned the early emigrants. they arrive with soft bodies and unaired souls. i had this vividly brought home to me by a man on a train among the selkirks. he stood on the safely railed rear-platform, looked at the gigantic pine-furred shoulder round which men at their lives' risk had led every yard of the track, and chirruped: 'i say, why can't all this be nationalised?' there was nothing under heaven except the snows and the steep to prevent him from dropping off the cars and hunting a mine for himself. instead of which he went into the dining-car. that is one type. a man told me the old tale of a crowd of russian immigrants who at a big fire in a city 'verted to the ancestral type, and blocked the streets yelling, 'down with the czar!' that is another type. a few days later i was shown a wire stating that a community of doukhobors--russians again--had, not for the first time, undressed themselves, and were fleeing up the track to meet the messiah before the snow fell. police were pursuing them with warm underclothing, and trains would please take care not to run over them. so there you have three sort of steam-borne unfitness--soft, savage, and mad. there is a fourth brand, which may be either home-grown or imported, but democracies do not recognise it, of downright bad folk--grown, healthy men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. these four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. for example, i read a letter in a paper sympathising with these same doukhobors. the writer knew a community of excellent people in england (you see where the rot starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above marriage. they were a soulful folk, living pure lives. the doukhobors were also pure and soulful, entitled in a free country to live their own lives, and not to be oppressed, etc. etc. (imported soft, observe, playing up to imported mad.) meantime, disgusted police were chasing the doukhobors into flannels that they might live to produce children fit to consort with the sons of the man who wrote that letter and the daughters of the crowd that lost their heads at the fire. 'all of which,' men and women answered, 'we admit. but what can we do? we want people.' and they showed vast and well-equipped schools, where the children of slav immigrants are taught english and the songs of canada. 'when they grow up,' people said, 'you can't tell them from canadians.' it was a wonderful work. the teacher holds up pens, reels, and so forth, giving the name in english; the children repeating chinese fashion. presently when they have enough words they can bridge back to the knowledge they learned in their own country, so that a boy of twelve, at, say, the end of a year, will produce a well-written english account of his journey from russia, how much his mother paid for food by the way, and where his father got his first job. he will also lay his hand on his heart, and say, 'i--am--a--canadian.' this gratifies the canadian, who naturally purrs over an emigrant owing everything to the land which adopted him and set him on his feet. the lady bountiful of an english village takes the same interest in a child she has helped on in the world. and the child repays by his gratitude and good behaviour? personally, one cannot care much for those who have renounced their own country. they may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. a thousand years cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the races across the border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, and morale the south and south-east profoundly and fatally affects the north and north-west. that was why the sight of the beady-eyed, muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and oriental bundles in their hands, always distressed one. 'but _why_ must you get this stuff?' i asked. 'you know it is not your equal, and it knows that it is not your equal; and that is bad for you both. what is the matter with the english as immigrants?' the answers were explicit: 'because the english do not work. because we are sick of remittance-men and loafers sent out here. because the english are rotten with socialism. because the english don't fit with our life. they kick at our way of doing things. they are always telling us how things are done in england. they carry frills! don't you know the story of the englishman who lost his way and was found half-dead of thirst beside a river? when he was asked why he didn't drink, he said, "how the deuce can i without a glass?"' 'but,' i argued over three thousand miles of country, 'all these are excellent reasons for bringing in the englishman. it is true that in his own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. here, general january will stiffen him up. remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of the family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer from a few thousand of them among your six millions. as to the englishman's socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal alive. what you call socialism is his intellectual equivalent for diabolo and limerick competitions. as to his criticisms, you surely wouldn't marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought to choose your immigrants on the same lines. you admit that the canadian is too busy to kick at anything. the englishman is a born kicker. ("yes, he is all that," they said.) he kicks on principle, and that is what makes for civilisation. so did your englishman's instinct about the glass. every new country needs--vitally needs--one-half of one per cent of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of their hands. you are always talking of the second generation of your smyrniotes and bessarabians. think what the second generation of the english are!' they thought--quite visibly--but they did not much seem to relish it. there was a queer stringhalt in their talk--a conversational shy across the road--when one touched on these subjects. after a while i went to a tribal herald whom i could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where the trouble really lay, and who was behind it. 'it is labour,' he said. 'you had better leave it alone.' labour one cannot leave a thing alone if it is thrust under the nose at every turn. i had not quitted the quebec steamer three minutes when i was asked point-blank: 'what do you think of the question of asiatic exclusion which is agitating our community?' the second sign-post on the great main road says: 'if a community is agitated by a question--inquire politely after the health of the agitator,' this i did, without success; and had to temporise all across the continent till i could find some one to help me to acceptable answers. the question appears to be confined to british columbia. there, after a while, the men who had their own reasons for not wishing to talk referred me to others who explained, and on the acutest understanding that no names were to be published (it is sweet to see engineers afraid of being hoist by their own petards) one got more or less at something like facts. the chinaman has always been in the habit of coming to british columbia, where he makes, as he does elsewhere, the finest servant in the world. no one, i was assured on all hands, objects to the biddable chinaman. he takes work which no white man in a new country will handle, and when kicked by the mean white will not grossly retaliate. he has always paid for the privilege of making his fortune on this wonderful coast, but with singular forethought and statesmanship, the popular will, some few years ago, decided to double the head-tax on his entry. strange as it may appear, the chinaman now charges double for his services, and is scarce at that. this is said to be one of the reasons why overworked white women die or go off their heads; and why in new cities you can see blocks of flats being built to minimise the inconveniences of housekeeping without help. the birth-rate will fall later in exact proportion to those flats. since the russo-japanese war the japanese have taken to coming over to british columbia. they also do work which no white man will; such as hauling wet logs for lumber mills out of cold water at from eight to ten shillings a day. they supply the service in hotels and dining-rooms and keep small shops. the trouble with them is that they are just a little too good, and when attacked defend themselves with asperity. a fair sprinkling of punjabis--ex-soldiers, sikhs, muzbis, and jats--are coming in on the boats. the plague at home seems to have made them restless, but i could not gather why so many of them come from shahpur, phillour, and jullundur way. these men do not, of course, offer for house-service, but work in the lumber mills, and with the least little care and attention could be made most valuable. some one ought to tell them not to bring their old men with them, and better arrangements should be made for their remitting money home to their villages. they are not understood, of course; but they are not hated. the objection is all against the japanese. so far--except that they are said to have captured the local fishing trade at vancouver, precisely as the malays control the cape town fish business--they have not yet competed with the whites; but i was earnestly assured by many men that there was danger of their lowering the standard of life and wages. the demand, therefore, in certain quarters is that they go--absolutely and unconditionally. (you may have noticed that democracies are strong on the imperative mood.) an attempt was made to shift them shortly before i came to vancouver, but it was not very successful, because the japanese barricaded their quarters and flocked out, a broken bottle held by the neck in either hand, which they jabbed in the faces of the demonstrators. it is, perhaps, easier to haze and hammer bewildered hindus and tamils, as is being done across the border, than to stampede the men of the yalu and liaoyang.[ ] [footnote : battles in the russo-japanese war.] but when one began to ask questions one got lost in a maze of hints, reservations, and orations, mostly delivered with constraint, as though the talkers were saying a piece learned by heart. here are some samples:-- a man penned me in a corner with a single heavily capitalised sentence. 'there is a general sentiment among our people that the japanese must go,' said he. 'very good,' said i. 'how d'you propose to set about it?' 'that is nothing to us. there is a general sentiment,' etc. 'quite so. sentiment is a beautiful thing, but what are you going to do?' he did not condescend to particulars, but kept repeating the sentiment, which, as i promised, i record. another man was a little more explicit. 'we desire,' he said, 'to keep the chinaman. but the japanese must go.' 'then who takes their place? isn't this rather a new country to pitch people out of?' 'we must develop our resources slowly, sir--with an eye to the interests of our children. we must preserve the continent for races which will assimilate with ours. we must not be swamped by aliens.' 'then bring in your own races and bring 'em in quick,' i ventured. this is the one remark one must not make in certain quarters of the west; and i lost caste heavily while he explained (exactly as the dutch did at the cape years ago) how british columbia was by no means so rich as she appeared; that she was throttled by capitalists and monopolists of all kinds; that white labour had to be laid off and fed and warmed during the winter; that living expenses were enormously high; that they were at the end of a period of prosperity, and were now entering on lean years; and that whatever steps were necessary for bringing in more white people should be taken with extreme caution. then he added that the railway rates to british columbia were so high that emigrants were debarred from coming on there. 'but haven't the rates been reduced?' i asked. 'yes--yes, i believe they have, but immigrants are so much in demand that they are snapped up before they have got so far west. you must remember, too, that skilled labour is not like agricultural labour. it is dependent on so many considerations. and the japanese must go.' 'so people have told me. but i heard stories of dairies and fruit-farms in british columbia being thrown up because there was no labour to milk or pick the fruit. is that true, d'you think?' 'well, you can't expect a man with all the chances that our country offers him to milk cows in a pasture. a chinaman can do that. we want races that will assimilate with ours,' etc., etc. 'but didn't the salvation army offer to bring in three or four thousand english some short time ago? what came of that idea?' 'it--er--fell through.' 'why?' 'for political reasons, i believe. we do not want people who will lower the standard of living. that is why the japanese must go.' 'then why keep the chinese?' 'we can get on with the chinese. we can't get on without the chinese. but we must have emigration of a type that will assimilate with our people. i hope i have made myself clear?' i hoped that he had, too. now hear a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper. 'we have to pay for this precious state of things with our health and our children's. do you know the saying that the frontier is hard on women and cattle? this isn't the frontier, but in some respects it's worse, because we have all the luxuries and appearances--the pretty glass and silver to put on the table. we have to dust, polish, and arrange 'em after we've done our housework. i don't suppose that means anything to you, but--try it for a month! we have no help. a chinaman costs fifty or sixty dollars a month now. our husbands can't always afford that. how old would you take me for? i'm not thirty. well thank god, i stopped my sister coming out west. oh yes, it's a fine country--for men.' 'can't you import servants from england?' 'i can't pay a girl's passage in order to have her married in three months. besides, she wouldn't work. they won't when they see chinamen working.' 'do you object to the japanese, too?' 'of course not. no one does. it's only politics. the wives of the men who earn six and seven dollars a day--skilled labour they call it--have chinese and jap servants. _we_ can't afford it. _we_ have to think of saving for the future, but those other people live up to every cent they earn. they know _they're_ all right. they're labour. they'll be looked after, whatever happens. you can see how the state looks after me.' a little later i had occasion to go through a great and beautiful city between six and seven of a crisp morning. milk and fish, vegetables, etc., were being delivered to the silent houses by chinese and japanese. not a single white man was visible on that chilly job. later still a man came to see me, without too publicly giving his name. he was in a small way of business, and told me (others had said much the same thing) that if i gave him away his business would suffer. he talked for half an hour on end. 'am i to understand, then,' i said, 'that what you call labour absolutely dominates this part of the world?' he nodded. 'that it is difficult to get skilled labour into here?' 'difficult? my god, if i want to get an extra hand for my business--i pay union wages, of course--i have to arrange to get him here secretly. i have to go out and meet him, accidental-like, down the line, and if the unions find out that he is coming, they, like as not, order him back east, or turn him down across the border.' 'even if he has his union ticket? why?' 'they'll tell him that labour conditions are not good here. he knows what that means. he'll turn back quick enough. i'm in a small way of business, and i can't afford to take any chances fighting the unions.' 'what would happen if you did?' 'd'you know what's happening across the border? men get blown up there--with dynamite.' 'but this isn't across the border?' 'it's a damn-sight too near to be pleasant. and witnesses get blown up, too. you see, the labour situation ain't run from our side the line. it's worked from down under. you may have noticed men were rather careful when they talked about it?' 'yes, i noticed all that.' 'well, it ain't a pleasant state of affairs. i don't say that the unions here would do anything _to_ you--and please understand i'm all for the rights of labour myself. labour has no better friend than me--i've been a working man, though i've got a business of my own now. don't run away with any idea that i'm against labour--will you?' 'not in the least. i can see that. you merely find that labour's a little bit--er--inconsiderate, sometimes?' 'look what happens across the border! i suppose they've told you that little fuss with the japanese in vancouver was worked from down under, haven't they? i don't think our own people 'ud have done it by themselves.' 'i've heard that several times. is it quite sporting, do you think, to lay the blame on another country?' '_you_ don't live here. but as i was saying--if we get rid of the japs to-day, we'll be told to get rid of some one else to-morrow. there's no limit, sir, to what labour wants. none!' 'i thought they only want a fair day's wage for a fair day's work?' 'that may do in the old country, but here they mean to boss the country. they do.' 'and how does the country like it?' 'we're about sick of it. it don't matter much in flush times--employers'll do most anything sooner than stop work--but when we come to a pinch, you'll hear something. we're a rich land--in spite of everything they make out--but we're held up at every turn by labour. why, there's businesses on businesses which friends of mine--in a small way like myself--want to start. businesses in every direction--if they was only allowed to start in. but they ain't.' 'that's a pity. now, what do you think about the japanese question?' 'i don't think. i know. both political parties are playing up to the labour vote--if you understand what that means.' i tried to understand. 'and neither side'll tell the truth--that if the asiatic goes, this side of the continent'll drop out of sight, unless we get free white immigration. and any party that proposed white immigration on a large scale 'ud be snowed under next election. i'm telling you what politicians think. myself, i believe if a man stood up to labour--not that i've any feeling against labour--and just talked sense, a lot of people would follow him--quietly, of course. i believe he could even get white immigration after a while. he'd lose the first election, of course, but in the long run.... we're about sick of labour. i wanted you to know the truth.' 'thank you. and you don't think any attempt to bring in white immigration would succeed?' 'not if it didn't suit labour. you can try it if you like, and see what happens.' on that hint i made an experiment in another city. there were three men of position, and importance, and affluence, each keenly interested in the development of their land, each asserting that what the land needed was white immigrants. and we four talked for two hours on the matter--up and down and in circles. the one point on which those three men were unanimous was, that whatever steps were taken to bring people into british columbia from england, by private recruiting or otherwise, should be taken secretly. otherwise the business of the people concerned in the scheme would suffer. at which point i dropped the great question of asiatic exclusion which is agitating all our community; and i leave it to you, especially in australia and the cape, to draw your own conclusions. externally, british columbia appears to be the richest and the loveliest section of the continent. over and above her own resources she has a fair chance to secure an immense asiatic trade, which she urgently desires. her land, in many places over large areas, is peculiarly fitted for the small former and fruit-grower, who can send his truck to the cities. on every hand i heard a demand for labour of all kinds. at the same time, in no other part of the continent did i meet so many men who insistently decried the value and possibilities of their country, or who dwelt more fluently on the hardships and privations to be endured by the white immigrant. i believe that one or two gentlemen have gone to england to explain the drawbacks _viva voce_. it is possible that they incur a great responsibility in the present, and even a terrible one for the future. the fortunate towns after politics, let us return to the prairie which is the high veldt, plus hope, activity, and reward. winnipeg is the door to it--a great city in a great plain, comparing herself, innocently enough, to other cities of her acquaintance, but quite unlike any other city. when one meets, in her own house, a woman not seen since girlhood she is all a stranger till some remembered tone or gesture links up to the past, and one cries: 'it _is_ you after all.' but, indeed, the child has gone; the woman with her influences has taken her place. i tried vainly to recover the gawky, graceless city i had known, so unformed and so insistent on her shy self. i even ventured to remind a man of it. 'i remember,' he said, smiling, 'but we were young then. this thing,' indicating an immense perspective of asphalted avenue that dipped under thirty railway tracks, 'only came up in the last ten years--practically the last five. we've had to enlarge all those warehouses yonder by adding two or three stories to 'em, and we've hardly begun to go ahead yet. we're just beginning.' warehouses, railway-sidings, and such are only counters in the white man's game, which can be swept up and re-dealt as the play varies. it was the spirit in the thin dancing air--the new spirit of the new city--which rejoiced me. winnipeg has things in abundance, but has learned to put them beneath her feet, not on top of her mind, and so is older than many cities. none the less the things had to be shown--for what shopping is to the woman showing off his town is to the right-minded man. first came the suburbs--miles on miles of the dainty, clean-outlined, wooden-built houses, where one can be so happy and so warm, each unjealously divided from its neighbour by the lightest of boundaries. one could date them by their architecture, year after year, back to the early 'nineties, which is when civilisation began; could guess within a few score dollars at their cost and the incomes of their owners, and could ask questions about the new domestic appliances of to-day. 'asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks came up a few years ago,' said our host as we trotted over miles of it. 'we found it the only way to fight the prairie mud. look!' where the daring road ended, there lay unsubdued, level with the pale asphalt, the tenacious prairie, over which civilisation fought her hub-deep way to the west. and with asphalt and concrete they fight the prairie back every building season. next came the show-houses, built by rich men with an eye to the honour and glory of their city, which is the first obligation of wealth in a new land. we twisted and turned among broad, clean, tree-lined, sunlit boulevards and avenues, all sluiced down with an air that forbade any thought of fatigue, and talked of city government and municipal taxation, till, in a certain silence, we were shown a suburb of uncared-for houses, shops, and banks, whose sides and corners were rubbed greasy by the shoulders of loafers. dirt and tin cans lay about the street. yet it was not the squalor of poverty so much as the lack of instinct to keep clean. one race prefers to inhabit there. next a glimpse of a cold, white cathedral, red-brick schools almost as big (thank goodness!) as some convents; hospitals, institutions, a mile or so of shops, and then a most familiar-feeling lunch at a club which would have amazed my englishman at montreal, where men, not yet old, talked of fort garry as they remembered it, and tales of the founding of the city, of early administrative shifts and accidents, mingled with the younger men's prophecies and frivolities. there are a few places still left where men can handle big things with a light touch, and take more for granted in five minutes than an englishman at home could puzzle out in a year. but one would not meet many english at a lunch in a london club who took the contract for building london wall or helped bully king john into signing magna charta. i had two views of the city--one on a gray day from the roof of a monster building, whence it seemed to overflow and fill with noises the whole vast cup of the horizon; and still, all round its edge, jets of steam and the impatient cries of machinery showed it was eating out into the prairie like a smothered fire. the other picture was a silhouette of the city's flank, mysterious as a line of unexplored cliffs, under a sky crimson--barred from the zenith to the ground, where it lay, pale emerald behind the uneven ramparts. as our train halted in the last of the dusk, and the rails glowed dull red, i caught the deep surge of it, and seven miles across the purple levels saw the low, restless aurora of its lights. it is rather an awesome thing to listen to a vanguard of civilisation talking to itself in the night in the same tone as a thousand-year-old city. all the country hereabouts is riddled with railways for business and pleasure undreamed of fifteen years ago, and it was a long time before we reached the clear prairie of air and space and open land. the air is different from any air that ever blew; the space is ampler than most spaces, because it runs back to the unhampered pole, and the open land keeps the secret of its magic as closely as the sea or the desert. people here do not stumble against each other around corners, but see largely and tranquilly from a long way off what they desire, or wish to avoid, and they shape their path accordingly across the waves, and troughs, and tongues, and dips and fans of the land. when mere space and the stoop of the high sky begin to overwhelm, earth provides little ponds and lakes, lying in soft-flanked hollows, where people can step down out of the floods of air, and delight themselves with small and known distances. most of the women i saw about the houses were down in the hollows, and most of the men were on the crests and the flats. once, while we halted a woman drove straight down at us from the sky-line, along a golden path between black ploughed lands. when the horse, who managed affairs, stopped at the cars, she nodded mysteriously, and showed us a very small baby in the hollow of her arm. doubtless she was some exiled queen flying north to found a dynasty and establish a country. the prairie makes everything wonderful. they were threshing the wheat on both sides or the track as far as the eye could see. the smoke of the machines went up in orderly perspective alongside the mounds of chaff--thus: a machine, a house, a mound of chaff, a stretch of wheat in stocks--and then repeat the pattern over the next few degrees of longitude. we ran through strings of nearly touching little towns, where i remembered an occasional shack; and through big towns once represented by a name-board, a siding, and two troopers of the north-west police. in those days men proved that wheat would not grow north of some fool's line, or other, or, if it did, that no one would grow it. and now the wheat was marching with us as far as the eye could reach; the railways were out, two, three hundred miles north, peopling a new wheat country; and north of that again the grand trunk was laying down a suburban extension of a few thousand miles across the continent, with branches perhaps to dawson city, certainly to hudson bay. 'come north and look!' cried the afrites of the railway. 'you're only on the fringe of it here.' i preferred to keep the old road, and to gape at miracles accomplished since my day. the old, false-fronted, hollow-stomached western hotels were gone; their places filled by five-storey brick or stone ones, with post offices to match. occasionally some overlooked fragment of the past still cleaved to a town, and marked it for an old acquaintance, but often one had to get a mile away and look back on a place--as one holds a palimpsest up against the light--to identify the long overlaid lines of the beginnings. each town supplied the big farming country behind it, and each town school carried the union jack on a flagstaff in its playground. so far as one could understand, the scholars are taught neither to hate, nor despise, nor beg from, their own country. i whispered to a man that i was a little tired of a three days' tyranny of wheat, besides being shocked at farmers who used clean bright straw for fuel, and made bonfires of their chaff-hills. 'you're 'way behind the times,' said he. 'there's fruit and dairying and any quantity of mixed farming going forward all around--let alone irrigation further west. wheat's not our only king by a long sight. wait till you strike such and such a place.' it was there i met a prophet and a preacher in the shape of a commissioner of the local board of trade (all towns have them), who firmly showed me the vegetables which his district produced. they _were_ vegetables too--all neatly staged in a little kiosk near the station. i think the pious thomas tusser would have loved that man. 'providence,' said he, shedding pamphlets at every gesture, 'did not intend everlasting wheat in this section. no, sir! our business is to keep ahead of providence--to meet her with mixed farming. are you interested in mixed farming? psha! too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. it draws people together, mixed farming does. i don't say wheat is narrowing to the outlook, but i claim there's more sociability and money in mixed farming. we've been hypnotised by wheat and cattle. now--the cars won't start yet awhile--i'll just tell you my ideas.' for fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making sugar in alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of all things, with proper devotion. 'what we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men--more men. yes, and women.' they need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work at harvest time--maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run till they are married. a steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting others from england; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised emigration work ('labour' does not yet object to people working on the land) we might do something worth talking about. the races which work and do not form committees are going into the country at least as fast as ours. it makes one jealous and afraid to watch aliens taking, and taking honestly, so much of this treasure of good fortune and sane living. there was a town down the road which i had first heard discussed nigh twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'young feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll hear of that town if you live. she's born lucky.' i saw the town later--it was a siding by a trestle bridge where indians sold beadwork--and as years passed i gathered that the old tramp's prophecy had come true, and that luck of some kind had struck the little town by the big river. so, this trip, i stopped to make sure. it was a beautiful town of six thousand people, and a railway junction, beside a high-girdered iron bridge; there was a public garden with trees at the station. a company of joyous men and women, whom that air and that light, and their own goodwill, made our brothers and sisters, came along in motors, and gave us such a day as never was. 'what about the luck?' i asked. 'heavens!' said one. 'haven't you heard about our natural gas--the greatest natural gas in the world? oh, come and see!' i was whirled off to a roundhouse full of engines and machinery-shops, worked by natural gas which comes out of the earth, smelling slightly of fried onions, at a pressure of six hundred pounds, and by valves and taps is reduced to four pounds. there was luck enough to make a metropolis. imagine a city's heating and light--to say nothing of power--laid on at no greater expense than that of piping! 'are there any limits to the possibilities of it?' i demanded. 'who knows? we're only at the beginning. we'll show you a brick-making plant, out on the prairie, run by gas. but just now we want to show you one of our pet farms.' away swooped the motors, like swallows, over roads any width you please, and up on to what looked like the high veldt itself. a major of the mounted police, who had done a year at the (boer) war, told us how the ostrich-farm fencing and the little meercats sitting up and racing about south africa had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. (the prairie has nothing to learn from the veldt about fencing, or tricky gates.) 'after all,' said the major, 'there's no country to touch this. i've had thirty years of it--from one end to the other.' then they pointed out all the quarters of the horizon--say, fifty miles wherever you turned--and gave them names. the show farmer had taken his folk to church, but we friendly slipped through his gates and reached the silent, spick-and-span house, with its trim barn, and a vast mound of copper-coloured wheat, piled in the sun between two mounds of golden chaff. every one thumbed a sample of it and passed judgment--it must have been worth a few hundred golden sovereigns as it lay, out on the veldt--and we sat around, on the farm machinery, and, in the hush that a shut-up house always imposes, we seemed to hear the lavish earth getting ready for new harvests. there was no true wind, but a push, as it were, of the whole crystal atmosphere. 'now for the brickfield!' they cried. it was many miles off. the road fed by a never-to-be-forgotten drop, to a river broad as the orange at norval's pont, rustling between mud hills. an old scotchman, in the very likeness of charon, with big hip boots, controlled a pontoon, which sagged back and forth by current on a wire rope. the reckless motors bumped on to this ferry through a foot of water, and charon, who never relaxed, bore us statelily across the dark, broad river to the further bank, where we all turned to look at the lucky little town, and discuss its possibilities. 'i think you can see it best from here,' said one. 'no, from here,' said another, and their voices softened on the very name of it. then for an hour we raced over true prairie, great yellow-green plains crossed by old buffalo trails, which do not improve motor springs, till a single chimney broke the horizon like a mast at sea; and thereby were more light-hearted men and women, a shed and a tent or two for workmen, the ribs and frames of the brick-making mechanism, a fifteen foot square shaft sunk, sixty foot down to the clay, and, stark and black, the pipe of a natural-gas well. the rest was prairie--the mere curve of the earth--with little grey birds calling. i thought it could not have been simpler, more audacious or more impressive, till i saw some women in pretty frocks go up and peer at the hissing gas-valves. 'we fancied that it might amuse you,' said all those merry people, and between laughter and digressions they talked over projects for building, first their own, and next other cities, in brick of all sorts; giving figures of output and expenses of plant that made one gasp. to the eye the affair was no more than a novel or delicious picnic. what it actually meant was a committee to change the material of civilisation for a hundred miles around. i felt as though i were assisting at the planning of nineveh; and whatever of good comes to the little town that was born lucky i shall always claim a share. but there is no space to tell how we fed, with a prairie appetite, in the men's quarters, on a meal prepared by an artist; how we raced home at speeds no child could ever hear of, and no grown-up should attempt; how the motors squattered at the ford, and took pot-shots at the pontoon till even charon smiled; how great horses hauled the motors up the gravelly bank into the town; how there we met people in their sunday best, walking and driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished because they thought that their guests might be tired. i can give you no notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it--of the almost affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so delicately controlled the whole affair--any more than i can describe a certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green. it was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt, 'you see, we just love our town,' 'so do we,' i said, and it slid behind us. mountains and the pacific the prairie proper ends at calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills, breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. the river that floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle like prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows. what i saw of calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were invented to run about new cities). what i heard i picked up, oddly enough, weeks later, from a young dane in the north sea. he was qualmish, but his saga of triumph upheld him. 'three years ago i come to canada by steerage--third class. _and_ i have the language to learn. look at me! i have now my own dairy business, in calgary, and--look at me!--my own half section, that is, three hundred and twenty acres. all my land which is mine! and now i come home, first class, for christmas here in denmark, and i shall take out back with me, some friends of mine which are farmers, to farm on those irrigated lands near by calgary. oh, i tell you there is nothing wrong with canada for a man which works.' 'and will your friends go?' i inquired. 'you bet they will. it is all arranged already. i bet they get ready to go now already; and in three years they will come back for christmas here in denmark, first class like me.' 'then you think calgary is going ahead?' 'you bet! we are only at the beginning of things. look at me! chickens? i raise chickens also in calgary,' etc., etc. after all this pageant of unrelieved material prosperity, it was a rest to get to the stillness of the big foothills, though they, too, had been in-spanned for the work of civilisation. the timber off their sides was ducking and pitch-poling down their swift streams, to be sawn into house-stuff for all the world. the woodwork of a purely english villa may come from as many imperial sources as its owner's income. the train crept, whistling to keep its heart up, through the winding gateways of the hills, till it presented itself, very humbly, before the true mountains, the not so little brothers to the himalayas. mountains of the pine-cloaked, snow-capped breed are unchristian things. men mine into the flanks of some of them, and trust to modern science to pull them through. not long ago, a mountain kneeled on a little mining village as an angry elephant kneels; but it did not get up again, and the half of that camp was no more seen on earth. the other half still stands--uninhabited. the 'heathen in his blindness' would have made arrangements with the genius of the place before he ever drove a pick there. 'as a learned scholar of a little-known university once observed to an engineer officer on the himalaya-tibet road--'you white men gain nothing by not noticing what you cannot see. you fall off the road, or the road falls on you, and you die, and you think it all an accident. how much wiser it was when we were allowed to sacrifice a man officially, sir, before making bridges or other public works. then the local gods were officially recognised, sir, and did not give any more trouble, and the local workmen, sir, were much pleased with these precautions.' there are many local gods on the road through the rockies: old bald mountains that have parted with every shred of verdure and stand wrapped in sheets of wrinkled silver rock, over which the sight travels slowly as in delirium; mad, horned mountains, wreathed with dancing mists; low-browed and bent-shouldered faquirs of the wayside, sitting in meditation beneath a burden of glacier-ice that thickens every year; and mountains of fair aspect on one side, but on the other seamed with hollow sunless clefts, where last year's snow is blackened with this year's dirt and smoke of forest-fires. the drip from it seeps away through slopes of unstable gravel and dirt, till, at the appointed season, the whole half-mile of undermined talus slips and roars into the horrified valley. the railway winds in and out among them with little inexplicable deviations and side-twists, much as a buck walks through a forest-glade, sidling and crossing uneasily in what appears to be a plain way. only when the track has rounded another shoulder or two, a backward and upward glance at some menacing slope shows why the train did not take the easier-looking road on the other side of the gorge. from time to time the mountains lean apart, and nurse between them some golden valley of slow streams, fat pastures, and park-like uplands, with a little town, and cow bells tinkling among berry bushes; and children who have never seen the sun rise or set, shouting at the trains; and real gardens round the houses. at calgary it was a frost, and the dahlias were dead. a day later nasturtiums bloomed untouched beside the station platforms, and the air was heavy and liquid with the breath of the pacific. one felt the spirit of the land change with the changing outline of the hills till, on the lower levels by the fraser, it seemed that even the sussex downs must be nearer at heart to the prairie than british columbia. the prairie people notice the difference, and the hill people, unwisely, i think, insist on it. perhaps the magic may lie in the scent of strange evergreens and mosses not known outside the ranges: or it may strike from wall to wall of timeless rifts and gorges, but it seemed to me to draw out of the great sea that washes further asia--the asia of allied mountains, mines, and forests. we rested one day high up in the rockies, to visit a lake carved out of pure jade, whose property is to colour every reflection on its bosom to its own tint. a belt of brown dead timber on a gravel scar, showed, upside down, like sombre cypresses rising from green turf and the reflected snows were pale green. in summer many tourists go there, but we saw nothing except the wonderworking lake lying mute in its circle of forest, where red and orange lichens grew among grey and blue moss, and we heard nothing except the noise of its outfall hurrying through a jam of bone-white logs. the thing might have belonged to tibet or some unexplored valley behind kin-chinjunga. it had no concern with the west. as we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired, bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. a string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them. 'indians on the move?' said i. 'how characteristic!' as the women jolted by, one of them very slightly turned her eyes, and they were, past any doubt, the comprehending equal eyes of the civilised white woman which moved in that berry-brown face. 'yes,' said our driver, when the cavalcade had navigated the next curve,' that'll be mrs. so-and-so and miss so-and-so. they mostly camp hereabout for three months every year. i reckon they're coming in to the railroad before the snow falls.' 'and whereabout do they go?' i asked. 'oh, all about anywheres. if you mean where they come from just now--that's the trail yonder.' he pointed to a hair-crack across the face of a mountain, and i took his word for it that it was a safe pony-trail. the same evening, at an hotel of all the luxuries, a slight woman in a very pretty evening frock was turning over photographs, and the eyes beneath the strictly-arranged hair were the eyes of the woman in the beadwork jacket who had quirted the piebald pack-pony past our buggy. praised be allah for the diversity of his creatures! but do you know any other country where two women could go out for a three months' trek and shoot in perfect comfort and safety? these mountains are only ten days from london, and people more and more use them for pleasure-grounds. other and most unthought-of persons buy little fruit-farms in british columbia as an excuse for a yearly visit to the beautiful land, and they tempt yet more people from england. this is apart from the regular tide of emigration, and serves to make the land known. if you asked a state-owned railway to gamble on the chance of drawing tourists, the commissioner of railways would prove to you that the experiment could never succeed, and that it was wrong to risk the taxpayers' money in erecting first-class hotels. yet south africa could, even now, be made a tourists' place--if only the railroads and steamship lines had faith. on thinking things over i suspect i was not intended to appreciate the merits of british columbia too highly. maybe i misjudged; maybe she was purposely misrepresented; but i seemed to hear more about 'problems' and 'crises' and 'situations' in her borders than anywhere else. so far as eye or ear could gather, the one urgent problem was to find enough men and women to do the work in hand. lumber, coal, minerals, fisheries, fit soil for fruit, dairy, and poultry farms are all there in a superb climate. the natural beauty of earth and sky match these lavish gifts; to which are added thousands of miles of safe and sheltered waterways for coastal trade; deep harbours that need no dredge; the ground-works of immense and ice-free ports--all the title-deeds to half the trade of asia. for the people's pleasure and good disport salmon, trout, quail, and pheasant play in front of and through the suburbs of her capitals. a little axe-work and road-metalling gives a city one of the loveliest water-girt parks that we have outside the tropics. another town is presented with a hundred islands, knolls, wooded coves, stretches of beach, and dingles, laid down as expressly for camp-life, picnics, and boating parties, beneath skies never too hot and rarely too cold. if they care to lift up their eyes from their almost subtropical gardens they can behold snowy peaks across blue bays, which must be good for the soul. though they face a sea out of which any portent may arise, they are not forced to protect or even to police its waters. they are as ignorant of drouth, murrain, pestilence locusts, and blight, as they are of the true meaning of want and fear. such a land is good for an energetic man. it is also not so bad for the loafer. i was, as i have told you, instructed on its, drawbacks. i was to understand that there was no certainty in any employment; and that a man who earned immense wages for six months of the year would have to be kept by the community if he fell out of work for the other six. i was not to be deceived by golden pictures set before me by interested parties (that is to say, by almost every one i met), and i was to give due weight to the difficulties and discouragements that beset the intending immigrant. were i an intending immigrant i would risk a good deal of discomfort to get on to the land in british columbia; and were i rich, with no attachments outside england, i would swiftly buy me a farm or a house in that country for the mere joy of it. i forgot those doleful and unhumorous conspirators among people who fervently believed in the place; but afterwards the memory left a bad taste in my mouth. cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort of men they allow to talk about them. time had changed vancouver literally out of all knowledge. from the station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange, and where i remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. vancouver is an aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the vancouver baby--_i.e._ the first child born in vancouver--had been married. a steamer--once familiar in table bay--had landed a few hundred sikhs and punjabi jats--to each man his bundle--and the little groups walked uneasy alone, keeping, for many of them had been soldiers, to the military step. yes, they said they had come to this country to get work. news had reached their villages that work at great wages was to be had in this country. their brethren who had gone before had sent them the news. yes, and sometimes the money for the passage out. the money would be paid back from the so-great wages to come. with interest? assuredly with interest.. did men lend money for nothing in _any_ country? they were waiting for their brethren to come and show them where to eat, and later, how to work. meanwhile this was a new country. how could they say anything about it? no, it was not like gurgaon or shahpur or jullundur. the sickness (plague) had come to all these places. it had come into the punjab by every road, and many--many--many had died. the crops, too, had failed in some districts. hearing the news about these so-great wages they had taken ship for the belly's sake--for the money's sake--for the children's sake. 'would they go back again?' they grinned as they nudged each other. the sahib had not quite understood. they had come over for the sake of the money--the rupees, no, the dollars. the punjab was their home where their villages lay, where their people were waiting. without doubt--without doubt--they would go back. then came the brethren already working in the mills--cosmopolitans dressed in ready-made clothes, and smoking cigarettes. 'this way, o you people,' they cried. the bundles were reshouldered and the turbaned knots melted away. the last words i caught were true sikh talk: 'but what about the money, o my brother?' some punjabis have found out that money can be too dearly bought. there was a sikh in a sawmill, had been driver in a mountain battery at home. himself he was from amritsar. (oh, pleasant as cold water in a thirsty land is the sound of a familiar name in a fair country!) 'but you had your pension. why did you come here?' 'heaven-born, because my sense was little. and there was also the sickness at amritsar.' (the historian a hundred years hence will be able to write a book on economic changes brought about by pestilence. there is a very interesting study somewhere of the social and commercial effects of the black death in england.) on a wharf, waiting for a steamer, some thirty sikhs, many of them wearing their old uniforms (which should not be allowed) were talking at the tops of their voices, so that the shed rang like an indian railway station. a suggestion that if they spoke lower life would be easier was instantly adopted. then a senior officer with a british india medal asked hopefully: 'has the sahib any orders where we are to go?' alas he had none--nothing but goodwill and greetings for the sons of the khalsa, and they tramped off in fours. it is said that when the little riot broke out in vancouver these 'heathen' were invited by other asiatics to join in defending themselves against the white man. they refused on the ground that they were subjects of the king. i wonder what tales they sent back to their villages, and where, and how fully, every detail of the affair was talked over. white men forget that no part of the empire can live or die to itself. here is a rather comic illustration of this on the material side. the wonderful waters between vancouver and victoria are full of whales, leaping and rejoicing in the strong blue all about the steamer. there is, therefore, a whalery on an island near by, and i had the luck to travel with one of the shareholders. 'whales are beautiful beasts,' he said affectionately. 'we've a contract with a scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years ahead. it's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.' he went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at once. 'all the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come home. we kill 'em right off.' 'and how d'you strip 'em?' it seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. at the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern appliances. the whales are hauled up inclined planes like logs to a sawmill, and as much of them as will not make oil for the scotch leather-dresser, or cannot be dried for the japanese market, is converted into potent manure. 'no manure can touch ours,' said the shareholder. 'it's so rich in bone, d'you see. the only thing that has beat us up to date is their hides; but we've fixed up a patent process now for turning 'em into floorcloth. yes, they're beautiful beasts. that fellow,' he pointed to a black hump in a wreath of spray, 'would cut up a miracle.' 'if you go on like this you won't have any whales left,' i said. 'that is so. but the concern pays thirty per cent, and--a few years back, no one believed in it.' i forgave him everything for the last sentence. a conclusion canada possesses two pillars of strength and beauty in quebec and victoria. the former ranks by herself among those mother-cities of whom none can say 'this reminds me.' to realise victoria you must take all that the eye admires most in bournemouth, torquay, the isle of wight, the happy valley at hong-kong, the doon, sorrento, and camps bay; add reminiscences of the thousand islands, and arrange the whole round the bay of naples, with some himalayas for the background. real estate agents recommend it as a little piece of england--the island on which it stands is about the size of great britain--but no england is set in any such seas or so fully charged with the mystery of the larger ocean beyond. the high, still twilights along the beaches are out of the old east just under the curve of the world, and even in october the sun rises warm from the first. earth, sky, and water wait outside every man's door to drag him out to play if he looks up from his work; and, though some other cities in the dominion do not quite understand this immoral mood of nature, men who have made their money in them go off to victoria, and with the zeal of converts preach and preserve its beauties. we went to look at a marine junk-store which had once been esquimalt, a station of the british navy. it was reached through winding roads, lovelier than english lanes, along watersides and parkways any one of which would have made the fortune of a town. 'most cities,' a man said, suddenly, 'lay out their roads at right angles. we do in the business quarters. what d'you think?' 'i fancy some of those big cities will have to spend millions on curved roads some day for the sake of a change,' i said. 'you've got what no money can buy.' 'that's what the men tell us who come to live in victoria. and they've had experience.' it is pleasant to think of the western millionaire, hot from some gridiron of rectangular civilisation, confirming good victorians in the policy of changing vistas and restful curves. there is a view, when the morning mists peel off the harbour where the steamers tie up, or the houses of parliament on one hand, and a huge hotel on the other, which as an example of cunningly-fitted-in water-fronts and facades is worth a very long journey. the hotel was just being finished. the ladies' drawing-room, perhaps a hundred feet by forty, carried an arched and superbly enriched plaster ceiling of knops and arabesques and interlacings, which somehow seemed familiar. 'we saw a photo of it in _country life_,' the contractor explained. 'it seemed just what the room needed, so one of our plasterers, a frenchman--that's him--took and copied it. it comes in all right, doesn't it?' about the time the noble original was put up in england drake might have been sailing somewhere off this very coast. so, you see, victoria lawfully holds the copyright. i tried honestly to render something of the colour, the gaiety, and the graciousness of the town and the island, but only found myself piling up unbelievable adjectives, and so let it go with a hundred other wonders and repented that i had wasted my time and yours on the anxious-eyed gentlemen who talked of 'drawbacks.' a verse cut out of a newspaper seems to sum up their attitude: as the land of little leisure is the place where things are done, so the land of scanty pleasure is the place for lots of fun. in the land of plenty trouble people laugh as people should, but there's some one always kicking in the land of heap too good! at every step of my journey people assured me that i had seen nothing of canada. silent mining men from the north; fruit-farmers from the okanagan valley; foremen of railway gangs, not so long from english public schools; the oldest inhabitant of the town of villeneuve, aged twenty-eight; certain english who lived on the prairie and contrived to get fun and good fellowship as well as money; the single-minded wheat-growers and cattle-men; election agents; police troopers expansive in the dusk of wayside halts; officials dependent on the popular will, who talked as delicately as they walked; and queer souls who did not speak english, and said so loudly in the dining-car--each, in his or her own way, gave me to understand this. my excursion bore the same relation to their country as a 'bus-ride down the strand bears to london, so i knew how they felt. the excuse is that our own flesh and blood are more interesting than anybody else, and i held by birth the same right in them and their lives as they held in any other part of the empire. because they had become a people within the empire my right was admitted and no word spoken; which would not have been the case a few years ago. one may mistake many signs on the road, but there is no mistaking the spirit of sane and realised nationality, which fills the land from end to end precisely as the joyous hum of a big dynamo well settled to its load makes a background to all the other shop noises. for many reasons that spirit came late, but since it has come after the day of little things, doubts, and open or veiled contempts, there is less danger that it will go astray among the boundless wealth and luxury that await it. the people, the schools, the churches, the press in its degree, and, above all, the women, understand without manifestoes that their land must now as always abide under the law in deed and in word and in thought. this is their caste-mark, the ark of their covenant, their reason for being what they are. in the big cities, with their village-like lists of police court offences; in the wide-open little western towns where the present is as free as the lives and the future as safe as the property of their inhabitants; in the coast cities galled and humiliated at their one night's riot ('it's not our habit, sir! it's not our habit!'); up among the mountains where the officers of the law track and carefully bring into justice the astounded malefactor; and behind the orderly prairies to the barren grounds, as far as a single white man can walk, the relentless spirit of the breed follows up, and oversees, and controls. it does not much express itself in words, but sometimes, in intimate discussion, one is privileged to catch a glimpse of the inner fires. they burn hotly. '_we_ do not mean to be de-civilised,' said the first man with whom i talked about it. that was the answer throughout--the keynote and the explanation. otherwise the canadians are as human as the rest of us to evade or deny a plain issue. the duty of developing their country is always present, but when it comes to taking thought, better thought, for her defence, they refuge behind loose words and childish anticipations of miracles--quite in the best imperial manner. all admit that canada is wealthy; few that she is weak; still fewer that, unsupported, she would very soon cease to exist as a nation. the anxious inquirer is told that she does her duty towards england by developing her resources; that wages are so high a paid army is out of the question; that she is really maturing splendid defence schemes, but must not be hurried or dictated to; that a little wise diplomacy is all that will ever be needed in this so civilised era; that when the evil day comes something will happen (it certainly will), the whole concluding, very often, with a fervent essay on the immorality of war, all about as much to the point as carrying a dove through the streets to allay pestilence. the question before canada is not what she thinks or pays, but what an enemy may think it necessary to make her pay. if she continues wealthy and remains weak she will surely be attacked under one pretext or another. then she will go under, and her spirit will return to the dust with her flag as it slides down the halliards. 'that is absurd,' is always the quick answer. 'in her own interests england could never permit it. what you speak of presupposes the fall of england.' not necessarily. nothing worse than a stumble by the way; but when england stumbles the empire shakes. canada's weakness is lack of men. england's weakness is an excess of voters who propose to live at the expense of the state. these loudly resent that any money should be diverted from themselves; and since money is spent on fleets and armies to protect the empire while it is consolidating, they argue that if the empire ceased to exist armaments would cease too, and the money so saved could be spent on their creature comforts. they pride themselves on being an avowed and organised enemy of the empire which, as others see it, waits only to give them health, prosperity, and power beyond anything their votes could win them in england. but their leaders need their votes in england, as they need their outcries and discomforts to help them in their municipal and parliamentary careers. no engineer lowers steam in his own boilers. so they are told little except evil of the great heritage outside, and are kept compounded in cities under promise of free rations and amusements. if the empire were threatened they would not, in their own interests, urge england to spend men and money on it. consequently it might be well if the nations within the empire were strong enough to endure a little battering unaided at the first outset--till such time, that is, as england were permitted to move to their help. for this end an influx of good men is needed more urgently every year during which peace holds--men loyal, clean, and experienced in citizenship, with women not ignorant of sacrifice. here the gentlemen who propose to be kept by their neighbours are our helpful allies. they have succeeded in making uneasy the class immediately above them, which is the english working class, as yet undebauched by the temptation of state-aided idleness or state-guaranteed irresponsibility. england has millions of such silent careful folk accustomed, even yet, to provide for their own offspring, to bring them up in a resolute fear of god, and to desire no more than the reward of their own labours. a few years ago this class would not have cared to shift; now they feel the general disquiet. they live close to it. tea-and-sugar borrowing friends have told them jocularly, or with threats, of a good time coming when things will go hard with the uncheerful giver. the prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to their savings bank books. they hear--they do not need to read--the speeches delivered in their streets on a sunday morning. it is one of their pre-occupations to send their children to sunday school by roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. when the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. if these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they look), and slip quietly away. in the english country, as well as in the towns, there is a feeling--not yet panic, but the dull edge of it--that the future will be none too rosy for such as are working, or are in the habit of working. this is all to our advantage. canada can best serve her own interests and those of the empire by systematically exploiting this new recruiting-ground. now that south africa, with the exception of rhodesia, has been paralysed, and australia has not yet learned the things which belong to her peace, canada has the chance of the century to attract good men and capital into the dominion. but the men are much more important than the money. they may not at first be as clever with the hoe as the bessarabian or the bokhariot, or whatever the fashionable breed is, but they have qualities of pluck, good humour, and a certain well-wearing virtue which are not altogether bad. they will not hold aloof from the life of the land, nor pray in unknown tongues to byzantine saints; while the very tenacity and caution which made them cleave to england this long, help them to root deeply elsewhere. they are more likely to bring their women than other classes, and those women will make sacred and individual homes. a little-regarded crown colony has a proverb that no district can be called settled till there are pots of musk in the house-windows--sure sign that an english family has come to stay. it is not certain how much of the present steamer-dumped foreign population has any such idea. we have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. what would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till the storm were over? surely the conclusion of the whole matter throughout the whole empire must be men and women of our own stock, habits, language, and hopes brought in by every possible means under a well-settled policy? time will not be allowed us to multiply to unquestionable peace, but by drawing upon england we can swiftly transfuse what we need of her strength into her veins, and by that operation bleed her into health and sanity meantime, the only serious enemy to the empire, within or without, is that very democracy which depends on the empire for its proper comforts, and in whose behalf these things are urged. egypt of the magicians sea travel. a return to the east. a serpent of old nile. up the river. dead kings. the face of the desert. the riddle of empire. _and the magicians of egypt did so with their enchantments_.--exodus vii. . i sea travel i had left europe for no reason except to discover the sun, and there were rumours that he was to be found in egypt. but i had not realised what more i should find there. a p. & o. boat carried us out of marseilles. a serang of lascars, with whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the baggage-hatch. somebody bungled at the winch. the serang called him a name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer. 'o serang, is that man a fool?' 'very foolish, sahib. he comes from surat. he only comes for his food's sake.' the serang grinned; the surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and the voices that called: 'lower away! stop her!' were as familiar as the friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along the deck. but for the passage of a few impertinent years, i should have gone without hesitation to share their rice. serangs used to be very kind to little white children below the age of caste. most familiar of all was the ship itself. it had slipped my memory, nor was there anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade. some north atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the discovery, and were as pleased about it as american tourists at stratford-on-avon. 'oh, come and see!' they cried. 'she has _one_ screw--only one screw! hear her thump! and _have_ you seen their old barn of a saloon? _and_ the officers' library? it's open for two half-hours a day week-days and one on sundays. you pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. we wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. it's like sailing with columbus.' they wandered about--voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting off at port said. i explored, too. from the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin, where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time and progress had stood still with the p. & o. to be just, there were electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra; and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor. all the rest was under the old motto: '_quis separabit_'--'this is quite separate from other lines.' 'after all,' said an anglo-indian, whom i was telling about civilised ocean travel, 'they don't want you egyptian trippers. they're sure of _us_, because----' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the bombay foreshore. 'but it's absurd,' i insisted. 'the whole concern is out of date. there's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my cabin with a candle in a lantern.' meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward port said, because we had no mails aboard, and the mediterranean, exhausted after severe february hysterics, lay out like oil. i had some talk with a scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family--all sorts together. the serang said that, for _his_ part, he had noticed no difference in twenty years. 'men are always of many kinds, sahib. and that is because god makes men this and that. not all one pattern--not by any means all one pattern.' he told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and families at porbandar. 'and that also is thus, and no talk makes it otherwise.' after suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the anglo-indian contingent. little by little one came at the outlines of the old stories--a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future. it was not a nice india that the tales hinted at. here is one that explains a great deal: there was a pathan, a mohammedan, in a hindu village, employed by the village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade. he lived alone among hindus, and--so ran the charge in the lower court--he wilfully broke the caste of a hindu villager by forcing on him forbidden mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others. the evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should, and the pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder. he appealed and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case personally to the court of revision. 'said, i believe, that he did not much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as man to man, he might have a run for his money. out of the jail, then, he came, and, pathan-like, not content with his own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret agent of the government sent down to spy on that village. then he warmed to it. yes, he _was_ that money-lender's agent--a persuader of the reluctant, if you like--working for a hindu employer. naturally, many men owed him grudges. a lot of the evidence against him was quite true, but the prosecution had twisted it abominably. about that knife, for instance. true, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged. but why? because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers. at that feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the headman's house. how could he have broken _any_ man's caste when they were all eating his sheep? and in the courtyard of the headman's house they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger against him, each man exciting his neighbour. he was a pathan. he knew what that sort of talk meant. a man cannot collect debts without making enemies. so he warned them. again and again he warned them, saying: 'leave me alone. do not lay hands on me.' but the trouble grew worse, and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a jackal in a drain. then he said, 'if blows are struck, i strike, and _i_ strike to kill, because i am a pathan,' but the blows were struck, heavy ones. therefore, with the very afghan knife that had cut up the mutton, he struck the headman. 'had you meant to kill the headman?' 'assuredly! i am a pathan. when i strike, i strike to kill. i had warned them again and again. i think i got him in the liver. he died. and that is all there is to it, sahibs. it was my life or theirs. they would have taken mine over my freely given meats. _now_, what'll you do with me?' in the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide. 'but,' said i, when the tale had been told, 'whatever made the lower court accept all that village evidence? it was too good on the face of it,' 'the lower court said it could not believe it possible that so many respectable native gentle could have banded themselves together to tell a lie.' 'oh! had the lower court been long in the country?' 'it was a native judge,' was the reply. if you think this over in all its bearings, you will see that the lower court was absolutely sincere. was not the lower court itself a product of western civilisation, and, as such, bound to play up--to pretend to think along western lines--translating each grade of indian village society into its english equivalent, and ruling as an english judge would have ruled? pathans and, incidentally, english officials must look after themselves. there is a fell disease of this century called 'snobbery of the soul.' its germ has been virulently developed in modern cultures from the uncomplex bacillus isolated sixty years ago by the late william makepeace thackeray. precisely as major ponto, with his plated dishes and stable-boy masquerading as footman, lied to himself and his guests so--but the _book of snobs_ can only be brought up to date by him who wrote it. then, a man struck in from the sudan--far and far to the south--with a story of a discomposed judge and a much too collected prisoner. to the great bazaars of omdurman, where all things are sold, came a young man from the uttermost deserts of somewhere or other and heard a gramophone. life was of no value to him till he had bought the creature. he took it back to his village, and at twilight set it going among his ravished friends. his father, sheik of the village, came also, listened to the loud shoutings without breath, the strong music lacking musicians, and said, justly enough: 'this thing is a devil. you must not bring devils into my village. lock it up.' they waited until he had gone away and then began another tune. a second time the sheik came, repeated the command, and added that if the singing box was heard again, he would slay the buyer. but their curiosity and joy defied even this, and for the third time (late at night) they slipped in pin and record and let the djinn rave. so the sheik, with his rifle, shot his son as he had promised, and the english judge before whom he eventually came had all the trouble in the world to save that earnest gray head from the gallows. thus: 'now, old man, you must say guilty or not guilty.' 'but i shot him. that is why i am here. i----' 'hush! it is a form of words which the law asks. _(sotte voce_. write down that the old idiot doesn't understand.) be still now.' 'but i shot him. what else could i have done? he bought a devil in a box, and----' 'quiet! that comes later. leave talking.' 'but i am sheik of the village. one must not bring devils into a village. i _said_ i would shoot him.' 'this matter is in the hands of the law. _i_ judge.' 'what need? i shot him. suppose that _your_ son had brought a devil in a box to _your_ village----' they explained to him, at last, that under british rule fathers must hand over devil-dealing children to be shot by the white men (the first step, you see, on the downward path of state aid), and that he must go to prison for several months for interfering with a government shoot. we are a great race. there was a pious young judge in nigeria once, who kept a condemned prisoner waiting very many minutes while he hunted through the hausa dictionary, word by word, for, 'may--god--have--mercy--on--your--soul.' and i heard another tale--about the suez canal this time--a hint of what may happen some day at panama. there was a tramp steamer, loaded with high explosives, on her way to the east, and at the far end of the canal one of the sailors very naturally upset a lamp in the fo'c'sle. after a heated interval the crew took to the desert alongside, while the captain and the mate opened all cocks and sank her, not in the fairway but up against a bank, just leaving room for a steamer to squeeze past. then the canal authorities wired to her charterers to know exactly what there might be in her; and it is said that the reply kept them awake of nights, for it was their business to blow her up. meantime, traffic had to go through, and a p. & o. steamer came along. there was the canal; there was the sunken wreck, marked by one elderly arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot clearance on each side for the p. & o. she went through a-tiptoe, because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and the tramp held more--very much more, not to mention detonators. by some absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the time was an old lady rather proud of the secret. 'ah,' she said, in the middle of that agonised glide, 'you may depend upon it that if everybody knew what, i know, they'd all be on the other side of the ship.' later on, the authorities blew up the tramp with infinite precautions from some two miles off, for which reason she neither destroyed the suez canal nor dislocated the sweet water canal alongside, but merely dug out a hole a hundred feet or a hundred yards deep, and so vanished from lloyd's register. but no stories could divert one long from the peculiarities of that amazing line which exists strictly for itself. there was a bathroom (occupied) at the windy end of an open alleyway. in due time the bather came out. said the steward, as he swabbed out the tub for his successor: 'that was the chief engineer. 'e's been some time. must 'ave 'ad a mucky job below, this mornin'.' i have a great admiration for chief engineers. they are men in authority, needing all the comforts and aids that can possibly be given them--such as bathrooms of their own close to their own cabins, where they can clean off at leisure. it is not fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it done on real ships. nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a cathedral and say, 'we'll see if it can be managed.' they double down the alleyway and shout, 'matcham' or 'ponting' or 'guttman,' and in fifteen seconds one of those swift three has the taps going and the towels out. real ships are not annexes of westminster abbey or borstal reformatory. they supply decent accommodation in return for good money, and i imagine that their directors instruct their staffs to look pleased while at work. some generations back there must have been an idea that the p. & o. was vastly superior to all lines afloat--a sort of semipontifical show not to be criticised. how much of the notion was due to its own excellence and how much to its passenger-traffic monopoly does not matter. to-day, it neither feeds nor tends its passengers, nor keeps its ships well enough to put on any airs at all. for which reason, human nature being what it is, it surrounds itself with an ungracious atmosphere of absurd ritual to cover grudged and inadequate performance. what it really needs is to be dropped into a march north atlantic, without any lascars, and made to swim for its life between a c.p.r. boat and a north german lloyd--till it learns to smile. ii a return to the east the east is a much larger slice of the world than europeans care to admit. some say it begins at st. gothard, where the smells of two continents meet and fight all through that terrible restaurant-car dinner in the tunnel. others have found it at venice on warm april mornings. but the east is wherever one sees the lateen sail--that shark's fin of a rig which for hundreds of years has dogged all white bathers round the mediterranean. there is still a suggestion of menace, a hint of piracy, in the blood whenever the lateen goes by, fishing or fruiting or coasting. 'this is _not_ my ancestral trade,' she whispers to the accomplice sea. 'if everybody had their rights i should be doing something quite different; for my father, he was the junk, and my mother, she was the dhow, and between the two of 'em they made asia.' then she tacks, disorderly but deadly quick, and shuffles past the unimaginative steam-packet with her hat over one eye and a knife, as it were, up her baggy sleeves. even the stone-boats at port said, busied on jetty extensions, show their untamed descent beneath their loaded clumsiness. they are all children of the camel-nosed dhow, who is the mother of mischief; but it was very good to meet them again in raw sunshine, unchanged in any rope and patch. old port said had disappeared beneath acres of new buildings where one could walk at leisure without being turned back by soldiers. two or three landmarks remained; two or three were reported as still in existence, and one face showed itself after many years--ravaged but respectable--rigidly respectable. 'yes,' said the face, 'i have been here all the time. but i have made money, and when i die i am going home to be buried.' 'why not go home before you are buried, o face?' 'because i have lived here _so_ long. home is only good to be buried in.' 'and what do you do, nowadays?' 'nothing now. i live on my _rentes_--my income.' think of it! to live icily in a perpetual cinematograph show of excited, uneasy travellers; to watch huge steamers, sliding in and out all day and all night like railway trucks, unknowing and unsought by a single soul aboard; to talk five or six tongues indifferently, but to have no country--no interest in any earth except one reservation in a continental cemetery. it was a cold evening after heavy rain and the half-flooded streets reeked. but we undefeated tourists ran about in droves and saw all that could be seen before train-time. we missed, most of us, the canal company's garden, which happens to mark a certain dreadful and exact division between east and west. up to that point--it is a fringe of palms, stiff against the sky--the impetus of home memories and the echo of home interests carry the young man along very comfortably on his first journey. but at suez one must face things. people, generally the most sympathetic, leave the boat there; the older men who are going on have discovered each other and begun to talk shop; no newspapers come aboard, only clipped reuter telegrams; the world seems cruelly large and self-absorbed. one goes for a walk and finds this little bit of kept ground, with comfortable garden-gated houses on either side of the path. then one begins to wonder--in the twilight, for choice--when one will see those palms again from the other side. then the black hour of homesickness, vain regrets, foolish promises, and weak despair shuts down with the smell of strange earth and the cadence of strange tongues. cross-roads and halting-places in the desert are always favoured by djinns and afrits. the young man will find them waiting for him in the canal company's garden at port said. on the other hand, if he is fortunate enough to have won the east by inheritance, as there are families who served her for five or six generations, he will meet no ghouls in that garden, but a free and a friendly and an ample welcome from good spirits of the east that awaits him. the voices of the gardeners and the watchmen will be as the greetings of his father's servants in his father's house; the evening smells and the sight of the hibiscus and poinsettia will unlock his tongue in words and sentences that he thought he had clean forgotten, and he will go back to the ship (i have seen) as a prince entering on his kingdom. there was a man in our company--a young englishman--who had just been granted his heart's desire in the shape of some raw district south of everything southerly in the sudan, where, on two-thirds of a member of parliament's wage, under conditions of life that would horrify a self-respecting operative, he will see perhaps some dozen white men in a year, and will certainly pick up two sorts of fever. he had been moved to work very hard for this billet by the representations of a friend in the same service, who said that it was a 'rather decent sort of service,' and he was all of a heat to reach khartum, report for duty, and fall to. if he is lucky, he may get a district where the people are so virtuous that they do not know how to wear any clothes at all, and so ignorant that they have never yet come across strong drink. the train that took us to cairo was own sister in looks and fittings to any south african train--for which i loved her--but she was a trial to some citizens of the united states, who, being used to the pullman, did not understand the side-corridored, solid-compartment idea. the trouble with a standardised democracy seems to be that, once they break loose from their standards, they have no props. people are _not_ left behind and luggage is rarely mislaid on the railroads of the older world. there is an ordained ritual for the handling of all things, to which if a man will only conform and keep quiet, he and his will be attended to with the rest. the people that i watched would not believe this. they charged about futilely and wasted themselves in trying to get ahead of their neighbours. here is a fragment from the restaurant-car: 'look at here! me and some friends of mine are going to dine at this table. we don't want to be separated and--' 'you 'ave your number for the service, sar?' 'number? what number? we want to dine _here_, i tell you.' 'you shall get your number, sar, for the first service?' 'haow's that? where in thunder do we _get_ the numbers, anyway?' 'i will give you the number, sar, at the time--for places at the first service.' 'yes, but we want to dine together here--right _now._' 'the service is not yet ready, sar.' and so on--and so on; with marchings and counter-marchings, and every word nervously italicised. in the end they dined precisely where there was room for them in that new world which they had strayed into. on one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the other at the black canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the night-running steamers. then came towns, lighted with electricity, governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton. such a town, for instance, as zagazig, last seen by a very small boy who was lifted out of a railway-carriage and set down beneath a whitewashed wall under naked stars in an illimitable emptiness because, they told him, the train was on fire. childlike, this did not worry him. what stuck in his sleepy mind was the absurd name of the place and his father's prophecy that when he grew up he would 'come that way in a big steamer.' so all his life, the word 'zagazig' carried memories of a brick shed, the flicker of an oil-lamp's floating wick, a sky full of eyes, and an engine coughing in a desert at the world's end; which memories returned in a restaurant-car jolting through what seemed to be miles of brilliantly lighted streets and factories. no one at the table had even turned his head for the battlefields of kassassin and tel-el-kebir. after all, why should they? that work is done, and children are getting ready to be born who will say: '_i_ can remember gondokoro (or el-obeid or some undreamed of clapham junction, abyssinia-way) before a single factory was started--before the overhead traffic began. yes, when there was a fever--actually fever--in the city itself!' the gap is no greater than that between to-day's and t'other day's zagazig--between the horsed vans of the overland route in lieutenant waghorn's time and the shining motor that flashed us to our cairo hotel through what looked like the suburbs of marseilles or rome. always keep a new city till morning, 'in the daytime,' as it is written in the perspicuous book,[ ] 'thou hast long occupation,' our window gave on to the river, but before one moved toward it one heard the thrilling squeal of the kites--those same thievish companions of the road who, at that hour, were watching every englishman's breakfast in every compound and camp from cairo to calcutta. [footnote : the koran.] voices rose from below--unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar accents. a black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as fingers, the tipped mainyard of a nile boat and framed himself in the window. then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling kites. and beneath our balcony rolled very nile himself, golden in sunshine, wrinkled under strong breezes, with a crowd of creaking cargo-boats waiting for a bridge to be opened. on the cut-stone quay above, a line of cab drivers--a _ticca-gharri_ stand, nothing less--lolled and chaffed and tinkered with their harnesses in every beautiful attitude of the ungirt east. all the ground about was spotted with chewed sugarcane--first sign of the hot weather all the world over. troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved moslem world was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who pray at dawn. i made haste to cross the bridge and to hear the palms in the wind on the far side. they sang as nobly as though they had been true coconuts, and the thrust of the north wind behind them was almost as open-handed as the thrust of the trades. then came a funeral--the sheeted corpse on the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of the household--either way, as the prophet says, do not let the mourners go too long weeping and hungry)--the women behind, tossing their arms and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high. they might have come forth from the taksali gate in the city of lahore on just such a cold weather morning as this, on their way to the mohammedan burial-grounds by the river. and the veiled countrywomen, shuffling side by side, elbow pressed to hip, and eloquent right hand pivoting round, palm uppermost, to give value to each shrill phrase, might have been the wives of so many punjabi cultivators but that they wore another type of bangle and slipper. a knotty-kneed youth sitting high on a donkey, both amuleted against the evil eye, chewed three purplish-feet of sugar-cane, which made one envious as well as voluptuously homesick, though the sugar-cane of egypt is not to be compared with that of bombay. hans breitmann writes somewhere: oh, if you live in leyden town you'll meet, if troot be told, der forms of all der freunds dot tied when du werst six years old. and they were all there under the chanting palms--saices, orderlies, pedlars, water-carriers, street-cleaners, chicken-sellers and the slate-coloured buffalo with the china-blue eyes being talked to by a little girl with the big stick. behind the hedges of well-kept gardens squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman--a touch of arab about mouth and lean nostril--quite unconcerned with a ferocious row between two donkey-men. they were fighting across the body of a nubian who had chosen to sleep in that place. presently, one of them stepped back on the sleeper's stomach. the nubian grunted, elbowed himself up, rolled his eyes, and pronounced a few utterly dispassionate words. the warriors stopped, settled their headgear, and went away as quickly as the nubian went to sleep again. this was life, the real, unpolluted stuff--worth a desert-full of mummies. and right through the middle of it--hooting and kicking up the nile--passed a cook's steamer all ready to take tourists to assuan. from the nubian's point of view she, and not himself, was the wonder--as great as the swiss-controlled, swiss-staffed hotel behind her, whose lift, maybe, the nubian helped to run. marids, and afrits, guardians of hidden gold, who choke or crush the rash seeker; encounters with the long-buried dead in a cairo back-alley; undreamed-of promotions, and suddenly lit loves are the stuff of any respectable person's daily life; but the white man from across the water, arriving in hundreds with his unveiled womenfolk, who builds himself flying-rooms and talks along wires, who flees up and down the river, mad to sit upon camels and asses, constrained to throw down silver from both hands--at once a child and a warlock--this thing must come to the nubian sheer out of the _thousand and one nights_. at any rate, the nubian was perfectly sane. having eaten, he slept in god's own sunlight, and i left him, to visit the fortunate and guarded and desirable city of cairo, to whose people, male and female, allah has given subtlety in abundance. their jesters are known to have surpassed in refinement the jesters of damascus, as did their twelve police captains the hardiest and most corrupt of bagdad in the tolerant days of harun-al-raschid; while their old women, not to mention their young wives, could deceive the father of lies himself. delhi is a great place--most bazaar storytellers in india make their villain hail from there; but when the agony and intrigue are piled highest and the tale halts till the very last breathless sprinkle of cowries has ceased to fall on his mat, why then, with wagging head and hooked forefinger, the storyteller goes on: '_but_ there was a man from cairo, an egyptian of the egyptians, who'--and all the crowd knows that a bit of real metropolitan devilry is coming. iii a serpent of old nile modern cairo is an unkempt place. the streets are dirty and ill-constructed, the pavements unswept and often broken, the tramways thrown, rather than laid, down, the gutters neglected. one expects better than this in a city where the tourist spends so much every season. granted that the tourist is a dog, he comes at least with a bone in his mouth, and a bone that many people pick. he should have a cleaner kennel. the official answer is that the tourist-traffic is a flea-bite compared with the cotton industry. even so, land in cairo city must be too valuable to be used for cotton growing. it might just as well be paved or swept. there is some sort of authority supposed to be in charge of municipal matters, but its work is crippled by what is called 'the capitulations.' it was told to me that every one in cairo except the english, who appear to be the mean whites of these parts, has the privilege of appealing to his consul on every conceivable subject from the disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. as almost every one with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial meter, arshin, or cubit of ezekiel within the city. and since every consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above annoying the english on general principles, municipal progress is slow. cairo strikes one as unventilated and unsterilised, even when the sun and wind are scouring it together. the tourist talks a good deal, as you may see here, but the permanent european resident does not open his mouth more than is necessary--sound travels so far across flat water. besides, the whole position of things, politically and administratively, is essentially false. here is a country which is not a country but a longish strip of market-garden, nominally in charge of a government which is not a government but the disconnected satrapy of a half-dead empire, controlled pecksniffingly by a power which is not a power but an agency, which agency has been tied up by years, custom, and blackmail into all sorts of intimate relations with six or seven european powers, all with rights and perquisites, none of whose subjects seem directly amenable to any power which at first, second, or third hand is supposed to be responsible. that is the barest outline. to fill in the details (if any living man knows them) would be as easy as to explain baseball to an englishman or the eton wall game to a citizen of the united states. but it is a fascinating play. there are frenchmen in it, whose logical mind it offends, and they revenge themselves by printing the finance-reports and the catalogue of the bulak museum in pure french. there are germans in it, whose demands must be carefully weighed--not that they can by any means be satisfied, but they serve to block other people's. there are russians in it, who do not very much matter at present but will be heard from later. there are italians and greeks in it (both rather pleased with themselves just now), full of the higher finance and the finer emotions. there are egyptian pashas in it, who come back from paris at intervals and ask plaintively to whom they are supposed to belong. there is his highness, the khedive, in it, and _he_ must be considered not a little, and there are women in it, up to their eyes. and there are great english cotton and sugar interests, and angry english importers clamouring to know why they cannot do business on rational lines or get into the sudan, which they hold is ripe for development if the administration there would only see reason. among these conflicting interests and amusements sits and perspires the english official, whose job is irrigating or draining or reclaiming land on behalf of a trifle of ten million people, and he finds himself tripped up by skeins of intrigue and bafflement which may ramify through half a dozen harems and four consulates. all this makes for suavity, toleration, and the blessed habit of not being surprised at anything whatever. or, so it seemed to me, watching a big dance at one of the hotels. every european race and breed, and half of the united states were represented, but i fancied i could make out three distinct groupings. the tourists with the steamer-trunk creases still across their dear, excited backs; the military and the officials sure of their partners beforehand, and saying clearly what ought to be said; and a third contingent, lower-voiced, softer-footed, and keener-eyed than the other two, at ease, as gipsies are on their own ground, flinging half-words in local _argot_ over shoulders at their friends, understanding on the nod and moved by springs common to their clan only. for example, a woman was talking flawless english to her partner, an english officer. just before the next dance began, another woman beckoned to her, eastern fashion, all four fingers flicking downward. the first woman crossed to a potted palm; the second moved toward it also, till the two drew, up, not looking at each other, the plant between them. then she who had beckoned spoke in a strange tongue _at_ the palm. the first woman, still looking away, answered in the same fashion with a rush of words that rattled like buckshot through the stiff fronds. her tone had nothing to do with that in which she greeted her new partner, who came up as the music began. the one was a delicious drawl; the other had been the guttural rasp and click of the kitchen and the bazaar. so she moved off, and, in a little, the second woman disappeared into the crowd. most likely it was no more than some question of the programme or dress, but the prompt, feline stealth and coolness of it, the lightning-quick return to and from world-apart civilisations stuck in my memory. so did the bloodless face of a very old turk, fresh from some horror of assassination in constantinople in which he, too, had been nearly pistolled, but, they said, he had argued quietly over the body of a late colleague, as one to whom death was of no moment, until the hysterical young turks were abashed and let him get away--to the lights and music of this elegantly appointed hotel. these modern 'arabian nights' are too hectic for quiet folk. i declined upon a more rational cairo--the arab city where everything is as it was when maruf the cobbler fled from fatima-el-orra and met the djinn in the adelia musjid. the craftsmen and merchants sat on their shop-boards, a rich mystery of darkness behind them, and the narrow gullies were polished to shoulder-height by the mere flux of people. shod white men, unless they are agriculturists, touch lightly, with their hands at most, in passing. easterns lean and loll and squat and sidle against things as they daunder along. when the feet are bare, the whole body thinks. moreover, it is unseemly to buy or to do aught and be done with it. only people with tight-fitting clothes that need no attention have time for that. so we of the loose skirt and flowing trousers and slack slipper make full and ample salutations to our friends, and redouble them toward our ill-wishers, and if it be a question of purchase, the stuff must be fingered and appraised with a proverb or so, and if it be a fool-tourist who thinks that he cannot be cheated, o true believers! draw near and witness how we shall loot him. but i bought nothing. the city thrust more treasure upon me than i could carry away. it came out of dark alleyways on tawny camels loaded with pots; on pattering asses half buried under nets of cut clover; in the exquisitely modelled hands of little children scurrying home from the cookshop with the evening meal, chin pressed against the platter's edge and eyes round with responsibility above the pile; in the broken lights from jutting rooms overhead, where the women lie, chin between palms, looking out of windows not a foot from the floor; in every glimpse into every courtyard, where the men smoke by the tank; in the heaps of rubbish and rotten bricks that flanked newly painted houses, waiting to be built, some day, into houses once more; in the slap and slide or the heelless red-and-yellow slippers all around, and, above all, in the mixed delicious smells of frying butter, mohammedan bread, kababs, leather, cooking-smoke, assafetida, peppers, and turmeric. devils cannot abide the smell of burning turmeric, but the right-minded man loves it. it stands for evening that brings all home, the evening meal, the dipping of friendly hands in the dish, the one face, the dropped veil, and the big, guttering pipe afterward. praised be allah for the diversity of his creatures and for the five advantages of travel and for the glories of the cities of the earth! harun-al-raschid, in roaring bagdad of old, never delighted himself to the limits of such a delight as was mine, that afternoon. it is true that the call to prayer, the cadence of some of the street-cries, and the cut of some of the garments differed a little from what i had been brought up to; but for the rest, the shadow on the dial had turned back twenty degrees for me, and i found myself saying, as perhaps the dead say when they have recovered their wits, 'this is my real world again,' some men are mohammedan by birth, some by training, and some by fate, but i have never met an englishman yet who hated islam and its people as i have met englishmen who hated some other faiths. _musalmani awadani_, as the saying goes--where there are mohammedans, there is a comprehensible civilisation. then we came upon a deserted mosque of pitted brick colonnades round a vast courtyard open to the pale sky. it was utterly empty except for its own proper spirit, and that caught one by the throat as one entered. christian churches may compromise with images and side-chapels where the unworthy or abashed can traffic with accessible saints. islam has but one pulpit and one stark affirmation--living or dying, one only--and where men have repeated that in red-hot belief through centuries, the air still shakes to it. some say now that islam is dying and that nobody cares; others that, if she withers in europe and asia, she will renew herself in africa and will return--terrible--after certain years, at the head of all the nine sons of ham; others dream that the english understand islam as no one else does, and, in years to be, islam will admit this and the world will be changed. if you go to the mosque al azhar--the thousand-year-old university of cairo--you will be able to decide for yourself. there is nothing to see except many courts, cool in hot weather, surrounded by cliff-like brick walls. men come and go through dark doorways, giving on to yet darker cloisters, as freely as though the place was a bazaar. there are no aggressive educational appliances. the students sit on the ground, and their teachers instruct them, mostly by word of mouth, in grammar, syntax, logic; _al-hisab_, which is arithmetic; _al-jab'r w'al muqabalah_, which is algebra; _at-tafsir,_ commentaries on the koran, and last and most troublesome, _al-ahadis,_ traditions, and yet more commentaries on the law of islam, which leads back, like everything, to the koran once again. (for it is written, 'truly the quran is none other than a revelation.') it is a very comprehensive curriculum. no man can master it entirely, but any can stay there as long as he pleases. the university provides commons--twenty-five thousand loaves a day, i believe,--and there is always a place to lie down in for such as do not desire a shut room and a bed. nothing could be more simple or, given certain conditions, more effective. close upon six hundred professors, who represent officially or unofficially every school or thought, teach ten or twelve thousand students, who draw from every mohammedan community, west and east between manila and morocco, north and south between kamchatka and the malay mosque at cape town. these drift off to become teachers of little schools, preachers at mosques, students of the law known to millions (but rarely to europeans), dreamers, devotees, or miracle-workers in all the ends of the earth. the man who interested me most was a red-bearded, sunk-eyed mullah from the indian frontier, not likely to be last at any distribution of food, who stood up like a lean wolfhound among collies in a little assembly at a doorway. and there was another mosque, sumptuously carpeted and lighted (which the prophet does not approve of), where men prayed in the dull mutter that, at times, mounts and increases under the domes like the boom of drums or the surge of a hot hive before the swarm flings out. and round the corner of it, one almost ran into our inconspicuous and wholly detached private of infantry, his tunic open, his cigarette alight, leaning against some railings and considering the city below. men in forts and citadels and garrisons all the world over go up at twilight as automatically as sheep at sundown, to have a last look round. they say little and return as silently across the crunching gravel, detested by bare feet, to their whitewashed rooms and regulated lives. one of the men told me he thought well of cairo. it was interesting. 'take it from me,' he said, 'there's a lot in seeing places, because you can remember 'em afterward.' he was very right. the purple and lemon-coloured hazes of dusk and reflected day spread over the throbbing, twinkling streets, masked the great outline of the citadel and the desert hills, and conspired to confuse and suggest and evoke memories, till cairo the sorceress cast her proper shape and danced before me in the heartbreaking likeness of every city i had known and loved, a little farther up the road. it was a cruel double-magic. for in the very hour that my homesick soul had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back on the dial, i realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all the men penned in far-off places among strange sounds and smells. iv up the river once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence. what impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank boredom of all who took part in the ritual. 'it was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '_you_ come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's only part of their daily work to _them_. i expect,' he added, 'i should have found it the same if--er--i'd gone on to the finish.' he would have. break into any new hell or heaven and you will be met at its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance. for three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks, carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with egypt, under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. twice or thrice daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. saddles were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly returned to our bridge and our baedekers. for sheer comfort, not to say padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our passengers were citizens of the united states--egypt in winter ought to be admitted into the union as a temporary territory--there was no lack of interest. they were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of information about his native city. i had the joy of seeing two such men meet. they turned their backs resolutely on the river, bit and lit cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of their towns;--los angeles, let us say, and rochester, n.y. it sounded like a duel between two cash-registers. one forgot, of course, that all the dreary figures were alive to them, and as los angeles spoke rochester visualised. next day i met an englishman from the soudan end of things, very full of a little-known railway which had been laid down in what had looked like raw desert, and therefore had turned out to be full of paying freight. he was in the full-tide of it when los angeles ranged alongside and cast anchor, fascinated by the mere roll of numbers. 'haow's that?' he cut in sharply at a pause. he was told how, and went on to drain my friend dry concerning that railroad, out of sheer fraternal interest, as he explained, in 'any darn' thing that's being made anywheres,' 'so you see,' my friend went on, 'we shall be bringing abyssinian cattle into cairo.' 'on the hoof?' one quick glance at the desert ranges. 'no, no! by rail and river. and after _that_ we're going to grow cotton between the blue and the white nile and knock spots out of the states.' 'ha-ow's that?' 'this way.' the speaker spread his first and second fingers fanwise under the big, interested beak. 'that's the blue nile. and that's the white. there's a difference of so many feet between 'em, an' in that fork here, 'tween my fingers, we shall--' '_i_ see. irrigate on the strength of the little difference in the levels. how many acres?' again los angeles was told. he expanded like a frog in a shower. 'an' i thought,' he murmured, 'egypt was all mummies and the bible! _i_ used to know something about cotton. now we'll talk.' all that day the two paced the deck with the absorbed insolente of lovers; and, lover-like, each would steal away and tell me what a splendid soul was his companion. that was one type; but there were others--professional men who did not make or sell things--and these the hand of an all-exacting democracy seemed to have run into one mould. they 'were not reticent, but no matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the fittings of a pullman. i hinted something of this to a woman aboard who was learned in their sermons of either language. 'i think,' she began, 'that the staleness you complain of--' 'i never said "staleness,"' i protested. 'but you thought it. the staleness you noticed is due to our men being so largely educated by old women--old maids. practically till he goes to college, and not always then, a boy can't get away from them.' 'then what happens?' 'the natural result. a man's instinct is to teach a boy to think for himself. if a woman can't make a boy think _as_ she thinks, she sits down and cries. a man hasn't any standards. he makes 'em. a woman's the most standardised being in the world. she has to be. _now_ d'you see?' 'not yet.' 'well, our trouble in america is that we're being school-marmed to death. you can see it in any paper you pick up. what were those men talking about just now?' 'food adulteration, police-reform, and beautifying waste-lots in towns,' i replied promptly. she threw up her hands. 'i knew it!' she cried. 'our great national policy of co-educational housekeeping! ham-frills and pillow-shams. did you ever know a man get a woman's respect by parading around creation with a dish-clout pinned to his coat-tails?' 'but if his woman ord----told him to do it?' i suggested. 'then she'd despise him the more for doing it. _you_ needn't laugh. 'you're coming to the same sort of thing in england.' i returned to the little gathering. a woman was talking to them as one accustomed to talk from birth. they listened with the rigid attention of men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. she was, to put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no man ventured to say as much. 'that's what i mean by being school-manned to death,' said my acquaintance wickedly. 'why, she bored 'em stiff; but they are so well brought up, they didn't even know they were bored. some day the american man is going to revolt.' 'and what'll the american woman do?' 'she'll sit and cry--and it'll do her good.' later on, i met a woman from a certain western state seeing god's great, happy, inattentive world for the first time, and rather distressed that it was not like hers. she had always understood that the english were brutal to their wives--the papers of her state said so. (if you only knew the papers of her state i) but she had not noticed any scandalous treatment so far, and englishwomen, whom she admitted she would never understand, seemed to enjoy a certain specious liberty and equality; while englishmen were distinctly kind to girls in difficulties over their baggage and tickets on strange railways. quite a nice people, she concluded, but without much sense of humour. one day, she showed me what looked like a fashion-paper print of a dress-stuff--a pretty oval medallion of stars on a striped grenadine background that somehow seemed familiar. 'how nice! what is it?' i asked. 'our national flag,' she replied. 'indeed. but it doesn't look quite----' 'no. this is a new design for arranging the stars so that they shall be easier to count and more decorative in effect. we're going to take a vote on it in our state, where _we_ have the franchise. i shall cast my vote when i get home.' 'really! and how will you vote?' 'i'm just thinking that out.' she spread the picture on her knee and considered it, head to one side, as though it were indeed dress material. all this while the land of egypt marched solemnly beside us on either hand. the river being low, we saw it from the boat as one long plinth, twelve to twenty feet high of brownish, purplish mud, visibly upheld every hundred yards or so by glistening copper caryatides in the shape of naked men baling water up to the crops above. behind that bright emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of desert, and a pale blue sky closed all. there was egypt even as the pharaohs, their engineers and architects, had seen it--land to cultivate, folk and cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place beyond the limits of cultivation. when the banks grew lower, one looked across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy noah's-ark with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, and an occasional horse. the beasts stood as still, too, as the toys, because they were tethered or hobbled each to his own half-circle of clover, and moved forward when that was eaten. only the very little kids were loose, and these played on the flat mud roofs like kittens. no wonder 'every shepherd is an abomination to the egyptians.' the dusty, naked-footed field-tracks are cut down to the last centimetre of grudged width; the main roads are lifted high on the flanks of the canals, unless the permanent-way of some light railroad can be pressed to do duty for them. the wheat, the pale ripened tufted sugar-cane, the millet, the barley, the onions, the fringed castor-oil bushes jostle each other for foothold, since the desert will not give them room; and men chase the falling nile inch by inch, each dawn, with new furrowed melon-beds on the still dripping mud-banks. administratively, such a land ought to be a joy. the people do not emigrate; all their resources are in plain sight; they are as accustomed as their cattle to being led about. all they desire, and it has been given them, is freedom from murder and mutilation, rape and robbery. the rest they can attend to in their silent palm-shaded villages where the pigeons coo and the little children play in the dust. but western civilisation is a devastating and a selfish game. like the young woman from 'our state,' it says in effect: 'i am rich. i've nothing to do. i _must_ do something. i shall take up social reform.' just now there is a little social reform in egypt which is rather amusing. the egyptian cultivator borrows money; as all farmers must. this land without hedge or wild-flower is his passion by age-long inheritance and suffering, by, in and for which he lives. he borrows to develop it and to buy more at from £ to £ per acre, the profit on which, when all is paid, works out at between £ to £ per acre. formerly, he borrowed from the local money-lenders, mostly greeks, at per cent per annum and over. this rate is not excessive, so long as public opinion allows the borrower from time to time to slay the lender; but modern administration calls that riot and murder. some years ago, therefore, there was established a state-guaranteed bank which lent to the cultivators at eight per cent, and the cultivator zealously availed himself of that privilege. he did not default more than in reason, but being a farmer, he naturally did not pay up till threatened with being sold up. so he prospered and bought more land, which was his heart's desire. this year-- --the administration issued sudden orders that no man owning less than five acres could borrow on security of his land. the matter interested me directly, because i held five hundred pounds worth of shares in that state-guaranteed bank, and more than half our clients were small men of less than five acres. so i made inquiries in quarters that seemed to possess information, and was told that the new law was precisely on all-fours with the homestead act or the united states and france, and the intentions of divine providence--or words to that effect. 'but,' i asked, 'won't this limitation of credit prevent the men with less than five acres from borrowing more to buy more land and getting on in the world?' 'yes,' was the answer, 'of course it will. that's just what we want to prevent. half these fellows ruin themselves trying to buy more land. we've got to protect them against themselves.' that, alas! is the one enemy against which no law can protect any son of adam; since the real reasons that make or break a man are too absurd or too obscene to be reached from outside. then i cast about in other quarters to discover what the cultivator was going to do about it. 'oh, him?' said one of my many informants. '_he's_ all right. there are about six ways of evading the act that, _i_ know of. the fellah probably knows another six. he has been trained to look after himself since the days of rameses. he can forge land-transfers for one thing; borrow land enough to make his holding more than five acres for as long as it takes to register a loan; get money from his own women (yes, that's one result of modern progress in this land!) or go back to his old friend the greek at per cent.' 'then the greek will sell him up, and that will be against the law, won't it?' i said. 'don't you worry about the greek. he can get through any law ever made if there's five piastres on the other side of it.' 'maybe; but _was_ the agricultural bank selling the cultivators up too much?' 'not in the least. the number of small holdings is on the increase, if anything. most cultivators won't pay a loan until you point a judgment-summons at their head. they think that shows they're men of consequence. this swells the number of judgment-summonses issued, but it doesn't mean a land-sale for each summons. another fact is that in real life some men don't get on as well as others. either they don't farm well enough, or they take to hashish, or go crazy about a girl and borrow money for her, or--er--something of that kind, and they are sold up. you may have noticed that.' 'i have. and meantime, what is the fellah doing?' 'meantime, the fellah has misread the act--as usual. he thinks it's retrospective, and that he needn't pay past debts. they may make trouble, but i fancy your bank will keep quiet.' 'keep quiet! with the bottom knocked out of two-thirds of its business and--and my five hundred pounds involved!' 'is that your trouble? i don't think your shares will rise in a hurry; but if you want some fun, go and talk to the french about it,' this seemed as good a way as any of getting a little interest. the frenchman that i went to spoke with a certain knowledge of finance and politics and the natural malice of a logical race against an illogical horde. 'yes,' he said. 'the idea of limiting credit under these circumstances is absurd. but that is not all. people are not frightened, business is not upset by one absurd idea, but by the possibilities of more,' 'are there any more ideas, then, that are going to be tried on this country?' 'two or three,' he replied placidly. 'they are all generous; but they are all ridiculous. egypt is not a place where one should promulgate ridiculous ideas.' 'but my shares--my shares!' i cried. 'they have already dropped several points.' 'it is possible. they will drop more. then they will rise.' 'thank you. but why?' 'because the idea is fundamentally absurd. that will never be admitted by your people, but there will be arrangements, accommodations, adjustments, till it is all the same as it used to be. it will be the concern of the permanent official--poor devil!--to pull it straight. it is always his concern. meantime, prices will rise for all things.' 'why?' 'because the land is the chief security in egypt. if a man cannot borrow on that security, the rates of interest will increase on whatever other security he offers. that will affect all work and wages and government contracts.' he put it so convincingly and with so many historical illustrations that i saw whole perspectives of the old energetic pharaohs, masters of life and death along the river, checked in mid-career by cold-blooded accountants chanting that not even the gods themselves can make two plus two more than four. and the vision ran down through the ages to one little earnest head on a cook's steamer, bent sideways over the vital problem of rearranging 'our national flag' so that it should be 'easier to count the stars.' for the thousandth time: praised be allah for the diversity of his creatures! v dead kings the swiss are the only people who have taken the trouble to master the art of hotel-keeping. consequently, in the things that really matter--beds, baths, and victuals--they control egypt; and since every land always throws back to its aboriginal life (which is why the united states delight in telling aged stories), any ancient egyptian would at once understand and join in with the life that roars through the nickel-plumbed tourist-barracks on the river, where all the world frolics in the sunshine. at first sight, the show lends itself to cheap moralising, till one recalls that one only sees busy folk when they are idle, and rich folk when they have made their money. a citizen of the united states--his first trip abroad--pointed out a middle-aged anglo-saxon who was relaxing after the manner of several school-boys. 'there's a sample!' said the son of hustle scornfully. 'tell me, _he_ ever did anything in his life?' unluckily he had pitched upon one who, when he is in collar, reckons thirteen and a half hours a fairish day's work. among this assembly were men and women burned to an even blue-black tint--civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes. they explained themselves as 'diggers'--just diggers--and opened me a new world. granted that all egypt is one big undertaker's emporium, what could be more fascinating than to get government leave to rummage in a corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying to pay dividends in the shape of amethyst necklaces, lapis-lazuli scarabs, pots of pure gold, and priceless bits of statuary? or, if one is rich, what better fun than to grub-stake an expedition on the supposed site of a dead city and see what turns up? there was a big-game hunter who had used most of the continent, quite carried away by this sport. 'i'm going to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging myself,' he said. 'it beats elephants to pieces. in _this_ game you're digging up dead things and making them alive. aren't you going to have a flutter?' he showed me a seductive little prospectus. myself, i would sooner not lay hands on a dead man's kit or equipment, especially when he has gone to his grave in the belief that the trinkets guarantee salvation. of course, there is the other argument, put forward by sceptics, that the egyptian was a blatant self-advertiser, and that nothing would please him more than the thought that he was being looked at and admired after all these years. still, one might rob some shrinking soul who didn't see it in that light. at the end of spring the diggers flock back out of the desert and exchange chaff and flews in the gorgeous verandahs. for example, a's company has made a find of priceless stuff, heaven knows how old, and is--not too meek about it. company b, less fortunate, hints that if only a knew to what extent their native diggers had been stealing and disposing of the thefts, under their very archaeological noses, they would not be so happy. 'nonsense,' says company a. 'our diggers are above suspicion. besides, we watched 'em.' '_are_ they?' is the reply. 'well, next time you are in berlin, go to the museum and you'll see what the germans have got hold of. it must have come out of your ground. the dynasty proves it.' so a's cup is poisoned--till next year. no collector or curator of a museum should have any moral scruples whatever; and i have never met one who had; though i have been informed by deeply-shocked informants of four nationalities that the germans are the most flagrant pirates of all. the business of exploration is about as romantic as earth-work on indian railways. there are the same narrow-gauge trams and donkeys, the same shining gangs in the borrow-pits and the same skirling dark-blue crowds of women and children with the little earth-baskets. but the hoes are not driven in, nor the clods jerked aside at random, and when the work fringes along the base of some mighty wall, men use their hands carefully. a white man--or he was white at breakfast-time--patrols through the continually renewed dust-haze. weeks may pass without a single bead, but anything may turn up at any moment, and it is his to answer the shout of discovery. we had the good fortune to stay a while at the headquarters of the metropolitan museum (new york) in a valley riddled like a rabbit-warren with tombs. their stables, store-houses, and servants' quarters are old tombs; their talk is of tombs, and their dream (the diggers' dream always) is to discover a virgin tomb where the untouched dead lie with their jewels upon them. four miles away are the wide-winged, rampant hotels. here is nothing whatever but the rubbish of death that died thousands of years ago, on whose grave no green thing has ever grown. villages, expert in two hundred generations of grave-robbing, cower among the mounds of wastage, and whoop at the daily tourist. paths made by bare feet run from one half-tomb, half-mud-heap to the next, not much more distinct than snail smears, but they have been used since.... time is a dangerous thing to play with. that morning the concierge had toiled for us among steamer-sailings to see if we could save three days. that evening we sat with folk for whom time had stood still since the ptolemies. i wondered, at first, how it concerned them or any man if such and such a pharaoh had used to his own glory the plinths and columns of such another pharaoh before or after melchizedek. their whole background was too inconceivably remote for the mind to work on. but the next morning we were taken to the painted tomb of a noble--a minister of agriculture--who died four or five thousand years ago. he said to me, in so many words: 'observe i was very like your friend, the late mr. samuel pepys, of your admiralty. i took an enormous interest in life, which i most thoroughly enjoyed, on its human and on its spiritual side. i do not think you will find many departments of state better managed than mine, or a better-kept house, or a nicer set of young people ... my daughters! the eldest, as you can see, takes after her mother. the youngest, my favourite, is supposed to favour me. now i will show you all the things that i did, and delighted in, till it was time for me to present my accounts elsewhere.' and he showed me, detail by detail, in colour and in drawing, his cattle, his horses, his crops, his tours in the district, his accountants presenting the revenue returns, and he himself, busiest of the busy, in the good day. but when we left that broad, gay ante-room and came to the narrower passage where once his body had lain and where all his doom was portrayed, i could not follow him so well. i did not see how he, so experienced in life, could be cowed by friezes of brute-headed apparitions or satisfied by files of repeated figures. he explained, something to this effect: 'we live on the river--a line without breadth or thickness. behind us is the desert, which nothing can affect; wither no man goes till he is dead, (one does not use good agricultural ground for cemeteries.) practically, then, we only move in two dimensions--up stream or down. take away the desert, which we don't consider any more than a healthy man considers death, and you will see that we have no background whatever. our world is all one straight bar of brown or green earth, and, for some months, mere sky-reflecting water that wipes out everything you have only to look at the colossi to realise how enormously and extravagantly man and his works must scale in such a country. remember too, that our crops are sure, and our life is very, very easy. above all, we have no neighbours that is to say, we must give out, for we cannot take in. now, i put it to you, what is left for a priest with imagination, except to develop ritual and multiply gods on friezes? unlimited leisure, limited space of two dimensions, divided by the hypnotising line of the river, and bounded by visible, unalterable death--must, _ipso facto_----' 'even so,' i interrupted. 'i do not comprehend your gods--your direct worship of beasts, for instance?' 'you prefer the indirect? the worship of humanity with a capital h? my gods, or what i saw in them, contented me.' 'what did you see in your gods as affecting belief and conduct?' 'you know the answer to the riddle of the sphinx?' 'no,' i murmured. 'what is it?' '"all sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever tells,"' he replied. with that i had to be content, for the passage ended in solid rock. there were other tombs in the valley, but the owners were dumb, except one pharaoh, who from the highest motives had broken with the creeds and instincts of his country, and so had all but wrecked it. one of his discoveries was an artist, who saw men not on one plane but modelled full or three-quarter face, with limbs suited to their loads and postures. his vividly realised stuff leaped to the eye out of the acreage of low-relief in the old convention, and i applauded as a properly brought-up tourist should. 'mine was a fatal mistake,' pharaoh ahkenaton sighed in my ear,' i mistook the conventions of life for the realities.' 'ah, those soul-crippling conventions!' i cried. 'you mistake _me_,' he answered more stiffly. 'i was so sure of their reality that i thought that they were really lies, whereas they were only invented to cover the raw facts of life.' 'ah, those raw facts of life!' i cried, still louder; for it is not often that one has a chance of impressing a pharaoh.' we must face them with open eyes and an open mind! did _you_?' 'i had no opportunity of avoiding them,' he replied. 'i broke every convention in my land.' 'oh, noble! and what happened?' 'what happens when you strip the cover off a hornet's nest? the raw fact of life is that mankind is just a little lower than the angels, and the conventions are based on that fact in order that men may become angels. but if you begin, as i did, by the convention that men are angels they will assuredly become bigger beasts than ever.' 'that,' i said firmly, 'is altogether out-of-date. you should have brought a larger mentality, a more vital uplift, and--er--all that sort of thing, to bear on--all that sort of thing, you know.' 'i did,' said ahkenaton gloomily. 'it broke me!' and he, too, went dumb among the ruins. there is a valley of rocks and stones in every shade of red and brown, called the valley of the kings, where a little oil-engine coughs behind its hand all day long, grinding electricity to light the faces of dead pharaohs a hundred feet underground. all down the valley, during the tourist season, stand char-a-bancs and donkeys and sand-carts, with here and there exhausted couples who have dropped out of the processions and glisten and fan themselves in some scrap of shade. along the sides of the valley are the tombs of the kings neatly numbered, as it might be mining adits with concrete steps leading up to them, and iron grilles that lock of nights, and doorkeepers of the department of antiquities demanding the proper tickets. one enters, and from deeps below deeps hears the voices of dragomans booming through the names and titles of the illustrious and thrice-puissant dead. rock-cut steps go down into hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which, men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real tombs by thieves to come. up and down these alley-ways clatter all the races of europe with a solid backing of the united states. their footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. they peer up at the blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on their programme. what they think proper to say, they say aloud--and some of it is very interesting. what they feel you can guess from a certain haste in their movements--something between the shrinking modesty of a man under fire and the hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on attitude of visitors to a mine. after all, it is not natural for man to go underground except for business or for the last time. he is conscious of the weight of mother-earth overhead, and when to her expectant bulk is added the whole beaked, horned, winged, and crowned hierarchy of a lost faith flaming at every turn of his eye, he naturally wishes to move away. even the sight of a very great king indeed, sarcophagused under electric light in a hall full of most fortifying pictures, does not hold him too long. some men assert that the crypt of st. peter's, with only nineteen centuries bearing down on the groining, and the tombs of early popes and kings all about, is more impressive than the valley of the kings because it explains how and out of what an existing creed grew. but the valley of the kings explains nothing except that most terrible line in _macbeth_: to the last syllable of recorded time. earth opens her dry lips and says it. in one of the tombs there is a little chamber whose ceiling, probably because of a fault in the rock, could not be smoothed off like the others. so the decorator, very cunningly, covered it with a closely designed cloth-pattern--just such a chintz-like piece of stuff as, in real life, one would use to underhang a rough roof with. he did it perfectly, down there in the dark, and went his way. thousands of years later, there was born a man of my acquaintance who, for good and sufficient reason, had an almost insane horror of anything in the nature of a ceiling-cloth. he used to make excuses for not going into the dry goods shops at christmas, when hastily enlarged annexes are hidden, roof and sides, with embroideries. perhaps a snake or a lizard had dropped on his mother from the roof before he was born; perhaps it was the memory of some hideous fever-bout in a tent. at any rate, that man's idea of the torment was a hot, crowded underground room, underhung with patterned cloths. once in his life at a city in the far north, where he had to make a speech, he met that perfect combination. they led him up and down narrow, crowded, steam-heated passages, till they planted him at last in a room without visible windows (by which he knew he was, underground), and directly beneath a warm-patterned ceiling-cloth--rather like a tent-lining. and there he had to say his say, while panic terror sat in his throat. the second time was in the valley of the kings, where very similar passages, crowded with people, led him into a room cut of rock, fathoms underground, with what looked like a sagging chintz cloth not three feet above his head. the man i'd like to catch,' he said when he came outside again, 'is that decorator-man. d'you suppose he meant to produce that effect?' every man has his private terrors, other than those of his own conscience. from what i saw in the valley of the kings, the egyptians seem to have known this some time ago. they certainly have impressed it on most unexpected people. i heard two voices down a passage talking together as follows: _she_. i guess we weren't ever meant to see these old tombs from inside, anyway. _he_. how so? _she_. for one thing, they believe so hard in being dead. of course, their outlook on spiritual things wasn't as broad as ours. _he_. well, there's no danger of _our_ being led away by it. did you buy that alleged scarab off the dragoman this morning? vi the face of the desert going up the nile is like running the gauntlet before eternity. till one has seen it, one does not realise the amazing thinness of that little damp trickle of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws of established death. a rifle-shot would cover the widest limits of cultivation, a bow-shot would reach the narrower. once beyond them a man may carry his next drink with him till he reaches cape blanco on the west (where he may signal for one from a passing union castle boat) or the karachi club on the east. say four thousand dry miles to the left hand and three thousand to the right. the weight of the desert is on one, every day and every hour. at morning, when the cavalcade tramps along in the rear of the tulip-like dragoman, she says: 'i am here----just beyond that ridge of pink sand that you are admiring. come along, pretty gentleman, and i'll tell you your fortune.' but the dragoman says very clearly: 'please, sar, do not separate yourself at _all_ from the main body,' which, the desert knows well, you had no thought of doing. at noon, when the stewards rummage out lunch-drinks from the dewy ice-chest, the desert whines louder than the well-wheels on the bank: 'i am here, only a quarter of a mile away. for mercy's sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips. there's a white man a few hundred miles off, dying on my lap of thirst--thirst that you cure with a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you hold him down with the one hand, and he thinks he is cursing you aloud, but he isn't, because his tongue is outside his mouth and he can't get it back. thank _you_, my noble captain!' for naturally one tips half the drink over the rail with the ancient prayer: 'may it reach him who needs it,' and turns one's back on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning their mid-day mirage-dance. at evening the desert obtrudes again--tricked out as a nautch girl in veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. she postures shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'notice me!' she cries, like any other worthless woman. 'admire the play of my mobile features--the revelations of my multi-coloured soul! observe my allurements and potentialities. thrill while i stir you!' so she floats through all her changes and retires upstage into the arms of the dusk. but at midnight she drops all pretence and bears down in her natural shape, which depends upon the conscience of the beholder and his distance from the next white man. you will observe in the _benedicite omnia opera_ that the desert is the sole thing not enjoined to 'bless the lord, praise him and magnify him for ever.' this is because when our illustrious father, the lord adam, and his august consort, the lady eve, were expelled from eden, eblis the accursed, fearful lest mankind should return ultimately to the favour of allah, set himself to burn and lay waste all the lands east and west of eden. oddly enough, the garden of eden is almost the exact centre of all the world's deserts, counting from gobi to timbuctoo; and all that land _qua_ land is 'dismissed from the mercy of god.' those who use it do so at their own risk. consequently the desert produces her own type of man exactly as the sea does. i was fortunate enough to meet one sample, aged perhaps twenty-five. his work took him along the edge of the red sea, where men on swift camels come to smuggle hashish, and sometimes guns, from dhows that put in to any convenient beach. these smugglers must be chased on still swifter camels, and since the wells are few and known, the game is to get ahead of them and occupy their drinking-places. but they may skip a well or so, and do several days' march in one. then their pursuer must take e'en greater risks and make crueller marches that the law may be upheld. the one thing in the law's favour is that _hashish_ smells abominably--worse than a heated camel--so, when they range alongside, no time is lost in listening to lies. it was not told to me how they navigate themselves across the broken wastes, or by what arts they keep alive in the dust-storms and heat. that was taken for granted, and the man who took it so considered himself the most commonplace of mortals. he was deeply moved by the account of a new aerial route which the french are laying out somewhere in the sahara over a waterless stretch of four hundred miles, where if the aeroplane is disabled between stations the pilot will most likely die and dry up beside it. to do the desert justice, she rarely bothers to wipe out evidence of a kill. there are places in the desert, men say, where even now you come across the dead of old battles, all as light as last year's wasps' nests, laid down in swaths or strung out in flight, with, here and there, the little sparkling lines of the emptied cartridge-cases that dropped them. there are valleys and ravines that the craziest smugglers do not care to refuge in at certain times of the year; as there are rest-houses where one's native servants will not stay because they are challenged on their way to the kitchen by sentries of old soudanese regiments which have long gone over to paradise. and of voices and warnings and outcries behind rocks there is no end. these last arise from the fact that men very rarely live in a spot so utterly still that they can hear the murmuring race of the blood over their own ear-drums. neither ship, prairie, nor forest gives that silence. i went out to find it once, when our steamer tied up and the rest of them had gone to see a sight, but i never dared venture more than a mile from our funnel-smoke. at that point i came upon a hill honey-combed with graves that held a multitude of paper-white skulls, all grinning cheerfully like ambassadors of the desert. but i did not accept their invitation. they had told me that all the little devils learn to draw in the desert, which explains the elaborate and purposeless detail that fills it. none but devils could think of etching every rock outcrop with wind-lines, or skinning it down to its glistening nerves with sand-blasts; of arranging hills in the likeness of pyramids and sphinxes and wrecked town-suburbs; of covering the space of half an english county with sepia studies of interlacing and recrossing ravines, dongas, and nullahs, each an exposition of much too clever perspective; and of wiping out the half-finished work with a wash of sand in three tints, only to pick it up again in silver-point on the horizon's edge. this they do in order to make lost travellers think they can recognise landmarks and run about identifying them till the madness comes. the desert is all devil-device--as you might say 'blasted cleverness'--crammed with futile works, always promising something fresh round the next corner, always leading out through heaped decoration and over-insistent design into equal barrenness. there was a morning of mornings when we lay opposite the rock-hewn temple of abu simbel, where four great figures, each sixty feet high, sit with their hands on their knees waiting for judgment day. at their feet is a little breadth of blue-green crop; they seem to hold back all the weight of the desert behind them, which, none the less, lips over at one side in a cataract of vividest orange sand. the tourist is recommended to see the sunrise here, either from within the temple where it falls on a certain altar erected by rameses in his own honour, or from without where another power takes charge. the stars had paled when we began our watch; the river birds were just whispering over their toilettes in the uncertain purplish light. then the river dimmered up like pewter; the line of the ridge behind the temple showed itself against a milkiness in the sky; one felt rather than saw that there were four figures in the pit of gloom below it. these blocked themselves out, huge enough, but without any special terror, while the glorious ritual of the eastern dawn went forward. some reed of the bank revealed itself by reflection, black on silver; arched wings flapped and jarred the still water to splintered glass; the desert ridge turned to topaz, and the four figures stood clear, yet without shadowing, from their background. the stronger light flooded them red from head to foot, and they became alive--as horridly and tensely yet blindly alive as pinioned men in the death-chair before the current is switched on. one felt that if by any miracle the dawn could be delayed a second longer, they would tear themselves free, and leap forth to heaven knows what sort of vengeance. but that instant the full sun pinned them in their places--nothing more than statues slashed with light and shadow--and another day got to work. a few yards to the left of the great images, close to the statue of an egyptian princess, whose face was the very face of 'she,' there was a marble slab over the grave of an english officer killed in a fight against dervishes nearly a generation ago. from abu simbel to wady halfa the river, escaped from the domination of the pharaohs, begins to talk about dead white men. thirty years ago, young english officers in india lied and intrigued furiously that they might be attached to expeditions whose bases were sometimes at suakim, sometimes quite in the desert air, but all of whose deeds are now quite forgotten. occasionally the dragoman, waving a smooth hand east or south-easterly, will speak of some fight. then every one murmurs: 'oh yes. that was gordon, of course,' or 'was that before or after omdurman?' but the river is much more precise. as the boat quarters the falling stream like a puzzled hound, all the old names spurt up again under the paddle-wheels--'hicks' army--val baker--el teb--tokar--tamai--tamanieb and osman digna!' her head swings round for another slant: '_we cannot land english or indian troops: if consulted, recommend abandonment of the soudan within certain limits._' that was my lord granville chirruping to the advisers of his highness the khedive, and the sentence comes back as crisp as when it first shocked one in ' . next--here is a long reach between flooded palm trees--next, of course, comes gordon--and a delightfully mad irish war correspondent who was locked up with him in khartoum. gordon--eighty-four--eighty-five--the suakim-berber railway really begun and quite as really abandoned. korti--abu klea--the desert column--a steamer called the _safieh_ not the _condor_, which rescued two other steamers wrecked on their way back from a khartoum in the red hands of the mahdi of those days. then--the smooth glide over deep water continues--another suakim expedition with a great deal of osman digna and renewed attempts to build the suakim-berber railway. 'hashin,' say the paddle-wheels, slowing all of a sudden--'macneill's zareba--the th sikhs and another native regiment--osman digna in great pride and power, and wady halfa a frontier town. tamai, once more; another siege of suakim: gemaiza; handub; trinkitat, and tokar-- .' the river recalls the names; the mind at once brings up the face and every trick of speech of some youth met for a few hours, maybe, in a train on the way to egypt of the old days. both name and face had utterly vanished from one's memory till then. it was another generation that picked up the ball ten years later and touched down in khartoum. several people aboard the cook boat had been to that city. they all agreed that the hotel charges were very high, but that you could buy the most delightful curiosities in the native bazaar. but i do not like bazaars of the egyptian kind, since a discovery i made at assouan. there was an old man--a mussulman--who pressed me to buy some truck or other, but not with the villainous camaraderie that generations of low-caste tourists have taught the people, nor yet with the cosmopolitan light-handedness of appeal which the town-bred egyptian picks up much too quickly; but with a certain desperate zeal, foreign to his whole creed and nature. he fingered, he implored, he fawned with an unsteady eye, and while i wondered i saw behind him the puffy pink face of a fezzed jew, watching him as a stoat watches a rabbit. when he moved the jew followed and took position at a commanding angle. the old man glanced from me to him and renewed his solicitations. so one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a tambourine with the stoat behind him. they told me afterwards that jews own most of the stalls in assouan bazaar, the mussulmans working for them, since tourists need oriental colour. never having seen or imagined a jew coercing a mussulman, this colour was new and displeasing to me. vii the riddle of empire at halfa one feels the first breath of a frontier. here the egyptian government retires into the background, and even the cook steamer does not draw up in the exact centre of the postcard. at the telegraph-office, too, there are traces, diluted but quite recognisable, of military administration. nor does the town, in any way or place whatever, smell--which is proof that it is not looked after on popular lines. there is nothing to see in it any more than there is in hulk c. , late of her majesty's troopship _himalaya_, now a coal-hulk in the hamoaze at plymouth. a river front, a narrow terraced river-walk of semi-oriental houses, barracks, a mosque, and half-a-dozen streets at right angles, the desert racing up to the end of each, make all the town. a mile or so up stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. it is all as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the finger-bowl rings when the rubbing finger is lifted. the most unlikely men have done time there; stores by the thousand ton have been rolled and pushed and hauled up the banks by tens of thousands of scattered hands; hospitals have pitched themselves there, expanded enormously, shrivelled up and drifted away with the drifting regiments; railway sidings by the mile have been laid down and ripped up again, as need changed, and utterly wiped out by the sands. halfa has been the rail-head, army headquarters, and hub of the universe--the one place where a man could make sure of buying tobacco and sardines, or could hope for letters for himself and medical attendance for his friend. now she is a little shrunken shell of a town without a proper hotel, where tourists hurry up from the river to buy complete sets of soudan stamps at the post office. i went for a purposeless walk from one end of the place to the other, and found a crowd of native boys playing football on what might have been a parade-ground of old days. 'and what school is that?' i asked in english of a small, eager youth. 'madrissah,' said he most intelligently, which being translated means just 'school.' 'yes, but _what_ school?' 'yes, madrissah, school, sir,' and he tagged after to see what else the imbecile wanted. a line of railway track, that must have fed big workshops in its time, led me between big-roomed houses and offices labelled departmentally, with here and there a clerk at work. i was directed and re-directed by polite egyptian officials (i wished to get at a white officer if possible, but there wasn't one about); was turned out of a garden which belonged to an authority; hung round the gate of a bungalow with an old-established compound and two white men sitting in chairs on a verandah; wandered down towards the river under the palm trees, where the last red light came through; lost myself among rusty boilers and balks of timber; and at last loafed back in the twilight escorted by the small boy and an entire brigade of ghosts, not one of whom i had ever met before, but all of whom i knew most intimately. they said it was the evenings that used to depress _them_ most, too; so they all came back after dinner and bore me company, while i went to meet a friend arriving by the night train from khartoum. she was an hour late, and we spent it, the ghosts and i, in a brick-walled, tin-roofed shed, warm with the day's heat; a crowd of natives laughing and talking somewhere behind in the darkness. we knew each other so well by that time, that we had finished discussing every conceivable topic of conversation--the whereabouts of the mahdi's head, for instance--work, reward, despair, acknowledgment, flat failure, all the real motives that had driven us to do anything, and all our other longings. so we sat still and let the stars move, as men must do when they meet this kind of train. presently i asked: 'what is the name of the next station out from here?' 'station number one,' said a ghost. 'and the next?' 'station number two, and so on to eight, i think.' 'and wasn't it worth while to name even _one_ of these stations from some man, living or dead, who had something to do with making the line?' 'well, they didn't, anyhow,' said another ghost. 'i suppose they didn't think it worth while. why? what do _you_ think?' 'i think, i replied, 'it is the sort of snobbery that nations go to hades for.' her headlight showed at last, an immense distance off; the economic electrics were turned up, the ghosts vanished, the dragomans of the various steamers flowed forward in beautiful garments to meet their passengers who had booked passages in the cook boats, and the khartoum train decanted a joyous collection of folk, all decorated with horns, hoofs, skins, hides, knives, and assegais, which they had been buying at omdurman. and when the porters laid hold upon their bristling bundles, it was like macneill's zareba without the camels. two young men in tarboushes were the only people who had no part in the riot. said one of them to the other: 'hullo?' said the other: 'hullo!' they grunted together for a while. then one pleasantly: 'oh, i'm sorry for _that_! i thought i was going to have you under me for a bit. then you'll use the rest-house there?' 'i suppose so,' said the other. 'do you happen to know if the roof's on?' here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, and i shall never know, except from the back pages of the soudan almanack, what state that rest-house there is in. the soudan administration, by the little i heard, is a queer service. it extends itself in silence from the edges of abyssinia to the swamps of the equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand square miles. it legislates according to the custom of the tribe where possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no precedent. it is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own reputation. it is said to be the only service in which a man taking leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest himself that he may return the more fit to his job. a high standard of intelligence is required, and lapses are not overlooked. for instance, one man on leave in london took the wrong train from boulogne, and instead of going to paris, which, of course, he had intended, found himself at a station called kirk kilissie or adrianople west, where he stayed for some weeks. it was a mistake that might have happened to any one on a dark night after a stormy passage, but the authorities would not believe it, and when i left egypt were busily engaged in boiling him in hot oil. they are grossly respectable in the soudan now. long and long ago, before even the philippines were taken, a friend of mine was reprimanded by a british member of parliament, first for the sin of blood-guiltiness because he was by trade a soldier, next for murder because he had fought in great battles, and lastly, and most important, because he and his fellow-braves had saddled the british taxpayer with the expense of the soudan. my friend explained that all the soudan had ever cost the british taxpayer was the price of about one dozen of regulation union jacks--one for each province. 'that,' said the m.p. triumphantly, 'is all it will ever be worth.' he went on to justify himself, and the soudan went on also. to-day it has taken its place as one of those accepted miracles which are worked without heat or headlines by men who do the job nearest their hand and seldom fuss about their reputations. but less than sixteen years ago the length and breadth of it was one crazy hell of murder, torture, and lust, where every man who had a sword used it till he met a stronger and became a slave. it was--men say who remember it--a hysteria of blood and fanaticism; and precisely as an hysterical woman is called to her senses by a dash of cold water, so at the battle of omdurman the land was reduced to sanity by applied death on such a scale as the murderers and the torturers at their most unbridled could scarcely have dreamed. in a day and a night all who had power and authority were wiped out and put under till, as the old song says, no chief remained to ask after any follower. they had all charged into paradise. the people who were left looked for renewed massacres of the sort they had been accustomed to, and when these did not come, they said helplessly: 'we have nothing. we are nothing. will you sell us into slavery among the egyptians?' the men who remember the old days of the reconstruction--which deserves an epic of its own--say that there was nothing left to build on, not even wreckage. knowledge, decency, kinship, property, tide, sense of possession had all gone. the people were told they were to sit still and obey orders; and they stared and fumbled like dazed crowds after an explosion. bit by bit, however, they were fed and watered and marshalled into some sort of order; set to tasks they never dreamed to see the end of; and, almost by physical force, pushed and hauled along the ways of mere life. they came to understand presently that they might reap what they had sown, and that man, even a woman, might walk for a day's journey with two goats and a native bedstead and live undespoiled. but they had to be taught kindergarten-fashion. and little by little, as they realised that the new order was sure and that their ancient oppressors were quite dead, there returned not only cultivators, craftsmen, and artisans, but outlandish men of war, scarred with old wounds and the generous dimples that the martini-henry bullet used to deal--fighting men on the lookout for new employ. they would hang about, first on one leg, then on the other, proud or uneasily friendly, till some white officer circulated near by. and at his fourth or fifth passing, brown and white having approved each other by eye, the talk--so men say--would run something like this: officer (_with air of sudden discovery_). oh, you by the hut, there, what is your business? warrior (_at 'attention' complicated by attempt to salute_). i am so-and-so, son of so-and-so, from such and such a place. officer. i hear. and ...? warrior (_repeating salute_). and a fighting man also. officer (_impersonally to horizon_). but they _all_ say that nowadays. warrior (_very loudly_). but there is a man in one of your battalions who can testify to it. he is the grandson of my father's uncle. officer (_confidentially to his boots_). hell is _quite_ full of such grandsons of just such father's uncles; and how do i know if private so-and-so speaks the truth about his family? (_makes to go._) warrior (_swiftly removing necessary garments_). perhaps. but _these_ don't lie. look! i got this ten, twelve years ago when i was quite a lad, close to the old border, yes, halfa. it was a true snider bullet. feel it! this little one on the leg i got at the big fight that finished it all last year. but i am not lame (_violent leg-exercise_), not in the least lame. see! i run. i jump. i kick. praised be allah! officer. praised be allah! and then? warrior (_coquettishly_). then, i shoot. i am not a common spear-man. (_lapse into english._) yeh, dam goo' shot! (_pumps lever of imaginary martini_). officer (_unmoved_). i see. and then? warrior (_indignantly_). _i_ am come here--after many days' marching. (_change to childlike wheedle_.) are _all_ the regiments full? at this point the relative, in uniform, generally discovered himself, and if the officer liked the cut of his jib, another 'old mahdi's man' would be added to the machine that made itself as it rolled along. they dealt with situations in those days by the unclouded light of reason and a certain high and holy audacity. there is a tale of two sheikhs shortly after the reconstruction began. one of them, abdullah of the river, prudent and the son of a slave-woman, professed loyalty to the english very early in the day, and used that loyalty as a cloak to lift camels from another sheikh, farid of the desert, still at war with the english, but a perfect gentleman, which abdullah was not. naturally, farid raided back on abdullah's kine, abdullah complained to the authorities, and the border fermented. to farid in his desert camp with a clutch of abdullah's cattle round him, entered, alone and unarmed, the officer responsible for the peace of those parts. after compliments, for they had had dealings with each other before: 'you've been driving abdullah's stock again,' said the englishman. 'i should think i had!' was the hot answer. 'he lifts my camels and scuttles back into your territory, where he knows i can't follow him for the life; and when i try to get a bit of my own back, he whines to you. he's a cad--an utter cad.' 'at any rate, he is loyal. if you'd only come in and be loyal too, you'd both be on the same footing, and then if he stole from you, he'd catch it!' 'he'd never dare to steal except under your protection. give him what he'd have got in the mahdi's time--a first-class flogging. _you_ know he deserves it!' 'i'm afraid that isn't allowed. you have to let me shift all those bullocks of his back again.' 'and if i don't?' 'then, i shall have to ride back and collect all my men and begin war against you.' 'but what prevents my cutting your throat where you sit? 'for one thing, you aren't abdullah, and----' 'there! you confess he's a cad!' 'and for another, the government would only send another officer who didn't understand your ways, and then there _would_ be war, and no one would score except abdullah. he'd steal your camels and get credit for it.' 'so he would, the scoundrel! this is a hard world for honest men. now, you admit abdullah is a cad. listen to me, and i'll tell you a few more things about him. he was, etc., etc. he is, etc., etc.' 'you're perfectly right, sheikh, but don't you see i can't tell him what i think of him so long as he's loyal and you're out against us? now, if _you_ come in i promise you that i'll give abdullah a telling-off--yes, in your presence--that will do you good to listen to.' 'no! i won't come in! but--i tell you what i will do. i'll accompany you to-morrow as your guest, understand, to your camp. then you send for abdullah, and _if_ i judge that his fat face has been sufficiently blackened in my presence, i'll think about coming in later.' so it was arranged, and they slept out the rest of the night, side by side, and in the morning they gathered up and returned all abdullah's cattle, and in the evening, in farid's presence, abdullah got the tongue-lashing of his wicked old life, and farid of the desert laughed and came in; and they all lived happy ever afterwards. somewhere or other in the nearer provinces the old heady game must be going on still, but the soudan proper has settled to civilisation of the brick-bungalow and bougainvillea sort, and there is a huge technical college where the young men are trained to become fitters, surveyors, draftsmen, and telegraph employees at fabulous wages. in due time, they will forget how warily their fathers had to walk in the mahdi's time to secure even half a bellyful; then, as has happened elsewhere. they will honestly believe that they themselves originally created and since then have upheld the easy life into which they were bought at so heavy a price. then the demand will go up for 'extension of local government,' 'soudan for the soudanese,' and so on till the whole cycle has to be retrodden. it is a hard law but an old one--rome died learning it, as our western civilisation may die--that if you give any man anything that he has not painfully earned for himself, you infallibly make him or his descendants your devoted enemies. the end the jungle book [illustration: rudyard kipling] [illustration: "little toomai laid himself down close to the great neck lest a swinging bough should sweep him to the ground." (see page .)] the jungle book by rudyard kipling [illustration] new york the century co. copyright , , by rudyard kipling copyright, , by harper and brothers copyright , , by the century co. contents page mowgli's brothers hunting-song of the seeonee pack kaa's hunting road-song of the bandar-log "tiger! tiger!" mowgli's song the white seal lukannon "rikki-tikki-tavi" darzee's chaunt toomai of the elephants shiv and the grasshopper her majesty's servants parade-song of the camp animals list of illustrations page "little toomai laid himself down close to the great neck, lest a swinging bough should sweep him to the ground" frontispiece "'good luck go with you, o chief of the wolves'" "the tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder" the meeting at the council rock "bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, 'come along, little brother'" "'wake, little brother; i bring news'" "'are all these tales such cobwebs and moon-talk?' said mowgli" "buldeo lay as still, as still, expecting every minute to see mowgli turn into a tiger, too" "when the moon rose over the plain the villagers saw mowgli trotting across, with two wolves at his heels" "they clambered up on the council rock together, and mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone" "ten fathoms deep" "they were all awake and staring in every direction but the right one" "he had found sea cow at last" "rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck" "he put his nose into the ink" "rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow" "he came to breakfast riding on teddy's shoulder" "'we are very miserable,' said darzee" "'i am nag,' said the cobra: 'look, and be afraid.' but at the bottom of his cold heart _he_ was afraid" "he jumped up in the air, and just under him whizzed by the head of nagaina" "in the dark he ran up against chuchundra, the muskrat" "then rikki-tikki was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog" darzee's wife pretends to have a broken wing "nagaina flew down the path with rikki-tikki behind her" "it is all over" "kala nag was the best-loved elephant in the service" "'he is afraid of me,' said little toomai, and he made kala nag lift up his feet one after the other" "he would get his torch and wave it, and yell with the best" "'not green corn, protector of the poor,--melons,' said little toomai" "little toomai looked down upon scores and scores of broad backs" "'to toomai of the elephants. barrao!'" "a camel had blundered into my tent" "'anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night,' said the troop-horse" "'the man was lying on the ground, and i stretched myself not to tread on him, and he slashed up at me'" "then i heard an old, grizzled, long-haired central asian chief asking questions of a native officer" the jungle book now rann, the kite, brings home the night that mang, the bat, sets free-- the herds are shut in byre and hut, for loosed till dawn are we. this is the hour of pride and power, talon and tush and claw. oh, hear the call!--good hunting all that keep the jungle law! _night-song in the jungle._ [illustration] mowgli's brothers it was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the seeonee hills when father wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in the tips. mother wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "augrh!" said father wolf, "it is time to hunt again"; and he was going to spring downhill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "good luck go with you, o chief of the wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth go with the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in this world." [illustration: "'good luck go with you, o chief of the wolves.'"] it was the jackal--tabaqui, the dish-licker--and the wolves of india despise tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. they are afraid of him too, because tabaqui, more than any one else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. even the tiger hides when little tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. we call it hydrophobia, but they call it _dewanee_--the madness--and run. "enter, then, and look," said father wolf, stiffly; "but there is no food here." "for a wolf, no," said tabaqui; "but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. who are we, the gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?" he scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily. "all thanks for this good meal," he said, licking his lips. "how beautiful are the noble children! how large are their eyes! and so young too! indeed, indeed, i might have remembered that the children of kings are men from the beginning." now, tabaqui knew as well as any one else that there is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces; and it pleased him to see mother and father wolf look uncomfortable. tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then he said spitefully: "shere khan, the big one, has shifted his hunting-grounds. he will hunt among these hills during the next moon, so he has told me." shere khan was the tiger who lived near the waingunga river, twenty miles away. "he has no right!" father wolf began angrily. "by the law of the jungle he has no right to change his quarters without fair warning. he will frighten every head of game within ten miles; and i--i have to kill for two, these days." "his mother did not call him lungri [the lame one] for nothing," said mother wolf, quietly. "he has been lame in one foot from his birth. that is why he has only killed cattle. now the villagers of the waingunga are angry with him, and he has come here to make _our_ villagers angry. they will scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set alight. indeed, we are very grateful to shere khan!" "shall i tell him of your gratitude?" said tabaqui. "out!" snapped father wolf. "out, and hunt with thy master. thou hast done harm enough for one night." "i go," said tabaqui, quietly. "ye can hear shere khan below in the thickets. i might have saved myself the message." father wolf listened, and in the dark valley that ran down to a little river, he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle knows it. "the fool!" said father wolf. "to begin a night's work with that noise! does he think that our buck are like his fat waingunga bullocks?" "h'sh! it is neither bullock nor buck that he hunts to-night," said mother wolf; "it is man." the whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to roll from every quarter of the compass. it was the noise that bewilders wood-cutters, and gipsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger. "man!" said father wolf, showing all his white teeth. "faugh! are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat man--and on our ground too!" the law of the jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting-grounds of his pack or tribe. the real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. then everybody in the jungle suffers. the reason the beasts give among themselves is that man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. they say too--and it is true--that man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth. the purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated "aaarh!" of the tiger's charge. then there was a howl--an untigerish howl--from shere khan. "he has missed," said mother wolf. "what is it?" father wolf ran out a few paces and heard shere khan muttering and mumbling savagely, as he tumbled about in the scrub. "the fool has had no more sense than to jump at a wood-cutters' camp-fire, so he has burned his feet," said father wolf, with a grunt. "tabaqui is with him." "something is coming uphill," said mother wolf, twitching one ear. "get ready." the bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and father wolf dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world--the wolf checked in mid-spring. he made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. the result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost where he left ground. "man!" he snapped. "a man's cub. look!" directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk--as soft and as dimpled a little thing as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. he looked up into father wolf's face and laughed. "is that a man's cub?" said mother wolf. "i have never seen one. bring it here." a wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though father wolf's jaws closed right on the child's back not a tooth even scratched the skin, as he laid it down among the cubs. "how little! how naked, and--how bold!" said mother wolf, softly. the baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm hide. "ahai! he is taking his meal with the others. and so this is a man's cub. now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's cub among her children?" "i have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our pack or in my time," said father wolf. "he is altogether without hair, and i could kill him with a touch of my foot. but see, he looks up and is not afraid." the moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for shere khan's great square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance. tabaqui, behind him, was squeaking: "my lord, my lord, it went in here!" "shere khan does us great honor," said father wolf, but his eyes were very angry. "what does shere khan need?" "my quarry. a man's cub went this way," said shere khan. "its parents have run off. give it to me." shere khan had jumped at a wood-cutter's camp-fire, as father wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet. but father wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. even where he was, shere khan's shoulders and fore paws were cramped for want of room, as a man's would be if he tried to fight in a barrel. "the wolves are a free people," said father wolf. "they take orders from the head of the pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. the man's cub is ours--to kill if we choose." "ye choose and ye do not choose! what talk is this of choosing? by the bull that i killed, am i to stand nosing into your dog's den for my fair dues? it is i, shere khan, who speak!" the tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder. mother wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of shere khan. [illustration: "the tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder."] "and it is i, raksha [the demon], who answer. the man's cub is mine, lungri--mine to me! he shall not be killed. he shall live to run with the pack and to hunt with the pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs--frog-eater--fish-killer, he shall hunt _thee_! now get hence, or by the sambhur that i killed (_i_ eat no starved cattle), back thou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever thou camest into the world! go!" father wolf looked on amazed. he had almost forgotten the days when he won mother wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in the pack and was not called the demon for compliment's sake. shere khan might have faced father wolf, but he could not stand up against mother wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. so he backed out of the cave-mouth growling, and when he was clear he shouted: "each dog barks in his own yard! we will see what the pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. the cub is mine, and to my teeth he will come in the end, o bush-tailed thieves!" mother wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and father wolf said to her gravely: "shere khan speaks this much truth. the cub must be shown to the pack. wilt thou still keep him, mother?" "keep him!" she gasped. "he came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not afraid! look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already. and that lame butcher would have killed him, and would have run off to the waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! keep him? assuredly i will keep him. lie still, little frog. o thou mowgli,--for mowgli, the frog, i will call thee,--the time will come when thou wilt hunt shere khan as he has hunted thee!" "but what will our pack say?" said father wolf. the law of the jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf may, when he marries, withdraw from the pack he belongs to; but as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must bring them to the pack council, which is generally held once a month at full moon, in order that the other wolves may identify them. after that inspection the cubs are free to run where they please, and until they have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the pack kills one of them. the punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so. father wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and then on the night of the pack meeting took them and mowgli and mother wolf to the council rock--a hilltop covered with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could hide. akela, the great gray lone wolf, who led all the pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone, to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. the lone wolf had led them for a year now. he had fallen twice into a wolf-trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customs of men. [illustration: the meeting at the council rock.] there was very little talking at the rock. the cubs tumbled over one another in the center of the circle where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully, and return to his place on noiseless feet. sometimes a mother would push her cub far out into the moonlight, to be sure that he had not been overlooked. akela from his rock would cry: "ye know the law--ye know the law! look well, o wolves!" and the anxious mothers would take up the call: "look--look well, o wolves!" at last--and mother wolf's neck-bristles lifted as the time came--father wolf pushed "mowgli, the frog," as they called him, into the center, where he sat laughing and playing with some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight. akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the monotonous cry, "look well!" a muffled roar came up from behind the rocks--the voice of shere khan crying, "the cub is mine; give him to me. what have the free people to do with a man's cub?" akela never even twitched his ears. all he said was, "look well, o wolves! what have the free people to do with the orders of any save the free people? look well!" there was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in his fourth year flung back shere khan's question to akela: "what have the free people to do with a man's cub?" now the law of the jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the pack who are not his father and mother. "who speaks for this cub?" said akela. "among the free people, who speaks?" there was no answer, and mother wolf got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things came to fighting. then the only other creature who is allowed at the pack council--baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the law of the jungle; old baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey--rose up on his hind quarters and grunted. "the man's cub--the man's cub?" he said. "_i_ speak for the man's cub. there is no harm in a man's cub. i have no gift of words, but i speak the truth. let him run with the pack, and be entered with the others. i myself will teach him." "we need yet another," said akela. "baloo has spoken, and he is our teacher for the young cubs. who speaks besides baloo?" a black shadow dropped down into the circle. it was bagheera, the black panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. everybody knew bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. but he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down. "o akela, and ye, the free people," he purred, "i have no right in your assembly; but the law of the jungle says that if there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. and the law does not say who may or may not pay that price. am i right?" "good! good!" said the young wolves, who are always hungry. "listen to bagheera. the cub can be bought for a price. it is the law." "knowing that i have no right to speak here, i ask your leave." "speak then," cried twenty voices. "to kill a naked cub is shame. besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown. baloo has spoken in his behalf. now to baloo's word i will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept the man's cub according to the law. is it difficult?" there was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: "what matter? he will die in the winter rains. he will scorch in the sun. what harm can a naked frog do us? let him run with the pack. where is the bull, bagheera? let him be accepted." and then came akela's deep bay, crying: "look well--look well, o wolves!" mowgli was still playing with the pebbles, and he did not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one by one. at last they all went down the hill for the dead bull, and only akela, bagheera, baloo, and mowgli's own wolves were left. shere khan roared still in the night, for he was very angry that mowgli had not been handed over to him. "ay, roar well," said bagheera, under his whiskers; "for the time comes when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or i know nothing of man." "it was well done," said akela. "men and their cubs are very wise. he may be a help in time." "truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead the pack forever," said bagheera. akela said nothing. he was thinking of the time that comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up--to be killed in his turn. "take him away," he said to father wolf, "and train him as befits one of the free people." and that is how mowgli was entered into the seeonee wolf-pack for the price of a bull and on baloo's good word. now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only guess at all the wonderful life that mowgli led among the wolves, because if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. he grew up with the cubs, though they of course were grown wolves almost before he was a child, and father wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat's claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool, meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man. when he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate, and went to sleep again; when he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that bagheera showed him how to do. bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, "come along, little brother," and at first mowgli would cling like the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself through the branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. he took his place at the council rock, too, when the pack met, and there he discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun. [illustration: "bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, 'come along, little brother.'"] at other times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their coats. he would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but he had a mistrust of men because bagheera showed him a square box with a drop-gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it, and told him it was a trap. he loved better than anything else to go with bagheera into the dark warm heart of the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how bagheera did his killing. bagheera killed right and left as he felt hungry, and so did mowgli--with one exception. as soon as he was old enough to understand things, bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had been bought into the pack at the price of a bull's life. "all the jungle is thine," said bagheera, "and thou canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old. that is the law of the jungle." mowgli obeyed faithfully. and he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat. mother wolf told him once or twice that shere khan was not a creature to be trusted, and that some day he must kill shere khan; but though a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour, mowgli forgot it because he was only a boy--though he would have called himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human tongue. shere khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as akela grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends with the younger wolves of the pack, who followed him for scraps, a thing akela would never have allowed if he had dared to push his authority to the proper bounds. then shere khan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man's cub. "they tell me," shere khan would say, "that at council ye dare not look him between the eyes"; and the young wolves would growl and bristle. bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this, and once or twice he told mowgli in so many words that shere khan would kill him some day; and mowgli would laugh and answer: "i have the pack and i have thee; and baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for my sake. why should i be afraid?" it was one very warm day that a new notion came to bagheera--born of something that he had heard. perhaps ikki, the porcupine, had told him; but he said to mowgli when they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay with his head on bagheera's beautiful black skin: "little brother, how often have i told thee that shere khan is thy enemy?" "as many times as there are nuts on that palm," said mowgli, who, naturally, could not count. "what of it? i am sleepy, bagheera, and shere khan is all long tail and loud talk, like mao, the peacock." "but this is no time for sleeping. baloo knows it, i know it, the pack know it, and even the foolish, foolish deer know. tabaqui has told thee too." "ho! ho!" said mowgli. "tabaqui came to me not long ago with some rude talk that i was a naked man's cub, and not fit to dig pig-nuts; but i caught tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him better manners." "that was foolishness; for though tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he would have told thee of something that concerned thee closely. open those eyes, little brother! shere khan dares not kill thee in the jungle for fear of those that love thee; but remember, akela is very old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill his buck, and then he will be leader no more. many of the wolves that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the council first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as shere khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the pack. in a little time thou wilt be a man." "and what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?" said mowgli. "i was born in the jungle; i have obeyed the law of the jungle; and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws i have not pulled a thorn. surely they are my brothers!" bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut his eyes. "little brother," said he, "feel under my jaw." mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under bagheera's silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were all hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a little bald spot. "there is no one in the jungle that knows that i, bagheera, carry that mark--the mark of the collar; and yet, little brother, i was born among men, and it was among men that my mother died--in the cages of the king's palace at oodeypore. it was because of this that i paid the price for thee at the council when thou wast a little naked cub. yes, i too was born among men. i had never seen the jungle. they fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night i felt that i was bagheera, the panther, and no man's plaything, and i broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw, and came away; and because i had learned the ways of men, i became more terrible in the jungle than shere khan. is it not so?" "yes," said mowgli; "all the jungle fear bagheera--all except mowgli." "oh, _thou_ art a man's cub," said the black panther, very tenderly; "and even as i returned to my jungle, so thou must go back to men at last,--to the men who are thy brothers,--if thou art not killed in the council." "but why--but why should any wish to kill me?" said mowgli. "look at me," said bagheera; and mowgli looked at him steadily between the eyes. the big panther turned his head away in half a minute. "_that_ is why," he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. "not even i can look thee between the eyes, and i was born among men, and i love thee, little brother. the others they hate thee because their eyes cannot meet thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled out thorns from their feet--because thou art a man." "i did not know these things," said mowgli, sullenly; and he frowned under his heavy black eyebrows. "what is the law of the jungle? strike first and then give tongue. by thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. but be wise. it is in my heart that when akela misses his next kill,--and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck,--the pack will turn against him and against thee. they will hold a jungle council at the rock, and then--and then ... i have it!" said bagheera, leaping up. "go thou down quickly to the men's huts in the valley, and take some of the red flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than i or baloo or those of the pack that love thee. get the red flower." by red flower bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name. every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it. "the red flower?" said mowgli. "that grows outside their huts in the twilight. i will get some." "there speaks the man's cub," said bagheera, proudly. "remember that it grows in little pots. get one swiftly, and keep it by thee for time of need." "good!" said mowgli. "i go. but art thou sure, o my bagheera"--he slipped his arm round the splendid neck, and looked deep into the big eyes--"art thou sure that all this is shere khan's doing?" "by the broken lock that freed me, i am sure, little brother." "then, by the bull that bought me, i will pay shere khan full tale for this, and it may be a little over," said mowgli; and he bounded away. "that is a man. that is all a man," said bagheera to himself, lying down again. "oh, shere khan, never was a blacker hunting than that frog-hunt of thine ten years ago!" mowgli was far and far through the forest, running hard, and his heart was hot in him. he came to the cave as the evening mist rose, and drew breath, and looked down the valley. the cubs were out, but mother wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his breathing that something was troubling her frog. "what is it, son?" she said. "some bat's chatter of shere khan," he called back. "i hunt among the plowed fields to-night"; and he plunged downward through the bushes, to the stream at the bottom of the valley. there he checked, for he heard the yell of the pack hunting, heard the bellow of a hunted sambhur, and the snort as the buck turned at bay. then there were wicked, bitter howls from the young wolves: "akela! akela! let the lone wolf show his strength. room for the leader of our pack! spring, akela!" the lone wolf must have sprung and missed his hold, for mowgli heard the snap of his teeth and then a yelp as the sambhur knocked him over with his fore foot. he did not wait for anything more, but dashed on; and the yells grew fainter behind him as he ran into the crop-lands where the villagers lived. "bagheera spoke truth," he panted, as he nestled down in some cattle-fodder by the window of a hut. "to-morrow is one day for akela and for me." then he pressed his face close to the window and watched the fire on the hearth. he saw the husbandman's wife get up and feed it in the night with black lumps; and when the morning came and the mists were all white and cold, he saw the man's child pick up a wicker pot plastered inside with earth, fill it with lumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under his blanket, and go out to tend the cows in the byre. "is that all?" said mowgli. "if a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear"; so he strode around the corner and met the boy, took the pot from his hand, and disappeared into the mist while the boy howled with fear. "they are very like me," said mowgli, blowing into the pot, as he had seen the woman do. "this thing will die if i do not give it things to eat"; and he dropped twigs and dried bark on the red stuff. half-way up the hill he met bagheera with the morning dew shining like moonstones on his coat. "akela has missed," said the panther. "they would have killed him last night, but they needed thee also. they were looking for thee on the hill." "i was among the plowed lands. i am ready. look!" mowgli held up the fire-pot. "good! now, i have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, and presently the red flower blossomed at the end of it. art thou not afraid?" "no. why should i fear? i remember now--if it is not a dream--how, before i was a wolf, i lay beside the red flower, and it was warm and pleasant." all that day mowgli sat in the cave tending his fire-pot and dipping dry branches into it to see how they looked. he found a branch that satisfied him, and in the evening when tabaqui came to the cave and told him, rudely enough, that he was wanted at the council rock, he laughed till tabaqui ran away. then mowgli went to the council, still laughing. akela the lone wolf lay by the side of his rock as a sign that the leadership of the pack was open, and shere khan with his following of scrap-fed wolves walked to and fro openly, being flattered. bagheera lay close to mowgli, and the fire-pot was between mowgli's knees. when they were all gathered together, shere khan began to speak--a thing he would never have dared to do when akela was in his prime. "he has no right," whispered bagheera. "say so. he is a dog's son. he will be frightened." mowgli sprang to his feet. "free people," he cried, "does shere khan lead the pack? what has a tiger to do with our leadership?" "seeing that the leadership is yet open, and being asked to speak--" shere khan began. "by whom?" said mowgli. "are we _all_ jackals, to fawn on this cattle-butcher? the leadership of the pack is with the pack alone." there were yells of "silence, thou man's cub!" "let him speak; he has kept our law!" and at last the seniors of the pack thundered: "let the dead wolf speak!" when a leader of the pack has missed his kill, he is called the dead wolf as long as he lives, which is not long, as a rule. akela raised his old head wearily: "free people, and ye too, jackals of shere khan, for twelve seasons i have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. now i have missed my kill. ye know how that plot was made. ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to make my weakness known. it was cleverly done. your right is to kill me here on the council rock now. therefore i ask, 'who comes to make an end of the lone wolf?' for it is my right, by the law of the jungle, that ye come one by one." there was a long hush, for no single wolf cared to fight akela to the death. then shere khan roared: "bah! what have we to do with this toothless fool? he is doomed to die! it is the man-cub who has lived too long. free people, he was my meat from the first. give him to me. i am weary of this man-wolf folly. he has troubled the jungle for ten seasons. give me the man-cub, or i will hunt here always, and not give you one bone! he is a man--a man's child, and from the marrow of my bones i hate him!" then more than half the pack yelled: "a man--a man! what has a man to do with us? let him go to his own place." "and turn all the people of the villages against us?" snarled shere khan. "no; give him to me. he is a man, and none of us can look him between the eyes." akela lifted his head again, and said: "he has eaten our food; he has slept with us; he has driven game for us; he has broken no word of the law of the jungle." "also, i paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. the worth of a bull is little, but bagheera's honor is something that he will perhaps fight for," said bagheera in his gentlest voice. "a bull paid ten years ago!" the pack snarled. "what do we care for bones ten years old?" "or for a pledge?" said bagheera, his white teeth bared under his lip. "well are ye called the free people!" "no man's cub can run with the people of the jungle!" roared shere khan. "give him to me." "he is our brother in all but blood," akela went on; "and ye would kill him here. in truth, i have lived too long. some of ye are eaters of cattle, and of others i have heard that, under shere khan's teaching, ye go by dark night and snatch children from the villager's doorstep. therefore i know ye to be cowards, and it is to cowards i speak. it is certain that i must die, and my life is of no worth, or i would offer that in the man-cub's place. but for the sake of the honor of the pack,--a little matter that, by being without a leader, ye have forgotten,--i promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, i will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye. i will die without fighting. that will at least save the pack three lives. more i cannot do; but, if ye will, i can save ye the shame that comes of killing a brother against whom there is no fault--a brother spoken for and bought into the pack according to the law of the jungle." "he is a man--a man--a man!" snarled the pack; and most of the wolves began to gather round shere khan, whose tail was beginning to switch. "now the business is in thy hands," said bagheera to mowgli. "_we_ can do no more except fight." mowgli stood upright--the fire-pot in his hands. then he stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the council; but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolf-like, the wolves had never told him how they hated him. "listen, you!" he cried. "there is no need for this dog's jabber. ye have told me so often to-night that i am a man (though indeed i would have been a wolf with you to my life's end) that i feel your words are true. so i do not call ye my brothers any more, but _sag_ [dogs], as a man should. what ye will do, and what ye will not do, is not yours to say. that matter is with _me_; and that we may see the matter more plainly, i, the man, have brought here a little of the red flower which ye, dogs, fear." he flung the fire-pot on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up as all the council drew back in terror before the leaping flames. mowgli thrust his dead branch into the fire till the twigs lit and crackled, and whirled it above his head among the cowering wolves. "thou art the master," said bagheera, in an undertone. "save akela from the death. he was ever thy friend." akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave one piteous look at mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long black hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that made the shadows jump and quiver. "good!" said mowgli, staring around slowly, and thrusting out his lower lip. "i see that ye are dogs. i go from you to my own people--if they be my own people. the jungle is shut to me, and i must forget your talk and your companionship; but i will be more merciful than ye are. because i was all but your brother in blood, i promise that when i am a man among men i will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me." he kicked the fire with his foot, and the sparks flew up. "there shall be no war between any of us and the pack. but here is a debt to pay before i go." he strode forward to where shere khan sat blinking stupidly at the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his chin. bagheera followed close, in case of accidents. "up, dog!" mowgli cried. "up, when a man speaks, or i will set that coat ablaze!" shere khan's ears lay flat back on his head, and he shut his eyes, for the blazing branch was very near. "this cattle-killer said he would kill me in the council because he had not killed me when i was a cub. thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men! stir a whisker, lungri, and i ram the red flower down thy gullet!" he beat shere khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined in an agony of fear. "pah! singed jungle-cat--go now! but remember when next i come to the council rock, as a man should come, it will be with shere khan's hide on my head. for the rest, akela goes free to live as he pleases. ye will _not_ kill him, because that is not my will. nor do i think that ye will sit here any longer, lolling out your tongues as though ye were somebodies, instead of dogs whom i drive out--thus! go!" the fire was burning furiously at the end of the branch, and mowgli struck right and left round the circle, and the wolves ran howling with the sparks burning their fur. at last there were only akela, bagheera, and perhaps ten wolves that had taken mowgli's part. then something began to hurt mowgli inside him, as he had never been hurt in his life before, and he caught his breath and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face. "what is it? what is it?" he said. "i do not wish to leave the jungle, and i do not know what this is. am i dying, bagheera?" "no, little brother. those are only tears such as men use," said bagheera. "now i know thou art a man, and a man's cub no longer. the jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward. let them fall, mowgli; they are only tears." so mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before. "now," he said, "i will go to men. but first i must say farewell to my mother"; and he went to the cave where she lived with father wolf, and he cried on her coat, while the four cubs howled miserably. "ye will not forget me?" said mowgli. "never while we can follow a trail," said the cubs. "come to the foot of the hill when thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and we will come into the crop-lands to play with thee by night." "come soon!" said father wolf. "oh, wise little frog, come again soon; for we be old, thy mother and i." "come soon," said mother wolf, "little naked son of mine; for, listen, child of man, i loved thee more than ever i loved my cubs." "i will surely come," said mowgli; "and when i come it will be to lay out shere khan's hide upon the council rock. do not forget me! tell them in the jungle never to forget me!" the dawn was beginning to break when mowgli went down the hillside alone to the crops to meet those mysterious things that are called men. hunting-song of the seeonee pack as the dawn was breaking the sambhur belled once, twice, and again! and a doe leaped up--and a doe leaped up from the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup. this i, scouting alone, beheld, once, twice, and again! as the dawn was breaking the sambhur belled once, twice, and again! and a wolf stole back--and a wolf stole back to carry the word to the waiting pack; and we sought and we found and we bayed on his track once, twice, and again! as the dawn was breaking the wolf-pack yelled once, twice, and again! feet in the jungle that leave no mark! eyes that can see in the dark--the dark! tongue--give tongue to it! hark! o hark! once, twice, and again! kaa's hunting his spots are the joy of the leopard: his horns are the buffalo's pride-- be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide. if ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed sambhur can gore; ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew it ten seasons before. oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as sister and brother, for though they are little and fubsy, it may be the bear is their mother. "there is none like to me!" says the cub in the pride of his earliest kill; but the jungle is large and the cub he is small. let him think and be still. _maxims of baloo._ [illustration] kaa's hunting all that is told here happened some time before mowgli was turned out of the seeonee wolf-pack. it was in the days when baloo was teaching him the law of the jungle. the big, serious, old brown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil, for the young wolves will only learn as much of the law of the jungle as applies to their own pack and tribe, and run away as soon as they can repeat the hunting verse: "feet that make no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, and sharp white teeth--all these things are the marks of our brothers except tabaqui and the hyena, whom we hate." but mowgli, as a man-cub, had to learn a great deal more than this. sometimes bagheera, the black panther, would come lounging through the jungle to see how his pet was getting on, and would purr with his head against a tree while mowgli recited the day's lesson to baloo. the boy could climb almost as well as he could swim, and swim almost as well as he could run; so baloo, the teacher of the law, taught him the wood and water laws: how to tell a rotten branch from a sound one; how to speak politely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of them fifty feet aboveground; what to say to mang, the bat, when he disturbed him in the branches at midday; and how to warn the water-snakes in the pools before he splashed down among them. none of the jungle people like being disturbed, and all are very ready to fly at an intruder. then, too, mowgli was taught the strangers' hunting call, which must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the jungle people hunts outside his own grounds. it means, translated: "give me leave to hunt here because i am hungry"; and the answer is: "hunt, then, for food, but not for pleasure." all this will show you how much mowgli had to learn by heart, and he grew very tired of repeating the same thing a hundred times; but, as baloo said to bagheera one day when mowgli had been cuffed and had run off in a temper: "a man's cub is a man's cub, and he must learn _all_ the law of the jungle." "but think how small he is," said the black panther, who would have spoiled mowgli if he had had his own way. "how can his little head carry all thy long talk?" "is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? no. that is why i teach him these things, and that is why i hit him, very softly, when he forgets." "softly! what dost thou know of softness, old iron-feet?" bagheera grunted. "his face is all bruised to-day by thy--softness. ugh!" "better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance," baloo answered, very earnestly. "i am now teaching him the master words of the jungle that shall protect him with the birds and the snake people, and all that hunt on four feet, except his own pack. he can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the jungle. is not that worth a little beating?" "well, look to it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. he is no tree-trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. but what are those master words? i am more likely to give help than to ask it"--bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue ripping-chisel talons at the end of it--"still i should like to know." "i will call mowgli and he shall say them--if he will. come, little brother!" "my head is ringing like a bee-tree," said a sullen voice over their heads, and mowgli slid down a tree-trunk, very angry and indignant, adding, as he reached the ground: "i come for bagheera and not for _thee_, fat old baloo!" "that is all one to me," said baloo, though he was hurt and grieved. "tell bagheera, then, the master words of the jungle that i have taught thee this day." "master words for which people?" said mowgli, delighted to show off. "the jungle has many tongues. _i_ know them all." "a little thou knowest, but not much. see, o bagheera, they never thank their teacher! not one small wolfling has come back to thank old baloo for his teachings. say the word for the hunting people, then,--great scholar!" "we be of one blood, ye and i," said mowgli, giving the words the bear accent which all the hunting people of the jungle use. "good! now for the birds." mowgli repeated, with the kite's whistle at the end of the sentence. "now for the snake people," said bagheera. the answer was a perfectly indescribable hiss, and mowgli kicked up his feet behind, clapped his hands together to applaud himself, and jumped on bagheera's back, where he sat sideways, drumming with his heels on the glossy skin and making the worst faces that he could think of at baloo. "there--there! that was worth a little bruise," said the brown bear, tenderly. "some day thou wilt remember me." then he turned aside to tell bagheera how he had begged the master words from hathi, the wild elephant, who knows all about these things, and how hathi had taken mowgli down to a pool to get the snake word from a water-snake, because baloo could not pronounce it, and how mowgli was now reasonably safe against all accidents in the jungle, because neither snake, bird, nor beast would hurt him. "no one then is to be feared," baloo wound up, patting his big furry stomach with pride. "except his own tribe," said bagheera, under his breath; and then aloud to mowgli: "have a care for my ribs, little brother! what is all this dancing up and down?" mowgli had been trying to make himself heard by pulling at bagheera's shoulder-fur and kicking hard. when the two listened to him he was shouting at the top of his voice: "and _so_ i shall have a tribe of my own, and lead them through the branches all day long." "what is this new folly, little dreamer of dreams?" said bagheera. "yes, and throw branches and dirt at old baloo," mowgli went on. "they have promised me this, ah!" "whoof!" baloo's big paw scooped mowgli off bagheera's back, and as the boy lay between the big fore paws he could see the bear was angry. "mowgli," said baloo, "thou hast been talking with the bandar-log--the monkey people." mowgli looked at bagheera to see if the panther was angry too, and bagheera's eyes were as hard as jade-stones. "thou hast been with the monkey people--the gray apes--the people without a law--the eaters of everything. that is great shame." "when baloo hurt my head," said mowgli (he was still down on his back), "i went away, and the gray apes came down from the trees and had pity on me. no one else cared." he snuffled a little. "the pity of the monkey people!" baloo snorted. "the stillness of the mountain stream! the cool of the summer sun! and then, man-cub?" "and then--and then they gave me nuts and pleasant things to eat, and they--they carried me in their arms up to the top of the trees and said i was their blood-brother, except that i had no tail, and should be their leader some day." "they have _no_ leader," said bagheera. "they lie. they have always lied." "they were very kind, and bade me come again. why have i never been taken among the monkey people? they stand on their feet as i do. they do not hit me with hard paws. they play all day. let me get up! bad baloo, let me up! i will go play with them again." "listen, man-cub," said the bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. "i have taught thee all the law of the jungle for all the peoples of the jungle--except the monkey folk who live in the trees. they have no law. they are outcastes. they have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen and peep and wait up above in the branches. their way is not our way. they are without leaders. they have no remembrance. they boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter, and all is forgotten. we of the jungle have no dealings with them. we do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die. hast thou ever heard me speak of the bandar-log till to-day?" "no," said mowgli in a whisper, for the forest was very still now that baloo had finished. "the jungle people put them out of their mouths and out of their minds. they are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the jungle people. but we do _not_ notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads." he had hardly spoken when a shower of nuts and twigs spattered down through the branches; and they could hear coughings and howlings and angry jumpings high up in the air among the thin branches. "the monkey people are forbidden," said baloo, "forbidden to the jungle people. remember." "forbidden," said bagheera; "but i still think baloo should have warned thee against them." "i--i? how was i to guess he would play with such dirt. the monkey people! faugh!" a fresh shower came down on their heads, and the two trotted away, taking mowgli with them. what baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. they belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the jungle people to cross one another's path. but whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the jungle people to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the jungle people could see them. they were always just going to have a leader and laws and customs of their own, but they never did, because their memories would not hold over from day to day, and so they settled things by making up a saying: "what the bandar-log think now the jungle will think later"; and that comforted them a great deal. none of the beasts could reach them, but on the other hand none of the beasts would notice them, and that was why they were so pleased when mowgli came to play with them, and when they heard how angry baloo was. they never meant to do any more,--the bandar-log never mean anything at all,--but one of them invented what seemed to him a brilliant idea, and he told all the others that mowgli would be a useful person to keep in the tribe, because he could weave sticks together for protection from the wind; so, if they caught him, they could make him teach them. of course mowgli, as a wood-cutter's child, inherited all sorts of instincts, and used to make little play-huts of fallen branches without thinking how he came to do it. the monkey people, watching in the trees, considered these huts most wonderful. this time, they said, they were really going to have a leader and become the wisest people in the jungle--so wise that every one else would notice and envy them. therefore they followed baloo and bagheera and mowgli through the jungle very quietly till it was time for the midday nap, and mowgli, who was very much ashamed of himself, slept between the panther and the bear, resolving to have no more to do with the monkey people. the next thing he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and arms,--hard, strong little hands,--and then a swash of branches in his face; and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as baloo woke the jungle with his deep cries and bagheera bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared. the bandar-log howled with triumph, and scuffled away to the upper branches where bagheera dared not follow, shouting: "he has noticed us! bagheera has noticed us! all the jungle people admire us for our skill and our cunning!" then they began their flight; and the flight of the monkey people through tree-land is one of the things nobody can describe. they have their regular roads and cross-roads, uphills and downhills, all laid out from fifty to seventy or a hundred feet aboveground, and by these they can travel even at night if necessary. two of the strongest monkeys caught mowgli under the arms and swung off with him through the tree-tops, twenty feet at a bound. had they been alone they could have gone twice as fast, but the boy's weight held them back. sick and giddy as mowgli was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, though the glimpses of earth far down below frightened him, and the terrible check and jerk at the end of the swing over nothing but empty air brought his heart between his teeth. his escort would rush him up a tree till he felt the weak topmost branches crackle and bend under them, and, then, with a cough and a whoop, would fling themselves into the air outward and downward, and bring up hanging by their hands or their feet to the lower limbs of the next tree. sometimes he could see for miles and miles over the still green jungle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would lash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be almost down to earth again. so bounding and crashing and whooping and yelling, the whole tribe of bandar-log swept along the tree-roads with mowgli their prisoner. for a time he was afraid of being dropped; then he grew angry, but he knew better than to struggle; and then he began to think. the first thing was to send back word to baloo and bagheera, for, at the pace the monkeys were going, he knew his friends would be left far behind. it was useless to look down, for he could see only the top sides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue, rann, the kite, balancing and wheeling as he kept watch over the jungle waiting for things to die. rann noticed that the monkeys were carrying something, and dropped a few hundred yards to find out whether their load was good to eat. he whistled with surprise when he saw mowgli being dragged up to a tree-top, and heard him give the kite call for "we be of one blood, thou and i." the waves of the branches closed over the boy, but rann balanced away to the next tree in time to see the little brown face come up again. "mark my trail!" mowgli shouted. "tell baloo of the seeonee pack, and bagheera of the council rock." "in whose name, brother?" rann had never seen mowgli before, though of course he had heard of him. "mowgli, the frog. man-cub they call me! mark my tra--il!" the last words were shrieked as he was being swung through the air, but rann nodded, and rose up till he looked no bigger than a speck of dust, and there he hung, watching with his telescope eyes the swaying of the tree-tops as mowgli's escort whirled along. "they never go far," he said, with a chuckle. "they never do what they set out to do. always pecking at new things are the bandar-log. this time, if i have any eyesight, they have pecked down trouble for themselves, for baloo is no fledgling and bagheera can, as i know, kill more than goats." then he rocked on his wings, his feet gathered up under him, and waited. meanwhile, baloo and bagheera were furious with rage and grief. bagheera climbed as he had never climbed before, but the branches broke beneath his weight, and he slipped down, his claws full of bark. "why didst thou not warn the man-cub!" he roared to poor baloo, who had set off at a clumsy trot in the hope of overtaking the monkeys. "what was the use of half slaying him with blows if thou didst not warn him?" "haste! o haste! we--we may catch them yet!" baloo panted. "at that speed! it would not tire a wounded cow. teacher of the law, cub-beater--a mile of that rolling to and fro would burst thee open. sit still and think! make a plan. this is no time for chasing. they may drop him if we follow too close." "_arrula! whoo!_ they may have dropped him already, being tired of carrying him. who can trust the bandar-log? put dead bats on my head! give me black bones to eat! roll me into the hives of the wild bees that i may be stung to death, and bury me with the hyena; for i am the most miserable of bears! _arulala! wahooa!_ o mowgli, mowgli! why did i not warn thee against the monkey folk instead of breaking thy head? now perhaps i may have knocked the day's lesson out of his mind, and he will be alone in the jungle without the master words!" baloo clasped his paws over his ears and rolled to and fro, moaning. "at least he gave me all the words correctly a little time ago," said bagheera, impatiently. "baloo, thou hast neither memory nor respect. what would the jungle think if i, the black panther, curled myself up like ikki, the porcupine, and howled?" "what do i care what the jungle thinks? he may be dead by now." "unless and until they drop him from the branches in sport, or kill him out of idleness, i have no fear for the man-cub. he is wise and well-taught, and, above all, he has the eyes that make the jungle people afraid. but (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of the bandar-log, and they, because they live in trees, have no fear of any of our people." bagheera licked his one fore paw thoughtfully. "fool that i am! oh fat, brown, root-digging fool that i am!" said baloo, uncoiling himself with a jerk. "it is true what hathi, the wild elephant, says: '_to each his own fear_'; and they, the bandar-log, fear kaa, the rock snake. he can climb as well as they can. he steals the young monkeys in the night. the mere whisper of his name makes their wicked tails cold. let us go to kaa." "what will he do for us? he is not of our tribe, being footless and with most evil eyes," said bagheera. "he is very old and very cunning. above all, he is always hungry," said baloo, hopefully. "promise him many goats." "he sleeps for a full month after he has once eaten. he may be asleep now, and even were he awake, what if he would rather kill his own goats?" bagheera, who did not know much about kaa, was naturally suspicious. "then in that case, thou and i together, old hunter, may make him see reason." here baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder against the panther, and they went off to look for kaa, the rock python. they found him stretched out on a warm ledge in the afternoon sun, admiring his beautiful new coat, for he had been in retirement for the last ten days changing his skin, and now he was very splendid--darting his big blunt-nosed head along the ground, and twisting the thirty feet of his body into fantastic knots and curves, and licking his lips as he thought of his dinner to come. "he has not eaten," said baloo, with a grunt of relief, as soon as he saw the beautifully mottled brown and yellow jacket. "be careful, bagheera! he is always a little blind after he has changed his skin, and very quick to strike." kaa was not a poison snake--in fact he rather despised the poison snakes for cowards; but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once lapped his huge coils round anybody there was no more to be said. "good hunting!" cried baloo, sitting up on his haunches. like all snakes of his breed kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call at first. then he curled up ready for any accident, his head lowered. "good hunting for us all," he answered. "oho, baloo, what dost thou do here? good hunting, bagheera. one of us at least needs food. is there any news of game afoot? a doe now, or even a young buck? i am as empty as a dried well." "we are hunting," said baloo, carelessly. he knew that you must not hurry kaa. he is too big. "give me permission to come with you," said kaa. "a blow more or less is nothing to thee, bagheera or baloo, but i--i have to wait and wait for days in a wood path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape. _pss naw!_ the branches are not what they were when i was young. rotten twigs and dry boughs are they all." "maybe thy great weight has something to do with the matter," said baloo. "i am a fair length--a fair length," said kaa, with a little pride. "but for all that, it is the fault of this new-grown timber. i came very near to falling on my last hunt,--very near indeed,--and the noise of my slipping, for my tail was not tight wrapped round the tree, waked the bandar-log, and they called me most evil names." "'footless, yellow earthworm,'" said bagheera under his whiskers, as though he were trying to remember something. "_sssss!_ have they ever called me _that_?" said kaa. "something of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon, but we never noticed them. they will say anything--even that thou hast lost all thy teeth, and dare not face anything bigger than a kid, because (they are indeed shameless, these bandar-log)--because thou art afraid of the he-goats' horns," bagheera went on sweetly. now a snake, especially a wary old python like kaa, very seldom shows that he is angry; but baloo and bagheera could see the big swallowing muscles on either side of kaa's throat ripple and bulge. "the bandar-log have shifted their grounds," he said, quietly. "when i came up into the sun today i heard them whooping among the tree-tops." "it--it is the bandar-log that we follow now," said baloo; but the words stuck in his throat, for this was the first time in his memory that one of the jungle people had owned to being interested in the doings of the monkeys. "beyond doubt, then, it is no small thing that takes two such hunters--leaders in their own jungle, i am certain--on the trail of the bandar-log," kaa replied, courteously, as he swelled with curiosity. "indeed," baloo began, "i am no more than the old, and sometimes very foolish, teacher of the law to the seeonee wolf-cubs, and bagheera here--" "is bagheera," said the black panther, and his jaws shut with a snap, for he did not believe in being humble. "the trouble is this, kaa. those nut-stealers and pickers of palm-leaves have stolen away our man-cub, of whom thou hast perhaps heard." "i heard some news from ikki (his quills make him presumptuous) of a man-thing that was entered into a wolf-pack, but i did not believe. ikki is full of stories half heard and very badly told." "but it is true. he is such a man-cub as never was," said baloo. "the best and wisest and boldest of man-cubs. my own pupil, who shall make the name of baloo famous through all the jungles; and besides, i--we--love him, kaa." "_ts! ts!_" said kaa, shaking his head to and fro. "i also have known what love is. there are tales i could tell that--" "that need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise properly," said bagheera, quickly. "our man-cub is in the hands of the bandar-log now, and we know that of all the jungle people they fear kaa alone." "they fear me alone. they have good reason," said kaa. "chattering, foolish, vain--vain, foolish, and chattering--are the monkeys. but a man-thing in their hands is in no good luck. they grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw them down. they carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. that manling is not to be envied. they called me also--'yellow fish,' was it not?" "worm--worm--earthworm," said bagheera; "as well as other things which i cannot now say for shame." "we must remind them to speak well of their master. _aaa-sssh!_ we must help their wandering memories. now, whither went they with thy cub?" "the jungle alone knows. toward the sunset, i believe," said baloo. "we had thought that thou wouldst know, kaa." "i? how? i take them when they come in my way, but i do not hunt the bandar-log--or frogs--or green scum on a water-hole, for that matter." "up, up! up, up! _hillo! illo! illo!_ look up, baloo of the seeonee wolf pack!" baloo looked up to see where the voice came from, and there was rann, the kite, sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned flanges of his wings. it was near rann's bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jungle looking for the bear, and missed him in the thick foliage. "what is it?" said baloo. "i have seen mowgli among the bandar-log. he bade me tell you. i watched. the bandar-log have taken him beyond the river to the monkey city--to the cold lairs. they may stay there for a night, or ten nights, or an hour. i have told the bats to watch through the dark time. that is my message. good hunting, all you below!" "full gorge and a deep sleep to you, rann!" cried bagheera. "i will remember thee in my next kill, and put aside the head for thee alone, o best of kites!" "it is nothing. it is nothing. the boy held the master word. i could have done no less," and rann circled up again to his roost. "he has not forgotten to use his tongue," said baloo, with a chuckle of pride. "to think of one so young remembering the master word for the birds while he was being pulled across trees!" "it was most firmly driven into him," said bagheera. "but i am proud of him, and now we must go to the cold lairs." they all knew where that place was, but few of the jungle people ever went there, because what they called the cold lairs was an old deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that men have once used. the wild boar will, but the hunting-tribes do not. besides, the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to live anywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come within eye-shot of it except in times of drouth, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs held a little water. "it is half a night's journey--at full speed," said bagheera. baloo looked very serious. "i will go as fast as i can," he said, anxiously. "we dare not wait for thee. follow, baloo. we must go on the quick-foot--kaa and i." "feet or no feet, i can keep abreast of all thy four," said kaa, shortly. baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting, and so they left him to come on later, while bagheera hurried forward, at the rocking panther-canter. kaa said nothing, but, strive as bagheera might, the huge rock python held level with him. when they came to a hill-stream, bagheera gained, because he bounded across while kaa swam, his head and two feet of his neck clearing the water, but on level ground kaa made up the distance. "by the broken lock that freed me," said bagheera, when twilight had fallen, "thou art no slow-goer." "i am hungry," said kaa. "besides, they called me speckled frog." "worm--earthworm, and yellow to boot." "all one. let us go on," and kaa seemed to pour himself along the ground, finding the shortest road with his steady eyes, and keeping to it. in the cold lairs the monkey people were not thinking of mowgli's friends at all. they had brought the boy to the lost city, and were very pleased with themselves for the time. mowgli had never seen an indian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and splendid. some king had built it long ago on a little hill. you could still trace the stone causeways that led up to the ruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn, rusted hinges. trees had grown into and out of the walls; the battlements were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hung out of the windows of the towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps. a great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the courtyards and the fountains was split and stained with red and green, and the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king's elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees. from the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city, looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads met; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides. the monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the jungle people because they lived in the forest. and yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. they would sit in circles on the hall of the king's council-chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose-trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. they explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms; but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not, and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds, telling one another that they were doing as men did. they drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout: "there are none in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the bandar-log." then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the jungle people would notice them. mowgli, who had been trained under the law of the jungle, did not like or understand this kind of life. the monkeys dragged him into the cold lairs late in the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as mowgli would have done after a long journey, they joined hands and danced about and sang their foolish songs. one of the monkeys made a speech, and told his companions that mowgli's capture marked a new thing in the history of the bandar-log, for mowgli was going to show them how to weave sticks and canes together as a protection against rain and cold. mowgli picked up some creepers and began to work them in and out, and the monkeys tried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lost interest and began to pull their friends' tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing. "i want to eat," said mowgli. "i am a stranger in this part of the jungle. bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here." twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts and wild pawpaws; but they fell to fighting on the road, and it was too much trouble to go back with what was left of the fruit. mowgli was sore and angry as well as hungry, and he roamed through the empty city giving the strangers' hunting call from time to time, but no one answered him, and mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place indeed. "all that baloo has said about the bandar-log is true," he thought to himself. "they have no law, no hunting call, and no leaders--nothing but foolish words and little picking, thievish hands. so if i am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault. but i must try to return to my own jungle. baloo will surely beat me, but that is better than chasing silly rose-leaves with the bandar-log." but no sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinching him to make him grateful. he set his teeth and said nothing, but went with the shouting monkeys to a terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs that were half full of rain-water. there was a ruined summer-house of white marble in the center of the terrace, built for queens dead a hundred years ago. the domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the underground passage from the palace by which the queens used to enter; but the walls were made of screens of marble tracery--beautiful, milk-white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill it shone through the openwork, casting shadows on the ground like black-velvet embroidery. sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, mowgli could not help laughing when the bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to leave them. "we are great. we are free. we are wonderful. we are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! we all say so, and so it must be true," they shouted. "now as you are a new listener and can carry our words back to the jungle people so that they may notice us in future, we will tell you all about our most excellent selves." mowgli made no objection, and the monkeys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on the terrace to listen to their own speakers singing the praises of the bandar-log, and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they would all shout together: "this is true; we all say so." mowgli nodded and blinked, and said "yes" when they asked him a question, and his head spun with the noise. "tabaqui, the jackal, must have bitten all these people," he said to himself, "and now they have the madness. certainly this is _dewance_--the madness. do they never go to sleep? now there is a cloud coming to cover that moon. if it were only a big enough cloud i might try to run away in the darkness. but i am tired." that same cloud was being watched by two good friends in the ruined ditch below the city wall, for bagheera and kaa, knowing well how dangerous the monkey people were in large numbers, did not wish to run any risks. the monkeys never fight unless they are a hundred to one, and few in the jungle care for those odds. "i will go to the west wall," kaa whispered, "and come down swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor. they will not throw themselves upon _my_ back in their hundreds, but--" "i know it," said bagheera. "would that baloo were here; but we must do what we can. when that cloud covers the moon i shall go to the terrace. they hold some sort of council there over the boy." "good hunting," said kaa, grimly, and glided away to the west wall. that happened to be the least ruined of any, and the big snake was delayed a while before he could find a way up the stones. the cloud hid the moon, and as mowgli wondered what would come next he heard bagheera's light feet on the terrace. the black panther had raced up the slope almost without a sound, and was striking--he knew better than to waste time in biting--right and left among the monkeys, who were seated round mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. there was a howl of fright and rage, and then as bagheera tripped on the rolling, kicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: "there is only one here! kill him! kill!" a scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over bagheera, while five or six laid hold of mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the summer-house, and pushed him through the hole of the broken dome. a man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good ten feet, but mowgli fell as baloo had taught him to fall, and landed light. "stay there," shouted the monkeys, "till we have killed thy friend. later we will play with thee, if the poison people leave thee alive." "we be of one blood, ye and i," said mowgli, quickly giving the snake's call. he could hear rustling and hissing in the rubbish all round him, and gave the call a second time to make sure. "down hoods all," said half a dozen low voices. every old ruin in india becomes sooner or later a dwelling-place of snakes, and the old summer-house was alive with cobras. "stand still, little brother, lest thy feet do us harm." mowgli stood as quietly as he could, peering through the openwork and listening to the furious din of the fight round the black panther--the yells and chatterings and scufflings, and bagheera's deep, hoarse cough as he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his enemies. for the first time since he was born, bagheera was fighting for his life. "baloo must be at hand; bagheera would not have come alone," mowgli thought; and then he called aloud: "to the tank, bagheera! roll to the water-tanks! roll and plunge! get to the water!" bagheera heard, and the cry that told him mowgli was safe gave him new courage. he worked his way desperately, inch by inch, straight for the reservoirs, hitting in silence. then from the ruined wall nearest the jungle rose up the rumbling war-shout of baloo. the old bear had done his best, but he could not come before. "bagheera," he shouted, "i am here! i climb! i haste! _ahuwora!_ the stones slip under my feet! wait my coming, o most infamous bandar log!" he panted up the terrace only to disappear to the head in a wave of monkeys, but he threw himself squarely on his haunches, and spreading out his fore paws, hugged as many as he could hold, and then began to hit with a regular _bat-bat-bat_, like the flipping strokes of a paddle-wheel. a crash and a splash told mowgli that bagheera had fought his way to the tank, where the monkeys could not follow. the panther lay gasping for breath, his head just out of water, while the monkeys stood three deep on the red stone steps, dancing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out to help baloo. it was then that bagheera lifted up his dripping chin, and in despair gave the snake's call for protection,--"we be of one blood, ye and i,"--for he believed that kaa had turned tail at the last minute. even baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on the edge of the terrace, could not help chuckling as he heard the big black panther asking for help. kaa had only just worked his way over the west wall, landing with a wrench that dislodged a coping-stone into the ditch. he had no intention of losing any advantage of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled himself once or twice, to be sure that every foot of his long body was in working order. all that while the fight with baloo went on, and the monkeys yelled in the tank round bagheera, and mang, the bat, flying to and fro, carried the news of the great battle over the jungle, till even hathi, the wild elephant, trumpeted, and, far away, scattered bands of the monkey folk woke and came leaping along the tree-roads to help their comrades in the cold lairs, and the noise of the fight roused all the day-birds for miles round. then kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious to kill. the fighting strength of a python is in the driving blow of his head, backed by all the strength and weight of his body. if you can imagine a lance, or a battering-ram, or a hammer, weighing nearly half a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can imagine roughly what kaa was like when he fought. a python four or five feet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the chest, and kaa was thirty feet long, as you know. his first stroke was delivered into the heart of the crowd round baloo--was sent home with shut mouth in silence, and there was no need of a second. the monkeys scattered with cries of "kaa! it is kaa! run! run!" generations of monkeys had been scared into good behavior by the stories their elders told them of kaa, the night-thief, who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey that ever lived; of old kaa, who could make himself look so like a dead branch or a rotten stump that the wisest were deceived till the branch caught them, and then-- kaa was everything that the monkeys feared in the jungle, for none of them knew the limits of his power, none of them could look him in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug. and so they ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and the roofs of the houses, and baloo drew a deep breath of relief. his fur was much thicker than bagheera's, but he had suffered sorely in the fight. then kaa opened his mouth for the first time and spoke one long hissing word, and the far-away monkeys, hurrying to the defense of the cold lairs, stayed where they were, cowering, till the loaded branches bent and crackled under them. the monkeys on the walls and the empty houses stopped their cries, and in the stillness that fell upon the city mowgli heard bagheera shaking his wet sides as he came up from the tank. then the clamor broke out again. the monkeys leaped higher up the walls; they clung round the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked as they skipped along the battlements; while mowgli, dancing in the summer-house, put his eye to the screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front teeth, to show his derision and contempt. "get the man-cub out of that trap; i can do no more," bagheera gasped. "let us take the man-cub and go. they may attack again." "they will not move till i order them. stay you sssso!" kaa hissed, and the city was silent once more. "i could not come before, brother, but i _think_ i heard thee call"--this was to bagheera. "i--i may have cried out in the battle," bagheera answered. "baloo, art thou hurt?" "i am not sure that they have not pulled me into a hundred little bearlings," said baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. "wow! i am sore. kaa, we owe thee, i think, our lives--bagheera and i." "no matter. where is the manling?" "here, in a trap. i cannot climb out," cried mowgli. the curve of the broken dome was above his head. "take him away. he dances like mao, the peacock. he will crush our young," said the cobras inside. "hah!" said kaa, with a chuckle, "he has friends everywhere, this manling. stand back, manling; and hide you, o poison people. i break down the wall." kaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in the marble tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head to get the distance, and then lifting up six feet of his body clear of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power, smashing blows, nose-first. the screenwork broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and rubbish, and mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself between baloo and bagheera--an arm round each big neck. "art thou hurt?" said baloo, hugging him softly. "i am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised; but, oh, they have handled ye grievously, my brothers! ye bleed." "others also," said bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank. "it is nothing, it is nothing if thou art safe, o my pride of all little frogs!" whimpered baloo. "of that we shall judge later," said bagheera, in a dry voice that mowgli did not at all like. "but here is kaa, to whom we owe the battle and thou owest thy life. thank him according to our customs, mowgli." mowgli turned and saw the great python's head swaying a foot above his own. "so this is the manling," said kaa. "very soft is his skin, and he is not so unlike the bandar-log. have a care, manling, that i do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when i have newly changed my coat." "we be of one blood, thou and i," mowgli answered. "i take my life from thee, to-night. my kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, o kaa." "all thanks, little brother," said kaa, though his eyes twinkled. "and what may so bold a hunter kill? i ask that i may follow when next he goes abroad." "i kill nothing,--i am too little,--but i drive goats toward such as can use them. when thou art empty come to me and see if i speak the truth. i have some skill in these [he held out his hands], and if ever thou art in a trap, i may pay the debt which i owe to thee, to bagheera, and to baloo, here. good hunting to ye all, my masters." "well said," growled baloo, for mowgli had returned thanks very prettily. the python dropped his head lightly for a minute on mowgli's shoulder. "a brave heart and a courteous tongue," said he. "they shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling. but now go hence quickly with thy friends. go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not well that thou shouldst see." the moon was sinking behind the hills and the lines of trembling monkeys huddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged, shaky fringes of things. baloo went down to the tank for a drink, and bagheera began to put his fur in order, as kaa glided out into the center of the terrace and brought his jaws together with a ringing snap that drew all the monkeys' eyes upon him. "the moon sets," he said. "is there yet light to see?" from the walls came a moan like the wind in the tree-tops: "we see, o kaa!" "good! begins now the dance--the dance of the hunger of kaa. sit still and watch." he turned twice or thrice in a big circle, weaving his head from right to left. then he began making loops and figures of eight with his body, and soft, oozy triangles that melted into squares and five-sided figures, and coiled mounds, never resting, never hurrying, and never stopping his low, humming song. it grew darker and darker, till at last the dragging, shifting coils disappeared, but they could hear the rustle of the scales. baloo and bagheera stood still as stone, growling in their throats, their neck-hair bristling, and mowgli watched and wondered. "bandar-log," said the voice of kaa at last, "can ye stir foot or hand without my order? speak!" "without thy order we cannot stir foot or hand, o kaa!" "good! come all one pace nearer to me." the lines of the monkeys swayed forward helplessly, and baloo and bagheera took one stiff step forward with them. "nearer!" hissed kaa, and they all moved again. mowgli laid his hands on baloo and bagheera to get them away, and the two great beasts started as though they had been waked from a dream. "keep thy hand on my shoulder," bagheera whispered. "keep it there, or i must go back--must go back to kaa. _aah!_" "it is only old kaa making circles on the dust," said mowgli; "let us go"; and the three slipped off through a gap in the walls to the jungle. "_whoof!_" said baloo, when he stood under the still trees again. "never more will i make an ally of kaa," and he shook himself all over. "he knows more than we," said bagheera, trembling. "in a little time, had i stayed, i should have walked down his throat." "many will walk that road before the moon rises again," said baloo. "he will have good hunting--after his own fashion." "but what was the meaning of it all?" said mowgli, who did not know anything of a python's powers of fascination. "i saw no more than a big snake making foolish circles till the dark came. and his nose was all sore. ho! ho!" "mowgli," said bagheera, angrily, "his nose was sore on _thy_ account; as my ears and sides and paws, and baloo's neck and shoulders are bitten on _thy_ account. neither baloo nor bagheera will be able to hunt with pleasure for many days." "it is nothing," said baloo; "we have the man-cub again." "true; but he has cost us most heavily in time which might have been spent in good hunting, in wounds, in hair,--i am half plucked along my back,--and last of all, in honor. for, remember, mowgli, i, who am the black panther, was forced to call upon kaa for protection, and baloo and i were both made stupid as little birds by the hunger-dance. all this, man-cub, came of thy playing with the bandar-log." "true; it is true," said mowgli, sorrowfully. "i am an evil man-cub, and my stomach is sad in me." "_mf!_ what says the law of the jungle, baloo?" baloo did not wish to bring mowgli into any more trouble, but he could not tamper with the law, so he mumbled, "sorrow never stays punishment. but remember, bagheera, he is very little." "i will remember; but he has done mischief; and blows must be dealt now. mowgli, hast thou anything to say?" "nothing. i did wrong. baloo and thou art wounded. it is just." bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps; from a panther's point of view they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs, but for a seven year-old boy they amounted to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid. when it was all over mowgli sneezed, and picked himself up without a word. "now," said bagheera, "jump on my back, little brother, and we will go home." one of the beauties of jungle law is that punishment settles all scores. there is no nagging afterward. mowgli laid his head down on bagheera's back and slept so deeply that he never waked when he was put down by mother wolf's side in the home-cave. road-song of the bandar-log here we go in a flung festoon, half-way up to the jealous moon! don't you envy our pranceful bands? don't you wish you had extra hands? wouldn't you like if your tails were--_so_-- curved in the shape of a cupid's bow? now you're angry, but--never mind, _brother, thy tail hangs down behind_! here we sit in a branchy row, thinking of beautiful things we know; dreaming of deeds that we mean to do, all complete, in a minute or two-- something noble and grand and good, won by merely wishing we could. now we're going to--never mind, _brother, thy tail hangs down behind_! all the talk we ever have heard uttered by bat or beast or bird-- hide or fin or scale or feather-- jabber it quickly and all together! excellent! wonderful! once again! now we are talking just like men. let's pretend we are ... never mind, _brother, thy tail hangs down behind_! this is the way of the monkey-kind. _then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines, that rocket by where, light and high, the wild-grape swings. by the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make, be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things!_ "tiger! tiger!" what of the hunting, hunter bold? _brother, the watch was long and cold._ what of the quarry ye went to kill? _brother, he crops in the jungle still._ where is the power that made your pride? _brother, it ebbs from my flank and side._ where is the haste that ye hurry by? _brother, i go to my lair--to die._ [illustration] "tiger! tiger!" now we must go back to the last tale but one. when mowgli left the wolf's cave after the fight with the pack at the council rock, he went down to the plowed lands where the villagers lived, but he would not stop there because it was too near to the jungle, and he knew that he had made at least one bad enemy at the council. so he hurried on, keeping to the rough road that ran down the valley, and followed it at a steady jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a country that he did not know. the valley opened out into a great plain dotted over with rocks and cut up by ravines. at one end stood a little village, and at the other the thick jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing-grounds, and stopped there as though it had been cut off with a hoe. all over the plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the little boys in charge of the herds saw mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yellow pariah dogs that hang about every indian village barked. mowgli walked on, for he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the village gate he saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate at twilight, pushed to one side. "umph!" he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in his night rambles after things to eat. "so men are afraid of the people of the jungle here also." he sat down by the gate, and when a man came out he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that he wanted food. the man stared, and ran back up the one street of the village shouting for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in white, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead. the priest came to the gate, and with him at least a hundred people, who stared and talked and shouted and pointed at mowgli. "they have no manners, these men folk," said mowgli to himself. "only the gray ape would behave as they do." so he threw back his long hair and frowned at the crowd. "what is there to be afraid of?" said the priest. "look at the marks on his arms and legs. they are the bites of wolves. he is but a wolf-child run away from the jungle." of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped mowgli harder than they intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and legs. but he would have been the last person in the world to call these bites; for he knew what real biting meant. "_arré! arré!_" said two or three women together. "to be bitten by wolves, poor child! he is a handsome boy. he has eyes like red fire. by my honor, messua, he is not unlike thy boy that was taken by the tiger." "let me look," said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists and ankles, and she peered at mowgli under the palm of her hand. "indeed he is not. he is thinner, but he has the very look of my boy." the priest was a clever man, and he knew that messua was wife to the richest villager in the place. so he looked up at the sky for a minute, and said solemnly: "what the jungle has taken the jungle has restored. take the boy into thy house, my sister, and forget not to honor the priest who sees so far into the lives of men." "by the bull that bought me," said mowgli to himself, "but all this talking is like another looking-over by the pack! well, if i am a man, a man i must become." the crowd parted as the woman beckoned mowgli to her hut, where there was a red lacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain-chest with curious raised patterns on it, half a dozen copper cooking-pots, an image of a hindu god in a little alcove, and on the wall a real looking-glass, such as they sell at the country fairs. she gave him a long drink of milk and some bread, and then she laid her hand on his head and looked into his eyes; for she thought perhaps that he might be her real son come back from the jungle where the tiger had taken him. so she said: "nathoo, o nathoo!" mowgli did not show that he knew the name. "dost thou not remember the day when i gave thee thy new shoes?" she touched his foot, and it was almost as hard as horn. "no," she said, sorrowfully; "those feet have never worn shoes, but thou art very like my nathoo, and thou shalt be my son." mowgli was uneasy, because he had never been under a roof before; but as he looked at the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out any time if he wanted to get away, and that the window had no fastenings. "what is the good of a man," he said to himself at last, "if he does not understand man's talk? now i am as silly and dumb as a man would be with us in the jungle. i must learn their talk." it was not for fun that he had learned while he was with the wolves to imitate the challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt of the little wild pig. so as soon as messua pronounced a word mowgli would imitate it almost perfectly, and before dark he had learned the names of many things in the hut. there was a difficulty at bedtime, because mowgli would not sleep under anything that looked so like a panther-trap as that hut, and when they shut the door he went through the window. "give him his will," said messua's husband. "remember he can never till now have slept on a bed. if he is indeed sent in the place of our son he will not run away." so mowgli stretched himself in some long, clean grass at the edge of the field, but before he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked him under the chin. "phew!" said gray brother (he was the eldest of mother wolf's cubs). "this is a poor reward for following thee twenty miles. thou smellest of wood-smoke and cattle--altogether like a man already. wake, little brother; i bring news." [illustration: "'wake, little brother; i bring news.'"] "are all well in the jungle?" said mowgli, hugging him. "all except the wolves that were burned with the red flower. now, listen. shere khan has gone away to hunt far off till his coat grows again, for he is badly singed. when he returns he swears that he will lay thy bones in the waingunga." "there are two words to that. i also have made a little promise. but news is always good. i am tired to-night,--very tired with new things, gray brother,--but bring me the news always." "thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? men will not make thee forget?" said gray brother, anxiously. "never. i will always remember that i love thee and all in our cave; but also i will always remember that i have been cast out of the pack." "and that thou mayest be cast out of another pack. men are only men, little brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond. when i come down here again, i will wait for thee in the bamboos at the edge of the grazing-ground." for three months after that night mowgli hardly ever left the village gate, he was so busy learning the ways and customs of men. first he had to wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly; and then he had to learn about money, which he did not in the least understand, and about plowing, of which he did not see the use. then the little children in the village made him very angry. luckily, the law of the jungle had taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle, life and food depend on keeping your temper; but when they made fun of him because he would not play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him from picking them up and breaking them in two. he did not know his own strength in the least. in the jungle he knew he was weak compared with the beasts, but in the village, people said he was as strong as a bull. and mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes between man and man. when the potter's donkey slipped in the clay-pit, mowgli hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their journey to the market at khanhiwara. that was very shocking, too, for the potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. when the priest scolded him, mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey, too, and the priest told messua's husband that mowgli had better be set to work as soon as possible; and the village head-man told mowgli that he would have to go out with the buffaloes next day, and herd them while they grazed. no one was more pleased than mowgli; and that night, because he had been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off to a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great fig-tree. it was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and the barber (who knew all the gossip of the village), and old buldeo, the village hunter, who had a tower musket, met and smoked. the monkeys sat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk every night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big _huqas_ (the water-pipes) till far into the night. they told wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts; and buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged out of their heads. most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle was always at their door. the deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within sight of the village gates. mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking of, had to cover his face not to show that he was laughing, while buldeo, the tower musket across his knees, climbed on from one wonderful story to another, and mowgli's shoulders shook. buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away messua's son was a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked old money-lender, who had died some years ago. "and i know that this is true," he said, "because purun dass always limped from the blow that he got in a riot when his account-books were burned, and the tiger that i speak of _he_ limps, too, for the tracks of his pads are unequal." "true, true; that must be the truth," said the graybeards, nodding together. "are all these tales such cobwebs and moon-talk?" said mowgli. "that tiger limps because he was born lame, as every one knows. to talk of the soul of a money-lender in a beast that never had the courage of a jackal is child's talk." [illustration: "'are all these tales such cobwebs and moontalk?' said mowgli."] buldeo was speechless with surprise for a moment, and the head-man stared. "oho! it is the jungle brat, is it?" said buldeo. "if thou art so wise, better bring his hide to khanhiwara, for the government has set a hundred rupees [$ ] on his life. better still, do not talk when thy elders speak." mowgli rose to go. "all the evening i have lain here listening," he called back over his shoulder, "and, except once or twice, buldeo has not said one word of truth concerning the jungle, which is at his very doors. how, then, shall i believe the tales of ghosts and gods and goblins which he says he has seen?" "it is full time that boy went to herding," said the head-man, while buldeo puffed and snorted at mowgli's impertinence. the custom of most indian villages is for a few boys to take the cattle and buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them back at night; and the very cattle that would trample a white man to death allow themselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at by children that hardly come up to their noses. so long as the boys keep with the herds they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob of cattle. but if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes carried off. mowgli went through the village street in the dawn, sitting on the back of rama, the great herd bull; and the slaty-blue buffaloes, with their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out of their byres, one by one, and followed him, and mowgli made it very clear to the children with him that he was the master. he beat the buffaloes with a long, polished bamboo, and told kamya, one of the boys, to graze the cattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be very careful not to stray away from the herd. an indian grazing-ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. the buffaloes generally keep to the pools and muddy places, where they lie wallowing or basking in the warm mud for hours. mowgli drove them on to the edge of the plain where the waingunga river came out of the jungle; then he dropped from rama's neck, trotted off to a bamboo clump, and found gray brother. "ah," said gray brother, "i have waited here very many days. what is the meaning of this cattle-herding work?" "it is an order," said mowgli. "i am a village herd for a while. what news of shere khan?" "he has come back to this country, and has waited here a long time for thee. now he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. but he means to kill thee." "very good," said mowgli. "so long as he is away do thou or one of the brothers sit on that rock, so that i can see thee as i come out of the village. when he comes back wait for me in the ravine by the _dhâk_-tree in the center of the plain. we need not walk into shere khan's mouth." then mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while the buffaloes grazed round him. herding in india is one of the laziest things in the world. the cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move on again, and they do not even low. they only grunt, and the buffaloes very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after another, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and there they lie like logs. the sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd-children hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead, and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and follow, and the next, and the next, and almost before they were dead there would be a score of hungry kites come out of nowhere. then they sleep and wake and sleep again, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put grasshoppers in them; or catch two praying-mantises and make them fight; or string a necklace of red and black jungle-nuts; or watch a lizard basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. then they sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and the day seems longer than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and put reeds into the men's hands, and pretend that they are kings and the figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped. then evening comes, and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of the sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other, and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village lights. day after day mowgli would lead the buffaloes out to their wallows, and day after day he would see gray brother's back a mile and a half away across the plain (so he knew that shere khan had not come back), and day after day he would lie on the grass listening to the noise round him, and dreaming of old days in the jungle. if shere khan had made a false step with his lame paw up in the jungles by the waingunga, mowgli would have heard him in those long still mornings. [illustration] at last a day came when he did not see gray brother at the signal place, and he laughed and headed the buffaloes for the ravine by the _dhâk_-tree, which was all covered with golden-red flowers. there sat gray brother, every bristle on his back lifted. "he has hidden for a month to throw thee off thy guard. he crossed the ranges last night with tabaqui, hot-foot on thy trail," said the wolf, panting. mowgli frowned. "i am not afraid of shere khan, but tabaqui is very cunning." "have no fear," said gray brother, licking his lips a little. "i met tabaqui in the dawn. now he is telling all his wisdom to the kites, but he told _me_ everything before i broke his back. shere khan's plan is to wait for thee at the village gate this evening--for thee and for no one else. he is lying up now in the big dry ravine of the waingunga." "has he eaten to-day, or does he hunt empty?" said mowgli, for the answer meant life or death to him. "he killed at dawn,--a pig,--and he has drunk too. remember, shere khan could never fast even for the sake of revenge." "oh! fool, fool! what a cub's cub it is! eaten and drunk too, and he thinks that i shall wait till he has slept! now, where does he lie up? if there were but ten of us we might pull him down as he lies. these buffaloes will not charge unless they wind him, and i cannot speak their language. can we get behind his track so that they may smell it?" "he swam far down the waingunga to cut that off," said gray brother. "tabaqui told him that, i know. he would never have thought of it alone." mowgli stood with his finger in his mouth, thinking. "the big ravine of the waingunga. that opens out on the plain not half a mile from here. i can take the herd round through the jungle to the head of the ravine and then sweep down--but he would slink out at the foot. we must block that end. gray brother, canst thou cut the herd in two for me?" "not i, perhaps--but i have brought a wise helper." gray brother trotted off and dropped into a hole. then there lifted up a huge gray head that mowgli knew well, and the hot air was filled with the most desolate cry of all the jungle--the hunting-howl of a wolf at midday. "akela! akela!" said mowgli, clapping his hands. "i might have known that thou wouldst not forget me. we have a big work in hand. cut the herd in two, akela. keep the cows and calves together, and the bulls and the plow-buffaloes by themselves." the two wolves ran, ladies'-chain fashion, in and out of the herd, which snorted and threw up its head, and separated into two clumps. in one the cow-buffaloes stood, with their calves in the center, and glared and pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, to charge down and trample the life out of him. in the other the bulls and the young bulls snorted and stamped; but, though they looked more imposing, they were much less dangerous, for they had no calves to protect. no six men could have divided the herd so neatly. "what orders!" panted akela. "they are trying to join again." mowgli slipped on to rama's back. "drive the bulls away to the left, akela. gray brother, when we are gone hold the cows together, and drive them into the foot of the ravine." "how far?" said gray brother, panting and snapping. "till the sides are higher than shere khan can jump," shouted mowgli. "keep them there till we come down." the bulls swept off as akela bayed, and gray brother stopped in front of the cows. they charged down on him, and he ran just before them to the foot of the ravine, as akela drove the bulls far to the left. "well done! another charge and they are fairly started. careful, now--careful, akela. a snap too much, and the bulls will charge. _hujah!_ this is wilder work than driving black-buck. didst thou think these creatures could move so swiftly?" mowgli called. "i have--have hunted these too in my time," gasped akela in the dust. "shall i turn them into the jungle?" "ay, turn! swiftly turn them. rama is mad with rage. oh, if i could only tell him what i need of him to-day!" the bulls were turned to the right this time, and crashed into the standing thicket. the other herd-children, watching with the cattle half a mile away, hurried to the village as fast as their legs could carry them, crying that the buffaloes had gone mad and run away. but mowgli's plan was simple enough. all he wanted to do was to make a big circle uphill and get at the head of the ravine, and then take the bulls down it and catch shere khan between the bulls and the cows, for he knew that after a meal and a full drink shere khan would not be in any condition to fight or to clamber up the sides of the ravine. he was soothing the buffaloes now by voice, and akela had dropped far to the rear, only whimpering once or twice to hurry the rear-guard. it was a long, long circle, for they did not wish to get too near the ravine and give shere khan warning. at last mowgli rounded up the bewildered herd at the head of the ravine on a grassy patch that sloped steeply down to the ravine itself. from that height you could see across the tops of the trees down to the plain below; but what mowgli looked at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran nearly straight up and down, and the vines and creepers that hung over them would give no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get out. "let them breathe, akela," he said, holding up his hand. "they have not winded him yet. let them breathe. i must tell shere khan who comes. we have him in the trap." he put his hands to his mouth and shouted down the ravine,--it was almost like shouting down a tunnel,--and the echoes jumped from rock to rock. after a long time there came back the drawling, sleepy snarl of a full-fed tiger just awakened. "who calls?" said shere khan, and a splendid peacock fluttered up out of the ravine, screeching. "i, mowgli. cattle-thief, it is time to come to the council rock! down--hurry them down, akela. down, rama, down!" the herd paused for an instant at the edge of the slope, but akela gave tongue in the full hunting-yell, and they pitched over one after the other just as steamers shoot rapids, the sand and stones spurting up round them. once started, there was no chance of stopping, and before they were fairly in the bed of the ravine rama winded shere khan and bellowed. "ha! ha!" said mowgli, on his back. "now thou knowest!" and the torrent of black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the ravine like boulders in flood-time; the weaker buffaloes being shouldered out to the sides of the ravine where they tore through the creepers. they knew what the business was before them--the terrible charge of the buffalo-herd, against which no tiger can hope to stand. shere khan heard the thunder of their hoofs, picked himself up, and lumbered down the ravine, looking from side to side for some way of escape, but the walls of the ravine were straight, and he had to keep on, heavy with his dinner and his drink, willing to do anything rather than fight. the herd splashed through the pool he had just left, bellowing till the narrow cut rang. mowgli heard an answering bellow from the foot of the ravine, saw shere khan turn (the tiger knew if the worst came to the worst it was better to meet the bulls than the cows with their calves), and then rama tripped, stumbled, and went on again over something soft, and, with the bulls at his heels, crashed full into the other herd, while the weaker buffaloes were lifted clean off their feet by the shock of the meeting. that charge carried both herds out into the plain, goring and stamping and snorting. mowgli watched his time, and slipped off rama's neck, laying about him right and left with his stick. "quick, akela! break them up. scatter them, or they will be fighting one another. drive them away, akela. _hai_, rama! _hai! hai! hai!_ my children. softly now, softly! it is all over." akela and gray brother ran to and fro nipping the buffaloes' legs, and though the herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine again, mowgli managed to turn rama, and the others followed him to the wallows. shere khan needed no more trampling. he was dead, and the kites were coming for him already. "brothers, that was a dog's death," said mowgli, feeling for the knife he always carried in a sheath round his neck now that he lived with men. "but he would never have shown fight. his hide will look well on the council rock. we must get to work swiftly." a boy trained among men would never have dreamed of skinning a ten-foot tiger alone, but mowgli knew better than any one else how an animal's skin is fitted on, and how it can be taken off. but it was hard work, and mowgli slashed and tore and grunted for an hour, while the wolves lolled out their tongues, or came forward and tugged as he ordered them. presently a hand fell on his shoulder, and looking up he saw buldeo with the tower musket. the children had told the village about the buffalo stampede, and buldeo went out angrily, only too anxious to correct mowgli for not taking better care of the herd. the wolves dropped out of sight as soon as they saw the man coming. "what is this folly?" said buldeo, angrily. "to think that thou canst skin a tiger! where did the buffaloes kill him? it is the lame tiger, too, and there is a hundred rupees on his head. well, well, we will overlook thy letting the herd run off, and perhaps i will give thee one of the rupees of the reward when i have taken the skin to khanhiwara." he fumbled in his waist-cloth for flint and steel, and stooped down to singe shere khan's whiskers. most native hunters singe a tiger's whiskers to prevent his ghost haunting them. "hum!" said mowgli, half to himself as he ripped back the skin of a fore paw. "so thou wilt take the hide to khanhiwara for the reward, and perhaps give me one rupee? now it is in my mind that i need the skin for my own use. heh! old man, take away that fire!" "what talk is this to the chief hunter of the village? thy luck and the stupidity of thy buffaloes have helped thee to this kill. the tiger has just fed, or he would have gone twenty miles by this time. thou canst not even skin him properly, little beggar-brat, and forsooth i, buldeo, must be told not to singe his whiskers. mowgli, i will not give thee one anna of the reward, but only a very big beating. leave the carcass!" "by the bull that bought me," said mowgli, who was trying to get at the shoulder, "must i stay babbling to an old ape all noon? here, akela, this man plagues me." buldeo, who was still stooping over shere khan's head, found himself sprawling on the grass, with a gray wolf standing over him, while mowgli went on skinning as though he were alone in all india. "ye-es," he said, between his teeth. "thou art altogether right, buldeo. thou wilt never give me one anna of the reward. there is an old war between this lame tiger and myself--a very old war, and--i have won." to do buldeo justice, if he had been ten years younger he would have taken his chance with akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf who obeyed the orders of this boy who had private wars with man-eating tigers was not a common animal. it was sorcery, magic of the worst kind, thought buldeo, and he wondered whether the amulet round his neck would protect him. he lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see mowgli turn into a tiger, too. [illustration: "buldeo lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see mowgli turn into a tiger, too."] "maharaj! great king," he said at last, in a husky whisper. "yes," said mowgli, without turning his head, chuckling a little. "i am an old man. i did not know that thou wast anything more than a herd-boy. may i rise up and go away, or will thy servant tear me to pieces?" "go, and peace go with thee. only, another time do not meddle with my game. let him go, akela." buldeo hobbled away to the village as fast as he could, looking back over his shoulder in case mowgli should change into something terrible. when he got to the village he told a tale of magic and enchantment and sorcery that made the priest look very grave. mowgli went on with his work, but it was nearly twilight before he and the wolves had drawn the great gay skin clear of the body. "now we must hide this and take the buffaloes home! help me to herd them, akela." the herd rounded up in the misty twilight, and when they got near the village mowgli saw lights, and heard the conches and bells in the temple blowing and banging. half the village seemed to be waiting for him by the gate. "that is because i have killed shere khan," he said to himself; but a shower of stones whistled about his ears, and the villagers shouted: "sorcerer! wolf's brat! jungle-demon! go away! get hence quickly, or the priest will turn thee into a wolf again. shoot, buldeo, shoot!" the old tower musket went off with a bang, and a young buffalo bellowed in pain. "more sorcery!" shouted the villagers. "he can turn bullets. buldeo, that was _thy_ buffalo." "now what is this?" said mowgli, bewildered, as the stones flew thicker. "they are not unlike the pack, these brothers of thine," said akela, sitting down composedly. "it is in my head that, if bullets mean anything, they would cast thee out." "wolf! wolf's cub! go away!" shouted the priest, waving a sprig of the sacred _tulsi_ plant. "again? last time it was because i was a man. this time it is because i am a wolf. let us go, akela." a woman--it was messua--ran across to the herd, and cried: "oh, my son, my son! they say thou art a sorcerer who can turn himself into a beast at will. i do not believe, but go away or they will kill thee. buldeo says thou art a wizard, but i know thou hast avenged nathoo's death." "come back, messua!" shouted the crowd. "come back, or we will stone thee." mowgli laughed a little short ugly laugh, for a stone had hit him in the mouth. "run back, messua. this is one of the foolish tales they tell under the big tree at dusk. i have at least paid for thy son's life. farewell; and run quickly, for i shall send the herd in more swiftly than their brickbats. i am no wizard, messua. farewell! "now, once more, akela," he cried. "bring the herd in." the buffaloes were anxious enough to get to the village. they hardly needed akela's yell, but charged through the gate like a whirlwind, scattering the crowd right and left. "keep count!" shouted mowgli, scornfully. "it may be that i have stolen one of them. keep count, for i will do your herding no more. fare you well, children of men, and thank messua that i do not come in with my wolves and hunt you up and down your street." he turned on his heel and walked away with the lone wolf; and as he looked up at the stars he felt happy. "no more sleeping in traps for me, akela. let us get shere khan's skin and go away. no; we will not hurt the village, for messua was kind to me." when the moon rose over the plain, making it look all milky, the horrified villagers saw mowgli, with two wolves at his heels and a bundle on his head, trotting across at the steady wolf's trot that eats up the long miles like fire. then they banged the temple bells and blew the conches louder than ever; and messua cried, and buldeo embroidered the story of his adventures in the jungle, till he ended by saying that akela stood up on his hind legs and talked like a man. [illustration: "when the moon rose over the plain the villagers saw mowgli trotting across, with two wolves at his heels."] the moon was just going down when mowgli and the two wolves came to the hill of the council rock, and they stopped at mother wolf's cave. "they have cast me out from the man pack, mother," shouted mowgli, "but i come with the hide of shere khan to keep my word." mother wolf walked stiffly from the cave with the cubs behind her, and her eyes glowed as she saw the skin. "i told him on that day, when he crammed his head and shoulders into this cave, hunting for thy life, little frog--i told him that the hunter would be the hunted. it is well done." "little brother, it is well done," said a deep voice in the thicket. "we were lonely in the jungle without thee," and bagheera came running to mowgli's bare feet. they clambered up the council rock together, and mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone where akela used to sit, and pegged it down with four slivers of bamboo, and akela lay down upon it, and called the old call to the council, "look--look well, o wolves!" exactly as he had called when mowgli was first brought there. [illustration: "they clambered up on the council rock together, and mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone."] ever since akela had been deposed, the pack had been without a leader, hunting and fighting at their own pleasure. but they answered the call from habit, and some of them were lame from the traps they had fallen into, and some limped from shot-wounds, and some were mangy from eating bad food, and many were missing; but they came to the council rock, all that were left of them, and saw shere khan's striped hide on the rock, and the huge claws dangling at the end of the empty, dangling feet. it was then that mowgli made up a song without any rhymes, a song that came up into his throat all by itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down on the rattling skin, and beating time with his heels till he had no more breath left, while gray brother and akela howled between the verses. "look well, o wolves. have i kept my word?" said mowgli when he had finished; and the wolves bayed "yes," and one tattered wolf howled: "lead us again, o akela. lead us again, o man-cub, for we be sick of this lawlessness, and we would be the free people once more." "nay," purred bagheera, "that may not be. when ye are full-fed, the madness may come upon ye again. not for nothing are ye called the free people. ye fought for freedom, and it is yours. eat it, o wolves." "man pack and wolf pack have cast me out," said mowgli. "now i will hunt alone in the jungle." "and we will hunt with thee," said the four cubs. so mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that day on. but he was not always alone, because years afterward he became a man and married. but that is a story for grown-ups. mowgli's song that he sang at the council rock when he danced on shere khan's hide the song of mowgli--i, mowgli, am singing. let the jungle listen to the things i have done. shere khan said he would kill--would kill! at the gates in the twilight he would kill mowgli, the frog! he ate and he drank. drink deep, shere khan, for when wilt thou drink again? sleep and dream of the kill. i am alone on the grazing-grounds. gray brother, come to me! come to me, lone wolf, for there is big game afoot. bring up the great bull-buffaloes, the blue-skinned herd-bulls with the angry eyes. drive them to and fro as i order. sleepest thou still, shere khan? wake, o wake! here come i, and the bulls are behind. rama, the king of the buffaloes, stamped with his foot. waters of the waingunga, whither went shere khan? he is not ikki to dig holes, nor mao, the peacock, that he should fly. he is not mang, the bat, to hang in the branches. little bamboos that creak together, tell me where he ran? _ow!_ he is there. _ahoo!_ he is there. under the feet of rama lies the lame one! up, shere khan! up and kill! here is meat; break the necks of the bulls! _hsh!_ he is asleep. we will not wake him, for his strength is very great. the kites have come down to see it. the black ants have come up to know it. there is a great assembly in his honor. _alala!_ i have no cloth to wrap me. the kites will see that i am naked. i am ashamed to meet all these people. lend me thy coat, shere khan. lend me thy gay striped coat that i may go to the council rock. by the bull that bought me i have made a promise--a little promise. only thy coat is lacking before i keep my word. with the knife--with the knife that men use--with the knife of the hunter, the man, i will stoop down for my gift. waters of the waingunga, bear witness that shere khan gives me his coat for the love that he bears me. pull, gray brother! pull, akela! heavy is the hide of shere khan. the man pack are angry. they throw stones and talk child's talk. my mouth is bleeding. let us run away. through the night, through the hot night, run swiftly with me, my brothers. we will leave the lights of the village and go to the low moon. waters of the waingunga, the man pack have cast me out. i did them no harm, but they were afraid of me. why? wolf pack, ye have cast me out too. the jungle is shut to me and the village gates are shut. why? as mang flies between the beasts and the birds so fly i between the village and the jungle. why? i dance on the hide of shere khan, but my heart is very heavy. my mouth is cut and wounded with the stones from the village, but my heart is very light because i have come back to the jungle. why? these two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the spring. the water comes out of my eyes; yet i laugh while it falls. why? i am two mowglis, but the hide of shere khan is under my feet. all the jungle knows that i have killed shere khan. look--look well, o wolves! _ahae!_ my heart is heavy with the things that i do not understand. the white seal oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, and black are the waters that sparkled so green. the moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us at rest in the hollows that rustle between. where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! the storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas. _seal lullaby._ [illustration] the white seal all these things happened several years ago at a place called novastoshnah, or north east point, on the island of st. paul, away and away in the bering sea. limmershin, the winter wren, told me the tale when he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to japan, and i took him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to fly back to st. paul's again. limmershin is a very odd little bird, but he knows how to tell the truth. nobody comes to novastoshnah except on business, and the only people who have regular business there are the seals. they come in the summer months by hundreds and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea; for novastoshnah beach has the finest accommodation for seals of any place in all the world. sea catch knew that, and every spring would swim from whatever place he happened to be in--would swim like a torpedo-boat straight for novastoshnah, and spend a month fighting with his companions for a good place on the rocks as close to the sea as possible. sea catch was fifteen years old, a huge gray fur-seal with almost a mane on his shoulders, and long, wicked dogteeth. when he heaved himself up on his front flippers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground, and his weight, if any one had been bold enough to weigh him, was nearly seven hundred pounds. he was scarred all over with the marks of savage fights, but he was always ready for just one fight more. he would put his head on one side, as though he were afraid to look his enemy in the face; then he would shoot it out like lightning, and when the big teeth were firmly fixed on the other seal's neck, the other seal might get away if he could, but sea catch would not help him. yet sea catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against the rules of the beach. he only wanted room by the sea for his nursery; but as there were forty or fifty thousand other seals hunting for the same thing each spring, the whistling, bellowing, roaring, and blowing on the beach was something frightful. from a little hill called hutchinson's hill you could look over three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of the fighting. they fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries; for they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as men. their wives never came to the island until late in may or early in june, for they did not care to be torn to pieces; and the young two-, three-, and four-year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping went inland about half a mile through the ranks of the fighters and played about on the sand-dunes in droves and legions, and rubbed off every single green thing that grew. they were called the holluschickie,--the bachelors,--and there were perhaps two or three hundred thousand of them at novastoshnah alone. sea catch had just finished his forty-fifth fight one spring when matkah, his soft, sleek, gentle-eyed wife came up out of the sea, and he caught her by the scruff of the neck and dumped her down on his reservation, saying gruffly: "late, as usual. where _have_ you been?" it was not the fashion for sea catch to eat anything during the four months he stayed on the beaches, and so his temper was generally bad. matkah knew better than to answer back. she looked around and cooed: "how thoughtful of you. you've taken the old place again." "i should think i had," said sea catch. "look at me!" he was scratched and bleeding in twenty places; one eye was almost blind, and his sides were torn to ribbons. "oh, you men, you men!" matkah said, fanning herself with her hind flipper. "why can't you be sensible and settle your places quietly? you look as though you had been fighting with the killer whale." "i haven't been doing anything _but_ fight since the middle of may. the beach is disgracefully crowded this season. i've met at least a hundred seals from lukannon beach, house-hunting. why can't people stay where they belong?" "i've often thought we should be much happier if we hauled out at otter island instead of this crowded place," said matkah. "bah! only the holluschickie go to otter island. if we went there they would say we were afraid. we must preserve appearances, my dear." sea catch sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders and pretended to go to sleep for a few minutes, but all the time he was keeping a sharp lookout for a fight. now that all the seals and their wives were on the land you could hear their clamor miles out to sea above the loudest gales. at the lowest counting there were over a million seals on the beach,--old seals, mother seals, tiny babies, and holluschickie, fighting, scuffling, bleating, crawling, and playing together,--going down to the sea and coming up from it in gangs and regiments, lying over every foot of ground as far as the eye could reach, and skirmishing about in brigades through the fog. it is nearly always foggy at novastoshnah, except when the sun comes out and makes everything look all pearly and rainbow-colored for a little while. kotick, matkah's baby, was born in the middle of that confusion, and he was all head and shoulders, with pale, watery blue eyes, as tiny seals must be; but there was something about his coat that made his mother look at him very closely. "sea catch," she said, at last, "our baby's going to be white!" "empty clam-shells and dry seaweed!" snorted sea catch. "there never has been such a thing in the world as a white seal." "i can't help that," said matkah; "there's going to be now"; and she sang the low, crooning seal-song that all the mother seals sing to their babies: you mustn't swim till you're six weeks old, or your head will be sunk by your heels; and summer gales and killer whales are bad for baby seals. are bad for baby seals, dear rat, as bad as bad can be; but splash and grow strong, and you can't be wrong, child of the open sea! of course the little fellow did not understand the words at first. he paddled and scrambled about by his mother's side, and learned to scuffle out of the way when his father was fighting with another seal, and the two rolled and roared up and down the slippery rocks. matkah used to go to sea to get things to eat, and the baby was fed only once in two days; but then he ate all he could, and throve upon it. the first thing he did was to crawl inland, and there he met tens of thousands of babies of his own age, and they played together like puppies, went to sleep on the clean sand, and played again. the old people in the nurseries took no notice of them, and the holluschickie kept to their own grounds, so the babies had a beautiful playtime. when matkah came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight to their playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait until she heard kotick bleat. then she would take the straightest of straight lines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking the youngsters head over heels right and left. there were always a few hundred mothers hunting for their children through the playgrounds, and the babies were kept lively; but, as matkah told kotick, "so long as you don't lie in muddy water and get mange; or rub the hard sand into a cut or scratch; and so long as you never go swimming when there is a heavy sea, nothing will hurt you here." little seals can no more swim than little children, but they are unhappy till they learn. the first time that kotick went down to the sea a wave carried him out beyond his depth, and his big head sank and his little hind flippers flew up exactly as his mother had told him in the song, and if the next wave had not thrown him back again he would have drowned. after that he learned to lie in a beach-pool and let the wash of the waves just cover him and lift him up while he paddled, but he always kept his eye open for big waves that might hurt. he was two weeks learning to use his flippers; and all that while he floundered in and out of the water, and coughed and grunted and crawled up the beach and took cat-naps on the sand, and went back again, until at last he found that he truly belonged to the water. then you can imagine the times that he had with his companions, ducking under the rollers; or coming in on top of a comber and landing with a swash and a splutter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach; or standing up on his tail and scratching his head as the old people did; or playing "i'm the king of the castle" on slippery, weedy rocks that just stuck out of the wash. now and then he would see a thin fin, like a big shark's fin, drifting along close to shore, and he knew that that was the killer whale, the grampus, who eats young seals when he can get them; and kotick would head for the beach like an arrow, and the fin would jig off slowly, as if it were looking for nothing at all. late in october the seals began to leave st. paul's for the deep sea, by families and tribes, and there was no more fighting over the nurseries, and the holluschickie played anywhere they liked. "next year," said matkah to kotick, "you will be a holluschickie; but this year you must learn how to catch fish." they set out together across the pacific, and matkah showed kotick how to sleep on his back with his flippers tucked down by his side and his little nose just out of the water. no cradle is so comfortable as the long, rocking swell of the pacific. when kotick felt his skin tingle all over, matkah told him he was learning the "feel of the water," and that tingly, prickly feelings meant bad weather coming, and he must swim hard and get away. "in a little time," she said, "you'll know where to swim to, but just now we'll follow sea pig, the porpoise, for he is very wise." a school of porpoises were ducking and tearing through the water, and little kotick followed them as fast as he could. "how do you know where to go to?" he panted. the leader of the school rolled his white eyes, and ducked under. "my tail tingles, youngster," he said. "that means there's a gale behind me. come along! when you're south of the sticky water [he meant the equator], and your tail tingles, that means there's a gale in front of you and you must head north. come along! the water feels bad here." this was one of very many things that kotick learned, and he was always learning. matkah taught him how to follow the cod and the halibut along the under-sea banks, and wrench the rockling out of his hole among the weeds; how to skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water, and dart like a rifle-bullet in at one porthole and out at another as the fishes ran; how to dance on the top of the waves when the lightning was racing all over the sky, and wave his flipper politely to the stumpy-tailed albatross and the man-of-war hawk as they went down the wind; how to jump three or four feet clear of the water, like a dolphin, flippers close to the side and tail curved; to leave the flying-fish alone because they are all bony; to take the shoulder-piece out of a cod at full speed ten fathoms deep; and never to stop and look at a boat or a ship, but particularly a row boat. at the end of six months, what kotick did not know about deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing, and all that time he never set flipper on dry ground. [illustration: "ten fathoms deep."] one day, however, as he was lying half asleep in the warm water somewhere off the island of juan fernandez, he felt faint and lazy all over, just as human people do when the spring is in their legs, and he remembered the good firm beaches of novastoshnah seven thousand miles away; the games his companions played, the smell of the seaweed, the seal-roar, and the fighting. that very minute he turned north, swimming steadily, and as he went on he met scores of his mates, all bound for the same place, and they said: "greeting, kotick! this year we are all holluschickie, and we can dance the fire-dance in the breakers off lukannon and play on the new grass. but where did you get that coat?" kotick's fur was almost pure white now, and though he felt very proud of it, he only said: "swim quickly! my bones are aching for the land." and so they all came to the beaches where they had been born and heard the old seals, their fathers, fighting in the rolling mist. that night kotick danced the fire-dance with the yearling seals. the sea is full of fire on summer nights all the way down from novastoshnah to lukannon, and each seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him, and a flaming flash when he jumps, and the waves break in great phosphorescent streaks and swirls. then they went inland to the holluschickie grounds, and rolled up and down in the new wild wheat, and told stories of what they had done while they had been at sea. they talked about the pacific as boys would talk about a wood that they had been nutting in, and if any one had understood them, he could have gone away and made such a chart of that ocean as never was. the three- and four-year-old holluschickie romped down from hutchinson's hill, crying: "out of the way, youngsters! the sea is deep, and you don't know all that's in it yet. wait till you've rounded the horn. hi, you yearling, where did you get that white coat?" "i didn't get it," said kotick; "it grew." and just as he was going to roll the speaker over, a couple of black-haired men with flat red faces came from behind a sand-dune, and kotick, who had never seen a man before, coughed and lowered his head. the holluschickie just bundled off a few yards and sat staring stupidly. the men were no less than kerick booterin, the chief of the seal-hunters on the island, and patalamon, his son. they came from the little village not half a mile from the seal nurseries, and they were deciding what seals they would drive up to the killing-pens (for the seals were driven just like sheep), to be turned into sealskin jackets later on. "ho!" said patalamon. "look! there's a white seal!" kerick booterin turned nearly white under his oil and smoke, for he was an aleut, and aleuts are not clean people. then he began to mutter a prayer. "don't touch him, patalamon. there has never been a white seal since--since i was born. perhaps it is old zaharrof's ghost. he was lost last year in the big gale." "i'm not going near him," said patalamon. "he's unlucky. do you really think he is old zaharrof come back? i owe him for some gulls' eggs." "don't look at him," said kerick. "head off that drove of four-year-olds. the men ought to skin two hundred to-day, but it's the beginning of the season, and they are new to the work. a hundred will do. quick!" patalamon rattled a pair of seal's shoulder-bones in front of a herd of holluschickie and they stopped dead, puffing and blowing. then he stepped near, and the seals began to move, and kerick headed them inland, and they never tried to get back to their companions. hundreds and hundreds of thousands of seals watched them being driven, but they went on playing just the same. kotick was the only one who asked questions, and none of his companions could tell him anything, except that the men always drove seals in that way for six weeks or two months of every year. "i am going to follow," he said, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head as he shuffled along in the wake of the herd. "the white seal is coming after us," cried patalamon. "that's the first time a seal has ever come to the killing-grounds alone." "hsh! don't look behind you," said kerick. "it _is_ zaharrof's ghost! i must speak to the priest about this." the distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it took an hour to cover, because if the seals went too fast kerick knew that they would get heated and then their fur would come off in patches when they were skinned. so they went on very slowly, past sea-lion's neck, past webster house, till they came to the salt house just beyond the sight of the seals on the beach. kotick followed, panting and wondering. he thought that he was at the world's end, but the roar of the seal nurseries behind him sounded as loud as the roar of a train in a tunnel. then kerick sat down on the moss and pulled out a heavy pewter watch and let the drove cool off for thirty minutes, and kotick could hear the fog-dew dripping from the brim of his cap. then ten or twelve men, each with an iron-bound club three or four feet long, came up, and kerick pointed out one or two of the drove that were bitten by their companions or were too hot, and the men kicked those aside with their heavy boots made of the skin of a walrus's throat, and then kerick said: "let go!" and then the men clubbed the seals on the head as fast as they could. ten minutes later little kotick did not recognize his friends any more, for their skins were ripped off from the nose to the hind flippers--whipped off and thrown down on the ground in a pile. that was enough for kotick. he turned and galloped (a seal can gallop very swiftly for a short time) back to the sea, his little new mustache bristling with horror. at sea-lion's neck, where the great sea-lions sit on the edge of the surf, he flung himself flipper over-head into the cool water, and rocked there, gasping miserably. "what's here?" said a sea-lion, gruffly; for as a rule the sea-lions keep themselves to themselves. "_scoochnie! ochen scoochnie!_" ("i'm lonesome, very lonesome!"), said kotick. "they're killing _all_ the holluschickie on _all_ the beaches!" the sea-lion turned his head inshore. "nonsense," he said; "your friends are making as much noise as ever. you must have seen old kerick polishing off a drove. he's done that for thirty years." "it's horrible," said kotick, backing water as a wave went over him, and steadying himself with a screw-stroke of his flippers that brought him up all standing within three inches of a jagged edge of rock. "well done for a yearling!" said the sea-lion, who could appreciate good swimming. "i suppose it _is_ rather awful from your way of looking at it; but if you seals will come here year after year, of course the men get to know of it, and unless you can find an island where no men ever come, you will always be driven." "isn't there any such island?" began kotick. "i've followed the _poltoos_ [the halibut] for twenty years, and i can't say i've found it yet. but look here--you seem to have a fondness for talking to your betters; suppose you go to walrus islet and talk to sea vitch. he may know something. don't flounce off like that. it's a six-mile swim, and if i were you i should haul out and take a nap first, little one." kotick thought that that was good advice, so he swam round to his own beach, hauled out, and slept for half an hour, twitching all over, as seals will. then he headed straight for walrus islet, a little low sheet of rocky island almost due northeast from novastoshnah, all ledges of rock and gulls' nests, where the walrus herded by themselves. he landed close to old sea vitch--the big, ugly, bloated, pimpled, fat-necked, long-tusked walrus of the north pacific, who has no manners except when he is asleep--as he was then, with his hind flippers half in and half out of the surf. "wake up!" barked kotick, for the gulls were making a great noise. "hah! ho! hmph! what's that?" said sea vitch, and he struck the next walrus a blow with his tusks and waked him up, and the next struck the next, and so on till they were all awake and staring in every direction but the right one. [illustration: "they were all awake and staring in every direction but the right one."] "hi! it's me," said kotick, bobbing in the surf and looking like a little white slug. "well! may i be----skinned!" said sea vitch, and they all looked at kotick as you can fancy a club full of drowsy old gentlemen would look at a little boy. kotick did not care to hear any more about skinning just then; he had seen enough of it; so he called out: "isn't there any place for seals to go where men don't ever come?" "go and find out," said sea vitch, shutting his eyes. "run away. we're busy here." kotick made his dolphin-jump in the air and shouted as loud as he could: "clam-eater! clam-eater!" he knew that sea vitch never caught a fish in his life, but always rooted for clams and seaweeds; though he pretended to be a very terrible person. naturally the chickies and the gooverooskies and the epatkas, the burgomaster gulls and the kittiwakes and the puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude, took up the cry, and--so limmershin told me--for nearly five minutes you could not have heard a gun fired on walrus islet. all the population was yelling and screaming: "clam-eater! _stareek_ [old man]!" while sea vitch rolled from side to side grunting and coughing. "_now_ will you tell?" said kotick, all out of breath. "go and ask sea cow," said sea vitch. "if he is living still, he'll be able to tell you." "how shall i know sea cow when i meet him?" said kotick, sheering off. "he's the only thing in the sea uglier than sea vitch," screamed a burgomaster gull, wheeling under sea vitch's nose. "uglier, and with worse manners! _stareek!_" kotick swam back to novastoshnah, leaving the gulls to scream. there he found that no one sympathized with him in his little attempts to discover a quiet place for the seals. they told him that men had always driven the holluschickie--it was part of the day's work--and that if he did not like to see ugly things he should not have gone to the killing-grounds. but none of the other seals had seen the killing, and that made the difference between him and his friends. besides, kotick was a white seal. "what you must do," said old sea catch, after he had heard his son's adventures, "is to grow up and be a big seal like your father, and have a nursery on the beach, and then they will leave you alone. in another five years you ought to be able to fight for yourself." even gentle matkah, his mother, said: "you will never be able to stop the killing. go and play in the sea, kotick." and kotick went off and danced the fire-dance with a very heavy little heart. that autumn he left the beach as soon as he could, and set off alone because of a notion in his bullet-head. he was going to find sea cow, if there was such a person in the sea, and he was going to find a quiet island with good firm beaches for seals to live on, where men could not get at them. so he explored and explored by himself from the north to the south pacific, swimming as much as three hundred miles in a day and a night. he met with more adventures than can be told, and narrowly escaped being caught by the basking shark, and the spotted shark, and the hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf up and down the high seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the scarlet-spotted scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years, and grow very proud of it; but he never met sea cow, and he never found an island that he could fancy. if the beach was good and hard, with a slope behind it for seals to play on, there was always the smoke of a whaler on the horizon, boiling down blubber, and kotick knew what _that_ meant. or else he could see that seals had once visited the island and been killed off, and kotick knew that where men had come once they would come again. he picked up with an old stumpy-tailed albatross, who told him that kerguelen island was the very place for peace and quiet, and when kotick went down there he was all but smashed to pieces against some wicked black cliffs in a heavy sleet-storm with lightning and thunder. yet as he pulled out against the gale he could see that even there had once been a seal nursery. and it was so in all the other islands that he visited. limmershin gave a long list of them, for he said that kotick spent five seasons exploring, with a four months' rest each year at novastoshnah, where the holluschickie used to make fun of him and his imaginary islands. he went to the gallapagos, a horrid dry place on the equator, where he was nearly baked to death; he went to the georgia islands, the orkneys, emerald island, little nightingale island, gough's island, bouvet's island, the crossets, and even to a little speck of an island south of the cape of good hope. but everywhere the people of the sea told him the same things. seals had come to those islands once upon a time, but men had killed them all off. even when he swam thousands of miles out of the pacific, and got to a place called cape corientes (that was when he was coming back from gough's island), he found a few hundred mangy seals on a rock, and they told him that men came there too. that nearly broke his heart, and he headed round the horn back to his own beaches; and on his way north he hauled out on an island full of green trees, where he found an old, old seal who was dying, and kotick caught fish for him and told him all his sorrows. "now," said kotick, "i am going back to novastoshnah, and if i am driven to the killing-pens with the holluschickie i shall not care." the old seal said: "try once more. i am the last of the lost rookery of masafuera, and in the days when men killed us by the hundred thousand there was a story on the beaches that some day a white seal would come out of the north and lead the seal people to a quiet place. i am old and i shall never live to see that day, but others will. try once more." and kotick curled up his mustache (it was a beauty), and said: "i am the only white seal that has ever been born on the beaches, and i am the only seal, black or white, who ever thought of looking for new islands." that cheered him immensely; and when he came back to novastoshnah that summer, matkah, his mother, begged him to marry and settle down, for he was no longer a holluschick, but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curly white mane on his shoulders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as his father. "give me another season," he said. "remember, mother, it is always the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach." curiously enough, there was another seal who thought that she would put off marrying till the next year, and kotick danced the fire-dance with her all down lukannon beach the night before he set off on his last exploration. this time he went westward, because he had fallen on the trail of a great shoal of halibut, and he needed at least one hundred pounds of fish a day to keep him in good condition. he chased them till he was tired, and then he curled himself up and went to sleep on the hollows of the ground-swell that sets in to copper island. he knew the coast perfectly well, so about midnight, when he felt himself gently bumped on a weed bed, he said: "hm, tide 's running strong to-night," and turning over under water opened his eyes slowly and stretched. then he jumped like a cat, for he saw huge things nosing about in the shoal water and browsing on the heavy fringes of the weeds. "by the great combers of magellan!" he said, beneath his mustache. "who in the deep sea are these people?" they were like no walrus, sea-lion, seal, bear, whale, shark, fish, squid, or scallop that kotick had ever seen before. they were between twenty and thirty feet long, and they had no hind flippers, but a shovel-like tail that looked as if it had been whittled out of wet leather. their heads were the most foolish-looking things you ever saw, and they balanced on the ends of their tails in deep water when they weren't grazing, bowing solemnly to one another and waving their front flippers as a fat man waves his arm. "ahem!" said kotick. "good sport, gentlemen?" the big things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the frog-footman. when they began feeding again kotick saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces, that they could twitch apart about a foot and bring together again with a whole bushel of seaweed between the splits. they tucked the stuff into their mouths and chumped solemnly. "messy style of feeding that," said kotick. they bowed again, and kotick began to lose his temper. "very good," he said. "if you do happen to have an extra joint in your front flipper you needn't show off so. i see you bow gracefully, but i should like to know your names." the split lips moved and twitched, and the glassy green eyes stared; but they did not speak. "well!" said kotick, "you're the only people i've ever met uglier than sea vitch--and with worse manners." then he remembered in a flash what the burgomaster gull had screamed to him when he was a little yearling at walrus islet, and he tumbled backward in the water, for he knew that he had found sea cow at last. [illustration: "he had found sea cow at last."] the sea cows went on schlooping and grazing, and chumping in the weed, and kotick asked them questions in every language that he had picked up in his travels; and the sea people talk nearly as many languages as human beings. but the sea cow did not answer, because sea cow cannot talk. he has only six bones in his neck where he ought to have seven, and they say under the sea that that prevents him from speaking even to his companions; but, as you know, he has an extra joint in his fore flipper, and by waving it up and down and about he makes what answers to a sort of clumsy telegraphic code. by daylight kotick's mane was standing on end and his temper was gone where the dead crabs go. then the sea cow began to travel northward very slowly, stopping to hold absurd bowing councils from time to time, and kotick followed them, saying to himself: "people who are such idiots as these are would have been killed long ago if they hadn't found out some safe island; and what is good enough for the sea cow is good enough for the sea catch. all the same, i wish they'd hurry." it was weary work for kotick. the herd never went more than forty or fifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept close to the shore all the time; while kotick swam round them, and over them, and under them, but he could not hurry them up one half-mile. as they went farther north they held a bowing council every few hours, and kotick nearly bit off his mustache with impatience till he saw that they were following up a warm current of water, and then he respected them more. one night they sank through the shiny water--sank like stones--and, for the first time since he had known them, began to swim quickly. kotick followed, and the pace astonished him, for he never dreamed that sea cow was anything of a swimmer. they headed for a cliff by the shore, a cliff that ran down into deep water, and plunged into a dark hole at the foot of it, twenty fathoms under the sea. it was a long, long swim, and kotick badly wanted fresh air before he was out of the dark tunnel they led him through. "my wig!" he said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into open water at the farther end. "it was a long dive, but it was worth it." the sea cows had separated, and were browsing lazily along the edges of the finest beaches that kotick had ever seen. there were long stretches of smooth worn rock running for miles, exactly fitted to make seal nurseries, and there were playgrounds of hard sand, sloping inland behind them, and there were rollers for seals to dance in, and long grass to roll in, and sand-dunes to climb up and down, and best of all, kotick knew by the feel of the water, which never deceives a true sea catch, that no men had ever come there. the first thing he did was to assure himself that the fishing was good, and then he swam along the beaches and counted up the delightful low sandy islands half hidden in the beautiful rolling fog. away to the northward out to sea ran a line of bars and shoals and rocks that would never let a ship come within six miles of the beach; and between the islands and the mainland was a stretch of deep water that ran up to the perpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below the cliffs was the mouth of the tunnel. "it's novastoshnah over again, but ten times better," said kotick. "sea cow must be wiser than i thought. men can't come down the cliffs, even if there were any men; and the shoals to seaward would knock a ship to splinters. if any place in the sea is safe, this is it." he began to think of the seal he had left behind him, but though he was in a hurry to go back to novastoshnah, he thoroughly explored the new country, so that he would be able to answer all questions. then he dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel, and raced through to the southward. no one but a sea cow or a seal would have dreamed of there being such a place, and when he looked back at the cliffs even kotick could hardly believe that he had been under them. he was six days going home, though he was not swimming slowly; and when he hauled out just above sea-lion's neck the first person he met was the seal who had been waiting for him, and she saw by the look in his eyes that he had found his island at last. but the holluschickie and sea catch, his father, and all the other seals, laughed at him when he told them what he had discovered, and a young seal about his own age said: "this is all very well, kotick, but you can't come from no one knows where and order us off like this. remember we've been fighting for our nurseries, and that's a thing you never did. you preferred prowling about in the sea." the other seals laughed at this, and the young seal began twisting his head from side to side. he had just married that year, and was making a great fuss about it. "i've no nursery to fight for," said kotick. "i want only to show you all a place where you will be safe. what's the use of fighting?" "oh, if you're trying to back out, of course i've no more to say," said the young seal, with an ugly chuckle. "will you come with me if i win?" said kotick; and a green light came into his eyes, for he was very angry at having to fight at all. "very good," said the young seal, carelessly. "_if_ you win, i'll come." he had no time to change his mind, for kotick's head darted out and his teeth sunk in the blubber of the young seal's neck. then he threw himself back on his haunches and hauled his enemy down the beach, shook him, and knocked him over. then kotick roared to the seals: "i've done my best for you these five seasons past. i've found you the island where you'll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necks you won't believe. i'm going to teach you now. look out for yourselves!" limmershin told me that never in his life--and limmershin sees ten thousand big seals fighting every year--never in all his little life did he see anything like kotick's charge into the nurseries. he flung himself at the biggest sea-catch he could find, caught him by the throat, choked him and bumped him and banged him till he grunted for mercy, and then threw him aside and attacked the next. you see, kotick had never fasted for four months as the big seals did every year, and his deep-sea swimming-trips kept him in perfect condition, and, best of all, he had never fought before. his curly white mane stood up with rage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dogteeth glistened, and he was splendid to look at. old sea catch, his father, saw him tearing past, hauling the grizzled old seals about as though they had been halibut, and upsetting the young bachelors in all directions; and sea catch gave one roar and shouted: "he may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on the beaches. don't tackle your father, my son! he's with you!" kotick roared in answer, and old sea catch waddled in, his mustache on end, blowing like a locomotive, while matkah and the seal that was going to marry kotick cowered down and admired their men-folk. it was a gorgeous fight, for the two fought as long as there was a seal that dared lift up his head, and then they paraded grandly up and down the beach side by side, bellowing. at night, just as the northern lights were winking and flashing through the fog, kotick climbed a bare rock and looked down on the scattered nurseries and the torn and bleeding seals. "now," he said, "i've taught you your lesson." "my wig!" said old sea catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for he was fearfully mauled. "the killer whale himself could not have cut them up worse. son, i'm proud of you, and what's more, _i'll_ come with you to your island--if there is such a place." "hear you, fat pigs of the sea! who comes with me to the sea cow's tunnel? answer, or i shall teach you again," roared kotick. there was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and down the beaches. "we will come," said thousands of tired voices. "we will follow kotick, the white seal." then kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his eyes proudly. he was not a white seal any more, but red from head to tail. all the same he would have scorned to look at or touch one of his wounds. a week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand holluschickie and old seals) went away north to the sea cow's tunnel, kotick leading them, and the seals that stayed at novastoshnah called them idiots. but next spring when they all met off the fishing-banks of the pacific, kotick's seals told such tales of the new beaches beyond sea cow's tunnel that more and more seals left novastoshnah. of course it was not all done at once, for the seals need a long time to turn things over in their minds, but year by year more seals went away from novastoshnah, and lukannon, and the other nurseries, to the quiet, sheltered beaches where kotick sits all the summer through, getting bigger and fatter and stronger each year, while the holluschickie play round him, in that sea where no man comes. lukannon this is the great deep-sea song that all the st. paul seals sing when they are heading back to their beaches in the summer. it is a sort of very sad seal national anthem. i met my mates in the morning (and oh, but i am old!) where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled; i heard them lift the chorus that dropped the breakers' song-- the beaches of lukannon--two million voices strong! _the song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons, the song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes, the song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame-- the beaches of lukannon--before the sealers came!_ i met my mates in the morning (i'll never meet them more!); they came and went in legions that darkened all the shore. and through the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach we hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach. _the beaches of lukannon--the winter-wheat so tall-- the dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all! the platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn! the beaches of lukannon--the home where we were born!_ i meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band. men shoot us in the water and club us on the land; men drive us to the salt house like silly sheep and tame, and still we sing lukannon--before the sealers came. _wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, gooverooska go! and tell the deep-sea viceroys the story of our woe; ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore, the beaches of lukannon shall know their sons no more!_ "rikki-tikki-tavi" at the hole where he went in red-eye called to wrinkle-skin. hear what little red-eye saith: "nag, come up and dance with death!" eye to eye and head to head, (_keep the measure, nag._) this shall end when one is dead; (_at thy pleasure, nag._) turn for turn and twist for twist-- (_run and hide thee, nag._) hah! the hooded death has missed! (_woe betide thee, nag!_) [illustration] "rikki-tikki-tavi" this is the story of the great war that rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in segowlee cantonment. darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and chuchundra, the muskrat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but rikki-tikki did the real fighting. he was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. his eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry as he scuttled through the long grass, was: "_rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!_" one day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived with his father and mother, and carried him, kicking and clucking, down a roadside ditch. he found a little wisp of grass floating there, and clung to it till he lost his senses. when he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying: "here's a dead mongoose. let's have a funeral." "no," said his mother; "let's take him in and dry him. perhaps he isn't really dead." they took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his finger and thumb and said he was not dead but half choked; so they wrapped him in cotton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed. "now," said the big man (he was an englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); "don't frighten him, and we'll see what he'll do." it is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. the motto of all the mongoose family is, "run and find out"; and rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. he looked at the cotton-wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy's shoulder. "don't be frightened, teddy," said his father. "that's his way of making friends." "ouch! he's tickling under my chin," said teddy. [illustration: "rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck."] rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose. "good gracious," said teddy's mother, "and that's a wild creature! i suppose he's so tame because we've been kind to him." "all mongooses are like that," said her husband. "if teddy doesn't pick him up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he'll run in and out of the house all day long. let's give him something to eat." they gave him a little piece of raw meat. rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. then he felt better. "there are more things to find out about in this house," he said to himself, "than all my family could find out in all their lives. i shall certainly stay and find out." [illustration: "he put his nose into the ink."] he spent all that day roaming over the house. he nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing-table, and burned it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done. at nightfall he ran into teddy's nursery to watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when teddy went to bed rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it. teddy's mother and father came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. "i don't like that," said teddy's mother; "he may bite the child." "he'll do no such thing," said the father. "teddy's safer with that little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. if a snake came into the nursery now--" [illustration: "rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow."] but teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so awful. early in the morning rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda riding on teddy's shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other, because every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and rikki-tikki's mother (she used to live in the general's house at segowlee) had carefully told rikki what to do if ever he came across white men. [illustration: "he came to breakfast riding on teddy's shoulder."] then rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen. it was a large garden, only half cultivated, with bushes as big as summer-houses of marshal niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and thickets of high grass. rikki-tikki licked his lips. "this is a splendid hunting-ground," he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden, snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowful voices in a thorn-bush. it was darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. they had made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges with fibers, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. the nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried. "what is the matter?" asked rikki-tikki. [illustration: "'we are very miserable,' said darzee."] "we are very miserable," said darzee. "one of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday and nag ate him." "h'm!" said rikki-tikki," that is very sad--but i am a stranger here. who is nag?" darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss--a horrid cold sound that made rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. when he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of. "who is nag?" he said, "_i_ am nag. the great god brahm put his mark upon all our people when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off brahm as he slept. look, and be afraid!" [illustration: "'i am nag,' said the cobra: 'look, and be afraid!' but at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid."] he spread out his hood more than ever, and rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. he was afraid for the minute; but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life was to fight and eat snakes. nag knew that too, and at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid. "well," said rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, "marks or no marks, do you think it is right for you to eat fledglings out of a nest?" nag was thinking to himself, and watching the least little movement in the grass behind rikki-tikki. he knew that mongooses in the garden meant death sooner or later for him and his family; but he wanted to get rikki-tikki off his guard. so he dropped his head a little, and put it on one side. "let us talk," he said. "you eat eggs. why should not i eat birds?" "behind you! look behind you!" sang darzee. rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. he jumped up in the air as high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head of nagaina, nag's wicked wife. she had crept up behind him as he was talking, to make an end of him; and he heard her savage hiss as the stroke missed. he came down almost across her back, and if he had been an old mongoose he would have known that then was the time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing return-stroke of the cobra. he bit, indeed, but did not bite long enough, and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving nagaina torn and angry. [illustration: "he jumped up in the air, and just under him whizzed by the head of nagaina."] "wicked, wicked darzee!" said nag, lashing up as high as he could reach toward the nest in the thorn-bush; but darzee had built it out of reach of snakes, and it only swayed to and fro. rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose's eyes grow red, he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all around him, and chattered with rage. but nag and nagaina had disappeared into the grass. when a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next. rikki-tikki did not care to follow them, for he did not feel sure that he could manage two snakes at once. so he trotted off to the gravel path near the house, and sat down to think. it was a serious matter for him. if you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures him. that is not true. the victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot,--snake's blow against mongoose's jump,--and as no eye can follow the motion of a snake's head when it strikes, that makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb. rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose, and it made him all the more pleased to think that he had managed to escape a blow from behind. it gave him confidence in himself, and when teddy came running down the path, rikki-tikki was ready to be petted. but just as teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: "be careful. i am death!" it was karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerous as the cobra's. but he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people. rikki-tikki's eyes grew red again, and he danced up to karait with the peculiar rocking, swaying motion that he had inherited from his family. it looks very funny, but it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you can fly off from it at any angle you please; and in dealing with snakes this is an advantage. if rikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a much more dangerous thing than fighting nag, for karait is so small, and can turn so quickly, that unless rikki bit him close to the back of the head, he would get the return-stroke in his eye or lip. but rikki did not know: his eyes were all red, and he rocked back and forth, looking for a good place to hold. karait struck out. rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in, but the wicked little dusty gray head lashed within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over the body, and the head followed his heels close. teddy shouted to the house: "oh, look here! our mongoose is killing a snake"; and rikki-tikki heard a scream from teddy's mother. his father ran out with a stick, but by the time he came up, karait had lunged out once too far, and rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake's back, dropped his head far between his fore legs, bitten as high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. that bite paralyzed karait, and rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose, and if he wanted all his strength and quickness ready, he must keep himself thin. he went away for a dust-bath under the castor-oil bushes, while teddy's father beat the dead karait. "what is the use of that?" thought rikki-tikki. "i have settled it all"; and then teddy's mother picked him up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved teddy from death, and teddy's father said that he was a providence, and teddy looked on with big scared eyes. rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand. teddy's mother might just as well have petted teddy for playing in the dust. rikki was thoroughly enjoying himself. that night, at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses on the table, he could have stuffed himself three times over with nice things; but he remembered nag and nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be patted and petted by teddy's mother, and to sit on teddy's shoulder, his eyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off into his long war-cry of "_rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!_" teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on rikki-tikki sleeping under his chin. rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in the dark he ran up against chuchundra, the muskrat, creeping round by the wall. chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. he whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never gets there. [illustration: "in the dark he ran up against chuchundra, the muskrat."] "don't kill me," said chuchundra, almost weeping. "rikki-tikki, don't kill me." "do you think a snake-killer kills muskrats?" said rikki-tikki scornfully. "those who kill snakes get killed by snakes," said chuchundra, more sorrowfully than ever. "and how am i to be sure that nag won't mistake me for you some dark night?" "there's not the least danger," said rikki-tikki; "but nag is in the garden, and i know you don't go there." "my cousin chua, the rat, told me--" said chuchundra, and then he stopped. "told you what?" "h'sh! nag is everywhere, rikki-tikki. you should have talked to chua in the garden." "i didn't--so you must tell me. quick, chuchundra, or i'll bite you!" chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers. "i am a very poor man," he sobbed. "i never had spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room. h'sh! i mustn't tell you anything. can't you _hear_, rikki-tikki?" rikki-tikki listened. the house was as still as still, but he thought he could just catch the faintest _scratch-scratch_ in the world,--a noise as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane,--the dry scratch of a snake's scales on brickwork. "that's nag or nagaina," he said to himself; "and he is crawling into the bath-room sluice. you're right, chuchundra; i should have talked to chua." he stole off to teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then to teddy's mother's bath-room. at the bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath-water, and as rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard nag and nagaina whispering together outside in the moonlight. "when the house is emptied of people," said nagaina to her husband, "_he_ will have to go away, and then the garden will be our own again. go in quietly, and remember that the big man who killed karait is the first one to bite. then come out and tell me, and we will hunt for rikki-tikki together." "but are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the people?" said nag. "everything. when there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any mongoose in the garden? so long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon-bed hatch (as they may to-morrow), our children will need room and quiet." "i had not thought of that," said nag. "i will go, but there is no need that we should hunt for rikki-tikki afterward. i will kill the big man and his wife, and the child if i can, and come away quietly. then the bungalow will be empty, and rikki-tikki will go." rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and then nag's head came through the sluice, and his five feet of cold body followed it. angry as he was, rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw the size of the big cobra. nag coiled himself up, raised his head, and looked into the bath-room in the dark, and rikki could see his eyes glitter. "now, if i kill him here, nagaina will know; and if i fight him on the open floor, the odds are in his favor. what am i to do?" said rikki-tikki-tavi. nag waved to and fro, and then rikki-tikki heard him drinking from the biggest water-jar that was used to fill the bath. "that is good," said the snake. "now, when karait was killed, the big man had a stick. he may have that stick still, but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he will not have a stick. i shall wait here till he comes. nagaina--do you hear me?--i shall wait here in the cool till daytime." there was no answer from outside, so rikki-tikki knew nagaina had gone away. nag coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the water-jar, and rikki-tikki stayed still as death. after an hour he began to move, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. nag was asleep, and rikki-tikki looked at his big back, wondering which would be the best place for a good hold. "if i don't break his back at the first jump," said rikki, "he can still fight; and if he fights--o rikki!" he looked at the thickness of the neck below the hood, but that was too much for him; and a bite near the tail would only make nag savage. "it must be the head," he said at last: "the head above the hood; and, when i am once there, i must not let go." then he jumped. the head was lying a little clear of the water-jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head. this gave him just one second's purchase, and he made the most of it. then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog--to and fro on the floor, up and down, and round in great circles; but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body cartwhipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap-dish and the flesh-brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath. as he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honor of his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. he was dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a thunderclap just behind him; a hot wind knocked him senseless and red fire singed his fur. the big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a shot-gun into nag just behind the hood. [illustration: "then rikki-tikki was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog."] rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for now he was quite sure he was dead; but the head did not move, and the big man picked him up and said: "it's the mongoose again, alice; the little chap has saved _our_ lives now." then teddy's mother came in with a very white face, and saw what was left of nag, and rikki-tikki dragged himself to teddy's bedroom and spent half the rest of the night shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he really was broken into forty pieces, as he fancied. when morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his doings. "now i have nagaina to settle with, and she will be worse than five nags, and there's no knowing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch. goodness! i must go and see darzee," he said. without waiting for breakfast, rikki-tikki ran to the thorn-bush where darzee was singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. the news of nag's death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body on the rubbish-heap. "oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!" said rikki-tikki, angrily. "is this the time to sing?" "nag is dead--is dead--is dead!" sang darzee. "the valiant rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast. the big man brought the bang-stick and nag fell in two pieces! he will never eat my babies again." "all that's true enough; but where's nagaina?" said rikki-tikki, looking carefully round him. "nagaina came to the bath-room sluice and called for nag," darzee went on; "and nag came out on the end of a stick--the sweeper picked him up on the end of a stick and threw him upon the rubbish-heap. let us sing about the great, the red-eyed rikki-tikki!" and darzee filled his throat and sang. "if i could get up to your nest, i'd roll all your babies out!" said rikki-tikki. "you don't know when to do the right thing at the right time. you're safe enough in your nest there, but it's war for me down here. stop singing a minute, darzee." "for the great, the beautiful rikki-tikki's sake i will stop," said darzee. "what is it, o killer of the terrible nag!" "where is nagaina, for the third time?" "on the rubbish-heap by the stables, mourning for nag. great is rikki-tikki with the white teeth." "bother my white teeth! have you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?" "in the melon-bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes nearly all day. she had them there weeks ago." "and you never thought it worth while to tell me? the end nearest the wall, you said?" "rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?" "not eat exactly; no. darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly off to the stables and pretend that your wing is broken, and let nagaina chase you away to this bush? i must get to the melon-bed, and if i went there now she'd see me." darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head; and just because he knew that nagaina's children were born in eggs like his own, he didn't think at first that it was fair to kill them. but his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra's eggs meant young cobras later on; so she flew off from the nest, and left darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of nag. darzee was very like a man in some ways. she fluttered in front of nagaina by the rubbish-heap, and cried out, "oh, my wing is broken! the boy in the house threw a stone at me and broke it." then she fluttered more desperately than ever. [illustration: darzee's wife pretends to have broken a wing.] nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, "you warned rikki-tikki when i would have killed him. indeed and truly, you've chosen a bad place to be lame in." and she moved toward darzee's wife, slipping along over the dust. "the boy broke it with a stone!" shrieked darzee's wife. "well! it may be some consolation to you when you're dead to know that i shall settle accounts with the boy. my husband lies on the rubbish-heap this morning, but before night the boy in the house will lie very still. what is the use of running away? i am sure to catch you. little fool, look at me!" darzee's wife knew better than to do _that_, for a bird who looks at a snake's eyes gets so frightened that she cannot move. darzee's wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and nagaina quickened her pace. rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall. there, in the warm litter about the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a bantam's eggs, but with whitish skin instead of shell. "i was not a day too soon," he said; for he could see the baby cobras curled up inside the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched they could each kill a man or a mongoose. he bit off the tops of the eggs as fast as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras, and turned over the litter from time to time to see whether he had missed any. at last there were only three eggs left, and rikki-tikki began to chuckle to himself, when he heard darzee's wife screaming: "rikki-tikki, i led nagaina toward the house, and she has gone into the veranda, and--oh, come quickly--she means killing!" rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the veranda as hard as he could put foot to the ground. teddy and his mother and father were there at early breakfast; but rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating anything. they sat stone-still, and their faces were white. nagaina was coiled up on the matting by teddy's chair, within easy striking distance of teddy's bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro singing a song of triumph. "son of the big man that killed nag," she hissed, "stay still. i am not ready yet. wait a little. keep very still, all you three. if you move i strike, and if you do not move i strike. oh, foolish people, who killed my nag!" teddy's eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father could do was to whisper, "sit still, teddy. you mustn't move. teddy, keep still." then rikki-tikki came up and cried: "turn round, nagaina; turn and fight!" "all in good time," said she, without moving her eyes. "i will settle my account with _you_ presently. look at your friends, rikki-tikki. they are still and white; they are afraid. they dare not move, and if you come a step nearer i strike." "look at your eggs," said rikki-tikki, "in the melon-bed near the wall. go and look, nagaina." the big snake turned half round, and saw the egg on the veranda. "ah-h! give it to me," she said. rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and his eyes were blood-red. "what price for a snake's egg? for a young cobra? for a young king-cobra? for the last--the very last of the brood? the ants are eating all the others down by the melon-bed." nagaina spun clear round, forgetting everything for the sake of the one egg; and rikki-tikki saw teddy's father shoot out a big hand, catch teddy by the shoulder, and drag him across the little table with the tea-cups, safe and out of reach of nagaina. "tricked! tricked! tricked! _rikk-tck-tck!_" chuckled rikki-tikki. "the boy is safe, and it was i--i--i that caught nag by the hood last night in the bath-room." then he began to jump up and down, all four feet together, his head close to the floor. "he threw me to and fro, but he could not shake me off. he was dead before the big man blew him in two. i did it. _rikki-tikki-tck-tck!_ come then, nagaina. come and fight with me. you shall not be a widow long." nagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing teddy, and the egg lay between rikki-tikki's paws. "give me the egg, rikki-tikki. give me the last of my eggs, and i will go away and never come back," she said, lowering her hood. "yes, you will go away, and you will never come back; for you will go to the rubbish-heap with nag. fight, widow! the big man has gone for his gun! fight!" rikki-tikki was bounding all round nagaina, keeping just out of reach of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals. nagaina gathered herself together, and flung out at him. rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. again and again and again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack on the matting of the veranda and she gathered herself together like a watch-spring. then rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind her, and nagaina spun round to keep her head to his head, so that the rustle of her tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind. he had forgotten the egg. it still lay on the veranda, and nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and flew like an arrow down the path, with rikki-tikki behind her. when the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whiplash flicked across a horse's neck. [illustration: "nagaina flew down the path, with rikki-tikki behind her."] rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin again. she headed straight for the long grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was running rikki-tikki heard darzee still singing his foolish little song of triumph. but darzee's wife was wiser. she flew off her nest as nagaina came along, and flapped her wings about nagaina's head. if darzee had helped they might have turned her; but nagaina only lowered her hood and went on. still, the instant's delay brought rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and nag used to live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he went down with her--and very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to follow a cobra into its hole. it was dark in the hole; and rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give nagaina room to turn and strike at him. he held on savagely, and struck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth. then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and darzee said: "it is all over with rikki-tikki! we must sing his death-song. valiant rikki-tikki is dead! for nagaina will surely kill him underground." so he sang a very mournful song that he made up all on the spur of the minute, and just as he got to the most touching part the grass quivered again, and rikki-tikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the hole leg by leg, licking his whiskers. darzee stopped with a little shout. rikki-tikki shook some of the dust out of his fur and sneezed. "it is all over," he said. "the widow will never come out again." and the red ants that live between the grass stems heard him, and began to troop down one after another to see if he had spoken the truth. [illustration: "it is all over."] rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept where he was--slept and slept till it was late in the afternoon, for he had done a hard day's work. "now," he said, when he awoke, "i will go back to the house. tell the coppersmith, darzee, and he will tell the garden that nagaina is dead." the coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of a little hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always making it is because he is the town-crier to every indian garden, and tells all the news to everybody who cares to listen. as rikki-tikki went up the path, he heard his "attention" notes like a tiny dinner-gong; and then the steady "_ding-dong-tock!_ nag is dead--_dong!_ nagaina is dead! _ding-dong-tock!_" that set all the birds in the garden singing, and the frogs croaking; for nag and nagaina used to eat frogs as well as little birds. when rikki got to the house, teddy and teddy's mother (she looked very white still, for she had been fainting) and teddy's father came out and almost cried over him; and that night he ate all that was given him till he could eat no more, and went to bed on teddy's shoulder, where teddy's mother saw him when she came to look late at night. "he saved our lives and teddy's life," she said to her husband. "just think, he saved all our lives." rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for all the mongooses are light sleepers. "oh, it's you," said he. "what are you bothering for? all the cobras are dead; and if they weren't, i'm here." rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself; but he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls. darzee's chaunt (sung in honor of rikki-tikki-tavi) singer and tailor am i-- doubled the joys that i know-- proud of my lilt through the sky, proud of the house that i sew-- over and under, so weave i my music--so weave i the house that i sew. sing to your fledglings again, mother, oh lift up your head! evil that plagued us is slain, death in the garden lies dead. terror that hid in the roses is impotent--flung on the dung-hill and dead! who hath delivered us, who? tell me his nest and his name. rikki, the valiant, the true, tikki, with eyeballs of flame. rik-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame. give him the thanks of the birds, bowing with tail-feathers spread! praise him with nightingale words-- nay, i will praise him instead. hear! i will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed rikki, with eyeballs of red! (_here rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is lost._) toomai of the elephants i will remember what i was, i am sick of rope and chain-- i will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs. i will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane, i will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs. i will go out until the day, until the morning break, out to the winds' untainted kiss, the waters' clean caress: i will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake. i will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless! [illustration] toomai of the elephants kala nag, which means black snake, had served the indian government in every way that an elephant could serve it for forty-seven years, and as he was fully twenty years old when he was caught, that makes him nearly seventy--a ripe age for an elephant. he remembered pushing, with a big leather pad on his forehead, at a gun stuck in deep mud, and that was before the afghan war of , and he had not then come to his full strength. his mother, radha pyari,--radha the darling,--who had been caught in the same drive with kala nag, told him, before his little milk tusks had dropped out, that elephants who were afraid always got hurt: and kala nag knew that that advice was good, for the first time that he saw a shell burst he backed, screaming, into a stand of piled rifles, and the bayonets pricked him in all his softest places. so, before he was twenty-five, he gave up being afraid, and so he was the best-loved and the best-looked-after elephant in the service of the government of india. he had carried tents, twelve hundred pounds' weight of tents, on the march in upper india: he had been hoisted into a ship at the end of a steam-crane and taken for days across the water, and made to carry a mortar on his back in a strange and rocky country very far from india, and had seen the emperor theodore lying dead in magdala, and had come back again in the steamer entitled, so the soldiers said, to the abyssinian war medal. he had seen his fellow-elephants die of cold and epilepsy and starvation and sunstroke up at a place called ali musjid, ten years later; and afterward he had been sent down thousands of miles south to haul and pile big baulks of teak in the timber-yards at moulmein. there he had half killed an insubordinate young elephant who was shirking his fair share of the work. [illustration: "kala nag was the best-loved elephant in the service."] after that he was taken off timber-hauling, and employed, with a few score other elephants who were trained to the business, in helping to catch wild elephants among the garo hills. elephants are very strictly preserved by the indian government. there is one whole department which does nothing else but hunt them, and catch them, and break them in, and send them up and down the country as they are needed for work. kala nag stood ten fair feet at the shoulders, and his tusks had been cut off short at five feet, and bound round the ends, to prevent them splitting, with bands of copper; but he could do more with those stumps than any untrained elephant could do with the real sharpened ones. when, after weeks and weeks of cautious driving of scattered elephants across the hills, the forty or fifty wild monsters were driven into the last stockade, and the big drop-gate, made of tree-trunks lashed together, jarred down behind them, kala nag, at the word of command, would go into that flaring, trumpeting pandemonium (generally at night, when the flicker of the torches made it difficult to judge distances), and, picking out the biggest and wildest tusker of the mob, would hammer him and hustle him into quiet while the men on the backs of the other elephants roped and tied the smaller ones. there was nothing in the way of fighting that kala nag, the old wise black snake, did not know, for he had stood up more than once in his time to the charge of the wounded tiger, and, curling up his soft trunk to be out of harm's way, had knocked the springing brute sideways in mid-air with a quick sickle-cut of his head, that he had invented all by himself; had knocked him over, and kneeled upon him with his huge knees till the life went out with a gasp and a howl, and there was only a fluffy striped thing on the ground for kala nag to pull by the tail. "yes," said big toomai, his driver, the son of black toomai who had taken him to abyssinia, and grandson of toomai of the elephants who had seen him caught, "there is nothing that the black snake fears except me. he has seen three generations of us feed him and groom him, and he will live to see four." "he is afraid of _me_ also," said little toomai, standing up to his full height of four feet, with only one rag upon him. he was ten years old, the eldest son of big toomai, and, according to custom, he would take his father's place on kala nag's neck when he grew up, and would handle the heavy iron _ankus_, the elephant-goad that had been worn smooth by his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. he knew what he was talking of; for he had been born under kala nag's shadow, had played with the end of his trunk before he could walk, had taken him down to water as soon as he could walk, and kala nag would no more have dreamed of disobeying his shrill little orders than he would have dreamed of killing him on that day when big toomai carried the little brown baby under kala nag's tusks, and told him to salute his master that was to be. [illustration: "'he is afraid of me,' said little toomai, and he made kala nag lift up his feet one after the other."] "yes," said little toomai, "he is afraid of _me_," and he took long strides up to kala nag, called him a fat old pig, and made him lift up his feet one after the other. "wah!" said little toomai, "thou art a big elephant," and he wagged his fluffy head, quoting his father. "the government may pay for elephants, but they belong to us mahouts. when thou art old, kala nag, there will come some rich rajah, and he will buy thee from the government, on account of thy size and thy manners, and then thou wilt have nothing to do but to carry gold earrings in thy ears, and a gold howdah on thy back, and a red cloth covered with gold on thy sides, and walk at the head of the processions of the king. then i shall sit on thy neck, o kala nag, with a silver _ankus_, and men will run before us with golden sticks, crying, 'room for the king's elephant!' that will be good, kala nag, but not so good as this hunting in the jungles." "umph!" said big toomai. "thou art a boy, and as wild as a buffalo-calf. this running up and down among the hills is not the best government service. i am getting old, and i do not love wild elephants, give me brick elephant-lines, one stall to each elephant, and big stumps to tie them to safely, and flat, broad roads to exercise upon, instead of this come-and-go camping. aha, the cawnpore barracks were good. there was a bazaar close by, and only three hours' work a day." little toomai remembered the cawnpore elephant-lines and said nothing. he very much preferred the camp life, and hated those broad, flat roads, with the daily grubbing for grass in the forage-reserve, and the long hours when there was nothing to do except to watch kala nag fidgeting in his pickets. what little toomai liked was to scramble up bridle-paths that only an elephant could take; the dip into the valley below; the glimpses of the wild elephants browsing miles away; the rush of the frightened pig and peacock under kala nag's feet; the blinding warm rains, when all the hills and valleys smoked; the beautiful misty mornings when nobody knew where they would camp that night; the steady, cautious drive of the wild elephants, and the mad rush and blaze and hullaballoo of the last night's drive, when the elephants poured into the stockade like boulders in a landslide, found that they could not get out, and flung themselves at the heavy posts only to be driven back by yells and flaring torches and volleys of blank cartridge. [illustration: "he would get his torch and wave it, and yell with the best."] even a little boy could be of use there, and toomai was as useful as three boys. he would get his torch and wave it, and yell with the best. but the really good time came when the driving out began, and the keddah, that is, the stockade, looked like a picture of the end of the world, and men had to make signs to one another, because they could not hear themselves speak. then little toomai would climb up to the top of one of the quivering stockade-posts, his sun-bleached brown hair flying loose all over his shoulders, and he looking like a goblin in the torch-light; and as soon as there was a lull you could hear his high-pitched yells of encouragement to kala nag, above the trumpeting and crashing, and snapping of ropes, and groans of the tethered elephants. "_maîl, maîl, kala nag!_ (go on, go on, black snake!) _dant do!_ (give him the tusk!) _somalo! somalo!_ (careful, careful!) _maro! mar!_ (hit him, hit him!) mind the post! _arre! arre! hai! yai! kya-a-ah!_" he would shout, and the big fight between kala nag and the wild elephant would sway to and fro across the keddah, and the old elephant-catchers would wipe the sweat out of their eyes, and find time to nod to little toomai wriggling with joy on the top of the posts. he did more than wriggle. one night he slid down from the post and slipped in between the elephants, and threw up the loose end of a rope, which had dropped, to a driver who was trying to get a purchase on the leg of a kicking young calf (calves always give more trouble than full-grown animals). kala nag saw him, caught him in his trunk, and handed him up to big toomai, who slapped him then and there, and put him back on the post. next morning he gave him a scolding, and said: "are not good brick elephant-lines and a little tent-carrying enough, that thou must needs go elephant-catching on thy own account, little worthless? now those foolish hunters, whose pay is less than my pay, have spoken to petersen sahib of the matter." little toomai was frightened. he did not know much of white men, but petersen sahib was the greatest white man in the world to him. he was the head of all the keddah operations--the man who caught all the elephants for the government of india, and who knew more about the ways of elephants than any living man. "what--what will happen?" said little toomai. "happen! the worst that can happen. petersen sahib is a madman. else why should he go hunting these wild devils? he may even require thee to be an elephant-catcher, to sleep anywhere in these fever-filled jungles, and at last to be trampled to death in the keddah. it is well that this nonsense ends safely. next week the catching is over, and we of the plains are sent back to our stations. then we will march on smooth roads, and forget all this hunting. but, son, i am angry that thou shouldst meddle in the business that belongs to these dirty assamese jungle-folk. kala nag will obey none but me, so i must go with him into the keddah, but he is only a fighting elephant, and he does not help to rope them. so i sit at my ease, as befits a mahout,--not a mere hunter,--a mahout, i say, and a man who gets a pension at the end of his service. is the family of toomai of the elephants to be trodden underfoot in the dirt of a keddah? bad one! wicked one! worthless son! go and wash kala nag and attend to his ears, and see that there are no thorns in his feet; or else petersen sahib will surely catch thee and make thee a wild hunter--a follower of elephant's foot-tracks, a jungle-bear. bah! shame! go!" little toomai went off without saying a word, but he told kala nag all his grievances while he was examining his feet. "no matter," said little toomai, turning up the fringe of kala nag's huge right ear. "they have said my name to petersen sahib, and perhaps--and perhaps--and perhaps--who knows? hai! that is a big thorn that i have pulled out!" the next few days were spent in getting the elephants together, in walking the newly caught wild elephants up and down between a couple of tame ones, to prevent them from giving too much trouble on the downward march to the plains, and in taking stock of the blankets and ropes and things that had been worn out or lost in the forest. petersen sahib came in on his clever she-elephant pudmini; he had been paying off other camps among the hills, for the season was coming to an end, and there was a native clerk sitting at a table under a tree, to pay the drivers their wages. as each man was paid he went back to his elephant, and joined the line that stood ready to start. the catchers, and hunters, and beaters, the men of the regular keddah, who stayed in the jungle year in and year out, sat on the backs of the elephants that belonged to petersen sahib's permanent force, or leaned against the trees with their guns across their arms, and made fun of the drivers who were going away, and laughed when the newly caught elephants broke the line and ran about. big toomai went up to the clerk with little toomai behind him, and machua appa, the head-tracker, said in an undertone to a friend of his, "there goes one piece of good elephant-stuff at least. 't is a pity to send that young jungle-cock to moult in the plains." now petersen sahib had ears all over him, as a man must have who listens to the most silent of all living things--the wild elephant. he turned where he was lying all along on pudmini's back, and said, "what is that? i did not know of a man among the plain-drivers who had wit enough to rope even a dead elephant." "this is not a man, but a boy. he went into the keddah at the last drive, and threw barmao there the rope, when we were trying to get that young calf with the blotch on his shoulder away from his mother." machua appa pointed at little toomai, and petersen sahib looked, and little toomai bowed to the earth. "he throw a rope? he is smaller than a picket-pin. little one, what is thy name?" said petersen sahib. little toomai was too frightened to speak, but kala nag was behind him, and toomai made a sign with his hand, and the elephant caught him up in his trunk and held him level with pudmini's forehead, in front of the great petersen sahib. then little toomai covered his face with his hands, for he was only a child, and except where elephants were concerned, he was just as bashful as a child could be. "oho!" said petersen sahib, smiling underneath his mustache, "and why didst thou teach thy elephant _that_ trick? was it to help thee steal green corn from the roofs of the houses when the ears are put out to dry?" [illustration: "'not green corn, protector of the poor,--melons,' said little toomai."] "not green corn, protector of the poor,--melons," said little toomai, and all the men sitting about broke into a roar of laughter. most of them had taught their elephants that trick when they were boys. little toomai was hanging eight feet up in the air, and he wished very much that he were eight feet underground. "he is toomai, my son, sahib," said big toomai, scowling. "he is a very bad boy, and he will end in a jail, sahib." "of that i have my doubts," said petersen sahib. "a boy who can face a full keddah at his age does not end in jails. see, little one, here are four annas to spend in sweetmeats because thou hast a little head under that great thatch of hair. in time thou mayest become a hunter too." big toomai scowled more than ever. "remember, though, that keddahs are not good for children to play in," petersen sahib went on. "must i never go there, sahib?" asked little toomai, with a big gasp. "yes." petersen sahib smiled again. "when thou hast seen the elephants dance. that is the proper time. come to me when thou hast seen the elephants dance, and then i will let thee go into all the keddahs." there was another roar of laughter, for that is an old joke among elephant-catchers, and it means just never. there are great cleared flat places hidden away in the forests that are called elephants' ballrooms, but even these are found only by accident, and no man has ever seen the elephants dance. when a driver boasts of his skill and bravery the other drivers say, "and when didst _thou_ see the elephants dance?" kala nag put little toomai down, and he bowed to the earth again and went away with his father, and gave the silver four-anna piece to his mother, who was nursing his baby-brother, and they all were put up on kala nag's back, and the line of grunting, squealing elephants rolled down the hill-path to the plains. it was a very lively march on account of the new elephants, who gave trouble at every ford, and who needed coaxing or beating every other minute. big toomai prodded kala nag spitefully, for he was very angry, but little toomai was too happy to speak. petersen sahib had noticed him, and given him money, so he felt as a private soldier would feel if he had been called out of the ranks and praised by his commander-in-chief. "what did petersen sahib mean by the elephant-dance?" he said, at last, softly to his mother. big toomai heard him and grunted. "that thou shouldst never be one of these hill-buffaloes of trackers. _that_ was what he meant. oh you in front, what is blocking the way?" an assamese driver, two or three elephants ahead, turned round angrily, crying: "bring up kala nag, and knock this youngster of mine into good behavior. why should petersen sahib have chosen _me_ to go down with you donkeys of the rice-fields? lay your beast alongside, toomai, and let him prod with his tusks. by all the gods of the hills, these new elephants are possessed, or else they can smell their companions in the jungle." kala nag hit the new elephant in the ribs and knocked the wind out of him, as big toomai said, "we have swept the hills of wild elephants at the last catch. it is only your carelessness in driving. must i keep order along the whole line?" "hear him!" said the other driver. "_we_ have swept the hills! ho! ho! you are very wise, you plains-people. any one but a mudhead who never saw the jungle would know that _they_ know that the drives are ended for the season. therefore all the wild elephants to-night will--but why should i waste wisdom on a river-turtle?" "what will they do?" little toomai called out. "_ohé_, little one. art thou there? well, i will tell thee, for thou hast a cool head. they will dance, and it behooves thy father, who has swept _all_ the hills of _all_ the elephants, to double-chain his pickets to-night." "what talk is this?" said big toomai. "for forty years, father and son, we have tended elephants, and we have never heard such moonshine about dances." "yes; but a plains-man who lives in a hut knows only the four walls of his hut. well, leave thy elephants unshackled to-night and see what comes; as for their dancing, i have seen the place where--_bapree-bap!_ how many windings has the dihang river? here is another ford, and we must swim the calves. stop still, you behind there." and in this way, talking and wrangling and splashing through the rivers, they made their first march to a sort of receiving-camp for the new elephants; but they lost their tempers long before they got there. then the elephants were chained by their hind legs to their big stumps of pickets, and extra ropes were fitted to the new elephants, and the fodder was piled before them, and the hill-drivers went back to petersen sahib through the afternoon light, telling the plains-drivers to be extra careful that night, and laughing when the plains-drivers asked the reason. little toomai attended to kala nag's supper, and as evening fell, wandered through the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of a tom-tom. when an indian child's heart is full, he does not run about and make a noise in an irregular fashion. he sits down to a sort of revel all by himself. and little toomai had been spoken to by petersen sahib! if he had not found what he wanted i believe he would have burst. but the sweatmeat-seller in the camp lent him a little tom-tom--a drum beaten with the flat of the hand--and he sat down, cross-legged, before kala nag as the stars began to come out, the tom-tom in his lap, and he thumped and he thumped and he thumped, and the more he thought of the great honor that had been done to him, the more he thumped, all alone among the elephant-fodder. there was no tune and no words, but the thumping made him happy. the new elephants strained at their ropes, and squealed and trumpeted from time to time, and he could hear his mother in the camp hut putting his small brother to sleep with an old, old song about the great god shiv, who once told all the animals what they should eat. it is a very soothing lullaby, and the first verse says: shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow, sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago, gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate, from the king upon the _guddee_ to the beggar at the gate. all things made he--shiva the preserver. mahadeo! mahadeo! he made all,-- thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine, and mother's heart for sleepy head, o little son of mine! little toomai came in with a joyous _tunk-a-tunk_ at the end of each verse, till he felt sleepy and stretched himself on the fodder at kala nag's side. at last the elephants began to lie down one after another as is their custom, till only kala nag at the right of the line was left standing up; and he rocked slowly from side to side, his ears put forward to listen to the night wind as it blew very slowly across the hills. the air was full of all the night noises that, taken together, make one big silence--the click of one bamboo-stem against the other, the rustle of something alive in the undergrowth, the scratch and squawk of a half-waked bird (birds are awake in the night much more often than we imagine), and the fall of water ever so far away. little toomai slept for some time, and when he waked it was brilliant moonlight, and kala nag was still standing up with his ears cocked. little toomai turned, rustling in the fodder, and watched the curve of his big back against half the stars in heaven, and while he watched he heard, so far away that it sounded no more than a pinhole of noise pricked through the stillness, the "hoot-toot" of a wild elephant. all the elephants in the lines jumped up as if they had been shot, and their grunts at last waked the sleeping mahouts, and they came out and drove in the picket-pegs with big mallets, and tightened this rope and knotted that till all was quiet. one new elephant had nearly grubbed up his picket, and big toomai took off kala nag's leg-chain and shackled that elephant fore foot to hind foot, but slipped a loop of grass-string round kala nag's leg, and told him to remember that he was tied fast. he knew that he and his father and his grandfather had done the very same thing hundreds of times before. kala nag did not answer to the order by gurgling, as he usually did. he stood still, looking out across the moonlight, his head a little raised and his ears spread like fans, up to the great folds of the garo hills. "look to him if he grows restless in the night," said big toomai to little toomai, and he went into the hut and slept. little toomai was just going to sleep, too, when he heard the coir string snap with a little "tang," and kala nag rolled out of his pickets as slowly and as silently as a cloud rolls out of the mouth of a valley. little toomai pattered after him, bare-footed, down the road in the moonlight, calling under his breath, "kala nag! kala nag! take me with you, o kala nag!" the elephant turned without a sound, took three strides back to the boy in the moonlight, put down his trunk, swung him up to his neck, and almost before little toomai had settled his knees, slipped into the forest. there was one blast of furious trumpeting from the lines, and then the silence shut down on everything, and kala nag began to move. sometimes a tuft of high grass washed along his sides as a wave washes along the sides of a ship, and sometimes a cluster of wild-pepper vines would scrape along his back, or a bamboo would creak where his shoulder touched it; but between those times he moved absolutely without any sound, drifting through the thick garo forest as though it had been smoke. he was going uphill, but though little toomai watched the stars in the rifts of the trees, he could not tell in what direction. then kala nag reached the crest of the ascent and stopped for a minute, and little toomai could see the tops of the trees lying all speckled and furry under the moonlight for miles and miles, and the blue-white mist over the river in the hollow. toomai leaned forward and looked, and he felt that the forest was awake below him--awake and alive and crowded. a big brown fruit-eating bat brushed past his ear; a porcupine's quills rattled in the thicket, and in the darkness between the tree-stems he heard a hog-bear digging hard in the moist warm earth, and snuffing as it digged. then the branches closed over his head again, and kala nag began to go down into the valley--not quietly this time, but as a runaway gun goes down a steep bank--in one rush. the huge limbs moved as steadily as pistons, eight feet to each stride, and the wrinkled skin of the elbow-points rustled. the undergrowth on either side of him ripped with a noise like torn canvas, and the saplings that he heaved away right and left with his shoulders sprang back again, and banged him on the flank, and great trails of creepers, all matted together, hung from his tusks as he threw his head from side to side and plowed out his pathway. then little toomai laid himself down close to the great neck, lest a swinging bough should sweep him to the ground, and he wished that he were back in the lines again. the grass began to get squashy, and kala nag's feet sucked and squelched as he put them down, and the night mist at the bottom of the valley chilled little toomai. there was a splash and a trample, and the rush of running water, and kala nag strode through the bed of a river, feeling his way at each step. above the noise of the water, as it swirled round the elephant's legs, little toomai could hear more splashing and some trumpeting both up-stream and down--great grunts and angry snortings, and all the mist about him seemed to be full of rolling wavy shadows. "_ai!_" he said, half aloud, his teeth chattering. "the elephant-folk are out to-night. it _is_ the dance, then." kala nag swashed out of the water, blew his trunk clear, and began another climb; but this time he was not alone, and he had not to make his path. that was made already, six feet wide, in front of him, where the bent jungle-grass was trying to recover itself and stand up. many elephants must have gone that way only a few minutes before. little toomai looked back, and behind him a great wild tusker with his little pig's eyes glowing like hot coals, was just lifting himself out of the misty river. then the trees closed up again, and they went on and up, with trumpetings and crashings, and the sound of breaking branches on every side of them. at last kala nag stood still between two tree-trunks at the very top of the hill. they were part of a circle of trees that grew round an irregular space of some three or four acres, and in all that space, as little toomai could see, the ground had been trampled down as hard as a brick floor. some trees grew in the center of the clearing, but their bark was rubbed away, and the white wood beneath showed all shiny and polished in the patches of moonlight. there were creepers hanging from the upper branches, and the bells of the flowers of the creepers, great waxy white things like convolvuluses, hung down fast asleep; but within the limits of the clearing there was not a single blade of green--nothing but the trampled earth. the moonlight showed it all iron-gray, except where some elephants stood upon it, and their shadows were inky black. little toomai looked, holding his breath, with his eyes starting out of his head, and as he looked, more and more and more elephants swung out into the open from between the tree-trunks. little toomai could count only up to ten, and he counted again and again on his fingers till he lost count of the tens, and his head began to swim. outside the clearing he could hear them crashing in the undergrowth as they worked their way up the hillside; but as soon as they were within the circle of the tree-trunks they moved like ghosts. there were white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and twigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their ears; fat slow-footed she-elephants, with restless, little pinky-black calves only three or four feet high running under their stomachs; young elephants with their tusks just beginning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, scraggy old-maid elephants, with their hollow anxious faces, and trunks like rough bark; savage old bull-elephants, scarred from shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of bygone fights, and the caked dirt of their solitary mud-baths dropping from their shoulders; and there was one with a broken tusk and the marks of the full-stroke, the terrible drawing scrape, of a tiger's claws on his side. they were standing head to head, or walking to and fro across the ground in couples, or rocking and swaying all by themselves--scores and scores of elephants. toomai knew that so long as he lay still on kala nag's neck nothing would happen to him; for even in the rush and scramble of a keddah-drive a wild elephant does not reach up with his trunk and drag a man off the neck of a tame elephant; and these elephants were not thinking of men that night. once they started and put their ears forward when they heard the chinking of a leg-iron in the forest, but it was pudmini, petersen sahib's pet elephant, her chain snapped short off, grunting, snuffling up the hillside. she must have broken her pickets, and come straight from petersen sahib's camp; and little toomai saw another elephant, one that he did not know, with deep rope-galls on his back and breast. he, too, must have run away from some camp in the hills about. at last there was no sound of any more elephants moving in the forest, and kala nag rolled out from his station between the trees and went into the middle of the crowd, clucking and gurgling, and all the elephants began to talk in their own tongue, and to move about. [illustration: "little toomai looked down upon scores and scores of broad backs."] still lying down, little toomai looked down upon scores and scores of broad backs, and wagging ears, and tossing trunks, and little rolling eyes. he heard the click of tusks as they crossed other tusks by accident, and the dry rustle of trunks twined together, and the chafing of enormous sides and shoulders in the crowd, and the incessant flick and _hissh_ of the great tails. then a cloud came over the moon, and he sat in black darkness; but the quiet, steady hustling and pushing and gurgling went on just the same. he knew that there were elephants all round kala nag, and that there was no chance of backing him out of the assembly; so he set his teeth and shivered. in a keddah at least there was torch-light and shouting, but here he was all alone in the dark, and once a trunk came up and touched him on the knee. then an elephant trumpeted, and they all took it up for five or ten terrible seconds. the dew from the trees above spattered down like rain on the unseen backs, and a dull booming noise began, not very loud at first, and little toomai could not tell what it was; but it grew and grew, and kala nag lifted up one fore foot and then the other, and brought them down on the ground--one-two, one-two, as steadily as trip-hammers. the elephants were stamping altogether now, and it sounded like a war-drum beaten at the mouth of a cave. the dew fell from the trees till there was no more left to fall, and the booming went on, and the ground rocked and shivered, and little toomai put his hands up to his ears to shut out the sound. but it was all one gigantic jar that ran through him--this stamp of hundreds of heavy feet on the raw earth. once or twice he could feel kala nag and all the others surge forward a few strides, and the thumping would change to the crushing sound of juicy green things being bruised, but in a minute or two the boom of feet on hard earth began again. a tree was creaking and groaning somewhere near him. he put out his arm and felt the bark, but kala nag moved forward, still tramping, and he could not tell where he was in the clearing. there was no sound from the elephants, except once, when two or three little calves squeaked together. then he heard a thump and a shuffle, and the booming went on. it must have lasted fully two hours, and little toomai ached in every nerve; but he knew by the smell of the night air that the dawn was coming. the morning broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind the green hills, and the booming stopped with the first ray, as though the light had been an order. before little toomai had got the ringing out of his head, before even he had shifted his position, there was not an elephant in sight except kala nag, pudmini, and the elephant with the rope-galls, and there was neither sign nor rustle nor whisper down the hillsides to show where the others had gone. little toomai stared again and again. the clearing, as he remembered it, had grown in the night. more trees stood in the middle of it, but the undergrowth and the jungle-grass at the sides had been rolled back. little toomai stared once more. now he understood the trampling. the elephants had stamped out more room--had stamped the thick grass and juicy cane to trash, the trash into slivers, the slivers into tiny fibers, and the fibers into hard earth. "wah!" said little toomai, and his eyes were very heavy. "kala nag, my lord, let us keep by pudmini and go to peterson sahib's camp, or i shall drop from thy neck." the third elephant watched the two go away, snorted, wheeled round, and took his own path. he may have belonged to some little native king's establishment, fifty or sixty or a hundred miles away. two hours later, as petersen sahib was eating early breakfast, his elephants, who had been double-chained that night, began to trumpet, and pudmini, mired to the shoulders, with kala nag, very foot-sore, shambled into the camp. little toomai's face was gray and pinched, and his hair was full of leaves and drenched with dew; but he tried to salute petersen sahib, and cried faintly: "the dance--the elephant-dance! i have seen it, and--i die!" as kala nag sat down, he slid off his neck in a dead faint. but, since native children have no nerves worth speaking of, in two hours he was lying very contentedly in petersen sahib's hammock with petersen sahib's shooting-coat under his head, and a glass of warm milk, a little brandy, with a dash of quinine inside of him, and while the old hairy, scarred hunters of the jungles sat three-deep before him, looking at him as though he were a spirit, he told his tale in short words, as a child will, and wound up with: "now, if i lie in one word, send men to see, and they will find that the elephant-folk have trampled down more room in their dance-room, and they will find ten and ten, and many times ten, tracks leading to that dance-room. they made more room with their feet. i have seen it. kala nag took me, and i saw. also kala nag is very leg-weary!" little toomai lay back and slept all through the long afternoon and into the twilight, and while he slept petersen sahib and machua appa followed the track of the two elephants for fifteen miles across the hills. petersen sahib had spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he had only once before found such a dance-place. machua appa had no need to look twice at the clearing to see what had been done there, or to scratch with his toe in the packed, rammed earth. "the child speaks truth," said he. "all this was done last night, and i have counted seventy tracks crossing the river. see, sahib, where pudmini's leg-iron cut the bark of that tree! yes; she was there too." they looked at each other, and up and down, and they wondered; for the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom. "forty years and five," said machua appa, "have i followed my lord, the elephant, but never have i heard that any child of man had seen what this child has seen. by all the gods of the hills, it is--what can we say?" and he shook his head. when they got back to camp it was time for the evening meal. peterson sahib ate alone in his tent, but he gave orders that the camp should have two sheep and some fowls, as well as a double-ration of flour and rice and salt, for he knew that there would be a feast. big toomai had come up hot-foot from the camp in the plains to search for his son and his elephant, and now that he had found them he looked at them as though he were afraid of them both. and there was a feast by the blazing campfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants, and little toomai was the hero of it all; and the big brown elephant-catchers, the trackers and drivers and ropers, and the men who know all the secrets of breaking the wildest elephants, passed him from one to the other, and they marked his forehead with blood from the breast of a newly killed jungle-cock, to show that he was a forester, initiated and free of all the jungles. and at last, when the flames died down, and the red light of the logs made the elephants look as though they had been dipped in blood too, machua appa, the head of all the drivers of all the keddahs--machua appa, petersen sahib's other self, who had never seen a made road in forty years: machua appa, who was so great that he had no other name than machua appa--leaped to his feet, with little toomai held high in the air above his head, and shouted: "listen, my brothers. listen, too, you my lords in the lines there, for i, machua appa, am speaking! this little one shall no more be called little toomai, but toomai of the elephants, as his great-grandfather was called before him. what never man has seen he has seen through the long night, and the favor of the elephant-folk and of the gods of the jungles is with him. he shall become a great tracker; he shall become greater than i, even i, machua appa! he shall follow the new trail, and the stale trail, and the mixed trail, with a clear eye! he shall take no harm in the keddah when he runs under their bellies to rope the wild tuskers; and if he slips before the feet of the charging bull-elephant that bull-elephant shall know who he is and shall not crush him. _aihai!_ my lords in the chains,"--he whirled up the line of pickets,--"here is the little one that has seen your dances in your hidden places--the sight that never man saw! give him honor, my lords! _salaam karo_, my children. make your salute to toomai of the elephants! gunga pershad, ahaa! hira guj, birchi guj, kuttar guj, ahaa! pudmini,--thou hast seen him at the dance, and thou too, kala nag, my pearl among elephants!--ahaa! together! to toomai of the elephants. _barrao!_" [illustration: "'to toomai of the elephants. barrao!'"] and at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks till the tips touched their foreheads, and broke out into the full salute--the crashing trumpet-peal that only the viceroy of india hears, the salaamut of the keddah. but it was all for the sake of little toomai, who had seen what never man had seen before--the dance of the elephants at night and alone in the heart of the garo hills! shiv and the grasshopper (the song that toomai's mother sang to the baby) shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow, sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago, gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate, from the king upon the _guddee_ to the beggar at the gate. _all things made he--shiva the preserver, mahadeo! mahadeo! he made all,-- thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine, and mother's heart for sleepy head, o little son of mine!_ wheat he gave to rich folk, millet to the poor, broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door; cattle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, and rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low-- parbati beside him watched them come and go; thought to cheat her husband, turning shiv to jest-- stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast. _so she tricked him, shiva the preserver. mahadeo! mahadeo! turn and see. tall are the camels, heavy are the kine, but this was least of little things, o little son of mine!_ when the dole was ended, laughingly she said, "master, of a million mouths is not one unfed?" laughing, shiv made answer, "all have had their part, even he, the little one, hidden 'neath thy heart." from her breast she plucked it, parbati the thief, saw the least of little things gnawed a new-grown leaf! saw and feared and wondered, making prayer to shiv, who hath surely given meat to all that live. _all things made he--shiva the preserver. mahadeo! mahadeo! he made all,-- thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine, and mother's heart for sleepy head, o little son of mine!_ her majesty's servants you can work it out by fractions or by simple rule of three, but the way of tweedle-dum is not the way of tweedle-dee. you can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop but the way of pilly-winky's not the way of winkie-pop! [illustration] her majesty's servants it had been raining heavily for one whole month--raining on a camp of thirty thousand men, thousands of camels, elephants, horses, bullocks, and mules, all gathered together at a place called rawal pindi, to be reviewed by the viceroy of india. he was receiving a visit from the amir of afghanistan--a wild king of a very wild country; and the amir had brought with him for a bodyguard eight hundred men and horses who had never seen a camp or a locomotive before in their lives--savage men and savage horses from somewhere at the back of central asia. every night a mob of these horses would be sure to break their heel-ropes, and stampede up and down the camp through the mud in the dark, or the camels would break loose and run about and fall over the ropes of the tents, and you can imagine how pleasant that was for men trying to go to sleep. my tent lay far away from the camel lines, and i thought it was safe; but one night a man popped his head in and shouted, "get out, quick! they're coming! my tent's gone!" i knew who "they" were; so i put on my boots and waterproof and scuttled out into the slush. little vixen, my fox-terrier, went out through the other side; and then there was a roaring and a grunting and bubbling, and i saw the tent cave in, as the pole snapped, and begin to dance about like a mad ghost. a camel had blundered into it, and wet and angry as i was, i could not help laughing. then i ran on, because i did not know how many camels might have got loose, and before long i was out of sight of the camp, plowing my way through the mud. [illustration: "a camel had blundered into my tent."] at last i fell over the tail-end of a gun, and by that knew i was somewhere near the artillery lines where the cannon were stacked at night. as i did not want to plowter about any more in the drizzle and the dark, i put my waterproof over the muzzle of one gun, and made a sort of wigwam with two or three rammers that i found, and lay along the tail of another gun, wondering where vixen had got to, and where i might be. just as i was getting ready to sleep i heard a jingle of harness and a grunt, and a mule passed me shaking his wet ears. he belonged to a screw-gun battery, for i could hear the rattle of the straps and rings and chains and things on his saddle-pad. the screw-guns are tidy little cannon made in two pieces, that are screwed together when the time comes to use them. they are taken up mountains, anywhere that a mule can find a road, and they are very useful for fighting in rocky country. behind the mule there was a camel, with his big soft feet squelching and slipping in the mud, and his neck bobbing to and fro like a strayed hen's. luckily, i knew enough of beast language--not wild-beast language, but camp-beast language, of course--from the natives to know what he was saying. he must have been the one that flopped into my tent, for he called to the mule, "what shall i do? where shall i go? i have fought with a white thing that waved, and it took a stick and hit me on the neck." (that was my broken tentpole, and i was very glad to know it.) "shall we run on?" "oh, it was you," said the mule, "you and your friends, that have been disturbing the camp? all right. you'll be beaten for this in the morning; but i may as well give you something on account now." i heard the harness jingle as the mule backed and caught the camel two kicks in the ribs that rang like a drum. "another time," he said, "you'll know better than to run through a mule-battery at night, shouting 'thieves and fire!' sit down, and keep your silly neck quiet." the camel doubled up camel-fashion, like a two-foot rule, and sat down whimpering. there was a regular beat of hoofs in the darkness, and a big troop-horse cantered up as steadily as though he were on parade, jumped a gun-tail, and landed close to the mule. "it's disgraceful," he said, blowing out his nostrils. "those camels have racketed through our lines again--the third time this week. how's a horse to keep his condition if he isn't allowed to sleep? who's here?" "i'm the breech-piece mule of number two gun of the first screw battery," said the mule, "and the other's one of your friends. he's waked me up too. who are you?" "number fifteen, e troop, ninth lancers--dick cunliffe's horse. stand over a little, there." "oh, beg your pardon," said the mule. "it's too dark to see much. aren't these camels too sickening for anything? i walked out of my lines to get a little peace and quiet here." "my lords," said the camel humbly, "we dreamed bad dreams in the night, and we were very much afraid. i am only a baggage-camel of the th native infantry, and i am not so brave as you are, my lords." "then why the pickets didn't you stay and carry baggage for the th native infantry, instead of running all round the camp?" said the mule. "they were such very bad dreams," said the camel. "i am sorry. listen! what is that? shall we run on again?" "sit down," said the mule, "or you'll snap your long legs between the guns." he cocked one ear and listened. "bullocks!" he said; "gun-bullocks. on my word, you and your friends have waked the camp very thoroughly. it takes a good deal of prodding to put up a gun-bullock." i heard a chain dragging along the ground, and a yoke of the great sulky white bullocks that drag the heavy siege-guns when the elephants won't go any nearer to the firing, came shouldering along together; and almost stepping on the chain was another battery-mule, calling wildly for "billy." "that's one of our recruits," said the old mule to the troop-horse. "he's calling for me. here, youngster, stop squealing; the dark never hurt anybody yet." the gun-bullocks lay down together and began chewing the cud, but the young mule huddled close to billy. "things!" he said; "fearful and horrible things, billy! they came into our lines while we were asleep. d'you think they'll kill us?" "i've a very great mind to give you a number one kicking," said billy. "the idea of a fourteen-hand mule with your training disgracing the battery before this gentleman!" "gently, gently!" said the troop-horse. "remember they are always like this to begin with. the first time i ever saw a man (it was in australia when i was a three-year-old) i ran for half a day, and if i'd seen a camel i should have been running still." nearly all our horses for the english cavalry are brought to india from australia, and are broken in by the troopers themselves. "true enough," said billy. "stop shaking, youngster. the first time they put the full harness with all its chains on my back, i stood on my fore legs and kicked every bit of it off. i hadn't learned the real science of kicking then, but the battery said they had never seen anything like it." "but this wasn't harness or anything that jingled," said the young mule. "you know i don't mind that now, billy. it was things like trees, and they fell up and down the lines and bubbled; and my head-rope broke, and i couldn't find my driver, and i couldn't find you, billy, so i ran off with--with these gentlemen." "h'm!" said billy. "as soon as i heard the camels were loose i came away on my own account, quietly. when a battery--a screw-gun mule calls gun-bullocks gentlemen, he must be very badly shaken up. who are you fellows on the ground there?" the gun-bullocks rolled their cuds, and answered both together: "the seventh yoke of the first gun of the big gun battery. we were asleep when the camels came, but when we were trampled on we got up and walked away. it is better to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bedding. we told your friend here that there was nothing to be afraid of, but he knew so much that he thought otherwise. wah!" they went on chewing. "that comes of being afraid," said billy. "you get laughed at by gun-bullocks. i hope you like it, young 'un." the young mule's teeth snapped, and i heard him say something about not being afraid of any beefy old bullock in the world; but the bullocks only clicked their horns together and went on chewing. "now, don't be angry _after_ you've been afraid. that's the worst kind of cowardice," said the troop-horse. "anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night, _i_ think, if they see things they don't understand. we've broken out of our pickets, again and again, four hundred and fifty of us, just because a new recruit got to telling tales of whip-snakes at home in australia till we were scared to death of the loose ends of our head-ropes." [illustration: "'anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night,' said the troop-horse."] "that's all very well in camp," said billy; "i'm not above stampeding myself, for the fun of the thing, when i haven't been out for a day or two; but what do you do on active service?" "oh, that's quite another set of new shoes," said the troop-horse. "dick cunliffe's on my back then, and drives his knees into me, and all i have to do is to watch where i am putting my feet, and to keep my hind legs well under me, and be bridle-wise." "what's bridle-wise?" said the young mule. "by the blue gums of the back blocks," snorted the troop-horse, "do you mean to say that you aren't taught to be bridle-wise in your business? how can you do anything, unless you can spin round at once when the rein is pressed on your neck? it means life or death to your man, and of course that's life or death to you. get round with your hind legs under you the instant you feel the rein on your neck. if you haven't room to swing round, rear up a little and come round on your hind legs. that's being bridle-wise." "we aren't taught that way," said billy the mule stiffly. "we're taught to obey the man at our head: step off when he says so, and step in when he says so. i suppose it comes to the same thing. now, with all this fine fancy business and rearing, which must be very bad for your hocks, what do you _do_?" "that depends," said the troop-horse. "generally i have to go in among a lot of yelling, hairy men with knives,--long shiny knives, worse than the farrier's knives,--and i have to take care that dick's boot is just touching the next man's boot without crushing it. i can see dick's lance to the right of my right eye, and i know i'm safe. i shouldn't care to be the man or horse that stood up to dick and me when we're in a hurry." "don't the knives hurt?" said the young mule. "well, i got one cut across the chest once, but that wasn't dick's fault--" "a lot i should have cared whose fault it was, if it hurt!" said the young mule. "you must," said the troop-horse. "if you don't trust your man, you may as well run away at once. that's what some of our horses do, and i don't blame them. as i was saying, it wasn't dick's fault. the man was lying on the ground, and i stretched myself not to tread on him, and he slashed up at me. next time i have to go over a man lying down i shall step on him--hard." [illustration: "'the man was lying on the ground, and i stretched myself not to tread on him, and he slashed up at me.'"] "h'm!" said billy; "it sounds very foolish. knives are dirty things at any time. the proper thing to do is to climb up a mountain with a well-balanced saddle, hang on by all four feet and your ears too, and creep and crawl and wriggle along, till you come out hundreds of feet above any one else, on a ledge where there's just room enough for your hoofs. then you stand still and keep quiet,--never ask a man to hold your head, young 'un,--keep quiet while the guns are being put together, and then you watch the little poppy shells drop down into the tree-tops ever so far below." "don't you ever trip?" said the troop-horse. "they say that when a mule trips you can split a hen's ear," said billy. "now and again _per-haps_ a badly packed saddle will upset a mule, but it's very seldom. i wish i could show you our business. it's beautiful. why, it took me three years to find out what the men were driving at. the science of the thing is never to show up against the sky-line, because, if you do, you may get fired at. remember that, young 'un. always keep hidden as much as possible, even if you have to go a mile out of your way. i lead the battery when it comes to that sort of climbing." "fired at without the chance of running into the people who are firing!" said the troop-horse, thinking hard. "i couldn't stand that. i should want to charge, with dick." "oh no, you wouldn't; you know that as soon as the guns are in position _they'll_ do all the charging. that's scientific and neat; but knives--pah!" the baggage-camel had been bobbing his head to and fro for some time past, anxious to get a word in edgeways. then i heard him say, as he cleared his throat, nervously: "i--i--i have fought a little, but not in that climbing way or that running way." "no. now you mention it," said billy, "you don't look as though you were made for climbing or running--much. well, how was it, old hay-bales?" "the proper way," said the camel. "we all sat down--" "oh, my crupper and breastplate!" said the troop-horse under his breath. "sat down?" "we sat down--a hundred of us," the camel went on, "in a big square, and the men piled our packs and saddles outside the square, and they fired over our backs, the men did, on all sides of the square." "what sort of men? any men that came along?" said the troop-horse. "they teach us in riding-school to lie down and let our masters fire across us, but dick cunliffe is the only man i'd trust to do that. it tickles my girths, and, besides, i can't see with my head on the ground." "what does it matter who fires across you?" said the camel. "there are plenty of men and plenty of other camels close by, and a great many clouds of smoke. i am not frightened then. i sit still and wait." "and yet," said billy, "you dream bad dreams and upset the camp at night. well! well! before i'd lie down, not to speak of sitting down, and let a man fire across me, my heels and his head would have something to say to each other. did you ever hear anything so awful as that?" there was a long silence, and then one of the gun-bullocks lifted up his big head and said, "this is very foolish indeed. there is only one way of fighting." "oh, go on," said billy. "_please_ don't mind me. i suppose you fellows fight standing on your tails?" "only one way," said the two together. (they must have been twins.) "this is that way. to put all twenty yoke of us to the big gun as soon as two tails trumpets." ("two tails" is camp slang for the elephant.) "what does two tails trumpet for?" said the young mule. "to show that he is not going any nearer to the smoke on the other side. two tails is a great coward. then we tug the big gun all together--_heya_--_hullah! heeyah! hullah!_ _we_ do not climb like cats nor run like calves. we go across the level plain, twenty yoke of us, till we are unyoked again, and we graze while the big guns talk across the plain to some town with mud walls, and pieces of the wall fall out, and the dust goes up as though many cattle were coming home." "oh! and you choose that time for grazing do you?" said the young mule. "that time or any other. eating is always good. we eat till we are yoked up again and tug the gun back to where two tails is waiting for it. sometimes there are big guns in the city that speak back, and some of us are killed, and then there is all the more grazing for those that are left. this is fate--nothing but fate. none the less, two tails is a great coward. that is the proper way to fight. we are brothers from hapur. our father was a sacred bull of shiva. we have spoken." "well, i've certainly learned something tonight," said the troop-horse. "do you gentlemen of the screw-gun battery feel inclined to eat when you are being fired at with big guns, and two tails is behind you?" "about as much as we feel inclined to sit down and let men sprawl all over us, or run into people with knives. i never heard such stuff. a mountain ledge, a well-balanced load, a driver you can trust to let you pick your own way, and i'm your mule; but the other things--no!" said billy, with a stamp of his foot. "of course," said the troop-horse, "every one is not made in the same way, and i can quite see that your family, on your father's side, would fail to understand a great many things." "never you mind my family on my father's side," said billy angrily; for every mule hates to be reminded that his father was a donkey. "my father was a southern gentleman, and he could pull down and bite and kick into rags every horse he came across. remember that, you big brown brumby!" brumby means wild horse without any breeding. imagine the feelings of sunol if a car-horse called her a "skate," and you can imagine how the australian horse felt. i saw the white of his eye glitter in the dark. "see here, you son of an imported malaga jackass," he said between his teeth, "i'd have you know that i'm related on my mother's side to carbine, winner of the melbourne cup, and where _i_ come from we aren't accustomed to being ridden over roughshod by any parrot-mouthed, pig-headed mule in a pop-gun peashooter battery. are you ready?" "on your hind legs!" squealed billy. they both reared up facing each other, and i was expecting a furious fight, when a gurgly, rumbly voice called out of the darkness to the right--"children, what are you fighting about there? be quiet." both beasts dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither horse nor mule can bear to listen to an elephant's voice. "it's two tails!" said the troop-horse. "i can't stand him. a tail at each end isn't fair!" "my feelings exactly," said billy, crowding into the troop-horse for company. "we're very alike in some things." "i suppose we've inherited them from our mothers," said the troop-horse. "it's not worth quarreling about. hi! two tails, are you tied up?" "yes," said two tails, with a laugh all up his trunk. "i'm picketed for the night. i've heard what you fellows have been saying. but don't be afraid. i'm not coming over." the bullocks and the camel said, half aloud: "afraid of two tails--what nonsense!" and the bullocks went on: "we are sorry that you heard, but it is true. two tails, why are you afraid of the guns when they fire?" "well," said two tails, rubbing one hind leg against the other, exactly like a little boy saying a piece, "i don't quite know whether you'd understand." "we don't, but we have to pull the guns," said the bullocks. "i know it, and i know you are a good deal braver than you think you are. but it's different with me. my battery captain called me a pachydermatous anachronism the other day." "that's another way of fighting, i suppose?" said billy, who was recovering his spirits. "_you_ don't know what that means, of course, but i do. it means betwixt and between, and that is just where i am. i can see inside my head what will happen when a shell bursts; and you bullocks can't." "i can," said the troop-horse. "at least a little bit. i try not to think about it." "i can see more than you, and i _do_ think about it. i know there's a great deal of me to take care of, and i know that nobody knows how to cure me when i'm sick. all they can do is to stop my driver's pay till i get well, and i can't trust my driver." "ah!" said the troop-horse. "that explains it. i can trust dick." "you could put a whole regiment of dicks on my back without making me feel any better. i know just enough to be uncomfortable, and not enough to go on in spite of it." "we do not understand," said the bullocks. "i know you don't. i'm not talking to you. you don't know what blood is." "we do," said the bullocks. "it is red stuff that soaks into the ground and smells." the troop-horse gave a kick and a bound and a snort. "don't talk of it," he said. "i can smell it now, just thinking of it. it makes me want to run--when i haven't dick on my back." "but it is not here," said the camel and the bullocks. "why are you so stupid?" "it's vile stuff," said billy. "i don't want to run, but i don't want to talk about it." "there you are!" said two tails, waving his tail to explain. "surely. yes, we have been here all night," said the bullocks. two tails stamped his foot till the iron ring on it jingled. "oh, i'm not talking to _you_. you can't see inside your heads." "no. we see out of our four eyes," said the bullocks. "we see straight in front of us." "if i could do that and nothing else you wouldn't be needed to pull the big guns at all. if i was like my captain--he can see things inside his head before the firing begins, and he shakes all over, but he knows too much to run away--if i was like him i could pull the guns. but if i were as wise as all that i should never be here. i should be a king in the forest, as i used to be, sleeping half the day and bathing when i liked. i haven't had a good bath for a month." "that's all very fine," said billy; "but giving a thing a long name doesn't make it any better." "h'sh!" said the troop-horse. "i think i understand what two tails means." "you'll understand better in a minute," said two tails angrily. "now, just you explain to me why you don't like _this_!" he began trumpeting furiously at the top of his trumpet. "stop that!" said billy and the troop-horse together, and i could hear them stamp and shiver. an elephant's trumpeting is always nasty, especially on a dark night. "i sha'n't stop," said two tails. "won't you explain that, please? _hhrrmþh! rrrt! rrrmph! rrrhha!_" then he stopped suddenly, and i heard a little whimper in the dark, and knew that vixen had found me at last. she knew as well as i did that if there is one thing in the world the elephant is more afraid of than another it is a little barking dog; so she stopped to bully two tails in his pickets, and yapped round his big feet. two tails shuffled and squeaked. "go away, little dog!" he said. "don't snuff at my ankles, or i 'll kick at you. good little dog--nice little doggie, then! go home, you yelping little beast! oh, why doesn't some one take her away? she'll bite me in a minute." "seems to me," said billy to the troop-horse, "that our friend two tails is afraid of most things. now, if i had a full meal for every dog i've kicked across the parade-ground, i should be as fat as two tails nearly." i whistled, and vixen ran up to me, muddy all over, and licked my nose, and told me a long tale about hunting for me all through the camp. i never let her know that i understood beast talk, or she would have taken all sorts of liberties. so i buttoned her into the breast of my overcoat, and two tails shuffled and stamped and growled to himself. "extraordinary! most extraordinary!" he said. "it runs in our family. now, where has that nasty little beast gone to?" i heard him feeling about with his trunk. "we all seem to be affected in various ways," he went on, blowing his nose. "now, you gentlemen were alarmed, i believe, when i trumpeted." "not alarmed, exactly," said the troop-horse, "but it made me feel as though i had hornets where my saddle ought to be. don't begin again." "i'm frightened of a little dog, and the camel here is frightened by bad dreams in the night." "it is very lucky for us that we haven't all got to fight in the same way," said the troop-horse. "what i want to know," said the young mule, who had been quiet for a long time--"what _i_ want to know is, why we have to fight at all." "because we are told to," said the troop-horse, with a snort of contempt. "orders," said billy the mule; and his teeth snapped. "_hukm hai!_" (it is an order), said the camel with a gurgle; and two tails and the bullocks repeated, "_hukm hai!_" "yes, but who gives the orders?" said the recruit-mule. "the man who walks at your head--or sits on your back--or holds the nose-rope--or twists your tail," said billy and the troop-horse and the camel and the bullocks one after the other. "but who gives them the orders?" "now you want to know too much, young un," said billy, "and that is one way of getting kicked. all you have to do is to obey the man at your head and ask no questions." "he's quite right," said two tails. "i can't always obey, because i'm betwixt and between; but billy's right. obey the man next to you who gives the order, or you'll stop all the battery, besides getting a thrashing." the gun-bullocks got up to go. "morning is coming," they said. "we will go back to our lines. it is true that we see only out of our eyes, and we are not very clever; but still, we are the only people to-night who have not been afraid. good night, you brave people." nobody answered, and the troop-horse said, to change the conversation, "where's that little dog? a dog means a man somewhere near." "here i am," yapped vixen, "under the gun-tail with my man. you big, blundering beast of a camel you, you upset our tent. my man's very angry." "phew!" said the bullocks. "he must be white?" "of course he is," said vixen. "do you suppose i'm looked after by a black bullock-driver?" "_huah! ouach! ugh!_" said the bullocks. "let us get away quickly." they plunged forward in the mud, and managed somehow to run their yoke on the pole of an ammunition-wagon, where it jammed. "now you _have_ done it," said billy calmly. "don't struggle. you're hung up till daylight. what on earth's the matter?" the bullocks went off into the long hissing snorts that indian cattle give, and pushed and crowded and slued and stamped and slipped and nearly fell down in the mud, grunting savagely. "you'll break your necks in a minute," said the troop-horse. "what's the matter with white men? i live with 'em." "they--eat--us! pull!" said the near bullock: the yoke snapped with a twang, and they lumbered off together. i never knew before what made indian cattle so afraid of englishmen. we eat beef--a thing that no cattle-driver touches--and of course the cattle do not like it. "may i be flogged with my own pad-chains! who'd have thought of two big lumps like those losing their heads?" said billy. "never mind. i'm going to look at this man. most of the white men, i know, have things in their pockets," said the troop-horse. "i'll leave you, then. i can't say i'm overfond of 'em myself. besides, white men who haven't a place to sleep in are more than likely to be thieves, and i've a good deal of government property on my back. come along, young 'un, and we'll go back to our lines. good-night, australia! see you on parade to-morrow, i suppose. good-night, old hay-bale!--try to control your feelings, won't you? good-night, two tails! if you pass us on the ground to-morrow, don't trumpet. it spoils our formation." billy the mule stumped off with the swaggering limp of an old campaigner, as the troop-horse's head came nuzzling into my breast, and i gave him biscuits; while vixen, who is a most conceited little dog, told him fibs about the scores of horses that she and i kept. "i'm coming to the parade to-morrow in my dog-cart," she said. "where will you be?" "on the left hand of the second squadron. i set the time for all my troop, little lady," he said politely. "now i must go back to dick. my tail's all muddy, and he'll have two hours' hard work dressing me for the parade." the big parade of all the thirty thousand men was held that afternoon, and vixen and i had a good place close to the viceroy and the amir of afghanistan, with his high big black hat of astrakhan wool and the great diamond star in the center. the first part of the review was all sunshine, and the regiments went by in wave upon wave of legs all moving together, and guns all in a line, till our eyes grew dizzy. then the cavalry came up, to the beautiful cavalry canter of "bonnie dundee," and vixen cocked her ear where she sat on the dog-cart. the second squadron of the lancers shot by, and there was the troop-horse, with his tail like spun silk, his head pulled into his breast, one ear forward and one back, setting the time for all his squadron, his legs going as smoothly as waltz-music. then the big guns came by, and i saw two tails and two other elephants harnessed in line to a forty-pounder siege-gun while twenty yoke of oxen walked behind. the seventh pair had a new yoke, and they looked rather stiff and tired. last came the screw-guns, and billy the mule carried himself as though he commanded all the troops, and his harness was oiled and polished till it winked. i gave a cheer all by myself for billy the mule, but he never looked right or left. the rain began to fall again, and for a while it was too misty to see what the troops were doing. they had made a big half-circle across the plain, and were spreading out into a line. that line grew and grew and grew till it was three-quarters of a mile long from wing to wing--one solid wall of men, horses, and guns. then it came on straight toward the viceroy and the amir, and as it got nearer the ground began to shake, like the deck of a steamer when the engines are going fast. unless you have been there you cannot imagine what a frightening effect this steady come-down of troops has on the spectators, even when they know it is only a review. i looked at the amir. up till then he had not shown the shadow of a sign of astonishment or anything else; but now his eyes began to get bigger and bigger, and he picked up the reins on his horse's neck and looked behind him. for a minute it seemed as though he were going to draw his sword and slash his way out through the english men and women in the carriages at the back. then the advance stopped dead, the ground stood still, the whole line saluted, and thirty bands began to play all together. that was the end of the review, and the regiments went off to their camps in the rain; and an infantry band struck up with-- the animals went in two by two, hurrah! the animals went in two by two, the elephant and the battery mu- l', and they all got into the ark, for to get out of the rain! then i heard an old, grizzled, long-haired central asian chief, who had come down with the amir, asking questions of a native officer. [illustration: "then i heard an old, grizzled, long-haired, central asian chief asking questions of a native officer."] "now," said he, "in what manner was this wonderful thing done?" and the officer answered, "there was an order, and they obeyed." "but are the beasts as wise as the men?" said the chief. "they obey, as the men do. mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and the captain his major, and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding three regiments, and the brigadier his general, who obeys the viceroy, who is the servant of the empress. thus it is done." "would it were so in afghanistan!" said the chief; "for there we obey only our own wills." "and for that reason," said the native officer, twirling his mustache, "your amir whom you do not obey must come here and take orders from our viceroy." parade-song of the camp animals elephants of the gun-team we lent to alexander the strength of hercules, the wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees; we bowed our necks to service; they ne'er were loosed again,-- make way there, way for the ten-foot teams of the forty-pounder train! gun-bullocks those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon-ball, and what they know of powder upsets them one and all; then _we_ come into action and tug the guns again,-- make way there, way for the twenty yoke of the forty-pounder train! cavalry horses by the brand on my withers, the finest of tunes is played by the lancers, hussars, and dragoons, and it's sweeter than "stables" or "water" to me, the cavalry canter of "bonnie dundee"! then feed us and break us and handle and groom, and give us good riders and plenty of room, and launch us in column of squadrons and see the way of the war-horse to "bonnie dundee"! screw-gun mules as me and my companions were scrambling up a hill, the path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still; for we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere, and it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare! good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road; bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load: for we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere, and it's our delight on a mountain height with a leg or two to spare! commissariat camels we haven't a camelty tune of our own to help us trollop along, but every neck is a hairy trombone (_rtt-ta-ta-ta!_ is a hairy trombone!) and this is our marching song: _can't! don't! shan't! won't!_ pass it along the line! somebody's pack has slid from his back, wish it were only mine! somebody's load has tipped off in the road-- cheer for a halt and a row! _urrr! yarrh! grr! arrh!_ somebody's catching it now! all the beasts together children of the camp are we, serving each in his degree; children of the yoke and goad, pack and harness, pad and load. see our line across the plain, like a heel-rope bent again. reaching, writhing, rolling far, sweeping all away to war! while the men that walk beside, dusty, silent, heavy-eyed, cannot tell why we or they march and suffer day by day. _children of the camp are we,_ _serving each in his degree;_ _children of the yoke and goad,_ _pack and harness, pad and load._ transcriber's notes: passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. small caps were replaced with all caps. throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. those words were retained as-is. the illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate. thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the list of illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the same in the list of illustrations and in the book. on page , "bandar log" was replaced with "bandar-log". on page , a period was added after "leave to hunt here". on page , "novastoshna" was replaced with "novastoshnah". on page , "floam-flecked" was replaced with "foam-flecked". on page , there is a hyphen at the end of a line of poetry. that hyphen seems to be deliberate, and was kept as-is. transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. the second jungle book [illustration: rudyard kipling] [illustration] the second jungle book by rudyard kipling [illustration] decorated by john lockwood kipling, c.i.e. new york the century co. copyright, , by the century co. how fear came, the law of the jungle; the miracle of purun bhagat, a song of kabir; the undertakers, a ripple-song. copyright, , by bacheller, johnson & bacheller. quiquern, "angutivun tina." copyright, , by irving bacheller. the spring running, the outsong. copyright, , by john brisben walker. letting in the jungle, mowgli's song against people. copyright, , by rudyard kipling. red dog, chil's song. copyright, , by rudyard kipling. the king's ankus, the song of the little hunter. copyright, , by the century co. the de vinne press. "_now these are the laws of the jungle, and many and mighty are they; but the head and the hoof of the law and the haunch and the hump is--obey!_" contents page how fear came the law of the jungle the miracle of purun bhagat a song of kabir letting in the jungle mowgli's song against people the undertakers a ripple-song the king's ankus the song of the little hunter quiquern "angutivun tina" red dog chil's song the spring running the outsong the second jungle book the stream is shrunk--the pool is dry, and we be comrades, thou and i; with fevered jowl and sunken flank each jostling each along the bank; and, by one drouthy fear made still, foregoing thought of quest or kill. now 'neath his dam the fawn may see the lean pack-wolf as cowed as he, and the tall buck, unflinching, note the fangs that tore his father's throat. _the pools are shrunk--the streams are dry, and we be playmates, thou and i, till yonder cloud--good hunting!--loose the rain that breaks the water truce._ [illustration] how fear came the law of the jungle--which is by far the oldest law in the world--has arranged for almost every kind of accident that may befall the jungle people, till now its code is as perfect as time and custom can make it. if you have read the other book about mowgli, you will remember that he spent a great part of his life in the seeonee wolf-pack, learning the law from baloo, the brown bear; and it was baloo who told him, when the boy grew impatient at the constant orders, that the law was like the giant creeper, because it dropped across every one's back and no one could escape. "when thou hast lived as long as i have, little brother, thou wilt see how all the jungle obeys at least one law. and that will be no pleasant sight," said baloo. this talk went in at one ear and out at the other, for a boy who spends his life eating and sleeping does not worry about anything till it actually stares him in the face. but, one year, baloo's words came true, and mowgli saw all the jungle working under the law. it began when the winter rains failed almost entirely, and ikki, the porcupine, meeting mowgli in a bamboo-thicket, told him that the wild yams were drying up. now everybody knows that ikki is ridiculously fastidious in his choice of food, and will eat nothing but the very best and ripest. so mowgli laughed and said, "what is that to me?" "not much _now_," said ikki, rattling his quills in a stiff, uncomfortable way, "but later we shall see. is there any more diving into the deep rock-pool below the bee-rocks, little brother?" "no. the foolish water is going all away, and i do not wish to break my head," said mowgli, who, in those days, was quite sure that he knew as much as any five of the jungle people put together. "that is thy loss. a small crack might let in some wisdom." ikki ducked quickly to prevent mowgli from pulling his nose-bristles, and mowgli told baloo what ikki had said. baloo looked very grave, and mumbled half to himself: "if i were alone i would change my hunting-grounds now, before the others began to think. and yet--hunting among strangers ends in fighting; and they might hurt the man-cub. we must wait and see how the _mohwa_ blooms." that spring the _mohwa_ tree, that baloo was so fond of, never flowered. the greeny, cream-colored, waxy blossoms were heat-killed before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down when he stood on his hind legs and shook the tree. then, inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into the heart of the jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at last black. the green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff; the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the last least footmark on their edges as if it had been cast in iron; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered, clanking when the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in the jungle, till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering blue boulders in the bed of the stream. the birds and the monkey-people went north early in the year, for they knew what was coming; and the deer and the wild pig broke far away to the perished fields of the villages, dying sometimes before the eyes of men too weak to kill them. chil, the kite, stayed and grew fat, for there was a great deal of carrion, and evening after evening he brought the news to the beasts, too weak to force their way to fresh hunting-grounds, that the sun was killing the jungle for three days' flight in every direction. mowgli, who had never known what real hunger meant, fell back on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives--honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. he hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods. all the game in the jungle was no more than skin and bone, and bagheera could kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full meal. but the want of water was the worst, for though the jungle people drink seldom they must drink deep. and the heat went on and on, and sucked up all the moisture, till at last the main channel of the waingunga was the only stream that carried a trickle of water between its dead banks; and when hathi, the wild elephant, who lives for a hundred years and more, saw a long, lean blue ridge of rock show dry in the very center of the stream, he knew that he was looking at the peace rock, and then and there he lifted up his trunk and proclaimed the water truce, as his father before him had proclaimed it fifty years ago. the deer, wild pig, and buffalo took up the cry hoarsely; and chil, the kite, flew in great circles far and wide, whistling and shrieking the warning. by the law of the jungle it is death to kill at the drinking-places when once the water truce has been declared. the reason of this is that drinking comes before eating. every one in the jungle can scramble along somehow when only game is scarce; but water is water, and when there is but one source of supply, all hunting stops while the jungle people go there for their needs. in good seasons, when water was plentiful, those who came down to drink at the waingunga--or anywhere else, for that matter--did so at the risk of their lives, and that risk made no small part of the fascination of the night's doings. to move down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred; to wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from behind; to drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a thing that all tall-antlered young bucks took a delight in, precisely because they knew that at any moment bagheera or shere khan might leap upon them and bear them down. but now all that life-and-death fun was ended, and the jungle people came up, starved and weary, to the shrunken river,--tiger, bear, deer, buffalo, and pig, all together,--drank the fouled waters, and hung above them, too exhausted to move off. the deer and the pig had tramped all day in search of something better than dried bark and withered leaves. the buffaloes had found no wallows to be cool in, and no green crops to steal. the snakes had left the jungle and come down to the river in the hope of finding a stray frog. they curled round wet stones, and never offered to strike when the nose of a rooting pig dislodged them. the river-turtles had long ago been killed by bagheera, cleverest of hunters, and the fish had buried themselves deep in the dry mud. only the peace rock lay across the shallows like a long snake, and the little tired ripples hissed as they dried on its hot side. it was here that mowgli came nightly for the cool and the companionship. the most hungry of his enemies would hardly have cared for the boy then. his naked hide made him seem more lean and wretched than any of his fellows. his hair was bleached to tow color by the sun; his ribs stood out like the ribs of a basket, and the lumps on his knees and elbows, where he was used to track on all fours, gave his shrunken limbs the look of knotted grass-stems. but his eye, under his matted forelock, was cool and quiet, for bagheera was his adviser in this time of trouble, and told him to go quietly, hunt slowly, and never, on any account, to lose his temper. "it is an evil time," said the black panther, one furnace-hot evening, "but it will go if we can live till the end. is thy stomach full, man cub?" "there is stuff in my stomach, but i get no good of it. think you, bagheera, the rains have forgotten us and will never come again?" "not i! we shall see the _mohwa_ in blossom yet, and the little fawns all fat with new grass. come down to the peace rock and hear the news. on my back, little brother." "this is no time to carry weight. i can still stand alone, but--indeed we be no fatted bullocks, we too." bagheera looked along his ragged, dusty flank and whispered: "last night i killed a bullock under the yoke. so low was i brought that i think i should not have dared to spring if he had been loose. _wou!_" mowgli laughed. "yes, we be great hunters now," said he. "i am very bold--to eat grubs," and the two came down together through the crackling undergrowth to the river-bank and the lace-work of shoals that ran out from it in every direction. "the water cannot live long," said baloo, joining them. "look across. yonder are trails like the roads of man." on the level plain of the further bank the stiff jungle-grass had died standing, and, dying, had mummied. the beaten tracks of the deer and the pig, all heading toward the river, had striped that colorless plain with dusty gullies driven through the ten-foot grass, and, early as it was, each long avenue was full of first-comers hastening to the water. you could hear the does and fawns coughing in the snuff-like dust. up-stream, at the bend of the sluggish pool round the peace rock, and warden of the water truce, stood hathi, the wild elephant, with his sons, gaunt and gray in the moonlight, rocking to and fro--always rocking. below him a little were the vanguard of the deer; below these, again, the pig and the wild buffalo; and on the opposite bank, where the tall trees came down to the water's edge, was the place set apart for the eaters of flesh--the tiger, the wolves, the panther, and the bear, and the others. "we are under one law, indeed," said bagheera, wading into the water and looking across at the lines of clicking horns and starting eyes where the deer and the pig pushed each other to and fro. "good hunting, all you of my blood," he added, lying down at full length, one flank thrust out of the shallows; and then, between his teeth, "but for that which is the law it would be _very_ good hunting." the quick-spread ears of the deer caught the last sentence, and a frightened whisper ran along the ranks. "the truce! remember the truce!" "peace there, peace!" gurgled hathi, the wild elephant. "the truce holds, bagheera. this is no time to talk of hunting." "who should know better than i?" bagheera answered, rolling his yellow eyes up-stream. "i am an eater of turtles--a fisher of frogs. _ngaayah!_ would i could get good from chewing branches!" "_we_ wish so, very greatly," bleated a young fawn, who had only been born that spring, and did not at all like it. wretched as the jungle people were, even hathi could not help chuckling; while mowgli, lying on his elbows in the warm water, laughed aloud, and beat up the scum with his feet. "well spoken, little bud-horn," bagheera purred. "when the truce ends that shall be remembered in thy favor," and he looked keenly through the darkness to make sure of recognizing the fawn again. gradually the talking spread up and down the drinking-places. one could hear the scuffling, snorting pig asking for more room; the buffaloes grunting among themselves as they lurched out across the sand-bars, and the deer telling pitiful stories of their long foot-sore wanderings in quest of food. now and again they asked some question of the eaters of flesh across the river, but all the news was bad, and the roaring hot wind of the jungle came and went between the rocks and the rattling branches, and scattered twigs and dust on the water. "the men-folk, too, they die beside their plows," said a young sambhur. "i passed three between sunset and night. they lay still, and their bullocks with them. we also shall lie still in a little." "the river has fallen since last night," said baloo. "o hathi, hast thou ever seen the like of this drought?" "it will pass, it will pass," said hathi, squirting water along his back and sides. "we have one here that cannot endure long," said baloo; and he looked toward the boy he loved. "i?" said mowgli indignantly, sitting up in the water. "i have no long fur to cover my bones, but--but if _thy_ hide were taken off, baloo--" hathi shook all over at the idea, and baloo said severely: "man-cub, that is not seemly to tell a teacher of the law. _never_ have i been seen without my hide." "nay, i meant no harm, baloo; but only that thou art, as it were, like the cocoanut in the husk, and i am the same cocoanut all naked. now that brown husk of thine--" mowgli was sitting cross-legged, and explaining things with his forefinger in his usual way, when bagheera put out a paddy paw and pulled him over backward into the water. "worse and worse," said the black panther, as the boy rose spluttering. "first, baloo is to be skinned, and now he is a cocoanut. be careful that he does not do what the ripe cocoanuts do." "and what is that?" said mowgli, off his guard for the minute, though that is one of the oldest catches in the jungle. "break thy head," said bagheera quietly, pulling him under again. "it is not good to make a jest of thy teacher," said the bear, when mowgli had been ducked for the third time. "not good! what would ye have? that naked thing running to and fro makes a monkey-jest of those who have once been good hunters, and pulls the best of us by the whisker for sport." this was shere khan, the lame tiger, limping down to the water. he waited a little to enjoy the sensation he made among the deer on the opposite bank; then he dropped his square, frilled head and began to lap, growling: "the jungle has become a whelping-ground for naked cubs now. look at me, man-cub!" mowgli looked--stared, rather--as insolently as he knew how, and in a minute shere khan turned away uneasily. "man-cub this, and man-cub that," he rumbled, going on with his drink, "the cub is neither man nor cub, or he would have been afraid. next season i shall have to beg his leave for a drink. _aurgh!_" "that may come, too," said bagheera, looking him steadily between the eyes. "that may come, too--faugh, shere khan!--what new shame hast thou brought here?" the lame tiger had dipped his chin and jowl in the water, and dark oily streaks were floating from it down-stream. "man!" said shere khan coolly, "i killed an hour since." he went on purring and growling to himself. the line of beasts shook and wavered to and fro, and a whisper went up that grew to a cry: "man! man! he has killed man!" then all looked toward hathi, the wild elephant, but he seemed not to hear. hathi never does anything till the time comes, and that is one of the reasons why he lives so long. "at such a season as this to kill man! was no other game afoot?" said bagheera scornfully, drawing himself out of the tainted water, and shaking each paw, cat-fashion, as he did so. "i killed for choice--not for food." the horrified whisper began again, and hathi's watchful little white eye cocked itself in shere khan's direction. "for choice," shere khan drawled. "now come i to drink and make me clean again. is there any to forbid?" bagheera's back began to curve like a bamboo in a high wind, but hathi lifted up his trunk and spoke quietly. "thy kill was from choice?" he asked; and when hathi asks a question it is best to answer. "even so. it was my right and my night. thou knowest, o hathi." shere khan spoke almost courteously. "yes, i know," hathi answered; and, after a little silence, "hast thou drunk thy fill?" "for to-night, yes." "go, then. the river is to drink, and not to defile. none but the lame tiger would so have boasted of his right at this season when--when we suffer together--man and jungle people alike. clean or unclean, get to thy lair, shere khan!" the last words rang out like silver trumpets, and hathi's three sons rolled forward half a pace, though there was no need. shere khan slunk away, not daring to growl, for he knew--what every one else knows--that when the last comes to the last, hathi is the master of the jungle. "what is this right shere khan speaks of?" mowgli whispered in bagheera's ear. "to kill man is _always_ shameful. the law says so. and yet hathi says--" "ask him. i do not know, little brother. right or no right, if hathi had not spoken i would have taught that lame butcher his lesson. to come to the peace rock fresh from a kill of man--and to boast of it--is a jackal's trick. besides, he tainted the good water." mowgli waited for a minute to pick up his courage, because no one cared to address hathi directly, and then he cried: "what is shere khan's right, o hathi?" both banks echoed his words, for all the people of the jungle are intensely curious, and they had just seen something that none, except baloo, who looked very thoughtful, seemed to understand. "it is an old tale," said hathi; "a tale older than the jungle. keep silence along the banks, and i will tell that tale." there was a minute or two of pushing and shouldering among the pigs and the buffalo, and then the leaders of the herds grunted, one after another, "we wait," and hathi strode forward till he was nearly knee-deep in the pool by the peace rock. lean and wrinkled and yellow-tusked though he was, he looked what the jungle knew him to be--their master. "ye know, children," he began, "that of all things ye most fear man"; and there was a mutter of agreement. "this tale touches thee, little brother," said bagheera to mowgli. "i? i am of the pack--a hunter of the free people," mowgli answered. "what have i to do with man?" "and ye do not know why ye fear man?" hathi went on. "this is the reason. in the beginning of the jungle, and none know when that was, we of the jungle walked together, having no fear of one another. in those days there was no drought, and leaves and flowers and fruit grew on the same tree, and we ate nothing at all except leaves and flowers and grass and fruit and bark." "i am glad i was not born in those days," said bagheera. "bark is only good to sharpen claws." "and the lord of the jungle was tha, the first of the elephants. he drew the jungle out of deep waters with his trunk; and where he made furrows in the ground with his tusks, there the rivers ran; and where he struck with his foot, there rose ponds of good water; and when he blew through his trunk,--thus,--the trees fell. that was the manner in which the jungle was made by tha; and so the tale was told to me." "it has not lost fat in the telling," bagheera whispered, and mowgli laughed behind his hand. "in those days there was no corn or melons or pepper or sugar-cane, nor were there any little huts such as ye have all seen; and the jungle people knew nothing of man, but lived in the jungle together, making one people. but presently they began to dispute over their food, though there was grazing enough for all. they were lazy. each wished to eat where he lay down, as sometimes we can do now when the spring rains are good. tha, the first of the elephants, was busy making new jungles and leading the rivers in their beds. he could not walk in all places: therefore he made the first of the tigers the master and the judge of the jungle, to whom the jungle people should bring their disputes. in those days the first of the tigers ate fruit and grass with the others. he was as large as i am, and he was very beautiful, in color all over like the blossom of the yellow creeper. there was never stripe nor bar upon his hide in those good days when this the jungle was new. all the jungle people came before him without fear, and his word was the law of all the jungle. we were then, remember ye, one people. "yet upon a night there was a dispute between two bucks--a grazing-quarrel such as ye now settle with the horns and the fore feet--and it is said that as the two spoke together before the first of the tigers lying among the flowers, a buck pushed him with his horns, and the first of the tigers forgot that he was the master and judge of the jungle, and, leaping upon that buck, broke his neck. "till that night never one of us had died, and the first of the tigers, seeing what he had done, and being made foolish by the scent of the blood, ran away into the marshes of the north, and we of the jungle, left without a judge, fell to fighting among ourselves; and tha heard the noise of it and came back. then some of us said this and some of us said that, but he saw the dead buck among the flowers, and asked who had killed, and we of the jungle would not tell because the smell of the blood made us foolish. we ran to and fro in circles, capering and crying out and shaking our heads. then tha gave an order to the trees that hang low, and to the trailing creepers of the jungle, that they should mark the killer of the buck so that he should know him again, and he said, 'who will now be master of the jungle people?' then up leaped the gray ape who lives in the branches, and said, 'i will now be master of the jungle.' at this tha laughed, and said, 'so be it,' and went away very angry. "children, ye know the gray ape. he was then as he is now. at the first he made a wise face for himself, but in a little while he began to scratch and to leap up and down, and when tha came back he found the gray ape hanging, head down, from a bough, mocking those who stood below; and they mocked him again. and so there was no law in the jungle--only foolish talk and senseless words. "then tha called us all together and said: 'the first of your masters has brought death into the jungle, and the second shame. now it is time there was a law, and a law that ye must not break. now ye shall know fear, and when ye have found him ye shall know that he is your master, and the rest shall follow.' then we of the jungle said, 'what is fear?' and tha said, 'seek till ye find.' so we went up and down the jungle seeking for fear, and presently the buffaloes--" "ugh!" said mysa, the leader of the buffaloes, from their sand-bank. "yes, mysa, it was the buffaloes. they came back with the news that in a cave in the jungle sat fear, and that he had no hair, and went upon his hind legs. then we of the jungle followed the herd till we came to that cave, and fear stood at the mouth of it, and he was, as the buffaloes had said, hairless, and he walked upon his hinder legs. when he saw us he cried out, and his voice filled us with the fear that we have now of that voice when we hear it, and we ran away, tramping upon and tearing each other because we were afraid. that night, so it was told to me, we of the jungle did not lie down together as used to be our custom, but each tribe drew off by itself--the pig with the pig, the deer with the deer; horn to horn, hoof to hoof,--like keeping to like, and so lay shaking in the jungle. "only the first of the tigers was not with us, for he was still hidden in the marshes of the north, and when word was brought to him of the thing we had seen in the cave, he said: 'i will go to this thing and break his neck.' so he ran all the night till he came to the cave; but the trees and the creepers on his path, remembering the order that tha had given, let down their branches and marked him as he ran, drawing their fingers across his back, his flank, his forehead, and his jowl. wherever they touched him there was a mark and a stripe upon his yellow hide. _and those stripes do his children wear to this day!_ when he came to the cave, fear, the hairless one, put out his hand and called him 'the striped one that comes by night,' and the first of the tigers was afraid of the hairless one, and ran back to the swamps howling." mowgli chuckled quietly here, his chin in the water. "so loud did he howl that tha heard him and said, 'what is the sorrow?' and the first of the tigers, lifting up his muzzle to the new-made sky, which is now so old, said: 'give me back my power, o tha. i am made ashamed before all the jungle, and i have run away from a hairless one, and he has called me a shameful name.' 'and why?' said tha. 'because i am smeared with the mud of the marshes,' said the first of the tigers. 'swim, then, and roll on the wet grass, and if it be mud it will wash away,' said tha; and the first of the tigers swam, and rolled and rolled upon the grass, till the jungle ran round and round before his eyes, but not one little bar upon all his hide was changed, and tha, watching him, laughed. then the first of the tigers said, 'what have i done that this comes to me?' tha said, 'thou hast killed the buck, and thou hast let death loose in the jungle, and with death has come fear, so that the people of the jungle are afraid one of the other, as thou art afraid of the hairless one.' the first of the tigers said, 'they will never fear me, for i knew them since the beginning.' tha said, 'go and see.' and the first of the tigers ran to and fro, calling aloud to the deer and the pig and the sambhur and the porcupine and all the jungle peoples, and they all ran away from him who had been their judge, because they were afraid. "then the first of the tigers came back, and his pride was broken in him, and, beating his head upon the ground, he tore up the earth with all his feet and said: 'remember that i was once the master of the jungle. do not forget me, o tha! let my children remember that i was once without shame or fear!' and tha said: 'this much i will do, because thou and i together saw the jungle made. for one night in each year it shall be as it was before the buck was killed--for thee and for thy children. in that one night, if ye meet the hairless one--and his name is man--ye shall not be afraid of him, but he shall be afraid of you, as though ye were judges of the jungle and masters of all things. show him mercy in that night of his fear, for thou hast known what fear is.' "then the first of the tigers answered, 'i am content'; but when next he drank he saw the black stripes upon his flank and his side, and he remembered the name that the hairless one had given him, and he was angry. for a year he lived in the marshes, waiting till tha should keep his promise. and upon a night when the jackal of the moon [the evening star] stood clear of the jungle, he felt that his night was upon him, and he went to that cave to meet the hairless one. then it happened as tha promised, for the hairless one fell down before him and lay along the ground, and the first of the tigers struck him and broke his back, for he thought that there was but one such thing in the jungle, and that he had killed fear. then, nosing above the kill, he heard tha coming down from the woods of the north, and presently the voice of the first of the elephants, which is the voice that we hear now--" the thunder was rolling up and down the dry, scarred hills, but it brought no rain--only heat-lightning that flickered along the ridges--and hathi went on: "_that_ was the voice he heard, and it said: 'is this thy mercy?' the first of the tigers licked his lips and said: 'what matter? i have killed fear.' and tha said: 'o blind and foolish! thou hast untied the feet of death, and he will follow thy trail till thou diest. thou hast taught man to kill!' "the first of the tigers, standing stiffly to his kill, said: 'he is as the buck was. there is no fear. now i will judge the jungle peoples once more." "and tha said: 'never again shall the jungle peoples come to thee. they shall never cross thy trail, nor sleep near thee, nor follow after thee, nor browse by thy lair. only fear shall follow thee, and with a blow that thou canst not see he shall bid thee wait his pleasure. he shall make the ground to open under thy feet, and the creeper to twist about thy neck, and the tree-trunks to grow together about thee higher than thou canst leap, and at the last he shall take thy hide to wrap his cubs when they are cold. thou hast shown him no mercy, and none will he show thee.' "the first of the tigers was very bold, for his night was still on him, and he said: 'the promise of tha is the promise of tha. he will not take away my night?' and tha said: 'the one night is thine, as i have said, but there is a price to pay. thou hast taught man to kill, and he is no slow learner.' "the first of the tigers said: 'he is here under my foot, and his back is broken. let the jungle know i have killed fear.' "then tha laughed, and said: 'thou hast killed one of many, but thou thyself shalt tell the jungle--for thy night is ended.' "so the day came; and from the mouth of the cave went out another hairless one, and he saw the kill in the path, and the first of the tigers above it, and he took a pointed stick--" "they throw a thing that cuts now," said ikki, rustling down the bank; for ikki was considered uncommonly good eating by the gonds--they called him ho-igoo--and he knew something of the wicked little gondee axe that whirls across a clearing like a dragon-fly. "it was a pointed stick, such as they put in the foot of a pit-trap," said hathi, "and throwing it, he struck the first of the tigers deep in the flank. thus it happened as tha said, for the first of the tigers ran howling up and down the jungle till he tore out the stick, and all the jungle knew that the hairless one could strike from far off, and they feared more than before. so it came about that the first of the tigers taught the hairless one to kill--and ye know what harm that has since done to all our peoples--through the noose, and the pitfall, and the hidden trap, and the flying stick, and the stinging fly that comes out of white smoke [hathi meant the rifle], and the red flower that drives us into the open. yet for one night in the year the hairless one fears the tiger, as tha promised, and never has the tiger given him cause to be less afraid. where he finds him, there he kills him, remembering how the first of the tigers was made ashamed. for the rest, fear walks up and down the jungle by day and by night." "_ahi! aoo!_" said the deer, thinking of what it all meant to them. "and only when there is one great fear over all, as there is now, can we of the jungle lay aside our little fears, and meet together in one place as we do now." "for one night only does man fear the tiger?" said mowgli. "for one night only," said hathi. "but i--but we--but all the jungle knows that shere khan kills man twice and thrice in a moon." "even so. _then_ he springs from behind and turns his head aside as he strikes, for he is full of fear. if man looked at him he would run. but on his one night he goes openly down to the village. he walks between the houses and thrusts his head into the doorway, and the men fall on their faces and there he does his kill. one kill in that night." "oh!" said mowgli to himself, rolling over in the water. "_now_ i see why it was shere khan bade me look at him! he got no good of it, for he could not hold his eyes steady, and--and i certainly did not fall down at his feet. but then i am not a man, being of the free people." "umm!" said bagheera deep in his furry throat. "does the tiger know his night?" "never till the jackal of the moon stands clear of the evening mist. sometimes it falls in the dry summer and sometimes in the wet rains--this one night of the tiger. but for the first of the tigers, this would never have been, nor would any of us have known fear." the deer grunted sorrowfully, and bagheera's lips curled in a wicked smile. "do men know this--tale?" said he. "none know it except the tigers, and we, the elephants--the children of tha. now ye by the pools have heard it, and i have spoken." hathi dipped his trunk into the water as a sign that he did not wish to talk. "but--but--but," said mowgli, turning to baloo, "why did not the first of the tigers continue to eat grass and leaves and trees? he did but break the buck's neck. he did not _eat_. what led him to the hot meat?" "the trees and the creepers marked him, little brother, and made him the striped thing that we see. never again would he eat their fruit; but from that day he revenged himself upon the deer, and the others, the eaters of grass," said baloo. "then _thou_ knowest the tale. heh? why have i never heard?" "because the jungle is full of such tales. if i made a beginning there would never be an end to them. let go my ear, little brother." [illustration] [illustration] the law of the jungle just to give you an idea of the immense variety of the jungle law, i have translated into verse (baloo always recited them in a sort of sing-song) a few of the laws that apply to the wolves. there are, of course, hundreds and hundreds more, but these will do for specimens of the simpler rulings. _now this is the law of the jungle--as old and as true as the sky; and the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. as the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the law runneth forward and back-- for the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack._ wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; and remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. the jackal may follow the tiger, but, cub, when thy whiskers are grown, remember the wolf is a hunter--go forth and get food of thine own. keep peace with the lords of the jungle--the tiger, the panther, the bear; and trouble not hathi the silent, and mock not the boar in his lair. when pack meets with pack in the jungle, and neither will go from the trail, lie down till the leaders have spoken--it may be fair words shall prevail. when ye fight with a wolf of the pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, lest others take part in the quarrel, and the pack be diminished by war. the lair of the wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, not even the head wolf may enter, not even the council may come. the lair of the wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, the council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. if ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, lest ye frighten the deer from the crops, and the brothers go empty away. ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; but kill not for pleasure of killing, and _seven times never kill man_. if ye plunder his kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride; pack-right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. the kill of the pack is the meat of the pack. ye must eat where it lies; and no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. the kill of the wolf is the meat of the wolf. he may do what he will, but, till he has given permission, the pack may not eat of that kill. cub-right is the right of the yearling. from all of his pack he may claim full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same. lair-right is the right of the mother. from all of her year she may claim one haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same. cave-right is the right of the father--to hunt by himself for his own: he is freed of all calls to the pack; he is judged by the council alone. because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, in all that the law leaveth open, the word of the head wolf is law. _now these are the laws of the jungle, and many and mighty are they; but the head and the hoof of the law and the haunch and the hump is--obey!_ the miracle of purun bhagat the night we felt the earth would move we stole and plucked him by the hand, because we loved him with the love that knows but cannot understand. and when the roaring hillside broke, and all our world fell down in rain, we saved him, we the little folk; but lo! he does not come again! mourn now, we saved him for the sake of such poor love as wild ones may. mourn ye! our brother will not wake, and his own kind drive us away! _dirge of the langurs._ [illustration] the miracle of purun bhagat there was once a man in india who was prime minister of one of the semi-independent native states in the northwestern part of the country. he was a brahmin, so high-caste that caste ceased to have any particular meaning for him; and his father had been an important official in the gay-colored tag-rag and bobtail of an old-fashioned hindu court. but as purun dass grew up he felt that the old order of things was changing, and that if any one wished to get on in the world he must stand well with the english, and imitate all that the english believed to be good. at the same time a native official must keep his own master's favor. this was a difficult game, but the quiet, close-mouthed young brahmin, helped by a good english education at a bombay university, played it coolly, and rose, step by step, to be prime minister of the kingdom. that is to say, he held more real power than his master, the maharajah. when the old king--who was suspicious of the english, their railways and telegraphs--died, purun dass stood high with his young successor, who had been tutored by an englishman; and between them, though he always took care that his master should have the credit, they established schools for little girls, made roads, and started state dispensaries and shows of agricultural implements, and published a yearly blue-book on the "moral and material progress of the state," and the foreign office and the government of india were delighted. very few native states take up english progress altogether, for they will not believe, as purun dass showed he did, that what was good for the englishman must be twice as good for the asiatic. the prime minister became the honored friend of viceroys and governors, and lieutenant-governors, and medical missionaries, and common missionaries, and hard-riding english officers who came to shoot in the state preserves, as well as of whole hosts of tourists who traveled up and down india in the cold weather, showing how things ought to be managed. in his spare time he would endow scholarships for the study of medicine and manufactures on strictly english lines, and write letters to the "pioneer," the greatest indian daily paper, explaining his master's aims and objects. at last he went to england on a visit, and had to pay enormous sums to the priests when he came back; for even so high-caste a brahmin as purun dass lost caste by crossing the black sea. in london he met and talked with every one worth knowing--men whose names go all over the world--and saw a great deal more than he said. he was given honorary degrees by learned universities, and he made speeches and talked of hindu social reform to english ladies in evening dress, till all london cried, "this is the most fascinating man we have ever met at dinner since cloths were first laid." when he returned to india there was a blaze of glory, for the viceroy himself made a special visit to confer upon the maharajah the grand cross of the star of india--all diamonds and ribbons and enamel; and at the same ceremony, while the cannon boomed, purun dass was made a knight commander of the order of the indian empire; so that his name stood sir purun dass, k.c.i.e. that evening, at dinner in the big viceregal tent, he stood up with the badge and the collar of the order on his breast, and replying to the toast of his master's health, made a speech few englishmen could have bettered. next month, when the city had returned to its sunbaked quiet, he did a thing no englishman would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the world's affairs went, he died. the jeweled order of his knighthood went back to the indian government, and a new prime minister was appointed to the charge of affairs, and a great game of general post began in all the subordinate appointments. the priests knew what had happened and the people guessed; but india is the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why; and the fact that dewan sir purun dass, k.c.i.e., had resigned position, palace, and power, and taken up the begging-bowl and ocher-colored dress of a sunnyasi or holy man, was considered nothing extraordinary. he had been, as the old law recommends, twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter,--though he had never carried a weapon in his life,--and twenty years head of a household. he had used his wealth and his power for what he knew both to be worth; he had taken honor when it came his way; he had seen men and cities far and near, and men and cities had stood up and honored him. now he would let these things go, as a man drops the cloak he no longer needs. behind him, as he walked through the city gates, an antelope skin and brass-handled crutch under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished brown _coco-de-mer_ in his hand, barefoot, alone, with eyes cast on the ground--behind him they were firing salutes from the bastions in honor of his happy successor. purun dass nodded. all that life was ended; and he bore it no more ill-will or good-will than a man bears to a colorless dream of the night. he was a sunnyasi--a houseless wandering mendicant, depending on his neighbors for his daily bread; and so long as there is a morsel to divide in india neither priest nor beggar starves. he had never in his life tasted meat, and very seldom eaten even fish. a five-pound note would have covered his personal expenses for food through any one of the many years in which he had been absolute master of millions of money. even when he was being lionized in london he had held before him his dream of peace and quiet--the long, white, dusty indian road, printed all over with bare feet, the incessant, slow-moving traffic, and the sharp-smelling wood smoke curling up under the fig-trees in the twilight, where the wayfarers sit at their evening meal. when the time came to make that dream true the prime minister took the proper steps, and in three days you might more easily have found a bubble in the trough of the long atlantic seas than purun dass among the roving, gathering, separating millions of india. at night his antelope skin was spread where the darkness overtook him--sometimes in a sunnyasi monastery by the roadside; sometimes by a mud pillar shrine of kala pir, where the jogis, who are another misty division of holy men, would receive him as they do those who know what castes and divisions are worth; sometimes on the outskirts of a little hindu village, where the children would steal up with the food their parents had prepared; and sometimes on the pitch of the bare grazing-grounds, where the flame of his stick fire waked the drowsy camels. it was all one to purun dass--or purun bhagat, as he called himself now. earth, people, and food were all one. but unconsciously his feet drew him away northward and eastward; from the south to rohtak; from rohtak to kurnool; from kurnool to ruined samanah, and then up-stream along the dried bed of the gugger river that fills only when the rain falls in the hills, till one day he saw the far line of the great himalayas. then purun bhagat smiled, for he remembered that his mother was of rajput brahmin birth, from kulu way--a hill-woman, always homesick for the snows--and that the least touch of hill blood draws a man at the end back to where he belongs. "yonder," said purun bhagat, breasting the lower slopes of the sewaliks, where the cacti stand up like seven-branched candlesticks--"yonder i shall sit down and get knowledge"; and the cool wind of the himalayas whistled about his ears as he trod the road that led to simla. the last time he had come that way it had been in state, with a clattering cavalry escort, to visit the gentlest and most affable of viceroys; and the two had talked for an hour together about mutual friends in london, and what the indian common folk really thought of things. this time purun bhagat paid no calls, but leaned on the rail of the mall, watching that glorious view of the plains spread out forty miles below, till a native mohammedan policeman told him he was obstructing traffic; and purun bhagat salaamed reverently to the law, because he knew the value of it, and was seeking for a law of his own. then he moved on, and slept that night in an empty hut at chota simla, which looks like the very last end of the earth, but it was only the beginning of his journey. [illustration] he followed the himalaya-thibet road, the little ten-foot track that is blasted out of solid rock, or strutted out on timbers over gulfs a thousand feet deep; that dips into warm, wet, shut-in valleys, and climbs out across bare, grassy hill-shoulders where the sun strikes like a burning-glass; or turns through dripping, dark forests where the tree-ferns dress the trunks from head to heel, and the pheasant calls to his mate. and he met thibetan herdsmen with their dogs and flocks of sheep, each sheep with a little bag of borax on his back, and wandering wood-cutters, and cloaked and blanketed lamas from thibet, coming into india on pilgrimage, and envoys of little solitary hill-states, posting furiously on ring-streaked and piebald ponies, or the cavalcade of a rajah paying a visit; or else for a long, clear day he would see nothing more than a black bear grunting and rooting below in the valley. when he first started, the roar of the world he had left still rang in his ears, as the roar of a tunnel rings long after the train has passed through; but when he had put the mutteeanee pass behind him that was all done, and purun bhagat was alone with himself, walking, wondering, and thinking, his eyes on the ground, and his thoughts with the clouds. one evening he crossed the highest pass he had met till then--it had been a two days' climb--and came out on a line of snow-peaks that banded all the horizon--mountains from fifteen to twenty thousand feet high, looking almost near enough to hit with a stone, though they were fifty or sixty miles away. the pass was crowned with dense, dark forest--deodar, walnut, wild cherry, wild olive, and wild pear, but mostly deodar, which is the himalayan cedar; and under the shadow of the deodars stood a deserted shrine to kali--who is durga, who is sitala, who is sometimes worshiped against the smallpox. purun dass swept the stone floor clean, smiled at the grinning statue, made himself a little mud fireplace at the back of the shrine, spread his antelope skin on a bed of fresh pine-needles, tucked his _bairagi_--his brass-handled crutch--under his armpit, and sat down to rest. immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared for fifteen hundred feet, where a little village of stone-walled houses, with roofs of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt. all round it the tiny terraced fields lay out like aprons of patchwork on the knees of the mountain, and cows no bigger than beetles grazed between the smooth stone circles of the threshing-floors. looking across the valley, the eye was deceived by the size of things, and could not at first realize that what seemed to be low scrub, on the opposite mountain-flank, was in truth a forest of hundred-foot pines. purun bhagat saw an eagle swoop across the gigantic hollow, but the great bird dwindled to a dot ere it was half-way over. a few bands of scattered clouds strung up and down the valley, catching on a shoulder of the hills, or rising up and dying out when they were level with the head of the pass. and "here shall i find peace," said purun bhagat. now, a hill-man makes nothing of a few hundred feet up or down, and as soon as the villagers saw the smoke in the deserted shrine, the village priest climbed up the terraced hillside to welcome the stranger. when he met purun bhagat's eyes--the eyes of a man used to control thousands--he bowed to the earth, took the begging-bowl without a word, and returned to the village, saying, "we have at last a holy man. never have i seen such a man. he is of the plains--but pale-colored--a brahmin of the brahmins." then all the housewives of the village said, "think you he will stay with us?" and each did her best to cook the most savory meal for the bhagat. hill-food is very simple, but with buckwheat and indian corn, and rice and red pepper, and little fish out of the stream in the valley, and honey from the flue-like hives built in the stone walls, and dried apricots, and turmeric, and wild ginger, and bannocks of flour, a devout woman can make good things, and it was a full bowl that the priest carried to the bhagat. was he going to stay? asked the priest. would he need a _chela_--a disciple--to beg for him? had he a blanket against the cold weather? was the food good? purun bhagat ate, and thanked the giver. it was in his mind to stay. that was sufficient, said the priest. let the begging-bowl be placed outside the shrine, in the hollow made by those two twisted roots, and daily should the bhagat be fed; for the village felt honored that such a man--he looked timidly into the bhagat's face--should tarry among them. that day saw the end of purun bhagat's wanderings. he had come to the place appointed for him--the silence and the space. after this, time stopped, and he, sitting at the mouth of the shrine, could not tell whether he were alive or dead; a man with control of his limbs, or a part of the hills, and the clouds, and the shifting rain and sunlight. he would repeat a name softly to himself a hundred hundred times, till, at each repetition, he seemed to move more and more out of his body, sweeping up to the doors of some tremendous discovery; but, just as the door was opening, his body would drag him back, and, with grief, he felt he was locked up again in the flesh and bones of purun bhagat. every morning the filled begging-bowl was laid silently in the crutch of the roots outside the shrine. sometimes the priest brought it; sometimes a ladakhi trader, lodging in the village, and anxious to get merit, trudged up the path; but, more often, it was the woman who had cooked the meal overnight; and she would murmur, hardly above her breath: "speak for me before the gods, bhagat. speak for such a one, the wife of so-and-so!" now and then some bold child would be allowed the honor, and purun bhagat would hear him drop the bowl and run as fast as his little legs could carry him, but the bhagat never came down to the village. it was laid out like a map at his feet. he could see the evening gatherings, held on the circle of the threshing-floors because that was the only level ground; could see the wonderful unnamed green of the young rice, the indigo blues of the indian corn, the dock-like patches of buckwheat, and, in its season, the red bloom of the amaranth, whose tiny seeds, being neither grain nor pulse, make a food that can be lawfully eaten by hindus in time of fasts. when the year turned, the roofs of the huts were all little squares of purest gold, for it was on the roofs that they laid out their cobs of the corn to dry. hiving and harvest, rice-sowing and husking, passed before his eyes, all embroidered down there on the many-sided plots of fields, and he thought of them all, and wondered what they all led to at the long last. [illustration] even in populated india a man cannot a day sit still before the wild things run over him as though he were a rock; and in that wilderness very soon the wild things, who knew kali's shrine well, came back to look at the intruder. the _langurs_, the big gray-whiskered monkeys of the himalayas, were, naturally, the first, for they are alive with curiosity; and when they had upset the begging-bowl, and rolled it round the floor, and tried their teeth on the brass-handled crutch, and made faces at the antelope skin, they decided that the human being who sat so still was harmless. at evening, they would leap down from the pines, and beg with their hands for things to eat, and then swing off in graceful curves. they liked the warmth of the fire, too, and huddled round it till purun bhagat had to push them aside to throw on more fuel; and in the morning, as often as not, he would find a furry ape sharing his blanket. all day long, one or other of the tribe would sit by his side, staring out at the snows, crooning and looking unspeakably wise and sorrowful. after the monkeys came the _barasingh_, that big deer which is like our red deer, but stronger. he wished to rub off the velvet of his horns against the cold stones of kali's statue, and stamped his feet when he saw the man at the shrine. but purun bhagat never moved, and, little by little, the royal stag edged up and nuzzled his shoulder. purun bhagat slid one cool hand along the hot antlers, and the touch soothed the fretted beast, who bowed his head, and purun bhagat very softly rubbed and raveled off the velvet. afterward, the _barasingh_ brought his doe and fawn--gentle things that mumbled on the holy man's blanket--or would come alone at night, his eyes green in the fire-flicker, to take his share of fresh walnuts. at last, the musk-deer, the shyest and almost the smallest of the deerlets, came, too, her big rabbity ears erect; even brindled, silent _mushick-nabha_ must needs find out what the light in the shrine meant, and drop her moose-like nose into purun bhagat's lap, coming and going with the shadows of the fire. purun bhagat called them all "my brothers," and his low call of "_bhai! bhai!_" would draw them from the forest at noon if they were within earshot. the himalayan black bear, moody and suspicious--sona, who has the v-shaped white mark under his chin--passed that way more than once; and since the bhagat showed no fear, sona showed no anger, but watched him, and came closer, and begged a share of the caresses, and a dole of bread or wild berries. often, in the still dawns, when the bhagat would climb to the very crest of the pass to watch the red day walking along the peaks of the snows, he would find sona shuffling and grunting at his heels, thrusting a curious fore-paw under fallen trunks, and bringing it away with a _whoof_ of impatience; or his early steps would wake sona where he lay curled up, and the great brute, rising erect, would think to fight, till he heard the bhagat's voice and knew his best friend. nearly all hermits and holy men who live apart from the big cities have the reputation of being able to work miracles with the wild things, but all the miracle lies in keeping still, in never making a hasty movement, and, for a long time, at least, in never looking directly at a visitor. the villagers saw the outline of the _barasingh_ stalking like a shadow through the dark forest behind the shrine; saw the _minaul_, the himalayan pheasant, blazing in her best colors before kali's statue; and the _langurs_ on their haunches, inside, playing with the walnut shells. some of the children, too, had heard sona singing to himself, bear-fashion, behind the fallen rocks, and the bhagat's reputation as miracle-worker stood firm. yet nothing was further from his mind than miracles. he believed that all things were one big miracle, and when a man knows that much he knows something to go upon. he knew for a certainty that there was nothing great and nothing little in this world; and day and night he strove to think out his way into the heart of things, back to the place whence his soul had come. so thinking, his untrimmed hair fell down about his shoulders, the stone slab at the side of the antelope skin was dented into a little hole by the foot of his brass-handled crutch, and the place between the tree-trunks, where the begging-bowl rested day after day, sunk and wore into a hollow almost as smooth as the brown shell itself; and each beast knew his exact place at the fire. the fields changed their colors with the seasons; the threshing-floors filled and emptied, and filled again and again; and again and again, when winter came, the _langurs_ frisked among the branches feathered with light snow, till the mother-monkeys brought their sad-eyed little babies up from the warmer valleys with the spring. there were few changes in the village. the priest was older, and many of the little children who used to come with the begging-dish sent their own children now; and when you asked of the villagers how long their holy man had lived in kali's shrine at the head of the pass, they answered, "always." then came such summer rains as had not been known in the hills for many seasons. through three good months the valley was wrapped in cloud and soaking mist--steady, unrelenting downfall, breaking off into thunder-shower after thunder-shower. kali's shrine stood above the clouds, for the most part, and there was a whole month in which the bhagat never saw his village. it was packed away under a white floor of cloud that swayed and shifted and rolled on itself and bulged upward, but never broke from its piers--the streaming flanks of the valley. all that time he heard nothing but the sound of a million little waters, overhead from the trees, and underfoot along the ground, soaking through the pine-needles, dripping from the tongues of draggled fern, and spouting in newly torn muddy channels down the slopes. then the sun came out, and drew forth the good incense of the deodars and the rhododendrons, and that far-off, clean smell which the hill people call "the smell of the snows." the hot sunshine lasted for a week, and then the rains gathered together for their last downpour, and the water fell in sheets that flayed off the skin of the ground and leaped back in mud. purun bhagat heaped his fire high that night, for he was sure his brothers would need warmth; but never a beast came to the shrine, though he called and called till he dropped asleep, wondering what had happened in the woods. it was in the black heart of the night, the rain drumming like a thousand drums, that he was roused by a plucking at his blanket, and, stretching out, felt the little hand of a _langur_. "it is better here than in the trees," he said sleepily, loosening a fold of blanket; "take it and be warm." the monkey caught his hand and pulled hard. "is it food, then?" said purun bhagat. "wait awhile, and i will prepare some." as he kneeled to throw fuel on the fire the _langur_ ran to the door of the shrine, crooned, and ran back again, plucking at the man's knee. "what is it? what is thy trouble, brother?" said purun bhagat, for the _langur's_ eyes were full of things that he could not tell. "unless one of thy caste be in a trap--and none set traps here--i will not go into that weather. look, brother, even the _barasingh_ comes for shelter!" the deer's antlers clashed as he strode into the shrine, clashed against the grinning statue of kali. he lowered them in purun bhagat's direction and stamped uneasily, hissing through his half-shut nostrils. "hai! hai! hai!" said the bhagat, snapping his fingers. "is _this_ payment for a night's lodging?" but the deer pushed him toward the door, and as he did so purun bhagat heard the sound of something opening with a sigh, and saw two slabs of the floor draw away from each other, while the sticky earth below smacked its lips. "now i see," said purun bhagat. "no blame to my brothers that they did not sit by the fire to-night. the mountain is falling. and yet--why should i go?" his eye fell on the empty begging-bowl, and his face changed. "they have given me good food daily since--since i came, and, if i am not swift, to-morrow there will not be one mouth in the valley. indeed, i must go and warn them below. back there, brother! let me get to the fire." the _barasingh_ backed unwillingly as purun bhagat drove a pine torch deep into the flame, twirling it till it was well lit. "ah! ye came to warn me," he said, rising. "better than that we shall do; better than that. out, now, and lend me thy neck, brother, for i have but two feet." he clutched the bristling withers of the _barasingh_ with his right hand, held the torch away with his left, and stepped out of the shrine into the desperate night. there was no breath of wind, but the rain nearly drowned the flare as the great deer hurried down the slope, sliding on his haunches. as soon as they were clear of the forest more of the bhagat's brothers joined them. he heard, though he could not see, the _langurs_ pressing about him, and behind them the _uhh! uhh!_ of sona. the rain matted his long white hair into ropes; the water splashed beneath his bare feet, and his yellow robe clung to his frail old body, but he stepped down steadily, leaning against the _barasingh_. he was no longer a holy man, but sir purun dass, k.c.i.e., prime minister of no small state, a man accustomed to command, going out to save life. down the steep, plashy path they poured all together, the bhagat and his brothers, down and down till the deer's feet clicked and stumbled on the wall of a threshing-floor, and he snorted because he smelt man. now they were at the head of the one crooked village street, and the bhagat beat with his crutch on the barred windows of the blacksmith's house as his torch blazed up in the shelter of the eaves. "up and out!" cried purun bhagat; and he did not know his own voice, for it was years since he had spoken aloud to a man. "the hill falls! the hill is falling! up and out, oh, you within!" "it is our bhagat," said the blacksmith's wife. "he stands among his beasts. gather the little ones and give the call." it ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the narrow way, surged and huddled round the bhagat, and sona puffed impatiently. the people hurried into the street--they were no more than seventy souls all told--and in the glare of the torches they saw their bhagat holding back the terrified _barasingh_, while the monkeys plucked piteously at his skirts, and sona sat on his haunches and roared. "across the valley and up the next hill!" shouted purun bhagat. "leave none behind! we follow!" then the people ran as only hill folk can run, for they knew that in a landslip you must climb for the highest ground across the valley. they fled, splashing through the little river at the bottom, and panted up the terraced fields on the far side, while the bhagat and his brethren followed. up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, calling to each other by name--the roll-call of the village--and at their heels toiled the big _barasingh_, weighted by the failing strength of purun bhagat. at last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pine-wood, five hundred feet up the hillside. his instinct, that had warned him of the coming slide, told him he would be safe here. purun bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the rain and that fierce climb were killing him; but first he called to the scattered torches ahead, "stay and count your numbers"; then, whispering to the deer as he saw the lights gather in a cluster: "stay with me, brother. stay--till--i--go!" there was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and rocked to the blow. then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep c of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very roots of the pines quivered to it. it died away, and the sound of the rain falling on miles of hard ground and grass changed to the muffled drum of water on soft earth. that told its own tale. never a villager--not even the priest--was bold enough to speak to the bhagat who had saved their lives. they crouched under the pines and waited till the day. when it came they looked across the valley and saw that what had been forest, and terraced field, and track-threaded grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan-shaped smear, with a few trees flung head-down on the scarp. that red ran high up the hill of their refuge, damming back the little river, which had begun to spread into a brick-colored lake. of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was not trace. for one mile in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come away bodily, planed clean from head to heel. and the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray before their bhagat. they saw the _barasingh_ standing over him, who fled when they came near, and they heard the _langurs_ wailing in the branches, and sona moaning up the hill; but their bhagat was dead, sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the northeast. the priest said: "behold a miracle after a miracle, for in this very attitude must all sunnyasis be buried! therefore where he now is we will build the temple to our holy man." they built the temple before a year was ended--a little stone-and-earth shrine--and they called the hill the bhagat's hill, and they worship there with lights and flowers and offerings to this day. but they do not know that the saint of their worship is the late sir purun dass, k.c.i.e., d.c.l., ph.d., etc., once prime minister of the progressive and enlightened state of mohiniwala, and honorary or corresponding member of more learned and scientific societies than will ever do any good in this world or the next. [illustration] a song of kabir oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands! oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands! he has gone from the _guddee_ and put on the shroud, and departed in guise of _bairagi_ avowed! now the white road to delhi is mat for his feet, the _sal_ and the _kikar_ must guard him from heat; his home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd-- he is seeking the way as _bairagi_ avowed! he has looked upon man, and his eyeballs are clear (there was one; there is one, and but one, saith kabir); the red mist of doing has thinned to a cloud-- he has taken the path for _bairagi_ avowed! to learn and discern of his brother the clod, of his brother the brute, and his brother the god. he has gone from the council and put on the shroud ("can ye hear?" saith kabir), a _bairagi_ avowed! letting in the jungle veil them, cover them, wall them round-- blossom, and creeper, and weed-- let us forget the sight and the sound, the smell and the touch of the breed! fat black ash by the altar-stone, here is the white-foot rain, and the does bring forth in the fields unsown, and none shall affright them again; and the blind walls crumble, unknown, o'erthrown and none shall inhabit again! [illustration] letting in the jungle you will remember, if you have read the tales in the first jungle book, that, after mowgli had pinned shere khan's hide to the council rock, he told as many as were left of the seeonee pack that henceforward he would hunt in the jungle alone; and the four children of mother and father wolf said that they would hunt with him. but it is not easy to change one's life all in a minute--particularly in the jungle. the first thing mowgli did, when the disorderly pack had slunk off, was to go to the home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. then he told mother wolf and father wolf as much as they could understand of his adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker up and down the blade of his skinning-knife,--the same he had skinned shere khan with,--they said he had learned something. then akela and gray brother had to explain their share of the great buffalo-drive in the ravine, and baloo toiled up the hill to hear all about it, and bagheera scratched himself all over with pure delight at the way in which mowgli had managed his war. it was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep, and from time to time, during the talk, mother wolf would throw up her head, and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind brought her the smell of the tiger-skin on the council rock. "but for akela and gray brother here," mowgli said, at the end, "i could have done nothing. oh, mother, mother! if thou hadst seen the black herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through the gates when the man-pack flung stones at me!" "i am glad i did not see that last," said mother wolf, stiffly. "it is not _my_ custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals. _i_ would have taken a price from the man-pack; but i would have spared the woman who gave thee the milk. yes, i would have spared her alone." "peace, peace, raksha!" said father wolf, lazily. "our frog has come back again--so wise that his own father must lick his feet; and what is a cut, more or less, on the head? leave men alone." baloo and bagheera both echoed: "leave men alone." mowgli, his head on mother wolf's side, smiled contentedly, and said that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell man again. "but what," said akela, cocking one ear--"but what if men do not leave thee alone, little brother?" "we be _five_," said gray brother, looking round at the company, and snapping his jaws on the last word. "we also might attend to that hunting," said bagheera, with a little _switch-switch_ of his tail, looking at baloo. "but why think of men now, akela?" "for this reason," the lone wolf answered: "when that yellow thief's hide was hung up on the rock, i went back along our trail to the village, stepping in my tracks, turning aside, and lying down, to make a mixed trail in case one should follow us. but when i had fouled the trail so that i myself hardly knew it again, mang, the bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me. said mang, 'the village of the man-pack, where they cast out the man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest.'" "it was a big stone that i threw," chuckled mowgli, who had often amused himself by throwing ripe paw-paws into a hornet's nest, and racing off to the nearest pool before the hornets caught him. "i asked of mang what he had seen. he said the red flower blossomed at the gate of the village, and men sat about it carrying guns. now _i_ know, for i have good cause,"--akela looked down at the old dry scars on his flank and side,--"that men do not carry guns for pleasure. presently, little brother, a man with a gun follows our trail--if, indeed, he be not already on it." "but why should he? men have cast me out. what more do they need?" said mowgli, angrily. "thou art a man, little brother," akela returned. "it is not for _us_, the free hunters, to tell thee what thy brethren do, or why." he had just time to snatch up his paw as the skinning-knife cut deep into the ground below. mowgli struck quicker than an average human eye could follow, but akela was a wolf; and even a dog, who is very far removed from the wild wolf, his ancestor, can be waked out of deep sleep by a cart-wheel touching his flank, and can spring away unharmed before that wheel comes on. "another time," mowgli said quietly, returning the knife to its sheath, "speak of the man-pack and of mowgli in _two_ breaths--not one." "phff! that is a sharp tooth," said akela, snuffing at the blade's cut in the earth, "but living with the man-pack has spoiled thine eye, little brother. i could have killed a buck while thou wast striking." bagheera sprang to his feet, thrust up his head as far as he could, sniffed, and stiffened through every curve in his body. gray brother followed his example quickly, keeping a little to his left to get the wind that was blowing from the right, while akela bounded fifty yards up wind, and, half crouching, stiffened too. mowgli looked on enviously. he could smell things as very few human beings could, but he had never reached the hair-trigger-like sensitiveness of a jungle nose; and his three months in the smoky village had set him back sadly. however, he dampened his finger, rubbed it on his nose, and stood erect to catch the upper scent, which, though it is the faintest, is the truest. "man!" akela growled, dropping on his haunches. "buldeo!" said mowgli, sitting down. "he follows our trail, and yonder is the sunlight on his gun. look!" it was no more than a splash of sunlight, for a fraction of a second, on the brass clamps of the old tower musket, but nothing in the jungle winks with just that flash, except when the clouds race over the sky. then a piece of mica, or a little pool, or even a highly polished leaf will flash like a heliograph. but that day was cloudless and still. "i knew men would follow," said akela, triumphantly. "not for nothing have i led the pack." the four cubs said nothing, but ran down hill on their bellies, melting into the thorn and underbrush as a mole melts into a lawn. "where go ye, and without word?" mowgli called. "h'sh! we roll his skull here before midday!" gray brother answered. "back! back and wait! man does not eat man!" mowgli shrieked. "who was a wolf but now? who drove the knife at me for thinking he might be man?" said akela, as the four wolves turned back sullenly and dropped to heel. "am i to give a reason for all i choose to do?" said mowgli, furiously. "that is man! there speaks man!" bagheera muttered under his whiskers. "even so did men talk round the king's cages at oodeypore. we of the jungle know that man is wisest of all. if we trusted our ears we should know that of all things he is most foolish." raising his voice, he added, "the man-cub is right in this. men hunt in packs. to kill one, unless we know what the others will do, is bad hunting. come, let us see what this man means toward us." "we will not come," gray brother growled. "hunt alone, little brother. _we_ know our own minds. that skull would have been ready to bring by now." mowgli had been looking from one to the other of his friends, his chest heaving and his eyes full of tears. he strode forward to the wolves, and, dropping on one knee, said: "do i not know my mind? look at me!" they looked uneasily, and when their eyes wandered, he called them back again and again, till their hair stood up all over their bodies, and they trembled in every limb, while mowgli stared and stared. "now," said he, "of us five, which is leader?" "thou art leader, little brother," said gray brother, and he licked mowgli's foot. "follow, then," said mowgli, and the four followed at his heels with their tails between their legs. "this comes of living with the man-pack," said bagheera, slipping down after them. "there is more in the jungle now than jungle law, baloo." the old bear said nothing, but he thought many things. mowgli cut across noiselessly through the jungle, at right angles to buldeo's path, till, parting the undergrowth, he saw the old man, his musket on his shoulder, running up the trail of overnight at a dog-trot. you will remember that mowgli had left the village with the heavy weight of shere khan's raw hide on his shoulders, while akela and gray brother trotted behind, so that the triple trail was very clearly marked. presently buldeo came to where akela, as you know, had gone back and mixed it all up. then he sat down, and coughed and grunted, and made little casts round and about into the jungle to pick it up again, and all the time he could have thrown a stone over those who were watching him. no one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be heard; and mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very clumsily, could come and go like a shadow. they ringed the old man as a school of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and as they ringed him they talked unconcernedly, for their speech began below the lowest end of the scale that untrained human beings can hear. [the other end is bounded by the high squeak of mang, the bat, which very many people cannot catch at all. from that note all the bird and bat and insect talk takes on.] "this is better than any kill," said gray brother, as buldeo stooped and peered and puffed. "he looks like a lost pig in the jungles by the river. what does he say?" buldeo was muttering savagely. mowgli translated. "he says that packs of wolves must have danced round me. he says that he never saw such a trail in his life. he says he is tired." "he will be rested before he picks it up again," said bagheera coolly, as he slipped round a tree-trunk, in the game of blindman's-buff that they were playing. "_now_, what does the lean thing do?" "eat or blow smoke out of his mouth. men always play with their mouths," said mowgli; and the silent trailers saw the old man fill and light and puff at a water-pipe, and they took good note of the smell of the tobacco, so as to be sure of buldeo in the darkest night, if necessary. then a little knot of charcoal-burners came down the path, and naturally halted to speak to buldeo, whose fame as a hunter reached for at least twenty miles round. they all sat down and smoked, and bagheera and the others came up and watched while buldeo began to tell the story of mowgli, the devil-child, from one end to another, with additions and inventions. how he himself had really killed shere khan; and how mowgli had turned himself into a wolf, and fought with him all the afternoon, and changed into a boy again and bewitched buldeo's rifle, so that the bullet turned the corner, when he pointed it at mowgli, and killed one of buldeo's own buffaloes; and how the village, knowing him to be the bravest hunter in seeonee, had sent him out to kill this devil-child. but meantime the village had got hold of messua and her husband, who were undoubtedly the father and mother of this devil-child, and had barricaded them in their own hut, and presently would torture them to make them confess they were witch and wizard, and then they would be burned to death. "when?" said the charcoal-burners, because they would very much like to be present at the ceremony. buldeo said that nothing would be done till he returned, because the village wished him to kill the jungle boy first. after that they would dispose of messua and her husband, and divide their lands and buffaloes among the village. messua's husband had some remarkably fine buffaloes, too. it was an excellent thing to destroy wizards, buldeo thought; and people who entertained wolf-children out of the jungle were clearly the worst kind of witches. but, said the charcoal-burners, what would happen if the english heard of it? the english, they had heard, were a perfectly mad people, who would not let honest farmers kill witches in peace. why, said buldeo, the head-man of the village would report that messua and her husband had died of snake-bite. _that_ was all arranged, and the only thing now was to kill the wolf-child. they did not happen to have seen anything of such a creature? the charcoal-burners looked round cautiously, and thanked their stars they had not; but they had no doubt that so brave a man as buldeo would find him if any one could. the sun was getting rather low, and they had an idea that they would push on to buldeo's village and see that wicked witch. buldeo said that, though it was his duty to kill the devil-child, he could not think of letting a party of unarmed men go through the jungle, which might produce the wolf-demon at any minute, without his escort. he, therefore, would accompany them, and if the sorcerer's child appeared--well, he would show them how the best hunter in seeonee dealt with such things. the brahmin, he said, had given him a charm against the creature that made everything perfectly safe. "what says he? what says he? what says he?" the wolves repeated every few minutes; and mowgli translated until he came to the witch part of the story, which was a little beyond him, and then he said that the man and woman who had been so kind to him were trapped. "does man trap man?" said bagheera. "so he says. i cannot understand the talk. they are all mad together. what have messua and her man to do with me that they should be put in a trap; and what is all this talk about the red flower? i must look to this. whatever they would do to messua they will not do till buldeo returns. and so--" mowgli thought hard, with his fingers playing round the haft of the skinning-knife, while buldeo and the charcoal-burners went off very valiantly in single file. "i am going hot-foot back to the man-pack," mowgli said at last. "and those?" said gray brother, looking hungrily after the brown backs of the charcoal-burners. "sing them home," said mowgli with a grin; "i do not wish them to be at the village gates till it is dark. can ye hold them?" gray brother bared his white teeth in contempt. "we can head them round and round in circles like tethered goats--if i know man." "that i do not need. sing to them a little, lest they be lonely on the road, and, gray brother, the song need not be of the sweetest. go with them, bagheera, and help make that song. when the night is shut down, meet me by the village--gray brother knows the place." "it is no light hunting to work for a man-cub. when shall i sleep?" said bagheera, yawning, though his eyes showed that he was delighted with the amusement. "me to sing to naked men! but let us try." he lowered his head so that the sound would travel, and cried a long, long, "good hunting"--a midnight call in the afternoon, which was quite awful enough to begin with. mowgli heard it rumble, and rise, and fall, and die off in a creepy sort of whine behind him, and laughed to himself as he ran through the jungle. he could see the charcoal-burners huddled in a knot; old buldeo's gun-barrel waving, like a banana-leaf, to every point of the compass at once. then gray brother gave the _ya-la-hi! yalaha!_ call for the buck-driving, when the pack drives the nilghai, the big blue cow, before them, and it seemed to come from the very ends of the earth, nearer, and nearer, and nearer, till it ended in a shriek snapped off short. the other three answered, till even mowgli could have vowed that the full pack was in full cry, and then they all broke into the magnificent morning-song in the jungle, with every turn, and flourish, and grace-note, that a deep-mouthed wolf of the pack knows. this is a rough rendering of the song, but you must imagine what it sounds like when it breaks the afternoon hush of the jungle: one moment past our bodies cast no shadow on the plain; now clear and black they stride our track, and we run home again. in morning hush, each rock and bush stands hard, and high, and raw: then give the call: "_good rest to all that keep the jungle law!_" now horn and pelt our peoples melt in covert to abide; now, crouched and still, to cave and hill our jungle barons glide. now, stark and plain, man's oxen strain, that draw the new-yoked plow; now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red above the lit _talao_. ho! get to lair! the sun's aflare behind the breathing grass: and creaking through the young bamboo the warning whispers pass. by day made strange, the woods we range with blinking eyes we scan; while down the skies the wild duck cries: "_the day--the day to man!_" the dew is dried that drenched our hide, or washed about our way; and where we drank, the puddled bank is crisping into clay. the traitor dark gives up each mark of stretched or hooded claw; then hear the call: "_good rest to all that keep the jungle law!_" but no translation can give the effect of it, or the yelping scorn the four threw into every word of it, as they heard the trees crash when the men hastily climbed up into the branches, and buldeo began repeating incantations and charms. then they lay down and slept, for, like all who live by their own exertions, they were of a methodical cast of mind; and no one can work well without sleep. meantime, mowgli was putting the miles behind him, nine to the hour, swinging on, delighted to find himself so fit after all his cramped months among men. the one idea in his head was to get messua and her husband out of the trap, whatever it was; for he had a natural mistrust of traps. later on, he promised himself, he would pay his debts to the village at large. it was at twilight when he saw the well-remembered grazing-grounds, and the _dhak_-tree where gray brother had waited for him on the morning that he killed shere khan. angry as he was at the whole breed and community of man, something jumped up in his throat and made him catch his breath when he looked at the village roofs. he noticed that every one had come in from the fields unusually early, and that, instead of getting to their evening cooking, they gathered in a crowd under the village tree, and chattered, and shouted. "men must always be making traps for men, or they are not content," said mowgli. "last night it was mowgli--but that night seems many rains ago. to-night it is messua and her man. to-morrow, and for very many nights after, it will be mowgli's turn again." he crept along outside the wall till he came to messua's hut, and looked through the window into the room. there lay messua, gagged, and bound hand and foot, breathing hard, and groaning: her husband was tied to the gaily painted bedstead. the door of the hut that opened into the street was shut fast, and three or four people were sitting with their backs to it. mowgli knew the manners and customs of the villagers very fairly. he argued that so long as they could eat, and talk, and smoke, they would not do anything else; but as soon as they had fed they would begin to be dangerous. buldeo would be coming in before long, and if his escort had done its duty, buldeo would have a very interesting tale to tell. so he went in through the window, and, stooping over the man and the woman, cut their thongs, pulling out the gags, and looked round the hut for some milk. messua was half wild with pain and fear (she had been beaten and stoned all the morning), and mowgli put his hand over her mouth just in time to stop a scream. her husband was only bewildered and angry, and sat picking dust and things out of his torn beard. "i knew--i knew he would come," messua sobbed at last. "now do i _know_ that he is my son!" and she hugged mowgli to her heart. up to that time mowgli had been perfectly steady, but now he began to tremble all over, and that surprised him immensely. "why are these thongs? why have they tied thee?" he asked, after a pause. "to be put to the death for making a son of thee--what else?" said the man, sullenly. "look! i bleed." messua said nothing, but it was at _her_ wounds that mowgli looked, and they heard him grit his teeth when he saw the blood. "whose work is this?" said he. "there is a price to pay." "the work of all the village. i was too rich. i had too many cattle. _therefore_ she and i are witches, because we gave thee shelter." "i do not understand. let messua tell the tale." "i gave thee milk, nathoo; dost thou remember?" messua said timidly. "because thou wast my son, whom the tiger took, and because i loved thee very dearly. they said that i was thy mother, the mother of a devil, and therefore worthy of death." "and what is a devil?" said mowgli. "death i have seen." the man looked up gloomily, but messua laughed. "see!" she said to her husband, "i knew--i said that he was no sorcerer. he is my son--my son!" "son or sorcerer, what good will that do us?" the man answered. "we be as dead already." "yonder is the road to the jungle"--mowgli pointed through the window. "your hands and feet are free. go now." "we do not know the jungle, my son, as--as thou knowest," messua began. "i do not think that i could walk far." "and the men and women would be upon our backs and drag us here again," said the husband. "h'm!" said mowgli, and he tickled the palm of his hand with the tip of his skinning-knife; "i have no wish to do harm to any one of this village--_yet_. but i do not think they will stay thee. in a little while they will have much else to think upon. ah!" he lifted his head and listened to shouting and trampling outside. "so they have let buldeo come home at last?" "he was sent out this morning to kill thee," messua cried. "didst thou meet him?" "yes--we--i met him. he has a tale to tell; and while he is telling it there is time to do much. but first i will learn what they mean. think where ye would go, and tell me when i come back." he bounded through the window and ran along again outside the wall of the village till he came within ear-shot of the crowd round the peepul-tree. buldeo was lying on the ground, coughing and groaning, and every one was asking him questions. his hair had fallen about his shoulders; his hands and legs were skinned from climbing up trees, and he could hardly speak, but he felt the importance of his position keenly. from time to time he said something about devils and singing devils, and magic enchantment, just to give the crowd a taste of what was coming. then he called for water. "bah!" said mowgli. "chatter--chatter! talk, talk! men are blood-brothers of the _bandar-log_. now he must wash his mouth with water; now he must blow smoke; and when all that is done he has still his story to tell. they are very wise people--men. they will leave no one to guard messua till their ears are stuffed with buldeo's tales. and--i grow as lazy as they!" he shook himself and glided back to the hut. just as he was at the window he felt a touch on his foot. "mother," said he, for he knew that tongue well, "what dost _thou_ here?" "i heard my children singing through the woods, and i followed the one i loved best. little frog, i have a desire to see that woman who gave thee milk," said mother wolf, all wet with the dew. "they have bound and mean to kill her. i have cut those ties, and she goes with her man through the jungle." "i also will follow. i am old, but not yet toothless." mother wolf reared herself up on end, and looked through the window into the dark of the hut. in a minute she dropped noiselessly, and all she said was: "i gave thee thy first milk; but bagheera speaks truth: man goes to man at the last." "maybe," said mowgli, with a very unpleasant look on his face; "but to-night i am very far from that trail. wait here, but do not let her see." "_thou_ wast never afraid of _me_, little frog," said mother wolf, backing into the high grass, and blotting herself out, as she knew how. "and now," said mowgli, cheerfully, as he swung into the hut again, "they are all sitting round buldeo, who is saying that which did not happen. when his talk is finished, they say they will assuredly come here with the red--with fire and burn you both. and then?" "i have spoken to my man," said messua. "kanhiwara is thirty miles from here, but at kanhiwara we may find the english--" "and what pack are they?" said mowgli. "i do not know. they be white, and it is said that they govern all the land, and do not suffer people to burn or beat each other without witnesses. if we can get thither to-night, we live. otherwise we die." "live, then. no man passes the gates to-night. but what does _he_ do?" messua's husband was on his hands and knees digging up the earth in one corner of the hut. "it is his little money," said messua. "we can take nothing else." "ah, yes. the stuff that passes from hand to hand and never grows warmer. do they need it outside this place also?" said mowgli. the man stared angrily. "he is a fool, and no devil," he muttered. "with the money i can buy a horse. we are too bruised to walk far, and the village will follow us in an hour." "i say they will _not_ follow till i choose; but the horse is well thought of, for messua is tired." her husband stood up and knotted the last of the rupees into his waist-cloth. mowgli helped messua through the window, and the cool night air revived her, but the jungle in the starlight looked very dark and terrible. "ye know the trail to kanhiwara?" mowgli whispered. they nodded. "good. remember, now, not to be afraid. and there is no need to go quickly. only--only there may be some small singing in the jungle behind you and before." "think you we would have risked a night in the jungle through anything less than the fear of burning? it is better to be killed by beasts than by men," said messua's husband; but messua looked at mowgli and smiled. "i say," mowgli went on, just as though he were baloo repeating an old jungle law for the hundredth time to a foolish cub--"i say that not a tooth in the jungle is bared against you; not a foot in the jungle is lifted against you. neither man nor beast shall stay you till ye come within eye-shot of kanhiwara. there will be a watch about you." he turned quickly to messua, saying, "_he_ does not believe, but thou wilt believe?" "ay, surely, my son. man, ghost, or wolf of the jungle, i believe." "_he_ will be afraid when he hears my people singing. thou wilt know and understand. go now, and slowly, for there is no need of any haste. the gates are shut." messua flung herself sobbing at mowgli's feet, but he lifted her very quickly with a shiver. then she hung about his neck and called him every name of blessing she could think of, but her husband looked enviously across his fields, and said: "_if_ we reach kanhiwara, and i get the ear of the english, i will bring such a lawsuit against the brahmin and old buldeo and the others as shall eat the village to the bone. they shall pay me twice over for my crops untilled and my buffaloes unfed. i will have a great justice." mowgli laughed. "i do not know what justice is, but--come next rains and see what is left." they went off toward the jungle, and mother wolf leaped from her place of hiding. "follow!" said mowgli; "and look to it that all the jungle knows these two are safe. give tongue a little. i would call bagheera." the long, low howl rose and fell, and mowgli saw messua's husband flinch and turn, half minded to run back to the hut. "go on," mowgli called cheerfully. "i said there might be singing. the call will follow up to kanhiwara. it is favor of the jungle." messua urged her husband forward, and the darkness of the jungle shut down on them and mother wolf as bagheera rose up almost under mowgli's feet, trembling with delight of the night that drives the jungle people wild. "i am ashamed of thy brethren," he said, purring. "what? did they not sing sweetly to buldeo?" said mowgli. "too well! too well! they made even _me_ forget my pride, and, by the broken lock that freed me, i went singing through the jungle as though i were out wooing in the spring! didst thou not hear us?" "i had other game afoot. ask buldeo if he liked the song. but where are the four? i do not wish one of the man-pack to leave the gates to-night." "what need of the four, then?" said bagheera, shifting from foot to foot, his eyes ablaze, and purring louder than ever. "i can hold them, little brother. is it killing at last? the singing and the sight of the men climbing up the trees have made me very ready. what is man that we should care for him--the naked brown digger, the hairless and toothless, the eater of earth? i have followed him all day--at noon--in the white sunlight. i herded him as the wolves herd buck. i am bagheera! bagheera! bagheera! as i dance with my shadow, so danced i with those men. look!" the great panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf whirling overhead, struck left and right into the empty air, that sung under the strokes, landed noiselessly, and leaped again and again, while the half purr, half growl gathered head as steam rumbles in a boiler. "i am bagheera--in the jungle--in the night, and all my strength is in me. who shall stay my stroke? man-cub, with one blow of my paw i could beat thy head flat as a dead frog in the summer!" "strike, then!" said mowgli, in the dialect of the village, _not_ the talk of the jungle, and the human words brought bagheera to a full stop, flung back on haunches that quivered under him, his head just at the level of mowgli's. once more mowgli stared, as he had stared at the rebellious cubs, full into the beryl-green eyes till the red glare behind their green went out like the light of a lighthouse shut off twenty miles across the sea; till the eyes dropped, and the big head with them--dropped lower and lower, and the red rasp of a tongue grated on mowgli's instep. "brother--brother--brother!" the boy whispered, stroking steadily and lightly from the neck along the heaving back: "be still, be still! it is the fault of the night, and no fault of thine." "it was the smells of the night," said bagheera penitently. "this air cries aloud to me. but how dost _thou_ know?" of course the air round an indian village is full of all kinds of smells, and to any creature who does nearly all his thinking through his nose, smells are as maddening as music and drugs are to human beings. mowgli gentled the panther for a few minutes longer, and he lay down like a cat before a fire, his paws tucked under his breast, and his eyes half shut. "thou art of the jungle and _not_ of the jungle," he said at last. "and i am only a black panther. but i love thee, little brother." "they are very long at their talk under the tree," mowgli said, without noticing the last sentence. "buldeo must have told many tales. they should come soon to drag the woman and her man out of the trap and put them into the red flower. they will find that trap sprung. ho! ho!" "nay, listen," said bagheera. "the fever is out of my blood now. let them find _me_ there! few would leave their houses after meeting me. it is not the first time i have been in a cage; and i do not think they will tie _me_ with cords." "be wise, then," said mowgli, laughing; for he was beginning to feel as reckless as the panther, who had glided into the hut. "pah!" bagheera grunted. "this place is rank with man, but here is just such a bed as they gave me to lie upon in the king's cages at oodeypore. now i lie down." mowgli heard the strings of the cot crack under the great brute's weight. "by the broken lock that freed me, they will think they have caught big game! come and sit beside me, little brother; we will give them 'good hunting' together!" "no; i have another thought in my stomach. the man-pack shall not know what share i have in the sport. make thine own hunt. i do not wish to see them." "be it so," said bagheera. "ah, now they come!" the conference under the peepul-tree had been growing noisier and noisier, at the far end of the village. it broke in wild yells, and a rush up the street of men and women, waving clubs and bamboos and sickles and knives. buldeo and the brahmin were at the head of it, but the mob was close at their heels, and they cried, "the witch and the wizard! let us see if hot coins will make them confess! burn the hut over their heads! we will teach them to shelter wolf-devils! nay, beat them first! torches! more torches! buldeo, heat the gun-barrels!" here was some little difficulty with the catch of the door. it had been very firmly fastened, but the crowd tore it away bodily, and the light of the torches streamed into the room where, stretched at full length on the bed, his paws crossed and lightly hung down over one end, black as the pit, and terrible as a demon, was bagheera. there was one half-minute of desperate silence, as the front ranks of the crowd clawed and tore their way back from the threshold, and in that minute bagheera raised his head and yawned--elaborately, carefully, and ostentatiously--as he would yawn when he wished to insult an equal. the fringed lips drew back and up; the red tongue curled; the lower jaw dropped and dropped till you could see half-way down the hot gullet; and the gigantic dog-teeth stood clear to the pit of the gums till they rang together, upper and under, with the snick of steel-faced wards shooting home round the edges of a safe. next instant the street was empty; bagheera had leaped back through the window, and stood at mowgli's side, while a yelling, screaming torrent scrambled and tumbled one over another in their panic haste to get to their own huts. "they will not stir till day comes," said bagheera quietly. "and now?" the silence of the afternoon sleep seemed to have overtaken the village, but, as they listened, they could hear the sound of heavy grain-boxes being dragged over earthen floors and set down against doors. bagheera was quite right; the village would not stir till daylight. mowgli sat still, and thought, and his face grew darker and darker. "what have i done?" said bagheera, at last, coming to his feet, fawning. "nothing but great good. watch them now till the day. i sleep." mowgli ran off into the jungle, and dropped like a dead man across a rock, and slept and slept the day round, and the night back again. when he waked, bagheera was at his side, and there was a newly-killed buck at his feet. bagheera watched curiously while mowgli went to work with his skinning-knife, ate and drank, and turned over with his chin in his hands. "the man and the woman are come safe within eye-shot of kanhiwara," bagheera said. "thy lair mother sent the word back by chil, the kite. they found a horse before midnight of the night they were freed, and went very quickly. is not that well?" "that is well," said mowgli. "and thy man-pack in the village did not stir till the sun was high this morning. then they ate their food and ran back quickly to their houses." "did they, by chance, see thee?" "it may have been. i was rolling in the dust before the gate at dawn, and i may have made also some small song to myself. now, little brother, there is nothing more to do. come hunting with me and baloo. he has new hives that he wishes to show, and we all desire thee back again as of old. take off that look which makes even me afraid! the man and woman will not be put into the red flower, and all goes well in the jungle. is it not true? let us forget the man-pack." "they shall be forgotten in a little while. where does hathi feed to-night?" "where he chooses. who can answer for the silent one? but why? what is there hathi can do which we cannot?" "bid him and his three sons come here to me." "but, indeed, and truly, little brother, it is not--it is not seemly to say 'come,' and 'go,' to hathi. remember, he is the master of the jungle, and before the man-pack changed the look on thy face, he taught thee the master-words of the jungle." "that is all one. i have a master-word for him now. bid him come to mowgli, the frog, and if he does not hear at first, bid him come because of the sack of the fields of bhurtpore." "the sack of the fields of bhurtpore," bagheera repeated two or three times to make sure. "i go. hathi can but be angry at the worst, and i would give a moon's hunting to hear a master-word that compels the silent one." he went away, leaving mowgli stabbing furiously with his skinning-knife into the earth. mowgli had never seen human blood in his life before till he had seen, and--what meant much more to him--smelled messua's blood on the thongs that bound her. and messua had been kind to him, and, so far as he knew anything about love, he loved messua as completely as he hated the rest of mankind. but deeply as he loathed them, their talk, their cruelty, and their cowardice, not for anything the jungle had to offer could he bring himself to take a human life, and have that terrible scent of blood back again in his nostrils. his plan was simpler but much more thorough; and he laughed to himself when he thought that it was one of old buldeo's tales told under the peepul-tree in the evening that had put the idea into his head. "it _was_ a master-word," bagheera whispered in his ear. "they were feeding by the river, and they obeyed as though they were bullocks. look, where they come now!" hathi and his three sons had arrived in their usual way, without a sound. the mud of the river was still fresh on their flanks, and hathi was thoughtfully chewing the green stem of a young plantain-tree that he had gouged up with his tusks. but every line in his vast body showed to bagheera, who could see things when he came across them, that it was not the master of the jungle speaking to a man-cub, but one who was afraid coming before one who was not. his three sons rolled side by side, behind their father. mowgli hardly lifted his head as hathi gave him "good hunting." he kept him swinging and rocking, and shifting from one foot to another, for a long time before he spoke, and when he opened his mouth it was to bagheera, not to the elephants. "i will tell a tale that was told to me by the hunter ye hunted to-day," said mowgli. "it concerns an elephant, old and wise, who fell into a trap, and the sharpened stake in the pit scarred him from a little above his heel to the crest of his shoulder, leaving a white mark." mowgli threw out his hand, and as hathi wheeled the moonlight showed a long white scar on his slaty side, as though he had been struck with a red-hot whip. "men came to take him from the trap," mowgli continued, "but he broke his ropes, for he was strong, and went away till his wound was healed. then came he, angry, by night to the fields of those hunters. and i remember now that he had three sons. these things happened many, many rains ago, and very far away--among the fields of bhurtpore. what came to those fields at the next reaping, hathi?" "they were reaped by me and by my three sons," said hathi. "and to the plowing that follows the reaping?" said mowgli. "there was no plowing," said hathi. "and to the men that live by the green crops on the ground?" said mowgli. "they went away." "and to the huts in which the men slept?" said mowgli. "we tore the roofs to pieces, and the jungle swallowed up the walls," said hathi. "and what more?" said mowgli. "as much good ground as i can walk over in two nights from the east to the west, and from the north to the south as much as i can walk over in three nights, the jungle took. we let in the jungle upon five villages; and in those villages, and in their lands, the grazing-ground and the soft crop-grounds, there is not one man to-day who takes his food from the ground. that was the sack of the fields of bhurtpore, which i and my three sons did; and now i ask, man-cub, how the news of it came to thee?" said hathi. "a man told me, and now i see even buldeo can speak truth. it was well done, hathi with the white mark; but the second time it shall be done better, for the reason that there is a man to direct. thou knowest the village of the man-pack that cast me out? they are idle, senseless, and cruel; they play with their mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for food, but for sport. when they are full-fed they would throw their own breed into the red flower. this i have seen. it is not well that they should live here any more. i hate them!" "kill, then," said the youngest of hathi's three sons, picking up a tuft of grass, dusting it against his fore legs, and throwing it away, while his little red eyes glanced furtively from side to side. "what good are white bones to me?" mowgli answered angrily. "am i the cub of a wolf to play in the sun with a raw head? i have killed shere khan, and his hide rots on the council rock; but--but i do not know whither shere khan is gone, and my stomach is still empty. now i will take that which i can see and touch. let in the jungle upon that village, hathi!" bagheera shivered, and cowered down. he could understand, if the worst came to the worst, a quick rush down the village street, and a right and left blow into a crowd, or a crafty killing of men as they plowed in the twilight, but this scheme for deliberately blotting out an entire village from the eyes of man and beast frightened him. now he saw why mowgli had sent for hathi. no one but the long-lived elephant could plan and carry through such a war. "let them run as the men ran from the fields of bhurtpore, till we have the rain-water for the only plow, and the noise of the rain on the thick leaves for the pattering of their spindles--till bagheera and i lair in the house of the brahmin, and the buck drink at the tank behind the temple! let in the jungle, hathi!" "but i--but we have no quarrel with them, and it needs the red rage of great pain ere we tear down the places where men sleep," said hathi, doubtfully. "are ye the only eaters of grass in the jungle? drive in your peoples. let the deer and the pig and the nilghai look to it. ye need never show a hand's-breadth of hide till the fields are naked. let in the jungle, hathi!" "there will be no killing? my tusks were red at the sack of the fields of bhurtpore, and i would not wake that smell again." "nor i. i do not wish even their bones to lie on the clean earth. let them go and find a fresh lair. they cannot stay here. i have seen and smelled the blood of the woman that gave me food--the woman whom they would have killed but for me. only the smell of the new grass on their door-steps can take away that smell. it burns in my mouth. let in the jungle, hathi!" "ah!" said hathi. "so did the scar of the stake burn on my hide till we watched the villages die under in the spring growth. now i see. thy war shall be our war. we will let in the jungle!" mowgli had hardly time to catch his breath--he was shaking all over with rage and hate--before the place where the elephants had stood was empty, and bagheera was looking at him with terror. "by the broken lock that freed me!" said the black panther at last. "art _thou_ the naked thing i spoke for in the pack when all was young? master of the jungle, when my strength goes, speak for me--speak for baloo--speak for us all! we are cubs before thee! snapped twigs under foot! fawns that have lost their doe!" the idea of bagheera being a stray fawn upset mowgli altogether, and he laughed and caught his breath, and sobbed and laughed again, till he had to jump into a pool to make himself stop. then he swam round and round, ducking in and out of the bars of the moonlight like the frog, his namesake. by this time hathi and his three sons had turned, each to one point of the compass, and were striding silently down the valleys a mile away. they went on and on for two days' march--that is to say, a long sixty miles--through the jungle; and every step they took, and every wave of their trunks, was known and noted and talked over by mang and chil and the monkey people and all the birds. then they began to feed, and fed quietly for a week or so. hathi and his sons are like kaa, the rock python. they never hurry till they have to. at the end of that time--and none knew who had started it--a rumor went through the jungle that there was better food and water to be found in such and such a valley. the pig--who, of course, will go to the ends of the earth for a full meal--moved first by companies, scuffling over the rocks, and the deer followed, with the small wild foxes that live on the dead and dying of the herds; and the heavy-shouldered nilghai moved parallel with the deer, and the wild buffaloes of the swamps came after the nilghai. the least little thing would have turned the scattered, straggling droves that grazed and sauntered and drank and grazed again; but whenever there was an alarm some one would rise up and soothe them. at one time it would be sahi the porcupine, full of news of good feed just a little further on; at another mang would cry cheerily and flap down a glade to show it was all empty; or baloo, his mouth full of roots, would shamble alongside a wavering line and half frighten, half romp it clumsily back to the proper road. very many creatures broke back or ran away or lost interest, but very many were left to go forward. at the end of another ten days or so the situation was this. the deer and the pig and the nilghai were milling round and round in a circle of eight or ten miles radius, while the eaters of flesh skirmished round its edge. and the center of that circle was the village, and round the village the crops were ripening, and in the crops sat men on what they call _machans_--platforms like pigeon-perches, made of sticks at the top of four poles--to scare away birds and other stealers. then the deer were coaxed no more. the eaters of flesh were close behind them, and forced them forward and inward. it was a dark night when hathi and his three sons slipped down from the jungle, and broke off the poles of the _machans_ with their trunks; they fell as a snapped stalk of hemlock in bloom falls, and the men that tumbled from them heard the deep gurgling of the elephants in their ears. then the vanguard of the bewildered armies of the deer broke down and flooded into the village grazing-grounds and the plowed fields; and the sharp-hoofed, rooting wild pig came with them, and what the deer left the pig spoiled, and from time to time an alarm of wolves would shake the herds, and they would rush to and fro desperately, treading down the young barley, and cutting flat the banks of the irrigating channels. before the dawn broke the pressure on the outside of the circle gave way at one point. the eaters of flesh had fallen back and left an open path to the south, and drove upon drove of buck fled along it. others, who were bolder, lay up in the thickets to finish their meal next night. but the work was practically done. when the villagers looked in the morning they saw their crops were lost. and that meant death if they did not get away, for they lived year in and year out as near to starvation as the jungle was near to them. when the buffaloes were sent to graze the hungry brutes found that the deer had cleared the grazing-grounds, and so wandered into the jungle and drifted off with their wild mates; and when twilight fell the three or four ponies that belonged to the village lay in their stables with their heads beaten in. only bagheera could have given those strokes, and only bagheera would have thought of insolently dragging the last carcass to the open street. the villagers had no heart to make fires in the fields that night, so hathi and his three sons went gleaning among what was left; and where hathi gleans there is no need to follow. the men decided to live on their stored seed-corn until the rains had fallen, and then to take work as servants till they could catch up with the lost year; but as the grain-dealer was thinking of his well-filled crates of corn, and the prices he would levy at the sale of it, hathi's sharp tusks were picking out the corner of his mud house, and smashing open the big wicker-chest, leeped with cow-dung, where the precious stuff lay. when that last loss was discovered, it was the brahmin's turn to speak. he had prayed to his own gods without answer. it might be, he said, that, unconsciously, the village had offended some one of the gods of the jungle, for, beyond doubt, the jungle was against them. so they sent for the head man of the nearest tribe of wandering gonds--little, wise, and very black hunters, living in the deep jungle, whose fathers came of the oldest race in india--the aboriginal owners of the land. they made the gond welcome with what they had, and he stood on one leg, his bow in his hand, and two or three poisoned arrows stuck through his top-knot, looking half afraid and half contemptuously at the anxious villagers and their ruined fields. they wished to know whether his gods--the old gods--were angry with them, and what sacrifices should be offered. the gond said nothing, but picked up a trail of the _karela_, the vine that bears the bitter wild gourd, and laced it to and fro across the temple door in the face of the staring red hindu image. then he pushed with his hand in the open air along the road to kanhiwara, and went back to his jungle, and watched the jungle people drifting through it. he knew that when the jungle moves only white men can hope to turn it aside. there was no need to ask his meaning. the wild gourd would grow where they had worshiped their god, and the sooner they saved themselves the better. but it is hard to tear a village from its moorings. they stayed on as long as any summer food was left to them, and they tried to gather nuts in the jungle, but shadows with glaring eyes watched them, and rolled before them even at midday; and when they ran back afraid to their walls, on the tree trunks they had passed not five minutes before the bark would be stripped and chiseled with the stroke of some great taloned paw. the more they kept to their village, the bolder grew the wild things that gamboled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the waingunga. they had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the empty byres that backed on to the jungle; the wild pig trampled them down, and the knotty-rooted vines hurried after and threw their elbows over the new-won ground, and the coarse grass bristled behind the vines like the lances of a goblin army following a retreat. the unmarried men ran away first, and carried the news far and near that the village was doomed. who could fight, they said, against the jungle, or the gods of the jungle, when the very village cobra had left his hole in the platform under the peepul-tree? so their little commerce with the outside world shrunk as the trodden paths across the open grew fewer and fainter. at last the nightly trumpetings of hathi and his three sons ceased to trouble them; for they had no more to be robbed of. the crop on the ground and the seed in the ground had been taken. the outlying fields were already losing their shape, and it was time to throw themselves on the charity of the english at kanhiwara. native fashion, they delayed their departure from one day to another till the first rains caught them and the unmended roofs let in a flood, and the grazing-ground stood ankle deep, and all life came on with a rush after the heat of the summer. then they waded out, men, women, and children, through the blinding hot rain of the morning, but turned naturally for one farewell look at their homes. they heard, as the last burdened family filed through the gate, a crash of falling beams and thatch behind the walls. they saw a shiny, snaky black trunk lifted for an instant, scattering sodden thatch. it disappeared, and there was another crash, followed by a squeal. hathi had been plucking off the roofs of the huts as you pluck water-lilies, and a rebounding beam had pricked him. he needed only this to unchain his full strength, for of all things in the jungle the wild elephant enraged is the most wantonly destructive. he kicked backward at a mud wall that crumbled at the stroke, and, crumbling, melted to yellow mud under the torrent of rain. then he wheeled and squealed, and tore through the narrow streets, leaning against the huts right and left, shivering the crazy doors, and crumpling up the eaves; while his three sons raged behind as they had raged at the sack of the fields of bhurtpore. "the jungle will swallow these shells," said a quiet voice in the wreckage. "it is the outer wall that must lie down," and mowgli, with the rain sluicing over his bare shoulders and arms, leaped back from a wall that was settling like a tired buffalo. "all in good time," panted hathi. "oh, but my tusks were red at bhurtpore! to the outer wall, children! with the head! together! now!" the four pushed side by side; the outer wall bulged, split, and fell, and the villagers, dumb with horror, saw the savage, clay-streaked heads of the wreckers in the ragged gap. then they fled, houseless and foodless, down the valley, as their village, shredded and tossed and trampled, melted behind them. a month later the place was a dimpled mound, covered with soft, green young stuff; and by the end of the rains there was the roaring jungle in full blast on the spot that had been under plow not six months before. [illustration] mowgli's song against people i will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines-- i will call in the jungle to stamp out your lines! the roofs shall fade before it, the house-beams shall fall, and the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall cover it all! in the gates of these your councils my people shall sing, in the doors of these your garners the bat-folk shall cling; and the snake shall be your watchman, by a hearthstone unswept; for the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall fruit where ye slept! ye shall not see my strikers; ye shall hear them and guess; by night, before the moon-rise, i will send for my cess, and the wolf shall be your herdsman by a landmark removed, for the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall seed where ye loved! i will reap your fields before you at the hands of a host; ye shall glean behind my reapers for the bread that is lost; and the deer shall be your oxen by a headland untilled, for the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall leaf where ye build! i have untied against you the club-footed vines, i have sent in the jungle to swamp out your lines the trees--the trees are on you! the house-beams shall fall, and the _karela_, the bitter _karela_, shall cover you all! the undertakers when ye say to tabaqui, "my brother!" when ye call the hyena to meat, ye may cry the full truce with jacala--the belly that runs on four feet. --_jungle law._ [illustration] the undertakers "respect the aged!" it was a thick voice--a muddy voice that would have made you shudder--a voice like something soft breaking in two. there was a quaver in it, a croak and a whine. "respect the aged! o companions of the river--respect the aged!" nothing could be seen on the broad reach of the river except a little fleet of square-sailed, wooden-pinned barges, loaded with building-stone, that had just come under the railway bridge, and were driving down-stream. they put their clumsy helms over to avoid the sand-bar made by the scour of the bridge-piers, and as they passed, three abreast, the horrible voice began again: "o brahmins of the river--respect the aged and infirm!" a boatman turned where he sat on the gunwale, lifted up his hand, said something that was not a blessing, and the boats creaked on through the twilight. the broad indian river, that looked more like a chain of little lakes than a stream, was as smooth as glass, reflecting the sandy-red sky in mid-channel, but splashed with patches of yellow and dusky purple near and under the low banks. little creeks ran into the river in the wet season, but now their dry mouths hung clear above water-line. on the left shore, and almost under the railway bridge, stood a mud-and-brick and thatch-and-stick village, whose main street, full of cattle going back to their byres, ran straight to the river, and ended in a sort of rude brick pier-head, where people who wanted to wash could wade in step by step. that was the ghaut of the village of mugger-ghaut. night was falling fast over the fields of lentils and rice and cotton in the low-lying ground yearly flooded by the river; over the reeds that fringed the elbow of the bend, and the tangled low jungle of the grazing-grounds behind the still reeds. the parrots and crows, who had been chattering and shouting over their evening drink, had flown inland to roost, crossing the out-going battalions of the flying-foxes; and cloud upon cloud of water-birds came whistling and "honking" to the cover of the reed-beds. there were geese, barrel-headed and black-backed, teal, widgeon, mallard, and sheldrake, with curlews, and here and there a flamingo. a lumbering adjutant-crane brought up the rear, flying as though each slow stroke would be his last. "respect the aged! brahmins of the river--respect the aged!" the adjutant half turned his head, sheered a little in the direction of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sand-bar below the bridge. then you saw what a ruffianly brute he really was. his back view was immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six feet high, and looked rather like a very proper bald-headed parson. in front it was different, for his ally sloper-like head and neck had not a feather to them, and there was a horrible raw-skin pouch on his neck under his chin--a hold-all for the things his pickaxe beak might steal. his legs were long and thin and skinny, but he moved them delicately, and looked at them with pride as he preened down his ashy-gray tail-feathers, glanced over the smooth of his shoulder, and stiffened into "stand at attention." a mangy little jackal, who had been yapping hungrily on a low bluff, cocked up his ears and tail, and scuttered across the shallows to join the adjutant. he was the lowest of his caste--not that the best of jackals are good for much, but this one was peculiarly low, being half a beggar, half a criminal--a cleaner up of village rubbish-heaps, desperately timid or wildly bold, everlastingly hungry, and full of cunning that never did him any good. "ugh!" he said, shaking himself dolefully as he landed. "may the red mange destroy the dogs of this village! i have three bites for each flea upon me, and all because i looked--only looked, mark you--at an old shoe in a cow-byre. can i eat mud?" he scratched himself under his left ear. "i heard," said the adjutant, in a voice like a blunt saw going through a thick board--"i _heard_ there was a new-born puppy in that same shoe." "to hear is one thing; to know is another," said the jackal, who had a very fair knowledge of proverbs, picked up by listening to men round the village fires of an evening. "quite true. so, to make sure, i took care of that puppy while the dogs were busy elsewhere." "they were _very_ busy," said the jackal. "well, i must not go to the village hunting for scraps yet awhile. and so there truly was a blind puppy in that shoe?" "it is here," said the adjutant, squinting over his beak at his full pouch. "a small thing, but acceptable now that charity is dead in the world." "ahai! the world is iron in these days," wailed the jackal. then his restless eye caught the least possible ripple on the water, and he went on quickly: "life is hard for us all, and i doubt not that even our excellent master, the pride of the ghaut and the envy of the river--" "a liar, a flatterer, and a jackal were all hatched out of the same egg," said the adjutant to nobody in particular; for he was rather a fine sort of a liar on his own account when he took the trouble. "yes, the envy of the river," the jackal repeated, raising his voice. "even he, i doubt not, finds that since the bridge has been built good food is more scarce. but on the other hand, though i would by no means say this to his noble face, he is so wise and so virtuous--as i, alas! am not--" "when the jackal owns he is gray, how black must the jackal be!" muttered the adjutant. he could not see what was coming. "that _his_ food never fails, and in consequence--" there was a soft grating sound, as though a boat had just touched in shoal water. the jackal spun round quickly and faced (it is always best to face) the creature he had been talking about. it was a twenty-four-foot crocodile, cased in what looked like treble-riveted boiler-plate, studded and keeled and crested; the yellow points of his upper teeth just overhanging his beautifully fluted lower jaw. it was the blunt-nosed mugger of mugger-ghaut, older than any man in the village, who had given his name to the village; the demon of the ford before the railway bridge came--murderer, man-eater, and local fetish in one. he lay with his chin in the shallows, keeping his place by an almost invisible rippling of his tail, and well the jackal knew that one stroke of that same tail in the water could carry the mugger up the bank with the rush of a steam-engine. "auspiciously met, protector of the poor!" he fawned, backing at every word. "a delectable voice was heard, and we came in the hopes of sweet conversation. my tailless presumption, while waiting here, led me, indeed, to speak of thee. it is my hope that nothing was overheard." now the jackal had spoken just to be listened to, for he knew flattery was the best way of getting things to eat, and the mugger knew that the jackal had spoken for this end, and the jackal knew that the mugger knew, and the mugger knew that the jackal knew that the mugger knew, and so they were all very contented together. the old brute pushed and panted and grunted up the bank, mumbling, "respect the aged and infirm!" and all the time his little eyes burned like coals under the heavy, horny eyelids on the top of his triangular head, as he shoved his bloated barrel-body along between his crutched legs. then he settled down, and, accustomed as the jackal was to his ways, he could not help starting, for the hundredth time, when he saw how exactly the mugger imitated a log adrift on the bar. he had even taken pains to lie at the exact angle a naturally stranded log would make with the water, having regard to the current of the season at the time and place. all this was only a matter of habit, of course, because the mugger had come ashore for pleasure; but a crocodile is never quite full, and if the jackal had been deceived by the likeness he would not have lived to philosophize over it. "my child, i heard nothing," said the mugger, shutting one eye. "the water was in my ears, and also i was faint with hunger. since the railway bridge was built my people at my village have ceased to love me; and that is breaking my heart." "ah, shame!" said the jackal. "so noble a heart, too! but men are all alike, to my mind." "nay, there are very great differences indeed," the mugger answered gently. "some are as lean as boat-poles. others again are fat as young ja--dogs. never would i causelessly revile men. they are of all fashions, but the long years have shown me that, one with another, they are very good. men, women, and children--i have no fault to find with them. and remember, child, he who rebukes the world is rebuked by the world." "flattery is worse than an empty tin can in the belly. but that which we have just heard is wisdom," said the adjutant, bringing down one foot. "consider, though, their ingratitude to this excellent one," began the jackal tenderly. "nay, nay, not ingratitude!" the mugger said. "they do not think for others; that is all. but i have noticed, lying at my station below the ford, that the stairs of the new bridge are cruelly hard to climb, both for old people and young children. the old, indeed, are not so worthy of consideration, but i am grieved--i am truly grieved--on account of the fat children. still, i think, in a little while, when the newness of the bridge has worn away, we shall see my people's bare brown legs bravely splashing through the ford as before. then the old mugger will be honored again." "but surely i saw marigold wreaths floating off the edge of the ghaut only this noon," said the adjutant. marigold wreaths are a sign of reverence all india over. "an error--an error. it was the wife of the sweetmeat-seller. she loses her eyesight year by year, and cannot tell a log from me--the mugger of the ghaut. i saw the mistake when she threw the garland, for i was lying at the very foot of the ghaut, and had she taken another step i might have shown her some little difference. yet she meant well, and we must consider the spirit of the offering." "what good are marigold wreaths when one is on the rubbish-heap?" said the jackal, hunting for fleas, but keeping one wary eye on his protector of the poor. "true, but they have not yet begun to make the rubbish-heap that shall carry _me_. five times have i seen the river draw back from the village and make new land at the foot of the street. five times have i seen the village rebuilt on the banks, and i shall see it built yet five times more. i am no faithless, fish-hunting gavial, i, at kasi to-day and prayag to-morrow, as the saying is, but the true and constant watcher of the ford. it is not for nothing, child, that the village bears my name, and 'he who watches long,' as the saying is, 'shall at last have his reward.'" "_i_ have watched long--very long--nearly all my life, and my reward has been bites and blows," said the jackal. "ho! ho! ho!" roared the adjutant. "in august was the jackal born; the rains fell in september; 'now such a fearful flood as this,' says he, 'i can't remember!'" there is one very unpleasant peculiarity about the adjutant. at uncertain times he suffers from acute attacks of the fidgets or cramp in his legs, and though he is more virtuous to behold than any of the cranes, who are all immensely respectable, he flies off into wild, cripple-stilt war-dances, half opening his wings and bobbing his bald head up and down; while for reasons best known to himself he is very careful to time his worst attacks with his nastiest remarks. at the last word of his song he came to attention again, ten times adjutaunter than before. the jackal winced, though he was full three seasons old, but you cannot resent an insult from a person with a beak a yard long, and the power of driving it like a javelin. the adjutant was a most notorious coward, but the jackal was worse. "we must live before we can learn," said the mugger, "and there is this to say: little jackals are very common, child, but such a mugger as i am is not common. for all that, i am not proud, since pride is destruction; but take notice, it is fate, and against his fate no one who swims or walks or runs should say anything at all. i am well contented with fate. with good luck, a keen eye, and the custom of considering whether a creek or a backwater has an outlet to it ere you ascend, much may be done." "once i heard that even the protector of the poor made a mistake," said the jackal viciously. "true; but there my fate helped me. it was before i had come to my full growth--before the last famine but three (by the right and left of gunga, how full used the streams to be in those days!). yes, i was young and unthinking, and when the flood came, who so pleased as i? a little made me very happy then. the village was deep in flood, and i swam above the ghaut and went far inland, up to the rice-fields, and they were deep in good mud. i remember also a pair of bracelets (glass they were, and troubled me not a little) that i found that evening. yes, glass bracelets; and, if my memory serves me well, a shoe. i should have shaken off both shoes, but i was hungry. i learned better later. yes. and so i fed and rested me; but when i was ready to go to the river again the flood had fallen, and i walked through the mud of the main street. who but i? came out all my people, priests and women and children, and i looked upon them with benevolence. the mud is not a good place to fight in. said a boatman, 'get axes and kill him, for he is the mugger of the ford.' 'not so,' said the brahmin. 'look, he is driving the flood before him! he is the godling of the village.' then they threw many flowers at me, and by happy thought one led a goat across the road." "how good--how very good is goat!" said the jackal. "hairy--too hairy, and when found in the water more than likely to hide a cross-shaped hook. but that goat i accepted, and went down to the ghaut in great honor. later, my fate sent me the boatman who had desired to cut off my tail with an axe. his boat grounded upon an old shoal which you would not remember." "we are not _all_ jackals here," said the adjutant. "was it the shoal made where the stone-boats sank in the year of the great drouth--a long shoal that lasted three floods?" "there were two," said the mugger; "an upper and a lower shoal." "ay, i forgot. a channel divided them, and later dried up again," said the adjutant, who prided himself on his memory. "on the lower shoal my well-wisher's craft grounded. he was sleeping in the bows, and, half awake, leaped over to his waist--no, it was no more than to his knees--to push off. his empty boat went on and touched again below the next reach, as the river ran then. i followed, because i knew men would come out to drag it ashore." "and did they do so?" said the jackal, a little awe-stricken. this was hunting on a scale that impressed him. "there and lower down they did. i went no further, but that gave me three in one day--well-fed _manjis_ (boatmen) all, and, except in the case of the last (then i was careless), never a cry to warn those on the bank." "ah, noble sport! but what cleverness and great judgment it requires!" said the jackal. "not cleverness, child, but only thought. a little thought in life is like salt upon rice, as the boatmen say, and i have thought deeply always. the gavial, my cousin, the fish-eater, has told me how hard it is for him to follow his fish, and how one fish differs from the other, and how he must know them all, both together and apart. i say that is wisdom; but, on the other hand, my cousin, the gavial, lives among his people. _my_ people do not swim in companies, with their mouths out of the water, as rewa does; nor do they constantly rise to the surface of the water, and turn over on their sides, like mohoo and little chapta; nor do they gather in shoals after flood, like batchua and chilwa." "all are very good eating," said the adjutant, clattering his beak. "so my cousin says, and makes a great to-do over hunting them, but they do not climb the banks to escape his sharp nose. _my_ people are otherwise. their life is on the land, in the houses, among the cattle. i must know what they do, and what they are about to do; and, adding the tail to the trunk, as the saying is, i make up the whole elephant. is there a green branch and an iron ring hanging over a doorway? the old mugger knows that a boy has been born in that house, and must some day come down to the ghaut to play. is a maiden to be married? the old mugger knows, for he sees the men carry gifts back and forth; and she, too, comes down to the ghaut to bathe before her wedding, and--he is there. has the river changed its channel, and made new land where there was only sand before? the mugger knows." "now, of what use is that knowledge?" said the jackal. "the river has shifted even in my little life." indian rivers are nearly always moving about in their beds, and will shift, sometimes, as much as two or three miles in a season, drowning the fields on one bank, and spreading good silt on the other. "there is no knowledge so useful," said the mugger, "for new land means new quarrels. the mugger knows. oho! the mugger knows. as soon as the water has drained off, he creeps up the little creeks that men think would not hide a dog, and there he waits. presently comes a farmer saying he will plant cucumbers here, and melons there, in the new land that the river has given him. he feels the good mud with his bare toes. anon comes another, saying he will put onions, and carrots, and sugar-cane in such and such places. they meet as boats adrift meet, and each rolls his eye at the other under the big blue turban. the old mugger sees and hears. each calls the other 'brother,' and they go to mark out the boundaries of the new land. the mugger hurries with them from point to point, shuffling very low through the mud. now they begin to quarrel! now they say hot words! now they pull turbans! now they lift up their _lathis_ (clubs), and, at last, one falls backward into the mud, and the other runs away. when he comes back the dispute is settled, as the iron-bound bamboo of the loser witnesses. yet they are not grateful to the mugger. no, they cry 'murder!' and their families fight with sticks, twenty a side. my people are good people--upland jats--malwais of the bêt. they do not give blows for sport, and, when the fight is done, the old mugger waits far down the river, out of sight of the village, behind the _kikar_-scrub yonder. then come they down, my broad-shouldered jats--eight or nine together under the stars, bearing the dead man upon a bed. they are old men with gray beards, and voices as deep as mine. they light a little fire--ah! how well i know that fire!--and they drink tobacco, and they nod their heads together forward in a ring, or sideways toward the dead man upon the bank. they say the english law will come with a rope for this matter, and that such a man's family will be ashamed, because such a man must be hanged in the great square of the jail. then say the friends of the dead, 'let him hang!' and the talk is all to do over again--once, twice, twenty times in the long night. then says one, at last, 'the fight was a fair fight. let us take blood-money, a little more than is offered by the slayer, and we will say no more about it.' then do they haggle over the blood-money, for the dead was a strong man, leaving many sons. yet before _amratvela_ (sunrise) they put the fire to him a little, as the custom is, and the dead man comes to me, and _he_ says no more about it. aha! my children, the mugger knows--the mugger knows--and my malwah jats are a good people!" "they are too close--too narrow in the hand for my crop," croaked the adjutant. "they waste not the polish on the cow's horn, as the saying is; and, again, who can glean after a malwai?" "ah, i--glean--_them_," said the mugger. "now, in calcutta of the south, in the old days," the adjutant went on, "everything was thrown into the streets, and we picked and chose. those were dainty seasons. but to-day they keep their streets as clean as the outside of an egg, and my people fly away. to be clean is one thing; to dust, sweep, and sprinkle seven times a day wearies the very gods themselves." "there was a down-country jackal had it from a brother, who told me, that in calcutta of the south all the jackals were as fat as otters in the rains," said the jackal, his mouth watering at the bare thought of it. "ah, but the white-faces are there--the english, and they bring dogs from somewhere down the river, in boats--big fat dogs--to keep those same jackals lean," said the adjutant. "they are, then, as hard-hearted as these people? i might have known. neither earth, sky, nor water shows charity to a jackal. i saw the tents of a white-face last season, after the rains, and i also took a new yellow bridle to eat. the white-faces do not dress their leather in the proper way. it made me very sick." "that was better than my case," said the adjutant. "when i was in my third season, a young and a bold bird, i went down to the river where the big boats come in. the boats of the english are thrice as big as this village." "he has been as far as delhi, and says all the people there walk on their heads," muttered the jackal. the mugger opened his left eye, and looked keenly at the adjutant. "it is true," the big bird insisted. "a liar only lies when he hopes to be believed. no one who had not seen those boats _could_ believe this truth." "_that_ is more reasonable," said the mugger. "and then?" "from the insides of this boat they were taking out great pieces of white stuff, which, in a little while, turned to water. much split off, and fell about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put into a house with thick walls. but a boatman, who laughed, took a piece no larger than a small dog, and threw it to me. i--all my people--swallow without reflection, and that piece i swallowed as is our custom. immediately i was afflicted with an excessive cold which, beginning in my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, and deprived me even of speech, while the boatmen laughed at me. never have i felt such cold. i danced in my grief and amazement till i could recover my breath, and then i danced and cried out against the falseness of this world; and the boatmen derided me till they fell down. the chief wonder of the matter, setting aside that marvelous coldness, was that there was nothing at all in my crop when i had finished my lamentings!" the adjutant had done his very best to describe his feelings after swallowing a seven-pound lump of wenham lake ice, off an american ice-ship, in the days before calcutta made her ice by machinery; but as he did not know what ice was, and as the mugger and the jackal knew rather less, the tale missed fire. "anything," said the mugger, shutting his left eye again--"_anything_ is possible that comes out of a boat thrice the size of mugger-ghaut. my village is not a small one." there was a whistle overhead on the bridge, and the delhi mail slid across, all the carriages gleaming with light, and the shadows faithfully following along the river. it clanked away into the dark again; but the mugger and the jackal were so well used to it that they never turned their heads. "is that anything less wonderful than a boat thrice the size of mugger-ghaut?" said the bird, looking up. "i saw that built, child. stone by stone i saw the bridge-piers rise, and when the men fell off (they were wondrous sure-footed for the most part--but _when_ they fell) i was ready. after the first pier was made they never thought to look down the stream for the body to burn. there, again, i saved much trouble. there was nothing strange in the building of the bridge," said the mugger. "but that which goes across, pulling the roofed carts! that is strange," the adjutant repeated. "it is, past any doubt, a new breed of bullock. some day it will not be able to keep its foothold up yonder, and will fall as the men did. the old mugger will then be ready." the jackal looked at the adjutant, and the adjutant looked at the jackal. if there was one thing they were more certain of than another, it was that the engine was everything in the wide world except a bullock. the jackal had watched it time and again from the aloe-hedges by the side of the line, and the adjutant had seen engines since the first locomotive ran in india. but the mugger had only looked up at the thing from below, where the brass dome seemed rather like a bullock's hump. "m--yes, a new kind of bullock," the mugger repeated ponderously, to make himself quite sure in his own mind; and "certainly it is a bullock," said the jackal. "and again it might be--" began the mugger pettishly. "certainly--most certainly," said the jackal, without waiting for the other to finish. "what?" said the mugger angrily, for he could feel that the others knew more than he did. "what might it be? _i_ never finished my words. you said it was a bullock." "it is anything the protector of the poor pleases. i am _his_ servant--not the servant of the thing that crosses the river." "whatever it is, it is white-face work," said the adjutant; "and for my own part, i would not lie out upon a place so near to it as this bar." "you do not know the english as i do," said the mugger. "there was a white-face here when the bridge was built, and he would take a boat in the evenings and shuffle with his feet on the bottom-boards, and whisper: 'is he here? is he there? bring me my gun.' i could hear him before i could see him--each sound that he made--creaking and puffing and rattling his gun, up and down the river. as surely as i had picked up one of his workmen, and thus saved great expense in wood for the burning, so surely would he come down to the ghaut, and shout in a loud voice that he would hunt me, and rid the river of me--the mugger of mugger-ghaut! _me!_ children, i have swum under the bottom of his boat for hour after hour, and heard him fire his gun at logs; and when i was well sure he was wearied, i have risen by his side and snapped my jaws in his face. when the bridge was finished he went away. all the english hunt in that fashion, except when they are hunted." "who hunts the white-faces?" yapped the jackal excitedly. "no one now, but i have hunted them in my time." "i remember a little of that hunting. i was young then," said the adjutant, clattering his beak significantly. "i was well established here. my village was being builded for the third time, as i remember, when my cousin, the gavial, brought me word of rich waters above benares. at first i would not go, for my cousin, who is a fish-eater, does not always know the good from the bad; but i heard my people talking in the evenings, and what they said made me certain." "and what did they say?" the jackal asked. "they said enough to make me, the mugger of mugger-ghaut, leave water and take to my feet. i went by night, using the littlest streams as they served me; but it was the beginning of the hot weather and all streams were low. i crossed dusty roads; i went through tall grass; i climbed hills in the moonlight. even rocks did i climb, children--consider this well. i crossed the tail of sirhind, the waterless, before i could find the set of the little rivers that flow gungaward. i was a month's journey from my own people and the river that i knew. that was very marvelous!" "what food on the way?" said the jackal, who kept his soul in his little stomach, and was not a bit impressed by the mugger's land travels. "that which i could find--_cousin_," said the mugger slowly, dragging each word. now you do not call a man a cousin in india unless you think you can establish some kind of blood-relationship, and as it is only in old fairy-tales that the mugger ever marries a jackal, the jackal knew for what reason he had been suddenly lifted into the mugger's family circle. if they had been alone he would not have cared, but the adjutant's eyes twinkled with mirth at the ugly jest. "assuredly, father, i might have known," said the jackal. a mugger does not care to be called a father of jackals, and the mugger of mugger-ghaut said as much--and a great deal more which there is no use in repeating here. "the protector of the poor has claimed kinship. how can i remember the precise degree? moreover, we eat the same food. he has said it," was the jackal's reply. that made matters rather worse, for what the jackal hinted at was that the mugger must have eaten his food on that land march fresh and fresh every day, instead of keeping it by him till it was in a fit and proper condition, as every self-respecting mugger and most wild beasts do when they can. indeed, one of the worst terms of contempt along the river-bed is "eater of fresh meat." it is nearly as bad as calling a man a cannibal. "that food was eaten thirty seasons ago," said the adjutant quietly. "if we talk for thirty seasons more it will never come back. tell us, now, what happened when the good waters were reached after thy most wonderful land journey. if we listened to the howling of every jackal the business of the town would stop, as the saying is." the mugger must have been grateful for the interruption, because he went on, with a rush: "by the right and left of gunga! when i came there never did i see such waters!" "were they better, then, than the big flood of last season?" said the jackal. "better! that flood was no more than comes every five years--a handful of drowned strangers, some chickens, and a dead bullock in muddy water with cross-currents. but the season i think of, the river was low, smooth, and even, and, as the gavial had warned me, the dead english came down, touching each other. i got my girth in that season--my girth and my depth. from agra, by etawah and the broad waters by allahabad--" "oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the fort at allahabad!" said the adjutant. "they came in there like widgeon to the reeds, and round and round they swung--thus!" he went off into his horrible dance again, while the jackal looked on enviously. he naturally could not remember the terrible year of the mutiny they were talking about. the mugger continued: "yes, by allahabad one lay still in the slack-water and let twenty go by to pick one; and, above all, the english were not cumbered with jewelry and nose-rings and anklets as my women are nowadays. to delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for necklace, as the saying is. all the muggers of all the rivers grew fat then, but it was my fate to be fatter than them all. the news was that the english were being hunted into the rivers, and by the right and left of gunga! we believed it was true. so far as i went south i believed it to be true; and i went down-stream beyond monghyr and the tombs that look over the river." "i know that place," said the adjutant. "since those days monghyr is a lost city. very few live there now." "thereafter i worked up-stream very slowly and lazily, and a little above monghyr there came down a boatful of white-faces--alive! they were, as i remember, women, lying under a cloth spread over sticks, and crying aloud. there was never a gun fired at us the watchers of the fords in those days. all the guns were busy elsewhere. we could hear them day and night inland, coming and going as the wind shifted. i rose up full before the boat, because i had never seen white-faces alive, though i knew them well--otherwise. a naked white child kneeled by the side of the boat, and, stooping over, must needs try to trail his hands in the river. it is a pretty thing to see how a child loves running water. i had fed that day, but there was yet a little unfilled space within me. still, it was for sport and not for food that i rose at the child's hands. they were so clear a mark that i did not even look when i closed; but they were so small that though my jaws rang true--i am sure of that--the child drew them up swiftly, unhurt. they must have passed between tooth and tooth--those small white hands. i should have caught him crosswise at the elbows; but, as i said, it was only for sport and desire to see new things that i rose at all. they cried out one after another in the boat, and presently i rose again to watch them. their boat was too heavy to push over. they were only women, but he who trusts a woman will walk on duckweed in a pool, as the saying is: and by the right and left of gunga, that is truth!" "once a woman gave me some dried skin from a fish," said the jackal. "i had hoped to get her baby, but horse-food is better than the kick of a horse, as the saying is. what did thy woman do?" "she fired at me with a short gun of a kind i have never seen before or since. five times, one after another" (the mugger must have met with an old-fashioned revolver); "and i stayed open-mouthed and gaping, my head in the smoke. never did i see such a thing. five times, as swiftly as i wave my tail--thus!" the jackal, who had been growing more and more interested in the story, had just time to leap back as the long tail swung by like a scythe. "not before the fifth shot," said the mugger, as though he had never dreamed of stunning one of his listeners--"not before the fifth shot did i sink, and i rose in time to hear a boatman telling all those white women that i was most certainly dead. one bullet had gone under a neckplate of mine. i know not if it is there still, for the reason i cannot turn my head. look and see, child. it will show that my tale is true." "i?" said the jackal. "shall an eater of old shoes, a bone-cracker, presume to doubt the word of the envy of the river? may my tail be bitten off by blind puppies if the shadow of such a thought has crossed my humble mind. the protector of the poor has condescended to inform me, his slave, that once in his life he has been wounded by a woman. that is sufficient, and i will tell the tale to all my children, asking for no proof." "over-much civility is sometimes no better than over-much discourtesy, for, as the saying is, one can choke a guest with curds. i do _not_ desire that any children of thine should know that the mugger of mugger-ghaut took his only wound from a woman. they will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miserably as does their father." "it is forgotten long ago! it was never said! there never was a white woman! there was no boat! nothing whatever happened at all." the jackal waved his brush to show how completely everything was wiped out of his memory, and sat down with an air. "indeed, very many things happened," said the mugger, beaten in his second attempt that night to get the better of his friend. (neither bore malice, however. eat and be eaten was fair law along the river, and the jackal came in for his share of plunder when the mugger had finished a meal.) "i left that boat and went up-stream, and, when i had reached arrah and the backwaters behind it, there were no more dead english. the river was empty for a while. then came one or two dead, in red coats, not english, but of one kind all--hindus and purbeeahs--then five and six abreast, and at last, from arrah to the north beyond agra, it was as though whole villages had walked into the water. they came out of little creeks one after another, as the logs come down in the rains. when the river rose they rose also in companies from the shoals they had rested upon; and the falling flood dragged them with it across the fields and through the jungle by the long hair. all night, too, going north, i heard the guns, and by day the shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise which a heavy cart-wheel makes on sand under water; and every ripple brought more dead. at last even i was afraid, for i said: 'if this thing happen to men how shall the mugger of mugger-ghaut escape?' there were boats, too, that came up behind me without sails, burning continually, as the cotton-boats sometimes burn, but never sinking." "ah!" said the adjutant. "boats like those come to calcutta of the south. they are tall and black, they beat up the water behind them with a tail, and they--" "are thrice as big as my village. _my_ boats were low and white; they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. they made me very afraid, and i left water and went back to this my river, hiding by day and walking by night, when i could not find little streams to help me. i came to my village again, but i did not hope to see any of my people there. yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their fields, as quietly as their own cattle." "was there still good food in the river?" said the jackal. "more than i had any desire for. even i--and i do not eat mud--even i was tired, and, as i remember, a little frightened of this constant coming down of the silent ones. i heard my people say in my village that all the english were dead; but those that came, face-down, with the current were _not_ english, as my people saw. then my people said that it was best to say nothing at all, but to pay the tax and plow the land. after a long time the river cleared, and those that came down it had been clearly drowned by the floods, as i could well see; and, though it was not so easy then to get food, i was heartily glad of it. a little killing here and there is no bad thing--but even the mugger is sometimes satisfied, as the saying is." "marvelous! most truly marvelous!" said the jackal. "i am become fat through merely hearing about so much good eating. and afterward what, if it be permitted to ask, did the protector of the poor do?" "i said to myself--and by the right and left of gunga! i locked my jaws on that vow--i said i would never go roving any more. so i lived by the ghaut, very close to my own people, and i watched over them year after year; and they loved me so much that they threw marigold wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. yes, and my fate has been very kind to me, and the river is good enough to respect my poor and infirm presence; only--" "no one is all happy from his beak to his tail," said the adjutant sympathetically. "what does the mugger of mugger-ghaut need more?" "that little white child which i did not get," said the mugger, with a deep sigh. "he was very small, but i have not forgotten. i am old now, but before i die it is my desire to try one new thing. it is true they are a heavy-footed, noisy, and foolish people, and the sport would be small, but i remember the old days above benares, and, if the child lives, he will remember still. it may be he goes up and down the bank of some river, telling how he once passed his hands between the teeth of the mugger of mugger-ghaut and lived to make a tale of it. my fate has been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my dreams--the thought of the little white child in the bows of that boat." he yawned, and closed his jaws. "and now i will rest and think. keep silent, my children, and respect the aged." he turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand-bar, while the jackal drew back with the adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on the end nearest the railway bridge. "that was a pleasant and profitable life," he grinned, looking up inquiringly at the bird who towered above him. "and not once, mark you, did he think fit to tell me where a morsel might have been left along the banks. yet i have told _him_ a hundred times of good things wallowing down-stream. how true is the saying, 'all the world forgets the jackal and the barber when the news has been told!' now he is going to sleep! _arrh!_" "how can a jackal hunt with a mugger?" said the adjutant coolly. "big thief and little thief; it is easy to say who gets the pickings." the jackal turned, whining impatiently, and was going to curl himself up under the tree trunk, when suddenly he cowered, and looked up through the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head. "what now?" said the adjutant, opening his wings uneasily. "wait till we see. the wind blows from us to them, but they are not looking for us--those two men." "men, is it? my office protects me. all india knows i am holy." the adjutant, being a first-class scavenger, is allowed to go where he pleases, and so this one never flinched. "i am not worth a blow from anything greater than an old shoe," said the jackal, and listened again. "hark to that footfall!" he went on. "that was no country leather, but the shod foot of a white-face. listen again! iron hits iron up there! it is a gun! friend, those heavy-footed, foolish english are coming to speak with the mugger." "warn him, then. he was called protector of the poor by some one not unlike a starving jackal but a little time ago." "let my cousin protect his own hide. he has told me again and again there is nothing to fear from the white-faces. they must be white-faces. not a villager of mugger-ghaut would dare to come after him. see, i said it was a gun! now, with good luck, we shall feed before daylight. he cannot hear well out of water, and--this time it is not a woman!" a shiny barrel glittered for a minute in the moonlight on the girders. the mugger was lying on the sand-bar as still as his own shadow, his fore feet spread out a little, his head dropped between them, snoring like a--mugger. a voice on the bridge whispered: "it's an odd shot--straight down almost--but as safe as houses. better try behind the neck. golly! what a brute! the villagers will be wild if he's shot, though. he's the _deota_ (godling) of these parts." "don't care a rap," another voice answered; "he took about fifteen of my best coolies while the bridge was building, and it's time he was put a stop to. i've been after him in a boat for weeks. stand by with the martini as soon as i've given him both barrels of this." "mind the kick, then. a double four-bore's no joke." "that's for him to decide. here goes!" there was a roar like the sound of a small cannon (the biggest sort of elephant-rifle is not very different from some artillery), and a double streak of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a martini, whose long bullet makes nothing of a crocodile's plates. but the explosive bullets did the work. one of them struck just behind the mugger's neck, a hand's breadth to the left of the backbone, while the other burst a little lower down, at the beginning of the tail. in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a mortally wounded crocodile can scramble to deep water and get away; but the mugger of mugger-ghaut was literally broken into three pieces. he hardly moved his head before the life went out of him, and he lay as flat as the jackal. "thunder and lightning! lightning and thunder!" said that miserable little beast. "has the thing that pulls the covered carts over the bridge tumbled at last?" "it is no more than a gun," said the adjutant, though his very tail-feathers quivered. "nothing more than a gun. he is certainly dead. here come the white-faces." the two englishmen had hurried down from the bridge and across to the sand-bar, where they stood admiring the length of the mugger. then a native with an axe cut off the big head, and four men dragged it across the spit. "the last time that i had my hand in a mugger's mouth," said one of the englishmen, stooping down (he was the man who had built the bridge), "it was when i was about five years old--coming down the river by boat to monghyr. i was a mutiny baby, as they call it. poor mother was in the boat, too, and she often told me how she fired dad's old pistol at the beast's head." "well, you've certainly had your revenge on the chief of the clan--even if the gun has made your nose bleed. hi, you boatman! haul that head up the bank, and we'll boil it for the skull. the skin's too knocked about to keep. come along to bed now. this was worth sitting up all night for, wasn't it?" * * * * * curiously enough, the jackal and the adjutant made the very same remark not three minutes after the men had left. [illustration] a ripple song once a ripple came to land in the golden sunset burning-- lapped against a maiden's hand, by the ford returning. _dainty foot and gentle breast-- here, across, be glad and rest. "maiden, wait," the ripple saith; "wait awhile, for i am death!"_ "where my lover calls i go-- shame it were to treat him coldly-- 'twas a fish that circled so, turning over boldly." _dainty foot and tender heart, wait the loaded ferry-cart. "wait, ah, wait!" the ripple saith; "maiden, wait, for i am death!"_ "when my lover calls i haste-- dame disdain was never wedded!" ripple-ripple round her waist, clear the current eddied. _foolish heart and faithful hand, little feet that touched no land. far away the ripple sped, ripple--ripple--running red!_ the king's ankus these are the four that are never content, that have never been filled since the dews began-- jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of man. --_jungle saying._ [illustration] the king's ankus kaa, the big rock python, had changed his skin for perhaps the two hundredth time since his birth; and mowgli, who never forgot that he owed his life to kaa for a night's work at cold lairs, which you may perhaps remember, went to congratulate him. skin-changing always makes a snake moody and depressed till the new skin begins to shine and look beautiful. kaa never made fun of mowgli any more, but accepted him, as the other jungle people did, for the master of the jungle, and brought him all the news that a python of his size would naturally hear. what kaa did not know about the middle jungle, as they call it,--the life that runs close to the earth or under it, the boulder, burrow, and the tree-bole life,--might have been written upon the smallest of his scales. that afternoon mowgli was sitting in the circle of kaa's great coils, fingering the flaked and broken old skin that lay all looped and twisted among the rocks just as kaa had left it. kaa had very courteously packed himself under mowgli's broad, bare shoulders, so that the boy was really resting in a living arm-chair. "even to the scales of the eyes it is perfect," said mowgli, under his breath, playing with the old skin. "strange to see the covering of one's own head at one's own feet!" "aye, but i lack feet," said kaa; "and since this is the custom of all my people, i do not find it strange. does thy skin never feel old and harsh?" "then go i and wash, flathead; but, it is true, in the great heats i have wished i could slough my skin without pain, and run skinless." "i wash, and _also_ i take off my skin. how looks the new coat?" mowgli ran his hand down the diagonal checkerings of the immense back. "the turtle is harder-backed, but not so gay," he said judgmatically. "the frog, my name-bearer, is more gay, but not so hard. it is very beautiful to see--like the mottling in the mouth of a lily." "it needs water. a new skin never comes to full color before the first bath. let us go bathe." "i will carry thee," said mowgli; and he stooped down, laughing, to lift the middle section of kaa's great body, just where the barrel was thickest. a man might just as well have tried to heave up a two-foot water-main; and kaa lay still, puffing with quiet amusement. then the regular evening game began--the boy in the flush of his great strength, and the python in his sumptuous new skin, standing up one against the other for a wrestling-match--a trial of eye and strength. of course, kaa could have crushed a dozen mowglis if he had let himself go; but he played carefully, and never loosed one tenth of his power. ever since mowgli was strong enough to endure a little rough handling, kaa had taught him this game, and it suppled his limbs as nothing else could. sometimes mowgli would stand lapped almost to his throat in kaa's shifting coils, striving to get one arm free and catch him by the throat. then kaa would give way limply, and mowgli, with both quick-moving feet, would try to cramp the purchase of that huge tail as it flung backward feeling for a rock or a stump. they would rock to and fro, head to head, each waiting for his chance, till the beautiful, statue-like group melted in a whirl of black-and-yellow coils and struggling legs and arms, to rise up again and again. "now! now! now!" said kaa, making feints with his head that even mowgli's quick hand could not turn aside. "look! i touch thee here, little brother! here, and here! are thy hands numb? here again!" the game always ended in one way--with a straight, driving blow of the head that knocked the boy over and over. mowgli could never learn the guard for that lightning lunge, and, as kaa said, there was not the least use in trying. "good hunting!" kaa grunted at last; and mowgli, as usual, was shot away half a dozen yards, gasping and laughing. he rose with his fingers full of grass, and followed kaa to the wise snake's pet bathing-place--a deep, pitchy-black pool surrounded with rocks, and made interesting by sunken tree-stumps. the boy slipped in, jungle-fashion, without a sound, and dived across; rose, too, without a sound, and turned on his back, his arms behind his head, watching the moon rising above the rocks, and breaking up her reflection in the water with his toes. kaa's diamond-shaped head cut the pool like a razor, and came out to rest on mowgli's shoulder. they lay still, soaking luxuriously in the cool water. "it is _very_ good," said mowgli at last, sleepily. "now, in the man-pack, at this hour, as i remember, they laid them down upon hard pieces of wood in the inside of a mud-trap, and, having carefully shut out all the clean winds, drew foul cloth over their heavy heads, and made evil songs through their noses. it is better in the jungle." a hurrying cobra slipped down over a rock and drank, gave them "good hunting!" and went away. "sssh!" said kaa, as though he had suddenly remembered something. "so the jungle gives thee all that thou hast ever desired, little brother?" "not all," said mowgli, laughing; "else there would be a new and strong shere khan to kill once a moon. now, i could kill with my own hands, asking no help of buffaloes. and also i have wished the sun to shine in the middle of the rains, and the rains to cover the sun in the deep of summer; and also i have never gone empty but i wished that i had killed a goat; and also i have never killed a goat but i wished it had been buck; nor buck but i wished it had been nilghai. but thus do we feel, all of us." "thou hast no other desire?" the big snake demanded. "what more can i wish? i have the jungle, and the favor of the jungle! is there more anywhere between sunrise and sunset?" "now, the cobra said--" kaa began. "what cobra? he that went away just now said nothing. he was hunting." "it was another." "hast thou many dealings with the poison people? i give them their own path. they carry death in the fore-tooth, and that is not good--for they are so small. but what hood is this thou hast spoken with?" kaa rolled slowly in the water like a steamer in a beam sea. "three or four moons since," said he, "i hunted in cold lairs, which place thou hast not forgotten. and the thing i hunted fled shrieking past the tanks and to that house whose side i once broke for thy sake, and ran into the ground." "but the people of cold lairs do not live in burrows." mowgli knew that kaa was talking of the monkey people. "this thing was not living, but seeking to live," kaa replied, with a quiver of his tongue. "he ran into a burrow that led very far. i followed, and having killed, i slept. when i waked i went forward." "under the earth?" "even so, coming at last upon a white hood [a white cobra], who spoke of things beyond my knowledge, and showed me many things i had never before seen." "new game? was it good hunting?" mowgli turned quickly on his side. "it was no game, and would have broken all my teeth; but the white hood said that a man--he spoke as one that knew the breed--that a man would give the breath under his ribs for only the sight of those things." "we will look," said mowgli. "i now remember that i was once a man." "slowly--slowly. it was haste killed the yellow snake that ate the sun. we two spoke together under the earth, and i spoke of thee, naming thee as a man. said the white hood (and he is indeed as old as the jungle): 'it is long since i have seen a man. let him come, and he shall see all these things, for the least of which very many men would die.'" "that _must_ be new game. and yet the poison people do not tell us when game is afoot. they are an unfriendly folk." "it is _not_ game. it is--it is--i cannot say what it is." "we will go there. i have never seen a white hood, and i wish to see the other things. did he kill them?" "they are all dead things. he says he is the keeper of them all." "ah! as a wolf stands above meat he has taken to his own lair. let us go." mowgli swam to bank, rolled on the grass to dry himself, and the two set off for cold lairs, the deserted city of which you may have heard. mowgli was not the least afraid of the monkey people in those days, but the monkey people had the liveliest horror of mowgli. their tribes, however, were raiding in the jungle, and so cold lairs stood empty and silent in the moonlight. kaa led up to the ruins of the queen's pavilion that stood on the terrace, slipped over the rubbish, and dived down the half-choked staircase that went underground from the center of the pavilion. mowgli gave the snake-call--"we be of one blood, ye and i,"--and followed on his hands and knees. they crawled a long distance down a sloping passage that turned and twisted several times, and at last came to where the root of some great tree, growing thirty feet overhead, had forced out a solid stone in the wall. they crept through the gap, and found themselves in a large vault, whose domed roof had been also broken away by tree-roots so that a few streaks of light dropped down into the darkness. "a safe lair," said mowgli, rising to his firm feet, "but over far to visit daily. and now what do we see?" "am i nothing?" said a voice in the middle of the vault; and mowgli saw something white move till, little by little, there stood up the hugest cobra he had ever set eyes on--a creature nearly eight feet long, and bleached by being in darkness to an old ivory-white. even the spectacle-marks of his spread hood had faded to faint yellow. his eyes were as red as rubies, and altogether he was most wonderful. "good hunting!" said mowgli, who carried his manners with his knife, and that never left him. "what of my city?" said the white cobra, without answering the greeting. "what of the great, the walled city--the city of a hundred elephants and twenty thousand horses, and cattle past counting--the city of the king of twenty kings? i grow deaf here, and it is long since i heard their war-gongs." "the jungle is above our heads," said mowgli. "i know only hathi and his sons among elephants. bagheera has slain all the horses in one village, and--what is a king?" "i told thee," said kaa softly to the cobra--"i told thee, four moons ago, that thy city was not." "the city--the great city of the forest whose gates are guarded by the king's towers--can never pass. they builded it before my father's father came from the egg, and it shall endure when my son's sons are as white as i! salomdhi, son of chandrabija, son of viyeja, son of yegasuri, made it in the days of bappa rawal. whose cattle are _ye_?" "it is a lost trail," said mowgli, turning to kaa. "i know not his talk." "nor i. he is very old. father of cobras, there is only the jungle here, as it has been since the beginning." "then who is _he_," said the white cobra, "sitting down before me, unafraid, knowing not the name of the king, talking our talk through a man's lips? who is he with the knife and the snake's tongue?" "mowgli they call me," was the answer. "i am of the jungle. the wolves are my people, and kaa here is my brother. father of cobras, who art thou?" "i am the warden of the king's treasure. kurrun raja builded the stone above me, in the days when my skin was dark, that i might teach death to those who came to steal. then they let down the treasure through the stone, and i heard the song of the brahmins my masters." "umm!" said mowgli to himself. "i have dealt with one brahmin already, in the man-pack, and--i know what i know. evil comes here in a little." "five times since i came here has the stone been lifted, but always to let down more, and never to take away. there are no riches like these riches--the treasures of a hundred kings. but it is long and long since the stone was last moved, and i think that my city has forgotten." "there is no city. look up. yonder are roots of the great trees tearing the stones apart. trees and men do not grow together," kaa insisted. "twice and thrice have men found their way here," the white cobra answered savagely; "but they never spoke till i came upon them groping in the dark, and then they cried only a little time. but ye come with lies, man and snake both, and would have me believe the city is not, and that my wardship ends. little do men change in the years. but _i_ change never! till the stone is lifted, and the brahmins come down singing the songs that i know, and feed me with warm milk, and take me to the light again, i--i--_i_, and no other, am the warden of the king's treasure! the city is dead, ye say, and here are the roots of the trees? stoop down, then, and take what ye will. earth has no treasure like to these. man with the snake's tongue, if thou canst go alive by the way that thou hast entered at, the lesser kings will be thy servants!" "again the trail is lost," said mowgli, coolly. "can any jackal have burrowed so deep and bitten this great white hood? he is surely mad. father of cobras, i see nothing here to take away." "by the gods of the sun and moon, it is the madness of death upon the boy!" hissed the cobra. "before thine eyes close i will allow thee this favor. look thou, and see what man has never seen before!" "they do not well in the jungle who speak to mowgli of favors," said the boy, between his teeth; "but the dark changes all, as i know. i will look, if that please thee." he stared with puckered-up eyes round the vault, and then lifted up from the floor a handful of something that glittered. "oho!" said he, "this is like the stuff they play with in the man-pack: only this is yellow and the other was brown." he let the gold pieces fall, and moved forward. the floor of the vault was buried some five or six feet deep in coined gold and silver that had burst from the sacks it had been originally stored in, and, in the long years, the metal had packed and settled as sand packs at low tide. on it and in it, and rising through it, as wrecks lift through the sand, were jeweled elephant-howdahs of embossed silver, studded with plates of hammered gold, and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises. there were palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced emeralds that quivered on the branches; there were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with jeweled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon's-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that never see the light of day; there were jade cups and bracelets; there were incense-burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and eye-powder, all in embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets, head-bands, finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were belts, seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from which the wood had fallen away in powder, showing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals, cat's-eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and garnets within. the white cobra was right. no mere money would begin to pay the value of this treasure, the sifted pickings of centuries of war, plunder, trade, and taxation. the coins alone were priceless, leaving out of count all the precious stones; and the dead weight of the gold and silver alone might be two or three hundred tons. every native ruler in india to-day, however poor, has a hoard to which he is always adding; and though, once in a long while, some enlightened prince may send off forty or fifty bullock-cart loads of silver to be exchanged for government securities, the bulk of them keep their treasure and the knowledge of it very closely to themselves. [illustration] but mowgli naturally did not understand what these things meant. the knives interested him a little, but they did not balance so well as his own, and so he dropped them. at last he found something really fascinating laid on the front of a howdah half buried in the coins. it was a three-foot ankus, or elephant-goad--something like a small boat-hook. the top was one round shining ruby, and twelve inches of the handle below it were studded with rough turquoises close together, giving a most satisfactory grip. below them was a rim of jade with a flower-pattern running round it--only the leaves were emeralds, and the blossoms were rubies sunk in the cool, green stone. the rest of the handle was a shaft of pure ivory, while the point--the spike and hook--was gold-inlaid steel with pictures of elephant-catching; and the pictures attracted mowgli, who saw that they had something to do with his friend hathi the silent. the white cobra had been following him closely. "is this not worth dying to behold?" he said. "have i not done thee a great favor?" "i do not understand," said mowgli. "the things are hard and cold, and by no means good to eat. but this"--he lifted the ankus--"i desire to take away, that i may see it in the sun. thou sayest they are all thine? wilt thou give it to me, and i will bring thee frogs to eat?" the white cobra fairly shook with evil delight. "assuredly i will give it," he said. "all that is here i will give thee--till thou goest away." "but i go now. this place is dark and cold, and i wish to take the thorn-pointed thing to the jungle." "look by thy foot! what is that there?" mowgli picked up something white and smooth. "it is the bone of a man's head," he said quietly. "and here are two more." "they came to take the treasure away many years ago. i spoke to them in the dark, and they lay still." "but what do i need of this that is called treasure? if thou wilt give me the ankus to take away, it is good hunting. if not, it is good hunting none the less. i do not fight with the poison people, and i was also taught the master-word of thy tribe." "there is but one master-word here. it is mine!" kaa flung himself forward with blazing eyes. "who bade me bring the man?" he hissed. "i surely," the old cobra lisped. "it is long since i have seen man, and this man speaks our tongue." "but there was no talk of killing. how can i go to the jungle and say that i have led him to his death?" said kaa. "i talk not of killing till the time. and as to thy going or not going, there is the hole in the wall. peace, now, thou fat monkey-killer! i have but to touch thy neck, and the jungle will know thee no longer. never man came here that went away with the breath under his ribs. i am the warden of the treasure of the king's city!" "but, thou white worm of the dark, i tell thee there is neither king nor city! the jungle is all about us!" cried kaa. "there is still the treasure. but this can be done. wait a while, kaa of the rocks, and see the boy run. there is room for great sport here. life is good. run to and fro a while, and make sport, boy!" mowgli put his hand on kaa's head quietly. "the white thing has dealt with men of the man-pack until now. he does not know me," he whispered. "he has asked for this hunting. let him have it." mowgli had been standing with the ankus held point down. he flung it from him quickly, and it dropped crossways just behind the great snake's hood, pinning him to the floor. in a flash, kaa's weight was upon the writhing body, paralyzing it from hood to tail. the red eyes burned, and the six spare inches of the head struck furiously right and left. "kill!" said kaa, as mowgli's hand went to his knife. "no," he said, as he drew the blade; "i will never kill again save for food. but look you, kaa!" he caught the snake behind the hood, forced the mouth open with the blade of the knife, and showed the terrible poison-fangs of the upper jaw lying black and withered in the gum. the white cobra had outlived his poison, as a snake will. "_thuu_" ("it is dried up"),[ ] said mowgli; and motioning kaa away, he picked up the ankus, setting the white cobra free. [ ] literally, a rotted out tree-stump. "the king's treasure needs a new warden," he said gravely. "thuu, thou hast not done well. run to and fro and make sport, thuu!" "i am ashamed. kill me!" hissed the white cobra. "there has been too much talk of killing. we will go now. i take the thorn-pointed thing, thuu, because i have fought and worsted thee." "see, then, that the thing does not kill thee at last. it is death! remember, it is death! there is enough in that thing to kill the men of all my city. not long wilt thou hold it, jungle man, nor he who takes it from thee. they will kill, and kill, and kill for its sake! my strength is dried up, but the ankus will do my work. it is death! it is death! it is death!" mowgli crawled out through the hole into the passage again, and the last that he saw was the white cobra striking furiously with his harmless fangs at the stolid golden faces of the gods that lay on the floor, and hissing, "it is death!" they were glad to get to the light of day once more; and when they were back in their own jungle and mowgli made the ankus glitter in the morning light, he was almost as pleased as though he had found a bunch of new flowers to stick in his hair. "this is brighter than bagheera's eyes," he said delightedly, as he twirled the ruby. "i will show it to him; but what did the thuu mean when he talked of death?" "i cannot say. i am sorrowful to my tail's tail that he felt not thy knife. there is always evil at cold lairs--above ground or below. but now i am hungry. dost thou hunt with me this dawn?" said kaa. "no; bagheera must see this thing. good hunting!" mowgli danced off, flourishing the great ankus, and stopping from time to time to admire it, till he came to that part of the jungle bagheera chiefly used, and found him drinking after a heavy kill. mowgli told him all his adventures from beginning to end, and bagheera sniffed at the ankus between whiles. when mowgli came to the white cobra's last words, the panther purred approvingly. "then the white hood spoke the thing which is?" mowgli asked quickly. "i was born in the king's cages at oodeypore, and it is in my stomach that i know some little of man. very many men would kill thrice in a night for the sake of that one big red stone alone." "but the stone makes it heavy to the hand. my little bright knife is better; and--see! the red stone is not good to eat. then _why_ would they kill?" "mowgli, go thou and sleep. thou hast lived among men, and--" "i remember. men kill because they are not hunting;--for idleness and pleasure. wake again, bagheera. for what use was this thorn-pointed thing made?" bagheera half opened his eyes--he was very sleepy--with a malicious twinkle. "it was made by men to thrust into the head of the sons of hathi, so that the blood should pour out. i have seen the like in the street of oodeypore, before our cages. that thing has tasted the blood of many such as hathi." "but why do they thrust into the heads of elephants?" "to teach them man's law. having neither claws nor teeth, men make these things--and worse." "always more blood when i come near, even to the things the man-pack have made," said mowgli, disgustedly. he was getting a little tired of the weight of the ankus. "if i had known this, i would not have taken it. first it was messua's blood on the thongs, and now it is hathi's. i will use it no more. look!" the ankus flew sparkling, and buried itself point down thirty yards away, between the trees. "so my hands are clean of death," said mowgli, rubbing his palms on the fresh, moist earth. "the thuu said death would follow me. he is old and white and mad." "white or black, or death or life, _i_ am going to sleep, little brother. i cannot hunt all night and howl all day, as do some folk." bagheera went off to a hunting-lair that he knew, about two miles off. mowgli made an easy way for himself up a convenient tree, knotted three or four creepers together, and in less time than it takes to tell was swinging in a hammock fifty feet above ground. though he had no positive objection to strong daylight, mowgli followed the custom of his friends, and used it as little as he could. when he waked among the very loud-voiced peoples that live in the trees, it was twilight once more, and he had been dreaming of the beautiful pebbles he had thrown away. "at least i will look at the thing again," he said, and slid down a creeper to the earth; but bagheera was before him. mowgli could hear him snuffing in the half light. "where is the thorn-pointed thing?" cried mowgli. "a man has taken it. here is the trail." "now we shall see whether the thuu spoke truth. if the pointed thing is death, that man will die. let us follow." "kill first," said bagheera. "an empty stomach makes a careless eye. men go very slowly, and the jungle is wet enough to hold the lightest mark." they killed as soon as they could, but it was nearly three hours before they finished their meat and drink and buckled down to the trail. the jungle people know that nothing makes up for being hurried over your meals. "think you the pointed thing will turn in the man's hand and kill him?" mowgli asked. "the thuu said it was death." "we shall see when we find," said bagheera, trotting with his head low. "it is single-foot" (he meant that there was only one man), "and the weight of the thing has pressed his heel far into the ground." "hai! this is as clear as summer lightning," mowgli answered; and they fell into the quick, choppy trail-trot in and out through the checkers of the moonlight, following the marks of those two bare feet. "now he runs swiftly," said mowgli. "the toes are spread apart." they went on over some wet ground. "now why does he turn aside here?" "wait!" said bagheera, and flung himself forward with one superb bound as far as ever he could. the first thing to do when a trail ceases to explain itself is to cast forward without leaving your own confusing foot-marks on the ground. bagheera turned as he landed, and faced mowgli, crying, "here comes another trail to meet him. it is a smaller foot, this second trail, and the toes turn inward." then mowgli ran up and looked. "it is the foot of a gond hunter," he said. "look! here he dragged his bow on the grass. that is why the first trail turned aside so quickly. big foot hid from little foot." "that is true," said bagheera. "now, lest by crossing each other's tracks we foul the signs, let each take one trail. i am big foot, little brother, and thou art little foot, the gond." bagheera leaped back to the original trail, leaving mowgli stooping above the curious narrow track of the wild little man of the woods. "now," said bagheera, moving step by step along the chain of footprints, "i, big foot, turn aside here. now i hide me behind a rock and stand still, not daring to shift my feet. cry thy trail, little brother." "now, i, little foot, come to the rock," said mowgli, running up his trail. "now, i sit down under the rock, leaning upon my right hand, and resting my bow between my toes. i wait long, for the mark of my feet is deep here." "i also," said bagheera, hidden behind the rock. "i wait, resting the end of the thorn-pointed thing upon a stone. it slips, for here is a scratch upon the stone. cry thy trail, little brother." "one, two twigs and a big branch are broken here," said mowgli, in an undertone. "now, how shall i cry _that_? ah! it is plain now. i, little foot, go away making noises and tramplings so that big foot may hear me." he moved away from the rock pace by pace among the trees, his voice rising in the distance as he approached a little cascade. "i--go--far--away--to--where--the--noise--of--falling--water--covers-- my--noise; and--here--i--wait. cry thy trail, bagheera, big foot!" the panther had been casting in every direction to see how big foot's trail led away from behind the rock. then he gave tongue: "i come from behind the rock upon my knees, dragging the thorn-pointed thing. seeing no one, i run. i, big foot, run swiftly. the trail is clear. let each follow his own. i run!" bagheera swept on along the clearly marked trail, and mowgli followed the steps of the gond. for some time there was silence in the jungle. "where art thou, little foot?" cried bagheera. mowgli's voice answered him not fifty yards to the right. "um!" said the panther, with a deep cough. "the two run side by side, drawing nearer!" they raced on another half mile, always keeping about the same distance, till mowgli, whose head was not so close to the ground as bagheera's, cried: "they have met. good hunting--look! here stood little foot, with his knee on a rock--and yonder is big foot indeed!" not ten yards in front of them, stretched across a pile of broken rocks, lay the body of a villager of the district, a long, small-feathered gond arrow through his back and breast. "was the thuu so old and so mad, little brother?" said bagheera gently. "here is one death, at least." "follow on. but where is the drinker of elephant's blood--the red-eyed thorn?" "little foot has it--perhaps. it is single-foot again now." the single trail of a light man who had been running quickly and bearing a burden on his left shoulder, held on round a long, low spur of dried grass, where each footfall seemed, to the sharp eyes of the trackers, marked in hot iron. neither spoke till the trail ran up to the ashes of a camp-fire hidden in a ravine. "again!" said bagheera, checking as though he had been turned into stone. the body of a little wizened gond lay with its feet in the ashes, and bagheera looked inquiringly at mowgli. "that was done with a bamboo," said the boy, after one glance. "i have used such a thing among the buffaloes when i served in the man-pack. the father of cobras--i am sorrowful that i made a jest of him--knew the breed well, as i might have known. said i not that men kill for idleness?" "indeed, they killed for the sake of the red and blue stones," bagheera answered. "remember, i was in the king's cages at oodeypore." "one, two, three, four tracks," said mowgli, stooping over the ashes. "four tracks of men with shod feet. they do not go so quickly as gonds. now, what evil had the little woodman done to them? see, they talked together, all five, standing up, before they killed him. bagheera, let us go back. my stomach is heavy in me, and yet it heaves up and down like an oriole's nest at the end of a branch." "it is not good hunting to leave game afoot. follow!" said the panther. "those eight shod feet have not gone far." no more was said for fully an hour, as they worked up the broad trail of the four men with shod feet. it was clear, hot daylight now, and bagheera said, "i smell smoke." "men are always more ready to eat than to run," mowgli answered, trotting in and out between the low scrub bushes of the new jungle they were exploring. bagheera, a little to his left, made an indescribable noise in his throat. "here is one that has done with feeding," said he. a tumbled bundle of gay-colored clothes lay under a bush, and round it was some spilt flour. "that was done by the bamboo again," said mowgli. "see! that white dust is what men eat. they have taken the kill from this one,--he carried their food,--and given him for a kill to chil, the kite." "it is the third," said bagheera. "i will go with new, big frogs to the father of cobras, and feed him fat," said mowgli to himself. "the drinker of elephant's blood is death himself--but still i do not understand!" "follow!" said bagheera. they had not gone half a mile further when they heard ko, the crow, singing the death-song in the top of a tamarisk under whose shade three men were lying. a half-dead fire smoked in the center of the circle, under an iron plate which held a blackened and burned cake of unleavened bread. close to the fire, and blazing in the sunshine, lay the ruby-and-turquoise ankus. "the thing works quickly; all ends here," said bagheera. "how did _these_ die, mowgli? there is no mark on any." a jungle-dweller gets to learn by experience as much as many doctors know of poisonous plants and berries. mowgli sniffed the smoke that came up from the fire, broke off a morsel of the blackened bread, tasted it, and spat it out again. "apple of death," he coughed. "the first must have made it ready in the food for _these_, who killed him, having first killed the gond." "good hunting, indeed! the kills follow close," said bagheera. "apple of death" is what the jungle call thorn-apple or dhatura, the readiest poison in all india. "what now?" said the panther. "must thou and i kill each other for yonder red-eyed slayer?" "can it speak?" said mowgli, in a whisper. "did i do it a wrong when i threw it away? between us two it can do no wrong, for we do not desire what men desire. if it be left here, it will assuredly continue to kill men one after another as fast as nuts fall in a high wind. i have no love to men, but even i would not have them die six in a night." "what matter? they are only men. they killed one another and were well pleased," said bagheera. "that first little woodman hunted well." "they are cubs none the less; and a cub will drown himself to bite the moon's light on the water. the fault was mine," said mowgli, who spoke as though he knew all about everything. "i will never again bring into the jungle strange things--not though they be as beautiful as flowers. this"--he handled the ankus gingerly--"goes back to the father of cobras. but first we must sleep, and we cannot sleep near these sleepers. also we must bury _him_, lest he run away and kill another six. dig me a hole under that tree." "but, little brother," said bagheera, moving off to the spot, "i tell thee it is no fault of the blood-drinker. the trouble is with men." "all one," said mowgli. "dig the hole deep. when we wake i will take him up and carry him back." * * * * * two nights later, as the white cobra sat mourning in the darkness of the vault, ashamed, and robbed, and alone, the turquoise ankus whirled through the hole in the wall, and clashed on the floor of golden coins. "father of cobras," said mowgli (he was careful to keep the other side of the wall), "get thee a young and ripe one of thine own people to help thee guard the king's treasure so that no man may come away alive any more." "ah-ha! it returns, then. i said the thing was death. how comes it that thou art still alive?" the old cobra mumbled, twining lovingly round the ankus-haft. "by the bull that bought me, i do not know! that thing has killed six times in a night. let him go out no more." [illustration] the song of the little hunter ere mor the peacock flutters, ere the monkey people cry, ere chil the kite swoops down a furlong sheer, through the jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh-- he is fear, o little hunter, he is fear! very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade, and the whisper spreads and widens far and near; and the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now-- he is fear, o little hunter, he is fear! ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light, when the downward-dipping trails are dank and drear, comes a breathing hard behind thee--_snuffle-snuffle_ through the night-- it is fear, o little hunter, it is fear! on thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go; in the empty, mocking thicket plunge the spear; but thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left thy cheek-- it is fear, o little hunter, it is fear! when the heat-cloud sucks the tempest, when the slivered pine-trees fall, when the blinding, blaring rain-squalls lash and veer; through the war-gongs of the thunder rings a voice more loud than all-- it is fear, o little hunter, it is fear! now the spates are banked and deep; now the footless boulders leap-- now the lightning shows each littlest leaf-rib clear-- but thy throat is shut and dried, and thy heart against thy side hammers: fear, o little hunter--this is fear! [illustration] quiquern the people of the eastern ice, they are melting like the snow-- they beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go. the people of the western ice, they learn to steal and fight; they sell their furs to the trading-post; they sell their souls to the white. the people of the southern ice, they trade with the whaler's crew; their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few. but the people of the elder ice, beyond the white man's ken-- their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the men! --_translation._ [illustration] quiquern "he has opened his eyes. look!" "put him in the skin again. he will be a strong dog. on the fourth month we will name him." "for whom?" said amoraq. kadlu's eye rolled round the skin-lined snow-house till it fell on fourteen-year-old kotuko sitting on the sleeping-bench, making a button out of walrus ivory. "name him for me," said kotuko, with a grin. "i shall need him one day." kadlu grinned back till his eyes were almost buried in the fat of his flat cheeks, and nodded to amoraq, while the puppy's fierce mother whined to see her baby wriggling far out of reach in the little sealskin pouch hung above the warmth of the blubber-lamp. kotuko went on with his carving, and kadlu threw a rolled bundle of leather dog-harnesses into a tiny little room that opened from one side of the house, slipped off his heavy deerskin hunting-suit, put it into a whalebone-net that hung above another lamp, and dropped down on the sleeping-bench to whittle at a piece of frozen seal-meat till amoraq, his wife, should bring the regular dinner of boiled meat and blood-soup. he had been out since early dawn at the seal-holes, eight miles away, and had come home with three big seal. halfway down the long, low snow passage or tunnel that led to the inner door of the house you could hear snappings and yelpings, as the dogs of his sleigh-team, released from the day's work, scuffled for warm places. when the yelpings grew too loud kotuko lazily rolled off the sleeping-bench, and picked up a whip with an eighteen-inch handle of springy whalebone, and twenty-five feet of heavy, plaited thong. he dived into the passage, where it sounded as though all the dogs were eating him alive; but that was no more than their regular grace before meals. when he crawled out at the far end half a dozen furry heads followed him with their eyes as he went to a sort of gallows of whale-jawbones, from which the dog's meat was hung; split off the frozen stuff in big lumps with a broad-headed spear; and stood, his whip in one hand and the meat in the other. each beast was called by name, the weakest first, and woe betide any dog that moved out of his turn; for the tapering lash would shoot out like thonged lightning, and flick away an inch or so of hair and hide. each beast growled, snapped, choked once over his portion, and hurried back to the protection of the passage, while the boy stood upon the snow under the blazing northern lights and dealt out justice. the last to be served was the big black leader of the team, who kept order when the dogs were harnessed; and to him kotuko gave a double allowance of meat as well as an extra crack of the whip. "ah!" said kotuko, coiling up the lash, "i have a little one over the lamp that will make a great many howlings. _sarpok!_ get in!" he crawled back over the huddled dogs, dusted the dry snow from his furs with the whalebone beater that amoraq kept by the door, tapped the skin-lined roof of the house to shake off any icicles that might have fallen from the dome of snow above, and curled up on the bench. the dogs in the passage snored and whined in their sleep, the boy-baby in amoraq's deep fur hood kicked and choked and gurgled, and the mother of the newly named puppy lay at kotuko's side, her eyes fixed on the bundle of sealskin, warm and safe above the broad yellow flame of the lamp. and all this happened far away to the north, beyond labrador, beyond hudson's strait, where the great tides heave the ice about, north of melville peninsula--north even of the narrow fury and hecla straits--on the north shore of baffin land, where bylot's island stands above the ice of lancaster sound like a pudding-bowl wrong side up. north of lancaster sound there is little we know anything about, except north devon and ellesmere land; but even there live a few scattered people, next door, as it were, to the very pole. kadlu was an inuit,--what you call an esquimau,--and his tribe, some thirty persons all told, belonged to the tununirmiut--"the country lying at the back of something." in the maps that desolate coast is written navy board inlet, but the inuit name is best, because the country lies at the very back of everything in the world. for nine months of the year there is only ice, snow, and gale after gale, with a cold that no one can realize who has never seen the thermometer even at zero. for six months of those nine it is dark; and that is what makes it so horrible. in the three months of the summer it only freezes every other day and every night, and then the snow begins to weep off on the southerly slopes, and a few ground-willows put out their woolly buds, a tiny stonecrop or so makes believe to blossom, beaches of fine gravel and rounded stones run down to the open sea, and polished boulders and streaked rocks lift up above the granulated snow. but all that is gone in a few weeks, and the wild winter locks down again on the land; while at sea the ice tears up and down the offing, jamming and ramming, and splitting and hitting, and pounding and grounding, till it all freezes together, ten feet thick, from the land outward to deep water. in the winter kadlu would follow the seal to the edge of this land-ice, and spear them as they came up to breathe at their blow-holes. the seal must have open water to live and catch fish in, and in the deep of winter the ice would sometimes run eighty miles without a break from the nearest shore. in the spring he and his people retreated from the floes to the rocky mainland, where they put up tents of skins, and snared the sea-birds, or speared the young seal basking on the beaches. later, they would go south into baffin land after the reindeer, and to get their year's store of salmon from the hundreds of streams and lakes of the interior; coming back north in september or october for the musk-ox hunting and the regular winter sealery. this traveling was done with dog-sleighs, twenty and thirty miles a day, or sometimes down the coast in big skin "woman-boats," when the dogs and the babies lay among the feet of the rowers, and the women sang songs as they glided from cape to cape over the glassy, cold waters. all the luxuries that the tununirmiut knew came from the south--driftwood for sleigh-runners, rod-iron for harpoon-tips, steel knives, tin kettles that cooked food much better than the old soapstone affairs, flint and steel, and even matches, as well as colored ribbons for the women's hair, little cheap mirrors, and red cloth for the edging of deerskin dress-jackets. kadlu traded the rich, creamy, twisted narwhal-horn and musk-ox teeth (these are just as valuable as pearls) to the southern inuit, and they, in turn, traded with the whalers and the missionary-posts of exeter and cumberland sounds; and so the chain went on, till a kettle picked up by a ship's cook in the bhendy bazaar might end its days over a blubber-lamp somewhere on the cool side of the arctic circle. kadlu, being a good hunter, was rich in iron harpoons, snow-knives, bird-darts, and all the other things that make life easy up there in the great cold; and he was the head of this tribe, or, as they say, "the man who knows all about it by practice." this did not give him any authority, except now and then he could advise his friends to change their hunting-grounds; but kotuko used it to domineer a little, in the lazy, fat inuit fashion, over the other boys, when they came out at night to play ball in the moonlight, or to sing the child's song to the aurora borealis. but at fourteen an inuit feels himself a man, and kotuko was tired of making snares for wild fowl and kit-foxes, and most tired of all of helping the women to chew seal- and deerskins (that supples them as nothing else can) the long day through, while the men were out hunting. he wanted to go into the _quaggi_, the singing-house, when the hunters gathered there for their mysteries, and the _angekok_, the sorcerer, frightened them into the most delightful fits after the lamps were put out, and you could hear the spirit of the reindeer stamping on the roof; and when a spear was thrust out into the open black night it came back covered with hot blood. he wanted to throw his big boots into the net with the tired air of a head of a family, and to gamble with the hunters when they dropped in of an evening and played a sort of home-made roulette with a tin pot and a nail. there were hundreds of things that he wanted to do, but the grown men laughed at him and said, "wait till you have been in the buckle, kotuko. hunting is not _all_ catching." now that his father had named a puppy for him, things looked brighter. an inuit does not waste a good dog on his son till the boy knows something of dog-driving; and kotuko was more than sure that he knew more than everything. if the puppy had not had an iron constitution he would have died from over-stuffing and over-handling. kotuko made him a tiny harness with a trace to it, and hauled him all over the house floor, shouting: "aua! ja aua!" (go to the right.) "choiachoi! ja choiachoi!" (go to the left.) "ohaha!" (stop.) the puppy did not like it at all, but being fished for in this way was pure happiness beside being put to the sleigh for the first time. he just sat down on the snow, and played with the seal-hide trace that ran from his harness to the _pitu_, the big thong in the bows of the sleigh. then the team started, and the puppy found the heavy ten-foot sleigh running up his back, and dragging him along the snow, while kotuko laughed till the tears ran down his face. there followed days and days of the cruel whip that hisses like the wind over ice, and his companions all bit him because he did not know his work, and the harness chafed him, and he was not allowed to sleep with kotuko any more, but had to take the coldest place in the passage. it was a sad time for the puppy. the boy learned, too, as fast as the dog; though a dog-sleigh is a heartbreaking thing to manage. each beast is harnessed, the weakest nearest to the driver, by his own separate trace, which runs under his left fore-leg to the main thong, where it is fastened by a sort of button and loop which can be slipped by a turn of the wrist, thus freeing one dog at a time. this is very necessary, because young dogs often get the trace between their hind legs, where it cuts to the bone. and they one and all _will_ go visiting their friends as they run, jumping in and out among the traces. then they fight, and the result is more mixed than a wet fishing-line next morning. a great deal of trouble can be avoided by scientific use of the whip. every inuit boy prides himself as being a master of the long lash; but it is easy to flick at a mark on the ground, and difficult to lean forward and catch a shirking dog just behind the shoulders when the sleigh is going at full speed. if you call one dog's name for "visiting," and accidentally lash another, the two will fight it out at once, and stop all the others. again, if you travel with a companion and begin to talk, or by yourself and sing, the dogs will halt, turn round, and sit down to hear what you have to say. kotuko was run away from once or twice through forgetting to block the sleigh when he stopped; and he broke many lashings, and ruined a few thongs, before he could be trusted with a full team of eight and the light sleigh. then he felt himself a person of consequence, and on smooth, black ice, with a bold heart and a quick elbow, he smoked along over the levels as fast as a pack in full cry. he would go ten miles to the seal-holes, and when he was on the hunting-grounds he would twitch a trace loose from the _pitu_, and free the big black leader, who was the cleverest dog in the team. as soon as the dog had scented a breathing-hole kotuko would reverse the sleigh, driving a couple of sawed-off antlers, that stuck up like perambulator-handles from the back-rest, deep into the snow, so that the team could not get away. then he would crawl forward inch by inch, and wait till the seal came up to breathe. then he would stab down swiftly with his spear and running-line, and presently would haul his seal up to the lip of the ice, while the black leader came up and helped to pull the carcass across the ice to the sleigh. that was the time when the harnessed dogs yelled and foamed with excitement, and kotuko laid the long lash like a red-hot bar across all their faces, till the carcass froze stiff. going home was the heavy work. the loaded sleigh had to be humored among the rough ice, and the dogs sat down and looked hungrily at the seal instead of pulling. at last they would strike the well-worn sleigh-road to the village, and toodle-kiyi along the ringing ice, heads down and tails up, while kotuko struck up the "angutivaun tai-na tau-na-ne taina" (the song of the returning hunter), and voices hailed him from house to house under all that dim, star-litten sky. when kotuko the dog came to his full growth he enjoyed himself too. he fought his way up the team steadily, fight after fight, till one fine evening, over their food, he tackled the big, black leader (kotuko the boy saw fair play), and made second dog of him, as they say. so he was promoted to the long thong of the leading dog, running five feet in advance of all the others: it was his bounden duty to stop all fighting, in harness or out of it, and he wore a collar of copper wire, very thick and heavy. on special occasions he was fed with cooked food inside the house, and sometimes was allowed to sleep on the bench with kotuko. he was a good seal-dog, and would keep a musk-ox at bay by running round him and snapping at his heels. he would even--and this for a sleigh-dog is the last proof of bravery--he would even stand up to the gaunt arctic wolf, whom all dogs of the north, as a rule, fear beyond anything that walks the snow. he and his master--they did not count the team of ordinary dogs as company--hunted together, day after day and night after night, fur-wrapped boy and savage, long-haired, narrow-eyed, white-fanged, yellow brute. all an inuit has to do is to get food and skins for himself and his family. the women-folk make the skins into clothing, and occasionally help in trapping small game; but the bulk of the food--and they eat enormously--must be found by the men. if the supply fails there is no one up there to buy or beg or borrow from. the people must die. an inuit does not think of these chances till he is forced to. kadlu, kotuko, amoraq, and the boy-baby who kicked about in amoraq's fur hood and chewed pieces of blubber all day, were as happy together as any family in the world. they came of a very gentle race--an inuit seldom loses his temper, and almost never strikes a child--who did not know exactly what telling a real lie meant, still less how to steal. they were content to spear their living out of the heart of the bitter, hopeless cold; to smile oily smiles, and tell queer ghost and fairy tales of evenings, and eat till they could eat no more, and sing the endless woman's song, "amna aya, aya amna, ah! ah!" through the long, lamp-lighted days as they mended their clothes and their hunting-gear. but one terrible winter everything betrayed them. the tununirmiut returned from the yearly salmon-fishing, and made their houses on the early ice to the north of bylot's island, ready to go after the seal as soon as the sea froze. but it was an early and savage autumn. all through september there were continuous gales that broke up the smooth seal-ice when it was only four or five feet thick, and forced it inland, and piled a great barrier, some twenty miles broad, of lumped and ragged and needly ice, over which it was impossible to draw the dog-sleighs. the edge of the floe off which the seal were used to fish in winter lay, perhaps, twenty miles beyond this barrier, and out of reach of the tununirmiut. even so, they might have managed to scrape through the winter on their stock of frozen salmon and stored blubber, and what the traps gave them, but in december one of their hunters came across a _tupik_ (a skin-tent) of three women and a girl nearly dead, whose men had come down from the far north and been crushed in their little skin hunting-boats while they were out after the long-horned narwhal. kadlu, of course, could only distribute the women among the huts of the winter village, for no inuit dare refuse a meal to a stranger. he never knows when his own turn may come to beg. amoraq took the girl, who was about fourteen, into her own house as a sort of servant. from the cut of her sharp-pointed hood, and the long diamond pattern of her white deerskin leggings, they supposed she came from ellesmere land. she had never seen tin cooking-pots or wooden-shod sleighs before; but kotuko the boy and kotuko the dog were rather fond of her. then all the foxes went south, and even the wolverine, that growling, blunt-headed little thief of the snow, did not take the trouble to follow the line of empty traps that kotuko set. the tribe lost a couple of their best hunters, who were badly crippled in a fight with a musk-ox, and this threw more work on the others. kotuko went out, day after day, with a light hunting-sleigh and six or seven of the strongest dogs, looking till his eyes ached for some patch of clear ice where a seal might perhaps have scratched a breathing-hole. kotuko the dog ranged far and wide, and in the dead stillness of the ice-fields kotuko the boy could hear his half-choked whine of excitement, above a seal-hole three miles away, as plainly as though he were at his elbow. when the dog found a hole the boy would build himself a little, low snow wall to keep off the worst of the bitter wind, and there he would wait ten, twelve, twenty hours for the seal to come up to breathe, his eyes glued to the tiny mark he had made above the hole to guide the downward thrust of his harpoon, a little sealskin mat under his feet, and his legs tied together in the _tutareang_ (the buckle that the old hunters had talked about). this helps to keep a man's legs from twitching as he waits and waits and waits for the quick-eared seal to rise. though there is no excitement in it, you can easily believe that the sitting still in the buckle with the thermometer perhaps forty degrees below zero is the hardest work an inuit knows. when a seal was caught kotuko the dog would bound forward, his trace trailing behind him, and help to pull the body to the sleigh, where the tired and hungry dogs lay sullenly under the lee of the broken ice. a seal did not go very far, for each mouth in the little village had a right to be filled, and neither bone, hide, nor sinew was wasted. the dogs' meat was taken for human use, and amoraq fed the team with pieces of old summer skin-tents raked out from under the sleeping-bench, and they howled and howled again, and waked to howl hungrily. one could tell by the soapstone lamps in the huts that famine was near. in good seasons, when blubber was plentiful, the light in the boat-shaped lamps would be two feet high--cheerful, oily, and yellow. now it was a bare six inches: amoraq carefully pricked down the moss wick when an unwatched flame brightened for a moment, and the eyes of all the family followed her hand. the horror of famine up there in the great cold is not so much dying, as dying in the dark. all the inuit dread the dark that presses on them without a break for six months in each year; and when the lamps are low in the houses the minds of people begin to be shaken and confused. but worse was to come. the underfed dogs snapped and growled in the passages, glaring at the cold stars, and snuffing into the bitter wind, night after night. when they stopped howling the silence fell down again as solid and as heavy as a snowdrift against a door, and men could hear the beating of their blood in the thin passages of the ear, and the thumping of their own hearts, that sounded as loud as the noise of sorcerers' drums beaten across the snow. one night kotuko the dog, who had been unusually sullen in harness, leaped up and pushed his head against kotuko's knee. kotuko patted him, but the dog still pushed blindly forward, fawning. then kadlu waked, and gripped the heavy wolf-like head, and stared into the glassy eyes. the dog whimpered and shivered between kadlu's knees. the hair rose about his neck, and he growled as though a stranger were at the door; then he barked joyously, and rolled on the ground, and bit at kotuko's boot like a puppy. "what is it?" said kotuko; for he was beginning to be afraid. "the sickness," kadlu answered. "it is the dog-sickness." kotuko the dog lifted his nose, and howled and howled again. "i have not seen this before. what will he do?" said kotuko. kadlu shrugged one shoulder a little, and crossed the hut for his short stabbing-harpoon. the big dog looked at him, howled again, and slunk away down the passage, while the other dogs drew aside right and left to give him ample room. when he was out on the snow he barked furiously, as though on the trail of a musk-ox, and, barking and leaping and frisking, passed out of sight. this was not hydrophobia, but simple, plain madness. the cold and the hunger, and, above all, the dark, had turned his head; and when the terrible dog-sickness once shows itself in a team, it spreads like wildfire. next hunting-day another dog sickened, and was killed then and there by kotuko as he bit and struggled among the traces. then the black second dog, who had been the leader in the old days, suddenly gave tongue on an imaginary reindeer-track, and when they slipped him from the _pitu_ he flew at the throat of an ice-cliff, and ran away as his leader had done, his harness on his back. after that no one would take the dogs out again. they needed them for something else, and the dogs knew it; and though they were tied down and fed by hand, their eyes were full of despair and fear. to make things worse, the old women began to tell ghost-tales, and to say that they had met the spirits of the dead hunters lost that autumn, who prophesied all sorts of horrible things. kotuko grieved more for the loss of his dog than anything else; for, though an inuit eats enormously, he also knows how to starve. but the hunger, the darkness, the cold, and the exposure told on his strength, and he began to hear voices inside his head, and to see people who were not there, out of the tail of his eye. one night--he had unbuckled himself after ten hours' waiting above a "blind" seal-hole, and was staggering back to the village faint and dizzy--he halted to lean his back against a boulder which happened to be supported like a rocking-stone on a single jutting point of ice. his weight disturbed the balance of the thing, it rolled over ponderously, and as kotuko sprang aside to avoid it, slid after him, squeaking and hissing on the ice slope. that was enough for kotuko. he had been brought up to believe that every rock and boulder had its owner (its _inua_), who was generally a one-eyed kind of a woman-thing called a _tornaq_, and that when a _tornaq_ meant to help a man she rolled after him inside her stone house, and asked him whether he would take her for a guardian spirit. (in summer thaws the ice-propped rocks and boulders roll and slip all over the face of the land, so you can easily see how the idea of live stones arose.) kotuko heard the blood beating in his ears as he had heard it all day, and he thought that was the _tornaq_ of the stone speaking to him. before he reached home he was quite certain that he had held a long conversation with her, and as all his people believed that this was quite possible, no one contradicted him. "she said to me, 'i jump down, i jump down from my place on the snow,'" cried kotuko, with hollow eyes, leaning forward in the half-lighted hut. "she said, 'i will be a guide.' she says, 'i will guide you to the good seal-holes.' to-morrow i go out, and the _tornaq_ will guide me." then the _angekok_, the village sorcerer, came in, and kotuko told him the tale a second time. it lost nothing in the telling. "follow the _tornait_ [the spirits of the stones], and they will bring us food again," said the _angekok_. now the girl from the north had been lying near the lamp, eating very little and saying less for days past; but when amoraq and kadlu next morning packed and lashed a little hand-sleigh for kotuko, and loaded it with his hunting-gear and as much blubber and frozen seal-meat as they could spare, she took the pulling-rope, and stepped out boldly at the boy's side. "your house is my house," she said, as the little bone-shod sleigh squeaked and bumped behind them in the awful arctic night. "my house is your house," said kotuko; "but _i_ think that we shall both go to sedna together." now sedna is the mistress of the under-world, and the inuit believe that every one who dies must spend a year in her horrible country before going to quadliparmiut, the happy place, where it never freezes and the fat reindeer trot up when you call. through the village people were shouting: "the _tornait_ have spoken to kotuko. they will show him open ice. he will bring us the seal again!" their voices were soon swallowed up by the cold, empty dark, and kotuko and the girl shouldered close together as they strained on the pulling-rope or humored the sleigh through the broken ice in the direction of the polar sea. kotuko insisted that the _tornaq_ of the stone had told him to go north, and north they went under tuktuqdjung the reindeer--those stars that we call the great bear. no european could have made five miles a day over the ice-rubbish and the sharp-edged drifts; but those two knew exactly the turn of the wrist that coaxes a sleigh round a hummock, the jerk that neatly lifts it out of an ice-crack, and the exact strength that goes to the few quiet strokes of the spear-head that make a path possible when everything looks hopeless. the girl said nothing, but bowed her head, and the long wolverine-fur fringe of her ermine hood blew across her broad, dark face. the sky above them was an intense velvety-black, changing to bands of indian red on the horizon, where the great stars burned like street lamps. from time to time a greenish wave of the northern lights would roll across the hollow of the high heavens, flick like a flag, and disappear; or a meteor would crackle from darkness to darkness, trailing a shower of sparks behind. then they could see the ridged and furrowed surface of the floe tipped and laced with strange colors--red, copper, and bluish; but in the ordinary starlight everything turned to one frost-bitten gray. the floe, as you will remember, had been battered and tormented by the autumn gales till it was one frozen earthquake. there were gullies and ravines, and holes like gravel-pits, cut in ice; lumps and scattered pieces frozen down to the original floor of the floe; blotches of old black ice that had been thrust under the floe in some gale and heaved up again; roundish boulders of ice; saw-like edges of ice carved by the snow that flies before the wind; and sunken pits where thirty or forty acres lay below the level of the rest of the field. from a little distance you might have taken the lumps for seal or walrus, overturned sleighs or men on a hunting expedition, or even the great ten-legged white spirit-bear himself; but in spite of these fantastic shapes, all on the very edge of starting into life, there was neither sound nor the least faint echo of sound. and through this silence and through this waste, where the sudden lights flapped and went out again, the sleigh and the two that pulled it crawled like things in a nightmare--a nightmare of the end of the world at the end of the world. when they were tired kotuko would make what the hunters call a "half-house," a very small snow hut, into which they would huddle with the traveling-lamp, and try to thaw out the frozen seal-meat. when they had slept the march began again--thirty miles a day to get ten miles northward. the girl was always very silent, but kotuko muttered to himself and broke out into songs he had learned in the singing-house--summer songs, and reindeer and salmon songs--all horribly out of place at that season. he would declare that he heard the _tornaq_ growling to him, and would run wildly up a hummock, tossing his arms and speaking in loud, threatening tones. to tell the truth, kotuko was very nearly crazy for the time being; but the girl was sure that he was being guided by his guardian spirit, and that everything would come right. she was not surprised, therefore, when at the end of the fourth march kotuko, whose eyes were burning like fire-balls in his head, told her that his tornaq was following them across the snow in the shape of a two-headed dog. the girl looked where kotuko pointed, and something seemed to slip into a ravine. it was certainly not human, but everybody knew that the _tornait_ preferred to appear in the shape of bear and seal, and such like. it might have been the ten-legged white spirit-bear himself, or it might have been anything, for kotuko and the girl were so starved that their eyes were untrustworthy. they had trapped nothing, and seen no trace of game since they had left the village; their food would not hold out for another week, and there was a gale coming. a polar storm can blow for ten days without a break, and all that while it is certain death to be abroad. kotuko laid up a snow-house large enough to take in the hand-sleigh (never be separated from your meat), and while he was shaping the last irregular block of ice that makes the key-stone of the roof, he saw a thing looking at him from a little cliff of ice half a mile away. the air was hazy, and the thing seemed to be forty feet long and ten feet high, with twenty feet of tail and a shape that quivered all along the outlines. the girl saw it too, but instead of crying aloud with terror, said quietly, "that is quiquern. what comes after?" "he will speak to me," said kotuko; but the snow-knife trembled in his hand as he spoke, because however much a man may believe that he is a friend of strange and ugly spirits, he seldom likes to be taken quite at his word. quiquern, too, is the phantom of a gigantic toothless dog without any hair, who is supposed to live in the far north, and to wander about the country just before things are going to happen. they may be pleasant or unpleasant things, but not even the sorcerers care to speak about quiquern. he makes the dogs go mad. like the spirit-bear he has several extra pairs of legs,--six or eight,--and this thing jumping up and down in the haze had more legs than any real dog needed. kotuko and the girl huddled into their hut quickly. of course if quiquern had wanted them, he could have torn it to pieces above their heads, but the sense of a foot-thick snow wall between themselves and the wicked dark was great comfort. the gale broke with a shriek of wind like the shriek of a train, and for three days and three nights it held, never varying one point, and never lulling even for a minute. they fed the stone lamp between their knees, and nibbled at the half-warm seal-meat, and watched the black soot gather on the roof for seventy-two long hours. the girl counted up the food in the sleigh; there was not more than two days' supply, and kotuko looked over the iron heads and the deer-sinew fastenings of his harpoon and his seal-lance and his bird-dart. there was nothing else to do. "we shall go to sedna soon--very soon," the girl whispered. "in three days we shall lie down and go. will your _tornaq_ do nothing? sing her an _angekok's_ song to make her come here." he began to sing in the high-pitched howl of the magic songs, and the gale went down slowly. in the middle of his song the girl started, laid her mittened hand and then her head to the ice floor of the hut. kotuko followed her example, and the two kneeled, staring into each other's eyes, and listening with every nerve. he ripped a thin sliver of whalebone from the rim of a bird-snare that lay on the sleigh, and, after straightening, set it upright in a little hole in the ice, firming it down with his mitten. it was almost as delicately adjusted as a compass-needle, and now instead of listening they watched. the thin rod quivered a little--the least little jar in the world; then it vibrated steadily for a few seconds, came to rest, and vibrated again, this time nodding to another point of the compass. "too soon!" said kotuko. "some big floe has broken far away outside." the girl pointed at the rod, and shook her head. "it is the big breaking," she said. "listen to the ground-ice. it knocks." when they kneeled this time they heard the most curious muffled grunts and knockings, apparently under their feet. sometimes it sounded as though a blind puppy were squeaking above the lamp; then as if a stone were being ground on hard ice; and again, like muffled blows on a drum: but all dragged out and made small, as though they traveled through a little horn a weary distance away. "we shall not go to sedna lying down," said kotuko. "it is the breaking. the _tornaq_ has cheated us. we shall die." all this may sound absurd enough, but the two were face to face with a very real danger. the three days' gale had driven the deep water of baffin's bay southerly, and piled it on to the edge of the far-reaching land-ice that stretches from bylot's island to the west. also, the strong current which sets east out of lancaster sound carried with it mile upon mile of what they call pack-ice--rough ice that has not frozen into fields; and this pack was bombarding the floe at the same time that the swell and heave of the storm-worked sea was weakening and undermining it. what kotuko and the girl had been listening to were the faint echoes of that fight thirty or forty miles away, and the little telltale rod quivered to the shock of it. now, as the inuit say, when the ice once wakes after its long winter sleep, there is no knowing what may happen, for solid floe-ice changes shape almost as quickly as a cloud. the gale was evidently a spring gale sent out of time, and anything was possible. yet the two were happier in their minds than before. if the floe broke up there would be no more waiting and suffering. spirits, goblins, and witch-people were moving about on the racking ice, and they might find themselves stepping into sedna's country side by side with all sorts of wild things, the flush of excitement still on them. when they left the hut after the gale, the noise on the horizon was steadily growing, and the tough ice moaned and buzzed all round them. "it is still waiting," said kotuko. on the top of a hummock sat or crouched the eight-legged thing that they had seen three days before--and it howled horribly. "let us follow," said the girl. "it may know some way that does not lead to sedna"; but she reeled from weakness as she took the pulling-rope. the thing moved off slowly and clumsily across the ridges, heading always toward the westward and the land, and they followed, while the growling thunder at the edge of the floe rolled nearer and nearer. the floe's lip was split and cracked in every direction for three or four miles inland, and great pans of ten-foot-thick ice, from a few yards to twenty acres square, were jolting and ducking and surging into one another, and into the yet unbroken floe, as the heavy swell took and shook and spouted between them. this battering-ram ice was, so to speak, the first army that the sea was flinging against the floe. the incessant crash and jar of these cakes almost drowned the ripping sound of sheets of pack-ice driven bodily under the floe as cards are hastily pushed under a table-cloth. where the water was shallow these sheets would be piled one atop of the other till the bottom-most touched mud fifty feet down, and the discolored sea banked behind the muddy ice till the increasing pressure drove all forward again. in addition to the floe and the pack-ice, the gale and the currents were bringing down true bergs, sailing mountains of ice, snapped off from the greenland side of the water or the north shore of melville bay. they pounded in solemnly, the waves breaking white round them, and advanced on the floe like an old-time fleet under full sail. a berg that seemed ready to carry the world before it would ground helplessly in deep water, reel over, and wallow in a lather of foam and mud and flying frozen spray, while a much smaller and lower one would rip and ride into the flat floe, flinging tons of ice on either side, and cutting a track half a mile long before it was stopped. some fell like swords, shearing a raw-edged canal; and others splintered into a shower of blocks, weighing scores of tons apiece, that whirled and skirled among the hummocks. others, again, rose up bodily out of the water when they shoaled, twisted as though in pain, and fell solidly on their sides, while the sea threshed over their shoulders. this trampling and crowding and bending and buckling and arching of the ice into every possible shape was going on as far as the eye could reach all along the north line of the floe. from where kotuko and the girl were the confusion looked no more than an uneasy, rippling, crawling movement under the horizon; but it came toward them each moment, and they could hear, far away to landward, a heavy booming, as it might have been the boom of artillery through a fog. that showed that the floe was being jammed home against the iron cliffs of bylot's island, the land to the southward behind them. "this has never been before," said kotuko, staring stupidly. "this is not the time. how can the floe break _now_?" "follow _that_!" the girl cried, pointing to the thing, half limping, half running distractedly before them. they followed, tugging at the hand-sleigh, while nearer and nearer came the roaring march of the ice. at last the fields round them cracked and starred in every direction, and the cracks opened and snapped like the teeth of wolves. but where the thing rested, on a mound of old and scattered ice-blocks some fifty feet high, there was no motion. kotuko leaped forward wildly, dragging the girl after him, and crawled to the bottom of the mound. the talking of the ice grew louder and louder round them, but the mound stayed fast, and, as the girl looked at him, he threw his right elbow upward and outward, making the inuit sign for land in the shape of an island. and land it was that the eight-legged, limping thing had led them to--some granite-tipped, sand-beached islet off the coast, shod and sheathed and masked with ice so that no man could have told it from the floe, but at the bottom solid earth, and not shifting ice! the smashing and rebound of the floes as they grounded and splintered marked the borders of it, and a friendly shoal ran out to the northward, and turned aside the rush of the heaviest ice, exactly as a ploughshare turns over loam. there was danger, of course, that some heavily squeezed ice-field might shoot up the beach, and plane off the top of the islet bodily; but that did not trouble kotuko and the girl when they made their snow-house and began to eat, and heard the ice hammer and skid along the beach. the thing had disappeared, and kotuko was talking excitedly about his power over spirits as he crouched round the lamp. in the middle of his wild sayings the girl began to laugh, and rock herself backward and forward. behind her shoulder, crawling into the hut crawl by crawl, there were two heads, one yellow and one black, that belonged to two of the most sorrowful and ashamed dogs that ever you saw. kotuko the dog was one, and the black leader was the other. both were now fat, well-looking, and quite restored to their proper minds, but coupled to each other in an extraordinary fashion. when the black leader ran off, you remember, his harness was still on him. he must have met kotuko the dog, and played or fought with him, for his shoulder-loop had caught in the plaited copper wire of kotuko's collar, and had drawn tight, so that neither could get at the trace to gnaw it apart, but each was fastened sidelong to his neighbor's neck. that, with the freedom of hunting on their own account, must have helped to cure their madness. they were very sober. the girl pushed the two shamefaced creatures toward kotuko, and, sobbing with laughter, cried, "that is quiquern, who led us to safe ground. look at his eight legs and double head!" kotuko cut them free, and they fell into his arms, yellow and black together, trying to explain how they had got their senses back again. kotuko ran a hand down their ribs, which were round and well clothed. "they have found food," he said, with a grin. "i do not think we shall go to sedna so soon. my _tornaq_ sent these. the sickness has left them." as soon as they had greeted kotuko, these two, who had been forced to sleep and eat and hunt together for the past few weeks, flew at each other's throat, and there was a beautiful battle in the snow-house. "empty dogs do not fight," kotuko said. "they have found the seal. let us sleep. we shall find food." when they waked there was open water on the north beach of the island, and all the loosened ice had been driven landward. the first sound of the surf is one of the most delightful that the inuit can hear, for it means that spring is on the road. kotuko and the girl took hold of hands and smiled, for the clear, full roar of the surge among the ice reminded them of salmon and reindeer time and the smell of blossoming ground-willows. even as they looked, the sea began to skim over between the floating cakes of ice, so intense was the cold; but on the horizon there was a vast red glare, and that was the light of the sunken sun. it was more like hearing him yawn in his sleep than seeing him rise, and the glare only lasted for a few minutes, but it marked the turn of the year. nothing, they felt, could alter that. kotuko found the dogs fighting over a fresh-killed seal who was following the fish that a gale always disturbs. he was the first of some twenty or thirty seal that landed on the island in the course of the day, and till the sea froze hard there were hundreds of keen black heads rejoicing in the shallow free water and floating about with the floating ice. it was good to eat seal-liver again; to fill the lamps recklessly with blubber, and watch the flame blaze three feet in the air; but as soon as the new sea-ice bore, kotuko and the girl loaded the hand-sleigh, and made the two dogs pull as they had never pulled in their lives, for they feared what might have happened in their village. the weather was as pitiless as usual; but it is easier to draw a sleigh loaded with good food than to hunt starving. they left five-and-twenty seal carcasses buried in the ice of the beach, all ready for use, and hurried back to their people. the dogs showed them the way as soon as kotuko told them what was expected, and though there was no sign of a landmark, in two days they were giving tongue outside kadlu's house. only three dogs answered them; the others had been eaten, and the houses were all dark. but when kotuko shouted, "ojo!" (boiled meat), weak voices replied, and when he called the muster of the village name by name, very distinctly, there were no gaps in it. an hour later the lamps blazed in kadlu's house; snow-water was heating; the pots were beginning to simmer, and the snow was dripping from the roof, as amoraq made ready a meal for all the village, and the boy-baby in the hood chewed at a strip of rich nutty blubber, and the hunters slowly and methodically filled themselves to the very brim with seal-meat. kotuko and the girl told their tale. the two dogs sat between them, and whenever their names came in, they cocked an ear apiece and looked most thoroughly ashamed of themselves. a dog who has once gone mad and recovered, the inuit say, is safe against all further attacks. "so the _tornaq_ did not forget us," said kotuko. "the storm blew, the ice broke, and the seal swam in behind the fish that were frightened by the storm. now the new seal-holes are not two days' distant. let the good hunters go to-morrow and bring back the seal i have speared--twenty-five seal buried in the ice. when we have eaten those we will all follow the seal on the floe." "what do _you_ do?" said the sorcerer in the same sort of voice as he used to kadlu, richest of the tununirmiut. kotuko looked at the girl from the north, and said quietly, "_we_ build a house." he pointed to the northwest side of kadlu's house, for that is the side on which the married son or daughter always lives. the girl turned her hands palm upward, with a little despairing shake of her head. she was a foreigner, picked up starving, and could bring nothing to the housekeeping. amoraq jumped from the bench where she sat, and began to sweep things into the girl's lap--stone lamps, iron skin-scrapers, tin kettles, deerskins embroidered with musk-ox teeth, and real canvas-needles such as sailors use--the finest dowry that has ever been given on the far edge of the arctic circle, and the girl from the north bowed her head down to the very floor. "also these!" said kotuko, laughing and signing to the dogs, who thrust their cold muzzles into the girl's face. "ah," said the _angekok_, with an important cough, as though he had been thinking it all over. "as soon as kotuko left the village i went to the singing-house and sang magic. i sang all the long nights, and called upon the spirit of the reindeer. _my_ singing made the gale blow that broke the ice and drew the two dogs toward kotuko when the ice would have crushed his bones. _my_ song drew the seal in behind the broken ice. my body lay still in the _quaggi_, but my spirit ran about on the ice, and guided kotuko and the dogs in all the things they did. i did it." everybody was full and sleepy, so no one contradicted; and the _angekok_, by virtue of his office, helped himself to yet another lump of boiled meat, and lay down to sleep with the others in the warm, well-lighted, oil-smelling home. * * * * * now kotuko, who drew very well in the inuit fashion, scratched pictures of all these adventures on a long, flat piece of ivory with a hole at one end. when he and the girl went north to ellesmere land in the year of the wonderful open winter, he left the picture-story with kadlu, who lost it in the shingle when his dog-sleigh broke down one summer on the beach of lake netilling at nikosiring, and there a lake inuit found it next spring and sold it to a man at imigen who was interpreter on a cumberland sound whaler, and he sold it to hans olsen, who was afterward a quartermaster on board a big steamer that took tourists to the north cape in norway. when the tourist season was over, the steamer ran between london and australia, stopping at ceylon, and there olsen sold the ivory to a cingalese jeweler for two imitation sapphires. i found it under some rubbish in a house at colombo, and have translated it from one end to the other. "angutivun tina" [this is a very free translation of the song of the returning hunter, as the men used to sing it after seal-spearing. the inuit always repeat things over and over again.] our gloves are stiff with the frozen blood, our furs with the drifted snow, as we come in with the seal--the seal! in from the edge of the floe. _au jana! aua! oha! haq!_ and the yelping dog-teams go, and the long whips crack, and the men come back, back from the edge of the floe! we tracked our seal to his secret place, we heard him scratch below, we made our mark, and we watched beside, out on the edge of the floe. we raised our lance when he rose to breathe, we drove it downward--so! and we played him thus, and we killed him thus out on the edge of the floe. our gloves are glued with the frozen blood, our eyes with the drifting snow; but we come back to our wives again, back from the edge of the floe! _au jana! aua! oha! haq! and the loaded dog-teams go, and the wives can hear their men come back, back from the edge of the floe!_ [illustration] red dog for our white and our excellent nights--for the nights of swift running, fair ranging, far-seeing, good hunting, sure cunning! for the smells of the dawning, untainted, ere dew has departed! for the rush through the mist, and the quarry blind-started! for the cry of our mates when the sambhur has wheeled and is standing at bay, for the risk and the riot of night! for the sleep at the lair-mouth by day, it is met, and we go to the fight. bay! o bay! [illustration] red dog it was after the letting in of the jungle that the pleasantest part of mowgli's life began. he had the good conscience that comes from paying debts; all the jungle was his friend, and just a little afraid of him. the things that he did and saw and heard when he was wandering from one people to another, with or without his four companions, would make many stories, each as long as this one. so you will never be told how he met the mad elephant of mandla, who killed two-and-twenty bullocks drawing eleven carts of coined silver to the government treasury, and scattered the shiny rupees in the dust; how he fought jacala, the crocodile, all one long night in the marshes of the north, and broke his skinning-knife on the brute's back-plates; how he found a new and longer knife round the neck of a man who had been killed by a wild boar, and how he tracked that boar and killed him as a fair price for the knife; how he was caught up once in the great famine, by the moving of the deer, and nearly crushed to death in the swaying hot herds; how he saved hathi the silent from being once more trapped in a pit with a stake at the bottom, and how, next day, he himself fell into a very cunning leopard-trap, and how hathi broke the thick wooden bars to pieces above him; how he milked the wild buffaloes in the swamp, and how-- but we must tell one tale at a time. father and mother wolf died, and mowgli rolled a big boulder against the mouth of their cave, and cried the death song over them; baloo grew very old and stiff, and even bagheera, whose nerves were steel, and whose muscles were iron, was a shade slower on the kill than he had been. akela turned from gray to milky white with pure age; his ribs stuck out, and he walked as though he had been made of wood, and mowgli killed for him. but the young wolves, the children of the disbanded seeonee pack, throve and increased, and when there were about forty of them, masterless, full-voiced, clean-footed five-year-olds, akela told them that they ought to gather themselves together and follow the law, and run under one head, as befitted the free people. this was not a question in which mowgli concerned himself, for, as he said, he had eaten sour fruit, and he knew the tree it hung from; but when phao, son of phaona (his father was the gray tracker in the days of akela's headship), fought his way to the leadership of the pack, according to jungle law, and the old calls and songs began to ring under the stars once more, mowgli came to the council rock for memory's sake. when he chose to speak the pack waited till he had finished, and he sat at akela's side on the rock above phao. those were days of good hunting and good sleeping. no stranger cared to break into the jungles that belonged to mowgli's people, as they called the pack, and the young wolves grew fat and strong, and there were many cubs to bring to the looking-over. mowgli always attended a looking-over, remembering the night when a black panther bought a naked brown baby into the pack, and the long call, "look, look well, o wolves," made his heart flutter. otherwise, he would be far away in the jungle with his four brothers, tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things. one twilight when he was trotting leisurely across the ranges to give akela the half of a buck that he had killed, while the four jogged behind him, sparring a little, and tumbling one another over for joy of being alive, he heard a cry that had never been heard since the bad days of shere khan. it was what they call in the jungle the _pheeal_, a hideous kind of shriek that the jackal gives when he is hunting behind a tiger, or when there is a big killing afoot. if you can imagine a mixture of hate, triumph, fear, and despair, with a kind of leer running through it, you will get some notion of the _pheeal_ that rose and sank and wavered and quavered far away across the waingunga. the four stopped at once, bristling and growling. mowgli's hand went to his knife, and he checked, the blood in his face, his eyebrows knotted. "there is no striped one dare kill here," he said. "that is not the cry of the forerunner," answered gray brother. "it is some great killing. listen!" it broke out again, half sobbing and half chuckling, just as though the jackal had soft human lips. then mowgli drew deep breath, and ran to the council rock, overtaking on his way hurrying wolves of the pack. phao and akela were on the rock together, and below them, every nerve strained, sat the others. the mothers and the cubs were cantering off to their lairs; for when the _pheeal_ cries it is no time for weak things to be abroad. they could hear nothing except the waingunga rushing and gurgling in the dark, and the light evening winds among the tree-tops, till suddenly across the river a wolf called. it was no wolf of the pack, for they were all at the rock. the note changed to a long, despairing bay; and "dhole!" it said, "dhole! dhole! dhole!" they heard tired feet on the rocks, and a gaunt wolf, streaked with red on his flanks, his right fore-paw useless, and his jaws white with foam, flung himself into the circle and lay gasping at mowgli's feet. "good hunting! under whose headship?" said phao gravely. "good hunting! won-tolla am i," was the answer. he meant that he was a solitary wolf, fending for himself, his mate, and his cubs in some lonely lair, as do many wolves in the south. won-tolla means an outlier--one who lies out from any pack. then he panted, and they could see his heart-beats shake him backward and forward. "what moves?" said phao, for that is the question all the jungle asks after the _pheeal_ cries. "the dhole, the dhole of the dekkan--red dog, the killer! they came north from the south saying the dekkan was empty and killing out by the way. when this moon was new there were four to me--my mate and three cubs. she would teach them to kill on the grass plains, hiding to drive the buck, as we do who are of the open. at midnight i heard them together, full tongue on the trail. at the dawn-wind i found them stiff in the grass--four, free people, four when this moon was new. then sought i my blood-right and found the dhole." "how many?" said mowgli quickly; the pack growled deep in their throats. "i do not know. three of them will kill no more, but at the last they drove me like the buck; on my three legs they drove me. look, free people!" he thrust out his mangled fore-foot, all dark with dried blood. there were cruel bites low down on his side, and his throat was torn and worried. "eat," said akela, rising up from the meat mowgli had brought him, and the outlier flung himself on it. "this shall be no loss," he said humbly, when he had taken off the first edge of his hunger. "give me a little strength, free people, and i also will kill. my lair is empty that was full when this moon was new, and the blood debt is not all paid." phao heard his teeth crack on a haunch-bone and grunted approvingly. "we shall need those jaws," said he. "were their cubs with the dhole?" "nay, nay. red hunters all: grown dogs of their pack, heavy and strong, for all that they eat lizards in the dekkan." what won-tolla had said meant that the dhole, the red hunting-dog of the dekkan, was moving to kill, and the pack knew well that even the tiger will surrender a new kill to the dhole. they drive straight through the jungle, and what they meet they pull down and tear to pieces. though they are not as big nor half as cunning as the wolf, they are very strong and very numerous. the dhole, for instance, do not begin to call themselves a pack till they are a hundred strong; whereas forty wolves make a very fair pack indeed. mowgli's wanderings had taken him to the edge of the high grassy downs of the dekkan, and he had seen the fearless dholes sleeping and playing and scratching themselves in the little hollows and tussocks that they use for lairs. he despised and hated them because they did not smell like the free people, because they did not live in caves, and, above all, because they had hair between their toes while he and his friends were clean-footed. but he knew, for hathi had told him, what a terrible thing a dhole hunting-pack was. even hathi moves aside from their line, and until they are killed, or till game is scarce, they will go forward. akela knew something of the dholes, too, for he said to mowgli quietly. "it is better to die in a full pack than leaderless and alone. this is good hunting, and--my last. but, as men live, thou hast very many more nights and days, little brother. go north and lie down, and if any live after the dhole has gone by he shall bring thee word of the fight." "ah," said mowgli, quite gravely, "must i go to the marshes and catch little fish and sleep in a tree, or must i ask help of the bandar-log and crack nuts, while the pack fight below?" "it is to the death," said akela. "thou hast never met the dhole--the red killer. even the striped one--" "_aowa! aowa!_" said mowgli pettingly. "i have killed one striped ape, and sure am i in my stomach that shere khan would have left his own mate for meat to the dhole if he had winded a pack across three ranges. listen now: there was a wolf, my father, and there was a wolf, my mother, and there was an old gray wolf (not too wise: he is white now) was my father and my mother. therefore i--" he raised his voice, "i say that when the dhole come, and if the dhole come, mowgli and the free people are of one skin for that hunting; and i say, by the bull that bought me--by the bull bagheera paid for me in the old days which ye of the pack do not remember--_i_ say, that the trees and the river may hear and hold fast if i forget; _i_ say that this my knife shall be as a tooth to the pack--and i do not think it is so blunt. this is my word which has gone from me." "thou dost not know the dhole, man with a wolf's tongue," said won-tolla. "i look only to clear the blood debt against them ere they have me in many pieces. they move slowly, killing out as they go, but in two days a little strength will come back to me and i turn again for the blood debt. but for _ye_, free people, my word is that ye go north and eat but little for a while till the dhole are gone. there is no meat in this hunting." "hear the outlier!" said mowgli with a laugh. "free people, we must go north and dig lizards and rats from the bank, lest by any chance we meet the dhole. he must kill out our hunting-grounds, while we lie hid in the north till it please him to give us our own again. he is a dog--and the pup of a dog--red, yellow-bellied, lairless, and haired between every toe! he counts his cubs six and eight at the litter, as though he were chikai, the little leaping rat. surely we must run away, free people, and beg leave of the peoples of the north for the offal of dead cattle! ye know the saying: 'north are the vermin; south are the lice. _we_ are the jungle.' choose ye, o choose. it is good hunting! for the pack--for the full pack--for the lair and the litter; for the in-kill and the out-kill; for the mate that drives the doe and the little, little cub within the cave; it is met!--it is met!--it is met!" the pack answered with one deep, crashing bark that sounded in the night like a big tree falling. "it is met!" they cried. "stay with these," said mowgli to the four. "we shall need every tooth. phao and akela must make ready the battle. i go to count the dogs." "it is death!" won-tolla cried, half rising. "what can such a hairless one do against the red dog? even the striped one, remember--" "thou art indeed an outlier," mowgli called back; "but we will speak when the dholes are dead. good hunting all!" he hurried off into the darkness, wild with excitement, hardly looking where he set foot, and the natural consequence was that he tripped full length over kaa's great coils where the python lay watching a deer-path near the river. "_kssha!_" said kaa angrily. "is this jungle-work, to stamp and tramp and undo a night's hunting--when the game are moving so well, too?" "the fault was mine," said mowgli, picking himself up. "indeed i was seeking thee, flathead, but each time we meet thou art longer and broader by the length of my arm. there is none like thee in the jungle, wise, old, strong, and most beautiful kaa." "now, whither does _this_ trail lead?" kaa's voice was gentler. "not a moon since there was a manling with a knife threw stones at my head, and called me bad little tree-cat names, because i lay asleep in the open." "ay, and turned every driven deer to all the winds, and mowgli was hunting, and this same flathead was too deaf to hear his whistle, and leave the deer-roads free," mowgli answered composedly, sitting down among the painted coils. "now this same manling comes with soft, tickling words to this same flathead, telling him that he is wise and strong and beautiful, and this same old flathead believes and makes a place, thus, for this same stone-throwing manling, and--. art thou at ease now? could bagheera give thee so good a resting-place?" kaa had, as usual, made a sort of soft, half-hammock of himself under mowgli's weight. the boy reached out in the darkness, and gathered in the supple cable-like neck till kaa's head rested on his shoulder, and then he told him all that had happened in the jungle that night. "wise i may be," said kaa at the end; "but deaf i surely am. else i should have heard the _pheeal_. small wonder the eaters of grass are uneasy. how many be the dhole?" "i have not yet seen. i came hot-foot to thee. thou art older than hathi. but oh, kaa,"--here mowgli wriggled with sheer joy,--"it will be good hunting. few of us will see another moon." "dost _thou_ strike in this? remember thou art a man; and remember what pack cast thee out. let the wolf look to the dog. thou art a man." "last year's nuts are this year's black earth," said mowgli. "it is true that i am a man, but it is in my stomach that this night i have said that i am a wolf. i called the river and the trees to remember. i am of the free people, kaa, till the dhole has gone by." "free people," kaa grunted. "free thieves! and thou hast tied thyself into the death-knot for the sake of the memory of the dead wolves? this is no good hunting." "it is my word which i have spoken. the trees know, the river knows. till the dhole have gone by my word comes not back to me." "_ngssh!_ this changes all trails. i had thought to take thee away with me to the northern marshes, but the word--even the word of a little, naked, hairless manling--is the word. now i, kaa, say--" "think well, flathead, lest thou tie thyself into the death-knot also. i need no word from thee, for well i know--" "be it so, then," said kaa. "i will give no word; but what is in thy stomach to do when the dhole come?" "they must swim the waingunga. i thought to meet them with my knife in the shallows, the pack behind me; and so stabbing and thrusting we a little might turn them down-stream, or cool their throats." "the dhole do not turn and their throats are hot," said kaa. "there will be neither manling nor wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only dry bones." "_alala!_ if we die, we die. it will be most good hunting. but my stomach is young, and i have not seen many rains. i am not wise nor strong. hast thou a better plan, kaa?" "i have seen a hundred and a hundred rains. ere hathi cast his milk-tushes my trail was big in the dust. by the first egg i am older than many trees, and i have seen all that the jungle has done." "but _this_ is new hunting," said mowgli. "never before have the dhole crossed our trail." "what is has been. what will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backward. be still while i count those my years." for a long hour mowgli lay back among the coils, while kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg. the light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff passes with his head, right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night. then he felt kaa's back grow bigger and broader below him as the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard. "i have seen all the dead seasons," kaa said at last, "and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. art _thou_ still alive, manling?" "it is only a little after moonset," said mowgli. "i do not understand--" "_hssh!_ i am again kaa. i knew it was but a little time. now we will go to the river, and i will show thee what is to be done against the dhole." he turned, straight as an arrow, for the main stream of the waingunga, plunging in a little above the pool that hid the peace rock, mowgli at his side. "nay, do not swim. i go swiftly. my back, little brother!" mowgli tucked his left arm round kaa's neck, dropped his right close to his body, and straightened his feet. then kaa breasted the current as he alone could, and the ripple of the checked water stood up in a frill round mowgli's neck, and his feet were waved to and fro in the eddy under the python's lashing sides. a mile or two above the peace rock the waingunga narrows between a gorge of marble rocks from eighty to a hundred feet high, and the current runs like a mill-race between and over all manner of ugly stones. but mowgli did not trouble his head about the water; little water in the world could have given him a moment's fear. he was looking at the gorge on either side and sniffing uneasily, for there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air, very like the smell of a big ant-hill on a hot day. instinctively he lowered himself in the water, only raising his head to breathe from time to time, and kaa came to anchor with a double twist of his tail round a sunken rock, holding mowgli in the hollow of a coil, while the water raced on. "this is the place of death," said the boy. "why do we come here?" "they sleep," said kaa. "hathi will not turn aside for the striped one. yet hathi and the striped one together turn aside for the dhole, and the dhole they say turn aside for nothing. and yet for whom do the little people of the rocks turn aside? tell me, master of the jungle, who is the master of the jungle?" "these," mowgli whispered. "it is the place of death. let us go." "nay, look well, for they are asleep. it is as it was when i was not the length of thy arm." the split and weatherworn rocks of the gorge of the waingunga had been used since the beginning of the jungle by the little people of the rocks--the busy, furious, black wild bees of india; and, as mowgli knew well, all trails turned off half a mile before they reached the gorge. for centuries the little people had hived and swarmed from cleft to cleft, and swarmed again, staining the white marble with stale honey, and made their combs tall and deep in the dark of the inner caves, where neither man nor beast nor fire nor water had ever touched them. the length of the gorge on both sides was hung as it were with black shimmery velvet curtains, and mowgli sank as he looked, for those were the clotted millions of the sleeping bees. there were other lumps and festoons and things like decayed tree-trunks studded on the face of the rock, the old combs of past years, or new cities built in the shadow of the windless gorge, and huge masses of spongy, rotten trash had rolled down and stuck among the trees and creepers that clung to the rock-face. as he listened he heard more than once the rustle and slide of a honey-loaded comb turning over or falling away somewhere in the dark galleries; then a booming of angry wings and the sullen drip, drip, drip, of the wasted honey, guttering along till it lipped over some ledge in the open air and sluggishly trickled down on the twigs. there was a tiny little beach, not five feet broad, on one side of the river, and that was piled high with the rubbish of uncounted years. there were dead bees, drones, sweepings, and stale combs, and wings of marauding moths that had strayed in after honey, all tumbled in smooth piles of the finest black dust. the mere sharp smell of it was enough to frighten anything that had no wings, and knew what the little people were. kaa moved up-stream again till he came to a sandy bar at the head of the gorge. "here is this season's kill," said he. "look!" on the bank lay the skeletons of a couple of young deer and a buffalo. mowgli could see that neither wolf nor jackal had touched the bones, which were laid out naturally. "they came beyond the line: they did not know the law," murmured mowgli, "and the little people killed them. let us go ere they wake." "they do not wake till the dawn," said kaa. "now i will tell thee. a hunted buck from the south, many, many rains ago, came hither from the south, not knowing the jungle, a pack on his trail. being made blind by fear, he leaped from above, the pack running by sight, for they were hot and blind on the trail. the sun was high, and the little people were many and very angry. many too were those of the pack who leaped into the waingunga, but they were dead ere they took water. those who did not leap died also in the rocks above. but the buck lived." "how?" "because he came first, running for his life, leaping ere the little people were aware, and was in the river when they gathered to kill. the pack, following, was altogether lost under the weight of the little people." "the buck lived?" mowgli repeated slowly. "at least he did not die _then_, though none waited his coming down with a strong body to hold him safe against the water, as a certain old fat, deaf, yellow flathead would wait for a manling--yea, though there were all the dholes of the dekkan on his trail. what is in thy stomach?" kaa's head was close to mowgli's ear; and it was a little time before the boy answered. "it is to pull the very whiskers of death, but--kaa, thou art, indeed, the wisest of all the jungle." "so many have said. look now, if the dhole follow thee--" "as surely they will follow. ho! ho! i have many little thorns under my tongue to prick into their hides." "if they follow thee hot and blind, looking only at thy shoulders, those who do not die up above will take water either here or lower down, for the little people will rise up and cover them. now the waingunga is hungry water, and they will have no kaa to hold them, but will go down, such as live, to the shallows by the seeonee lairs, and there thy pack may meet them by the throat." "_ahai! eowawa!_ better could not be till the rains fall in the dry season. there is now only the little matter of the run and the leap. i will make me known to the dholes, so that they shall follow me very closely." "hast thou seen the rocks above thee? from the landward side?" "indeed, no. that i had forgotten." "go look. it is all rotten ground, cut and full of holes. one of thy clumsy feet set down without seeing would end the hunt. see, i leave thee here, and for thy sake only i will carry word to the pack that they may know where to look for the dhole. for myself, i am not of one skin with _any_ wolf." when kaa disliked an acquaintance he could be more unpleasant than any of the jungle people, except perhaps bagheera. he swam down-stream and opposite the rock he came on phao and akela listening to the night noises. "_hssh!_ dogs," he said cheerfully. "the dholes will come down-stream. if ye be not afraid ye can kill them in the shallows." "when come they?" said phao. "and where is my man-cub?" said akela. "they come when they come," said kaa. "wait and see. as for _thy_ man-cub, from whom thou hast taken a word and so laid him open to death, _thy_ man-cub is with _me_, and if he be not already dead the fault is none of thine, bleached dog! wait here for the dhole, and be glad that the man-cub and i strike on thy side." he flashed up-stream again, and moored himself in the middle of the gorge, looking upward at the line of the cliff. presently he saw mowgli's head move against the stars, and then there was a whizz in the air, the keen, clean _schloop_ of a body falling feet first, and next minute the boy was at rest again in the loop of kaa's body. "it is no leap by night," said mowgli quietly. "i have jumped twice as far for sport; but that is an evil place above--low bushes and gullies that go down very deep, all full of the little people. i have put big stones one above the other by the side of three gullies. these i shall throw down with my feet in running, and the little people will rise up behind me, very angry." "that is man's talk and man's cunning," said kaa. "thou art wise, but the little people are always angry." "nay, at twilight all wings near and far rest for a while. i will play with the dhole at twilight, for the dhole hunts best by day. he follows now won-tolla's blood-trail." "chil does not leave a dead ox, nor the dhole the blood-trail," said kaa. "then i will make him a new blood-trail, of his own blood, if i can, and give him dirt to eat. thou wilt stay here, kaa, till i come again with my dholes?" "ay, but what if they kill thee in the jungle, or the little people kill thee before thou canst leap down to the river?" "when to-morrow comes we will kill for to-morrow," said mowgli, quoting a jungle saying; and again, "when i am dead it is time to sing the death song. good hunting, kaa!" he loosed his arm from the python's neck and went down the gorge like a log in a freshet, paddling toward the far bank, where he found slack-water, and laughing aloud from sheer happiness. there was nothing mowgli liked better than, as he himself said, "to pull the whiskers of death," and make the jungle know that he was their overlord. he had often, with baloo's help, robbed bees' nests in single trees, and he knew that the little people hated the smell of wild garlic. so he gathered a small bundle of it, tied it up with a bark string, and then followed won-tolla's blood-trail as it ran southerly from the lairs, for some five miles, looking at the trees with his head on one side, and chuckling as he looked. "mowgli the frog have i been," said he to himself; "mowgli the wolf have i said that i am. now mowgli the ape must i be before i am mowgli the buck. at the end i shall be mowgli the man. ho!" and he slid his thumb along the eighteen-inch blade of his knife. won-tolla's trail, all rank with dark blood-spots, ran under a forest of thick trees that grew close together and stretched away northeastward, gradually growing thinner and thinner to within two miles of the bee rocks. from the last tree to the low scrub of the bee rocks was open country, where there was hardly cover enough to hide a wolf. mowgli trotted along under the trees, judging distances between branch and branch, occasionally climbing up a trunk and taking a trial leap from one tree to another, till he came to the open ground, which he studied very carefully for an hour. then he turned, picked up won-tolla's trail where he had left it, settled himself in a tree with an outrunning branch some eight feet from the ground, and sat still, sharpening his knife on the sole of his foot and singing to himself. a little before midday, when the sun was very warm, he heard the patter of feet and smelt the abominable smell of the dhole pack as they trotted pitilessly along won-tolla's trail. seen from above, the red dhole does not look half the size of a wolf, but mowgli knew how strong his feet and jaws were. he watched the sharp bay head of the leader snuffing along the trail and gave him "good hunting!" the brute looked up, and his companions halted behind him, scores and scores of red dogs with low-hung tails, heavy shoulders, weak quarters, and bloody mouths. the dholes are a silent people as a rule, and they have no manners even in their own jungle. fully two hundred must have gathered below him, but he could see that the leaders sniffed hungrily on won-tolla's trail, and tried to drag the pack forward. that would never do, or they would be at the lairs in broad daylight, and mowgli intended to hold them under his tree till dusk. "by whose leave do ye come here?" said mowgli. "all jungles are our jungle," was the reply, and the dhole that gave it bared his white teeth. mowgli looked down with a smile, and imitated perfectly the sharp chitter-chatter of chikai, the leaping rat of the dekkan, meaning the dholes to understand that he considered them no better than chikai. the pack closed up round the tree-trunk and the leader bayed savagely, calling mowgli a tree-ape. for all answer mowgli stretched down one naked leg and wriggled his bare toes just above the leader's head. that was enough, and more than enough, to wake the pack to stupid rage. those who have hair between their toes do not care to be reminded of it. mowgli caught his foot away as the leader leaped up, and said sweetly: "dog, red dog! go back to the dekkan and eat lizards. go to chikai thy brother--dog, dog--red, red, dog! there is hair between every toe!" he twiddled his toes a second time. "come down ere we starve thee out, hairless ape!" yelled the pack, and this was exactly what mowgli wanted. he laid himself down along the branch, his cheek to the bark, his right arm free, and there he told the pack what he thought and knew about them, their manners, their customs, their mates, and their puppies. there is no speech in the world so rancorous and so stinging as the language the jungle people use to show scorn and contempt. when you come to think of it you will see how this must be so. as mowgli told kaa, he had many little thorns under his tongue, and slowly and deliberately he drove the dholes from silence to growls, from growls to yells, and from yells to hoarse slavery ravings. they tried to answer his taunts, but a cub might as well have tried to answer kaa in a rage; and all the while mowgli's right hand lay crooked at his side, ready for action, his feet locked round the branch. the big bay leader had leaped many times in the air, but mowgli dared not risk a false blow. at last, made furious beyond his natural strength, he bounded up seven or eight feet clear of the ground. then mowgli's hand shot out like the head of a tree-snake, and gripped him by the scruff of his neck, and the branch shook with the jar as his weight fell back, almost wrenching mowgli to the ground. but he never loosed his grasp, and inch by inch he hauled the beast, hanging like a drowned jackal, up on the branch. with his left hand he reached for his knife and cut off the red, bushy tail, flinging the dhole back to earth again. that was all he needed. the pack would not go forward on won-tolla's trail now till they had killed mowgli or mowgli had killed them. he saw them settle down in circles with a quiver of the haunches that meant they were going to stay, and so he climbed to a higher crotch, settled his back comfortably, and went to sleep. after four or five hours he waked and counted the pack. they were all there, silent, husky, and dry, with eyes of steel. the sun was beginning to sink. in half an hour the little people of the rocks would be ending their labors, and, as he knew, the dhole does not fight best in the twilight. "i did not need such faithful watchers," he said politely, standing up on a branch, "but i will remember this. ye be true dholes, but to my thinking over much of one kind. for that reason i do not give the big lizard-eater his tail again. art thou not pleased, red dog?" "i myself will tear out thy stomach!" yelled the leader, scratching at the foot of the tree. "nay, but consider, wise rat of the dekkan. there will now be many litters of little tailless red dogs, yea, with raw red stumps that sting when the sand is hot. go home, red dog, and cry that an ape has done this. ye will not go? come, then, with me, and i will make you very wise!" he moved, bandar-log fashion, into the next tree, and so on into the next and the next, the pack following with lifted hungry heads. now and then he would pretend to fall, and the pack would tumble one over the other in their haste to be at the death. it was a curious sight--the boy with the knife that shone in the low sunlight as it shifted through the upper branches, and the silent pack with their red coats all aflame, huddling and following below. when he came to the last tree he took the garlic and rubbed himself all over carefully, and the dholes yelled with scorn. "ape with a wolf's tongue, dost thou think to cover thy scent?" they said. "we follow to the death." "take thy tail," said mowgli, flinging it back along the course he had taken. the pack instinctively rushed after it. "and follow now--to the death." he had slipped down the tree-trunk, and headed like the wind in bare feet for the bee rocks, before the dholes saw what he would do. they gave one deep howl, and settled down to the long, lobbing canter that can at the last run down anything that runs. mowgli knew their pack-pace to be much slower than that of the wolves, or he would never have risked a two-mile run in full sight. they were sure that the boy was theirs at last, and he was sure that he held them to play with as he pleased. all his trouble was to keep them sufficiently hot behind him to prevent their turning off too soon. he ran cleanly, evenly, and springily; the tailless leader not five yards behind him; and the pack tailing out over perhaps a quarter of a mile of ground, crazy and blind with the rage of slaughter. so he kept his distance by ear, reserving his last effort for the rush across the bee rocks. the little people had gone to sleep in the early twilight, for it was not the season of late-blossoming flowers; but as mowgli's first footfalls rang hollow on the hollow ground he heard a sound as though all the earth were humming. then he ran as he had never run in his life before, spurned aside one--two--three of the piles of stones into the dark, sweet-smelling gullies; heard a roar like the roar of the sea in a cave; saw with the tail of his eye the air grow dark behind him; saw the current of the waingunga far below and a flat, diamond-shaped head in the water; leaped outward with all his strength, the tailless dhole snapping at his shoulder in mid-air, and dropped feet first to the safety of the river, breathless and triumphant. there was not a sting upon him, for the smell of the garlic had checked the little people for just the few seconds that he was among them. when he rose kaa's coils were steadying him and things were bounding over the edge of the cliff--great lumps, it seemed, of clustered bees falling like plummets; but before any lump touched water the bees flew upward and the body of a dhole whirled down-stream. overhead they could hear furious short yells that were drowned in a roar like breakers--the roar of the wings of the little people of the rocks. some of the dholes, too, had fallen into the gullies that communicated with the underground caves, and there choked and fought and snapped among the tumbled honeycombs, and at last, borne up even when they were dead on the heaving waves of bees beneath them, shot out of some hole in the river-face, to roll over on the black rubbish-heaps. there were dholes who had leaped short into the trees on the cliffs, and the bees blotted out their shapes; but the greater number of them, maddened by the stings, had flung themselves into the river; and, as kaa said, the waingunga was hungry water. kaa held mowgli fast till the boy had recovered his breath. "we may not stay here," he said. "the little people are roused indeed. come!" swimming low and diving as often as he could, mowgli went down the river, knife in hand. "slowly, slowly," said kaa. "one tooth does not kill a hundred unless it be a cobra's, and many of the dholes took water swiftly when they saw the little people rise." "the more work for my knife, then. _phai!_ how the little people follow!" mowgli sank again. the face of the water was blanketed with wild bees, buzzing sullenly and stinging all they found. "nothing was ever yet lost by silence," said kaa--no sting could penetrate his scales--"and thou hast all the long night for the hunting. hear them howl!" nearly half the pack had seen the trap their fellows rushed into, and turning sharp aside had flung themselves into the water where the gorge broke down in steep banks. their cries of rage and their threats against the "tree-ape" who had brought them to their shame mixed with the yells and growls of those who had been punished by the little people. to remain ashore was death, and every dhole knew it. their pack was swept along the current, down to the deep eddies of the peace pool, but even there the angry little people followed and forced them to the water again. mowgli could hear the voice of the tailless leader bidding his people hold on and kill out every wolf in seeonee. but he did not waste his time in listening. "one kills in the dark behind us!" snapped a dhole. "here is tainted water." mowgli had dived forward like an otter, twitched a struggling dhole under water before he could open his mouth, and dark rings rose as the body plopped up, turning on its side. the dholes tried to turn, but the current prevented them, and the little people darted at their heads and ears, and they could hear the challenge of the seeonee pack growing louder and deeper in the gathering darkness. again mowgli dived, and again a dhole went under, and rose dead, and again the clamor broke out at the rear of the pack; some howling that it was best to go ashore, others calling on their leader to lead them back to the dekkan, and others bidding mowgli show himself and be killed. "they come to the fight with two stomachs and several voices," said kaa. "the rest is with thy brethren below yonder. the little people go back to sleep. they have chased us far. now i, too, turn back, for i am not of one skin with any wolf. good hunting, little brother, and remember the dhole bites low." a wolf came running along the bank on three legs, leaping up and down, laying his head sideways close to the ground, hunching his back, and breaking high into the air, as though he were playing with his cubs. it was won-tolla, the outlier, and he said never a word, but continued his horrible sport beside the dholes. they had been long in the water now, and were swimming wearily, their coats drenched and heavy, their bushy tails dragging like sponges, so tired and shaken that they, too, were silent, watching the pair of blazing eyes that moved abreast. "this is no good hunting," said one, panting. "good hunting!" said mowgli, as he rose boldly at the brute's side, and sent the long knife home behind the shoulder, pushing hard to avoid his dying snap. "art thou there, man-cub?" said won-tolla across the water. "ask of the dead, outlier," mowgli replied. "have none come down-stream? i have filled these dogs' mouths with dirt; i have tricked them in the broad daylight, and their leader lacks his tail, but here be some few for thee still. whither shall i drive them?" "i will wait," said won-tolla. "the night is before me." nearer and nearer came the bay of the seeonee wolves. "for the pack, for the full pack it is met!" and a bend in the river drove the dholes forward among the sands and shoals opposite the lairs. then they saw their mistake. they should have landed half a mile higher up, and rushed the wolves on dry ground. now it was too late. the bank was lined with burning eyes, and except for the horrible _pheeal_ that had never stopped since sundown, there was no sound in the jungle. it seemed as though won-tolla were fawning on them to come ashore; and "turn and take hold!" said the leader of the dholes. the entire pack flung themselves at the shore, threshing and squattering through the shoal water, till the face of the waingunga was all white and torn, and the great ripples went from side to side, like bow-waves from a boat. mowgli followed the rush, stabbing and slicing as the dholes, huddled together, rushed up the river-beach in one wave. then the long fight began, heaving and straining and splitting and scattering and narrowing and broadening along the red, wet sands, and over and between the tangled tree-roots, and through and among the brushes, and in and out of the grass clumps; for even now the dholes were two to one. but they met wolves fighting for all that made the pack, and not only the short, high, deep-chested, white-tusked hunters of the pack, but the anxious-eyed lahinis--the she-wolves of the lair, as the saying is--fighting for their litters, with here and there a yearling wolf, his first coat still half woolly, tugging and grappling by their sides. a wolf, you must know, flies at the throat or snaps at the flank, while a dhole, by preference, bites at the belly; so when the dholes were struggling out of the water and had to raise their heads, the odds were with the wolves. on dry land the wolves suffered; but in the water or ashore, mowgli's knife came and went without ceasing. the four had worried their way to his side. gray brother, crouched between the boy's knees, was protecting his stomach, while the others guarded his back and either side, or stood over him when the shock of a leaping, yelling dhole who had thrown himself full on the steady blade, bore him down. for the rest, it was one tangled confusion--a locked and swaying mob that moved from right to left and from left to right along the bank; and also ground round and round slowly on its own center. here would be a heaving mound, like a water-blister in a whirlpool, which would break like a water-blister, and throw up four or five mangled dogs, each striving to get back to the center; here would be a single wolf borne down by two or three dholes, laboriously dragging them forward, and sinking the while; here a yearling cub would be held up by the pressure round him, though he had been killed early, while his mother, crazed with dumb rage, rolled over and over, snapping, and passing on; and in the middle of the thickest press, perhaps, one wolf and one dhole, forgetting everything else, would be manoeuvering for first hold till they were whirled away by a rush of furious fighters. once mowgli passed akela, a dhole on either flank, and his all but toothless jaws closed over the loins of a third; and once he saw phao, his teeth set in the throat of a dhole, tugging the unwilling beast forward till the yearlings could finish him. but the bulk of the fight was blind flurry and smother in the dark; hit, trip, and tumble, yelp, groan, and worry-worry-worry, round him and behind him and above him. as the night wore on, the quick, giddy-go-round motion increased. the dholes were cowed and afraid to attack the stronger wolves, but did not yet dare to run away. mowgli felt that the end was coming soon, and contented himself with striking merely to cripple. the yearlings were growing bolder; there was time now and again to breathe, and pass a word to a friend, and the mere flicker of the knife would sometimes turn a dog aside. "the meat is very near the bone," gray brother yelled. he was bleeding from a score of flesh-wounds. "but the bone is yet to be cracked," said mowgli. "_eowawa! thus_ do we do in the jungle!" the red blade ran like a flame along the side of a dhole whose hind-quarters were hidden by the weight of a clinging wolf. "my kill!" snorted the wolf through his wrinkled nostrils. "leave him to me." "is thy stomach still empty, outlier?" said mowgli. won-tolla was fearfully punished, but his grip had paralyzed the dhole, who could not turn round and reach him. "by the bull that bought me," said mowgli, with a bitter laugh, "it is the tailless one!" and indeed it was the big bay-colored leader. "it is not wise to kill cubs and lahinis," mowgli went on, philosophically, wiping the blood out of his eyes, "unless one has also killed the outlier; and it is in my stomach that this won-tolla kills thee." a dhole leaped to his leader's aid; but before his teeth had found won-tolla's flank, mowgli's knife was in his throat, and gray brother took what was left. "and thus do we do in the jungle," said mowgli. won-tolla said not a word, only his jaws were closing and closing on the backbone as his life ebbed. the dhole shuddered, his head dropped, and he lay still, and won-tolla dropped above him. "_huh!_ the blood debt is paid," said mowgli. "sing the song, won-tolla." "he hunts no more," said gray brother; "and akela, too, is silent this long time." "the bone is cracked!" thundered phao, son of phaona. "they go! kill, kill out, o hunters of the free people!" dhole after dhole was slinking away from those dark and bloody sands to the river, to the thick jungle, up-stream or down-stream as he saw the road clear. "the debt! the debt!" shouted mowgli. "pay the debt! they have slain the lone wolf! let not a dog go!" he was flying to the river, knife in hand, to check any dhole who dared to take water, when, from under a mound of nine dead, rose akela's red head and fore-quarters, and mowgli dropped on his knees beside the lone wolf. "said i not it would be my last fight?" akela panted. "it is good hunting. and thou, little brother?" "i live, having killed many." "even so. i die, and i would--i would die by thee, little brother." mowgli took the terrible scarred head on his knees, and put his arms round the torn neck. "it is long since the old days of shere khan, and a man-cub that rolled naked in the dust." "nay, nay, i am a wolf. i am of one skin with the free people," mowgli cried. "it is no will of mine that i am a man." "thou art a man, little brother, wolfling of my watching. thou art a man, or else the pack had fled before the dhole. my life i owe to thee, and to-day thou hast saved the pack even as once i saved thee. hast thou forgotten? all debts are paid now. go to thine own people. i tell thee again, eye of my eye, this hunting is ended. go to thine own people." "i will never go. i will hunt alone in the jungle. i have said it." "after the summer come the rains, and after the rains comes the spring. go back before thou art driven." "who will drive me?" "mowgli will drive mowgli. go back to thy people. go to man." "when mowgli drives mowgli i will go," mowgli answered. "there is no more to say," said akela. "little brother, canst thou raise me to my feet? i also was a leader of the free people." very carefully and gently mowgli lifted the bodies aside, and raised akela to his feet, both arms round him, and the lone wolf drew a long breath, and began the death song that a leader of the pack should sing when he dies. it gathered strength as he went on, lifting and lifting, and ringing far across the river, till it came to the last "good hunting!" and akela shook himself clear of mowgli for an instant, and, leaping into the air, fell backward dead upon his last and most terrible kill. mowgli sat with the head on his knees, careless of anything else, while the remnant of the flying dholes were being overtaken and run down by the merciless lahinis. little by little the cries died away, and the wolves returned limping, as their wounds stiffened, to take stock of the losses. fifteen of the pack, as well as half a dozen lahinis, lay dead by the river, and of the others not one was unmarked. and mowgli sat through it all till the cold daybreak, when phao's wet, red muzzle was dropped in his hand, and mowgli drew back to show the gaunt body of akela. "good hunting!" said phao, as though akela were still alive, and then over his bitten shoulder to the others: "howl, dogs! a wolf has died to-night!" but of all the pack of two hundred fighting dholes, whose boast was that all jungles were their jungle, and that no living thing could stand before them, not one returned to the dekkan to carry that word. chil's song [this is the song that chil sang as the kites dropped down one after another to the river-bed, when the great fight was finished. chil is good friends with everybody, but he is a cold-blooded kind of creature at heart, because he knows that almost everybody in the jungle comes to him in the long run.] these were my companions going forth by night-- (_for chil! look you, for chil!_) now come i to whistle them the ending of the fight. (_chil! vanguards of chil!_) word they gave me overhead of quarry newly slain, word i gave them underfoot of buck upon the plain. here's an end of every trail--they shall not speak again! they that called the hunting-cry--they that followed fast-- (_for chil! look you, for chil!_) they that bade the sambhur wheel, and pinned him as he passed-- (_chil! vanguards of chil!_) they that lagged behind the scent--they that ran before, they that shunned the level horn--they that overbore. here's an end of every trail--they shall not follow more. these were my companions. pity 'twas they died! (_for chil! look you, for chil!_) now come i to comfort them that knew them in their pride. (_chil! vanguards of chil!_) tattered flank and sunken eye, open mouth and red, locked and lank and lone they lie, the dead upon their dead. here's an end of every trail--and here my hosts are fed! the spring running man goes to man! cry the challenge through the jungle! he that was our brother goes away. hear, now, and judge, o ye people of the jungle,-- answer, who shall turn him--who shall stay? man goes to man! he is weeping in the jungle: he that was our brother sorrows sore! man goes to man! (oh, we loved him in the jungle!) to the man-trail where we may not follow more. [illustration] the spring running the second year after the great fight with red dog and the death of akela, mowgli must have been nearly seventeen years old. he looked older, for hard exercise, the best of good eating, and baths whenever he felt in the least hot or dusty, had given him strength and growth far beyond his age. he could swing by one hand from a top branch for half an hour at a time, when he had occasion to look along the tree-roads. he could stop a young buck in mid-gallop and throw him sideways by the head. he could even jerk over the big, blue wild boars that lived in the marshes of the north. the jungle people who used to fear him for his wits feared him now for his strength, and when he moved quietly on his own affairs the mere whisper of his coming cleared the wood-paths. and yet the look in his eyes was always gentle. even when he fought, his eyes never blazed as bagheera's did. they only grew more and more interested and excited; and that was one of the things that bagheera himself did not understand. he asked mowgli about it, and the boy laughed and said: "when i miss the kill i am angry. when i must go empty for two days i am very angry. do not my eyes talk then?" "the mouth is angry," said bagheera, "but the eyes say nothing. hunting, eating, or swimming, it is all one--like a stone in wet or dry weather." mowgli looked at him lazily from under his long eyelashes, and, as usual, the panther's head dropped. bagheera knew his master. they were lying out far up the side of a hill overlooking the waingunga, and the morning mist hung below them in bands of white and green. as the sun rose it changed into bubbling seas of red gold, churned off, and let the low rays stripe the dried grass on which mowgli and bagheera were resting. it was the end of the cold weather, the leaves and the trees looked worn and faded, and there was a dry, ticking rustle everywhere when the wind blew. a little leaf tap-tap-tapped furiously against a twig, as a single leaf caught in a current will. it roused bagheera, for he snuffed the morning air with a deep, hollow cough, threw himself on his back, and struck with his fore-paws at the nodding leaf above. "the year turns," he said. "the jungle goes forward. the time of new talk is near. that leaf knows. it is very good." "the grass is dry," mowgli answered, pulling up a tuft. "even eye-of-the-spring [that is a little trumpet-shaped, waxy red flower that runs in and out among the grasses]--even eye-of-the spring is shut, and ... bagheera, _is_ it well for the black panther so to lie on his back and beat with his paws in the air, as though he were the tree-cat?" "aowh?" said bagheera. he seemed to be thinking of other things. "i say, _is_ it well for the black panther so to mouth and cough, and howl and roll? remember, we be the masters of the jungle, thou and i." "indeed, yes: i hear, man-cub." bagheera rolled over hurriedly and sat up, the dust on his ragged, black flanks. (he was just casting his winter coat.) "we be surely the masters of the jungle! who is so strong as mowgli? who so wise?" there was a curious drawl in the voice that made mowgli turn to see whether by any chance the black panther were making fun of him, for the jungle is full of words that sound like one thing, but mean another. "i said we be beyond question the masters of the jungle," bagheera repeated. "have i done wrong? i did not know that the man-cub no longer lay upon the ground. does he fly, then?" mowgli sat with his elbows on his knees, looking out across the valley at the daylight. somewhere down in the woods below a bird was trying over in a husky, reedy voice the first few notes of his spring song. it was no more than a shadow of the liquid, tumbling call he would be pouring later, but bagheera heard it. "i said the time of new talk is near," growled the panther, switching his tail. "i hear," mowgli answered. "bagheera, why dost thou shake all over? the sun is warm." "that is ferao, the scarlet woodpecker," said bagheera. "_he_ has not forgotten. now i, too, must remember my song," and he began purring and crooning to himself, harking back dissatisfied again and again. "there is no game afoot," said mowgli. "little brother, are _both_ thine ears stopped? that is no killing-word, but my song that i make ready against the need." "i had forgotten. i shall know when the time of new talk is here, because then thou and the others all run away and leave me alone." mowgli spoke rather savagely. "but, indeed, little brother," bagheera began, "we do not always--" "i say ye do," said mowgli, shooting out his forefinger angrily. "ye _do_ run away, and i, who am the master of the jungle, must needs walk alone. how was it last season, when i would gather sugar-cane from the fields of a man-pack? i sent a runner--i sent thee!--to hathi, bidding him to come upon such a night and pluck the sweet grass for me with his trunk." "he came only two nights later," said bagheera, cowering a little; "and of that long, sweet grass that pleased thee so he gathered more than any man-cub could eat in all the nights of the rains. that was no fault of mine." "he did not come upon the night when i sent him the word. no, he was trumpeting and running and roaring through the valleys in the moonlight. his trail was like the trail of three elephants, for he would not hide among the trees. he danced in the moonlight before the houses of the man-pack. i saw him, and yet he would not come to me; and _i_ am the master of the jungle!" "it was the time of new talk," said the panther, always very humble. "perhaps, little brother, thou didst not that time call him by a master-word? listen to ferao, and be glad!" mowgli's bad temper seemed to have boiled itself away. he lay back with his head on his arms, his eyes shut. "i do not know--nor do i care," he said sleepily. "let us sleep, bagheera. my stomach is heavy in me. make me a rest for my head." the panther lay down again with a sigh, because he could hear ferao practising and repractising his song against the springtime of new talk, as they say. in an indian jungle the seasons slide one into the other almost without division. there seem to be only two--the wet and the dry; but if you look closely below the torrents of rain and the clouds of char and dust you will find all four going round in their regular ring. spring is the most wonderful, because she has not to cover a clean, bare field with new leaves and flowers, but to drive before her and to put away the hanging-on, over-surviving raffle of half-green things which the gentle winter has suffered to live, and to make the partly dressed stale earth feel new and young once more. and this she does so well that there is no spring in the world like the jungle spring. there is one day when all things are tired, and the very smells, as they drift on the heavy air, are old and used. one cannot explain this, but it feels so. then there is another day--to the eye nothing whatever has changed--when all the smells are new and delightful, and the whiskers of the jungle people quiver to their roots, and the winter hair comes away from their sides in long, draggled locks. then, perhaps, a little rain falls, and all the trees and the bushes and the bamboos and the mosses and the juicy-leaved plants wake with a noise of growing that you can almost hear, and under this noise runs, day and night, a deep hum. _that_ is the noise of the spring--a vibrating boom which is neither bees, nor falling water, nor the wind in tree-tops, but the purring of the warm, happy world. up to this year mowgli had always delighted in the turn of the seasons. it was he who generally saw the first eye-of-the-spring deep down among the grasses, and the first bank of spring clouds which are like nothing else in the jungle. his voice could be heard in all sorts of wet, star-lighted, blossoming places, helping the big frogs through their choruses, or mocking the little upside-down owls that hoot through the white nights. like all his people, spring was the season he chose for his flittings--moving, for the mere joy of rushing through the warm air, thirty, forty, or fifty miles between twilight and the morning star, and coming back panting and laughing and wreathed with strange flowers. the four did not follow him on these wild ringings of the jungle, but went off to sing songs with other wolves. the jungle people are very busy in the spring, and mowgli could hear them grunting and screaming and whistling according to their kind. their voices then are different from their voices at other times of the year, and that is one of the reasons why spring in the jungle is called the time of new talk. but that spring, as he told bagheera, his stomach was changed in him. ever since the bamboo shoots turned spotty-brown he had been looking forward to the morning when the smells should change. but when the morning came, and mor the peacock, blazing in bronze and blue and gold, cried it aloud all along the misty woods, and mowgli opened his mouth to send on the cry, the words choked between his teeth, and a feeling came over him that began at his toes and ended in his hair--a feeling of pure unhappiness, so that he looked himself over to be sure that he had not trod on a thorn. mor cried the new smells, the other birds took it over, and from the rocks by the waingunga he heard bagheera's hoarse scream--something between the scream of an eagle and the neighing of a horse. there was a yelling and scattering of _bandar-log_ in the new-budding branches above, and there stood mowgli, his chest, filled to answer mor, sinking in little gasps as the breath was driven out of it by this unhappiness. he stared all round him, but he could see no more than the mocking _bandar-log_ scudding through the trees, and mor, his tail spread in full splendor, dancing on the slopes below. "the smells have changed," screamed mor. "good hunting, little brother! where is thy answer?" "little brother, good hunting!" whistled chil the kite and his mate, swooping down together. the two baffed under mowgli's nose so close that a pinch of downy white feathers brushed away. a light spring rain--elephant-rain they call it--drove across the jungle in a belt half a mile wide, left the new leaves wet and nodding behind, and died out in a double rainbow and a light roll of thunder. the spring hum broke out for a minute, and was silent, but all the jungle folk seemed to be giving tongue at once. all except mowgli. "i have eaten good food," he said to himself. "i have drunk good water. nor does my throat burn and grow small, as it did when i bit the blue-spotted root that oo the turtle said was clean food. but my stomach is heavy, and i have given very bad talk to bagheera and others, people of the jungle and my people. now, too, i am hot and now i am cold, and now i am neither hot nor cold, but angry with that which i cannot see. huhu! it is time to make a running! to-night i will cross the ranges; yes, i will make a spring running to the marshes of the north, and back again. i have hunted too easily too long. the four shall come with me, for they grow as fat as white grubs." he called, but never one of the four answered. they were far beyond earshot, singing over the spring songs--the moon and sambhur songs--with the wolves of the pack; for in the springtime the jungle people make very little difference between the day and the night. he gave the sharp, barking note, but his only answer was the mocking _maiou_ of the little spotted tree-cat winding in and out among the branches for early birds' nests. at this he shook all over with rage, and half drew his knife. then he became very haughty, though there was no one to see him, and stalked severely down the hillside, chin up and eyebrows down. but never a single one of his people asked him a question, for they were all too busy with their own affairs. "yes," said mowgli to himself, though in his heart he knew that he had no reason. "let the red dhole come from the dekkan, or the red flower dance among the bamboos, and all the jungle runs whining to mowgli, calling him great elephant-names. but now, because eye-of-the-spring is red, and mor, forsooth, must show his naked legs in some spring dance, the jungle goes mad as tabaqui.... by the bull that bought me! am i the master of the jungle, or am i not? be silent! what do ye here?" a couple of young wolves of the pack were cantering down a path, looking for open ground in which to fight. (you will remember that the law of the jungle forbids fighting where the pack can see.) their neck-bristles were as stiff as wire, and they bayed furiously, crouching for the first grapple. mowgli leaped forward, caught one outstretched throat in either hand, expecting to fling the creatures backward as he had often done in games or pack hunts. but he had never before interfered with a spring fight. the two leaped forward and dashed him aside, and without word to waste rolled over and over close locked. mowgli was on his feet almost before he fell, his knife and his white teeth were bared, and at that minute he would have killed both for no reason but that they were fighting when he wished them to be quiet, although every wolf has full right under the law to fight. he danced round them with lowered shoulders and quivering hand, ready to send in a double blow when the first flurry of the scuffle should be over; but while he waited the strength seemed to ebb from his body, the knife-point lowered, and he sheathed the knife and watched. "i have surely eaten poison," he sighed at last. "since i broke up the council with the red flower--since i killed shere khan--none of the pack could fling me aside. and these be only tail-wolves in the pack, little hunters! my strength is gone from me, and presently i shall die. oh, mowgli, why dost thou not kill them both?" the fight went on till one wolf ran away, and mowgli was left alone on the torn and bloody ground, looking now at his knife, and now at his legs and arms, while the feeling of unhappiness he had never known before covered him as water covers a log. he killed early that evening and eat but little, so as to be in good fettle for his spring running, and he eat alone because all the jungle people were away singing or fighting. it was a perfect white night, as they call it. all green things seemed to have made a month's growth since the morning. the branch that was yellow-leaved the day before dripped sap when mowgli broke it. the mosses curled deep and warm over his feet, the young grass had no cutting edges, and all the voices of the jungle boomed like one deep harp-string touched by the moon--the moon of new talk, who splashed her light full on rock and pool, slipped it between trunk and creeper, and sifted it through a million leaves. forgetting his unhappiness, mowgli sang aloud with pure delight as he settled into his stride. it was more like flying than anything else, for he had chosen the long downward slope that leads to the northern marshes through the heart of the main jungle, where the springy ground deadened the fall of his feet. a man-taught man would have picked his way with many stumbles through the cheating moonlight, but mowgli's muscles, trained by years of experience, bore him up as though he were a feather. when a rotten log or a hidden stone turned under his foot he saved himself, never checking his pace, without effort and without thought. when he tired of ground-going he threw up his hands monkey-fashion to the nearest creeper, and seemed to float rather than to climb up into the thin branches, whence he would follow a tree-road till his mood changed, and he shot downward in a long, leafy curve to the levels again. there were still, hot hollows surrounded by wet rocks where he could hardly breathe for the heavy scents of the night flowers and the bloom along the creeper-buds; dark avenues where the moonlight lay in belts as regular as checkered marbles in a church aisle; thickets where the wet young growth stood breast-high about him and threw its arms round his waist; and hilltops crowned with broken rock, where he leaped from stone to stone above the lairs of the frightened little foxes. he would hear, very faint and far off, the _chug-drug_ of a boar sharpening his tusks on a bole; and would come across the great gray brute all alone, scribing and rending the bark of a tall tree, his mouth dripping with foam, and his eyes blazing like fire. or he would turn aside to the sound of clashing horns and hissing grunts, and dash past a couple of furious sambhur, staggering to and fro with lowered heads, striped with blood that showed black in the moonlight. or at some rushing ford he would hear jacala the crocodile bellowing like a bull, or disturb a twined knot of the poison people, but before they could strike he would be away and across the glistening shingle, deep in the jungle again. so he ran, sometimes shouting, sometimes singing to himself, the happiest thing in all the jungle that night, till the smell of the flowers warned him that he was near the marshes, and those lay far beyond his furthest hunting-grounds. here, again, a man-trained man would have sunk overhead in three strides, but mowgli's feet had eyes in them, and they passed him from tussock to tussock and clump to quaking clump without asking help from the eyes in his head. he ran out to the middle of the swamp, disturbing the duck as he ran, and sat down on a moss-coated tree-trunk lapped in the black water. the marsh was awake all round him, for in the spring the bird-people sleep very lightly, and companies of them were coming or going the night through. but no one took any notice of mowgli sitting among the tall reeds humming songs without words, and looking at the soles of his hard brown feet in case of neglected thorns. all his unhappiness seemed to have been left behind in his own jungle, and he was just beginning a full-throat song when it came back again--ten times worse than before. this time mowgli was frightened. "it is here also!" he said half aloud. "it has followed me," and he looked over his shoulder to see whether the it were not standing behind him. "there is no one here." the night noises of the marsh went on, but never a bird or beast spoke to him, and the new feeling of misery grew. "i have surely eaten poison," he said in an awe-stricken voice. "it must be that carelessly i have eaten poison, and my strength is going from me. i was afraid--and yet it was not _i_ that was afraid--mowgli was afraid when the two wolves fought. akela, or even phao, would have silenced them; yet mowgli was afraid. that is true sign i have eaten poison.... but what do they care in the jungle? they sing and howl and fight, and run in companies under the moon, and i--_hai-mai!_--i am dying in the marshes, of that poison which i have eaten." he was so sorry for himself that he nearly wept. "and after," he went on, "they will find me lying in the black water. nay, i will go back to my own jungle, and i will die upon the council rock, and bagheera, whom i love, if he is not screaming in the valley--bagheera, perhaps, may watch by what is left for a little, lest chil use me as he used akela." a large, warm tear splashed down on his knee, and, miserable as he was, mowgli felt happy that he was so miserable, if you can understand that upside-down sort of happiness. "as chil the kite used akela," he repeated, "on the night i saved the pack from red dog." he was quiet for a little, thinking of the last words of the lone wolf, which you, of course, remember. "now akela said to me many foolish things before he died, for when we die our stomachs change. he said.... none the less, i _am_ of the jungle!" in his excitement, as he remembered the fight on waingunga bank, he shouted the last words aloud, and a wild buffalo-cow among the reeds sprang to her knees, snorting, "man!" "uhh!" said mysa the wild buffalo (mowgli could hear him turn in his wallow), "_that_ is no man. it is only the hairless wolf of the seeonee pack. on such nights runs he to and fro." "uhh!" said the cow, dropping her head again to graze, "i thought it was man." "i say no. oh, mowgli, is it danger?" lowed mysa. "oh, mowgli, is it danger?" the boy called back mockingly. "that is all mysa thinks for: is it danger? but for mowgli, who goes to and fro in the jungle by night, watching, what do ye care?" "how loud he cries!" said the cow. "thus do they cry," mysa answered contemptuously, "who, having torn up the grass, know not how to eat it." "for less than this," mowgli groaned to himself--"for less than this even last rains i had pricked mysa out of his wallow, and ridden him through the swamp on a rush halter." he stretched a hand to break one of the feathery reeds, but drew it back with a sigh. mysa went on steadily chewing the cud, and the long grass ripped where the cow grazed. "i will not die _here_," he said angrily. "mysa, who is of one blood with jacala and the pig, would see me. let us go beyond the swamp, and see what comes. never have i run such a spring running--hot and cold together. up, mowgli!" he could not resist the temptation of stealing across the reeds to mysa and pricking him with the point of his knife. the great dripping bull broke out of his wallow like a shell exploding, while mowgli laughed till he sat down. "say now that the hairless wolf of the seeonee pack once herded thee, mysa," he called. "wolf! _thou?_" the bull snorted, stamping in the mud. "all the jungle knows thou wast a herder of tame cattle--such a man's brat as shouts in the dust by the crops yonder. _thou_ of the jungle! what hunter would have crawled like a snake among the leeches, and for a muddy jest--a jackal's jest--have shamed me before my cow? come to firm ground, and i will--i will...." mysa frothed at the mouth, for mysa has nearly the worst temper of any one in the jungle. mowgli watched him puff and blow with eyes that never changed. when he could make himself heard through the spattering mud, he said: "what man-pack lair here by the marshes, mysa? this is new jungle to me." "go north, then," roared the angry bull, for mowgli had pricked him rather sharply. "it was a naked cowherd's jest. go and tell them at the village at the foot of the marsh." "the man-pack do not love jungle-tales, nor do i think, mysa, that a scratch more or less on thy hide is any matter for a council. but i will go and look at this village. yes, i will go. softly now. it is not every night that the master of the jungle comes to herd thee." he stepped out to the shivering ground on the edge of the marsh, well knowing that mysa would never charge over it, and laughed, as he ran, to think of the bull's anger. "my strength is not altogether gone," he said. "it may be that the poison is not to the bone. there is a star sitting low yonder." he looked at it between his half-shut hands. "by the bull that bought me, it is the red flower--the red flower that i lay beside before--before i came even to the first seeonee pack! now that i have seen, i will finish the running." the marsh ended in a broad plain where a light twinkled. it was a long time since mowgli had concerned himself with the doings of men, but this night the glimmer of the red flower drew him forward. "i will look," said he, "as i did in the old days, and i will see how far the man-pack has changed." forgetting that he was no longer in his own jungle, where he could do what he pleased, he trod carelessly through the dew-loaded grasses till he came to the hut where the light stood. three or four yelping dogs gave tongue, for he was on the outskirts of a village. "ho!" said mowgli, sitting down noiselessly, after sending back a deep wolf-growl that silenced the curs. "what comes will come. mowgli, what hast thou to do any more with the lairs of the man-pack?" he rubbed his mouth, remembering where a stone had struck it years ago when the other man-pack had cast him out. the door of the hut opened, and a woman stood peering out into the darkness. a child cried, and the woman said over her shoulder, "sleep. it was but a jackal that waked the dogs. in a little time morning comes." mowgli in the grass began to shake as though he had fever. he knew that voice well, but to make sure he cried softly, surprised to find how man's talk came back, "messua! o messua!" "who calls?" said the woman, a quiver in her voice. "hast thou forgotten?" said mowgli. his throat was dry as he spoke. "if it be _thou_, what name did i give thee? say!" she had half shut the door, and her hand was clutching at her breast. "nathoo! ohé nathoo!" said mowgli, for, as you remember, that was the name messua gave him when he first came to the man-pack. "come, my son," she called, and mowgli stepped into the light, and looked full at messua, the woman who had been good to him, and whose life he had saved from the man-pack so long before. she was older, and her hair was gray, but her eyes and her voice had not changed. woman-like, she expected to find mowgli where she had left him, and her eyes traveled upward in a puzzled way from his chest to his head, that touched the top of the door. "my son," she stammered; and then, sinking to his feet: "but it is no longer my son. it is a godling of the woods! ahai!" as he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders, the knife swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken for some wild god of a jungle legend. the child half asleep on a cot sprang up and shrieked aloud with terror. messua turned to soothe him, while mowgli stood still, looking in at the water-jars and the cooking-pots, the grain-bin, and all the other human belongings that he found himself remembering so well. "what wilt thou eat or drink?" messua murmured. "this is all thine. we owe our lives to thee. but art thou him i called nathoo, or a godling, indeed?" "i am nathoo," said mowgli, "i am very far from my own place. i saw this light, and came hither. i did not know thou wast here." "after we came to kanhiwara," messua said timidly, "the english would have helped us against those villagers that sought to burn us. rememberest thou?" "indeed, i have not forgotten." "but when the english law was made ready, we went to the village of those evil people, and it was no more to be found." "that also i remember," said mowgli, with a quiver of his nostril. "my man, therefore, took service in the fields, and at last--for, indeed, he was a strong man--we held a little land here. it is not so rich as the old village, but we do not need much--we two." "where is he--the man that dug in the dirt when he was afraid on that night?" "he is dead--a year." "and he?" mowgli pointed to the child. "my son that was born two rains ago. if thou art a godling, give him the favor of the jungle, that he may be safe among thy--thy people, as we were safe on that night." she lifted up the child, who, forgetting his fright, reached out to play with the knife that hung on mowgli's chest, and mowgli put the little fingers aside very carefully. "and if thou art nathoo whom the tigers carried away," messua went on, choking, "he is then thy younger brother. give him an elder brother's blessing." "_hai-mai!_ what do i know of the thing called a blessing? i am neither a godling nor his brother, and--o mother, mother, my heart is heavy in me." he shivered as he set down the child. "like enough," said messua, bustling among the cooking-pots. "this comes of running about the marshes by night. beyond question, the fever has soaked thee to the marrow." mowgli smiled a little at the idea of anything in the jungle hurting him. "i will make a fire, and thou shalt drink warm milk. put away the jasmine wreath: the smell is heavy in so small a place." mowgli sat down, muttering, with his face in his hands. all manner of strange feelings that he had never felt before were running over him, exactly as though he had been poisoned, and he felt dizzy and a little sick. he drank the warm milk in long gulps, messua patting him on the shoulder from time to time, not quite sure whether he were her son nathoo of the long ago days, or some wonderful jungle being, but glad to feel that he was at least flesh and blood. "son," she said at last,--her eyes were full of pride,--"have any told thee that thou art beautiful beyond all men?" "hah?" said mowgli, for naturally he had never heard anything of the kind. messua laughed softly and happily. the look in his face was enough for her. "i am the first, then? it is right, though it comes seldom, that a mother should tell her son these good things. thou art very beautiful. never have i looked upon such a man." mowgli twisted his head and tried to see over his own hard shoulder, and messua laughed again so long that mowgli, not knowing why, was forced to laugh with her, and the child ran from one to the other, laughing too. "nay, thou must not mock thy brother," said messua, catching him to her breast. "when thou art one half as fair we will marry thee to the youngest daughter of a king, and thou shalt ride great elephants." mowgli could not understand one word in three of the talk here; the warm milk was taking effect on him after his long run, so he curled up and in a minute was deep asleep, and messua put the hair back from his eyes, threw a cloth over him, and was happy. jungle-fashion, he slept out the rest of that night and all the next day; for his instincts, which never wholly slept, warned him there was nothing to fear. he waked at last with a bound that shook the hut, for the cloth over his face made him dream of traps; and there he stood, his hand on his knife, the sleep all heavy in his rolling eyes, ready for any fight. messua laughed, and set the evening meal before him. there were only a few coarse cakes baked over the smoky fire, some rice, and a lump of sour preserved tamarinds--just enough to go on with till he could get to his evening kill. the smell of the dew in the marshes made him hungry and restless. he wanted to finish his spring running, but the child insisted on sitting in his arms, and messua would have it that his long, blue-black hair must be combed out. so she sang, as she combed, foolish little baby-songs, now calling mowgli her son, and now begging him to give some of his jungle power to the child. the hut door was closed, but mowgli heard a sound he knew well, and saw messua's jaw drop with horror as a great gray paw came under the bottom of the door, and gray brother outside whined a muffled and penitent whine of anxiety and fear. "out and wait! ye would not come when i called," said mowgli in jungle-talk, without turning his head, and the great gray paw disappeared. "do not--do not bring thy--thy servants with thee," said messua. "i--we have always lived at peace with the jungle." "it is peace," said mowgli, rising. "think of that night on the road to kanhiwara. there were scores of such folk before thee and behind thee. but i see that even in springtime the jungle people do not always forget. mother, i go." messua drew aside humbly--he was indeed a wood-god, she thought; but as his hand was on the door the mother in her made her throw her arms round mowgli's neck again and again. "come back!" she whispered. "son or no son, come back, for i love thee--look, he too grieves." the child was crying because the man with the shiny knife was going away. "come back again," messua repeated. "by night or by day this door is never shut to thee." mowgli's throat worked as though the cords in it were being pulled, and his voice seemed to be dragged from it as he answered, "i will surely come back." "and now," he said, as he put by the head of the fawning wolf on the threshold, "i have a little cry against thee, gray brother. why came ye not all four when i called so long ago?" "so long ago? it was but last night. i--we--were singing in the jungle the new songs, for this is the time of new talk. rememberest thou?" "truly, truly." "and as soon as the songs were sung," gray brother went on earnestly, "i followed thy trail. i ran from all the others and followed hot-foot. but, o little brother, what hast _thou_ done, eating and sleeping with the man-pack?" "if ye had come when i called, this had never been," said mowgli, running much faster. "and now what is to be?" said gray brother. mowgli was just going to answer when a girl in a white cloth came down some path that led from the outskirts of the village. gray brother dropped out of sight at once, and mowgli backed noiselessly into a field of high-springing crops. he could almost have touched her with his hand when the warm, green stalks closed before his face and he disappeared like a ghost. the girl screamed, for she thought she had seen a spirit, and then she gave a deep sigh. mowgli parted the stalks with his hands and watched her till she was out of sight. "and now i do not know," he said, sighing in his turn. "_why_ did ye not come when i called?" "we follow thee--we follow thee," gray brother mumbled, licking at mowgli's heel. "we follow thee always, except in the time of the new talk." "and would ye follow me to the man-pack?" mowgli whispered. "did i not follow thee on the night our old pack cast thee out? who waked thee lying among the crops?" "ay, but again?" "have i not followed thee to-night?" "ay, but again and again, and it may be again, gray brother?" gray brother was silent. when he spoke he growled to himself, "the black one spoke truth." "and he said?" "man goes to man at the last. raksha, our mother, said--" "so also said akela on the night of red dog," mowgli muttered. "so also says kaa, who is wiser than us all." "what dost thou say, gray brother?" "they cast thee out once, with bad talk. they cut thy mouth with stones. they sent buldeo to slay thee. they would have thrown thee into the red flower. thou, and not i, hast said that they are evil and senseless. thou, and not i--i follow my own people--didst let in the jungle upon them. thou, and not i, didst make song against them more bitter even than our song against red dog." "i ask thee what _thou_ sayest?" they were talking as they ran. gray brother cantered on a while without replying, and then he said,--between bound and bound as it were,--"man-cub--master of the jungle--son of raksha, lair-brother to me--though i forget for a little while in the spring, thy trail is my trail, thy lair is my lair, thy kill is my kill, and thy death-fight is my death-fight. i speak for the three. but what wilt thou say to the jungle?" "that is well thought. between the sight and the kill it is not good to wait. go before and cry them all to the council rock, and i will tell them what is in my stomach. but they may not come--in the time of new talk they may forget me." "hast thou, then, forgotten nothing?" snapped gray brother over his shoulder, as he laid himself down to gallop, and mowgli followed, thinking. at any other season the news would have called all the jungle together with bristling necks, but now they were busy hunting and fighting and killing and singing. from one to another gray brother ran, crying, "the master of the jungle goes back to man! come to the council rock." and the happy, eager people only answered, "he will return in the summer heats. the rains will drive him to lair. run and sing with us, gray brother." "but the master of the jungle goes back to man," gray brother would repeat. "eee--yoawa? is the time of new talk any less sweet for that?" they would reply. so when mowgli, heavy-hearted, came up through the well-remembered rocks to the place where he had been brought into the council, he found only the four, baloo, who was nearly blind with age, and the heavy, cold-blooded kaa coiled around akela's empty seat. "thy trail ends here, then, manling?" said kaa, as mowgli threw himself down, his face in his hands. "cry thy cry. we be of one blood, thou and i--man and snake together." "why did i not die under red dog?" the boy moaned. "my strength is gone from me, and it is not any poison. by night and by day i hear a double step upon my trail. when i turn my head it is as though one had hidden himself from me that instant. i go to look behind the trees, and he is not there. i call and none cry again; but it is as though one listened and kept back the answer. i lie down, but i do not rest. i run the spring running, but i am not made still. i bathe, but i am not made cool. the kill sickens me, but i have no heart to fight except i kill. the red flower is in my body, my bones are water--and--i know not what i know." "what need of talk?" said baloo slowly, turning his head to where mowgli lay. "akela by the river said it, that mowgli should drive mowgli back to the man-pack. i said it. but who listens now to baloo? bagheera--where is bagheera this night?--he knows also. it is the law." "when we met at cold lairs, manling, i knew it," said kaa, turning a little in his mighty coils. "man goes to man at the last, though the jungle does not cast him out." the four looked at one another and at mowgli, puzzled but obedient. "the jungle does not cast me out, then?" mowgli stammered. gray brother and the three growled furiously, beginning, "so long as we live none shall dare--" but baloo checked them. "i taught thee the law. it is for me to speak," he said; "and, though i cannot now see the rocks before me, i see far. little frog, take thine own trail; make thy lair with thine own blood and pack and people; but when there is need of foot or tooth or eye, or a word carried swiftly by night, remember, master of the jungle, the jungle is thine at call." "the middle jungle is thine also," said kaa. "i speak for no small people." "_hai-mai_, my brothers," cried mowgli, throwing up his arms with a sob. "i know not what i know! i would not go; but i am drawn by both feet. how shall i leave these nights?" "nay, look up, little brother," baloo repeated. "there is no shame in this hunting. when the honey is eaten we leave the empty hive." "having cast the skin," said kaa, "we may not creep into it afresh. it is the law." "listen, dearest of all to me," said baloo. "there is neither word nor will here to hold thee back. look up! who may question the master of the jungle? i saw thee playing among the white pebbles yonder when thou wast a little frog; and bagheera, that bought thee for the price of a young bull newly killed, saw thee also. of that looking over we two only remain; for raksha, thy lair-mother, is dead with thy lair-father; the old wolf pack is long since dead; thou knowest whither shere khan went, and akela died among the dholes, where, but for thy wisdom and strength, the second seeonee pack would also have died. there remains nothing but old bones. it is no longer the man-cub that asks leave of his pack, but the master of the jungle that changes his trail. who shall question man in his ways?" "but bagheera and the bull that bought me," said mowgli. "i would not--" his words were cut short by a roar and a crash in the thicket below, and bagheera, light, strong, and terrible as always, stood before him. "_therefore_," he said, stretching out a dripping right paw, "i did not come. it was a long hunt, but he lies dead in the bushes now--a bull in his second year--the bull that frees thee, little brother. all debts are paid now. for the rest, my word is baloo's word." he licked mowgli's foot. "remember, bagheera loved thee," he cried and bounded away. at the foot of the hill he cried again long and loud, "good hunting on a new trail, master of the jungle! remember, bagheera loved thee." "thou hast heard," said baloo. "there is no more. go now; but first come to me. o wise little frog, come to me!" "it is hard to cast the skin," said kaa as mowgli sobbed and sobbed, with his head on the blind bear's side and his arms round his neck, while baloo tried feebly to lick his feet. "the stars are thin," said gray brother, snuffing at the dawn-wind. "where shall we lair to-day? for, from now, we follow new trails." * * * * * and this is the last of the mowgli stories. [illustration] the outsong this is the song that mowgli heard behind him in the jungle till he came to messua's door again: baloo-- for the sake of him who showed one wise frog the jungle-road, keep the law the man-pack make-- for thy blind old baloo's sake! clean or tainted, hot or stale, hold it as it were the trail, through the day and through the night questing neither left nor right. for the sake of him who loves thee beyond all else that moves, when thy pack would make thee pain, say: "tabaqui sings again." when thy pack would work thee ill, say: "shere khan is yet to kill." when the knife is drawn to slay, keep the law and go thy way. (root and honey, palm and spathe, guard a cub from harm and scathe!) _wood and water, wind and tree, jungle-favor go with thee!_ kaa-- anger is the egg of fear-- only lidless eyes are clear. cobra-poison none may leech; even so with cobra-speech. open talk shall call to thee strength, whose mate is courtesy. send no lunge beyond thy length; lend no rotten bough thy strength. gauge thy gape with buck or goat, lest thine eye should choke thy throat after gorging, wouldst thou sleep, look the den is hid and deep, lest a wrong, by thee forgot, draw thy killer to the spot. east and west and north and south, wash thy hide and close thy mouth. (pit and rift and blue pool-brim, middle jungle follow him!) _wood and water, wind and tree, jungle-favor go with thee!_ bagheera-- in the cage my life began; well i know the worth of man. by the broken lock that freed-- man-cub, 'ware the man-cub's breed! scenting-dew or starlight pale, choose no tangled tree-cat trail. pack or council, hunt or den, cry no truce with jackal-men. feed them silence when they say: "come with us an easy way." feed them silence when they seek help of thine to hurt the weak. make no _bandar's_ boast of skill; hold thy peace above the kill. let nor call nor song nor sign turn thee from thy hunting-line. (morning mist or twilight clear, serve him, wardens of the deer!) _wood and water, wind and tree, jungle-favor go with thee!_ the three-- _on the trail that thou must tread to the thresholds of our dread. where the flower blossoms red; through the nights when thou shalt lie prisoned from our mother-sky, hearing us, thy loves, go by; in the dawns, when thou shalt wake to the toil thou canst not break, heartsick for the jungle's sake: wood and water, wind and tree, wisdom, strength, and courtesy, jungle-favor go with thee!_ [illustration] a diversity of creatures by rudyard kipling preface with two exceptions, the dates at the head of these stories show when they were published in magazine form. 'the village that voted the earth was flat,' and 'my son's wife' carry the dates when they were written. rudyard kipling. contents as easy as abc _macdonough's song_ friendly brook _the land_ in the same boat '_helen all alone_' the honours of war _the children_ the dog hervey _the comforters_ the village that voted the earth was flat _the press_ in the presence _jobson's amen_ regulus _a translation_ the edge of the evening _rebirth_ the horse marines _the legend of mirth_ 'my son's wife' _the floods_ _the fabulists_ the vortex _the song of seven cities_ 'swept and garnished' mary postgate _the beginnings_ a diversity of creatures as easy as a.b.c. ( ) _the a.b.c., that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons, controls the planet. transportation is civilisation, our motto runs. theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere with the traffic_ and all it implies. _practically, the a.b.c. confirms or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders_. 'with the night mail[ ].' [footnote : _actions and reactions_.] isn't it almost time that our planet took some interest in the proceedings of the aërial board of control? one knows that easy communications nowadays, and lack of privacy in the past, have killed all curiosity among mankind, but as the board's official reporter i am bound to tell my tale. at . a.m., august , a.d. , the board, sitting in london, was informed by de forest that the district of northern illinois had riotously cut itself out of all systems and would remain disconnected till the board should take over and administer it direct. every northern illinois freight and passenger tower was, he reported, out of action; all district main, local, and guiding lights had been extinguished; all general communications were dumb, and through traffic had been diverted. no reason had been given, but he gathered unofficially from the mayor of chicago that the district complained of 'crowd-making and invasion of privacy.' as a matter of fact, it is of no importance whether northern illinois stay in or out of planetary circuit; as a matter of policy, any complaint of invasion of privacy needs immediate investigation, lest worse follow. by - a.m. de forest, dragomiroff (russia), takahira (japan), and pirolo (italy) were empowered to visit illinois and 'to take such steps as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and _all that that implies.'_ by a.m. the hall was empty, and the four members and i were aboard what pirolo insisted on calling 'my leetle godchild'--that is to say, the new _victor pirolo_. our planet prefers to know victor pirolo as a gentle, grey-haired enthusiast who spends his time near foggia, inventing or creating new breeds of spanish-italian olive-trees; but there is another side to his nature--the manufacture of quaint inventions, of which the _victor pirolo_ is, perhaps, not the least surprising. she and a few score sister-craft of the same type embody his latest ideas. but she is not comfortable. an a.b.c. boat does not take the air with the level-keeled lift of a liner, but shoots up rocket-fashion like the 'aeroplane' of our ancestors, and makes her height at top-speed from the first. that is why i found myself sitting suddenly on the large lap of eustace arnott, who commands the a.b.c. fleet. one knows vaguely that there is such a thing as a fleet somewhere on the planet, and that, theoretically, it exists for the purposes of what used to be known as 'war.' only a week before, while visiting a glacier sanatorium behind gothaven, i had seen some squadrons making false auroras far to the north while they manoeuvred round the pole; but, naturally, it had never occurred to me that the things could be used in earnest. said arnott to de forest as i staggered to a seat on the chart-room divan: 'we're tremendously grateful to 'em in illinois. we've never had a chance of exercising all the fleet together. i've turned in a general call, and i expect we'll have at least two hundred keels aloft this evening.' 'well aloft?' de forest asked. 'of course, sir. out of sight till they're called for.' arnott laughed as he lolled over the transparent chart-table where the map of the summer-blue atlantic slid along, degree by degree, in exact answer to our progress. our dial already showed m.p.h. and we were two thousand feet above the uppermost traffic lines. 'now, where is this illinois district of yours?' said dragomiroff. 'one travels so much, one sees so little. oh, i remember! it is in north america.' de forest, whose business it is to know the out districts, told us that it lay at the foot of lake michigan, on a road to nowhere in particular, was about half an hour's run from end to end, and, except in one corner, as flat as the sea. like most flat countries nowadays, it was heavily guarded against invasion of privacy by forced timber--fifty-foot spruce and tamarack, grown in five years. the population was close on two millions, largely migratory between florida and california, with a backbone of small farms (they call a thousand acres a farm in illinois) whose owners come into chicago for amusements and society during the winter. they were, he said, noticeably kind, quiet folk, but a little exacting, as all flat countries must be, in their notions of privacy. there had, for instance, been no printed news-sheet in illinois for twenty-seven years. chicago argued that engines for printed news sooner or later developed into engines for invasion of privacy, which in turn might bring the old terror of crowds and blackmail back to the planet. so news-sheets were not. 'and that's illinois,' de forest concluded. 'you see, in the old days, she was in the forefront of what they used to call "progress," and chicago--' 'chicago?' said takahira. 'that's the little place where there is salati's statue of the nigger in flames? a fine bit of old work.' 'when did you see it?' asked de forest quickly. 'they only unveil it once a year.' 'i know. at thanksgiving. it was then,' said takahira, with a shudder. 'and they sang macdonough's song, too.' 'whew!' de forest whistled. 'i did not know that! i wish you'd told me before. macdonough's song may have had its uses when it was composed, but it was an infernal legacy for any man to leave behind.' 'it's protective instinct, my dear fellows,' said pirolo, rolling a cigarette. 'the planet, she has had her dose of popular government. she suffers from inherited agoraphobia. she has no--ah--use for crowds.' dragomiroff leaned forward to give him a light. 'certainly,' said the white-bearded russian, 'the planet has taken all precautions against crowds for the past hundred years. what is our total population to-day? six hundred million, we hope; five hundred, we think; but--but if next year's census shows more than four hundred and fifty, i myself will eat all the extra little babies. we have cut the birth-rate out--right out! for a long time we have said to almighty god, "thank you, sir, but we do not much like your game of life, so we will not play."' 'anyhow,' said arnott defiantly, 'men live a century apiece on the average now.' 'oh, that is quite well! i am rich--you are rich--we are all rich and happy because we are so few and we live so long. only _i_ think almighty god he will remember what the planet was like in the time of crowds and the plague. perhaps he will send us nerves. eh, pirolo?' the italian blinked into space. 'perhaps,' he said, 'he has sent them already. anyhow, you cannot argue with the planet. she does not forget the old days, and--what can you do?' 'for sure we can't remake the world.' de forest glanced at the map flowing smoothly across the table from west to east. 'we ought to be over our ground by nine to-night. there won't be much sleep afterwards.' on which hint we dispersed, and i slept till takahira waked me for dinner. our ancestors thought nine hours' sleep ample for their little lives. we, living thirty years longer, feel ourselves defrauded with less than eleven out of the twenty-four. by ten o'clock we were over lake michigan. the west shore was lightless, except for a dull ground-glare at chicago, and a single traffic-directing light--its leading beam pointing north--at waukegan on our starboard bow. none of the lake villages gave any sign of life; and inland, westward, so far as we could see, blackness lay unbroken on the level earth. we swooped down and skimmed low across the dark, throwing calls county by county. now and again we picked up the faint glimmer of a house-light, or heard the rasp and rend of a cultivator being played across the fields, but northern illinois as a whole was one inky, apparently uninhabited, waste of high, forced woods. only our illuminated map, with its little pointer switching from county to county as we wheeled and twisted, gave us any idea of our position. our calls, urgent, pleading, coaxing or commanding, through the general communicator brought no answer. illinois strictly maintained her own privacy in the timber which she grew for that purpose. 'oh, this is absurd!' said de forest. 'we're like an owl trying to work a wheat-field. is this bureau creek? let's land, arnott, and get hold of some one.' we brushed over a belt of forced woodland--fifteen-year-old maple sixty feet high--grounded on a private meadow-dock, none too big, where we moored to our own grapnels, and hurried out through the warm dark night towards a light in a verandah. as we neared the garden gate i could have sworn we had stepped knee-deep in quicksand, for we could scarcely drag our feet against the prickling currents that clogged them. after five paces we stopped, wiping our foreheads, as hopelessly stuck on dry smooth turf as so many cows in a bog. 'pest!' cried pirolo angrily. 'we are ground-circuited. and it is my own system of ground-circuits too! i know the pull.' 'good evening,' said a girl's voice from the verandah. 'oh, i'm sorry! we've locked up. wait a minute.' we heard the click of a switch, and almost fell forward as the currents round our knees were withdrawn. the girl laughed, and laid aside her knitting. an old-fashioned controller stood at her elbow, which she reversed from time to time, and we could hear the snort and clank of the obedient cultivator half a mile away, behind the guardian woods. 'come in and sit down,' she said. 'i'm only playing a plough. dad's gone to chicago to--ah! then it was _your_ call i heard just now!' she had caught sight of arnott's board uniform, leaped to the switch, and turned it full on. we were checked, gasping, waist-deep in current this time, three yards from the verandah. 'we only want to know what's the matter with illinois,' said de forest placidly. 'then hadn't you better go to chicago and find out?' she answered. 'there's nothing wrong here. we own ourselves.' 'how can we go anywhere if you won't loose us?' de forest went on, while arnott scowled. admirals of fleets are still quite human when their dignity is touched. 'stop a minute--you don't know how funny you look!' she put her hands on her hips and laughed mercilessly. 'don't worry about that,' said arnott, and whistled. a voice answered from the _victor pirolo_ in the meadow. 'only a single-fuse ground-circuit!' arnott called. 'sort it out gently, please.' we heard the ping of a breaking lamp; a fuse blew out somewhere in the verandah roof, frightening a nestful of birds. the ground-circuit was open. we stooped and rubbed our tingling ankles. 'how rude--how very rude of you!' the maiden cried. ''sorry, but we haven't time to look funny,' said arnott. 'we've got to go to chicago; and if i were you, young lady, i'd go into the cellars for the next two hours, and take mother with me.' off he strode, with us at his heels, muttering indignantly, till the humour of the thing struck and doubled him up with laughter at the foot of the gang-way ladder. 'the board hasn't shown what you might call a fat spark on this occasion,' said de forest, wiping his eyes. 'i hope i didn't look as big a fool as you did, arnott! hullo! what on earth is that? dad coming home from chicago?' there was a rattle and a rush, and a five-plough cultivator, blades in air like so many teeth, trundled itself at us round the edge of the timber, fuming and sparking furiously. 'jump!' said arnott, as we bundled ourselves through the none-too-wide door. 'never mind about shutting it. up!' the _victor pirolo_ lifted like a bubble, and the vicious machine shot just underneath us, clawing high as it passed. 'there's a nice little spit-kitten for you!' said arnott, dusting his knees. 'we ask her a civil question. first she circuits us and then she plays a cultivator at us!' 'and then we fly,' said dragomiroff. 'if i were forty years more young, i would go back and kiss her. ho! ho!' 'i,' said pirolo, 'would smack her! my pet ship has been chased by a dirty plough; a--how do you say?--agricultural implement.' 'oh, that is illinois all over,' said de forest. 'they don't content themselves with talking about privacy. they arrange to have it. and now, where's your alleged fleet, arnott? we must assert ourselves against this wench.' arnott pointed to the black heavens. 'waiting on--up there,' said he. 'shall i give them the whole installation, sir?' 'oh, i don't think the young lady is quite worth that,' said de forest. 'get over chicago, and perhaps we'll see something.' in a few minutes we were hanging at two thousand feet over an oblong block of incandescence in the centre of the little town. 'that looks like the old city hall. yes, there's salati's statue in front of it,' said takahira. 'but what on earth are they doing to the place? i thought they used it for a market nowadays! drop a little, please.' we could hear the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines--the cheap western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed glass for their rough country roads. three or four surfacers worked on each side of a square of ruins. the brick and stone wreckage crumbled, slid forward, and presently spread out into white-hot pools of sticky slag, which the levelling-rods smoothed more or less flat. already a third of the big block had been so treated, and was cooling to dull red before our astonished eyes. 'it is the old market,' said de forest. 'well, there's nothing to prevent illinois from making a road through a market. it doesn't interfere with traffic, that i can see.' 'hsh!' said arnott, gripping me by the shoulder. 'listen! they're singing. why on the earth are they singing?' we dropped again till we could see the black fringe of people at the edge of that glowing square. at first they only roared against the roar of the surfacers and levellers. then the words came up clearly--the words of the forbidden song that all men knew, and none let pass their lips--poor pat macdonough's song, made in the days of the crowds and the plague--every silly word of it loaded to sparking-point with the planet's inherited memories of horror, panic, fear and cruelty. and chicago--innocent, contented little chicago--was singing it aloud to the infernal tune that carried riot, pestilence and lunacy round our planet a few generations ago! 'once there was the people--terror gave it birth; once there was the people, and it made a hell of earth!' (then the stamp and pause): 'earth arose and crushed it. listen, oh, ye slain! once there was the people--it shall never be again!' the levellers thrust in savagely against the ruins as the song renewed itself again, again and again, louder than the crash of the melting walls. de forest frowned. 'i don't like that,' he said. 'they've broken back to the old days! they'll be killing somebody soon. i think we'd better divert 'em, arnott.' 'ay, ay, sir.' arnott's hand went to his cap, and we heard the hull of the _victor pirolo_ ring to the command: 'lamps! both watches stand by! lamps! lamps! lamps!' 'keep still!' takahira whispered to me. 'blinkers, please, quartermaster.' 'it's all right--all right!' said pirolo from behind, and to my horror slipped over my head some sort of rubber helmet that locked with a snap. i could feel thick colloid bosses before my eyes, but i stood in absolute darkness. 'to save the sight,' he explained, and pushed me on to the chart-room divan. 'you will see in a minute.' as he spoke i became aware of a thin thread of almost intolerable light, let down from heaven at an immense distance--one vertical hairsbreadth of frozen lightning. 'those are our flanking ships,' said arnott at my elbow. 'that one is over galena. look south--that other one's over keithburg. vincennes is behind us, and north yonder is winthrop woods. the fleet's in position, sir'--this to de forest. 'as soon as you give the word.' 'ah no! no!' cried dragomiroff at my side. i could feel the old man tremble. 'i do not know all that you can do, but be kind! i ask you to be a little kind to them below! this is horrible--horrible!' 'when a woman kills a chicken, dynasties and empires sicken,' takahira quoted. 'it is too late to be gentle now.' 'then take off my helmet! take off my helmet!' dragomiroff began hysterically. pirolo must have put his arm round him. 'hush,' he said, 'i am here. it is all right, ivan, my dear fellow.' 'i'll just send our little girl in bureau county a warning,' said arnott. 'she don't deserve it, but we'll allow her a minute or two to take mamma to the cellar.' in the utter hush that followed the growling spark after arnott had linked up his service communicator with the invisible fleet, we heard macdonough's song from the city beneath us grow fainter as we rose to position. then i clapped my hand before my mask lenses, for it was as though the floor of heaven had been riddled and all the inconceivable blaze of suns in the making was poured through the manholes. 'you needn't count,' said arnott. i had had no thought of such a thing. 'there are two hundred and fifty keels up there, five miles apart. full power, please, for another twelve seconds.' the firmament, as far as eye could reach, stood on pillars of white fire. one fell on the glowing square at chicago, and turned it black. 'oh! oh! oh! can men be allowed to do such things?' dragomiroff cried, and fell across our knees. 'glass of water, please,' said takahira to a helmeted shape that leaped forward. 'he is a little faint.' the lights switched off, and the darkness stunned like an avalanche. we could hear dragomiroff's teeth on the glass edge. pirolo was comforting him. 'all right, all ra-ight,' he repeated. 'come and lie down. come below and take off your mask. i give you my word, old friend, it is all right. they are my siege-lights. little victor pirolo's leetle lights. you know _me_! i do not hurt people.' 'pardon!' dragomiroff moaned. 'i have never seen death. i have never seen the board take action. shall we go down and burn them alive, or is that already done?' 'oh, hush,' said pirolo, and i think he rocked him in his arms. 'do we repeat, sir?' arnott asked de forest. 'give 'em a minute's break,' de forest replied. 'they may need it.' we waited a minute, and then macdonough's song, broken but defiant, rose from undefeated chicago. 'they seem fond of that tune,' said de forest. 'i should let 'em have it, arnott.' 'very good, sir,' said arnott, and felt his way to the communicator keys. no lights broke forth, but the hollow of the skies made herself the mouth for one note that touched the raw fibre of the brain. men hear such sounds in delirium, advancing like tides from horizons beyond the ruled foreshores of space. 'that's our pitch-pipe,' said arnott. 'we may be a bit ragged. i've never conducted two hundred and fifty performers before.' he pulled out the couplers, and struck a full chord on the service communicators. the beams of light leaped down again, and danced, solemnly and awfully, a stilt-dance, sweeping thirty or forty miles left and right at each stiff-legged kick, while the darkness delivered itself--there is no scale to measure against that utterance--of the tune to which they kept time. certain notes--one learnt to expect them with terror--cut through one's marrow, but, after three minutes, thought and emotion passed in indescribable agony. we saw, we heard, but i think we were in some sort swooning. the two hundred and fifty beams shifted, re-formed, straddled and split, narrowed, widened, rippled in ribbons, broke into a thousand white-hot parallel lines, melted and revolved in interwoven rings like old-fashioned engine-turning, flung up to the zenith, made as if to descend and renew the torment, halted at the last instant, twizzled insanely round the horizon, and vanished, to bring back for the hundredth time darkness more shattering than their instantly renewed light over all illinois. then the tune and lights ceased together, and we heard one single devastating wail that shook all the horizon as a rubbed wet finger shakes the rim of a bowl. 'ah, that is my new siren,' said pirolo. 'you can break an iceberg in half, if you find the proper pitch. they will whistle by squadrons now. it is the wind through pierced shutters in the bows.' i had collapsed beside dragomiroff, broken and snivelling feebly, because i had been delivered before my time to all the terrors of judgment day, and the archangels of the resurrection were hailing me naked across the universe to the sound of the music of the spheres. then i saw de forest smacking arnott's helmet with his open hand. the wailing died down in a long shriek as a black shadow swooped past us, and returned to her place above the lower clouds. 'i hate to interrupt a specialist when he's enjoying himself,' said de forest. 'but, as a matter of fact, all illinois has been asking us to stop for these last fifteen seconds.' 'what a pity.' arnott slipped off his mask. 'i wanted you to hear us really hum. our lower c can lift street-paving.' 'it is hell--hell!' cried dragomiroff, and sobbed aloud. arnott looked away as he answered: 'it's a few thousand volts ahead of the old shoot-'em-and-sink-'em game, but i should scarcely call it _that_. what shall i tell the fleet, sir?' 'tell 'em we're very pleased and impressed. i don't think they need wait on any longer. there isn't a spark left down there.' de forest pointed. 'they'll be deaf and blind.' 'oh, i think not, sir. the demonstration lasted less than ten minutes.' 'marvellous!' takahira sighed. 'i should have said it was half a night. now, shall we go down and pick up the pieces?' 'but first a small drink,' said pirolo. 'the board must not arrive weeping at its own works.' 'i am an old fool--an old fool!' dragomiroff began piteously. 'i did not know what would happen. it is all new to me. we reason with them in little russia.' chicago north landing-tower was unlighted, and arnott worked his ship into the clips by her own lights. as soon as these broke out we heard groanings of horror and appeal from many people below. 'all right,' shouted arnott into the darkness. 'we aren't beginning again!' we descended by the stairs, to find ourselves knee-deep in a grovelling crowd, some crying that they were blind, others beseeching us not to make any more noises, but the greater part writhing face downward, their hands or their caps before their eyes. it was pirolo who came to our rescue. he climbed the side of a surfacing-machine, and there, gesticulating as though they could see, made oration to those afflicted people of illinois. 'you stchewpids!' he began. 'there is nothing to fuss for. of course, your eyes will smart and be red to-morrow. you will look as if you and your wives had drunk too much, but in a little while you will see again as well as before. i tell you this, and i--i am pirolo. victor pirolo!' the crowd with one accord shuddered, for many legends attach to victor pirolo of foggia, deep in the secrets of god. 'pirolo?' an unsteady voice lifted itself. 'then tell us was there anything except light in those lights of yours just now?' the question was repeated from every corner of the darkness. pirolo laughed. 'no!' he thundered. (why have small men such large voices?) 'i give you my word and the board's word that there was nothing except light--just light! you stchewpids! your birth-rate is too low already as it is. some day i must invent something to send it up, but send it down--never!' 'is that true?--we thought--somebody said--' one could feel the tension relax all round. 'you too big fools,' pirolo cried. 'you could have sent us a call and we would have told you.' 'send you a call!' a deep voice shouted. 'i wish you had been at our end of the wire.' 'i'm glad i wasn't,' said de forest. 'it was bad enough from behind the lamps. never mind! it's over now. is there any one here i can talk business with? i'm de forest--for the board.' 'you might begin with me, for one--i'm mayor,' the bass voice replied. a big man rose unsteadily from the street, and staggered towards us where we sat on the broad turf-edging, in front of the garden fences. 'i ought to be the first on my feet. am i?' said he. 'yes,' said de forest, and steadied him as he dropped down beside us. 'hello, andy. is that you?' a voice called. 'excuse me,' said the mayor; 'that sounds like my chief of police, bluthner!' 'bluthner it is; and here's mulligan and keefe--on their feet.' 'bring 'em up please, blut. we're supposed to be the four in charge of this hamlet. what we says, goes. and, de forest, what do you say?' 'nothing--yet,' de forest answered, as we made room for the panting, reeling men. '_you've_ cut out of system. well?' 'tell the steward to send down drinks, please,' arnott whispered to an orderly at his side. 'good!' said the mayor, smacking his dry lips. 'now i suppose we can take it, de forest, that henceforward the board will administer us direct?' 'not if the board can avoid it,' de forest laughed. 'the a.b.c. is responsible for the planetary traffic only.' '_and all that that implies_.' the big four who ran chicago chanted their magna charta like children at school. 'well, get on,' said de forest wearily. 'what is your silly trouble anyway?' 'too much dam' democracy,' said the mayor, laying his hand on de forest's knee. 'so? i thought illinois had had her dose of that.' 'she has. that's why. blut, what did you do with our prisoners last night?' 'locked 'em in the water-tower to prevent the women killing 'em,' the chief of police replied. 'i'm too blind to move just yet, but--' 'arnott, send some of your people, please, and fetch 'em along,' said de forest. 'they're triple-circuited,' the mayor called. 'you'll have to blow out three fuses.' he turned to de forest, his large outline just visible in the paling darkness. 'i hate to throw any more work on the board. i'm an administrator myself, but we've had a little fuss with our serviles. what? in a big city there's bound to be a few men and women who can't live without listening to themselves, and who prefer drinking out of pipes they don't own both ends of. they inhabit flats and hotels all the year round. they say it saves 'em trouble. anyway, it gives 'em more time to make trouble for their neighbours. we call 'em serviles locally. and they are apt to be tuberculous.' 'just so!' said the man called mulligan. transportation is civilisation. democracy is disease. i've proved it by the blood-test, every time.' 'mulligan's our health officer, and a one-idea man,' said the mayor, laughing. 'but it's true that most serviles haven't much control. they _will_ talk; and when people take to talking as a business, anything may arrive--mayn't it, de forest?' 'anything--except the facts of the case,' said de forest, laughing. 'i'll give you those in a minute,' said the mayor. 'our serviles got to talking--first in their houses and then on the streets, telling men and women how to manage their own affairs. (you can't teach a servile not to finger his neighbour's soul.) that's invasion of privacy, of course, but in chicago we'll suffer anything sooner than make crowds. nobody took much notice, and so i let 'em alone. my fault! i was warned there would be trouble, but there hasn't been a crowd or murder in illinois for nineteen years.' 'twenty-two,' said his chief of police. 'likely. anyway, we'd forgot such things. so, from talking in the houses and on the streets, our serviles go to calling a meeting at the old market yonder.' he nodded across the square where the wrecked buildings heaved up grey in the dawn-glimmer behind the square-cased statue of the negro in flames. 'there's nothing to prevent any one calling meetings except that it's against human nature to stand in a crowd, besides being bad for the health. i ought to have known by the way our men and women attended that first meeting that trouble was brewing. there were as many as a thousand in the market-place, touching each other. touching! then the serviles turned in all tongue-switches and talked, and we--' 'what did they talk about?' said takahira. 'first, how badly things were managed in the city. that pleased us four--we were on the platform--because we hoped to catch one or two good men for city work. you know how rare executive capacity is. even if we didn't it's--it's refreshing to find any one interested enough in our job to damn our eyes. you don't know what it means to work, year in, year out, without a spark of difference with a living soul.' 'oh, don't we!' said de forest. 'there are times on the board when we'd give our positions if any one would kick us out and take hold of things themselves.' 'but they won't,' said the mayor ruefully. 'i assure you, sir, we four have done things in chicago, in the hope of rousing people, that would have discredited nero. but what do they say? "very good, andy. have it your own way. anything's better than a crowd. i'll go back to my land." you _can't_ do anything with folk who can go where they please, and don't want anything on god's earth except their own way. there isn't a kick or a kicker left on the planet.' 'then i suppose that little shed yonder fell down by itself?' said de forest. we could see the bare and still smoking ruins, and hear the slag-pools crackle as they hardened and set. 'oh, that's only amusement. 'tell you later. as i was saying, our serviles held the meeting, and pretty soon we had to ground-circuit the platform to save 'em from being killed. and that didn't make our people any more pacific.' 'how d'you mean?' i ventured to ask. 'if you've ever been ground-circuited,' said the mayor, 'you'll know it don't improve any man's temper to be held up straining against nothing. no, sir! eight or nine hundred folk kept pawing and buzzing like flies in treacle for two hours, while a pack of perfectly safe serviles invades their mental and spiritual privacy, may be amusing to watch, but they are not pleasant to handle afterwards.' pirolo chuckled. 'our folk own themselves. they were of opinion things were going too far and too fiery. i warned the serviles; but they're born house-dwellers. unless a fact hits 'em on the head they cannot see it. would you believe me, they went on to talk of what they called "popular government"? they did! they wanted us to go back to the old voodoo-business of voting with papers and wooden boxes, and word-drunk people and printed formulas, and news-sheets! they said they practised it among themselves about what they'd have to eat in their flats and hotels. yes, sir! they stood up behind bluthner's doubled ground-circuits, and they said that, in this present year of grace, _to_ self-owning men and women, _on_ that very spot! then they finished'--he lowered his voice cautiously--'by talking about "the people." and then bluthner he had to sit up all night in charge of the circuits because he couldn't trust his men to keep 'em shut.' 'it was trying 'em too high,' the chief of police broke in. 'but we couldn't hold the crowd ground-circuited for ever. i gathered in all the serviles on charge of crowd-making, and put 'em in the water-tower, and then i let things cut loose. i had to! the district lit like a sparked gas-tank!' 'the news was out over seven degrees of country,' the mayor continued; 'and when once it's a question of invasion of privacy, good-bye to right and reason in illinois! they began turning out traffic-lights and locking up landing-towers on thursday night. friday, they stopped all traffic and asked for the board to take over. then they wanted to clean chicago off the side of the lake and rebuild elsewhere--just for a souvenir of "the people" that the serviles talked about. i suggested that they should slag the old market where the meeting was held, while i turned in a call to you all on the board. that kept 'em quiet till you came along. and--and now _you_ can take hold of the situation.' 'any chance of their quieting down?' de forest asked. 'you can try,' said the mayor. de forest raised his voice in the face of the reviving crowd that had edged in towards us. day was come. 'don't you think this business can be arranged?' he began. but there was a roar of angry voices: 'we've finished with crowds! we aren't going back to the old days! take us over! take the serviles away! administer direct or we'll kill 'em! down with the people!' an attempt was made to begin macdonough's song. it got no further than the first line, for the _victor pirolo_ sent down a warning drone on one stopped horn. a wrecked side-wall of the old market tottered and fell inwards on the slag-pools. none spoke or moved till the last of the dust had settled down again, turning the steel case of salati's statue ashy grey. 'you see you'll just _have_ to take us over,' the mayor whispered. de forest shrugged his shoulders. 'you talk as if executive capacity could be snatched out of the air like so much horse-power. can't you manage yourselves on any terms?' he said. 'we can, if you say so. it will only cost those few lives to begin with,' the mayor pointed across the square, where arnott's men guided a stumbling group of ten or twelve men and women to the lake front and halted them under the statue. 'now i think,' said takahira under his breath, 'there will be trouble.' the mass in front of us growled like beasts. at that moment the sun rose clear, and revealed the blinking assembly to itself. as soon as it realized that it was a crowd we saw the shiver of horror and mutual repulsion shoot across it precisely as the steely flaws shot across the lake outside. nothing was said, and, being half blind, of course it moved slowly. yet in less than fifteen minutes most of that vast multitude--three thousand at the lowest count--melted away like frost on south eaves. the remnant stretched themselves on the grass, where a crowd feels and looks less like a crowd. 'these mean business,' the mayor whispered to takahira. 'there are a goodish few women there who've borne children. i don't like it.' the morning draught off the lake stirred the trees round us with promise of a hot day; the sun reflected itself dazzlingly on the canister-shaped covering of salati's statue; cocks crew in the gardens, and we could hear gate-latches clicking in the distance as people stumblingly resought their homes. 'i'm afraid there won't be any morning deliveries,' said de forest. 'we rather upset things in the country last night.' 'that makes no odds,' the mayor returned. 'we're all provisioned for six months. _we_ take no chances.' nor, when you come to think of it, does any one else. it must be three-quarters of a generation since any house or city faced a food shortage. yet is there house or city on the planet to-day that has not half a year's provisions laid in? we are like the shipwrecked seamen in the old books, who, having once nearly starved to death, ever afterwards hide away bits of food and biscuit. truly we trust no crowds, nor system based on crowds! de forest waited till the last footstep had died away. meantime the prisoners at the base of the statue shuffled, posed, and fidgeted, with the shamelessness of quite little children. none of them were more than six feet high, and many of them were as grey-haired as the ravaged, harassed heads of old pictures. they huddled together in actual touch, while the crowd, spaced at large intervals, looked at them with congested eyes. suddenly a man among them began to talk. the mayor had not in the least exaggerated. it appeared that our planet lay sunk in slavery beneath the heel of the aërial board of control. the orator urged us to arise in our might, burst our prison doors and break our fetters (all his metaphors, by the way, were of the most mediæval). next he demanded that every matter of daily life, including most of the physical functions, should be submitted for decision at any time of the week, month, or year to, i gathered, anybody who happened to be passing by or residing within a certain radius, and that everybody should forthwith abandon his concerns to settle the matter, first by crowd-making, next by talking to the crowds made, and lastly by describing crosses on pieces of paper, which rubbish should later be counted with certain mystic ceremonies and oaths. out of this amazing play, he assured us, would automatically arise a higher, nobler, and kinder world, based--he demonstrated this with the awful lucidity of the insane--based on the sanctity of the crowd and the villainy of the single person. in conclusion, he called loudly upon god to testify to his personal merits and integrity. when the flow ceased, i turned bewildered to takahira, who was nodding solemnly. 'quite correct,' said he. 'it is all in the old books. he has left nothing out, not even the war-talk.' 'but i don't see how this stuff can upset a child, much less a district,' i replied. 'ah, you are too young,' said dragomiroff. 'for another thing, you are not a mamma. please look at the mammas.' ten or fifteen women who remained had separated themselves from the silent men, and were drawing in towards the prisoners. it reminded one of the stealthy encircling, before the rush in at the quarry, of wolves round musk-oxen in the north. the prisoners saw, and drew together more closely. the mayor covered his face with his hands for an instant. de forest, bareheaded, stepped forward between the prisoners, and the slowly, stiffly moving line. 'that's all very interesting,' he said to the dry-lipped orator. 'but the point seems that you've been making crowds and invading privacy.' a woman stepped forward, and would have spoken, but there was a quick assenting murmur from the men, who realised that de forest was trying to pull the situation down to ground-line. 'yes! yes!' they cried. 'we cut out because they made crowds and invaded privacy! stick to that! keep on that switch! lift the serviles out of this! the board's in charge! hsh!' 'yes, the board's in charge,' said de forest. 'i'll take formal evidence of crowd-making if you like, but the members of the board can testify to it. will that do?' the women had closed in another pace, with hands that clenched and unclenched at their sides. 'good! good enough!' the men cried. 'we're content. only take them away quickly.' 'come along up!' said de forest to the captives, 'breakfast is quite ready.' it appeared, however, that they did not wish to go. they intended to remain in chicago and make crowds. they pointed out that de forest's proposal was gross invasion of privacy. 'my dear fellow,' said pirolo to the most voluble of the leaders, 'you hurry, or your crowd that can't be wrong will kill you!' 'but that would be murder,' answered the believer in crowds; and there was a roar of laughter from all sides that seemed to show the crisis had broken. a woman stepped forward from the line of women, laughing, i protest, as merrily as any of the company. one hand, of course, shaded her eyes, the other was at her throat. 'oh, they needn't be afraid of being killed!' she called. 'not in the least,' said de forest. 'but don't you think that, now the board's in charge, you might go home while we get these people away?' 'i shall be home long before that. it--it has been rather a trying day.' she stood up to her full height, dwarfing even de forest's six-foot-eight, and smiled, with eyes closed against the fierce light. 'yes, rather,' said de forest. 'i'm afraid you feel the glare a little. we'll have the ship down.' he motioned to the _pirolo_ to drop between us and the sun, and at the same time to loop-circuit the prisoners, who were a trifle unsteady. we saw them stiffen to the current where they stood. the woman's voice went on, sweet and deep and unshaken: 'i don't suppose you men realise how much this--this sort of thing means to a woman. i've borne three. we women don't want our children given to crowds. it must be an inherited instinct. crowds make trouble. they bring back the old days. hate, fear, blackmail, publicity, "the people"--_that! that! that_!' she pointed to the statue, and the crowd growled once more. 'yes, if they are allowed to go on,' said de forest. 'but this little affair--' 'it means so much to us women that this--this little affair should never happen again. of course, never's a big word, but one feels so strongly that it is important to stop crowds at the very beginning. those creatures'--she pointed with her left hand at the prisoners swaying like seaweed in a tideway as the circuit pulled them--'those people have friends and wives and children in the city and elsewhere. one doesn't want anything done to _them_, you know. it's terrible to force a human being out of fifty or sixty years of good life. i'm only forty myself. _i_ know. but, at the same time, one feels that an example should be made, because no price is too heavy to pay if--if these people and _all that they imply_ can be put an end to. do you quite understand, or would you be kind enough to tell your men to take the casing off the statue? it's worth looking at.' 'i understand perfectly. but i don't think anybody here wants to see the statue on an empty stomach. excuse me one moment.' de forest called up to the ship, 'a flying loop ready on the port side, if you please.' then to the woman he said with some crispness, 'you might leave us a little discretion in the matter.' 'oh, of course. thank you for being so patient. i know my arguments are silly, but--' she half turned away and went on in a changed voice, 'perhaps this will help you to decide.' she threw out her right arm with a knife in it. before the blade could be returned to her throat or her bosom it was twitched from her grip, sparked as it flew out of the shadow of the ship above, and fell flashing in the sunshine at the foot of the statue fifty yards away. the outflung arm was arrested, rigid as a bar for an instant, till the releasing circuit permitted her to bring it slowly to her side. the other women shrank back silent among the men. pirolo rubbed his hands, and takahira nodded. 'that was clever of you, de forest,' said he. 'what a glorious pose!' dragomiroff murmured, for the frightened woman was on the edge of tears. 'why did you stop me? i would have done it!' she cried. 'i have no doubt you would,' said de forest. 'but we can't waste a life like yours on these people. i hope the arrest didn't sprain your wrist; it's so hard to regulate a flying loop. but i think you are quite right about those persons' women and children. we'll take them all away with us if you promise not to do anything stupid to yourself.' 'i promise--i promise.' she controlled herself with an effort. 'but it is so important to us women. we know what it means; and i thought if you saw i was in earnest--' 'i saw you were, and you've gained your point. i shall take all your serviles away with me at once. the mayor will make lists of their friends and families in the city and the district, and he'll ship them after us this afternoon.' 'sure,' said the mayor, rising to his feet. 'keefe, if you can see, hadn't you better finish levelling off the old market? it don't look sightly the way it is now, and we shan't use it for crowds any more.' 'i think you had better wipe out that statue as well, mr. mayor,' said de forest. 'i don't question its merits as a work of art, but i believe it's a shade morbid.' 'certainly, sir. oh, keefe! slag the nigger before you go on to fuse the market. i'll get to the communicators and tell the district that the board is in charge. are you making any special appointments, sir?' 'none. we haven't men to waste on these back-woods. carry on as before, but under the board. arnott, run your serviles aboard, please. ground ship and pass them through the bilge-doors. we'll wait till we've finished with this work of art.' the prisoners trailed past him, talking fluently, but unable to gesticulate in the drag of the current. then the surfacers rolled up, two on each side of the statue. with one accord the spectators looked elsewhere, but there was no need. keefe turned on full power, and the thing simply melted within its case. all i saw was a surge of white-hot metal pouring over the plinth, a glimpse of salati's inscription, 'to the eternal memory of the justice of the people,' ere the stone base itself cracked and powdered into finest lime. the crowd cheered. 'thank you,' said de forest; 'but we want our break-fasts, and i expect you do too. good-bye, mr. mayor! delighted to see you at any time, but i hope i shan't have to, officially, for the next thirty years. good-bye, madam. yes. we're all given to nerves nowadays. i suffer from them myself. good-bye, gentlemen all! you're under the tyrannous heel of the board from this moment, but if ever you feel like breaking your fetters you've only to let us know. this is no treat to us. good luck!' we embarked amid shouts, and did not check our lift till they had dwindled into whispers. then de forest flung himself on the chart-room divan and mopped his forehead. 'i don't mind men,' he panted, 'but women are the devil!' 'still the devil,' said pirolo cheerfully. 'that one would have suicided.' 'i know it. that was why i signalled for the flying loop to be clapped on her. i owe you an apology for that, arnott. i hadn't time to catch your eye, and you were busy with our caitiffs. by the way, who actually answered my signal? it was a smart piece of work.' 'ilroy,' said arnott; 'but he overloaded the wave. it may be pretty gallery-work to knock a knife out of a lady's hand, but didn't you notice how she rubbed 'em? he scorched her fingers. slovenly, i call it.' 'far be it from me to interfere with fleet discipline, but don't be too hard on the boy. if that woman had killed herself they would have killed every servile and everything related to a servile throughout the district by nightfall.' 'that was what she was playing for,' takahira said. 'and with our fleet gone we could have done nothing to hold them.' 'i may be ass enough to walk into a ground-circuit,' said arnott, 'but i don't dismiss my fleet till i'm reasonably sure that trouble is over. they're in position still, and i intend to keep 'em there till the serviles are shipped out of the district. that last little crowd meant murder, my friends.' 'nerves! all nerves!' said pirolo. 'you cannot argue with agoraphobia.' 'and it is not as if they had seen much dead--or _is_ it?' said takahira. 'in all my ninety years i have never seen death.' dragomiroff spoke as one who would excuse himself. 'perhaps that was why--last night--' then it came out as we sat over breakfast, that, with the exception of arnott and pirolo, none of us had ever seen a corpse, or knew in what manner the spirit passes. 'we're a nice lot to flap about governing the planet,' de forest laughed. 'i confess, now it's all over, that my main fear was i mightn't be able to pull it off without losing a life.' 'i thought of that too,' said arnott; 'but there's no death reported, and i've inquired everywhere. what are we supposed to do with our passengers? i've fed 'em.' 'we're between two switches,' de forest drawled. 'if we drop them in any place that isn't under the board the natives will make their presence an excuse for cutting out, same as illinois did, and forcing the board to take over. if we drop them in any place under the board's control they'll be killed as soon as our backs are turned.' 'if you say so,' said pirolo thoughtfully, 'i can guarantee that they will become extinct in process of time, quite happily. what is their birth-rate now?' 'go down and ask 'em,' said de forest. 'i think they might become nervous and tear me to bits,' the philosopher of foggia replied. 'not really? well?' 'open the bilge-doors,' said takahira with a downward jerk of the thumb. 'scarcely--after all the trouble we've taken to save 'em,' said de forest. 'try london,' arnott suggested. 'you could turn satan himself loose there, and they'd only ask him to dinner.' 'good man! you've given me an idea. vincent! oh, vincent!' he threw the general communicator open so that we could all hear, and in a few minutes the chart-room filled with the rich, fruity voice of leopold vincent, who has purveyed all london her choicest amusements for the last thirty years. we answered with expectant grins, as though we were actually in the stalls of, say, the combination on a first night. 'we've picked up something in your line,' de forest began. 'that's good, dear man. if it's old enough. there's nothing to beat the old things for business purposes. have you seen _london, chatham, and dover_ at earl's court? no? i thought i missed you there. immense! i've had the real steam locomotive engines built from the old designs and the iron rails cast specially by hand. cloth cushions in the carriages, too! immense! and paper railway tickets. and polly milton.' 'polly milton back again!' said arnott rapturously. 'book me two stalls for to-morrow night. what's she singing now, bless her?' 'the old songs. nothing comes up to the old touch. listen to this, dear men.' vincent carolled with flourishes: oh, cruel lamps of london, if tears your light could drown, your victims' eyes would weep them, oh, lights of london town! 'then they weep.' 'you see?' pirolo waved his hands at us. 'the old world always weeped when it saw crowds together. it did not know why, but it weeped. we know why, but we do not weep, except when we pay to be made to by fat, wicked old vincent.' 'old, yourself!' vincent laughed. 'i'm a public benefactor, i keep the world soft and united.' 'and i'm de forest of the board,' said de forest acidly, 'trying to get a little business done. as i was saying, i've picked up a few people in chicago.' 'i cut out. chicago is--' 'do listen! they're perfectly unique.' 'do they build houses of baked mudblocks while you wait--eh? that's an old contact.' 'they're an untouched primitive community, with all the old ideas.' 'sewing-machines and maypole-dances? cooking on coal-gas stoves, lighting pipes with matches, and driving horses? gerolstein tried that last year. an absolute blow-out!' de forest plugged him wrathfully, and poured out the story of our doings for the last twenty-four hours on the top-note. 'and they do it _all_ in public,' he concluded. 'you can't stop 'em. the more public, the better they are pleased. they'll talk for hours--like you! now you can come in again!' 'do you really mean they know how to vote?' said vincent. 'can they act it?' 'act? it's their life to 'em! and you never saw such faces! scarred like volcanoes. envy, hatred, and malice in plain sight. wonderfully flexible voices. they weep, too.' 'aloud? in public?' 'i guarantee. not a spark of shame or reticence in the entire installation. it's the chance of your career.' 'd'you say you've brought their voting props along--those papers and ballot-box things?' 'no, confound you! i'm not a luggage-lifter. apply direct to the mayor of chicago. he'll forward you everything. well?' 'wait a minute. did chicago want to kill 'em? that 'ud look well on the communicators.' 'yes! they were only rescued with difficulty from a howling mob--if you know what that is.' 'but i don't,' answered the great vincent simply. 'well then, they'll tell you themselves. they can make speeches hours long.' 'how many are there?' 'by the time we ship 'em all over they'll be perhaps a hundred, counting children. an old world in miniature. can't you see it?' 'm-yes; but i've got to pay for it if it's a blow-out, dear man.' 'they can sing the old war songs in the streets. they can get word-drunk, and make crowds, and invade privacy in the genuine old-fashioned way; and they'll do the voting trick as often as you ask 'em a question.' 'too good!' said vincent. 'you unbelieving jew! i've got a dozen head aboard here. i'll put you through direct. sample 'em yourself.' he lifted the switch and we listened. our passengers on the lower deck at once, but not less than five at a time, explained themselves to vincent. they had been taken from the bosom of their families, stripped of their possessions, given food without finger-bowls, and cast into captivity in a noisome dungeon. 'but look here,' said arnott aghast; 'they're saying what isn't true. my lower deck isn't noisome, and i saw to the finger-bowls myself.' 'my people talk like that sometimes in little russia,' said dragomiroff. 'we reason with them. we never kill. no!' 'but it's not true,' arnott insisted. 'what can you do with people who don't tell facts? they're mad!' 'hsh!' said pirolo, his hand to his ear. 'it is such a little time since all the planet told lies.' we heard vincent silkily sympathetic. would they, he asked, repeat their assertions in public--before a vast public? only let vincent give them a chance, and the planet, they vowed, should ring with their wrongs. their aim in life--two women and a man explained it together--was to reform the world. oddly enough, this also had been vincent's life-dream. he offered them an arena in which to explain, and by their living example to raise the planet to loftier levels. he was eloquent on the moral uplift of a simple, old-world life presented in its entirety to a deboshed civilisation. could they--would they--for three months certain, devote themselves under his auspices, as missionaries, to the elevation of mankind at a place called earl's court, which he said, with some truth, was one of the intellectual centres of the planet? they thanked him, and demanded (we could hear his chuckle of delight) time to discuss and to vote on the matter. the vote, solemnly managed by counting heads--one head, one vote--was favourable. his offer, therefore, was accepted, and they moved a vote of thanks to him in two speeches--one by what they called the 'proposer' and the other by the 'seconder.' vincent threw over to us, his voice shaking with gratitude: 'i've got 'em! did you hear those speeches? that's nature, dear men. art can't teach _that._ and they voted as easily as lying. i've never had a troupe of natural liars before. bless you, dear men! remember, you're on my free lists for ever, anywhere--all of you. oh, gerolstein will be sick--sick!' 'then you think they'll do?' said de forest. 'do? the little village'll go crazy! i'll knock up a series of old-world plays for 'em. their voices will make you laugh and cry. my god, dear men, where _do_ you suppose they picked up all their misery from, on this sweet earth? i'll have a pageant of the world's beginnings, and mosenthal shall do the music. i'll--' 'go and knock up a village for 'em by to-night. we'll meet you at no. west landing tower,' said de forest. 'remember the rest will be coming along to-morrow.' 'let 'em all come!' said vincent. 'you don't know how hard it is nowadays even for me, to find something that really gets under the public's damned iridium-plated hide. but i've got it at last. good-bye!' 'well,' said de forest when we had finished laughing, 'if any one understood corruption in london i might have played off vincent against gerolstein, and sold my captives at enormous prices. as it is, i shall have to be their legal adviser to-night when the contracts are signed. and they won't exactly press any commission on me, either.' 'meantime,' said takahira, 'we cannot, of course, confine members of leopold vincent's last-engaged company. chairs for the ladies, please, arnott.' 'then i go to bed,' said de forest. 'i can't face any more women!' and he vanished. when our passengers were released and given another meal (finger-bowls came first this time) they told us what they thought of us and the board; and, like vincent, we all marvelled how they had contrived to extract and secrete so much bitter poison and unrest out of the good life god gives us. they raged, they stormed, they palpitated, flushed and exhausted their poor, torn nerves, panted themselves into silence, and renewed the senseless, shameless attacks. 'but can't you understand,' said pirolo pathetically to a shrieking woman, 'that if we'd left you in chicago you'd have been killed?' 'no, we shouldn't. you were bound to save us from being murdered.' 'then we should have had to kill a lot of other people.' 'that doesn't matter. we were preaching the truth. you can't stop us. we shall go on preaching in london; and _then_ you'll see!' 'you can see now,' said pirolo, and opened a lower shutter. we were closing on the little village, with her three million people spread out at ease inside her ring of girdling main-traffic lights--those eight fixed beams at chatham, tonbridge, redhill, dorking, woking, st. albans, chipping ongar, and southend. leopold vincent's new company looked, with small pale faces, at the silence, the size, and the separated houses. then some began to weep aloud, shamelessly--always without shame. macdonough's song whether the state can loose and bind in heaven as well as on earth: if it be wiser to kill mankind before or after the birth-- these are matters of high concern where state-kept schoolmen are; but holy state (we have lived to learn) endeth in holy war. whether the people be led by the lord, or lured by the loudest throat: if it be quicker to die by the sword or cheaper to die by vote-- these are the things we have dealt with once, (and they will not rise from their grave) for holy people, however it runs, endeth in wholly slave. whatsoever, for any cause, seeketh to take or give, power above or beyond the laws, suffer it not to live! holy state or holy king-- or holy people's will-- have no truck with the senseless thing. order the guns and kill! _saying--after--me:--_ _once there was the people--terror gave it birth; once there was the people and it made a hell of earth. earth arose and crushed it. listen, o ye slain! once there was the people--it shall never be again!_ friendly brook (march ) the valley was so choked with fog that one could scarcely see a cow's length across a field. every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. a week's november rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and she proclaimed it aloud. two men in sackcloth aprons were considering an untrimmed hedge that ran down the hillside and disappeared into mist beside those roarings. they stood back and took stock of the neglected growth, tapped an elbow of hedge-oak here, a mossed beech-stub there, swayed a stooled ash back and forth, and looked at each other. 'i reckon she's about two rod thick,' said jabez the younger, 'an' she hasn't felt iron since--when has she, jesse?' 'call it twenty-five year, jabez, an' you won't be far out.' 'umm!' jabez rubbed his wet handbill on his wetter coat-sleeve. 'she ain't a hedge. she's all manner o' trees. we'll just about have to--' he paused, as professional etiquette required. 'just about have to side her up an' see what she'll bear. but hadn't we best--?' jesse paused in his turn, both men being artists and equals. 'get some kind o' line to go by.' jabez ranged up and down till he found a thinner place, and with clean snicks of the handbill revealed the original face of the fence. jesse took over the dripping stuff as it fell forward, and, with a grasp and a kick, made it to lie orderly on the bank till it should be faggoted. by noon a length of unclean jungle had turned itself into a cattle-proof barrier, tufted here and there with little plumes of the sacred holly which no woodman touches without orders. 'now we've a witness-board to go by!' said jesse at last. 'she won't be as easy as this all along,' jabez answered. 'she'll need plenty stakes and binders when we come to the brook.' 'well, ain't we plenty?' jesse pointed to the ragged perspective ahead of them that plunged downhill into the fog. 'i lay there's a cord an' a half o' firewood, let alone faggots, 'fore we get anywheres anigh the brook.' 'the brook's got up a piece since morning,' said jabez. 'sounds like's if she was over wickenden's door-stones.' jesse listened, too. there was a growl in the brook's roar as though she worried something hard. 'yes. she's over wickenden's door-stones,' he replied. 'now she'll flood acrost alder bay an' that'll ease her.' 'she won't ease jim wickenden's hay none if she do,' jabez grunted. 'i told jim he'd set that liddle hay-stack o' his too low down in the medder. i _told_ him so when he was drawin' the bottom for it.' 'i told him so, too,' said jesse. 'i told him 'fore ever you did. i told him when the county council tarred the roads up along.' he pointed uphill, where unseen automobiles and road-engines droned past continually. 'a tarred road, she shoots every drop o' water into a valley same's a slate roof. 'tisn't as 'twas in the old days, when the waters soaked in and soaked out in the way o' nature. it rooshes off they tarred roads all of a lump, and naturally every drop is bound to descend into the valley. and there's tar roads both two sides this valley for ten mile. that's what i told jim wickenden when they tarred the roads last year. but he's a valley-man. he don't hardly ever journey uphill.' 'what did he say when you told him that?' jabez demanded, with a little change of voice. 'why? what did he say to you when _you_ told him?' was the answer. 'what he said to you, i reckon, jesse.' 'then, you don't need me to say it over again, jabez.' 'well, let be how 'twill, what was he gettin' _after_ when he said what he said to me?' jabez insisted. 'i dunno; unless you tell me what manner o' words he said to _you_.' jabez drew back from the hedge--all hedges are nests of treachery and eavesdropping--and moved to an open cattle-lodge in the centre of the field. 'no need to go ferretin' around,' said jesse. 'none can't see us here 'fore we see them.' 'what was jim wickenden gettin' at when i said he'd set his stack too near anigh the brook?' jabez dropped his voice. 'he was in his mind.' 'he ain't never been out of it yet to my knowledge,' jesse drawled, and uncorked his tea-bottle. 'but then jim says: "i ain't goin' to shift my stack a yard," he says. "the brook's been good friends to me, and if she be minded," he says, "to take a snatch at my hay, i ain't settin' out to withstand her." that's what jim wickenden says to me last--last june-end 'twas,' said jabez. 'nor he hasn't shifted his stack, neither,' jesse replied. 'an' if there's more rain, the brook she'll shift it for him.' 'no need tell _me_! but i want to know what jim was gettin' _at_?' jabez opened his clasp-knife very deliberately; jesse as carefully opened his. they unfolded the newspapers that wrapped their dinners, coiled away and pocketed the string that bound the packages, and sat down on the edge of the lodge manger. the rain began to fall again through the fog, and the brook's voice rose. * * * * * 'but i always allowed mary was his lawful child, like,' said jabez, after jesse had spoken for a while. ''tain't so.... jim wickenden's woman she never made nothing. she come out o' lewes with her stockin's round her heels, an' she never made nor mended aught till she died. _he_ had to light fire an' get breakfast every mornin' except sundays, while she sowed it abed. then she took an' died, sixteen, seventeen, year back; but she never had no childern.' 'they was valley-folk,' said jabez apologetically. 'i'd no call to go in among 'em, but i always allowed mary--' 'no. mary come out o' one o' those lunnon childern societies. after his woman died, jim got his mother back from his sister over to peasmarsh, which she'd gone to house with when jim married. his mother kept house for jim after his woman died. they do say 'twas his mother led him on toward adoptin' of mary--to furnish out the house with a child, like, and to keep him off of gettin' a noo woman. he mostly done what his mother contrived. 'cardenly, twixt 'em, they asked for a child from one o' those lunnon societies--same as it might ha' been these barnardo children--an' mary was sent down to 'em, in a candle-box, i've heard.' 'then mary is chance-born. i never knowed that,' said jabez. 'yet i must ha' heard it some time or other ...' 'no. she ain't. 'twould ha' been better for some folk if she had been. she come to jim in a candle-box with all the proper papers--lawful child o' some couple in lunnon somewheres--mother dead, father drinkin'. _and_ there was that lunnon society's five shillin's a week for her. jim's mother she wouldn't despise week-end money, but i never heard jim was much of a muck-grubber. let be how 'twill, they two mothered up mary no bounds, till it looked at last like they'd forgot she wasn't their own flesh an' blood. yes, i reckon they forgot mary wasn't their'n by rights.' 'that's no new thing,' said jabez. 'there's more'n one or two in this parish wouldn't surrender back their bernarders. you ask mark copley an' his woman an' that bernarder cripple-babe o' theirs.' 'maybe they need the five shillin',' jesse suggested. 'it's handy,' said jabez. 'but the child's more. "dada" he says, an' "mumma" he says, with his great rollin' head-piece all hurdled up in that iron collar. _he_ won't live long--his backbone's rotten, like. but they copleys do just about set store by him--five bob or no five bob.' 'same way with jim an' his mother,' jesse went on. 'there was talk betwixt 'em after a few years o' not takin' any more week-end money for mary; but let alone _she_ never passed a farden in the mire 'thout longin's, jim didn't care, like, to push himself forward into the society's remembrance. so naun came of it. the week-end money would ha' made no odds to jim--not after his uncle willed him they four cottages at eastbourne _an'_ money in the bank.' 'that was true, too, then? i heard something in a scadderin' word-o'-mouth way,' said jabez. 'i'll answer for the house property, because jim he requested my signed name at the foot o' some papers concernin' it. regardin' the money in the bank, he nature-ally wouldn't like such things talked about all round the parish, so he took strangers for witnesses.' 'then 'twill make mary worth seekin' after?' 'she'll need it. her maker ain't done much for her outside nor yet in.' 'that ain't no odds.' jabez shook his head till the water showered off his hat-brim. 'if mary has money, she'll be wed before any likely pore maid. she's cause to be grateful to jim.' 'she hides it middlin' close, then,' said jesse. 'it don't sometimes look to me as if mary has her natural rightful feelin's. she don't put on an apron o' mondays 'thout being druv to it--in the kitchen _or_ the hen-house. she's studyin' to be a school-teacher. she'll make a beauty! i never knowed her show any sort o' kindness to nobody--not even when jim's mother was took dumb. no! 'twadn't no stroke. it stifled the old lady in the throat here. first she couldn't shape her words no shape; then she clucked, like, an' lastly she couldn't more than suck down spoon-meat an' hold her peace. jim took her to doctor harding, an' harding he bundled her off to brighton hospital on a ticket, but they couldn't make no stay to her afflictions there; and she was bundled off to lunnon, an' they lit a great old lamp inside her, and jim told me they couldn't make out nothing in no sort there; and, along o' one thing an' another, an' all their spyin's and pryin's, she come back a hem sight worse than when she started. jim said he'd have no more hospitalizin', so he give her a slate, which she tied to her waist-string, and what she was minded to say she writ on it.' 'now, i never knowed that! but they're valley-folk,' jabez repeated. ''twadn't particular noticeable, for she wasn't a talkin' woman any time o' her days. mary had all three's tongue.... well, then, two years this summer, come what i'm tellin' you. mary's lunnon father, which they'd put clean out o' their minds, arrived down from lunnon with the law on his side, sayin' he'd take his daughter back to lunnon, after all. i was working for mus' dockett at pounds farm that summer, but i was obligin' jim that evenin' muckin' out his pig-pen. i seed a stranger come traipsin' over the bridge agin' wickenden's door-stones. 'twadn't the new county council bridge with the handrail. they hadn't given it in for a public right o' way then. 'twas just a bit o' lathy old plank which jim had throwed acrost the brook for his own conveniences. the man wasn't drunk--only a little concerned in liquor, like--an' his back was a mask where he'd slipped in the muck comin' along. he went up the bricks past jim's mother, which was feedin' the ducks, an' set himself down at the table inside--jim was just changin' his socks--an' the man let jim know all his rights and aims regardin' mary. then there just about _was_ a hurly-bulloo? jim's fust mind was to pitch him forth, but he'd done that once in his young days, and got six months up to lewes jail along o' the man fallin' on his head. so he swallowed his spittle an' let him talk. the law about mary _was_ on the man's side from fust to last, for he showed us all the papers. then mary come downstairs--she'd been studyin' for an examination--an' the man tells her who he was, an' she says he had ought to have took proper care of his own flesh and blood while he had it by him, an' not to think he could ree-claim it when it suited. he says somethin' or other, but she looks him up an' down, front an' backwent, an' she just tongues him scadderin' out o' doors, and he went away stuffin' all the papers back into his hat, talkin' most abusefully. then she come back an' freed her mind against jim an' his mother for not havin' warned her of her upbringin's, which it come out she hadn't ever been told. they didn't say naun to her. they never did. _i'd_ ha' packed her off with any man that would ha' took her--an' god's pity on him!' 'umm!' said jabez, and sucked his pipe. 'so then, that was the beginnin.' the man come back again next week or so, an' he catched jim alone, 'thout his mother this time, an' he fair beazled him with his papers an' his talk--for the law _was_ on his side--till jim went down into his money-purse an' give him ten shillings hush-money--he told me--to withdraw away for a bit an' leave mary with 'em.' 'but that's no way to get rid o' man or woman,' jabez said. 'no more 'tis. i told jim so. "what can i do?" jim says. "the law's _with_ the man. i walk about daytimes thinkin' o' it till i sweats my underclothes wringin', an' i lie abed nights thinkin' o' it till i sweats my sheets all of a sop. 'tisn't as if i was a young man," he says, "nor yet as if i was a pore man. maybe he'll drink hisself to death." i e'en a'most told him outright what foolishness he was enterin' into, but he knowed it--he knowed it--because he said next time the man come 'twould be fifteen shillin's. an' next time 'twas. just fifteen shillin's!' 'an' _was_ the man her father?' asked jabez. 'he had the proofs an' the papers. jim showed me what that lunnon childern's society had answered when mary writ up to 'em an' taxed 'em with it. i lay she hadn't been proper polite in her letters to 'em, for they answered middlin' short. they said the matter was out o' their hands, but--let's see if i remember--oh, yes,--they ree-gretted there had been an oversight. i reckon they had sent mary out in the candle-box as a orphan instead o' havin' a father. terrible awkward! then, when he'd drinked up the money, the man come again--in his usuals--an' he kept hammerin' on and hammerin' on about his duty to his pore dear wife, an' what he'd do for his dear daughter in lunnon, till the tears runned down his two dirty cheeks an' he come away with more money. jim used to slip it into his hand behind the door; but his mother she heard the chink. she didn't hold with hush-money. she'd write out all her feelin's on the slate, an' jim 'ud be settin' up half the night answerin' back an' showing that the man had the law with him.' 'hadn't that man no trade nor business, then?' 'he told me he was a printer. i reckon, though, he lived on the rates like the rest of 'em up there in lunnon.' 'an' how did mary take it?' 'she said she'd sooner go into service than go with the man. i reckon a mistress 'ud be middlin' put to it for a maid 'fore she put mary into cap an' gown. she was studyin' to be a schoo-ool-teacher. a beauty she'll make!... well, that was how things went that fall. mary's lunnon father kep' comin' an' comin' 'carden as he'd drinked out the money jim gave him; an' each time he'd put-up his price for not takin' mary away. jim's mother, she didn't like partin' with no money, an' bein' obliged to write her feelin's on the slate instead o' givin' 'em vent by mouth, she was just about mad. just about she _was_ mad! 'come november, i lodged with jim in the outside room over 'gainst his hen-house. i paid _her_ my rent. i was workin' for dockett at pounds--gettin' chestnut-bats out o' perry shaw. just such weather as this be--rain atop o' rain after a wet october. (an' i remember it ended in dry frostes right away up to christmas.) dockett he'd sent up to perry shaw for me--no, he comes puffin' up to me himself--because a big corner-piece o' the bank had slipped into the brook where she makes that elber at the bottom o' the seventeen acre, an' all the rubbishy alders an' sallies which he ought to have cut out when he took the farm, they'd slipped with the slip, an' the brook was comin' rooshin' down atop of 'em, an' they'd just about back an' spill the waters over his winter wheat. the water was lyin' in the flats already. "gor a-mighty, jesse!" he bellers out at me, "get that rubbish away all manners you can. don't stop for no fagottin', but give the brook play or my wheat's past salvation. i can't lend you no help," he says, "but work an' i'll pay ye."' 'you had him there,' jabez chuckled. 'yes. i reckon i had ought to have drove my bargain, but the brook was backin' up on good bread-corn. so 'cardenly, i laid into the mess of it, workin' off the bank where the trees was drownin' themselves head-down in the roosh--just such weather as this--an' the brook creepin' up on me all the time. 'long toward noon, jim comes mowchin' along with his toppin' axe over his shoulder. '"be you minded for an extra hand at your job?" he says. '"be you minded to turn to?" i ses, an'--no more talk to it--jim laid in alongside o' me. he's no hunger with a toppin' axe.' 'maybe, but i've seed him at a job o' throwin' in the woods, an' he didn't seem to make out no shape,' said jabez. 'he haven't got the shoulders, nor yet the judgment--_my_ opinion--when he's dealin' with full-girt timber. he don't rightly make up his mind where he's goin' to throw her.' 'we wasn't throwin' nothin'. we was cuttin' out they soft alders, an' haulin' 'em up the bank 'fore they could back the waters on the wheat. jim didn't say much, 'less it was that he'd had a postcard from mary's lunnon father, night before, sayin' he was comin' down that mornin'. jim, he'd sweated all night, an' he didn't reckon hisself equal to the talkin' an' the swearin' an' the cryin', an' his mother blamin' him afterwards on the slate. "it spiled my day to think of it," he ses, when we was eatin' our pieces. "so i've fair cried dunghill an' run. mother'll have to tackle him by herself. i lay _she_ won't give him no hush-money," he ses. "i lay he'll be surprised by the time he's done with _her_," he ses. an' that was e'en a'most all the talk we had concernin' it. but he's no hunger with the toppin' axe. 'the brook she'd crep' up an' up on us, an' she kep' creepin' upon us till we was workin' knee-deep in the shallers, cuttin' an' pookin' an' pullin' what we could get to o' the rubbish. there was a middlin' lot comin' down-stream, too--cattle-bars, an' hop-poles and odds-ends bats, all poltin' down together; but they rooshed round the elber good shape by the time we'd backed out they drowned trees. come four o'clock we reckoned we'd done a proper day's work, an' she'd take no harm if we left her. we couldn't puddle about there in the dark an' wet to no more advantage. jim he was pourin' the water out of his boots--no, i was doin' that. jim was kneelin' to unlace his'n. "damn it all, jesse," he ses, standin' up; "the flood must be over my doorsteps at home, for here comes my old white-top bee-skep!"' 'yes. i allus heard he paints his bee-skeps,' jabez put in. 'i dunno paint don't tarrify bees more'n it keeps em' dry.' '"i'll have a pook at it," he ses, an' he pooks at it as it comes round the elber. the roosh nigh jerked the pooker out of his hand-grips, an' he calls to me, an' i come runnin' barefoot. then we pulled on the pooker, an' it reared up on eend in the roosh, an' we guessed what 'twas. 'cardenly we pulled it in into a shaller, an' it rolled a piece, an' a great old stiff man's arm nigh hit me in the face. then we was sure. "'tis a man," ses jim. but the face was all a mask. "i reckon it's mary's lunnon father," he ses presently. "lend me a match and i'll make sure." he never used baccy. we lit three matches one by another, well's we could in the rain, an' he cleaned off some o' the slob with a tussick o' grass. "yes," he ses. "it's mary's lunnon father. he won't tarrify us no more. d'you want him, jesse?" he ses. '"no," i ses. "if this was eastbourne beach like, he'd be half-a-crown apiece to us 'fore the coroner; but now we'd only lose a day havin' to 'tend the inquest. i lay he fell into the brook." '"i lay he did," ses jim. "i wonder if he saw mother." he turns him over, an' opens his coat and puts his fingers in the waistcoat pocket an' starts laughin'. "he's seen mother, right enough," he ses. "an' he's got the best of her, too. _she_ won't be able to crow no more over _me_ 'bout givin' him money. _i_ never give him more than a sovereign. she's give him two!" an' he trousers 'em, laughin' all the time. "an' now we'll pook him back again, for i've done with him," he ses. 'so we pooked him back into the middle of the brook, an' we saw he went round the elber 'thout balkin', an' we walked quite a piece beside of him to set him on his ways. when we couldn't see no more, we went home by the high road, because we knowed the brook 'u'd be out acrost the medders, an' we wasn't goin' to hunt for jim's little rotten old bridge in that dark--an' rainin' heavens' hard, too. i was middlin' pleased to see light an' vittles again when we got home. jim he pressed me to come insides for a drink. he don't drink in a generality, but he was rid of all his troubles that evenin', d'ye see? "mother," he ses so soon as the door ope'd, "have you seen him?" she whips out her slate an' writes down--"no." "oh, no," ses jim. "you don't get out of it that way, mother. i lay you _have_ seen him, an' i lay he's bested you for all your talk, same as he bested me. make a clean breast of it, mother," he ses. "he got round you too." she was goin' for the slate again, but he stops her. "it's all right, mother," he ses. "i've seen him sense you have, an' he won't trouble us no more." the old lady looks up quick as a robin, an' she writes, "did he say so?" "no," ses jim, laughin'. "he didn't say so. that's how i know. but he bested _you_, mother. you can't have it in at _me_ for bein' soft-hearted. you're twice as tender-hearted as what i be. look!" he ses, an' he shows her the two sovereigns. "put 'em away where they belong," he ses. "he won't never come for no more; an' now we'll have our drink," he ses, "for we've earned it." 'nature-ally they weren't goin' to let me see where they kep' their monies. she went upstairs with it--for the whisky.' 'i never knowed jim was a drinkin' man--in his own house, like,' said jabez. 'no more he isn't; but what he takes he likes good. he won't tech no publican's hogwash acrost the bar. four shillin's he paid for that bottle o' whisky. i know, because when the old lady brought it down there wasn't more'n jest a liddle few dreenin's an' dregs in it. nothin' to set before neighbours, i do assure you.' '"why, 'twas half full last week, mother," he ses. "you don't mean," he ses, "you've given him all that as well? it's two shillin's worth," he ses. (that's how i knowed he paid four.) "well, well, mother, you be too tender-'carted to live. but i don't grudge it to him," he ses. "i don't grudge him nothin' he can keep." so, 'cardenly, we drinked up what little sup was left.' 'an' what come to mary's lunnon father?' said jabez after a full minute's silence. 'i be too tired to go readin' papers of evenin's; but dockett he told me, that very week, i think, that they'd inquested on a man down at robertsbridge which had poked and poked up agin' so many bridges an' banks, like, they couldn't make naun out of him.' 'an' what did mary say to all these doin's?' 'the old lady bundled her off to the village 'fore her lunnon father come, to buy week-end stuff (an' she forgot the half o' it). when we come in she was upstairs studyin' to be a school-teacher. none told her naun about it. 'twadn't girls' affairs.' 'reckon _she_ knowed?' jabez went on. 'she? she must have guessed it middlin' close when she saw her money come back. but she never mentioned it in writing so far's i know. she were more worritted that night on account of two-three her chickens bein' drowned, for the flood had skewed their old hen-house round on her postes. i cobbled her up next mornin' when the brook shrinked.' 'an' where did you find the bridge? some fur down-stream, didn't ye?' 'just where she allus was. she hadn't shifted but very little. the brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. but i pooked three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.' 'well, i dunno how it _looks_ like, but let be how 'twill,' said jabez, 'he hadn't no business to come down from lunnon tarrifyin' people, an' threatenin' to take away children which they'd hobbed up for their lawful own--even if 'twas mary wickenden.' 'he had the business right enough, an' he had the law with him--no gettin' over that,' said jesse. 'but he had the drink with him, too, an' that was where he failed, like.' 'well, well! let be how 'twill, the brook was a good friend to jim. i see it now. i allus _did_ wonder what he was gettin' at when he said that, when i talked to him about shiftin' the stack. "you dunno everythin'," he ses. "the brook's been a good friend to me," he ses, "an' if she's minded to have a snatch at my hay, _i_ ain't settin' out to withstand her."' 'i reckon she's about shifted it, too, by now,' jesse chuckled. 'hark! that ain't any slip off the bank which she's got hold of.' the brook had changed her note again. it sounded as though she were mumbling something soft. the land when julius fabricius, sub-prefect of the weald, in the days of diocletian owned our lower river-field, he called to him hobdenius--a briton of the clay, saying: 'what about that river-piece for layin' in to hay?' and the aged hobden answered: 'i remember as a lad my father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad. an' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll get her clean. have it jest _as_ you've a mind to, but, if i was you, i'd dreen.' so they drained it long and crossways in the lavish roman style. still we find among the river-drift their flakes of ancient tile, and in drouthy middle august, when the bones of meadows show, we can trace the lines they followed sixteen hundred years ago. then julius fabricius died as even prefects do, and after certain centuries, imperial rome died too. then did robbers enter britain from across the northern main and our lower river-field was won by ogier the dane. well could ogier work his war-boat--well could ogier wield his brand-- much he knew of foaming waters--not so much of farming land. so he called to him a hobden of the old unaltered blood. saying: 'what about that river-bit, she doesn't look no good?' and that aged hobden answered: ''tain't for _me_ to interfere, but i've known that bit o' meadow now for five and fifty year. have it _jest_ as you've a mind to, but i've proved it time on time, if you want to change her nature you have _got_ to give her lime!' ogier sent his wains to lewes, twenty hours' solemn walk, and drew back great abundance of the cool, grey, healing chalk. and old hobden spread it broadcast, never heeding what was in't; which is why in cleaning ditches, now and then we find a flint. ogier died. his sons grew english. anglo-saxon was their name, till out of blossomed normandy another pirate came; for duke william conquered england and divided with his men, and our lower river-field he gave to william of warenne. but the brook (you know her habit) rose one rainy autumn night and tore down sodden flitches of the bank to left and right. so, said william to his bailiff as they rode their dripping rounds: 'hob, what about that river-bit--the brook's got up no bounds?' and that aged hobden answered: ''tain't my business to advise, but ye might ha' known 'twould happen from the way the valley lies. when ye can't hold back the water you must try and save the sile. hev it jest as you've a _mind_ to, but, if i was you, i'd spile!' they spiled along the water-course with trunks of willow-trees and planks of elms behind 'em and immortal oaken knees. and when the spates of autumn whirl the gravel-beds away you can see their faithful fragments iron-hard in iron clay. * * * * * _georgii quinti anno sexto_, i, who own the river-field, am fortified with title-deeds, attested, signed and sealed, guaranteeing me, my assigns, my executors and heirs all sorts of powers and profits which--are neither mine nor theirs. i have rights of chase and warren, as my dignity requires. i can fish--but hobden tickles. i can shoot--but hobden wires. i repair, but he reopens, certain gaps which, men allege, have been used by every hobden since a hobden swapped a hedge. shall i dog his morning progress o'er the track-betraying dew? demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew? confiscate his evening faggot into which the conies ran, and summons him to judgment? i would sooner summons pan. his dead are in the churchyard--thirty generations laid. their names went down in domesday book when domesday book was made. and the passion and the piety and prowess of his line have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the law calls mine. not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies, would i lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes. he is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer, and if flagrantly a poacher--'tain't for me to interfere. 'hob, what about that river-bit?' i turn to him again with fabricius and ogier and william of warenne. 'hev it jest as you've a mind to, _but_'--and so he takes command. for whoever pays the taxes old mus' hobden owns the land. in the same boat ( ) 'a throbbing vein,' said dr. gilbert soothingly, 'is the mother of delusion.' 'then how do you account for my knowing when the thing is due?' conroy's voice rose almost to a break. 'of course, but you should have consulted a doctor before using--palliatives.' 'it was driving me mad. and now i can't give them up.' ''not so bad as that! one doesn't form fatal habits at twenty-five. think again. were you ever frightened as a child?' 'i don't remember. it began when i was a boy.' 'with or without the spasm? by the way, do you mind describing the spasm again?' 'well,' said conroy, twisting in the chair, 'i'm no musician, but suppose you were a violin-string--vibrating--and some one put his finger on you? as if a finger were put on the naked soul! awful!' 'so's indigestion--so's nightmare--while it lasts.' 'but the horror afterwards knocks me out for days. and the waiting for it ... and then this drug habit! it can't go on!' he shook as he spoke, and the chair creaked. 'my dear fellow,' said the doctor, 'when you're older you'll know what burdens the best of us carry. a fox to every spartan.' 'that doesn't help _me_. i can't! i can't!' cried conroy, and burst into tears. 'don't apologise,' said gilbert, when the paroxysm ended. 'i'm used to people coming a little--unstuck in this room.' 'it's those tabloids!' conroy stamped his foot feebly as he blew his nose. 'they've knocked me out. i used to be fit once. oh, i've tried exercise and everything. but--if one sits down for a minute when it's due--even at four in the morning--it runs up behind one.' 'ye-es. many things come in the quiet of the morning. you always know when the visitation is due?' 'what would i give not to be sure!' he sobbed. 'we'll put that aside for the moment. i'm thinking of a case where what we'll call anæmia of the brain was masked (i don't say cured) by vibration. he couldn't sleep, or thought he couldn't, but a steamer voyage and the thump of the screw--' 'a steamer? after what i've told you!' conroy almost shrieked. 'i'd sooner ...' 'of course _not_ a steamer in your case, but a long railway journey the next time you think it will trouble you. it sounds absurd, but--' 'i'd try anything. i nearly have,' conroy sighed. 'nonsense! i've given you a tonic that will clear _that_ notion from your head. give the train a chance, and don't begin the journey by bucking yourself up with tabloids. take them along, but hold them in reserve--in reserve.' 'd'you think i've self-control enough, after what you've heard?' said conroy. dr. gilbert smiled. 'yes. after what i've seen,' he glanced round the room, 'i have no hesitation in saying you have quite as much self-control as many other people. i'll write you later about your journey. meantime, the tonic,' and he gave some general directions before conroy left. an hour later dr. gilbert hurried to the links, where the others of his regular week-end game awaited him. it was a rigid round, played as usual at the trot, for the tension of the week lay as heavy on the two king's counsels and sir john chartres as on gilbert. the lawyers were old enemies of the admiralty court, and sir john of the frosty eyebrows and abernethy manner was bracketed with, but before, rutherford gilbert among nerve-specialists. at the club-house afterwards the lawyers renewed their squabble over a tangled collision case, and the doctors as naturally compared professional matters. 'lies--all lies,' said sir john, when gilbert had told him conroy's trouble. '_post hoc, propter hoc_. the man or woman who drugs is _ipso facto_ a liar. you've no imagination.' ''pity you haven't a little--occasionally.' 'i have believed a certain type of patient in my time. it's always the same. for reasons not given in the consulting-room they take to the drug. certain symptoms follow. they will swear to you, and believe it, that they took the drug to mask the symptoms. what does your man use? najdolene? i thought so. i had practically the duplicate of your case last thursday. same old najdolene--same old lie.' 'tell me the symptoms, and i'll draw my own inferences, johnnie.' 'symptoms! the girl was rank poisoned with najdolene. ramping, stamping possession. gad, i thought she'd have the chandelier down.' 'mine came unstuck too, and he has the physique of a bull,' said gilbert. 'what delusions had yours?' 'faces--faces with mildew on them. in any other walk of life we'd call it the horrors. she told me, of course, she took the drugs to mask the faces. _post hoc, propter hoc_ again. all liars!' 'what's that?' said the senior k.c. quickly. 'sounds professional.' 'go away! not for you, sandy.' sir john turned a shoulder against him and walked with gilbert in the chill evening. to conroy in his chambers came, one week later, this letter: dear mr. conroy--if your plan of a night's trip on the th still holds good, and you have no particular destination in view, you could do me a kindness. a miss henschil, in whom i am interested, goes down to the west by the . from waterloo (number platform) on that night. she is not exactly an invalid, but, like so many of us, a little shaken in her nerves. her maid, of course, accompanies her, but if i knew you were in the same train it would be an additional source of strength. will you please write and let me know whether the . from waterloo, number platform, on the th, suits you, and i will meet you there? don't forget my caution, and keep up the tonic.--yours sincerely, l. rutherford gilbert. 'he knows i'm scarcely fit to look after myself,' was conroy's thought. 'and he wants me to look after a woman!' yet, at the end of half an hour's irresolution, he accepted. now conroy's trouble, which had lasted for years, was this: on a certain night, while he lay between sleep and wake, he would be overtaken by a long shuddering sigh, which he learned to know was the sign that his brain had once more conceived its horror, and in time--in due time--would bring it forth. drugs could so well veil that horror that it shuffled along no worse than as a freezing dream in a procession of disorderly dreams; but over the return of the event drugs had no control. once that sigh had passed his lips the thing was inevitable, and through the days granted before its rebirth he walked in torment. for the first two years he had striven to fend it off by distractions, but neither exercise nor drink availed. then he had come to the tabloids of the excellent m. najdol. these guarantee, on the label, 'refreshing and absolutely natural sleep to the soul-weary.' they are carried in a case with a spring which presses one scented tabloid to the end of the tube, whence it can be lipped off in stroking the moustache or adjusting the veil. three years of m. najdol's preparations do not fit a man for many careers. his friends, who knew he did not drink, assumed that conroy had strained his heart through valiant outdoor exercises, and conroy had with some care invented an imaginary doctor, symptoms, and regimen, which he discussed with them and with his mother in hereford. she maintained that he would grow out of it, and recommended nux vomica. when at last conroy faced a real doctor, it was, he hoped, to be saved from suicide by a strait-waistcoat. yet dr. gilbert had but given him more drugs--a tonic, for instance, that would couple railway carnages--and had advised a night in the train. not alone the horrors of a railway journey (for which a man who dare keep no servant must e'en pack, label, and address his own bag), but the necessity for holding himself in hand before a stranger 'a little shaken in her nerves.' he spent a long forenoon packing, because when he assembled and counted things his mind slid off to the hours that remained of the day before his night, and he found himself counting minutes aloud. at such times the injustice of his fate would drive him to revolts which no servant should witness, but on this evening dr. gilbert's tonic held him fairly calm while he put up his patent razors. waterloo station shook him into real life. the change for his ticket needed concentration, if only to prevent shillings and pence turning into minutes at the booking-office; and he spoke quickly to a porter about the disposition of his bag. the old . from waterloo to the west was an all-night caravan that halted, in the interests of the milk traffic, at almost every station. dr. gilbert stood by the door of the one composite corridor-coach; an older and stouter man behind him. 'so glad you're here!' he cried. 'let me get your ticket.' 'certainly not,' conroy answered. 'i got it myself--long ago. my bag's in too,' he added proudly. 'i beg your pardon. miss henschil's here. i'll introduce you.' 'but--but,' he stammered--'think of the state i'm in. if anything happens i shall collapse.' 'not you. you'd rise to the occasion like a bird. and as for the self-control you were talking of the other day'--gilbert swung him round--'look!' a young man in an ulster over a silk-faced frock-coat stood by the carriage window, weeping shamelessly. 'oh, but that's only drink,' conroy said. 'i haven't had one of my--my things since lunch.' 'excellent!' said gilbert. 'i knew i could depend on you. come along. wait for a minute, chartres.' a tall woman, veiled, sat by the far window. she bowed her head as the doctor murmured conroy knew not what. then he disappeared and the inspector came for tickets. 'my maid--next compartment,' she said slowly. conroy showed his ticket, but in returning it to the sleeve-pocket of his ulster the little silver najdolene case slipped from his glove and fell to the floor. he snatched it up as the moving train flung him into his seat. 'how nice!' said the woman. she leisurely lifted her veil, unbottoned the first button of her left glove, and pressed out from its palm a najdolene-case. 'don't!' said conroy, not realising he had spoken. 'i beg your pardon.' the deep voice was measured, even, and low. conroy knew what made it so. 'i said "don't"! he wouldn't like you to do it!' 'no, he would not.' she held the tube with its ever-presented tabloid between finger and thumb. 'but aren't you one of the--ah--"soul-weary" too?' 'that's why. oh, please don't! not at first. i--i haven't had one since morning. you--you'll set me off!' 'you? are you so far gone as that?' he nodded, pressing his palms together. the train jolted through vauxhall points, and was welcomed with the clang of empty milk-cans for the west. after long silence she lifted her great eyes, and, with an innocence that would have deceived any sound man, asked conroy to call her maid to bring her a forgotten book. conroy shook his head. 'no. our sort can't read. don't!' 'were you sent to watch me?' the voice never changed. 'me? i need a keeper myself much more--_this_ night of all!' 'this night? have you a night, then? they disbelieved _me_ when i told them of mine.' she leaned back and laughed, always slowly. 'aren't doctors stu-upid? they don't know.' she leaned her elbow on her knee, lifted her veil that had fallen, and, chin in hand, stared at him. he looked at her--till his eyes were blurred with tears. 'have i been there, think you?' she said. 'surely--surely,' conroy answered, for he had well seen the fear and the horror that lived behind the heavy-lidded eyes, the fine tracing on the broad forehead, and the guard set about the desirable mouth. 'then--suppose we have one--just one apiece? i've gone without since this afternoon.' he put up his hand, and would have shouted, but his voice broke. 'don't! can't you see that it helps me to help you to keep it off? don't let's both go down together.' 'but i want one. it's a poor heart that never rejoices. just one. it's my night.' 'it's mine--too. my sixty-fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.' he shut his lips firmly against the tide of visualised numbers that threatened to carry him along. 'ah, it's only my thirty-ninth.' she paused as he had done. 'i wonder if i shall last into the sixties.... talk to me or i shall go crazy. you're a man. you're the stronger vessel. tell me when you went to pieces.' 'one, two, three, four, five, six, seven--eight--i beg your pardon.' 'not in the least. i always pretend i've dropped a stitch of my knitting. i count the days till the last day, then the hours, then the minutes. do you?' 'i don't think i've done very much else for the last--' said conroy, shivering, for the night was cold, with a chill he recognised. 'oh, how comforting to find some one who can talk sense! it's not always the same date, is it?' 'what difference would that make?' he unbuttoned his ulster with a jerk. 'you're a sane woman. can't you see the wicked--wicked--wicked' (dust flew from the padded arm-rest as he struck it) unfairness of it? what have i done?' she laid her large hand on his shoulder very firmly. 'if you begin to think over that,' she said, 'you'll go to pieces and be ashamed. tell me yours, and i'll tell you mine. only be quiet--be quiet, lad, or you'll set me off!' she made shift to soothe him, though her chin trembled. 'well,' said he at last, picking at the arm-rest between them, 'mine's nothing much, of course.' 'don't be a fool! that's for doctors--and mothers.' 'it's hell,' conroy muttered. 'it begins on a steamer--on a stifling hot night. i come out of my cabin. i pass through the saloon where the stewards have rolled up the carpets, and the boards are bare and hot and soapy.' 'i've travelled too,' she said. 'ah! i come on deck. i walk down a covered alleyway. butcher's meat, bananas, oil, that sort of smell.' again she nodded. 'it's a lead-coloured steamer, and the sea's lead-coloured. perfectly smooth sea--perfectly still ship, except for the engines running, and her waves going off in lines and lines and lines--dull grey. all this time i know something's going to happen.' 'i know. something going to happen,' she whispered. 'then i hear a thud in the engine-room. then the noise of machinery falling down--like fire-irons--and then two most awful yells. they're more like hoots, and i know--i know while i listen--that it means that two men have died as they hooted. it was their last breath hooting out of them--in most awful pain. do you understand?' 'i ought to. go on.' 'that's the first part. then i hear bare feet running along the alleyway. one of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly, "my friend! all is lost!" then he taps me on the shoulder and i hear him drop down dead.' he panted and wiped his forehead. 'so that is your night?' she said. 'that is my night. it comes every few weeks--so many days after i get what i call sentence. then i begin to count.' 'get sentence? d'you mean _this_?' she half closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and shuddered. '"notice" i call it. sir john thought it was all lies.' she had unpinned her hat and thrown it on the seat opposite, showing the immense mass of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar neck and looped over the left ear. but conroy had no eyes except for her grave eyes. 'listen now!' said she. 'i walk down a road, a white sandy road near the sea. there are broken fences on either side, and men come and look at me over them.' 'just men? do they speak?' 'they try to. their faces are all mildewy--eaten away,' and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. 'it's the faces--the faces!' 'yes. like my two hoots. i know.' 'ah! but the place itself--the bareness--and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! the men run after me and i run.... i know what's coming too. one of them touches me.' 'yes! what comes then? we've both shirked that.' 'one awful shock--not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!' 'as though your soul were being stopped--as you'd stop a finger-bowl humming?' he said. 'just that,' she answered. 'one's very soul--the soul that one lives by--stopped. so!' she drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. 'and now,' she whined to him, 'now that we've stirred each other up this way, mightn't we have just one?' 'no,' said conroy, shaking. 'let's hold on. we're past'--he peered out of the black windows--'woking. there's the necropolis. how long till dawn?' 'oh, cruel long yet. if one dozes for a minute, it catches one.' 'and how d'you find that this'--he tapped the palm of his glove--'helps you?' 'it covers up the thing from being too real--if one takes enough--you know. only--only--one loses everything else. i've been no more than a bogie-girl for two years. what would you give to be real again? this lying's such a nuisance.' 'one must protect oneself--and there's one's mother to think of,' he answered. 'true. i hope allowances are made for us somewhere. our burden--can you hear?--our burden is heavy enough.' she rose, towering into the roof of the carriage. conroy's ungentle grip pulled her back. 'now _you_ are foolish. sit down,' said he. 'but the cruelty of it! can't you see it? don't you feel it? let's take one now--before i--' 'sit down!' cried conroy, and the sweat stood again on his forehead. he had fought through a few nights, and had been defeated on more, and he knew the rebellion that flares beyond control to exhaustion. she smoothed her hair and dropped back, but for a while her head and throat moved with the sickening motion of a captured wry-neck. 'once,' she said, spreading out her hands, 'i ripped my counterpane from end to end. that takes strength. i had it then. i've little now. "all dorn," as my little niece says. and you, lad?' '"all dorn"! let me keep your case for you till the morning.' 'but the cold feeling is beginning.' 'lend it me, then.' 'and the drag down my right side. i shan't be able to move in a minute.' 'i can scarcely lift my arm myself,' said conroy. 'we're in for it.' 'then why are you so foolish? you know it'll be easier if we have only one--only one apiece.' she was lifting the case to her mouth. with tremendous effort conroy caught it. the two moved like jointed dolls, and when their hands met it was as wood on wood. 'you must--not!' said conroy. his jaws stiffened, and the cold climbed from his feet up. 'why--must--i--not?' she repeated the words idiotically. conroy could only shake his head, while he bore down on the hand and the case in it. her speech went from her altogether. the wonderful lips rested half over the even teeth, the breath was in the nostrils only, the eyes dulled, the face set grey, and through the glove the hand struck like ice. presently her soul came back and stood behind her eyes--only thing that had life in all that place--stood and looked for conroy's soul. he too was fettered in every limb, but somewhere at an immense distance he heard his heart going about its work as the engine-room carries on through and beneath the all but overwhelming wave. his one hope, he knew, was not to lose the eyes that clung to his, because there was an evil abroad which would possess him if he looked aside by a hair-breadth. the rest was darkness through which some distant planet spun while cymbals clashed. (beyond farnborough the . rolls out many empty milk-cans at every halt.) then a body came to life with intolerable pricklings. limb by limb, after agonies of terror, that body returned to him, steeped in most perfect physical weariness such as follows a long day's rowing. he saw the heavy lids droop over her eyes--the watcher behind them departed--and, his soul sinking into assured peace, conroy slept. light on his eyes and a salt breath roused him without shock. her hand still held his. she slept, forehead down upon it, but the movement of his waking waked her too, and she sneezed like a child. 'i--i think it's morning,' said conroy. 'and nothing has happened! did you see your men? i didn't see my faces. does it mean we've escaped? did--did you take any after i went to sleep? i'll swear i didn't,' she stammered. 'no, there wasn't any need. we've slept through it.' 'no need! thank god! there was no need! oh, look!' the train was running under red cliffs along a sea-wall washed by waves that were colourless in the early light. southward the sun rose mistily upon the channel. she leaned out of the window and breathed to the bottom of her lungs, while the wind wrenched down her dishevelled hair and blew it below her waist. 'well!' she said with splendid eyes. 'aren't you still waiting for something to happen?' 'no. not till next time. we've been let off,' conroy answered, breathing as deeply as she. 'then we ought to say our prayers.' 'what nonsense! some one will see us.' 'we needn't kneel. stand up and say "our father." we _must_!' it was the first time since childhood that conroy had prayed. they laughed hysterically when a curve threw them against an arm-rest. 'now for breakfast!' she cried. 'my maid--nurse blaber--has the basket and things. it'll be ready in twenty minutes. oh! look at my hair!' and she went out laughing. conroy's first discovery, made without fumbling or counting letters on taps, was that the london and south western's allowance of washing-water is inadequate. he used every drop, rioting in the cold tingle on neck and arms. to shave in a moving train balked him, but the next halt gave him a chance, which, to his own surprise, he took. as he stared at himself in the mirror he smiled and nodded. there were points about this person with the clear, if sunken, eye and the almost uncompressed mouth. but when he bore his bag back to his compartment, the weight of it on a limp arm humbled that new pride. 'my friend,' he said, half aloud, 'you go into training. you're putty.' she met him in the spare compartment, where her maid had laid breakfast. 'by jove!' he said, halting at the doorway, 'i hadn't realised how beautiful you were!' 'the same to you, lad. sit down. i could eat a horse.' 'i shouldn't,' said the maid quietly. 'the less you eat the better.' she was a small, freckled woman, with light fluffy hair and pale-blue eyes that looked through all veils. 'this is miss blaber,' said miss henschil. 'he's one of the soul-weary too, nursey.' 'i know it. but when one has just given it up a full meal doesn't agree. that's why i've only brought you bread and butter.' she went out quietly, and conroy reddened. 'we're still children, you see,' said miss henschil. 'but i'm well enough to feel some shame of it. d'you take sugar?' they starved together heroically, and nurse blaber was good enough to signify approval when she came to clear away. 'nursey?' miss henschil insinuated, and flushed. 'do you smoke?' said the nurse coolly to conroy. 'i haven't in years. now you mention it, i think i'd like a cigarette--or something.' 'i used to. d'you think it would keep me quiet?' miss henschil said. 'perhaps. try these.' the nurse handed them her cigarette-case. 'don't take anything else,' she commanded, and went away with the tea-basket. 'good!' grunted conroy, between mouthfuls of tobacco. 'better than nothing,' said miss henschil; but for a while they felt ashamed, yet with the comfort of children punished together. 'now,' she whispered, 'who were you when you were a man?' conroy told her, and in return she gave him her history. it delighted them both to deal once more in worldly concerns--families, names, places, and dates--with a person of understanding. she came, she said, of lancashire folk--wealthy cotton-spinners, who still kept the broadened _a_ and slurred aspirate of the old stock. she lived with an old masterful mother in an opulent world north of lancaster gate, where people in society gave parties at a mecca called the langham hotel. she herself had been launched into society there, and the flowers at the ball had cost eighty-seven pounds; but, being reckoned peculiar, she had made few friends among her own sex. she had attracted many men, for she was a beauty--_the_ beauty, in fact, of society, she said. she spoke utterly without shame or reticence, as a life-prisoner tells his past to a fellow-prisoner; and conroy nodded across the smoke-rings. 'do you remember when you got into the carriage?' she asked. '(oh, i wish i had some knitting!) did you notice aught, lad?' conroy thought back. it was ages since. 'wasn't there some one outside the door--crying?' he asked. 'he's--he's the little man i was engaged to,' she said. 'but i made him break it off. i told him 'twas no good. but he won't, yo' see.' '_that_ fellow? why, he doesn't come up to your shoulder.' 'that's naught to do with it. i think all the world of him. i'm a foolish wench'--her speech wandered as she settled herself cosily, one elbow on the arm-rest. 'we'd been engaged--i couldn't help that--and he worships the ground i tread on. but it's no use. i'm not responsible, you see. his two sisters are against it, though i've the money. they're right, but they think it's the dri-ink,' she drawled. 'they're methody--the skinners. you see, their grandfather that started the patton mills, he died o' the dri-ink.' 'i see,' said conroy. the grave face before him under the lifted veil was troubled. 'george skinner.' she breathed it softly. 'i'd make him a good wife, by god's gra-ace--if i could. but it's no use. i'm not responsible. but he'll not take "no" for an answer. i used to call him "toots." he's of no consequence, yo' see.' 'that's in dickens,' said conroy, quite quickly. 'i haven't thought of toots for years. he was at doctor blimber's.' 'and so--that's my trouble,' she concluded, ever so slightly wringing her hands. 'but i--don't you think--there's hope now?' 'eh?' said conroy. 'oh yes! this is the first time i've turned my corner without help. with your help, i should say.' 'it'll come back, though.' 'then shall we meet it in the same way? here's my card. write me your train, and we'll go together.' 'yes. we must do that. but between times--when we want--' she looked at her palm, the four fingers working on it. 'it's hard to give 'em up.' 'but think what we have gained already, and let me have the case to keep.' she shook her head, and threw her cigarette out of the window. 'not yet.' 'then let's lend our cases to nurse, and we'll get through to-day on cigarettes. i'll call her while we feel strong.' she hesitated, but yielded at last, and nurse accepted the offerings with a smile. '_you'll_ be all right,' she said to miss henschil. 'but if i were you'--to conroy--'i'd take strong exercise.' when they reached their destination conroy set himself to obey nurse blaber. he had no remembrance of that day, except one streak of blue sea to his left, gorse-bushes to his right, and, before him, a coast-guard's track marked with white-washed stones that he counted up to the far thousands. as he returned to the little town he saw miss henschil on the beach below the cliffs. she kneeled at nurse blaber's feet, weeping and pleading. * * * * * twenty-five days later a telegram came to conroy's rooms: '_notice given. waterloo again. twenty-fourth.'_ that same evening he was wakened by the shudder and the sigh that told him his sentence had gone forth. yet he reflected on his pillow that he had, in spite of lapses, snatched something like three weeks of life, which included several rides on a horse before breakfast--the hour one most craves najdolene; five consecutive evenings on the river at hammersmith in a tub where he had well stretched the white arms that passing crews mocked at; a game of rackets at his club; three dinners, one small dance, and one human flirtation with a human woman. more notable still, he had settled his month's accounts, only once confusing petty cash with the days of grace allowed him. next morning he rode his hired beast in the park victoriously. he saw miss henschil on horse-back near lancaster gate, talking to a young man at the railings. she wheeled and cantered toward him. 'by jove! how well you look!' he cried, without salutation. 'i didn't know you rode.' 'i used to once,' she replied. 'i'm all soft now.' they swept off together down the ride. 'your beast pulls,' he said. 'wa-ant him to. gi-gives me something to think of. how've you been?' she panted. 'i wish chemists' shops hadn't red lights.' 'have you slipped out and bought some, then?' 'you don't know nursey. eh, but it's good to be on a horse again! this chap cost me two hundred.' 'then you've been swindled,' said conroy. 'i know it, but it's no odds. i must go back to toots and send him away. he's neglecting his work for me.' she swung her heavy-topped animal on his none too sound hocks. ''sentence come, lad?' 'yes. but i'm not minding it so much this time.' 'waterloo, then--and god help us!' she thundered back to the little frock-coated figure that waited faithfully near the gate. conroy felt the spring sun on his shoulders and trotted home. that evening he went out with a man in a pair oar, and was rowed to a standstill. but the other man owned he could not have kept the pace five minutes longer. * * * * * he carried his bag all down number platform at waterloo, and hove it with one hand into the rack. 'well done!' said nurse blaber, in the corridor. 'we've improved too.' dr. gilbert and an older man came out of the next compartment. 'hallo!' said gilbert. 'why haven't you been to see me, mr. conroy? come under the lamp. take off your hat. no--no. sit, you young giant. ve-ry good. look here a minute, johnnie.' a little, round-bellied, hawk-faced person glared at him. 'gilbert was right about the beauty of the beast,' he muttered. 'd'you keep it in your glove now?' he went on, and punched conroy in the short ribs. 'no,' said conroy meekly, but without coughing. 'nowhere--on my honour! i've chucked it for good.' 'wait till you are a sound man before you say _that_, mr. conroy.' sir john chartres stumped out, saying to gilbert in the corridor, 'it's all very fine, but the question is shall i or we "sir pandarus of troy become," eh? we're bound to think of the children.' 'have you been vetted?' said miss henschil, a few minutes after the train started. 'may i sit with you? i--i don't trust myself yet. i can't give up as easily as you can, seemingly.' 'can't you? i never saw any one so improved in a month.' 'look here!' she reached across to the rack, single-handed lifted conroy's bag, and held it at arm's length. 'i counted ten slowly. and i didn't think of hours or minutes,' she boasted. 'don't remind me,' he cried. 'ah! now i've reminded myself. i wish i hadn't. do you think it'll be easier for us to-night?' 'oh, don't.' the smell of the carriage had brought back all his last trip to him, and conroy moved uneasily. 'i'm sorry. i've brought some games,' she went on. 'draughts and cards--but they all mean counting. i wish i'd brought chess, but i can't play chess. what can we do? talk about something.' 'well, how's toots, to begin with?' said conroy. 'why? did you see him on the platform?' 'no. was he there? i didn't notice.' 'oh yes. he doesn't understand. he's desperately jealous. i told him it doesn't matter. will you please let me hold your hand? i believe i'm beginning to get the chill.' 'toots ought to envy me,' said conroy. 'he does. he paid you a high compliment the other night. he's taken to calling again--in spite of all they say.' conroy inclined his head. he felt cold, and knew surely he would be colder. 'he said,' she yawned. '(beg your pardon.) he said he couldn't see how i could help falling in love with a man like you; and he called himself a damned little rat, and he beat his head on the piano last night.' 'the piano? you play, then?' 'only to him. he thinks the world of my accomplishments. then i told him i wouldn't have you if you were the last man on earth instead of only the best-looking--not with a million in each stocking.' 'no, not with a million in each stocking,' said conroy vehemently. 'isn't that odd?' 'i suppose so--to any one who doesn't know. well, where was i? oh, george as good as told me i was deceiving him, and he wanted to go away without saying good-night. he hates standing a-tiptoe, but he must if i won't sit down.' conroy would have smiled, but the chill that foreran the coming of the lier-in-wait was upon him, and his hand closed warningly on hers. 'and--and so--' she was trying to say, when her hour also overtook her, leaving alive only the fear-dilated eyes that turned to conroy. hand froze on hand and the body with it as they waited for the horror in the blackness that heralded it. yet through the worst conroy saw, at an uncountable distance, one minute glint of light in his night. thither would he go and escape his fear; and behold, that light was the light in the watch-tower of her eyes, where her locked soul signalled to his soul: 'look at me!' in time, from him and from her, the thing sheered aside, that each soul might step down and resume its own concerns. he thought confusedly of people on the skirts of a thunderstorm, withdrawing from windows where the torn night is, to their known and furnished beds. then he dozed, till in some drowsy turn his hand fell from her warmed hand. 'that's all. the faces haven't come,' he heard her say. 'all--thank god! i don't feel even i need what nursey promised me. do you?' 'no.' he rubbed his eyes. 'but don't make too sure.' 'certainly not. we shall have to try again next month. i'm afraid it will be an awful nuisance for you.' 'not to me, i assure you,' said conroy, and they leaned back and laughed at the flatness of the words, after the hells through which they had just risen. 'and now,' she said, strict eyes on conroy, '_why_ wouldn't you take me--not with a million in each stocking?' 'i don't know. that's what i've been puzzling over.' 'so have i. we're as handsome a couple as i've ever seen. are you well off, lad?' 'they call me so,' said conroy, smiling. 'that's north country.' she laughed again. setting aside my good looks and yours, i've four thousand a year of my own, and the rents should make it six. that's a match some old cats would lap tea all night to fettle up.' 'it is. lucky toots!' said conroy. 'ay,' she answered, 'he'll be the luckiest lad in london if i win through. who's yours?' 'no--no one, dear. i've been in hell for years. i only want to get out and be alive and--so on. isn't that reason enough?' 'maybe, for a man. but i never minded things much till george came. i was all stu-upid like.' 'so was i, but now i think i can live. it ought to be less next month, oughtn't it?' he said. 'i hope so. ye-es. there's nothing much for a maid except to be married, and i ask no more. whoever yours is, when you've found her, she shall have a wedding present from mrs. george skinner that--' 'but she wouldn't understand it any more than toots.' 'he doesn't matter--except to me. i can't keep my eyes open, thank god! good-night, lad.' conroy followed her with his eyes. beauty there was, grace there was, strength, and enough of the rest to drive better men than george skinner to beat their heads on piano-tops--but for the new-found life of him conroy could not feel one flutter of instinct or emotion that turned to herward. he put up his feet and fell asleep, dreaming of a joyous, normal world recovered--with interest on arrears. there were many things in it, but no one face of any one woman. * * * * * thrice afterward they took the same train, and each time their trouble shrank and weakened. miss henschil talked of toots, his multiplied calls, the things he had said to his sisters, the much worse things his sisters had replied; of the late (he seemed very dead to them) m. najdol's gifts for the soul-weary; of shopping, of house rents, and the cost of really artistic furniture and linen. conroy explained the exercises in which he delighted--mighty labours of play undertaken against other mighty men, till he sweated and, having bathed, slept. he had visited his mother, too, in hereford, and he talked something of her and of the home-life, which his body, cut out of all clean life for five years, innocently and deeply enjoyed. nurse blaber was a little interested in conroy's mother, but, as a rule, she smoked her cigarette and read her paper-backed novels in her own compartment. on their last trip she volunteered to sit with them, and buried herself in _the cloister and the hearth_ while they whispered together. on that occasion (it was near salisbury) at two in the morning, when the lier-in-wait brushed them with his wing, it meant no more than that they should cease talk for the instant, and for the instant hold hands, as even utter strangers on the deep may do when their ship rolls underfoot. 'but still,' said nurse blaber, not looking up, 'i think your mr. skinner might feel jealous of all this.' 'it would be difficult to explain,' said conroy. 'then you'd better not be at my wedding,' miss henschil laughed. 'after all we've gone through, too. but i suppose you ought to leave me out. is the day fixed?' he cried. 'twenty-second of september--in spite of both his sisters. i can risk it now.' her face was glorious as she flushed. 'my dear chap!' he shook hands unreservedly, and she gave back his grip without flinching. 'i can't tell you how pleased i am!' 'gracious heavens!' said nurse blaber, in a new voice. 'oh, i beg your pardon. i forgot i wasn't paid to be surprised.' 'what at? oh, i see!' miss henschil explained to conroy. 'she expected you were going to kiss me, or i was going to kiss you, or something.' 'after all you've gone through, as mr. conroy said,' 'but i couldn't, could you?' said miss henschil, with a disgust as frank as that on conroy's face. 'it would be horrible--horrible. and yet, of course, you're wonderfully handsome. how d'you account for it, nursey?' nurse blaber shook her head. 'i was hired to cure you of a habit, dear. when you're cured i shall go on to the next case--that senile-decay one at bourne-mouth i told you about.' 'and i shall be left alone with george! but suppose it isn't cured,' said miss henschil of a sudden. suppose it comes back again. what can i do? i can't send for _him_ in this way when i'm a married woman!' she pointed like an infant. 'i'd come, of course,' conroy answered. 'but, seriously, that is a consideration.' they looked at each other, alarmed and anxious, and then toward nurse blaber, who closed her book, marked the place, and turned to face them. 'have you ever talked to your mother as you have to me?' she said. 'no. i might have spoken to dad--but mother's different. what d'you mean?' 'and you've never talked to your mother either, mr. conroy?' 'not till i took najdolene. then i told her it was my heart. there's no need to say anything, now that i'm practically over it, is there?' 'not if it doesn't come back, but--' she beckoned with a stumpy, triumphant linger that drew their heads close together. 'you know i always go in and read a chapter to mother at tea, child.' 'i know you do. you're an angel,' miss henschil patted the blue shoulder next her. 'mother's church of england now,' she explained. 'but she'll have her bible with her pikelets at tea every night like the skinners.' 'it was naaman and gehazi last tuesday that gave me a clue. i said i'd never seen a case of leprosy, and your mother said she'd seen too many.' 'where? she never told me,' miss henschil began. 'a few months before you were born--on her trip to australia--at mola or molo something or other. it took me three evenings to get it all out.' 'ay--mother's suspicious of questions,' said miss henschil to conroy. 'she'll lock the door of every room she's in, if it's but for five minutes. she was a tackberry from jarrow way, yo' see.' 'she described your men to the life--men with faces all eaten away, staring at her over the fence of a lepers' hospital in this molo island. they begged from her, and she ran, she told me, all down the street, back to the pier. one touched her and she nearly fainted. she's ashamed of that still.' 'my men? the sand and the fences?' miss henschil muttered. 'yes. you know how tidy she is and how she hates wind. she remembered that the fences were broken--she remembered the wind blowing. sand--sun--salt wind--fences--faces--i got it all out of her, bit by bit. you don't know what i know! and it all happened three or four months before you were born. there!' nurse blaber slapped her knee with her little hand triumphantly. 'would that account for it?' miss henschil shook from head to foot. 'absolutely. i don't care who you ask! you never imagined the thing. it was _laid_ on you. it happened on earth to _you_! quick, mr. conroy, she's too heavy for me! i'll get the flask.' miss henschil leaned forward and collapsed, as conroy told her afterwards, like a factory chimney. she came out of her swoon with teeth that chattered on the cup. 'no--no,' she said, gulping. 'it's not hysterics. yo' see i've no call to hev 'em any more. no call--no reason whatever. god be praised! can't yo' _feel_ i'm a right woman now?' 'stop hugging me!' said nurse blaber. 'you don't know your strength. finish the brandy and water. it's perfectly reasonable, and i'll lay long odds mr. conroy's case is something of the same. i've been thinking--' 'i wonder--' said conroy, and pushed the girl back as she swayed again. nurse blaber smoothed her pale hair. 'yes. your trouble, or something like it, happened somewhere on earth or sea to the mother who bore you. ask her, child. ask her and be done with it once for all.' 'i will,' said conroy.... 'there ought to be--' he opened his bag and hunted breathlessly. 'bless you! oh, god bless you, nursey!' miss henschil was sobbing. 'you don't know what this means to me. it takes it all off--from the beginning.' 'but doesn't it make any difference to you now?' the nurse asked curiously. 'now that you're rightfully a woman?' conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard. miss henschil stared across, and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her. 'i see what you mean,' she said. 'but it hasn't changed anything. i want toots. _he_ has never been out of his mind in his life--except over silly me.' 'it's all right,' said conroy, stooping under the lamp, bradshaw in hand. 'if i change at templecombe--for bristol (bristol--hereford--yes)--i can be with mother for breakfast in her room and find out.' 'quick, then,' said nurse blaber. 'we've passed gillingham quite a while. you'd better take some of our sandwiches.' she went out to get them. conroy and miss henschil would have danced, but there is no room for giants in a south-western compartment. 'good-bye, good luck, lad. eh, but you've changed already--like me. send a wire to our hotel as soon as you're sure,' said miss henschil. 'what should i have done without you?' 'or i?' said conroy. 'but it's nurse that's saving us really.' 'then thank her,' said miss henschil, looking straight at him. 'yes, i would. she'd like it.' when nurse blaber came back after the parting at templecombe her nose and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great light even while she sniffed over _the cloister and the hearth_. miss henschil, deep in a house furnisher's catalogue, did not speak for twenty minutes. then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and servants' sheets, 'but why should our times have been the same, nursey?' 'because a child is born somewhere every second of the clock,' nurse blaber answered. 'and besides that, you probably set each other off by talking and thinking about it. you shouldn't, you know.' 'ay, but you've never been in hell,' said miss henschil. the telegram handed in at hereford at . and delivered to miss henschil on the beach of a certain village at . ran thus: '"_absolutely confirmed. she says she remembers hearing noise of accident in engine-room returning from india eighty-five._"' 'he means the year, not the thermometer,' said nurse blaber, throwing pebbles at the cold sea. '"_and two men scalded thus explaining my hoots._" (the idea of telling me that!) "_subsequently silly clergyman passenger ran up behind her calling for joke, 'friend, all is lost,' thus accounting very words._"' nurse blaber purred audibly. '"_she says only remembers being upset minute or two. unspeakable relief. best love nursey, who is jewel. get out of her what she would like best._" oh, i oughtn't to have read that,' said miss henschil. 'it doesn't matter. i don't want anything,' said nurse blaber, 'and if i did i shouldn't get it.' 'helen all alone' there was darkness under heaven for an hour's space-- darkness that we knew was given us for special grace. sun and moon and stars were hid, god had left his throne, when helen came to me, she did, helen all alone! side by side (because our fate damned us ere our birth) we stole out of limbo gate looking for the earth. hand in pulling hand amid fear no dreams have known, helen ran with me, she did, helen all alone! when the horror passing speech hunted us along, each laid hold on each, and each found the other strong. in the teeth of things forbid and reason overthrown, helen stood by me, she did, helen all alone! when, at last, we heard the fires dull and die away, when, at last, our linked desires dragged us up to day, when, at last, our souls were rid of what that night had shown, helen passed from me, she did, helen all alone! let her go and find a mate, as i will find a bride, knowing naught of limbo gate or who are penned inside. there is knowledge god forbid more than one should own. so helen went from me, she did, oh my soul, be glad she did! helen all alone! the honours of war ( ) a hooded motor had followed mine from the guildford road up the drive to the infant's ancestral hall, and had turned off to the stables. 'we're having a quiet evening together. stalky's upstairs changing. dinner's at . sharp, because we're hungry. his room's next to yours,' said the infant, nursing a cobwebbed bottle of burgundy. then i found lieutenant-colonel a.l. corkran, i.a., who borrowed a collar-stud and told me about the east and his sikh regiment. 'and are your subalterns as good as ever?' i asked. 'amazin'--simply amazin'! all i've got to do is to find 'em jobs. they keep touchin' their caps to me and askin' for more work. 'come at me with their tongues hangin' out. _i_ used to run the other way at their age.' 'and when they err?' said i. 'i suppose they do sometimes?' 'then they run to me again to weep with remorse over their virgin peccadilloes. i never cuddled my colonel when i was in trouble. lambs--positive lambs!' 'and what do you say to 'em?' 'talk to 'em like a papa. tell 'em how i can't understand it, an' how shocked i am, and how grieved their parents'll be; and throw in a little about the army regulations and the ten commandments. 'makes one feel rather a sweep when one thinks of what one used to do at their age. d'you remember--' we remembered together till close on seven o'clock. as we went out into the gallery that runs round the big hall, we saw the infant, below, talking to two deferential well-set-up lads whom i had known, on and off, in the holidays, any time for the last ten years. one of them had a bruised cheek, and the other a weeping left eye. 'yes, that's the style,' said stalky below his breath. 'they're brought up on lemon-squash and mobilisation text-books. i say, the girls we knew must have been much better than they pretended they were; for i'll swear it isn't the fathers.' 'but why on earth did you do it?' the infant was shouting. 'you know what it means nowadays.' 'well, sir,' said bobby trivett, the taller of the two, 'wontner talks too much, for one thing. he didn't join till he was twenty-three, and, besides that, he used to lecture on tactics in the ante-room. he said clausewitz was the only tactician, and he illustrated his theories with cigar-ends. he was that sort of chap, sir.' 'and he didn't much care whose cigar-ends they were,' said eames, who was shorter and pinker. 'and then he _would_ talk about the 'varsity,' said bobby. 'he got a degree there. and he told us we weren't intellectual. he told the adjutant so, sir. he was just that kind of chap, sir, if you understand.' stalky and i backed behind a tall japanese jar of chrysanthemums and listened more intently. 'was all the mess in it, or only you two?' the infant demanded, chewing his moustache. 'the adjutant went to bed, of course, sir, and the senior subaltern said he wasn't going to risk his commission--they're awfully down on ragging nowadays in the service--but the rest of us--er--attended to him,' said bobby. 'much?' the infant asked. the boys smiled deprecatingly. 'not in the ante-room, sir,' said eames. 'then he called us silly children, and went to bed, and we sat up discussin', and i suppose we got a bit above ourselves, and we--er--' 'went to his quarters and drew him?' the infant suggested. 'well, we only asked him to get out of bed, and we put his helmet and sword-belt on for him, and we sung him bits out of the blue fairy book--the cram-book on army organisation. oh yes, and then we asked him to drink old clausewitz's health, as a brother-tactician, in milk-punch and worcester sauce, and so on. we had to help him a little there. he bites. there wasn't much else that time; but, you know, the war office is severe on ragging these days.' bobby stopped with a lopsided smile. 'and then,' eames went on, 'then wontner said we'd done several pounds' worth of damage to his furniture.' 'oh,' said the infant, 'he's that kind of man, is he? does he brush his teeth?' 'oh yes, he's quite clean all over!' said trivett; 'but his father's a wealthy barrister.' 'solicitor,' eames corrected, 'and so this mister wontner is out for our blood. he's going to make a first-class row about it--appeal to the war office--court of inquiry--spicy bits in the papers, and songs in the music-halls. he told us so.' 'that's the sort of chap he is,' said trivett. 'and that means old dhurrah-bags, our colonel, 'll be put on half-pay, same as that case in the scarifungers' mess; and our adjutant'll have to exchange, like it was with that fellow in the rd dragoons, and there'll be misery all round. he means making it too hot for us, and his papa'll back him.' 'yes, that's all very fine,' said the infant; 'but i left the service about the time you were born, bobby. what's it got to do with me?' 'father told me i was always to go to you when i was in trouble, and you've been awfully good to me since he ...' 'better stay to dinner.' the infant mopped his forehead. 'thank you very much, but the fact is--' trivett halted. 'this afternoon, about four, to be exact--' eames broke in. 'we went over to wontner's quarters to talk things over. the row only happened last night, and we found him writing letters as hard as he could to his father--getting up his case for the war office, you know. he read us some of 'em, but i'm not a good judge of style. we tried to ride him off quietly--apologies and so forth--but it was the milk-punch and mayonnaise that defeated us.' 'yes, he wasn't taking anything except pure revenge,' said eames. 'he said he'd make an example of the regiment, and he was particularly glad that he'd landed our colonel. he told us so. old dhurrah-bags don't sympathise with wontner's tactical lectures. he says wontner ought to learn manners first, but we thought--' trivett turned to eames, who was less a son of the house than himself, eames's father being still alive. 'then,' eames went on, 'he became rather noisome, and we thought we might as well impound the correspondence'--he wrinkled his swelled left eye--'and after that, we got him to take a seat in my car.' 'he was in a sack, you know,' trivett explained. 'he wouldn't go any other way. but we didn't hurt him.' 'oh no! his head's sticking out quite clear, and'--eames rushed the fence--'we've put him in your garage--er _pendente lite_.' 'my garage!' infant's voice nearly broke with horror. 'well, father always told me if i was in trouble, uncle george--' bobby's sentence died away as the infant collapsed on a divan and said no more than, 'your commissions!' there was a long, long silence. 'what price your latter-day lime-juice subaltern?' i whispered to stalky behind my hand. his nostrils expanded, and he drummed on the edge of the japanese jar with his knuckles. 'confound your father, bobby!' the infant groaned. 'raggin's a criminal offence these days. it isn't as if--' 'come on,' said stalky. 'that was my old line battalion in egypt. they nearly slung old dhurrah-bags and me out of the service in ' for ragging.' he descended the stairs and the infant rolled appealing eyes at him. 'i heard what you youngsters have confessed,' he began; and in his orderly-room voice, which is almost as musical as his singing one, he tongue-lashed those lads in such sort as was a privilege and a revelation to listen to. till then they had known him almost as a relative--we were all brevet, deputy, or acting uncles to the infant's friends' brood--a sympathetic elder brother, sound on finance. they had never met colonel a.l. corkran in the chair of justice. and while he flayed and rent and blistered, and wiped the floor with them, and while they looked for hiding-places and found none on that floor, i remembered ( ) the up-ending of 'dolly' macshane at dalhousie, which came perilously near a court-martial on second-lieutenant corkran; ( ) the burning of captain parmilee's mosquito-curtains on a hot indian dawn, when the captain slept in his garden, and lieutenant corkran, smoking, rode by after a successful whist night at the club; ( ) the introduction of an ekka pony, with ekka attached, into a brother captain's tent on a frosty night in peshawur, and the removal of tent, pole, cot, and captain all wrapped in chilly canvas; ( ) the bath that was given to elliot-hacker on his own verandah--his lady-love saw it and broke off the engagement, which was what the mess intended, she being an eurasian--and the powdering all over of elliot-hacker with flour and turmeric from the bazaar. when he took breath i realised how only satan can rebuke sin. the good don't know enough. 'now,' said stalky, 'get out! no, not out of the house. go to your rooms.' 'i'll send your dinner, bobby,' said the infant. 'ipps!' nothing had ever been known to astonish ipps, the butler. he entered and withdrew with his charges. after all, he had suffered from bobby since bobby's twelfth year. 'they've done everything they could, short of murder,' said the infant. 'you know what this'll mean for the regiment. it isn't as if we were dealing with sahibs nowadays.' 'quite so.' stalky turned on me. 'go and release the bagman,' he said. ''tisn't my garage,' i pleaded. 'i'm company. besides, he'll probably slay me. he's been in the sack for hours.' 'look here,' stalky thundered--the years had fallen from us both--'is your--am i commandin' or are you? we've got to pull this thing off somehow or other. cut over to the garage, make much of him, and bring him over. he's dining with us. be quick, you dithering ass!' i was quick enough; but as i ran through the shrubbery i wondered how one extricates the subaltern of the present day from a sack without hurting his feelings. anciently, one slit the end open, taking off his boots first, and then fled. imagine a sumptuously-equipped garage, half-filled by the infant's cobalt-blue, grey-corded silk limousine and a mud-splashed, cheap, hooded four-seater. in the back seat of this last, conceive a fiery chestnut head emerging from a long oat-sack; an implacable white face, with blazing eyes and jaws that worked ceaselessly at the loop of the string that was drawn round its neck. the effect, under the electrics, was that of a demon caterpillar wrathfully spinning its own cocoon. 'good evening!' i said genially. 'let me help you out of that.' the head glared. 'we've got 'em,' i went on. 'they came to quite the wrong shop for this sort of game--quite the wrong shop.' 'game!' said the head. 'we'll see about that. let me out.' it was not a promising voice for one so young, and, as usual, i had no knife. 'you've chewed the string so i can't find the knot,' i said as i worked with trembling fingers at the cater-pillar's throat. something untied itself, and mr. wontner wriggled out, collarless, tieless, his coat split half down his back, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his watch-chain snapped, his trousers rucked well above the knees. 'where,' he said grimly, as he pulled them down, 'are master trivett and master eames?' 'both arrested, of course,' i replied. 'sir george'--i gave the infant's full title as a baronet--'is a justice of the peace. he'd be very pleased if you dined with us. there's a room ready for you.' i picked up the sack. 'd'you know,' said mr. wontner through his teeth--but the car's bonnet was between us, 'that this looks to me like--i won't say conspiracy _yet_, but uncommonly like a confederacy.' when injured souls begin to distinguish and qualify, danger is over. so i grew bold. ''sorry you take it that way,' i said. 'you come here in trouble--' 'my good fool,' he interrupted, with a half-hysterical snort, 'let me assure you that the trouble will recoil on the other men!' 'as you please,' i went on. 'anyhow, the chaps who got you into trouble are arrested, and the magistrate who arrested 'em asks you to dinner. shall i tell him you're walking back to aldershot?' he picked some fluff off his waistcoat. 'i'm in no position to dictate terms yet,' he said. 'that will come later. i must probe into this a little further. in the meantime, i accept your invitation without prejudice--if you understand what that means.' i understood and began to be happy again. sub-alterns without prejudices were quite new to me. 'all right,' i replied; 'if you'll go up to the house, i'll turn out the lights.' he walked off stiffly, while i searched the sack and the car for the impounded correspondence that bobby had talked of. i found nothing except, as the police reports say, the trace of a struggle. he had kicked half the varnish off the back of the front seat, and had bitten the leather padding where he could reach it. evidently a purposeful and hard-mouthed young gentleman. 'well done!' said stalky at the door. 'so he didn't slay you. stop laughing. he's talking to the infant now about depositions. look here, you're nearest his size. cut up to your rooms and give ipps your dinner things and a clean shirt for him.' 'but i haven't got another suit,' i said. 'you! i'm not thinking of you! we've got to conciliate _him_. he's in filthy rags and a filthy temper, and he won't feel decent till he's dressed. you're the sacrifice. be quick! and clean socks, remember!' once more i trotted up to my room, changed into unseasonable unbrushed grey tweeds, put studs into a clean shirt, dug out fresh socks, handed the whole garniture over to ipps, and returned to the hall just in time to hear stalky say, 'i'm a stockbroker, but i have the honour to hold his majesty's commission in a territorial battalion.' then i felt as though i might be beginning to be repaid. 'i have a very high opinion of the territorials myself,' said mr. wontner above a glass of sherry. (infant never lets us put bitters into anything above twenty years old.) 'but if you had any experience of the service, you would find that the average army man--' here the infant suggested changing, and ipps, before whom no human passion can assert itself, led mr. wontner away. 'why the devil did you tell him i was on the bench?' said infant wrathfully to me. 'you know i ain't now. why didn't he stay in his father's office? he's a raging blight!' 'not a bit of it,' said stalky cheerfully. 'he's a little shaken and excited. probably beetle annoyed him in the garage, but we must overlook that. we've contained him so far, and i'm going to nibble round his outposts at dinner. all you've got to do, infant, is to remember you're a gentleman in your own house. don't hop! you'll find it pretty difficult before dinner's over. i don't want to hear anything at all from you, beetle.' 'but i'm just beginning to like him,' i said. 'do let me play!' 'not till i ask you. you'll overdo it. poor old dhurrah-bags! a scandal 'ud break him up!' 'but as long as a regiment has no say as to who joins it, it's bound to rag,' infant began. 'why--why, they varnished me when i joined!' he squirmed at the thought of it. 'don't be owls! we ain't discussing principles! we've got to save the court of inquiry if we can,' said stalky. five minutes later--at . to be precise--we four sat down to such a dinner as, i hold, only the infant's cook can produce, with wines worthy of pontifical banquets. a man in the extremity of rage and injured dignity is precisely like a typhoid patient. he asks no questions, accepts what is put before him, and babbles in one key--very often of trifles. but food and drink are the very best of drugs. i think it was heidsieck dry monopole ' --stalky as usual stuck to burgundy--that began to unlock mr. wontner's heart behind my shirt-front. me he snubbed throughout, after the oxford manner, because i had seen him in the sack, and he did not intend me to presume; but to stalky and the infant, while i admired the set of my dinner-jacket across his shoulders, he made his plans of revenge very clear indeed. he had even sketched out some of the paragraphs that were to appear in the papers, and if stalky had allowed me to speak, i would have told him that they were rather neatly phrased. 'you ought to be able to get whackin' damages out of 'em, into the bargain,' said stalky, after mr. wontner had outlined his position legally. 'my de-ah sir,' mr. wontner applied himself to his glass, 'it isn't a matter that gentlemen usually discuss, but, i assure you, we wontners'--he waved a well-kept hand--'do not stand in any need of filthy lucre.' in the next three minutes, we learned exactly what his father was worth, which, as he pointed out, was a trifle no man of the world dwelt on. stalky envied aloud, and i delivered my first kick at the infant's ankle. thence we drifted to education, and the average army man, and the desolating vacuity--i remember these words--of army society, notably among its womenkind. it appeared there was some sort of narrow convention in the army against mentioning a woman's name at mess. we were much surprised at this--stalky would not let me express my surprise--but we took it from mr. wontner, who said we might, that it was so. next he touched on colonels of the old school, and their cognisance of tactics. not that he himself pretended to any skill in tactics, but after three years at the 'varsity--none of us had had a 'varsity education--a man insensibly contracted the habit of clear thinking. at least, he could automatically co-ordinate his ideas, and the jealousy of these muddle-headed colonels was inconceivable. we would understand that it was his duty to force on the retirement of his colonel, who had been in the conspiracy against him; to make his adjutant resign or exchange; and to give the half-dozen childish subalterns who had vexed his dignity a chance to retrieve themselves in other corps--west african ones, he hoped. for himself, after the case was decided, he proposed to go on living in the regiment, just to prove--for he bore no malice--that times had changed, _nosque mutamur in illis_--if we knew what that meant. infant had curled his legs out of reach, so i was quite free to return thanks yet once more to allah for the diversity of his creatures in his adorable world. and so, by way of an eighty-year-old liqueur brandy, to tactics and the great general clausewitz, unknown to the average army man. here the infant, at a whisper from ipps--whose face had darkened like a mulberry while he waited--excused himself and went away, but stalky, colonel of territorials, wanted some tips on tactics. he got them unbrokenly for ten minutes--wontner and clausewitz mixed, but wontner in a film of priceless cognac distinctly on top. when the infant came back, he renewed his clear-spoken demand that infant should take his depositions. i supposed this to be a family trait of the wontners, whom i had been visualising for some time past even to the third generation. 'but, hang it all, they're both asleep!' said infant, scowling at me. 'ipps let 'em have the ' port.' 'asleep!' said stalky, rising at once. 'i don't see that makes any difference. as a matter of form, you'd better identify them. i'll show you the way.' we followed up the white stone side-staircase that leads to the bachelors' wing. mr. wontner seemed surprised that the boys were not in the coal-cellar. 'oh, a chap's assumed to be innocent until he's proved guilty,' said stalky, mounting step by step. 'how did they get you into the sack, mr. wontner?' 'jumped on me from behind--two to one,' said mr. wontner briefly. 'i think i handed each of them something first, but they roped my arms and legs.' 'and did they photograph you in the sack?' 'good heavens, no!' mr. wontner shuddered. 'that's lucky. awful thing to live down--a photograph, isn't it?' said stalky to me as we reached the landing. 'i'm thinking of the newspapers, of course.' 'oh, but you can easily have sketches in the illustrated papers from accounts supplied by eye-witnesses,' i said. mr. wontner turned him round. it was the first time he had honoured me by his notice since our talk in the garage. 'ah,' said he, 'do you pretend to any special knowledge in these matters?' 'i'm a journalist by profession,' i answered simply but nobly. 'as soon as you're at liberty, i'd like to have your account of the affair.' now i thought he would have loved me for this, but he only replied in an uncomfortable, uncoming-on voice, 'oh, you would, would you?' 'not if it's any trouble, of course,' i said. 'i can always get their version from the defendants. do either of 'em draw or sketch at all, mr. wontner? or perhaps your father might--' then he said quite hotly, 'i wish you to understand very clearly, my good man, that a gentleman's name can't be dragged through the gutter to bolster up the circulation of your wretched sheet, whatever it may be.' 'it is ----' i named a journal of enormous sales which specialises in scholastic, military, and other scandals. 'i don't know yet what it can't do, mr. wontner.' 'i didn't know that i was dealing with a reporter' said mr. wontner. we were all halted outside a shut door. ipps had followed us. 'but surely you want it in the papers, don't you?' i urged. 'with a scandal like this, one couldn't, in justice to the democracy, be exclusive. we'd syndicate it here and in the united states. i helped you out of the sack, if you remember.' 'i wish to goodness you'd stop talking!' he snapped, and sat down on a chair. stalky's hand on my shoulder quietly signalled me out of action, but i felt that my fire had not been misdirected. 'i'll answer for him,' said stalky to wontner, in an undertone that dropped to a whisper. i caught--'not without my leave--dependent on me for market-tips,' and other gratifying tributes to my integrity. still mr. wontner sat in his chair, and still we waited on him. the infant's face showed worry and heavy grief; stalky's, a bright and bird-like interest; mine was hidden behind his shoulders, but on the face of ipps were written emotions that no butler should cherish towards any guest. contempt and wrath were the least of them. and mr. wontner was looking full at ipps, as ipps was looking at him. mr. wontner's father, i understood, kept a butler and two footmen. 'd'you suppose they're shamming, in order to get off?' he said at last. ipps shook his head and noiselessly threw the door open. the boys had finished their dinner and were fast asleep--one on a sofa, one in a long chair--their faces fallen back to the lines of their childhood. they had had a wildish night, a hard day, that ended with a telling-off from an artist, and the assurance they had wrecked their prospects for life. what else should youth do, then, but eat, and drink ' port, and remember their sorrows no more? mr. wontner looked at them severely, ipps within easy reach, his hands quite ready. 'childish,' said mr. wontner at last. 'childish but necessary. er--have you such a thing as a rope on the premises, and a sack--two sacks and two ropes? i'm afraid i can't resist the temptation. that man understands, doesn't he, that this is a private matter?' 'that man,' who was me, was off to the basement like one of infant's own fallow-deer. the stables gave me what i wanted, and coming back with it through a dark passage, i ran squarely into ipps. 'go on!' he grunted. 'the minute he lays hands on master bobby, master bobby's saved. but that person ought to be told how near he came to being assaulted. it was touch-and-go with me all the time from the soup down, i assure you.' i arrived breathless with the sacks and the ropes. 'they were two to one with me,' said mr. wontner, as he took them. 'if they wake--' 'we'll stand by,' stalky replied. 'two to one is quite fair.' but the boys hardly grunted as mr. wontner roped first one and then the other. even when they were slid into the sacks they only mumbled, with rolling heads, through sticky lips, and snored on. 'port?' said mr. wontner virtuously. 'nervous exhaustion. they aren't much more than kids, after all. what's next?' said stalky. 'i want to take 'em away with me, please.' stalky looked at him with respect. 'i'll have my car round in five minutes,' said the infant. 'ipps'll help carry 'em downstairs,' and he shook mr. wontner by the hand. we were all perfectly serious till the two bundles were dumped on a divan in the hall, and the boys waked and began to realise what had happened. 'yah!' said mr. wontner, with the simplicity of twelve years old. 'who's scored now?' and he sat upon them. the tension broke in a storm of laughter, led, i think, by ipps. 'asinine--absolutely asinine!' said mr. wontner, with folded arms from his lively chair. but he drank in the flattery and the fellowship of it all with quite a brainless grin, as we rolled and stamped round him, and wiped the tears from our cheeks. 'hang it!' said bobby trivett. 'we're defeated!' 'by tactics, too,' said eames. 'i didn't think you knew 'em, clausewitz. it's a fair score. what are you going to do with us?' 'take you back to mess,' said mr. wontner. 'not like this?' 'oh no. worse--much worse! i haven't begun with you yet. and you thought you'd scored! yah!' they had scored beyond their wildest dream. the man in whose hands it lay to shame them, their colonel, their adjutant, their regiment, and their service, had cast away all shadow of his legal rights for the sake of a common or bear-garden rag--such a rag as if it came to the ears of the authorities, would cost him his commission. they were saved, and their saviour was their equal and their brother. so they chaffed and reviled him as such till he again squashed the breath out of them, and we others laughed louder than they. 'fall in!' said stalky when the limousine came round. 'this is the score of the century. i wouldn't miss it for a brigade! we shan't be long, infant!' i hurried into a coat. 'is there any necessity for that reporter-chap to come too?' said mr. wontner in an unguarded whisper. 'he isn't dressed for one thing.' bobby and eames wriggled round to look at the reporter, began a joyous bellow, and suddenly stopped. 'what's the matter?' said wontner with suspicion. 'nothing,' said bobby. 'i die happy, clausewitz. take me up tenderly.' we packed into the car, bearing our sheaves with us, and for half an hour, as the cool night-air fanned his thoughtful brow, mr. wontner was quite abreast of himself. though he said nothing unworthy, he triumphed and trumpeted a little loudly over the sacks. i sat between them on the back seat, and applauded him servilely till he reminded me that what i had seen and what he had said was not for publication. i hinted, while the boys plunged with joy inside their trappings, that this might be a matter for arrangement. 'then a sovereign shan't part us,' said mr. wontner cheerily, and both boys fell into lively hysterics. 'i don't see where the joke comes in for you,' said mr. wontner. 'i thought it was my little jokelet to-night.' 'no, clausewitz,' gasped bobby. 'some is, but not all. i'll be good now. i'll give you my parole till we get to mess. i wouldn't be out of this for a fiver.' 'nor me,' said eames, and he gave his parole to attempt no escape or evasion. 'now, i suppose,' said mr. wontner largely to stalky, as we neared the suburbs of ash, 'you have a good deal of practical joking on the stock exchange, haven't you?' 'and when were you on the stock exchange, uncle leonard?' piped bobby, while eames laid his sobbing head on my shoulder. 'i'm sorry,' said stalky, 'but the fact is, i command a regiment myself when i'm at home. your colonel knows me, i think.' he gave his name. mr. wontner seemed to have heard of it. we had to pick eames off the floor, where he had cast himself from excess of delight. 'oh, heavens!' said mr. wontner after a long pause. 'what have i done? what haven't i done?' we felt the temperature in the car rise as he blushed. 'you didn't talk tactics, clausewitz?' said bobby. 'oh, say it wasn't tactics, darling!' 'it was,' said wontner. eames was all among our feet again, crying, 'if you don't let me get my arms up, i'll be sick. let's hear what you said. tell us.' but mr. wontner turned to stalky. 'it's no good my begging your pardon, sir, i suppose,' he said. 'don't you notice 'em,' said stalky. 'it was a fair rag all round, and anyhow, you two youngsters haven't any right to talk tactics. you've been rolled up, horse, foot, and guns.' 'i'll make a treaty. if you'll let us go and change presently,' said bobby, 'i'll promise we won't tell about you, clausewitz. _you_ talked tactics to uncle len? old dhurrah-bags will like that. he don't love you, claus.' 'if i've made one ass of myself, i shall take extra care to make asses of you!' said wontner. 'i want to stop, please, at the next milliner's shop on the right. it ought to be close here.' he evidently knew the country even in the dark, for the car stopped at a brilliantly-lighted millinery establishment, where--it was saturday evening--a young lady was clearing up the counter. i followed him, as a good reporter should. 'have you got--' he began. 'ah, those'll do!' he pointed to two hairy plush beehive bonnets, one magenta, the other a conscientious electric blue. 'how much, please? i'll take them both, and that bunch of peacock feathers, and that red feather thing.' it was a brilliant crimson-dyed pigeon's wing. 'now i want some yards of muslin with a nice, fierce pattern, please.' he got it--yellow with black tulips--and returned heavily laden. 'sorry to have kept you,' said he. 'now we'll go to my quarters to change and beautify.' we came to them--opposite a dun waste of parade-ground that might have been mian mir--and bugles as they blew and drums as they rolled set heart-strings echoing. we hoisted the boys out and arranged them on chairs, while wontner changed into uniform, but stopped when he saw me taking off my jacket. 'what on earth's that for?' said he. 'because you've been wearing my evening things,' i said. 'i want to get into 'em again, if you don't mind.' 'then you aren't a reporter?' he said. 'no,' i said, 'but that shan't part us.' 'oh, hurry!' cried eames in desperate convulsions. 'we can't stand this much longer. 'tisn't fair on the young.' 'i'll attend to you in good time,' said wontner; and when he had made careful toilet, he unwrapped the bonnets, put the peacock's feather into the magenta one, pinned the crimson wing on the blue one, set them daintily on the boys' heads, and bade them admire the effect in his shaving-glass while he ripped the muslin into lengths, bound it first, and draped it artistically afterwards a little below their knees. he finished off with a gigantic sash-bow, obi fashion. 'hobble skirts,' he explained to stalky, who nodded approval. next he split open the bottom of each sack so that they could walk, but with very short steps. 'i ought to have got you white satin slippers,' he murmured, 'and i'm sorry there's no rouge.' 'don't worry on our account, old man--you're doing us proud,' said bobby from under his hat. 'this beats milk-punch and mayonnaise.' 'oh, why didn't we think of these things when we had him at our mercy?' eames wailed. 'never mind--we'll try it on the next chap. you've a mind, claus.' 'now we'll call on 'em at mess,' said wontner, as they minced towards the door. 'i think i'll call on your colonel,' said stalky. 'he oughtn't to miss this. your first attempt? i assure you i couldn't have done it better myself. thank you!' he held out his hand. 'thank _you_, sir!' said wontner, shaking it. 'i'm more grateful to you than i can say, and--and i'd like you to believe some time that i'm not quite as big a--' 'not in the least,' stalky interrupted. 'if i were writing a confidential report on you, i should put you down as rather adequate. look after your geishas, or they'll fall!' we watched the three cross the road and disappear into the shadow of the mess verandah. there was a noise. then telephone bells rang, a sergeant and a mess waiter charged out, and the noise grew, till at last the mess was a little noisy. we came back, ten minutes later, with colonel dalziell, who had been taking his sorrows to bed with him. the ante-room was quite full and visitors were still arriving, but it was possible to hear oneself speak occasionally. trivett and eames, in sack and sash, sat side by side on a table, their hats at a ravishing angle, coquettishly twiddling their tied feet. in the intervals of singing 'put me among the girls,' they sipped whisky-and-soda held to their lips by, i regret to say, a major. public opinion seemed to be against allowing them to change their costume till they should have danced in it. wontner, lying more or less gracefully at the level of the chandelier in the arms of six subalterns, was lecturing on tactics and imploring to be let down, which he was with a run when they realised that the colonel was there. then he picked himself up from the sofa and said: 'i want to apologise, sir, to you and the mess for having been such an ass ever since i joined!' this was when the noise began. seeing the night promised to be wet, stalky and i went home again in the infant's car. it was some time since we had tasted the hot air that lies between the cornice and the ceiling of crowded rooms. after half an hour's silence, stalky said to me: 'i don't know what you've been doing, but i believe i've been weepin'. would you put that down to burgundy or senile decay?' the children these were our children who died for our lands: they were dear in our sight. we have only the memory left of their home-treasured sayings and laughter. the price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another's hereafter. neither the alien nor priest shall decide on it. that is our right. _but who shall return us the children_? at the hour the barbarian chose to disclose his pretences, and raged against man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared for us, the first felon-stroke of the sword he had long-time prepared for us-- their bodies were all our defence while we wrought our defences. they bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us, those hours which we had not made good when the judgment o'ercame us. they believed us and perished for it. our statecraft, our learning. delivered them bound to the pit and alive to the burning whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour. not since her birth has our earth seen such worth loosed upon her. nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them. the wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption: being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption, hopeless themselves of relief, till death, marvelling, closed on them. that flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given to corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of heaven-- by the heart-shaking jests of decay where it lolled on the wires-- to be blanched or gay-painted by fumes--to be cindered by fires-- to be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation from crater to crater. for this we shall take expiation. _but who shall return us our children_? the dog hervey (april ) my friend attley, who would give away his own head if you told him you had lost yours, was giving away a six-months-old litter of bettina's pups, and half-a-dozen women were in raptures at the show on mittleham lawn. we picked by lot. mrs. godfrey drew first choice; her married daughter, second. i was third, but waived my right because i was already owned by malachi, bettina's full brother, whom i had brought over in the car to visit his nephews and nieces, and he would have slain them all if i had taken home one. milly, mrs. godfrey's younger daughter, pounced on my rejection with squeals of delight, and attley turned to a dark, sallow-skinned, slack-mouthed girl, who had come over for tennis, and invited her to pick. she put on a pince-nez that made her look like a camel, knelt clumsily, for she was long from the hip to the knee, breathed hard, and considered the last couple. 'i think i'd like that sandy-pied one,' she said. 'oh, not him, miss sichliffe!' attley cried. 'he was overlaid or had sunstroke or something. they call him the looney in the kennels. besides, he squints.' 'i think that's rather fetching,' she answered. neither malachi nor i had ever seen a squinting dog before. 'that's chorea--st. vitus's dance,' mrs. godfrey put in. 'he ought to have been drowned.' 'but i like his cast of countenance,' the girl persisted. 'he doesn't look a good life,' i said, 'but perhaps he can be patched up.' miss sichliffe turned crimson; i saw mrs. godfrey exchange a glance with her married daughter, and knew i had said something which would have to be lived down. 'yes,' miss sichliffe went on, her voice shaking, 'he isn't a good life, but perhaps i can--patch him up. come here, sir.' the misshapen beast lurched toward her, squinting down his own nose till he fell over his own toes. then, luckily, bettina ran across the lawn and reminded malachi of their puppyhood. all that family are as queer as dick's hatband, and fight like man and wife. i had to separate them, and mrs. godfrey helped me till they retired under the rhododendrons and had it out in silence. 'd'you know what that girl's father was?' mrs. godfrey asked. 'no,' i replied. 'i loathe her for her own sake. she breathes through her mouth.' 'he was a retired doctor,' she explained. 'he used to pick up stormy young men in the repentant stage, take them home, and patch them up till they were sound enough to be insured. then he insured them heavily, and let them out into the world again--with an appetite. of course, no one knew him while he was alive, but he left pots of money to his daughter.' 'strictly legitimate--highly respectable,' i said. 'but what a life for the daughter!' 'mustn't it have been! _now_ d'you realise what you said just now?' 'perfectly; and now you've made me quite happy, shall we go back to the house?' when we reached it they were all inside, sitting in committee on names. 'what shall you call yours?' i heard milly ask miss sichliffe. 'harvey,' she replied--'harvey's sauce, you know. he's going to be quite saucy when i've'--she saw mrs. godfrey and me coming through the french window--'when he's stronger.' attley, the well-meaning man, to make me feel at ease, asked what i thought of the name. 'oh, splendid,' i said at random. 'h with an a, a with an r, r with a--' 'but that's little bingo,' some one said, and they all laughed. miss sichliffe, her hands joined across her long knees, drawled, 'you ought always to verify your quotations.' it was not a kindly thrust, but something in the word 'quotation' set the automatic side of my brain at work on some shadow of a word or phrase that kept itself out of memory's reach as a cat sits just beyond a dog's jump. when i was going home, miss sichliffe came up to me in the twilight, the pup on a leash, swinging her big shoes at the end of her tennis-racket. ''sorry,' she said in her thick schoolboy-like voice. 'i'm sorry for what i said to you about verifying quotations. i didn't know you well enough and--anyhow, i oughtn't to have.' 'but you were quite right about little bingo,' i answered. 'the spelling ought to have reminded me.' 'yes, of course. it's the spelling,' she said, and slouched off with the pup sliding after her. once again my brain began to worry after something that would have meant something if it had been properly spelled. i confided my trouble to malachi on the way home, but bettina had bitten him in four places, and he was busy. weeks later, attley came over to see me, and before his car stopped malachi let me know that bettina was sitting beside the chauffeur. he greeted her by the scruff of the neck as she hopped down; and i greeted mrs. godfrey, attley, and a big basket. 'you've got to help me,' said attley tiredly. we took the basket into the garden, and there staggered out the angular shadow of a sandy-pied, broken-haired terrier, with one imbecile and one delirious ear, and two most hideous squints. bettina and malachi, already at grips on the lawn, saw him, let go, and fled in opposite directions. 'why have you brought that fetid hound here?' i demanded. 'harvey? for you to take care of,' said attley. 'he's had distemper, but _i_'m going abroad.' 'take him with you. i won't have him. he's mentally afflicted.' 'look here,' attley almost shouted, 'do i strike you as a fool?' 'always,' said i. 'well, then, if you say so, and ella says so, that proves i ought to go abroad.' 'will's wrong, quite wrong,' mrs. godfrey interrupted; 'but you must take the pup.' 'my dear boy, my dear boy, don't you ever give anything to a woman,' attley snorted. bit by bit i got the story out of them in the quiet garden (never a sign from bettina and malachi), while harvey stared me out of countenance, first with one cuttlefish eye and then with the other. it appeared that, a month after miss sichliffe took him, the dog harvey developed distemper. miss sichliffe had nursed him herself for some time; then she carried him in her arms the two miles to mittleham, and wept--actually wept--at attley's feet, saying that harvey was all she had or expected to have in this world, and attley must cure him. attley, being by wealth, position, and temperament guardian to all lame dogs, had put everything aside for this unsavoury job, and, he asserted, miss sichliffe had virtually lived with him ever since. 'she went home at night, of course,' he exploded, 'but the rest of the time she simply infested the premises. goodness knows, i'm not particular, but it was a scandal. even the servants!... three and four times a day, and notes in between, to know how the beast was. hang it all, don't laugh! and wanting to send me flowers and goldfish. do i look as if i wanted goldfish? can't you two stop for a minute?' (mrs. godfrey and i were clinging to each other for support.) 'and it isn't as if i was--was so alluring a personality, is it?' attley commands more trust, goodwill, and affection than most men, for he is that rare angel, an absolutely unselfish bachelor, content to be run by contending syndicates of zealous friends. his situation seemed desperate, and i told him so. 'instant flight is your only remedy,' was my verdict. i'll take care of both your cars while you're away, and you can send me over all the greenhouse fruit.' 'but why should i be chased out of my house by a she-dromedary?' he wailed. 'oh, stop! stop!' mrs. godfrey sobbed. 'you're both wrong. i admit you're right, but i _know_ you're wrong.' 'three _and_ four times a day,' said attley, with an awful countenance. 'i'm not a vain man, but--look here, ella, i'm not sensitive, i hope, but if you persist in making a joke of it--' 'oh, be quiet!' she almost shrieked. 'd'you imagine for one instant that your friends would ever let mittleham pass out of their hands? i quite agree it is unseemly for a grown girl to come to mittleham at all hours of the day and night--' 'i told you she went home o' nights,' attley growled. 'specially if she goes home o' nights. oh, but think of the life she must have led, will!' 'i'm not interfering with it; only she must leave me alone.' 'she may want to patch you up and insure you,' i suggested. 'd'you know what _you_ are?' mrs. godfrey turned on me with the smile i have feared for the last quarter of a century. 'you're the nice, kind, wise, doggy friend. you don't know how wise and nice you are supposed to be. will has sent harvey to you to complete the poor angel's convalescence. you know all about dogs, or will wouldn't have done it. he's written her that. you're too far off for her to make daily calls on you. p'r'aps she'll drop in two or three times a week, and write on other days. but it doesn't matter what she does, because you don't own mittleham, don't you see?' i told her i saw most clearly. 'oh, you'll get over that in a few days,' mrs. godfrey countered. 'you're the sporting, responsible, doggy friend who--' 'he used to look at me like that at first,' said attley, with a visible shudder, 'but he gave it up after a bit. it's only because you're new to him.' 'but, confound you! he's a ghoul--' i began. 'and when he gets quite well, you'll send him back to her direct with your love, and she'll give you some pretty four-tailed goldfish,' said mrs. godfrey, rising. 'that's all settled. car, please. we're going to brighton to lunch together.' they ran before i could get into my stride, so i told the dog harvey what i thought of them and his mistress. he never shifted his position, but stared at me, an intense, lopsided stare, eye after eye. malachi came along when he had seen his sister off, and from a distance counselled me to drown the brute and consort with gentlemen again. but the dog harvey never even cocked his cockable ear. and so it continued as long as he was with me. where i sat, he sat and stared; where i walked, he walked beside, head stiffly slewed over one shoulder in single-barrelled contemplation of me. he never gave tongue, never closed in for a caress, seldom let me stir a step alone. and, to my amazement, malachi, who suffered no stranger to live within our gates, saw this gaunt, growing, green-eyed devil wipe him out of my service and company without a whimper. indeed, one would have said the situation interested him, for he would meet us returning from grim walks together, and look alternately at harvey and at me with the same quivering interest that he showed at the mouth of a rat-hole. outside these inspections, malachi withdrew himself as only a dog or a woman can. miss sichliffe came over after a few days (luckily i was out) with some elaborate story of paying calls in the neighbourhood. she sent me a note of thanks next day. i was reading it when harvey and malachi entered and disposed themselves as usual, harvey close up to stare at me, malachi half under the sofa, watching us both. out of curiosity i returned harvey's stare, then pulled his lopsided head on to my knee, and took his eye for several minutes. now, in malachi's eye i can see at any hour all that there is of the normal decent dog, flecked here and there with that strained half-soul which man's love and association have added to his nature. but with harvey the eye was perplexed, as a tortured man's. only by looking far into its deeps could one make out the spirit of the proper animal, beclouded and cowering beneath some unfair burden. leggatt, my chauffeur, came in for orders. 'how d'you think harvey's coming on?' i said, as i rubbed the brute's gulping neck. the vet had warned me of the possibilities of spinal trouble following distemper. 'he ain't _my_ fancy,' was the reply. 'but _i_ don't question his comings and goings so long as i 'aven't to sit alone in a room with him.' 'why? he's as meek as moses,' i said. 'he fair gives me the creeps. p'r'aps he'll go out in fits.' but harvey, as i wrote his mistress from time to time, throve, and when he grew better, would play by himself grisly games of spying, walking up, hailing, and chasing another dog. from these he would break off of a sudden and return to his normal stiff gait, with the air of one who had forgotten some matter of life and death, which could be reached only by staring at me. i left him one evening posturing with the unseen on the lawn, and went inside to finish some letters for the post. i must have been at work nearly an hour, for i was going to turn on the lights, when i felt there was somebody in the room whom, the short hairs at the back of my neck warned me, i was not in the least anxious to face. there was a mirror on the wall. as i lifted my eyes to it i saw the dog harvey reflected near the shadow by the closed door. he had reared himself full-length on his hind legs, his head a little one side to clear a sofa between us, and he was looking at me. the face, with its knitted brows and drawn lips, was the face of a dog, but the look, for the fraction of time that i caught it, was human--wholly and horribly human. when the blood in my body went forward again he had dropped to the floor, and was merely studying me in his usual one-eyed fashion. next day i returned him to miss sichliffe. i would not have kept him another day for the wealth of asia, or even ella godfrey's approval. miss sichliffe's house i discovered to be a mid-victorian mansion of peculiar villainy even for its period, surrounded by gardens of conflicting colours, all dazzling with glass and fresh paint on ironwork. striped blinds, for it was a blazing autumn morning, covered most of the windows, and a voice sang to the piano an almost forgotten song of jean ingelow's-- methought that the stars were blinking bright, and the old brig's sails unfurled-- down came the loud pedal, and the unrestrained cry swelled out across a bed of tritomas consuming in their own fires-- when i said i will sail to my love this night on the other side of the world. i have no music, but the voice drew. i waited till the end: oh, maid most dear, i am not here i have no place apart-- no dwelling more on sea or shore, but only in thy heart. it seemed to me a poor life that had no more than that to do at eleven o'clock of a tuesday forenoon. then miss sichliffe suddenly lumbered through a french window in clumsy haste, her brows contracted against the light. 'well?' she said, delivering the word like a spear-thrust, with the full weight of a body behind it. 'i've brought harvey back at last,' i replied. 'here he is.' but it was at me she looked, not at the dog who had cast himself at her feet--looked as though she would have fished my soul out of my breast on the instant. 'wha--what did you think of him? what did _you_ make of him?' she panted. i was too taken aback for the moment to reply. her voice broke as she stooped to the dog at her knees. 'o harvey, harvey! you utterly worthless old devil!' she cried, and the dog cringed and abased himself in servility that one could scarcely bear to look upon. i made to go. 'oh, but please, you mustn't!' she tugged at the car's side. 'wouldn't you like some flowers or some orchids? we've really splendid orchids, and'--she clasped her hands--'there are japanese goldfish--real japanese goldfish, with four tails. if you don't care for 'em, perhaps your friends or somebody--oh, please!' harvey had recovered himself, and i realised that this woman beyond the decencies was fawning on me as the dog had fawned on her. 'certainly,' i said, ashamed to meet her eye. 'i'm lunching at mittleham, but--' 'there's plenty of time,' she entreated. 'what do _you_ think of harvey?' 'he's a queer beast,' i said, getting out. 'he does nothing but stare at me.' 'does he stare at you all the time he's with you?' 'always. he's doing it now. look!' we had halted. harvey had sat down, and was staring from one to the other with a weaving motion of the head. 'he'll do that all day,' i said. 'what is it, harvey?' 'yes, what _is_ it, harvey?' she echoed. the dog's throat twitched, his body stiffened and shook as though he were going to have a fit. then he came back with a visible wrench to his unwinking watch. 'always so?' she whispered. 'always,' i replied, and told her something of his life with me. she nodded once or twice, and in the end led me into the house. there were unaging pitch-pine doors of gothic design in it; there were inlaid marble mantel-pieces and cut-steel fenders; there were stupendous wall-papers, and octagonal, medallioned wedgwood what-nots, and black-and-gilt austrian images holding candelabra, with every other refinement that art had achieved or wealth had bought between and . and everything reeked of varnish. 'now!' she opened a baize door, and pointed down a long corridor flanked with more gothic doors. 'this was where we used to--to patch 'em up. you've heard of us. mrs. godfrey told you in the garden the day i got harvey given me. i'--she drew in her breath--'i live here by myself, and i have a very large income. come back, harvey.' he had tiptoed down the corridor, as rigid as ever, and was sitting outside one of the shut doors. 'look here!' she said, and planted herself squarely in front of me. 'i tell you this because you--you've patched up harvey, too. now, i want you to remember that my name is moira. mother calls me marjorie because it's more refined; but my real name is moira, and i am in my thirty-fourth year.' 'very good,' i said. 'i'll remember all that.' 'thank you.' then with a sudden swoop into the humility of an abashed boy--''sorry if i haven't said the proper things. you see--there's harvey looking at us again. oh, i want to say--if ever you want anything in the way of orchids or goldfish or--or anything else that would be useful to you, you've only to come to me for it. under the will i'm perfectly independent, and we're a long-lived family, worse luck!' she looked at me, and her face worked like glass behind driven flame. 'i may reasonably expect to live another fifty years,' she said. 'thank you, miss sichliffe,' i replied. 'if i want anything, you may be sure i'll come to you for it.' she nodded. 'now i must get over to mittleham,' i said. 'mr. attley will ask you all about this.' for the first time she laughed aloud. 'i'm afraid i frightened him nearly out of the county. i didn't think, of course. but i dare say he knows by this time he was wrong. say good-bye to harvey.' 'good-bye, old man,' i said. 'give me a farewell stare, so we shall know each other when we meet again.' the dog looked up, then moved slowly toward me, and stood, head bowed to the floor, shaking in every muscle as i patted him; and when i turned, i saw him crawl back to her feet. that was not a good preparation for the rampant boy-and-girl-dominated lunch at mittleham, which, as usual, i found in possession of everybody except the owner. 'but what did the dromedary say when you brought her beast back?' attley demanded. 'the usual polite things,' i replied. 'i'm posing as the nice doggy friend nowadays.' 'i don't envy you. she's never darkened my doors, thank goodness, since i left harvey at your place. i suppose she'll run about the county now swearing you cured him. that's a woman's idea of gratitude.' attley seemed rather hurt, and mrs. godfrey laughed. 'that proves you were right about miss sichliffe, ella,' i said. 'she had no designs on anybody.' 'i'm always right in these matters. but didn't she even offer you a goldfish?' 'not a thing,' said i. 'you know what an old maid's like where her precious dog's concerned.' and though i have tried vainly to lie to ella godfrey for many years, i believe that in this case i succeeded. when i turned into our drive that evening, leggatt observed half aloud: 'i'm glad zvengali's back where he belongs. it's time our mike had a look in.' sure enough, there was malachi back again in spirit as well as flesh, but still with that odd air of expectation he had picked up from harvey. * * * * * it was in january that attley wrote me that mrs. godfrey, wintering in madeira with milly, her unmarried daughter, had been attacked with something like enteric; that the hotel, anxious for its good name, had thrust them both out into a cottage annexe; that he was off with a nurse, and that i was not to leave england till i heard from him again. in a week he wired that milly was down as well, and that i must bring out two more nurses, with suitable delicacies. within seventeen hours i had got them all aboard the cape boat, and had seen the women safely collapsed into sea-sickness. the next few weeks were for me, as for the invalids, a low delirium, clouded with fantastic memories of portuguese officials trying to tax calves'-foot jelly; voluble doctors insisting that true typhoid was unknown in the island; nurses who had to be exercised, taken out of themselves, and returned on the tick of change of guard; night slides down glassy, cobbled streets, smelling of sewage and flowers, between walls whose every stone and patch attley and i knew; vigils in stucco verandahs, watching the curve and descent of great stars or drawing auguries from the break of dawn; insane interludes of gambling at the local casino, where we won heaps of unconsoling silver; blasts of steamers arriving and departing in the roads; help offered by total strangers, grabbed at or thrust aside; the long nightmare crumbling back into sanity one forenoon under a vine-covered trellis, where attley sat hugging a nurse, while the others danced a noiseless, neat-footed breakdown never learned at the middlesex hospital. at last, as the tension came out all over us in aches and tingles that we put down to the country wine, a vision of mrs. godfrey, her grey hair turned to spun-glass, but her eyes triumphant over the shadow of retreating death beneath them, with milly, enormously grown, and clutching life back to her young breast, both stretched out on cane chairs, clamouring for food. in this ungirt hour there imported himself into our life a youngish-looking middle-aged man of the name of shend, with a blurred face and deprecating eyes. he said he had gambled with me at the casino, which was no recommendation, and i remember that he twice gave me a basket of champagne and liqueur brandy for the invalids, which a sailor in a red-tasselled cap carried up to the cottage for me at a.m. he turned out to be the son of some merchant prince in the oil and colour line, and the owner of a four-hundred-ton steam yacht, into which, at his gentle insistence, we later shifted our camp, staff, and equipage, milly weeping with delight to escape from the horrible cottage. there we lay off funchal for weeks, while shend did miracles of luxury and attendance through deputies, and never once asked how his guests were enjoying themselves. indeed, for several days at a time we would see nothing of him. he was, he said, subject to malaria. giving as they do with both hands, i knew that attley and mrs. godfrey could take nobly; but i never met a man who so nobly gave and so nobly received thanks as shend did. 'tell us why you have been so unbelievably kind to us gipsies,' mrs. godfrey said to him one day on deck. he looked up from a diagram of some thames-mouth shoals which he was explaining to me, and answered with his gentle smile: 'i will. it's because it makes me happy--it makes me more than happy--to be with you. it makes me comfortable. you know how selfish men are? if a man feels comfortable all over with certain people, he'll bore them to death, just like a dog. you always make me feel as if pleasant things were going to happen to me.' 'haven't any ever happened before?' milly asked. 'this is the most pleasant thing that has happened to me in ever so many years,' he replied. 'i feel like the man in the bible, "it's good for me to be here." generally, i don't feel that it's good for me to be anywhere in particular.' then, as one begging a favour. 'you'll let me come home with you--in the same boat, i mean? i'd take you back in this thing of mine, and that would save you packing your trunks, but she's too lively for spring work across the bay.' we booked our berths, and when the time came, he wafted us and ours aboard the southampton mail-boat with the pomp of plenipotentiaries and the precision of the navy. then he dismissed his yacht, and became an inconspicuous passenger in a cabin opposite to mine, on the port side. we ran at once into early british spring weather, followed by sou'west gales. mrs. godfrey, milly, and the nurses disappeared. attley stood it out, visibly yellowing, till the next meal, and followed suit, and shend and i had the little table all to ourselves. i found him even more attractive when the women were away. the natural sweetness of the man, his voice, and bearing all fascinated me, and his knowledge of practical seamanship (he held an extra master's certificate) was a real joy. we sat long in the empty saloon and longer in the smoking-room, making dashes downstairs over slippery decks at the eleventh hour. it was on friday night, just as i was going to bed, that he came into my cabin, after cleaning his teeth, which he did half a dozen times a day. 'i say,' he began hurriedly, 'do you mind if i come in here for a little? i'm a bit edgy.' i must have shown surprise. 'i'm ever so much better about liquor than i used to be, but--it's the whisky in the suitcase that throws me. for god's sake, old man, don't go back on me to-night! look at my hands!' they were fairly jumping at the wrists. he sat down on a trunk that had slid out with the roll. we had reduced speed, and were surging in confused seas that pounded on the black port-glasses. the night promised to be a pleasant one! 'you understand, of course, don't you?' he chattered. 'oh yes,' i said cheerily; 'but how about--' 'no, no; on no account the doctor. 'tell a doctor, tell the whole ship. besides, i've only got a touch of 'em. you'd never have guessed it, would you? the tooth-wash does the trick. i'll give you the prescription.' i'll send a note to the doctor for a prescription, shall i?' i suggested. 'right! i put myself unreservedly in your hands. 'fact is, i always did. i said to myself--'sure i don't bore you?--the minute i saw you, i said, "thou art the man."' he repeated the phrase as he picked at his knees. 'all the same, you can take it from me that the ewe-lamb business is a rotten bad one. i don't care how unfaithful the shepherd may be. drunk or sober, 'tisn't cricket.' a surge of the trunk threw him across the cabin as the steward answered my bell. i wrote my requisition to the doctor while shend was struggling to his feet. 'what's wrong?' he began. 'oh, i know. we're slowing for soundings off ushant. it's about time, too. you'd better ship the dead-lights when you come back, matchem. it'll save you waking us later. this sea's going to get up when the tide turns. that'll show you,' he said as the man left, 'that i am to be trusted. you--you'll stop me if i say anything i shouldn't, won't you?' 'talk away,' i replied, 'if it makes you feel better.' 'that's it; you've hit it exactly. you always make me feel better. i can rely on you. it's awkward soundings but you'll see me through it. we'll defeat him yet.... i may be an utterly worthless devil, but i'm not a brawler.... i told him so at breakfast. i said, "doctor, i detest brawling, but if ever you allow that girl to be insulted again as clements insulted her, i will break your neck with my own hands." you think i was right?' 'absolutely,' i agreed. 'then we needn't discuss the matter any further. that man was a murderer in intention--outside the law, you understand, as it was then. they've changed it since--but he never deceived _me_. i told him so. i said to him at the time, "i don't know what price you're going to put on my head, but if ever you allow clements to insult her again, you'll never live to claim it."' 'and what did he do?' i asked, to carry on the conversation, for matchem entered with the bromide. 'oh, crumpled up at once. 'lead still going, matchem?' 'i 'aven't 'eard,' said that faithful servant of the union-castle company. 'quite right. never alarm the passengers. ship the dead-light, will you?' matchem shipped it, for we were rolling very heavily. there were tramplings and gull-like cries from on deck. shend looked at me with a mariner's eye. 'that's nothing,' he said protectingly. 'oh, it's all right for you,' i said, jumping at the idea. '_i_ haven't an extra master's certificate. i'm only a passenger. i confess it funks me.' instantly his whole bearing changed to answer the appeal. 'my dear fellow, it's as simple as houses. we're hunting for sixty-five fathom water. anything short of sixty, with a sou'west wind means--but i'll get my channel pilot out of my cabin and give you the general idea. i'm only too grateful to do anything to put your mind at ease.' and so, perhaps, for another hour--he declined the drink--channel pilot in hand, he navigated us round ushant, and at my request up-channel to southampton, light by light, with explanations and reminiscences. i professed myself soothed at last, and suggested bed. 'in a second,' said he. 'now, you wouldn't think, would you'--he glanced off the book toward my wildly swaying dressing-gown on the door--'that i've been seeing things for the last half-hour? 'fact is, i'm just on the edge of 'em, skating on thin ice round the corner--nor'east as near as nothing--where that dog's looking at me.' 'what's the dog like?' i asked. 'ah, that _is_ comforting of you! most men walk through 'em to show me they aren't real. as if i didn't know! but _you're_ different. anybody could see that with half an eye.' he stiffened and pointed. 'damn it all! the dog sees it too with half an--why, he knows you! knows you perfectly. d'you know _him_?' 'how can i tell if he isn't real?' i insisted. 'but you can! _you're_ all right. i saw that from the first. don't go back on me now or i shall go to pieces like the _drummond castle_. i beg your pardon, old man; but, you see, you _do_ know the dog. i'll prove it. what's that dog doing? come on! _you_ know.' a tremor shook him, and he put his hand on my knee, and whispered with great meaning: 'i'll letter or halve it with you. there! you begin.' 's,' said i to humour him, for a dog would most likely be standing or sitting, or may be scratching or sniffling or staring. 'q,' he went on, and i could feel the heat of his shaking hand. 'u,' said i. there was no other letter possible; but i was shaking too. 'i.' 'n.' 't-i-n-g,' he ran out. 'there! that proves it. i knew you knew him. you don't know what a relief that is. between ourselves, old man, he--he's been turning up lately a--a damn sight more often than i cared for. and a squinting dog--a dog that squints! i mean that's a bit _too_ much. eh? what?' he gulped and half rose, and i thought that the full tide of delirium would be on him in another sentence. 'not a bit of it,' i said as a last chance, with my hand over the bellpush. 'why, you've just proved that i know him; so there are two of us in the game, anyhow.' 'by jove! that _is_ an idea! of course there are. i knew you'd see me through. we'll defeat them yet. hi, pup!... he's gone. absolutely disappeared!' he sighed with relief, and i caught the lucky moment. 'good business! i expect he only came to have a look at me,' i said. 'now, get this drink down and turn in to the lower bunk.' he obeyed, protesting that he could not inconvenience me, and in the midst of apologies sank into a dead sleep. i expected a wakeful night, having a certain amount to think over; but no sooner had i scrambled into the top bunk than sleep came on me like a wave from the other side of the world. in the morning there were apologies, which we got over at breakfast before our party were about. 'i suppose--after this--well, i don't blame you. i'm rather a lonely chap, though.' his eyes lifted dog-like across the table. 'shend,' i replied, 'i'm not running a sunday school. you're coming home with me in my car as soon as we land.' 'that is kind of you--kinder than you think.' 'that's because you're a little jumpy still. now, i don't want to mix up in your private affairs--' 'but i'd like you to,' he interrupted. 'then, would you mind telling me the christian name of a girl who was insulted by a man called clements?' 'moira,' he whispered; and just then mrs. godfrey and milly came to table with their shore-going hats on. we did not tie up till noon, but the faithful leggatt had intrigued his way down to the dock-edge, and beside him sat malachi, wearing his collar of gold, or leggatt makes it look so, as eloquent as demosthenes. shend flinched a little when he saw him. we packed mrs. godfrey and milly into attley's car--they were going with him to mittleham, of course--and drew clear across the railway lines to find england all lit and perfumed for spring. shend sighed with happiness. 'd'you know,' he said, 'if--if you'd chucked me--i should have gone down to my cabin after breakfast and cut my throat. and now--it's like a dream--a good dream, you know.' we lunched with the other three at romsey. then i sat in front for a little while to talk to my malachi. when i looked back, shend was solidly asleep, and stayed so for the next two hours, while leggatt chased attley's fat daimler along the green-speckled hedges. he woke up when we said good-bye at mittleham, with promises to meet again very soon. 'and i hope,' said mrs. godfrey, 'that everything pleasant will happen to you.' 'heaps and heaps--all at once,' cried long, weak milly, waving her wet handkerchief. 'i've just got to look in at a house near here for a minute to inquire about a dog,' i said, 'and then we will go home.' 'i used to know this part of the world,' he replied, and said no more till leggatt shot past the lodge at the sichliffes's gate. then i heard him gasp. miss sichliffe, in a green waterproof, an orange jersey, and a pinkish leather hat, was working on a bulb-border. she straightened herself as the car stopped, and breathed hard. shend got out and walked towards her. they shook hands, turned round together, and went into the house. then the dog harvey pranced out corkily from under the lee of a bench. malachi, with one joyous swoop, fell on him as an enemy and an equal. harvey, for his part, freed from all burden whatsoever except the obvious duty of a man-dog on his own ground, met malachi without reserve or remorse, and with six months' additional growth to come and go on. 'don't check 'em!' cried leggatt, dancing round the flurry. 'they've both been saving up for each other all this time. it'll do 'em worlds of good.' 'leggatt,' i said, 'will you take mr. shend's bag and suitcase up to the house and put them down just inside the door? then we will go on.' so i enjoyed the finish alone. it was a dead heat, and they licked each other's jaws in amity till harvey, one imploring eye on me, leaped into the front seat, and malachi backed his appeal. it was theft, but i took him, and we talked all the way home of r-rats and r-rabbits and bones and baths and the other basic facts of life. that evening after dinner they slept before the fire, with their warm chins across the hollows of my ankles--to each chin an ankle--till i kicked them upstairs to bed. * * * * * i was not at mittleham when she came over to announce her engagement, but i heard of it when mrs. godfrey and attley came, forty miles an hour, over to me, and mrs. godfrey called me names of the worst for suppression of information. 'as long as it wasn't me, i don't care,' said attley. 'i believe you knew it all along,' mrs. godfrey repeated. 'else what made you drive that man literally into her arms?' 'to ask after the dog harvey,' i replied. 'then, what's the beast doing here?' attley demanded, for malachi and the dog harvey were deep in a council of the family with bettina, who was being out-argued. 'oh, harvey seemed to think himself _de trop_ where he was,' i said. 'and she hasn't sent after him. you'd better save bettina before they kill her.' 'there's been enough lying about that dog,' said mrs. godfrey to me. 'if he wasn't born in lies, he was baptized in 'em. d'you know why she called him harvey? it only occurred to me in those dreadful days when i was ill, and one can't keep from thinking, and thinks everything. d'you know your boswell? what did johnson say about hervey--with an e?' 'oh, _that's_ it, is it?' i cried incautiously. 'that was why i ought to have verified my quotations. the spelling defeated me. wait a moment, and it will come back. johnson said: "he was a vicious man,"' i began. '"but very kind to me,"' mrs. godfrey prompted. then, both together, '"if you call a dog hervey, i shall love him."' 'so you _were_ mixed up in it. at any rate, you had your suspicions from the first? tell me,' she said. 'ella,' i said, 'i don't know anything rational or reasonable about any of it. it was all--all woman-work, and it scared me horribly.' 'why?' she asked. that was six years ago. i have written this tale to let her know--wherever she may be. the comforters until thy feet have trod the road advise not wayside folk, nor till thy back has borne the load break in upon the broke. chase not with undesired largesse of sympathy the heart which, knowing her own bitterness, presumes to dwell apart. employ not that glad hand to raise the god-forgotten head to heaven, and all the neighbours' gaze-- cover thy mouth instead. the quivering chin, the bitten lip, the cold and sweating brow, later may yearn for fellowship-- not now, you ass, not now! time, not thy ne'er so timely speech, life, not thy views thereon, shall furnish or deny to each his consolation. or, if impelled to interfere, exhort, uplift, advise, lend not a base, betraying ear to all the victim's cries. only the lord can understand when those first pangs begin, how much is reflex action and how much is really sin. e'en from good words thyself refrain, and tremblingly admit there is no anodyne for pain except the shock of it. so, when thine own dark hour shall fall, unchallenged canst thou say: 'i never worried _you_ at all, for god's sake go away!' the village that voted the earth was flat ( ) our drive till then had been quite a success. the other men in the car were my friend woodhouse, young ollyett, a distant connection of his, and pallant, the m.p. woodhouse's business was the treatment and cure of sick journals. he knew by instinct the precise moment in a newspaper's life when the impetus of past good management is exhausted and it fetches up on the dead-centre between slow and expensive collapse and the new start which can be given by gold injections--and genius. he was wisely ignorant of journalism; but when he stooped on a carcase there was sure to be meat. he had that week added a half-dead, halfpenny evening paper to his collection, which consisted of a prosperous london daily, one provincial ditto, and a limp-bodied weekly of commercial leanings. he had also, that very hour, planted me with a large block of the evening paper's common shares, and was explaining the whole art of editorship to ollyett, a young man three years from oxford, with coir-matting-coloured hair and a face harshly modelled by harsh experiences, who, i understood, was assisting in the new venture. pallant, the long, wrinkled m.p., whose voice is more like a crane's than a peacock's, took no shares, but gave us all advice. 'you'll find it rather a knacker's yard,' woodhouse was saying. 'yes, i know they call me the knacker; but it will pay inside a year. all my papers do. i've only one motto: back your luck and back your staff. it'll come out all right.' then the car stopped, and a policeman asked our names and addresses for exceeding the speed-limit. we pointed out that the road ran absolutely straight for half a mile ahead without even a side-lane. 'that's just what we depend on,' said the policeman unpleasantly. 'the usual swindle,' said woodhouse under his breath. 'what's the name of this place?' 'huckley,' said the policeman. 'h-u-c-k-l-e-y,' and wrote something in his note-book at which young ollyett protested. a large red man on a grey horse who had been watching us from the other side of the hedge shouted an order we could not catch. the policeman laid his hand on the rim of the right driving-door (woodhouse carries his spare tyres aft), and it closed on the button of the electric horn. the grey horse at once bolted, and we could hear the rider swearing all across the landscape. 'damn it, man, you've got your silly fist on it! take it off!' woodhouse shouted. 'ho!' said the constable, looking carefully at his fingers as though we had trapped them. 'that won't do you any good either,' and he wrote once more in his note-book before he allowed us to go. this was woodhouse's first brush with motor law, and since i expected no ill consequences to myself, i pointed out that it was very serious. i took the same view myself when in due time i found that i, too, was summonsed on charges ranging from the use of obscene language to endangering traffic. judgment was done in a little pale-yellow market-town with a small, jubilee clock-tower and a large corn-exchange. woodhouse drove us there in his car. pallant, who had not been included in the summons, came with us as moral support. while we waited outside, the fat man on the grey horse rode up and entered into loud talk with his brother magistrates. he said to one of them--for i took the trouble to note it down--'it falls away from my lodge-gates, dead straight, three-quarters of a mile. i'd defy any one to resist it. we rooked seventy pounds out of 'em last month. no car can resist the temptation. you ought to have one your side the county, mike. they simply can't resist it.' 'whew!' said woodhouse. 'we're in for trouble. don't you say a word--or ollyett either! i'll pay the fines and we'll get it over as soon as possible. where's pallant?' 'at the back of the court somewhere,' said ollyett. 'i saw him slip in just now.' the fat man then took his seat on the bench, of which he was chairman, and i gathered from a bystander that his name was sir thomas ingell, bart., m.p., of ingell park, huckley. he began with an allocution pitched in a tone that would have justified revolt throughout empires. evidence, when the crowded little court did not drown it with applause, was given in the pauses of the address. they were all very proud of their sir thomas, and looked from him to us, wondering why we did not applaud too. taking its time from the chairman, the bench rollicked with us for seventeen minutes. sir thomas explained that he was sick and tired of processions of cads of our type, who would be better employed breaking stones on the road than in frightening horses worth more than themselves or their ancestors. this was after it had been proved that woodhouse's man had turned on the horn purposely to annoy sir thomas, who happened to be riding by'! there were other remarks too--primitive enough,--but it was the unspeakable brutality of the tone, even more than the quality of the justice, or the laughter of the audience that stung our souls out of all reason. when we were dismissed--to the tune of twenty-three pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence--we waited for pallant to join us, while we listened to the next case--one of driving without a licence. ollyett with an eye to his evening paper, had already taken very full notes of our own, but we did not wish to seem prejudiced. 'it's all right,' said the reporter of the local paper soothingly. 'we never report sir thomas _in extenso_. only the fines and charges.' 'oh, thank you,' ollyett replied, and i heard him ask who every one in court might be. the local reporter was very communicative. the new victim, a large, flaxen-haired man in somewhat striking clothes, to which sir thomas, now thoroughly warmed, drew public attention, said that he had left his licence at home. sir thomas asked him if he expected the police to go to his home address at jerusalem to find it for him; and the court roared. nor did sir thomas approve of the man's name, but insisted on calling him 'mr. masquerader,' and every time he did so, all his people shouted. evidently this was their established _auto-da-fé_. 'he didn't summons me--because i'm in the house, i suppose. i think i shall have to ask a question,' said pallant, reappearing at the close of the case. 'i think _i_ shall have to give it a little publicity too,' said woodhouse. 'we can't have this kind of thing going on, you know.' his face was set and quite white. pallant's, on the other hand, was black, and i know that my very stomach had turned with rage. ollyett was dum. 'well, let's have lunch,' woodhouse said at last. 'then we can get away before the show breaks up.' we drew ollyett from the arms of the local reporter, crossed the market square to the red lion and found sir thomas's 'mr. masquerader' just sitting down to beer, beef and pickles. 'ah!' said he, in a large voice. 'companions in misfortune. won't you gentlemen join me?' 'delighted,' said woodhouse. 'what did you get?' 'i haven't decided. it might make a good turn, but--the public aren't educated up to it yet. it's beyond 'em. if it wasn't, that red dub on the bench would be worth fifty a week.' 'where?' said woodhouse. the man looked at him with unaffected surprise. 'at any one of my places,' he replied. 'but perhaps you live here?' 'good heavens!' cried young ollyett suddenly. 'you _are_ masquerier, then? i thought you were!' 'bat masquerier.' he let the words fall with the weight of an international ultimatum. 'yes, that's all i am. but you have the advantage of me, gentlemen.' for the moment, while we were introducing ourselves, i was puzzled. then i recalled prismatic music-hall posters--of enormous acreage--that had been the unnoticed background of my visits to london for years past. posters of men and women, singers, jongleurs, impersonators and audacities of every draped and undraped brand, all moved on and off in london and the provinces by bat masquerier--with the long wedge-tailed flourish following the final 'r.' '_i_ knew you at once,' said pallant, the trained m.p., and i promptly backed the lie. woodhouse mumbled excuses. bat masquerier was not moved for or against us any more than the frontage of one of his own palaces. 'i always tell my people there's a limit to the size of the lettering,' he said. 'overdo that and the ret'na doesn't take it in. advertisin' is the most delicate of all the sciences.' 'there's one man in the world who is going to get a little of it if i live for the next twenty-four hours,' said woodhouse, and explained how this would come about. masquerier stared at him lengthily with gunmetal-blue eyes. 'you mean it?' he drawled; the voice was as magnetic as the look. '_i_ do,' said ollyett. 'that business of the horn alone ought to have him off the bench in three months.' masquerier looked at him even longer than he had looked at woodhouse. 'he told _me_,' he said suddenly, 'that my home-address was jerusalem. you heard that?' 'but it was the tone--the tone,' ollyett cried. 'you noticed that, too, did you?' said masquerier. 'that's the artistic temperament. you can do a lot with it. and i'm bat masquerier,' he went on. he dropped his chin in his fists and scowled straight in front of him.... 'i made the silhouettes--i made the trefoil and the jocunda. i made 'dal benzaguen.' here ollyett sat straight up, for in common with the youth of that year he worshipped miss vidal benzaguen of the trefoil immensely and unreservedly. '"_is_ that a dressing-gown or an ulster you're supposed to be wearing?" you heard _that_?... "and i suppose you hadn't time to brush your hair either?" you heard _that_?... now, you hear _me_!' his voice filled the coffee-room, then dropped to a whisper as dreadful as a surgeon's before an operation. he spoke for several minutes. pallant muttered 'hear! hear!' i saw ollyett's eye flash--it was to ollyett that masquerier addressed himself chiefly,--and woodhouse leaned forward with joined hands. 'are you _with_ me?' he went on, gathering us all up in one sweep of the arm. 'when i begin a thing i see it through, gentlemen. what bat can't break, breaks him! but i haven't struck that thing yet. this is no one-turn turn-it-down show. this is business to the dead finish. are you with me, gentlemen? good! now, we'll pool our assets. one london morning, and one provincial daily, didn't you say? one weekly commercial ditto and one m.p.' 'not much use, i'm afraid,' pallant smirked. 'but privileged. _but_ privileged,' he returned. 'and we have also my little team--london, blackburn, liverpool, leeds--i'll tell you about manchester later--and me! bat masquerier.' he breathed the name reverently into his tankard. 'gentlemen, when our combination has finished with sir thomas ingell, bart., m.p., and everything else that is his, sodom and gomorrah will be a winsome bit of merrie england beside 'em. i must go back to town now, but i trust you gentlemen will give me the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night at the chop suey--the red amber room--and we'll block out the scenario.' he laid his hand on young ollyett's shoulder and added: 'it's your brains i want.' then he left, in a good deal of astrachan collar and nickel-plated limousine, and the place felt less crowded. we ordered our car a few minutes later. as woodhouse, ollyett and i were getting in, sir thomas ingell, bart., m.p., came out of the hall of justice across the square and mounted his horse. i have sometimes thought that if he had gone in silence he might even then have been saved, but as he settled himself in the saddle he caught sight of us and must needs shout: 'not off yet? you'd better get away and you'd better be careful.' at that moment pallant, who had been buying picture-postcards, came out of the inn, took sir thomas's eye and very leisurely entered the car. it seemed to me that for one instant there was a shade of uneasiness on the baronet's grey-whiskered face. 'i hope,' said woodhouse after several miles, 'i hope he's a widower.' 'yes,' said pallant. 'for his poor, dear wife's sake i hope that, very much indeed. i suppose he didn't see me in court. oh, here's the parish history of huckley written by the rector and here's your share of the picture-postcards. are we all dining with this mr. masquerier to-night?' 'yes!' said we all. * * * * * if woodhouse knew nothing of journalism, young ollyett, who had graduated in a hard school, knew a good deal. our halfpenny evening paper, which we will call _the bun_ to distinguish her from her prosperous morning sister, _the cake_, was not only diseased but corrupt. we found this out when a man brought us the prospectus of a new oil-field and demanded sub-leaders on its prosperity. ollyett talked pure brasenose to him for three minutes. otherwise he spoke and wrote trade-english--a toothsome amalgam of americanisms and epigrams. but though the slang changes the game never alters, and ollyett and i and, in the end, some others enjoyed it immensely. it was weeks ere we could see the wood for the trees, but so soon as the staff realised that they had proprietors who backed them right or wrong, and specially when they were wrong (which is the sole secret of journalism), and that their fate did not hang on any passing owner's passing mood, they did miracles. but we did not neglect huckley. as ollyett said our first care was to create an 'arresting atmosphere' round it. he used to visit the village of week-ends, on a motor-bicycle with a side-car; for which reason i left the actual place alone and dealt with it in the abstract. yet it was i who drew first blood. two inhabitants of huckley wrote to contradict a small, quite solid paragraph in _the bun_ that a hoopoe had been seen at huckley and had, 'of course, been shot by the local sportsmen.' there was some heat in their letters, both of which we published. our version of how the hoopoe got his crest from king solomon was, i grieve to say, so inaccurate that the rector himself--no sportsman as he pointed out, but a lover of accuracy--wrote to us to correct it. we gave his letter good space and thanked him. 'this priest is going to be useful,' said ollyett. 'he has the impartial mind. i shall vitalise him.' forthwith he created m.l. sigden, a recluse of refined tastes who in _the bun_ demanded to know whether this huckley-of-the-hoopoe was the hugly of his boyhood and whether, by any chance, the fell change of name had been wrought by collusion between a local magnate and the railway, in the mistaken interests of spurious refinement. 'for i knew it and loved it with the maidens of my day--_eheu ab angulo!_--as hugly,' wrote m.l. sigden from oxf. though other papers scoffed, _the bun_ was gravely sympathetic. several people wrote to deny that huckley had been changed at birth. only the rector--no philosopher as he pointed out, but a lover of accuracy--had his doubts, which he laid publicly before mr. m.l. sigden who suggested, through _the bun_, that the little place might have begun life in anglo-saxon days as 'hogslea' or among the normans as 'argilé,' on account of its much clay. the rector had his own ideas too (he said it was mostly gravel), and m.l. sigden had a fund of reminiscences. oddly enough--which is seldom the case with free reading-matter--our subscribers rather relished the correspondence, and contemporaries quoted freely. 'the secret of power,' said ollyett, 'is not the big stick. it's the liftable stick.' (this means the 'arresting' quotation of six or seven lines.) 'did you see the _spec._ had a middle on "rural tenacities" last week. that was all huckley. i'm doing a "mobiquity" on huckley next week.' our 'mobiquities' were friday evening accounts of easy motor-bike-_cum_-side-car trips round london, illustrated (we could never get that machine to work properly) by smudgy maps. ollyett wrote the stuff with a fervour and a delicacy which i always ascribed to the side-car. his account of epping forest, for instance, was simply young love with its soul at its lips. but his huckley 'mobiquity' would have sickened a soap-boiler. it chemically combined loathsome familiarity, leering suggestion, slimy piety and rancid 'social service' in one fuming compost that fairly lifted me off my feet. 'yes,' said he, after compliments. 'it's the most vital, arresting and dynamic bit of tump i've done up to date. _non nobis gloria!_ i met sir thomas ingell in his own park. he talked to me again. he inspired most of it.' 'which? the "glutinous native drawl," or "the neglected adenoids of the village children"?' i demanded. 'oh, no! that's only to bring in the panel doctor. it's the last flight we--i'm proudest of.' this dealt with 'the crepuscular penumbra spreading her dim limbs over the boskage'; with 'jolly rabbits'; with a herd of 'gravid polled angus'; and with the 'arresting, gipsy-like face of their swart, scholarly owner--as well known at the royal agricultural shows as that of our late king-emperor.' '"swart" is good and so's "gravid,"' said i, 'but the panel doctor will be annoyed about the adenoids.' 'not half as much as sir thomas will about his face,' said ollyett. 'and if you only knew what i've left out!' he was right. the panel doctor spent his week-end (this is the advantage of friday articles) in overwhelming us with a professional counterblast of no interest whatever to our subscribers. we told him so, and he, then and there, battered his way with it into the _lancet_ where they are keen on glands, and forgot us altogether. but sir thomas ingell was of sterner stuff. he must have spent a happy week-end too. the letter which we received from him on monday proved him to be a kinless loon of upright life, for no woman, however remotely interested in a man would have let it pass the home wastepaper-basket. he objected to our references to his own herd, to his own labours in his own village, which he said was a model village, and to our infernal insolence; but he objected most to our invoice of his features. we wrote him courtously to ask whether the letter was meant for publication. he, remembering, i presume, the duke of wellington, wrote back, 'publish and be damned.' 'oh! this is too easy,' ollyett said as he began heading the letter. 'stop a minute,' i said. 'the game is getting a little beyond us. to-night's the bat dinner.' (i may have forgotten to tell you that our dinner with bat masquerier in the red amber room of the chop suey had come to be a weekly affair.) 'hold it over till they've all seen it.' 'perhaps you're right,' he said. 'you might waste it.' at dinner, then, sir thomas's letter was handed round. bat seemed to be thinking of other matters, but pallant was very interested. 'i've got an idea,' he said presently. 'could you put something into _the bun_ to-morrow about foot-and-mouth disease in that fellow's herd?' 'oh, plague if you like,' ollyett replied. 'they're only five measly shorthorns. i saw one lying down in the park. she'll serve as a sub-stratum of fact.' 'then, do that; and hold the letter over meanwhile. i think _i_ come in here,' said pallant. 'why?' said i. 'because there's something coming up in the house about foot-and-mouth, and because he wrote me a letter after that little affair when he fined you. 'took ten days to think it over. here you are,' said pallant. 'house of commons paper, you see.' we read: dear pallant--although in the past our paths have not lain much together, i am sure you will agree with me that on the floor of the house all members are on a footing of equality. i make bold, therefore, to approach you in a matter which i think capable of a very different interpretation from that which perhaps was put upon it by your friends. will you let them know that that was the case and that i was in no way swayed by animus in the exercise of my magisterial duties, which as you, as a brother magistrate, can imagine are frequently very distasteful to--yours very sincerely, t. ingell. _p.s._--i have seen to it that the motor vigilance to which your friends took exception has been considerably relaxed in my district. 'what did you answer?' said ollyett, when all our opinions had been expressed. 'i told him i couldn't do anything in the matter. and i couldn't--then. but you'll remember to put in that foot-and-mouth paragraph. i want something to work upon.' 'it seems to me _the bun_ has done all the work up to date,' i suggested. 'when does _the cake_ come in?' '_the cake_,' said woodhouse, and i remembered afterwards that he spoke like a cabinet minister on the eve of a budget, 'reserves to itself the fullest right to deal with situations as they arise.' 'ye-eh!' bat masquerier shook himself out of his thoughts. '"situations as they arise." i ain't idle either. but there's no use fishing till the swim's baited. you'--he turned to ollyett--'manufacture very good ground-bait.... i always tell my people--what the deuce is that?' there was a burst of song from another private dining-room across the landing. 'it ees some ladies from the trefoil,' the waiter began. 'oh, i know that. what are they singing, though?' he rose and went out, to be greeted by shouts of applause from that merry company. then there was silence, such as one hears in the form-room after a master's entry. then a voice that we loved began again: 'here we go gathering nuts in may--nuts in may--nuts in may!' 'it's only 'dal--and some nuts,' he explained when he returned. 'she says she's coming in to dessert.' he sat down, humming the old tune to himself, and till miss vidal benzaguen entered, he held us speechless with tales of the artistic temperament. we obeyed pallant to the extent of slipping into _the bun_ a wary paragraph about cows lying down and dripping at the mouth, which might be read either as an unkind libel or, in the hands of a capable lawyer, as a piece of faithful nature-study. 'and besides,' said ollyett, 'we allude to "gravid polled angus." i am advised that no action can lie in respect of virgin shorthorns. pallant wants us to come to the house to-night. he's got us places for the strangers' gallery. i'm beginning to like pallant.' 'masquerier seems to like you,' i said. 'yes, but i'm afraid of him,' ollyett answered with perfect sincerity. 'i am. he's the absolutely amoral soul. i've never met one yet.' we went to the house together. it happened to be an irish afternoon, and as soon as i had got the cries and the faces a little sorted out, i gathered there were grievances in the air, but how many of them was beyond me. 'it's all right,' said ollyett of the trained ear. 'they've shut their ports against--oh yes--export of irish cattle! foot-and-mouth disease at ballyhellion. _i_ see pallant's idea!' the house was certainly all mouth for the moment, but, as i could feel, quite in earnest. a minister with a piece of typewritten paper seemed to be fending off volleys of insults. he reminded me somehow of a nervous huntsman breaking up a fox in the face of rabid hounds. 'it's question-time. they're asking questions,' said ollyett. 'look! pallant's up.' there was no mistaking it. his voice, which his enemies said was his one parliamentary asset, silenced the hubbub as toothache silences mere singing in the ears. he said: 'arising out of that, may i ask if any special consideration has recently been shown in regard to any suspected outbreak of this disease on _this_ side of the channel?' he raised his hand; it held a noon edition of _the bun_. we had thought it best to drop the paragraph out of the later ones. he would have continued, but something in a grey frock-coat roared and bounded on a bench opposite, and waved another _bun_. it was sir thomas ingell. 'as the owner of the herd so dastardly implicated--' his voice was drowned in shouts of 'order!'--the irish leading. 'what's wrong?' i asked ollyett. 'he's got his hat on his head, hasn't he?' 'yes, but his wrath should have been put as a question.' 'arising out of that, mr. speaker, sirrr!' sir thomas bellowed through a lull, 'are you aware that--that all this is a conspiracy--part of a dastardly conspiracy to make huckley ridiculous--to make _us_ ridiculous? part of a deep-laid plot to make _me_ ridiculous, mr. speaker, sir!' the man's face showed almost black against his white whiskers, and he struck out swimmingly with his arms. his vehemence puzzled and held the house for an instant, and the speaker took advantage of it to lift his pack from ireland to a new scent. he addressed sir thomas ingell in tones of measured rebuke, meant also, i imagine, for the whole house, which lowered its hackles at the word. then pallant, shocked and pained: 'i can only express my profound surprise that in response to my simple question the honourable member should have thought fit to indulge in a personal attack. if i have in any way offended--' again the speaker intervened, for it appeared that he regulated these matters. he, too, expressed surprise, and sir thomas sat back in a hush of reprobation that seemed to have the chill of the centuries behind it. the empire's work was resumed. 'beautiful!' said i, and i felt hot and cold up my back. 'and now we'll publish his letter,' said ollyett. we did--on the heels of his carefully reported outburst. we made no comment. with that rare instinct for grasping the heart of a situation which is the mark of the anglo-saxon, all our contemporaries and, i should say, two-thirds of our correspondents demanded how such a person could be made more ridiculous than he had already proved himself to be. but beyond spelling his name 'injle,' we alone refused to hit a man when he was down. 'there's no need,' said ollyett. 'the whole press is on the huckle from end to end.' even woodhouse was a little astonished at the ease with which it had come about, and said as much. 'rot!' said ollyett. 'we haven't really begun. huckley isn't news yet.' 'what do you mean?' said woodhouse, who had grown to have great respect for his young but by no means distant connection. 'mean? by the grace of god, master ridley, i mean to have it so that when huckley turns over in its sleep, reuters and the press association jump out of bed to cable.' then he went off at score about certain restorations in huckley church which, he said--and he seemed to spend his every week-end there--had been perpetrated by the rector's predecessor, who had abolished a 'leper-window' or a 'squinch-hole' (whatever these may be) to institute a lavatory in the vestry. it did not strike me as stuff for which reuters or the press association would lose much sleep, and i left him declaiming to woodhouse about a fourteenth-century font which, he said, he had unearthed in the sexton's tool-shed. my methods were more on the lines of peaceful penetration. an odd copy, in _the bun's_ rag-and-bone library, of hone's _every-day book_ had revealed to me the existence of a village dance founded, like all village dances, on druidical mysteries connected with the solar solstice (which is always unchallengeable) and mid-summer morning, which is dewy and refreshing to the london eye. for this i take no credit--hone being a mine any one can work--but that i rechristened that dance, after i had revised it, 'the gubby' is my title to immortal fame. it was still to be witnessed, i wrote, 'in all its poignant purity at huckley, that last home of significant mediæval survivals'; and i fell so in love with my creation that i kept it back for days, enamelling and burnishing. 'you's better put it in,' said ollyett at last. 'it's time we asserted ourselves again. the other fellows are beginning to poach. you saw that thing in the _pinnacle_ about sir thomas's model village? he must have got one of their chaps down to do it.' ''nothing like the wounds of a friend,' i said. 'that account of the non-alcoholic pub alone was--' 'i liked the bit best about the white-tiled laundry and the fallen virgins who wash sir thomas's dress shirts. our side couldn't come within a mile of that, you know. we haven't the proper flair for sexual slobber.' 'that's what i'm always saying,' i retorted. 'leave 'em alone. the other fellows are doing our work for us now. besides i want to touch up my "gubby dance" a little more.' 'no. you'll spoil it. let's shove it in to-day. for one thing it's literature. i don't go in for compliments as you know, but, etc. etc.' i had a healthy suspicion of young ollyett in every aspect, but though i knew that i should have to pay for it, i fell to his flattery, and my priceless article on the 'gubby dance' appeared. next saturday he asked me to bring out _the bun_ in his absence, which i naturally assumed would be connected with the little maroon side-car. i was wrong. on the following monday i glanced at _the cake_ at breakfast-time to make sure, as usual, of her inferiority to my beloved but unremunerative _bun_. i opened on a heading: 'the village that voted the earth was flat.' i read ... i read that the geoplanarian society--a society devoted to the proposition that the earth is flat--had held its annual banquet and exercises at huckley on saturday, when after convincing addresses, amid scenes of the greatest enthusiasm, huckley village had decided by an unanimous vote of that the earth was flat. i do not remember that i breathed again till i had finished the two columns of description that followed. only one man could have written them. they were flawless--crisp, nervous, austere yet human, poignant, vital, arresting--most distinctly arresting--dynamic enough to shift a city--and quotable by whole sticks at a time. and there was a leader, a grave and poised leader, which tore me in two with mirth, until i remembered that i had been left out--infamously and unjustifiably dropped. i went to ollyett's rooms. he was breakfasting, and, to do him justice, looked conscience-stricken. 'it wasn't my fault,' he began. 'it was bat masquerier. i swear _i_ would have asked you to come if--' 'never mind that,' i said. 'it's the best bit of work you've ever done or will do. did any of it happen?' 'happen? heavens! d'you think even _i_ could have invented it?' 'is it exclusive to _the cake_?' i cried. 'it cost bat masquerier two thousand,' ollyett replied. 'd'you think he'd let any one else in on that? but i give you my sacred word i knew nothing about it till he asked me to come down and cover it. he had huckley posted in three colours, "the geoplanarians' annual banquet and exercises." yes, he invented "geoplanarians." he wanted huckley to think it meant aeroplanes. yes, i know that there is a real society that thinks the world's flat--they ought to be grateful for the lift--but bat made his own. he did! he created the whole show, i tell you. he swept out half his halls for the job. think of that--on a saturday! they--we went down in motor char-à-bancs--three of 'em--one pink, one primrose, and one forget-me-not blue--twenty people in each one and "the earth _is_ flat" on each side and across the back. i went with teddy rickets and lafone from the trefoil, and both the silhouette sisters, and--wait a minute!--the crossleigh trio. you know the every-day dramas trio at the jocunda--ada crossleigh, "bunt" crossleigh, and little victorine? them. and there was hoke ramsden, the lightning-change chap in _morgiana and drexel_--and there was billy turpeen. yes, you know him! the north london star. "i'm the referee that got himself disliked at blackheath." _that_ chap! and there was mackaye--that one-eyed scotch fellow that all glasgow is crazy about. talk of subordinating yourself for art's sake! mackaye was the earnest inquirer who got converted at the end of the meeting. and there was quite a lot of girls i didn't know, and--oh, yes--there was 'dal! 'dal benzaguen herself! we sat together, going and coming. she's all the darling there ever was. she sent you her love, and she told me to tell you that she won't forget about nellie farren. she says you've given her an ideal to work for. she? oh, she was the lady secretary to the geoplanarians, of course. i forget who were in the other brakes--provincial stars mostly--but they played up gorgeously. the art of the music-hall's changed since your day. they didn't overdo it a bit. you see, people who believe the earth is flat don't dress quite like other people. you may have noticed that i hinted at that in my account. it's a rather flat-fronted ionic style--neo-victorian, except for the bustles, 'dal told me,--but 'dal looked heavenly in it! so did little victorine. and there was a girl in the blue brake--she's a provincial--but she's coming to town this winter and she'll knock 'em--winnie deans. remember that! she told huckley how she had suffered for the cause as a governess in a rich family where they believed that the world is round, and how she threw up her job sooner than teach immoral geography. that was at the overflow meeting outside the baptist chapel. she knocked 'em to sawdust! we must look out for winnie.... but lafone! lafone was beyond everything. impact, personality--conviction--the whole bag o' tricks! he sweated conviction. gad, he convinced _me_ while he was speaking! (him? he was president of the geoplanarians, of course. haven't you read my account?) it _is_ an infernally plausible theory. after all, no one has actually proved the earth is round, have they?' 'never mind the earth. what about huckley?' 'oh, huckley got tight. that's the worst of these model villages if you let 'em smell fire-water. there's one alcoholic pub in the place that sir thomas can't get rid of. bat made it his base. he sent down the banquet in two motor lorries--dinner for five hundred and drinks for ten thousand. huckley voted all right. don't you make any mistake about that. no vote, no dinner. a unanimous vote--exactly as i've said. at least, the rector and the doctor were the only dissentients. we didn't count them. oh yes, sir thomas was there. he came and grinned at us through his park gates. he'll grin worse to-day. there's an aniline dye that you rub through a stencil-plate that eats about a foot into any stone and wears good to the last. bat had both the lodge-gates stencilled "the earth _is_ flat!" and all the barns and walls they could get at.... oh lord, but huckley was drunk! we had to fill 'em up to make 'em forgive us for not being aeroplanes. unthankful yokels! d'you realise that emperors couldn't have commanded the talent bat decanted on 'em? why, 'dal alone was.... and by eight o'clock not even a bit of paper left! the whole show packed up and gone, and huckley hoo-raying for the earth being flat.' 'very good,' i began. 'i am, as you know, a one-third proprietor of _the bun_.' 'i didn't forget that,' ollyett interrupted. 'that was uppermost in my mind all the time. i've got a special account for _the bun_ to-day--it's an idyll--and just to show how i thought of you, i told 'dal, coming home, about your gubby dance, and she told winnie. winnie came back in our char-à-banc. after a bit we had to get out and dance it in a field. it's quite a dance the way we did it--and lafone invented a sort of gorilla lockstep procession at the end. bat had sent down a film-chap on the chance of getting something. he was the son of a clergyman--a most dynamic personality. he said there isn't anything for the cinema in meetings _qua_ meetings--they lack action. films are a branch of art by themselves. but he went wild over the gubby. he said it was like peter's vision at joppa. he took about a million feet of it. then i photoed it exclusive for _the bun_. i've sent 'em in already, only remember we must eliminate winnie's left leg in the first figure. it's too arresting.... and there you are! but i tell you i'm afraid of bat. that man's the personal devil. he did it all. he didn't even come down himself. he said he'd distract his people.' 'why didn't he ask me to come?' i persisted. 'because he said you'd distract me. he said he wanted my brains on ice. he got 'em. i believe it's the best thing i've ever done.' he reached for _the cake_ and re-read it luxuriously. 'yes, out and away the best--supremely quotable,' he concluded, and--after another survey--'by god, what a genius i was yesterday!' i would have been angry, but i had not the time. that morning, press agencies grovelled to me in _the bun_ office for leave to use certain photos, which, they understood, i controlled, of a certain village dance. when i had sent the fifth man away on the edge of tears, my self-respect came back a little. then there was _the bun's_ poster to get out. art being elimination, i fined it down to two words (one too many, as it proved)--'the gubby!' in red, at which our manager protested; but by five o'clock he told me that i was _the_ napoleon of fleet street. ollyett's account in _the bun_ of the geoplanarians' exercises and love feast lacked the supreme shock of his version in _the cake_, but it bruised more; while the photos of 'the gubby' (which, with winnie's left leg, was why i had set the doubtful press to work so early) were beyond praise and, next day, beyond price. but even then i did not understand. a week later, i think it was, bat masquerier telephoned to me to come to the trefoil. 'it's your turn now,' he said. 'i'm not asking ollyett. come to the stage-box.' i went, and, as bat's guest, was received as royalty is not. we sat well back and looked out on the packed thousands. it was _morgiana and drexel_, that fluid and electric review which bat--though he gave lafone the credit--really created. 'ye-es,' said bat dreamily, after morgiana had given 'the nasty jar' to the forty thieves in their forty oil 'combinations.' 'as you say, i've got 'em and i can hold 'em. what a man does doesn't matter much; and how he does it don't matter either. it's the _when_--the psychological moment. 'press can't make up for it; money can't; brains can't. a lot's luck, but all the rest is genius. i'm not speaking about my people now. i'm talking of myself.' then 'dal--she was the only one who dared--knocked at the door and stood behind us all alive and panting as morgiana. lafone was carrying the police-court scene, and the house was ripped up crossways with laughter. 'ah! tell a fellow now,' she asked me for the twentieth time, 'did you love nellie farren when you were young?' 'did we love her?' i answered. '"if the earth and the sky and the sea"--there were three million of us, 'dal, and we worshipped her.' 'how did she get it across?' dal went on. 'she was nellie. the houses used to coo over her when she came on.' 'i've had a good deal, but i've never been cooed over yet,' said 'dal wistfully. 'it isn't the how, it's the when,' bat repeated. 'ah!' he leaned forward as the house began to rock and peal full-throatedly. 'dal fled. a sinuous and silent procession was filing into the police-court to a scarcely audible accompaniment. it was dressed--but the world and all its picture-palaces know how it was dressed. it danced and it danced, and it danced the dance which bit all humanity in the leg for half a year, and it wound up with the lockstep finale that mowed the house down in swathes, sobbing and aching. somebody in the gallery moaned, 'oh gord, the gubby!' and we heard the word run like a shudder, for they had not a full breath left among them. then 'dal came on, an electric star in her dark hair, the diamonds flashing in her three-inch heels--a vision that made no sign for thirty counted seconds while the police-court scene dissolved behind her into morgiana's manicure palace, and they recovered themselves. the star on her forehead went out, and a soft light bathed her as she took--slowly, slowly to the croon of adoring strings--the eighteen paces forward. we saw her first as a queen alone; next as a queen for the first time conscious of her subjects, and at the end, when her hands fluttered, as a woman delighted, awed not a little, but transfigured and illuminated with sheer, compelling affection and goodwill. i caught the broken mutter of welcome--the coo which is more than tornadoes of applause. it died and rose and died again lovingly. 'she's got it across,' bat whispered. 'i've never seen her like this. i told her to light up the star, but i was wrong, and she knew it. she's an artist.' ''dal, you darling!' some one spoke, not loudly but it carried through the house. 'thank _you_!' 'dal answered, and in that broken tone one heard the last fetter riveted. 'good evening, boys! i've just come from--now--where the dooce was it i have come from?' she turned to the impassive files of the gubby dancers, and went on: 'ah, so good of you to remind me, you dear, bun-faced things. i've just come from the village--the village that voted the earth was flat.' she swept into that song with the full orchestra. it devastated the habitable earth for the next six months. imagine, then, what its rage and pulse must have been at the incandescent hour of its birth! she only gave the chorus once. at the end of the second verse, 'are you _with_ me, boys?' she cried, and the house tore it clean away from her--'_earth_ was flat--_earth_ was flat. flat as my hat--flatter than that'--drowning all but the bassoons and double-basses that marked the word. 'wonderful,' i said to bat. 'and it's only "nuts in may," with variations.' 'yes--but _i_ did the variations,' he replied. at the last verse she gestured to carlini the conductor, who threw her up his baton. she caught it with a boy's ease. 'are you _with_ me?' she cried once more, and--the maddened house behind her--abolished all the instruments except the guttural belch of the double-basses on '_earth_'--'the village that voted the _earth_ was flat--_earth_ was flat!' it was delirium. then she picked up the gubby dancers and led them in a clattering improvised lockstep thrice round the stage till her last kick sent her diamond-hiked shoe catherine-wheeling to the electrolier. i saw the forest of hands raised to catch it, heard the roaring and stamping pass through hurricanes to full typhoon; heard the song, pinned down by the faithful double-basses as the bull-dog pins down the bellowing bull, overbear even those; till at last the curtain fell and bat took me round to her dressing-room, where she lay spent after her seventh call. still the song, through all those white-washed walls, shook the reinforced concrete of the trefoil as steam pile-drivers shake the flanks of a dock. 'i'm all out--first time in my life. ah! tell a fellow now, did i get it across?' she whispered huskily. 'you know you did,' i replied as she dipped her nose deep in a beaker of barley-water. 'they cooed over you.' bat nodded. 'and poor nellie's dead--in africa, ain't it?' 'i hope i'll die before they stop cooing,' said 'dal. '"_earth_ was flat--_earth_ was flat!"' now it was more like mine-pumps in flood. 'they'll have the house down if you don't take another,' some one called. 'bless 'em!' said 'dal, and went out for her eighth, when in the face of that cataract she said yawning, 'i don't know how _you_ feel, children, but _i_'m dead. you be quiet.' 'hold a minute,' said bat to me. 'i've got to hear how it went in the provinces. winnie deans had it in manchester, and ramsden at glasgow--and there are all the films too. i had rather a heavy week-end.' the telephones presently reassured him. 'it'll do,' said he. 'and _he_ said my home address was jerusalem.' he left me humming the refrain of 'the holy city.' like ollyett i found myself afraid of that man. when i got out into the street and met the disgorging picture-palaces capering on the pavements and humming it (for he had put the gramophones on with the films), and when i saw far to the south the red electrics flash 'gubby' across the thames, i feared more than ever. * * * * * a few days passed which were like nothing except, perhaps, a suspense of fever in which the sick man perceives the searchlights of the world's assembled navies in act to converge on one minute fragment of wreckage--one only in all the black and agony-strewn sea. then those beams focussed themselves. earth as we knew it--the full circuit of our orb--laid the weight of its impersonal and searing curiosity on this huckley which had voted that it was flat. it asked for news about huckley--where and what it might be, and how it talked--it knew how it danced--and how it thought in its wonderful soul. and then, in all the zealous, merciless press, huckley was laid out for it to look at, as a drop of pond water is exposed on the sheet of a magic-lantern show. but huckley's sheet was only coterminous with the use of type among mankind. for the precise moment that was necessary, fate ruled it that there should be nothing of first importance in the world's idle eye. one atrocious murder, a political crisis, an incautious or heady continental statesman, the mere catarrh of a king, would have wiped out the significance of our message, as a passing cloud annuls the urgent helio. but it was halcyon weather in every respect. ollyett and i did not need to lift our little fingers any more than the alpine climber whose last sentence has unkeyed the arch of the avalanche. the thing roared and pulverised and swept beyond eyesight all by itself--all by itself. and once well away, the fall of kingdoms could not have diverted it. ours is, after all, a kindly earth. while the song ran and raped it with the cataleptic kick of 'ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,' multiplied by the west african significance of 'everybody's doing it,' plus twice the infernal elementality of a certain tune in _dona et gamma_; when for all practical purposes, literary, dramatic, artistic, social, municipal, political, commercial, and administrative, the earth _was_ flat, the rector of huckley wrote to us--again as a lover of accuracy--to point out that the huckley vote on 'the alleged flatness of this scene of our labours here below' was _not_ unanimous; he and the doctor having voted against it. and the great baron reuter himself (i am sure it could have been none other) flashed that letter in full to the front, back, and both wings of this scene of our labours. for huckley was news. _the bun_ also contributed a photograph which cost me some trouble to fake. 'we are a vital nation,' said ollyett while we were discussing affairs at a bat dinner. 'only an englishman could have written that letter at this present juncture.' 'it reminded me of a tourist in the cave of the winds under niagara. just one figure in a mackintosh. but perhaps you saw our photo?' i said proudly. 'yes,' bat replied. 'i've been to niagara, too. and how's huckley taking it?' 'they don't quite understand, of course,' said ollyett. 'but it's bringing pots of money into the place. ever since the motor-bus excursions were started--' 'i didn't know they had been,' said pallant. 'oh yes. motor char-à-bancs--uniformed guides and key-bugles included. they're getting a bit fed up with the tune there nowadays,' ollyett added. 'they play it under his windows, don't they?' bat asked. 'he can't stop the right of way across his park.' 'he cannot,' ollyett answered. 'by the way, woodhouse, i've bought that font for you from the sexton. i paid fifteen pounds for it.' 'what am i supposed to do with it?' asked woodhouse. 'you give it to the victoria and albert museum. it is fourteenth-century work all right. you can trust me.' 'is it worth it--now?' said pallant. 'not that i'm weakening, but merely as a matter of tactics?' 'but this is true,' said ollyett. 'besides, it is my hobby, i always wanted to be an architect. i'll attend to it myself. it's too serious for _the bun_ and miles too good for _the cake_.' he broke ground in a ponderous architectural weekly, which had never heard of huckley. there was no passion in his statement, but mere fact backed by a wide range of authorities. he established beyond doubt that the old font at huckley had been thrown out, on sir thomas's instigation, twenty years ago, to make room for a new one of bath stone adorned with limoges enamels; and that it had lain ever since in a corner of the sexton's shed. he proved, with learned men to support him, that there was only one other font in all england to compare with it. so woodhouse bought it and presented it to a grateful south kensington which said it would see the earth still flatter before it returned the treasure to purblind huckley. bishops by the benchful and most of the royal academy, not to mention 'margaritas ante porcos,' wrote fervently to the papers. _punch_ based a political cartoon on it; the _times_ a third leader, 'the lust of newness'; and the _spectator_ a scholarly and delightful middle, 'village hausmania.' the vast amused outside world said in all its tongues and types: 'of course! this is just what huckley would do!' and neither sir thomas nor the rector nor the sexton nor any one else wrote to deny it. 'you see,' said ollyett, 'this is much more of a blow to huckley than it looks--because every word of it's true. your gubby dance was inspiration, i admit, but it hadn't its roots in--' 'two hemispheres and four continents so far,' i pointed out. 'its roots in the hearts of huckley was what i was going to say. why don't you ever come down and look at the place? you've never seen it since we were stopped there.' 'i've only my week-ends free,' i said, 'and you seem to spend yours there pretty regularly--with the side-car. i was afraid--' 'oh, _that's_ all right,' he said cheerily. 'we're quite an old engaged couple now. as a matter of fact, it happened after "the gravid polled angus" business. come along this saturday. woodhouse says he'll run us down after lunch. he wants to see huckley too.' pallant could not accompany us, but bat took his place. 'it's odd,' said bat, 'that none of us except ollyett has ever set eyes on huckley since that time. that's what i always tell my people. local colour is all right after you've got your idea. before that, it's a mere nuisance.' he regaled us on the way down with panoramic views of the success--geographical and financial--of 'the gubby' and the song. 'by the way,' said he, 'i've assigned 'dal all the gramophone rights of "the earth." she's a born artist. 'hadn't sense enough to hit me for triple-dubs the morning after. she'd have taken it out in coos.' 'bless her! and what'll she make out of the gramophone rights?' i asked. 'lord knows!' he replied. 'i've made fifty-four thousand my little end of the business, and it's only just beginning. hear _that_!' a shell-pink motor-brake roared up behind us to the music on a key-bugle of 'the village that voted the earth was flat.' in a few minutes we overtook another, in natural wood, whose occupants were singing it through their noses. 'i don't know that agency. it must be cook's,' said ollyett. 'they _do_ suffer.' we were never out of earshot of the tune the rest of the way to huckley. though i knew it would be so, i was disappointed with the actual aspect of the spot we had--it is not too much to say--created in the face of the nations. the alcoholic pub; the village green; the baptist chapel; the church; the sexton's shed; the rectory whence the so-wonderful letters had come; sir thomas's park gate-pillars still violently declaring 'the earth _is_ flat,' were as mean, as average, as ordinary as the photograph of a room where a murder has been committed. ollyett, who, of course, knew the place specially well, made the most of it to us. bat, who had employed it as a back-cloth to one of his own dramas, dismissed it as a thing used and emptied, but woodhouse expressed my feelings when he said: 'is that all--after all we've done?' '_i_ know,' said ollyett soothingly. '"like that strange song i heard apollo sing: when ilion like a mist rose into towers." i've felt the same sometimes, though it has been paradise for me. but they _do_ suffer.' the fourth brake in thirty minutes had just turned into sir thomas's park to tell the hall that 'the _earth_ was flat'; a knot of obviously american tourists were kodaking his lodge-gates; while the tea-shop opposite the lych-gate was full of people buying postcards of the old font as it had lain twenty years in the sexton's shed. we went to the alcoholic pub and congratulated the proprietor. 'it's bringin' money to the place,' said he. 'but in a sense you can buy money too dear. it isn't doin' us any good. people are laughin' at us. that's what they're doin'.... now, with regard to that vote of ours you may have heard talk about....' 'for gorze sake, chuck that votin' business,' cried an elderly man at the door. 'money-gettin' or no money-gettin', we're fed up with it.' 'well, i do think,' said the publican, shifting his ground, 'i do think sir thomas might ha' managed better in some things.' 'he tole me,'--the elderly man shouldered his way to the bar--'he tole me twenty years ago to take an' lay that font in my tool-shed. he _tole_ me so himself. an' now, after twenty years, me own wife makin' me out little better than the common 'angman!' 'that's the sexton,' the publican explained. 'his good lady sells the postcards--if you 'aven't got some. but we feel sir thomas might ha' done better.' 'what's he got to do with it?' said woodhouse. 'there's nothin' we can trace 'ome to 'im in so many words, but we think he might 'ave saved us the font business. now, in regard to that votin' business--' 'chuck it! oh, chuck it!' the sexton roared, 'or you'll 'ave me cuttin' my throat at cock-crow. 'ere's another parcel of fun-makers!' a motor-brake had pulled up at the door and a multitude of men and women immediately descended. we went out to look. they bore rolled banners, a reading-desk in three pieces, and, i specially noticed, a collapsible harmonium, such as is used on ships at sea. 'salvation army?' i said, though i saw no uniforms. two of them unfurled a banner between poles which bore the legend: 'the earth _is_ flat.' woodhouse and i turned to bat. he shook his head. 'no, no! not me.... if i had only seen their costumes in advance!' 'good lord!' said ollyett. 'it's the genuine society!' the company advanced on the green with the precision of people well broke to these movements. scene-shifters could not have been quicker with the three-piece rostrum, nor stewards with the harmonium. almost before its cross-legs had been kicked into their catches, certainly before the tourists by the lodge-gates had begun to move over, a woman sat down to it and struck up a hymn: hear ther truth our tongues are telling, spread ther light from shore to shore, god hath given man a dwelling flat and flat for evermore. when ther primal dark retreated, when ther deeps were undesigned, he with rule and level meted habitation for mankind! i saw sick envy on bat's face. 'curse nature,' he muttered. 'she gets ahead of you every time. to think _i_ forgot hymns and a harmonium!' then came the chorus: hear ther truth our tongues are telling, spread ther light from shore to shore-- oh, be faithful! oh, be truthful! earth is flat for evermore. they sang several verses with the fervour of christians awaiting their lions. then there were growlings in the air. the sexton, embraced by the landlord, two-stepped out of the pub-door. each was trying to outroar the other. 'apologising in advarnce for what he says,' the landlord shouted: 'you'd better go away' (here the sexton began to speak words). 'this isn't the time nor yet the place for--for any more o' this chat.' the crowd thickened. i saw the village police-sergeant come out of his cottage buckling his belt. 'but surely,' said the woman at the harmonium, 'there must be some mistake. we are not suffragettes.' 'damn it! they'd be a change,' cried the sexton. 'you get out of this! don't talk! _i_ can't stand it for one! get right out, or we'll font you!' the crowd which was being recruited from every house in sight echoed the invitation. the sergeant pushed forward. a man beside the reading-desk said: 'but surely we are among dear friends and sympathisers. listen to me for a moment.' it was the moment that a passing char-à-banc chose to strike into the song. the effect was instantaneous. bat, ollyett, and i, who by divers roads have learned the psychology of crowds, retreated towards the tavern door. woodhouse, the newspaper proprietor, anxious, i presume, to keep touch with the public, dived into the thick of it. every one else told the society to go away at once. when the lady at the harmonium (i began to understand why it is sometimes necessary to kill women) pointed at the stencilled park pillars and called them 'the cromlechs of our common faith,' there was a snarl and a rush. the police-sergeant checked it, but advised the society to keep on going. the society withdrew into the brake fighting, as it were, a rear-guard action of oratory up each step. the collapsed harmonium was hauled in last, and with the perfect unreason of crowds, they cheered it loudly, till the chauffeur slipped in his clutch and sped away. then the crowd broke up, congratulating all concerned except the sexton, who was held to have disgraced his office by having sworn at ladies. we strolled across the green towards woodhouse, who was talking to the police-sergeant near the park-gates. we were not twenty yards from him when we saw sir thomas ingell emerge from the lodge and rush furiously at woodhouse with an uplifted stick, at the same time shrieking: 'i'll teach you to laugh, you--' but ollyett has the record of the language. by the time we reached them, sir thomas was on the ground; woodhouse, very white, held the walking-stick and was saying to the sergeant: 'i give this person in charge for assault.' 'but, good lord!' said the sergeant, whiter than woodhouse. 'it's sir thomas.' 'whoever it is, it isn't fit to be at large,' said woodhouse. the crowd suspecting something wrong began to reassemble, and all the english horror of a row in public moved us, headed by the sergeant, inside the lodge. we shut both park-gates and lodge-door. 'you saw the assault, sergeant,' woodhouse went on. 'you can testify i used no more force than was necessary to protect myself. you can testify that i have not even damaged this person's property. (here! take your stick, you!) you heard the filthy language he used.' 'i--i can't say i did,' the sergeant stammered. 'oh, but _we_ did!' said ollyett, and repeated it, to the apron-veiled horror of the lodge-keeper's wife. sir thomas on a hard kitchen chair began to talk. he said he had 'stood enough of being photographed like a wild beast,' and expressed loud regret that he had not killed 'that man,' who was 'conspiring with the sergeant to laugh at him.' ''ad you ever seen 'im before, sir thomas?' the sergeant asked. 'no! but it's time an example was made here. i've never seen the sweep in my life.' i think it was bat masquerier's magnetic eye that recalled the past to him, for his face changed and his jaw dropped. 'but i have!' he groaned. 'i remember now.' here a writhing man entered by the back door. he was, he said, the village solicitor. i do not assert that he licked woodhouse's boots, but we should have respected him more if he had and been done with it. his notion was that the matter could be accommodated, arranged and compromised for gold, and yet more gold. the sergeant thought so too. woodhouse undeceived them both. to the sergeant he said, 'will you or will you not enter the charge?' to the village solicitor he gave the name of his lawyers, at which the man wrung his hands and cried, 'oh, sir t., sir t.!' in a miserable falsetto, for it was a bat masquerier of a firm. they conferred together in tragic whispers. 'i don't dive after dickens,' said ollyett to bat and me by the window, 'but every time _i_ get into a row i notice the police-court always fills up with his characters.' 'i've noticed that too,' said bat. 'but the odd thing is you mustn't give the public straight dickens--not in my business. i wonder why that is.' then sir thomas got his second wind and cursed the day that he, or it may have been we, were born. i feared that though he was a radical he might apologise and, since he was an m.p., might lie his way out of the difficulty. but he was utterly and truthfully beside himself. he asked foolish questions--such as what we were doing in the village at all, and how much blackmail woodhouse expected to make out of him. but neither woodhouse nor the sergeant nor the writhing solicitor listened. the upshot of their talk, in the chimney-corner, was that sir thomas stood engaged to appear next monday before his brother magistrates on charges of assault, disorderly conduct, and language calculated, etc. ollyett was specially careful about the language. then we left. the village looked very pretty in the late light--pretty and tuneful as a nest of nightingales. 'you'll turn up on monday, i hope,' said woodhouse, when we reached town. that was his only allusion to the affair. so we turned up--through a world still singing that the earth was flat--at the little clay-coloured market-town with the large corn exchange and the small jubilee memorial. we had some difficulty in getting seats in the court. woodhouse's imported london lawyer was a man of commanding personality, with a voice trained to convey blasting imputations by tone. when the case was called, he rose and stated his client's intention not to proceed with the charge. his client, he went on to say, had not entertained, and, of course, in the circumstances could not have entertained, any suggestion of accepting on behalf of public charities any moneys that might have been offered to him on the part of sir thomas's estate. at the same time, no one acknowledged more sincerely than his client the spirit in which those offers had been made by those entitled to make them. but, as a matter of fact--here he became the man of the world colloguing with his equals--certain--er--details had come to his client's knowledge _since_ the lamentable outburst, which ... he shrugged his shoulders. nothing was served by going into them, but he ventured to say that, had those painful circumstances only been known earlier, his client would--again 'of course'--never have dreamed--a gesture concluded the sentence, and the ensnared bench looked at sir thomas with new and withdrawing eyes. frankly, as they could see, it would be nothing less than cruelty to proceed further with this--er-unfortunate affair. he asked leave, therefore, to withdraw the charge _in toto_, and at the same time to express his client's deepest sympathy with all who had been in any way distressed, as his client had been, by the fact and the publicity of proceedings which he could, of course, again assure them that his client would never have dreamed of instituting if, as he hoped he had made plain, certain facts had been before his client at the time when.... but he had said enough. for his fee it seemed to me that he had. heaven inspired sir thomas's lawyer--all of a sweat lest his client's language should come out--to rise up and thank him. then, sir thomas--not yet aware what leprosy had been laid upon him, but grateful to escape on any terms--followed suit. he was heard in interested silence, and people drew back a pace as gehazi passed forth. 'you hit hard,' said bat to woodhouse afterwards. 'his own people think he's mad.' 'you don't say so? i'll show you some of his letters to-night at dinner,' he replied. he brought them to the red amber room of the chop suey. we forgot to be amazed, as till then we had been amazed, over the song or 'the gubby,' or the full tide of fate that seemed to run only for our sakes. it did not even interest ollyett that the verb 'to huckle' had passed into the english leader-writers' language. we were studying the interior of a soul, flash-lighted to its grimiest corners by the dread of 'losing its position.' 'and then it thanked you, didn't it, for dropping the case?' said pallant. 'yes, and it sent me a telegram to confirm.' woodhouse turned to bat. 'now d'you think i hit too hard?' he asked. 'no-o!' said bat. 'after all--i'm talking of every one's business now--one can't ever do anything in art that comes up to nature in any game in life. just think how this thing has--' 'just let me run through that little case of yours again,' said pallant, and picked up _the bun_ which had it set out in full. 'any chance of 'dal looking in on us to-night?' ollyett began. 'she's occupied with her art too,' bat answered bitterly. 'what's the use of art? tell me, some one!' a barrel-organ outside promptly pointed out that the _earth_ was flat. 'the gramophone's killing street organs, but i let loose a hundred-and-seventy-four of those hurdygurdys twelve hours after the song,' said bat. 'not counting the provinces.' his face brightened a little. 'look here!' said pallant over the paper. 'i don't suppose you or those asinine j.p.'s knew it--but your lawyer ought to have known that you've all put your foot in it most confoundedly over this assault case.' 'what's the matter?' said woodhouse. 'it's ludicrous. it's insane. there isn't two penn'orth of legality in the whole thing. of course, you could have withdrawn the charge, but the way you went about it is childish--besides being illegal. what on earth was the chief constable thinking of?' 'oh, he was a friend of sir thomas's. they all were for that matter,' i replied. 'he ought to be hanged. so ought the chairman of the bench. i'm talking as a lawyer now.' 'why, what have we been guilty of? misprision of treason or compounding a felony--or what?' said ollyett. 'i'll tell you later.' pallant went back to the paper with knitted brows, smiling unpleasantly from time to time. at last he laughed. 'thank you!' he said to woodhouse. 'it ought to be pretty useful--for us.' 'what d'you mean?' said ollyett. 'for our side. they are all rads who are mixed up in this--from the chief constable down. there must be a question. there must be a question.' 'yes, but i wanted the charge withdrawn in my own way,' woodhouse insisted. 'that's nothing to do with the case. it's the legality of your silly methods. you wouldn't understand if i talked till morning,' he began to pace the room, his hands behind him. 'i wonder if i can get it through our whip's thick head that it's a chance.... that comes of stuffing the bench with radical tinkers,' he muttered. 'oh, sit down!' said woodhouse. 'where's your lawyer to be found now?' he jerked out. 'at the trefoil,' said bat promptly. 'i gave him the stage-box for to-night. he's an artist too.' 'then i'm going to see him,' said pallant. 'properly handled this ought to be a godsend for our side.' he withdrew without apology. 'certainly, this thing keeps on opening up, and up,' i remarked inanely. 'it's beyond me!' said bat. 'i don't think if i'd known i'd have ever ... yes, i would, though. he said my home address was--' 'it was his tone--his tone!' ollyett almost shouted. woodhouse said nothing, but his face whitened as he brooded. 'well, any way,' bat went on, 'i'm glad i always believed in god and providence and all those things. else i should lose my nerve. we've put it over the whole world--the full extent of the geographical globe. we couldn't stop it if we wanted to now. it's got to burn itself out. i'm not in charge any more. what d'you expect'll happen next. angels?' i expected nothing. nothing that i expected approached what i got. politics are not my concern, but, for the moment, since it seemed that they were going to 'huckle' with the rest, i took an interest in them. they impressed me as a dog's life without a dog's decencies, and i was confirmed in this when an unshaven and unwashen pallant called on me at ten o'clock one morning, begging for a bath and a couch. 'bail too?' i asked. he was in evening dress and his eyes were sunk feet in his head. 'no,' he said hoarsely. 'all night sitting. fifteen divisions. 'nother to-night. your place was nearer than mine, so--' he began to undress in the hall. when he awoke at one o'clock he gave me lurid accounts of what he said was history, but which was obviously collective hysteria. there had been a political crisis. he and his fellow m.p.'s had 'done things'--i never quite got at the things--for eighteen hours on end, and the pitiless whips were even then at the telephones to herd 'em up to another dog-fight. so he snorted and grew hot all over again while he might have been resting. 'i'm going to pitch in my question about that miscarriage of justice at huckley this afternoon, if you care to listen to it,' he said. 'it'll be absolutely thrown away--in our present state. i told 'em so; but it's my only chance for weeks. p'raps woodhouse would like to come.' 'i'm sure he would. anything to do with huckley interests us,' i said. 'it'll miss fire, i'm afraid. both sides are absolutely cooked. the present situation has been working up for some time. you see the row was bound to come, etc. etc.,' and he flew off the handle once more. i telephoned to woodhouse, and we went to the house together. it was a dull, sticky afternoon with thunder in the air. for some reason or other, each side was determined to prove its virtue and endurance to the utmost. i heard men snarling about it all round me. 'if they won't spare us, we'll show 'em no mercy,' 'break the brutes up from the start. they can't stand late hours.' 'come on! no shirking! i know _you've_ had a turkish bath,' were some of the sentences i caught on our way. the house was packed already, and one could feel the negative electricity of a jaded crowd wrenching at one's own nerves, and depressing the afternoon soul. 'this is bad!' woodhouse whispered. 'there'll be a row before they've finished. look at the front benches!' and he pointed out little personal signs by which i was to know that each man was on edge. he might have spared himself. the house was ready to snap before a bone had been thrown. a sullen minister rose to reply to a staccato question. his supporters cheered defiantly. 'none o' that! none o' that!' came from the back benches. i saw the speaker's face stiffen like the face of a helmsman as he humours a hard-mouthed yacht after a sudden following sea. the trouble was barely met in time. there came a fresh, apparently causeless gust a few minutes later--savage, threatening, but futile. it died out--one could hear the sigh--in sudden wrathful realisation of the dreary hours ahead, and the ship of state drifted on. then pallant--and the raw house winced at the torture of his voice--rose. it was a twenty-line question, studded with legal technicalities. the gist of it was that he wished to know whether the appropriate minister was aware that there had been a grave miscarriage of justice on such and such a date, at such and such a place, before such and such justices of the peace, in regard to a case which arose-- i heard one desperate, weary 'damn!' float up from the pit of that torment. pallant sawed on--'out of certain events which occurred at the village of huckley.' the house came to attention with a parting of the lips like a hiccough, and it flashed through my mind.... pallant repeated, 'huckley. the village--' 'that voted the _earth_ was flat.' a single voice from a back bench sang it once like a lone frog in a far pool. '_earth_ was flat,' croaked another voice opposite. '_earth_ was flat.' there were several. then several more. it was, you understand, the collective, overstrained nerve of the house, snapping, strand by strand to various notes, as the hawser parts from its moorings. 'the village that voted the _earth_ was flat.' the tune was beginning to shape itself. more voices were raised and feet began to beat time. even so it did not occur to me that the thing would-- 'the village that voted the _earth_ was flat!' it was easier now to see who were not singing. there were still a few. of a sudden (and this proves the fundamental instability of the cross-bench mind) a cross-bencher leaped on his seat and there played an imaginary double-bass with tremendous maestro-like wagglings of the elbow. the last strand parted. the ship of state drifted out helpless on the rocking tide of melody. 'the village that voted the _earth_ was flat! the village that voted the _earth_ was flat!' the irish first conceived the idea of using their order-papers as funnels wherewith to reach the correct '_vroom--vroom_' on '_earth_.' labour, always conservative and respectable at a crisis, stood out longer than any other section, but when it came in it was howling syndicalism. then, without distinction of party, fear of constituents, desire for office, or hope of emolument, the house sang at the tops and at the bottoms of their voices, swaying their stale bodies and epileptically beating with their swelled feet. they sang 'the village that voted the _earth_ was flat': first, because they wanted to, and secondly--which is the terror of that song--because they could not stop. for no consideration could they stop. pallant was still standing up. some one pointed at him and they laughed. others began to point, lunging, as it were, in time with the tune. at this moment two persons came in practically abreast from behind the speaker's chair, and halted appalled. one happened to be the prime minister and the other a messenger. the house, with tears running down their cheeks, transferred their attention to the paralysed couple. they pointed six hundred forefingers at them. they rocked, they waved, and they rolled while they pointed, but still they sang. when they weakened for an instant, ireland would yell: 'are ye _with_ me, bhoys?' and they all renewed their strength like antaeus. no man could say afterwards what happened in the press or the strangers' gallery. it was the house, the hysterical and abandoned house of commons that held all eyes, as it deafened all ears. i saw both front benches bend forward, some with their foreheads on their despatch-boxes, the rest with their faces in their hands; and their moving shoulders jolted the house out of its last rag of decency. only the speaker remained unmoved. the entire press of great britain bore witness next day that he had not even bowed his head. the angel of the constitution, for vain was the help of man, foretold him the exact moment at which the house would have broken into 'the gubby.' he is reported to have said: 'i heard the irish beginning to shuffle it. so i adjourned.' pallant's version is that he added: 'and i was never so grateful to a private member in all my life as i was to mr. pallant.' he made no explanation. he did not refer to orders or disorders. he simply adjourned the house till six that evening. and the house adjourned--some of it nearly on all fours. i was not correct when i said that the speaker was the only man who did not laugh. woodhouse was beside me all the time. his face was set and quite white--as white, they told me, as sir thomas ingell's when he went, by request, to a private interview with his chief whip. the press the soldier may forget his sword the sailorman the sea, the mason may forget the word and the priest his litany: the maid may forget both jewel and gem, and the bride her wedding-dress-- but the jew shall forget jerusalem ere we forget the press! who once hath stood through the loaded hour ere, roaring like the gale, the harrild and the hoe devour their league-long paper bale, and has lit his pipe in the morning calm that follows the midnight stress-- he hath sold his heart to the old black art we call the daily press. who once hath dealt in the widest game that all of a man can play, no later love, no larger fame will lure him long away. as the war-horse smelleth the battle afar, the entered soul, no less, he saith: 'ha! ha!' where the trumpets are and the thunders of the press. canst thou number the days that we fulfil, or the _times_ that we bring forth? canst thou send the lightnings to do thy will, and cause them reign on earth? hast thou given a peacock goodly wings to please his foolishness? sit down at the heart of men and things, companion of the press! the pope may launch his interdict, the union its decree, but the bubble is blown and the bubble is pricked by us and such as we. remember the battle and stand aside while thrones and powers confess that king over all the children of pride is the press--the press--the press! in the presence ( ) 'so the matter,' the regimental chaplain concluded, 'was correct; in every way correct. i am well pleased with rutton singh and attar singh. they have gathered the fruit of their lives.' he folded his arms and sat down on the verandah. the hot day had ended, and there was a pleasant smell of cooking along the regimental lines, where half-clad men went back and forth with leaf platters and water-goglets. the subadar-major, in extreme undress, sat on a chair, as befitted his rank; the havildar-major, his nephew, leaning respectfully against the wall. the regiment was at home and at ease in its own quarters in its own district which takes its name from the great muhammadan saint mian mir, revered by jehangir and beloved by guru har gobind, sixth of the great sikh gurus. 'quite correct,' the regimental chaplain repeated. no sikh contradicts his regimental chaplain who expounds to him the holy book of the grunth sahib and who knows the lives and legends of all the gurus. the subadar-major bowed his grey head. the havildar-major coughed respectfully to attract attention and to ask leave to speak. though he was the subadar-major's nephew, and though his father held twice as much land as his uncle, he knew his place in the scheme of things. the subadar-major shifted one hand with an iron bracelet on the wrist. 'was there by any chance any woman at the back of it?' the havildar-major murmured. 'i was not here when the thing happened.' 'yes! yes! yes! we all know that thou wast in england eating and drinking with the sahibs. we are all surprised that thou canst still speak punjabi.' the subadar-major's carefully-tended beard bristled. 'there was no woman,' the regimental chaplain growled. 'it was land. hear, you! rutton singh and attar singh were the elder of four brothers. these four held land in--what was the village's name?--oh, pishapur, near thori, in the banalu tehsil of patiala state, where men can still recognise right behaviour when they see it. the two younger brothers tilled the land, while rutton singh and attar singh took service with the regiment, according to the custom of the family.' 'true, true,' said the havildar-major. 'there is the same arrangement in all good families.' 'then, listen again,' the regimental chaplain went on. 'their kin on their mother's side put great oppression and injustice upon the two younger brothers who stayed with the land in patiala state. their mother's kin loosened beasts into the four brothers' crops when the crops were green; they cut the corn by force when it was ripe; they broke down the water-courses; they defiled the wells; and they brought false charges in the law-courts against all four brothers. they did not spare even the cotton-seed, as the saying is. 'their mother's kin trusted that the young men would thus be forced by weight of trouble, and further trouble and perpetual trouble, to quit their lands in pishapur village in banalu tehsil in patiala state. if the young men ran away, the land would come whole to their mother's kin. i am not a regimental school-master, but is it understood, child?' 'understood,' said the havildar-major grimly. 'pishapur is not the only place where the fence eats the field instead of protecting it. but perhaps there was a woman among their mother's kin?' 'god knows!' said the regimental chaplain. 'woman, or man, or law-courts, the young men would _not_ be driven off the land which was their own by inheritance. they made appeal to rutton singh and attar singh, their brethren who had taken service with _us_ in the regiment, and so knew the world, to help them in their long war against their mother's kin in pishapur. for that reason, because their own land and the honour of their house was dear to them, rutton singh and attar singh needs must very often ask for leave to go to patiala and attend to the lawsuits and cattle-poundings there. 'it was not, look you, as though they went back to their own village and sat, garlanded with jasmine, in honour, upon chairs before the elders under the trees. they went back always to perpetual trouble, either of lawsuits, or theft, or strayed cattle; and they sat on thorns.' 'i knew it,' said the subadar-major. 'life was bitter for them both. but they were well-conducted men. it was not hard to get them their leave from the colonel sahib.' 'they spoke to me also,' said the chaplain. '_"let him who desires the four great gifts apply himself to the words of holy men."_ that is written. often they showed me the papers of the false lawsuits brought against them. often they wept on account of the persecution put upon them by their mother's kin. men thought it was drugs when their eyes showed red.' 'they wept in my presence too,' said the subadar-major. 'well-conducted men of nine years' service apiece. rutton singh was drill-naik, too.' 'they did all things correctly as sikhs should,' said the regimental chaplain. 'when the persecution had endured seven years, attar singh took leave to pishapur once again (that was the fourth time in that year only) and he called his persecutors together before the village elders, and he cast his turban at their feet and besought them by his mother's blood to cease from their persecutions. for he told them earnestly that he had marched to the boundaries of his patience, and that there could be but one end to the matter. 'they gave him abuse. they mocked him and his tears, which was the same as though they had mocked the regiment. then attar singh returned to the regiment, and laid this last trouble before rutton singh, the eldest brother. but rutton singh could not get leave all at once.' 'because he was drill-naik and the recruits were to be drilled. i myself told him so,' said the subadar-major. 'he was a well-conducted man. he said he could wait.' 'but when permission was granted, those two took four days' leave,' the chaplain went on. 'i do not think attar singh should have taken baynes sahib's revolver. he was baynes sahib's orderly, and all that sahib's things were open to him. it was, therefore, as i count it, shame to attar singh,' said the subadar-major. 'all the words had been said. there was need of arms, and how could soldiers use government rifles upon mere cultivators in the fields?' the regimental chaplain replied. 'moreover, the revolver was sent back, together with a money-order for the cartridges expended. _"borrow not; but if thou borrowest, pay back soon!"_ that is written in the hymns. rutton singh took a sword, and he and attar singh went to pishapur and, after word given, the four brethren fell upon their persecutors in pishapur village and slew seventeen, wounding ten. a revolver is better than a lawsuit. i say that these four brethren, the two with _us_, and the two mere cultivators, slew and wounded twenty-seven--all their mother's kin, male and female. 'then the four mounted to their housetop, and attar singh, who was always one of the impetuous, said "my work is done," and he made _shinan_ (purification) in all men's sight, and he lent rutton singh baynes sahib's revolver, and rutton singh shot him in the head. 'so attar singh abandoned his body, as an insect abandons a blade of grass. but rutton singh, having more work to do, went down from the housetop and sought an enemy whom he had forgotten--a patiala man of this regiment who had sided with the persecutors. when he overtook the man, rutton singh hit him twice with bullets and once with the sword.' 'but the man escaped and is now in the hospital here,' said the subadar-major. 'the doctor says he will live in spite of all.' 'not rutton singh's fault. rutton singh left him for dead. then rutton singh returned to the housetop, and the three brothers together, attar singh being dead, sent word by a lad to the police station for an army to be dispatched against them that they might die with honours. but none came. and yet patiala state is not under english law and they should know virtue there when they see it! 'so, on the third day, rutton singh also made _shinan_, and the youngest of the brethren shot him also in the head, and _he_ abandoned his body. 'thus was all correct. there was neither heat, nor haste, nor abuse in the matter from end to end. there remained alive not one man or woman of their mother's kin which had oppressed them. of the other villagers of pishapur, who had taken no part in the persecutions, not one was slain. indeed, the villagers sent them food on the housetop for those three days while they waited for the police who would not dispatch that army. 'listen again! i know that attar singh and rutton singh omitted no ceremony of the purifications, and when all was done baynes sahib's revolver was thrown down from the housetop, together with three rupees twelve annas; and order was given for its return by post.' 'and what befell the two younger brethren who were not in the service?' the havildar-major asked. 'doubtless they too are dead, but since they were not in the regiment their honour concerns themselves only. so far as _we_ were touched, see how correctly we came out of the matter! i think the king should be told; for where could you match such a tale except among us sikhs? _sri wah guru ji ki khalsa! sri wah guru ji ki futteh!_' said the regimental chaplain. 'would three rupees twelve annas pay for the used cartridges?' said the havildar-major. 'attar singh knew the just price. all baynes sahib's gear was in his charge. they expended one tin box of fifty cartouches, lacking two which were returned. as i said--as i say--the arrangement was made not with heat nor blasphemies as a mussulman would have made it; not with cries nor caperings as an idolater would have made it; but conformably to the ritual and doctrine of the sikhs. hear you! _"though hundreds of amusements are offered to a child it cannot live without milk. if a man be divorced from his soul and his soul's desire he certainly will not stop to play upon the road, but he will make haste with his pilgrimage_." that is written. i rejoice in my disciples.' 'true! true! correct! correct!' said the subadar-major. there was a long, easy silence. one heard a water-wheel creaking somewhere and the nearer sound of meal being ground in a quern. 'but he--' the chaplain pointed a scornful chin at the havildar-major--'_he_ has been so long in england that--' 'let the lad alone,' said his uncle. 'he was but two months there, and he was chosen for good cause.' theoretically, all sikhs are equal. practically, there are differences, as none know better than well-born, land-owning folk, or long-descended chaplains from amritsar. 'hast thou heard anything in england to match my tale?' the chaplain sneered. 'i saw more than i could understand, so i have locked up my stories in my own mouth,' the havildar-major replied meekly. 'stories? what stories? i know all the stories about england,' said the chaplain. 'i know that _terains_ run underneath their bazaars there, and as for their streets stinking with _mota kahars_, only this morning i was nearly killed by duggan sahib's _mota-kahar_. that young man is a devil.' 'i expect grunthi-jee,' said the subadar-major, 'you and i grow too old to care for the kahar-ki-nautch--the bearer's dance.' he named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun. then he turned to his nephew. 'when i was a lad and came back to my village on leave, i waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, i spoke of what i had seen elsewhere.' 'ay, my father,' said the havildar-major, softly and affectionately. he sat himself down with respect, as behoved a mere lad of thirty with a bare half-dozen campaigns to his credit. 'there were four men in this affair also,' he began, 'and it was an affair that touched the honour, not of one regiment, nor two, but of all the army in hind. some part of it i saw; some i heard; but _all_ the tale is true. my father's brother knows, and my priest knows, that i was in england on business with my colonel, when the king--the great queen's son--completed his life. 'first, there was a rumour that sickness was upon him. next, we knew that he lay sick in the palace. a very great multitude stood outside the palace by night and by day, in the rain as well as the sun, waiting for news. 'then came out one with a written paper, and set it upon a gate-side--the word of the king's death--and they read, and groaned. this i saw with my own eyes, because the office where my colonel sahib went daily to talk with colonel forsyth sahib was at the east end of the very gardens where the palace stood. they are larger gardens than shalimar here'--he pointed with his chin up the lines--'or shahdera across the river. 'next day there was a darkness in the streets, because all the city's multitude were clad in black garments, and they spoke as a man speaks in the presence of his dead--all those multitudes. in the eyes, in the air, and in the heart, there was blackness. i saw it. but that is not my tale. 'after ceremonies had been accomplished, and word had gone out to the kings of the earth that they should come and mourn, the new king--the dead king's son--gave commandment that his father's body should be laid, coffined, in a certain temple which is near the river. there are no idols in that temple; neither any carvings, nor paintings, nor gildings. it is all grey stone, of one colour as though it were cut out of the live rock. it is larger than--yes, than the durbar sahib at amritsar, even though the akal bunga and the baba-atal were added. how old it may be god knows. it is the sahibs' most sacred temple. 'in that place, by the new king's commandment, they made, as it were, a shrine for a saint, with lighted candles at the head and the feet of the dead, and duly appointed watchers for every hour of the day and the night, until the dead king should be taken to the place of his fathers, which is at wanidza. 'when all was in order, the new king said, "give entrance to all people," and the doors were opened, and o my uncle! o my teacher! all the world entered, walking through that temple to take farewell of the dead. there was neither distinction, nor price, nor ranking in the host, except an order that they should walk by fours. 'as they gathered in the streets without--very, very far off--so they entered the temple, walking by fours: the child, the old man; mother, virgin, harlot, trader, priest; of all colours and faiths and customs under the firmament of god, from dawn till late at night. i saw it. my colonel gave me leave to go. i stood in the line, many hours, one _koss_, two _koss_, distant from the temple.' 'then why did the multitude not sit down under the trees?' asked the priest. 'because we were still between houses. the city is many _koss_ wide,' the havildar-major resumed. 'i submitted myself to that slow-moving river and thus--thus--a pace at a time--i made pilgrimage. there were in my rank a woman, a cripple, and a lascar from the ships. 'when we entered the temple, the coffin itself was as a shoal in the ravi river, splitting the stream into two branches, one on either side of the dead; and the watchers of the dead, who were soldiers, stood about it, moving no more than the still flame of the candles. their heads were bowed; their hands were clasped; their eyes were cast upon the ground--thus. they were not men, but images, and the multitude went past them in fours by day, and, except for a little while, by night also. 'no, there was no order that the people should come to pay respect. it was a free-will pilgrimage. eight kings had been commanded to come--who obeyed--but upon his own sahibs the new king laid no commandment. of themselves they came. 'i made pilgrimage twice: once for my salt's sake, and once again for wonder and terror and worship. but my mouth cannot declare one thing of a hundred thousand things in this matter. there were _lakhs_ of _lakhs_, _crores_ of _crores_ of people. i saw them.' 'more than at our great pilgrimages?' the regimental chaplain demanded. 'yes. those are only cities and districts coming out to pray. this was the world walking in grief. and now, hear you! it is the king's custom that four swords of our armies in hind should stand always before the presence in case of need.' 'the king's custom, our right,' said the subadar-major curtly. 'also our right. these honoured ones are changed after certain months or years, that the honour may be fairly spread. now it chanced that when the old king--the queen's son--completed his days, the four that stood in the presence were goorkhas. neither sikhs alas, nor pathans, rajputs, nor jats. goorkhas, my father.' 'idolaters,' said the chaplain. 'but soldiers; for i remember in the tirah--' the havildar-major began. '_but_ soldiers, for i remember fifteen campaigns. go on,' said the subadar-major. 'and it was their honour and right to furnish one who should stand in the presence by day and by night till it went out to burial. there were no more than four all told--four old men to furnish that guard.' 'old? old? what talk is this of old men?' said the subadar-major. 'nay. my fault! your pardon!' the havildar-major spread a deprecating hand. 'they were strong, hot, valiant men, and the youngest was a lad of forty-five.' 'that is better,' the subadar-major laughed. 'but for all their strength and heat they could not eat strange food from the sahibs' hands. there was no cooking place in the temple; but a certain colonel forsyth sahib, who had understanding, made arrangement whereby they should receive at least a little caste-clean parched grain; also cold rice maybe, and water which was pure. yet, at best, this was no more than a hen's mouthful, snatched as each came off his guard. they lived on grain and were thankful, as the saying is. 'one hour's guard in every four was each man's burden, for, as i have shown, they were but four all told; and the honour of our armies in hind was on their heads. the sahibs could draw upon all the armies in england for the other watchers--thousands upon thousands of fresh men--if they needed; but these four were but four. 'the sahibs drew upon the granadeers for the other watchers. granadeers be very tall men under very tall bearskins, such as fusilier regiments wear in cold weather. thus, when a granadeer bowed his head but a very little over his stock, the bearskin sloped and showed as though he grieved exceedingly. now the goorkhas wear flat, green caps--' 'i see, i see,' said the subadar-major impatiently. 'they are bull-necked, too; and their stocks are hard, and when they bend deeply--deeply--to match the granadeers--they come nigh to choking themselves. that was a handicap against them, when it came to the observance of ritual. 'yet even with their tall, grief-declaring bearskins, the granadeers could not endure the full hour's guard in the presence. there was good cause, as i will show, why no man could endure that terrible hour. so for them the hour's guard was cut to one-half. what did it matter to the sahibs? they could draw on ten thousand granadeers. forsyth sahib, who had comprehension, put this choice also before the four, and they said, "no, ours is the honour of the armies of hind. whatever the sahibs do, we will suffer the full hour." 'forsyth sahib, seeing that they were--knowing that they could neither sleep long nor eat much, said, "is it great suffering?" they said, "it is great honour. we will endure." 'forsyth sahib, who loves us, said then to the eldest, "ho, father, tell me truly what manner of burden it is; for the full hour's watch breaks up our men like water." 'the eldest answered, "sahib, the burden is the feet of the multitude that pass us on either side. our eyes being lowered and fixed, we see those feet only from the knee down--a river of feet, sahib, that never--never--never stops. it is not the standing without any motion; it is not hunger; nor is it the dead part before the dawn when maybe a single one comes here to weep. it is the burden of the unendurable procession of feet from the knee down, that never--never--never stops!" 'forsyth sahib said, "by god, i had not considered that! now i know why our men come trembling and twitching off that guard. but at least, my father, ease the stock a little beneath the bent chin for that one hour." 'the eldest said, "we are in the presence. moreover _he_ knew every button and braid and hook of every uniform in all his armies." 'then forsyth sahib said no more, except to speak about their parched grain, but indeed they could not eat much after their hour, nor could they sleep much because of eye-twitchings and the renewed procession of the feet before the eyes. yet they endured each his full hour--not half an hour--his one full hour in each four hours.' 'correct! correct!' said the subadar-major and the chaplain together. 'we come well out of this affair.' 'but seeing that they were old men,' said the subadar-major reflectively, 'very old men, worn out by lack of food and sleep, could not arrangements have been made, or influence have been secured, or a petition presented, whereby a well-born sikh might have eased them of some portion of their great burden, even though his substantive rank--' 'then they would most certainly have slain me,' said the havildar-major with a smile. 'and they would have done correctly,' said the chaplain. 'what befell the honourable ones later?' 'this. the kings of the earth and all the armies sent flowers and such-like to the dead king's palace at wanidza, where the funeral offerings were accepted. there was no order given, but all the world made oblation. so the four took counsel--three at a time--and either they asked forsyth sahib to choose flowers, or themselves they went forth and bought flowers--i do not know; but, however it was arranged, the flowers were bought and made in the shape of a great drum-like circle weighing half a _maund_. 'forsyth sahib had said, "let the flowers be sent to wanidza with the other flowers which all the world is sending." but they said among themselves, "it is not fit that these flowers, which are the offerings of his armies in hind, should come to the palace of the presence by the hands of hirelings or messengers, or of any man not in his service." 'hearing this, forsyth sahib, though he was much occupied with office-work, said, "give me the flowers, and i will steal a time and myself take them to wanidza." 'the eldest said, "since when has forsyth sahib worn sword?" 'forsyth sahib said, "but always. and i wear it in the presence when i put on uniform. i am a colonel in the armies of hind." the eldest said, "of what regiment?" and forsyth sahib looked on the carpet and pulled the hair of his lip. he saw the trap.' 'forsyth sahib's regiment was once the old forty-sixth pathans which was called--' the subadar-major gave the almost forgotten title, adding that he had met them in such and such campaigns, when forsyth sahib was a young captain. the havildar-major took up the tale, saying, 'the eldest knew that also, my father. he laughed, and presently forsyth sahib laughed. '"it is true," said forsyth sahib. "i have no regiment. for twenty years i have been a clerk tied to a thick pen. therefore i am the more fit to be your orderly and messenger in this business." 'the eldest then said, "if it were a matter of my life or the honour of _any_ of my household, it would be easy." and forsyth sahib joined his hands together, half laughing, though he was ready to weep, and he said, "enough! i ask pardon. which one of you goes with the offering?" 'the eldest said, feigning not to have heard, "nor must they be delivered by a single sword--as though we were pressed for men in his service," and they saluted and went out.' 'were these things seen, or were they told thee?' said the subadar-major. 'i both saw and heard in the office full of books and papers where my colonel sahib consulted forsyth sahib upon the business that had brought my colonel sahib to england.' 'and what was that business?' the regimental chaplain asked of a sudden, looking full at the havildar-major, who returned the look without a quiver. 'that was not revealed to me,' said the havildar-major. 'i heard it might have been some matter touching the integrity of certain regiments,' the chaplain insisted. 'the matter was not in any way open to my ears,' said the havildar-major. 'humph!' the chaplain drew his hard road-worn feet under his robe. 'let us hear the tale that it is permitted thee to tell,' he said, and the havildar-major went on: 'so then the three, having returned to the temple, called the fourth, who had only forty-five years, when he came off guard, and said, "we go to the palace at wanidza with the offerings. remain thou in the presence, and take all our guards, one after the other, till we return." 'within that next hour they hired a large and strong _mota-kahar_ for the journey from the temple to wanidza, which is twenty _koss_ or more, and they promised expedition. but he who took their guards said, "it is not seemly that we should for any cause appear to be in haste. there are eighteen medals with eleven clasps and three orders to consider. go at leisure. i can endure." 'so the three with the offerings were absent three hours and a half, and having delivered the offering at wanidza in the correct manner they returned and found the lad on guard, and they did not break his guard till his full hour was ended. so _he_ endured four hours in the presence, not stirring one hair, his eyes abased, and the river of feet, from the knee down, passing continually before his eyes. when he was relieved, it was seen that his eyeballs worked like weavers' shuttles. 'and so it was done--not in hot blood, not for a little while, nor yet with the smell of slaughter and the noise of shouting to sustain, but in silence, for a very long time, rooted to one place before the presence among the most terrible feet of the multitude.' 'correct!' the chaplain chuckled. 'but the goorkhas had the honour,' said the subadar-major sadly. 'theirs was the honour of his armies in hind, and that was our honour,' the nephew replied. 'yet i would one sikh had been concerned in it--even one low-caste sikh. and after?' 'they endured the burden until the end--until it went out of the temple to be laid among the older kings at wanidza. when all was accomplished and it was withdrawn under the earth, forsyth sahib said to the four, "the king gives command that you be fed here on meat cooked by your own cooks. eat and take ease, my fathers." 'so they loosed their belts and ate. they had not eaten food except by snatches for some long time; and when the meat had given them strength they slept for very many hours; and it was told me that the procession of the unendurable feet ceased to pass before their eyes any more.' he threw out one hand palm upward to show that the tale was ended. 'we came well and cleanly out of it,' said the subadar-major. 'correct! correct! correct!' said the regimental chaplain. 'in an evil age it is good to hear such things, and there is certainly no doubt that this is a very evil age.' jobson's amen 'blessed be the english and all their ways and works. cursed be the infidels, hereticks, and turks!' 'amen,' quo' jobson, 'but where i used to lie was neither candle, bell nor book to curse my brethren by: 'but a palm-tree in full bearing, bowing down, bowing down, to a surf that drove unsparing at the brown-walled town-- conches in a temple, oil-lamps in a dome-- and a low moon out of africa said: "this way home!"' 'blessed be the english and all that they profess. cursed be the savages that prance in nakedness!' 'amen,' quo' jobson, 'but where i used to lie was neither shirt nor pantaloons to catch my brethren by: 'but a well-wheel slowly creaking, going round, going round, by a water-channel leaking over drowned, warm ground-- parrots very busy in the trellised pepper-vine-- and a high sun over asia shouting: "rise and shine!"' 'blessed be the english and everything they own. cursed be the infidels that bow to wood and stone!' 'amen,' quo' jobson, 'but where i used to lie was neither pew nor gospelleer to save my brethren by: 'but a desert stretched and stricken, left and right, left and right, where the piled mirages thicken under white-hot light-- a skull beneath a sand-hill and a viper coiled inside-- and a red wind out of libya roaring: "run and hide!"' 'blessed be the english and all they make or do. cursed be the hereticks who doubt that this is true!' 'amen,' quo' jobson, 'but where i mean to die is neither rule nor calliper to judge the matter by: 'but himalaya heavenward-heading, sheer and vast, sheer and vast, in a million summits bedding on the last world's past; a certain sacred mountain where the scented cedars climb, and--the feet of my beloved hurrying back through time!' regulus ( ) _regulus, a roman general, defeated the carthaginians b.c., but was next year defeated and taken prisoner by the carthaginians, who sent him to rome with an embassy to ask for peace or an exchange of prisoners. regulus strongly advised the roman senate to make no terms with the enemy. he then returned to carthage and was put to death._ the fifth form had been dragged several times in its collective life, from one end of the school horace to the other. those were the years when army examiners gave thousands of marks for latin, and it was mr. king's hated business to defeat them. hear him, then, on a raw november morning at second lesson. 'aha!' he began, rubbing his hands. '_cras ingens iterabimus aequor._ our portion to-day is the fifth ode of the third book, i believe--concerning one regulus, a gentleman. and how often have we been through it?' 'twice, sir,' said malpass, head of the form. mr. king shuddered. 'yes, twice, quite literally,' he said. 'to-day, with an eye to your army _viva-voce_ examinations--ugh!--i shall exact somewhat freer and more florid renditions. with feeling and comprehension if that be possible. i except'--here his eye swept the back benches--'our friend and companion beetle, from whom, now as always, i demand an absolutely literal translation.' the form laughed subserviently. 'spare his blushes! beetle charms us first.' beetle stood up, confident in the possession of a guaranteed construe, left behind by m'turk, who had that day gone into the sick-house with a cold. yet he was too wary a hand to show confidence. '_credidimus_, we--believe--we have believed,' he opened in hesitating slow time, '_tonantem joven_, thundering jove--_regnare_, to reign--_caelo_, in heaven. _augustus_, augustus--_habebitur_, will be held or considered--_praesens divus_, a present god--_adjectis britannis_, the britons being added--_imperio_, to the empire--_gravibusque persis_, with the heavy--er, stern persians.' 'what?' 'the grave or stern persians.' beetle pulled up with the 'thank-god-i-have-done-my-duty' air of nelson in the cockpit. 'i am quite aware,' said king, 'that the first stanza is about the extent of your knowledge, but continue, sweet one, continue. _gravibus_, by the way, is usually translated as "troublesome."' beetle drew a long and tortured breath. the second stanza (which carries over to the third) of that ode is what is technically called a 'stinker.' but m'turk had done him handsomely. '_milesne crassi_, had--has the soldier of crassus--_vixit_, lived--_turpis maritus_, a disgraceful husband--' 'you slurred the quantity of the word after _turpis_,' said king. 'let's hear it.' beetle guessed again, and for a wonder hit the correct quantity. 'er--a disgraceful husband--_conjuge barbara_, with a barbarous spouse.' 'why do you select _that_ disgustful equivalent out of all the dictionary?' king snapped. 'isn't "wife" good enough for you?' 'yes, sir. but what do i do about this bracket, sir? shall i take it now?' 'confine yourself at present to the soldier of crassus.' 'yes, sir. _et_, and--_consenuit_, has he grown old--_in armis_, in the--er--arms--_hositum socerorum_, of his father-in-law's enemies.' 'who? how? which?' 'arms of his enemies' fathers-in-law, sir.' 'tha-anks. by the way, what meaning might you attach to _in armis_?' 'oh, weapons--weapons of war, sir.' there was a virginal note in beetle's voice as though he had been falsely accused of uttering indecencies. 'shall i take the bracket now, sir?' 'since it seems to be troubling you.' '_pro curia_, o for the senate house--_inversique mores_, and manners upset--upside down.' 've-ry like your translation. meantime, the soldier of crassus?' '_sub rege medo_, under a median king--_marsus et apulus_, he being a marsian and an apulian.' 'who? the median king?' 'no, sir. the soldier of crassus. _oblittus_ agrees with _milesne crassi_, sir,' volunteered too-hasty beetle. 'does it? it doesn't with _me_.' '_oh-blight-us_,' beetle corrected hastily, 'forgetful--_anciliorum_, of the shields, or trophies--_et nominis_, and the--his name--_et togae_, and the toga--_eternaeque vestae_, and eternal vesta--_incolumi jove_, jove being safe--_et urbe roma_, and the roman city.' with an air of hardly restrained zeal--'shall i go on, sir?' mr. king winced. 'no, thank you. you have indeed given us a translation! may i ask if it conveys any meaning whatever to your so-called mind?' 'oh, i think so, sir.' this with gentle toleration for horace and all his works. 'we envy you. sit down.' beetle sat down relieved, well knowing that a reef of uncharted genitives stretched ahead of him, on which in spite of m'turk's sailing-directions he would infallibly have been wrecked. rattray, who took up the task, steered neatly through them and came unscathed to port. 'here we require drama,' said king. 'regulus himself is speaking now. who shall represent the provident-minded regulus? winton, will you kindly oblige?' winton of king's house, a long, heavy, tow-headed second fifteen forward, overdue for his first fifteen colours, and in aspect like an earnest, elderly horse, rose up, and announced, among other things, that he had seen 'signs affixed to punic deluges.' half the form shouted for joy, and the other half for joy that there was something to shout about. mr. king opened and shut his eyes with great swiftness. '_signa adfixa delubris_,' he gasped. 'so _delubris_ is "deluges" is it? winton, in all our dealings, have i ever suspected you of a jest?' 'no, sir,' said the rigid and angular winton, while the form rocked about him. 'and yet you assert _delubris_ means "deluges." whether i am a fit subject for such a jape is, of course, a matter of opinion, but.... winton, you are normally conscientious. may we assume you looked out _delubris_?' 'no, sir.' winton was privileged to speak that truth dangerous to all who stand before kings. ''made a shot at it then?' every line of winton's body showed he had done nothing of the sort. indeed, the very idea that 'pater' winton (and a boy is not called 'pater' by companions for his frivolity) would make a shot at anything was beyond belief. but he replied, 'yes,' and all the while worked with his right heel as though he were heeling a ball at punt-about. though none dared to boast of being a favourite with king, the taciturn, three-cornered winton stood high in his house-master's opinion. it seemed to save him neither rebuke nor punishment, but the two were in some fashion sympathetic. 'hm!' said king drily. 'i was going to say--_flagito additis damnum_, but i think--i think i see the process. beetle, the translation of _delubris_, please.' beetle raised his head from his shaking arm long enough to answer: 'ruins, sir.' there was an impressive pause while king checked off crimes on his fingers. then to beetle the much-enduring man addressed winged words: 'guessing,' said he. 'guessing, beetle, as usual, from the look of _delubris_ that it bore some relation to _diluvium_ or deluge, you imparted the result of your half-baked lucubrations to winton who seems to have been lost enough to have accepted it. observing next, your companion's fall, from the presumed security of your undistinguished position in the rear-guard, you took another pot-shot. the turbid chaos of your mind threw up some memory of the word "dilapidations" which you have pitifully attempted to disguise under the synonym of "ruins."' as this was precisely what beetle had done he looked hurt but forgiving. 'we will attend to this later,' said king. 'go on, winton, and retrieve yourself.' _delubris_ happened to be the one word which winton had not looked out and had asked beetle for, when they were settling into their places. he forged ahead with no further trouble. only when he rendered _scilicet_ as 'forsooth,' king erupted. 'regulus,' he said, 'was not a leader-writer for the penny press, nor, for that matter, was horace. regulus says: "the soldier ransomed by gold will come keener for the fight--will he by--by gum!" _that's_ the meaning of _scilicet_. it indicates contempt--bitter contempt. "forsooth," forsooth! you'll be talking about "speckled beauties" and "eventually transpire" next. howell, what do you make of that doubled "vidi ego--ego vidi"? it wasn't put in to fill up the metre, you know.' 'isn't it intensive, sir?' said howell, afflicted by a genuine interest in what he read. 'regulus was a bit in earnest about rome making no terms with carthage--and he wanted to let the romans understand it, didn't he, sir?' 'less than your usual grace, but the fact. regulus _was_ in earnest. he was also engaged at the same time in cutting his own throat with every word he uttered. he knew carthage which (your examiners won't ask you this so you needn't take notes) was a sort of god-forsaken nigger manchester. regulus was not thinking about his own life. he was telling rome the truth. he was playing for his side. those lines from the eighteenth to the fortieth ought to be written in blood. yet there are things in human garments which will tell you that horace was a flâneur--a man about town. avoid such beings. horace knew a very great deal. _he_ knew! _erit ille fortis_--"will he be brave who once to faithless foes has knelt?" and again (stop pawing with your hooves, thornton!) _hic unde vitam sumeret inscius_. that means roughly--but i perceive i am ahead of my translators. begin at _hic unde_, vernon, and let us see if you have the spirit of regulus.' now no one expected fireworks from gentle paddy vernon, sub-prefect of hartopp's house, but, as must often be the case with growing boys, his mind was in abeyance for the time being, and he said, all in a rush, on behalf of regulus: '_o magna carthago probrosis altior italiae ruinis_, o carthage, thou wilt stand forth higher than the ruins of italy.' even beetle, most lenient of critics, was interested at this point, though he did not join the half-groan of reprobation from the wiser heads of the form. '_please_ don't mind me,' said king, and vernon very kindly did not. he ploughed on thus: 'he (regulus) is related to have removed from himself the kiss of the shameful wife and of his small children as less by the head, and, being stern, to have placed his virile visage on the ground.' since king loved 'virile' about as much as he did 'spouse' or 'forsooth' the form looked up hopefully. but jove thundered not. 'until,' vernon continued, 'he should have confirmed the sliding fathers as being the author of counsel never given under an alias.' he stopped, conscious of stillness round him like the dread calm of the typhoon's centre. king's opening voice was sweeter than honey. 'i am painfully aware by bitter experience that i cannot give you any idea of the passion, the power, the--the essential guts of the lines which you have so foully outraged in our presence. but--' the note changed, 'so far as in me lies, i will strive to bring home to you, vernon, the fact that there exist in latin a few pitiful rules of grammar, of syntax, nay, even of declension, which were not created for your incult sport--your boeotian diversion. you will, therefore, vernon, write out and bring to me to-morrow a word-for-word english-latin translation of the ode, together with a full list of all adjectives--an adjective is not a verb, vernon, as the lower third will tell you--all adjectives, their number, case, and gender. even now i haven't begun to deal with you faithfully.' 'i--i'm very sorry, sir,' vernon stammered. 'you mistake the symptoms, vernon. you are possibly discomfited by the imposition, but sorrow postulates some sort of mind, intellect, _nous_. your rendering of _probrosis_ alone stamps you as lower than the beasts of the field. will some one take the taste out of our mouths? and--talking of tastes--' he coughed. there was a distinct flavour of chlorine gas in the air. up went an eyebrow, though king knew perfectly well what it meant. 'mr. hartopp's st--science class next door,' said malpass. 'oh yes. i had forgotten. our newly established modern side, of course. perowne, open the windows; and winton, go on once more from _interque maerentes_.' 'and hastened away,' said winton, 'surrounded by his mourning friends, into--into illustrious banishment. but i got that out of conington, sir,' he added in one conscientious breath. 'i am aware. the master generally knows his ass's crib, though i acquit _you_ of any intention that way. can you suggest anything for _egregius exul_? only "egregious exile"? i fear "egregious" is a good word ruined. no! you can't in this case improve on conington. now then for _atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor pararet_. the whole force of it lies in the _atqui_.' 'although he knew,' winton suggested. 'stronger than that, i think.' 'he who knew well,' malpass interpolated. 'ye-es. "well though he knew." i don't like conington's "well-witting." it's wardour street.' 'well though he knew what the savage torturer was--was getting ready for him,' said winton. 'ye-es. had in store for him.' 'yet he brushed aside his kinsmen and the people delaying his return.' 'ye-es; but then how do you render _obstantes_?' 'if it's a free translation mightn't _obstantes_ and _morantem_ come to about the same thing, sir?' 'nothing comes to "about the same thing" with horace, winton. as i have said, horace was not a journalist. no, i take it that his kinsmen bodily withstood his departure, whereas the crowd--_populumque_--the democracy stood about futilely pitying him and getting in the way. now for that noblest of endings--_quam si clientum_,' and king ran off into the quotation: 'as though some tedious business o'er of clients' court, his journey lay towards venafrum's grassy floor or sparta-built tarentum's bay. all right, winton. beetle, when you've quite finished dodging the fresh air yonder, give me the meaning of _tendens_--and turn down your collar.' 'me, sir? _tendens_, sir? oh! stretching away in the direction of, sir.' 'idiot! regulus was not a feature of the landscape. he was a man, self-doomed to death by torture. _atqui, sciebat_--knowing it--having achieved it for his country's sake--can't you hear that _atqui_ cut like a knife?--he moved off with some dignity. that is why horace out of the whole golden latin tongue chose the one word "tendens"--which is utterly untranslatable.' the gross injustice of being asked to translate it, converted beetle into a young christian martyr, till king buried his nose in his handkerchief again. 'i think they've broken another gas-bottle next door, sir,' said howell. 'they're always doing it.' the form coughed as more chlorine came in. 'well, i suppose we must be patient with the modern side,' said king. 'but it is almost insupportable for this side. vernon, what are you grinning at?' vernon's mind had returned to him glowing and inspired. he chuckled as he underlined his horace. 'it appears to amuse you,' said king. 'let us participate. what is it?' 'the last two lines of the tenth ode, in this book, sir,' was vernon's amazing reply. 'what? oh, i see. _non hoc semper erit liminis aut aquae caelestis patiens latus_[ ].' king's mouth twitched to hide a grin. 'was that done with intention?' [footnote : 'this side will not always be patient of rain and waiting on the threshold.'] 'i--i thought it fitted, sir.' 'it does. it's distinctly happy. what put it into your thick head, paddy?' 'i don't know, sir, except we did the ode last term.' 'and you remembered? the same head that minted _probrosis_ as a verb! vernon, you are an enigma. no! this side will _not_ always be patient of unheavenly gases and waters. i will make representations to our so-called moderns. meantime (who shall say i am not just?) i remit you your accrued pains and penalties in regard to _probrosim, probrosis, probrosit_ and other enormities. i oughtn't to do it, but this side is occasionally human. by no means bad, paddy.' 'thank you, sir,' said vernon, wondering how inspiration had visited him. then king, with a few brisk remarks about science, headed them back to regulus, of whom and of horace and rome and evil-minded commercial carthage and of the democracy eternally futile, he explained, in all ages and climes, he spoke for ten minutes; passing thence to the next ode--_delicta majorum_--where he fetched up, full-voiced, upon--'_dis te minorem quod geris imperas_' (thou rulest because thou bearest thyself as lower than the gods)--making it a text for a discourse on manners, morals, and respect for authority as distinct from bottled gases, which lasted till the bell rang. then beetle, concertinaing his books, observed to winton, 'when king's really on tap he's an interestin' dog. hartopp's chlorine uncorked him.' 'yes; but why did you tell me _delubris_ was "deluges," you silly ass?' said winton. 'well, that uncorked him too. look out, you hoof-handed old owl!' winton had cleared for action as the form poured out like puppies at play and was scragging beetle. stalky from behind collared winton low. the three fell in confusion. '_dis te minorem quod geris imperas_,' quoth stalky, ruffling winton's lint-white locks. 'mustn't jape with number five study. don't be too virtuous. don't brood over it. 'twon't count against you in your future caree-ah. cheer up, pater.' 'pull him off my--er--essential guts, will you?' said beetle from beneath. 'he's squashin' 'em.' they dispersed to their studies. * * * * * no one, the owner least of all, can explain what is in a growing boy's mind. it might have been the blind ferment of adolescence; stalky's random remarks about virtue might have stirred him; like his betters he might have sought popularity by way of clowning; or, as the head asserted years later, the only known jest of his serious life might have worked on him, as a sober-sided man's one love colours and dislocates all his after days. but, at the next lesson, mechanical drawing with mr. lidgett who as drawing-master had very limited powers of punishment, winton fell suddenly from grace and let loose a live mouse in the form-room. the whole form, shrieking and leaping high, threw at it all the plaster cones, pyramids, and fruit in high relief--not to mention ink-pots--that they could lay hands on. mr. lidgett reported at once to the head; winton owned up to his crime, which, venial in the upper third, pardonable at a price in the lower fourth, was, of course, rank ruffianism on the part of a fifth form boy; and so, by graduated stages, he arrived at the head's study just before lunch, penitent, perturbed, annoyed with himself and--as the head said to king in the corridor after the meal--more human than he had known him in seven years. 'you see,' the head drawled on, 'winton's only fault is a certain costive and unaccommodating virtue. so this comes very happily.' 'i've never noticed any sign of it,' said king. winton was in king's house, and though king as pro-consul might, and did, infernally oppress his own province, once a black and yellow cap was in trouble at the hands of the imperial authority king fought for him to the very last steps of caesar's throne. 'well, you yourself admitted just now that a mouse was beneath the occasion,' the head answered. 'it was.' mr. king did not love mr. lidgett. 'it should have been a rat. but--but--i hate to plead it--it's the lad's first offence.' 'could you have damned him more completely, king?' 'hm. what is the penalty?' said king, in retreat, but keeping up a rear-guard action. 'only my usual few lines of virgil to be shown up by tea-time.' the head's eyes turned slightly to that end of the corridor where mullins, captain of the games ('pot,' 'old pot,' or 'potiphar' mullins), was pinning up the usual wednesday notice--'big, middle, and little side football--a to k, l to z, to . p.m.' you cannot write out the head's usual few (which means five hundred) latin lines and play football for one hour and three-quarters between the hours of . and p.m. winton had evidently no intention of trying to do so, for he hung about the corridor with a set face and an uneasy foot. yet it was law in the school, compared with which that of the medes and persians was no more than a non-committal resolution, that any boy, outside the first fifteen, who missed his football for any reason whatever, and had not a written excuse, duly signed by competent authority to explain his absence, would receive not less than three strokes with a ground-ash from the captain of the games, generally a youth between seventeen and eighteen years, rarely under eleven stone ('pot' was nearer thirteen), and always in hard condition. king knew without inquiry that the head had given winton no such excuse. 'but he is practically a member of the first fifteen. he has played for it all this term,' said king. 'i believe his cap should have arrived last week.' 'his cap has not been given him. officially, therefore, he is naught. i rely on old pot.' 'but mullins is winton's study-mate,' king persisted. pot mullins and pater winton were cousins and rather close friends. 'that will make no difference to mullins--or winton, if i know 'em,' said the head. 'but--but,' king played his last card desperately, 'i was going to recommend winton for extra sub-prefect in my house, now carton has gone.' 'certainly,' said the head. 'why not? he will be excellent by tea-time, i hope.' at that moment they saw mr. lidgett, tripping down the corridor, waylaid by winton. 'it's about that mouse-business at mechanical drawing,' winton opened, swinging across his path. 'yes, yes, highly disgraceful,' mr. lidgett panted. 'i know it was,' said winton. 'it--it was a cad's trick because--' 'because you knew i couldn't give you more than fifty lines,' said mr. lidgett. 'well, anyhow i've come to apologise for it.' 'certainly,' said mr. lidgett, and added, for he was a kindly man, 'i think that shows quite right feeling. i'll tell the head at once i'm satisfied.' 'no--no!' the boy's still unmended voice jumped from the growl to the squeak. 'i didn't mean _that_! i--i did it on principle. please don't--er--do anything of that kind.' mr. lidgett looked him up and down and, being an artist, understood. 'thank you, winton,' he said. 'this shall be between ourselves.' 'you heard?' said king, indecent pride in his voice. 'of course. you thought he was going to get lidgett to beg him off the impot.' king denied this with so much warmth that the head laughed and king went away in a huff. 'by the way,' said the head, 'i've told winton to do his lines in your form-room--not in his study.' 'thanks,' said king over his shoulder, for the head's orders had saved winton and mullins, who was doing extra army work in the study, from an embarrassing afternoon together. an hour later, king wandered into his still form-room as though by accident. winton was hard at work. 'aha!' said king, rubbing his hands. 'this does not look like games, winton. don't let me arrest your facile pen. whence this sudden love for virgil?' 'impot from the head, sir, for that mouse-business this morning.' 'rumours thereof have reached us. that was a lapse on your part into lower thirdery which i don't quite understand.' the 'tump-tump' of the puntabouts before the sides settled to games came through the open window. winton, like his house-master, loved fresh air. then they heard paddy vernon, sub-prefect on duty, calling the roll in the field and marking defaulters. winton wrote steadily. king curled himself up on a desk, hands round knees. one would have said that the man was gloating over the boy's misfortune, but the boy understood. '_dis te minorem quod geris imperas_,' king quoted presently. 'it is necessary to bear oneself as lower than the local gods--even than drawing-masters who are precluded from effective retaliation. i _do_ wish you'd tried that mouse-game with me, pater.' winton grinned; then sobered 'it was a cad's trick, sir, to play on mr. lidgett.' he peered forward at the page he was copying. 'well, "the sin _i_ impute to each frustrate ghost"--' king stopped himself. 'why do you goggle like an owl? hand me the mantuan and i'll dictate. no matter. any rich virgilian measures will serve. i may peradventure recall a few.' he began: 'tu regere imperio populos romane memento hae tibi erunt artes pacisque imponere morem, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. there you have it all, winton. write that out twice and yet once again.' for the next forty minutes, with never a glance at the book, king paid out the glorious hexameters (and king could read latin as though it were alive), winton hauling them in and coiling them away behind him as trimmers in a telegraph-ship's hold coil away deep-sea cable. king broke from the aeneid to the georgics and back again, pausing now and then to translate some specially loved line or to dwell on the treble-shot texture of the ancient fabric. he did not allude to the coming interview with mullins except at the last, when he said, 'i think at this juncture, pater, i need not ask you for the precise significance of _atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor_.' the ungrateful winton flushed angrily, and king loafed out to take five o'clock call-over, after which he invited little hartopp to tea and a talk on chlorine-gas. hartopp accepted the challenge like a bantam, and the two went up to king's study about the same time as winton returned to the form-room beneath it to finish his lines. then half a dozen of the second fifteen, who should have been washing, strolled in to condole with 'pater' winton, whose misfortune and its consequences were common talk. no one was more sincere than the long, red-headed, knotty-knuckled 'paddy' vernon, but, being a careless animal, he joggled winton's desk. 'curse you for a silly ass!' said winton. 'don't do that.' no one is expected to be polite while under punishment, so vernon, sinking his sub-prefectship, replied peacefully enough: 'well, don't be wrathy, pater.' 'i'm not,' said winton. 'get out! this ain't your house form-room.' ''form-room don't belong to you. why don't you go to your own study?' vernon replied. 'because mullins is there waitin' for the victim,' said stalky delicately, and they all laughed. 'you ought to have shaken that mouse out of your trouser-leg, pater. that's the way _i_ did in my youth. pater's revertin' to his second childhood. never mind, pater, we all respect you and your future caree-ah.' winton, still writhing, growled. vernon leaning on the desk somehow shook it again. then he laughed. 'what are you grinning at?' winton asked. 'i was only thinkin' of _you_ being sent up to take a lickin' from pot. i swear i don't think it's fair. you've never shirked a game in your life, and you're as good as in the first fifteen already. your cap ought to have been delivered last week, oughtn't it?' it was law in the school that no man could by any means enjoy the privileges and immunities of the first fifteen till the black velvet cap with the gold tassel, made by dilatory exeter outfitters, had been actually set on his head. ages ago, a large-built and unruly second fifteen had attempted to change this law, but the prefects of that age were still larger, and the lively experiment had never been repeated. 'will you,' said winton very slowly, 'kindly mind your own damned business, you cursed, clumsy, fat-headed fool?' the form-room was as silent as the empty field in the darkness outside. vernon shifted his feet uneasily. 'well, _i_ shouldn't like to take a lickin' from pot,' he said. 'wouldn't you?' winton asked, as he paged the sheets of lines with hands that shook. 'no, i shouldn't,' said vernon, his freckles growing more distinct on the bridge of his white nose. 'well, i'm going to take it'--winton moved clear of the desk as he spoke. 'but _you're_ going to take a lickin' from me first.' before any one realised it, he had flung himself neighing against vernon. no decencies were observed on either side, and the rest looked on amazed. the two met confusedly, vernon trying to do what he could with his longer reach; winton, insensible to blows, only concerned to drive his enemy into a corner and batter him to pulp. this he managed over against the fire-place, where vernon dropped half-stunned. 'now i'm going to give you your lickin',' said winton. 'lie there till i get a ground-ash and i'll cut you to pieces. if you move, i'll chuck you out of the window.' he wound his hands into the boy's collar and waistband, and had actually heaved him half off the ground before the others with one accord dropped on his head, shoulders, and legs. he fought them crazily in an awful hissing silence. stalky's sensitive nose was rubbed along the floor; beetle received a jolt in the wind that sent him whistling and crowing against the wall; perowne's forehead was cut, and malpass came out with an eye that explained itself like a dying rainbow through a whole week. 'mad! quite mad!' said stalky, and for the third time wriggled back to winton's throat. the door opened and king came in, hartopp's little figure just behind him. the mound on the floor panted and heaved but did not rise, for winton still squirmed vengefully. 'only a little play, sir,' said perowne. ''only hit my head against a form.' this was quite true. 'oh,' said king. '_dimovit obstantes propinquos._ you, i presume, are the _populus_ delaying winton's return to--mullins, eh?' 'no, sir,' said stalky behind his claret-coloured handkerchief. 'we're the _maerentes amicos_.' 'not bad! you see, some of it sticks after all,' king chuckled to hartopp, and the two masters left without further inquiries. the boys sat still on the now-passive winton. 'well,' said stalky at last, 'of all the putrid he-asses, pater, you are _the_--' 'i'm sorry. i'm awfully sorry,' winton began, and they let him rise. he held out his hand to the bruised and bewildered vernon. 'sorry, paddy. i--i must have lost my temper. i--i don't know what's the matter with me.' ''fat lot of good that'll do my face at tea,' vernon grunted. 'why couldn't you say there was something wrong with you instead of lamming out like a lunatic? is my lip puffy?' 'just a trifle. look at my beak! well, we got all these pretty marks at footer--owin' to the zeal with which we played the game,' said stalky, dusting himself. 'but d'you think you're fit to be let loose again, pater? 'sure you don't want to kill another sub-prefect? i wish _i_ was pot. i'd cut your sprightly young soul out.' 'i s'pose i ought to go to pot now,' said winton. 'and let all the other asses see you lookin' like this! not much. we'll all come up to number five study and wash off in hot water. beetle, you aren't damaged. go along and light the gas-stove.' 'there's a tin of cocoa in my study somewhere,' perowne shouted after him. 'rootle round till you find it, and take it up.' separately, by different roads, vernon's jersey pulled half over his head, the boys repaired to number five study. little hartopp and king, i am sorry to say, leaned over the banisters of king's landing and watched. 've-ry human,' said little hartopp. 'your virtuous winton, having got himself into trouble, takes it out of my poor old paddy. i wonder what precise lie paddy will tell about his face.' 'but surely you aren't going to embarrass him by asking?' said king. '_your_ boy won,' said hartopp. 'to go back to what we were discussing,' said king quickly, 'do you pretend that your modern system of inculcating unrelated facts about chlorine, for instance, all of which may be proved fallacies by the time the boys grow up, can have any real bearing on education--even the low type of it that examiners expect?' 'i maintain nothing. but is it any worse than your chinese reiteration of uncomprehended syllables in a dead tongue?' 'dead, forsooth!' king fairly danced. 'the only living tongue on earth! chinese! on my word, hartopp!' 'and at the end of seven years--how often have i said it?' hartopp went on,--'seven years of two hundred and twenty days of six hours each, your victims go away with nothing, absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, if they've been very attentive, a dozen--no, i'll grant you twenty--one score of totally unrelated latin tags which any child of twelve could have absorbed in two terms.' 'but--but can't you realise that if our system brings later--at any rate--at a pinch--a simple understanding--grammar and latinity apart--a mere glimpse of the significance (foul word!) of, we'll say, one ode of horace, one twenty lines of virgil, we've got what we poor devils of ushers are striving after?' 'and what might that be?' said hartopp. 'balance, proportion, perspective--life. your scientific man is the unrelated animal--the beast without background. haven't you ever realised _that_ in your atmosphere of stinks?' 'meantime you make them lose life for the sake of living, eh?' 'blind again, hartopp! i told you about paddy's quotation this morning. (but he made _probrosis_ a verb, he did!) you yourself heard young corkran's reference to _maerentes amicos_. it sticks--a little of it sticks among the barbarians.' 'absolutely and essentially chinese,' said little hartopp, who, alone of the common-room, refused to be outfaced by king. 'but i don't yet understand how paddy came to be licked by winton. paddy's supposed to be something of a boxer.' 'beware of vinegar made from honey,' king replied. 'pater, like some other people, is patient and long-suffering, but he has his limits. the head is oppressing him damnably, too. as i pointed out, the boy has practically been in the first fifteen since term began.' 'but, my dear fellow, i've known you give a boy an impot and refuse him leave off games, again and again.' 'ah, but that was when there was real need to get at some oaf who couldn't be sensitised in any other way. now, in our esteemed head's action i see nothing but--' the conversation from this point does not concern us. meantime winton, very penitent and especially polite towards vernon, was being cheered with cocoa in number five study. they had some difficulty in stemming the flood of his apologies. he himself pointed out to vernon that he had attacked a sub-prefect for no reason whatever, and, therefore, deserved official punishment. 'i can't think what was the matter with me to-day,' he mourned. 'ever since that blasted mouse-business--' 'well, then, don't think,' said stalky. 'or do you want paddy to make a row about it before all the school?' here vernon was understood to say that he would see winton and all the school somewhere else. 'and if you imagine perowne and malpass and me are goin' to give evidence at a prefects' meeting just to soothe your beastly conscience, you jolly well err,' said beetle. 'i know what you did.' 'what?' croaked pater, out of the valley of his humiliation. 'you went berserk. i've read all about it in _hypatia_.' 'what's "going berserk"?' winton asked. 'never you mind,' was the reply. 'now, don't you feel awfully weak and seedy?' 'i _am_ rather tired,' said winton, sighing. 'that's what you ought to be. you've gone berserk and pretty soon you'll go to sleep. but you'll probably be liable to fits of it all your life,' beetle concluded. ''shouldn't wonder if you murdered some one some day.' 'shut up--you and your berserks!' said stalky. 'go to mullins now and get it over, pater.' 'i call it filthy unjust of the head,' said vernon. 'anyhow, you've given me my lickin', old man. i hope pot'll give you yours.' 'i'm awfully sorry--awfully sorry,' was winton's last word. it was the custom in that consulship to deal with games' defaulters between five o'clock call-over and tea. mullins, who was old enough to pity, did not believe in letting boys wait through the night till the chill of the next morning for their punishments. he was finishing off the last of the small fry and their excuses when winton arrived. 'but, please, mullins'--this was babcock tertius, a dear little twelve-year-old mother's darling--'i had an awful hack on the knee. i've been to the matron about it and she gave me some iodine. i've been rubbing it in all day. i thought that would be an excuse off.' 'let's have a look at it,' said the impassive mullins. 'that's a shin-bruise--about a week old. touch your toes. i'll give you the iodine.' babcock yelled loudly as he had many times before. the face of jevons, aged eleven, a new boy that dark wet term, low in the house, low in the lower school, and lowest of all in his home-sick little mind turned white at the horror of the sight. they could hear his working lips part stickily as babcock wailed his way out of hearing. 'hullo, jevons! what brings you here?' said mullins. 'pl-ease, sir, i went for a walk with babcock tertius.' 'did you? then i bet you went to the tuck-shop--and you paid, didn't you?' a nod. jevons was too terrified to speak. 'of course, and i bet babcock told you that old pot 'ud let you off because it was the first time.' another nod with a ghost of a smile in it. 'all right.' mullins picked jevons up before he could guess what was coming, laid him on the table with one hand, with the other gave him three emphatic spanks, then held him high in air. 'now you tell babcock tertius that he's got you a licking from me, and see you jolly well pay it back to him. and when you're prefect of games don't you let any one shirk his footer without a written excuse. where d'you play in your game?' 'forward, sir.' 'you can do better than that. i've seen you run like a young buck-rabbit. ask dickson from me to try you as three-quarter next game, will you? cut along.' jevons left, warm for the first time that day, enormously set up in his own esteem, and very hot against the deceitful babcock. mullins turned to winton. 'your name's on the list, pater.' winton nodded. 'i know it. the head landed me with an impot for that mouse-business at mechanical drawing. no excuse.' 'he meant it then?' mullins jerked his head delicately towards the ground-ash on the table. 'i heard something about it.' winton nodded. 'a rotten thing to do,' he said. 'can't think what i was doing ever to do it. it counts against a fellow so; and there's some more too--' 'all right, pater. just stand clear of our photo-bracket, will you?' the little formality over, there was a pause. winton swung round, yawned in pot's astonished face and staggered towards the window-seat. 'what's the matter with you, dick? ill?' 'no. perfectly all right, thanks. only--only a little sleepy.' winton stretched himself out, and then and there fell deeply and placidly asleep. 'it isn't a faint,' said the experienced mullins, 'or his pulse wouldn't act. 'tisn't a fit or he'd snort and twitch. it can't be sunstroke, this term, and he hasn't been over-training for anything.' he opened winton's collar, packed a cushion under his head, threw a rug over him and sat down to listen to the regular breathing. before long stalky arrived, on pretence of borrowing a book. he looked at the window-seat. ''noticed anything wrong with winton lately?' said mullins. ''notice anything wrong with my beak?' stalky replied. 'pater went berserk after call-over, and fell on a lot of us for jesting with him about his impot. you ought to see malpass's eye.' 'you mean that pater fought?' said mullins. 'like a devil. then he nearly went to sleep in our study just now. i expect he'll be all right when he wakes up. rummy business! conscientious old bargee. you ought to have heard his apologies.' 'but pater can't fight one little bit,' mullins repeated. ''twasn't fighting. he just tried to murder every one.' stalky described the affair, and when he left mullins went off to take counsel with the head, who, out of a cloud of blue smoke, told him that all would yet be well. 'winton,' said he, 'is a little stiff in his moral joints. he'll get over that. if he asks you whether to-day's doings will count against him in his--' 'but you know it's important to him, sir. his people aren't--very well off,' said mullins. 'that's why i'm taking all this trouble. you must reassure him, pot. i have overcrowded him with new experiences. oh, by the way, has his cap come?' 'it came at dinner, sir.' mullins laughed. sure enough, when he waked at tea-time, winton proposed to take mullins all through every one of his day's lapses from grace, and 'do you think it will count against me?' said he. 'don't you fuss so much about yourself and your silly career,' said mullins. 'you're all right. and oh--here's your first cap at last. shove it up on the bracket and come on to tea.' they met king on their way, stepping statelily and rubbing his hands. 'i have applied,' said he, 'for the services of an additional sub-prefect in carton's unlamented absence. your name, winton, seems to have found favour with the powers that be, and--and all things considered--i am disposed to give my support to the nomination. you are therefore a quasi-lictor.' 'then it didn't count against me,' winton gasped as soon as they were out of hearing. a captain of games can jest with a sub-prefect publicly. 'you utter ass!' said mullins, and caught him by the back of his stiff neck and ran him down to the hall where the sub-prefects, who sit below the salt, made him welcome with the economical bloater-paste of mid-term. king and little hartopp were sparring in the reverend john gillett's study at p.m.--classical _versus_ modern as usual. 'character--proportion--background,' snarled king. 'that is the essence of the humanities.' 'analects of confucius,' little hartopp answered. 'time,' said the reverend john behind the soda-water. 'you men oppress me. hartopp, what did you say to paddy in your dormitories to-night? even _you_ couldn't have overlooked his face.' 'but i did,' said hartopp calmly. 'i wasn't even humorous about it as some clerics might have been. i went straight through and said naught.' 'poor paddy! now, for my part,' said king, 'and you know i am not lavish in my praises, i consider winton a first-class type; absolutely first-class.' 'ha-ardly,' said the reverend john. 'first-class of the second class, i admit. the very best type of second class but'--he shook his head--'it should have been a rat. pater'll never be anything more than a colonel of engineers.' 'what do you base that verdict on?' said king stiffly. 'he came to me after prayers--with all his conscience.' 'poor old pater. was it the mouse?' said little hartopp. 'that, and what he called his uncontrollable temper, and his responsibilities as sub-prefect.' 'and you?' 'if we had had what is vulgarly called a pi-jaw he'd have had hysterics. so i recommended a dose of epsom salts. he'll take it, too--conscientiously. don't eat me, king. perhaps, he'll be a k.c.b.' ten o'clock struck and the army class boys in the further studies coming to their houses after an hour's extra work passed along the gravel path below. some one was chanting, to the tune of 'white sand and grey sand,' _dis te minorem quod geris imperas_. he stopped outside mullins' study. they heard mullins' window slide up and then stalky's voice: 'ah! good-evening, mullins, my _barbarus tortor_. we're the waits. we have come to inquire after the local berserk. is he doin' as well as can be expected in his new caree-ah?' 'better than you will, in a sec, stalky,' mullins grunted. 'glad of that. we thought he'd like to know that paddy has been carried to the sick-house in ravin' delirium. they think it's concussion of the brain.' 'why, he was all right at prayers,' winton began earnestly, and they heard a laugh in the background as mullins slammed down the window. ''night, regulus,' stalky sang out, and the light footsteps went on. 'you see. it sticks. a little of it sticks among the barbarians,' said king. 'amen,' said the reverend john. 'go to bed.' a translation horace, bk. v. _ode _ there are whose study is of smells, and to attentive schools rehearse how something mixed with something else makes something worse. some cultivate in broths impure the clients of our body--these, increasing without venus, cure, or cause, disease. others the heated wheel extol, and all its offspring, whose concern is how to make it farthest roll and fastest turn. me, much incurious if the hour present, or to be paid for, brings me to brundusium by the power of wheels or wings; me, in whose breast no flame hath burned life-long, save that by pindar lit, such lore leaves cold: i am not turned aside to it more than when, sunk in thought profound of what the unaltering gods require, my steward (friend but slave) brings round logs for my fire. the edge of the evening ( ) ah! what avails the classic bent, and what the chosen word, against the undoctored incident that actually occurred? and what is art whereto we press through paint and prose and rhyme-- when nature in her nakedness defeats us every time? 'hi! hi! hold your horses! stop!... well! well!' a lean man in a sable-lined overcoat leaped from a private car and barred my way up pall mall. 'you don't know me? you're excusable. i wasn't wearing much of anything last time we met--in south africa.' the scales fell from my eyes, and i saw him once more in a sky-blue army shirt, behind barbed wire, among dutch prisoners bathing at simonstown, more than a dozen years ago[ ]. 'why, it's zigler--laughton o. zigler!' i cried. 'well, i _am_ glad to see you.' [footnote : 'the captive': _traffics and discoveries_.] 'oh no! you don't work any of your english on me. "so glad to see you, doncher know--an' ta-ta!" do you reside in this village?' 'no. i'm up here buying stores.' 'then you take my automobile. where to?... oh, i know _them_! my lord marshalton is one of the directors. pigott, drive to the army and navy cooperative supply association limited, victoria street, westminister.' he settled himself on the deep dove-colour pneumatic cushions, and his smile was like the turning on of all the electrics. his teeth were whiter than the ivory fittings. he smelt of rare soap and cigarettes--such cigarettes as he handed me from a golden box with an automatic lighter. on my side of the car was a gold-mounted mirror, card and toilette case. i looked at him inquiringly. 'yes,' he nodded, 'two years after i quit the cape. she's not an ohio girl, though. she's in the country now. is that right? she's at our little place in the country. we'll go there as soon as you're through with your grocery-list. engagements? the only engagement you've got is to grab your grip--get your bag from your hotel, i mean--and come right along and meet her. you are the captive of _my_ bow and spear now.' 'i surrender,' i said meekly. 'did the zigler automatic gun do all this?' i pointed to the car fittings. 'psha! think of your rememberin' that! well, no. the zigler is a great gun--the greatest ever--but life's too short, an' too interestin', to squander on pushing her in military society. i've leased my rights in her to a pennsylvanian-transylvanian citizen full of mentality and moral uplift. if those things weigh with the chancelleries of europe, he will make good and--i shall be surprised. excuse me!' he bared his head as we passed the statue of the great queen outside buckingham palace. 'a very great lady!' said he. 'i have enjoyed her hospitality. she represents one of the most wonderful institutions in the world. the next is the one we are going to. mrs. zigler uses 'em, and they break her up every week on returned empties.' 'oh, you mean the stores?' i said. 'mrs. zigler means it more. they are quite ambassadorial in their outlook. i guess i'll wait outside and pray while you wrestle with 'em.' my business at the stores finished, and my bag retrieved from the hotel, his moving palace slid us into the country. 'i owe it to you,' zigler began as smoothly as the car, 'to tell you what i am now. i represent the business end of the american invasion. not the blame cars themselves--i wouldn't be found dead in one--but the tools that make 'em. i am the zigler higher-speed tool and lathe trust. the trust, sir, is entirely my own--in my own inventions. i am the renzalaer ten-cylinder aërial--the lightest aeroplane-engine on the market--one price, one power, one guarantee. i am the orlebar paper-welt, pulp-panel company for aeroplane bodies; and i am the rush silencer for military aeroplanes--absolutely silent--which the continent leases under royalty. with three exceptions, the british aren't wise to it yet. that's all i represent at present. you saw me take off my hat to your late queen? i owe every cent i have to that great an' good lady. yes, sir, i came out of africa, after my eighteen months' rest-cure and open-air treatment and sea-bathing, as her prisoner of war, like a giant refreshed. there wasn't anything could hold me, when i'd got my hooks into it, after that experience. and to you as a representative british citizen, i say here and now that i regard you as the founder of the family fortune--tommy's and mine.' 'but i only gave you some papers and tobacco.' 'what more does any citizen need? the cullinan diamond wouldn't have helped me as much then; an'--talking about south africa, tell me--' we talked about south africa till the car stopped at the georgian lodge of a great park. 'we'll get out here. i want to show you a rather sightly view,' said zigler. we walked, perhaps, half a mile, across timber-dotted turf, past a lake, entered a dark rhododendron-planted wood, ticking with the noise of pheasants' feet, and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of turf, several acres in extent. irish yews, of a size that i had never seen before, walled the sunless circle like cliffs of riven obsidian, except at the lower end, where it gave on to a stretch of undulating bare ground ending in a timbered slope half-a-mile away. 'that's where the old marshalton race-course used to be,' said zigler. 'that ice-house is called flora's temple. nell gwynne and mrs. siddons an' taglioni an' all that crowd used to act plays here for king george the third. wasn't it? well, george is the only king i play. let it go at that. this circle was the stage, i guess. the kings an' the nobility sat in flora's temple. i forget who sculped these statues at the door. they're the comic and tragic muse. but it's a sightly view, ain't it?' the sunlight was leaving the park. i caught a glint of silver to the southward beyond the wooded ridge. 'that's the ocean--the channel, i mean,' said zigler. 'it's twenty-three miles as a man flies. a sightly view, ain't it?' i looked at the severe yews, the dumb yelling mouths of the two statues, at the blue-green shadows on the unsunned grass, and at the still bright plain in front where some deer were feeding. 'it's a most dramatic contrast, but i think it would be better on a summer's day,' i said, and we went on, up one of the noiseless rides, a quarter of a mile at least, till we came to the porticoed front of an enormous georgian pile. four footmen revealed themselves in a hall hung with pictures. 'i hired this off of my lord marshalton,' zigler explained, while they helped us out of our coats under the severe eyes of ruffed and periwigged ancestors. 'ya-as. they always look at _me_ too, as if i'd blown in from the gutter. which, of course, i have. that's mary, lady marshalton. old man joshua painted her. do you see any likeness to my lord marshalton? why, haven't you ever met up with him? he was captain mankeltow--my royal british artillery captain that blew up my gun in the war, an' then tried to bury me against my religious principles[ ]. ya-as. his father died and he got the lordship. that was about all he got by the time that your british death-duties were through with him. so he said i'd oblige him by hiring his ranch. it's a hell an' a half of a proposition to handle, but tommy--mrs. laughton--understands it. come right in to the parlour and be very welcome.' [footnote : "the captive": _traffics and discoveries_.] he guided me, hand on shoulder, into a babble of high-pitched talk and laughter that filled a vast drawing-room. he introduced me as the founder of the family fortunes to a little, lithe, dark-eyed woman whose speech and greeting were of the soft-lipped south. she in turn presented me to her mother, a black-browed snowy-haired old lady with a cap of priceless venetian point, hands that must have held many hearts in their time, and a dignity as unquestioned and unquestioning as an empress. she was, indeed, a burton of savannah, who, on their own ground, out-rank the lees of virginia. the rest of the company came from buffalo, cincinnati, cleveland and chicago, with here and there a softening southern strain. a party of young folk popped corn beneath a mantelpiece surmounted by a gainsborough. two portly men, half hidden by a cased harp, discussed, over sheaves of typewritten documents, the terms of some contract. a knot of matrons talked servants--irish _versus_ german--across the grand piano. a youth ravaged an old bookcase, while beside him a tall girl stared at the portrait of a woman of many loves, dead three hundred years, but now leaping to life and warning under the shaded frame-light. in a corner half-a-dozen girls examined the glazed tables that held the decorations--english and foreign--of the late lord marshalton. 'see heah! would this be the ordeh of the gyartah?' one said, pointing. 'i presoom likely. no! the garter has "_honey swore_"--i know that much. this is "tria juncta" something.' 'oh, what's that cunning little copper cross with "for valurr"?' a third cried. 'say! look at here!' said the young man at the bookcase. 'here's a first edition of _handley cross_ and a beewick's _birds_ right next to it--just like so many best sellers. look, maidie!' the girl beneath the picture half turned her body but not her eyes. 'you don't tell _me_!' she said slowly. 'their women amounted to something after all.' 'but woman's scope, and outlook was vurry limmutted in those days,' one of the matrons put in, from the piano. 'limmutted? for _her_? if they whurr, i guess she was the limmut. who was she? peters, whurr's the cat'log?' a thin butler, in charge of two footmen removing the tea-batteries, slid to a table and handed her a blue-and-qilt book. he was button-holed by one of the men behind the harp, who wished to get a telephone call through to edinburgh. 'the local office shuts at six,' said peters. 'but i can get through to'--he named some town--'in ten minutes, sir.' 'that suits me. you'll find me here when you've hitched up. oh, say, peters! we--mister olpherts an' me--ain't goin' by that early morning train to-morrow--but the other one--on the other line--whatever they call it.' 'the nine twenty-seven, sir. yes, sir. early breakfast will be at half-past eight and the car will be at the door at nine.' 'peters!' an imperious young voice called. 'what's the matteh with lord marshalton's ordeh of the gyartah? we cyan't find it anyweah.' 'well, miss, i _have_ heard that that order is usually returned to his majesty on the death of the holder. yes, miss.' then in a whisper to a footman, 'more butter for the pop-corn in king charles's corner.' he stopped behind my chair. 'your room is number eleven, sir. may i trouble you for your keys?' he left the room with a six-year-old maiden called alice who had announced she would not go to bed ''less peter, peter, punkin-eater takes me--so there!' he very kindly looked in on me for a moment as i was dressing for dinner. 'not at all, sir,' he replied to some compliment i paid him. 'i valeted the late lord marshalton for fifteen years. he was very abrupt in his movements, sir. as a rule i never received more than an hour's notice of a journey. we used to go to syria frequently. i have been twice to babylon. mr. and mrs. zigler's requirements are, comparatively speaking, few.' 'but the guests?' 'very little out of the ordinary as soon as one knows their ordinaries. extremely simple, if i may say so, sir.' i had the privilege of taking mrs. burton in to dinner, and was rewarded with an entirely new, and to me rather shocking view, of abraham lincoln, who, she said, had wasted the heritage of his land by blood and fire, and had surrendered the remnant to aliens. 'my brother, suh,' she said, 'fell at gettysburg in order that armenians should colonise new england to-day. if i took any interest in any dam-yankee outside of my son-in-law laughton yondah, i should say that my brother's death had been amply avenged.' the man at her right took up the challenge, and the war spread. her eyes twinkled over the flames she had lit. 'don't these folk,' she said a little later, 'remind you of arabs picnicking under the pyramids?' 'i've never seen the pyramids,' i replied. 'hm! i didn't know you were as english as all that.' and when i laughed, 'are you?' 'always. it saves trouble.' 'now that's just what i find so significant among the english'--this was alice's mother, i think, with one elbow well forward among the salted almonds. 'oh, i know how _you_ feel, madam burton, but a northerner like myself--i'm buffalo--even though we come over every year--notices the desire for comfort in england. there's so little conflict or uplift in british society.' 'but we like being comfortable,' i said. 'i know it. it's very characteristic. but ain't it a little, just a little, lacking in adaptability an' imagination?' 'they haven't any need for adaptability,' madam burton struck in. 'they haven't any ellis island standards to live up to.' 'but we can assimilate,' the buffalo woman charged on. 'now you _have_ done it!' i whispered to the old lady as the blessed word 'assimilation' woke up all the old arguments for and against. there was not a dull moment in that dinner for me--nor afterwards when the boys and girls at the piano played the rag-time tunes of their own land, while their elders, inexhaustibly interested, replunged into the discussion of that land's future, till there was talk of coon-can. when all the company had been set to tables zigler led me into his book-lined study, where i noticed he kept his golf-clubs, and spoke simply as a child, gravely as a bishop, of the years that were past since our last meeting. 'that's about all, i guess--up to date,' he said when he had unrolled the bright map of his fortunes across three continents. 'bein' rich suits me. so does your country, sir. my own country? you heard what that detroit man said at dinner. "a government of the alien, by the alien, for the alien." mother's right, too. lincoln killed us. from the highest motives--but he killed us. oh, say, that reminds me. 'j'ever kill a man from the highest motives?' 'not from any motive--as far as i remember.' 'well, i have. it don't weigh on my mind any, but it was interesting. life _is_ interesting for a rich--for any--man in england. ya-as! life in england is like settin' in the front row at the theatre and never knowin' when the whole blame drama won't spill itself into your lap. i didn't always know that. i lie abed now, and i blush to think of some of the breaks i made in south africa. about the british. not your official method of doin' business. but the spirit. i was 'way, 'way off on the spirit. are you acquainted with any other country where you'd have to kill a man or two to get at the national spirit?' 'well,' i answered, 'next to marrying one of its women, killing one of its men makes for pretty close intimacy with any country. i take it you killed a british citizen.' 'why, no. our syndicate confined its operations to aliens--dam-fool aliens.... 'j'ever know an english lord called lundie[ ]? looks like a frame-food and soap advertisement. i imagine he was in your supreme court before he came into his lordship.' [footnote : 'the puzzler': _actions and reactions_.] 'he is a lawyer--what we call a law lord--a judge of appeal--not a real hereditary lord.' 'that's as much beyond me as _this_!' zigler slapped a fat debrett on the table. 'but i presoom this unreal law lord lundie is kind o' real in his decisions? i judged so. and--one more question. 'ever meet a man called walen?' 'd'you mean burton-walen, the editor of--?' i mentioned the journal. 'that's him. 'looks like a tough, talks like a maxim, and trains with kings.' 'he does,' i said. 'burton-walen knows all the crowned heads of europe intimately. it's his hobby.' 'well, there's the whole outfit for you--exceptin' my lord marshalton, _né_ mankeltow, an' me. all active murderers--specially the law lord--or accessories after the fact. and what do they hand you out for _that_, in this country?' 'twenty years, i believe,' was my reply. he reflected a moment. 'no-o-o,' he said, and followed it with a smoke-ring. 'twenty months at the cape is my limit. say, murder ain't the soul-shatterin' event those nature-fakers in the magazines make out. it develops naturally like any other proposition.... say, 'j'ever play this golf game? it's come up in the states from maine to california, an' we're prodoocin' all the champions in sight. not a business man's play, but interestin'. i've got a golf-links in the park here that they tell me is the finest inland course ever. i had to pay extra for that when i hired the ranche--last year. it was just before i signed the papers that our murder eventuated. my lord marshalton he asked me down for the week-end to fix up something or other--about peters and the linen, i think 'twas. mrs. zigler took a holt of the proposition. she understood peters from the word "go." there wasn't any house-party; only fifteen or twenty folk. a full house is thirty-two, tommy tells me. 'guess we must be near on that to-night. in the smoking-room here, my lord marshalton--mankeltow that was--introduces me to this walen man with the nose. he'd been in the war too, from start to finish. he knew all the columns and generals that i'd battled with in the days of my zigler gun. we kinder fell into each other's arms an' let the harsh world go by for a while. 'walen he introduces me to your lord lundie. _he_ was a new proposition to me. if he hadn't been a lawyer he'd have made a lovely cattle-king. i thought i had played poker some. another of my breaks. ya-as! it cost me eleven hundred dollars besides what tommy said when i retired. i have no fault to find with your hereditary aristocracy, or your judiciary, or your press. 'sunday we all went to church across the park here.... psha! think o' your rememberin' my religion! i've become an episcopalian since i married. ya-as.... after lunch walen did his crowned-heads-of-europe stunt in the smokin'-room here. he was long on kings. and continental crises. i do not pretend to follow british domestic politics, but in the aeroplane business a man has to know something of international possibilities. at present, you british are settin' in kimonoes on dynamite kegs. walen's talk put me wise on the location and size of some of the kegs. ya-as! 'after that, we four went out to look at those golf-links i was hirin'. we each took a club. mine'--he glanced at a great tan bag by the fire-place--'was the beginner's friend--the cleek. well, sir, this golf proposition took a holt of me as quick as--quick as death. they had to prise me off the greens when it got too dark to see, and then we went back to the house. i was walkin' ahead with my lord marshalton talkin' beginners' golf. (_i_ was the man who ought to have been killed by rights.) we cut 'cross lots through the woods to flora's temple--that place i showed you this afternoon. lundie and walen were, maybe, twenty or thirty rod behind us in the dark. marshalton and i stopped at the theatre to admire at the ancestral yew-trees. he took me right under the biggest--king somebody's yew--and while i was spannin' it with my handkerchief, he says, "look heah!" just as if it was a rabbit--and down comes a bi-plane into the theatre with no more noise than the dead. my rush silencer is the only one on the market that allows that sort of gumshoe work.... what? a bi-plane--with two men in it. both men jump out and start fussin' with the engines. i was starting to tell mankeltow--i can't remember to call him marshalton any more--that it looked as if the royal british flying corps had got on to my rush silencer at last; but he steps out from under the yew to these two stealthy steves and says, "what's the trouble? can i be of any service?" he thought--so did i--'twas some of the boys from aldershot or salisbury. well, sir, from there on, the situation developed like a motion-picture in hell. the man on the nigh side of the machine whirls round, pulls his gun and fires into mankeltow's face. i laid him out with my cleek automatically. any one who shoots a friend of mine gets what's comin' to him if i'm within reach. he drops. mankeltow rubs his neck with his handkerchief. the man the far side of the machine starts to run. lundie down the ride, or it might have been walen, shouts, "what's happened?" mankeltow says, "collar that chap." 'the second man runs ring-a-ring-o'-roses round the machine, one hand reachin' behind him. mankeltow heads him off to me. he breaks blind for walen and lundie, who are runnin' up the ride. there's some sort of mix-up among 'em, which it's too dark to see, and a thud. walen says, "oh, well collared!" lundie says, "that's the only thing i never learned at harrow!"... mankeltow runs up to 'em, still rubbin' his neck, and says, "_he_ didn't fire at me. it was the other chap. where is he?" '"i've stretched him alongside his machine," i says. '"are they poachers?" says lundie. '"no. airmen. i can't make it out," says mankeltow. '"look at here," says walen, kind of brusque. "this man ain't breathin' at all. didn't you hear somethin' crack when he lit, lundie?" '"my god!" says lundie. "did i? i thought it was my suspenders"--no, he said "braces." 'right there i left them and sort o' tiptoed back to my man, hopin' he'd revived and quit. but he hadn't. that darned cleek had hit him on the back of the neck just where his helmet stopped. he'd got _his_. i knew it by the way the head rolled in my hands. then the others came up the ride totin' _their_ load. no mistakin' that shuffle on grass. d'you remember it--in south africa? ya-as. '"hsh!" says lundie. "do you know i've broken this man's neck?" '"same here," i says. '"what? both?" says mankeltow. '"nonsense!" says lord lundie. "who'd have thought he was that out of training? a man oughtn't to fly if he ain't fit." '"what did they want here, anyway?" said walen; and mankeltow says, "we can't leave them in the open. some one'll come. carry 'em to flora's temple." we toted 'em again and laid 'em out on a stone bench. they were still dead in spite of our best attentions. we knew it, but we went through the motions till it was quite dark. 'wonder if all murderers do that? "we want a light on this," says walen after a spell. "there ought to be one in the machine. why didn't they light it?" 'we came out of flora's temple, and shut the doors behind us. some stars were showing then--same as when cain did his little act, i guess. i climbed up and searched the machine. she was very well equipped, i found two electric torches in clips alongside her barometers by the rear seat. '"what make is she?" says mankeltow. '"continental renzalaer," i says. "my engines and my rush silencer." 'walen whistles. "here--let me look," he says, and grabs the other torch. she was sure well equipped. we gathered up an armful of cameras an' maps an' note-books an' an album of mounted photographs which we took to flora's temple and spread on a marble-topped table (i'll show you to-morrow) which the king of naples had presented to grandfather marshalton. walen starts to go through 'em. we wanted to know why our friends had been so prejudiced against our society. '"wait a minute," says lord lundie. "lend me a handkerchief." 'he pulls out his own, and walen contributes his green-and-red bandanna, and lundie covers their faces. "now," he says, "we'll go into the evidence." 'there wasn't any flaw in that evidence. walen read out their last observations, and mankeltow asked questions, and lord lundie sort o' summarised, and i looked at the photos in the album. 'j'ever see a bird's-eye telephoto-survey of england for military purposes? it's interestin' but indecent--like turnin' a man upside down. none of those close-range panoramas of forts could have been taken without my rush silencer. '"i wish _we_ was as thorough as they are," says mankeltow, when walen stopped translatin'. '"we've been thorough enough," says lord lundie. "the evidence against both accused is conclusive. any other country would give 'em seven years in a fortress. we should probably give 'em eighteen months as first-class misdemeanants. but their case," he says, "is out of our hands. we must review our own. mr. zigler," he said, "will you tell us what steps you took to bring about the death of the first accused?" i told him. he wanted to know specially whether i'd stretched first accused before or after he had fired at mankeltow. mankeltow testified he'd been shot at, and exhibited his neck as evidence. it was scorched. '"now, mr. walen," says lord lundie. "will you kindly tell us what steps you took with regard to the second accused?" '"the man ran directly at me, me lord," says walen. "i said, 'oh no, you don't,' and hit him in the face." 'lord lundie lifts one hand and uncovers second accused's face. there was a bruise on one cheek and the chin was all greened with grass. he was a heavy-built man. '"what happened after that?" says lord lundie. '"to the best of my remembrance he turned from me towards your lordship." 'then lundie goes ahead. "i stooped, and caught the man round the ankles," he says. "the sudden check threw him partially over my left shoulder. i jerked him off that shoulder, still holding his ankles, and he fell heavily on, it would appear, the point of his chin, death being instantaneous." '"death being instantaneous," says walen. 'lord lundie takes off his gown and wig--you could see him do it--and becomes our fellow-murderer. "that's our case," he says. "i know how _i_ should direct the jury, but it's an undignified business for a lord of appeal to lift his hand to, and some of my learned brothers," he says, "might be disposed to be facetious." 'i guess i can't be properly sensitised. any one who steered me out of that trouble might have had the laugh on me for generations. but i'm only a millionaire. i said we'd better search second accused in case he'd been carryin' concealed weapons. '"that certainly is a point," says lord lundie. "but the question for the jury would be whether i exercised more force than was necessary to prevent him from usin' them." _i_ didn't say anything. he wasn't talkin' my language. second accused had his gun on him sure enough, but it had jammed in his hip-pocket. he was too fleshy to reach behind for business purposes, and he didn't look a gun-man anyway. both of 'em carried wads of private letters. by the time walen had translated, we knew how many children the fat one had at home and when the thin one reckoned to be married. too bad! ya-as. 'says walen to me while we was rebuttonin' their jackets (they was not in uniform): "ever read a book called _the wreckers_, mr. zigler?" '"not that i recall at the present moment," i says. '"well, do," he says. "you'd appreciate it. you'd appreciate it now, i assure you." '"i'll remember," i says. "but i don't see how this song and dance helps us any. here's our corpses, here's their machine, and daylight's bound to come." '"heavens! that reminds me," says lundie. "what time's dinner?" '"half-past eight," says mankeltow. "it's half-past five now. we knocked off golf at twenty to, and if they hadn't been such silly asses, firin' pistols like civilians, we'd have had them to dinner. why, they might be sitting with us in the smoking-room this very minute," he says. then he said that no man had a right to take his profession so seriously as these two mountebanks. '"how interestin'!" says lundie. "i've noticed this impatient attitude toward their victim in a good many murderers. i never understood it before. of course, it's the disposal of the body that annoys 'em. now, i wonder," he says, "who our case will come up before? let's run through it again." 'then walen whirls in. he'd been bitin' his nails in a corner. we was all nerved up by now.... me? the worst of the bunch. i had to think for tommy as well. '"we _can't_ be tried," says walen. "we _mustn't_ be tried! it'll make an infernal international stink. what did i tell you in the smoking-room after lunch? the tension's at breaking-point already. this 'ud snap it. can't you see that?" '"i was thinking of the legal aspect of the case," says lundie. "with a good jury we'd likely be acquitted." '"acquitted!" says walen. "who'd dare acquit us in the face of what 'ud be demanded by--the other party? did you ever hear of the war of jenkins' ear? 'ever hear of mason and slidel? 'ever hear of an ultimatum? you know who _these_ two idiots are; you know who _we_ are--a lord of appeal, a viscount of the english peerage, and me--_me_ knowing all i know, which the men who know dam' well know that i _do_ know! it's our necks or armageddon. which do you think this government would choose? we _can't_ be tried!" he says. '"then i expect i'll have to resign me club," lundie goes on. "i don't think that's ever been done before by an _ex-officio_ member. i must ask the secretary." i guess he was kinder bunkered for the minute, or maybe 'twas the lordship comin' out on him. '"rot!" says mankeltow. "walen's right. we can't afford to be tried. we'll have to bury them; but my head-gardener locks up all the tools at five o'clock." '"not on your life!" says lundie. he was on deck again--as the high-class lawyer. "right or wrong, if we attempt concealment of the bodies we're done for." "'i'm glad of that," says mankeltow, "because, after all, it ain't cricket to bury 'em." 'somehow--but i know i ain't english--that consideration didn't worry me as it ought. an' besides, i was thinkin'--i had to--an' i'd begun to see a light 'way off--a little glimmerin' light o' salvation. '"then what _are_ we to do?" says walen. "zigler, what do you advise? your neck's in it too." '"gentlemen," i says, "something lord lundie let fall a while back gives me an idea. i move that this committee empowers big claus and little claus, who have elected to commit suicide in our midst, to leave the premises _as_ they came. i'm asking you to take big chances," i says, "but they're all we've got," and then i broke for the bi-plane. 'don't tell me the english can't think as quick as the next man when it's up to them! they lifted 'em out o' flora's temple--reverent, but not wastin' time--whilst i found out what had brought her down. one cylinder was misfirin'. i didn't stop to fix it. my renzalaer will hold up on six. we've proved that. if her crew had relied on my guarantees, they'd have been half-way home by then, instead of takin' their seats with hangin' heads like they was ashamed. they ought to have been ashamed too, playin' gun-men in a british peer's park! i took big chances startin' her without controls, but 'twas a dead still night an' a clear run--you saw it--across the theatre into the park, and i prayed she'd rise before she hit high timber. i set her all i dared for a quick lift. i told mankeltow that if i gave her too much nose she'd be liable to up-end and flop. he didn't want another inquest on his estate. no, sir! so i had to fix her up in the dark. ya-as! 'i took big chances, too, while those other three held on to her and i worked her up to full power. my renzalaer's no ventilation-fan to pull against. but i climbed out just in time. i'd hitched the signallin' lamp to her tail so's we could track her. otherwise, with my rush silencer, we might's well have shooed an owl out of a barn. she left just that way when we let her go. no sound except the propellers--_whoo-oo-oo! whoo-oo-oo!_ there was a dip in the ground ahead. it hid her lamp for a second--but there's no such thing as time in real life. then that lamp travelled up the far slope slow--too slow. then it kinder lifted, we judged. then it sure was liftin'. then it lifted good. d'you know why? our four naked perspirin' souls was out there underneath her, hikin' her heavens high. yes, sir. _we_ did it!... and that lamp kept liftin' and liftin'. then she side-slipped! my god, she side-slipped twice, which was what i'd been afraid of all along! then she straightened up, and went away climbin' to glory, for that blessed star of our hope got smaller and smaller till we couldn't track it any more. then we breathed. we hadn't breathed any since their arrival, but we didn't know it till we breathed that time--all together. then we dug our finger-nails out of our palms an' came alive again--in instalments. 'lundie spoke first. "we therefore commit their bodies to the air," he says, an' puts his cap on. '"the deep--the deep," says walen. "it's just twenty-three miles to the channel." '"poor chaps! poor chaps!" says mankeltow. "we'd have had 'em to dinner if they hadn't lost their heads. i can't tell you how this distresses me, laughton." '"well, look at here, arthur," i says. "it's only god's own mercy you an' me ain't lyin' in flora's temple now, and if that fat man had known enough to fetch his gun around while he was runnin', lord lundie and walen would have been alongside us." '"i see that," he says. "but we're alive and they're dead, don't ye know." '"i know it," i says. "that's where the dead are always so damned unfair on the survivors." '"i see that too," he says. "but i'd have given a good deal if it hadn't happened, poor chaps!" '"amen!" says lundie. then? oh, then we sorter walked back two an' two to flora's temple an' lit matches to see we hadn't left anything behind. walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left. there was the first man's pistol which we'd forgot to return him, lyin' on the stone bench. mankeltow puts his hand on it--he never touched the trigger--an', bein' an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off--spiteful as a rattler! '"look out! they'll have one of us yet," says walen in the dark. but they didn't--the lord hadn't quit being our shepherd--and we heard the bullet zip across the veldt--quite like old times. ya-as! '"swine!" says mankeltow. 'after that i didn't hear any more "poor chap" talk.... me? i never worried about killing _my_ man. i was too busy figurin' how a british jury might regard the proposition. i guess lundie felt that way too. 'oh, but say! we had an interestin' time at dinner. folks was expected whose auto had hung up on the road. they hadn't wired, and peters had laid two extra places. we noticed 'em as soon as we sat down. i'd hate to say how noticeable they were. mankeltow with his neck bandaged (he'd caught a relaxed throat golfin') sent for peters and told him to take those empty places away--_if you please_. it takes something to rattle peters. he was rattled that time. nobody else noticed anything. and now...' 'where did they come down?' i asked, as he rose. 'in the channel, i guess. there was nothing in the papers about 'em. shall we go into the drawin'-room, and see what these boys and girls are doin?' but say, ain't life in england inter_es_tin'? rebirth if any god should say "i will restore the world her yesterday whole as before my judgment blasted it"--who would not lift heart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift? if any god should will to wipe from mind the memory of this ill which is mankind in soul and substance now--who would not bless even to tears his loving-tenderness? if any god should give us leave to fly these present deaths we live, and safely die in those lost lives we lived ere we were born-- what man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn? for we are what we are-- so broke to blood and the strict works of war-- so long subdued to sacrifice, that threadbare death commands hardly observance at our busier hands. yet we were what we were, and, fashioned so, it pleases us to stare at the far show of unbelievable years and shapes that flit, in our own likeness, on the edge of it. the horse marines ( ) _the rt. hon. r.b. haldane, secretary of state for war[ ], was questioned in the house of commons on april th about the rocking-horses which the war office is using for the purpose of teaching recruits to ride. lord ronaldshay asked the war secretary if rocking-horses were to be supplied to all the cavalry regiments for teaching recruits to ride. 'the noble lord,' replied mr. haldane, 'is doubtless alluding to certain dummy horses on rockers which have been tested with very satisfactory results.'... the mechanical steed is a wooden horse with an astonishing tail. it is painted brown and mounted on swinging rails. the recruit leaps into the saddle and pulls at the reins while the riding-instructor rocks the animal to and fro with his foot. the rocking-horses are being made at woolwich. they are quite cheap_. --daily paper. [footnote : now viscount haldane of cloan.] my instructions to mr. leggatt, my engineer, had been accurately obeyed. he was to bring my car on completion of annual overhaul, from coventry _via_ london, to southampton docks to await my arrival; and very pretty she looked, under the steamer's side among the railway lines, at six in the morning. next to her new paint and varnish i was most impressed by her four brand-new tyres. 'but i didn't order new tyres,' i said as we moved away. 'these are irresilients, too.' 'treble-ribbed,' said leggatt. 'diamond-stud sheathing.' 'then there has been a mistake.' 'oh no, sir; they're gratis.' the number of motor manufacturers who give away complete sets of treble-ribbed irresilient tyres is so limited that i believe i asked leggatt for an explanation. 'i don't know that i could very well explain, sir,' was the answer. 'it 'ud come better from mr. pyecroft. he's on leaf at portsmouth--staying with his uncle. his uncle 'ad the body all night. i'd defy you to find a scratch on her even with a microscope.' 'then we will go home by the portsmouth road,' i said. and we went at those speeds which are allowed before the working-day begins or the police are thawed out. we were blocked near portsmouth by a battalion of regulars on the move. 'whitsuntide manoeuvres just ending,' said leggatt. 'they've had a fortnight in the downs.' he said no more until we were in a narrow street somewhere behind portsmouth town railway station, where he slowed at a green-grocery shop. the door was open, and a small old man sat on three potato-baskets swinging his feet over a stooping blue back. 'you call that shinin' 'em?' he piped. 'can you see your face in 'em yet? no! then shine 'em, or i'll give you a beltin' you'll remember!' 'if you stop kickin' me in the mouth perhaps i'd do better,' said pyecroft's voice meekly. we blew the horn. pyecroft arose, put away the brushes, and received us not otherwise than as a king in his own country. 'are you going to leave me up here all day?' said the old man. pyecroft lifted him down and he hobbled into the back room. 'it's his corns,' pyecroft explained. 'you can't shine corny feet--and he hasn't had his breakfast.' 'i haven't had mine either,' i said. 'breakfast for two more, uncle,' pyecroft sang out. 'go out an' buy it then,' was the answer, 'or else it's half-rations.' pyecroft turned to leggatt, gave him his marketing orders, and despatched him with the coppers. 'i have got four new tyres on my car,' i began impressively. 'yes,' said mr. pyecroft. 'you have, and i _will_ say'--he patted my car's bonnet--'you earned 'em.' 'i want to know why--,' i went on. 'quite justifiable. you haven't noticed anything in the papers, have you?' 'i've only just landed. i haven't seen a paper for weeks.' 'then you can lend me a virgin ear. there's been a scandal in the junior service--the army, i believe they call 'em.' a bag of coffee-beans pitched on the counter. 'roast that,' said the uncle from within. pyecroft rigged a small coffee-roaster, while i took down the shutters, and sold a young lady in curl-papers two bunches of mixed greens and one soft orange. 'sickly stuff to handle on an empty stomach, ain't it?' said pyecroft. 'what about my new tyres?' i insisted. 'oh, any amount. but the question is'--he looked at me steadily--'is this what you might call a court-martial or a post-mortem inquiry?' 'strictly a post-mortem,' said i. 'that being so,' said pyecroft, 'we can rapidly arrive at facts. last thursday--the shutters go behind those baskets--last thursday at five bells in the forenoon watch, otherwise ten-thirty a.m., your mr. leggatt was discovered on westminster bridge laying his course for the old kent road.' 'but that doesn't lead to southampton,' i interrupted. 'then perhaps he was swinging the car for compasses. be that as it may, we found him in that latitude, simultaneous as jules and me was _ong route_ for waterloo to rejoin our respective ships--or navies i should say. jules was a _permissionaire_, which meant being on leaf, same as me, from a french cassowary-cruiser at portsmouth. a party of her trusty and well-beloved petty officers 'ad been seeing london, chaperoned by the r.c. chaplain. jules 'ad detached himself from the squadron and was cruisin' on his own when i joined him, in company of copious lady-friends. _but_, mark you, your mr. leggatt drew the line at the girls. loud and long he drew it.' 'i'm glad of that,' i said. 'you may be. he adopted the puristical formation from the first. "yes," he said, when we was annealing him at--but you wouldn't know the pub--"i _am_ going to southampton," he says, "and i'll stretch a point to go _via_ portsmouth; _but_," says he, "seeing what sort of one hell of a time invariably trarnspires when we cruise together, mr. pyecroft, i do _not_ feel myself justified towards my generous and long-suffering employer in takin' on that kind of ballast as well." i assure you he considered your interests.' 'and the girls?' i asked. 'oh, i left that to jules. i'm a monogomite by nature. so we embarked strictly _ong garçong_. but i should tell you, in case he didn't, that your mr. leggatt's care for your interests 'ad extended to sheathing the car in matting and gunny-bags to preserve her paint-work. she was all swathed up like an i-talian baby.' 'he _is_ careful about his paint-work,' i said. 'for a man with no service experience i should say he was fair homicidal on the subject. if we'd been marines he couldn't have been more pointed in his allusions to our hob-nailed socks. however, we reduced him to a malleable condition, and embarked for portsmouth. i'd seldom rejoined my _vaisseau ong automobile, avec_ a fur coat and goggles. nor 'ad jules.' 'did jules say much?' i asked, helplessly turning the handle of the coffee-roaster. 'that's where i pitied the pore beggar. he 'adn't the language, so to speak. he was confined to heavings and shruggin's and copious _mong jews_! the french are very badly fitted with relief-valves. and then our mr. leggatt drove. he drove.' 'was he in a very malleable condition?' 'not him! we recognised the value of his cargo from the outset. he hadn't a chance to get more than moist at the edges. after which we went to sleep; and now we'll go to breakfast.' we entered the back room where everything was in order, and a screeching canary made us welcome. the uncle had added sausages and piles of buttered toast to the kippers. the coffee, cleared with a piece of fish-skin, was a revelation. leggatt, who seemed to know the premises, had run the car into the tiny backyard where her mirror-like back almost blocked up the windows. he minded shop while we ate. pyecroft passed him his rations through a flap in the door. the uncle ordered him in, after breakfast, to wash up, and he jumped in his gaiters at the old man's commands as he has never jumped to mine. 'to resoom the post-mortem,' said pyecroft, lighting his pipe. 'my slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile language from your mr. leggatt.' 'i--i--' leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in the other. 'when you're wanted aft you'll be sent for, mr. leggatt,' said pyecroft amiably. 'it's clean mess decks for you now. resooming once more, we was on a lonely and desolate ocean near portsdown, surrounded by gorse bushes, and a boy scout was stirring my stomach with his little copper-stick.' '"you count ten," he says. '"very good, boy jones," i says, "count 'em," and i hauled him in over the gunnel, and ten i gave him with my large flat hand. the remarks he passed, lying face down tryin' to bite my leg, would have reflected credit on any service. having finished i dropped him overboard again, which was my gross political error. i ought to 'ave killed him; because he began signalling--rapid and accurate--in a sou'westerly direction. few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when b.p.'s little pets take to signallin'. make a note o' that! three minutes later we were stopped and boarded by scouts--up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots! the last i heard from your mr. leggatt as he went under, brushin' 'em off his cap, was thanking heaven he'd covered up the new paint-work with mats. an 'eroic soul!' 'not a scratch on her body,' said leggatt, pouring out the coffee-grounds. 'and jules?' said i. 'oh, jules thought the much advertised social revolution had begun, but his mackintosh hampered him. 'you told me to bring the mackintosh,' leggatt whispered to me. 'and when i 'ad 'em half convinced he was a french vicomte coming down to visit the commander-in-chief at portsmouth, he tried to take it off. seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking sherlock holmes of the pink eye patrol (they called him eddy) deduced that i wasn't speaking the truth. eddy said i was tryin' to sneak into portsmouth unobserved--unobserved mark you!--and join hands with the enemy. it trarnspired that the scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin' forces, ably assisted by all branches of the service, and they was so afraid the car wouldn't count ten points to them in the fray, that they'd have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire--also in short under-drawers. a fleshy sight!' here mr. pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. 'that umpire,' he said suddenly, 'was our mr. morshed--a gentleman whose acquaintance you have already made _and_ profited by, if i mistake not[ ].' [footnote : 'their lawful occasions,' _traffics and discoveries_.] 'oh, was the navy in it too?' i said; for i had read of wild doings occasionally among the boy scouts on the portsmouth road, in which navy, army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part. 'the navy _was_ in it. i was the only one out of it--for several seconds. our mr. morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my appealin' winks at 'im behind your goggles didn't arrive. but when eddy darling had told his story, i saluted, which is difficult in furs, and i stated i was bringin' him dispatches from the north. my mr. morshed cohered on the instant. i've never known his ethergram installations out of order yet. "go and guard your blessed road," he says to the fratton orphan asylum standing at attention all round him, and, when they was removed--"pyecroft," he says, still _sotte voce_, "what in hong-kong are you doing with this dun-coloured _sampan_?" 'it was your mr. leggatt's paint-protective matting which caught his eye. she _did_ resemble a _sampan_, especially about the stern-works. at these remarks i naturally threw myself on 'is bosom, so far as service conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was yours. you know his way of working his lips like a rabbit? yes, he was quite pleased. "_his_ car!" he kept murmuring, working his lips like a rabbit. "i owe 'im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me. i'll keep the car." 'your mr. leggatt now injected some semi-mutinous remarks to the effect that he was your chauffeur in charge of your car, and, as such, capable of so acting. mr. morshed threw him a glarnce. it sufficed. didn't it suffice, mr. leggatt?' 'i knew if something didn't happen, something worse would,' said leggatt. 'it never fails when you're aboard.' 'and jules?' i demanded. 'jules was, so to speak, panicking in a water-tight flat through his unfortunate lack of language. i had to introduce him as part of the _entente cordiale_, and he was put under arrest, too. then we sat on the grass and smoked, while eddy and co. violently annoyed the traffic on the portsmouth road, till the umpires, all in short panties, conferred on the valuable lessons of the field-day and added up points, same as at target-practice. i didn't hear their conclusions, but our mr. morshed delivered a farewell address to eddy and co., tellin' 'em they ought to have deduced from a hundred signs about me, that i was a friendly bringin' in dispatches from the north. we left 'em tryin' to find those signs in the scout book, and we reached mr. morshed's hotel at portsmouth at . p.m. _ong automobile_. here endeth the first chapter.' 'begin the second,' i said. the uncle and leggatt had finished washing up and were seated, smoking, while the damp duster dried at the fire. 'about what time was it,' said pyecroft to leggatt, 'when our mr. morshed began to talk about uncles?' 'when he came back to the bar, after he'd changed into those rat-catcher clothes,' said leggatt. 'that's right. "pye," said he, "have you an uncle?" "i have," i says. "here's santy to him," and i finished my sherry and bitters to _you_, uncle.' 'that's right,' said pyecroft's uncle sternly. 'if you hadn't i'd have belted you worth rememberin', emmanuel. i had the body all night.' pyecroft smiled affectionately. 'so you 'ad, uncle, an' beautifully you looked after her. but as i was saying, "i have an uncle, too," says mr. morshed, dark and lowering. "yet somehow i can't love him. i want to mortify the beggar. volunteers to mortify my uncle, one pace to the front." 'i took jules with me the regulation distance. jules was getting interested. your mr. leggatt preserved a strictly nootral attitude. '"you're a pressed man," says our mr. morshed. "i owe your late employer much, so to say. the car will manoeuvre all night, as requisite." 'mr. leggatt come out noble as your employee, and, by 'eaven's divine grace, instead of arguing, he pleaded his new paint and varnish which was mr. morshed's one vital spot (he's lootenant on one of the new catch-'em-alive-o's now). "true," says he, "paint's an 'oly thing. i'll give you one hour to arrange a _modus vivendi_. full bunkers and steam ready by p.m. to-night, _if_ you please." 'even so, mr. leggatt was far from content. _i_ 'ad to arrange the details. we run her into the yard here.' pyecroft nodded through the window at my car's glossy back-panels. 'we took off the body with its mats and put it in the stable, substitooting (and that yard's a tight fit for extensive repairs) the body of uncle's blue delivery cart. it overhung a trifle, but after i'd lashed it i knew it wouldn't fetch loose. thus, in our composite cruiser, we repaired once more to the hotel, and was immediately dispatched to the toy-shop in the high street where we took aboard one rocking-horse which was waiting for us.' 'took aboard _what_?' i cried. 'one fourteen-hand dapple-grey rocking-horse, with pure green rockers and detachable tail, pair gashly glass eyes, complete set 'orrible grinnin' teeth, and two bloody-red nostrils which, protruding from the brown papers, produced the _tout ensemble_ of a ju-ju sacrifice in the benin campaign. do i make myself comprehensible?' 'perfectly. did you say anything?' i asked. 'only to jules. to him, i says, wishing to try him. "_allez à votre bateau. je say mon lootenong. eel voo donneray porkwor_." to me, says he, "_vous ong ate hurroo! jamay de la vee_!" and i saw by his eye he'd taken on for the full term of the war. jules was a blue-eyed, brindle-haired beggar of a useful make and inquirin' habits. your mr. leggatt he only groaned.' leggatt nodded. 'it was like nightmares,' he said. 'it was like nightmares.' 'once more, then,' pyecroft swept on, 'we returned to the hotel and partook of a sumptuous repast, under the able and genial chairmanship of our mr. morshed, who laid his projecks unreservedly before us. "in the first place," he says, opening out bicycle-maps, "my uncle, who, i regret to say, is a brigadier-general, has sold his alleged soul to dicky bridoon for a feathery hat and a pair o' gilt spurs. jules, _conspuez l'oncle_!" so jules, you'll be glad to hear--' 'one minute, pye,' i said. 'who is dicky bridoon?' 'i don't usually mingle myself up with the bickerings of the junior service, but it trarnspired that he was secretary o' state for civil war, an' he'd been issuing mechanical leather-belly gee-gees which doctors recommend for tumour--to the british cavalry in loo of real meat horses, to learn to ride on. don't you remember there was quite a stir in the papers owing to the cavalry not appreciatin' 'em? but that's a minor item. the main point was that our uncle, in his capacity of brigadier-general, mark you, had wrote to the papers highly approvin' o' dicky bridoon's mechanical substitutes an 'ad thus obtained promotion--all same as a agnosticle stoker psalm-singin' 'imself up the service under a pious captain. at that point of the narrative we caught a phosphorescent glimmer why the rocking-horse might have been issued; but none the less the navigation was intricate. omitting the fact it was dark and cloudy, our brigadier-uncle lay somewhere in the south downs with his brigade, which was manoeuvrin' at whitsum manoeuvres on a large scale--red army _versus_ blue, et cetera; an' all we 'ad to go by was those flapping bicycle-maps and your mr. leggatt's groans.' 'i was thinking what the downs mean after dark,' said leggatt angrily. 'they was worth thinkin' of,' said pyecroft. 'when we had studied the map till it fair spun, we decided to sally forth and creep for uncle by hand in the dark, dark night, an' present 'im with the rocking-horse. so we embarked at . p.m.' 'one minute again, please. how much did jules understand by that time?' i asked. 'sufficient unto the day--or night, perhaps i should say. he told our mr. morshed he'd follow him _more sang frays_, which is french for dead, drunk, or damned. barrin' 'is paucity o' language, there wasn't a blemish on jules. but what i wished to imply was, when we climbed into the back parts of the car, our lootenant morshed says to me, "i doubt if i'd flick my cigar-ends about too lavish, mr. pyecroft. we ought to be sitting on five pounds' worth of selected fireworks, and i think the rockets are your end." not being able to smoke with my 'ead over the side i threw it away; and then your mr. leggatt, 'aving been as nearly mutinous as it pays to be with my mr. morshed, arched his back and drove.' 'where did he drive to, please?' said i. 'primerrily, in search of any or either or both armies; seconderrily, of course, in search of our brigadier-uncle. not finding him on the road, we ran about the grass looking for him. this took us to a great many places in a short time. ow 'eavenly that lilac did smell on top of that first down--stinkin' its blossomin' little heart out!' 'i 'adn't leesure to notice,' said mr. leggatt. 'the downs were full o' chalk-pits, and we'd no lights.' 'we 'ad the bicycle-lamp to look at the map by. didn't you notice the old lady at the window where we saw the man in the night-gown? i thought night-gowns as sleepin' rig was extinck, so to speak.' 'i tell you i 'adn't leesure to notice,' leggatt repeated. 'that's odd. then what might 'ave made you tell the sentry at the first camp we found that you was the _daily express_ delivery-waggon?' 'you can't touch pitch without being defiled,' leggatt answered. ''oo told the officer in the bath we were umpires?' 'well, he asked us. that was when we found the territorial battalion undressin' in slow time. it lay on the left flank o' the blue army, and it cackled as it lay, too. but it gave us our position as regards the respective armies. we wandered a little more, and at . p.m., not having had a road under us for twenty minutes, we scaled the heights of something or other--which are about six hundred feet high. here we 'alted to tighten the lashings of the superstructure, and we smelt leather and horses three counties deep all round. we was, as you might say, in the thick of it.' '"ah!" says my mr. morshed. "my 'orizon has indeed broadened. what a little thing is an uncle, mr. pyecroft, in the presence o' these glitterin' constellations! simply ludicrous!" he says, "to waste a rocking-horse on an individual. we must socialise it. but we must get their 'eads up first. touch off one rocket, if you please." 'i touched off a green three-pounder which rose several thousand metres, and burst into gorgeous stars. "reproduce the manoeuvre," he says, "at the other end o' this ridge--if it don't end in another cliff." so we steamed down the ridge a mile and a half east, and then i let jules touch off a pink rocket, or he'd ha' kissed me. that was his only way to express his emotions, so to speak. their heads come up then all around us to the extent o' thousands. we hears bugles like cocks crowing below, and on the top of it a most impressive sound which i'd never enjoyed before because 'itherto i'd always been an inteegral part of it, so to say--the noise of 'ole armies gettin' under arms. they must 'ave anticipated a night attack, i imagine. most impressive. then we 'eard a threshin'-machine. "tutt! tutt! this is childish!" says lootenant morshed. "we can't wait till they've finished cutting chaff for their horses. we must make 'em understand we're not to be trifled with. expedite 'em with another rocket, mr. pyecroft." '"it's barely possible, sir," i remarks, "that that's a searchlight churnin' up," and by the time we backed into a providential chalk cutting (which was where our first tyre went pungo) she broke out to the northward, and began searching the ridge. a smart bit o' work.' ''twasn't a puncture. the inner tube had nipped because we skidded so,' leggatt interrupted. 'while your mr. leggatt was effectin' repairs, another searchlight broke out to the southward, and the two of 'em swept our ridge on both sides. right at the west end of it they showed us the ground rising into a hill, so to speak, crowned with what looked like a little fort. morshed saw it before the beams shut off. "that's the key of the position!" he says. "occupy it at all hazards." '"i haven't half got occupation for the next twenty minutes," says your mr. leggatt, rootin' and blasphemin' in the dark. mark, now, 'ow morshed changed his tactics to suit 'is environment. "right!" says he. "i'll stand by the ship. mr. pyecroft and jules, oblige me by doubling along the ridge to the east with all the maroons and crackers you can carry without spilling. read the directions careful for the maroons, mr. pyecroft, and touch them off at half-minute intervals. jules represents musketry an' maxim fire under your command. remember, it's death or salisbury gaol! prob'ly both!" 'by these means and some moderately 'ard runnin', we distracted 'em to the eastward. maroons, you may not be aware, are same as bombs, with the anarchism left out. in confined spots like chalk-pits, they knock a four-point-seven silly. but you should read the directions before'and. in the intervals of the slow but well-directed fire of my cow-guns, jules, who had found a sheep-pond in the dark a little lower down, gave what you might call a cinematograph reproduction o' sporadic musketry. they was large size crackers, and he concluded with the dull, sickenin' thud o' blind shells burstin' on soft ground.' 'how did he manage that?' i said. 'you throw a lighted squib into water and you'll see,' said pyecroft. 'thus, then, we improvised till supplies was exhausted and the surrounding landscapes fair 'owled and 'ummed at us. the jun or service might 'ave 'ad their doubts about the rockets but they couldn't overlook our gunfire. both sides tumbled out full of initiative. i told jules no two flat-feet 'ad any right to be as happy as us, and we went back along the ridge to the derelict, and there was our mr. morshed apostrophin' his 'andiwork over fifty square mile o' country with "attend, all ye who list to hear!" out of the fifth reader. he'd got as far as "and roused the shepherds o' stonehenge, the rangers o' beaulieu" when we come up, and he drew our attention to its truth as well as its beauty. that's rare in poetry, i'm told. he went right on to--"the red glare on skiddaw roused those beggars at carlisle"--which he pointed out was poetic license for leith hill. this allowed your mr. leggatt time to finish pumpin' up his tyres. i 'eard the sweat 'op off his nose.' 'you know what it is, sir,' said poor leggatt to me. 'it warfted across my mind, as i listened to what was trarnspirin', that it might be easier to make the mess than to wipe it up, but such considerations weighed not with our valiant leader. '"mr. pyecroft," he says, "it can't have escaped your notice that we 'ave one angry and 'ighly intelligent army in front of us, an' another 'ighly angry and equally intelligent army in our rear. what 'ud you recommend?" 'most men would have besought 'im to do a lateral glide while there was yet time, but all i said was: "the rocking-horse isn't expended yet, sir." 'he laid his hand on my shoulder. "pye," says he, "there's worse men than you in loftier places. they shall 'ave it. none the less," he remarks, "the ice is undeniably packing." 'i may 'ave omitted to point out that at this juncture two large armies, both deprived of their night's sleep, was awake, as you might say, and hurryin' into each other's arms. here endeth the second chapter.' he filled his pipe slowly. the uncle had fallen asleep. leggatt lit another cigarette. 'we then proceeded _ong automobile_ along the ridge in a westerly direction towards the miniature fort which had been so kindly revealed by the searchlight, but which on inspection (your mr. leggatt bumped into an outlyin' reef of it) proved to be a wurzel-clump; _c'est-à-dire_, a parallelogrammatic pile of about three million mangold-wurzels, brought up there for the sheep, i suppose. on all sides, excep' the one we'd come by, the ground fell away moderately quick, and down at the bottom there was a large camp lit up an' full of harsh words of command. '"i said it was the key to the position," lootenant morshed remarks. "trot out persimmon!" which we rightly took to read, "un-wrap the rocking-horse." '"houp la!" says jules in a insubordinate tone, an' slaps persimmon on the flank. '"silence!" says the lootenant. "this is the royal navy, not newmarket"; and we carried persimmon to the top of the mangel-wurzel clump as directed. 'owing to the inequalities of the terrain (i _do_ think your mr. leggatt might have had a spirit-level in his kit) he wouldn't rock free on the bed-plate, and while adjustin' him, his detachable tail fetched adrift. our lootenant was quick to seize the advantage. '"remove that transformation," he says. "substitute one roman candle. gas-power is superior to manual propulsion." 'so we substituted. he arranged the _pièce de resistarnce_ in the shape of large drums--not saucers, mark you--drums of coloured fire, with printed instructions, at proper distances round persimmon. there was a brief interregnum while we dug ourselves in among the wurzels by hand. then he touched off the fires, _not_ omitting the roman candle, and, you may take it from me, all was visible. persimmon shone out in his naked splendour, red to port, green to starboard, and one white light at his bows, as per board o' trade regulations. only he didn't so much rock, you might say, as shrug himself, in a manner of speaking, every time the candle went off. one can't have everything. but the rest surpassed our highest expectations. i think persimmon was noblest on the starboard or green side--more like when a man thinks he's seeing mackerel in hell, don't you know? and yet i'd be the last to deprecate the effect of the port light on his teeth, or that blood-shot look in his left eye. he knew there was something going on he didn't approve of. he looked worried.' 'did you laugh?' i said. 'i'm not much of a wag myself; nor it wasn't as if we 'ad time to allow the spectacle to sink in. the coloured fires was supposed to burn ten minutes, whereas it was obvious to the meanest capacity that the junior service would arrive by forced marches in about two and a half. they grarsped our topical allusion as soon as it was across the foot-lights, so to speak. they were quite chafed at it. of course, 'ad we reflected, we might have known that exposin' illuminated rockin'-horses to an army that was learnin' to ride on 'em partook of the nature of a _double entender_, as the french say--same as waggling the tiller lines at a man who's had a hanging in the family. i knew the cox of the _archimandrite's_ galley 'arf killed for a similar _plaisan-teree._ but we never anticipated lobsters being so sensitive. that was why we shifted. we could 'ardly tear our commandin' officer away. he put his head on one side, and kept cooin'. the only thing he 'ad neglected to provide was a line of retreat; but your mr. leggatt--an 'eroic soul in the last stage of wet prostration--here took command of the van, or, rather, the rear-guard. we walked downhill beside him, holding on to the superstructure to prevent her capsizing. these technical details, 'owever, are beyond me.' he waved his pipe towards leggatt. 'i saw there was two deepish ruts leadin' down 'ill somewhere,' said leggatt. 'that was when the soldiers stopped laughin', and begun to run uphill.' 'stroll, lovey, stroll!' pyecroft corrected. 'the dervish rush took place later.' 'so i laid her in these ruts. that was where she must 'ave scraped her silencer a bit. then they turned sharp right--the ruts did--and then she stopped bonnet-high in a manure-heap, sir; but i'll swear it was all of a one in three gradient. i think it was a barnyard. we waited there,' said leggatt. 'but not for long,' said pyecroft. 'the lights were towering out of the drums on the position we 'ad so valiantly abandoned; and the junior service was escaladin' it _en masse_. when numerous bodies of 'ighly trained men arrive simultaneous in the same latitude from opposite directions, each remarking briskly, "what the 'ell did you do _that_ for?" detonation, as you might say, is practically assured. they didn't ask for extraneous aids. if we'd come out with sworn affidavits of what we'd done they wouldn't 'ave believed us. they wanted each other's company exclusive. such was the effect of persimmon on their clarss feelings. idol'try, _i_ call it! events transpired with the utmost velocity and rapidly increasing pressures. there was a few remarks about dicky bridoon and mechanical horses, and then some one was smacked--hard by the sound--in the middle of a remark.' 'that was the man who kept calling for the forty-fifth dragoons,' said leggatt. 'he got as far as drag ...' 'was it?' said pyecroft dreamily. 'well, he couldn't say they didn't come. they all came, and they all fell to arguin' whether the infantry should 'ave persimmon for a regimental pet or the cavalry should keep him for stud purposes. hence the issue was soon clouded with mangold-wurzels. our commander said we 'ad sowed the good seed, and it was bearing abundant fruit. (they weigh between four and seven pounds apiece.) seein' the children 'ad got over their shyness, and 'ad really begun to play games, we backed out o' the pit and went down, by steps, to the camp below, no man, as you might say, making us afraid. here we enjoyed a front view of the battle, which rolled with renewed impetus, owing to both sides receiving strong reinforcements every minute. all arms were freely represented; cavalry, on this occasion only, acting in concert with artillery. they argued the relative merits of horses _versus_ feet, so to say, but they didn't neglect persimmon. the wounded rolling downhill with the wurzels informed us that he had long ago been socialised, and the smallest souvenirs were worth a man's life. speaking broadly, the junior service appeared to be a shade out of 'and, if i may venture so far. they did _not_ pay prompt and unhesitating obedience to the "retires" or the "cease fires" or the "for 'eaven's sake come to bed, ducky" of their officers, who, i regret to say, were 'otly embroiled at the heads of their respective units.' 'how did you find that out?' i asked. 'on account of lootenant morshed going to the mess tent to call on his uncle and raise a drink; but all hands had gone to the front. we thought we 'eard somebody bathing behind the tent, and we found an oldish gentleman tryin' to drown a boy in knickerbockers in a horse-trough. he kept him under with a bicycle, so to speak. he 'ad nearly accomplished his fell design, when we frustrated him. he was in a highly malleable condition and full o' _juice de spree_. "arsk not what i am," he says. "my wife 'll tell me that quite soon enough. arsk rather what i've been," he says. "i've been dinin' here," he says. "i commanded 'em in the eighties," he says, "and, gawd forgive me," he says, sobbin' 'eavily, "i've spent this holy evening telling their colonel they was a set of educated inefficients. hark to 'em!" we could, without strainin' ourselves; but how _he_ picked up the gentle murmur of his own corps in that on-the-knee party up the hill i don't know. "they've marched and fought thirty mile to-day," he shouts, "and now they're tearin' the _intestines_ out of the cavalry up yonder! they won't stop this side the gates o' delhi," he says. "i commanded their ancestors. there's nothing wrong with the service," he says, wringing out his trousers on his lap. "'eaven pardon me for doubtin' 'em! same old game--same young beggars." 'the boy in the knickerbockers, languishing on a chair, puts in a claim for one drink. "let him go dry," says our friend in shirt-tails. "he's a reporter. he run into me on his filthy bicycle and he asked me if i could furnish 'im with particulars about the mutiny in the army. you false-'earted proletarian publicist," he says, shakin' his finger at 'im--for he was reelly annoyed--"i'll teach you to defile what you can't comprebend! when my regiment's in a state o' mutiny, i'll do myself the honour of informing you personally. you particularly ignorant and very narsty little man," he says, "you're no better than a dhobi's donkey! if there wasn't dirty linen to wash, you'd starve," he says, "and why i haven't drowned you will be the lastin' regret of my life." 'well, we sat with 'em and 'ad drinks for about half-an-hour in front of the mess tent. he'd ha' killed the reporter if there hadn't been witnesses, and the reporter might have taken notes of the battle; so we acted as two-way buffers, in a sense. i don't hold with the press mingling up with service matters. they draw false conclusions. now, mark you, at a moderate estimate, there were seven thousand men in the fighting line, half of 'em hurt in their professional feelings, an' the other half rubbin' in the liniment, as you might say. all due to persimmon! if you 'adn't seen it you wouldn't 'ave believed it. and yet, mark you, not one single unit of 'em even resorted to his belt. they confined themselves to natural producks--hands and the wurzels. i thought jules was havin' fits, till it trarnspired the same thought had impressed him in the french language. he called it _incroyable_, i believe. seven thousand men, with seven thousand rifles, belts, and bayonets, in a violently agitated condition, and not a ungenteel blow struck from first to last. the old gentleman drew our attention to it as well. it was quite noticeable. 'lack of ammunition was the primerry cause of the battle ceasin'. a brigade-major came in, wipin' his nose on both cuffs, and sayin' he 'ad 'ad snuff. the brigadier-uncle followed. he was, so to speak, sneezin'. we thought it best to shift our moorings without attractin' attention; so we shifted. they 'ad called the cows 'ome by then. the junior service was going to bye-bye all round us, as happy as the ship's monkey when he's been playin' with the paints, and lootenant morshed and jules kept bowin' to port and starboard of the superstructure, acknowledgin' the unstinted applause which the multitude would 'ave given 'em if they'd known the facts. on the other 'and, as your mr. leggatt observed, they might 'ave killed us. 'that would have been about five bells in the middle watch, say half-past two. a well-spent evening. there was but little to be gained by entering portsmouth at that hour, so we turned off on the grass (this was after we had found a road under us), and we cast anchors out at the stern and prayed for the day. 'but your mr. leggatt he had to make and mend tyres all our watch below. it trarnspired she had been running on the rim o' two or three wheels, which, very properly, he hadn't reported till the close of the action. and that's the reason of your four new tyres. mr. morshed was of opinion you'd earned 'em. do you dissent?' i stretched out my hand, which pyecroft crushed to pulp. 'no, pye,' i said, deeply moved, 'i agree entirely. but what happened to jules?' 'we returned him to his own navy after breakfast. he wouldn't have kept much longer without some one in his own language to tell it to. i don't know any man i ever took more compassion on than jules. 'is sufferings swelled him up centimetres, and all he could do on the hard was to kiss lootenant morshed and me, _and_ your mr. leggatt. he deserved that much. a cordial beggar.' pyecroft looked at the washed cups on the table, and the low sunshine on my car's back in the yard. 'too early to drink to him,' he said. 'but i feel it just the same.' the uncle, sunk in his chair, snored a little; the canary answered with a shrill lullaby. pyecroft picked up the duster, threw it over the cage, put his finger to his lips, and we tiptoed out into the shop, while leggatt brought the car round. 'i'll look out for the news in the papers,' i said, as i got in. 'oh, we short-circuited that! nothing trarnspired excep' a statement to the effect that some territorial battalions had played about with turnips at the conclusion of the manoeuvres the taxpayer don't know all he gets for his money. farewell!' we moved off just in time to be blocked by a regiment coming towards the station to entrain for london. 'beg your pardon, sir,' said a sergeant in charge of the baggage, 'but would you mind backin' a bit till we get the waggons past?' 'certainly,' i said. 'you don't happen to have a rocking-horse among your kit, do you?' the rattle of our reverse drowned his answer, but i saw his eyes. one of them was blackish-green, about four days old. the legend of mirth the four archangels, so the legends tell, raphael, gabriel, michael, azrael, being first of those to whom the power was shown, stood first of all the host before the throne, and when the charges were allotted burst tumultuous-winged from out the assembly first. zeal was their spur that bade them strictly heed their own high judgment on their lightest deed. zeal was their spur that, when relief was given, urged them unwearied to fresh toil in heaven; for honour's sake perfecting every task beyond what e'en perfection's self could ask.... and allah, who created zeal and pride, knows how the twain are perilous-near allied. it chanced on one of heaven's long-lighted days, the four and all the host having gone their ways each to his charge, the shining courts were void save for one seraph whom no charge employed, with folden wings and slumber-threatened brow. to whom the word: 'beloved, what dost thou?' 'by the permission,' came the answer soft, 'little i do nor do that little oft. as is the will in heaven so on earth where by the will i strive to make men mirth.' he ceased and sped, hearing the word once more: 'beloved, go thy way and greet the four.' systems and universes overpast, the seraph came upon the four, at last, guiding and guarding with devoted mind the tedious generations of mankind who lent at most unwilling ear and eye when they could not escape the ministry.... yet, patient, faithful, firm, persistent, just toward all that gross, indifferent, facile dust, the archangels laboured to discharge their trust by precept and example, prayer and law, advice, reproof, and rule, but, labouring, saw each in his fellow's countenance confessed, the doubt that sickens: 'have i done my best?' even as they sighed and turned to toil anew, the seraph hailed them with observance due; and after some fit talk of higher things touched tentative on mundane happenings. this they permitting, he, emboldened thus, prolused of humankind promiscuous. and, since the large contention less avails than instances observed, he told them tales--tales of the shop, the bed, the court, the street, intimate, elemental, indiscreet: occasions where confusion smiting swift piles jest on jest as snow-slides pile the drift. whence, one by one, beneath derisive skies, the victims bare, bewildered heads arise: tales of the passing of the spirit, graced with humour blinding as the doom it faced: stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside to tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried: tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue, but only (allah be exalted!) true, and only, as the seraph showed that night, delighting to the limits of delight. these he rehearsed with artful pause and halt, and such pretence of memory at fault, that soon the four--so well the bait was thrown-- came to his aid with memories of their own-- matters dismissed long since as small or vain, whereof the high significance had lain hid, till the ungirt glosses made it plain. then as enlightenment came broad and fast, each marvelled at his own oblivious past until--the gates of laughter opened wide-- the four, with that bland seraph at their side, while they recalled, compared, and amplified, in utter mirth forgot both zeal and pride. high over heaven the lamps of midnight burned ere, weak with merriment, the four returned, not in that order they were wont to keep-- pinion to pinion answering, sweep for sweep, in awful diapason heard afar, but shoutingly adrift 'twixt star and star. reeling a planet's orbit left or right as laughter took them in the abysmal night; or, by the point of some remembered jest, winged and brought helpless down through gulfs unguessed, where the blank worlds that gather to the birth leaped in the womb of darkness at their mirth, and e'en gehenna's bondsmen understood. they were not damned from human brotherhood. not first nor last of heaven's high host, the four that night took place beneath the throne once more. o lovelier than their morning majesty, the understanding light behind the eye! o more compelling than their old command, the new-learned friendly gesture of the hand! o sweeter than their zealous fellowship, the wise half-smile that passed from lip to lip! o well and roundly, when command was given, they told their tale against themselves to heaven, and in the silence, waiting on the word, received the peace and pardon of the lord! 'my son's wife' ( ) he had suffered from the disease of the century since his early youth, and before he was thirty he was heavily marked with it. he and a few friends had rearranged heaven very comfortably, but the reorganisation of earth, which they called society, was even greater fun. it demanded work in the shape of many taxi-rides daily; hours of brilliant talk with brilliant talkers; some sparkling correspondence; a few silences (but on the understanding that their own turn should come soon) while other people expounded philosophies; and a fair number of picture-galleries, tea-fights, concerts, theatres, music-halls, and cinema shows; the whole trimmed with love-making to women whose hair smelt of cigarette-smoke. such strong days sent frankwell midmore back to his flat assured that he and his friends had helped the world a step nearer the truth, the dawn, and the new order. his temperament, he said, led him more towards concrete data than abstract ideas. people who investigate detail are apt to be tired at the day's end. the same temperament, or it may have been a woman, made him early attach himself to the immoderate left of his cause in the capacity of an experimenter in social relations. and since the immoderate left contains plenty of women anxious to help earnest inquirers with large independent incomes to arrive at evaluations of essentials, frankwell midmore's lot was far from contemptible. at that hour fate chose to play with him. a widowed aunt, widely separated by nature, and more widely by marriage, from all that midmore's mother had ever been or desired to be, died and left him possessions. mrs. midmore, having that summer embraced a creed which denied the existence of death, naturally could not stoop to burial; but midmore had to leave london for the dank country at a season when social regeneration works best through long, cushioned conferences, two by two, after tea. there he faced the bracing ritual of the british funeral, and was wept at across the raw grave by an elderly coffin-shaped female with a long nose, who called him 'master frankie'; and there he was congratulated behind an echoing top-hat by a man he mistook for a mute, who turned out to be his aunt's lawyer. he wrote his mother next day, after a bright account of the funeral: 'so far as i can understand, she has left me between four and five hundred a year. it all comes from ther land, as they call it down here. the unspeakable attorney, sperrit, and a green-eyed daughter, who hums to herself as she tramps but is silent on all subjects except "huntin'," insisted on taking me to see it. ther land is brown and green in alternate slabs like chocolate and pistachio cakes, speckled with occasional peasants who do not utter. in case it should not be wet enough there is a wet brook in the middle of it. ther house is by the brook. i shall look into it later. if there should be any little memento of jenny that you care for, let me know. didn't you tell me that mid-victorian furniture is coming into the market again? jenny's old maid--it is called rhoda dolbie--tells me that jenny promised it thirty pounds a year. the will does not. hence, i suppose, the tears at the funeral. but that is close on ten per cent of the income. i fancy jenny has destroyed all her private papers and records of her _vie intime_, if, indeed, life be possible in such a place. the sperrit man told me that if i had means of my own i might come and live on ther land. i didn't tell him how much i would pay not to! i cannot think it right that any human being should exercise mastery over others in the merciless fashion our tom-fool social system permits; so, as it is all mine, i intend to sell it whenever the unholy sperrit can find a purchaser.' and he went to mr. sperrit with the idea next day, just before returning to town. 'quite so,' said the lawyer. 'i see your point, of course. but the house itself is rather old-fashioned--hardly the type purchasers demand nowadays. there's no park, of course, and the bulk of the land is let to a life-tenant, a mr. sidney. as long as he pays his rent, he can't be turned out, and even if he didn't'--mr. sperrit's face relaxed a shade--'you might have a difficulty.' 'the property brings four hundred a year, i understand,' said midmore. 'well, hardly--ha-ardly. deducting land and income tax, tithes, fire insurance, cost of collection and repairs of course, it returned two hundred and eighty-four pounds last year. the repairs are rather a large item--owing to the brook. i call it liris--out of horace, you know.' midmore looked at his watch impatiently. 'i suppose you can find somebody to buy it?' he repeated. 'we will do our best, of course, if those are your instructions. then, that is all except'--here midmore half rose, but mr. sperrit's little grey eyes held his large brown ones firmly--'except about rhoda dolbie, mrs. werf's maid. i may tell you that we did not draw up your aunt's last will. she grew secretive towards the last--elderly people often do--and had it done in london. i expect her memory failed her, or she mislaid her notes. she used to put them in her spectacle-case.... my motor only takes eight minutes to get to the station, mr. midmore ... but, as i was saying, whenever she made her will with _us_, mrs. werf always left rhoda thirty pounds per annum. charlie, the wills!' a clerk with a baldish head and a long nose dealt documents on to the table like cards, and breathed heavily behind midmore. 'it's in no sense a legal obligation, of course,' said mr. sperrit. 'ah, that one is dated january the th, eighteen eighty-nine.' midmore looked at his watch again and found himself saying with no good grace: 'well, i suppose she'd better have it--for the present at any rate.' he escaped with an uneasy feeling that two hundred and fifty-four pounds a year was not exactly four hundred, and that charlie's long nose annoyed him. then he returned, first-class, to his own affairs. of the two, perhaps three, experiments in social relations which he had then in hand, one interested him acutely. it had run for some months and promised most variegated and interesting developments, on which he dwelt luxuriously all the way to town. when he reached his flat he was not well prepared for a twelve-page letter explaining, in the diction of the immoderate left which rubricates its i's and illuminates its t's, that the lady had realised greater attractions in another soul. she re-stated, rather than pleaded, the gospel of the immoderate left as her justification, and ended in an impassioned demand for her right to express herself in and on her own life, through which, she pointed out, she could pass but once. she added that if, later, she should discover midmore was 'essentially complementary to her needs,' she would tell him so. that midmore had himself written much the same sort of epistle--barring the hint of return--to a woman of whom his needs for self-expression had caused him to weary three years before, did not assist him in the least. he expressed himself to the gas-fire in terms essential but not complimentary. then he reflected on the detached criticism of his best friends and her best friends, male and female, with whom he and she and others had talked so openly while their gay adventure was in flower. he recalled, too--this must have been about midnight--her analysis from every angle, remote and most intimate, of the mate to whom she had been adjudged under the base convention which is styled marriage. later, at that bad hour when the cattle wake for a little, he remembered her in other aspects and went down into the hell appointed; desolate, desiring, with no god to call upon. about eleven o'clock next morning eliphaz the temanite, bildad the shuhite, and zophar the naamathite called upon him 'for they had made appointment together' to see how he took it; but the janitor told them that job had gone--into the country, he believed. midmore's relief when he found his story was not written across his aching temples for mr. sperrit to read--the defeated lover, like the successful one, believes all earth privy to his soul--was put down by mr. sperrit to quite different causes. he led him into a morning-room. the rest of the house seemed to be full of people, singing to a loud piano idiotic songs about cows, and the hall smelt of damp cloaks. 'it's our evening to take the winter cantata,' mr. sperrit explained. 'it's "high tide on the coast of lincolnshire." i hoped you'd come back. there are scores of little things to settle. as for the house, of course, it stands ready for you at any time. i couldn't get rhoda out of it--nor could charlie for that matter. she's the sister, isn't she, of the nurse who brought you down here when you were four, she says, to recover from measles?' 'is she? was i?' said midmore through the bad tastes in his mouth. 'd'you suppose i could stay there the night?' thirty joyous young voices shouted appeal to some one to leave their 'pipes of parsley 'ollow--'ollow--'ollow!' mr. sperrit had to raise his voice above the din. 'well, if i asked you to stay _here_, i should never hear the last of it from rhoda. she's a little cracked, of course, but the soul of devotion and capable of anything. _ne sit ancillae_, you know.' 'thank you. then i'll go. i'll walk.' he stumbled out dazed and sick into the winter twilight, and sought the square house by the brook. it was not a dignified entry, because when the door was unchained and rhoda exclaimed, he took two valiant steps into the hall and then fainted--as men sometimes will after twenty-two hours of strong emotion and little food. 'i'm sorry,' he said when he could speak. he was lying at the foot of the stairs, his head on rhoda's lap. 'your 'ome is your castle, sir,' was the reply in his hair. 'i smelt it wasn't drink. you lay on the sofa till i get your supper.' she settled him in a drawing-room hung with yellow silk, heavy with the smell of dead leaves and oil lamp. something murmured soothingly in the background and overcame the noises in his head. he thought he heard horses' feet on wet gravel and a voice singing about ships and flocks and grass. it passed close to the shuttered bay-window. but each will mourn his own, she saith, and sweeter woman ne'er drew breath than my son's wife, elizabeth ... cusha--cusha--cusha--calling. the hoofs broke into a canter as rhoda entered with the tray. 'and then i'll put you to bed,' she said. 'sidney's coming in the morning.' midmore asked no questions. he dragged his poor bruised soul to bed and would have pitied it all over again, but the food and warm sherry and water drugged him to instant sleep. rhoda's voice wakened him, asking whether he would have ''ip, foot, or sitz,' which he understood were the baths of the establishment. 'suppose you try all three,' she suggested. 'they're all yours, you know, sir.' he would have renewed his sorrows with the daylight, but her words struck him pleasantly. everything his eyes opened upon was his very own to keep for ever. the carved four-post chippendale bed, obviously worth hundreds; the wavy walnut william and mary chairs--he had seen worse ones labelled twenty guineas apiece; the oval medallion mirror; the delicate eighteenth-century wire fireguard; the heavy brocaded curtains were his--all his. so, too, a great garden full of birds that faced him when he shaved; a mulberry tree, a sun-dial, and a dull, steel-coloured brook that murmured level with the edge of a lawn a hundred yards away. peculiarly and privately his own was the smell of sausages and coffee that he sniffed at the head of the wide square landing, all set round with mysterious doors and bartolozzi prints. he spent two hours after breakfast in exploring his new possessions. his heart leaped up at such things as sewing-machines, a rubber-tyred bath-chair in a tiled passage, a malachite-headed malacca cane, boxes and boxes of unopened stationery, seal-rings, bunches of keys, and at the bottom of a steel-net reticule a little leather purse with seven pounds ten shillings in gold and eleven shillings in silver. 'you used to play with that when my sister brought you down here after your measles,' said rhoda as he slipped the money into his pocket. 'now, this was your pore dear auntie's business-room.' she opened a low door. 'oh, i forgot about mr. sidney! there he is.' an enormous old man with rheumy red eyes that blinked under downy white eyebrows sat in an empire chair, his cap in his hands. rhoda withdrew sniffing. the man looked midmore over in silence, then jerked a thumb towards the door. 'i reckon she told you who i be,' he began. 'i'm the only farmer you've got. nothin' goes off my place 'thout it walks on its own feet. what about my pig-pound?' 'well, what about it?' said midmore. 'that's just what i be come about. the county councils are getting more particular. did ye know there was swine fever at pashell's? there _be_. it'll 'ave to be in brick.' 'yes,' said midmore politely. 'i've bin at your aunt that was, plenty times about it. i don't say she wasn't a just woman, but she didn't read the lease same way i did. i be used to bein' put upon, but there's no doing any longer 'thout that pig-pound.' 'when would you like it?' midmore asked. it seemed the easiest road to take. 'any time or other suits me, i reckon. he ain't thrivin' where he is, an' i paid eighteen shillin' for him.' he crossed his hands on his stick and gave no further sign of life. 'is that all?' midmore stammered. 'all now--excep''--he glanced fretfully at the table beside him--'excep' my usuals. where's that rhoda?' midmore rang the bell. rhoda came in with a bottle and a glass. the old man helped himself to four stiff fingers, rose in one piece, and stumped out. at the door he cried ferociously: 'don't suppose it's any odds to you whether i'm drowned or not, but them floodgates want a wheel and winch, they do. i be too old for liftin' 'em with the bar--my time o' life.' 'good riddance if 'e was drowned,' said rhoda. 'but don't you mind him. he's only amusin' himself. your pore dear auntie used to give 'im 'is usual--'tisn't the whisky _you_ drink--an' send 'im about 'is business.' 'i see. now, is a pig-pound the same thing as a pig-sty?' rhoda nodded. ''e needs one, too, but 'e ain't entitled to it. you look at 'is lease--third drawer on the left in that bombay cab'net--an' next time 'e comes you ask 'im to read it. that'll choke 'im off, because 'e can't!' there was nothing in midmore's past to teach him the message and significance of a hand-written lease of the late 'eighties, but rhoda interpreted. 'it don't mean anything reelly,' was her cheerful conclusion, 'excep' you mustn't get rid of him anyhow, an' 'e can do what 'e likes always. lucky for us 'e _do_ farm; and if it wasn't for 'is woman--' 'oh, there's a mrs. sidney, is there?' 'lor, _no_!' the sidneys don't marry. they keep. that's his fourth since--to my knowledge. he was a takin' man from the first.' 'any families?' 'they'd be grown up by now if there was, wouldn't they? but you can't spend all your days considerin' 'is interests. that's what gave your pore aunt 'er indigestion. 'ave you seen the gun-room?' midmore held strong views on the immorality of taking life for pleasure. but there was no denying that the late colonel werf's seventy-guinea breechloaders were good at their filthy job. he loaded one, took it out and pointed--merely pointed--it at a cock-pheasant which rose out of a shrubbery behind the kitchen, and the flaming bird came down in a long slant on the lawn, stone dead. rhoda from the scullery said it was a lovely shot, and told him lunch was ready. he spent the afternoon gun in one hand, a map in the other, beating the bounds of his lands. they lay altogether in a shallow, uninteresting valley, flanked with woods and bisected by a brook. up stream was his own house; down stream, less than half a mile, a low red farm-house squatted in an old orchard, beside what looked like small lock-gates on the thames. there was no doubt as to ownership. mr. sidney saw him while yet far off, and bellowed at him about pig-pounds and floodgates. these last were two great sliding shutters of weedy oak across the brook, which were prised up inch by inch with a crowbar along a notched strip of iron, and when sidney opened them they at once let out half the water. midmore watched it shrink between its aldered banks like some conjuring trick. this, too, was his very own. 'i see,' he said. 'how interesting! now, what's that bell for?' he went on, pointing to an old ship's bell in a rude belfry at the end of an outhouse. 'was that a chapel once?' the red-eyed giant seemed to have difficulty in expressing himself for the moment and blinked savagely. 'yes,' he said at last. 'my chapel. when you 'ear that bell ring you'll 'ear something. nobody but me 'ud put up with it--but i reckon it don't make any odds to you.' he slammed the gates down again, and the brook rose behind them with a suck and a grunt. midmore moved off, conscious that he might be safer with rhoda to hold his conversational hand. as he passed the front of the farm-house a smooth fat woman, with neatly parted grey hair under a widow's cap, curtsied to him deferentially through the window. by every teaching of the immoderate left she had a perfect right to express herself in any way she pleased, but the curtsey revolted him. and on his way home he was hailed from behind a hedge by a manifest idiot with no roof to his mouth, who hallooed and danced round him. 'what did that beast want?' he demanded of rhoda at tea. 'jimmy? he only wanted to know if you 'ad any telegrams to send. 'e'll go anywhere so long as 'tisn't across running water. that gives 'im 'is seizures. even talkin' about it for fun like makes 'im shake.' 'but why isn't he where he can be properly looked after?' 'what 'arm's 'e doing? e's a love-child, but 'is family can pay for 'im. if 'e was locked up 'e'd die all off at once, like a wild rabbit. won't you, please, look at the drive, sir?' midmore looked in the fading light. the neat gravel was pitted with large roundish holes, and there was a punch or two of the same sort on the lawn. 'that's the 'unt comin' 'ome,' rhoda explained. 'your pore dear auntie always let 'em use our drive for a short cut after the colonel died. the colonel wouldn't so much because he preserved; but your auntie was always an 'orsewoman till 'er sciatica.' 'isn't there some one who can rake it over or--or something?' said midmore vaguely. 'oh yes. you'll never see it in the morning, but--you was out when they came 'ome an' mister fisher--he's the master--told me to tell you with 'is compliments that if you wasn't preservin' and cared to 'old to the old understanding', is gravel-pit is at your service same as before. 'e thought, perhaps, you mightn't know, and it 'ad slipped my mind to tell you. it's good gravel, mister fisher's, and it binds beautiful on the drive. we 'ave to draw it, o' course, from the pit, but--' midmore looked at her helplessly. 'rhoda,' said he, 'what am i supposed to do?' 'oh, let 'em come through,' she replied. 'you never know. you may want to 'unt yourself some day.' that evening it rained and his misery returned on him, the worse for having been diverted. at last he was driven to paw over a few score books in a panelled room called the library, and realised with horror what the late colonel werf's mind must have been in its prime. the volumes smelt of a dead world as strongly as they did of mildew. he opened and thrust them back, one after another, till crude coloured illustrations of men on horses held his eye. he began at random and read a little, moved into the drawing-room with the volume, and settled down by the fire still reading. it was a foul world into which he peeped for the first time--a heavy-eating, hard-drinking hell of horse-copers, swindlers, matchmaking mothers, economically dependent virgins selling themselves blushingly for cash and lands: jews, tradesmen, and an ill-considered spawn of dickens-and-horsedung characters (i give midmore's own criticism), but he read on, fascinated, and behold, from the pages leaped, as it were, the brother to the red-eyed man of the brook, bellowing at a landlord (here midmore realised that _he_ was that very animal) for new barns; and another man who, like himself again, objected to hoof-marks on gravel. outrageous as thought and conception were, the stuff seemed to have the rudiments of observation. he dug out other volumes by the same author, till rhoda came in with a silver candlestick. 'rhoda,' said he, 'did you ever hear about a character called james pigg--and batsey?' 'why, o' course,' said she. 'the colonel used to come into the kitchen in 'is dressin'-gown an' read us all those jorrockses.' 'oh, lord!' said midmore, and went to bed with a book called _handley cross_ under his arm, and a lonelier columbus into a stranger world the wet-ringed moon never looked upon. * * * * * here we omit much. but midmore never denied that for the epicure in sensation the urgent needs of an ancient house, as interpreted by rhoda pointing to daylight through attic-tiles held in place by moss, gives an edge to the pleasure of social research elsewhere. equally he found that the reaction following prolonged research loses much of its grey terror if one knows one can at will bathe the soul in the society of plumbers (all the water-pipes had chronic appendicitis), village idiots (jimmy had taken midmore under his weak wing and camped daily at the drive-gates), and a giant with red eyelids whose every action is an unpredictable outrage. towards spring midmore filled his house with a few friends of the immoderate left. it happened to be the day when, all things and rhoda working together, a cartload of bricks, another of sand, and some bags of lime had been despatched to build sidney his almost daily-demanded pig-pound. midmore took his friends across the flat fields with some idea of showing them sidney as a type of 'the peasantry.' they hit the minute when sidney, hoarse with rage, was ordering bricklayer, mate, carts and all off his premises. the visitors disposed themselves to listen. 'you never give me no notice about changin' the pig,' sidney shouted. the pig--at least eighteen inches long--reared on end in the old sty and smiled at the company. 'but, my good man--' midmore opened. 'i ain't! for aught you know i be a dam' sight worse than you be. you can't come and be'ave arbit'ry with me. you _are_ be'avin' arbit'ry! all you men go clean away an' don't set foot on my land till i bid ye.' 'but you asked'--midmore felt his voice jump up--'to have the pig-pound built.' ''spose i did. that's no reason you shouldn't send me notice to change the pig. 'comin' down on me like this 'thout warnin'! that pig's got to be got into the cowshed an' all.' 'then open the door and let him run in,' said midmore. 'don't you be'ave arbit'ry with _me_! take all your dam' men 'ome off my land. i won't be treated arbit'ry.' the carts moved off without a word, and sidney went into the house and slammed the door. 'now, i hold that is enormously significant,' said a visitor. 'here you have the logical outcome of centuries of feudal oppression--the frenzy of fear.' the company looked at midmore with grave pain. 'but he _did_ worry my life out about his pig-sty,' was all midmore found to say. others took up the parable and proved to him if he only held true to the gospels of the immoderate left the earth would soon be covered with 'jolly little' pig-sties, built in the intervals of morris-dancing by 'the peasant' himself. midmore felt grateful when the door opened again and mr. sidney invited them all to retire to the road which, he pointed out, was public. as they turned the corner of the house, a smooth-faced woman in a widow's cap curtsied to each of them through the window. instantly they drew pictures of that woman's lot, deprived of all vehicle for self-expression--'the set grey life and apathetic end,' one quoted--and they discussed the tremendous significance of village theatricals. even a month ago midmore would have told them all that he knew and rhoda had dropped about sidney's forms of self-expression. now, for some strange reason, he was content to let the talk run on from village to metropolitan and world drama. rhoda advised him after the visitors left that 'if he wanted to do that again' he had better go up to town. 'but we only sat on cushions on the floor,' said her master. 'they're too old for romps,' she retorted, 'an' it's only the beginning of things. i've seen what _i've_ seen. besides, they talked and laughed in the passage going to their baths--such as took 'em.' 'don't be a fool, rhoda,' said midmore. no man--unless he has loved her--will casually dismiss a woman on whose lap he has laid his head. 'very good,' she snorted, 'but that cuts both ways. an' now, you go down to sidney's this evenin' and put him where he ought to be. he was in his right about you givin' 'im notice about changin' the pig, but he 'adn't any right to turn it up before your company. no manners, no pig-pound. he'll understand.' midmore did his best to make him. he found himself reviling the old man in speech and with a joy quite new in all his experience. he wound up--it was a plagiarism from a plumber--by telling mr. sidney that he looked like a turkey-cock, had the morals of a parish bull, and need never hope for a new pig-pound as long as he or midmore lived. 'very good,' said the giant. 'i reckon you thought you 'ad something against me, and now you've come down an' told it me like man to man. quite right. i don't bear malice. now, you send along those bricks an' sand, an' i'll make a do to build the pig-pound myself. if you look at my lease you'll find out you're bound to provide me materials for the repairs. only--only i thought there'd be no 'arm in my askin' you to do it throughout like.' midmore fairly gasped. 'then, why the devil did you turn my carts back when--when i sent them up here to do it throughout for you?' mr. sidney sat down on the floodgates, his eyebrows knitted in thought. 'i'll tell you,' he said slowly. ''twas too dam' like cheatin' a suckin' baby. my woman, she said so too.' for a few seconds the teachings of the immoderate left, whose humour is all their own, wrestled with those of mother earth, who has her own humours. then midmore laughed till he could scarcely stand. in due time mr. sidney laughed too--crowing and wheezing crescendo till it broke from him in roars. they shook hands, and midmore went home grateful that he had held his tongue among his companions. when he reached his house he met three or four men and women on horse-back, very muddy indeed, coming down the drive. feeling hungry himself, he asked them if they were hungry. they said they were, and he bade them enter. jimmy took their horses, who seemed to know him. rhoda took their battered hats, led the women upstairs for hairpins, and presently fed them all with tea-cakes, poached eggs, anchovy toast, and drinks from a coromandel-wood liqueur case which midmore had never known that he possessed. 'and i _will_ say,' said miss connie sperrit, her spurred foot on the fender and a smoking muffin in her whip hand, 'rhoda does one top-hole. she always did since i was eight.' 'seven, miss, was when you began to 'unt,' said rhoda, setting down more buttered toast. 'and so,' the m.f.h. was saying to midmore, 'when he got to your brute sidney's land, we had to whip 'em off. it's a regular alsatia for 'em. they know it. why'--he dropped his voice--'i don't want to say anything against sidney as your tenant, of course, but i do believe the old scoundrel's perfectly capable of putting down poison.' 'sidney's capable of anything,' said midmore with immense feeling; but once again he held his tongue. they were a queer community; yet when they had stamped and jingled out to their horses again, the house felt hugely big and disconcerting. this may be reckoned the conscious beginning of his double life. it ran in odd channels that summer--a riding school, for instance, near hayes common and a shooting ground near wormwood scrubs. a man who has been saddle-galled or shoulder-bruised for half the day is not at his london best of evenings; and when the bills for his amusements come in he curtails his expenses in other directions. so a cloud settled on midmore's name. his london world talked of a hardening of heart and a tightening of purse-strings which signified disloyalty to the cause. one man, a confidant of the old expressive days, attacked him robustiously and demanded account of his soul's progress. it was not furnished, for midmore was calculating how much it would cost to repave stables so dilapidated that even the village idiot apologised for putting visitors' horses into them. the man went away, and served up what he had heard of the pig-pound episode as a little newspaper sketch, calculated to annoy. midmore read it with an eye as practical as a woman's, and since most of his experiences had been among women, at once sought out a woman to whom he might tell his sorrow at the disloyalty of his own familiar friend. she was so sympathetic that he went on to confide how his bruised heart--she knew all about it--had found so-lace, with a long o, in another quarter which he indicated rather carefully in case it might be betrayed to other loyal friends. as his hints pointed directly towards facile hampstead, and as his urgent business was the purchase of a horse from a dealer, beckenham way, he felt he had done good work. later, when his friend, the scribe, talked to him alluringly of 'secret gardens' and those so-laces to which every man who follows the wider morality is entitled, midmore lent him a five-pound note which he had got back on the price of a ninety-guinea bay gelding. so true it is, as he read in one of the late colonel werf's books, that 'the young man of the present day would sooner lie under an imputation against his morals than against his knowledge of horse-flesh.' midmore desired more than he desired anything else at that moment to ride and, above all, to jump on a ninety-guinea bay gelding with black points and a slovenly habit of hitting his fences. he did not wish many people except mr. sidney, who very kindly lent his soft meadow behind the floodgates, to be privy to the matter, which he rightly foresaw would take him to the autumn. so he told such friends as hinted at country week-end visits that he had practically let his newly inherited house. the rent, he said, was an object to him, for he had lately lost large sums through ill-considered benevolences. he would name no names, but they could guess. and they guessed loyally all round the circle of his acquaintance as they spread the news that explained so much. there remained only one couple of his once intimate associates to pacify. they were deeply sympathetic and utterly loyal, of course, but as curious as any of the apes whose diet they had adopted. midmore met them in a suburban train, coming up to town, not twenty minutes after he had come off two hours' advanced tuition (one guinea an hour) over hurdles in a hall. he had, of course, changed his kit, but his too heavy bridle-hand shook a little among the newspapers. on the inspiration of the moment, which is your natural liar's best hold, he told them that he was condemned to a rest-cure. he would lie in semi-darkness drinking milk, for weeks and weeks, cut off even from letters. he was astonished and delighted at the ease with which the usual lie confounds the unusual intellect. they swallowed it as swiftly as they recommended him to live on nuts and fruit; but he saw in the woman's eyes the exact reason she would set forth for his retirement. after all, she had as much right to express herself as he purposed to take for himself; and midmore believed strongly in the fullest equality of the sexes. that retirement made one small ripple in the strenuous world. the lady who had written the twelve-page letter ten months before sent him another of eight pages, analysing all the motives that were leading her back to him--should she come?--now that he was ill and alone. much might yet be retrieved, she said, out of the waste of jarring lives and piteous misunderstandings. it needed only a hand. but midmore needed two, next morning very early, for a devil's diversion, among wet coppices, called 'cubbing.' 'you haven't a bad seat,' said miss sperrit through the morning-mists. 'but you're worrying him.' 'he pulls so,' midmore grunted. 'let him alone, then. look out for the branches,' she shouted, as they whirled up a splashy ride. cubs were plentiful. most of the hounds attached themselves to a straight-necked youngster of education who scuttled out of the woods into the open fields below. 'hold on!' some one shouted. 'turn 'em, midmore. that's your brute sidney's land. it's all wire.' 'oh, connie, stop!' mrs. sperrit shrieked as her daughter charged at a boundary-hedge. 'wire be damned! i had it all out a fortnight ago. come on!' this was midmore, buffeting into it a little lower down. '_i_ knew that!' connie cried over her shoulder, and she flitted across the open pasture, humming to herself. 'oh, of course! if some people have private information, they can afford to thrust.' this was a snuff-coloured habit into which miss sperrit had cannoned down the ride. 'what! 'midmore got sidney to heel? _you_ never did that, sperrit.' this was mr. fisher, m.f.h., enlarging the breach midmore had made. 'no, confound him!' said the father testily. 'go on, sir! _injecto ter pulvere_--you've kicked half the ditch into my eye already.' they killed that cub a little short of the haven his mother had told him to make for--a two-acre alsatia of a gorse-patch to which the m.f.h. had been denied access for the last fifteen seasons. he expressed his gratitude before all the field and mr. sidney, at mr. sidney's farm-house door. 'and if there should be any poultry claims--' he went on. 'there won't be,' said midmore. 'it's too like cheating a sucking child, isn't it, mr. sidney?' 'you've got me!' was all the reply. 'i be used to bein' put upon, but you've got me, mus' midmore.' midmore pointed to a new brick pig-pound built in strict disregard of the terms of the life-tenant's lease. the gesture told the tale to the few who did not know, and they shouted. such pagan delights as these were followed by pagan sloth of evenings when men and women elsewhere are at their brightest. but midmore preferred to lie out on a yellow silk couch, reading works of a debasing vulgarity; or, by invitation, to dine with the sperrits and savages of their kidney. these did not expect flights of fancy or phrasing. they lied, except about horses, grudgingly and of necessity, not for art's sake; and, men and women alike, they expressed themselves along their chosen lines with the serene indifference of the larger animals. then midmore would go home and identify them, one by one, out of the natural-history books by mr. surtees, on the table beside the sofa. at first they looked upon him coolly, but when the tale of the removed wire and the recaptured gorse had gone the rounds, they accepted him for a person willing to play their games. true, a faction suspended judgment for a while, because they shot, and hoped that midmore would serve the glorious mammon of pheasant-raising rather than the unkempt god of fox-hunting. but after he had shown his choice, they did not ask by what intellectual process he had arrived at it. he hunted three, sometimes four, times a week, which necessitated not only one bay gelding (£ : s.), but a mannerly white-stockinged chestnut (£ ), and a black mare, rather long in the back but with a mouth of silk (£ ), who so evidently preferred to carry a lady that it would have been cruel to have baulked her. besides, with that handling she could be sold at a profit. and besides, the hunt was a quiet, intimate, kindly little hunt, not anxious for strangers, of good report in the _field_, the servant of one m.f.h., given to hospitality, riding well its own horses, and, with the exception of midmore, not novices. but as miss sperrit observed, after the m.f.h. had said some things to him at a gate: 'it _is_ a pity you don't know as much as your horse, but you will in time. it takes years and yee-ars. i've been at it for fifteen and i'm only just learning. but you've made a decent kick-off.' so he kicked off in wind and wet and mud, wondering quite sincerely why the bubbling ditches and sucking pastures held him from day to day, or what so-lace he could find on off days in chasing grooms and brick-layers round outhouses. to make sure he up-rooted himself one week-end of heavy mid-winter rain, and re-entered his lost world in the character of galahad fresh from a rest-cure. they all agreed, with an eye over his shoulder for the next comer, that he was a different man; but when they asked him for the symptoms of nervous strain, and led him all through their own, he realised he had lost much of his old skill in lying. his three months' absence, too, had put him hopelessly behind the london field. the movements, the allusions, the slang of the game had changed. the couples had rearranged themselves or were re-crystallizing in fresh triangles, whereby he put his foot in it badly. only one great soul (he who had written the account of the pig-pound episode) stood untouched by the vast flux of time, and midmore lent him another fiver for his integrity. a woman took him, in the wet forenoon, to a pronouncement on the oneness of impulse in humanity, which struck him as a polysyllabic _résumé_ of mr. sidney's domestic arrangements, plus a clarion call to 'shock civilisation into common-sense.' 'and you'll come to tea with me to-morrow?' she asked, after lunch, nibbling cashew nuts from a saucer. midmore replied that there were great arrears of work to overtake when a man had been put away for so long. 'but you've come back like a giant refreshed.... i hope that daphne'--this was the lady of the twelve and the eight-page letter--'will be with us too. she has misunderstood herself, like so many of us,' the woman murmured, 'but i think eventually ...' she flung out her thin little hands. 'however, these are things that each lonely soul must adjust for itself.' 'indeed, yes,' said midmore with a deep sigh. the old tricks were sprouting in the old atmosphere like mushrooms in a dung-pit. he passed into an abrupt reverie, shook his head, as though stung by tumultuous memories, and departed without any ceremony of farewell to--catch a mid-afternoon express where a man meets associates who talk horse, and weather as it affects the horse, all the way down. what worried him most was that he had missed a day with the hounds. he met rhoda's keen old eyes without flinching; and the drawing-room looked very comfortable that wet evening at tea. after all, his visit to town had not been wholly a failure. he had burned quite a bushel of letters at his flat. a flat--here he reached mechanically towards the worn volumes near the sofa--a flat was a consuming animal. as for daphne ... he opened at random on the words: 'his lordship then did as desired and disclosed a _tableau_ of considerable strength and variety.' midmore reflected: 'and i used to think.... but she wasn't.... we were all babblers and skirters together.... i didn't babble much--thank goodness--but i skirted.' he turned the pages backward for more _sortes surteesianae_, and read: 'when at length they rose to go to bed it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs, that the man before him walked very crookedly.' he laughed aloud at the fire. 'what about to-morrow?' rhoda asked, entering with garments over her shoulder. 'it's never stopped raining since you left. you'll be plastered out of sight an' all in five minutes. you'd better wear your next best, 'adn't you? i'm afraid they've shrank. 'adn't you best try 'em on?' 'here?' said midmore. ''suit yourself. i bathed you when you wasn't larger than a leg o' lamb,' said the ex-ladies'-maid. 'rhoda, one of these days i shall get a valet, and a married butler.' 'there's many a true word spoke in jest. but nobody's huntin' to-morrow.' 'why? have they cancelled the meet?' 'they say it only means slipping and over-reaching in the mud, and they all 'ad enough of that to-day. charlie told me so just now.' 'oh!' it seemed that the word of mr. sperrit's confidential clerk had weight. 'charlie came down to help mr. sidney lift the gates,' rhoda continued. 'the floodgates? they are perfectly easy to handle now. i've put in a wheel and a winch.' 'when the brook's really up they must be took clean out on account of the rubbish blockin' 'em. that's why charlie came down.' midmore grunted impatiently. 'everybody has talked to me about that brook ever since i came here. it's never done anything yet.' 'this 'as been a dry summer. if you care to look now, sir, i'll get you a lantern.' she paddled out with him into a large wet night. half-way down the lawn her light was reflected on shallow brown water, pricked through with grass blades at the edges. beyond that light, the brook was strangling and kicking among hedges and tree-trunks. 'what on earth will happen to the big rose-bed?' was midmore's first word. 'it generally 'as to be restocked after a flood. ah!' she raised her lantern. 'there's two garden-seats knockin' against the sun-dial. now, that won't do the roses any good.' 'this is too absurd. there ought to be some decently thought-out system--for--for dealing with this sort of thing.' he peered into the rushing gloom. there seemed to be no end to the moisture and the racket. in town he had noticed nothing. 'it can't be 'elped,' said rhoda. 'it's just what it does do once in just so often. we'd better go back.' all earth under foot was sliding in a thousand liquid noises towards the hoarse brook. somebody wailed from the house: ''fraid o' the water! come 'ere! 'fraid o' the water!' 'that's jimmy. wet always takes 'im that way,' she explained. the idiot charged into them, shaking with terror. 'brave jimmy! how brave of jimmy! come into the hall. what jimmy got now?' she crooned. it was a sodden note which ran: 'dear rhoda--mr. lotten, with whom i rode home this afternoon, told me that if this wet keeps up, he's afraid the fish-pond he built last year, where coxen's old mill-dam was, will go, as the dam did once before, he says. if it does it's bound to come down the brook. it may be all right, but perhaps you had better look out. c.s.' 'if coxen's dam goes, that means.... i'll 'ave the drawing-room carpet up at once to be on the safe side. the claw-'ammer is in the libery.' 'wait a minute. sidney's gates are out, you said?' 'both. he'll need it if coxen's pond goes.... i've seen it once.' 'i'll just slip down and have a look at sidney. light the lantern again, please, rhoda.' 'you won't get _him_ to stir. he's been there since he was born. but _she_ don't know anything. i'll fetch your waterproof and some top-boots.' ''fraid o' the water! 'fraid o' the water!' jimmy sobbed, pressed against a corner of the hall, his hands to his eyes. 'all right, jimmy. jimmy can help play with the carpet,' rhoda answered, as midmore went forth into the darkness and the roarings all round. he had never seen such an utterly unregulated state of affairs. there was another lantern reflected on the streaming drive. 'hi! rhoda! did you get my note? i came down to make sure. i thought, afterwards, jimmy might funk the water!' 'it's me--miss sperrit,' midmore cried. 'yes, we got it, thanks.' 'you're back, then. oh, good!... is it bad down with you?' 'i'm going to sidney's to have a look.' 'you won't get _him_ out. 'lucky i met bob lotten. i told him he hadn't any business impounding water for his idiotic trout without rebuilding the dam.' 'how far up is it? i've only been there once.' 'not more than four miles as the water will come. he says he's opened all the sluices.' she had turned and fallen into step beside him, her hooded head bowed against the thinning rain. as usual she was humming to herself. 'why on earth did you come out in this weather?' midmore asked. 'it was worse when you were in town. the rain's taking off now. if it wasn't for that pond, i wouldn't worry so much. there's sidney's bell. come on!' she broke into a run. a cracked bell was jangling feebly down the valley. 'keep on the road!' midmore shouted. the ditches were snorting bank-full on either side, and towards the brook-side the fields were afloat and beginning to move in the darkness. 'catch me going off it! there's his light burning all right.' she halted undistressed at a little rise. 'but the flood's in the orchard. look!' she swung her lantern to show a front rank of old apple-trees reflected in still, out-lying waters beyond the half-drowned hedge. they could hear above the thud-thud of the gorged floodgates, shrieks in two keys as monotonous as a steam-organ. 'the high one's the pig.' miss sperrit laughed. 'all right! i'll get _her_ out. you stay where you are, and i'll see you home afterwards.' 'but the water's only just over the road,' she objected. 'never mind. don't you move. promise?' 'all right. you take my stick, then, and feel for holes in case anything's washed out anywhere. this _is_ a lark!' midmore took it, and stepped into the water that moved sluggishly as yet across the farm road which ran to sidney's front door from the raised and metalled public road. it was half way up to his knees when he knocked. as he looked back miss sperrit's lantern seemed to float in mid-ocean. 'you can't come in or the water'll come with you. i've bunged up all the cracks,' mr. sidney shouted from within. 'who be ye?' 'take me out! take me out!' the woman shrieked, and the pig from his sty behind the house urgently seconded the motion. 'i'm midmore! coxen's old mill-dam is likely to go, they say. come out!' 'i told 'em it would when they made a fish-pond of it. 'twasn't ever puddled proper. but it's a middlin' wide valley. she's got room to spread.... keep still, or i'll take and duck you in the cellar!... you go 'ome, mus' midmore, an' take the law o' mus' lotten soon's you've changed your socks.' 'confound you, aren't you coming out?' 'to catch my death o' cold? i'm all right where i be. i've seen it before. but you can take _her_. she's no sort o' use or sense.... climb out through the window. didn't i tell you i'd plugged the door-cracks, you fool's daughter?' the parlour window opened, and the woman flung herself into midmore's arms, nearly knocking him down. mr. sidney leaned out of the window, pipe in mouth. 'take her 'ome,' he said, and added oracularly: 'two women in one house, two cats an' one mouse, two dogs an' one bone-- which i will leave alone. i've seen it before.' then he shut and fastened the window. 'a trap! a trap! you had ought to have brought a trap for me. i'll be drowned in this wet,' the woman cried. 'hold up! you can't be any wetter than you are. come along!' midmore did not at all like the feel of the water over his boot-tops. 'hooray! come along!' miss sperrit's lantern, not fifty yards away, waved cheerily. the woman threshed towards it like a panic-stricken goose, fell on her knees, was jerked up again by midmore, and pushed on till she collapsed at miss sperrit's feet. 'but you won't get bronchitis if you go straight to mr. midmore's house,' said the unsympathetic maiden. 'o gawd! o gawd! i wish our 'eavenly father 'ud forgive me my sins an' call me 'ome,' the woman sobbed. 'but i won't go to _'is_ 'ouse! i won't.' 'all right, then. stay here. now, if we run,' miss sperrit whispered to midmore, 'she'll follow us. not too fast!' they set off at a considerable trot, and the woman lumbered behind them, bellowing, till they met a third lantern--rhoda holding jimmy's hand. she had got the carpet up, she said, and was escorting jimmy past the water that he dreaded. 'that's all right,' miss sperrit pronounced. 'take mrs. sidney back with you, rhoda, and put her to bed. i'll take jimmy with me. you aren't afraid of the water now, are you, jimmy?' 'not afraid of anything now.' jimmy reached for her hand. 'but get away from the water quick.' 'i'm coming with you,' midmore interrupted. 'you most certainly are not. you're drenched. she threw you twice. go home and change. you may have to be out again all night. it's only half-past seven now. i'm perfectly safe.' she flung herself lightly over a stile, and hurried uphill by the foot-path, out of reach of all but the boasts of the flood below. rhoda, dead silent, herded mrs. sidney to the house. 'you'll find your things laid out on the bed,' she said to midmore as he came up. i'll attend to--to this. _she's_ got nothing to cry for.' midmore raced into dry kit, and raced uphill to be rewarded by the sight of the lantern just turning into the sperrits' gate. he came back by way of sidney's farm, where he saw the light twinkling across three acres of shining water, for the rain had ceased and the clouds were stripping overhead, though the brook was noisier than ever. now there was only that doubtful mill-pond to look after--that and his swirling world abandoned to himself alone. 'we shall have to sit up for it,' said rhoda after dinner. and as the drawing-room commanded the best view of the rising flood, they watched it from there for a long time, while all the clocks of the house bore them company. ''tisn't the water, it's the mud on the skirting-board after it goes down that i mind,' rhoda whispered. 'the last time coxen's mill broke, i remember it came up to the second--no, third--step o' mr. sidney's stairs.' 'what did sidney do about it?' 'he made a notch on the step. 'e said it was a record. just like 'im.' 'it's up to the drive now,' said midmore after another long wait. 'and the rain stopped before eight, you know.' 'then coxen's dam _'as_ broke, and that's the first of the flood-water.' she stared out beside him. the water was rising in sudden pulses--an inch or two at a time, with great sweeps and lagoons and a sudden increase of the brook's proper thunder. 'you can't stand all the time. take a chair,' midmore said presently. rhoda looked back into the bare room. 'the carpet bein' up _does_ make a difference. thank you, sir, i _will_ 'ave a set-down.' ''right over the drive now,' said midmore. he opened the window and leaned out. 'is that wind up the valley, rhoda?' 'no, that's _it_! but i've seen it before.' there was not so much a roar as the purposeful drive of a tide across a jagged reef, which put down every other sound for twenty minutes. a wide sheet of water hurried up to the little terrace on which the house stood, pushed round either corner, rose again and stretched, as it were, yawning beneath the moonlight, joined other sheets waiting for them in unsuspected hollows, and lay out all in one. a puff of wind followed. 'it's right up to the wall now. i can touch it with my finger.' midmore bent over the window-sill. 'i can 'ear it in the cellars,' said rhoda dolefully. 'well, we've done what we can! i think i'll 'ave a look.' she left the room and was absent half an hour or more, during which time he saw a full-grown tree hauling itself across the lawn by its naked roots. then a hurdle knocked against the wall, caught on an iron foot-scraper just outside, and made a square-headed ripple. the cascade through the cellar-windows diminished. 'it's dropping,' rhoda cried, as she returned. 'it's only tricklin' into my cellars now.' 'wait a minute. i believe--i believe i can see the scraper on the edge of the drive just showing!' in another ten minutes the drive itself roughened and became gravel again, tilting all its water towards the shrubbery. 'the pond's gone past,' rhoda announced. 'we shall only 'ave the common flood to contend with now. you'd better go to bed.' 'i ought to go down and have another look at sidney before daylight.' 'no need. you can see 'is light burnin' from all the upstairs windows.' 'by the way. i forgot about _her_. where've you put her?' 'in my bed.' rhoda's tone was ice. 'i wasn't going to undo a room for _that_ stuff.' 'but it--it couldn't be helped,' said midmore. 'she was half drowned. one mustn't be narrow-minded, rhoda, even if her position isn't quite--er--regular.' 'pfff! i wasn't worryin' about that.' she leaned forward to the window. 'there's the edge of the lawn showin' now. it falls as fast as it rises. dearie'--the change of tone made midmore jump--'didn't you know that i was 'is first? _that's_ what makes it so hard to bear.' midmore looked at the long lizard-like back and had no words. she went on, still talking through the black window-pane: 'your pore dear auntie was very kind about it. she said she'd make all allowances for one, but no more. never any more.... then, you didn't know 'oo charlie was all this time?' 'your nephew, i always thought.' 'well, well,' she spoke pityingly. 'everybody's business being nobody's business, i suppose no one thought to tell you. but charlie made 'is own way for 'imself from the beginnin'!... but _her_ upstairs, she never produced anything. just an 'ousekeeper, as you might say. 'turned over an' went to sleep straight off. she 'ad the impudence to ask me for 'ot sherry-gruel.' 'did you give it to her,' said midmore. 'me? your sherry? no!' the memory of sidney's outrageous rhyme at the window, and charlie's long nose (he thought it looked interested at the time) as he passed the copies of mrs. werf's last four wills, overcame midmore without warning. 'this damp is givin' you a cold,' said rhoda, rising. 'there you go again! sneezin's a sure sign of it. better go to bed. you can't do any thin' excep''--she stood rigid, with crossed arms--'about me.' 'well. what about you?' midmore stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket. 'now you know about it, what are you goin' to do--sir?' she had the answer on her lean cheek before the sentence was finished. 'go and see if you can get us something to eat, rhoda. and beer.' 'i expec' the larder'll be in a swim,' she replied, 'but old bottled stuff don't take any harm from wet.' she returned with a tray, all in order, and they ate and drank together, and took observations of the falling flood till dawn opened its bleared eyes on the wreck of what had been a fair garden. midmore, cold and annoyed, found himself humming: 'that flood strewed wrecks upon the grass, that ebb swept out the flocks to sea. there isn't a rose left, rhoda! an awesome ebb and flow it was to many more than mine and me. but each will mourn his ... it'll cost me a hundred.' 'now we know the worst,' said rhoda, 'we can go to bed. i'll lay on the kitchen sofa. his light's burnin' still.' 'and _she_?' 'dirty old cat! you ought to 'ear 'er snore!' at ten o'clock in the morning, after a maddening hour in his own garden on the edge of the retreating brook, midmore went off to confront more damage at sidney's. the first thing that met him was the pig, snowy white, for the water had washed him out of his new sty, calling on high heaven for breakfast. the front door had been forced open, and the flood had registered its own height in a brown dado on the walls. midmore chased the pig out and called up the stairs. 'i be abed o' course. which step 'as she rose to?' sidney cried from above. 'the fourth? then it's beat all records. come up.' 'are you ill?' midmore asked as he entered the room. the red eyelids blinked cheerfully. mr. sidney, beneath a sumptuous patch-work quilt, was smoking. 'nah! i'm only thankin' god i ain't my own landlord. take that cheer. what's she done?' 'it hasn't gone down enough for me to make sure.' 'them floodgates o' yourn'll be middlin' far down the brook by now; an' your rose-garden have gone after 'em. i saved my chickens, though. you'd better get mus' sperrit to take the law o' lotten an' 'is fish-pond.' 'no, thanks. i've trouble enough without that.' 'hev ye?' mr. sidney grinned. 'how did ye make out with those two women o' mine last night? i lay they fought.' 'you infernal old scoundrel!' midmore laughed. 'i be--an' then again i bain't,' was the placid answer. 'but, rhoda, _she_ wouldn't ha' left me last night. fire or flood, she wouldn't.' 'why didn't you ever marry her?' midmore asked. 'waste of good money. she was willin' without.' there was a step on the gritty mud below, and a voice humming. midmore rose quickly saying: 'well, i suppose you're all right now.' 'i be. i ain't a landlord, nor i ain't young--nor anxious. oh, mus' midmore! would it make any odds about her thirty pounds comin' regular if i married her? charlie said maybe 'twould.' 'did he?' midmore turned at the door. 'and what did jimmy say about it?' 'jimmy?' mr. sidney chuckled as the joke took him. 'oh, _he's_ none o' mine. he's charlie's look-out.' midmore slammed the door and ran downstairs. 'well, this is a--sweet--mess,' said miss sperrit in shortest skirts and heaviest riding-boots. 'i had to come down and have a look at it. "the old mayor climbed the belfry tower." 'been up all night nursing your family?' 'nearly that! isn't it cheerful?' he pointed through the door to the stairs with small twig-drift on the last three treads. 'it's a record, though,' said she, and hummed to herself: 'that flood strewed wrecks upon the grass, that ebb swept out the flocks to sea.' 'you're always singing that, aren't you?' midmore said suddenly as she passed into the parlour where slimy chairs had been stranded at all angles. 'am i? now i come to think of it i believe i do. they say i always hum when i ride. have you noticed it?' 'of course i have. i notice every--' 'oh,' she went on hurriedly. 'we had it for the village cantata last winter--"the brides of enderby."' 'no! "high tide on the coast of lincolnshire."' for some reason midmore spoke sharply. 'just like that.' she pointed to the befouled walls. 'i say.... let's get this furniture a little straight.... you know it too?' 'every word, since you sang it of course.' 'when?' 'the first night i ever came down. you rode past the drawing-room window in the dark singing it--"and sweeter woman--"' 'i thought the house was empty then. your aunt always let us use that short cut. ha-hadn't we better get this out into the passage? it'll all have to come out anyhow. you take the other side.' they began to lift a heavyish table. their words came jerkily between gasps and their faces were as white as--a newly washed and very hungry pig. 'look out!' midmore shouted. his legs were whirled from under him, as the table, grunting madly, careened and knocked the girl out of sight. the wild boar of asia could not have cut down a couple more scientifically, but this little pig lacked his ancestor's nerve and fled shrieking over their bodies. 'are you hurt, darling?' was midmore's first word, and 'no--i'm only winded--dear,' was miss sperrit's, as he lifted her out of her corner, her hat over one eye and her right cheek a smear of mud. they fed him a little later on some chicken-feed that they found in sidney's quiet barn, a pail of buttermilk out of the dairy, and a quantity of onions from a shelf in the back-kitchen. 'seed-onions, most likely,' said connie. 'you'll hear about this.' 'what does it matter? they ought to have been gilded. we must buy him.' 'and keep him as long as he lives,' she agreed. 'but i think i ought to go home now. you see, when i came out i didn't expect ... did you?' 'no! yes.... it had to come.... but if any one had told me an hour ago!... sidney's unspeakable parlour--and the mud on the carpet.' 'oh, i say! is my cheek clean now?' 'not quite. lend me your hanky again a minute, darling.... what a purler you came!' 'you can't talk. 'remember when your chin hit that table and you said "blast"! i was just going to laugh.' 'you didn't laugh when i picked you up. you were going "oo-oo-oo" like a little owl.' 'my dear child--' 'say that again!' 'my dear child. (do you really like it? i keep it for my best friends.) my _dee-ar_ child, i thought i was going to be sick there and then. he knocked every ounce of wind out of me--the angel! but i must really go.' they set off together, very careful not to join hands or take arms. 'not across the fields,' said midmore at the stile. 'come round by--by your own place.' she flushed indignantly. 'it will be yours in a little time,' he went on, shaken with his own audacity. 'not so much of your little times, if you please!' she shied like a colt across the road; then instantly, like a colt, her eyes lit with new curiosity as she came in sight of the drive-gates. 'and not quite so much of your airs and graces, madam,' midmore returned, 'or i won't let you use our drive as a short cut any more.' 'oh, i'll be good. i'll be good.' her voice changed suddenly. 'i swear i'll try to be good, dear. i'm not much of a thing at the best. what made _you_....' 'i'm worse--worse! miles and oceans worse. but what does it matter now?' they halted beside the gate-pillars. 'i see!' she said, looking up the sodden carriage sweep to the front door porch where rhoda was slapping a wet mat to and fro. '_i_ see.... now, i really must go home. no! don't you come. i must speak to mother first all by myself.' he watched her up the hill till she was out of sight. the floods the rain it rains without a stay in the hills above us, in the hills; and presently the floods break way whose strength is in the hills. the trees they suck from every cloud, the valley brooks they roar aloud-- bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands, lowlands under the hills! the first wood down is sere and small, from the hills, the brishings off the hills; and then come by the bats and all we cut last year in the hills; and then the roots we tried to cleave but found too tough and had to leave-- polting through the lowlands, lowlands, lowlands under the hills! the eye shall look, the ear shall hark to the hills, the doings in the hills, and rivers mating in the dark with tokens from the hills. now what is weak will surely go, and what is strong must prove it so. stand fast in the lowlands, lowlands, lowlands under the hills! the floods they shall not be afraid-- nor the hills above 'em, nor the hills-- of any fence which man has made betwixt him and the hills. the waters shall not reckon twice for any work of man's device, but bid it down to the lowlands, lowlands, lowlands under the hills! the floods shall sweep corruption clean-- by the hills, the blessing of the hills-- that more the meadows may be green new-amended from the hills. the crops and cattle shall increase, nor little children shall not cease-- go--plough the lowlands, lowlands, lowlands under the hills! the fabulists when all the world would have a matter hid, since truth is seldom friend to any crowd, men write in fable, as old Æsop did, jesting at that which none will name aloud. and this they needs must do, or it will fall unless they please they are not heard at all. when desperate folly daily laboureth to work confusion upon all we have, when diligent sloth demandeth freedom's death, and banded fear commandeth honour's grave-- even in that certain hour before the fall unless men please they are not heard at all. needs must all please, yet some not all for need needs must all toil, yet some not all for gain, but that men taking pleasure may take heed, whom present toil shall snatch from later pain. thus some have toiled but their reward was small since, though they pleased, they were not heard at all. this was the lock that lay upon our lips, this was the yoke that we have undergone, denying us all pleasant fellowships as in our time and generation. our pleasures unpursued age past recall. and for our pains--we are not heard at all. what man hears aught except the groaning guns? what man heeds aught save what each instant brings? when each man's life all imaged life outruns, what man shall pleasure in imaginings? so it hath fallen, as it was bound to fall, we are not, nor we were not, heard at all. the vortex (august ) 'thy lord spoke by inspiration to the bee.' al koran. i have, to my grief and loss, suppressed several notable stories of my friend, the hon. a.m. penfentenyou[ ], once minister of woods and waysides in de thouar's first administration; later, premier in all but name of one of our great and growing dominions; and now, as always, the idol of his own province, which is two and one-half the size of england. [footnote : see 'the puzzler,' _actions and reactions_.] for this reason i hold myself at liberty to deal with some portion of the truth concerning penfentenyou's latest visit to our shores. he arrived at my house by car, on a hot summer day, in a white waistcoat and spats, sweeping black frock-coat and glistening top-hat--a little rounded, perhaps, at the edges, but agile as ever in mind and body. 'what is the trouble now?' i asked, for the last time we had met, penfentenyou was floating a three-million pound loan for his beloved but unscrupulous province, and i did not wish to entertain any more of his financial friends. 'we,' penfentenyou replied ambassadorially, 'have come to have a voice in your councils. by the way, the voice is coming down on the evening train with my agent-general. i thought you wouldn't mind if i invited 'em. you know we're going to share your burdens henceforward. you'd better get into training.' 'certainly,' i replied. 'what's the voice like?' 'he's in earnest,' said penfentenyou. 'he's got it, and he's got it bad. he'll give it to you,' he said. 'what's his name?' 'we call him all sorts of names, but i think you'd better call him mr. lingnam. you won't have to do it more than once.' 'what's he suffering from?' 'the empire. he's pretty nearly cured us all of imperialism at home. p'raps he'll cure you.' 'very good. what am i to do with him?' 'don't you worry,' said penfentenyou. 'he'll do it.' and when mr. lingnam appeared half-an-hour later with the agent-general for penfentenyou's dominion, he did just that. he advanced across the lawn eloquent as all the tides. he said he had been observing to the agent-general that it was both politically immoral and strategically unsound that forty-four million people should bear the entire weight of the defences of our mighty empire, but, as he had observed (here the agent-general evaporated), we stood now upon the threshold of a new era in which the self-governing _and_ self-respecting (bis) dominions would rightly and righteously, as co-partners in empery, shoulder their share of any burden which the pan-imperial council of the future should allot. the agent-general was already arranging for drinks with penfentenyou at the other end of the garden. mr. lingnam swept me on to the most remote bench and settled to his theme. we dined at eight. at nine mr. lingnam was only drawing abreast of things imperial. at ten the agent-general, who earns his salary, was shamelessly dozing on the sofa. at eleven he and penfentenyou went to bed. at midnight mr. lingnam brought down his big-bellied despatch box with the newspaper clippings and set to federating the empire in earnest. i remember that he had three alternative plans. as a dealer in words, i plumped for the resonant third--'reciprocally co-ordinated senatorial hegemony'--which he then elaborated in detail for three-quarters of an hour. at half-past one he urged me to have faith and to remember that nothing mattered except the idea. then he retired to his room, accompanied by one glass of cold water, and i went into the dawn-lit garden and prayed to any power that might be off duty for the blood of mr. lingnam, penfentenyou, and the agent-general. to me, as i have often observed elsewhere, the hour of earliest dawn is fortunate, and the wind that runs before it has ever been my most comfortable counsellor. 'wait!' it said, all among the night's expectant rosebuds. 'to-morrow is also a day. wait upon the event!' i went to bed so at peace with god and man and guest that when i waked i visited mr. lingnam in pyjamas, and he talked to me pan-imperially for half-an-hour before his bath. later, the agent-general said he had letters to write, and penfentenyou invented a cabinet crisis in his adored dominion which would keep him busy with codes and cables all the forenoon. but i said firmly, 'mr. lingnam wishes to see a little of the country round here. you are coming with us in your own car.' 'it's a hired one,' penfentenyou objected. 'yes. paid for by me as a taxpayer,' i replied. 'and yours has a top, and the weather looks thundery,' said the agent-general. 'ours hasn't a wind-screen. even our goggles were hired.' 'i'll lend you goggles,' i said. 'my car is under repairs.' the hireling who had looked to be returned to london spat and growled on the drive. she was an open car, capable of some eighteen miles on the flat, with tetanic gears and a perpetual palsy. 'it won't make the least difference,' sighed the agent-general. 'he'll only raise his voice. he did it all the way coming down.' 'i say,' said penfentenyou suspiciously, 'what are you doing all this _for_?' 'love of the empire,' i answered, as mr. lingnam tripped up in dust-coat and binoculars. 'now, mr. lingnam will tell us exactly what he wants to see. he probably knows more about england than the rest of us put together.' 'i read it up yesterday,' said mr. lingnam simply. while we stowed the lunch-basket (one can never make too sure with a hired car) he outlined a very pretty and instructive little day's run. 'you'll drive, of course?' said penfentenyou to him. 'it's the only thing you know anything about.' this astonished me, for your greater federationists are rarely mechanicians, but mr. lingnam said he would prefer to be inside for the present and enjoy our conversation. well settled on the back seat, he did not once lift his eyes to the mellow landscape around him, or throw a word at the life of the english road which to me is one renewed and unreasoned orgy of delight. the mustard-coloured scouts of the automobile association; their natural enemies, the unjust police; our natural enemies, the deliberate market-day cattle, broadside-on at all corners, the bicycling butcher-boy a furlong behind; road-engines that pulled giddy-go-rounds, rifle galleries, and swings, and sucked snortingly from wayside ponds in defiance of the notice-board; traction-engines, their trailers piled high with road metal; uniformed village nurses, one per seven statute miles, flitting by on their wheels; governess-carts full of pink children jogging unconcernedly past roaring, brazen touring-cars; the wayside rector with virgins in attendance, their faces screwed up against our dust; motor-bicycles of every shape charging down at every angle; red flags of rifle-ranges; detachments of dusty-putteed territorials; coveys of flagrant children playing in mid-street, and the wise, educated english dog safe and quite silent on the pavement if his fool-mistress would but cease from trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings. but mr. lingnam only talked. he talked--we all sat together behind so that we could not escape him--and he talked above the worn gears and a certain maddening swish of one badly patched tire--_and_ he talked of the federation of the empire against all conceivable dangers except himself. yet i was neither brutally rude like penfentenyou, nor swooningly bored like the agent-general. i remembered a certain joseph finsbury who delighted the tregonwell arms on the borders of the new forest with nine'--it should have been ten--'versions of a single income of two hundred pounds' placing the imaginary person in--but i could not recall the list of towns further than 'london, paris, bagdad, and spitsbergen.' this last i must have murmured aloud, for the agent-general suddenly became human and went on: 'bussorah, heligoland, and the scilly islands--' 'what?' growled penfentenyou. 'nothing,' said the agent-general, squeezing my hand affectionately. 'only we have just found out that we are brothers.' 'exactly,' said mr. lingnam. 'that's what i've been trying to lead up to. we're _all_ brothers. d'you realise that fifteen years ago such a conversation as we're having would have been unthinkable? the empire wouldn't have been ripe for it. to go back, even ten years--' 'i've got it,' cried the agent-general. '"brighton, cincinnati, and nijni-novgorod!" god bless r.l.s.! go on, uncle joseph. i can endure much now.' mr. lingnam went on like our shandrydan, slowly and loudly. he admitted that a man obsessed with a central idea--and, after all, the only thing that mattered was the idea--might become a bore, but the world's work, he pointed out, had been done by bores. so he laid his bones down to that work till we abandoned ourselves to the passage of time and the mercy of allah, who alone closes the mouths of his prophets. and we wasted more than fifty miles of summer's vivid own england upon him the while. about two o'clock we topped sumtner rising and looked down on the village of sumtner barton, which lies just across a single railway line, spanned by a red brick bridge. the thick, thunderous june airs brought us gusts of melody from a giddy-go-round steam-organ in full blast near the pond on the village green. drums, too, thumped and banners waved and regalia flashed at the far end of the broad village street. mr. lingnam asked why. 'nothing imperial, i'm afraid. it looks like a foresters' fête--one of our big mutual benefit societies,' i explained. 'the idea only needs to be co-ordinated to imperial scale--' he began. 'but it means that the pub. will be crowded,' i went on. 'what's the matter with lunching by the roadside here?' said penfentenyou. 'we've got the lunch-basket.' 'haven't you ever heard of sumtner barton ales?' i demanded, and be became the administrator at once, saying, '_i_ see! lingnam can drive us in and we'll get some, while holford'--this was the hireling chauffeur, whose views on beer we knew not--'lays out lunch here. that'll be better than eating at the pub. we can take in the foresters' fête as well, and perhaps i can buy some newspapers at the station.' 'true,' i answered. 'the railway station is just under that bridge, and we'll come back and lunch here.' i indicated a terrace of cool clean shade beneath kindly beeches at the head of sumtner rise. as holford got out the lunch-basket, a detachment of regular troops on manoeuvres swung down the baking road. 'ah!' said mr. lingnam, the monthly-magazine roll in his voice. 'all europe is an armed camp, groaning, as i remember i once wrote, under the weight of its accoutrements.' 'oh, hop in and drive,' cried penfentenyou. 'we want that beer!' it made no difference. mr. lingnam could have federated the empire from a tight rope. he continued his oration at the wheel as we trundled. 'the danger to the younger nations is of being drawn into this vortex of militarism,' he went on, dodging the rear of the soldiery. 'slow past troops,' i hinted. 'it saves 'em dust. and we overtake on the right as a rule in england.' 'thanks!' mr. lingnam slued over. 'that's another detail which needs to be co-ordinated throughout the empire. but to go back to what i was saying. my idea has always been that the component parts of the empire should take counsel among themselves on the approach of war, so that, after we have decided on the merits of the _casus belli_, we can co-ordinate what part each dominion shall play whenever war is, unfortunately, a possibility.' we neared the hog-back railway bridge, and the hireling knocked piteously at the grade. mr. lingnam changed gears, and she hoisted herself up to a joyous _youp-i-addy-i-ay!_ from the steam-organ. as we topped the arch we saw a foresters' band with banners marching down the street. 'that's all very fine,' said the agent-general, 'but in real life things have a knack of happening without approaching--' * * * * * (some schools of thought hold that time is not; and that when we attain complete enlightenment we shall behold past, present, and future as one awful whole. i myself have nearly achieved this.) * * * * * we dipped over the bridge into the village. a boy on a bicycle, loaded with four paper bonnet-boxes, pedalled towards us, out of an alley on our right. he bowed his head the better to overcome the ascent, and naturally took his left. mr. lingnam swerved frantically to the right. penfentenyou shouted. the boy looked up, saw the car was like to squeeze him against the bridge wall, flung himself off his machine and across the narrow pavement into the nearest house. he slammed the door at the precise moment when the car, all brakes set, bunted the abandoned bicycle, shattering three of the bonnet-boxes and jerking the fourth over the unscreened dashboard into mr. lingnam's arms. there was a dead stillness, then a hiss like that of escaping steam, and a man who had been running towards us ran the other way. 'why! i think that those must be bees,' said mr. lingnam. they were--four full swarms--and the first living objects which he had remarked upon all day. some one said, 'oh, god!' the agent-general went out over the back of the car, crying resolutely: 'stop the traffic! stop the traffic, there!' penfentenyou was already on the pavement ringing a door-bell, so i had both their rugs, which--for i am an apiarist--i threw over my head. while i was tucking my trousers into my socks--for i am an apiarist of experience--mr. lingnam picked up the unexploded bonnet-box and with a single magnificent gesture (he told us afterwards he thought there was a river beneath) hurled it over the parapet of the bridge, ere he ran across the road towards the village green. now, the station platform immediately below was crowded with foresters and their friends waiting to welcome a delegation from a sister court. i saw the box burst on the flint edging of the station garden and the contents sweep forward cone-wise like shrapnel. but the result was stimulating rather than sedative. all those well-dressed people below shouted like sodom and gomorrah. then they moved as a unit into the booking-office, the waiting-rooms, and other places, shut doors and windows and declaimed aloud, while the incoming train whistled far down the line. i pivoted round cross-legged on the back seat, like a circassian beauty beneath her veil, and saw penfentenyou, his coat-collar over his ears, dancing before a shut door and holding up handfuls of currency to a silver-haired woman at an upper window, who only mouthed and shook her head. a little child, carrying a kitten, came smiling round a corner. suddenly (but these things moved me no more than so many yards of three-penny cinematograph-film) the kitten leaped spitting from her arms, the child burst into tears, penfentenyou, still dancing, snatched her up and tucked her under his coat, the woman's countenance blanched, the front door opened, penfentenyou and the child pressed through, and i was alone in an inhospitable world where every one was shutting windows and calling children home. a voice cried: 'you've frowtened 'em! you've frowtened 'em! throw dust on 'em and they'll settle!' i did not desire to throw dust on any created thing. i needed both hands for my draperies and two more for my stockings. besides, the bees were doing me no hurt. they recognised me as a member of the county bee-keepers' association who had paid his annual subscription and was entitled to a free seat at all apicultural exhibitions. the quiver and the churn of the hireling car, or it might have been the lurching banners and the arrogant big drum, inclined many of them to go up street, and pay court to the advancing foresters' band. so they went, such as had not followed mr. lingnam in his flight toward the green, and i looked out of two goggled eyes instead of half a one at the approaching musicians, while i listened with both ears to the delayed train's second whistle down the line beneath me. the forester's band no more knew what was coming than do troops under sudden fire. indeed, there were the same extravagant gestures and contortions as attend wounds and deaths in war; the very same uncanny cessations of speech--for the trombone was cut off at midslide, even as a man drops with a syllable on his tongue. they clawed, they slapped, they fled, leaving behind them a trophy of banners and brasses crudely arranged round the big drum. then that end of the street also shut its windows, and the village, stripped of life, lay round me like a reef at low tide. though i am, as i have said, an apiarist in good standing, i never realised that there were so many bees in the world. when they had woven a flashing haze from one end of the desert street to the other, there remained reserves enough to form knops and pendules on all window-sills and gutter-ends, without diminishing the multitudes in the three oozing bonnet-boxes, or drawing on the fourth (railway) battalion in charge of the station below. the prisoners in the waiting-rooms and other places there cried out a great deal (i argued that they were dying of the heat), and at regular intervals the stationmaster called and called to a signalman who was not on duty, and the train whistled as it drew nearer. then penfentenyou, venal and adaptable politician of the type that survives at the price of all the higher emotions, appeared at the window of the house on my right, broken and congested with mirth, the woman beside him, and the child in his arms. i saw his mouth open and shut, he hollowed his hands round it, but the churr of the motor and the bees drowned his words. he pointed dramatically across the street many times and fell back, tears running down his face. i turned like a hooded barbette in a heavy seaway (not knowing when my trousers would come out of my socks again) through one hundred and eighty degrees, and in due time bore on the village green. there was a salmon in the pond, rising short at a cloud of midges to the tune of _yip-i-addy_; but there was none to gaff him. the swing-boats were empty, cocoa-nuts sat still on their red sticks before white screens, and the gay-painted horses of the giddy-go-rounds revolved riderless. all was melody, green turf, bright water, and this greedy gambolling fish. when i had identified it by its grey gills and binoculars as lingnam, i prostrated myself before allah in that mirth which is more truly labour than any prayer. then i turned to the purple penfentenyou at the window, and wiped my eyes on the rug edge. he raised the window half one cautious inch and bellowed through the crack: 'did you see _him_? have they got _you_? i can see lots of things from here. it's like a three-ring circus!' 'can you see the station?' i replied, nodding toward the right rear mudguard. he twisted and craned sideways, but could not command that beautiful view. 'no! what's it like?' he cried. 'hell!' i shouted. the silver-haired woman frowned; so did penfentenyou, and, i think, apologised to her for my language. 'you're always so extreme,' he fluted reproachfully. 'you forget that nothing matters except the idea. besides, they are this lady's bees.' he closed the window, and introduced us through it in dumb show; but he contrived to give the impression that _i_ was the specimen under glass. a spurt of damp steam saved me from apoplexy. the train had lost patience at last, and was coming into the station directly beneath me to see what was the matter. happy voices sang and heads were thrust out all along the compartments, but none answered their songs or greetings. she halted, and the people began to get out. then they began to get in again, as their friends in the waiting-rooms advised. all did not catch the warning, so there was congestion at the doors, but those whom the bees caught got in first. still the bees, more bent on their own business than wanton torture, kept to the south end of the platform by the bookstall, and that was why the completely exposed engine-driver at the north end of the train did not at first understand the hermetically sealed stationmaster when the latter shouted to him many times to 'get on out o' this.' 'where are you?' was the reply. 'and what for?' 'it don't matter where i am, an' you'll get what-for in a minute if you don't shift,' said the stationmaster. 'drop 'em at parson's meadow and they can walk up over the fields.' that bare-armed, thin-shirted idiot, leaning out of the cab, took the stationmaster's orders as an insult to his dignity, and roared at the shut offices: 'you'll give me what-for, will you? look 'ere, i'm not in the 'abit of--' his outstretched hand flew to his neck.... do you know that if you sting an engine-driver it is the same as stinging his train? she starts with a jerk that nearly smashes the couplings, and runs, barking like a dog, till she is out of sight. nor does she think about spilled people and parted families on the platform behind her. i had to do all that. there was a man called fred, and his wife harriet--a cheery, full-blooded couple--who interested me immensely before they battered their way into a small detached building, already densely occupied. there was also a nameless bachelor who sat under a half-opened umbrella and twirled it dizzily, which was so new a game that i applauded aloud. when they had thoroughly cleared the ground, the bees set about making comb for publication at the bookstall counter. presently some bold hearts tiptoed out of the waiting-rooms over the loud gravel with the consciously modest air of men leaving church, climbed the wooden staircase to the bridge, and so reached my level, where the inexhaustible bonnet-boxes were still vomiting squadrons and platoons. there was little need to bid them descend. they had wrapped their heads in handkerchiefs, so that they looked like the disappointed dead scuttling back to purgatory. only one old gentleman, pontifically draped in a banner embroidered 'temperance and fortitude,' ran the gauntlet up-street, shouting as he passed me, 'it's night or blücher, mister.' they let him in at the white hart, the pub. where i should have bought the beer. after this the day sagged. i fell to reckoning how long a man in a turkish bath, weakened by excessive laughter, could live without food, and specially drink; and how long a disenfranchised bee could hold out under the same conditions. obviously, since her one practical joke costs her her life, the bee can have but small sense of humour; but her fundamentally dismal and ungracious outlook on life impressed me beyond words. she had paralysed locomotion, wiped out trade, social intercourse, mutual trust, love, friendship, sport, music (the lonely steam-organ had run down at last), all that gives substance, colour or savour to life, and yet, in the barren desert she had created, was not one whit more near to the evolution of a saner order of things. the heavens were darkened with the swarms' divided counsels; the street shimmered with their purposeless sallies. they clotted on tiles and gutter-pipes, and began frenziedly to build a cell or two of comb ere they discovered that their queen was not with them; then flung off to seek her, or whirled, dishevelled and insane, into another hissing nebula on the false rumour that she was there. i scowled upon them with disfavour, and a massy, blue thunder-head rose majestically from behind the elm-trees of sumtner barton rectory, arched over and scowled with me. then i realised that it was not bees nor locusts that had darkened the skies, but the on-coming of the malignant english thunderstorm--the one thing before which even deborah the bee cannot express her silly little self. 'aha! _now_ you'll catch it,' i said, as the herald gusts set the big drum rolling down the street like a box-kite. up and up yearned the dark cloud, till the first lightning quivered and cut. deborah cowered. where she flew, there she fled; where she was, there she sat still; and the solid rain closed in on her as a book that is closed when the chapter is finished. by the time it had soaked to my second rug, penfentenyou appeared at the window, wiping his false mouth on a napkin. 'are you all right?' he inquired. 'then _that's_ all right! mrs. bellamy says that her bees don't sting in the wet. you'd better fetch lingnam over. he's got to pay for them and the bicycle.' i had no words which the silver-haired lady could listen to, but paddled across the flooded street between flashes to the pond on the green. mr. lingnam, scarcely visible through the sheeting downpour, trotted round the edge. he bore himself nobly, and lied at the mere sight of me. 'isn't this wet?' he cried. 'it has drenched me to the skin. i shall need a change.' 'come along,' i said. 'i don't know what you'll get, but you deserve more.' penfentenyou, dry, fed, and in command, let us in. 'you,' he whispered to me, 'are to wait in the scullery. mrs. bellamy didn't like the way you talked about her bees. hsh! hsh! she's a kind-hearted lady. she's a widow, lingnam, but she's kept _his_ clothes, and as soon as you've paid for the damage she'll rent you a suit. i've arranged it all!' 'then tell him he mustn't undress in my hall,' said a voice from the stair-head. 'tell _her_--' lingnam began. 'come and look at the pretty suit i've chosen,' penfentenyou cooed, as one cajoling a maniac. i staggered out-of-doors again, and fell into the car, whose ever-running machinery masked my yelps and hiccups. when i raised my forehead from the wheel, i saw that traffic through the village had been resumed, after, as my watch showed, one and one-half hour's suspension. there were two limousines, one landau, one doctor's car, three touring-cars, one patent steam-laundry van, three tricars, one traction-engine, some motor-cycles, one with a side-car, and one brewery lorry. it was the allegory of my own imperturbable country, delayed for a short time by unforeseen external events but now going about her business, and i blessed her with tears in my eyes, even though i knew she looked upon me as drunk and incapable. then troops came over the bridge behind me--a company of dripping wet regulars without any expression. in their rear, carrying the lunch-basket, marched the agent-general and holford the hired chauffeur. 'i say,' said the agent-general, nodding at the darkened khaki backs. 'if _that's_ what we've got to depend on in event of war they're a broken reed. they ran like hares--ran like hares, i tell you.' 'and you?' i asked. 'oh, i just sauntered back over the bridge and stopped the traffic that end. then i had lunch. 'pity about the beer, though. i say--these cushions are sopping wet!' 'i'm sorry,' i said. 'i haven't had time to turn 'em.' 'nor there wasn't any need to 'ave kept the engine runnin' all this time,' said holford sternly. 'i'll 'ave to account for the expenditure of petrol. it exceeds the mileage indicated, you see.' 'i'm sorry,' i repeated. after all, that is the way that taxpayers regard most crises. the house-door opened and penfentenyou and another came out into the now thinning rain. 'ah! there you both are! here's lingnam,' he cried. 'he's got a little wet. he's had to change.' 'we saw that. i was too sore and weak to begin another laugh, but the agent-general crumpled up where he stood. the late mr. bellamy must have been a man of tremendous personality, which he had impressed on every angle of his garments. i was told later that he had died in delirium tremens, which at once explained the pattern, and the reason why mr. lingnam, writhing inside it, swore so inspiredly. of the deliberate and diffuse federationist there remained no trace, save the binoculars and two damp whiskers. we stood on the pavement, before elemental man calling on elemental powers to condemn and incinerate creation. 'well, hadn't we better be getting back?' said the agent-general. 'look out!' i remarked casually. 'those bonnet-boxes are full of bees still!' 'are they?' said the livid mr. lingnam, and tilted them over with the late mr. bellamy's large boots. deborah rolled out in drenched lumps into the swilling gutter. there was a muffled shriek at the window where mrs. bellamy gesticulated. 'it's all right. i've paid for them,' said mr. lingnam. he dumped out the last dregs like mould from a pot-bound flower-pot. 'what? are you going to take 'em home with you?' said the agent-general. 'no!' he passed a wet hand over his streaky forehead. 'wasn't there a bicycle that was the beginning of this trouble?' said he. 'it's under the fore-axle, sir,' said holford promptly. 'i can fish it out from 'ere.' 'not till i've done with it, please.' before we could stop him, he had jumped into the car and taken charge. the hireling leaped into her collar, surged, shrieked (less loudly than mrs. bellamy at the window), and swept on. that which came out behind her was, as holford truly observed, no joy-wheel. mr. lingnam swung round the big drum in the market-place and thundered back, shouting: 'leave it alone. it's my meat!' 'mince-meat, 'e means,' said holford after this second trituration. 'you couldn't say now it 'ad ever _been_ one, could you?' mrs. bellamy opened the window and spoke. it appears she had only charged for damage to the bicycle, not for the entire machine which mr. lingnam was ruthlessly gleaning, spoke by spoke, from the highway and cramming into the slack of the hood. at last he answered, and i have never seen a man foam at the mouth before. 'if you don't stop, i shall come into your house--in this car--and drive upstairs and--kill you!' she stopped; he stopped. holford took the wheel, and we got away. it was time, for the sun shone after the storm, and deborah beneath the tiles and the eaves already felt its reviving influence compel her to her interrupted labours of federation. we warned the village policeman at the far end of the street that he might have to suspend traffic again. the proprietor of the giddy-go-round, swings, and cocoanut-shies wanted to know from whom, in this world or another, he could recover damages. mr. lingnam referred him most directly to mrs. bellamy.... then we went home. after dinner that evening mr. lingnam rose stiffly in his place to make a few remarks on the federation of the empire on the lines of co-ordinated, offensive operations, backed by the entire effective forces, moral, military, and fiscal, of permanently mobilised communities, the whole brought to bear, without any respect to the merits of any _casus belli_, instantaneously, automatically, and remorselessly at the first faint buzz of war. 'the trouble with us,' said he, 'is that we take such an infernally long time making sure that we are right that we don't go ahead when things happen. for instance, i ought to have gone ahead instead of pulling up when i hit that bicycle.' 'but you were in the wrong, lingnam, when you turned to the right,' i put in. 'i don't want to hear any more of your damned, detached, mugwumping excuses for the other fellow,' he snapped. 'now you're beginning to see things,' said penfentenyou. 'i hope you won't backslide when the swellings go down.' the song of seven cities i was lord of cities very sumptuously builded. seven roaring cities paid me tribute from afar. ivory their outposts were--the guardrooms of them gilded, and garrisoned with amazons invincible in war. all the world went softly when it walked before my cities-- neither king nor army vexed my peoples at their toil. never horse nor chariot irked or overbore my cities, never mob nor ruler questioned whence they drew their spoil. banded, mailed and arrogant from sunrise unto sunset, singing while they sacked it, they possessed the land at large. yet when men would rob them, they resisted, they made onset and pierced the smoke of battle with a thousand-sabred charge! so they warred and trafficked only yesterday, my cities. to-day there is no mark or mound of where my cities stood. for the river rose at midnight and it washed away my cities. they are evened with atlantis and the towns before the flood. rain on rain-gorged channels raised the water-levels round them, freshet backed on freshet swelled and swept their world from sight, till the emboldened floods linked arms and flashing forward drowned them-- drowned my seven cities and their peoples in one night! low among the alders lie their derelict foundations, the beams wherein they trusted and the plinths whereon they built-- my rulers and their treasure and their unborn populations, dead, destroyed, aborted, and defiled with mud and silt! the daughters of the palace whom they cherished in my cities, my silver-tongued princesses, and the promise of their may-- their bridegrooms of the june-tide--all have perished in my cities, with the harsh envenomed virgins that can neither love nor play. i was lord of cities--i will build anew my cities, seven, set on rocks, above the wrath of any flood. nor will i rest from search till i have filled anew my cities with peoples undefeated of the dark, enduring blood. to the sound of trumpets shall their seed restore my cities. wealthy and well-weaponed, that once more may i behold all the world go softly when it walks before my cities, and the horses and the chariots fleeing from them as of old! 'swept and garnished' (january ) when the first waves of feverish cold stole over frau ebermann she very wisely telephoned for the doctor and went to bed. he diagnosed the attack as mild influenza, prescribed the appropriate remedies, and left her to the care of her one servant in her comfortable berlin flat. frau ebermann, beneath the thick coverlet, curled up with what patience she could until the aspirin should begin to act, and anna should come back from the chemist with the formamint, the ammoniated quinine, the eucalyptus, and the little tin steam-inhaler. meantime, every bone in her body ached; her head throbbed; her hot, dry hands would not stay the same size for a minute together; and her body, tucked into the smallest possible compass, shrank from the chill of the well-warmed sheets. of a sudden she noticed that an imitation-lace cover which should have lain mathematically square with the imitation-marble top of the radiator behind the green plush sofa had slipped away so that one corner hung over the bronze-painted steam pipes. she recalled that she must have rested her poor head against the radiator-top while she was taking off her boots. she tried to get up and set the thing straight, but the radiator at once receded toward the horizon, which, unlike true horizons, slanted diagonally, exactly parallel with the dropped lace edge of the cover. frau ebermann groaned through sticky lips and lay still. 'certainly, i have a temperature,' she said. 'certainly, i have a grave temperature. i should have been warned by that chill after dinner.' she resolved to shut her hot-lidded eyes, but opened them in a little while to torture herself with the knowledge of that ungeometrical thing against the far wall. then she saw a child--an untidy, thin-faced little girl of about ten, who must have strayed in from the adjoining flat. this proved--frau ebermann groaned again at the way the world falls to bits when one is sick--proved that anna had forgotten to shut the outer door of the flat when she went to the chemist. frau ebermann had had children of her own, but they were all grown up now, and she had never been a child-lover in any sense. yet the intruder might be made to serve her scheme of things. 'make--put,' she muttered thickly, 'that white thing straight on the top of that yellow thing.' the child paid no attention, but moved about the room, investigating everything that came in her way--the yellow cut-glass handles of the chest of drawers, the stamped bronze hook to hold back the heavy puce curtains, and the mauve enamel, new art finger-plates on the door. frau ebermann watched indignantly. 'aie! that is bad and rude. go away!' she cried, though it hurt her to raise her voice. 'go away by the road you came!' the child passed behind the bed-foot, where she could not see her. 'shut the door as you go. i will speak to anna, but--first, put that white thing straight.' she closed her eyes in misery of body and soul. the outer door clicked, and anna entered, very penitent that she had stayed so long at the chemist's. but it had been difficult to find the proper type of inhaler, and-- 'where did the child go?' moaned frau ebermann--'the child that was here?' 'there was no child,' said startled anna. 'how should any child come in when i shut the door behind me after i go out? all the keys of the flats are different.' 'no, no! you forgot this time. but my back is aching, and up my legs also. besides, who knows what it may have fingered and upset? look and see.' 'nothing is fingered, nothing is upset,' anna replied, as she took the inhaler from its paper box. 'yes, there is. now i remember all about it. put--put that white thing, with the open edge--the lace, i mean--quite straight on that--' she pointed. anna, accustomed to her ways, understood and went to it. 'now, is it quite straight?' frau ebermann demanded. 'perfectly,' said anna. 'in fact, in the very centre of the radiator.' anna measured the equal margins with her knuckle, as she had been told to do when she first took service. 'and my tortoise-shell hair brushes?' frau ebermann could not command her dressing-table from where she lay. 'perfectly straight, side by side in the big tray, and the comb laid across them. your watch also in the coralline watch-holder. everything'--she moved round the room to make sure--'everything is as you have it when you are well.' frau ebermann sighed with relief. it seemed to her that the room and her head had suddenly grown cooler. 'good!' said she. 'now warm my night-gown in the kitchen, so it will be ready when i have perspired. and the towels also. make the inhaler steam, and put in the eucalyptus; that is good for the larynx. then sit you in the kitchen, and come when i ring. but, first, my hot-water bottle.' it was brought and scientifically tucked in. 'what news?' said frau ebermann drowsily. she had not been out that day. 'another victory,' said anna. 'many more prisoners and guns.' frau ebermann purred, one might almost say grunted, contentedly. 'that is good too,' she said; and anna, after lighting the inhaler-lamp, went out. frau ebermann reflected that in an hour or so the aspirin would begin to work, and all would be well. to-morrow--no, the day after--she would take up life with something to talk over with her friends at coffee. it was rare--every one knew it--that she should be overcome by any ailment. yet in all her distresses she had not allowed the minutest deviation from daily routine and ritual. she would tell her friends--she ran over their names one by one--exactly what measures she had taken against the lace cover on the radiator-top and in regard to her two tortoise-shell hair brushes and the comb at right angles. how she had set everything in order--everything in order. she roved further afield as she wriggled her toes luxuriously on the hot-water bottle. if it pleased our dear god to take her to himself, and she was not so young as she had been--there was that plate of the four lower ones in the blue tooth-glass, for instance--he should find all her belongings fit to meet his eye. 'swept and garnished' were the words that shaped themselves in her intent brain. 'swept and garnished for--' no, it was certainly not for the dear lord that she had swept; she would have her room swept out to-morrow or the day after, and garnished. her hands began to swell again into huge pillows of nothingness. then they shrank, and so did her head, to minute dots. it occurred to her that she was waiting for some event, some tremendously important event, to come to pass. she lay with shut eyes for a long time till her head and hands should return to their proper size. she opened her eyes with a jerk. 'how stupid of me,' she said aloud, 'to set the room in order for a parcel of dirty little children!' they were there--five of them, two little boys and three girls--headed by the anxious-eyed ten-year-old whom she had seen before. they must have entered by the outer door, which anna had neglected to shut behind her when she returned with the inhaler. she counted them backward and forward as one counts scales--one, two, three, four, five. they took no notice of her, but hung about, first on one foot then on the other, like strayed chickens, the smaller ones holding by the larger. they had the air of utterly wearied passengers in a railway waiting-room, and their clothes were disgracefully dirty. 'go away!' cried frau ebermann at last, after she had struggled, it seemed to her, for years to shape the words. 'you called?' said anna at the living-room door. 'no,' said her mistress. 'did you shut the flat door when you came in?' 'assuredly,' said anna. 'besides, it is made to catch shut of itself.' 'then go away,' said she, very little above a whisper. if anna pretended not to see the children, she would speak to anna later on. 'and now,' she said, turning toward them as soon as the door closed. the smallest of the crowd smiled at her, and shook his head before he buried it in his sister's skirts. 'why--don't--you--go--away?' she whispered earnestly. again they took no notice, but, guided by the elder girl, set themselves to climb, boots and all, on to the green plush sofa in front of the radiator. the little boys had to be pushed, as they could not compass the stretch unaided. they settled themselves in a row, with small gasps of relief, and pawed the plush approvingly. 'i ask you--i ask you why do you not go away--why do you not go away?' frau ebermann found herself repeating the question twenty times. it seemed to her that everything in the world hung on the answer. 'you know you should not come into houses and rooms unless you are invited. not houses and bedrooms, you know.' 'no,' a solemn little six-year-old repeated, 'not houses nor bedrooms, nor dining-rooms, nor churches, nor all those places. shouldn't come in. it's rude.' 'yes, he said so,' the younger girl put in proudly. 'he said it. he told them only pigs would do that.' the line nodded and dimpled one to another with little explosive giggles, such as children use when they tell deeds of great daring against their elders. 'if you know it is wrong, that makes it much worse,' said frau ebermann. 'oh yes; much worse,' they assented cheerfully, till the smallest boy changed his smile to a baby wail of weariness. 'when will they come for us?' he asked, and the girl at the head of the row hauled him bodily into her square little capable lap. 'he's tired,' she explained. 'he is only four. he only had his first breeches this spring.' they came almost under his armpits, and were held up by broad linen braces, which, his sorrow diverted for the moment, he patted proudly. 'yes, beautiful, dear,' said both girls. 'go away!' said frau ebermann. 'go home to your father and mother!' their faces grew grave at once. 'h'sh! we _can't_,' whispered the eldest. 'there isn't anything left.' 'all gone,' a boy echoed, and he puffed through pursed lips. 'like _that_, uncle told me. both cows too.' 'and my own three ducks,' the boy on the girl's lap said sleepily. 'so, you see, we came here.' the elder girl leaned forward a little, caressing the child she rocked. 'i--i don't understand,' said frau ebermann 'are you lost, then? you must tell our police.' 'oh no; we are only waiting.' 'but what are you waiting _for?_' 'we are waiting for our people to come for us. they told us to come here and wait for them. so we are waiting till they come,' the eldest girl replied. 'yes. we are waiting till our people come for us,' said all the others in chorus. 'but,' said frau ebermann very patiently--'but now tell me, for i tell you that i am not in the least angry, where do you come from? where do you come from?' the five gave the names of two villages of which she had read in the papers, 'that is silly,' said frau ebermann. 'the people fired on us, and they were punished. those places are wiped out, stamped flat.' 'yes, yes, wiped out, stamped flat. that is why and--i have lost the ribbon off my pigtail,' said the younger girl. she looked behind her over the sofa-back. 'it is not here,' said the elder. 'it was lost before. don't you remember?' 'now, if you are lost, you must go and tell our police. they will take care of you and give you food,' said frau ebermann. 'anna will show you the way there.' 'no,'--this was the six-year-old with the smile,--'we must wait here till our people come for us. mustn't we, sister?' 'of course. we wait here till our people come for us. all the world knows that,' said the eldest girl. 'yes.' the boy in her lap had waked again. 'little children, too--as little as henri, and _he_ doesn't wear trousers yet. as little as all that.' 'i don't understand,' said frau ebermann, shivering. in spite of the heat of the room and the damp breath of the steam-inhaler, the aspirin was not doing its duty. the girl raised her blue eyes and looked at the woman for an instant. 'you see,' she said, emphasising her statements with her ringers, '_they_ told _us_ to wait _here_ till _our_ people came for us. so we came. we wait till our people come for us.' 'that is silly again,' said frau ebermann. 'it is no good for you to wait here. do you know what this place is? you have been to school? it is berlin, the capital of germany.' 'yes, yes,' they all cried; 'berlin, capital of germany. we know that. that is why we came.' 'so, you see, it is no good,' she said triumphantly, 'because your people can never come for you here.' 'they told us to come here and wait till our people came for us.' they delivered this as if it were a lesson in school. then they sat still, their hands orderly folded on their laps, smiling as sweetly as ever. 'go away! go away!' frau ebermann shrieked. 'you called?' said anna, entering. 'no. go away! go away!' 'very good, old cat,' said the maid under her breath. 'next time you _may_ call,' and she returned to her friend in the kitchen. 'i ask you--ask you, _please_ to go away,' frau ebermann pleaded. 'go to my anna through that door, and she will give you cakes and sweeties. it is not kind of you to come into my room and behave so badly.' 'where else shall we go now?' the elder girl demanded, turning to her little company. they fell into discussion. one preferred the broad street with trees, another the railway station; but when she suggested an emperor's palace, they agreed with her. 'we will go then,' she said, and added half apologetically to frau ebermann, 'you see, they are so little they like to meet all the others.' 'what others?' said frau ebermann. 'the others--hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of the others.' 'that is a lie. there cannot be a hundred even, much less a thousand,' cried frau ebermann. 'so?' said the girl politely. 'yes. _i_ tell you; and i have very good information. i know how it happened. you should have been more careful. you should not have run out to see the horses and guns passing. that is how it is done when our troops pass through. my son has written me so.' they had clambered down from the sofa, and gathered round the bed with eager, interested eyes. 'horses and guns going by--how fine!' some one whispered. 'yes, yes; believe me, _that_ is how the accidents to the children happen. you must know yourself that it is true. one runs out to look--' 'but i never saw any at all,' a boy cried sorrowfully. 'only one noise i heard. that was when aunt emmeline's house fell down.' 'but listen to me. _i_ am telling you! one runs out to look, because one is little and cannot see well. so one peeps between the man's legs, and then--you know how close those big horses and guns turn the corners--then one's foot slips and one gets run over. that's how it happens. several times it had happened, but not many times; certainly not a hundred, perhaps not twenty. so, you see, you _must_ be all. tell me now that you are all that there are, and anna shall give you the cakes.' 'thousands,' a boy repeated monotonously. 'then we all come here to wait till our people come for us.' 'but now we will go away from here. the poor lady is tired,' said the elder girl, plucking his sleeve. 'oh, you hurt, you hurt!' he cried, and burst into tears. 'what is that for?' said frau ebermann. 'to cry in a room where a poor lady is sick is very inconsiderate.' 'oh, but look, lady!' said the elder girl. frau ebermann looked and saw. '_au revoir_, lady.' they made their little smiling bows and curtseys undisturbed by her loud cries. '_au revoir,_ lady. we will wait till our people come for us.' when anna at last ran in, she found her mistress on her knees, busily cleaning the floor with the lace cover from the radiator, because, she explained, it was all spotted with the blood of five children--she was perfectly certain there could not be more than five in the whole world--who had gone away for the moment, but were now waiting round the corner, and anna was to find them and give them cakes to stop the bleeding, while her mistress swept and garnished that our dear lord when he came might find everything as it should be. mary postgate ( ) of miss mary postgate, lady mccausland wrote that she was 'thoroughly conscientious, tidy, companionable, and ladylike. i am very sorry to part with her, and shall always be interested in her welfare.' miss fowler engaged her on this recommendation, and to her surprise, for she had had experience of companions, found that it was true. miss fowler was nearer sixty than fifty at the time, but though she needed care she did not exhaust her attendant's vitality. on the contrary, she gave out, stimulatingly and with reminiscences. her father had been a minor court official in the days when the great exhibition of had just set its seal on civilisation made perfect. some of miss fowler's tales, none the less, were not always for the young. mary was not young, and though her speech was as colourless as her eyes or her hair, she was never shocked. she listened unflinchingly to every one; said at the end, 'how interesting!' or 'how shocking!' as the case might be, and never again referred to it, for she prided herself on a trained mind, which 'did not dwell on these things.' she was, too, a treasure at domestic accounts, for which the village tradesmen, with their weekly books, loved her not. otherwise she had no enemies; provoked no jealousy even among the plainest; neither gossip nor slander had ever been traced to her; she supplied the odd place at the rector's or the doctor's table at half an hour's notice; she was a sort of public aunt to very many small children of the village street, whose parents, while accepting everything, would have been swift to resent what they called 'patronage'; she served on the village nursing committee as miss fowler's nominee when miss fowler was crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, and came out of six months' fortnightly meetings equally respected by all the cliques. and when fate threw miss fowler's nephew, an unlovely orphan of eleven, on miss fowler's hands, mary postgate stood to her share of the business of education as practised in private and public schools. she checked printed clothes-lists, and unitemised bills of extras; wrote to head and house masters, matrons, nurses and doctors, and grieved or rejoiced over half-term reports. young wyndham fowler repaid her in his holidays by calling her 'gatepost,' 'postey,' or 'packthread,' by thumping her between her narrow shoulders, or by chasing her bleating, round the garden, her large mouth open, her large nose high in air, at a stiff-necked shamble very like a camel's. later on he filled the house with clamour, argument, and harangues as to his personal needs, likes and dislikes, and the limitations of 'you women,' reducing mary to tears of physical fatigue, or, when he chose to be humorous, of helpless laughter. at crises, which multiplied as he grew older, she was his ambassadress and his interpretress to miss fowler, who had no large sympathy with the young; a vote in his interest at the councils on his future; his sewing-woman, strictly accountable for mislaid boots and garments; always his butt and his slave. and when he decided to become a solicitor, and had entered an office in london; when his greeting had changed from 'hullo, postey, you old beast,' to mornin', packthread,' there came a war which, unlike all wars that mary could remember, did not stay decently outside england and in the newspapers, but intruded on the lives of people whom she knew. as she said to miss fowler, it was 'most vexatious.' it took the rector's son who was going into business with his elder brother; it took the colonel's nephew on the eve of fruit-farming in canada; it took mrs. grant's son who, his mother said, was devoted to the ministry; and, very early indeed, it took wynn fowler, who announced on a postcard that he had joined the flying corps and wanted a cardigan waistcoat. 'he must go, and he must have the waistcoat,' said miss fowler. so mary got the proper-sized needles and wool, while miss fowler told the men of her establishment--two gardeners and an odd man, aged sixty--that those who could join the army had better do so. the gardeners left. cheape, the odd man, stayed on, and was promoted to the gardener's cottage. the cook, scorning to be limited in luxuries, also left, after a spirited scene with miss fowler, and took the housemaid with her. miss fowler gazetted nellie, cheape's seventeen-year-old daughter, to the vacant post; mrs. cheape to the rank of cook, with occasional cleaning bouts; and the reduced establishment moved forward smoothly. wynn demanded an increase in his allowance. miss fowler, who always looked facts in the face, said, 'he must have it. the chances are he won't live long to draw it, and if three hundred makes him happy--' wynn was grateful, and came over, in his tight-buttoned uniform, to say so. his training centre was not thirty miles away, and his talk was so technical that it had to be explained by charts of the various types of machines. he gave mary such a chart. 'and you'd better study it, postey,' he said. 'you'll be seeing a lot of 'em soon.' so mary studied the chart, but when wynn next arrived to swell and exalt himself before his womenfolk, she failed badly in cross-examination, and he rated her as in the old days. 'you _look_ more or less like a human being,' he said in his new service voice. 'you _must_ have had a brain at some time in your past. what have you done with it? where d'you keep it? a sheep would know more than you do, postey. you're lamentable. you are less use than an empty tin can, you dowey old cassowary.' 'i suppose that's how your superior officer talks to _you_?' said miss fowler from her chair. 'but postey doesn't mind,' wynn replied. 'do you, packthread?' 'why? was wynn saying anything? i shall get this right next time you come,' she muttered, and knitted her pale brows again over the diagrams of taubes, farmans, and zeppelins. in a few weeks the mere land and sea battles which she read to miss fowler after breakfast passed her like idle breath. her heart and her interest were high in the air with wynn, who had finished 'rolling' (whatever that might be) and had gone on from a 'taxi' to a machine more or less his own. one morning it circled over their very chimneys, alighted on vegg's heath, almost outside the garden gate, and wynn came in, blue with cold, shouting for food. he and she drew miss fowler's bath-chair, as they had often done, along the heath foot-path to look at the bi-plane. mary observed that 'it smelt very badly.' 'postey, i believe you think with your nose,' said wynn. 'i know you don't with your mind. now, what type's that?' 'i'll go and get the chart,' said mary. 'you're hopeless! you haven't the mental capacity of a white mouse,' he cried, and explained the dials and the sockets for bomb-dropping till it was time to mount and ride the wet clouds once more. 'ah!' said mary, as the stinking thing flared upward. 'wait till our flying corps gets to work! wynn says it's much safer than in the trenches.' 'i wonder,' said miss fowler. 'tell cheape to come and tow me home again.' 'it's all downhill. i can do it,' said mary, 'if you put the brake on.' she laid her lean self against the pushing-bar and home they trundled. 'now, be careful you aren't heated and catch a chill,' said overdressed miss fowler. 'nothing makes me perspire,' said mary. as she bumped the chair under the porch she straightened her long back. the exertion had given her a colour, and the wind had loosened a wisp of hair across her forehead. miss fowler glanced at her. 'what do you ever think of, mary?' she demanded suddenly. 'oh, wynn says he wants another three pairs of stockings--as thick as we can make them.' 'yes. but i mean the things that women think about. here you are, more than forty--' 'forty-four,' said truthful mary. 'well?' 'well?' mary offered miss fowler her shoulder as usual. 'and you've been with me ten years now.' 'let's see,' said mary. 'wynn was eleven when he came. he's twenty now, and i came two years before that. it must be eleven.' 'eleven! and you've never told me anything that matters in all that while. looking back, it seems to me that _i_'ve done all the talking.' 'i'm afraid i'm not much of a conversationalist. as wynn says, i haven't the mind. let me take your hat.' miss fowler, moving stiffly from the hip, stamped her rubber-tipped stick on the tiled hall floor. 'mary, aren't you _anything_ except a companion? would you _ever_ have been anything except a companion?' mary hung up the garden hat on its proper peg. 'no,' she said after consideration. 'i don't imagine i ever should. but i've no imagination, i'm afraid.' she fetched miss fowler her eleven-o'clock glass of contrexéville. that was the wet december when it rained six inches to the month, and the women went abroad as little as might be. wynn's flying chariot visited them several times, and for two mornings (he had warned her by postcard) mary heard the thresh of his propellers at dawn. the second time she ran to the window, and stared at the whitening sky. a little blur passed overhead. she lifted her lean arms towards it. that evening at six o'clock there came an announcement in an official envelope that second lieutenant w. fowler had been killed during a trial flight. death was instantaneous. she read it and carried it to miss fowler. 'i never expected anything else,' said miss fowler; 'but i'm sorry it happened before he had done anything.' the room was whirling round mary postgate, but she found herself quite steady in the midst of it. 'yes,' she said. 'it's a great pity he didn't die in action after he had killed somebody.' 'he was killed instantly. that's one comfort,' miss fowler went on. 'but wynn says the shock of a fall kills a man at once--whatever happens to the tanks,' quoted mary. the room was coming to rest now. she heard miss fowler say impatiently, 'but why can't we cry, mary?' and herself replying, 'there's nothing to cry for. he has done his duty as much as mrs. grant's son did.' 'and when he died, _she_ came and cried all the morning,' said miss fowler. 'this only makes me feel tired--terribly tired. will you help me to bed, please, mary?--and i think i'd like the hot-water bottle.' so mary helped her and sat beside, talking of wynn in his riotous youth. 'i believe,' said miss fowler suddenly, 'that old people and young people slip from under a stroke like this. the middle-aged feel it most.' 'i expect that's true,' said mary, rising. 'i'm going to put away the things in his room now. shall we wear mourning?' 'certainly not,' said miss fowler. 'except, of course, at the funeral. i can't go. you will. i want you to arrange about his being buried here. what a blessing it didn't happen at salisbury!' every one, from the authorities of the flying corps to the rector, was most kind and sympathetic. mary found herself for the moment in a world where bodies were in the habit of being despatched by all sorts of conveyances to all sorts of places. and at the funeral two young men in buttoned-up uniforms stood beside the grave and spoke to her afterwards. 'you're miss postgate, aren't you?' said one. 'fowler told me about you. he was a good chap--a first-class fellow--a great loss.' 'great loss!' growled his companion. 'we're all awfully sorry.' 'how high did he fall from?' mary whispered. 'pretty nearly four thousand feet, i should think, didn't he? you were up that day, monkey?' 'all of that,' the other child replied. 'my bar made three thousand, and i wasn't as high as him by a lot.' 'then _that's_ all right,' said mary. 'thank you very much.' they moved away as mrs. grant flung herself weeping on mary's flat chest, under the lych-gate, and cried, '_i_ know how it feels! _i_ know how it feels!' 'but both his parents are dead,' mary returned, as she fended her off. 'perhaps they've all met by now,' she added vaguely as she escaped towards the coach. 'i've thought of that too,' wailed mrs. grant; 'but then he'll be practically a stranger to them. quite embarrassing!' mary faithfully reported every detail of the ceremony to miss fowler, who, when she described mrs. grant's outburst, laughed aloud. 'oh, how wynn would have enjoyed it! he was always utterly unreliable at funerals. d'you remember--' and they talked of him again, each piecing out the other's gaps. 'and now,' said miss fowler, 'we'll pull up the blinds and we'll have a general tidy. that always does us good. have you seen to wynn's things?' 'everything--since he first came,' said mary. 'he was never destructive--even with his toys.' they faced that neat room. 'it can't be natural not to cry,' mary said at last. 'i'm _so_ afraid you'll have a reaction.' 'as i told you, we old people slip from under the stroke. it's you i'm afraid for. have you cried yet?' 'i can't. it only makes me angry with the germans.' 'that's sheer waste of vitality,' said miss fowler. 'we must live till the war's finished.' she opened a full wardrobe. 'now, i've been thinking things over. this is my plan. all his civilian clothes can be given away--belgian refugees, and so on.' mary nodded. 'boots, collars, and gloves?' 'yes. we don't need to keep anything except his cap and belt.' 'they came back yesterday with his flying corps clothes'--mary pointed to a roll on the little iron bed. 'ah, but keep his service things. some one may be glad of them later. do you remember his sizes?' 'five feet eight and a half; thirty-six inches round the chest. but he told me he's just put on an inch and a half. i'll mark it on a label and tie it on his sleeping-bag.' 'so that disposes of _that_,' said miss fowler, tapping the palm of one hand with the ringed third finger of the other. 'what waste it all is! we'll get his old school trunk to-morrow and pack his civilian clothes.' 'and the rest?' said mary. 'his books and pictures and the games and the toys--and--and the rest?' 'my plan is to burn every single thing,' said miss fowler. 'then we shall know where they are and no one can handle them afterwards. what do you think?' 'i think that would be much the best,' said mary. 'but there's such a lot of them.' 'we'll burn them in the destructor,' said miss fowler. this was an open-air furnace for the consumption of refuse; a little circular four-foot tower of pierced brick over an iron grating. miss fowler had noticed the design in a gardening journal years ago, and had had it built at the bottom of the garden. it suited her tidy soul, for it saved unsightly rubbish-heaps, and the ashes lightened the stiff clay soil. mary considered for a moment, saw her way clear, and nodded again. they spent the evening putting away well-remembered civilian suits, underclothes that mary had marked, and the regiments of very gaudy socks and ties. a second trunk was needed, and, after that, a little packing-case, and it was late next day when cheape and the local carrier lifted them to the cart. the rector luckily knew of a friend's son, about five feet eight and a half inches high, to whom a complete flying corps outfit would be most acceptable, and sent his gardener's son down with a barrow to take delivery of it. the cap was hung up in miss fowler's bedroom, the belt in miss postgate's; for, as miss fowler said, they had no desire to make tea-party talk of them. 'that disposes of _that_,' said miss fowler. 'i'll leave the rest to you, mary. i can't run up and down the garden. you'd better take the big clothes-basket and get nellie to help you.' 'i shall take the wheel-barrow and do it myself,' said mary, and for once in her life closed her mouth. miss fowler, in moments of irritation, had called mary deadly methodical. she put on her oldest waterproof and gardening-hat and her ever-slipping goloshes, for the weather was on the edge of more rain. she gathered fire-lighters from the kitchen, a half-scuttle of coals, and a faggot of brushwood. these she wheeled in the barrow down the mossed paths to the dank little laurel shrubbery where the destructor stood under the drip of three oaks. she climbed the wire fence into the rector's glebe just behind, and from his tenant's rick pulled two large armfuls of good hay, which she spread neatly on the fire-bars. next, journey by journey, passing miss fowler's white face at the morning-room window each time, she brought down in the towel-covered clothes-basket, on the wheel-barrow, thumbed and used hentys, marryats, levers, stevensons, baroness orczys, garvices, schoolbooks, and atlases, unrelated piles of the _motor cyclist_, the _light car_, and catalogues of olympia exhibitions; the remnants of a fleet of sailing-ships from ninepenny cutters to a three-guinea yacht; a prep.-school dressing-gown; bats from three-and-sixpence to twenty-four shillings; cricket and tennis balls; disintegrated steam and clockwork locomotives with their twisted rails; a grey and red tin model of a submarine; a dumb gramophone and cracked records; golf-clubs that had to be broken across the knee, like his walking-sticks, and an assegai; photographs of private and public school cricket and football elevens, and his o.t.c. on the line of march; kodaks, and film-rolls; some pewters, and one real silver cup, for boxing competitions and junior hurdles; sheaves of school photographs; miss fowler's photograph; her own which he had borne off in fun and (good care she took not to ask!) had never returned; a playbox with a secret drawer; a load of flannels, belts, and jerseys, and a pair of spiked shoes unearthed in the attic; a packet of all the letters that miss fowler and she had ever written to him, kept for some absurd reason through all these years; a five-day attempt at a diary; framed pictures of racing motors in full brooklands career, and load upon load of undistinguishable wreckage of tool-boxes, rabbit-hutches, electric batteries, tin soldiers, fret-saw outfits, and jig-saw puzzles. miss fowler at the window watched her come and go, and said to herself, 'mary's an old woman. i never realised it before.' after lunch she recommended her to rest. 'i'm not in the least tired,' said mary. 'i've got it all arranged. i'm going to the village at two o'clock for some paraffin. nellie hasn't enough, and the walk will do me good.' she made one last quest round the house before she started, and found that she had overlooked nothing. it began to mist as soon as she had skirted vegg's heath, where wynn used to descend--it seemed to her that she could almost hear the beat of his propellers overhead, but there was nothing to see. she hoisted her umbrella and lunged into the blind wet till she had reached the shelter of the empty village. as she came out of mr. kidd's shop with a bottle full of paraffin in her string shopping-bag, she met nurse eden, the village nurse, and fell into talk with her, as usual, about the village children. they were just parting opposite the 'royal oak,' when a gun, they fancied, was fired immediately behind the house. it was followed by a child's shriek dying into a wail. 'accident!' said nurse eden promptly, and dashed through the empty bar, followed by mary. they found mrs. gerritt, the publican's wife, who could only gasp and point to the yard, where a little cart-lodge was sliding sideways amid a clatter of tiles. nurse eden snatched up a sheet drying before the fire, ran out, lifted something from the ground, and flung the sheet round it. the sheet turned scarlet and half her uniform too, as she bore the load into the kitchen. it was little edna gerritt, aged nine, whom mary had known since her perambulator days. 'am i hurted bad?' edna asked, and died between nurse eden's dripping hands. the sheet fell aside and for an instant, before she could shut her eyes, mary saw the ripped and shredded body. 'it's a wonder she spoke at all,' said nurse eden. 'what in god's name was it?' 'a bomb,' said mary. 'one o' the zeppelins?' 'no. an aeroplane. i thought i heard it on the heath, but i fancied it was one of ours. it must have shut off its engines as it came down. that's why we didn't notice it.' 'the filthy pigs!' said nurse eden, all white and shaken. 'see the pickle i'm in! go and tell dr. hennis, miss postgate.' nurse looked at the mother, who had dropped face down on the floor. 'she's only in a fit. turn her over.' mary heaved mrs. gerritt right side up, and hurried off for the doctor. when she told her tale, he asked her to sit down in the surgery till he got her something. 'but i don't need it, i assure you,' said she. 'i don't think it would be wise to tell miss fowler about it, do you? her heart is so irritable in this weather.' dr. hennis looked at her admiringly as he packed up his bag. 'no. don't tell anybody till we're sure,' he said, and hastened to the 'royal oak,' while mary went on with the paraffin. the village behind her was as quiet as usual, for the news had not yet spread. she frowned a little to herself, her large nostrils expanded uglily, and from time to time she muttered a phrase which wynn, who never restrained himself before his womenfolk, had applied to the enemy. 'bloody pagans! they _are_ bloody pagans. but,' she continued, falling back on the teaching that had made her what she was, 'one mustn't let one's mind dwell on these things.' before she reached the house dr. hennis, who was also a special constable, overtook her in his car. 'oh, miss postgate,' he said, 'i wanted to tell you that that accident at the "royal oak" was due to gerritt's stable tumbling down. it's been dangerous for a long time. it ought to have been condemned.' 'i thought i heard an explosion too,' said mary. 'you might have been misled by the beams snapping. i've been looking at 'em. they were dry-rotted through and through. of course, as they broke, they would make a noise just like a gun.' 'yes?' said mary politely. 'poor little edna was playing underneath it,' he went on, still holding her with his eyes, 'and that and the tiles cut her to pieces, you see?' 'i saw it,' said mary, shaking her head. 'i heard it too.' 'well, we cannot be sure.' dr. hennis changed his tone completely. 'i know both you and nurse eden (i've been speaking to her) are perfectly trustworthy, and i can rely on you not to say anything--yet at least. it is no good to stir up people unless--' 'oh, i never do--anyhow,' said mary, and dr. hennis went on to the county town. after all, she told herself, it might, just possibly, have been the collapse of the old stable that had done all those things to poor little edna. she was sorry she had even hinted at other things, but nurse eden was discretion itself. by the time she reached home the affair seemed increasingly remote by its very monstrosity. as she came in, miss fowler told her that a couple of aeroplanes had passed half an hour ago. 'i thought i heard them,' she replied, 'i'm going down to the garden now. i've got the paraffin.' 'yes, but--what _have_ you got on your boots? they're soaking wet. change them at once.' not only did mary obey but she wrapped the boots in a newspaper, and put them into the string bag with the bottle. so, armed with the longest kitchen poker, she left. 'it's raining again,' was miss fowler's last word, 'but--i know you won't be happy till that's disposed of.' 'it won't take long. i've got everything down there, and i've put the lid on the destructor to keep the wet out.' the shrubbery was filling with twilight by the time she had completed her arrangements and sprinkled the sacrificial oil. as she lit the match that would burn her heart to ashes, she heard a groan or a grunt behind the dense portugal laurels. 'cheape?' she called impatiently, but cheape, with his ancient lumbago, in his comfortable cottage would be the last man to profane the sanctuary. 'sheep,' she concluded, and threw in the fusee. the pyre went up in a roar, and the immediate flame hastened night around her. 'how wynn would have loved this!' she thought, stepping back from the blaze. by its light she saw, half hidden behind a laurel not five paces away, a bareheaded man sitting very stiffly at the foot of one of the oaks. a broken branch lay across his lap--one booted leg protruding from beneath it. his head moved ceaselessly from side to side, but his body was as still as the tree's trunk. he was dressed--she moved sideways to look more closely--in a uniform something like wynn's, with a flap buttoned across the chest. for an instant, she had some idea that it might be one of the young flying men she had met at the funeral. but their heads were dark and glossy. this man's was as pale as a baby's, and so closely cropped that she could see the disgusting pinky skin beneath. his lips moved. 'what do you say?' mary moved towards him and stooped. 'laty! laty! laty!' he muttered, while his hands picked at the dead wet leaves. there was no doubt as to his nationality. it made her so angry that she strode back to the destructor, though it was still too hot to use the poker there. wynn's books seemed to be catching well. she looked up at the oak behind the man; several of the light upper and two or three rotten lower branches had broken and scattered their rubbish on the shrubbery path. on the lowest fork a helmet with dependent strings, showed like a bird's-nest in the light of a long-tongued flame. evidently this person had fallen through the tree. wynn had told her that it was quite possible for people to fall out of aeroplanes. wynn told her too, that trees were useful things to break an aviator's fall, but in this case the aviator must have been broken or he would have moved from his queer position. he seemed helpless except for his horrible rolling head. on the other hand, she could see a pistol case at his belt--and mary loathed pistols. months ago, after reading certain belgian reports together, she and miss fowler had had dealings with one--a huge revolver with flat-nosed bullets, which latter, wynn said, were forbidden by the rules of war to be used against civilised enemies. 'they're good enough for us,' miss fowler had replied. 'show mary how it works.' and wynn, laughing at the mere possibility of any such need, had led the craven winking mary into the rector's disused quarry, and had shown her how to fire the terrible machine. it lay now in the top-left-hand drawer of her toilet-table--a memento not included in the burning. wynn would be pleased to see how she was not afraid. she slipped up to the house to get it. when she came through the rain, the eyes in the head were alive with expectation. the mouth even tried to smile. but at sight of the revolver its corners went down just like edna gerritt's. a tear trickled from one eye, and the head rolled from shoulder to shoulder as though trying to point out something. 'cassée. tout cassée,' it whimpered. 'what do you say?' said mary disgustedly, keeping well to one side, though only the head moved. 'cassée,' it repeated. 'che me rends. le médicin! toctor!' 'nein!' said she, bringing all her small german to bear with the big pistol. 'ich haben der todt kinder gesehn.' the head was still. mary's hand dropped. she had been careful to keep her finger off the trigger for fear of accidents. after a few moments' waiting, she returned to the destructor, where the flames were falling, and churned up wynn's charring books with the poker. again the head groaned for the doctor. 'stop that!' said mary, and stamped her foot. 'stop that, you bloody pagan!' the words came quite smoothly and naturally. they were wynn's own words, and wynn was a gentleman who for no consideration on earth would have torn little edna into those vividly coloured strips and strings. but this thing hunched under the oak-tree had done that thing. it was no question of reading horrors out of newspapers to miss fowler. mary had seen it with her own eyes on the 'royal oak' kitchen table. she must not allow her mind to dwell upon it. now wynn was dead, and everything connected with him was lumping and rustling and tinkling under her busy poker into red black dust and grey leaves of ash. the thing beneath the oak would die too. mary had seen death more than once. she came of a family that had a knack of dying under, as she told miss fowler, 'most distressing circumstances.' she would stay where she was till she was entirely satisfied that it was dead--dead as dear papa in the late 'eighties; aunt mary in eighty-nine; mamma in 'ninety-one; cousin dick in ninety-five; lady mccausland's housemaid in 'ninety-nine; lady mccausland's sister in nineteen hundred and one; wynn buried five days ago; and edna gerritt still waiting for decent earth to hide her. as she thought--her underlip caught up by one faded canine, brows knit and nostrils wide--she wielded the poker with lunges that jarred the grating at the bottom, and careful scrapes round the brick-work above. she looked at her wrist-watch. it was getting on to half-past four, and the rain was coming down in earnest. tea would be at five. if it did not die before that time, she would be soaked and would have to change. meantime, and this occupied her, wynn's things were burning well in spite of the hissing wet, though now and again a book-back with a quite distinguishable title would be heaved up out of the mass. the exercise of stoking had given her a glow which seemed to reach to the marrow of her bones. she hummed--mary never had a voice--to herself. she had never believed in all those advanced views--though miss fowler herself leaned a little that way--of woman's work in the world; but now she saw there was much to be said for them. this, for instance, was _her_ work--work which no man, least of all dr. hennis, would ever have done. a man, at such a crisis, would be what wynn called a 'sportsman'; would leave everything to fetch help, and would certainly bring it into the house. now a woman's business was to make a happy home for--for a husband and children. failing these--it was not a thing one should allow one's mind to dwell upon--but-- 'stop it!' mary cried once more across the shadows. 'nein, i tell you! ich haben der todt kinder gesehn.' _but_ it was a fact. a woman who had missed these things could still be useful--more useful than a man in certain respects. she thumped like a pavior through the settling ashes at the secret thrill of it. the rain was damping the fire, but she could feel--it was too dark to see--that her work was done. there was a dull red glow at the bottom of the destructor, not enough to char the wooden lid if she slipped it half over against the driving wet. this arranged, she leaned on the poker and waited, while an increasing rapture laid hold on her. she ceased to think. she gave herself up to feel. her long pleasure was broken by a sound that she had waited for in agony several times in her life. she leaned forward and listened, smiling. there could be no mistake. she closed her eyes and drank it in. once it ceased abruptly. 'go on,' she murmured, half aloud. 'that isn't the end.' then the end came very distinctly in a lull between two rain-gusts. mary postgate drew her breath short between her teeth and shivered from head to foot. '_that's_ all right,' said she contentedly, and went up to the house, where she scandalised the whole routine by taking a luxurious hot bath before tea, and came down looking, as miss fowler said when she saw her lying all relaxed on the other sofa, 'quite handsome!' the beginnings it was not part of their blood, it came to them very late with long arrears to make good, when the english began to hate. they were not easily moved, they were icy willing to wait till every count should be proved, ere the english began to hate. their voices were even and low, their eyes were level and straight. there was neither sign nor show, when the english began to hate. it was not preached to the crowd, it was not taught by the state. no man spoke it aloud, when the english began to hate. it was not suddenly bred, it will not swiftly abate, through the chill years ahead, when time shall count from the date that the english began to hate. transcriber's note: printer's errors and typos have been corrected. italics are indicated using _underscore_ characters. consult the transcriber's notes at the end of this text for details. rewards and fairies by rudyard kipling _with illustrations by frank craig_ toronto the macmillan company of canada, ltd. copyright, by rudyard kipling contents page _a charm_ ix introduction xi cold iron _cold iron_ gloriana _the two cousins_ _the looking-glass_ the wrong thing _a truthful song_ _king henry vii. and the shipwrights_ marklake witches _the way through the woods_ _brookland road_ the knife and the naked chalk _the run of the downs_ _song of the men's side_ brother square-toes _philadelphia_ _if_---- 'a priest in spite of himself' _a st. helena lullaby_ '_poor honest men_' the conversion of st. wilfrid _eddi's service_ _song of the red war-boat_ a doctor of medicine _an astrologer's song_ '_our fathers of old_' simple simon _the thousandth man_ _frankie's trade_ the tree of justice _the ballad of minepit shaw_ _a carol_ illustrations 'admiral boy--vice-admiral babe,' says gloriana, 'i cry your pardon' _face page_ i kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder. 'rise up, sir harry dawe,' he says " they made the sign which no indian makes outside of the medicine lodges " 'you'll open a road from the east unto the west, and back again' " _a charm_ _take of english earth as much as either hand may rightly clutch. in the taking of it breathe prayer for all who lie beneath-- not the great nor well bespoke, but the mere uncounted folk of whose life and death is none report or lamentation. lay that earth upon thy heart, and thy sickness shall depart!_ _it shall sweeten and make whole fevered breath and festered soul; it shall mightily restrain over-busy hand and brain; it shall ease thy mortal strife 'gainst the immortal woe of life, till thyself restored shall prove by what grace the heavens do move._ _take of english flowers these-- spring's full-facéd primroses, summer's wild wide-hearted rose, autumn's wall-flower of the close, and, thy darkness to illume, winter's bee-thronged ivy-bloom. seek and serve them where they bide from candlemas to christmas-tide. for these simples used aright shall restore a failing sight._ _these shall cleanse and purify webbed and inward-turning eye; these shall show thee treasure hid, thy familiar fields amid, at thy threshold, on thy hearth, or about thy daily path; and reveal (which is thy need) every man a king indeed!_ introduction once upon a time, dan and una, brother and sister, living in the english country, had the good fortune to meet with puck, _alias_ robin goodfellow, _alias_ nick o' lincoln, _alias_ lob-lie-by-the-fire, the last survivor in england of those whom mortals call fairies. their proper name, of course, is 'the people of the hills.' this puck, by means of the magic of oak, ash, and thorn, gave the children power-- to see what they should see and hear what they should hear, though it should have happened three thousand year. the result was that from time to time, and in different places on the farm and in the fields and the country about, they saw and talked to some rather interesting people. one of these, for instance, was a knight of the norman conquest, another a young centurion of a roman legion stationed in england, another a builder and decorator of king henry vii.'s time; and so on and so forth; as i have tried to explain in a book called _puck of pook's hill_. a year or so later, the children met puck once more, and though they were then older and wiser, and wore boots regularly instead of going bare-footed when they got the chance, puck was as kind to them as ever, and introduced them to more people of the old days. he was careful, of course, to take away their memory of their walks and conversations afterwards, but otherwise he did not interfere; and dan and una would find the strangest sort of persons in their gardens or woods. in the stories that follow i am trying to tell something about those people. cold iron when dan and una had arranged to go out before breakfast, they did not remember it was midsummer morning. they only wanted to see the otter which, old hobden said, had been fishing their brook for weeks; and early morning was the time to surprise him. as they tiptoed out of the house into the wonderful stillness, the church clock struck five. dan took a few steps across the dew-blobbed lawn, and looked at his black footprints. 'i think we ought to be kind to our poor boots,' he said. 'they'll get horrid wet.' it was their first summer in boots, and they hated them, so they took them off, and slung them round their necks, and paddled joyfully over the dripping turf where the shadows lay the wrong way, like evening in the east. the sun was well up and warm, but by the brook the last of the night mist still fumed off the water. they picked up the chain of otter's footprints on the mud, and followed it from the bank, between the weeds and the drenched mowing, while the birds shouted with surprise. then the track left the brook and became a smear, as though a log had been dragged along. they traced it into three cows meadow, over the mill-sluice to the forge, round hobden's garden, and then up the slope till it ran out on the short turf and fern of pook's hill, and they heard the cock-pheasants crowing in the woods behind them. 'no use!' said dan, questing like a puzzled hound. 'the dew's drying off, and old hobden says otters'll travel for miles.' 'i'm sure we've travelled miles.' una fanned herself with her hat. 'how still it is! it's going to be a regular roaster.' she looked down the valley, where no chimney yet smoked. 'hobden's up!' dan pointed to the open door of the forge cottage. 'what d'you suppose he has for breakfast?' 'one of _them_. he says they eat good all times of the year.' una jerked her head at some stately pheasants going down to the brook for a drink. a few steps farther on a fox broke almost under their bare feet, yapped, and trotted off. 'ah, mus' reynolds--mus' reynolds'--dan was quoting from old hobden,--'if i knowed all you knowed, i'd know something.'[ ] [ ] see 'the winged hats' in _puck of pook's hill_. 'i say,' una lowered her voice, 'you know that funny feeling of things having happened before. i felt it when you said "mus' reynolds."' 'so did i,' dan began. 'what is it?' they faced each other stammering with excitement. 'wait a shake! i'll remember in a minute. wasn't it something about a fox--last year. oh, i nearly had it then!' dan cried. 'be quiet!' said una, prancing excitedly. 'there was something happened before we met the fox last year. hills! broken hills--the play at the theatre--see what you see----' 'i remember now,' dan shouted. 'it's as plain as the nose on your face--pook's hill--puck's hill--puck!' 'i remember, too,' said una. 'and it's midsummer day again!' the young fern on a knoll rustled, and puck walked out, chewing a green-topped rush. 'good midsummer morning to you. here's a happy meeting,' said he. they shook hands all round, and asked questions. 'you've wintered well,' he said after a while, and looked them up and down. 'nothing much wrong with you, seemingly.' 'they've put us into boots,' said una. 'look at my feet--they're all pale white, and my toes are squdged together awfully.' 'yes--boots make a difference,' puck wriggled his brown, square, hairy foot, and cropped a dandelion flower between the big toe and the next. 'i could do that--last year,' dan said dismally, as he tried and failed. 'and boots simply ruin one's climbing.' 'there must be some advantage to them, i suppose,' said puck, 'or folk wouldn't wear them. shall we come this way?' they sauntered along side by side till they reached the gate at the far end of the hillside. here they halted just like cattle, and let the sun warm their backs while they listened to the flies in the wood. 'little lindens is awake,' said una, as she hung with her chin on the top rail. 'see the chimney smoke?' 'to-day's thursday, isn't it?' puck turned to look at the old pink farmhouse across the little valley. 'mrs. vincey's baking day. bread should rise well this weather.' he yawned, and that set them both yawning. the bracken about rustled and ticked and shook in every direction. they felt that little crowds were stealing past. 'doesn't that sound like--er--the people of the hills?' said una. 'it's the birds and wild things drawing up to the woods before people get about,' said puck, as though he were ridley the keeper. 'oh, we know that. i only said it sounded like.' 'as i remember 'em, the people of the hills used to make more noise. they'd settle down for the day rather like small birds settling down for the night. but that was in the days when they carried the high hand. oh, me! the deeds that i've had act and part in, you'd scarcely believe!' 'i like that!' said dan. 'after all you told us last year, too!' 'only, the minute you went away, you made us forget everything,' said una. puck laughed and shook his head. 'i shall this year, too. i've given you seizin of old england, and i've taken away your doubt and fear, but your memory and remembrance between whiles i'll keep where old billy trott kept his night-lines--and that's where he could draw 'em up and hide 'em at need. does that suit?' he twinkled mischievously. 'it's got to suit,' said una, and laughed. 'we can't magic back at you.' she folded her arms and leaned against the gate. 'suppose, now, you wanted to magic me into something--an otter? could you?' 'not with those boots round your neck.' 'i'll take them off.' she threw them on the turf. dan's followed immediately. 'now!' she said. 'less than ever now you've trusted me. where there's true faith, there's no call for magic.' puck's slow smile broadened all over his face. 'but what have boots to do with it?' said una, perching on the gate. 'there's cold iron in them,' said puck, and settled beside her. 'nails in the soles, i mean. it makes a difference.' 'how?' 'can't you feel it does? you wouldn't like to go back to bare feet again, same as last year, would you? not really?' 'no--o. i suppose i shouldn't--not for always. i'm growing up, you know,' said una. 'but you told us last year, in the long slip--at the theatre--that you didn't mind cold iron,' said dan. '_i_ don't; but folk in housen, as the people of the hills call them, must be ruled by cold iron. folk in housen are born on the near side of cold iron--there's iron in every man's house, isn't there? they handle cold iron every day of their lives, and their fortune's made or spoilt by cold iron in some shape or other. that's how it goes with flesh and blood, and one can't prevent it.' 'i don't quite see. how do you mean?' said dan. 'it would take me some time to tell you.' 'oh, it's ever so long to breakfast,' said dan. 'we looked in the larder before we came out.' he unpocketed one big hunk of bread and una another, which they shared with puck. 'that's little lindens' baking,' he said, as his white teeth sunk in it. 'i know mrs. vincey's hand.' he ate with a slow sideways thrust and grind, just like old hobden, and, like hobden, hardly dropped a crumb. the sun flashed on little lindens' windows, and the cloudless sky grew stiller and hotter in the valley. 'ah--cold iron,' he said at last to the impatient children. 'folk in housen, as the people of the hills say, grow so careless about cold iron. they'll nail the horseshoe over the front door, and forget to put it over the back. then, some time or other, the people of the hills slip in, find the cradle-babe in the corner, and----' 'oh, i know. steal it and leave a changeling,' una cried. 'no,' said puck firmly. 'all that talk of changelings is people's excuse for their own neglect. never believe 'em. i'd whip 'em at the cart-tail through three parishes if i had my way.' 'but they don't do it now,' said una. 'whip, or neglect children? umm! some folks and some fields never alter. but the people of the hills didn't work any changeling tricks. they'd tiptoe in and whisper, and weave round the cradle-babe in the chimney-corner--a fag-end of a charm here, or half a spell there--like kettles singing; but when the babe's mind came to bud out afterwards, it would act differently from other people in its station. that's no advantage to man or maid. so i wouldn't allow it with my folks' babies here. i told sir huon so once.' 'who was sir huon?' dan asked, and puck turned on him in quiet astonishment. 'sir huon of bordeaux--he succeeded king oberon. he had been a bold knight once, but he was lost on the road to babylon, a long while back. have you ever heard, "how many miles to babylon?"' 'of course,' said dan, flushing. 'well, sir huon was young when that song was new. but about tricks on mortal babies. i said to sir huon in the fern here, on just such a morning as this: "if you crave to act and influence on folk in housen, which i know is your desire, why don't you take some human cradle-babe by fair dealing, and bring him up among yourselves on the far side of cold iron--as oberon did in time past? then you could make him a splendid fortune, and send him out into the world?" '"time past is past time," says sir huon. "i doubt if we could do it. for one thing, the babe would have to be taken without wronging man, woman, or child. for another, he'd have to be born on the far side of cold iron--in some house where no cold iron ever stood; and for yet the third, he'd have to be kept from cold iron all his days till we let him find his fortune. no, it's not easy," he said, and he rode off, thinking. you see, sir huon had been a man once. 'i happened to attend lewes market next woden's day even, and watched the slaves being sold there--same as pigs are sold at robertsbridge market nowadays. only, the pigs have rings on their noses, and the slaves had rings round their necks.' 'what sort of rings?' said dan. 'a ring of cold iron, four fingers wide, and a thumb thick, just like a quoit, but with a snap to it for to snap round the slave's neck. they used to do a big trade in slave-rings at the forge here, and ship them to all parts of old england, packed in oak sawdust. but, as i was saying, there was a farmer out of the weald who had bought a woman with a babe in her arms, and he didn't want any encumbrances to her driving his beasts home for him.' 'beast himself!' said una, and kicked her bare heel on the gate. 'so he blamed the auctioneer. "it's none o' my baby," the wench puts in. "i took it off a woman in our gang who died on terrible down yesterday." "i'll take it off to the church then," says the farmer. "mother church'll make a monk of it, and we'll step along home." 'it was dusk then. he slipped down to st. pancras' church, and laid the babe at the cold chapel door. i breathed on the back of his stooping neck--and--i've _heard_ he never could be warm at any fire afterwards. i should have been surprised if he could! then i whipped up the babe, and came flying home here like a bat to his belfry. 'on the dewy break of morning of thor's own day--just such a day as this--i laid the babe outside the hill here, and the people flocked up and wondered at the sight. '"you've brought him, then?" sir huon said, staring like any mortal man. '"yes, and he's brought his mouth with him too," i said. the babe was crying loud for his breakfast. '"what is he?" says sir huon, when the womenfolk had drawn him under to feed him. '"full moon and morning star may know," i says. "_i_ don't. by what i could make out of him in the moonlight, he's without brand or blemish. i'll answer for it that he's born on the far side of cold iron, for he was born under a shaw on terrible down, and i've wronged neither man, woman, nor child in taking him, for he is the son of a dead slave woman." '"all to the good, robin," sir huon said. "he'll be the less anxious to leave us. oh, we'll give him a splendid fortune, and he shall act and influence on folk in housen as we have always craved." his lady came up then, and drew him under to watch the babe's wonderful doings.' 'who was his lady?' said dan. 'the lady esclairmonde. she had been a woman once, till she followed sir huon across the fern, as we say. babies are no special treat to me--i've watched too many of them--so i stayed on the hill. presently i heard hammering down at the forge there,' puck pointed towards hobden's cottage. 'it was too early for any workmen, but it passed through my mind that the breaking day was thor's own day. a slow north-east wind blew up and set the oaks sawing and fretting in a way i remembered; so i slipped over to see what i could see.' 'and what did you see?' 'a smith forging something or other out of cold iron. when it was finished, he weighed it in his hand (his back was towards me), and tossed it from him a longish quoit-throw down the valley. i saw cold iron flash in the sun, but i couldn't quite make out where it fell. _that_ didn't trouble me. i knew it would be found sooner or later by some one.' 'how did you know?' dan went on. 'because i knew the smith that made it,' said puck quietly. 'wayland smith?'[ ] una suggested. [ ] see 'weland's sword' in _puck of pook's hill_. 'no. i should have passed the time o' day with wayland smith, of course. this other was different. so'--puck made a queer crescent in the air with his finger--'i counted the blades of grass under my nose till the wind dropped and he had gone--he and his hammer.' 'was it thor then?' una murmured under her breath. 'who else? it was thor's own day.' puck repeated the sign. 'i didn't tell sir huon or his lady what i'd seen. borrow trouble for yourself if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours. moreover, i might have been mistaken about the smith's work. he might have been making things for mere amusement, though it wasn't like him, or he might have thrown away an old piece of made iron. one can never be sure. so i held my tongue and enjoyed the babe. he was a wonderful child--and the people of the hills were so set on him, they wouldn't have believed me. he took to me wonderfully. as soon as he could walk he'd putter forth with me all about my hill here. fern makes soft falling! he knew when day broke on earth above, for he'd thump, thump, thump, like an old buck-rabbit in a bury, and i'd hear him say "opy!" till some one who knew the charm let him out, and then it would be "robin! robin!" all round robin hood's barn, as we say, till he'd found me.' 'the dear!' said una. 'i'd like to have seen him!' 'yes, he was a boy. and when it came to learning his words--spells and such like--he'd sit on the hill in the long shadows, worrying out bits of charms to try on passers-by. and when the bird flew to him, or the tree bowed to him for pure love's sake (like everything else on my hill), he'd shout, "robin! look--see! look, see, robin!" and sputter out some spell or other that they had taught him, _all_ wrong end first, till i hadn't the heart to tell him it was his own dear self and not the words that worked the wonder. when he got more abreast of his words, and could cast spells for sure, as we say, he took more and more notice of things and people in the world. people, of course, always drew him, for he was mortal all through. 'seeing that he was free to move among folk in housen, under or over cold iron, i used to take him along with me night-walking, where he could watch folk, and i could keep him from touching cold iron. that wasn't so difficult as it sounds, because there are plenty of things besides cold iron in housen to catch a boy's fancy. he _was_ a handful, though! i shan't forget when i took him to little lindens--his first night under a roof. the smell of the rushlights and the bacon on the beams--they were stuffing a feather-bed too, and it was a drizzling warm night--got into his head. before i could stop him--we were hiding in the bakehouse--he'd whipped up a storm of wildfire, with flashlights and voices, which sent the folk shrieking into the garden, and a girl overset a hive there, and--of course _he_ didn't know till then such things could touch him--he got badly stung, and came home with his face looking like kidney potatoes! 'you can imagine how angry sir huon and lady esclairmonde were with poor robin! they said the boy was never to be trusted with me night-walking any more--and he took about as much notice of their order as he did of the bee-stings. night after night, as soon as it was dark, i'd pick up his whistle in the wet fern, and off we'd flit together among folk in housen till break of day--he asking questions, and i answering according to my knowledge. then we fell into mischief again!' puck shook till the gate rattled. 'we came across a man up at brightling who was beating his wife with a bat in the garden. i was just going to toss the man over his own woodlump when the boy jumped the hedge and ran at him. of course the woman took her husband's part, and while the man beat him, the woman scratted his face. it wasn't till i danced among the cabbages like brightling beacon all ablaze that they gave up and ran indoors. the boy's fine green-and-gold clothes were torn all to pieces, and he had been welted in twenty places with the man's bat, and scratted by the woman's nails to pieces. he looked like a robertsbridge hopper on a monday morning. '"robin," said he, while i was trying to clean him down with a bunch of hay, "i don't quite understand folk in housen. i went to help that old woman, and she hit me, robin!" '"what else did you expect?" i said. "that was the one time when you might have worked one of your charms, instead of running into three times your weight." '"i didn't think," he says. "but i caught the man one on the head that was as good as any charm. did you see it work, robin?" '"mind your nose," i said. "bleed it on a dockleaf--not your sleeve, for pity's sake." i knew what the lady esclairmonde would say. '_he_ didn't care. he was as happy as a gipsy with a stolen pony, and the front part of his gold coat, all blood and grass stains, looked like ancient sacrifices. 'of course the people of the hills laid the blame on me. the boy could do nothing wrong, in their eyes. '"you are bringing him up to act and influence on folk in housen, when you're ready to let him go," i said. "now he's begun to do it, why do you cry shame on me? that's no shame. it's his nature drawing him to his kind." '"but we don't want him to begin _that_ way," the lady esclairmonde said. "we intend a splendid fortune for him--not your flitter-by-night, hedge-jumping, gipsy-work." '"i don't blame you, robin," says sir huon, "but i _do_ think you might look after the boy more closely." '"i've kept him away from cold iron these sixteen years," i said. "you know as well as i do, the first time he touches cold iron he'll find his own fortune, in spite of everything you intend for him. you owe me something for that." 'sir huon, having been a man, was going to allow me the right of it, but the lady esclairmonde, being the mother of all mothers, over-persuaded him. '"we're very grateful," sir huon said, "but we think that just for the present you are about too much with him on the hill." '"though you have said it," i said, "i will give you a second chance." i did not like being called to account for my doings on my own hill. i wouldn't have stood it even that far except i loved the boy. '"no! no!" says the lady esclairmonde. "he's never any trouble when he's left to me and himself. it's your fault." '"you have said it," i answered. "hear me! from now on till the boy has found his fortune, whatever that may be, i vow to you all on my hill, by oak, and ash, and thorn, _and_ by the hammer of asa thor"'--again puck made that curious double-cut in the air--'"that you may leave me out of all your counts and reckonings." then i went out'--he snapped his fingers--'like the puff of a candle, and though they called and cried, they made nothing by it. i didn't promise not to keep an eye on the boy, though. i watched him close--close--close! 'when he found what his people had forced me to do, he gave them a piece of his mind, but they all kissed and cried round him, and being only a boy, he came over to their way of thinking (i don't blame him), and called himself unkind and ungrateful; and it all ended in fresh shows and plays, and magics to distract him from folk in housen. dear heart alive! how he used to call and call on me, and i couldn't answer, or even let him know that i was near!' 'not even once?' said una. 'if he was very lonely?' 'no, he couldn't,' said dan, who had been thinking. 'didn't you swear by the hammer of thor that you wouldn't, puck?' 'by that hammer!' was the deep rumbled reply. then he came back to his soft speaking voice. 'and the boy _was_ lonely, when he couldn't see me any more. he began to try to learn all learning (he had good teachers), but i saw him lift his eyes from the big black books towards folk in housen all the time. he studied song-making (good teacher she had too!), but he sung those songs with his back toward the hill, and his face toward folk. _i_ know! i have sat and grieved over him grieving within a rabbit's jump of him. then he studied the high, low, and middle magic. he had promised the lady esclairmonde he would never go near folk in housen; so he had to make shows and shadows for his mind to chew on.' 'what sort of shows?' said dan. 'just boy's magic as we say. i'll show you some, some time. it pleased him for the while, and it didn't hurt any one in particular except a few men coming home late from the taverns. but i knew what it was a sign of, and i followed him like a weasel follows a rabbit. as good a boy as ever lived! i've seen him with sir huon and the lady esclairmonde stepping just as they stepped to avoid the track of cold iron in a furrow, or walking wide of some old ash-tot because a man had left his swop-hook or spade there; and all his heart aching to go straightforward among folk in housen all the time. oh, a good boy! they always intended a fine fortune for him--but they could never find it in their heart to let him begin. i've heard that many warned them, but they wouldn't be warned. so it happened _as_ it happened. 'one hot night i saw the boy roving about here wrapped in his flaming discontents. there was flash on flash against the clouds, and rush on rush of shadows down the valley till the shaws were full of his hounds giving tongue, and the wood-ways were packed with his knights in armour riding down into the water-mists--all his own magic, of course. behind them you could see great castles lifting slow and splendid on arches of moonshine, with maidens waving their hands at the windows, which all turned into roaring rivers; and then would come the darkness of his own young heart wiping out the whole slateful. but boy's magic doesn't trouble me--or merlin's either for that matter. i followed the boy by the flashes and the whirling wildfire of his discontent, and oh, but i grieved for him! oh, but i grieved for him! he pounded back and forth like a bullock in a strange pasture--sometimes alone--sometimes waist-deep among his shadow-hounds--sometimes leading his shadow-knights on a hawk-winged horse to rescue his shadow-girls. i never guessed he had such magic at his command; but it's often that way with boys. 'just when the owl comes home for the second time, i saw sir huon and the lady ride down my hill, where there's not much magic allowed except mine. they were very pleased at the boy's magic--the valley flared with it--and i heard them settling his splendid fortune when they should find it in their hearts to let him go to act and influence among folk in housen. sir huon was for making him a great king somewhere or other, and the lady was for making him a marvellous wise man whom all should praise for his skill and kindness. she was very kind-hearted. 'of a sudden we saw the flashes of his discontent turned back on the clouds, and his shadow-hounds stopped baying. '"there's magic fighting magic over yonder," the lady esclairmonde cried, reining up. "who is against him?" 'i could have told her, but i did not count it any of my business to speak of asa thor's comings and goings.' 'how did you know?' said una. 'a slow north-east wind blew up, sawing and fretting through the oaks in a way i remembered. the wildfire roared up, one last time in one sheet, and snuffed out like a rush-light, and a bucketful of stinging hail fell. we heard the boy walking in the long slip--where i first met you. '"here, oh, come here!" said the lady esclairmonde, and stretched out her arms in the dark. 'he was coming slowly, but he stumbled in the footpath, being, of course, mortal man. '"why, what's this?" he said to himself. we three heard him. '"hold, lad, hold! 'ware cold iron!" said sir huon, and they two swept down like night-jars, crying as they rode. 'i ran at their stirrups, but it was too late. we felt that the boy had touched cold iron somewhere in the dark, for the horses of the hill shied off, and whipped round, snorting. 'then i judged it was time for me to show myself in my own shape; so i did. '"whatever it is," i said, "he has taken hold of it. now we must find out whatever it _is_ that he has taken hold of; for that will be his fortune." '"come here, robin," the boy shouted, as soon as he heard my voice. "i don't know what i've hold of." '"it is in your hands," i called back. "tell us if it is hard and cold, with jewels atop. for that will be a king's sceptre." '"not by a furrow-long," he said, and stooped and tugged in the dark. we heard him. '"has it a handle and two cutting edges?" i called. "for that'll be a knight's sword." '"no, it hasn't," he says. "it's neither ploughshare, whittle, hook, nor crook, nor aught i've yet seen men handle." by this time he was scratting in the dirt to prize it up. '"whatever it is, you know who put it there, robin," said sir huon to me, "or you would not ask those questions. you should have told me as soon as you knew." '"what could you or i have done against the smith that made it and laid it for him to find?" i said, and i whispered sir huon what i had seen at the forge on thor's day, when the babe was first brought to the hill. '"oh, good-bye, our dreams!" said sir huon. "it's neither sceptre, sword, nor plough! maybe yet it's a bookful of learning, bound with iron clasps. there's a chance for a splendid fortune in that sometimes." 'but we knew we were only speaking to comfort ourselves, and the lady esclairmonde, having been a woman, said so. '"thur aie! thur help us!" the boy called. "it is round, without end, cold iron, four fingers wide and a thumb thick, and there is writing on the breadth of it." '"read the writing if you have the learning," i called. the darkness had lifted by then, and the owl was out over the fern again. 'he called back, reading the runes on the iron: "few can see further forth than when the child meets the cold iron." and there he stood, in clear starlight, with a new, heavy, shining slave-ring round his proud neck. '"is this how it goes?" he asked, while the lady esclairmonde cried. '"that is how it goes," i said. he hadn't snapped the catch home yet, though. '"what fortune does it mean for him?" said sir huon, while the boy fingered the ring. "you who walk under cold iron, you must tell us and teach us." '"tell i can, but teach i cannot," i said. "the virtue of the ring is only that he must go among folk in housen henceforward, doing what they want done, or what he knows they need, all old england over. never will he be his own master, nor yet ever any man's. he will get half he gives, and give twice what he gets, till his life's last breath; and if he lays aside his load before he draws that last breath, all his work will go for naught." '"oh, cruel, wicked thor!" cried the lady esclairmonde. "ah, look, see, all of you! the catch is still open! he hasn't locked it. he can still take it off. he can still come back. come back!" she went as near as she dared, but she could not lay hands on cold iron. the boy could have taken it off, yes. we waited to see if he would, but he put up his hand, and the snap locked home. '"what else could i have done?" said he. '"surely, then, you will do," i said. "morning's coming, and if you three have any farewells to make, make them now, for, after sunrise, cold iron must be your master." 'so the three sat down, cheek by wet cheek, telling over their farewells till morning light. as good a boy as ever lived, he was.' 'and what happened to him?' asked dan. 'when morning came, cold iron was master of him and his fortune, and he went to work among folk in housen. presently he came across a maid like-minded with himself, and they were wedded, and had bushels of children, as the saying is. perhaps you'll meet some of his breed, this year.' 'thank you,' said una. 'but what did the poor lady esclairmonde do?' 'what _can_ you do when asa thor lays the cold iron in a lad's path? she and sir huon were comforted to think they had given the boy good store of learning to act and influence on folk in housen. for he _was_ a good boy! isn't it getting on for breakfast time? i'll walk with you a piece.' when they were well in the centre of the bone-dry fern, dan nudged una, who stopped and put on a boot as quickly as she could. 'now,' she said, 'you can't get any oak, ash, and thorn leaves from here, and'--she balanced wildly on one leg--'i'm standing on cold iron. what'll you do if we don't go away?' 'e-eh? of all mortal impudence!' said puck, as dan, also in one boot, grabbed his sister's hand to steady himself. he walked round them, shaking with delight. 'you think i can only work with a handful of dead leaves? this comes of taking away your doubt and fear! i'll show you!' * * * * * a minute later they charged into old hobden at his simple breakfast of cold roast pheasant, shouting that there was a wasps' nest in the fern which they had nearly stepped on, and asking him to come and smoke it out. 'it's too early for wops-nestes, an' i don't go diggin' in the hill, not for shillin's,' said the old man placidly. 'you've a thorn in your foot, miss una. sit down, and put on your t'other boot. you're too old to be caperin' barefoot on an empty stomach. stay it with this chicken o' mine.' cold iron '_gold is for the mistress--silver for the maid! copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade._' 'good!' said the baron, sitting in his hall, 'but iron--cold iron--is master of them all!' so he made rebellion 'gainst the king his liege, camped before his citadel and summoned it to siege-- 'nay!' said the cannoneer on the castle wall, 'but iron--cold iron--shall be master of you all!' woe for the baron and his knights so strong, when the cruel cannon-balls laid 'em all along! he was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall, and iron--cold iron--was master of it all! yet his king spake kindly (oh, how kind a lord!) 'what if i release thee now and give thee back thy sword?' 'nay!' said the baron, 'mock not at my fall, for iron--cold iron--is master of men all.' '_tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown-- halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown._' 'as my loss is grievous, so my hope is small, for iron--cold iron--must be master of men all!' yet his king made answer (few such kings there be!) 'here is bread and here is wine--sit and sup with me. eat and drink in mary's name, the whiles i do recall how iron--cold iron--can be master of men all!' he took the wine and blessed it; he blessed and brake the bread. with his own hands he served them, and presently he said: 'look! these hands they pierced with nails outside my city wall show iron--cold iron--to be master of men all! 'wounds are for the desperate, blows are for the strong, balm and oil for weary hearts all cut and bruised with wrong. i forgive thy treason--i redeem thy fall-- for iron--cold iron--must be master of men all!' '_crowns are for the valiant--sceptres for the bold! thrones and powers for mighty men who dare to take and hold._' 'nay!' said the baron, kneeling in his hall, 'but iron--cold iron--is master of man all! iron, out of calvary, is master of man all!' gloriana the two cousins valour and innocence have latterly gone hence to certain death by certain shame attended. envy--ah! even to tears!-- the fortune of their years which, though so few, yet so divinely ended. scarce had they lifted up life's full and fiery cup, than they had set it down untouched before them. before their day arose they beckoned it to close-- close in destruction and confusion o'er them. they did not stay to ask what prize should crown their task, well sure that prize was such as no man strives for; but passed into eclipse, her kiss upon their lips-- even belphoebe's, whom they gave their lives for! gloriana willow shaw, the little fenced wood where the hop-poles are stacked like indian wigwams, had been given to dan and una for their very own kingdom when they were quite small. as they grew older, they contrived to keep it most particularly private. even phillips, the gardener, told them every time he came in to take a hop-pole for his beans, and old hobden would no more have thought of setting his rabbit-wires there without leave, given fresh each spring, than he would have torn down the calico and marking-ink notice on the big willow which said: 'grown-ups not allowed in the kingdom unless brought.' now you can understand their indignation when, one blowy july afternoon, as they were going up for a potato-roast, they saw somebody moving among the trees. they hurled themselves over the gate, dropping half the potatoes, and while they were picking them up puck came out of a wigwam. 'oh, it's you, is it?' said una. 'we thought it was people.' 'i saw you were angry--from your legs,' he answered with a grin. 'well, it's our own kingdom--not counting you, of course.' 'that's rather why i came. a lady here wants to see you.' 'what about?' said dan cautiously. 'oh, just kingdoms and things. she knows about kingdoms.' there was a lady near the fence dressed in a long dark cloak that hid everything except her high red-heeled shoes. her face was half covered by a black silk fringed mask, without goggles. and yet she did not look in the least as if she motored. puck led them up to her and bowed solemnly. una made the best dancing-lesson curtsy she could remember. the lady answered with a long, deep, slow, billowy one. 'since it seems that you are a queen of this kingdom,' she said, 'i can do no less than acknowledge your sovereignty.' she turned sharply on staring dan. 'what's in your head, lad? manners?' 'i was thinking how wonderfully you did that curtsy,' he answered. she laughed a rather shrill laugh. 'you're a courtier already. do you know anything of dances, wench--or queen, must i say?' 'i've had some lessons, but i can't really dance a bit,' said una. 'you should learn then.' the lady moved forward as though she would teach her at once. 'it gives a woman alone among men or her enemies time to think how she shall win or--lose. a woman can only work in man's playtime. heigho!' she sat down on the bank. old middenboro, the lawn-mower pony, stumped across the paddock and hung his sorrowful head over the fence. 'a pleasant kingdom,' said the lady, looking round. 'well enclosed. and how does your majesty govern it? who is your minister?' una did not quite understand. 'we don't play that,' she said. 'play?' the lady threw up her hands and laughed. 'we have it for our own, together,' dan explained. 'and d'you never quarrel, young burleigh?' 'sometimes, but then we don't tell.' the lady nodded. 'i've no brats of my own, but i understand keeping a secret between queens and their ministers. _ay de mi!_ but with no disrespect to present majesty, methinks your realm is small, and therefore likely to be coveted by man and beast. for example'--she pointed to middenboro--'yonder old horse, with the face of a spanish friar--does he never break in?' 'he can't. old hobden stops all our gaps for us,' said una, 'and we let hobden catch rabbits in the shaw.' the lady laughed like a man. 'i see! hobden catches conies--rabbits--for himself, and guards your defences for you. does he make a profit out of his coney-catching?' 'we never ask,' said una. 'hobden's a particular friend of ours.' 'hoity-toity!' the lady began angrily. then she laughed. 'but i forget. it is your kingdom. i knew a maid once that had a larger one than this to defend, and so long as her men kept the fences stopped, she asked 'em no questions either.' 'was she trying to grow flowers?' said una. 'no, trees--perdurable trees. her flowers all withered.' the lady leaned her head on her hand. 'they do if you don't look after them. we've got a few. would you like to see? i'll fetch you some.' una ran off to the rank grass in the shade behind the wigwam, and came back with a handful of red flowers. 'aren't they pretty?' she said. 'they're virginia stock.' 'virginia?' said the lady, and lifted them to the fringe of her mask. 'yes. they come from virginia. did your maid ever plant any?' 'not herself--but her men adventured all over the earth to pluck or to plant flowers for her crown. they judged her worthy of them.' 'and was she?' said dan cheerfully. '_quien sabe?_ (who knows?) but at least, while her men toiled abroad she toiled in england, that they might find a safe home to come back to.' 'and what was she called?' 'gloriana--belphoebe--elizabeth of england.' her voice changed at each word. 'you mean queen bess?' the lady bowed her head a little towards dan. 'you name her lightly enough, young burleigh. what might you know of her?' said she. 'well, i--i've seen the little green shoes she left at brickwall house--down the road, you know. they're in a glass case--awfully tiny things.' 'oh, burleigh, burleigh!' she laughed. 'you are a courtier too soon.' 'but they are,' dan insisted. 'as little as dolls' shoes. did you really know her well?' 'well. she was a--woman. i've been at her court all my life. yes, i remember when she danced after the banquet at brickwall. they say she danced philip of spain out of a brand-new kingdom that day. worth the price of a pair of old shoes--hey?' she thrust out one foot, and stooped forward to look at its broad flashing buckle. 'you've heard of philip of spain--long-suffering philip,' she said, her eyes still on the shining stones. 'faith, what some men will endure at some women's hands passes belief! if _i_ had been a man, and a woman had played with me as elizabeth played with philip, i would have----' she nipped off one of the virginia stocks and held it up between finger and thumb. 'but for all that'--she began to strip the leaves one by one--'they say--and i am persuaded--that philip loved her.' she tossed her head sideways. 'i don't quite understand,' said una. 'the high heavens forbid that you should, wench!' she swept the flowers from her lap and stood up in the rush of shadows that the wind chased through the wood. 'i should like to know about the shoes,' said dan. 'so ye shall, burleigh. so ye shall, if ye watch me. 'twill be as good as a play.' 'we've never been to a play,' said una. the lady looked at her and laughed. 'i'll make one for you. watch! you are to imagine that she--gloriana, belphoebe, elizabeth--has gone on a progress to rye to comfort her sad heart (maids are often melancholic), and while she halts at brickwall house, the village--what was its name?' she pushed puck with her foot. 'norgem,' he croaked, and squatted by the wigwam. 'norgem village loyally entertains her with a masque or play, and a latin oration spoken by the parson, for whose false quantities, if i'd made 'em in my girlhood, i should have been whipped.' 'you whipped?' said dan. 'soundly, sirrah, soundly! she stomachs the affront to her scholarship, makes her grateful, gracious thanks from the teeth outwards, thus'--(the lady yawned)--'oh, a queen may love her subjects in her heart, and yet be dog-wearied of 'em in body and mind--and so sits down'--her skirts foamed about her as she sat--'to a banquet beneath brickwall oak. here for her sins she is waited upon by---- what were the young cockerels' names that served gloriana at table?' 'frewens, courthopes, fullers, husseys,' puck began. she held up her long jewelled hand. 'spare the rest! they were the best blood of sussex, and by so much the more clumsy in handling the dishes and plates. wherefore'--she looked funnily over her shoulder--'you are to think of gloriana in a green and gold-laced habit, dreadfully expecting that the jostling youths behind her would, of pure jealousy or devotion, spatter it with sauces and wines. the gown was philip's gift, too! at this happy juncture a queen's messenger, mounted and mired, spurs up the rye road and delivers her a letter'--she giggled--'a letter from a good, simple, frantic spanish gentleman called--don philip.' 'that wasn't philip, king of spain?' dan asked. 'truly, it was. 'twixt you and me and the bedpost, young burleigh, these kings and queens are very like men and women, and i've heard they write each other fond, foolish letters that none of their ministers should open.' 'did her ministers ever open queen elizabeth's letters?' said una. 'faith, yes! but she'd have done as much for theirs, any day. you are to think of gloriana, then (they say she had a pretty hand), excusing herself thus to the company--for the queen's time is never her own--and, while the music strikes up, reading philip's letter, as i do.' she drew a real letter from her pocket, and held it out almost at arm's length, like the old post-mistress in the village when she reads telegrams. '_hm! hm! hm!_ philip writes as ever most lovingly. he says his gloriana is cold, for which reason he burns for her through a fair written page.' she turned it with a snap. 'what's here? philip complains that certain of her gentlemen have fought against his generals in the low countries. he prays her to hang 'em when they re-enter her realms. (hm, that's as may be.) here's a list of burnt shipping slipped between two vows of burning adoration. oh, poor philip! his admirals at sea--no less than three of 'em--have been boarded, sacked, and scuttled on their lawful voyages by certain english mariners (gentlemen, he will not call them), who are now at large and working more piracies in _his_ american ocean, which the pope gave him. (he and the pope should guard it, then!) philip hears, but his devout ears will not credit it, that gloriana in some fashion countenances these villains' misdeeds, shares in their booty, and--oh, shame!--has even lent them ships royal for their sinful thefts. therefore he requires (which is a word gloriana loves not), _requires_ that she shall hang 'em when they return to england, and afterwards shall account to him for all the goods and gold they have plundered. a most loving request! if gloriana will not be philip's bride, she shall be his broker and his butcher! should she still be stiff-necked, he writes--see where the pen digged the innocent paper!--that he hath both the means and the intention to be revenged on her. aha! now we come to the spaniard in his shirt!' (she waved the letter merrily.) 'listen here! philip will prepare for gloriana a destruction from the west--a destruction from the west--far exceeding that which pedro de avila wrought upon the huguenots. and he rests and remains, kissing her feet and her hands, her slave, her enemy, or her conqueror, as he shall find that she uses him.' she thrust back the letter under her cloak, and went on acting, but in a softer voice. 'all this while--hark to it--the wind blows through brickwall oak, the music plays, and, with the company's eyes upon her, the queen of england must think what this means. she cannot remember the name of pedro de avila, nor what he did to the huguenots, nor when, nor where. she can only see darkly some dark motion moving in philip's dark mind, for he hath never written before in this fashion. she must smile above the letter as though it were good news from her ministers--the smile that tires the mouth and the poor heart. what shall she do?' again her voice changed. 'you are to fancy that the music of a sudden wavers away. chris hatton, captain of her bodyguard, quits the table all red and ruffled, and gloriana's virgin ear catches the clash of swords at work behind a wall. the mothers of sussex look round to count their chicks--i mean those young game-cocks that waited on her. two dainty youths have stepped aside into brickwall garden with rapier and dagger on a private point of honour. they are haled out through the gate, disarmed and glaring--the lively image of a brace of young cupids transformed into pale, panting cains. ahem! gloriana beckons awfully--thus! they come up for judgment. their lives and estates lie at her mercy whom they have doubly offended, both as queen and woman. but la! what will not foolish young men do for a beautiful maid?' 'why? what did she do? what had they done?' said una. 'hsh! you mar the play! gloriana had guessed the cause of the trouble. they were handsome lads. so she frowns a while and tells 'em not to be bigger fools than their mothers had made 'em, and warns 'em, if they do not kiss and be friends on the instant, she'll have chris hatton horse and birch 'em in the style of the new school at harrow. (chris looks sour at that.) lastly, because she needed time to think on philip's letter burning in her pocket, she signifies her pleasure to dance with 'em and teach 'em better manners. whereat the revived company call down heaven's blessing on her gracious head; chris and the others prepare brickwall house for a dance, and she walks in the clipped garden between those two lovely young sinners who are both ready to sink for shame. they confess their fault. it appears that midway in the banquet the elder--they were cousins--conceived that the queen looked upon him with special favour. the younger, taking the look to himself, after some words gives the elder the lie; hence, as she guessed, the duel.' 'and which had she really looked at?' dan asked. [illustration: 'admiral boy--vice-admiral babe,' says gloriana, 'i cry your pardon.'--p. .] 'neither--except to wish them farther off. she was afraid all the while they'd spill dishes on her gown. she tells 'em this, poor chicks--and it completes their abasement. when they had grilled long enough, she says: "and so you would have fleshed your maiden swords for me--for me?" faith, they would have been at it again if she'd egged 'em on! but their swords--oh, prettily they said it!--had been drawn for her once or twice already. '"and where?" says she. "on your hobby-horses before you were breeched?" '"on my own ship," says the elder. "my cousin was vice-admiral of our venture in his pinnace. we would not have you think of us as brawling children." '"no, no," says the younger, and flames like a very tudor rose. "at least the spaniards know us better." '"admiral boy--vice-admiral babe," says gloriana, "i cry your pardon. the heat of these present times ripens childhood to age more quickly than i can follow. but we are at peace with spain. where did you break your queen's peace?" '"on the sea called the spanish main, though 'tis no more spanish than my doublet," says the elder. guess how that warmed gloriana's already melting heart! she would never suffer any sea to be called spanish in her private hearing. '"and why was i not told? what booty got you, and where have you hid it? disclose," says she. "you stand in some danger of the gallows for pirates." '"the axe, most gracious lady," says the elder, "for we are gentle born." he spoke truth, but no woman can brook contradiction. "hoity-toity," says she, and, but that she remembered that she was a queen, she'd have cuffed the pair of 'em. "it shall be gallows, hurdle, and dung-cart if i choose." '"had our queen known of our going beforehand, philip might have held her to blame for some small things we did on the seas," the younger lisps. '"as for treasure," says the elder, "we brought back but our bare lives. we were wrecked on the gascons' graveyard, where our sole company for three months was the bleached bones of de avila's men." 'gloriana's mind jumped back to philip's last letter. '"de avila that destroyed the huguenots? what d'you know of him?" she says. the music called from the house here, and they three turned back between the yews. '"simply that de avila broke in upon a plantation of frenchmen on that coast, and very spaniardly hung them all for heretics--eight hundred or so. the next year dominique de gorgues, a gascon, broke in upon de avila's men, and very justly hung 'em all for murderers--five hundred or so. no christians inhabit there now," says the elder lad, "though 'tis a goodly land north of florida." '"how far is it from england?" asks prudent gloriana. '"with a fair wind, six weeks. they say that philip will plant it again soon." this was the younger, and he looked at her out of the corner of his innocent eye. 'chris hatton, fuming, meets and leads her into brickwall hall, where she dances--thus. a woman can think while she dances--can think. i'll show you. watch!' she took off her cloak slowly, and stood forth in dove-coloured satin, worked over with pearls that trembled like running water in the running shadows of the trees. still talking--more to herself than to the children--she swam into a majestical dance of the stateliest balancings, the haughtiest wheelings and turnings aside, the most dignified sinkings, the gravest risings, all joined together by the elaboratest interlacing steps and circles. they leaned forward breathlessly to watch the splendid acting. 'would a spaniard,' she began, looking on the ground, 'speak of his revenge till his revenge were ripe? no. yet a man who loved a woman might threaten her in the hope that his threats would make her love him. such things have been.' she moved slowly across a bar of sunlight. 'a destruction from the west may signify that philip means to descend on ireland. but then my irish spies would have had some warning. the irish keep no secrets. no--it is not ireland. now why--why--why'--the red shoes clicked and paused--'does philip name pedro melendez de avila, a general in his americas, unless'--she turned more quickly--'unless he intends to work his destruction from the americas? did he say de avila only to put her off her guard, or for this once has his black pen betrayed his black heart? we'--she raised herself to her full height--'england must forestall master philip. but not openly,' she sank again--'we cannot fight spain openly--not yet--not yet.' she stepped three paces as though she were pegging down some snare with her twinkling shoe-buckles. 'the queen's mad gentlemen may fight philip's poor admirals where they find 'em, but england, gloriana, harry's daughter, must keep the peace. perhaps, after all, philip loves her--as many men and boys do. that may help england. oh, _what_ shall help england?' she raised her head--the masked head that seemed to have nothing to do with the busy feet--and stared straight at the children. 'i think this is rather creepy,' said una with a shiver. 'i wish she'd stop.' the lady held out her jewelled hand as though she were taking some one else's hand in the grand chain. 'can a ship go down into the gascons' graveyard and wait there?' she asked into the air, and passed on rustling. 'she's pretending to ask one of the cousins, isn't she?' said dan, and puck nodded. back she came in the silent, swaying, ghostly dance. they saw she was smiling beneath the mask, and they could hear her breathing hard. 'i cannot lend you any my ships for the venture; philip would hear of it,' she whispered over her shoulder; 'but as much guns and powder as you ask, if you do not ask too----' her voice shot up and she stamped her foot thrice. 'louder! louder, the music in the gallery! oh, me, but i have burst out of my shoe!' she gathered her skirts in each hand, and began a curtsy. 'you will go at your own charges,' she whispered straight before her. 'oh, enviable and adorable age of youth!' her eyes shone through the mask-holes. 'but i warn you you'll repent it. put not your trust in princes--or queens. philip's ships'll blow you out of water. you'll not be frightened? well, we'll talk on it again, when i return from rye, dear lads.' the wonderful curtsy ended. she stood up. nothing stirred on her except the rush of the shadows. 'and so it was finished,' she said to the children. 'why d'you not applaud?' 'what was finished?' said una. 'the dance,' the lady replied offendedly. 'and a pair of green shoes.' 'i don't understand a bit,' said una. 'eh? what did _you_ make of it, young burleigh?' 'i'm not quite sure,' dan began, 'but----' 'you never can be--with a woman. but----' 'but i thought gloriana meant the cousins to go back to the gascons' graveyard, wherever that was.' ''twas virginia afterwards. her plantation of virginia.' 'virginia afterwards, and stop philip from taking it. didn't she say she'd lend 'em guns?' 'right so. but not ships--_then_.' 'and i thought you meant they must have told her they'd do it off their own bat, without getting her into a row with philip. was i right?' 'near enough for a minister of the queen. but remember she gave the lads full time to change their minds. she was three long days at rye royal--knighting of fat mayors. when she came back to brickwall, they met her a mile down the road, and she could feel their eyes burn through her riding-mask. chris hatton, poor fool, was vexed at it. '"you would not birch them when i gave you the chance," says she to chris. "now you must get me half an hour's private speech with 'em in brickwall garden. eve tempted adam in a garden. quick, man, or i may repent!"' 'she was a queen. why did she not send for them herself,' said una. the lady shook her head. 'that was never her way. i've seen her walk to her own mirror by bye-ends, and the woman that cannot walk straight _there_ is past praying for. yet i would have you pray for her! what else--what else in england's name could she have done?' she lifted her hand to her throat for a moment. 'faith,' she cried, 'i'd forgotten the little green shoes! she left 'em at brickwall--so she did. and i remember she gave the norgem parson--john withers, was he?--a text for his sermon--"over edom have i cast out my shoe." neat, if he'd understood!' 'i don't understand,' said una. 'what about the two cousins?' 'you are as cruel as a woman,' the lady answered. '_i_ was not to blame. i told you i gave 'em time to change their minds. on my honour (_ay de mi!_), she asked no more of 'em at first than to wait a while off that coast--the gascons' graveyard--to hover a little if their ships chanced to pass that way--they had only one tall ship and a pinnace--only to watch and bring me word of philip's doings. one must watch philip always. what a murrain right had he to make any plantation there, a hundred leagues north of his spanish main, and only six weeks from england? by my dread father's soul, i tell you he had none--none!' she stamped her red foot again, and the two children shrunk back for a second. 'nay, nay. you must not turn from me too! she laid it all fairly before the lads in brickwall garden between the yews. i told 'em that if philip sent a fleet (and to make a plantation he could not well send less), their poor little cock-boats could not sink it. they answered that, with submission, the fight would be their own concern. she showed 'em again that there could be only one end to it--quick death on the sea, or slow death in philip's prisons. they asked no more than to embrace death for my sake. many men have prayed to me for life. i've refused 'em, and slept none the worse after; but when my men, my tall, fantastical young men beseech me on their knees for leave to die for me, it shakes me--ah, it shakes me to the marrow of my old bones.' her chest sounded like a board as she hit it. 'she showed 'em all. i told 'em that this was no time for open war with spain. if by miracle inconceivable they prevailed against philip's fleet, philip would hold me accountable. for england's sake, to save war, i should e'en be forced (i told 'em so) to give him up their young lives. if they failed, and again by some miracle escaped philip's hand, and crept back to england with their bare lives, they must lie--oh, i told 'em all--under my sovereign displeasure. she could not know them, see them, nor hear their names, nor stretch out a finger to save them from the gallows, if philip chose to ask it. '"be it the gallows, then," says the elder. (i could have wept, but that my face was made for the day.) '"either way--any way--this venture is death, which i know you fear not. but it is death with assured dishonour," i cried. '"yet our queen will know in her heart what we have done," says the younger. '"sweetheart," i said. "a queen has no heart." '"but she is a woman, and a woman would not forget," says the elder. "we will go!" they knelt at my feet. '"nay, dear lads--but here!" i said, and i opened my arms to them and i kissed them. '"be ruled by me," i said. "we'll hire some ill-featured old tarry-breeks of an admiral to watch the graveyard, and you shall come to court." '"hire whom you please," says the elder; "we are ruled by you, body and soul"; and the younger, who shook most when i kissed 'em, says between his white lips, "i think you have power to make a god of a man." '"come to court and be sure of it," i says. 'they shook their heads and i knew--i knew, that go they would. if i had not kissed them--perhaps i might have prevailed.' 'then why did you do it?' said una. 'i don't think you knew really what you wanted done.' 'may it please your majesty,' the lady bowed her head low, 'this gloriana whom i have represented for your pleasure was a woman and a queen. remember her when you come to your kingdom.' 'but did the cousins go to the gascons' graveyard?' said dan, as una frowned. 'they went,' said the lady. 'did they ever come back?' una began; but--'did they stop king philip's fleet?' dan interrupted. the lady turned to him eagerly. 'd'you think they did right to go?' she asked. 'i don't see what else they could have done,' dan replied, after thinking it over. 'd'you think she did right to send 'em?' the lady's voice rose a little. 'well,' said dan, 'i don't see what else she could have done, either--do you? how did they stop king philip from getting virginia?' 'there's the sad part of it. they sailed out that autumn from rye royal, and there never came back so much as a single rope-yarn to show what had befallen them. the winds blew, and they were not. does that make you alter your mind, young burleigh?' 'i expect they were drowned, then. anyhow, philip didn't score, did he?' 'gloriana wiped out her score with philip later. but if philip had won, would you have blamed gloriana for wasting those lads' lives?' 'of course not. she was bound to try to stop him.' the lady coughed. 'you have the root of the matter in you. were i queen, i'd make you minister.' 'we don't play that game,' said una, who felt that she disliked the lady as much as she disliked the noise the high wind made tearing through willow shaw. 'play!' said the lady with a laugh, and threw up her hands affectedly. the sunshine caught the jewels on her many rings and made them flash till una's eyes dazzled, and she had to rub them. then she saw dan on his knees picking up the potatoes they had spilled at the gate. 'there wasn't anybody in the shaw, after all,' he said. 'didn't you think you saw some one?' 'i'm most awfully glad there isn't,' said una. then they went on with the potato-roast. the looking-glass _queen bess was harry's daughter!_ the queen was in her chamber, and she was middling old, her petticoat was satin and her stomacher was gold. backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass, making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass. the cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass as comely or as kindly or as young as once she was! the queen was in her chamber, a-combing of her hair, there came queen mary's spirit and it stood behind her chair, singing, 'backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass, but i will stand behind you till you face the looking-glass. the cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass as lovely or unlucky or as lonely as i was!' the queen was in her chamber, a-weeping very sore, there came lord leicester's spirit and it scratched upon the door, singing, 'backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass, but i will walk beside you till you face the looking-glass. the cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass as hard and unforgiving or as wicked as you was!' the queen was in her chamber; her sins were on her head; she looked the spirits up and down and statelily she said: 'backwards and forwards and sideways though i've been, yet i am harry's daughter and i am england's queen!' and she faced the looking-glass (and whatever else there was), and she saw her day was over and she saw her beauty pass in the cruel looking-glass that can always hurt a lass more hard than any ghost there is or any man there was! the wrong thing a truthful song i. the bricklayer:-- _i tell this tale which is strictly true, just by way of convincing you how very little since things were made things have altered in the building trade._ a year ago, come the middle o' march, we was building flats near the marble arch, when a thin young man with coal-black hair came up to watch us working there. now there wasn't a trick in brick or stone that this young man hadn't seen or known; nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul but this young man could use 'em all! then up and spoke the plumbyers bold, which was laying the pipes for the hot and cold: 'since you with us have made so free, will you kindly say what your name might be?' the young man kindly answered them: 'it might be lot or methusalem, or it might be moses (a man i hate), whereas it is pharaoh surnamed the great. 'your glazing is new and your plumbing's strange, but otherwise i perceive no change, and in less than a month if you do as i bid i'd learn you to build me a pyramid.' ii. the sailor:-- _i tell this tale which is stricter true, just by way of convincing you how very little since things was made things have altered in the shipwright's trade._ in blackwall basin yesterday a china barque re-fitting lay, when a fat old man with snow-white hair came up to watch us working there. now there wasn't a knot which the riggers knew but the old man made it--and better too; nor there wasn't a sheet, or a lift, or a brace, but the old man knew its lead and place. then up and spake the caulkyers bold, which was packing the pump in the after-hold: 'since you with us have made so free, will you kindly tell what your name might be?' the old man kindly answered them: 'it might be japhet, it might be shem, or it might be ham (though his skin was dark), whereas it is noah, commanding the ark. 'your wheel is new and your pumps are strange, but otherwise i perceive no change, and in less than a week, if she did not ground, i'd sail this hooker the wide world round!' both: _we tell these tales which are strictest true, etc._ the wrong thing dan had gone in for building model boats; but after he had filled the schoolroom with chips, which he expected una to clear away, they turned him out of doors and he took all his tools up the hill to mr. springett's yard, where he knew he could make as much mess as he chose. old mr. springett was a builder, contractor, and sanitary engineer, and his yard, which opened off the village street, was always full of interesting things. at one end of it was a long loft, reached by a ladder, where he kept his iron-bound scaffold planks, tins of paints, pulleys, and odds and ends he had found in old houses. he would sit here by the hour watching his carts as they loaded or unloaded in the yard below, while dan gouged and grunted at the carpenter's bench near the loft window. mr. springett and dan had always been particular friends, for mr. springett was so old he could remember when railways were being made in the southern counties of england, and people were allowed to drive dogs in carts. one hot, still afternoon--the tar-paper on the roof smelt like ships--dan, in his shirt sleeves, was smoothing down a new schooner's bow, and mr. springett was talking of barns and houses he had built. he said he never forgot any stick or stone he had ever handled, or any man, woman, or child he had ever met. just then he was very proud of the village hall at the entrance to the village, which he had finished a few weeks before. 'an' i don't mind tellin' you, mus' dan,' he said, 'that the hall will be my last job top of this mortal earth. i didn't make ten pounds--no, nor yet five--out o' the whole contrac', but my name's lettered on the foundation stone--_ralph springett, builder_--and the stone she's bedded on four foot good concrete. if she shifts any time these five hundred years, i'll sure-ly turn in my grave. i told the lunnon architec' so when he come down to oversee my work.' 'what did he say?' dan was sandpapering the schooner's port bow. 'nothing. the hall ain't more than one of his small jobs for _him_, but 'tain't small to me, an' my name is cut and lettered, frontin' the village street, i do hope an' pray, for time everlastin.' you'll want the little round file for that holler in her bow. who's there?' mr. springett turned stiffly in his chair. a long pile of scaffold-planks ran down the centre of the loft. dan looked, and saw hal of the draft's touzled head beyond them.[ ] [ ] see 'hal o' the draft' in _puck of pook's hill_. 'be you the builder of the village hall?' he asked of mr. springett. 'i be,' was the answer. 'but if you want a job----' hal laughed. 'no, faith!' he said. 'only the hall is as good and honest a piece of work as i've ever run a rule over. so, being born hereabouts, and being reckoned a master among masons, and accepted as a master mason, i made bold to pay my brotherly respects to the builder.' 'aa--um!' mr. springett looked important. 'i be a bit rusty, but i'll try ye!' he asked hal several curious questions, and the answers must have pleased him, for he invited hal to sit down. hal moved up, always keeping behind the pile of planks so that only his head showed, and sat down on a trestle in the dark corner at the back of mr. springett's desk. he took no notice of dan, but talked at once to mr. springett about bricks, and cement, and lead and glass, and after a while dan went on with his work. he knew mr. springett was pleased, because he tugged his white sandy beard, and smoked his pipe in short puffs. the two men seemed to agree about everything, but when grown-ups agree they interrupt each other almost as much as if they were quarrelling. hal said something about workmen. 'why, that's what _i_ always say,' mr. springett cried. 'a man who can only do one thing, he's but next-above-fool to the man that can't do nothing. that's where the unions make their mistake.' 'my thought to the very dot.' dan heard hal slap his tight-hosed leg. 'i've suffered in my time from these same guilds--unions d'you call 'em? all their precious talk of the mysteries of their trades--why, what does it come to?' 'nothin'! you've just about hit it,' said mr. springett, and rammed his hot tobacco with his thumb. 'take the art of wood-carving,' hal went on. he reached across the planks, grabbed a wooden mallet, and moved his other hand as though he wanted something. mr. springett without a word passed him one of dan's broad chisels. 'ah! wood-carving, for example. if you can cut wood and have a fair draft of what ye mean to do, a heaven's name take chisel and mall and let drive at it, say i! you'll soon find all the mystery, forsooth, of wood-carving under your proper hand!' whack, came the mallet on the chisel, and a sliver of wood curled up in front of it. mr. springett watched like an old raven. 'all art is one, man--one!' said hal between whacks; 'and to wait on another man to finish out----' 'to finish out your work ain't no sense,' mr. springett cut in. 'that's what i'm always saying to the boy here.' he nodded towards dan. 'that's what i said when i put the new wheel into brewster's mill in eighteen hundred seventy-two. i reckoned i was millwright enough for the job 'thout bringin' a man from lunnon. an' besides, dividin' work eats up profits, no bounds.' hal laughed his beautiful deep laugh, and mr. springett joined in till dan laughed too. 'you handle your tools, i can see,' said mr. springett. 'i reckon, if you're any way like me, you've found yourself hindered by those--guilds, did you call 'em?--unions, we say.' 'you may say so!' hal pointed to a white scar on his cheek-bone. 'this is a remembrance from the master watching foreman of masons on magdalen tower, because, please you, i dared to carve stone without their leave. they said a stone had slipped from the cornice by accident.' 'i know them accidents. there's no way to disprove 'em. an' stones ain't the only things that slip,' mr. springett grunted. hal went on: 'i've seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot a too-clever workman thirty foot on to the cold chancel floor below. and a rope can break----' 'yes, natural as nature; an' lime'll fly up in a man's eyes without any breath o' wind sometimes,' said mr. springett. 'but who's to show 'twasn't a accident?' 'who do these things?' dan asked, and straightened his back at the bench as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice to get at her counter. 'them which don't wish other men to work no better nor quicker than they do,' growled mr. springett. 'don't pinch her so hard in the vice, mus' dan. put a piece o' rag in the jaws, or you'll bruise her. more than that'--he turned towards hal--'if a man has his private spite laid up against you, the unions give him his excuse for working it off.' 'well i know it,' said hal. 'they never let you go, them spiteful ones. i knowed a plasterer in eighteen hundred sixty-one--down to the wells. he was a frenchy--a bad enemy he was.' 'i had mine too. he was an italian, called benedetto. i met him first at oxford on magdalen tower when i was learning my trade--or trades, i should say. a bad enemy he was, as you say, but he came to be my singular good friend,' said hal as he put down the mallet and settled himself comfortably. 'what might his trade have been--plasterin'?' mr. springett asked. 'plastering of a sort. he worked in stucco--fresco we call it. made pictures on plaster. not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in drawing. he'd take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff, and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost. oh, benedetto could draw, but a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of colour or plaster--common tricks, all of 'em--and his one single talk was how tom, dick or harry had stole this or t'other secret art from him.' 'i know that sort,' said mr. springett. 'there's no keeping peace or making peace with such. an' they're mostly born an' bone idle.' 'true. even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. we two came to loggerheads early on magdalen tower. i was a youngster then. maybe i spoke my mind about his work.' 'you shouldn't never do that.' mr. springett shook his head. 'that sort lay it up against you.' 'true enough. this benedetto did most specially. body o' me, the man lived to hate me! but i always kept my eyes open on a plank or a scaffold. i was mighty glad to be shut of him when he quarrelled with his guild foreman, and went off, nose in air, and paints under his arm. but'--hal leaned forward--'if you hate a man or a man hates you----' '_i_ know. you're everlastin' running acrost him,' mr. springett interrupted. 'excuse me, sir.' he leaned out of the window, and shouted to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks. 'ain't you no more sense than to heap 'em up that way?' he said. 'take an' throw a hundred of 'em off. it's more than the team can compass. throw 'em off, i tell you, and make another trip for what's left over. excuse me, sir. you was saying----' 'i was saying that before the end of the year i went to bury to strengthen the lead-work in the great abbey east window there.' 'now that's just one of the things i've never done. but i mind there was a cheap excursion to chichester in eighteen hundred seventy-nine, an' i went an' watched 'em leading a won'erful fine window in chichester cathedral. i stayed watchin' till 'twas time for us to go back. dunno as i had two drinks p'raps, all that day.' hal smiled. 'at bury then, sure enough, i met my enemy benedetto. he had painted a picture in plaster on the south wall of the refectory--a noble place for a noble thing--a picture of jonah.' 'ah! jonah an' his whale. i've never been as fur as bury. you've worked about a lot,' said mr. springett, with his eyes on the carter below. 'no. not the whale. this was a picture of jonah and the pompion that withered. but all that benedetto had shown was a peevish greybeard huggled up in angle-edged drapery beneath a pompion on a wooden trellis. this last, being a dead thing, he'd drawn it as 'twere to the life. but fierce old jonah, bared in the sun, angry even to death that his cold prophecy was disproven--jonah, ashamed, and already hearing the children of nineveh running to mock him--ah, that was what benedetto had _not_ drawn!' 'he better ha' stuck to his whale, then,' said mr. springett. 'he'd ha' done no better with that. he draws the damp cloth off the picture, an' shows it to me. i was a craftsman too, d'ye see? '"'tis good," i said, "but it goes no deeper than the plaster." '"what?" he said in a whisper. '"be thy own judge, benedetto," i answered. "does it go deeper than the plaster?" 'he reeled against a piece of dry wall. "no," he says, "and i know it. i could not hate thee more than i have done these five years, but if i live, i will try, hal. i will try." then he goes away. i pitied him, but i had spoken truth. his picture went no deeper than the plaster.' 'ah!' said mr. springett, who had turned quite red. 'you was talkin' so fast i didn't understand what you was drivin' at. i've seen men--good workmen they was--try to do more than they could do, and--and they couldn't compass it. they knowed it, and it nigh broke their hearts like. you was in your right, o' course, sir, to say what you thought o' his work; but if you'll excuse me, was you in your duty?' 'i was wrong to say it,' hal replied. 'god forgive me--i was young! he was workman enough himself to know where he failed. but it all came evens in the long run. by the same token, did ye ever hear o' one torrigiano--torrisany we called him?' 'i can't say i ever did. was he a frenchy like?' 'no, a hectoring, hard-mouthed, long-sworded italian builder, as vain as a peacock and as strong as a bull, but, mark you, a master workman. more than that--he could get his best work out of the worst men.' 'which it's a gift. i had a foreman-bricklayer like him once,' said mr. springett. 'he used to prod 'em in the back like with a pointing-trowel, and they did wonders.' 'i've seen our torrisany lay a 'prentice down with one buffet and raise him with another--to make a mason of him. i worked under him at building a chapel in london--a chapel and a tomb for the king.' 'i never knew kings went to chapel much,' said mr. springett. 'but i always hold with a man, don't care who he be, seein' about his own grave before he dies. tidn't the sort of thing to leave to your family after the will's read. i reckon 'twas a fine vault.' 'none finer in england. this torrigiano had the contract for it, as you'd say. he picked master craftsmen from all parts--england, france, italy, the low countries--no odds to him so long as they knew their work, and he drove them like--like pigs at brightling fair. he called us english all pigs. we suffered it because he was a master in his craft. if he misliked any work that a man had done, with his own great hands he'd rive it out, and tear it down before us all. "ah, you pig--you english pig!" he'd scream in the dumb wretch's face. "you answer me? you look at me? you think at me? come out with me into the cloisters. i will teach you carving myself. i will gild you all over!" but when his passion had blown out, he'd slip his arm round the man's neck, and impart knowledge worth gold. 'twould have done your heart good, mus' springett, to see the two hundred of us--masons, jewellers, carvers, gilders, iron workers and the rest--all toiling like cock-angels, and this mad italian hornet fleeing from one to next up and down the chapel. 'done your heart good, it would!' 'i believe you,' said mr. springett. 'in eighteen hundred fifty-four, i mind, the railway was bein' made into hastin's. there was two thousand navvies on it--all young--all strong--an' i was one of 'em. oh, dearie me! excuse me, sir, but was your enemy workin' with you?' 'benedetto? be sure he was. he followed me like a lover. he painted pictures on the chapel ceiling--slung from a chair. torrigiano made us promise not to fight till the work should be finished. we were both master craftsmen, do ye see, and he needed us. none the less, i never went aloft to carve 'thout testing all my ropes and knots each morning. we were never far from each other. benedetto 'ud sharpen his knife on his sole while he waited for his plaster to dry--_wheet, wheet, wheet_. i'd hear it where i hung chipping round a pillar-head, and we'd nod to each other friendly-like. oh, he was a craftsman, was benedetto, but his hate spoiled his eye and his hand. i mind the night i had finished the models for the bronze saints round the tomb; torrigiano embraced me before all the chapel, and bade me to supper. i met benedetto when i came out. he was slavering in the porch like a mad dog.' 'working himself up to it?' said mr. springett. 'did he have it in at ye that night?' 'no, no. that time he kept his oath to torrigiano. but i pitied him. eh, well! now i come to my own follies. i had never thought too little of myself; but after torrisany had put his arm round my neck, i--i'--hal broke into a laugh--'i lay there was not much odds 'twixt me and a cock-sparrow in his pride.' 'i was pretty middlin' young once on a time,' said mr. springett. 'then ye know that a man can't drink and dice and dress fine, and keep company above his station, but his work suffers for it, mus' springett.' 'i never held much with dressin' up, but--you're right! the worst mistakes _i_ ever made they was made on a monday morning,' mr. springett answered. 'we've all been one sort of fool or t'other. mus' dan, mus' dan, take the smallest gouge, or you'll be spluttin' her stern works clean out. can't ye see the grain of the wood don't favour a chisel?' 'i'll spare you some of my follies. but there was a man called brygandyne--bob brygandyne--clerk of the king's ships, a little, smooth, bustling atomy, as clever as a woman to get work done for nothin'--a won'erful smooth-tongued pleader. he made much o' me, and asked me to draft him out a drawing, a piece of carved and gilt scroll-work for the bows of one of the king's ships--the _sovereign_ was her name.' 'was she a man-of-war?' asked dan. 'she was a war-ship, and a woman called catherine of castile desired the king to give her the ship for a pleasure-ship of her own. _i_ did not know at the time, but she'd been at bob to get this scroll-work done and fitted that the king might see it. i made him the picture, in an hour, all of a heat after supper--one great heaving play of dolphins and a neptune or so reining in webby-footed sea-horses, and arion with his harp high atop of them. it was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine foot deep--painted and gilt.' 'it must ha' just about looked fine,' said mr. springett. 'that's the curiosity of it. 'twas bad--rank bad. in my conceit i must needs show it to torrigiano, in the chapel. he straddles his legs; hunches his knife behind him, and whistles like a storm-cock through a sleet-shower. benedetto was behind him. he were never far apart, i've told you. '"that is pig's work," says our master. "swine's work. you make any more such things, even after your fine court suppers, and you shall be sent away." 'benedetto licks his lips like a cat. "is it so bad then, master?" he says. "what a pity!" '"yes," says torrigiano. "scarcely _you_ could do things so bad. i will condescend to show." 'he talks to me then and there. no shouting, no swearing (it was too bad for that); but good, memorable counsel, bitten in slowly. then he sets me to draft out a pair of iron gates, to take, as he said, the taste of my naughty dolphins out of my mouth. iron's sweet stuff if you don't torture her, and hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason and a support for every curve and bar of it. a week at that settled my stomach handsomely, and the master let me put the work through the smithy, where i sweated out more of my foolish pride.' 'good stuff is good iron,' said mr. springett. 'i done a pair of lodge gates once in eighteen hundred sixty-three.' 'oh, i forgot to say that bob brygandyne whipped away my draft of the ship's scroll-work, and would not give it back to me to re-draw. he said 'twould do well enough. howsoever, my lawful work kept me too busied to remember him. body o' me, but i worked that winter upon the gates and the bronzes for the tomb as i'd never worked before! i was leaner than a lath, but i lived--i lived then!' hal looked at mr. springett with his wise, crinkled-up eyes, and the old man smiled back. 'ouch!' dan cried. he had been hollowing out the schooner's after-deck, the little gouge had slipped and gashed the ball of his left thumb,--an ugly, triangular tear. 'that came of not steadying your wrist,' said hal calmly. 'don't bleed over the wood. _do_ your work with your heart's blood, but no need to let it show.' he rose and peered into a corner of the loft. mr. springett had risen too, and swept down a ball of cobwebs from a rafter. 'clap that on,' was all he said, 'and put your handkerchief atop. 'twill cake over in a minute. it don't hurt now, do it?' 'no,' said dan indignantly. 'you know it has happened lots of times. i'll tie it up myself. go on, sir.' 'and it'll happen hundreds of times more,' said hal with a friendly nod as he sat down again. but he did not go on till dan's hand was tied up properly. then he said: 'one dark december day--too dark to judge colour--we was all sitting and talking round the fires in the chapel (you heard good talk there), when bob brygandyne bustles in and--"hal, you're sent for," he squeals. i was at torrigiano's feet on a pile of put-locks, as i might be here, toasting a herring on my knife's point. 'twas the one english thing our master liked--salt herring. '"i'm busy, about my art," i calls. '"art?" says bob. "what's art compared to your scroll-work for the _sovereign_. come." '"be sure your sins will find you out," says torrigiano. "go with him and see." as i followed bob out i was aware of benedetto, like a black spot when the eyes are tired, sliddering up behind me. 'bob hurries through the streets in the raw fog, slips into a doorway, up stairs, along passages, and at last thrusts me into a little cold room vilely hung with flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a table and my draft of the _sovereign's_ scroll-work. here he leaves me. presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man in a fur cap. '"master harry dawe?" said he. '"the same," i says. "where a plague has bob brygandyne gone?" 'his thin eyebrows surged up a piece and come down again in a stiff bar. "he went to the king," he says. '"all one. what's your pleasure with me?" i says shivering, for it was mortal cold. 'he lays his hand flat on my draft. "master dawe," he says, "do you know the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked gilding of yours?" 'by that i guessed he was some cheese-paring clerk or other of the king's ships, so i gave him the price. i forget it now, but it worked out to thirty pounds--carved, gilt, and fitted in place. '"thirty pounds!" he said, as though i had pulled a tooth of him. "you talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the asking. none the less," he says, "your draft's a fine piece of work." 'i'd been looking at it ever since i came in, and 'twas viler even than i judged it at first. my eye and hand had been purified the past months, d'you see, by my iron work. '"i could do it better now," i said. the more i studied my squabby neptunes the less i liked 'em; and arion was a pure flaming shame atop of the unbalanced dolphins. '"i doubt it will be fresh expense to draft it again," he says. '"bob never paid me for the first draft. i lay he'll never pay me for the second. 'twill cost the king nothing if i re-draw it," i says. '"there's a woman wishes it to be done quickly," he says. "we'll stick to your first drawing, mus' dawe. but thirty pounds is thirty pounds. you must make it less." 'and all the while the faults in my draft fair leaped out and hit me between the eyes. at any cost, i thinks to myself, i must get it back and re-draft it. he grunts at me impatiently, and a splendid thought comes to me, which shall save me. by the same token, 'twas quite honest.' 'they ain't always,' said mr. springett. 'how did you get out of it?' 'by the truth. i says to master fur cap, as i might to you here, i says, "i'll tell you something, since you seem a knowledgeable man. is the _sovereign_ to lie in thames river all her days, or will she take the high seas?" '"oh," he says quickly, "the king keeps no cats that don't catch mice. she must sail the seas, master dawe. she'll be hired to merchants for the trade. she'll be out in all shapes o' weathers. does that make any odds?" '"why, then," says i, "the first heavy sea she sticks her nose into 'll claw off half that scroll-work, and the next will finish it. if she's meant for a pleasure-ship give me my draft again, and i'll porture you a pretty, light piece of scroll-work, good, cheap. if she's meant for the open sea, pitch the draft into the fire. she can never carry that weight on her bows." 'he looks at me squintlings and plucks his under-lip. '"is this your honest, unswayed opinion?" he says. '"body o' me! ask about!" i says. "any seaman could tell you 'tis true. i'm advising you against my own profit, but why i do so is my own concern." '"not altogether," he says. "it's some of mine. you've saved me thirty pounds, master dawe, and you've given me good arguments to use against a wilful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. we'll not have any scroll-work." his face shined with pure joy. '"then see that the thirty pounds you've saved on it are honestly paid the king," i says, "and keep clear o' womenfolk." i gathered up my draft and crumpled it under my arm. "if that's all you need of me i'll be gone," i says, "for i'm pressed." 'he turns him round and fumbles in a corner. "too pressed to be made a knight, sir harry?" he says, and comes at me smiling, with three-quarters of a rusty sword. 'i pledge you my mark i never guessed it was the king till that moment. i kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder. '"rise up, sir harry dawe," he says, and, in the same breath, "i'm pressed, too," and slips through the tapestries, leaving me like a stuck calf. 'it come over me, in a bitter wave like, that here was i, a master craftsman, who had worked no bounds, soul or body, to make the king's tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time; and here, d'you see, i was made knight, not for anything i'd slaved over, or given my heart and guts to, but expressedly because i'd saved him thirty pounds and a tongue-lashing from catherine of castile--she that had asked for the ship. that thought shrivelled me withinsides while i was folding away my draft. on the heels of it--maybe you'll see why--i began to grin to myself. i thought of the earnest simplicity of the man--the king, i should say--because i'd saved him the money; his smile as though he'd won half france! i thought of my own silly pride and foolish expectations that some day he'd honour me as a master craftsman. i thought of the broken-tipped sword he'd found behind the hangings; the dirt of the cold room, and his cold eye, wrapped up in his own concerns, scarcely resting on me. then i remembered the solemn chapel roof and the bronzes about the stately tomb he'd lie in, and--d'ye see?--the unreason of it all--the mad high humour of it all--took hold on me till i sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed till i could laugh no more. what else could i have done? [illustration: i kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder. 'rise up, sir harry dawe,' he says.--p. .] 'i never heard his feet behind me--he always walked like a cat--but his arm slid round my neck, pulling me back where i sat, till my head lay on his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my heart--benedetto! even so i laughed--the fit was beyond my holding--laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. he was stark crazed for the time. '"laugh," he said. "finish the laughter. i'll not cut ye short. tell me now"--he wrenched at my head--"why the king chose to honour you--you--you--you lickspittle englishman? i am full of patience now. i have waited so long." then he was off at score about his jonah in bury refectory, and what i'd said of it, and his pictures in the chapel which all men praised and none looked at twice (as if that was _my_ fault!) and a whole parcel of words and looks treasured up against me through years. '"ease off your arm a little," i said. "i cannot die by choking, for i am just dubbed knight, benedetto." '"tell me, and i'll confess ye, sir harry dawe, knight. there's a long night before ye. tell," says he. 'so i told him--his chin on my crown--told him all; told it as well and with as many words as i have ever told a tale at a supper with torrigiano. i knew benedetto would understand, for, mad or sad, he was a craftsman. i believed it to be the last tale i'd ever tell top of mortal earth, and i would not put out bad work before i left the lodge. all art's one art, as i said. i bore benedetto no malice. my spirits, d'you see, were catched up in a high, solemn exaltation, and i saw all earth's vanities foreshortened and little, laid out below me like a town from a cathedral scaffolding. i told him what befell, and what i thought of it. i gave him the king's very voice at "master dawe, you've saved me thirty pounds!" his peevish grunt while he looked for the sword; and how the badger-eyed figures of glory and victory leered at me from the flemish hangings. body o' me, 'twas a fine, noble tale, and, as i thought, my last work on earth. '"that is how i was honoured by the king," i said. "they'll hang ye for killing me, benedetto. and, since you've killed in the king's palace, they'll draw and quarter you; but you're too mad to care. grant me, though, ye never heard a better tale." 'he said nothing, but i felt him shake. my head on his chest shook; his right arm fell away, his left dropped the knife, and he leaned with both hands on my shoulder--shaking--shaking! i turned me round. no need to put my foot on his knife. the man was speechless with laughter--honest craftsman's mirth. the first time i'd ever seen him laugh. you know the mirth that cuts off the very breath, while ye stamp and snatch at the short ribs? that was benedetto's case. 'when he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, i haled him out into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all over again--waving our hands and wagging our heads--till the watch came to know if we were drunk. 'benedetto says to 'em, solemn as an owl: "you have saved me thirty pound, mus' dawe," and off he pealed. in some sort we were mad drunk--i because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up and carried away by laughter. his very face had changed too. '"hal," he cries, "i forgive thee. forgive me too, hal. oh, you english, you english! did it gall thee, hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword? tell me again, hal, how the king grunted with joy. oh, let us tell the master." 'so we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other's necks, and when we could speak--he thought we'd been fighting--we told the master. yes, we told torrigiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold pavement. then he knocked our heads together. '"ah, you english," he cried. "you are more than pigs. you are english. now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. put the draft in the fire, and never do so any more. you are a fool, hal, and you are a fool, benedetto, but i need your works to please this beautiful english king----" '"and i meant to kill hal," says benedetto. "master, i meant to kill him because the english king had made him a knight." '"ah!" says the master, shaking his finger. "benedetto, if you had killed my hal, i should have killed you--in the cloister. but you are a craftsman too, so i should have killed you like a craftsman, very, very slowly--in an hour, if i could spare the time!" that was torrigiano--the master!' mr. springett sat quite still for some time after hal had finished. then he turned dark red; then he rocked to and fro; then he coughed and wheezed till the tears ran down his face. dan knew by this that he was laughing, but it surprised hal at first. 'excuse me, sir,' said mr. springett, 'but i was thinkin' of some stables i built for a gentleman in eighteen hundred seventy-four. they was stables in blue brick--very particular work. dunno as they weren't the best job which ever i'd done. but the gentleman's lady--she'd come from lunnon, new married--she was all for buildin' what she called a haw-haw--what you an' me 'ud call a dik--right acrost his park. a middlin' big job which i'd have had the contract of, for she spoke to me in the library about it. but i told her there was a line o' springs just where she wanted to dig her ditch, an' she'd flood the park if she went on.' 'were there any springs at all?' said hal. 'bound to be springs everywhere if you dig deep enough, ain't there? but what i said about the springs put her out o' conceit o' diggin' haw-haws, an' she took an' built a white tile dairy instead. but when i sent in my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it 'thout even lookin' at it, and i hadn't forgotten nothin', i do assure you. more than that, he slips two five-pound notes into my hand in the library, an' "ralph," he says--he allers called me by name--"ralph," he says, "you've saved me a heap of expense an' trouble this autumn." i didn't say nothin', o' course. i knowed he didn't want any haw-haws digged acrost his park no more'n _i_ did, but i never said nothing. no more he didn't say nothing about my blue-brick stables, which was really the best an' honestest piece o' work i'd done in quite a while. he give me ten pounds for savin' him a hem of a deal o' trouble at home. i reckon things are pretty much alike, all times, in all places.' hal and he laughed together. dan couldn't quite understand what they thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without speaking. when he looked up, mr. springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his green and yellow pocket-handkerchief. 'bless me, mus' dan, i've been asleep,' he said. 'an' i've dreamed a dream which has made me laugh--laugh as i ain't laughed in a long day. i can't remember what 'twas all about, but they do say that when old men take to laughin' in their sleep, they're middlin' ripe for the next world. have you been workin' honest, mus' dan?' 'ra-ather,' said dan, unclamping the schooner from the vice. 'and look how i've cut myself with the small gouge.' 'ye-es. you want a lump o' cobwebs to that,' said mr. springett. 'oh, i see you've put it on already. that's right, mus' dan.' king henry vii. and the shipwrights harry our king in england, from london town is gone, and comen to hamull on the hoke in the countie of suthampton. for there lay _the mary of the tower_, his ship of war so strong, and he would discover, certaynely, if his shipwrights did him wrong. he told not none of his setting forth, nor yet where he would go, (but only my lord of arundel,) and meanly did he show, in an old jerkin and patched hose that no man might him mark; with his frieze hood and cloak about, he looked like any clerk. he was at hamull on the hoke about the hour of the tide, and saw the _mary_ haled into dock, the winter to abide, with all her tackle and habiliments which are the king his own; but then ran on his false shipwrights and stripped her to the bone. they heaved the main-mast overboard, that was of a trusty tree, and they wrote down it was spent and lost by force of weather at sea. but they sawen it into planks and strakes as far as it might go, to maken beds for their own wives and little children also. there was a knave called slingawai, he crope beneath the deck, crying: 'good felawes, come and see! the ship is nigh a wreck! for the storm that took our tall main-mast, it blew so fierce and fell, alack! it hath taken the kettles and pans, and this brass pott as well!' with that he set the pott on his head and hied him up the hatch, while all the shipwrights ran below to find what they might snatch; all except bob brygandyne and he was a yeoman good, he caught slingawai round the waist and threw him on to the mud. 'i have taken plank and rope and nail, without the king his leave, after the custom of portesmouth, but i will not suffer a thief. nay, never lift up thy hand at me! there's no clean hands in the trade-- steal in measure,' quo' brygandyne. 'there's measure in all things made!' 'gramercy, yeoman!' said our king. 'thy council liketh me.' and he pulled a whistle out of his neck and whistled whistles three. then came my lord of arundel pricking across the down, and behind him the mayor and burgesses of merry suthampton town. they drew the naughty shipwrights up, with the kettles in their hands, and bound them round the forecastle to wait the king's commands. but 'since ye have made your beds,' said the king, 'ye needs must lie thereon. for the sake of your wives and little ones--felawes, get you gone!' when they had beaten slingawai, out of his own lips, our king appointed brygandyne to be clerk of all his ships. 'nay, never lift up thy hands to me--there's no clean hands in the trade. but steal in measure,' said harry our king. 'there's measure in all things made!' _god speed the 'mary of the tower,' the 'sovereign' and 'grace dieu,' the 'sweepstakes' and the 'mary fortune,' and the 'henry of bristol' too! all tall ships that sail on the sea, or in our harbours stand, that they may keep measure with harry our king and peace in engeland!_ marklake witches the way through the woods they shut the road through the woods seventy years ago. weather and rain have undone it again, and now you would never know there was once a road through the woods before they planted the trees. it is underneath the coppice and heath, and the thin anemones. only the keeper sees that, where the ring-dove broods, and the badgers roll at ease, there was once a road through the woods. yet, if you enter the woods of a summer evening late, when the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools where the otter whistles his mate. (they fear not men in the woods because they see so few) you will hear the beat of a horse's feet and the swish of a skirt in the dew, steadily cantering through the misty solitudes, as though they perfectly knew the old lost road through the woods.... but there is no road through the woods. marklake witches when dan took up boat-building, una coaxed mrs. vincey, the farmer's wife at little lindens, to teach her to milk. mrs. vincey milks in the pasture in summer, which is different from milking in the shed, because the cows are not tied up, and until they know you they will not stand still. after three weeks una could milk _red cow_ or _kitty shorthorn_ quite dry, without her wrists aching, and then she allowed dan to look. but milking did not amuse him, and it was pleasanter for una to be alone in the quiet pastures with quiet-spoken mrs. vincey. so, evening after evening, she slipped across to little lindens, took her stool from the fern-clump beside the fallen oak, and went to work, her pail between her knees, and her head pressed hard into the cow's flank. as often as not, mrs. vincey would be milking cross _pansy_ at the other end of the pasture, and would not come near till it was time to strain and pour off. once, in the middle of a milking, _kitty shorthorn_ boxed una's ear with her tail. 'you old pig!' said una, nearly crying, for a cow's tail can hurt. 'why didn't you tie it down, child?' said a voice behind her. 'i meant to, but the flies are so bad i let her off--and this is what she's done!' una looked round, expecting puck, and saw a curly-haired girl, not much taller than herself, but older, dressed in a curious high-waisted, lavender-coloured riding-habit, with a high hunched collar and a deep cape and a belt fastened with a steel clasp. she wore a yellow velvet cap and tan gauntlets, and carried a real hunting-crop. her cheeks were pale except for two pretty pink patches in the middle, and she talked with little gasps at the end of her sentences, as though she had been running. 'you don't milk so badly, child,' she said, and when she smiled her teeth showed small and even and pearly. 'can you milk?' una asked, and then flushed, for she heard puck's chuckle. he stepped out of the fern and sat down, holding _kitty shorthorn's_ tail. 'there isn't much,' he said, 'that miss philadelphia doesn't know about milk--or, for that matter, butter and eggs. she's a great housewife.' 'oh,' said una. 'i'm sorry i can't shake hands. mine are all milky; but mrs. vincey is going to teach me butter-making this summer.' 'ah! _i_'m going to london this summer,' the girl said, 'to my aunt in bloomsbury.' she coughed as she began to hum, '"oh, what a town! what a wonderful metropolis!"' 'you've got a cold,' said una. 'no. only my stupid cough. but it's vastly better than it was last winter. it will disappear in london air. every one says so. d'you like doctors, child?' 'i don't know any,' una replied. 'but i'm sure i shouldn't.' 'think yourself lucky, child. i beg your pardon,' the girl laughed, for una frowned. 'i'm not a child, and my name's una,' she said. 'mine's philadelphia. but everybody except rené calls me phil. i'm squire bucksteed's daughter--over at marklake yonder.' she jerked her little round chin towards the south behind dallington. 'sure-ly you know marklake?' 'we went a picnic to marklake green once,' said una. 'it's awfully pretty. i like all those funny little roads that don't lead anywhere.' 'they lead over our land,' said philadelphia stiffly, 'and the coach road is only four miles away. one can go anywhere from the green. i went to the assize ball at lewes last year.' she spun round and took a few dancing steps, but stopped with her hand to her side. 'it gives me a stitch,' she explained. 'no odds. 'twill go away in london air. that's the latest french step, child. rené taught it me. d'you hate the french, chi--una?' 'well, i hate french, of course, but i don't mind mam'selle. she's rather decent. is rené your french governess?' philadelphia laughed till she caught her breath again. 'oh no! rené's a french prisoner--on parole. that means he's promised not to escape till he has been properly exchanged for an englishman. he's only a doctor, so i hope they won't think him worth exchanging. my uncle captured him last year in the _ferdinand_ privateer, off belle isle, and he cured my uncle of a r-r-raging toothache. of course, after _that_ we couldn't let him lie among the common french prisoners at rye, and so he stays with us. he's of very old family--a breton, which is nearly next door to being a true briton, my father says--and he wears his hair clubbed--not powdered. _much_ more becoming, don't you think?' 'i don't know what you're----' una began, but puck, the other side of the pail, winked, and she went on with her milking. 'he's going to be a great french physician when the war is over. he makes me bobbins for my lace-pillow now--he's very clever with his hands; but he'd doctor our people on the green if they would let him. only our doctor--dr. break--says he's an emp----or imp something--worse than impostor. but my nurse says----' 'nurse! you're ever so old. what have you got a nurse for?' una finished milking, and turned round on her stool as _kitty shorthorn_ grazed off. 'because i can't get rid of her. old cissie nursed my mother, and she says she'll nurse me till she dies. the idea! she never lets me alone. she thinks i'm delicate. she has grown infirm in her understanding, you know. mad--quite mad, poor cissie!' 'really mad?' said una. 'or just silly?' 'crazy i should say--from the things she does. her devotion to me is terribly embarrassing. you know i have all the keys of the hall except the brewery and the tenants' kitchen. i give out all stores and the linen and plate.' 'how jolly! i love store-rooms and giving out things.' 'ah, it's a great responsibility you'll find when you come to my age. last year dad said i was fatiguing myself with my duties, and he actually wanted me to give up the keys to old amoore, our housekeeper. i wouldn't. i hate her. i said, "no, sir. i am mistress of marklake hall just as long as i live, because i'm never going to be married, and i shall give out stores and linen till i die!"' 'and what did your father say?' 'oh, i threatened to pin a dishclout to his coattail. he ran away. every one's afraid of dad, except me.' philadelphia stamped her foot. 'the idea! if i can't make my own father happy in his own house, i'd like to meet the woman that can, and--and--i'd have the living hide off her!' she cut with her long-thonged whip. it cracked like a pistol-shot across the still pasture. _kitty shorthorn_ threw up her head and trotted away. 'i beg your pardon,' philadelphia said; 'but it makes me furious. don't you hate those ridiculous old quizzes with their feathers and fronts, who come to dinner and call you "child" in your own chair at your own table?' 'i don't always come to dinner,' said una, 'but i hate being called "child." please tell me about store-rooms and giving out things.' 'ah, it's a great responsibility--particularly with that old cat amoore looking at the lists over your shoulder. and such a shocking thing happened last summer! poor crazy cissie, my nurse that i was telling you of, she took three solid silver tablespoons.' 'took! but isn't that stealing?' una cried. 'hsh!' said philadelphia, looking round at puck. 'all i say is she took them without my leave. i made it right afterwards. so, as dad says--and he's a magistrate--it wasn't a legal offence; it was only compounding a felony.' 'it sounds awful,' said una. 'it was. my dear, i was furious! i had had the keys for ten months, and i'd never lost anything before. i said nothing at first, because a big house offers so many chances of things being mislaid, and coming to hand later. "fetching up in the lee-scuppers," my uncle calls it. but next week i spoke to old cissie about it when she was doing my hair at night, and she said i wasn't to worry my heart for trifles!' 'isn't it like 'em?' una burst out. 'they see you're worried over something that really matters, and they say, "don't worry"; as if _that_ did any good!' 'i quite agree with you, my dear; quite agree with you! i told ciss the spoons were solid silver, and worth forty shillings, so if the thief were found, he'd be tried for his life.' 'hanged, do you mean?' una said. 'they ought to be; but dad says no jury will hang a man nowadays for a forty-shilling theft. they transport 'em into penal servitude at the uttermost ends of the earth beyond the seas, for the term of their natural life. i told cissie that, and i saw her tremble in my mirror. then she cried, and caught hold of my knees, and i couldn't for my life understand what it was all about,--she cried so. _can_ you guess, my dear, what that poor crazy thing had done? it was midnight before i pieced it together. she had given the spoons to jerry gamm, the witchmaster on the green, so that he might put a charm on me! me!' 'put a charm on you? why?' 'that's what _i_ asked; and then i saw how mad poor cissie was! you know this stupid little cough of mine? it will disappear as soon as i go to london. she was troubled about _that_, and about my being so thin, and she told me jerry had promised her, if she would bring him three silver spoons, that he'd charm my cough away and make me plump--"flesh-up," she said. i couldn't help laughing; but it was a terrible night! i had to put cissie into my own bed, and stroke her hand till she cried herself to sleep. what else could i have done? when she woke, and i coughed--i suppose i _can_ cough in my own room if i please--she said that she'd killed me, and asked me to have her hanged at lewes sooner than send her to the uttermost ends of the earth away from me.' 'how awful! what did you do, phil?' 'do? i rode off at five in the morning to talk to master jerry, with a new lash on my whip. oh, i was _furious_! witchmaster or no witchmaster, i meant to----' 'ah! what's a witchmaster?' 'a master of witches, of course. _i_ don't believe there are witches; but people say every village has a few, and jerry was the master of all ours at marklake. he has been a smuggler, and a man-of-war's man, and now he pretends to be a carpenter and joiner--he can make almost anything--but he really is a white wizard. he cures people by herbs and charms. he can cure them after dr. break has given them up, and that's why dr. break hates him so. he used to make me toy carts, and charm off my warts when i was a child.' philadelphia spread out her hands with the delicate shiny little nails. 'it isn't counted lucky to cross him. he has his ways of getting even with you, they say. but _i_ wasn't afraid of jerry! i saw him working in his garden, and i leaned out of my saddle and double-thonged him between the shoulders, over the hedge. well, my dear, for the first time since dad gave him to me, my _troubadour_ (i wish you could see the sweet creature!) shied across the road, and i spilled out into the hedge-top. _most_ undignified! jerry pulled me through to his side and brushed the leaves off me. i was horribly pricked, but i didn't care. "now, jerry," i said, "i'm going to take the hide off you first, and send you to lewes afterwards. you well know why." "oh!" he said, and he sat down among his bee-hives. "then i reckon you've come about old cissie's business, my dear." "i reckon i just about have," i said. "stand away from these hives. i can't get at you there." "that's why i be where i be," he said. "if you'll excuse me, miss phil, i don't hold with bein' flogged before breakfast, at my time o' life." he's a huge big man, but he looked so comical squatting among the hives that--i know i oughtn't to--i laughed, and he laughed. i always laugh at the wrong time. but i soon recovered my dignity, and i said, "then give me back what you made poor cissie steal!" '"your pore cissie," he said. "she's a hatful o' trouble. but you shall have 'em, miss phil. they're all ready put by for you." and, would you believe it, the old sinner pulled my three silver spoons out of his dirty pocket, and polished them on his cuff! "here they be," he says, and he gave them to me, just as cool as though i'd come to have my warts charmed. that's the worst of people having known you when you were young. but i preserved my composure. "jerry," i said, "what in the world are we to do? if you'd been caught with these things on you, you'd have been hanged." '"i know it," he said. "but they're yours now." '"but you made my cissie steal them," i said. '"that i didn't," he said. "your cissie, she was pickin' at me and tarrifyin' me all the long day an' every day for weeks, to put a charm on you, miss phil, and take away your little spitty cough." '"yes, i knew that, jerry, and to make me flesh up!" i said. "i'm much obliged to you, but i'm not one of your pigs!" '"ah! i reckon she've been talking to you, then," he said. "yes, she give me no peace, and bein' tarrified--for i don't hold with old women--i laid a task on her which i thought 'ud silence her. _i_ never reckoned the old scrattle 'ud risk her neckbone at lewes assizes for your sake, miss phil. but she did. she up an' stole, i tell ye, as cheerful as a tinker. you might ha' knocked me down with any one of them liddle spoons when she brung 'em in her apron." '"do you mean to say, then, that you did it to try my poor cissie?" i screamed at him. '"what else for, dearie?" he said. "_i_ don't stand in need of hedge-stealings. i'm a freeholder, with money in the bank; and now i won't trust women no more! silly old besom! i do beleft she'd ha' stole the squire's big fob-watch, if i'd required her." '"then you're a wicked, wicked old man," i said, and i was so angry that i couldn't help crying, and of course that made me cough. 'jerry was in a fearful taking. he picked me up and carried me into his cottage--it's full of foreign curiosities--and he got me something to eat and drink, and he said he'd be hanged by the neck any day if it pleased me. he said he'd even tell old cissie he was sorry. that's a great come-down for a witchmaster, you know. 'i was ashamed of myself for being so silly, and i dabbed my eyes and said, "the least you can do now is to give poor ciss some sort of a charm for me." '"yes, that's only fair dealings," he said. "you know the names of the twelve apostles, dearie? you say them names, one by one, before your open window, rain or storm, wet or shine, five times a day fasting. but mind you, 'twixt every name you draw in your breath through your nose, right down to your pretty liddle toes, as long and as deep as you can, and let it out slow through your pretty liddle mouth. there's virtue for your cough in those names spoke that way. and i'll give you something you can see, moreover. here's a stick of maple which is the warmest tree in the wood."' 'that's true,' una interrupted. 'you can feel it almost as warm as yourself when you touch it.' '"it's cut one inch long for your every year," jerry said. "that's sixteen inches. you set it in your window so that it holds up the sash, and thus you keep it, rain or shine, or wet or fine, day and night. i've said words over it which will have virtue on your complaints." '"i haven't any complaints, jerry," i said. "it's only to please cissie." '"i know that as well as you do, dearie," he said. and--and that was all that came of my going to give him a flogging. i wonder whether he made poor _troubadour_ shy when i lashed at him? jerry has his ways of getting even of people.' 'i wonder,' said una. 'well, did you try the charm? did it work?' 'what nonsense! i told rené about it, of course, because he's a doctor. he's going to be a most famous doctor. that's why our doctor hates him. rené said, "oho! your master gamm, he is worth knowing," and he put up his eyebrows--like this. he made joke of it all. he can see my window from the carpenter's shed, where he works, and if ever the maple stick fell down, he pretended to be in a fearful taking till i propped the window up again. he used to ask me whether i had said my apostles properly, and how i took my deep breaths. oh yes, and the next day, though he had been there ever so many times before, he put on his new hat and paid jerry gamm a visit of state--as a fellow-physician. jerry never guessed rené was making fun of him, and so he told rené about the sick people in the village, and how he cured them with herbs after dr. break had given them up. jerry could talk smugglers' french, of course, and i had taught rené plenty of english, if only he wasn't so shy. they called each other monsieur gamm and mosheur lanark, just like gentlemen. i suppose it amused poor rené. he hasn't much to do, except to fiddle about in the carpenter's shop. he's like all the french prisoners--always making knick-knacks; and jerry had a little lathe at his cottage, and so--and so--rené took to being with jerry much more than i approved of. the hall is so big and empty when dad's away, and i will _not_ sit with old amoore--she talks so horridly about every one--specially about rené. 'i was rude to rené, i'm afraid; but i was properly served out for it. one always is. you see dad went down to hastings to pay his respects to the general who commanded the brigade there, and to bring him to the hall afterwards. dad told me he was a very brave soldier from india--he was colonel of dad's regiment, the thirty-third foot, after dad left the army, and then he changed his name from wesley to wellesley, or else the other way about; and dad said i was to get out all the silver for him, and i knew that meant a big dinner. so i sent down to the sea for early mackerel, and had _such_ a morning in the kitchen and the store-rooms. old amoore nearly cried. 'however, my dear, i made all my preparations in ample time, but the fish didn't arrive--it never does--and i wanted rené to ride to pevensey and bring it himself. he had gone over to jerry, of course, as he always used, unless i requested his presence beforehand. _i_ can't send for rené every time i want him. he should be there. now, don't you ever do what i did, child, because it's in the highest degree unladylike; but--but one of our woods runs up to jerry's garden, and if you climb--it's ungenteel, but i can climb like a kitten--there's an old hollow oak just above the pigsty where you can hear and see everything below. truthfully, i only went to tell rené about the mackerel, but i saw him and jerry sitting on the seat playing with wooden toy trumpets. so i slipped into the hollow, and choked down my cough, and listened. rené had never shown _me_ any of these trumpets.' 'trumpets? aren't you too old for trumpets?' said una. 'they weren't real trumpets, because jerry opened his shirt collar, and rené put one end of his trumpet against jerry's chest, and put his ear to the other. then jerry put his trumpet against rené's chest, and listened while rené breathed and coughed. i was afraid _i_ would cough too. '"this hollywood one is the best," said jerry. "'tis won'erful like hearin' a man's soul whisperin' in his innards; but unless i've a buzzin' in my ears, mosheur lanark, you make much about the same kind o' noises as old gaffer macklin--but not quite so loud as young copper. it sounds like breakers on a reef--a long way off. comprenny?" '"perfectly," said rené. "i drive on the breakers. but before i strike, i shall save hundreds, thousands, millions perhaps, by my little trumpets. now tell me what sounds the old gaffer macklin have made in his chest, and what the young copper also." 'jerry talked for nearly a quarter of an hour about sick people in the village, while rené asked questions. then he sighed, and said, "you explain very well, monsieur gamm, but if only i had your opportunities to listen for myself! do you think these poor people would let me listen to them through my trumpet--for a little money? no?"--rené's as poor as a church mouse. '"they'd kill you, mosheur. it's all i can do to coax 'em to abide it, and i'm jerry gamm," said jerry. he's very proud of his attainments. '"then these poor people are alarmed--no?" said rené. '"they've had it in for me for some time back because o' my tryin' your trumpets on their sick; and i reckon by the talk at the alehouse they won't stand much more. tom dunch an' some of his kidney was drinkin' themselves riot-ripe when i passed along after noon. charms an' mutterin's and bits o' red wool and black hens is in the way o' nature to these fools, mosheur; but anything likely to do 'em real service is devil's work by their estimation. if i was you, i'd go home before they come." jerry spoke quite quietly, and rené shrugged his shoulders. '"i am prisoner on parole, monsieur gamm," he said. "i have no home." 'now that was unkind of rené. he's often told me that he looked on england as his home. i suppose it's french politeness. '"then we'll talk o' something that matters," said jerry. "not to name no names, mosheur lanark, what might be your own opinion o' some one who ain't old gaffer macklin nor young copper? is that person better or worse?" '"better--for time that is," said rené. he meant for the time being, but i never could teach him some phrases. '"i thought so too," said jerry. "but how about time to come?" 'rené shook his head, and then he blew his nose. you don't know how odd a man looks blowing his nose when you are sitting directly above him. '"i've thought that too," said jerry. he rumbled so deep i could scarcely catch. "it don't make much odds to me, because i'm old. but you're young, mosheur--you're young," and he put his hand on rené's knee, and rené covered it with his hand. i didn't know they were such friends. '"thank you, _mon ami_," said rené. "i am much oblige. let us return to our trumpet-making. but i forget"--he stood up--"it appears that you receive this afternoon!" 'you can't see into gamm's lane from the oak, but the gate opened, and fat little doctor break stumped in, mopping his head, and half-a-dozen of our people followed him, very drunk. 'you ought to have seen rené bow; he does it beautifully. '"a word with you, laennec," said dr. break. "jerry has been practising some devilry or other on these poor wretches, and they've asked me to be arbiter." '"whatever that means, i reckon it's safer than asking you to be doctor," said jerry, and tom dunch, one of our carters, laughed. '"that ain't right feeling of you, tom," jerry said, "seeing how clever dr. break put away your thorn in the flesh last winter." tom's wife had died at christmas, though dr. break bled her twice a week. he danced with rage. '"this is all beside the mark," he said. "these good people are willing to testify that you've been impudently prying into god's secrets by means of some papistical contrivance which this person"--he pointed to poor rené--"has furnished you with. why, here are the things themselves!" rené was holding a trumpet in his hand. 'then all the men talked at once. they said old gaffer macklin was dying from stitches in his side where jerry had put the trumpet--they called it the devil's ear-piece; and they said it left round red witchmarks on people's skins, and dried up their lights, and made 'em spit blood, and threw 'em into sweats. terrible things they said. you never heard such a noise. i took advantage of it to cough. 'rené and jerry were standing with their backs to the pigsty. jerry fumbled in his big flap pockets and fished up a pair of pistols. you ought to have seen the men give back when he cocked his. he passed one to rené. '"wait! wait!" said rené. "i will explain to the doctor if he permits." he waved a trumpet at him, and the men at the gate shouted, "don't touch it, doctor! don't lay a hand to the thing." '"come, come!" said rené. "you are not so big fool as you pretend, dr. break. no?" 'dr. break backed toward the gate, watching jerry's pistol, and rené followed him with his trumpet, like a nurse trying to amuse a child, and put the ridiculous thing to his ear to show how it was used, and talked of _la gloire_, and _la humanité_, and _la science_, while dr. break watched jerry's pistol and swore. i nearly laughed aloud. '"now listen! now listen!" said rené. "this will be moneys in your pockets, my dear _confrère_. you will become rich." 'then dr. break said something about adventurers who could not earn an honest living in their own country creeping into decent houses and taking advantage of gentlemen's confidence to enrich themselves by base intrigues. 'rené dropped his absurd trumpet and made one of his best bows. i knew he was angry from the way he rolled his "r's." '"ver-r-ry good," said he. "for that i shall have much pleasure to kill you now and here. monsieur gamm"--another bow to jerry--"you will please lend him your pistol, or he shall have mine. i give you my word i know not which is best; and if he will choose a second from his friends over there"--another bow to our drunken yokels at the gate--"we will commence." '"that's fair enough," said jerry. "tom dunch, you owe it to the doctor to be his second. place your man." '"no," said tom. "no mixin' in gentry's quarrels for me." and he shook his head and went out, and the others followed him. '"hold on," said jerry. "you've forgot what you set out to do up at the alehouse just now. you was goin' to search me for witchmarks; you was goin' to duck me in the pond; you was goin' to drag all my bits o' sticks out o' my little cottage here. what's the matter with you? wouldn't you like to be with your old woman to-night, tom?" 'but they didn't even look back, much less come. they ran to the village alehouse like hares. '"no matter for these canaille," said rené, buttoning up his coat so as not to show any linen. all gentlemen do that before a duel, dad says--and he's been out five times. "you shall be his second, monsieur gamm. give him the pistol." 'dr. break took it as if it was red-hot, but he said that if rené resigned his pretensions in certain quarters he would pass over the matter. rené bowed deeper than ever. '"as for that," he said, "if you were not the ignorant which you are, you would have known long ago that the subject of your remarks is not for any living man." 'i don't know what the subject of his remarks might have been, but he spoke in a simply dreadful voice, my dear, and dr. break turned quite white, and said rené was a liar; and then rené caught him by the throat, and choked him black. 'well, my dear, as if this wasn't deliciously exciting enough, just exactly at that minute i heard a strange voice on the other side of the hedge say, "what's this? what's this, bucksteed?" and there was my father and sir arthur wesley on horseback in the lane; and there was rené kneeling on dr. break, and there was i up in the oak, listening with all my ears. 'i must have leaned forward too much, and the voice gave me such a start that i slipped. i had only time to make one jump on to the pigsty roof--another, before the tiles broke, on to the pigsty wall--and then i bounced down into the garden, just behind jerry, with my hair full of bark. imagine the situation!' 'oh, i can!' una laughed till she nearly fell off the stool. 'dad said, "phil--a--del--phia!" and sir arthur wesley said, "good ged!" and jerry put his foot on the pistol rené had dropped. but rené was splendid. he never even looked at me. he began to untwist dr. break's neckcloth as fast as he'd twisted it, and asked him if he felt better. '"what's happened? what's happened?" said dad. '"a fit!" said rené. "i fear my _confrère_ has had a fit. do not be alarmed. he recovers himself. shall i bleed you a little, my dear doctor?" dr. break was very good too. he said, "i am vastly obliged, monsieur laennec, but i am restored now." and as he went out of the gate he told dad it was a syncope--i think. then sir arthur said, "quite right, bucksteed. not another word! they are both gentlemen." and he took off his cocked hat to dr. break and rené. 'but poor dad wouldn't let well alone. he kept saying, "philadelphia, what does all this mean?" '"well, sir," i said, "i've only just come down. as far as i could see, it looked as though dr. break had had a sudden seizure." that was quite true--if you'd seen rené seize him. sir arthur laughed. "not much change there, bucksteed," he said. "she's a lady--a thorough lady." '"heaven knows she doesn't look like one," said poor dad. "go home, philadelphia." 'so i went home, my dear--don't laugh so!--right under sir arthur's nose--a most enormous nose--feeling as though i were twelve years old, going to be whipped. oh, i _beg_ your pardon, child!' 'it's all right,' said una. 'i'm getting on for thirteen. i've never been whipped, but i know how you felt. all the same, it must have been funny!' 'funny! if you'd heard sir arthur jerking out, "good ged, bucksteed!" every minute as they rode behind me; and poor dad saying, "'pon my honour, arthur, i can't account for it!" oh, how my cheeks tingled when i reached my room! but cissie had laid out my very best evening dress, the white satin one, vandyked at the bottom with spots of morone foil, and the pearl knots, you know, catching up the drapery from the left shoulder. i had poor mother's lace tucker and her coronet comb.' 'oh, you lucky!' una murmured. '_and_ gloves?' 'french kid, my dear'--philadelphia patted her shoulder--'and morone satin shoes and a morone and gold crape fan. that restored my calm. nice things always do. i wore my hair banded on my forehead with a little curl over the left ear. and when i descended the stairs, _en grande tenue_, old amoore curtsied to me without my having to stop and look at her, which alas! is too often the case. sir arthur highly approved of the dinner, my dear: the mackerel _did_ come in time. we had all the marklake silver out, and he toasted my health, and he asked me where my little bird's-nesting sister was. i _know_ he did it to quiz me, so i looked him straight in the face, my dear, and i said, "i always send her to the nursery, sir arthur, when i receive guests at marklake hall."' 'oh, how chee--clever of you. what did he say?' una cried. 'he said, "not much change there, bucksteed. ged, i deserved it," and he toasted me again. they talked about the french and what a shame it was that sir arthur only commanded a brigade at hastings, and he told dad of a battle in india at a place called assaye. dad said it was a terrible fight, but sir arthur described it as though it had been a whist-party--i suppose because a lady was present.' 'of course you were the lady; i wish i'd seen you,' said una. 'i wish you had, child. i had _such_ a triumph after dinner. rené and dr. break came in. they had quite made up their quarrel, and they told me they had the highest esteem for each other, and i laughed and said, "i heard every word of it up in the tree." you never saw two men so frightened in your life, and when i said, "what _was_ 'the subject of your remarks,' rené?" neither of them knew where to look. oh, i quizzed them unmercifully. they'd seen me jump off the pigsty roof, remember.' 'but what _was_ the subject of their remarks?' said una. 'oh, dr. break said it was a professional matter, so the laugh was turned on me. i was horribly afraid it might have been something unladylike and indelicate. but _that_ wasn't my triumph. dad asked me to play on the harp. between just you and me, child, i had been practising a new song from london--i don't always live in trees--for weeks; and i gave it them for a surprise.' 'what was it?' said una. 'sing it.' '"i have given my heart to a flower." not very difficult fingering, but r-r-ravishing sentiment.' philadelphia coughed and cleared her throat. 'i've a deep voice for my age and size,' she explained. 'contralto, you know, but it ought to be stronger,' and she began, her face all dark against the last of the soft pink sunset: 'i have given my heart to a flower, though i know it is fading away, though i know it will live but an hour and leave me to mourn its decay! 'isn't that touchingly sweet? then the last verse--i wish i had my harp, dear--goes as low as my register will reach.' she drew in her chin, and took a deep breath: 'ye desolate whirlwinds that rave, i charge you be good to my dear! she is all--she is all that i have, and the time of our parting is near!' 'beautiful!' said una. 'and did they like it?' 'like it? they were overwhelmed--_accablés_, as rené says. my dear, if i hadn't seen it, i shouldn't have believed that i could have drawn tears, genuine tears, to the eyes of four grown men. but i did! rené simply couldn't endure it! he's all french sensibility. he hid his face and said, "_assez mademoiselle! c'est plus fort que moi! assez!_" and sir arthur blew his nose and said, "good ged! this is worse than assaye!" while dad sat with the tears simply running down his cheeks.' 'and what did dr. break do?' 'he got up and pretended to look out of the window, but i saw his little fat shoulders jerk as if he had the hiccoughs. that _was_ a triumph. i never suspected him of sensibility.' 'oh, i wish i'd seen! i wish i'd been you,' said una, clasping her hands. puck rustled and rose from the fern, just as a big blundering cockchafer flew smack against una's cheek. when she had finished rubbing the place, mrs. vincey called to her that _pansy_ had been fractious, or she would have come long before to help her strain and pour off. 'it didn't matter,' said una; 'i just waited. is that old _pansy_ barging about the lower pasture now?' 'no,' said mrs. vincey, listening. 'it sounds more like a horse being galloped middlin' quick through the woods; but there's no road there. i reckon it's one of gleason's colts loose. shall i see you up to the house, miss una?' 'gracious no! thank you. what's going to hurt me?' said una, and she put her stool away behind the oak, and strolled home through the gaps that old hobden kept open for her. brookland road i was very well pleased with what i knowed, i reckoned myself no fool-- till i met with a maid on the brookland road, that turned me back to school. _low down--low down! where the liddle green lanterns shine-- oh! maids, i've done with 'ee all but one, and she can never be mine!_ 'twas right in the middest of a hot june night, with thunder duntin' round, and i see'd her face by the fairy light that beats from off the ground. she only smiled and she never spoke, she smiled and went away; but when she'd gone my heart was broke, and my wits was clean astray. oh! stop your ringing and let me be-- let be, oh brookland bells! you'll ring old goodman[ ] out of the sea, before i wed one else! old goodman's farm is rank sea sand, and was this thousand year; but it shall turn to rich plough land before i change my dear! oh! fairfield church is water-bound from autumn to the spring; but it shall turn to high hill ground before my bells do ring! oh! leave me walk on the brookland road, in the thunder and warm rain-- oh! leave me look where my love goed and p'raps i'll see her again! _low down--low down! where the liddle green lanterns shine-- oh! maids, i've done with 'ee all but one, and she can never be mine._ [ ] earl godwin of the goodwin sands (?). the knife and the naked chalk the run of the downs _the weald is good, the downs are best-- i'll give you the run of 'em, east to west._ beachy head and winddoor hill, they were once and they are still. firle, mount caburn and mount harry go back as far as sums'll carry. ditchling beacon and chanctonbury ring, they have looked on many a thing; and what those two have missed between 'em i reckon truleigh hill has seen 'em. highden, bignor and duncton down knew old england before the crown. linch down, treyford and sunwood knew old england before the flood. and when you end on the hampshire side-- butser's old as time and tide. _the downs are sheep, the weald is corn, you be glad you are sussex born!_ the knife and the naked chalk the children went to the seaside for a month, and lived in a flint village on the bare windy chalk downs, quite thirty miles away from home. they made friends with an old shepherd, called mr. dudeney, who had known their father when their father was little. he did not talk like their own people in the weald of sussex, and he used different names for farm things, but he understood how they felt, and let them go with him. he had a tiny cottage about half a mile from the village, where his wife made mead from thyme honey, and nursed sick lambs in front of a coal fire, while old jim, who was mr. dudeney's sheep-dog's father, lay at the door. they brought up beef bones for old jim (you must never give a sheep-dog mutton bones), and if mr. dudeney happened to be far in the downs, mrs. dudeney would tell the dog to take them to him, and he did. one august afternoon when the village water-cart had made the street smell specially townified, they went to look for their shepherd as usual, and, as usual, old jim crawled over the door-step and took them in charge. the sun was hot, the dry grass was very slippery, and the distances were very distant. 'it's just like the sea,' said una, when old jim halted in the shade of a lonely flint barn on a bare rise. 'you see where you're going, and--you go there, and there's nothing between.' dan slipped off his shoes. 'when we get home i shall sit in the woods all day,' he said. 'whuff!' said old jim, to show he was ready, and struck across a long rolling stretch of turf. presently he asked for his beef bone. 'not yet,' said dan. 'where's mr. dudeney? where's master?' old jim looked as if he thought they were mad, and asked again. 'don't you give it him,' una cried. 'i'm not going to be left howling in a desert.' 'show, boy! show!' said dan, for the downs seemed as bare as the palm of your hand. old jim sighed, and trotted forward. soon they spied the blob of mr. dudeney's hat against the sky a long way off. 'right! all right!' said dan. old jim wheeled round, took his bone carefully between his blunted teeth, and returned to the shadow of the old barn, looking just like a wolf. the children went on. two kestrels hung bivvering and squealing above them. a gull flapped lazily along the white edge of the cliffs. the curves of the downs shook a little in the heat, and so did mr. dudeney's distant head. they walked toward it very slowly and found themselves staring into a horse-shoe-shaped hollow a hundred feet deep, whose steep sides were laced with tangled sheep-tracks. the flock grazed on the flat at the bottom, under charge of young jim. mr. dudeney sat comfortably knitting on the edge of the slope, his crook between his knees. they told him what old jim had done. 'ah, he thought you could see my head as soon as he did. the closeter you be to the turf the more you see things. you look warm-like,' said mr. dudeney. 'we be,' said una, flopping down. '_and_ tired.' 'set beside o' me here. the shadow'll begin to stretch out in a little while, and a heat-shake o' wind will come up with it that'll overlay your eyes like so much wool.' 'we don't want to sleep,' said una indignantly; but she settled herself as she spoke, in the first strip of early afternoon shade. 'o' course not. you come to talk with me same as your father used. _he_ didn't need no dog to guide him to norton pit.' 'well, he belonged here,' said dan, and laid himself down at length on the turf. 'he did. and what beats me is why he went off to live among them messy trees in the weald, when he might ha' stayed here and looked all about him. there's no profit to trees. they draw the lightning, and sheep shelter under 'em, and _so_, like as not, you'll lose a half score ewes struck dead in one storm. tck! your father knew that.' 'trees aren't messy.' una rose on her elbow. 'and what about firewood? i don't like coal.' 'eh? you lie a piece more up-hill and you'll lie more natural,' said mr. dudeney, with his provoking deaf smile. 'now press your face down and smell to the turf. that's southdown thyme which makes our southdown mutton beyond compare, and, my mother told me, 'twill cure anything except broken necks, or hearts. i forget which.' they sniffed, and somehow forgot to lift their cheeks from the soft thymy cushions. 'you don't get nothing like that in the weald. watercress, maybe?' said mr. dudeney. 'but we've water--brooks full of it--where you paddle in hot weather,' una replied, watching a yellow-and-violet-banded snail-shell close to her eye. 'brooks flood. then you must shift your sheep--let alone foot-rot afterward. i put more dependence on a dew-pond any day.' 'how's a dew-pond made?' said dan, and tilted his hat over his eyes. mr. dudeney explained. the air trembled a little as though it could not make up its mind whether to slide into the pit or move across the open. but it seemed easiest to go down-hill, and the children felt one soft puff after another slip and sidle down the slope in fragrant breaths that baffed on their eyelids. the little whisper of the sea by the cliffs joined with the whisper of the wind over the grass, the hum of insects in the thyme, the ruffle and rustle of the flock below, and a thickish mutter deep in the very chalk beneath them. mr. dudeney stopped explaining, and went on with his knitting. they were roused by voices. the shadow had crept half-way down the steep side of norton's pit, and on the edge of it, his back to them, puck sat beside a half-naked man who seemed busy at some work. the wind had dropped, and in that funnel of ground every least noise and movement reached them like whispers up a water-pipe. 'that is clever,' said puck, leaning over. 'how truly you shape it!' 'yes, but what does the beast care for a brittle flint tip? bah!' the man flicked something contemptuously over his shoulder. it fell between dan and una--a beautiful dark-blue flint arrow-head still hot from the maker's hand. the man reached for another stone, and worked away like a thrush with a snail-shell. 'flint work is fool's work,' he said at last. 'one does it because one always did it, but when it comes to dealing with the beast--no good!' he shook his shaggy head. 'the beast was dealt with long ago. he has gone,' said puck. 'he'll be back at lambing-time. _i_ know him.' he chipped very carefully, and the flints squeaked. 'not he. children can lie out on the chalk now all day through and go home safe.' 'can they? well, call the beast by his true name, and i'll believe it,' the man replied. 'surely!' puck leaped to his feet, curved his hands round his mouth and shouted: "wolf! wolf!" norton's pit threw back the echo from its dry sides--'wuff! wuff!' like young jim's bark. 'you see? you hear?' said puck. 'nobody answers. grey shepherd is gone. feet-in-the-night has run off. there are no more wolves.' 'wonderful!' the man wiped his forehead as though he were hot. 'who drove him away? you?' 'many men through many years, each working in his own country. were you one of them?' puck answered. the man slid his sheepskin cloak to his waist, and without a word pointed to his side, which was all seamed and blotched with scars. his arms too were dimpled from shoulder to elbow with horrible white dimples. 'i see,' said puck. 'it is the beast's mark. what did you use against him?' 'hand, hammer, and spear, as our fathers did before us.' 'so? then how'--puck twitched aside the man's dark-brown cloak--'how did a flint-worker come by _that_? show, man, show!' he held out his little hand. the man slipped a long dark iron knife, almost a short sword, from his belt, and after breathing on it, handed it hilt-first to puck, who took it with his head on one side, as you should when you look at the works of a watch, squinted down the dark blade, and very delicately rubbed his forefinger from the point to the hilt. 'good!' said he, in a surprised tone. 'it should be. the children of the night made it,' the man answered. 'so i see by the iron. what might it have cost you?' 'this!' the man raised his hand to his cheek. puck whistled like a weald starling. 'by the great rings of the chalk!' he cried. 'was _that_ your price? turn sunward that i may see better, and shut your eye.' he slipped his hand beneath the man's chin and swung him till he faced the children up the slope. they saw that his right eye was gone, and the eyelid lay shrunk. quickly puck turned him round again, and the two sat down. 'it was for the sheep. the sheep are the people,' said the man, in an ashamed voice. 'what else could i have done? _you_ know, old one.' puck sighed a little fluttering sigh. 'take the knife. i listen.' the man bowed his head, drove the knife into the turf, and while it still quivered said: 'this is witness between us that i speak the thing that has been. before my knife and the naked chalk i speak. touch!' puck laid a hand on the hilt. it stopped shaking. the children wriggled a little nearer. 'i am of the people of the worked flint. i am the one son of the priestess who sells the winds to the men of the sea. i am the buyer of the knife--the keeper of the people,' the man began, in a sort of singing shout. 'these are my names in this country of the naked chalk, between the trees and the sea.' 'yours was a great country. your names are great too,' said puck. 'one cannot feed some things on names and songs'; the man hit himself on the chest. 'it is better--always better--to count one's children safe round the fire, their mother among them.' 'ahai!' said puck. 'i think this will be a very old tale.' 'i warm myself and eat at any fire that i choose, but there is no _one_ to light me a fire or cook my meat. i sold all that when i bought the magic knife for my people. it was not right that the beast should master man. what else could i have done?' 'i hear. i know. i listen,' said puck. 'when i was old enough to take my place in the sheepguard, the beast gnawed all our country like a bone between his teeth. he came in behind the flocks at watering-time, and watched them round the dew-ponds; he leaped into the folds between our knees at the shearing; he walked out alongside the grazing flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our boys threw flints at him; he crept by night into the huts, and licked the babe from between the mother's hands; he called his companions and pulled down men in broad daylight on the naked chalk. no--not always did he do so! _this_ was his cunning! he would go away for a while to let us forget him. a year--two years perhaps--we neither smelt, nor heard, nor saw him. when our flocks had increased; when our men did not always look behind them; when children strayed from the fenced places; when our women walked alone to draw water--back, back, back came the curse of the chalk, grey shepherd, feet-in-the night--the beast, the beast, the beast! 'he laughed at our little brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. he learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. i think he knew when there was a flaw in the flint. often it does not show till you bring it down on his snout. then--_pouf!_--the false flint falls all to flinders, and you are left with the hammer-handle in your fist, and his teeth in your flank! i have felt them. at evening, too, in the dew, or when it has misted and rained, your spear-head lashings slack off, though you have kept them beneath your cloak all day. you are alone--but so close to the home ponds that you stop to tighten the sinews with hands, teeth, and a piece of driftwood. you bend over and pull--so! that is the minute for which he has followed you since the stars went out. "aarh!" he says. "wurr-aarh!" he says.' (norton's pit gave back the growl like a pack of real wolves.) 'then he is on your right shoulder feeling for the vein in your neck, and--perhaps your sheep run on without you. to fight the beast is nothing, but to be despised by the beast when he fights you--that is like his teeth in the heart! old one, why is it that men desire so greatly, and can do so little?' 'i do not know. did you desire so much?' said puck. 'i desired to master the beast. it is not right that the beast should master man. but my people were afraid. even my mother, the priestess, was afraid when i told her what i desired. we were accustomed to be afraid of the beast. when i was made a man, and a maiden--she was a priestess--waited for me at the dew-ponds, the beast flitted from off the chalk. perhaps it was a sickness; perhaps he had gone to his gods to learn how to do us new harm. but he went, and we breathed more freely. the women sang again; the children were not so much guarded; our flocks grazed far out. i took mine yonder'--he pointed inland to the hazy line of the weald--'where the new grass was best. they grazed north. i followed till we were close to the trees'--he lowered his voice--'close _there_ where the children of the night live,' he pointed north again. 'ah, now i remember a thing,' said puck. 'tell me, why did your people fear the trees so extremely?' 'because the gods hate the trees and strike them with lightning. we can see them burning for days all along the chalk's edge. besides, all the chalk knows that the children of the night, though they worship our gods, are magicians. when a man goes into their country, they change his spirit; they put words into his mouth; they make him like talking water. but a voice in my heart told me to go toward the north. while i watched my sheep there i saw three beasts chasing a man, who ran toward the trees. by this i knew he was a child of the night. we flint-workers fear the trees more than we fear the beast. he had no hammer; he carried a knife like this one. a beast leaped at him. he stretched out his knife. the beast fell dead. the other beasts ran away howling, which they would never have done from a flint-worker. the man went in among the trees. i looked for the dead beast. he had been killed in a new way--by a single deep, clean cut, without bruise or tear, which had split his bad heart. wonderful! so i saw that the man's knife was magic, and i thought how to get it,--thought strongly how to get it. 'when i brought the flocks to the shearing, my mother the priestess asked me, "what is the new thing which you have seen and i see in your face?" i said, "it is a sorrow to me"; and she answered, "all new things are sorrow. sit in my place, and eat sorrow." i sat down in her place by the fire, where she talks to the ghosts in winter, and two voices spoke in my heart. one voice said, "ask the children of the night for the magic knife. it is not fit that the beast should master man." i listened to that voice. 'one voice said, "if you go among the trees, the children of the night will change your spirit. eat and sleep here." the other voice said, "ask for the knife." i listened to that voice. 'i said to my mother in the morning, "i go away to find a thing for the people, but i do not know whether i shall return in my own shape." she answered, "whether you live or die, or are made different, i am your mother."' 'true,' said puck. 'the old ones themselves cannot change men's mothers even if they would.' 'let us thank the old ones! i spoke to my maiden, the priestess who waited for me at the dew-ponds. she promised fine things too.' the man laughed. 'i went away to that place where i had seen the magician with the knife. i lay out two days on the short grass before i ventured among the trees. i felt my way before me with a stick. i was afraid of the terrible talking trees. i was afraid of the ghosts in the branches; of the soft ground underfoot; of the red and black waters. i was afraid, above all, of the change. it came!' they saw him wipe his forehead once again, and his strong back-muscles quivered till he laid his hand on the knife-hilt. 'a fire without a flame burned in my head; an evil taste grew in my mouth; my eyelids shut hot over my eyes; my breath was hot between my teeth, and my hands were like the hands of a stranger. i was made to sing songs and to mock the trees, though i was afraid of them. at the same time i saw myself laughing, and i was very sad for this fine young man, who was myself. ah! the children of the night know magic.' 'i think that is done by the spirits of the mist. they change a man if he sleeps among them,' said puck. 'had you slept in any mists?' 'yes--but _i_ know it was the children of the night. after three days i saw a red light behind the trees, and i heard a heavy noise. i saw the children of the night dig red stones from a hole, and lay them in fires. the stones melted like tallow, and the men beat the soft stuff with hammers. i wished to speak to these men, but the words were changed in my mouth, and all i could say was, "do not make that noise. it hurts my head." by this i knew that i was bewitched, and i clung to the trees, and prayed the children of the night to take off their spells. they were cruel. they asked me many questions which they would never allow me to answer. they changed my words between my teeth till i wept. then they led me into a hut and covered the floor with hot stones and dashed water on the stones, and sang charms till the sweat poured off me like water. i slept. when i waked, my own spirit--not the strange, shouting thing--was back in my body, and i was like a cool bright stone on the shingle between the sea and the sunshine. the magicians came to hear me--women and men--each wearing a magic knife. their priestess was their ears and their mouth. 'i spoke. i spoke many words that went smoothly along like sheep in order when their shepherd, standing on a mound, can count those coming, and those far off getting ready to come. i asked for magic knives for my people. i said that my people would bring meat, and milk, and wool, and lay them in the short grass outside the trees, if the children of the night would leave magic knives for our people to take away. they were pleased. their priestess said, "for whose sake have you come?" i answered, "the sheep are the people. if the beast kills our sheep, our people die. so i come for a magic knife to kill the beast." 'she said, "we do not know if our god will let us trade with the people of the naked chalk. wait till we have asked." 'when they came back from the question place (their gods are our gods), their priestess said, "the god needs a proof that your words are true." i said, "what is the proof?" she said, "the god says that if you have come for the sake of your people you will give him your right eye to be put out; but if you have come for any other reason you will not give it. this proof is between you and the god. we ourselves are sorry." 'i said, "this is a hard proof. is there no other road?" 'she said, "yes. you can go back to your people with your two eyes in your head if you choose. but then you will not get any magic knives for your people." 'i said, "it would be easier if i knew that i were to be killed." 'she said, "perhaps the god knew this too. see! i have made my knife hot." 'i said, "be quick, then!" with her knife heated in the flame she put out my right eye. she herself did it. i am the son of a priestess. she was a priestess. it was not work for any common man.' 'true! most true,' said puck. 'no common man's work, that. and, afterwards?' 'afterwards i did not see out of that eye any more. i found also that a one eye does not tell you truly where things are. try it!' at this dan put his hand over one eye, and reached for the flint arrow-head on the grass. he missed it by inches. 'it's true,' he whispered to una. 'you can't judge distances a bit with only one eye.' puck was evidently making the same experiment, for the man laughed at him. 'i know it is so,' said he. 'even now i am not always sure of my blow. i stayed with the children of the night till my eye healed. they said i was the son of tyr, the god who put his right hand in a beast's mouth. they showed me how they melted their red stone and made the magic knives of it. they told me the charms they sang over the fires and at the beatings. i can sing many charms.' then he began to laugh like a boy. 'i was thinking of my journey home,' he said, 'and of the surprised beast. he had come back to the chalk. i saw him--i smelt his lairs as soon as ever i left the trees. he did not know i had the magic knife--i hid it under my cloak--the knife that the priestess gave me. ho! ho! that happy day was too short! see! a beast would wind me. "wow!" he would say, "here is my flint-worker!" he would come leaping, tail in air; he would roll; he would lay his head between his paws out of merriness of heart at his warm, waiting meal. he would leap--and, oh, his eye in mid-leap when he saw--when he saw the knife held ready for him! it pierced his hide as a rush pierces curdled milk. often he had no time to howl. i did not trouble to flay any beasts i killed. sometimes i missed my blow. then i took my little flint hammer and beat out his brains as he cowered. he made no fight. he knew the knife! but the beast is very cunning. before evening all the beasts had smelt the blood on my knife, and were running from me like hares. _they_ knew! then i walked as a man should--the master of the beast! 'so came i back to my mother's house. there was a lamb to be killed. i cut it in two halves with my knife, and i told her all my tale. she said, "this is the work of a god." i kissed her and laughed. i went to my maiden who waited for me at the dew-ponds. there was a lamb to be killed. i cut it in two halves with my knife, and told her all my tale. she said, "it is the work of a god." i laughed, but she pushed me away, and being on my blind side, ran off before i could kiss her. i went to the men of the sheepguard at watering-time. there was a sheep to be killed for their meat. i cut it in two halves with my knife, and told them all my tale. they said, "it is the work of a god." i said, "we talk too much about gods. let us eat and be happy, and to-morrow i will take you to the children of the night, and each man will find a magic knife." 'i was glad to smell our sheep again; to see the broad sky from edge to edge, and to hear the sea. i slept beneath the stars in my cloak. the men talked among themselves. 'i led them, the next day, to the trees, taking with me meat, wool, and curdled milk, as i had promised. we found the magic knives laid out on the grass, as the children of the night had promised. they watched us from among the trees. their priestess called to me and said, "how is it with your people?" i said, "their hearts are changed. i cannot see their hearts as i used to." she said, "that is because you have only one eye. come to me and i will be both your eyes." but i said, "i must show my people how to use their knives against the beast, as you showed me how to use my knife." i said this because the magic knife does not balance like the flint. she said, "what you have done, you have done for the sake of a woman, and not for the sake of your people." i asked of her, "then why did the god accept my right eye, and why are you so angry?" she answered, "because any man can lie to a god, but no man can lie to a woman. and i am not angry with you. i am only very sorrowful for you. wait a little, and you will see out of your one eye why i am sorry." so she hid herself. 'i went back with my people, each one carrying his knife, and making it sing in the air--_tssee-sssse_. the flint never sings. it mutters--_ump-ump_. the beast heard. the beast saw. _he_ knew! everywhere he ran away from us. we all laughed. as we walked over the grass my mother's brother--the chief on the man's side--he took off his chief's necklace of yellow sea-stones.' 'how? eh? oh, i remember! amber,' said puck. 'and would have put them on my neck. i said, "no, i am content. what does my one eye matter if my other eye sees fat sheep and fat children running about safely?" my mother's brother said to them, "i told you he would never take such things." then they began to sing a song in the old tongue--_the song of tyr_. i sang with them, but my mother's brother said, "this is _your_ song, oh, buyer of the knife. let _us_ sing it, tyr." 'even then i did not understand, till i saw that--that no man stepped on my shadow; and i knew that they thought me to be a god, like the god tyr, who gave his right hand to conquer a great beast.' 'by the fire in the belly of the flint, was that so?' puck rapped out. 'by my knife and the naked chalk, so it was! they made way for my shadow as though it had been a priestess walking to the barrows of the dead. i was afraid. i said to myself, "my mother and my maiden will know i am not tyr." but _still_ i was afraid with the fear of a man who falls into a steep flint-pit while he runs, and feels that it will be hard to climb out. 'when we came to the dew-ponds all our people were there. the men showed their knives and told their tale. the sheepguards also had seen the beast flying from us. the beast went west across the river in packs--howling! he knew the knife had come to the naked chalk at last--at last! _he_ knew! so my work was done. i looked for my maiden among the priestesses. she looked at me, but she did not smile. she made the sign to me that our priestesses must make when they sacrifice to the old dead in the barrows. i would have spoken, but my mother's brother made himself my mouth, as though i had been one of the old dead in the barrows for whom our priests speak to the people on midsummer mornings.' 'i remember. well i remember those midsummer mornings!' said puck. 'then i went away angrily to my mother's house. she would have knelt before me. then i was more angry, but she said, "only a god would have spoken to me thus, a priestess. a man would have feared the punishment of the gods." i looked at her and i laughed. i could not stop my unhappy laughing. they called me from the door by the name of tyr himself. a young man with whom i had watched my first flocks, and chipped my first arrow, and fought my first beast, called me by that name in the old tongue. he asked my leave to take my maiden. his eyes were lowered, his hands were on his forehead. he was full of the fear of a god, but of _me_, a man, he had no fear when he asked. i did not kill him. i said, "call the maiden." she came also without fear--this very one that had waited for me, that had talked with me by our dew-ponds. being a priestess, she lifted her eyes to me. as i look on a hill or a cloud, so she looked at me. she spoke in the old tongue which priestesses use when they make prayers to the old dead in the barrows. she asked leave that she might light the fire in my companion's house--and that i should bless their children. i did not kill her. i heard my own voice, little and cold, say, "let it be as you desire," and they went away hand in hand. my heart grew little and cold, a wind shouted in my ears; my eye darkened. i said to my mother, "can a god die?" i heard her say, "what is it? what is it, my son?" and i fell into darkness full of hammer-noises. i was not.' 'oh, poor--poor god!' said puck. 'and your wise mother?' '_she_ knew. as soon as i dropped she knew. when my spirit came back i heard her whisper on my ear, "whether you live or die, or are made different, i am your mother." that was good--better even than the water she gave me and the going away of the sickness. though i was ashamed to have fallen down, yet i was very glad. she was glad too. neither of us wished to lose the other. there is only the one mother for the one son. i heaped the fire for her, and barred the doors, and sat at her feet as before i went away, and she combed my hair, and sang. 'i said at last, "what is to be done to the people who say that i am tyr?" 'she said, "he who has done a god-like thing must bear himself like a god. i see no way out of it. the people are now your sheep till you die. you cannot drive them off." 'i said, "this is a heavier sheep than i can lift." she said, "in time it will grow easy. in time perhaps you will not lay it down for any maiden anywhere. be wise--be very wise, my son, for nothing is left you except the words, and the songs, and the worship of a god."' 'oh, poor god!' said puck. 'but those are not altogether bad things.' 'i know they are not; but i would sell them all--all--all for one small child of my own, smearing himself with the ashes of our own house-fire.' he wrenched his knife from the turf, thrust it into his belt and stood up. 'and yet, what else could i have done?' he said. 'the sheep are the people.' 'it is a very old tale,' puck answered. 'i have heard the like of it not only on the naked chalk, but also among the trees--under oak, and ash, and thorn.' * * * * * the afternoon shadows filled all the quiet emptiness of norton's pit. the children heard the sheep bells and young jim's busy bark above them, and they scrambled up the slope to the level. 'we let you have your sleep out,' said mr. dudeney, as the flock scattered before them. 'it's making for tea-time now.' 'look what i've found,' said dan, and held up a little blue flint arrow-head as fresh as though it had been chipped that very day. 'oh,' said mr. dudeney, 'the closeter you be to the turf the more you're apt to see things. i've found 'em often. some says the fairies made 'em, but i says they was made by folks like ourselves--only a goodish time back. they're lucky to keep. now, you couldn't ever have slept--not to any profit--among your father's trees same as you've laid out on naked chalk--could you?' 'one doesn't want to sleep in the woods,' said una. 'then what's the good of 'em?' said mr. dudeney. 'might as well set in the barn all day. fetch 'em 'long, jim boy!' the downs, that looked so bare and hot when they came, were full of delicious little shadow-dimples; the smell of the thyme and the salt mixed together on the south-west drift from the still sea; their eyes dazzled with the low sun, and the long grass under it looked golden. the sheep knew where their fold was, so young jim came back to his master, and they all four strolled home, the scabious-heads swishing about their ankles, and their shadows streaking behind them like the shadows of giants. song of the men's side once we feared the beast--when he followed us we ran, ran very fast though we knew it was not right that the beast should master man; but what could we flint-workers do? the beast only grinned at our spears round his ears-- grinned at the hammers that we made; but now we will hunt him for the life with the knife-- and this is the buyer of the blade! _room for his shadow on the grass--let it pass! to left and right--stand clear! this is the buyer of the blade--be afraid! this is the great god tyr!_ tyr thought hard till he hammered out a plan, for he knew it was not right (and it _is_ not right) that the beast should master man; so he went to the children of the night. he begged a magic knife of their make for our sake. when he begged for the knife they said: 'the price of the knife you would buy is an eye!' and that was the price he paid. _tell it to the barrows of the dead--run ahead! shout it so the women's side can hear! this is the buyer of the blade--be afraid! this is the great god tyr!_ our women and our little ones may walk on the chalk, as far as we can see them and beyond. we shall not be anxious for our sheep when we keep tally at the shearing-pond. we can eat with both our elbows on our knees, if we please, we can sleep after meals in the sun; for shepherd of the twilight is dismayed at the blade, feet-in-the-night have run! dog-without-a-master goes away (hai, tyr aie!), devil-in-the-dusk has run! then: _room for his shadow on the grass--let it pass! to left and right--stand clear! this is the buyer of the blade--be afraid! this is the great god tyr!_ brother square-toes philadelphia if you're off to philadelphia in the morning, you mustn't take my stories for a guide. there's little left indeed of the city you will read of and all the folk i write about have died. now few will understand if you mention talleyrand, or remember what his cunning and his skill did. and the cabmen at the wharf do not know count zinnendorf, nor the church in philadelphia he builded. it is gone, gone, gone with lost atlantis (never say i didn't give you warning). in seventeen ninety-three 'twas there for all to see, but it's not in philadelphia this morning. if you're off to philadelphia in the morning, you mustn't go by everything i've said. bob bicknell's southern stages have been laid aside for ages, but the limited will take you there instead. toby hirte can't be seen at one hundred and eighteen, north second street--no matter when you call; and i fear you'll search in vain for the wash-house down the lane where pharaoh played the fiddle at the ball. it is gone, gone, gone with thebes the golden (never say i didn't give you warning). in seventeen ninety-four 'twas a famous dancing-floor-- but it's not in philadelphia this morning. if you're off to philadelphia in the morning, you must telegraph for rooms at some hotel. you needn't try your luck at epply's or the 'buck,' though the father of his country liked them well. it is not the slightest use to inquire for adam goos, or to ask where pastor meder has removed--so you must treat as out of date the story i relate, of the church in philadelphia he loved so. he is gone, gone, gone with martin luther, (never say i didn't give you warning). in seventeen ninety-five he was (rest his soul!) alive. but he's not in philadelphia this morning. if you're off to philadelphia this morning, and wish to prove the truth of what i say, i pledge my word you'll find the pleasant land behind unaltered since red jacket rode that way. still the pine-woods scent the noon; still the catbird sings his tune; still autumn sets the maple-forest blazing. still the grape-vine through the dusk flings her soul-compelling musk; still the fire-flies in the corn make night amazing. they are there, there, there with earth immortal (citizens, i give you friendly warning). the things that truly last when men and times have passed they are all in pennsylvania this morning! brother square-toes it was almost the end of their visit to the seaside. they had turned themselves out of doors while their trunks were being packed, and strolled over the downs towards the dull evening sea. the tide was dead low under the chalk cliffs, and the little wrinkled waves grieved along the sands up the coast to newhaven and down the coast to long, grey brighton, whose smoke trailed out across the channel. they walked to the gap where the cliff is only a few feet high. a windlass for hoisting shingle from the beach below stands at the edge of it. the coastguard cottages are a little farther on, and an old ship's figure-head of a turk in a turban stared at them over the wall. 'this time to-morrow we shall be at home, thank goodness,' said una. 'i hate the sea!' 'i believe it's all right in the middle,' said dan. 'the edges are the sorrowful parts.' cordery, the coastguard, came out of the cottage, levelled his telescope at some fishing-boats, shut it with a click and walked away. he grew smaller and smaller along the edge of the cliff, where neat piles of white chalk every few yards show the path even on the darkest night. 'where's cordery going?' said una. 'half-way to newhaven,' said dan. 'then he'll meet the newhaven coastguard and turn back. he says if coastguards were done away with, smuggling would start up at once.' a voice on the beach under the cliff began to sing: 'the moon she shined on telscombe tye-- on telscombe tye at night it was-- she saw the smugglers riding by, a very pretty sight it was!' feet scrabbled on the flinty path. a dark, thin-faced man in very neat brown clothes and broad-toed shoes came up, followed by puck. 'three dunkirk boats was standin' in!' the man went on. 'hssh!' said puck. 'you'll shock these nice young people.' 'oh! shall i? mille pardons!' he shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears--spread his hands abroad, and jabbered in french. 'no comprenny?' he said. 'i'll give it you in low german.' and he went off in another language, changing his voice and manner so completely that they hardly knew him for the same person. but his dark beady-brown eyes still twinkled merrily in his lean face, and the children felt that they did not suit the straight, plain, snuffy-brown coat, brown knee-breeches, and broad-brimmed hat. his hair was tied in a short pig-tail which danced wickedly when he turned his head. 'ha' done!' said puck, laughing. 'be one thing or t'other, pharaoh--french or english or german--no great odds which.' 'oh, but it is, though,' said una quickly. 'we haven't begun german yet, and--and we're going back to our french next week.' 'aren't you english?' said dan. 'we heard you singing just now.' 'aha! that was the sussex side o' me. dad he married a french girl out o' boulogne, and french she stayed till her dyin' day. she was an aurette, of course. we lees mostly marry aurettes. haven't you ever come across the saying: 'aurettes and lees, like as two peas. what they can't smuggle, they'll run over seas?' 'then, are you a smuggler?' una cried; and, 'have you smuggled much?' said dan. mr. lee nodded solemnly. 'mind you,' said he, 'i don't uphold smuggling for the generality o' mankind--mostly they can't make a do of it--but i was brought up to the trade, d'ye see, in a lawful line o' descent on'--he waved across the channel--'on both sides the water. 'twas all in the families, same as fiddling. the aurettes used mostly to run the stuff across from boulogne, and we lees landed it here and ran it up to london town, by the safest road.' 'then where did you live?' said una. 'you mustn't ever live too close to your business in _our_ trade. we kept our little fishing smack at shoreham, but otherwise we lees was all honest cottager folk--at warminghurst under washington--bramber way--on the old penn estate.' 'ah!' said puck, squatted by the windlass. 'i remember a piece about the lees at warminghurst, i do: 'there was never a lee to warminghurst that wasn't a gipsy last and first. i reckon that's truth, pharaoh.' pharaoh laughed. 'admettin' that's true,' he said, 'my gipsy blood must be wore pretty thin, for i've made and kept a worldly fortune.' 'by smuggling?' dan asked. 'no, in the tobacco trade.' 'you don't mean to say you gave up smuggling just to go and be a tobacconist!' dan looked so disappointed they all had to laugh. 'i'm sorry; but there's all sorts of tobacconists,' pharaoh replied. 'how far out, now, would you call that smack with the patch on her foresail?' he pointed to the fishing-boats. 'a scant mile,' said puck after a quick look. 'just about. it's seven fathom under her--clean sand. that was where uncle aurette used to sink his brandy kegs from boulogne, and we fished 'em up and rowed 'em into the gap here for the ponies to run inland. one thickish night in january of ' , dad and uncle lot and me came over from shoreham in the smack, and we found uncle aurette and the l'estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in their lugger with new year's presents from mother's folk in boulogne. i remember aunt cecile she'd sent me a fine new red knitted cap, which i put on then and there, for the french was having their revolution in those days, and red caps was all the fashion. uncle aurette tells us that they had cut off their king louis' head, and, moreover, the brest forts had fired on an english man-o'-war. the news wasn't a week old. '"that means war again, when we was only just getting used to the peace," says dad. "why can't king george's men and king louis' men do on their uniforms and fight it out over our heads?" '"me too, i wish that," says uncle aurette. "but they'll be pressing better men than themselves to fight for 'em. the press-gangs are out already on our side: you look out for yours." '"i'll have to bide ashore and grow cabbages for a while, after i've run this cargo; but i do wish"--dad says, going over the lugger's side with our new year presents under his arm and young l'estrange holding the lantern--"i just do wish that those folk which make war so easy had to run one cargo a month all this winter. it 'ud show 'em what honest work means." '"well, i've warned ye," says uncle aurette. "i'll be slipping off now before your revenue cutter comes. give my love to sister and take care o' the kegs. it's thicking to southward." 'i remember him waving to us and young stephen l'estrange blowing out the lantern. by the time we'd fished up the kegs the fog came down so thick dad judged it risky for me to row 'em ashore, even though we could hear the ponies stamping on the beach. so he and uncle lot took the dinghy and left me in the smack playing on my fiddle to guide 'em back. 'presently i heard guns. two of 'em sounded mighty like uncle aurette's three-pounders. he didn't go naked about the seas after dark. then come more, which i reckoned was captain giddens in the revenue cutter. he was open-handed with his compliments, but he _would_ lay his guns himself. i stopped fiddling to listen, and i heard a whole skyful o' french up in the fog--and a high bow come down on top o' the smack. i hadn't time to call or think. i remember the smack heeling over, and me standing on the gunwale pushing against the ship's side as if i hoped to bear her off. then the square of an open port, with a lantern in it, slid by in front of my nose. i kicked back on our gunwale as it went under and slipped through that port into the french ship--me and my fiddle.' 'gracious!' said una. 'what an adventure!' 'didn't anybody see you come in?' said dan. 'there wasn't any one there. i'd made use of an orlop-deck port--that's the next deck below the gun-deck, which by rights should not have been open at all. the crew was standing by their guns up above. i rolled on to a pile of dunnage in the dark and i went to sleep. when i woke, men was talking all round me, telling each other their names and sorrows just like dad told me pressed men used to talk in the last war. pretty soon i made out they'd all been hove aboard together by the press-gangs, and left to sort 'emselves. the ship she was the _embuscade_, a thirty-six gun republican frigate, captain jean baptiste bompard, two days out of le havre, going to the united states with a republican french ambassador of the name of genêt. they had been up all night clearing for action on account of hearing guns in the fog. uncle aurette and captain giddens must have been passing the time o' day with each other off newhaven, and the frigate had drifted past 'em. she never knew she'd run down our smack. seeing so many aboard was total strangers to each other, i thought one more mightn't be noticed; so i put aunt cecile's red cap on the back of my head, and my hands in my pockets like the rest, and, as we french say, i circulated till i found the galley. '"what! here's one of 'em that isn't sick!" says a cook. "take his breakfast to citizen bompard." 'i carried the tray to the cabin, but i didn't call this bompard "citizen." oh no! "mon capitaine" was my little word, same as uncle aurette used to answer in king louis' navy. bompard, he liked it; he took me on for cabin servant, and after that no one asked questions; and thus i got good victuals and light work all the way across to america. he talked a heap of politics, and so did his officers, and when this ambassador genêt got rid of his land-stomach and laid down the law after dinner, a rook's parliament was nothing compared to their cabin. i learned to know most of the men which had worked the french revolution, through waiting at table and hearing talk about 'em. one of our forecas'le six-pounders was called danton and t'other marat. i used to play the fiddle between 'em, sitting on the capstan. day in and day out bompard and monsieur genêt talked o' what france had done, and how the united states was going to join her to finish off the english in this war. monsieur genêt said he'd justabout make the united states fight for france. he was a rude common man. but i liked listening. i always helped drink any healths that was proposed--specially citizen danton's who'd cut off king louis' head. an all-englishman might have been shocked--that's where my french blood saved me. 'it didn't save me from getting a dose of ship's fever though, the week before we put monsieur genêt ashore at charleston; and what was left of me after bleeding and pills took the dumb horrors from living 'tween decks. the surgeon, karaguen his name was, kept me down there to help him with his plasters--i was too weak to wait on bompard. i don't remember much of any account for the next few weeks, till i smelled lilacs, and i looked out of the port, and we was moored to a wharf-edge and there was a town o' fine gardens and red-brick houses and all the green leaves in god's world waiting for me outside. '"what's this?" i said to the sick-bay man--old pierre tiphaigne he was. "philadelphia," says pierre. "you've missed it all. we're sailing next week." 'i just turned round and cried for longing to be amongst the laylocks. '"if that's your trouble," says old pierre, "you go straight ashore. none'll hinder you. they're all gone mad on these coasts--french and american together. 'tisn't _my_ notion o' war." pierre was an old king louis man. 'my legs was pretty tottly, but i made shift to go on deck, which it was like a fair. the frigate was crowded with fine gentlemen and ladies pouring in and out. they sung and they waved french flags, while captain bompard and his officers--yes, and some of the men--speechified to all and sundry about war with england. they shouted, "down with england!"--"down with washington!"--"hurrah for france and the republic!" _i_ couldn't make sense of it. i wanted to get out from that crunch of swords and petticoats and sit in a field. one of the gentlemen said to me, "is that a genuine cap o' liberty you're wearing?" 'twas aunt cecile's red one, and pretty near wore out. "oh yes!" i says, "straight from france." "i'll give you a shilling for it," he says, and with that money in my hand and my fiddle under my arm i squeezed past the entry-port and went ashore. it was like a dream--meadows, trees, flowers, birds, houses, and people _all_ different! i sat me down in a meadow and fiddled a bit, and then i went in and out the streets, looking and smelling and touching, like a little dog at a fair. fine folk was setting on the white stone doorsteps of their houses, and a girl threw me a handful of laylock sprays, and when i said "merci" without thinking, she said she loved the french. they was all the fashion in the city. i saw more tricolour flags in philadelphia than ever i'd seen in boulogne, and every one was shouting for war with england. a crowd o' folk was cheering after our french ambassador--that same monsieur genêt which we'd left at charleston. he was a-horseback behaving as if the place belonged to him--and commanding all and sundry to fight the british. but i'd heard that before. i got into a long straight street as wide as the broyle, where gentlemen was racing horses. i'm fond o' horses. nobody hindered 'em, and a man told me it was called race street o' purpose for that. then i followed some black niggers, which i'd never seen close before; but i left them to run after a great, proud, copper-faced man with feathers in his hair and a red blanket trailing behind him. a man told me he was a real red indian called red jacket, and i followed him into an alley-way off race street by second street, where there was a fiddle playing. i'm fond o' fiddling. the indian stopped at a baker's shop--conrad gerhard's it was--and bought some sugary cakes. hearing what the price was i was going to have some too, but the indian asked me in english if i was hungry. "oh yes!" i says. i must have looked a sore scrattel. he opens a door on to a staircase and leads the way up. we walked into a dirty little room full of flutes and fiddles and a fat man fiddling by the window, in a smell of cheese and medicines fit to knock you down. i _was_ knocked down too, for the fat man jumped up and hit me a smack in the face. i fell against an old spinet covered with pill-boxes and the pills rolled about the floor. the indian never moved an eyelid. '"pick up the pills! pick up the pills!" the fat man screeches. 'i started picking 'em up--hundreds of 'em--meaning to run out under the indian's arm, but i came on giddy all over and i sat down. the fat man went back to his fiddling. '"toby!" says the indian after quite a while. "i brought the boy to be fed, not hit." '"what?" says toby, "i thought it was gert schwankfelder." he put down his fiddle and took a good look at me. "himmel!" he says. "i have hit the wrong boy. it is not the new boy. why are you not the new boy? why are you not gert schwankfelder?" '"i don't know," i said. "the gentleman in the pink blanket brought me." 'says the indian, "he is hungry, toby. christians always feed the hungry. so i bring him." '"you should have said that first," said toby. he pushed plates at me and the indian put bread and pork on them, and a glass of madeira wine. i told him i was off the french ship, which i had joined on account of my mother being french. that was true enough when you think of it, and besides i saw that the french was all the fashion in philadelphia. toby and the indian whispered and i went on picking up the pills. '"you like pills--eh?" says toby. '"no," i says. "i've seen our ship's doctor roll too many of 'em." '"ho!" he says, and he shoves two bottles at me. "what's those?" '"calomel," i says. "and t'other's senna." '"right," he says. "one week have i tried to teach gert schwankfelder the difference between them, yet he cannot tell. you like to fiddle?" he says. he'd just seen my kit on the floor. '"oh yes!" says i. '"oho!" he says. "what note is this?" drawing his bow acrost. 'he meant it for a, so i told him it was. '"my brother," he says to the indian. "i think this is the hand of providence! i warned that gert if he went to play upon the wharves any more he would hear from me. now look at this boy and say what you think." 'the indian looked me over whole minutes--there was a musical clock on the wall and dolls came out and hopped while the hour struck. he looked me over all the while they did it. '"good," he says at last. "this boy is good." '"good, then," says toby. "now i shall play my fiddle and you shall sing your hymn, brother. boy, go down to the bakery and tell them you are young gert schwankfelder that was. the horses are in davy jones's locker. if you ask any questions you shall hear from me." 'i left 'em singing hymns and i went down to old conrad gerhard. he wasn't at all surprised when i told him i was young gert schwankfelder that was. he knew toby. his wife she walked me into the back yard without a word, and she washed me and she cut my hair to the edge of a basin, and she put me to bed, and oh! how i slept--how i slept in that little room behind the oven looking on the flower garden! i didn't know toby went to the _embuscade_ that night and bought me off dr. karaguen for twelve dollars and a dozen bottles of seneca oil. karaguen wanted a new lace to his coat, and he reckoned i hadn't long to live; so he put me down as "discharged sick."' 'i like toby,' said una. 'who was he?' said puck. 'apothecary tobias hirte,' pharaoh replied. 'one hundred and eighteen, second street--the famous seneca oil man, that lived half of every year among the indians. but let me tell my tale my own way, same as his brown mare used to go to lebanon.' 'then why did he keep her in davy jones's locker?' dan asked. 'that was his joke. he kept her under david jones's hat shop in the "buck" tavern yard, and his indian friends kept their ponies there when they visited him. i looked after the horses when i wasn't rolling pills on top of the old spinet, while he played his fiddle and red jacket sang hymns. i liked it. i had good victuals, light work, a suit o' clean clothes, a plenty music, and quiet, smiling german folk all around that let me sit in their gardens. my first sunday, toby took me to his church in moravian alley; and that was in a garden too. the women wore long-eared caps and handkerchiefs. they came in at one door and the men at another, and there was a brass chandelier you could see your face in, and a nigger-boy to blow the organ bellows. i carried toby's fiddle, and he played pretty much as he chose all against the organ and the singing. he was the only one they let do it, for they was a simple-minded folk. they used to wash each other's feet up in the attic to keep 'emselves humble: which lord knows they didn't need.' 'how very queer,' said una. pharaoh's eyes twinkled. 'i've met many and seen much,' he said; 'but i haven't yet found any better or quieter or forbearinger people than the brethren and sistern of the moravian church in philadelphia. nor will i ever forget my first sunday--the service was in english that week--with the smell of the flowers coming in from pastor meder's garden where the big peach tree is, and me looking at all the clean strangeness and thinking of 'tween decks on the _embuscade_ only six days ago. being a boy, it seemed to me it had lasted for ever, and was going on for ever. but i didn't know toby then. as soon as the dancing clock struck midnight that sunday--i was lying under the spinet--i heard toby's fiddle. he'd just done his supper, which he always took late and heavy. "gert," says he, "get the horses. liberty and independence for ever! the flowers appear upon the earth and the time of the singing of birds is come. we are going to my country seat in lebanon." 'i rubbed my eyes, and fetched 'em out of the "buck" stable. red jacket was there saddling his, and when i'd packed the saddle-bags we three rode up race street to the ferry by starlight. so we went travelling. it's a kindly, softly country there, back of philadelphia among the german towns, lancaster way. little houses and bursting big barns, fat cattle, fat women, and all as peaceful as heaven might be if they farmed there. toby sold medicines out of his saddle-bags, and gave the french war-news to folk along the roads. him and his long-hilted umberell was as well known as the stage coaches. he took orders for that famous seneca oil which he had the secret of from red jacket's indians, and he slept in friend's farmhouses, but he _would_ shut all the windows; so red jacket and me slept outside. there's nothing to hurt except snakes--and they slip away quick enough if you thrash in the bushes.' 'i'd have liked that!' said dan. 'i'd no fault to find with those days. in the cool o' the morning the cat-bird sings. he's something to listen to. and there's a smell of wild grape-vine growing in damp hollows which you drop into, after long rides in the heat, which is beyond compare for sweetness. so's the puffs out of the pine woods of afternoons. come sundown, the frogs strike up, and later on the fireflies dance in the corn. oh me, the fireflies in the corn! we were a week or ten days on the road, tacking from one place to another--such as lancaster, bethlehem-ephrata--"thou bethlehem-ephrata"--no odds--i loved the going about; and so we jogged into dozy little lebanon by the blue mountains, where toby had a cottage and a garden of all fruits. he come north every year for this wonderful seneca oil the seneca indians made for him. they'd never sell to any one else, and he doctored 'em with von swieten pills, which they valued more than their own oil. he could do what he chose with them, and, of course, he tried to make them moravians. the senecas are a seemly, quiet people, and they'd had trouble enough from white men--americans and english--during the wars, to keep 'em in that walk. they lived on a reservation by themselves away off by their lake. toby took me up there, and they treated me as if i was their own blood brother. red jacket said the mark of my bare feet in the dust was just like an indian's and my style of walking was similar. i know i took to their ways all over.' 'maybe the gipsy drop in your blood helped you?' said puck. 'sometimes i think it did,' pharaoh went on. 'anyhow red jacket and cornplanter, the other seneca chief, they let me be adopted into the tribe. it's only a compliment, of course, but toby was angry when i showed up with my face painted. they gave me a side-name which means "two tongues," because, d'ye see, i talked french and english. 'they had their own opinions (_i_'ve heard 'em) about the french and the english, _and_ the americans. they'd suffered from all of 'em during the wars, and they only wished to be left alone. but they thought a heap of the president of the united states. cornplanter had had dealings with him in some french wars out west when general washington was only a lad. his being president afterwards made no odds to 'em. they always called him big hand, for he was a large-fisted man, and he was all of their notion of a white chief. cornplanter 'ud sweep his blanket round him, and after i'd filled his pipe he'd begin--"in the old days, long ago, when braves were many and blankets were few, big hand said----" if red jacket agreed to the say-so he'd trickle a little smoke out of the corners of his mouth. if he didn't, he'd blow through his nostrils. then cornplanter 'ud stop and red jacket 'ud take on. red jacket was the better talker of the two. i've laid and listened to 'em for hours. oh! they knew general washington well. cornplanter used to meet him at epply's--the great dancing place in the city before district marshal william nichols bought it. they told me he was always glad to see 'em, and he'd hear 'em out to the end if they had anything on their minds. they had a good deal in those days. i came at it by degrees, after i was adopted into the tribe. the talk up in lebanon and everywhere else that summer was about the french war with england and whether the united states 'ud join in with france or make a peace treaty with england. toby wanted peace so as he could go about the reservation buying his oils. but most of the white men wished for war, and they was angry because the president wouldn't give the sign for it. the newspaper said men was burning guy fawke images of general washington and yelling after him in the streets of philadelphia. you'd have been astonished what those two fine old chiefs knew of the ins and outs of such matters. the little i've learned of politics i picked up from cornplanter and red jacket on the reservation. toby used to read the _aurora_ newspaper. he was what they call a "democrat," though our church is against the brethren concerning themselves with politics.' 'i hate politics, too,' said una, and pharaoh laughed. 'i might ha' guessed it,' he said. 'but here's something that isn't politics. one hot evening late in august, toby was reading the newspaper on the stoop and red jacket was smoking under a peach tree and i was fiddling. of a sudden toby drops his _aurora_. '"i am an oldish man, too fond of my own comforts," he says. "i will go to the church which is in philadelphia. my brother, lend me a spare pony. i must be there to-morrow night." '"good!" says red jacket looking at the sun. "my brother shall be there. i will ride with him and bring back the ponies." 'i went to pack the saddle-bags. toby had cured me of asking questions. he stopped my fiddling if i did. besides, indians don't ask questions much and i wanted to be like 'em. 'when the horses were ready i jumped up. '"get off," says toby. "stay and mind the cottage till i come back. the lord has laid this on me, not on you--i wish he hadn't." 'he powders off down the lancaster road, and i sat on the door-step wondering after him. when i picked up the paper to wrap his fiddle-strings in, i spelled out a piece about the yellow fever being in philadelphia so dreadful every one was running away. i was scared, for i was fond of toby. we never said much to each other, but we fiddled together, and music's as good as talking to them that understand.' 'did toby die of yellow fever?' una asked. 'not him! there's justice left in the world still. he went down to the city and bled 'em well again in heaps. he sent back word by red jacket that, if there was war or he died i was to bring the oils along to the city, but till then i was to go on working in the garden and red jacket was to see me do it. down at heart all indians reckon digging a squaw's business, and neither him nor cornplanter, when he relieved watch, was a hard task-master. we hired a nigger-boy to do our work, and a lazy grinning runagate he was. when i found toby didn't die the minute he reached town, why, boylike, i took him off my mind and went with my indians again. oh! those days up north at canasedago, running races and gambling with the senecas, or bee-hunting in the woods, or fishing in the lake.' pharaoh sighed and looked across the water. 'but it's best,' he went on suddenly, 'after the first frostes. you roll out o' your blanket and find every leaf left green over night turned red and yellow, not by trees at a time, but hundreds and hundreds of miles of 'em, like sunsets splattered upside down. on one of such days--the maples was flaming scarlet and gold, and the sumach bushes were redder--cornplanter and red jacket came out in full war-dress, making the very leaves look silly: feathered war-bonnets, yellow doe-skin leggings, fringed and tasselled, red horse-blankets, and their bridles feathered and shelled and beaded no bounds. i thought it was war against the british till i saw their faces weren't painted, and they only carried wrist-whips. then i hummed "yankee doodle" at 'em. they told me they was going to visit big hand and find out for sure whether he meant to join the french in fighting the english or make a peace treaty with england. i reckon those two would ha' gone out on the war-path at a nod from big hand, but they knew well, if there was war 'twixt england and the united states, their tribe 'ud catch it from both parties same as in all the other wars. they asked me to come along and hold the ponies. that puzzled me, because they always put their ponies up at the "buck" or epply's when they went to see general washington in the city, and horse-holding is a nigger's job. besides, i wasn't exactly dressed for it.' 'd'you mean you were dressed like an indian?' dan demanded. pharaoh looked a little abashed. 'this didn't happen at lebanon,' he said, 'but a bit farther north, on the reservation; and at that particular moment of time, so far as blanket, hair-band, moccasins, and sunburn went, there wasn't much odds 'twix me and a young seneca buck. you may laugh,' he smoothed down his long-skirted brown coat. 'but i told you i took to their ways all over. i said nothing, though i was bursting to let out the war-whoop like the young men had taught me.' 'no, and you don't let out one here, either,' said puck before dan could ask. 'go on, brother square-toes.' 'we went on.' pharaoh's narrow dark eyes gleamed and danced. 'we went on--forty, fifty miles a day, for days on end--we three braves. and how a great tall indian a-horseback can carry his war-bonnet at a canter through thick timber without brushing a feather beats _me_! my silly head was banged often enough by low branches, but they slipped through like running elks. we had evening hymn-singing every night after they'd blown their pipe-smoke to the quarters of heaven. where did we go? i'll tell you, but don't blame me if you're no wiser. we took the old war-trail from the end of the lake along the east susquehanna through the nantego country, right down to fort shamokin on the senachse river. we crossed the juniata by fort granville, got into shippensberg over the hills by the ochwick trail, and then to williams ferry (it's a bad one). from williams ferry, across the shanedore, over the blue mountains, through ashby's gap, and so south-east by south from there, till we found the president at the back of his own plantations. i'd hate to be trailed by indians in earnest. they caught him like a partridge on a stump. after we'd left our ponies, we scouted forward through a woody piece, and, creeping slower and slower, at last if my moccasins even slipped red jacket 'ud turn and frown. i heard voices--monsieur genêt's for choice--long before i saw anything, and we pulled up at the edge of a clearing where some niggers in grey and red liveries were holding horses, and half-a-dozen gentlemen--but one was genêt--were talking among felled timber. i fancy they'd come to see genêt a piece on his road, for his portmantle was with him. i hid in between two logs as near to the company as i be to that old windlass there. i didn't need anybody to show me big hand. he stood up, very still, his legs a little apart, listening to genêt, that french ambassador, which never had more manners than a bosham tinker. genêt was as good as ordering him to declare war on england at once. i had heard that clack before on the _embuscade_. he said he'd stir up the whole united states to have war with england, whether big hand liked it or not. 'big hand heard him out to the last end. i looked behind me and my two chiefs had vanished like smoke. says big hand, "that is very forcibly put, monsieur genêt----" "citizen--citizen!" the fellow spits in. "_i_, at least, am a republican!" "citizen genêt," he says, "you may be sure it will receive my fullest consideration." this seemed to take citizen genêt back a piece. he rode off grumbling, and never gave his nigger a penny. no gentleman! 'the others all assembled round big hand then, and, in their way, they said pretty much what genêt had said. they put it to him, here was france and england at war, in a manner of speaking, right across the united states' stomach, and paying no regards to any one. the french was searching american ships on pretence they was helping england, but really for to steal the goods. the english was doing the same, only t'other way round, and besides searching, they was pressing american citizens into their navy to help them fight france, on pretence that those americans was lawful british subjects. his gentlemen put this very clear to big hand. it didn't look to _them_, they said, as though the united states trying to keep out of the fight was any advantage to _her_, because she only catched it from both french and english. they said that nine out of ten good americans was crazy to fight the english then and there. they wouldn't say whether that was right or wrong; they only wanted big hand to turn it over in his mind. he did--for a while. i saw red jacket and cornplanter watching him from the far side of the clearing, and how they had slipped round there was another mystery. then big hand drew himself up, and he let his gentlemen have it.' 'hit 'em?' dan asked. 'no, nor yet was it what you might call swearing. he--he blasted 'em with his natural speech. he asked them half-a-dozen times over whether the united states had enough armed ships for any shape or sort of war with any one. he asked 'em, if they thought she _had_ those ships, to _give_ him those ships, and they looked on the ground, as if they expected to find 'em _there_. he put it to 'em whether, setting ships aside, their country--i reckon he gave 'em good reasons--whether the united states was ready or able to face a new big war; she having but so few years back wound up one against england, and being all holds full of her own troubles. as i said, the strong way he laid it all before 'em blasted 'em, and when he'd done it was like a still in the woods after a storm. a little man--but they all looked little--pipes up like a young rook in a blowed-down nest, "nevertheless, general, it seems you will be compelled to fight england." quick big hand wheels on him, "and is there anything in my past which makes you think i am averse to fighting great britain?" 'everybody laughed except him. "oh, general, you mistake us entirely!" they says. "i trust so," he says. "but i know my duty. we _must_ have peace with england." '"at any price?" says the man with the rook's voice. '"at any price," says he word by word. "our ships will be searched--our citizens will be pressed, but----" '"then what about the declaration of independence?" says one. '"deal with facts, not fancies," says big hand. "the united states are in no position to fight england." '"but think of public opinion," another one starts up. "the feeling in philadelphia alone is at fever heat." [illustration: they made the sign which no indian makes outside of the medicine lodges.--p. .] 'he held up one of his big hands. "gentlemen," he says--slow he spoke, but his voice carried far--"i have to think of our country. let me assure you that the treaty with great britain will be made though every city in the union burn me in effigy." '"at any price?" the actor-like chap keeps on croaking. '"the treaty must be made on great britain's own terms. what else can i do?" 'he turns his back on 'em and they looked at each other and slinked off to the horses, leaving him alone: and then i saw he was an old man. then red jacket and cornplanter rode down the clearing from the far end as though they had just chanced along. back went big hand's shoulders, up went his head and he stepped forward one single pace with a great deep hough! so pleased he was. that was a statelified meeting to behold--three big men, and two of 'em looking like jewelled images among the spattle of gay-coloured leaves. i saw my chiefs' war-bonnets sinking together, down and down. then they made the sign which no indian makes outside of the medicine lodges--a sweep of the right hand just clear of the dust and an inbend of the left knee at the same time, and those proud eagle feathers almost touched his boot-top.' 'what did it mean?' said dan. 'mean!' pharaoh cried. 'why it's what you--what we--it's the sachems' way of sprinkling the sacred corn-meal in front of--oh! it's a piece of indian compliment really, and it signifies that you are a very big chief. 'big hand looked down on 'em. first he says quite softly, "my brothers know it is not easy to be a chief." then his voice grew. "my children," says he, "what is in your minds?" 'says cornplanter, "we came to ask whether there will be war with king george's men, but we have heard what our father has said to his chiefs. we will carry away that talk in our hearts to tell to our people." '"no," says big hand. "leave all that talk behind--it was between white men only--but take this message from _me_ to your people--'there will be no war.'" 'his gentlemen were waiting, so they didn't delay him; only cornplanter says, using his old side-name, "big hand, did you see us among the timber just now?" '"surely," says he. "_you_ taught me to look behind trees when we were both young." and with that he cantered off. 'neither of my chiefs spoke till we were back on our ponies again and a half-hour along the home-trail. then cornplanter says to red jacket, "we will have the corn dance this year. there will be no war." and that was all there was to it.' pharaoh stood up as though he had finished. 'yes,' said puck, rising too. 'and what came out of it in the long run?' 'let me get at my story my own way,' was the answer. 'look! it's later than i thought. that shoreham smack's thinking of her supper.' the children looked across the darkening channel. a smack had hoisted a lantern and slowly moved west where brighton pier lights ran out in a twinkling line. when they turned round the gap was empty behind them. 'i expect they've packed our trunks by now,' said dan. 'this time to-morrow we'll be home.' if---- if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too; if you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; if you can dream--and not make dreams your master; if you can think--and not make thoughts your aim, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same; if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools; if you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss; if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: 'hold on!' if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much; if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and--which is more--you'll be a man, my son! 'a priest in spite of himself' a st. helena lullaby how far is st. helena from a little child at play? what makes you want to wander there with all the world between? oh, mother, call your son again or else he'll run away. (_no one thinks of winter when the grass is green!_) how far is st. helena from a fight in paris street? i haven't time to answer now--the men are falling fast. the guns begin to thunder, and the drums begin to beat. (_if you take the first step you will take the last!_) how far is st. helena from the field of austerlitz? you couldn't hear me if i told--so loud the cannons roar. but not so far for people who are living by their wits. (_'gay go up' means 'gay go down' the wide world o'er!_) how far is st. helena from an emperor of france? i cannot see--i cannot tell--the crowns they dazzle so. the kings sit down to dinner, and the queens stand up to dance. (_after open weather you may look for snow!_) how far is st. helena from the capes of trafalgar? a longish way--a longish way--with ten year more to run. it's south across the water underneath a setting star. (_what you cannot finish you must leave undone!_) how far is st. helena from the beresina ice? an ill way--a chill way--the ice begins to crack. but not so far for gentlemen who never took advice. (_when you can't go forward you must e'en come back!_) how far is st. helena from the field of waterloo? a near way--a clear way--the ship will take you soon. a pleasant place for gentlemen with little left to do. (_morning never tries you till the afternoon!_) how far from st. helena to the gate of heaven's grace? that no one knows--that no one knows--and no one ever will. but fold your hands across your heart and cover up your face, and after all your trapesings, child, lie still! 'a priest in spite of himself' the day after they came home from the sea-side they set out on a tour of inspection to make sure everything was as they had left it. soon they discovered that old hobden had blocked their best hedge-gaps with stakes and thorn-bundles, and had trimmed up the hedges where the blackberries were setting. 'it can't be time for the gipsies to come along,' said una. 'why, it was summer only the other day!' 'there's smoke in low shaw!' said dan, sniffing. 'let's make sure!' they crossed the fields towards the thin line of blue smoke that leaned above the hollow of low shaw which lies beside the king's hill road. it used to be an old quarry till somebody planted it, and you can look straight down into it from the edge of banky meadow. 'i thought so,' dan whispered, as they came up to the fence at the edge of the larches. a gipsy-van--not the showman's sort, but the old black kind, with little windows high up and a baby-gate across the door--was getting ready to leave. a man was harnessing the horses; an old woman crouched over the ashes of a fire made out of broken fence-rails; and a girl sat on the van-steps singing to a baby on her lap. a wise-looking, thin dog snuffed at a patch of fur on the ground till the old woman put it carefully in the middle of the fire. the girl reached back inside the van and tossed her a paper parcel. this was laid on the fire too, and they smelt singed feathers. 'chicken feathers!' said dan. 'i wonder if they are old hobden's.' una sneezed. the dog growled and crawled to the girl's feet, the old woman fanned the fire with her hat, while the man led the horses up to the shafts. they all moved as quickly and quietly as snakes over moss. 'ah!' said the girl. 'i'll teach you!' she beat the dog, who seemed to expect it. 'don't do that,' una called down. 'it wasn't his fault.' 'how do you know what i'm beating him for?' she answered. 'for not seeing us,' said dan. 'he was standing right in the smoke, and the wind was wrong for his nose, anyhow.' the girl stopped beating the dog and the old woman fanned faster than ever. 'you've fanned some of your feathers out of the fire,' said una. 'there's a tail-feather by that chestnut-tot.' 'what of it?' said the old woman, as she grabbed it. 'oh, nothing!' said dan. 'only i've heard say that tail-feathers are as bad as the whole bird, sometimes.' that was a saying of hobden's about pheasants. old hobden always burned all feather and fur before he sat down to eat. 'come on, mother,' the man whispered. the old woman climbed into the van and the horses drew it out of the deep-rutted shaw on to the hard road. the girl waved her hands and shouted something they could not catch. 'that was gipsy for "thank you kindly, brother and sister,"' said pharaoh lee. he was standing behind them, his fiddle under his arm. 'gracious, you startled me!' said una. '_you_ startled old priscilla savile,' puck called from below them. 'come and sit by their fire. she ought to have put it out before they left.' they dropped down the ferny side of the shaw. una raked the ashes together, dan found a dead wormy oak branch that burns without flame, and they watched the smoke while pharaoh played a curious wavery air. 'that's what the girl was humming to the baby,' said una. 'i know it,' he nodded, and went on: 'ai lumai, lumai, lumai! luludia! ai luludia!' he passed from one odd tune to another, and quite forgot the children. at last puck asked him to go on with his adventures in philadelphia and among the seneca indians. 'i'm telling it,' he said, staring straight in front of him as he played. 'can't you hear?' 'maybe, but _they_ can't. tell it aloud,' said puck. pharaoh shook himself, laid his fiddle beside him, and began: 'i'd left red jacket and cornplanter riding home with me after big hand had said that there wouldn't be any war. that's all there was to it. we believed big hand and we went home again--we three braves. when we reached lebanon we found toby at the cottage with his waistcoat a foot too big for him--so hard he had worked amongst the yellow-fever people. he beat me for running off with the indians, but 'twas worth it--i was glad to see him,--and when we went back to philadelphia for the winter, and i was told how he'd sacrificed himself over sick people in the yellow fever, i thought the world and all of him. no i didn't neither. i'd thought that all along. that yellow fever must have been something dreadful. even in december people had no more than begun to trinkle back to town. whole houses stood empty and the niggers was robbing them out. but i can't call to mind that any of the moravian brethren had died. it seemed like they had just kept on with their own concerns, and the good lord he'd just looked after 'em. that was the winter--yes, winter of ninety-three--the brethren bought a stove for the church. toby spoke in favour of it because the cold spoiled his fiddle hand, but many thought stove-heat not in the bible, and there was yet a third party which always brought hickory coal foot-warmers to service and wouldn't speak either way. they ended by casting the lot for it, which is like pitch and toss. after my summer with the senecas, church-stoves didn't highly interest me, so i took to haunting round among the french _emigrés_ which philadelphia was full of. my french and my fiddling helped me there, d'ye see. they come over in shiploads from france, where, by what i made out, every one was killing every one else by any means, and they spread 'emselves about the city--mostly in drinker's alley and elfrith's alley--and they did odd jobs till times should mend. but whatever they stooped to, they were gentry and kept a cheerful countenance, and after an evening's fiddling at one of their poor little proud parties, the brethren seemed old-fashioned. pastor meder and brother adam goose didn't like my fiddling for hire, but toby said it was lawful in me to earn my living by exercising my talents. he never let me be put upon. 'in february of ninety-four--no, march it must have been, because a new ambassador called fauchet had come from france, with no more manners than genêt the old one--in march, red jacket came in from the reservation bringing news of all kind friends there. i showed him round the city, and we saw general washington riding through a crowd of folk that shouted for war with england. they gave him quite rough music, but he looked 'twixt his horse's ears and made out not to notice. his stirrup brished red jacket's elbow, and red jacket whispered up, "my brother knows it is not easy to be a chief?" big hand shot just one look at him and nodded. then there was a scuffle behind us over some one who wasn't hooting at washington loud enough to please the people. we went away to be out of the fight. indians won't risk being hit.' 'what do they do if they are?' dan asked. 'kill, of course. that's why they have such proper manners. well, then, coming home by drinker's alley to get a new shirt which a french vicomte's lady was washing to take the stiff out of (i'm always choice in my body-linen) a lame frenchman pushes a paper of buttons at us. he hadn't long landed in the united states, and please would we buy. he sure-ly was a pitiful scrattel--his coat half torn off, his face cut, but his hands steady; so i knew it wasn't drink. he said his name was peringuey, and he'd been knocked about in the crowd round the stadt--independence hall. one thing leading to another we took him up to toby's rooms, same as red jacket had taken me the year before. the compliments he paid to toby's madeira wine fairly conquered the old man, for he opened a second bottle and he told this monsieur peringuey all about our great stove dispute in the church. i remember pastor meder and brother adam goose dropped in, and although they and toby were direct opposite sides regarding stoves, yet this monsieur peringuey he made 'em feel as if he thought each one was in the right of it. he said he had been a clergyman before he had to leave france. he admired at toby's fiddling, and he asked if red jacket, sitting by the spinet, was a simple huron. senecas aren't hurons, they're iroquois, of course, and toby told him so. well, then, in due time he arose and left in a style which made us feel he'd been favouring us, instead of us feeding him. i've never seen that so strong before--in a man. we all talked him over but couldn't make head or tail of him, and red jacket come out to walk with me to the french quarter when i was due to fiddle at a party. passing drinker's alley again we saw a naked window with a light in it, and there sat our button-selling monsieur peringuey throwing dice all alone, right hand against left. 'says red jacket, keeping back in the dark, "look at his face!" 'i was looking. i protest to you i wasn't frightened like i was when big hand talked to his gentlemen. i--i only looked, and i only wondered that even those dead dumb dice 'ud dare to fall different from what that face wished. it--it _was_ a face! '"he is bad," says red jacket. "but he is a great chief. the french have sent away a great chief. i thought so when he told us his lies. now i know." 'i had to go on to the party, so i asked him to call round for me afterwards and we'd have hymn-singing at toby's as usual. '"no," he says. "tell toby i am not christian to-night. all indian." he had those fits sometimes. i wanted to know more about monsieur peringuey, and the _emigré_ party was the very place to find out. it's neither here nor there of course, but those french _emigré_ parties they almost make you cry. the men that you bought fruit of in market street, the hairdressers and fencing-masters and french teachers, they turn back again by candlelight to what they used to be at home, and you catch their real names. there wasn't much room in the wash-house, so i sat on top of the copper and played 'em the tunes they called for--"_si le roi m'avait donné_," and such nursery stuff. they cried sometimes. it hurt me to take their money afterwards, indeed it did. and there i found out about monsieur peringuey. he was a proper rogue too! none of 'em had a good word for him except the marquise that kept the french boarding-house on fourth street. i made out that his real name was the count talleyrand de périgord--a priest right enough, but sorely come down in the world. he'd been king louis' ambassador to england a year or two back, before the french had cut off king louis' head; and, by what i heard, that head wasn't hardly more than hanging loose before he'd run back to paris and prevailed on danton, the very man which did the murder, to send him back to england again as ambassador of the french republic! that was too much for the english, so they kicked him out by act of parliament, and he'd fled to the americas without money or friends or prospects. i'm telling you the talk in the wash-house. some of 'em was laughing over it. says the french marquise, "my friends, you laugh too soon. that man will be on the winning side before any of us." '"i did not know you were so fond of priests, marquise," says the vicomte. his lady did my washing, as i've told you. '"i have my reasons," says the marquise. "he sent my uncle and my two brothers to heaven by the little door,"--that was one of the _emigré_ names for the guillotine. "he will be on the winning side if it costs him the blood of every friend he has in the world." '"then what does he want here?" says one of 'em. "we have all lost our game." '"my faith!" says the marquise. "he will find out, if any one can, whether this canaille of a washington means to help us to fight england. genêt (that was my ambassador in the _embuscade_) has failed and gone off disgraced; fauchet (he was the new man) hasn't done any better, but our abbé will find out, and he will make his profit out of the news. such a man does not fail." '"he begins unluckily," says the vicomte. "he was set upon to-day in the street for not hooting your washington." they all laughed again, and one remarks, "how does the poor devil keep himself." 'he must have slipped in through the wash-house door, for he flits past me and joins 'em, cold as ice. '"one does what one can," he says. "i sell buttons. and you, marquise?" '"i?"--she waves her poor white hands all burned--"i am a cook--a very bad one--at your service, abbé. we were just talking about you." 'they didn't treat him like they talked of him. they backed off and stood still. "'i have missed something then," he says. "but i spent this last hour playing--only for buttons, marquise--against a noble savage, the veritable huron himself." '"you had your usual luck, i hope?" she says. '"certainly," he says. "i cannot afford to lose even buttons in these days." '"then i suppose the child of nature does not know that your dice are usually loaded, father tout-a-tous," she continues. i don't know whether she meant to accuse him of cheating. he only bows. '"not yet, mademoiselle cunegonde," he says, and goes on to make himself agreeable to the rest of the company. and that was how i found out our monsieur peringuey was count charles maurice talleyrand de périgord.' pharaoh stopped, but the children said nothing. 'you've heard of him?' said pharaoh. una shook her head. 'was red jacket the indian he played dice with?' dan asked. 'he was. red jacket told me the next time we met. i asked if the lame man had cheated. red jacket said no--he had played quite fair and was a master player. i allow red jacket knew. i've seen him, on the reservation, play himself out of everything he had and in again. then i told red jacket all i'd heard at the party concerning talleyrand. '"i was right," he says. "i saw the man's war-face when he thought he was alone. that is why i played him. i played him face to face. he is a great chief. do they say why he comes here?" '"they say he comes to find out if big hand makes war against the english," i said. 'red jacket grunted. "yes," he says. "he asked me that too. if he had been a small chief i should have lied. but he is a great chief. he knew i was a chief, so i told him the truth. i told him what big hand said to cornplanter and me in the clearing--'there will be no war.' i could not see what he thought. i could not see behind his face. but he is a great chief. he will believe." '"will he believe that big hand can keep his people back from war?" i said, thinking of the crowds that hooted big hand whenever he rode out. '"he is as bad as big hand is good, but he is not as strong as big hand," says red jacket. "when he talks with big hand he will feel this in his heart. the french have sent away a great chief. presently he will go back and make them afraid." 'now wasn't that comical? the french woman that knew him and owed all her losses to him; the indian that picked him up, cut and muddy on the street and played dice with him; they neither of 'em doubted that talleyrand was something by himself--appearances notwithstanding.' 'and was he something by himself?' asked una. pharaoh began to laugh, but stopped. 'the way _i_ look at it,' he said, 'talleyrand was one of just three men in this world who are quite by themselves. big hand i put first, because i've seen him.' 'ay,' said puck. 'i'm sorry we lost him out of old england. who d'you put second?' 'talleyrand: maybe because i've seen him too,' said pharaoh. 'who's third?' said puck. 'boney--even though i've seen him.' 'whew!' said puck. 'every man has his own weights and measures, but that's queer reckoning.' 'boney?' said una. 'you don't mean you've ever met napoleon bonaparte?' 'there, i knew you wouldn't have patience with the rest of my tale after hearing that! but wait a minute. talleyrand he come round to hundred and eighteen in a day or two to thank toby for his kindness. i didn't mention the dice-playing, but i could see that red jacket's doings had made talleyrand highly curious about indians--though he would call him the huron. toby, as you may believe, was all holds full of knowledge concerning their manners and habits. he only needed a listener. the brethren don't study indians much till they join the church, but toby knew 'em wild. so evening after evening talleyrand crossed his sound leg over his game one and toby poured forth. having been adopted into the senecas i, naturally, kept still, but toby 'ud call on me to back up some of his remarks, and by that means, and a habit he had of drawing you on in talk, talleyrand saw i knew something of his noble savages too. then he tried a trick. coming back from an _emigré_ party he turns into his little shop and puts it to me, laughing like, that i'd gone with the two chiefs on their visit to big hand. _i_ hadn't told. red jacket hadn't told, and toby, of course, didn't know. 'twas just talleyrand's guess. "now," he says, "my english and red jacket's french was so bad that i am not sure i got the rights of what the president really said to the unsophisticated huron. do me the favour of telling it again." i told him every word red jacket had told him and not one word more. i had my suspicions, having just come from an _emigré_ party where the marquise was hating and praising him as usual. '"much obliged," he said. "but i couldn't gather from red jacket exactly what the president said to monsieur genêt, or to his american gentlemen after monsieur genêt had ridden away." 'i saw talleyrand was guessing again, for red jacket hadn't told him a word about the white man's pow-wow.' 'why hadn't he?' puck asked. 'because red jacket was a chief. he told talleyrand what the president had said to him and cornplanter; but he didn't repeat the talk, between the white men, that big hand ordered him to leave behind.' 'oh!' said puck. 'i see. what did _you_ do?' 'first i was going to make some sort of tale round it, but talleyrand was a chief too. so i said, "as soon as i get red jacket's permission to tell that part of the tale, i'll be delighted to refresh your memory, abbé." what else could i have done? '"is that all?" he says, laughing. "let me refresh your memory. in a month from now i can give you a hundred dollars for your account of the conversation." '"make it five hundred, abbé," i says. '"five, then," says he. '"that will suit me admirably," i says. "red jacket will be in town again by then, and the moment he gives me leave i'll claim the money." 'he had a hard fight to be civil but he come out smiling. '"monsieur," he says. "i beg your pardon as sincerely as i envy the noble huron your loyalty. do me the honour to sit down while i explain." 'there wasn't another chair, so i sat on the button-box. 'he was a clever man. he had got hold of the gossip that the president meant to make a peace treaty with england at any cost. he had found out--from genêt, i reckon, who was with the president on the day the two chiefs met him. he'd heard that genêt had had a huff with the president and had ridden off leaving his business at loose ends. what he wanted--what he begged and blustered to know--was just the very words which the president had said to his gentlemen _after_ genêt had left, concerning the peace treaty with england. he put it to me that in helping him to those very words i'd be helping three great countries as well as mankind. the room was as bare as the palm of your hand, but i couldn't laugh. '"i'm sorry," i says, when he wiped his forehead. "as soon as red jacket gives permission----" '"you don't believe me, then?" he cuts in. '"not one little, little word, abbé," i says; "except that you mean to be on the winning side. remember, i've been fiddling to all your old friends for months." 'well, then, his temper fled him and he called me names. '"wait a minute, ci-devant," i says at last. "i _am_ half english and half french, but i am not the half of a man. i will tell thee something the indian told me. has thee seen the president?" '"oh yes!" he sneers, "i had letters from the lord lansdowne to that estimable old man." '"then," i says, "thee will understand. the red skin said that when thee has met the president thee will feel in thy heart he is a stronger man than thee." '"go!" he whispers. "before i kill thee, go." 'he looked like it. so i left him.' 'why did he want to know so badly?' said dan. 'the way i look at it is that if he _had_ known for certain that washington meant to make the peace treaty with england at any price, he'd ha' left old fauchet fumbling about in philadelphia while he went straight back to france and told old danton--"it's no good your wasting time and hopes on the united states, because she won't fight on our side--that i've proof of!" then danton might have been grateful and given talleyrand a job, because a whole mass of things hang on knowing for sure who's your friend and who's your enemy. just think of us poor shopkeepers, for instance.' 'did red jacket let you tell, when he came back?' una asked. 'of course not. he said, "when cornplanter and i ask you what big hand said to the whites you can tell the lame chief. all that talk was left behind in the timber, as big hand ordered. tell the lame chief there will be no war. he can go back to france with that word." 'talleyrand and me hadn't met for a long time except at _emigré_ parties. when i give him the message he just shook his head. he was sorting buttons in the shop. '"i cannot return to france with nothing better than the word of an unsophisticated savage," he says. '"hasn't the president said anything to you?" i asked him. '"he has said everything that one in his position ought to say, but--but if only i had what he said to his cabinet after genêt rode off i believe i could change europe--the world, maybe." '"i'm sorry," i says. "maybe you'll do that without my help." 'he looked at me hard. "either you have unusual observation for one so young, or you choose to be insolent," he says. '"it was intended for a compliment," i says. "but no odds. we're off in a few days for our summer trip, and i've come to make my good-byes." '"i go on my travels too," he says. "if ever we meet again you may be sure i will do my best to repay what i owe you." '"without malice, abbé, i hope," i says. '"none whatever," says he. "give my respects to your adorable dr. pangloss (that was one of his side-names for toby) and the huron." i never _could_ teach him the difference betwixt hurons and senecas. 'then sister haga came in for a paper of what we call "pilly buttons," and that was the last i saw of talleyrand in those parts.' 'but after that you met napoleon, didn't you?' said una. 'wait just a little, dearie. after that, toby and i went to lebanon and the reservation, and, being older and knowing better how to manage him, i enjoyed myself well that summer with fiddling and fun. when we came back, the brethren got after toby because i wasn't learning any lawful trade, and he had hard work to save me from being apprenticed to helmbold and geyer the printers. 'twould have ruined our music together, indeed it would; and when we escaped that, old mattes roush, the leather-breeches maker round the corner, took a notion i was cut out for skin-dressing. but we were rescued. along towards christmas there comes a big sealed letter from the bank saying that a monsieur talleyrand had put five hundred dollars--a hundred pounds--to my credit there to use as i pleased. there was a little note from him inside--he didn't give any address--to thank me for past kindnesses and my believing in his future which he said was pretty cloudy at the time of writing. i wished toby to share the money. _i_ hadn't done more than bring talleyrand up to hundred and eighteen. the kindnesses were toby's. but toby said, "no! liberty and independence for ever. i have all my wants, my son." so i gave him a set of new fiddle-strings and the brethren didn't advise us any more. only pastor meder he preached about the deceitfulness of riches, and brother adam goose said if there was war the english 'ud surely shoot down the bank. _i_ knew there wasn't going to be any war, but i drew the money out and on red jacket's advice i put it into horse-flesh, which i sold to bob bicknell for the baltimore stage-coaches. that way, i doubled my money inside the twelvemonth.' 'you gipsy! you proper gipsy!' puck shouted. 'why not? 'twas fair buying and selling. well, one thing leading to another, in a few years i had made the beginning of a worldly fortune and was in the tobacco trade.' 'ah!' said puck, suddenly. 'might i inquire if you'd ever sent any news to your people in england--or in france?' 'o' course i had. i wrote regular every three months after i'd made money in the horse trade. we lees don't like coming home empty-handed. if it's only a turnip or an egg, it's something. oh yes, i wrote good and plenty to uncle aurette, and--dad don't read very quickly--uncle used to slip over newhaven way and tell dad what was going on in the tobacco trade.' 'i see-- 'aurettes and lees-- like as two peas. go on, brother square-toes,' said puck. pharaoh laughed and went on. 'talleyrand he'd gone up in the world same as me. he'd sailed to france again, and was a great man in the government there awhile, but they had to turn him out on account of some story about bribes from american shippers. all our poor _emigrés_ said he was surely finished this time, but red jacket and me we didn't think it likely, not unless he was quite dead. big hand had made his peace treaty with great britain, just _as_ he said he would, and there was a roaring trade 'twixt england and the united states for such as 'ud take the risk of being searched by british and french men-of-wars. those two was fighting, and just _as_ his gentlemen told big hand 'ud happen--the united states was catching it from both. if an english man-o'-war met an american ship he'd press half the best men out of her, and swear they was british subjects. most of 'em was! if a frenchman met her he'd, likely, have the cargo out of her, swearing it was meant to aid and comfort the english; and if a spaniard or a dutchman met her--they was hanging on to england's coat-tails too--lord only knows what _they_ wouldn't do! it came over me that what i wanted in my tobacco trade was a fast-sailing ship and a man who could be french, english, or american at a pinch. luckily i could lay my hands on both articles. so along towards the end of september in the year ' i sailed from philadelphia with a hundred and eleven hogshead o' good virginia tobacco, in the brig _berthe aurette_ named after mother's maiden name, hoping 'twould bring me luck, which she didn't--and yet she did.' 'where was you bound for?' puck asked. 'er--any port i found handiest. i didn't tell toby or the brethren. they don't understand the inns and outs of the tobacco trade.' puck coughed a small cough as he shifted a piece of wood with his bare foot. 'it's easy for you to sit and judge,' pharaoh cried. 'but think o' what _we_ had to put up with! we spread our wings and run across the broad atlantic like a hen through a horse-fair. even so, we was stopped by an english frigate, three days out. he sent a boat alongside and pressed seven able seamen. i remarked it was hard on honest traders, but the officer said they was fighting all creation and hadn't time to argue. the next english frigate we escaped with no more than a shot in our quarter. then we was chased two days and a night by a french privateer, firing between squalls, and the dirty little english ten-gun brig which made him sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men. that's how we reached to the chops of the channel. twelve good men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close besides our rudder; our mainsail looking like spectacles where the frenchman had hit us--and the channel crawling with short-handed british cruisers. put _that_ in your pipe and smoke it next time you grumble at the price of tobacco! 'well, then, to top it off, while we was trying to get at our leaks, a french lugger come swooping at us out o' the dusk. we warned him to keep away, but he fell aboard us, and up climbed his jabbering red-caps. we couldn't endure any more--indeed we couldn't. we went at 'em with all we could lay hands on. it didn't last long. they was fifty odd to our twenty-three. pretty soon i heard the cutlasses thrown down and some one bellowed for the _sacré_ captain. '"here i am!" i says. "i don't suppose it makes any odds to you thieves, but this is the united states brig _berthe aurette_." '"my aunt!" the man says, laughing. "why is she named that?" '"who's speaking?" i said. 'twas too dark to see, but i thought i knew the voice. '"enseigne de vaisseau estephe l'estrange," he sings out, and then i was sure. '"oh!" i says. "it's all in the family, i suppose, but you _have_ done a fine day's work, stephen." 'he whips out the binnacle-light and holds it to my face. he was young l'estrange, my full cousin, that i hadn't seen since the night the smack sank off telscombe tye--six years ago. '"whew!" he says. "that's why she was named for aunt berthe, is it? what's your share in her, pharaoh?" '"only half owner, but the cargo's mine." '"that's bad," he says. "i'll do what i can, but you shouldn't have fought us." '"steve," i says, "you aren't ever going to report our little fall-out as a fight! why, a revenue cutter 'ud laugh at it!" '"so'd i if i wasn't in the republican navy," he says. "but two of our men are dead, d'ye see, and i'm afraid i'll have to take you to the prize court at le havre." '"will they condemn my 'baccy?" i asks. '"to the last ounce. but i was thinking more of the ship. she'd make a sweet little craft for the navy if the prize court 'ud let me have her," he says. 'then i knew there was no hope. i don't blame him--a man must consider his own interests--but nigh every dollar i had was in ship or cargo, and steve kept on saying, "you shouldn't have fought us." 'well, then, the lugger took us to le havre, and that being the one time we _did_ want a british ship to rescue us, why o' course we never saw one. my cousin spoke his best for us at the prize court. he owned he'd no right to rush alongside in the face o' the united states flag, but we couldn't get over those two men killed, d'ye see, and the court condemned both ship and cargo. they was kind enough not to make us prisoners--only beggars--and young l'estrange was given the _berthe aurette_ to re-arm into the french navy. '"i'll take you round to boulogne," he says. "mother and the rest'll be glad to see you, and you can slip over to newhaven with uncle aurette. or you can ship with me, like most o' your men, and have a turn at king george's loose trade. there's plenty pickings," he says. 'crazy as i was, i couldn't help laughing. '"i've had my allowance of pickings and stealings," i says. "where are they taking my tobacco?" 'twas being loaded on to a barge. '"up the seine to be sold in paris," he says. "neither you nor i will ever touch a penny of that money." '"get me leave to go with it," i says. "i'll see if there's justice to be gotten out of our american ambassador." '"there's not much justice in this world," he says, "without a navy." but he got me leave to go with the barge and he gave me some money. that tobacco was all i had, and i followed it like a hound follows a snatched bone. going up the river i fiddled a little to keep my spirits up, as well as to make friends with the guard. they was only doing their duty. outside o' that they were the reasonablest o' god's creatures. they never even laughed at me. so we come to paris, by river; along in november, which the french had christened brumaire. they'd given new names to all the months, and after such an outrageous silly piece o' business as _that_, they wasn't likely to trouble 'emselves with my rights and wrongs. they didn't. the barge was laid up below notre dame church in charge of a caretaker, and he let me sleep aboard after i'd run about all day from office to office, seeking justice and fair dealing, and getting speeches concerning liberty. none heeded me. looking back on it i can't rightly blame 'em. i'd no money, my clothes was filthy mucked; i hadn't changed my linen in weeks, and i'd no proof of my claims except the ship's papers, which, they said, i might have stolen. the thieves! the doorkeeper to the american ambassador--for i never saw even the secretary--he swore i spoke french a sight too well for an american citizen. worse than that--i had spent my money, d'ye see, and i--i took to fiddling in the streets for my keep; and--and, a ship's captain with a fiddle under his arm--well, i _don't_ blame 'em that they didn't believe me. 'i come back to the barge one day--late in this month brumaire it was--fair beazled out. old maingon, the caretaker, he'd lit a fire in a bucket and was grilling a herring. '"courage, mon ami," he says. "dinner is served." '"i can't eat," i says. "i can't do any more. it's stronger than i am." '"bah!" he says. "nothing's stronger than a man. me, for example! less than two years ago i was blown up in the _orient_ in aboukir bay, but i descended again and hit the water like a fairy. look at me now," he says. he wasn't much to look at, for he'd only one leg and one eye, but the cheerfullest soul that ever trod shoe-leather. "that's worse than a hundred and eleven hogshead of 'baccy," he goes on. "you're young, too! what wouldn't i give to be young in france at this hour! there's nothing you couldn't do," he says. "the ball's at your feet--kick it!" he says. he kicks the old fire bucket with his peg-leg. "general buonaparte, for example!" he goes on. "that man's a babe compared to me, and see what he's done already. he's conquered egypt and austria and italy--oh! half europe!" he says, "and now he sails back to paris, and he sails out to st. cloud down the river here--_don't_ stare at the river, you young fool!--and all in front of these pig-jobbing lawyers and citizens he makes himself consul, which is as good as a king. he'll _be_ king, too, in the next three turns of the capstan--king of france, england, and the world! think o' that!" he shouts, "and eat your herring." 'i says something about boney. if he hadn't been fighting england i shouldn't have lost my 'baccy--should i? '"young fellow," says maingon, "you don't understand." 'we heard cheering. a carriage passed over the bridge with two in it. '"that's the man himself," says maingon. "he'll give 'em something to cheer for soon." he stands at the salute. '"who's t'other in black beside him?" i asks, fairly shaking all over. '"ah! he's the clever one. you'll hear of him before long. he's that scoundrel-bishop, talleyrand." '"it is!" i said, and up the steps i went with my fiddle, and run after the carriage calling, "abbé, abbé!" 'a soldier knocked the wind out of me with the back of his sword, but i had sense to keep on following till the carriage stopped--and there just was a crowd round the house-door! i must have been half-crazy else i wouldn't have struck up "_si le roi m'avait donné, paris la grande ville!_" i thought it might remind him. '"that is a good omen!" he says to boney sitting all hunched up; and he looks straight at me. '"abbé--oh, abbé!" i says. "don't you remember toby and hundred and eighteen second street?" 'he said not a word. he just crooked his long white finger to the guard at the door while the carriage steps were let down, and i skipped into the house, and they slammed the door in the crowd's face. '"you go there," says a soldier, and shoves me into an empty room, where i catched my first breath since i'd left the barge. presently i heard plates rattling next door--there were only folding doors between--and a cork drawn. "i tell you," some one shouts with his mouth full, "it was all that sulky ass sieyès' fault. only my speech to the five hundred saved the situation." '"did it save your coat?" says talleyrand. "i hear they tore it when they threw you out. don't gasconade to me. you may be in the road of victory, but you aren't there yet." 'then i guessed t'other man was boney. he stamped about and swore at talleyrand. '"you forget yourself, consul," says talleyrand, "or rather you remember yourself--corsican." '"pig!" says boney, and worse. '"emperor!" says talleyrand, but, the way he spoke, it sounded worst of all. some one must have backed against the folding doors, for they flew open and showed me in the middle of the room. boney whipped out his pistol before i could stand up. "general," says talleyrand to him, "this gentleman has a habit of catching us canaille _en déshabillé_. put that thing down." 'boney laid it on the table, so i guessed which was master. talleyrand takes my hand--"charmed to see you again, candide," he says. "how is the adorable dr. pangloss and the noble huron?" '"they were doing very well when i left," i said. "but i'm not." '"do _you_ sell buttons now?" he says, and fills me a glass of wine off the table. '"madeira," says he. "not so good as some i have drunk." '"you mountebank!" boney roars. "turn that out." (he didn't even say "man," but talleyrand, being gentle born, just went on.) '"pheasant is not so good as pork," he says. "you will find some at that table if you will do me the honour to sit down. pass him a clean plate, general." and, as true as i'm here, boney slid a plate along just like a sulky child. he was a lanky-haired, yellow-skinned little man, as nervous as a cat--and as dangerous. i could feel that. '"and now," said talleyrand, crossing his game leg over his sound one, "will you tell me your story?" 'i was in a fluster, but i told him nearly everything from the time he left me the five hundred dollars in philadelphia, up to my losing ship and cargo at le havre. boney began by listening, but after a bit he dropped into his own thoughts and looked at the crowd sideways through the front-room curtains. talleyrand called to him when i'd done. '"eh? what we need now," says boney, "is peace for the next three or four years." '"quite so," says talleyrand. "meantime i want the consul's order to the prize court at le havre to restore my friend here his ship." '"nonsense!" says boney. "give away an oak-built brig of two hundred and seven tons for sentiment? certainly not! she must be armed into my navy with ten--no, fourteen twelve-pounders and two long fours. is she strong enough to bear a long twelve forward?" 'now i could ha' sworn he'd paid no heed to my talk, but that wonderful head-piece of his seemingly skimmed off every word of it that was useful to him. '"ah, general!" says talleyrand. "you are a magician--a magician without morals. but the brig is undoubtedly american, and we don't want to offend them more than we have." '"need anybody talk about the affair?" he says. he didn't look at me, but i knew what was in his mind--just cold murder because i worried him; and he'd order it as easy as ordering his carriage. '"you can't stop 'em," i said. "there's twenty-two other men besides me." i felt a little more 'ud set me screaming like a wired hare. '"undoubtedly american," talleyrand goes on. "you would gain something if you returned the ship--with a message of fraternal good-will--published in the _moniteur_" (that's a french paper like the philadelphia _aurora_). '"a good idea!" boney answers. "one could say much in a message." '"it might be useful," says talleyrand. "shall i have the message prepared?" he wrote something in a little pocket ledger. '"yes--for me to embellish this evening. the _moniteur_ will publish it to-night." '"certainly. sign, please," says talleyrand, tearing the leaf out. '"but that's the order to return the brig," says boney. "is that necessary? why should i lose a good ship? haven't i lost enough ships already?" 'talleyrand didn't answer any of those questions. then boney sidled up to the table and jabs his pen into the ink. then he shies at the paper again: "my signature alone is useless," he says. "you must have the other two consuls as well. sieyès and roger ducos must sign. we must preserve the laws." '"by the time my friend presents it," says talleyrand, still looking out of the window, "only one signature will be necessary." 'boney smiles. "it's a swindle," says he, but he signed and pushed the paper across. '"give that to the president of the prize court at le havre," says talleyrand, "and he will give you back your ship. i will settle for the cargo myself. you have told me how much it cost. what profit did you expect to make on it?" 'well, then, as man to man, i was bound to warn him that i'd set out to run it into england without troubling the revenue, and so i couldn't rightly set bounds to my profits.' 'i guessed that all along,' said puck. 'there was never a lee to warminghurst-- that wasn't a smuggler last and first.' the children laughed. 'it's comical enough now,' said pharaoh. 'but i didn't laugh then. says talleyrand after a minute, "i am a bad accountant and i have several calculations on hand at present. shall we say twice the cost of the cargo?" 'say? i couldn't say a word. i sat choking and nodding like a china image while he wrote an order to his secretary to pay me, i won't say how much, because you wouldn't believe it. '"oh! bless you, abbé! god bless you!" i got it out at last. '"yes," he says, "i am a priest in spite of myself, but they call me bishop now. take this for my episcopal blessing," and he hands me the paper. '"he stole all that money from me," says boney over my shoulder. "a bank of france is another of the things we must make. are you mad?" he shouts at talleyrand. '"quite," says talleyrand, getting up. "but be calm; the disease will never attack you. it is called gratitude. this gentleman found me in the street and fed me when i was hungry." '"i see; and he has made a fine scene of it and you have paid him, i suppose. meantime, france waits." '"oh! poor france!" says talleyrand. "good-bye, candide," he says to me. "by the way," he says, "have you yet got red jacket's permission to tell me what the president said to his cabinet after monsieur genêt rode away?" 'i couldn't speak, i could only shake my head, and boney--so impatient he was to go on with his doings--he ran at me and fair pushed me out of the room. and that was all there was to it.' pharaoh stood up and slid his fiddle into one of his big skirt pockets as though it were a dead hare. 'oh! but we want to know lots and lots more,' said dan. 'how you got home--and what old maingon said on the barge--and wasn't your cousin surprised when he had to give back the _berthe aurette_, and----' 'tell us more about toby!' cried una. 'yes, and red jacket,' said dan. 'won't you tell us any more?' they both pleaded. puck kicked the oak branch on the fire, till it sent up a column of smoke that made them sneeze. when they had finished the shaw was empty except for old hobden stamping through the larches. 'they gipsies have took two,' he said: 'my black pullet and my liddle gingy-speckled cockrel.' 'i thought so,' said dan, picking up one tail-feather the old woman had overlooked. 'which way did they go? which way did the runagates go?' said hobden. 'hobby!' said una. 'would you like it if we told keeper ridley all your goings and comings?' 'poor honest men' your jar of virginny will cost you a guinea, which you reckon too much by five shillings or ten; but light your churchwarden and judge it according when i've told you the troubles of poor honest men. from the capes of the delaware, as you are well aware, we sail with tobacco for england--but then our own british cruisers, they watch us come through, sirs, and they press half a score of us poor honest men. or if by quick sailing (thick weather prevailing) we leave them behind (as we do now and then) we are sure of a gun from each frigate we run from, which is often destruction to poor honest men! broadsides the atlantic we tumble short-handed, with shot-holes to plug and new canvas to bend, and off the azores, dutch, dons and monsieurs are waiting to terrify poor honest men! napoleon's embargo is laid on all cargo which comfort or aid to king george may intend; and since roll, twist and leaf, of all comforts is chief, they try for to steal it from poor honest men! with no heart for fight, we take refuge in flight, but fire as we run, our retreat to defend, until our stern-chasers cut up her fore-braces, and she flies off the wind from us poor honest men! twix' the forties and fifties, south-eastward the drift is, and so, when we think we are making land's end, alas, it is ushant with half the king's navy, blockading french ports against poor honest men! but they may not quit station (which is our salvation), so swiftly we stand to the nor'ard again; and finding the tail of a homeward-bound convoy, we slip past the scillies like poor honest men. twix' the lizard and dover, we hand our stuff over, though i may not inform how we do it, nor when; but a light on each quarter low down on the water is well understanded by poor honest men! even then we have dangers from meddlesome strangers, who spy on our business and are not content to take a smooth answer, except with a handspike ... and they say they are murdered by poor honest men! to be drowned or be shot is our natural lot, why should we, moreover, be hanged in the end-- after all our great pains for to dangle in chains, as though we were smugglers, not poor honest men? the conversion of st. wilfrid eddi's service eddi, priest of st. wilfrid in the chapel at manhood end, ordered a midnight service for such as cared to attend. but the saxons were keeping christmas, and the night was stormy as well. nobody came to service though eddi rang the bell. 'wicked weather for walking,' said eddi of manhood end. 'but i must go on with the service for such as care to attend.' the altar candles were lighted,-- an old marsh donkey came, bold as a guest invited, and stared at the guttering flame. the storm beat on at the windows, the water splashed on the floor, and a wet yoke-weary bullock pushed in through the open door. 'how do i know what is greatest, how do i know what is least? that is my father's business,' said eddi, wilfrid's priest. 'but, three are gathered together-- listen to me and attend. i bring good news, my brethren!' said eddi, of manhood end. and he told the ox of a manger and a stall in bethlehem, and he spoke to the ass of a rider that rode to jerusalem. they steamed and dripped in the chancel, they listened and never stirred, while, just as though they were bishops, eddi preached them the word. till the gale blew off on the marshes and the windows showed the day, and the ox and the ass together wheeled and clattered away. and when the saxons mocked him, said eddi of manhood end, 'i dare not shut his chapel on such as care to attend.' the conversion of st. wilfrid they had bought peppermints up at the village, and were coming home past little st. barnabas's church, when they saw jimmy kidbrooke, the carpenter's baby, kicking at the churchyard gate, with a shaving in his mouth and the tears running down his cheeks. una pulled out the shaving and put in a peppermint. jimmy said he was looking for his grand-daddy--he never seemed to take much notice of his father--so they went up between the old graves, under the leaf-dropping limes, to the porch, where jim trotted in, looked about the empty church, and screamed like a gate-hinge. young sam kidbrooke's voice came from the bell-tower, and made them jump. 'why, jimmy,' he called, 'what are you doin' here? fetch him, father!' old mr. kidbrooke stumped downstairs, jerked jimmy on to his shoulder, stared at the children beneath his brass spectacles, and stumped back again. they laughed: it was so exactly like mr. kidbrooke. 'it's all right,' una called up the stairs. 'we found him, sam. does his mother know?' 'he's come off by himself. she'll be just about crazy,' sam answered. 'then i'll run down street and tell her.' una darted off. 'thank you, miss una. would you like to see how we're mendin' the bell-beams, mus' dan?' dan hopped up, and saw young sam lying on his stomach in a most delightful place among beams and ropes, close to the five great bells. old mr. kidbrooke on the floor beneath was planing a piece of wood, and jimmy was eating the shavings as fast as they came away. he never looked at jimmy; jimmy never stopped eating; and the broad gilt-bobbed pendulum of the church clock never stopped swinging across the white-washed wall of the tower. dan winked through the sawdust that fell on his up-turned face. 'ring a bell,' he called. 'i mustn't do that, but i'll buzz one of 'em a bit for you,' said sam. he pounded on the sound-bow of the biggest bell, and waked a hollow groaning boom that ran up and down the tower like creepy feelings down your back. just when it almost began to hurt, it died away in a hurry of beautiful sorrowful cries, like a wineglass rubbed with a wet finger. the pendulum clanked--one loud clank to each silent swing. dan heard una return from mrs. kidbrooke's, and ran down to fetch her. she was standing by the font staring at some one who kneeled at the altar rail. 'is that the lady who practises the organ?' she whispered. 'no. she's gone into the organ-place. besides, she wears black,' dan replied. the figure rose and came down the nave. it was a white-haired man in a long white gown with a sort of scarf looped low on the neck, one end hanging over his shoulder. his loose long sleeves were embroidered with gold, and a deep strip of gold embroidery waved and sparkled round the hem of his gown. 'go and meet him,' said puck's voice behind the font. 'it's only wilfrid.' 'wilfrid who?' said dan. 'you come along too.' 'wilfrid--saint of sussex, and archbishop of york. _i_ shall wait till he asks me.' he waved them forward. their feet squeaked on the old grave slabs in the centre aisle. the archbishop raised one hand with a pink ring on it, and said something in latin. he was very handsome, and his thin face looked almost as silvery as his thin circle of hair. 'are you alone?' he asked. 'puck's here, of course,' said una. 'do you know him?' 'i know him better now than i used to.' he beckoned over dan's shoulder, and spoke again in latin. puck pattered forward, holding himself as straight as an arrow. the archbishop smiled. 'be welcome,' said he. 'be very welcome.' 'welcome to you also, o prince of the church,' puck replied. the archbishop bowed his head and passed on, till he glimmered like a white moth in the shadow by the font. 'he does look awfully princely,' said una. 'isn't he coming back?' 'oh yes. he's only looking over the church. he's very fond of churches,' said puck. 'what's that?' the lady who practises the organ was speaking to the blower-boy behind the organ-screen. 'we can't very well talk here,' puck whispered. 'let's go to panama corner.' he led them to the end of the south aisle, where there is a slab of iron which says in queer, long-tailed letters: _orate p. annema jhone coline._ the children always called it panama corner. the archbishop moved slowly about the little church, peering at the old memorial tablets and the new glass windows. the lady who practises the organ began to pull out stops and rustle hymnbooks behind the screen. 'i hope she'll do all the soft lacey tunes--like treacle on porridge,' said una. 'i like the trumpety ones best,' said dan. 'oh, look at wilfrid! he's trying to shut the altar gates!' 'tell him he mustn't,' said puck, quite seriously. 'he can't, anyhow,' dan muttered, and tiptoed out of panama corner while the archbishop patted and patted at the carved gates that always sprang open again beneath his hand. 'that's no use, sir,' dan whispered. 'old mr. kidbrooke says altar-gates are just _the_ one pair of gates which no man can shut. he made 'em so himself.' the archbishop's blue eyes twinkled. dan saw that he knew all about it. 'i beg your pardon,' dan stammered--very angry with puck. 'yes, i know! he made them so himself.' the archbishop smiled, and crossed to panama corner, where una dragged up a certain padded arm-chair for him to sit on. the organ played softly. 'what does that music say?' he asked. una dropped into the chant without thinking: '"oh, all ye works of the lord, bless ye the lord; praise him and magnify him for ever." we call it the noah's ark, because it's all lists of things--beasts and birds and whales, you know.' 'whales?' said the archbishop quickly. 'yes--"o ye whales, and all that move in the waters,"' una hummed--'"bless ye the lord"--it sounds like a wave turning over, doesn't it?' 'holy father,' said puck with a demure face, 'is a little seal also "one who moves in the water"?' 'eh? oh yes--yess!' he laughed. 'a seal moves wonderfully in the waters. do the seal come to my island still?' puck shook his head. 'all those little islands have been swept away.' 'very possible. the tides ran fiercely down there. do you know the land of the sea-calf, maiden?' 'no--but we've seen seals--at brighton.' 'the archbishop is thinking of a little farther down the coast. he means seal's eye--selsea--down chichester way--where he converted the south saxons,' puck explained. 'yes--yess; if the south saxons did not convert me,' said the archbishop, smiling. 'the first time i was wrecked was on that coast. as our ship took ground and we tried to push her off, an old fat fellow, i remember, reared breast high out of the water, and scratched his head with his flipper as if he were saying: "what _does_ that respectable person with the pole think he is doing?" i was very wet and miserable, but i could not help laughing, till the natives came down and attacked us.' 'what did you do?' dan asked. 'one couldn't very well go back to france, so one tried to make them go back to the shore. all the south saxons are born wreckers, like my own northumbrian folk. i was bringing over a few things for my old church at york, and some of the natives laid hands on them, and--and i'm afraid i lost my temper.' 'it is said,' puck's voice was wickedly meek, 'that there was a great fight.' 'eh, but i must ha' been a silly lad.' wilfrid spoke with a sudden thick burr in his voice. he coughed, and took up his silvery tones again. 'there was no fight really. my men thumped a few of them, but the tide rose half an hour before its time, with a strong wind, and we backed off. what i wanted to say, though, was, that the seas about us were full of sleek seals watching the scuffle. my good eddi--my chaplain--insisted that they were demons. yes--yess! that was my first acquaintance with the south saxons and their seals.' 'but not the only time you were wrecked, was it?' said dan. 'alas, no! on sea and land my life seems to have been one long shipwreck,' he looked at the jhone coline slab as old hobden sometimes looks into the fire. 'ah, well!' 'but did you ever have any more adventures among the seals?' said una, after a pause. 'oh, the seals! i beg your pardon. they are the important things. yes--yess! i went back to the south saxons after twelve--fifteen years. no, i did not come by water, but overland from my own northumbria, to see what i could do. it's little one _can_ do with that class of native except make them stop killing each other and themselves----' 'why did they kill themselves?' una asked, her chin in her hand. 'because they were heathen. when they grew tired of life (as if they were the only people) they would jump into the sea. they called it going to wotan. it wasn't want of food always--by any means. a man would tell you that he felt grey in the heart, or a woman would say that she saw nothing but long days in front of her; and they'd saunter away to the mud-flats and--that would be the end of them, poor souls, unless one headed them off! one had to run quick, but one can't allow people to lay hands on themselves because they happen to feel grey. yes--yess! extraordinary people, the south saxons. disheartening, sometimes.... what does that say now?' the organ had changed tune again. 'only a hymn for next sunday,' said una. '"the church's one foundation." go on, please, about running over the mud. i should like to have seen you.' 'i dare say you would, and i really _could_ run in those days. ethelwalch the king gave me some five or six muddy parishes by the sea, and the first time my good eddi and i rode there we saw a man slouching along the slob, among the seals at manhood end. my good eddi disliked seals--but he swallowed his objections and ran like a hare.' 'why?' said dan. 'for the same reason that i did. we thought it was one of our people going to drown himself. as a matter of fact, eddi and i were nearly drowned in the pools before we overtook him. to cut a long story short, we found ourselves very muddy, very breathless, being quietly made fun of in good latin by a very well-spoken person. no--he'd no idea of going to wotan. he was fishing on his own beaches, and he showed us the beacons and turf-heaps that divided his lands from the church property. he took us to his own house, gave us a good dinner, some more than good wine, sent a guide with us into chichester, and became one of my best and most refreshing friends. he was a meon by descent, from the west edge of the kingdom; a scholar educated, curiously enough, at lyons, my old school; had travelled the world over, even to rome, and was a brilliant talker. we found we had scores of acquaintances in common. it seemed he was a small chief under king ethelwalch, and i fancy the king was somewhat afraid of him. the south saxons mistrust a man who talks too well. ah! _now_, i've left out the very point of my story. he kept a great grey-muzzled old dog-seal that he had brought up from a pup. he called it padda--after one of my clergy. it _was_ rather like fat, honest old padda. the creature followed him everywhere, and nearly knocked down my good eddi when we first met him. eddi loathed it. it used to sniff at his thin legs and cough at him. i can't say i ever took much notice of it (i was not fond of animals), till one day eddi came to me with a circumstantial account of some witchcraft that meon worked. he would tell the seal to go down to the beach the last thing at night, and bring him word of the weather. when it came back, meon might say to his slaves, "padda thinks we shall have wind to-morrow. haul up the boats!" i spoke to meon casually about the story, and he laughed. 'he told me he could judge by the look of the creature's coat and the way it sniffed what weather was brewing. quite possible. one need not put down everything one does not understand to the work of bad spirits--or good ones, for that matter.' he nodded towards puck, who nodded gaily in return. 'i say so,' he went on, 'because to a certain extent i have been made a victim of that habit of mind. some while after i was settled at selsea, king ethelwalch and queen ebba ordered their people to be baptized. i fear i'm too old to believe that a whole nation can change its heart at the king's command, and i had a shrewd suspicion that their real motive was to get a good harvest. no rain had fallen for two or three years, but as soon as we had finished baptizing, it fell heavily, and they all said it was a miracle.' 'and was it?' dan asked. 'everything in life is a miracle, but'--the archbishop twisted the heavy ring on his finger--'i should be slow--ve-ry slow should i be--to assume that a certain sort of miracle happens whenever lazy and improvident people say they are going to turn over a new leaf if they are paid for it. my friend meon had sent his slaves to the font, but he had not come himself, so the next time i rode over--to return a manuscript--i took the liberty of asking why. he was perfectly open about it. he looked on the king's action as a heathen attempt to curry favour with the christians' god through me the archbishop, and he would have none of it. "my dear man," i said, "admitting that that is the case, surely you, as an educated person, don't believe in wotan and all the other hobgoblins any more than padda here." the old seal was hunched up on his ox-hide behind his master's chair. '"even if i don't," he said, "why should i insult the memory of my fathers' gods? i have sent you a hundred and three of my rascals to christen. isn't that enough?" '"by no means," i answered. "i want _you_." '"he wants us! what do you think of that, padda?" he pulled the seal's whiskers till it threw back its head and roared, and he pretended to interpret. "no! padda says he won't be baptized yet awhile. he says you'll stay to dinner and come fishing with me to-morrow, because you're overworked and need a rest." '"i wish you'd keep yon brute in its proper place," i said, and eddi, my chaplain, agreed. '"i do," said meon. "i keep him just next my heart. he can't tell a lie, and he doesn't know how to love any one except me. it 'ud be the same if i were dying on a mud-bank, wouldn't it, padda?" '"augh! augh!" said padda, and put up his head to be scratched. 'then meon began to tease eddi: "padda says, if eddi saw his archbishop dying on a mud-bank eddi would tuck up his gown and run. padda knows eddi can run too! padda came into wittering church last sunday--all wet--to hear the music, and eddi ran out." 'my good eddi rubbed his hands and his shins together, and flushed. "padda is a child of the devil, who is the father of lies!" he cried, and begged my pardon for having spoken. i forgave him. '"yes. you are just about stupid enough for a musician," said meon. "but here he is. sing a hymn to him, and see if he can stand it. you'll find my small harp beside the fireplace." 'eddi, who is really an excellent musician, played and sang for quite half an hour. padda shuffled off his ox-hide, hunched himself on his flippers before him, and listened with his head thrown back. yes--yess! a rather funny sight! meon tried not to laugh, and asked eddi if he were satisfied. 'it takes some time to get an idea out of my good eddi's head. he looked at me. '"do you want to sprinkle him with holy water, and see if he flies up the chimney? why not baptize him?" said meon. 'eddi was really shocked. i thought it was bad taste myself. '"that's not fair," said meon. "you call him a demon and a familiar spirit because he loves his master and likes music, and when i offer you a chance to prove it you won't take it. look here! i'll make a bargain. i'll be baptized if you'll baptize padda too. he's more of a man than most of my slaves." '"one doesn't bargain--or joke--about these matters," i said. he was going altogether too far. '"quite right," said meon; "i shouldn't like any one to joke about padda. padda, go down to the beach and bring us to-morrow's weather!" 'my good eddi must have been a little over-tired with his day's work. "i am a servant of the church," he cried. "my business is to save souls, not to enter into fellowships and understandings with accursed beasts." '"have it your own narrow way," said meon. "padda, you needn't go." the old fellow flounced back to his ox-hide at once. '"man could learn obedience at least from that creature," said eddi, a little ashamed of himself. christians should not curse. '"don't begin to apologise just when i am beginning to like you," said meon. "we'll leave padda behind to-morrow--out of respect to your feelings. now let's go to supper. we must be up early to-morrow for the whiting." 'the next was a beautiful crisp autumn morning--a weather breeder, if i had taken the trouble to think; but it's refreshing to escape from kings and converts for half a day. we three went by ourselves in meon's smallest boat, and we got on the whiting near an old wreck, a mile or so off shore. meon knew the marks to a yard, and the fish were keen. yes--yess! a perfect morning's fishing! if a bishop can't be a fisherman, who can?' he twiddled his ring again. 'we stayed there a little too long, and while we were getting up our stone, down came the fog. after some discussion, we decided to row for the land. the ebb was just beginning to make round the point, and sent us all ways at once like a coracle.' 'selsea bill,' said puck under his breath. 'the tides run something furious there.' 'i believe you,' said the archbishop. 'meon and i have spent a good many evenings arguing as to where exactly we drifted. all i know is we found ourselves in a little rocky cove that had sprung up round us out of the fog, and a swell lifted the boat on to a ledge, and she broke up beneath our feet. we had just time to shuffle through the weed before the next wave. the sea was rising. '"it's rather a pity we didn't let padda go down to the beach last night," said meon. "he might have warned us this was coming." '"better fall into the hands of god than the hands of demons," said eddi, and his teeth chattered as he prayed. a nor'-west breeze had just got up--distinctly cool. '"save what you can of the boat," said meon; "we may need it," and we had to drench ourselves again, fishing out stray planks.' 'what for?' said dan. 'for firewood. we did not know when we should get off. eddi had flint and steel, and we found dry fuel in the old gulls' nests and lit a fire. it smoked abominably, and we guarded it with boat-planks up-ended between the rocks. one gets used to that sort of thing if one travels. unluckily i'm not so strong as i was. i fear i must have been a trouble to my friends. it was blowing a full gale before midnight. eddi wrung out his cloak, and tried to wrap me in it, but i ordered him on his obedience to keep it. however, he held me in his arms all the first night, and meon begged his pardon for what he'd said the night before--about eddi running away if he found me on a sandbank, you remember. '"you are right in half your prophecy," said eddi. "i have tucked up my gown, at any rate." (the wind had blown it over his head.) "now let us thank god for his mercies." '"hum!" said meon. "if this gale lasts, we stand a very fair chance of dying of starvation." '"if it be god's will that we live, god will provide," said eddi. "at least help me to sing to him." the wind almost whipped the words out of his mouth, but he braced himself against a rock and sang psalms. 'i'm glad i never concealed my opinion--from myself--that eddi was a better man than i. yet i have worked hard in my time--very hard! yes--yess! so the morning and the evening were our second day on that islet. there was rainwater in the rock pools, and, as a churchman, i knew how to fast, but i admit we were hungry. meon fed our fire chip by chip to eke it out, and they made me sit over it, the dear fellows, when i was too weak to object. meon held me in his arms the second night, just like a child. my good eddi was a little out of his senses, and imagined himself teaching a york choir to sing. even so, he was beautifully patient with them. 'i heard meon whisper, "if this keeps up we shall go to our gods. i wonder what wotan will say to me. he must know i don't believe in him. on the other hand, i can't do what ethelwalch finds so easy--curry favour with your god at the last minute, in the hope of being saved--as you call it. how do you advise, bishop?" '"my dear man," i said, "if that is your honest belief, i take it upon myself to say you had far better not curry favour with any god. but if it's only your jutish pride that holds you back, lift me up, and i'll baptize you even now." '"lie still," said meon. "i could judge better if i were in my own hall. but to desert one's fathers' gods--even if one doesn't believe in them--in the middle of a gale, isn't quite--what would you do yourself?" 'i was lying in his arms, kept alive by the warmth of his big, steady heart. it did not seem to me the time or the place for subtle arguments, so i answered, "no, i certainly should not desert my god." i don't see even now what else i could have said. '"thank you. i'll remember that, if i live," said meon, and i must have drifted back to my dreams about northumbria and beautiful france, for it was broad daylight when i heard him calling on wotan in that high, shaking heathen yell that i detest so. '"lie quiet. i'm giving wotan his chance," he said. our dear eddi ambled up, still beating time to his imaginary choir. '"yes. call on your gods," he cried, "and see what gifts they will send you. they are gone on a journey, or they are hunting." 'i assure you the words were not out of his mouth when old padda shot from the top of a cold wrinkled swell, drove himself over the weedy ledge, and landed fair in our laps with a rock-cod between his teeth. i could not help smiling at eddi's face. "a miracle! a miracle!" he cried, and kneeled down to clean the cod. '"you've been a long time winding us, my son," said meon. "now fish--fish for all our lives. we're starving, padda." 'the old fellow flung himself quivering like a salmon backward into the boil of the currents round the rocks, and meon said, "we're safe. i'll send him to fetch help when this wind drops. eat and be thankful." 'i never tasted anything so good as those rock-codlings we took from padda's mouth and half roasted over the fire. between his plunges padda would hunch up and purr over meon with the tears running down his face. i never knew before that seals could weep for joy--as i have wept. '"surely," said eddi, with his mouth full, "god has made the seal the loveliest of his creatures in the water. look how padda breasts the current! he stands up against it like a rock; now watch the chain of bubbles where he dives; and now--there is his wise head under that rock ledge! oh, a blessing be on thee, my little brother padda!" '"you _said_ he was a child of the devil!" meon laughed. '"there i sinned," poor eddi answered. "call him here, and i will ask his pardon. god sent him out of the storm to humble me, a fool." '"i won't ask you to enter into fellowships and understandings with any accursed brute," said meon, rather unkindly. "shall we say he was sent to our bishop as the ravens were sent to your prophet elijah?" '"doubtless that is so," said eddi. "i will write it so if i live to get home." '"no--no!" i said. "let us three poor men kneel and thank god for his mercies." 'we kneeled, and old padda shuffled up and thrust his head under meon's elbows. i laid my hand upon it and blessed him. so did eddi. '"and now, my son," i said to meon, "shall i baptize thee?" '"not yet," said he. "wait till we are well ashore and at home. no god in any heaven shall say that i came to him or left him because i was wet and cold. i will send padda to my people for a boat. is that witchcraft, eddi?" '"why, no. surely padda will go and pull them to the beach by the skirts of their gowns as he pulled me in wittering church to ask me to sing. only then i was afraid, and did not understand," said eddi. '"you are understanding now," said meon, and at a wave of his arm off went padda to the mainland, making a wake like a war-boat till we lost him in the rain. meon's people could not bring a boat across for some hours; even so it was ticklish work among the rocks in that tideway. but they hoisted me aboard, too stiff to move, and padda swam behind us, barking and turning somersaults all the way to manhood end!' 'good old padda!' murmured dan. 'when we were quite rested and re-clothed, and his people had been summoned--not an hour before--meon offered himself to be baptized.' 'was padda baptized too?' una asked. 'no, that was only meon's joke. but he sat blinking on his ox-hide in the middle of the hall. when eddi (who thought i wasn't looking) made a little cross in holy water on his wet muzzle, he kissed eddi's hand. a week before eddi wouldn't have touched him. _that_ was a miracle, if you like! but seriously, i was more glad than i can tell you to get meon. a rare and splendid soul that never looked back--never looked back!' the archbishop half closed his eyes. 'but, sir,' said puck, most respectfully, 'haven't you left out what meon said afterwards?' before the bishop could speak he turned to the children and went on: 'meon called all his fishers and ploughmen and herdsmen into the hall and he said: "listen, men! two days ago i asked our bishop whether it was fair for a man to desert his fathers' gods in a time of danger. our bishop said it was not fair. you needn't shout like that, because you are all christians now. my red war-boat's crew will remember how near we all were to death when padda fetched them over to the bishop's islet. you can tell your mates that even in that place, at that time, hanging on the wet, weedy edge of death, our bishop, a christian, counselled me, a heathen, to stand by my fathers' gods. i tell you now that a faith which takes care that every man shall keep faith, even though he may save his soul by breaking faith, is the faith for a man to believe in. so i believe in the christian god, and in wilfrid his archbishop, and in the church that wilfrid rules. you have been baptized once by the king's orders. i shall not have you baptized again; but if i find any more old women being sent to wotan, or any girls dancing on the sly before balder, or any men talking about thun or lok or the rest, i will teach you with my own hands how to keep faith with the christian god. go out quietly; you'll find a couple of beefs on the beach." then of course they shouted "hurrah!" which meant "thor help us!" and--i think you laughed, sir?' 'i think you remember it all too well,' said the archbishop, smiling. 'it was a joyful day for me. i had learned a great deal on that rock where padda found us. yes--yess! one should deal kindly with all the creatures of god, and gently with their masters. but one learns late.' he rose, and his gold-embroidered sleeves rustled thickly. the organ clacked and took deep breaths. 'wait a minute,' dan whispered. 'she's going to do the trumpety one. it takes all the wind you can pump. it's in latin, sir.' 'there is no other tongue,' the archbishop answered. 'it's not a real hymn,' una explained. 'she does it as a treat after her exercises. she isn't a real organist, you know. she just comes down here sometimes, from the albert hall.' 'oh, what a miracle of a voice!' said the archbishop. it rang out suddenly from a dark arch of lonely noises--every word spoken to the very end. 'dies irae, dies illa solvet saeclum in favilla teste david cum sibylla.' the archbishop caught his breath and moved forward. the music carried on by itself a while. 'now it's calling all the light out of the windows,' una whispered to dan. 'i think it's more like a horse neighing in battle,' he whispered back. the voice cried: 'tuba mirum spargens sonum per sepulchra regionum.' deeper and deeper the organ dived down, but far below its deepest note they heard puck's voice joining in the last line: 'coget omnes ante thronum.' as they looked in wonder, for it sounded like the dull jar of one of the very pillars shifting, the little fellow turned and went out through the south door. 'now's the sorrowful part, but it's very beautiful.' una found herself speaking to the empty chair in front of her. 'what are you doing that for?' dan said behind her. 'you spoke so politely too.' 'i don't know ... i thought ...' said una. 'funny!' ''tisn't. it's the part you like best,' dan grunted. the music had turned soft--full of little sounds that chased each other on wings across the broad gentle flood of the main tune. but the voice was ten times lovelier than the music. 'recordare jesu pie, quod sum causa tuae viae, ne me perdas illâ die!' there was no more. they moved out into the centre-aisle. ''that you?' the lady called as she shut the lid. 'i thought i heard you, and i played it on purpose.' 'thank you awfully,' said dan. 'we hoped you would, so we waited. come on, una, it's pretty nearly dinner-time.' song of the red war-boat shove off from the wharf-edge! steady! watch for a smooth! give way! if she feels the lop already she'll stand on her head in the bay. it's ebb--it's dusk--it's blowing, the shoals are a mile of white, but (snatch her along!) we're going to find our master to-night. for we hold that in all disaster of shipwreck, storm, or sword, a man must stand by his master when once he has pledged his word! raging seas have we rowed in, but we seldom saw them thus; our master is angry with odin-- odin is angry with us! heavy odds have we taken, but never before such odds. the gods know they are forsaken, we must risk the wrath of the gods! over the crest she flies from, into its hollow she drops, crouches and clears her eyes from the wind-torn breaker-tops, ere out on the shrieking shoulder of a hill-high surge she drives. meet her! meet her and hold her! pull for your scoundrel lives! the thunders bellow and clamour the harm that they mean to do; there goes thor's own hammer cracking the dark in two! close! but the blow has missed her, here comes the wind of the blow! row or the squall'll twist her broadside on to it!--_row!_ hearken, thor of the thunder! we are not here for a jest-- for wager, warfare, or plunder, or to put your power to test. this work is none of our wishing-- we would stay at home if we might-- but our master is wrecked out fishing, we go to find him to-night. for we hold that in all disaster-- as the gods themselves have said-- a man must stand by his master till one of the two is dead. that is our way of thinking, now you can do as you will, while we try to save her from sinking, and hold her head to it still. bale her and keep her moving, or she'll break her back in the trough ... who said the weather's improving, or the swells are taking off? * * * * * sodden, and chafed and aching, gone in the loins and knees-- no matter--the day is breaking, and there's far less weight to the seas! up mast, and finish baling-- in oars, and out with the mead-- the rest will be two-reef sailing ... that was a night indeed! but we hold that in all disaster (and faith, we have found it true!) if only you stand by your master, the gods will stand by you! a doctor of medicine an astrologer's song to the heavens above us o look and behold the planets that love us all harnessed in gold! what chariots, what horses, against us shall bide while the stars in their courses do fight on our side? all thought, all desires, that are under the sun, are one with their fires, as we also are one; all matter, all spirit, all fashion, all frame, receive and inherit their strength from the same. (oh, man that deniest all power save thine own, their power in the highest is mightily shown. not less in the lowest that power is made clear. oh, man, if thou knowest, what treasure is here!) earth quakes in her throes and we wonder for why! but the blind planet knows when her ruler is nigh; and, attuned since creation, to perfect accord, she thrills in her station and yearns to her lord. the waters have risen, the springs are unbound-- the floods break their prison, and ravin around. no rampart withstands 'em, their fury will last, till the sign that commands 'em sinks low or swings past. through abysses unproven, and gulfs beyond thought, our portion is woven, our burden is brought. yet they that prepare it, whose nature we share, make us who must bear it well able to bear. though terrors o'ertake us we'll not be afraid, no power can unmake us save that which has made. nor yet beyond reason nor hope shall we fall-- all things have their season, and mercy crowns all. then, doubt not, ye fearful-- the eternal is king-- up, heart, and be cheerful, and lustily sing:-- _what chariots, what horses, against us shall bide while the stars in their courses do fight on our side?_ a doctor of medicine they were playing hide-and-seek with bicycle lamps after tea. dan had hung his lamp on the apple tree at the end of the hellebore bed in the walled garden, and was crouched by the gooseberry bushes ready to dash off when una should spy him. he saw her lamp come into the garden and disappear as she hid it under her cloak. while he listened for her footsteps, somebody (they both thought it was phillips the gardener) coughed in the corner of the herb-beds. 'all right,' una shouted across the asparagus; 'we aren't hurting your old beds, phippsey!' she flashed her lantern towards the spot, and in its circle of light they saw a guy fawkes-looking man in a black cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, walking down the path beside puck. they ran to meet him, and the man said something to them about _rooms_ in their head. after a time they understood he was warning them not to catch colds. 'you've a bit of a cold yourself, haven't you?' said una, for he ended all his sentences with a consequential cough. puck laughed. 'child,' the man answered, 'if it hath pleased heaven to afflict me with an infirmity----' 'nay, nay,' puck struck in, 'the maid spoke out of kindness. _i_ know that half your cough is but a catch to trick the vulgar; and that's a pity. there's honesty enough in you, nick, without rasping and hawking.' 'good people'--the man shrugged his lean shoulders--'the vulgar crowd love not truth unadorned. wherefore we philosophers must needs dress her to catch their eye or--ahem!--their ear.' 'and what d'you think of _that_?' said puck solemnly to dan. 'i don't know,' he answered. 'it sounds like lessons.' 'ah--well! there have been worse men than nick culpeper to take lessons from. now, where can we sit that's not indoors?' 'in the hay-mow, next to old middenboro,' dan suggested. '_he_ doesn't mind.' 'eh?' mr. culpeper was stooping over the pale hellebore blooms by the light of una's lamp. 'does master middenboro need my poor services, then?' 'save him, no!' said puck. 'he is but a horse--next door to an ass, as you'll see presently. come!' their shadows jumped and slid on the fruit-tree walls. they filed out of the garden by the snoring pig-pound and the crooning hen-house, to the shed where middenboro the old lawn-mower pony lives. his friendly eyes showed green in the light as they set their lamps down on the chickens' drinking-trough outside, and pushed past to the hay-mow. mr. culpeper stooped at the door. 'mind where you lie,' said dan. 'this hay's full of hedge-brishings.' 'in! in!' said puck. 'you've lain in fouler places than this, nick. ah! let us keep touch with the stars!' he kicked open the top of the half door, and pointed to the clear sky. 'there be the planets you conjure with! what does your wisdom make of that wandering and variable star behind those apple boughs?' the children smiled. a bicycle that they knew well was being walked down the steep lane. 'where?' mr. culpeper leaned forward quickly. 'that? some countryman's lantern.' 'wrong, nick,' said puck. ''tis a singular bright star in virgo, declining towards the house of aquarius the water-carrier, who hath lately been afflicted by gemini. aren't i right, una?' mr. culpeper snorted contemptuously. 'no. it's the village nurse going down to the mill about some fresh twins that came there last week. nurse,' una called, as the light stopped on the flat, 'when can i see the morris twins? and how are they?' 'next sunday, perhaps. doing beautifully,' the nurse called back, and with a _ping-ping-ping_ of the bell brushed round the corner. 'her uncle's a vetinary surgeon near banbury,' una explained, 'and if you ring her bell at night, it rings right beside her bed--not downstairs at all. then she jumps up--she always keeps a pair of dry boots in the fender, you know--and goes anywhere she's wanted. we help her bicycle through gaps sometimes. most of her babies do beautifully. she told us so herself.' 'i doubt not, then, that she reads in my books,' said mr. culpeper quietly. 'twins at the mill!' he muttered half aloud. '"and again he sayeth, return, ye children of men."' 'are you a doctor or a rector?' una asked, and puck with a shout turned head over heels in the hay. but mr. culpeper was quite serious. he told them that he was a physician-astrologer--a doctor who knew all about the stars as well as all about herbs for medicine. he said that the sun, the moon, and five planets, called jupiter, mars, mercury, saturn, and venus, governed everybody and everything in the world. they all lived in houses--he mapped out some of them against the dark with a busy forefinger--and they moved from house to house like pieces at draughts; and they went loving and hating each other all over the skies. if you knew their likes and dislikes, he said, you could make them cure your patient and hurt your enemy, and find out the secret causes of things. he talked of these five planets as though they belonged to him, or as though he were playing long games against them. the children burrowed in the hay up to their chins, and looked out over the half door at the solemn, star-powdered sky till they seemed to be falling upside down into it, while mr. culpeper talked about 'trines' and 'oppositions' and 'conjunctions' and 'sympathies' and 'antipathies' in a tone that just matched things. a rat ran between middenboro's feet, and the old pony stamped. 'mid hates rats,' said dan, and passed him over a lock of hay. 'i wonder why.' 'divine astrology tells us,' said mr. culpeper. 'the horse, being a martial beast that beareth man to battle, belongs naturally to the red planet mars--the lord of war. i would show you him, but he's too near his setting. rats and mice, doing their businesses by night, come under the dominion of our lady the moon. now between mars and luna, the one red, t'other white, the one hot, t'other cold and so forth, stands, as i have told you, a natural antipathy, or, as you say, hatred. which antipathy their creatures do inherit. whence, good people, you may both see and hear your cattle stamp in their stalls for the self-same causes as decree the passages of the stars across the unalterable face of heaven! ahem!' puck lay along chewing a leaf. they felt him shake with laughter, and mr. culpeper sat up stiffly. 'i myself,' said he, 'have saved men's lives, and not a few neither, by observing at the proper time--there is a time, mark you, for all things under the sun--by observing, i say, so small a beast as a rat in conjunction with so great a matter as this dread arch above us.' he swept his hand across the sky. 'yet there are those,' he went on sourly, 'who have years without knowledge.' 'right,' said puck. 'no fool like an old fool.' mr. culpeper wrapped his cloak round him and sat still while the children stared at the great bear on the hill-top. 'give him time,' puck whispered behind his hand. 'he turns like a timber-tug--all of a piece.' 'ahem!' mr. culpeper said suddenly. 'i'll prove it to you. when i was physician to saye's horse, and fought the king--or rather the man charles stuart--in oxfordshire (i had _my_ learning at cambridge), the plague was very hot all around us. i saw it at close hands. he who says i am ignorant of the plague, for example, is altogether beside the bridge.' 'we grant it,' said puck solemnly. 'but why talk of the plague this rare night?' 'to prove my argument. this oxfordshire plague, good people, being generated among rivers and ditches, was of a werish, watery nature. therefore it was curable by drenching the patient in cold water, and laying him in wet cloths; or at least, so i cured some of them. mark this. it bears on what shall come after.' 'mark also, nick,' said puck, 'that we are not your college of physicians, but only a lad and a lass and a poor lubberkin. therefore be plain, old hyssop on the wall!' 'to be plain and in order with you, i was shot in the chest while gathering of betony from a brookside near thame, and was took by the king's men before their colonel, one blagg or bragge, whom i warned honestly that i had spent the week past among our plague-stricken. he flung me off into a cowshed, much like this here, to die, as i supposed; but one of their priests crept in by night and dressed my wound. he was a sussex man like myself.' 'who was that?' said puck suddenly. 'zack tutshom?' 'no, jack marget,' said mr. culpeper. 'jack marget of new college? the little merry man that stammered so? why a plague was stuttering jack at oxford then?' said puck. 'he had come out of sussex in hope of being made a bishop when the king should have conquered the rebels, as he styled us parliament men. his college had lent the king some monies too, which they never got again, no more than simple jack got his bishopric. when we met he had had a bitter bellyful of king's promises, and wished to return to his wife and babes. this came about beyond expectation, for, so soon as i could stand of my wound the man blagge made excuse that i had been among the plague, and jack had been tending me, to thrust us both out from their camp. the king had done with jack now that jack's college had lent the money, and blagge's physician could not abide me because i would not sit silent and see him butcher the sick. (he was a college of physicians man!) so blagge, i say, thrust us both out, with many vile words, for a pair of pestilent, prating, pragmatical rascals.' 'ha! called _you_ pragmatical, nick?' puck started up. 'high time oliver came to purge the land! how did you and honest jack fare next?' 'we were in some sort constrained to each other's company. i was for going to my house in spitalfields, he would go to his parish in sussex; but the plague was broke out and spreading through wiltshire, berkshire, and hampshire, and he was so mad distracted to think that it might even then be among his folks at home that i bore him company. he had comforted me in my distress. i could not have done less; and i remembered that i had a cousin at great wigsell, near by jack's parish. thus we footed it from oxford, cassock and buff coat together, resolute to leave wars on the left side henceforth; and either through our mean appearances, or the plague making men less cruel, we were not hindered. to be sure they put us in the stocks one half-day for rogues and vagabonds at a village under st. leonard's forest, where, as i have heard, nightingales never sing; but the constable very honestly gave me back my astrological almanac, which i carry with me.' mr. culpeper tapped his thin chest. 'i dressed a whitlow on his thumb. so we went forward. 'not to trouble you with impertinences, we fetched over against jack marget's parish in a storm of rain about the day's end. here our roads divided, for i would have gone on to my cousin at great wigsell, but while jack was pointing me out his steeple, we saw a man lying drunk, as he conceived, athwart the road. he said it would be one hebden, a parishioner, and till then a man of good life; and he accused himself bitterly for an unfaithful shepherd, that had left his flock to follow princes. but i saw it was the plague, and not the beginnings of it neither. they had set out the plague-stone, and the man's head lay on it.' 'what's a plague-stone?' dan whispered. 'when the plague is so hot in a village that the neighbours shut the roads against 'em, people set a hollowed stone, pot, or pan, where such as would purchase victual from outside may lay money and the paper of their wants, and depart. those that would sell come later--what will a man not do for gain?--snatch the money forth, and leave in exchange such goods as their conscience reckons fair value. i saw a silver groat in the water, and the man's list of what he would buy was rain-pulped in his wet hand. '"my wife! oh, my wife and babes!" says jack of a sudden, and makes up-hill--i with him. 'a woman peers out from behind a barn, crying out that the village is stricken with the plague, and that for our lives' sake we must avoid it. '"sweetheart!" says jack. "must i avoid thee?" and she leaps at him and says the babes are safe. she was his wife. 'when he had thanked god, even to tears, he tells me this was not the welcome he had intended, and presses me to flee the place while i was clean. '"nay! the lord do so to me and more also if i desert thee now," i said. "these affairs are, under god's leave, in some fashion my strength." '"oh, sir," she says, "are you a physician? we have none." '"then, good people," said i, "i must e'en justify myself to you by my works." '"look--look ye," stammers jack, "i took you all this time for a crazy roundhead preacher." he laughs, and she, and then i--all three together in the rain are overtook by an unreasonable gust or clap of laughter, which none the less eased us. we call it in medicine the hysterical passion. so i went home with 'em.' 'why did you not go on to your cousin at great wigsell, nick?' puck suggested. ''tis barely seven mile up the road.' 'but the plague was here,' mr. culpeper answered, and pointed up the hill. 'what else could i have done?' 'what were the parson's children called?' said una. 'elizabeth, alison, stephen, and charles--a babe. i scarce saw them at first, for i separated to live with their father in a cart-lodge. the mother we put--forced--into the house with her babes. she had done enough. 'and now, good people, give me leave to be particular in this case. the plague was worst on the north side of the street, for lack, as i showed 'em, of sunshine; which, proceeding from the _primum mobile_, or source of life (i speak astrologically), is cleansing and purifying in the highest degree. the plague was hot too by the corn-chandler's, where they sell forage to the carters; extreme hot in both mills along the river, and scatteringly in other places, _except_, mark you, at the smithy. mark here, that all forges and smith-shops belong to mars, even as corn and meat and wine-shops acknowledge venus for their mistress. there was no plague in the smithy at munday's lane----' 'munday's lane? you mean our village? i thought so when you talked about the two mills,' cried dan. 'where did we put the plague-stone? i'd like to have seen it.' 'then look at it now,' said puck, and pointed to the chickens' drinking-trough where they had set their bicycle lamps. it was a rough, oblong stone pan, rather like a small kitchen sink, which phillips, who never wastes anything, had found in a ditch and had used for his precious hens. 'that?' said dan and una, and stared, and stared, and stared. mr. culpeper made impatient noises in his throat and went on. 'i am at these pains to be particular, good people, because i would have you follow, so far as you may, the operations of my mind. that plague which i told you i had handled outside wallingford in oxfordshire was of a watery nature, conformable to the brookish riverine country it bred in, and curable, as i have said, by drenching in water. this plague of ours here, for all that it flourished along watercourses--every soul at both mills died of it,--could not be so handled. which brought me to a stand. ahem!' 'and your sick people in the meantime?' puck demanded. 'we persuaded them on the north side of the street to lie out in hitheram's field. where the plague had taken one, or at most two, in a house, folk would not shift for fear of thieves in their absence. they cast away their lives to die among their goods.' 'human nature,' said puck. 'i've seen it time and again. how did your sick do in the fields?' 'they died not near so thick as those that kept within doors, and even then they died more out of distraction and melancholy than plague. but i confess, good people, i could not in any sort master the sickness, or come at a glimmer of its nature or governance. to be brief, i was flat bewildered at the brute malignity of the disease, and so--did what i should have done before--dismissed all conjectures and apprehensions that had grown up within me, chose a good hour by my almanac, clapped my vinegar-cloth to my face, and entered some empty houses, resigned to wait upon the stars for guidance.' 'at night? were you not horribly frightened?' said puck. 'i dared to hope that the god who hath made man so nobly curious to search out his mysteries might not destroy a devout seeker. in due time--there is a time, as i have said, for everything under the sun--i spied a whitish rat, very puffed and scabby, which sat beneath the dormer of an attic through which shined our lady the moon. whilst i looked on him--and her--she was moving towards old cold saturn, her ancient ally--the rat creeped languishingly into her light, and there, before my eyes, died. presently his mate or companion came out, laid him down beside there, and in like fashion died too. later--an hour or less to midnight--a third rat did e'en the same; always choosing the moonlight to die in. this threw me into an amaze, since, as we know, the moonlight is favourable, not hurtful, to the creatures of the moon; and saturn, being friends with her, as you would say, was hourly strengthening her evil influence. yet these three rats had been stricken dead in very moonlight. i leaned out of the window to see which of heaven's host might be on our side, and there beheld i good trusty mars, very red and heated, bustling about his setting. i straddled the roof to see better. 'jack marget came up street going to comfort our sick in hitheram's field. a tile slipped under my foot. 'says he heavily enough, "watchman, what of the night?" "heart up, jack," says i. "methinks there's one fighting for us that, like a fool, i've forgot all this summer." my meaning was naturally the planet mars. '"pray to him then," says he. "i forgot him too this summer." 'he meant god, whom he always bitterly accused himself of having forgotten up in oxfordshire, among the king's men. i called down that he had made amends enough for his sin by his work among the sick, but he said he would not believe so till the plague was lifted from 'em. he was at his strength's end--more from melancholy than any just cause. i have seen this before among priests and over-cheerful men. i drenched him then and there with a half cup of waters, which i do not say cure the plague, but are excellent against heaviness of the spirits.' 'what were they?' said dan. 'white brandy rectified, camphor, cardamoms, ginger, two sorts of pepper, and aniseed.' 'whew!' said puck. 'waters you call 'em!' 'jack coughed on it valiantly, and went down hill with me. i was for the lower mill in the valley, to note the aspect of the heavens. my mind had already shadowed forth the reason, if not the remedy, for our troubles, but i would not impart it to the vulgar till i was satisfied. that practice may be perfect, judgment ought to be sound, and to make judgment sound is required an exquisite knowledge. ahem! i left jack and his lantern among the sick in hitheram's field. he still maintained the prayers of the so-called church, which were rightly forbidden by cromwell.' 'you should have told your cousin at wigsell,' said puck, 'and jack would have been fined for it, and you'd have had half the money. how did you come so to fail in your duty, nick?' mr. culpeper laughed--his only laugh that evening--and the children jumped at the loud neigh of it. 'we were not fearful of _men's_ judgment in those days,' he answered. 'now mark me closely, good people, for what follows will be to you, though not to me, remarkable. when i reached the empty mill, old saturn, low down in the house of the fishes, threatened the sun's rising-place. our lady the moon was moving towards the help of him (understand, i speak astrologically). i looked abroad upon the high heavens, and i prayed the maker of 'em for guidance. now mars sparklingly withdrew himself below the sky. on the instant of his departure, which i noted, a bright star or vapour leaped forth above his head (as though he had heaved up his sword), and broke all about in fire. the cocks crowed midnight through the valley, and i sat me down by the mill-wheel, chewing spearmint (though that's a herb of venus), and calling myself all the asses' heads in the world! 'twas plain enough _now_!' 'what was plain?' said una. 'the true cause and cure of the plague. mars, good fellow, had fought for us to the uttermost. faint though he had been in the heavens, and this had made me overlook him in my computations, he more than any of the other planets had kept the heavens--which is to say, had been visible some part of each night wellnigh throughout the year. therefore his fierce and cleansing influence, warring against the moon, had stretched out to kill those three rats under my nose, and under the nose of their natural mistress, the moon. i had known mars lean half across heaven to deal our lady the moon some shrewd blow from under his shield, but i had never before seen his strength displayed so effectual.' 'i don't understand a bit. do you mean mars killed the rats because he hated the moon?' said una. '_that_ is as plain as the pikestaff with which blagge's men pushed me forth,' mr. culpeper answered. 'i'll prove it. why had the plague not broken out at the blacksmith's shop in munday's lane? because, as i've shown you, forges and smithies belong naturally to mars, and, for his honour's sake, mars 'ud keep 'em clean from the creatures of the moon. but was it like, think you, that he'd come down and rat-catch in general for lazy, ungrateful mankind? that were working a willing horse to death. so then you can see that the meaning of the blazing star above him when he set was simply this: "destroy and burn the creatures of the moon, for they are at the root of your trouble. and thus, having shown you a taste of my power, good people, adieu."' 'did mars really say all that?' una whispered. 'yes, and twice so much as that to any one who had ears to hear. briefly, he enlightened me that the plague was spread by the creatures of the moon. the moon, our lady of ill-aspect, was the offender. my own poor wits showed me that i, nick culpeper, had the people in my charge, god's good providence aiding me, and no time to lose neither. 'i posted up the hill, and broke into hitheram's field amongst 'em all at prayers. '"eureka, good people!" i cried, and cast down a dead mill-rat which i'd found. "here's your true enemy, revealed at last by the stars." '"nay, but i'm praying," says jack. his face was as white as washed silver. '"there's a time for everything under the sun," says i. "if you would stay the plague, take and kill your rats." '"oh, mad, stark mad!" says he, and wrings his hands. 'a fellow lay in the ditch beside him, who bellows that he'd as soon die mad hunting rats as be preached to death on a cold fallow. they laughed round him at this, but jack marget falls on his knees, and very presumptuously petitions that he may be appointed to die to save the rest of his people. this was enough to thrust 'em back into their melancholy. '"you are an unfaithful shepherd, jack," i says. "take a bat" (which we call a stick in sussex) "and kill a rat if you die before sunrise. 'twill save your people." '"aye, aye. take a bat and kill a rat," he says ten times over, like a child, which moved 'em to ungovernable motions of that hysterical passion before mentioned, so that they laughed all, and at least warmed their chill bloods at that very hour--one o'clock or a little after--when the fires of life burn lowest. truly there is a time for everything; and the physician must work with it--ahem!--or miss his cure. to be brief with you, i persuaded 'em, sick or sound, to have at the whole generation of rats throughout the village. and there's a reason for all things too, though the wise physician need not blab 'em all. _imprimis_, or firstly, the mere sport of it, which lasted ten days, drew 'em most markedly out of their melancholy. i'd defy sorrowful job himself to lament or scratch while he's routing rats from a rick. _secundo_, or secondly, the vehement act and operation of this chase or war opened their skins to generous transpiration--more vulgarly, sweated 'em handsomely; and this further drew off their black bile--the mother of sickness. thirdly, when we came to burn the bodies of the rats, i sprinkled sulphur on the faggots, whereby the onlookers were as handsomely suffumigated. this i could not have compassed if i had made it a mere physician's business; they'd have thought it some conjuration. yet more, we cleansed, limed, and burned out a hundred foul poke-holes, sinks, slews, and corners of unvisited filth in and about the houses in the village, and by good fortune (mark here that mars was in opposition to venus) burned the corn-chandler's shop to the ground. mars loves not venus. will noakes the saddler dropped his lantern on a truss of straw while he was rat-hunting there.' 'had ye given will any of that gentle cordial of yours, nick, by any chance?' said puck. 'a glass--or two glasses--not more. but as i would say, in fine, when we had killed the rats, i took ash, slag, and charcoal from the smithy, and burnt earth from the brickyard (i reason that a brickyard belongs to mars), and rammed it with iron crowbars into the rat-runs and buries, and beneath all the house floors. the creatures of the moon hate all that mars hath used for his own clean ends. for example--rats bite not iron.' 'and how did poor stuttering jack endure it?' said puck. 'he sweated out his melancholy through his skin, and catched a loose cough, which i cured with electuaries, according to art. it is noteworthy, were i speaking among my equals, that the venom of the plague translated, or turned itself into, and evaporated, or went away as, a very heavy hoarseness and thickness of the head, throat, and chest. (observe from my books which planets govern these portions of man's body, and your darkness, good people, shall be illuminated--ahem!) none the less, the plague, _qua_ plague, ceased and took off (for we only lost three more, and two of 'em had it already on 'em) from the morning of the day that mars enlightened me by the lower mill.' he coughed--almost trumpeted--triumphantly. 'it is proved,' he jerked out. 'i say i have proved my contention, which is, that by divine astrology and humble search into the veritable causes of things--at the proper time--the sons of wisdom may combat even the plague.' 'h'm!' puck replied. 'for my own part i hold that a simple soul----' 'mine?--simple, forsooth?' said mr. culpeper. 'a very simple soul, a high courage tempered with sound and stubborn conceit, is stronger than all the stars in their courses. so i confess truly that you saved the village, nick.' 'i stubborn? i stiff-necked? i ascribed all my poor success, under god's good providence, to divine astrology. not to me the glory! you talk as that dear weeping ass jack marget preached before i went back to my work in red lion house, spitalfields. 'oh! stammering jack preached, did he? they say he loses his stammer in the pulpit.' 'and his wits with it. he delivered a most idolatrous discourse when the plague was stayed. he took for his text: "the wise man that delivered the city." i could have given him a better, such as: "there is a time for----"' 'but what made you go to church to hear him?' puck interrupted. 'wail attersole was your lawfully appointed preacher, and a dull dog he was!' mr. culpeper wriggled uneasily. 'the vulgar,' said he, 'the old crones and--ahem--the children, alison and the others, they dragged me to the house of rimmon by the hand. i was in two minds to inform on jack for maintaining the mummeries of the falsely called church, which, i'll prove to you, are founded merely on ancient fables----' 'stick to your herbs and planets,' said puck, laughing. 'you should have told the magistrates, nick, and had jack fined. again, why did you neglect your plain duty?' 'because--because i was kneeling, and praying, and weeping with the rest of 'em at the altar rails. in medicine this is called the hysterical passion. it may be--it may be.' 'that's as may be,' said puck. they heard him turn the hay. 'why, your hay is half hedge-brishings,' he said. 'you don't expect a horse to thrive on oak and ash and thorn leaves, do you?' * * * * * _ping-ping-ping_ went the bicycle bell round the corner. nurse was coming back from the mill. 'is it all right?' una called. 'all quite right,' nurse called back. 'they're to be christened next sunday.' 'what? what?' they both leaned forward across the half-door. it could not have been properly fastened, for it opened, and tilted them out with hay and leaves sticking all over them. 'come on! we must get those two twins' names,' said una, and they charged up-hill shouting over the hedge, till nurse slowed up and told them. when they returned, old middenboro had got out of his stall, and they spent a lively ten minutes chasing him in again by starlight. 'our fathers of old' excellent herbs had our fathers of old-- excellent herbs to ease their pain-- alexanders and marigold, eyebright, orris, and elecampane, basil, rocket, valerian, rue, (almost singing themselves they run) vervain, dittany, call-me-to-you-- cowslip, melilot, rose of the sun. anything green that grew out of the mould was an excellent herb to our fathers of old. wonderful tales had our fathers of old-- wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars-- the sun was lord of the marigold, basil and rocket belonged to mars. pat as a sum in division it goes-- (every plant had a star bespoke)-- who but venus should govern the rose? who but jupiter own the oak? simply and gravely the facts are told in the wonderful books of our fathers of old. wonderful little, when all is said, wonderful little our fathers knew. half their remedies cured you dead-- most of their teaching was quite untrue-- 'look at the stars when a patient is ill, (dirt has nothing to do with disease,) bleed and blister as much as you will, blister and bleed him as oft as you please.' whence enormous and manifold errors were made by our fathers of old. yet when the sickness was sore in the land, and neither planet nor herb assuaged, they took their lives in their lancet-hand and, oh, what a wonderful war they waged! yes, when the crosses were chalked on the door-- yes, when the terrible dead-cart rolled, excellent courage our fathers bore-- excellent heart had our fathers of old. none too learned, but nobly bold into the fight went our fathers of old. if it be certain, as galen says, and sage hippocrates holds as much-- 'that those afflicted by doubts and dismays are mightily helped by a dead man's touch,' then, be good to us, stars above! then, be good to us, herbs below! we are afflicted by what we can prove; we are distracted by what we know-- so--ah so! down from your heaven or up from your mould, send us the hearts of our fathers of old! simple simon the thousandth man one man in a thousand, solomon says, will stick more close than a brother. and it's worth while seeking him half your days if you find him before the other. nine hundred and ninety-nine depend on what the world sees in you, but the thousandth man will stand your friend with the whole round world agin you. 'tis neither promise nor prayer nor show will settle the finding for 'ee. nine hundred and ninety-nine of 'em go by your looks or your acts or your glory. but if he finds you and you find him, the rest of the world don't matter; for the thousandth man will sink or swim with you in any water. you can use his purse with no more shame than he uses yours for his spendings; and laugh and mention it just the same as though there had been no lendings. nine hundred and ninety-nine of 'em call for silver and gold in their dealings; but the thousandth man he's worth 'em all, because you can show him your feelings! his wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right, in season or out of season. stand up and back it in all men's sight-- with _that_ for your only reason! nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bide the shame or mocking or laughter, but the thousandth man will stand by your side to the gallows-foot--and after! simple simon cattiwow came down the steep lane with his five-horse timber-tug. he stopped by the woodlump at the back gate to take off the brakes. his real name was brabon, but the first time the children met him, years and years ago, he told them he was 'carting wood,' and it sounded so exactly like 'cattiwow' that they never called him anything else. 'hi!' una shouted from the top of the woodlump, where they had been watching the lane. 'what are you doing? why weren't we told?' 'they've just sent for me,' cattiwow answered. 'there's a middlin' big log sticked in the dirt at rabbit shaw, and'--he flicked his whip back along the line--'so they've sent for us all.' dan and una threw themselves off the woodlump almost under black sailor's nose. cattiwow never let them ride the big beam that makes the body of the timber-tug, but they hung on behind while their teeth thuttered. the wood road beyond the brook climbs at once into the woods, and you see all the horses' backs rising, one above another, like moving stairs. cattiwow strode ahead in his sackcloth woodman's petticoat, belted at the waist with a leather strap; and when he turned and grinned, his red lips showed under his sackcloth-coloured beard. his cap was sackcloth too, with a flap behind, to keep twigs and bark out of his neck. he navigated the tug among pools of heather-water that splashed in their faces, and through clumps of young birches that slashed at their legs, and when they hit an old toadstooled stump, they never knew whether it would give way in showers of rotten wood, or jar them back again. at the top of rabbit shaw half-a-dozen men and a team of horses stood round a forty-foot oak log in a muddy hollow. the ground about was poached and stoached with sliding hoof-marks, and a wave of dirt was driven up in front of the butt. 'what did you want to bury her for this way?' said cattiwow. he took his broad-axe and went up the log tapping it. 'she's sticked fast,' said 'bunny' lewknor, who managed the other team. cattiwow unfastened the five wise horses from the tug. they cocked their ears forward, looked, and shook themselves. 'i believe sailor knows,' dan whispered to una. 'he do,' said a man behind them. he was dressed in flour sacks like the others, and he leaned on his broad-axe, but the children, who knew all the wood gangs, knew he was a stranger. in his size and oily hairiness he might have been bunny lewknor's brother, except that his brown eyes were as soft as a spaniel's, and his rounded black beard, beginning close up under them, reminded una of the walrus in _the walrus and the carpenter_. 'don't he just about know?' he said shyly, and shifted from one foot to the other. 'yes. "what cattiwow can't get out of the woods must have roots growing to her"'--dan had heard old hobden say this a few days before. at that minute puck pranced up, picking his way through the pools of black water in the ling. 'look _out_!' cried una, jumping forward. 'he'll see you, puck!' 'me and mus' robin are pretty middlin' well acquainted,' the man answered with a smile that made them forget all about walruses. 'this is simon cheyneys,' puck began, and cleared his throat. 'shipbuilder of rye port; burgess of the said town, and the only----' 'oh, look! look ye! that's a knowing one,' said the man. cattiwow had fastened his team to the thin end of the log, and was moving them about with his whip till they stood at right angles to it, heading downhill. then he grunted. the horses took the strain, beginning with sailor next the log, like a tug-of-war team, and dropped almost to their knees. the log shifted a nail's breadth in the clinging dirt, with the noise of a giant's kiss. 'you're getting her!' simon cheyneys slapped his knee. 'hing on! hing on, lads, or she'll master ye! ah!' sailor's left hind hoof had slipped on a heather-tuft. one of the men whipped off his sack apron and spread it down. they saw sailor feel for it, and recover. still the log hung, and the team grunted in despair. 'hai!' shouted cattiwow, and brought his dreadful whip twice across sailor's loins with the crack of a shot-gun. the horse almost screamed as he pulled that extra last ounce which he did not know was in him. the thin end of the log left the dirt and rasped on dry gravel. the butt ground round like a buffalo in his wallow. quick as an axe-cut, lewknor snapped on his five horses, and sliding, trampling, jingling, and snorting, they had the whole thing out on the heather. 'dat's the very first time i've knowed you lay into sailor--to hurt him,' said lewknor. 'it is,' said cattiwow, and passed his hand over the two wheals. 'but i'd ha' laid my own brother open at that pinch. now we'll twitch her down the hill a piece--she lies just about right--and get her home by the low road. my team'll do it, bunny; you bring the tug along. mind out!' he spoke to the horses, who tightened the chains. the great log half rolled over, and slowly drew itself out of sight downhill, followed by the wood gang and the timber-tug. in half a minute there was nothing to see but the deserted hollow of the torn-up dirt, the birch undergrowth still shaking, and the water draining back into the hoof-prints. 'ye heard him?' simon cheyneys asked. 'he cherished his horse, but he'd ha' laid him open in that pinch.' 'not for his own advantage,' said puck quickly. ''twas only to shift the log.' 'i reckon every man born of woman has his log to shift in the world--if so be you're hintin' at any o' frankie's doings. _he_ never hit beyond reason or without reason,' said simon. '_i_ never said a word against frankie,' puck retorted, with a wink at the children. 'an' if i did, do it lie in your mouth to contest my say-so, seeing how you----' 'why don't it lie in my mouth, seeing i was the first which knowed frankie for all he was?' the burly sack-clad man puffed down at cool little puck. 'yes, and the first which set out to poison him--frankie--on the high seas----' simon's angry face changed to a sheepish grin. he waggled his immense hands, but puck stood off and laughed mercilessly. 'but let me tell you, mus' robin,' he pleaded. 'i've heard the tale. tell the children here. look, dan! look, una!'--puck's straight brown finger levelled like an arrow. 'there's the only man that ever tried to poison sir francis drake!' 'oh, mus' robin! tidn't fair. you've the 'vantage of us all in your upbringin's by hundreds o' years. 'stands to nature you know all the tales against every one.' he turned his soft eyes so helplessly on una that she cried, 'stop ragging him, puck! you know he didn't really.' 'i do. but why are you so sure, little maid?' 'because--because he doesn't look like it,' said una stoutly. 'i thank you,' said simon to una. 'i--i was always trustable like with children if you let me alone, you double handful o' mischief!' he pretended to heave up his axe on puck; and then his shyness overtook him afresh. 'where did you know sir francis drake?' said dan, not relishing being called a child. 'at rye port, to be sure,' said simon, and seeing dan's bewilderment, repeated it. 'yes, but look here,' said dan. 'drake he was a devon man. the song says so.' '"_and_ ruled the devon seas,"' una went on. 'that's what i was thinking--if you don't mind.' simon cheyneys seemed to mind very much indeed, for he swelled in silence while puck laughed. 'hutt!' he burst out at last, 'i've heard that talk too. if you listen to them west country folk, you'll listen to a pack o' lies. i believe frankie was born somewhere out west among the shires, but his father had to run for it when frankie was a baby, because the neighbours was wishful to kill him, d'ye see? he run to chatham, old parson drake did, an' frankie was brought up in a old hulks of a ship moored in the medway river, same as it might ha' been the rother. brought up _at_ sea, you might say, before he could walk _on_ land--nigh chatham in kent. and ain't kent back-door to sussex? and don't that make frankie sussex? o' course it do. devon man! bah! those west country boats they're always fishin' in other folks' water.' 'i beg your pardon,' said dan. 'i'm sorry.' 'no call to be sorry. you've been misled. i met frankie at rye port when my uncle, that was the shipbuilder there, pushed me off his wharf-edge on to frankie's ship. frankie had put in from chatham with his rudder splutted, and a man's arm--moon's that 'ud be--broken at the tiller. "take this boy aboard an' drown him," says my uncle, "and i'll mend your rudder-piece for love."' 'what did your uncle want you drowned for?' said una. 'that was only his fashion of say-so, same as mus' robin. i'd a foolishness in my head that ships could be builded out of iron. yes--iron ships! i'd made me a liddle toy one of iron plates beat out thin--and she floated a wonder! but my uncle, bein' a burgess of rye, and a shipbuilder, he 'prenticed me to frankie in the fetchin' trade, to cure this foolishness.' 'what was the fetchin' trade?' dan interrupted. 'fetchin' poor flemishers and dutchmen out o' the low countries into england. the king o' spain, d'ye see, he was burnin' 'em in those parts, for to make 'em papishers, so frankie he fetched 'em away to _our_ parts, and a risky trade it was. his master wouldn't never touch it while he lived, but he left his ship to frankie when he died, and frankie turned her into this fetchin' trade. outrageous cruel hard work--on besom black nights bulting back and forth off they dutch roads with shoals on all sides, and having to hark out for the _frish-frish-frish_-like of a spanish galliwopses' oars creepin' up on ye. frankie 'ud have the tiller and moon he'd peer forth at the bows, our lantern under his skirts, till the boat we was lookin' for 'ud blurt up out o' the dark, and we'd lay hold and haul aboard whoever 'twas--man, woman, or babe,--an' round we'd go again, the wind bewling like a kite in our riggin's, and they'd drop into the hold and praise god for happy deliverance till they was all sick. 'i had nigh a year at it, an' we must have fetched off--oh, a hundred pore folk, i reckon. outrageous bold, too, frankie growed to be. outrageous cunning he was. once we was as near as nothing nipped by a tall ship off tergo sands in a snowstorm. she had the wind of us, and spooned straight before it, shooting all bow guns. frankie fled inshore smack for the beach, till he was atop of the first breakers. then he hove his anchor out, which nigh tore our bows off, but it twitched us round end-for-end into the wind, d'ye see, an' we clawed off them sands like a drunk man rubbin' along a tavern bench. when we could see, the spanisher was laid flat along in the breakers with the snows whitening on his wet belly. he thought he could go where frankie went.' 'what happened to the crew?' said una. 'we didn't stop,' simon answered. 'there was a very liddle new baby in our hold, and the mother, she wanted to get to some dry bed middlin' quick. we runned into dover, and said nothing.' 'was sir francis drake very much pleased?' 'heart alive, maid, he'd no head to his name in those days. he was just a outrageous, valiant, crop-haired, tutt-mouthed boy roarin' up an' down the narrer seas, with his beard not yet quilled out. he made a laughing-stock of everything all day, and he'd hold our lives in the bight of his arm all the besom-black night among they dutch sands; and we'd ha' jumped overside to behove him any one time, all of us.' 'then why did you try to poison him?' una asked wickedly, and simon hung his head like a shy child. 'oh, that was when he set me to make a pudden, for because our cook was hurted. _i_ done my uttermost, but she all fetched adrift like in the bag, an' the more i biled the bits of her, the less she favoured any fashion o' pudden. moon he chawed and chammed his piece, and frankie chawed and chammed his'n, and--no words to it--he took me by the ear an' walked me out over the bow-end, an' him an' moon hove the pudden at me on the bowsprit gub by gub, something cruel hard!' simon rubbed his hairy cheek. '"nex' time you bring me anything," says frankie, "you bring me cannon-shot an' i'll know what i'm getting." but as for poisoning----' he stopped, the children laughed so. 'of course you didn't,' said una. 'oh, simon, we _do_ like you!' 'i was always likeable with children.' his smile crinkled up through the hair round his eyes. 'simple simon they used to call me through our yard gates.' 'did sir francis mock you?' dan asked. 'ah, no. he was gentle-born. laugh he did--he was always laughing--but not so as to hurt a feather. an' i loved 'en. i loved 'en before england knew 'en, or queen bess she broke his heart.' 'but he hadn't really done anything when you knew him, had he?' una insisted. 'armadas and those things, i mean.' simon pointed to the scars and scrapes left by cattiwow's great log. 'you tell me that that good ship's timber never done nothing against winds and weathers since her upspringing, and i'll confess ye that young frankie never done nothing neither. nothing? he adventured and suffered and made shift on they dutch sands _as_ much in any one month as ever he had occasion for to do in a half-year on the high seas afterwards. an' what was his tools? a coaster boat--a liddle box o' walty plankin' an' some few fathom feeble rope held together an' made able by _him_ sole. he drawed our spirits up in our bodies same as a chimney-towel draws a fire. 'twas in him, and it comed out all times and shapes.' 'i wonder did he ever 'magine what he was going to be? tell himself stories about it?' said dan with a flush. 'i expect so. we mostly do--even when we're grown. but bein' frankie, he took good care to find out beforehand what his fortune might be. had i rightly ought to tell 'em this piece?' simon turned to puck, who nodded. 'my mother, she was just a fair woman, but my aunt, her sister, she had gifts by inheritance laid up in her,' simon began. 'oh, that'll never do,' cried puck, for the children stared blankly. 'do you remember what robin promised to the widow whitgift so long as her blood and get lasted?'[ ] [ ] see 'dymchurch flit' in _puck of pook's hill_. 'yes. there was always to be one of them that could see farther through a millstone than most,' dan answered promptly. 'well, simon's aunt's mother,' said puck slowly, 'married the widow's blind son on the marsh, and simon's aunt was the one chosen to see farthest through millstones. do you understand?' 'that was what i was gettin' at,' said simon, 'but you're so desperate quick. my aunt she knew what was coming to people. my uncle being a burgess of rye, he counted all such things odious, and my aunt she couldn't be got to practise her gifts hardly at all, because it hurted her head for a week afterwards; but when frankie heard she had 'em, he was all for nothing till she foretold on him--till she looked in his hand to tell his fortune, d'ye see? one time we was at rye she come aboard with my other shirt and some apples, and he fair beazled the life out of her about it. '"oh, you'll be twice wed, and die childless," she says, and pushes his hand away. '"that's the woman's part," he says. "what'll come to me--to me?" an' he thrusts it back under her nose. '"gold--gold, past belief or counting," she says. "let go 'o me, lad." '"sink the gold!" he says. "what'll i _do_, mother?" he coaxed her like no woman could well withstand. i've seen him with 'em--even when they were sea-sick. '"if you _will_ have it," she says at last, "you shall have it. you'll do a many things, and eating and drinking with a dead man beyond the world's end will be the least of them. for you'll open a road from the east unto the west, and back again, and you'll bury your heart with your best friend by that road-side, and the road you open none shall shut so long as you're let lie quiet in your grave."[ ] [ ] the old lady's prophecy is in a fair way to come true, for when the panama canal is finished, one end of it will open into the very bay where sir francis drake was buried. then ships will be taken through the canal, and the road round cape horn which sir francis opened will be abandoned. '"and if i'm not?" he says. '"why then," she says, "sim's iron ships will be sailing on dry land. now ha' done with this foolishness. where's sim's shirt?" 'he couldn't fetch no more out of her, and when we come up from the cabin, he stood mazed like by the tiller, playing with a apple. '"my sorrow!" says my aunt; "d'ye see that? the great world lying in his hand, liddle and round like a apple." '"why, 'tis one you gived him," i says. '"to be sure," she says. "'tis just a apple," and she went ashore with her hand to her head. it always hurted her to show her gifts. [illustration: 'you'll open a road from the east unto the west, and back again.'--p. .] 'him and me puzzled over that talk plenty. it sticked in his mind quite extravagant. the very next time we slipped out for some fetchin' trade, we met mus' stenning's boat over by calais sands; and he warned us that the spanishers had shut down all their dutch ports against us english, and their galliwopses was out picking up our boats like flies off hogs' backs. mus' stenning he runs for shoreham, but frankie held on a piece, knowin' that mus' stenning was jealous of our good trade. over by dunkirk a great gor-bellied spanisher, with the cross on his sails, came rampin' at us. we left him. we left him all they bare seas to conquest in. '"looks like this road was going to be shut pretty soon," says frankie, humouring her at the tiller. "i'll have to open that other one your aunt foretold of." '"the spanisher's crowdin' down on us middlin' quick," i says. '"no odds," says frankie, "he'll have the inshore tide against him. did your aunt say i was to lie quiet in my grave for ever?" '"till my iron ships sailed dry land," i says. '"that's foolishness," he says. "who cares where frankie drake makes a hole in the water now or twenty years from now?" 'the spanisher kept muckin' on more and more canvas. i told him so. '"he's feelin' the tide," was all he says. "if he was among tergoes sands with this wind, we'd be picking his bones proper. i'd give my heart to have all their tall ships there some night before a north gale, and me to windward. there'd be gold in my hands then. did your aunt say she saw the world settin' in my hand, sim?" '"yes, but 'twas a apple," says i, and he laughed like he always did at me. "do you ever feel minded to jump overside and be done with everything?" he asks after a while. '"no. what water comes aboard is too wet as 'tis," i says. "the spanisher's going about." '"i told you," says he, never looking back. "he'll give us the pope's blessing as he swings. come down off that rail. there's no knowin' where stray shots may hit." so i came down off the rail, and leaned against it, and the spanisher he ruffled round in the wind, and his port-lids opened all red inside. '"now what'll happen to my road if they don't let me lie quiet in my grave?" he says. "does your aunt mean there's two roads to be found and kept open--or what does she mean? i don't like that talk about t'other road. d'you believe in your iron ships, sim?" 'he knowed i did, so i only nodded, and he nodded back again. '"anybody but me 'ud call you a fool, sim," he says. "lie down. here comes the pope's blessing!" 'the spanisher gave us his broadside as he went about. they all fell short except one that smack-smooth hit the rail behind my back, an' i felt most won'erful cold. '"be you hit anywhere to signify?" he says. "come over to me." '"o lord, mus' drake," i says, "my legs won't move," and that was the last i spoke for months.' 'why? what had happened?' cried dan and una together. 'the rail had jarred me in here like.' simon reached behind him clumsily. 'from my shoulders down i didn't act no shape. frankie carried me piggy-back to my aunt's house, and i lay bed-rid and tongue-tied while she rubbed me day and night, month in and month out. she had faith in rubbing with the hands. p'raps she put some of her gifts into it, too. last of all, something loosed itself in my pore back, and lo! i was whole restored again, but kitten-feeble. '"where's frankie?" i says, thinking i'd been a longish while abed. '"down-wind amongst the dons--months ago," says my aunt. '"when can i go after 'en?" i says. '"your duty's to your town and trade now," says she. "your uncle he died last michaelmas and he've left you and me the yard. so no more iron ships, mind ye." '"what?" i says. "and you the only one that beleft in 'em!" '"maybe i do still," she says, "but i'm a woman before i'm a whitgift, and wooden ships is what england needs us to build. i lay it on ye to do so." 'that's why i've never teched iron since that day--not to build a toy ship of. i've never even drawed a draft of one for my pleasure of evenings.' simon smiled down on them all. 'whitgift blood is terrible resolute--on the she-side,' said puck. 'didn't you ever see sir francis drake again?' dan asked. 'with one thing and another, and my being made a burgess of rye, i never clapped eyes on him for the next twenty years. oh, i had the news of his mighty doings the world over. they was the very same bold, cunning shifts and passes he'd worked with beforetimes off they dutch sands, but, naturally, folk took more note of them. when queen bess made him knight, he sent my aunt a dried orange stuffed with spiceries to smell to. she cried outrageous on it. she blamed herself for her foretellings, having set him on his won'erful road; but i reckon he'd ha' gone that way all withstanding. curious how close she foretelled it! the world in his hand like an apple, an' he burying his best friend, mus' doughty----' 'never mind for mus' doughty,' puck interrupted. 'tell us where you met sir francis next.' 'oh, ha! that was the year i was made a burgess of rye--the same year which king philip sent his ships to take england without frankie's leave.' 'the armada!' said dan contentedly. 'i was hoping that would come.' '_i_ knowed frankie would never let 'em smell london smoke, but plenty good men in rye was two-three minded about the upshot. 'twas the noise of the gun-fire terrified us. the wind favoured it our way from off behind the isle of wight. it made a mutter like, which growed and growed, and by the end of a week women was shruckin' in the streets. then _they_ come sliddering past fairlight in a great smoky pat vambrished with red gun-fire, and our ships flying forth and ducking in again. the smoke-pat sliddered over to the french shore, so i knowed frankie was edging the spanishers toward they dutch sands where he was master. i says to my aunt, "the smoke's thinning out. i lay frankie's just about scrapin' his hold for a few last rounds shot. 'tis time for me to go." '"never in them clothes," she says. "do on the doublet i bought you to be made burgess in, and don't you shame this day." 'so i mucked it on, and my chain, and my stiffed dutch breeches and all. '"i be comin', too," she says from her chamber, and forth she come pavisanding like a peacock--stuff, ruff, stomacher and all. she was a notable woman.' 'but how did you go? you haven't told us,' said una. 'in my own ship--but half-share was my aunt's. in the _antony of rye_ to be sure; and not empty-handed. i'd been loadin' her for three days with the pick of our yard. we was ballasted on cannon-shot of all three sizes; and iron rods and straps for his carpenters; and a nice passel of clean three-inch oak planking and hide breech-ropes for his cannon, and gubs of good oakum, and bolts o' canvas, and all the sound rope in the yard. what else could i ha' done? _i_ knowed what he'd need most after a week's such work. i'm a shipbuilder, little maid. 'we'd a fair slant o' wind off dungeness, and we crept on till it fell light airs and puffed out. the spanishers was all in a huddle over by calais, and our ships was strawed about mending 'emselves like dogs lickin' bites. now and then a spanisher would fire from a low port, and the ball 'ud troll across the flat swells, but both sides was finished fightin' for that tide. 'the first ship we foreslowed on, her breast-works was crushed in, an' men was shorin' 'em up. she said nothing. the next was a black pinnace, his pumps clackin' middling quick, and he said nothing. but the third, mending shot holes, he spoke out plenty. i asked him where mus' drake might be, and a shiny-suited man on the poop looked down into us, and saw what we carried. '"lay alongside, you!" he says. "we'll take that all." '"'tis for mus' drake," i says, keeping away lest his size should lee the wind out of my sails. '"hi! ho! hither! we're lord high admiral of england! come alongside, or we'll hang ye," he says. ''twas none of my affairs who he was if he wasn't frankie, and while he talked so hot i slipped behind a green-painted ship with her top-sides splintered. we was all in the middest of 'em then. '"hi! hoi!" the green ship says. "come alongside, honest man, and i'll buy your load. i'm fenner that fought the seven portugals--clean out of shot or bullets. frankie knows me." '"ay, but i don't," i says, and i slacked nothing. 'he was a masterpiece. seein' i was for goin' on, he hails a bridport hoy beyond us and shouts, "george! oh, george! wing that duck. he's fat!" an' true as we're all here, that squatty bridport boat rounds to acrost our bows, intending to stop us by means o' shooting. 'my aunt looks over our rail. "george," she says, "you finish with your enemies afore you begin on your friends." 'him that was laying the liddle swivel-gun at us sweeps off his hat an' calls her queen bess, and asks if she was selling liquor to pore dry sailors. my aunt answered him quite a piece. she was a notable woman. 'then _he_ come up--his long pennant trailing overside--his waistcloths and netting tore all to pieces where the spanishers had grappled, and his sides black-smeared with their gun-blasts like candle-smoke in a bottle. we hooked on to a lower port and hung. '"oh, mus' drake! mus' drake," i calls up. 'he stood on the great anchor cathead, his shirt open to the middle, and his face shining like the sun. '"why, sim!" he says. just like that--after twenty year! "sim," he says, "what brings you?" '"pudden," i says, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "you told me to bring cannon-shot next time, an' i've brought 'em." 'he saw we had. he ripped out a fathom and a half o' brimstone spanish, and he swung down on our rail, and he kissed me before all his fine young captains. his men was swarming out of the lower ports ready to unload us. when he saw how i'd considered all his likely wants, he kissed me again. '"here's a friend that sticketh closer than a brother!" he says. "mistress," he says to my aunt, "all you foretold on me was true. i've opened that road from the east to the west, and i've buried my heart beside it." "i know," she says. "that's why i be come." '"but ye never foretold this"; he points to both they great fleets. '"this don't seem to me to make much odds compared to what happens _to_ a man," she says. "do it?" '"certain sure a man forgets to remember when he's proper mucked up with work. sim," he says to me, "we must shift every living spanisher round dunkirk corner on to our dutch sands before morning. the wind'll come out of the north after this calm--same as it used--and then they're our meat." '"amen," says i. "i've brought you what i could scutchel up of odds and ends. be you hit anywhere to signify?" '"oh, our folk'll attend to all that when we've time," he says. he turns to talk to my aunt, while his men flew the stuff out of our hold. i think i saw old moon amongst 'em, but we was too busy to more than nod like. yet the spanishers was going to prayers with their bells and candles before we'd cleaned out the _antony_. twenty-two ton o' useful stuff i'd fetched him. '"now, sim," says my aunt, "no more devouring of mus' drake's time. he's sending us home in the bridport hoy. i want to speak to them young springalds again." '"but here's our ship all ready and swept," i says. '"swep' an' garnished," says frankie. "i'm going to fill her with devils in the likeness o' pitch and sulphur. we must shift the dons round dunkirk corner, and if shot can't do it, we'll send down fireships." '"i've given him my share of the _antony_," says my aunt. "what do you reckon to do about yours?" '"she offered it," said frankie, laughing. '"she wouldn't have if i'd overheerd her," i says; "because i'd have offered my share first." then i told him how the _antony's_ sails was best trimmed to drive before the wind, and seeing he was full of occupations we went acrost to that bridport hoy, and left him. 'but frankie was gentle-born, d'ye see, and that sort they never overlook any folks' dues. 'when the hoy passed under his stern, he stood bare-headed on the poop same as if my aunt had been his queen, and his musicianers played "mary ambree" on their silver trumpets quite a long while. heart alive, little maid! i never meaned to make you look sorrowful----' * * * * * bunny lewknor in his sackcloth petticoats burst through the birch scrub wiping his forehead. 'we've got the stick to rights now! she've been a whole hatful o' trouble. you come an' ride her home, mus' dan and miss una!' they found the proud wood-gang at the foot of the slope, with the log double-chained on the tug. 'cattiwow, what are you going to do with it?' said dan, as they straddled the thin part. 'she's going down to rye to make a keel for a lowestoft fishin' boat, i've heard. hold tight!' cattiwow cracked his whip, and the great log dipped and tilted, and leaned and dipped again, exactly like a stately ship upon the high seas. frankie's trade old horn to all atlantic said: (_a-hay o! to me o!_) 'now where did frankie learn his trade? for he ran me down with a three-reef mains'le.' (_all round the horn!_) atlantic answered:--'not from me! you'd better ask the cold north sea, for he ran me down under all plain canvas.' (_all round the horn!_) the north sea answered:--'he's my man, for he came to me when he began-- frankie drake in an open coaster.' (_all round the sands!_) 'i caught him young and i used him sore, so you never shall startle frankie more, without capsizing earth and her waters. (_all round the sands!_) 'i did not favour him at all, i made him pull and i made him haul-- and stand his trick with the common sailors. (_all round the sands!_) 'i froze him stiff and i fogged him blind, and kicked him home with his road to find by what he could see of a three-day snow-storm. (_all round the sands!_) 'i learned him his trade o' winter nights, 'twixt mardyk fort and dunkirk lights on a five-knot tide with the forts a-firing. (_all round the sands!_) 'before his beard began to shoot, i showed him the length of the spaniard's foot-- and i reckon he clapped the boot on it later. (_all round the sands!_) 'if there's a risk which you can make that's worse than he was used to take nigh every week in the way of his business; (_all round the sands!_) 'if there's a trick that you can try which he hasn't met in time gone by, not once or twice, but ten times over; (_all round the sands!_) 'if you can teach him aught that's new, (_a-hay o! to me o!_) i'll give you bruges and niewport too, and the ten tall churches that stand between 'em.' _storm along my gallant captains!_ (_all round the horn!_) the tree of justice the ballad of minepit shaw about the time that taverns shut and men can buy no beer, two lads went up by the keepers' hut to steal lord pelham's deer. night and the liquor was in their heads-- they laughed and talked no bounds, till they waked the keepers on their beds, and the keepers loosed the hounds. they had killed a hart, they had killed a hind, ready to carry away, when they heard a whimper down the wind and they heard a bloodhound bay. they took and ran across the fern, their crossbows in their hand, till they met a man with a green lantern that called and bade 'em stand. 'what are ye doing, o flesh and blood, and what's your foolish will, that you must break into minepit wood and wake the folk of the hill?' 'oh, we've broke into lord pelham's park, and killed lord pelham's deer, and if ever you heard a little dog bark you'll know why we come here! 'we ask you let us go our way, as fast as we can flee, for if ever you heard a bloodhound bay, you'll know how pressed we be.' 'oh, lay your crossbows on the bank and drop the knife from your hand, and though the hounds are at your flank i'll save you where you stand!' they laid their crossbows on the bank they threw their knives in the wood, and the ground before them opened and sank and saved 'em where they stood. 'oh, what's the roaring in our ears that strikes us well-nigh dumb?' 'oh, that is just how things appears according as they come.' 'what are the stars before our eyes that strike us well-nigh blind?' 'oh, that is just how things arise according as you find.' 'and why's our bed so hard to the bones excepting where it's cold?' 'oh, that's because it is precious stones excepting where 'tis gold.' 'think it over as you stand, for i tell you without fail, if you haven't got into fairyland you're not in lewes gaol.' all night long they thought of it, and, come the dawn, they saw they'd tumbled into a great old pit, at the bottom of minepit shaw. and the keepers' hound had followed 'em close and broke her neck in the fall; so they picked up their knives and their crossbows and buried the dog. that's all. but whether the man was a poacher too or a pharisee so bold-- i reckon there's more things told than are true, and more things true than are told. the tree of justice it was a warm, dark winter day with the sou'-west wind singing through dallington forest, and the woods below the beacon. the children set out after dinner to find old hobden, who had a three months' job in the rough at the back of pound's wood. he had promised to get them a dormouse in its nest. the bright leaf still clung to the beech coppice; the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. they worked their way by their own short cuts to the edge of pound's wood, and heard a horse's feet just as they came to the beech where ridley the keeper hangs up the vermin. the poor little fluffy bodies dangled from the branches--some perfectly good, but most of them dried to twisted strips. 'three more owls,' said dan, counting. 'two stoats, four jays, and a kestrel. that's ten since last week. ridley's a beast.' 'in my time this sort of tree bore heavier fruit.' sir richard dalyngridge[ ] reined up his grey horse, swallow, in the ride behind them. 'what play do you make?' he asked. [ ] this is the norman knight they met the year before in _puck of pook's hill_. see 'young men at the manor,' 'the knights of the joyous venture,' and 'old men at pevensey,' in that book. 'nothing, sir. we're looking for old hobden,' dan replied. 'he promised to get us a sleeper.' 'sleeper? a _dormeuse_ do you say?' 'yes, a dormouse, sir.' 'i understand. i passed a woodman on the low grounds. come!' he wheeled up the ride again, and pointed through an opening to the patch of beech-stubs, chestnut, hazel, and birch that old hobden would turn into firewood, hop-poles, pea-boughs, and house-faggots before spring. the old man was as busy as a beaver. something laughed beneath a thorn, and puck stole out, his finger on his lip. 'look!' he whispered. 'along between the spindle trees. ridley has been there this half-hour.' the children followed his point, and saw ridley the keeper in an old dry ditch, watching hobden as a cat watches a mouse. 'huhh!' cried una. 'hobden always 'tends to his wires before breakfast. he puts his rabbits into the faggots he's allowed to take home. he'll tell us about 'em to-morrow.' 'we had the same breed in my day,' sir richard replied, and moved off quietly, puck at his bridle, the children on either side between the close-trimmed beech stuff. 'what did you do to them?' said dan, as they repassed ridley's terrible tree. 'that!' sir richard jerked his head toward the dangling owls. 'not he,' said puck. 'there was never enough brute norman in you to hang a man for taking a buck.' 'i--i cannot abide to hear their widows screech. but why am i on horseback while you are afoot?' he dismounted lightly, tapped swallow on the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the narrow ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. he walked as though all the woods belonged to him. 'i have often told my friends,' he went on, 'that red william the king was not the only norman found dead in a forest while he hunted.' 'd'you mean william rufus?' said dan. 'yes,' said puck, kicking a clump of red toadstools off a dead log. 'for example, there was a knight new from normandy,' sir richard went on, 'to whom henry our king granted a manor in kent near by. he chose to hang his forester's son the day before a deer-hunt that he gave to pleasure the king.' 'now when would that be?' said puck, and scratched an ear thoughtfully. 'the summer of the year king henry broke his brother robert of normandy at tenchebrai fight. our ships were even then at pevensey loading for the war.' 'what happened to the knight?' dan asked. 'they found him pinned to an ash, three arrows through his leather coat. _i_ should have worn mail that day.' 'and did you see him all bloody?' dan continued. 'nay, i was with de aquila at pevensey, counting horse-shoes, and arrow sheaves, and ale-barrels into the holds of the ships. the army only waited for our king to lead them against robert in normandy, but he sent word to de aquila that he would hunt with him here before he set out for france.' 'why did the king want to hunt so particularly?' una demanded. 'if he had gone straight to france after the kentish knight was killed, men would have said he feared being slain like the knight. it was his duty to show himself debonair to his english people as it was de aquila's duty to see that he took no harm while he did it. but it was a great burden! de aquila, hugh, and i ceased work on the ships, and scoured all the honour of the eagle--all de aquila's lands--to make a fit, and, above all, a safe sport for our king. look!' the ride twisted, and came out on the top of pound's hill wood. sir richard pointed to the swells of beautiful, dappled dallington, that showed like a woodcock's breast up the valley. 'ye know the forest?' said he. 'you ought to see the bluebells there in spring!' said una. 'i have seen,' said sir richard, gazing, and stretched out his hand. 'hugh's work and mine was first to move the deer gently from all parts into dallington yonder, and there to hold them till the king came. next, we must choose some three hundred beaters to drive the deer to the stands within bowshot of the king. here was our trouble! in the mellay of a deer-drive a saxon peasant and a norman king may come over close to each other. the conquered do not love their conquerors all at once. so we needed sure men, for whom their village or kindred would answer in life, cattle, and land if any harm come to the king. ye see?' 'if one of the beaters shot the king,' said puck, 'sir richard wanted to be able to punish that man's village. then the village would take care to send a good man.' 'so! so it was. but, lest our work should be too easy, the king had done such a dread justice over at salehurst, for the killing of the kentish knight (twenty-six men he hanged, as i heard), that our folk were half-mad with fear before we began. it is easier to dig out a badger gone to earth than a saxon gone dumb-sullen. and atop of their misery the old rumour waked that harold the saxon was alive and would bring them deliverance from us normans. this has happened every autumn since senlac fight.' 'but king harold was killed at hastings,' said una. 'so it was said, and so it was believed by us normans, but our saxons always believed he would come again. _that_ rumour did not make our work any more easy.' sir richard strode on down the far slope of the wood, where the trees thin out. it was fascinating to watch how he managed his long spurs among the lumps of blackened ling. 'but we did it!' he said. 'after all, a woman is as good as a man to beat the woods, and the mere word that deer are afoot makes cripples and crones young again. de aquila laughed when hugh told him over the list of beaters. half were women; and many of the rest were clerks--saxon and norman priests. 'hugh and i had not time to laugh for eight days, till de aquila, as lord of pevensey, met our king and led him to the first shooting stand--by the mill on the edge of the forest. hugh and i--it was no work for hot heads or heavy hands--lay with our beaters on the skirts of dallington to watch both them and the deer. when de aquila's great horn blew we went forward, a line half a league long. oh, to see the fat clerks, their gowns tucked up, puffing and roaring, and the sober millers dusting the undergrowth with their staves; and, like as not, between them a saxon wench, hand in hand with her man, shrilling like a kite as she ran, and leaping high through the fern, all for joy of the sport.' '_ah! how! ah! how! how-ah! sa-how-ah!_' puck bellowed without warning, and swallow bounded forward, ears cocked, and nostrils cracking. '_hal-lal-lal-lal-la-hai-ie!_' sir richard answered in a high clear shout. the two voices joined in swooping circles of sound, and a heron rose out of a red osier bed below them, circling as though he kept time to the outcry. swallow quivered and swished his glorious tail. they stopped together on the same note. a hoarse shout answered them across the bare woods. 'that's old hobden,' said una. 'small blame to him. it is in his blood,' said puck. 'did your beaters cry so, sir richard?' 'my faith, they forgot all else. (steady, swallow, steady!) they forgot where the king and his people waited to shoot. they followed the deer to the very edge of the open till the first flight of wild arrows from the stands flew fair over them. 'i cried, "'ware shot! 'ware shot!" and a knot of young knights new from normandy, that had strayed away from the grand stand, turned about, and in mere sport loosed off at our line shouting: "'ware senlac arrows! 'ware senlac arrows!" a jest, i grant you, but too sharp. one of our beaters answered in saxon: "'ware new forest arrows! 'ware red william's arrow!" so i judged it time to end the jests, and when the boys saw my old mail gown (for, to shoot with strangers _i_ count the same as war), they ceased shooting. so _that_ was smoothed over, and we gave our beaters ale to wash down their anger. they were excusable! we--they had sweated to show our guests good sport, and our reward was a flight of hunting-arrows which no man loves, and worse, a churl's jibe over hard-fought, fair-lost hastings fight. so, before the next beat, hugh and i assembled and called the beaters over by name, to steady them. the greater part we knew, but among the netherfield men i saw an old, old man, in the dress of a pilgrim. 'the clerk of netherfield said he was well known by repute for twenty years as a witless man that journeyed without rest to all the shrines of england. the old man sits, saxon fashion, head between fists. we normans rest our chin on our left palm. '"who answers for him?" said i. "if he fails in his duty, who will pay his fine?" '"who will pay my fine?" the pilgrim said. "i have asked that of all the saints in england these forty years, less three months and nine days! they have not answered!" when he lifted his thin face i saw he was one-eyed, and frail as a rushlight. '"nay but, father," i said, "to whom hast thou commended thyself?" he shook his head, so i spoke in saxon: "whose man art thou?" '"i think i have a writing from rahere, the king's jester," said he after a while. "i am, as i suppose, rahere's man." 'he pulled a writing from his scrip, and hugh coming up, read it. 'it set out that the pilgrim was rahere's man, and that rahere was the king's jester. there was latin writ at the back. '"what a plague conjuration's here?" said hugh, turning it over. "_pum-quum-sum oc-occ._ magic?" '"black magic," said the clerk of netherfield (he had been a monk at battle). "they say rahere is more of a priest than a fool and more of a wizard than either. here's rahere's name writ, and there's rahere's red cockscomb sign drawn below for such as cannot read." he looked slyly at me. '"then read it," said i, "and show thy learning." he was a vain little man, and he gave it us after much mouthing. '"the charm, which i think is from virgilius the sorcerer, says: 'when thou art once dead, and minos (which is a heathen judge) has doomed thee, neither cunning, nor speechcraft, nor good works will restore thee!' a terrible thing! it denies any mercy to a man's soul!" '"does it serve?" said the pilgrim, plucking at hugh's cloak. "oh, man of the king's blood, does it cover me?" 'hugh was of earl godwin's blood, and all sussex knew it, though no saxon dared call him kingly in a norman's hearing. there can be but one king. '"it serves," said hugh. "but the day will be long and hot. better rest here. we go forward now." '"no, i will keep with thee, my kinsman," he answered like a child. he was indeed childish through great age. 'the line had not moved a bowshot when de aquila's great horn blew for a halt, and soon young fulke--our false fulke's son--yes, the imp that lit the straw in pevensey castle[ ]--came thundering up a woodway. [ ] see 'old men at pevensey' in _puck of pook's hill_. '"uncle," said he (though he was a man grown, he called me uncle), "those young norman fools who shot at you this morn are saying that your beaters cried treason against the king. it has come to harry's long ears, and he bids you give account of it. there are heavy fines in his eye, but i am with you to the hilt, uncle." 'when the boy had fled back, hugh said to me: "it was rahere's witless man cried, ''ware red william's arrow!' i heard him, and so did the clerk of netherfield." '"then rahere must answer to the king for his man," said i. "keep him by you till i send," and i hastened down. 'the king was with de aquila in the grand stand above welansford down in the valley yonder. his court--knights and dames--lay glittering on the edge of the glade. i made my homage, and henry took it coldly. '"how came your beaters to shout threats against me?" said he. '"the tale has grown," i answered. "one old witless man cried out, ''ware red william's arrow,' when the young knights shot at our line. we had two beaters hit." '"i will do justice on that man," he answered. "who is his master?" '"he is rahere's man," said i. '"rahere's?" said henry. "has my fool a fool?" 'i heard the bells jingle at the back of the stand, and a red leg waved over it, then a black one. so, very slowly, rahere the king's jester straddled the edge of the planks, and looked down on us, rubbing his chin. loose-knit, with cropped hair, and a sad priest's face, under his cockscomb cap, that he could twist like a strip of wet leather. his eyes were hollow-set. '"nay, nay, brother," said he. "if i suffer you to keep your fool, you must e'en suffer me to keep mine." 'this he delivered slowly into the king's angry face! my faith, a king's jester must be bolder than lions! '"now we will judge the matter," said rahere. "let these two brave knights go hang my fool because he warned king henry against running after saxon deer through woods full of saxons. 'faith, brother, if _thy_ brother, red william, now among the saints as we hope, had been timely warned against a certain arrow in new forest, one fool of us four would not be crowned fool of england this morning. therefore, hang the fool's fool, knights!" 'mark the fool's cunning! rahere had himself given us order to hang the man. no king dare confirm a fool's command to such a great baron as de aquila; and the helpless king knew it. '"what? no hanging?" said rahere, after a silence. "a god's gracious name, kill something, then! go forward with the hunt!" 'he splits his face ear to ear in a yawn like a fish-pond. "henry," says he, "the next time i sleep, do not pester me with thy fooleries." then he throws himself out of sight behind the back of the stand. 'i have seen courage with mirth in de aquila and hugh, but stark mad courage of rahere's sort i had never even guessed at.' 'what did the king say?' cried dan. 'he had opened his mouth to speak, when young fulke, who had come into the stand with us, laughed, and, boy like, once begun, could not check himself. he kneeled on the instant for pardon, but fell sideways, crying: "his legs! oh, his long, waving red legs as he went backward!" 'like a storm breaking, our grave king laughed,--stamped and reeled with laughter till the stand shook. so, like a storm, this strange thing passed! 'he wiped his eyes, and signed to de aquila to let the drive come on. 'when the deer broke, we were pleased that the king shot from the shelter of the stand, and did not ride out after the hurt beasts as red william would have done. most vilely his knights and barons shot! 'de aquila kept me beside him, and i saw no more of hugh till evening. we two had a little hut of boughs by the camp, where i went to wash me before the great supper, and in the dusk i heard hugh on the couch. '"wearied, hugh?" said i. '"a little," he says. "i have driven saxon deer all day for a norman king, and there is enough of earl godwin's blood left in me to sicken at the work. wait awhile with the torch." 'i waited then, and i thought i heard him sob.' 'poor hugh! was he so tired?' said una. 'hobden says beating is hard work sometimes.' 'i think this tale is getting like the woods,' said dan, 'darker and twistier every minute.' sir richard had walked as he talked, and though the children thought they knew the woods well enough, they felt a little lost. 'a dark tale enough,' says sir richard, 'but the end was not all black. when we had washed, we went to wait on the king at meat in the great pavilion. just before the trumpets blew for the entry--all the guests upstanding--long rahere comes posturing up to hugh, and strikes him with his bauble-bladder. '"here's a heavy heart for a joyous meal!" he says. "but each man must have his black hour or where would be the merit of laughing? take a fool's advice, and sit it out with my man. i'll make a jest to excuse you to the king if he remember to ask for you. that's more than i would do for archbishop anselm." 'hugh looked at him heavy-eyed. "rahere?" said he. "the king's jester? oh, saints, what punishment for my king!" and smites his hands together. '"go--go fight it out in the dark," says rahere, "and thy saxon saints reward thee for thy pity to my fool." he pushed him from the pavilion, and hugh lurched away like one drunk.' 'but why?' said una. 'i don't understand.' 'ah, why indeed? live you long enough, maiden, and you shall know the meaning of many whys.' sir richard smiled. 'i wondered too, but it was my duty to wait on the king at the high table in all that glitter and stir. 'he spoke me his thanks for the sport i had helped show him, and he had learned from de aquila enough of my folk and my castle in normandy to graciously feign that he knew and had loved my brother there. (this, also, is part of a king's work.) many great men sat at the high table--chosen by the king for their wits, not for their birth. i have forgotten their names, and their faces i only saw that one night. but'--sir richard turned in his stride--'but rahere, flaming in black and scarlet among our guests, the hollow of his dark cheek flushed with wine--long, laughing rahere, and the stricken sadness of his face when he was not twisting it about--rahere i shall never forget. 'at the king's outgoing de aquila bade me follow him, with his great bishops and two great barons, to the little pavilion. we had devised jugglers and dances for the court's sport; but henry loved to talk gravely with grave men, and de aquila had told him of my travels to the world's end. we had a fire of apple-wood, sweet as incense,--and the curtains at the door being looped up, we could hear the music and see the lights shining on mail and dresses. 'rahere lay behind the king's chair. the questions he darted forth at me were as shrewd as the flames. i was telling of our fight with the apes, as ye called them, at the world's end.[ ] [ ] see 'the knights of the joyous venture,' in _puck of pook's hill_. '"but where is the saxon knight that went with you?" said henry. "he must confirm these miracles." '"he is busy," said rahere, "confirming a new miracle." '"enough miracles for to-day," said the king. "rahere, you have saved your long neck. fetch the saxon knight." '"pest on it," said rahere. "who would be a king's jester? i'll bring him, brother, if you'll see that none of your home-brewed bishops taste my wine while i am away." so he jingled forth between the men-at-arms at the door. 'henry had made many bishops in england without the pope's leave. i know not the rights of the matter, but only rahere dared jest about it. we waited on the king's next word. '"i think rahere is jealous of you," said he, smiling, to nigel of ely. he was one bishop; and william of exeter, the other--wel-wast the saxons called him--laughed long. "rahere is a priest at heart. shall i make him a bishop, de aquila?" says the king. '"there might be worse," said our lord of pevensey. "rahere would never do what anselm has done." 'this anselm, archbishop of canterbury, had gone off raging to the pope at rome, because henry would make bishops without _his_ leave either. i knew not the rights of it, but de aquila did, and the king laughed. '"anselm means no harm. he should have been a monk, not a bishop," said the king. "i'll never quarrel with anselm or his pope till they quarrel with my england. if we can keep the king's peace till my son comes to rule, no man will lightly quarrel with our england." '"amen," said de aquila. "but the king's peace ends when the king dies." 'that is true. the king's peace dies with the king. the custom then is that all laws are outlaw, and men do what they will till the new king is chosen. '"i will amend that," said the king hotly. "i will have it so that though king, son, and grandson were all slain in one day, _still_ the king's peace should hold over all england! what is a man that his mere death must upheave a people? we must have the law." '"truth," said william of exeter; but that he would have said to any word of the king. 'the two great barons behind said nothing. this teaching was clean against their stomachs, for when the king's peace ends, the great barons go to war and increase their lands. at that instant we heard rahere's voice returning, in a scurril saxon rhyme against william of exeter: "well wist wal-wist where lay his fortune when that he fawned on the king for his crozier," and amid our laughter he burst in, with one arm round hugh, and one round the old pilgrim of netherfield. '"here is your knight, brother," said he, "and for the better disport of the company, here is my fool. hold up, saxon samson, the gates of gaza are clean carried away!" 'hugh broke loose, white and sick, and staggered to my side; the old man blinked upon the company. 'we looked at the king, but he smiled. '"rahere promised he would show me some sport after supper to cover his morning's offence," said he to de aquila. "so this is thy man, rahere?" '"even so," said rahere. "my man he has been, and my protection he has taken, ever since i found him under the gallows at stamford bridge telling the kites atop of it that he was--harold of england!" 'there was a great silence upon these last strange words, and hugh hid his face on my shoulder, woman-fashion. '"it is most cruel true," he whispered to me. "the old man proved it to me at the beat after you left, and again in our hut even now. it is harold, my king!" 'de aquila crept forward. he walked about the man and swallowed. '"bones of the saints!" said he, staring. '"many a stray shot goes too well home," said rahere. 'the old man flinched as at an arrow. "why do you hurt me still?" he said in saxon. "it was on some bones of some saints that i promised i would give my england to the great duke." he turns on us all crying, shrilly: "thanes, he had caught me at rouen--a lifetime ago. if i had not promised, i should have lain there all my life. what else could i have done? i have lain in a strait prison all my life none the less. there is no need to throw stones at me." he guarded his face with his arms, and shivered. '"now his madness will strike him down," said rahere. "cast out the evil spirit, one of you new bishops." 'said william of exeter: "harold was slain at santlache fight. all the world knows it." '"i think this man must have forgotten," said rahere. "be comforted, father. thou wast well slain at hastings forty years gone, less three months and nine days. tell the king." 'the man uncovered his face. "i thought they would stone me," he said. "i did not know i spoke before a king." he came to his full towering height--no mean man, but frail beyond belief. 'the king turned to the tables, and held him out his own cup of wine. the old man drank, and beckoned behind him, and, before all the normans, my hugh bore away the empty cup, saxon fashion, upon the knee. '"it is harold!" said de aquila. "his own stiff-necked blood kneels to serve him." '"be it so," said henry. "sit, then, thou that hast been harold of england." 'the madman sat, and hard, dark henry looked at him between half-shut eyes. we others stared like oxen, all but de aquila, who watched rahere as i have seen him watch a far sail on the sea. 'the wine and the warmth cast the old man into a dream. his white head bowed; his hands hung. his eye indeed was opened, but the mind was shut. when he stretched his feet, they were scurfed and road-cut like a slave's. '"ah, rahere," cried hugh, "why hast thou shown him thus? better have let him die than shame him--and me!" '"shame thee?" said the king. "would any baron of mine kneel to me if i were witless, discrowned, and alone, and harold had my throne?" '"no," said rahere. "i am the sole fool that might do it, brother, unless"--he pointed at de aquila, whom he had only met that day--"yonder tough norman crab kept me company. but, sir hugh, i did not mean to shame him. he hath been somewhat punished through, maybe, little fault of his own." '"yet he lied to my father, the conqueror," said the king, and the old man flinched in his sleep. '"maybe," said rahere, "but thy brother robert, whose throat we purpose soon to slit with our own hands----" '"hutt!" said the king, laughing. "i'll keep robert at my table for a life's guest when i catch him. robert means no harm. it is all his cursed barons." '"none the less," said rahere, "robert may say that thou hast not always spoken the stark truth to him about england. i should not hang too many men on _that_ bough, brother." '"and it is certain," said hugh, "that"--he pointed to the old man--"harold was forced to make his promise to the great duke." '"very strongly forced," said de aquila. he had never any pride in the duke william's dealings with harold before hastings. yet, as he said, one cannot build a house all of straight sticks. '"no matter how he was forced," said henry, "england was promised to my father william by edward the confessor. is it not so?" william of exeter nodded. "harold confirmed that promise to my father on the bones of the saints. afterwards he broke his oath and would have taken england by the strong hand." '"oh! la! la!" rahere rolled up his eyes like a girl. "that ever england should be taken by the strong hand!" 'seeing that red william and henry after him had each in just that fashion snatched england from robert of normandy, we others knew not where to look; but de aquila saved us quickly. '"promise kept or promise broken," he said, "harold came near enough to breaking us normans at senlac." '"was it so close a fight, then?" said henry. '"a hair would have turned it either way," de aquila answered. "his house-carles stood like rocks against rain. where wast thou, hugh, in it?" '"among godwin's folk beneath the golden dragon till your front gave back, and we broke our ranks to follow," said hugh. '"but i bade you stand! i bade you stand! i knew it was all a deceit!" harold had waked, and leaned forward as one crying from the grave. '"ah, now we see how the traitor himself was betrayed!" said william of exeter, and looked for a smile from the king. '"i made thee bishop to preach at _my_ bidding," said henry; and turning to harold, "tell us here how thy people fought us?" said he. "their sons serve me now against my brother robert!" 'the old man shook his head cunningly. "na--na--na," he cried. "i know better. every time i tell my tale men stone me. but, thanes, i will tell you a greater thing. listen!" he told us how many paces it was from some saxon saint's shrine to another shrine, and how many more back to the abbey of the battle. '"ay," said he. "i have trodden it too often to be out even ten paces. i move very swiftly. harold of norway knows that, and so does tostig my brother. they lie at ease at stamford bridge, and from stamford bridge to the battle abbey it is----" he muttered over many numbers and forgot us. '"ay," said de aquila, all in a muse. "that man broke harold of norway at stamford bridge, and came near to breaking us at santlache--all within one month." '"but how did he come alive from santlache fight?" asked the king. "ask him! hast thou heard it, rahere?" '"never. he says he has been stoned too often for telling the tale. but he can count you off saxon and norman shrines till daylight," said rahere, and the old man nodded proudly. '"my faith," said henry after a while, "i think even my father the great duke would pity if he could see him." "how if he _does_ see?" said rahere. 'hugh covered his face with his sound hand. "ah, why hast thou shamed him?" he cried again to rahere. '"no--no," says the old man, reaching to pluck at rahere's cape. "i am rahere's man. none stone me now," and he played with the bells on the scollops of it. '"how if he had been brought to me when you found him?" said the king to rahere. '"you would have held him prisoner again--as the great duke did," rahere answered. '"true," said our king. "he is nothing except his name. yet that name might have been used by stronger men to trouble my england. yes. i must have made him my life's guest--as i shall make robert." '"i knew it," said rahere. "but while this man wandered mad by the wayside, none cared what he called himself." '"i learned to cease talking before the stones flew," says the old man, and hugh groaned. '"ye have heard!" said rahere. "witless, landless, nameless, and, but for my protection, masterless, he can still make shift to bide his doom under the open sky." '"then wherefore didst thou bring him here for a mock and a shame?" cried hugh, beside himself with woe. '"a right mock and a just shame!" said william of exeter. '"not to me," said nigel of ely. "i see and i tremble, but i neither mock nor judge." '"well spoken, ely." rahere falls into the pure fool again. "i'll pray for thee when i turn monk. thou hast given thy blessing on a war between two most christian brothers." he meant the war forward 'twixt henry and robert of normandy. "i charge you, brother," he says, wheeling on the king, "dost thou mock my fool?" 'the king shook his head, and so then did smooth william of exeter. '"de aquila, dost thou mock him?" rahere jingled from one to another, and the old man smiled. '"by the bones of the saints, not i," said our lord of pevensey. "i know how dooms near he broke us at santlache." '"sir hugh, you are excused the question. but you, valiant, loyal, honourable, and devout barons, lords of man's justice in your own bounds, do _you_ mock my fool?" 'he shook his bauble in the very faces of those two barons whose names i have forgotten. "na--na!" they said, and waved him back foolishly enough. 'he hies him across to staring, nodding harold, and speaks from behind his chair. '"no man mocks thee. who here judges this man? henry of england--nigel--de aquila! on your souls, swift with the answer!" he cried. 'none answered. we were all--the king not least--overborne by that terrible scarlet and black wizard-jester. '"well for your souls," he said, wiping his brow. next, shrill like a woman: "oh, come to me!" and hugh ran forward to hold harold, that had slidden down in the chair. '"hearken," said rahere, his arm round harold's neck. "the king--his bishops--the knights--all the world's crazy chessboard neither mock nor judge thee. take that comfort with thee, harold of england!" 'hugh heaved the old man up and he smiled. '"good comfort," said harold. "tell me again! i have been somewhat punished----" 'rahere hallooed it once more into his ear as the head rolled. we heard him sigh, and nigel of ely stood forth, praying aloud. '"out! i will have no norman!" harold said as clearly as i speak now, and he refuged himself on hugh's sound shoulder, and stretched out, and lay all still.' 'dead?' said una, turning up a white face in the dusk. 'that was his good fortune. to die in the king's presence, and on the breast of the most gentlest, truest knight of his own house. some of us envied him,' said sir richard, and fell back to take swallow's bridle. 'turn left here,' puck called ahead of them from under an oak. they ducked down a narrow path through close ash plantation. the children hurried forward, but cutting a corner charged full breast into the thorn-faggot that old hobden was carrying home on his back. 'my! my!' said he. 'have you scratted your face, miss una?' 'sorry! it's all right,' said una, rubbing her nose. 'how many rabbits did you get to-day?' 'that's tellin's,' the old man grinned as he re-hoisted his faggot. 'i reckon mus' ridley he've got rheumatism along o' lyin' in the dik to see i didn't snap up any. think o' that now!' they laughed a good deal while he told them the tale. 'an' just as he crawled away i heard some one hollerin' to the hounds in our woods,' said he. 'didn't you hear? you must ha' been asleep sure-ly.' 'oh, what about the sleeper you promised to show us?' dan cried. ''ere he be--house an' all!' hobden dived into the prickly heart of the faggot and took out a dormouse's wonderfully woven nest of grass and leaves. his blunt fingers parted it as if it had been precious lace, and tilting it toward the last of the light he showed the little, red, furry chap curled up inside, his tail between his eyes that were shut for their winter sleep. 'let's take him home. don't breathe on him,' said una. 'it'll make him warm and he'll wake up and die straight off. won't he, hobby?' 'that's a heap better by my reckonin' than wakin' up and findin' himself in a cage for life. no! we'll lay him into the bottom o' this hedge. dat's jus' right! no more trouble for him till come spring. an' now we'll go home.' _a carol_ _our lord who did the ox command to kneel to judah's king, he binds his frost upon the land to ripen it for spring-- to ripen it for spring, good sirs, according to his word; which well must be as ye can see-- and who shall judge the lord?_ _when we poor fenmen skate the ice or shiver on the wold, we hear the cry of a single tree that breaks her heart in the cold-- that breaks her heart in the cold, good sirs, and rendeth by the board; which well must be as ye can see-- and who shall judge the lord?_ _her wood is crazed and little worth excepting as to burn, that we may warm and make our mirth until the spring return-- until the spring return, good sirs, when people walk abroad; which well must be as ye can see-- and who shall judge the lord?_ _god bless the master of this house, and all that sleep therein! and guard the fens from pirate folk, and keep us all from sin, to walk in honesty, good sirs, of thought and deed and word! which shall befriend our latter end-- and who shall judge the lord?_ the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. transcriber's notes: some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed or closed with the wrong mark. possible printer's errors and omissions have been silently corrected, while those requiring interpretation have been left open. spelling is preserved except as noted below. the page numbers referred to here are in the original printed edition. "winters bee-thronged ivy-bloom" was changed to "winter's bee-thronged ivy-bloom". (page x) a missing period was added to the final word. (page xiii) (good teacher she had too!)" changed to "(good teacher he had too!)" (page ) a missing period was added after "she laughed". (page ) "king philip's fleet!" was changed to "king philip's fleet?" (page ) a missing period was added after "called gratitude". (page ) "soeclum" was changed to "saeclum". (page ) a missing comma was added to "that's tellin's,'" (page ) the [oe] ligature is represented here as "oe". an almanac of twelve sports by william nicholson _words by rudyard kipling_ published by r. h. russell. new york. . . january. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ -- _wednesday_ -- _thursday_ -- _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- february. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ -- _wednesday_ -- _thursday_ -- _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- march. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ _thursday_ _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- april. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ _thursday_ _friday_ _saturday_ may. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ -- _thursday_ -- _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- june. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ _thursday_ _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- here is a horse to tame-- here is a gun to handle-- god knows you can enter the game if you'll only pay for the same, and the price of the game is a candle-- one single flickering candle! . july. _sunday_ _monday_ -- _tuesday_ -- _wednesday_ -- _thursday_ -- _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- august. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ _thursday_ -- _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- september. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ _thursday_ _friday_ _saturday_ -- october. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ -- _wednesday_ -- _thursday_ -- _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- november. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ _thursday_ -- _friday_ -- _saturday_ -- december. _sunday_ _monday_ _tuesday_ _wednesday_ _thursday_ _friday_ _saturday_ hunting. certes it is a noble sport and men have quitted selle and swum for't, but i am of a meeker sort and i prefer surtees in comfort. reach down my "handley cross" again. my run, where never danger lurks, is with jorrocks and his deathless train pigg, binjimin and arterxerxes! [illustration: january.] coursing. most men harry the world for fun-- each man seeks it a different way but "of all daft devils under the sun a grey'ound's the daftest" said jorrocks j. [illustration: february.] racing. the horse is ridden--the jockey rides-- the backers back--the owners own but ... there are lots of things besides, and i should leave this play alone. [illustration: march.] boating. the pope of rome he could not win from pleasant meat and pleasant sin these who, in honour's hope, endure lean days and lives enforced pure. these who, replying not, submit unto the curses of the pit which he that rides (o greater shame!) flings forth by number not by name... could triple crown or jesuit's oath do what yon shuffle-stocking doth? [illustration: april.] fishing. behold a parable! _a_ fished for _b_. _c_ took her bait; her heart was set on _d_. thank heaven, who cooled your blood and cramped your wishes, men and not gods torment you, little fishes. [illustration: may.] cricket. thank god who made the british isles and taught me how to play, i do not worship crocodiles or bow the knee to clay! give me a willow wand and i, with hide and cork and twine, from century to century will gambol round my shrine. [illustration: june.] archery. the child of the nineties considers with laughter the maid whom his sire in the sixties ran after, while careering himself in pursuit of a girl whom the twenties will dub a "last century heir-loom." [illustration: july.] coaching. the pious horse to church may trot. a maid may work a man's salvation. four horses and a girl are not, however, aids to reformation. [illustration: august.] shooting. "peace upon earth, goodwill to men!" so greet we christmas day. oh christian load your gun and then, o christian, out and slay! [illustration: september.] golf. why golf is art and art is golf we have not far to seek-- so much depends upon the lie, so much upon the cleek. [illustration: october.] boxing. read here the moral roundly writ for him that into battle goes-- each soul that, hitting hard and hit, encounters gross or ghostly foes:-- prince, blown by many overthrows half blind with shame, half choked with dirt _man cannot tell but allah knows how much the other side was hurt!_ [illustration: november.] skating. over the ice she flies perfect and poised and fair-- stars in my true-love's eyes teach me to do and to dare! now will i fly as she flies ... woe for the stars that misled! stars that i saw in her eyes now do i see in my head! [illustration: december.] now we must come away. what are you out of pocket? 'sorry to spoil your play, but somebody says we must pay-- and the candle's down to the socket-- its horrible tallowy socket! distributed proofreaders traffics and discoveries by rudyard kipling contents _from the masjid-al-aqsa of sayyid ahmed(wahabi)_ the captive _poseidon's law_ the bonds of discipline _the runners_ a sahibs' war _the wet litany_ "their lawful occasions"--part i. "their lawful occasions"--part ii. _the king's task_ the comprehension of private cooper _the necessitarian_ steam tactics _kaspar's song in "varda"_ "wireless" _song of the old guard_ the army of a dream--part i. the army of a dream--part ii. _the return of the children_ "they" _from lyden's "irenius_" mrs. bathurst "_our fathers also_" below the mill dam the captive from the masjid-al-aqsa of sayyid ahmed (wahabi) not with an outcry to allah nor any complaining he answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining. when the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them, he brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them. ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him, observing him nobly at ease, i alighted and followed him. thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow rather his red yesterday and his regal to-morrow, wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded, nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded. saluting aloofly his fate, he made swift with his story; and the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory embroidered with names of the djinns--a miraculous weaving-- but the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving. so i submitted myself to the limits of rapture-- bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture-- till he returned me to earth and the visions departed; but on him be the peace and the blessing: for he was great-hearted! the captive "he that believeth shall not make haste."--_isaiah_. the guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly spanking the water with the flat of their oars. a red-coated militia-man, rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the stern. between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing. behind their orderly tin camp and the electric-light poles rose those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat on simonstown. beneath them the little _barracouta_ nodded to the big _gibraltar_, and the old _penelope_, that in ten years has been bachelors' club, natural history museum, kindergarten, and prison, rooted and dug at her fixed moorings. far out, a three-funnelled atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in from the deep sea. said the sentry, assured of the visitor's good faith, "talk to 'em? you can, to any that speak english. you'll find a lot that do." here and there earnest groups gathered round ministers of the dutch reformed church, who doubtless preached conciliation, but the majority preferred their bath. the god who looks after small things had caused the visitor that day to receive two weeks' delayed mails in one from a casual postman, and the whole heavy bundle of newspapers, tied with a strap, he dangled as bait. at the edge of the beach, cross-legged, undressed to his sky-blue army shirt, sat a lean, ginger-haired man, on guard over a dozen heaps of clothing. his eyes followed the incoming atlantic boat. "excuse me, mister," he said, without turning (and the speech betrayed his nationality), "would you mind keeping away from these garments? i've been elected janitor--on the dutch vote." the visitor moved over against the barbed-wire fence and sat down to his mail. at the rustle of the newspaper-wrappers the ginger-coloured man turned quickly, the hunger of a press-ridden people in his close-set iron- grey eyes. "have you any use for papers?" said the visitor. "have i any use?" a quick, curved forefinger was already snicking off the outer covers. "why, that's the new york postmark! give me the ads. at the back of _harper's_ and _m'clure's_ and i'm in touch with god's country again! did you know how i was aching for papers?" the visitor told the tale of the casual postman. "providential!" said the ginger-coloured man, keen as a terrier on his task; "both in time and matter. yes! ... the _scientific american_ yet once more! oh, it's good! it's good!" his voice broke as he pressed his hawk-like nose against the heavily-inked patent-specifications at the end. "can i keep it? i thank you--i thank you! why--why--well--well! the _american tyler_ of all things created! do you subscribe to that?" "i'm on the free list," said the visitor, nodding. he extended his blue-tanned hand with that air of oriental spaciousness which distinguishes the native-born american, and met the visitor's grasp expertly. "i can only say that you have treated me like a brother (yes, i'll take every last one you can spare), and if ever--" he plucked at the bosom of his shirt. "psha! i forgot i'd no card on me; but my name's zigler--laughton g. zigler. an american? if ohio's still in the union, i am, sir. but i'm no extreme states'-rights man. i've used all of my native country and a few others as i have found occasion, and now i am the captive of your bow and spear. i'm not kicking at that. i am not a coerced alien, nor a naturalised texas mule-tender, nor an adventurer on the instalment plan. _i_ don't tag after our consul when he comes around, expecting the american eagle to lift me out o' this by the slack of my pants. no, sir! if a britisher went into indian territory and shot up his surroundings with a colt automatic (not that _she's_ any sort of weapon, but i take her for an illustration), he'd be strung up quicker'n a snowflake 'ud melt in hell. no ambassador of yours 'ud save him. i'm my neck ahead on this game, anyway. that's how i regard the proposition. "have i gone gunning against the british? to a certain extent, i presume you never heard tell of the laughton-zigler automatic two-inch field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and ballbearing gear throughout? or laughtite, the new explosive? absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present effete charge--flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa, cord, or prism--i don't care what it is. laughtite's immense; so's the zigler automatic. it's me. it's fifteen years of me. you are not a gun-sharp? i am sorry. i could have surprised you. apart from my gun, my tale don't amount to much of anything. i thank you, but i don't use any tobacco you'd be likely to carry... bull durham? _bull durham!_ i take it all back--every last word. bull durham--here! if ever you strike akron, ohio, when this fool-war's over, remember you've laughton o. zigler in your vest pocket. including the city of akron. we've a little club there.... hell! what's the sense of talking akron with no pants? "my gun? ... for two cents i'd have shipped her to our filipeens. 'came mighty near it too; but from what i'd read in the papers, you can't trust aguinaldo's crowd on scientific matters. why don't i offer it to our army? well, you've an effete aristocracy running yours, and we've a crowd of politicians. the results are practically identical. i am not taking any u.s. army in mine. "i went to amsterdam with her--to this dutch junta that supposes it's bossing the war. i wasn't brought up to love the british for one thing, and for another i knew that if she got in her fine work (my gun) i'd stand more chance of receiving an unbiassed report from a crowd of dam-fool british officers than from a hatful of politicians' nephews doing duty as commissaries and ordnance sharps. as i said, i put the brown man out of the question. that's the way _i_ regarded the proposition. "the dutch in holland don't amount to a row of pins. maybe i misjudge 'em. maybe they've been swindled too often by self-seeking adventurers to know a enthusiast when they see him. anyway, they're slower than the wrath o' god. but on delusions--as to their winning out next thursday week at a.m.--they are--if i may say so--quite british. "i'll tell you a curious thing, too. i fought 'em for ten days before i could get the financial side of my game fixed to my liking. i knew they didn't believe in the zigler, but they'd no call to be crazy-mean. i fixed it--free passage and freight for me and the gun to delagoa bay, and beyond by steam and rail. then i went aboard to see her crated, and there i struck my fellow-passengers--all deadheads, same as me. well, sir, i turned in my tracks where i stood and besieged the ticket-office, and i said, 'look at here, van dunk. i'm paying for my passage and her room in the hold--every square and cubic foot.' 'guess he knocked down the fare to himself; but i paid. i paid. i wasn't going to deadhead along o' _that_ crowd of pentecostal sweepings. 'twould have hoodooed my gun for all time. that was the way i regarded the proposition. no, sir, they were not pretty company. "when we struck pretoria i had a hell-and-a-half of a time trying to interest the dutch vote in my gun an' her potentialities. the bottom was out of things rather much just about that time. kruger was praying some and stealing some, and the hollander lot was singing, 'if you haven't any money you needn't come round,' nobody was spending his dough on anything except tickets to europe. we were both grossly neglected. when i think how i used to give performances in the public streets with dummy cartridges, filling the hopper and turning the handle till the sweat dropped off me, i blush, sir. i've made her to do her stunts before kaffirs--naked sons of ham--in commissioner street, trying to get a holt somewhere. "did i talk? i despise exaggeration--'tain't american or scientific--but as true as i'm sitting here like a blue-ended baboon in a kloof, teddy roosevelt's western tour was a maiden's sigh compared to my advertising work. "'long in the spring i was rescued by a commandant called van zyl--a big, fleshy man with a lame leg. take away his hair and his gun and he'd make a first-class schenectady bar-keep. he found me and the zigler on the veldt (pretoria wasn't wholesome at that time), and he annexed me in a somnambulistic sort o' way. he was dead against the war from the start, but, being a dutchman, he fought a sight better than the rest of that 'god and the mauser' outfit. adrian van zyl. slept a heap in the daytime--and didn't love niggers. i liked him. i was the only foreigner in his commando. the rest was georgia crackers and pennsylvania dutch--with a dash o' philadelphia lawyer. i could tell you things about them would surprise you. religion for one thing; women for another; but i don't know as their notions o' geography weren't the craziest. 'guess that must be some sort of automatic compensation. there wasn't one blamed ant-hill in their district they didn't know _and_ use; but the world was flat, they said, and england was a day's trek from cape town. "they could fight in their own way, and don't you forget it. but i guess you will not. they fought to kill, and, by what i could make out, the british fought to be killed. so both parties were accommodated. "i am the captive of your bow and spear, sir. the position has its obligations--on both sides. you could not be offensive or partisan to me. i cannot, for the same reason, be offensive to you. therefore i will not give you my opinions on the conduct of your war. "anyway, i didn't take the field as an offensive partisan, but as an inventor. it was a condition and not a theory that confronted me. (yes, sir, i'm a democrat by conviction, and that was one of the best things grover cleveland ever got off.) "after three months' trek, old man van zyl had his commando in good shape and refitted off the british, and he reckoned he'd wait on a british general of his acquaintance that did business on a circuit between stompiesneuk, jackhalputs, vrelegen, and odendaalstroom, year in and year out. he was a fixture in that section. "'he's a dam' good man,' says van zyl. 'he's a friend of mine. he sent in a fine doctor when i was wounded and our hollander doc. wanted to cut my leg off. ya, i'll guess we'll stay with him.' up to date, me and my zigler had lived in innocuous desuetude owing to little odds and ends riding out of gear. how in thunder was i to know there wasn't the ghost of any road in the country? but raw hide's cheap and lastin'. i guess i'll make my next gun a thousand pounds heavier, though. "well, sir, we struck the general on his beat--vrelegen it was--and our crowd opened with the usual compliments at two thousand yards. van zyl shook himself into his greasy old saddle and says, 'now we shall be quite happy, mr. zigler. no more trekking. joost twelve miles a day till the apricots are ripe.' "then we hitched on to his outposts, and vedettes, and cossack-picquets, or whatever they was called, and we wandered around the veldt arm in arm like brothers. "the way we worked lodge was this way. the general, he had his breakfast at : a.m. to the tick. he might have been a long island commuter. at : a.m. i'd go down to the thirty-fourth street ferry to meet him--i mean i'd see the zigler into position at two thousand (i began at three thousand, but that was cold and distant)--and blow him off to two full hoppers--eighteen rounds--just as they were bringing in his coffee. if his crowd was busy celebrating the anniversary of waterloo or the last royal kid's birthday, they'd open on me with two guns (i'll tell you about them later on), but if they were disengaged they'd all stand to their horses and pile on the ironmongery, and washers, and typewriters, and five weeks' grub, and in half an hour they'd sail out after me and the rest of van zyl's boys; lying down and firing till : a.m. or maybe high noon. then we'd go from labour to refreshment, resooming at p.m. and battling till tea-time. tuesday and friday was the general's moving days. he'd trek ahead ten or twelve miles, and we'd loaf around his flankers and exercise the ponies a piece. sometimes he'd get hung up in a drift--stalled crossin' a crick--and we'd make playful snatches at his wagons. first time that happened i turned the zigler loose with high hopes, sir; but the old man was well posted on rearguards with a gun to 'em, and i had to haul her out with three mules instead of six. i was pretty mad. i wasn't looking for any experts back of the royal british artillery. otherwise, the game was mostly even. he'd lay out three or four of our commando, and we'd gather in four or five of his once a week or thereon. one time, i remember, long towards dusk we saw 'em burying five of their boys. they stood pretty thick around the graves. we wasn't more than fifteen hundred yards off, but old van zyl wouldn't fire. he just took off his hat at the proper time. he said if you stretched a man at his prayers you'd have to hump his bad luck before the throne as well as your own. i am inclined to agree with him. so we browsed along week in and week out. a war-sharp might have judged it sort of docile, but for an inventor needing practice one day and peace the next for checking his theories, it suited laughton o. zigler. "and friendly? friendly was no word for it. we was brothers in arms. "why, i knew those two guns of the royal british artillery as well as i used to know the old fifth avenoo stages. _they_ might have been brothers too. "they'd jolt into action, and wiggle around and skid and spit and cough and prize 'emselves back again during our hours of bloody battle till i could have wept, sir, at the spectacle of modern white men chained up to these old hand-power, back-number, flint-and-steel reaping machines. one of 'em--i called her baldy--she'd a long white scar all along her barrel-- i'd made sure of twenty times. i knew her crew by sight, but she'd come switching and teturing out of the dust of my shells like--like a hen from under a buggy--and she'd dip into a gully, and next thing i'd know 'ud be her old nose peeking over the ridge sniffin' for us. her runnin' mate had two grey mules in the lead, and a natural wood wheel repainted, and a whole raft of rope-ends trailin' around. 'jever see tom reed with his vest off, steerin' congress through a heat-wave? i've been to washington often --too often--filin' my patents. i called her tom reed. we three 'ud play pussy-wants-a-corner all round the outposts on off-days--cross-lots through the sage and along the mezas till we was short-circuited by canons. o, it was great for me and baldy and tom reed! i don't know as we didn't neglect the legitimate interests of our respective commanders sometimes for this ball-play. i know _i_ did. "'long towards the fall the royal british artillery grew shy--hung back in their breeching sort of--and their shooting was way--way off. i observed they wasn't taking any chances, not though i acted kitten almost underneath 'em. "i mentioned it to van zyl, because it struck me i had about knocked their royal british moral endways. "'no,' says he, rocking as usual on his pony. 'my captain mankeltow he is sick. that is all.' "'so's your captain mankeltow's guns,' i said. 'but i'm going to make 'em a heap sicker before he gets well.' "'no,' says van zyl. 'he has had the enteric a little. now he is better, and he was let out from hospital at jackhalputs. ah, that mankeltow! he always makes me laugh so. i told him--long back--at colesberg, i had a little home for him at nooitgedacht. but he would not come--no! he has been sick, and i am sorry.' "'how d'you know that?' i says. "'why, only to-day he sends back his love by johanna van der merwe, that goes to their doctor for her sick baby's eyes. he sends his love, that mankeltow, and he tells her tell me he has a little garden of roses all ready for me in the dutch indies--umballa. he is very funny, my captain mankeltow.' "the dutch and the english ought to fraternise, sir. they've the same notions of humour, to my thinking.' "'when he gets well,' says van zyl, 'you look out, mr. americaan. he comes back to his guns next tuesday. then they shoot better.' "i wasn't so well acquainted with the royal british artillery as old man van zyl. i knew this captain mankeltow by sight, of course, and, considering what sort of a man with the hoe he was, i thought he'd done right well against my zigler. but nothing epoch-making. "next morning at the usual hour i waited on the general, and old van zyl come along with some of the boys. van zyl didn't hang round the zigler much as a rule, but this was his luck that day. "he was peeking through his glasses at the camp, and i was helping pepper, the general's sow-belly--just as usual--when he turns to me quick and says, 'almighty! how all these englishmen are liars! you cannot trust one,' he says. 'captain mankeltow tells our johanna he comes not back till tuesday, and to-day is friday, and there he is! almighty! the english are all chamberlains!' "if the old man hadn't stopped to make political speeches he'd have had his supper in laager that night, i guess. i was busy attending to tom reed at two thousand when baldy got in her fine work on me. i saw one sheet of white flame wrapped round the hopper, and in the middle of it there was one o' my mules straight on end. nothing out of the way in a mule on end, but this mule hadn't any head. i remember it struck me as incongruous at the time, and when i'd ciphered it out i was doing the santos-dumont act without any balloon and my motor out of gear. then i got to thinking about santos-dumont and how much better my new way was. then i thought about professor langley and the smithsonian, and wishing i hadn't lied so extravagantly in some of my specifications at washington. then i quit thinking for quite a while, and when i resumed my train of thought i was nude, sir, in a very stale stretcher, and my mouth was full of fine dirt all flavoured with laughtite. "i coughed up that dirt. "'hullo!' says a man walking beside me. 'you've spoke almost in time. have a drink?' "i don't use rum as a rule, but i did then, because i needed it. "'what hit us?'i said. "'me,' he said. 'i got you fair on the hopper as you pulled out of that donga; but i'm sorry to say every last round in the hopper's exploded and your gun's in a shocking state. i'm real sorry,' he says. 'i admire your gun, sir.' "'are you captain mankeltow?' i says. "'yes,' he says. 'i presoom you're mister zigler. your commanding officer told me about you.' "'have you gathered in old man van zyl?' i said. "'commandant van zyl,' he says very stiff, 'was most unfortunately wounded, but i am glad to say it's not serious. we hope he'll be able to dine with us to-night; and i feel sure,' he says, 'the general would be delighted to see you too, though he didn't expect,' he says, 'and no one else either, by jove!' he says, and blushed like the british do when they're embarrassed. "i saw him slide an episcopalian prayer-book up his sleeve, and when i looked over the edge of the stretcher there was half-a-dozen enlisted men --privates--had just quit digging and was standing to attention by their spades. i guess he was right on the general not expecting me to dinner; but it was all of a piece with their sloppy british way of doing business. any god's quantity of fuss and flubdub to bury a man, and not an ounce of forehandedness in the whole outfit to find out whether he was rightly dead. and i am a congregationalist anyway! "well, sir, that was my introduction to the british army. i'd write a book about it if anyone would believe me. this captain mankeltow, royal british artillery, turned the doctor on me (i could write another book about _him_) and fixed me up with a suit of his own clothes, and fed me canned beef and biscuits, and give me a cigar--a henry clay and a whisky-and- sparklet. he was a white man. "'ye-es, by jove,' he said, dragging out his words like a twist of molasses, 'we've all admired your gun and the way you've worked it. some of us betted you was a british deserter. i won a sovereign on that from a yeoman. and, by the way,' he says, 'you've disappointed me groom pretty bad.' "'where does your groom come in?' i said. "'oh, he was the yeoman. he's a dam poor groom,' says my captain, 'but he's a way-up barrister when he's at home. he's been running around the camp with his tongue out, waiting for the chance of defending you at the court-martial.' "'what court-martial?' i says. "'on you as a deserter from the artillery. you'd have had a good run for your money. anyway, you'd never have been hung after the way you worked your gun. deserter ten times over,' he says, 'i'd have stuck out for shooting you like a gentleman.' "well, sir, right there it struck me at the pit of my stomach--sort of sickish, sweetish feeling--that my position needed regularising pretty bad. i ought to have been a naturalised burgher of a year's standing; but ohio's my state, and i wouldn't have gone back on her for a desertful of dutchmen. that and my enthoosiasm as an inventor had led me to the existing crisis; but i couldn't expect this captain mankeltow to regard the proposition that way. there i sat, the rankest breed of unreconstructed american citizen, caught red-handed squirting hell at the british army for months on end. i tell _you_, sir, i wished i was in cincinnatah that summer evening. i'd have compromised on brooklyn. "'what d'you do about aliens?' i said, and the dirt i'd coughed up seemed all back of my tongue again. "'oh,' says he, 'we don't do much of anything. they're about all the society we get. i'm a bit of a pro-boer myself,' he says, 'but between you and me the average boer ain't over and above intellectual. you're the first american we've met up with, but of course you're a burgher.' "it was what i ought to have been if i'd had the sense of a common tick, but the way he drawled it out made me mad. "'of course i am not,' i says. 'would _you_ be a naturalised boer?' "'i'm fighting against 'em,' he says, lighting a cigarette, 'but it's all a matter of opinion.' "'well,' i says, 'you can hold any blame opinion you choose, but i'm a white man, and my present intention is to die in that colour.' "he laughed one of those big, thick-ended, british laughs that don't lead anywhere, and whacked up some sort of compliment about america that made me mad all through. "i am the captive of your bow and spear, sir, but i do not understand the alleged british joke. it is depressing. "i was introdooced to five or six officers that evening, and every blame one of 'em grinned and asked me why i wasn't in the filipeens suppressing our war! and that was british humour! they all had to get it off their chests before they'd talk sense. but they was sound on the zigler. they had all admired her. i made out a fairy-story of me being wearied of the war, and having pushed the gun at them these last three months in the hope they'd capture it and let me go home. that tickled 'em to death. they made me say it three times over, and laughed like kids each time. but half the british _are_ kids; specially the older men. my captain mankeltow was less of it than the others. he talked about the zigler like a lover, sir, and i drew him diagrams of the hopper-feed and recoil-cylinder in his note-book. he asked the one british question i was waiting for, 'hadn't i made my working-parts too light?' the british think weight's strength. "at last--i'd been shy of opening the subject before--at last i said, 'gentlemen, you are the unprejudiced tribunal i've been hunting after. i guess you ain't interested in any other gun-factory, and politics don't weigh with you. how did it feel your end of the game? what's my gun done, anyway?' "'i hate to disappoint you,' says captain mankeltow, 'because i know you feel as an inventor.' i wasn't feeling like an inventor just then. i felt friendly, but the british haven't more tact than you can pick up with a knife out of a plate of soup. "'the honest truth,' he says, 'is that you've wounded about ten of us one way and another, killed two battery horses and four mules, and--oh, yes,' he said, 'you've bagged five kaffirs. but, buck up,' he said, 'we've all had mighty close calls'--shaves, he called 'em, i remember. 'look at my pants.' "they was repaired right across the seat with minneapolis flour-bagging. i could see the stencil. "'i ain't bluffing,' he says. 'get the hospital returns, doc.' "the doctor gets 'em and reads 'em out under the proper dates. that doctor alone was worth the price of admission. "i was right pleased right through that i hadn't killed any of these cheerful kids; but none the less i couldn't help thinking that a few more kaffirs would have served me just as well for advertising purposes as white men. no, sir. anywhichway you regard the proposition, twenty-one casualties after months of close friendship like ours was--paltry. "they gave me taffy about the gun--the british use taffy where we use sugar. it's cheaper, and gets there just the same. they sat around and proved to me that my gun was too good, too uniform--shot as close as a mannlicher rifle. "says one kid chewing a bit of grass: 'i counted eight of your shells, sir, burst in a radius of ten feet. all of 'em would have gone through one waggon-tilt. it was beautiful,' he says. 'it was too good.' "i shouldn't wonder if the boys were right. my laughtite is too mathematically uniform in propelling power. yes; she was too good for this refractory fool of a country. the training gear was broke, too, and we had to swivel her around by the trail. but i'll build my next zigler fifteen hundred pounds heavier. might work in a gasoline motor under the axles. i must think that up. "'well, gentlemen,' i said, 'i'd hate to have been the death of any of you; and if a prisoner can deed away his property, i'd love to present the captain here with what he's seen fit to leave of my zigler.' "'thanks awf'ly,' says my captain. 'i'd like her very much. she'd look fine in the mess at woolwich. that is, if you don't mind, mr. zigler.' "'go right ahead,' i says. 'i've come out of all the mess i've any use for; but she'll do to spread the light among the royal british artillery.' "i tell you, sir, there's not much of anything the matter with the royal british artillery. they're brainy men languishing under an effete system which, when you take good holt of it, is england--just all england. 'times i'd feel i was talking with real live citizens, and times i'd feel i'd struck the beef eaters in the tower. "how? well, this way. i was telling my captain mankeltow what van zyl had said about the british being all chamberlains when the old man saw him back from hospital four days ahead of time. "'oh, damn it all!' he says, as serious as the supreme court. 'it's too bad,' he says. 'johanna must have misunderstood me, or else i've got the wrong dutch word for these blarsted days of the week. i told johanna i'd be out on friday. the woman's a fool. oah, da-am it all!' he says. 'i wouldn't have sold old van zyl a pup like that,' he says. 'i'll hunt him up and apologise.' "he must have fixed it all right, for when we sailed over to the general's dinner my captain had van zyl about half-full of sherry and bitters, as happy as a clam. the boys all called him adrian, and treated him like their prodigal father. he'd been hit on the collarbone by a wad of shrapnel, and his arm was tied up. "but the general was the peach. i presume you're acquainted with the average run of british generals, but this was my first. i sat on his left hand, and he talked like--like the _ladies' home journal_. j'ever read that paper? it's refined, sir--and innocuous, and full of nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. he was it. he began by a lydia pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and hoped the boys had done me well, and that i was enjoying my stay in their midst. then he thanked me for the interesting and valuable lessons that i'd given his crowd-- specially in the matter of placing artillery and rearguard attacks. he'd wipe his long thin moustache between drinks--lime-juice and water he used --and blat off into a long 'a-aah,' and ladle out more taffy for me or old man van zyl on his right. i told him how i'd had my first pisgah-sight of the principles of the zigler when i was a fourth-class postmaster on a star-route in arkansas. i told him how i'd worked it up by instalments when i was machinist in waterbury, where the dollar-watches come from. he had one on his wrist then. i told him how i'd met zalinski (he'd never heard of zalinski!) when i was an extra clerk in the naval construction bureau at washington. i told him how my uncle, who was a truck-farmer in noo jersey (he loaned money on mortgage too, for ten acres ain't enough now in noo jersey), how he'd willed me a quarter of a million dollars, because i was the only one of our kin that called him down when he used to come home with a hard-cider jag on him and heave ox-bows at his nieces. i told him how i'd turned in every red cent on the zigler, and i told him the whole circus of my coming out with her, and so on, and so following; and every forty seconds he'd wipe his moustache and blat, 'how interesting. really, now? how interesting.' "it was like being in an old english book, sir. like _bracebridge hall_. but an american wrote _that!_ i kept peeking around for the boar's head and the rosemary and magna charta and the cricket on the hearth, and the rest of the outfit. then van zyl whirled in. he was no ways jagged, but thawed--thawed, sir, and among friends. they began discussing previous scraps all along the old man's beat--about sixty of 'em--as well as side- shows with other generals and columns. van zyl told 'im of a big beat he'd worked on a column a week or so before i'd joined him. he demonstrated his strategy with forks on the table. "'there!' said the general, when he'd finished. 'that proves my contention to the hilt. maybe i'm a bit of a pro-boer, but i stick to it,' he says, 'that under proper officers, with due regard to his race prejudices, the boer'ud make the finest mounted infantry in the empire. adrian,' he says, 'you're simply squandered on a cattle-run. you ought to be at the staff college with de wet.' "'you catch de wet and i come to your staff college--eh,' says adrian, laughing. 'but you are so slow, generaal. why are you so slow? for a month,' he says, 'you do so well and strong that we say we shall hands-up and come back to our farms. then you send to england and make us a present of two--three--six hundred young men, with rifles and wagons and rum and tobacco, and such a great lot of cartridges, that our young men put up their tails and start all over again. if you hold an ox by the horn and hit him by the bottom he runs round and round. he never goes anywhere. so, too, this war goes round and round. you know that, generaal!' "'quite right, adrian,' says the general; 'but you must believe your bible.' "'hooh!' says adrian, and reaches for the whisky. 'i've never known a dutchman a professing atheist, but some few have been rather active agnostics since the british sat down in pretoria. old man van zyl--he told me--had soured on religion after bloemfontein surrendered. he was a free stater for one thing.' "'he that believeth,' says the general, 'shall not make haste. that's in isaiah. we believe we're going to win, and so we don't make haste. as far as i'm concerned i'd like this war to last another five years. we'd have an army then. it's just this way, mr. zigler,' he says, 'our people are brimfull of patriotism, but they've been born and brought up between houses, and england ain't big enough to train 'em--not if you expect to preserve.' "'preserve what?' i says. 'england?' "'no. the game,' he says; 'and that reminds me, gentlemen, we haven't drunk the king and foxhunting.' "so they drank the king and fox-hunting. i drank the king because there's something about edward that tickles me (he's so blame british); but i rather stood out on the fox-hunting. i've ridden wolves in the cattle- country, and needed a drink pretty bad afterwards, but it never struck me as i ought to drink about it--he-red-it-arily. "'no, as i was saying, mr. zigler,' he goes on, 'we have to train our men in the field to shoot and ride. i allow six months for it; but many column-commanders--not that i ought to say a word against 'em, for they're the best fellows that ever stepped, and most of 'em are my dearest friends--seem to think that if they have men and horses and guns they can take tea with the boers. it's generally the other way about, ain't it, mr. zigler?' "'to some extent, sir,' i said. "'i'm _so_ glad you agree with me,' he says. 'my command here i regard as a training depot, and you, if i may say so, have been one of my most efficient instructors. i mature my men slowly but thoroughly. first i put 'em in a town which is liable to be attacked by night, where they can attend riding-school in the day. then i use 'em with a convoy, and last i put 'em into a column. it takes time,' he says, 'but i flatter myself that any men who have worked under me are at least grounded in the rudiments of their profession. adrian,' he says, 'was there anything wrong with the men who upset van bester's applecart last month when he was trying to cross the line to join piper with those horses he'd stole from gabbitas?' "'no, generaal,' says van zyl. 'your men got the horses back and eleven dead; and van besters, he ran to delarey in his shirt. they was very good, those men. they shoot hard.' "_'so_ pleased to hear you say so. i laid 'em down at the beginning of this century--a vintage. _you_ remember 'em, mankeltow?' he says. 'the central middlesex buncho busters--clerks and floorwalkers mostly,' and he wiped his moustache. 'it was just the same with the liverpool buckjumpers, but they were stevedores. let's see--they were a last-century draft, weren't they? they did well after nine months. _you_ know 'em, van zyl? you didn't get much change out of 'em at pootfontein?' "'no,' says van zyl. 'at pootfontein i lost my son andries.' "'i beg your pardon, commandant,' says the general; and the rest of the crowd sort of cooed over adrian. "'excoose,' says adrian. 'it was all right. they were good men those, but it is just what i say. some are so dam good we want to hands-up, and some are so dam bad, we say, "take the vierkleur into cape town." it is not upright of you, generaal. it is not upright of you at all. i do not think you ever wish this war to finish.' "'it's a first-class dress-parade for armageddon,' says the general. 'with luck, we ought to run half a million men through the mill. why, we might even be able to give our native army a look in. oh, not here, of course, adrian, but down in the colony--say a camp-of-exercise at worcester. you mustn't be prejudiced, adrian. i've commanded a district in india, and i give you my word the native troops are splendid men.' "'oh, i should not mind them at worcester,' says adrian. 'i would sell you forage for them at worcester--yes, and paarl and stellenbosch; but almighty!' he says, 'must i stay with cronje till you have taught half a million of these stupid boys to ride? i shall be an old man.' "well, sir, then and there they began arguing whether st. helena would suit adrian's health as well as some other places they knew about, and fixing up letters of introduction to dukes and lords of their acquaintance, so's van zyl should be well looked after. we own a fair- sized block of real estate--america does--but it made me sickish to hear this crowd fluttering round the atlas (oh yes, they had an atlas), and choosing stray continents for adrian to drink his coffee in. the old man allowed he didn't want to roost with cronje, because one of cronje's kin had jumped one of his farms after paardeberg. i forget the rights of the case, but it was interesting. they decided on a place called umballa in india, because there was a first-class doctor there. "so adrian was fixed to drink the king and foxhunting, and study up the native army in india (i'd like to see 'em myself), till the british general had taught the male white citizens of great britain how to ride. don't misunderstand me, sir. i loved that general. after ten minutes i loved him, and i wanted to laugh at him; but at the same time, sitting there and hearing him talk about the centuries, i tell you, sir, it scared me. it scared me cold! he admitted everything--he acknowledged the corn before you spoke--he was more pleased to hear that his men had been used to wipe the geldt with than i was when i knocked out tom reed's two lead- horses--and he sat back and blew smoke through his nose and matured his men like cigars and--he talked of the everlastin' centuries! "i went to bed nearer nervous prostration than i'd come in a long time. next morning me and captain mankeltow fixed up what his shrapnel had left of my zigler for transport to the railroad. she went in on her own wheels, and i stencilled her 'royal artillery mess, woolwich,' on the muzzle, and he said he'd be grateful if i'd take charge of her to cape town, and hand her over to a man in the ordnance there. 'how are you fixed financially? you'll need some money on the way home,' he says at last. "'for one thing, cap,' i said, 'i'm not a poor man, and for another i'm not going home. i am the captive of your bow and spear. i decline to resign office.' "'skittles!' he says (that was a great word of his), 'you'll take parole, and go back to america and invent another zigler, a trifle heavier in the working parts--i would. we've got more prisoners than we know what to do with as it is,' he says. 'you'll only be an additional expense to me as a taxpayer. think of schedule d,' he says, 'and take parole.' "'i don't know anything about your tariffs,' i said, 'but when i get to cape town i write home for money, and i turn in every cent my board'll cost your country to any ten-century-old department that's been ordained to take it since william the conqueror came along.' "'but, confound you for a thick-headed mule,' he says, 'this war ain't any more than just started! do you mean to tell me you're going to play prisoner till it's over?' "'that's about the size of it,' i says, 'if an englishman and an american could ever understand each other.' "'but, in heaven's holy name, why?' he says, sitting down of a heap on an anthill. "'well, cap,' i says, 'i don't pretend to follow your ways of thought, and i can't see why you abuse your position to persecute a poor prisoner o' war on _his!_' "'my dear fellow,' he began, throwing up his hands and blushing, 'i'll apologise.' "'but if you insist,' i says, 'there are just one and a half things in this world i can't do. the odd half don't matter here; but taking parole, and going home, and being interviewed by the boys, and giving lectures on my single-handed campaign against the hereditary enemies of my beloved country happens to be the one. we'll let it go at that, cap.' "'but it'll bore you to death,' he says. the british are a heap more afraid of what they call being bored than of dying, i've noticed. "'i'll survive,' i says, 'i ain't british. i can think,' i says. "'by god,' he says, coming up to me, and extending the right hand of fellowship, 'you ought to be english, zigler!' "it's no good getting mad at a compliment like that. the english all do it. they're a crazy breed. when they don't know you they freeze up tighter'n the st. lawrence. when they _do_, they go out like an ice-jam in april. up till we prisoners left--four days--my captain mankeltow told me pretty much all about himself there was; his mother and sisters, and his bad brother that was a trooper in some colonial corps, and how his father didn't get on with him, and--well, everything, as i've said. they're undomesticated, the british, compared with us. they talk about their own family affairs as if they belonged to someone else. 'taint as if they hadn't any shame, but it sounds like it. i guess they talk out loud what we think, and we talk out loud what they think. "i liked my captain mankeltow. i liked him as well as any man i'd ever struck. he was white. he gave me his silver drinking-flask, and i gave him the formula of my laughtite. that's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his vest-pocket, on the lowest count, if he has the knowledge to use it. no, i didn't tell him the money-value. he was english. he'd send his valet to find out. "well, me and adrian and a crowd of dam dutchmen was sent down the road to cape town in first-class carriages under escort. (what did i think of your enlisted men? they are largely different from ours, sir: very largely.) as i was saying, we slid down south, with adrian looking out of the car- window and crying. dutchmen cry mighty easy for a breed that fights as they do; but i never understood how a dutchman could curse till we crossed into the orange free state colony, and he lifted up his hand and cursed steyn for a solid ten minutes. then we got into the colony, and the rebs-- ministers mostly and schoolmasters--came round the cars with fruit and sympathy and texts. van zyl talked to 'em in dutch, and one man, a big red-bearded minister, at beaufort west, i remember, he jest wilted on the platform. "'keep your prayers for yourself,' says van zyl, throwing back a bunch of grapes. 'you'll need 'em, and you'll need the fruit too, when the war comes down here. _you_ done it,' he says. 'you and your picayune church that's deader than cronje's dead horses! what sort of a god have you been unloading on us, you black _aas vogels_? the british came, and we beat 'em,' he says, 'and you sat still and prayed. the british beat us, and you sat still,' he says. 'you told us to hang on, and we hung on, and our farms was burned, and you sat still--you and your god. see here,' he says, 'i shot my bible full of bullets after bloemfontein went, and you and god didn't say anything. take it and pray over it before we federals help the british to knock hell out of you rebels.' "then i hauled him back into the car. i judged he'd had a fit. but life's curious--and sudden--and mixed. i hadn't any more use for a reb than van zyl, and i knew something of the lies they'd fed us up with from the colony for a year and more. i told the minister to pull his freight out of that, and went on with my lunch, when another man come along and shook hands with van zyl. he'd known him at close range in the kimberley seige and before. van zyl was well seen by his neighbours, i judge. as soon as this other man opened his mouth i said, 'you're kentucky, ain't you?' 'i am,' he says; 'and what may you be?' i told him right off, for i was pleased to hear good united states in any man's mouth; but he whipped his hands behind him and said, 'i'm not knowing any man that fights for a tammany dutchman. but i presoom you've been well paid, you dam gun-runnin' yank.' "well, sir, i wasn't looking for that, and it near knocked me over, while old man van zyl started in to explain. "'don't you waste your breath, mister van zyl,' the man says. 'i know this breed. the south's full of 'em.' then he whirls round on me and says, 'look at here, you yank. a little thing like a king's neither here nor there, but what _you've_ done,' he says, 'is to go back on the white man in six places at once--two hemispheres and four continents--america, england, canada, australia, new zealand, and south africa. don't open your head,' he says. 'you know well if you'd been caught at this game in our country you'd have been jiggling in the bight of a lariat before you could reach for your naturalisation papers. go on and prosper,' he says, 'and you'll fetch up by fighting for niggers, as the north did.' and he threw me half-a-crown--english money. "sir, i do not regard the proposition in that light, but i guess i must have been somewhat shook by the explosion. they told me at cape town one rib was driven in on to my lungs. i am not adducing this as an excuse, but the cold god's truth of the matter is--the money on the floor did it.... i give up and cried. put my head down and cried. "i dream about this still sometimes. he didn't know the circumstances, but i dream about it. and it's hell! "how do you regard the proposition--as a brother? if you'd invented your own gun, and spent fifty-seven thousand dollars on her--and had paid your own expenses from the word 'go'? an american citizen has a right to choose his own side in an unpleasantness, and van zyl wasn't any krugerite ... and i'd risked my hide at my own expense. i got that man's address from van zyl; he was a mining man at kimberley, and i wrote him the facts. but he never answered. guess he thought i lied.... damned southern rebel! "oh, say. did i tell you my captain gave me a letter to an english lord in cape town, and he fixed things so's i could lie up a piece in his house? i was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib had gouged into the lung--here. this lord was a crank on guns, and he took charge of the zigler. he had his knife into the british system as much as any american. he said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in your army. he said the british soldier had failed in every point except courage. he said england needed a monroe doctrine worse than america--a new doctrine, barring out all the continent, and strictly devoting herself to developing her own colonies. he said he'd abolish half the foreign office, and take all the old hereditary families clean out of it, because, he said, they was expressly trained to fool around with continental diplomats, and to despise the colonies. his own family wasn't more than six hundred years old. he was a very brainy man, and a good citizen. we talked politics and inventions together when my lung let up on me. "did he know my general? yes. he knew 'em all. called 'em teddie and gussie and willie. they was all of the very best, and all his dearest friends; but he told me confidentially they was none of 'em fit to command a column in the field. he said they were too fond of advertising. generals don't seem very different from actors or doctors or--yes, sir--inventors. "he fixed things for me lovelily at simons-town. had the biggest sort of pull--even for a lord. at first they treated me as a harmless lunatic; but after a while i got 'em to let me keep some of their books. if i was left alone in the world with the british system of bookkeeping, i'd reconstruct the whole british empire--beginning with the army. yes, i'm one of their most trusted accountants, and i'm paid for it. as much as a dollar a day. i keep that. i've earned it, and i deduct it from the cost of my board. when the war's over i'm going to pay up the balance to the british government. yes, sir, that's how i regard the proposition. "adrian? oh, he left for umballa four months back. he told me he was going to apply to join the national scouts if the war didn't end in a year. 'tisn't in nature for one dutchman to shoot another, but if adrian ever meets up with steyn there'll be an exception to the rule. ye--es, when the war's over it'll take some of the british army to protect steyn from his fellow-patriots. but the war won't be over yet awhile. he that believeth don't hurry, as isaiah says. the ministers and the school-teachers and the rebs'll have a war all to themselves long after the north is quiet. "i'm pleased with this country--it's big. not so many folk on the ground as in america. there's a boom coming sure. i've talked it over with adrian, and i guess i shall buy a farm somewhere near bloemfontein and start in cattle-raising. it's big and peaceful--a ten-thousand-acre farm. i could go on inventing there, too. i'll sell my zigler, i guess. i'll offer the patent rights to the british government; and if they do the 'reelly-now-how-interesting' act over her, i'll turn her over to captain mankeltow and his friend the lord. they'll pretty quick find some gussie, or teddie, or algie who can get her accepted in the proper quarters. i'm beginning to know my english. "and now i'll go in swimming, and read the papers after lunch. i haven't had such a good time since willie died." he pulled the blue shirt over his head as the bathers returned to their piles of clothing, and, speaking through the folds, added: "but if you want to realise your assets, you should lease the whole proposition to america for ninety-nine years." the bonds of discipline poseidon's law when the robust and brass-bound man commissioned first for sea his fragile raft, poseidon laughed, and, "mariner," said he, "behold, a law immutable i lay on thee and thine, that never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine. "let zeus adjudge your landward kin, whose votive meal and salt at easy-cheated altars win oblivion for the fault, but ye the unhoodwinked waves shall test--the immediate gulfs condemn-- unless ye owe the fates a jest, be slow to jest with them. "ye shall not clear by greekly speech, nor cozen from your path the twinkling shoal, the leeward beach, and hadria's white-lipped wrath; nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud-avenging hosts; nor make at all or all make good your bulwarks and your boasts. "now and henceforward serve unshod through wet and wakeful shifts, a present and oppressive god, but take, to aid, my gifts-- the wide and windward-opened eye, the large and lavish hand, the soul that cannot tell a lie--except upon the land!" in dromond and in catafract--wet, wakeful, windward-eyed-- he kept poseidon's law intact (his ship and freight beside), but, once discharged the dromond's hold, the bireme beached once more, splendaciously mendacious rolled the brass-bound man ashore. * * * * * the thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high, and where three hundred blades bit white the twin-propellers ply: the god that hailed, the keel that sailed, are changed beyond recall, but the robust and brass-bound man he is not changed at all! from punt returned, from phormio's fleet, from javan and gadire, he strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire, and, moist with much falernian or smoked massilian juice, revenges there the brass-bound man his long-enforced truce! the bonds of discipline as literature, it is beneath contempt. it concerns the endurance, armament, turning-circle, and inner gear of every ship in the british navy--the whole embellished with profile plates. the teuton approaches the matter with pagan thoroughness; the muscovite runs him close; but the gaul, ever an artist, breaks enclosure to study the morale, at the present day, of the british sailorman. in this, i conceive, he is from time to time aided by the zealous amateur, though i find very little in his dispositions to show that he relies on that amateur's hard-won information. there exists--unlike some other publication, it is not bound in lead boards--a work by one "m. de c.," based on the absolutely unadorned performances of one of our well-known _acolyte_ type of cruisers. it contains nothing that did not happen. it covers a period of two days; runs to twenty-seven pages of large type exclusive of appendices; and carries as many exclamation points as the average dumas novel. i read it with care, from the adorably finished prologue--it is the disgrace of our navy that we cannot produce a commissioned officer capable of writing one page of lyric prose--to the eloquent, the joyful, the impassioned end; and my first notion was that i had been cheated. in this sort of book-collecting you will see how entirely the bibliophile lies at the mercy of his agent. "m. de c.," i read, opened his campaign by stowing away in one of her boats what time h.m.s. _archimandrite_ lay off funchal. "m. de c." was, always on behalf of his country, a madeira portuguese fleeing from the conscription. they discovered him eighty miles at sea and bade him assist the cook. so far this seemed fairly reasonable. next day, thanks to his histrionic powers and his ingratiating address, he was promoted to the rank of "supernumerary captain's servant"--a "post which," i give his words, "i flatter myself, was created for me alone, and furnished me with opportunities unequalled for a task in which one word malapropos would have been my destruction." from this point onward, earth and water between them held no marvels like to those "m. de c." had "envisaged"--if i translate him correctly. it became clear to me that "m. de c." was either a pyramidal liar, or... i was not acquainted with any officer, seaman, or marine in the _archimandrite_; but instinct told me i could not go far wrong if i took a third-class ticket to plymouth. i gathered information on the way from a leading stoker, two seaman- gunners, and an odd hand in a torpedo factory. they courteously set my feet on the right path, and that led me through the alleys of devonport to a public-house not fifty yards from the water. we drank with the proprietor, a huge, yellowish man called tom wessels; and when my guides had departed, i asked if he could produce any warrant or petty officer of the _archimandrite_. "the _bedlamite_, d'you mean--'er last commission, when they all went crazy?" "shouldn't wonder," i replied. "fetch me a sample and i'll see." "you'll excuse me, o' course, but--what d'you want 'im _for?_" "i want to make him drunk. i want to make you drunk--if you like. i want to make him drunk here." "spoke very 'andsome. i'll do what i can." he went out towards the water that lapped at the foot of the street. i gathered from the pot-boy that he was a person of influence beyond admirals. in a few minutes i heard the noise of an advancing crowd, and the voice of mr. wessels. "'e only wants to make you drunk at 'is expense. dessay 'e'll stand you all a drink. come up an' look at 'im. 'e don't bite." a square man, with remarkable eyes, entered at the head of six large bluejackets. behind them gathered a contingent of hopeful free-drinkers. "'e's the only one i could get. transferred to the _postulant_ six months back. i found 'im quite accidental." mr. wessels beamed. "i'm in charge o' the cutter. our wardroom is dinin' on the beach _en masse_. they won't be home till mornin'," said the square man with the remarkable eyes. "are you an _archimandrite?_" i demanded. "that's me. i was, as you might say." "hold on. i'm a _archimandrite._" a red marine with moist eyes tried to climb on the table. "was you lookin' for a _bedlamite?_ i've--i've been invalided, an' what with that, an' visitin' my family 'ome at lewes, per'aps i've come late. 'ave i?" "you've 'ad all that's good for you," said tom wessels, as the red marine sat cross-legged on the floor. "there are those 'oo haven't 'ad a thing yet!" cried a voice by the door. "i will take this _archimandrite_" i said, "and this marine. will you please give the boat's crew a drink now, and another in half an hour if-- if mr.----" "pyecroft," said the square man. "emanuel pyecroft, second-class petty- officer." "--mr. pyecroft doesn't object?" "he don't. clear out. goldin', you picket the hill by yourself, throwin' out a skirmishin'-line in ample time to let me know when number one's comin' down from his vittles." the crowd dissolved. we passed into the quiet of the inner bar, the red marine zealously leading the way. "and what do you drink, mr. pyecroft?" i said. "only water. warm water, with a little whisky an' sugar an' per'aps a lemon." "mine's beer," said the marine. "it always was." "look 'ere, glass. you take an' go to sleep. the picket'll be comin' for you in a little time, an' per'aps you'll 'ave slep' it off by then. what's your ship, now?" said mr. wessels. "the ship o' state--most important?" said the red marine magnificently, and shut his eyes. "that's right," said mr. pyecroft. "he's safest where he is. an' now-- here's santy to us all!--what d'you want o' me?" "i want to read you something." "tracts, again!" said the marine, never opening his eyes. "well. i'm game.... a little more 'ead to it, miss, please." "he thinks 'e's drinkin'--lucky beggar!" said mr. pyecroft. "i'm agreeable to be read to. 'twon't alter my convictions. i may as well tell you beforehand i'm a plymouth brother." he composed his face with the air of one in the dentist's chair, and i began at the third page of "m. de c." "'_at the moment of asphyxiation, for i had hidden myself under the boat's cover, i heard footsteps upon the superstructure and coughed with empress_'--coughed loudly, mr. pyecroft. '_by this time i judged the vessel to be sufficiently far from land. a number of sailors extricated me amid language appropriate to their national brutality. i responded that i named myself antonio, and that i sought to save myself from the portuguese conscription_.' "ho!" said mr. pyecroft, and the fashion of his countenance changed. then pensively: "ther beggar! what might you have in your hand there?" "it's the story of antonio--a stowaway in the _archimandrite's_ cutter. a french spy when he's at home, i fancy. what do _you_ know about it?" "an' i thought it was tracts! an' yet some'ow i didn't." mr. pyecroft nodded his head wonderingly. "our old man was quite right--so was 'op--so was i. 'ere, glass!" he kicked the marine. "here's our antonio 'as written a impromptu book! he _was_ a spy all right." the red marine turned slightly, speaking with the awful precision of the half-drunk. "'as 'e got any-thin' in about my 'orrible death an' execution? ex_cuse_ me, but if i open my eyes, i shan't be well. that's where i'm different from _all_ other men. ahem!" "what about glass's execution?" demanded pyecroft. "the book's in french," i replied. "then it's no good to me." "precisely. now i want you to tell your story just as it happened. i'll check it by this book. take a cigar. i know about his being dragged out of the cutter. what i want to know is what was the meaning of all the other things, because they're unusual." "they were," said mr. pyecroft with emphasis. "lookin' back on it as i set here more an' more i see what an 'ighly unusual affair it was. but it happened. it transpired in the _archimandrite_--the ship you can trust... antonio! ther beggar!" "take your time, mr. pyecroft." in a few moments we came to it thus-- "the old man was displeased. i don't deny he was quite a little displeased. with the mail-boats trottin' into madeira every twenty minutes, he didn't see why a lop-eared portugee had to take liberties with a man-o'-war's first cutter. any'ow, we couldn't turn ship round for him. we drew him out and took him out to number one. 'drown 'im,' 'e says. 'drown 'im before 'e dirties my fine new decks.' but our owner was tenderhearted. 'take him to the galley,' 'e says. 'boil 'im! skin 'im! cook 'im! cut 'is bloomin' hair? take 'is bloomin' number! we'll have him executed at ascension.' "retallick, our chief cook, an' a carth'lic, was the on'y one any way near grateful; bein' short-'anded in the galley. he annexes the blighter by the left ear an' right foot an' sets him to work peelin' potatoes. so then, this antonio that was avoidin' the conscription--" "_sub_scription, you pink-eyed matlow!" said the marine, with the face of a stone buddha, and whimpered sadly: "pye don't see any fun in it at all." "_con_scription--come to his illegitimate sphere in her majesty's navy, an' it was just then that old 'op, our yeoman of signals, an' a fastidious joker, made remarks to me about 'is hands. "'those 'ands,' says 'op, 'properly considered, never done a day's honest labour in their life. tell me those hands belong to a blighted portugee manual labourist and i won't call you a liar, but i'll say you an' the admiralty are pretty much unique in your statements.' 'op was always a fastidious joker--in his language as much as anything else. he pursued 'is investigations with the eye of an 'awk outside the galley. he knew better than to advance line-head against retallick, so he attacked _ong eshlong_, speakin' his remarks as much as possible into the breech of the starboard four point seven, an' 'ummin' to 'imself. our chief cook 'ated 'ummin'. 'what's the matter of your bowels?' he says at last, fistin' out the mess- pork agitated like. "'don't mind me,' says 'op. 'i'm only a mildewed buntin'-tosser,' 'e says: 'but speakin' for my mess, i do hope,' 'e says, 'you ain't goin' to boil your portugee friend's boots along o' that pork you're smellin' so gay!' "'boots! boots! boots!' says retallick, an' he run round like a earwig in a alder-stalk. 'boots in the galley,' 'e says. 'cook's mate, cast out an' abolish this cutter-cuddlin' abori_gine's_ boots!'" "they was hove overboard in quick time, an' that was what 'op was lyin' to for. as subsequently transpired. "'fine arab arch to that cutter-cuddler's hinstep,' he says to me. 'run your eye over it, pye,' 'e says. 'nails all present an' correct,' 'e says. 'bunion on the little toe, too,' 'e says; 'which comes from wearin' a tight boot. what do _you_ think?' "'dook in trouble, per'aps,' i says. 'he ain't got the hang of spud- skinnin'.' no more he 'ad. 'e was simply cannibalisin' 'em. "'i want to know what 'e 'as got the 'ang of,' says 'op, obstructed-like. 'watch 'im,' 'e says. 'these shoulders were foreign-drilled somewhere.' '"when it comes to "down 'ammicks!" which is our naval way o' goin' to bye-bye, i took particular trouble over antonio, 'oo had 'is 'ammick 'ove at 'im with general instructions to sling it an' be sugared. in the ensuin' melly i pioneered him to the after-'atch, which is a orifice communicatin' with the after-flat an' similar suites of apartments. he havin' navigated at three fifths power immejit ahead o' me, _i_ wasn't goin' to volunteer any assistance, nor he didn't need it.' "'mong jew!' says 'e, sniffin' round. an' twice more 'mong jew!'--which is pure french. then he slings 'is 'ammick, nips in, an' coils down. 'not bad for a portugee conscript,' i says to myself, casts off the tow, abandons him, and reports to 'op. "about three minutes later i'm over'auled by our sub-lootenant, navigatin' under forced draught, with his bearin's 'eated. 'e had the temerity to say i'd instructed our antonio to sling his carcass in the alleyway, an' 'e was peevish about it. o' course, i prevaricated like 'ell. you get to do that in the service. nevertheless, to oblige mr. ducane, i went an' readjusted antonio. you may not 'ave ascertained that there are two ways o' comin' out of an 'ammick when it's cut down. antonio came out t'other way--slidin' 'andsome to his feet. that showed me two things. first, 'e had been in an 'ammick before, an' next, he hadn't been asleep. then i reproached 'im for goin' to bed where 'e'd been told to go, instead o' standin' by till some one gave him entirely contradictory orders. which is the essence o' naval discipline. "in the middle o' this argument the gunner protrudes his ram-bow from 'is cabin, an' brings it all to an 'urried conclusion with some remarks suitable to 'is piebald warrant-rank. navigatin' thence under easy steam, an' leavin' antonio to re-sling his little foreign self, my large flat foot comes in detonatin' contact with a small objec' on the deck. not 'altin' for the obstacle, nor changin' step, i shuffles it along under the ball of the big toe to the foot o' the hatchway, when, lightly stoopin', i catch it in my right hand and continue my evolutions in rapid time till i eventuates under 'op's lee. "it was a small moroccer-bound pocket-book, full of indelible pencil- writin'--in french, for i could plainly discern the _doodeladays_, which is about as far as my education runs. "'op fists it open and peruses. 'e'd known an 'arf-caste frenchwoman pretty intricate before he was married; when he was trained man in a stinkin' gunboat up the saigon river. he understood a lot o' french-- domestic brands chiefly--the kind that isn't in print. "'pye,' he says to me, 'you're a tattician o' no mean value. i am a trifle shady about the precise bearin' an' import' o' this beggar's private log here,' 'e says, 'but it's evidently a case for the owner. you'll 'ave your share o' the credit,' 'e says. "'nay, nay, pauline,' i says, 'you don't catch emanuel pyecroft mine- droppin' under any post-captain's bows,' i says, 'in search of honour,' i says. 'i've been there oft.' "'well, if you must, you must,' 'e says, takin' me up quick. 'but i'll speak a good word for you, pye.' "'you'll shut your mouth, 'op,' i says, 'or you an' me'll part brass-rags. the owner has his duties, an' i have mine. we will keep station,' i says, 'nor seek to deviate.' "'deviate to blazes!' says 'op. 'i'm goin' to deviate to the owner's comfortable cabin direct.' so he deviated." mr. pyecroft leaned forward and dealt the marine a large pattern navy kick. "'ere, glass! you was sentry when 'op went to the old man--the first time, with antonio's washin'-book. tell us what transpired. you're sober. you don't know how sober you are!" the marine cautiously raised his head a few inches. as mr. pyecroft said, he was sober--after some r.m.l.i. fashion of his own devising. "'op bounds in like a startled anteloper, carryin' 'is signal-slate at the ready. the old man was settin' down to 'is bountiful platter--not like you an' me, without anythin' more in sight for an 'ole night an' 'arf a day. talkin' about food--" "no! no! no!" cried pyecroft, kicking again. "what about 'op?" i thought the marine's ribs would have snapped, but he merely hiccuped. "oh, 'im! 'e 'ad it written all down on 'is little slate--i think--an' 'e shoves it under the old man's nose. 'shut the door,' says 'op. 'for 'eavin's sake shut the cabin door!' then the old man must ha' said somethin' 'bout irons. 'i'll put 'em on, sir, in your very presence,' says 'op, 'only 'ear my prayer,' or--words to that 'fect.... it was jus' the same with me when i called our sergeant a bladder-bellied, lard-'eaded, perspirin' pension-cheater. they on'y put on the charge-sheet 'words to that effect,' spoiled the 'ole 'fect." "'op! 'op! 'op! what about 'op?" thundered pyecroft. "'op? oh, shame thing. words t' that 'fect. door shut. nushin' more transphired till 'op comes out--nose exshtreme angle plungin' fire or--or words 'that effect. proud's parrot. 'oh, you prou' old parrot,' i says." mr. glass seemed to slumber again. "lord! how a little moisture disintegrates, don't it? when we had ship's theatricals off vigo, glass 'ere played dick deadeye to the moral, though of course the lower deck wasn't pleased to see a leatherneck interpretin' a strictly maritime part, as you might say. it's only his repartees, which 'e can't contain, that conquers him. shall i resume my narrative?" another drink was brought on this hint, and mr. pyecroft resumed. "the essence o' strategy bein' forethought, the essence o' tattics is surprise. per'aps you didn't know that? my forethought 'avin' secured the initial advantage in attack, it remained for the old man to ladle out the surprise-packets. 'eavens! what surprises! that night he dines with the wardroom, bein' of the kind--i've told you as we were a 'appy ship?--that likes it, and the wardroom liked it too. this ain't common in the service. they had up the new madeira--awful undisciplined stuff which gives you a cordite mouth next morning. they told the mess-men to navigate towards the extreme an' remote 'orizon, an' they abrogated the sentry about fifteen paces out of earshot. then they had in the gunner, the bo'sun, an' the carpenter, an' stood them large round drinks. it all come out later-- wardroom joints bein' lower-deck hash, as the sayin' is--that our number one stuck to it that 'e couldn't trust the ship for the job. the old man swore 'e could, 'avin' commanded 'er over two years. he was right. there wasn't a ship, i don't care in what fleet, could come near the _archimandrites_ when we give our mind to a thing. we held the cruiser big-gun records, the sailing-cutter (fancy-rig) championship, an' the challenge-cup row round the fleet. we 'ad the best nigger-minstrels, the best football an' cricket teams, an' the best squee-jee band of anything that ever pushed in front of a brace o' screws. an' _yet_ our number one mistrusted us! 'e said we'd be a floatin' hell in a week, an' it 'ud take the rest o' the commission to stop our way. they was arguin' it in the wardroom when the bridge reports a light three points off the port bow. we overtakes her, switches on our search-light, an' she discloses herself as a collier o' no mean reputation, makin' about seven knots on 'er lawful occasions--to the cape most like. "then the owner--so we 'eard in good time--broke the boom, springin' all mines together at close interval. "'look 'ere, my jokers,' 'e says (i'm givin' the grist of 'is arguments, remember), 'number one says we can't enlighten this cutter-cuddlin gaulish lootenant on the manners an' customs o' the navy without makin' the ship a market-garden. there's a lot in that,' 'e says, 'specially if we kept it up lavish, till we reached ascension. but,' 'e says, 'the appearance o' this strange sail has put a totally new aspect on the game. we can run to just one day's amusement for our friend, or else what's the good o' discipline? an' then we can turn 'im over to our presumably short-'anded fellow-subject in the small-coal line out yonder. he'll be pleased,' says the old man, 'an' so will antonio. m'rover,' he says to number one, 'i'll lay you a dozen o' liquorice an' ink'--it must ha' been that new tawny port--'that i've got a ship i can trust--for one day,' 'e says. 'wherefore,' he says, 'will you have the extreme goodness to reduce speed as requisite for keepin' a proper distance behind this providential tramp till further orders?' now, that's what i call tattics. "the other manoeuvres developed next day, strictly in accordance with the plans as laid down in the wardroom, where they sat long an' steady. 'op whispers to me that antonio was a number one spy when 'e was in commission, and a french lootenant when 'e was paid off, so i navigated at three 'undred and ninety six revolutions to the galley, never 'avin' kicked a lootenant up to date. i may as well say that i did not manoeuvre against 'im as a frenchman, because i like frenchmen, but stric'ly on 'is rank an' ratin' in 'is own navy. i inquired after 'is health from retallick. "'don't ask me,' 'e says, sneerin' be'ind his silver spectacles. ''e's promoted to be captain's second supernumerary servant, to be dressed and addressed as such. if 'e does 'is dooties same as he skinned the spuds, _i_ ain't for changin' with the old man.' "in the balmy dawnin' it was given out, all among the 'olystones, by our sub-lootenant, who was a three-way-discharge devil, that all orders after eight bells was to be executed in inverse ration to the cube o' the velocity. 'the reg'lar routine,' he says, 'was arrogated for reasons o' state an' policy, an' any flat-foot who presumed to exhibit surprise, annoyance, or amusement, would be slightly but firmly reproached.' then the gunner mops up a heathenish large detail for some hanky-panky in the magazines, an' led 'em off along with our gunnery jack, which is to say, our gunnery lootenant. "that put us on the _viva voce_--particularly when we understood how the owner was navigatin' abroad in his sword-belt trustin' us like brothers. we shifts into the dress o' the day, an' we musters _an'_ we prays _ong reggle_, an' we carries on anticipatory to bafflin' antonio. "then our sergeant of marines come to me wringin' his 'ands an' weepin'. 'e'd been talkin' to the sub-lootenant, an' it looked like as if his upper-works were collapsin'. "'i want a guarantee,' 'e says, wringin' 'is 'ands like this. '_i_ 'aven't 'ad sunstroke slave-dhowin' in tajurrah bay, an' been compelled to live on quinine an' chlorodyne ever since. _i_ don't get the horrors off glasses o' brown sherry.' "'what 'ave you got now?' i says. "'_i_ ain't an officer,' 'e says. '_my_ sword won't be handed back to me at the end o' the court-martial on account o' my little weaknesses, an' no stain on my character. i'm only a pore beggar of a red marine with eighteen years' service, an' why for,' says he, wringin' 'is hands like this all the time, 'must i chuck away my pension, sub-lootenant or no sub-lootenant? look at 'em,' he says, 'only look at 'em. marines fallin' in for small-arm drill!' "the leathernecks was layin' aft at the double, an' a more insanitary set of accidents i never wish to behold. most of 'em was in their shirts. they had their trousers on, of course--rolled up nearly to the knee, but what i mean is belts over shirts. three or four 'ad _our_ caps, an' them that had drawn helmets wore their chin-straps like portugee earrings. oh, yes; an' three of 'em 'ad only one boot! i knew what our bafflin' tattics was goin' to be, but even i was mildly surprised when this gay fantasia of brazee drummers halted under the poop, because of an 'ammick in charge of our navigator, an' a small but 'ighly efficient landin'-party. "''ard astern both screws!' says the navigator. 'room for the captain's 'ammick!' the captain's servant--cockburn 'is name was--had one end, an' our newly promoted antonio, in a blue slop rig, 'ad the other. they slung it from the muzzle of the port poop quick-firer thort-ships to a stanchion. then the old man flickered up, smokin' a cigarette, an' brought 'is stern to an anchor slow an' oriental. "'what a blessin' it is, mr. ducane,' 'e says to our sub-lootenant, 'to be out o' sight o' the 'ole pack o' blighted admirals! what's an admiral after all?' 'e says. 'why, 'e's only a post-captain with the pip, mr. ducane. the drill will now proceed. what o! antonio, _descendez_ an' get me a split.' "when antonio came back with the whisky-an'-soda, he was told off to swing the 'ammick in slow time, an' that massacritin' small-arm party went on with their oratorio. the sergeant had been kindly excused from participating an' he was jumpin' round on the poop-ladder, stretchin' 'is leather neck to see the disgustin' exhibition an' cluckin' like a ash- hoist. a lot of us went on the fore an' aft bridge an' watched 'em like 'listen to the band in the park.' all these evolutions, i may as well tell you, are highly unusual in the navy. after ten minutes o' muckin' about, glass 'ere--pity 'e's so drunk!--says that 'e'd had enough exercise for 'is simple needs an' he wants to go 'ome. mr. ducane catches him a sanakatowzer of a smite over the 'ead with the flat of his sword. down comes glass's rifle with language to correspond, and he fiddles with the bolt. up jumps maclean--'oo was a gosport 'ighlander--an' lands on glass's neck, thus bringin' him to the deck, fully extended. "the old man makes a great show o' wakin' up from sweet slumbers. 'mistah ducane,' he says, 'what is this painful interregnum?' or words to that effect. ducane takes one step to the front, an' salutes: 'only 'nother case of attempted assassination, sir,' he says. "'is that all?' says the old man, while maclean sits on glass's collar button. 'take him away,' 'e says, 'he knows the penalty.'" "ah! i suppose that is the 'invincible _morgue_ britannic in the presence of brutally provoked mutiny,'" i muttered, as i turned over the pages of m. de c. "so, glass, 'e was led off kickin' an' squealin', an' hove down the ladder into 'is sergeant's volupshus arms. 'e run glass forward, an' was all for puttin' 'im in irons as a maniac. "'you refill your waterjacket and cool off!' says glass, sittin' down rather winded. 'the trouble with you is you haven't any imagination.' "'haven't i? i've got the remnants of a little poor authority though,' 'e says, lookin' pretty vicious. "'you 'ave?' says glass. 'then for pity's sake 'ave some proper feelin' too. i'm goin' to be shot this evenin'. you'll take charge o' the firin'- party.' "some'ow or other, that made the sergeant froth at the mouth. 'e 'ad no more play to his intellects than a spit-kid. 'e just took everything as it come. well, that was about all, i think.... unless you'd care to have me resume my narrative." we resumed on the old terms, but with rather less hot water. the marine on the floor breathed evenly, and mr. pyecroft nodded. "i may have omitted to inform you that our number one took a general row round the situation while the small-arm party was at work, an' o' course he supplied the outlines; but the details we coloured in by ourselves. these were our tattics to baffle antonio. it occurs to the carpenter to 'ave the steam-cutter down for repairs. 'e gets 'is cheero-party together, an' down she comes. you've never seen a steam-cutter let down on the deck, 'ave you? it's not usual, an' she takes a lot o' humourin'. thus we 'ave the starboard side completely blocked an' the general traffic tricklin' over'ead along the fore-an'-aft bridge. then chips gets into her an' begins balin' out a mess o' small reckonin's on the deck. simultaneous there come up three o' those dirty engine-room objects which we call 'tiffies,' an' a stoker or two with orders to repair her steamin'-gadgets. _they_ get into her an' bale out another young christmas-treeful of small reckonin's--brass mostly. simultaneous it hits the pusser that 'e'd better serve out mess pork for the poor matlow. these things half shifted retallick, our chief cook, off 'is bed-plate. yes, you might say they broke 'im wide open. 'e wasn't at all used to 'em. "number one tells off five or six prime, able-bodied seamen-gunners to the pork barrels. you never see pork fisted out of its receptacle, 'ave you? simultaneous, it hits the gunner that now's the day an' now's the hour for a non-continuous class in maxim instruction. so they all give way together, and the general effect was _non plus ultra_. there was the cutter's innards spread out like a fratton pawnbroker's shop; there was the 'tiffies' hammerin' in the stern of 'er, an' _they_ ain't antiseptic; there was the maxim class in light skirmishin' order among the pork, an' forrard the blacksmith had 'is forge in full blast, makin' 'orse-shoes, i suppose. well, that accounts for the starboard side. the on'y warrant officer 'oo hadn't a look in so far was the bosun. so 'e stated, all out of 'is own 'ead, that chips's reserve o' wood an' timber, which chips 'ad stole at our last refit, needed restowin'. it was on the port booms--a young an' healthy forest of it, for charley peace wasn't to be named 'longside o' chips for burglary. "'all right,' says our number one. 'you can 'ave the whole port watch if you like. hell's hell,' 'e says, 'an when there study to improve.' "jarvis was our bosun's name. he hunted up the 'ole of the port watch by hand, as you might say, callin' 'em by name loud an' lovin', which is not precisely navy makee-pigeon. they 'ad that timber-loft off the booms, an' they dragged it up and down like so many sweatin' little beavers. but jarvis was jealous o' chips an' went round the starboard side to envy at him. "'tain't enough,' 'e says, when he had climbed back. 'chips 'as got his bazaar lookin' like a coal-hulk in a cyclone. we must adop' more drastic measures.' off 'e goes to number one and communicates with 'im. number one got the old man's leave, on account of our goin' so slow (we were keepin' be'ind the tramp), to fit the ship with a full set of patent supernumerary sails. four trysails--yes, you might call 'em trysails--was our admiralty allowance in the un'eard of event of a cruiser breakin' down, but we had our awnin's as well. they was all extricated from the various flats an' 'oles where they was stored, an' at the end o' two hours' hard work number one 'e made out eleven sails o' different sorts and sizes. i don't know what exact nature of sail you'd call 'em--pyjama-stun'sles with a touch of sarah's shimmy, per'aps--but the riggin' of 'em an' all the supernumerary details, as you might say, bein' carried on through an' over an' between the cutter an' the forge an' the pork an' cleanin' guns, an' the maxim class an' the bosun's calaboose _and_ the paintwork, was sublime. there's no other word for it. sub-lime! "the old man keeps swimmin' up an' down through it all with the faithful antonio at 'is side, fetchin' him numerous splits. 'e had eight that mornin', an' when antonio was detached to get 'is spy-glass, or his gloves, or his lily-white 'andkerchief, the old man would waste 'em down a ventilator. antonio must ha' learned a lot about our navy thirst." "he did." "ah! would you kindly mind turnin' to the precise page indicated an' givin' me a _résumé_ of 'is tattics?" said mr. pyecroft, drinking deeply. "i'd like to know 'ow it looked from 'is side o' the deck." "how will this do?" i said. "'_once clear of the land, like voltaire's habakkuk_------"' "one o' their new commerce-destroyers, i suppose," mr. pyecroft interjected. "'--_each man seemed veritably capable of all--to do according to his will. the boats, dismantled and forlorn, are lowered upon the planking. one cries "aid me!" flourishing at the same time the weapons of his business. a dozen launch themselves upon him in the orgasm of zeal misdirected. he beats them off with the howlings of dogs. he has lost a hammer. this ferocious outcry signifies that only. eight men seek the utensil, colliding on the way with some many others which, seated in the stern of the boat, tear up and scatter upon the planking the ironwork which impedes their brutal efforts. elsewhere, one detaches from on high wood, canvas, iron bolts, coal-dust--what do i know_?'" "that's where 'e's comin' the bloomin' _onjenew_. 'e knows a lot, reely." "'_they descend thundering upon the planking, and the spectacle cannot reproduce itself. in my capacity of valet to the captain, whom i have well and beautifully plied with drink since the rising of the sun (behold me also, ganymede!) i pass throughout observing, it may be not a little. they ask orders. there is none to give them. one sits upon the edge of the vessel and chants interminably the lugubrious "roule britannia"--to endure how lomg_?'" "that was me! on'y 'twas 'a life on the ocean wave'--which i hate more than any stinkin' tune i know, havin' dragged too many nasty little guns to it. yes, number one told me off to that for ten minutes; an' i ain't musical, you might say." "_'then come marines, half-dressed, seeking vainly through this "tohu- bohu_"' (that's one of his names for the _archimandrite_, mr. pyecroft), '_for a place whence they shall not be dislodged. the captain, heavy with drink, rolls himself from his hammock. he would have his people fire the maxims. they demand which maxim. that to him is equal. the breech-lock indispensable is not there. they demand it of one who opens a barrel of pork, for this navy feeds at all hours. he refers them to the cook, yesterday my master_--'" "yes, an' retallick nearly had a fit. what a truthful an' observin' little antonio we 'ave!" "'_it is discovered in the hands of a boy who says, and they do not rebuke him, that he has found it by hazard_.' i'm afraid i haven't translated quite correctly, mr. pyecroft, but i've done my best." "why, it's beautiful--you ought to be a frenchman--you ought. you don't want anything o' _me_. you've got it all there." "yes, but i like your side of it. for instance. here's a little thing i can't quite see the end of. listen! '_of the domain which britannia rules by sufferance, my gross captain, knew nothing, and his navigator, if possible, less. from the bestial recriminations and the indeterminate chaos of the grand deck, i ascended--always with a whisky-and-soda in my hands--to a scene truly grotesque. behold my captain in plain sea, at issue with his navigator! a crisis of nerves due to the enormous quantity of alcohol which he had swallowed up to then, has filled for him the ocean with dangers, imaginary and fantastic. incapable of judgment, menaced by the phantasms of his brain inflamed, he envisages islands perhaps of the hesperides beneath his keel--vigias innumerable.'_ i don't know what a vigia is, mr. pyecroft. _'he creates shoals sad and far-reaching of the mid-atlantic!'_ what was that, now?" "oh, i see! that come after dinner, when our navigator threw 'is cap down an' danced on it. danby was quartermaster. they 'ad a tea-party on the bridge. it was the old man's contribution. does he say anything about the leadsmen?" "is this it? _'overborne by his superior's causeless suspicion, the navigator took off the badges of his rank and cast them at the feet of my captain and sobbed. a disgusting and maudlin reconciliation followed. the argument renewed itself, each grasping the wheel, crapulous'_ (that means drunk, i think, mr. pyecroft), _'shouting. it appeared that my captain would chenaler'_ (i don't know what that means, mr. pyecroft) _'to the cape. at the end, he placed a sailor with the sound'_ (that's the lead, i think) _'in his hand, garnished with suet.'_ was it garnished with suet?" "he put two leadsmen in the chains, o' course! he didn't know that there mightn't be shoals there, 'e said. morgan went an' armed his lead, to enter into the spirit o' the thing. they 'eaved it for twenty minutes, but there wasn't any suet--only tallow, o' course." "'_garnished with suet at two thousand metres of profundity. decidedly the britannic navy is well guarded_.' well, that's all right, mr. pyecroft. would you mind telling me anything else of interest that happened?" "there was a good deal, one way an' another. i'd like to know what this antonio thought of our sails." "he merely says that '_the engines having broken down, an officer extemporised a mournful and useless parody of sails_.' oh, yes! he says that some of them looked like '_bonnets in a needlecase_,' i think." "bonnets in a needlecase! they were stun'sles. that shows the beggar's no sailor. that trick was really the one thing we did. pho! i thought he was a sailorman, an' 'e hasn't sense enough to see what extemporisin' eleven good an' drawin' sails out o' four trys'les an' a few awnin's means. 'e must have been drunk!" "never mind, mr. pyecroft. i want to hear about your target-practice, and the execution." "oh! we had a special target-practice that afternoon all for antonio. as i told my crew--me bein' captain of the port-bow quick-firer, though i'm a torpedo man now--it just showed how you can work your gun under any discomforts. a shell--twenty six-inch shells--burstin' inboard couldn't 'ave begun to make the varicose collection o' tit-bits which we had spilled on our deck. it was a lather--a rich, creamy lather! "we took it very easy--that gun-practice. we did it in a complimentary 'jenny-'ave-another-cup-o' tea' style, an' the crew was strictly ordered not to rupture 'emselves with unnecessary exertion. this isn't our custom in the navy when we're _in puris naturalibus_, as you might say. but we wasn't so then. we was impromptu. an' antonio was busy fetchin' splits for the old man, and the old man was wastin' 'em down the ventilators. there must 'ave been four inches in the bilges, i should think--wardroom whisky- an'-soda. "then i thought i might as well bear a hand as look pretty. so i let my _bundoop_ go at fifteen 'undred--sightin' very particular. there was a sort of 'appy little belch like--no more, i give you my word--an' the shell trundled out maybe fifty feet an' dropped into the deep atlantic. "'government powder, sir!' sings out our gunnery jack to the bridge, laughin' horrid sarcastic; an' then, of course, we all laughs, which we are not encouraged to do _in puris naturalibus_. then, of course, i saw what our gunnery jack 'ad been after with his subcutaneous details in the magazines all the mornin' watch. he had redooced the charges to a minimum, as you might say. but it made me feel a trifle faint an' sickish notwithstanding this spit-in-the-eye business. every time such transpired, our gunnery lootenant would say somethin' sarcastic about government stores, an' the old man fair howled. 'op was on the bridge with 'im, an' 'e told me--'cause 'e's a free-knowledgeist an' reads character--that antonio's face was sweatin' with pure joy. 'op wanted to kick him. does antonio say anything about that?" "not about the kicking, but he is great on the gun-practice, mr. pyecroft. he has put all the results into a sort of appendix--a table of shots. he says that the figures will speak more eloquently than words." "what? nothin' about the way the crews flinched an' hopped? nothin' about the little shells rumblin' out o' the guns so casual?" "there are a few pages of notes, but they only bear out what you say. he says that these things always happen as soon as one of our ships is out of sight of land. oh, yes! i've forgotten. he says, _'from the conversation of my captain with his inferiors i gathered that no small proportion of the expense of these nominally efficient cartridges finds itself in his pockets. so much, indeed, was signified by an officer on the deck below, who cried in a high voice: "i hope, sir, you are making something out of it. it is rather monotonous." this insult, so flagrant, albeit well- merited, was received with a smile of drunken bonhommy'_--that's cheerfulness, mr. pyecroft. your glass is empty." "resumin' afresh," said mr. pyecroft, after a well-watered interval, "i may as well say that the target-practice occupied us two hours, and then we had to dig out after the tramp. then we half an' three-quarters cleaned up the decks an' mucked about as requisite, haulin' down the patent awnin' stun'sles which number one 'ad made. the old man was a shade doubtful of his course, 'cause i 'eard him say to number one, 'you were right. a week o' this would turn the ship into a hayti bean-feast. but,' he says pathetic, 'haven't they backed the band noble?' "'oh! it's a picnic for them,' says number one. "'but when do we get rid o' this whisky-peddlin' blighter o' yours, sir?' "'that's a cheerful way to speak of a viscount,' says the old man. "e's the bluest blood o' france when he's at home,' "'which is the precise landfall i wish 'im to make,' says number one.' it'll take all 'ands and the captain of the head to clean up after 'im.' "'they won't grudge it,' says the old man. 'just as soon as it's dusk we'll overhaul our tramp friend an' waft him over,' "then a sno--midshipman--moorshed was is name--come up an' says somethin' in a low voice. it fetches the old man. "'you'll oblige me,' 'e says, 'by takin' the wardroom poultry for _that_. i've ear-marked every fowl we've shipped at madeira, so there can't be any possible mistake. m'rover,' 'e says, 'tell 'em if they spill one drop of blood on the deck,' he says, 'they'll not be extenuated, but hung.' "mr. moorshed goes forward, lookin' unusual 'appy, even for him. the marines was enjoyin' a committee-meetin' in their own flat. "after that, it fell dark, with just a little streaky, oily light on the sea--an' anythin' more chronic than the _archimandrite_ i'd trouble you to behold. she looked like a fancy bazaar and a auction-room--yes, she almost looked like a passenger-steamer. we'd picked up our tramp, an' was about four mile be'ind 'er. i noticed the wardroom as a class, you might say, was manoeuvrin' _en masse_, an' then come the order to cockbill the yards. we hadn't any yards except a couple o' signallin' sticks, but we cock-billed 'em. i hadn't seen that sight, not since thirteen years in the west indies, when a post-captain died o' yellow jack. it means a sign o' mourning the yards bein' canted opposite ways, to look drunk an' disorderly. they do. "'an' what might our last giddy-go-round signify?' i asks of 'op. "'good 'evins!' 'e says, 'are you in the habit o' permittin' leathernecks to assassinate lootenants every morning at drill without immejitly 'avin' 'em shot on the foc'sle in the horrid crawly-crawly twilight?'" "'yes,' i murmured over my dear book, '_the infinitely lugubrious crepuscule. a spectacle of barbarity unparalleled--hideous--cold-blooded, and yet touched with appalling grandeur_.'" "ho! was that the way antonio looked at it? that shows he 'ad feelin's. to resoom. without anyone givin' us orders to that effect, we began to creep about an' whisper. things got stiller and stiller, till they was as still as--mushrooms! then the bugler let off the 'dead march' from the upper bridge. he done it to cover the remarks of a cock-bird bein' killed forrard, but it came out paralysin' in its _tout ensemble_. you never heard the 'dead march' on a bugle? then the pipes went twitterin' for both watches to attend public execution, an' we came up like so many ghosts, the 'ole ship's company. why, mucky 'arcourt, one o' our boys, was that took in he give tongue like a beagle-pup, an' was properly kicked down the ladder for so doin'. well, there we lay--engines stopped, rollin' to the swell, all dark, yards cock-billed, an' that merry tune yowlin' from the upper bridge. we fell in on the foc'sle, leavin' a large open space by the capstan, where our sail-maker was sittin' sewin' broken firebars into the foot of an old 'ammick. 'e looked like a corpse, an' mucky had another fit o' hysterics, an' you could 'ear us breathin' 'ard. it beat anythin' in the theatrical line that even us _archimandrites_ had done--an' we was the ship you could trust. then come the doctor an' lit a red lamp which he used for his photographic muckin's, an' chocked it on the capstan. that was finally gashly! "then come twelve marines guardin' glass 'ere. you wouldn't think to see 'im what a gratooitous an' aboundin' terror he was that evenin'. 'e was in a white shirt 'e'd stole from cockburn, an' his regulation trousers, barefooted. 'e'd pipe-clayed 'is 'ands an' face an' feet an' as much of his chest as the openin' of his shirt showed. 'e marched under escort with a firm an' undeviatin' step to the capstan, an' came to attention. the old man reinforced by an extra strong split--his seventeenth, an' 'e didn't throw _that_ down the ventilator--come up on the bridge an' stood like a image. 'op, 'oo was with 'im, says that 'e heard antonio's teeth singin', not chatterin'--singin' like funnel-stays in a typhoon. yes, a moanin' æolian harp, 'op said. "'when you are ready, sir, drop your 'andkerchief,' number one whispers. "'good lord!' says the old man, with a jump. 'eh! what? what a sight! what a sight!' an' he stood drinkin' it in, i suppose, for quite two minutes. "glass never says a word. 'e shoved aside an 'andkerchief which the sub-lootenant proffered 'im to bind 'is eyes with--quiet an' collected; an' if we 'adn't been feelin' so very much as we did feel, his gestures would 'ave brought down the 'ouse." "i can't open my eyes, or i'll be sick," said the marine with appalling clearness. "i'm pretty far gone--i know it--but there wasn't anyone could 'ave beaten edwardo glass, r.m.l.i., that time. why, i scared myself nearly into the 'orrors. go on, pye. glass is in support--as ever." "then the old man drops 'is 'andkerchief, an' the firin'-party fires like one man. glass drops forward, twitchin' an' 'eavin' horrid natural, into the shotted 'ammick all spread out before him, and the firin' party closes in to guard the remains of the deceased while sails is stitchin' it up. an' when they lifted that 'ammick it was one wringin' mess of blood! they on'y expended one wardroom cock-bird, too. did you know poultry bled that extravagant? _i_ never did. "the old man--so 'op told me--stayed on the bridge, brought up on a dead centre. number one was similarly, though lesser, impressed, but o' course 'is duty was to think of 'is fine white decks an' the blood. 'arf a mo', sir,' he says, when the old man was for leavin'. 'we have to wait for the burial, which i am informed takes place immejit.' "'it's beyond me,' says the owner. 'there was general instructions for an execution, but i never knew i had such a dependable push of mountebanks aboard,' he says. 'i'm all cold up my back, still.' "the marines carried the corpse below. then the bugle give us some more 'dead march,' then we 'eard a splash from a bow six-pounder port, an' the bugle struck up a cheerful tune. the whole lower deck was complimentin' glass, 'oo took it very meek. 'e _is_ a good actor, for all 'e's a leatherneck. "'now,' said the old man, 'we must turn over antonio. he's in what i have 'eard called one perspirin' funk.' "of course, i'm tellin' it slow, but it all 'appened much quicker. we run down our trampo--without o' course informin' antonio of 'is 'appy destiny --an' inquired of 'er if she had any use for a free and gratis stowaway. oh, yes? she said she'd be highly grateful, but she seemed a shade puzzled at our generosity, as you might put it, an' we lay by till she lowered a boat. then antonio--who was un'appy, distinctly un'appy--was politely requested to navigate elsewhere, which i don't think he looked for. 'op was deputed to convey the information, an' 'op got in one sixteen-inch kick which 'oisted 'im all up the ladder. 'op ain't really vindictive, an' 'e's fond of the french, especially the women, but his chances o' kicking lootenants was like the cartridge--reduced to a minimum. "the boat 'adn't more than shoved off before a change, as you might say, came o'er the spirit of our dream. the old man says, like elphinstone an' bruce in the portsmouth election when i was a boy: 'gentlemen,' he says, 'for gentlemen you have shown yourselves to be--from the bottom of my heart i thank you. the status an' position of our late lamented shipmate made it obligate,' 'e says, 'to take certain steps not strictly included in the regulations. an' nobly,' says 'e, 'have you assisted me. now,' 'e says, 'you hold the false and felonious reputation of bein' the smartest ship in the service. pigsties,' 'e says,' is plane trigonometry alongside our present disgustin' state. efface the effects of this indecent orgy,' he says. 'jump, you lop-eared, flat-footed, butter-backed amalekites! dig out, you briny-eyed beggars!'" "do captains talk like that in the navy, mr. pyecroft?" i asked. "i've told you once i only give the grist of his arguments. the bosun's mate translates it to the lower deck, as you may put it, and the lower deck springs smartly to attention. it took us half the night 'fore we got 'er anyway ship-shape; but by sunrise she was beautiful as ever, and we resoomed. i've thought it over a lot since; yes, an' i've thought a lot of antonio trimmin' coal in that tramp's bunkers. 'e must 'ave been highly surprised. wasn't he?" "he was, mr. pyecroft," i responded. "but now we're talking of it, weren't you all a little surprised?" "it come as a pleasant relief to the regular routine," said mr. pyecroft. "we appreciated it as an easy way o' workin' for your country. but--the old man was right--a week o' similar manoeuvres would 'ave knocked our moral double-bottoms bung out. now, couldn't you oblige with antonio's account of glass's execution?" i obliged for nearly ten minutes. it was at best but a feeble rendering of m. de c.'s magnificent prose, through which the soul of the poet, the eye of the mariner, and the heart of the patriot bore magnificent accord. his account of his descent from the side of the "_infamous vessel consecrated to blood_" in the "_vast and gathering dusk of the trembling ocean_" could only be matched by his description of the dishonoured hammock sinking unnoticed through the depths, while, above, the bugler played music "_of an indefinable brutality_" "by the way, what did the bugler play after glass's funeral?" i asked. "him? oh! 'e played 'the strict q.t.' it's a very old song. we 'ad it in fratton nearly fifteen years back," said mr. pyecroft sleepily. i stirred the sugar dregs in my glass. suddenly entered armed men, wet and discourteous, tom wessels smiling nervously in the background. "where is that--minutely particularised person--glass?" said the sergeant of the picket. "'ere!" the marine rose to the strictest of attentions. "an' it's no good smelling of my breath, because i'm strictly an' ruinously sober." "oh! an' what may you have been doin' with yourself?" "listenin' to tracts. you can look! i've had the evenin' of my little life. lead on to the _cornucopia's_ midmost dunjing cell. there's a crowd of brass-'atted blighters there which will say i've been absent without leaf. never mind. i forgive them before'and. _the_ evenin' of my life, an' please don't forget it." then in a tone of most ingratiating apology to me: "i soaked it all in be'ind my shut eyes. 'i'm"--he jerked a contemptuous thumb towards mr. pyecroft--"'e's a flatfoot, a indigo-blue matlow. 'e never saw the fun from first to last. a mournful beggar--most depressin'." private glass departed, leaning heavily on the escort's arm. mr. pyecroft wrinkled his brows in thought--the profound and far-reaching meditation that follows five glasses of hot whisky-and-water. "well, i don't see anything comical--greatly--except here an' there. specially about those redooced charges in the guns. do _you_ see anything funny in it?" there was that in his eye which warned me the night was too wet for argument. "no, mr. pyecroft, i don't," i replied. "it was a beautiful tale, and i thank you very much." a sahibs' war the runners _news!_ what is the word that they tell now--now--now! the little drums beating in the bazaars? _they_ beat (among the buyers and sellers) _"nimrud--ah nimrud! god sends a gnat against nimrud_!" watchers, o watchers a thousand! _news!_ at the edge of the crops--now--now--where the well-wheels are halted, one prepares to loose the bullocks and one scrapes his hoe, _they_ beat (among the sowers and the reapers) _"nimrud--ah nimrud! god prepares an ill day for nimrud_!" watchers, o watchers ten thousand. _news!_ by the fires of the camps--now--now--where the travellers meet where the camels come in and the horses: their men conferring, _they_ beat (among the packmen and the drivers) _"nimrud--ah nimrud! thus it befell last noon to nimrud_!" watchers, o watchers an hundred thousand! _news!_ under the shadow of the border-peels--now--now--now! in the rocks of the passes where the expectant shoe their horses, _they_ beat (among the rifles and the riders) _"nimrud--ah nimrud! shall we go up against nimrud_?" watchers, o watchers a thousand thousand? _news!_ bring out the heaps of grain--open the account-books again! drive forward the well-bullocks against the taxable harvest! eat and lie under the trees--pitch the police-guarded fair-grounds, o dancers! hide away the rifles and let down the ladders from the watch-towers! _they_ beat (among all the peoples) _"now--now--now! god has reserved the sword for nimrud! god has given victory to nimrud!" let us abide under nimrud_!" o well-disposed and heedful, an hundred thousand thousand! a sahibs' war pass? pass? pass? i have one pass already, allowing me to go by the _rêl_ from kroonstadt to eshtellenbosch, where the horses are, where i am to be paid off, and whence i return to india. i am a--trooper of the gurgaon rissala (cavalry regiment), the one hundred and forty-first punjab cavalry, do not herd me with these black kaffirs. i am a sikh--a trooper of the state. the lieutenant-sahib does not understand my talk? is there _any_ sahib on the train who will interpret for a trooper of the gurgaon rissala going about his business in this devil's devising of a country, where there is no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, and no respect paid to a sikh? is there no help?... god be thanked, here is such a sahib! protector of the poor! heaven-born! tell the young lieutenant-sahib that my name is umr singh; i am--i was servant to kurban sahib, now dead; and i have a pass to go to eshtellenbosch, where the horses are. do not let him herd me with these black kaffirs!... yes, i will sit by this truck till the heaven-born has explained the matter to the young lieutenant-sahib who does not understand our tongue. * * * * * what orders? the young lieutenant-sahib will not detain me? good! i go down to eshtellenbosch by the next _terain_? good! i go with the heaven- born? good! then for this day i am the heaven-born's servant. will the heaven-born bring the honour of his presence to a seat? here is an empty truck; i will spread my blanket over one corner thus--for the sun is hot, though not so hot as our punjab in may. i will prop it up thus, and i will arrange this hay thus, so the presence can sit at ease till god sends us a _terain_ for eshtellenbosch.... the presence knows the punjab? lahore? amritzar? attaree, belike? my village is north over the fields three miles from attaree, near the big white house which was copied from a certain place of the great queen's by --by--i have forgotten the name. can the presence recall it? sirdar dyal singh attareewalla! yes, that is the very man; but how does the presence know? born and bred in hind, was he? o-o-oh! this is quite a different matter. the sahib's nurse was a surtee woman from the bombay side? that was a pity. she should have been an up-country wench; for those make stout nurses. there is no land like the punjab. there are no people like the sikhs. umr singh is my name, yes. an old man? yes. a trooper only after all these years? ye-es. look at my uniform, if the sahib doubts. nay--nay; the sahib looks too closely. all marks of rank were picked off it long ago, but--but it is true--mine is not a common cloth such as troopers use for their coats, and--the sahib has sharp eyes--that black mark is such a mark as a silver chain leaves when long worn on the breast. the sahib says that troopers do not wear silver chains? no-o. troopers do not wear the arder of beritish india? no. the sahib should have been in the police of the punjab. i am not a trooper, but i have been a sahib's servant for nearly a year--bearer, butler, sweeper, any and all three. the sahib says that sikhs do not take menial service? true; but it was for kurban sahib-- my kurban sahib--dead these three months! * * * * * young--of a reddish face--with blue eyes, and he lilted a little on his feet when he was pleased, and cracked his finger-joints. so did his father before him, who was deputy-commissioner of jullundur in my father's time when i rode with the gurgaon rissala. _my_ father? jwala singh. a sikh of sikhs--he fought against the english at sobraon and carried the mark to his death. so we were knit as it were by a blood-tie, i and my kurban sahib. yes, i was a trooper first--nay, i had risen to a lance-duffadar, i remember--and my father gave me a dun stallion of his own breeding on that day; and _he_ was a little baba, sitting upon a wall by the parade-ground with his ayah--all in white, sahib--laughing at the end of our drill. and his father and mine talked together, and mine beckoned to me, and i dismounted, and the baba put his hand into mine--eighteen--twenty-five-- twenty-seven years gone now--kurban sahib--my kurban sahib! oh, we were great friends after that! he cut his teeth on my sword-hilt, as the saying is. he called me big umr singh--buwwa umwa singh, for he could not speak plain. he stood only this high, sahib, from the bottom of this truck, but he knew all our troopers by name--every one.... and he went to england, and he became a young man, and back he came, lilting a little in his walk, and cracking his finger-joints--back to his own regiment and to me. he had not forgotten either our speech or our customs. he was a sikh at heart, sahib. he was rich, open-handed, just, a friend of poor troopers, keen- eyed, jestful, and careless. _i_ could tell tales about him in his first years. there was very little he hid from _me_. i was his umr singh, and when we were alone he called me father, and i called him son. yes, that was how we spoke. we spoke freely together on everything--about war, and women, and money, and advancement, and such all. we spoke about this war, too, long before it came. there were many box- wallas, pedlars, with pathans a few, in this country, notably at the city of yunasbagh (johannesburg), and they sent news in every week how the sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the boer-log; and how big guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep sahibs in order; and how a sahib called eger sahib (edgar?) was killed for a jest by the boer-log. the sahib knows how we of hind hear all that passes over the earth? there was not a gun cocked in yunasbagh that the echo did not come into hind in a month. the sahibs are very clever, but they forget their own cleverness has created the _dak_ (the post), and that for an anna or two all things become known. we of hind listened and heard and wondered; and when it was a sure thing, as reported by the pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that the sahibs of yunasbagh lay in bondage to the boer-log, certain among us asked questions and waited for signs. others of us mistook the meaning of those signs. _wherefore, sahib, came the long war in the tirah_! this kurban sahib knew, and we talked together. he said, "there is no haste. presently we shall fight, and we shall fight for all hind in that country round yunasbagh. here he spoke truth. does the sahib not agree? quite so. it is for hind that the sahibs are fighting this war. ye cannot in one place rule and in another bear service. either ye must everywhere rule or everywhere obey. god does not make the nations ringstraked. true--true-- true!" so did matters ripen--a step at a time. it was nothing to me, except i think--and the sahib sees this, too?--that it is foolish to make an army and break their hearts in idleness. why have they not sent for men of the tochi--the men of the tirah--the men of buner? folly, a thousand times. _we_ could have done it all so gently--so gently. then, upon a day, kurban sahib sent for me and said, "ho, dada, i am sick, and the doctor gives me a certificate for many months." and he winked, and i said, "i will get leave and nurse thee, child. shall i bring my uniform?" he said, "yes, and a sword for a sick man to lean on. we go to bombay, and thence by sea to the country of the hubshis" (niggers). mark his cleverness! he was first of all our men among the native regiments to get leave for sickness and to come here. now they will not let our officers go away, sick or well, except they sign a bond not to take part in this war-game upon the road. but _he_ was clever. there was no whisper of war when he took his sick-leave. i came also? assuredly. i went to my colonel, and sitting in the chair (i am--i was--of that rank for which a chair is placed when we speak with the colonel) i said, "my child goes sick. give me leave, for i am old and sick also." and the colonel, making the word double between english and our tongue, said, "yes, thou art truly _sikh_"; and he called me an old devil-- jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my kurban sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at long last he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my sahib safe again. my sahib back again--aie me! so i went to bombay with kurban sahib, but there, at sight of the black water, wajib ali, his bearer checked, and said that his mother was dead. then i said to kurban sahib, "what is one mussulman pig more or less? give me the keys of the trunks, and i will lay out the white shirts for dinner." then i beat wajib ali at the back of watson's hotel, and that night i prepared kurban sahib's razors. i say, sahib, that i, a sikh of the khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. but i did not put on my uniform while i did it. on the other hand, kurban sahib took for me, upon the steamer, a room in all respects like to his own, and would have given me a servant. we spoke of many things on the way to this country; and kurban sahib told me what he perceived would be the conduct of the war. he said, "they have taken men afoot to fight men ahorse, and they will foolishly show mercy to these boer-log because it is believed that they are white." he said, "there is but one fault in this war, and that is that the government have not employed _us_, but have made it altogether a sahibs' war. very many men will thus be killed, and no vengeance will be taken." true talk--true talk! it fell as kurban sahib foretold. and we came to this country, even to cape town over yonder, and kurban sahib said, "bear the baggage to the big dak-bungalow, and i will look for employment fit for a sick man." i put on the uniform of my rank and went to the big dak-bungalow, called maun nihâl seyn, [footnote: mount nelson?] and i caused the heavy baggage to be bestowed in that dark lower place--is it known to the sahib?--which was already full of the swords and baggage of officers. it is fuller now--dead men's kit all! i was careful to secure a receipt for all three pieces. i have it in my belt. they must go back to the punjab. anon came kurban sahib, lilting a little in his step, which sign i knew, and he said, "we are born in a fortunate hour. we go to eshtellenbosch to oversee the despatch of horses." remember, kurban sahib was squadron- leader of the gurgaon rissala, and _i_ was umr singh. so i said, speaking as we do--we did--when none was near, "thou art a groom and i am a grass- cutter, but is this any promotion, child?" at this he laughed, saying, "it is the way to better things. have patience, father." (aye, he called me father when none were by.) "this war ends not to-morrow nor the next day. i have seen the new sahibs," he said, "and they are fathers of owls--all-- all--all!" so we went to eshtellenbosch, where the horses are; kurban sahib doing the service of servants in that business. and the whole business was managed without forethought by new sahibs from god knows where, who had never seen a tent pitched or a peg driven. they were full of zeal, but empty of all knowledge. then came, little by little from hind, those pathans--they are just like those vultures up there, sahib--they always follow slaughter. and there came to eshtellenbosch some sikhs--muzbees, though--and some madras monkey-men. they came with horses. puttiala sent horses. jhind and nabha sent horses. all the nations of the khalsa sent horses. all the ends of the earth sent horses. god knows what the army did with them, unless they ate them raw. they used horses as a courtesan uses oil: with both hands. these needed many men. kurban sahib appointed me to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly ones--_hubshis_--whose touch and shadow are pollution. they were enormous eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like animals. some were called fingoes, and some, i think, red kaffirs, but they were all kaffirs --filth unspeakable. i taught them to water and feed, and sweep and rub down. yes, i oversaw the work of sweepers--a _jemadar_ of _mehtars_ (headman of a refuse-gang) was i, and kurban sahib little better, for five months. evil months! the war went as kurban sahib had said. our new men were slain and no vengeance was taken. it was a war of fools armed with the weapons of magicians. guns that slew at half a day's march, and men who, being new, walked blind into high grass and were driven off like cattle by the boer-log! as to the city of eshtellenbosch, i am not a sahib--only a sikh. i would have quartered one troop only of the gurgaon rissala in that city--one little troop--and i would have schooled that city till its men learned to kiss the shadow of a government horse upon the ground. there are many _mullahs_ (priests) in eshtellenbosch. they preached the jehad against us. this is true--all the camp knew it. and most of the houses were thatched! a war of fools indeed! at the end of five months my kurban sahib, who had grown lean, said, "the reward has come. we go up towards the front with horses to-morrow, and, once away, i shall be too sick so return. make ready the baggage." thus we got away, with some kaffirs in charge of new horses for a certain new regiment that had come in a ship. the second day by _terain_, when we were watering at a desolate place without any sort of a bazaar to it, slipped out from the horse-boxes one sikander khan, that had been a _jemadar_ of _saises_ (head-groom) at eshtellenbosch, and was by service a trooper in a border regiment. kurban sahib gave him big abuse for his desertion; but the pathan put up his hands as excusing himself, and kurban sahib relented and added him to our service. so there were three of us--kurban sahib, i, and sikander khan--sahib, sikh, and _sag_ (dog). but the man said truly, "we be far from our homes and both servants of the raj. make truce till we see the indus again." i have eaten from the same dish as sikander khan-- beef, too, for aught i know! he said, on the night he stole some swine's flesh in a tin from a mess-tent, that in his book, the koran, it is written that whoso engages in a holy war is freed from ceremonial obligations. wah! he had no more religion than the sword-point picks up of sugar and water at baptism. he stole himself a horse at a place where there lay a new and very raw regiment. i also procured myself a grey gelding there. they let their horses stray too much, those new regiments. some shameless regiments would indeed have made away with _our_ horses on the road! they exhibited indents and requisitions for horses, and once or twice would have uncoupled the trucks; but kurban sahib was wise, and i am not altogether a fool. there is not much honesty at the front. notably, there was one congregation of hard-bitten horse-thieves; tall, light sahibs, who spoke through their noses for the most part, and upon all occasions they said, "oah hell!" which, in our tongue, signifies _jehannum ko jao_. they bore each man a vine-leaf upon their uniforms, and they rode like rajputs. nay, they rode like sikhs. they rode like the ustrelyahs! the ustrelyahs, whom we met later, also spoke through their noses not little, and they were tall, dark men, with grey, clear eyes, heavily eyelashed like camel's eyes--very proper men--a new brand of sahib to me. they said on all occasions, "no fee-ah," which in our tongue means _durro mut_ ("do not be afraid"), so we called them the _durro muts_. dark, tall men, most excellent horsemen, hot and angry, waging war _as_ war, and drinking tea as a sandhill drinks water. thieves? a little, sahib. sikander khan swore to me; and he comes of a horse-stealing clan for ten generations; he swore a pathan was a babe beside a _durro mut_ in regard to horse-lifting. the _durro muts_ cannot walk on their feet at all. they are like hens on the high road. therefore they must have horses. very proper men, with a just lust for the war. aah--"no fee-ah," say the _durro muts_. _they_ saw the worth of kurban sahib. _they_ did not ask him to sweep stables. they would by no means let him go. he did substitute for one of their troop-leaders who had a fever, one long day in a country full of little hills--like the mouth of the khaibar; and when they returned in the evening, the _durro muts_ said, "wallah! this is a man. steal him!" so they stole my kurban sahib as they would have stolen anything else that they needed, and they sent a sick officer back to eshtellenbosch in his place. thus kurban sahib came to his own again, and i was his bearer, and sikander khan was his cook. the law was strict that this was a sahibs' war, but there was no order that a bearer and a cook should not ride with their sahib--and we had naught to wear but our uniforms. we rode up and down this accursed country, where there is no bazaar, no pulse, no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, no firewood; nothing but raw corn and a little cattle. there were no great battles as i saw it, but a plenty of gun-firing. when we were many, the boer-log came out with coffee to greet us, and to show us _purwanas_ (permits) from foolish english generals who had gone that way before, certifying they were peaceful and well-disposed. when we were few, they hid behind stones and shot us. now the order was that they were sahibs, and this was a sahibs' war. good! but, as i understand it, when a sahib goes to war, he puts on the cloth of war, and only those who wear that cloth may take part in the war. good! that also i understand. but these people were as they were in burma, or as the afridis are. they shot at their pleasure, and when pressed hid the gun and exhibited _purwanas_, or lay in a house and said they were farmers. even such farmers as cut up the madras troops at hlinedatalone in burma! even such farmers as slew cavagnari sahib and the guides at kabul! we schooled _those_ men, to be sure--fifteen, aye, twenty of a morning pushed off the verandah in front of the bala hissar. i looked that the jung-i-lat sahib (the commander-in-chief) would have remembered the old days; but--no. all the people shot at us everywhere, and he issued proclamations saying that he did not fight the people, but a certain army, which army, in truth, was all the boer-log, who, between them, did not wear enough of uniform to make a loincloth. a fool's war from first to last; for it is manifest that he who fights should be hung if he fights with a gun in one hand and a _purwana_ in the other, as did all these people. yet we, when they had had their bellyful for the time, received them with honour, and gave them permits, and refreshed them and fed their wives and their babes, and severely punished our soldiers who took their fowls. so the work was to be done not once with a few dead, but thrice and four times over. i talked much with kurban sahib on this, and he said, "it is a sahibs' war. that is the order;" and one night, when sikander khan would have lain out beyond the pickets with his knife and shown them how it is worked on the border, he hit sikander khan between the eyes and came near to breaking in his head. then sikander khan, a bandage over his eyes, so that he looked like a sick camel, talked to him half one march, and he was more bewildered than i, and vowed he would return to eshtellenbosch. but privately to me kurban sahib said we should have loosed the sikhs and the gurkhas on these people till they came in with their foreheads in the dust. for the war was not of that sort which they comprehended. they shot us? assuredly they shot us from houses adorned with a white flag; but when they came to know our custom, their widows sent word by kaffir runners, and presently there was not quite so much firing. _no fee- ah_! all the boer-log with whom we dealt had _purwanas_ signed by mad generals attesting that they were well-disposed to the state. they had also rifles not a few, and cartridges, which they hid in the roof. the women wept very greatly when we burned such houses, but they did not approach too near after the flames had taken good hold of the thatch, for fear of the bursting cartridges. the women of the boer-log are very clever. they are more clever than the men. the boer-log are clever? never, never, no! it is the sahibs who are fools. for their own honour's sake the sahibs must say that the boer-log are clever; but it is the sahibs' wonderful folly that has made the boer-log. the sahibs should have sent _us_ into the game. but the _durro muts_ did well. they dealt faithfully with all that country thereabouts--not in any way as we of hind should have dealt, but they were not altogether fools. one night when we lay on the top of a ridge in the cold, i saw far away a light in a house that appeared for the sixth part of an hour and was obscured. anon it appeared again thrice for the twelfth part of an hour. i showed this to kurban sahib, for it was a house that had been spared--the people having many permits and swearing fidelity at our stirrup-leathers. i said to kurban sahib, "send half a troop, child, and finish that house. they signal to their brethren." and he laughed where he lay and said, "if i listened to my bearer umr singh, there would not be left ten houses in all this land." i said, "what need to leave one? this is as it was in burma. they are farmers to-day and fighters to-morrow. let us deal justly with them." he laughed and curled himself up in his blanket, and i watched the far light in the house till day. i have been on the border in eight wars, not counting burma. the first afghan war; the second afghan war; two mahsud waziri wars (that is four); two black mountain wars, if i remember right; the malakand and tirah. i do not count burma, or some small things. _i_ know when house signals to house! i pushed sikandar khan with my foot, and he saw it too. he said, "one of the boer-log who brought pumpkins for the mess, which i fried last night, lives in yonder house." i said, "how dost thou know?" he said, "because he rode out of the camp another way, but i marked how his horse fought with him at the turn of the road; and before the light fell i stole out of the camp for evening prayer with kurban sahib's glasses, and from a little hill i saw the pied horse of that pumpkin-seller hurrying to that house." i said naught, but took kurban sahib's glasses from his greasy hands and cleaned them with a silk handkerchief and returned them to their case. sikander khan told me that he had been the first man in the zenab valley to use glasses--whereby he finished two blood-feuds cleanly in the course of three months' leave. but he was otherwise a liar. that day kurban sahib, with some ten troopers, was sent on to spy the land for our camp. the _durro muts_ moved slowly at that time. they were weighted with grain and forage and carts, and they greatly wished to leave these all in some town and go on light to other business which pressed. so kurban sahib sought a short cut for them, a little off the line of march. we were twelve miles before the main body, and we came to a house under a high bushed hill, with a nullah, which they call a donga, behind it, and an old sangar of piled stones, which they call a kraal, before it. two thorn bushes grew on either side of the door, like babul bushes, covered with a golden coloured bloom, and the roof was all of thatch. before the house was a valley of stones that rose to another bush-covered hill. there was an old man in the verandah--an old man with a white beard and a wart upon the left side of his neck; and a fat woman with the eyes of a swine and the jowl of a swine; and a tall young man deprived of understanding. his head was hairless, no larger than an orange, and the pits of his nostrils were eaten away by a disease. he laughed and slavered and he sported sportively before kurban sahib. the man brought coffee and the woman showed us _purwanas_ from three general sahibs, certifying that they were people of peace and goodwill. here are the _purwanas_, sahib. does the sahib know the generals who signed them? they swore the land was empty of boer-log. they held up their hands and swore it. that was about the time of the evening meal. i stood near the verandah with sikander khan, who was nosing like a jackal on a lost scent. at last he took my arm and said, "see yonder! there is the sun on the window of the house that signalled last night. this house can see that house from here," and he looked at the hill behind him all hairy with bushes, and sucked in his breath. then the idiot with the shrivelled head danced by me and threw back that head, and regarded the roof and laughed like a hyena, and the fat woman talked loudly, as it were, to cover some noise. after this passed i to the back of the house on pretence to get water for tea, and i saw fresh fresh horse-dung on the ground, and that the ground was cut with the new marks of hoofs; and there had dropped in the dirt one cartridge. then kurban sahib called to me in our tongue, saying, "is this a good place to make tea?" and i replied, knowing what he meant, "there are over many cooks in the cook-house. mount and go, child." then i returned, and he said, smiling to the woman, "prepare food, and when we have loosened our girths we will come in and eat;" but to his men he said in a whisper, "ride away!" no. he did not cover the old man or the fat woman with his rifle. that was not his custom. some fool of the _durro muts_, being hungry, raised his voice to dispute the order to flee, and before we were in our saddles many shots came from the roof--from rifles thrust through the thatch. upon this we rode across the valley of stones, and men fired at us from the nullah behind the house, and from the hill behind the nullah, as well as from the roof of the house--so many shots that it sounded like a drumming in the hills. then sikandar khan, riding low, said, "this play is not for us alone, but for the rest of the _durro muts_," and i said, "be quiet. keep place!" for his place was behind me, and i rode behind kurban sahib. but these new bullets will pass through five men arow! we were not hit--not one of us--and we reached the hill of rocks and scattered among the stones, and kurban sahib turned in his saddle and said, "look at the old man!" he stood in the verandah firing swiftly with a gun, the woman beside him and the idiot also--both with guns. kurban sahib laughed, and i caught him by the wrist, but--his fate was written at that hour. the bullet passed under my arm-pit and struck him in the liver, and i pulled him backward between two great rocks atilt --kurban sahib, my kurban sahib! from the nullah behind the house and from the hills came our boer-log in number more than a hundred, and sikandar khan said, "_now_ we see the meaning of last night's signal. give me the rifle." he took kurban sahib's rifle--in this war of fools only the doctors carry swords--and lay belly-flat to the work, but kurban sahib turned where he lay and said, "be still. it is a sahibs' war," and kurban sahib put up his hand--thus; and then his eyes rolled on me, and i gave him water that he might pass the more quickly. and at the drinking his spirit received permission.... thus went our fight, sahib. we _durro muts_ were on a ridge working from the north to the south, where lay our main body, and the boer-log lay in a valley working from east to west. there were more than a hundred, and our men were ten, but they held the boer-log in the valley while they swiftly passed along the ridge to the south. i saw three boers drop in the open. then they all hid again and fired heavily at the rocks that hid our men; but our men were clever and did not show, but moved away and away, always south; and the noise of the battle withdrew itself southward, where we could hear the sound of big guns. so it fell stark dark, and sikandar khan found a deep old jackal's earth amid rocks, into which we slid the body of kurban sahib upright. sikandar khan took his glasses, and i took his handkerchief and some letters and a certain thing which i knew hung round his neck, and sikandar khan is witness that i wrapped them all in the handkerchief. then we took an oath together, and lay still and mourned for kurban sahib. sikandar khan wept till daybreak--even he, a pathan, a mohammedan! all that night we heard firing to the southward, and when the dawn broke the valley was full of boer-log in carts and on horses. they gathered by the house, as we could see through kurban sahib's glasses, and the old man, who, i take it, was a priest, blessed them, and preached the holy war, waving his arm; and the fat woman brought coffee; and the idiot capered among them and kissed their horses. presently they went away in haste; they went over the hills and were not; and a black slave came out and washed the door-sills with bright water. sikandar khan saw through the glasses that the stain was blood, and he laughed, saying, "wounded men lie there. we shall yet get vengeance." about noon we saw a thin, high smoke to the southward, such a smoke as a burning house will make in sunshine, and sikandar khan, who knows how to take a bearing across a hill, said, "at last we have burned the house of the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled." and i said: "what need now that they have slain my child? let me mourn." it was a high smoke, and the old man, as i saw, came out into the verandah to behold it, and shook his clenched hands at it. so we lay till the twilight, foodless and without water, for we had vowed a vow neither to eat nor to drink till we had accomplished the matter. i had a little opium left, of which i gave sikandar khan the half, because he loved kurban sahib. when it was full dark we sharpened our sabres upon a certain softish rock which, mixed with water, sharpens steel well, and we took off our boots and we went down to the house and looked through the windows very softly. the old man sat reading in a book, and the woman sat by the hearth; and the idiot lay on the floor with his head against her knee, and he counted his fingers and laughed, and she laughed again. so i knew they were mother and son, and i laughed, too, for i had suspected this when i claimed her life and her body from sikandar khan, in our discussion of the spoil. then we entered with bare swords.... indeed, these boer-log do not understand the steel, for the old man ran towards a rifle in the corner; but sikandar khan prevented him with a blow of the flat across the hands, and he sat down and held up his hands, and i put my fingers on my lips to signify they should be silent. but the woman cried, and one stirred in an inner room, and a door opened, and a man, bound about the head with rags, stood stupidly fumbling with a gun. his whole head fell inside the door, and none followed him. it was a very pretty stroke--for a pathan. they then were silent, staring at the head upon the floor, and i said to sikandar khan, "fetch ropes! not even for kurban sahib's sake will i defile my sword." so he went to seek and returned with three long leather ones, and said, "four wounded lie within, and doubtless each has a permit from a general," and he stretched the ropes and laughed. then i bound the old man's hands behind his back, and unwillingly--for he laughed in my face, and would have fingered my beard--the idiot's. at this the woman with the swine's eyes and the jowl of a swine ran forward, and sikandar khan said, "shall i strike or bind? she was thy property on the division." and i said, "refrain! i have made a chain to hold her. open the door." i pushed out the two across the verandah into the darker shade of the thorn-trees, and she followed upon her knees and lay along the ground, and pawed at my boots and howled. then sikandar khan bore out the lamp, saying that he was a butler and would light the table, and i looked for a branch that would bear fruit. but the woman hindered me not a little with her screechings and plungings, and spoke fast in her tongue, and i replied in my tongue, "i am childless to-night because of thy perfidy, and _my_ child was praised among men and loved among women. he would have begotten men--not animals. thou hast more years to live than i, but my grief is the greater." i stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot's neck, and flung the end over the branch, and sikandar khan held up the lamp that she might well see. then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of kurban sahib. one hand he held to his side, even where the bullet had struck him, and the other he put forward thus, and said, "no. it is a sahibs' war." and i said, "wait a while, child, and thou shalt sleep." but he came nearer, riding, as it were, upon my eyes, and said, "no. it is a sahibs' war." and sikandar khan said, "is it too heavy?" and set down the lamp and came to me; and as he turned to tally on the rope, the spirit of kurban sahib stood up within arm's reach of us, and his face was very angry, and a third time he said, "no. it is a sahibs' war." and a little wind blew out the lamp, and i heard sikandar khan's teeth chatter in his head. so we stayed side by side, the ropes in our hand, a very long while, for we could not shape any words. then i heard sikandar khan open his water- bottle and drink; and when his mouth was slaked he passed to me and said, "we are absolved from our vow." so i drank, and together we waited for the dawn in that place where we stood--the ropes in our hand. a little after third cockcrow we heard the feet of horses and gun wheels very far off, and so soon as the light came a shell burst on the threshold of the house, and the roof of the verandah that was thatched fell in and blazed before the windows. and i said, "what of the wounded boer-log within?" and sikandar khan said, "we have heard the order. it is a sahibs' war. stand still." then came a second shell--good line, but short--and scattered dust upon us where we stood; and then came ten of the little quick shells from the gun that speaks like a stammerer--yes, pompom the sahibs call it--and the face of the house folded down like the nose and the chin of an old man mumbling, and the forefront of the house lay down. then sikandar khan said, "if it be the fate of the wounded to die in the fire, _i_ shall not prevent it." and he passed to the back of the house and presently came back, and four wounded boer-log came after him, of whom two could not walk upright. and i said, "what hast thou done?" and he said, "i have neither spoken to them nor laid hand on them. they follow in hope of mercy." and i said, "it is a sahibs' war. let them wait the sahibs' mercy." so they lay still, the four men and the idiot, and the fat woman under the thorn-tree, and the house burned furiously. then began the known sound of cartouches in the roof--one or two at first; then a trill, and last of all one loud noise and the thatch blew here and there, and the captives would have crawled aside on account of the heat that was withering the thorn-trees, and on account of wood and bricks flying at random. but i said, "abide! abide! ye be sahibs, and this is a sahibs' war, o sahibs. there is no order that ye should depart from this war." they did not understand my words. yet they abode and they lived. presently rode down five troopers of kurban sahib's command, and one i knew spoke my tongue, having sailed to calcutta often with horses. so i told him all my tale, using bazaar-talk, such as his kidney of sahib would understand; and at the end i said, "an order has reached us here from the dead that this is a sahibs' war. i take the soul of my kurban sahib to witness that i give over to the justice of the sahibs these sahibs who have made me childless." then i gave him the ropes and fell down senseless, my heart being very full, but my belly was empty, except for the little opium. they put me into a cart with one of their wounded, and after a while i understood that they had fought against the boer-log for two days and two nights. it was all one big trap, sahib, of which we, with kurban sahib, saw no more than the outer edge. they were very angry, the _durro muts_-- very angry indeed. i have never seen sahibs so angry. they buried my kurban sahib with the rites of his faith upon the top of the ridge overlooking the house, and i said the proper prayers of the faith, and sikandar khan prayed in his fashion and stole five signalling-candles, which have each three wicks, and lighted the grave as if it had been the grave of a saint on a friday. he wept very bitterly all that night, and i wept with him, and he took hold of my feet and besought me to give him a remembrance from kurban sahib. so i divided equally with him one of kurban sahib's handkerchiefs--not the silk ones, for those were given him by a certain woman; and i also gave him a button from a coat, and a little steel ring of no value that kurban sahib used for his keys, and he kissed them and put them into his bosom. the rest i have here in that little bundle, and i must get the baggage from the hotel in cape town--some four shirts we sent to be washed, for which we could not wait when we went up-country--and i must give them all to my colonel-sahib at sialkote in the punjab. for my child is dead--my baba is dead!... i would have come away before; there was no need to stay, the child being dead; but we were far from the rail, and the _durro muts_ were as brothers to me, and i had come to look upon sikandar khan as in some sort a friend, and he got me a horse and i rode up and down with them; but the life had departed. god knows what they called me--orderly, _chaprassi_ (messenger), cook, sweeper, i did not know nor care. but once i had pleasure. we came back in a month after wide circles to that very valley. i knew it every stone, and i went up to the grave, and a clever sahib of the _durro muts_ (we left a troop there for a week to school those people with _purwanas_) had cut an inscription upon a great rock; and they interpreted it to me, and is was a jest such as kurban sahib himself would have loved. oh! i have the inscription well copied here. read it aloud, sahib, and i will explain the jests. there are two very good ones. begin, sahib:-- in memory of walter decies corbyn late captain st punjab cavalry the gurgaon rissala, that is. go on, sahib. treacherously shot near this place by the connivance of the late hendrik dirk uys a minister of god who thrice took the oath of neutrality and piet his son, this little work aha! this is the first jest. the sahib should see this little work! was accomplished in partial and inadequate recognition of their loss by some men who loved him _si monumentum requiris circumspice_ that is the second jest. it signifies that those who would desire to behold a proper memorial to kurban sahib must look out at the house. and, sahib, the house is not there, nor the well, nor the big tank which they call dams, nor the little fruit-trees, nor the cattle. there is nothing at all, sahib, except the two trees withered by the fire. the rest is like the desert here--or my hand--or my heart. empty, sahib--all empty! "their lawful occasions" the wet litany when the water's countenance blurrs 'twixt glance and second glance; when the tattered smokes forerun ashen 'neath a silvered sun; when the curtain of the haze shuts upon our helpless ways-- hear the channel fleet at sea; _libera nos domine_! when the engines' bated pulse scarcely thrills the nosing hulls; when the wash along the side sounds, a sudden, magnified when the intolerable blast marks each blindfold minute passed. when the fog-buoy's squattering flight guides us through the haggard night; when the warning bugle blows; when the lettered doorways close; when our brittle townships press, impotent, on emptiness. when the unseen leadsmen lean questioning a deep unseen; when their lessened count they tell to a bridge invisible; when the hid and perilous cliffs return our cry to us. when the treble thickness spread swallows up our next-ahead; when her siren's frightened whine shows her sheering out of line; when, her passage undiscerned, we must turn where she has turned-- hear the channel fleet at sea; _libera nos domine_! "their lawful occasions" part i ... "and a security for such as pass on the seas upon their lawful occasions."--_navy prayer_. disregarding the inventions of the marine captain, whose other name is gubbins, let a plain statement suffice. h.m.s. _caryatid_ went to portland to join blue fleet for manoeuvres. i travelled overland from london by way of portsmouth, where i fell among friends. when i reached portland, h.m.s. _caryatid_, whose guest i was to have been, had, with blue fleet, already sailed for some secret rendezvous off the west coast of ireland, and portland breakwater was filled with red fleet, my official enemies and joyous acquaintances, who received me with unstinted hospitality. for example, lieutenant-commander a.l. hignett, in charge of three destroyers, _wraith, stiletto_, and _kobbold_, due to depart at p.m. that evening, offered me a berth on his thirty-knot flagship, but i preferred my comforts, and so accepted sleeping-room in h.m.s. _pedantic_ ( , tons), leader of the second line. after dining aboard her i took boat to weymouth to get my kit aboard, as the battleships would go to war at midnight. in transferring my allegiance from blue to red fleet, whatever the marine captain may say, i did no wrong. i truly intended to return to the _pedantic_ and help to fight blue fleet. all i needed was a new toothbrush, which i bought from a chemist in a side street at : p. m. as i turned to go, one entered seeking alleviation of a gum-boil. he was dressed in a checked ulster, a black silk hat three sizes too small, cord-breeches, boots, and pure brass spurs. these he managed painfully, stepping like a prisoner fresh from leg-irons. as he adjusted the pepper-plaster to the gum the light fell on his face, and i recognised mr. emanuel pyecroft, late second-class petty officer of h.m.s. _archimandrite_, an unforgettable man, met a year before under tom wessel's roof in plymouth. it occurred to me that when a petty officer takes to spurs he may conceivably meditate desertion. for that reason i, though a taxpayer, made no sign. indeed, it was mr. pyecroft, following me out of the shop, who said hollowly: "what might you be doing here?" "i'm going on manoeuvres in the _pedantic_," i replied. "ho!" said mr. pyecroft. "an' what manner o' manoeuvres d'you expect to see in a blighted cathedral like the _pedantic_? _i_ know 'er. i knew her in malta, when the _vulcan_ was her permanent tender. manoeuvres! you won't see more than 'man an' arm watertight doors!' in your little woollen undervest." "i'm sorry for that." "why?" he lurched heavily as his spurs caught and twanged like tuning- forks. "war's declared at midnight. _pedantics_ be sugared! buy an 'am an' see life!" for the moment i fancied mr. pyecroft, a fugitive from justice, purposed that we two should embrace a robin hood career in the uplands of dorset. the spurs troubled me, and i made bold to say as much. "them!" he said, coming to an intricate halt. "they're part of the _prima facie_ evidence. but as for me--let me carry your bag--i'm second in command, leadin'-hand, cook, steward, an' lavatory man, with a few incidentals for sixpence a day extra, on no. torpedo-boat." "they wear spurs there?" "well," said mr. peycroft, "seein' that two six seven belongs to blue fleet, which left the day before yesterday, disguises are imperative. it transpired thus. the right honourable lord gawd almighty admiral master frankie frobisher, k.c.b., commandin' blue fleet, can't be bothered with one tin-torpedo-boat more or less; and what with lyin' in the reserve four years, an' what with the new kind o' tiffy which cleans dynamos with brick-dust and oil (blast these spurs! they won't render!), two six seven's steam-gadgets was paralytic. our mr. moorshed done his painstakin' best--it's his first command of a war-canoe, matoor age nineteen (down that alleyway, please!) but be that as it may, his holiness frankie is aware of us crabbin' ourselves round the breakwater at five knots, an' steerin' _pari passu_, as the french say. (up this alley-way, please!) if he'd given mr. hinchcliffe, our chief engineer, a little time, it would never have transpired, for what hinch can't drive he can coax; but the new port bein' a trifle cloudy, an' 'is joints tinglin' after a post-captain dinner, frankie come on the upper bridge seekin' for a sacrifice. we, offerin' a broadside target, got it. he told us what 'is grandmamma, 'oo was a lady an' went to sea in stick-and string-batteaus, had told him about steam. he throwed in his own prayers for the 'ealth an' safety of all steam-packets an' their officers. then he give us several distinct orders. the first few--i kept tally--was all about going to hell; the next many was about not evolutin' in his company, when there; an' the last all was simply repeatin' the motions in quick time. knowin' frankie's groovin' to be badly eroded by age and lack of attention, i didn't much panic; but our mr. moorshed, 'e took it a little to heart. me an' mr. hinchcliffe consoled 'im as well as service conditions permits of, an' we had a _résumé_-supper at the back o' the camber--secluded _an'_ lugubrious! then one thing leadin' up to another, an' our orders, except about anchorin' where he's booked for, leavin' us a clear 'orizon, number two six seven is now--mind the edge of the wharf--here!" by mysterious doublings he had brought me out on to the edge of a narrow strip of water crowded with coastwise shipping that runs far up into weymouth town. a large foreign timber-brig lay at my feet, and under the round of her stern cowered, close to the wharf-edge, a slate-coloured, unkempt, two-funnelled craft of a type--but i am no expert--between the first-class torpedo-boat and the full-blooded destroyer. from her archaic torpedo-tubes at the stern, and quick-firers forward and amidship, she must have dated from the early nineties. hammerings and clinkings, with spurts of steam and fumes of hot oil, arose from her inside, and a figure in a striped jersey squatted on the engine-room gratings. "she ain't much of a war-canoe, but you'll see more life in 'er than on an whole squadron of bleedin' _pedantics."_ "but she's laid up here--and blue fleet have gone," i protested. "precisely. only, in his comprehensive orders frankie didn't put us out of action. thus we're a non-neglectable fightin' factor which you mightn't think from this elevation; _an'_ m'rover, red fleet don't know we're 'ere. most of us"--he glanced proudly at his boots--"didn't run to spurs, but we're disguised pretty devious, as you might say. morgan, our signaliser, when last seen, was a dawlish bathing-machine proprietor. hinchcliffe was naturally a german waiter, and me you behold as a squire of low degree; while yonder levantine dragoman on the hatch is our mr. moorshed. he was the second cutter's snotty--_my_ snotty--on the _archimandrite_--two years--cape station. likewise on the west coast, mangrove swampin', an' gettin' the cutter stove in on small an' unlikely bars, an' manufacturin' lies to correspond. what i don't know about mr. moorshed is precisely the same gauge as what mr. moorshed don't know about me--half a millimetre, as you might say. he comes into awful opulence of his own when 'e's of age; an' judgin' from what passed between us when frankie cursed 'im, i don't think 'e cares whether he's broke to-morrow or--the day after. are you beginnin' to follow our tattics? they'll be worth followin'. or _are_ you goin' back to your nice little cabin on the _pedantic_--which i lay they've just dismounted the third engineer out of--to eat four fat meals per diem, an' smoke in the casement?" the figure in the jersey lifted its head and mumbled. "yes, sir," was mr. pyecroft's answer. "i 'ave ascertained that _stiletto, wraith_, and _kobbold_ left at p. m. with the first division o' red fleet's cruisers except _devolotion_ and _cryptic_, which are delayed by engine-room defects." then to me: "won't you go aboard? mr. moorshed 'ud like some one to talk to. you buy an 'am an see life." at this he vanished; and the demon of pure irresponsibility bade me lower myself from the edge of the wharf to the tea-tray plates of no. . "what d'you want?" said the striped jersey. "i want to join blue fleet if i can," i replied. "i've been left behind by--an accident. "well?" "mr. pyecroft told me to buy a ham and see life. about how big a ham do you need?" "i don't want any ham, thank you. that's the way up the wharf. _good_- night." "good-night!" i retraced my steps, wandered in the dark till i found a shop, and there purchased, of sardines, canned tongue, lobster, and salmon, not less than half a hundredweight. a belated sausage-shop supplied me with a partially cut ham of pantomime tonnage. these things i, sweating, bore out to the edge of the wharf and set down in the shadow of a crane. it was a clear, dark summer night, and from time to time i laughed happily to myself. the adventure was preordained on the face of it. pyecroft alone, spurred or barefoot, would have drawn me very far from the paths of circumspection. his advice to buy a ham and see life clinched it. presently mr. pyecroft--i heard spurs clink--passed me. then the jersey voice said: "what the mischief's that?" "'asn't the visitor come aboard, sir? 'e told me he'd purposely abandoned the _pedantic_ for the pleasure of the trip with us. told me he was official correspondent for the _times_; an' i know he's littery by the way 'e tries to talk navy-talk. haven't you seen 'im, sir?" slowly and dispassionately the answer drawled long on the night; "pye, you are without exception the biggest liar in the service!" "then what am i to do with the bag, sir? it's marked with his name." there was a pause till mr. moorshed said "oh!" in a tone which the listener might construe precisely as he pleased. "_he_ was the maniac who wanted to buy a ham and see life--was he? if he goes back to the _pedantic_--" "pre-cisely, sir. gives us all away, sir." "then what possessed _you_ to give it away to him, you owl?" "i've got his bag. if 'e gives anything away, he'll have to go naked." at this point i thought it best to rattle my tins and step out of the shadow of the crane. "i've bought the ham," i called sweetly. "have you still any objection to my seeing life, mr. moorshed?" "all right, if you're insured. won't you come down?" i descended; pyecroft, by a silent flank movement, possessing himself of all the provisions, which he bore to some hole forward. "have you known mr. pyecroft long?" said my host. "met him once, a year ago, at devonport. what do you think of him?" "what do _you_ think of him?" "i've left the _pedantic_--her boat will be waiting for me at ten o'clock, too--simply because i happened to meet him," i replied. "that's all right. if you'll come down below, we may get some grub." we descended a naked steel ladder to a steel-beamed tunnel, perhaps twelve feet long by six high. leather-topped lockers ran along either side; a swinging table, with tray and lamp above, occupied the centre. other furniture there was none. "you can't shave here, of course. we don't wash, and, as a rule, we eat with our fingers when we're at sea. d'you mind?" mr. moorshed, black-haired, black-browed, sallow-complexioned, looked me over from head to foot and grinned. he was not handsome in any way, but his smile drew the heart. "you didn't happen to hear what frankie told me from the flagship, did you? his last instructions, and i've logged them here in shorthand, were"--he opened a neat pocket-book--"_'get out of this and conduct your own damned manoeuvres in your own damned tinker fashion! you're a disgrace to the service, and your boat's offal.'"_ "awful?" i said. "no--offal--tripes--swipes--ullage." mr. pyecroft entered, in the costume of his calling, with the ham and an assortment of tin dishes, which he dealt out like cards. "i shall take these as my orders," said mr. moorshed. "i'm chucking the service at the end of the year, so it doesn't matter." we cut into the ham under the ill-trimmed lamp, washed it down with whisky, and then smoked. from the foreside of the bulkhead came an uninterrupted hammering and clinking, and now and then a hiss of steam. "that's mr. hinchcliffe," said pyecroft. "he's what is called a first- class engine-room artificer. if you hand 'im a drum of oil an' leave 'im alone, he can coax a stolen bicycle to do typewritin'." very leisurely, at the end of his first pipe, mr. moorshed drew out a folded map, cut from a newspaper, of the area of manoeuvres, with the rules that regulate these wonderful things, below. "well, i suppose i know as much as an average stick-and-string admiral," he said, yawning. "is our petticoat ready yet, mr. pyecroft?" as a preparation for naval manoeuvres these councils seemed inadequate. i followed up the ladder into the gloom cast by the wharf edge and the big lumber-ship's side. as my eyes stretched to the darkness i saw that no. had miraculously sprouted an extra pair of funnels--soft, for they gave as i touched them. "more _prima facie_ evidence. you runs a rope fore an' aft, an' you erects perpendick-u-arly two canvas tubes, which you distends with cane hoops, thus 'avin' as many funnels as a destroyer. at the word o' command, up they go like a pair of concertinas, an' consequently collapses equally 'andy when requisite. comin' aft we shall doubtless overtake the dawlish bathin'-machine proprietor fittin' on her bustle." mr. pyecroft whispered this in my ear as moorshed moved toward a group at the stern. "none of us who ain't built that way can be destroyers, but we can look as near it as we can. let me explain to you, sir, that the stern of a thorneycroft boat, which we are _not_, comes out in a pretty bulge, totally different from the yarrow mark, which again we are not. but, on the other 'and, _dirk, stiletto, goblin, ghoul, djinn_, and _a-frite_--red fleet dee-stroyers, with 'oom we hope to consort later on terms o' perfect equality--_are_ thorneycrofts, an' carry that grecian bend which we are now adjustin' to our _arriere-pensée_--as the french would put it--by means of painted canvas an' iron rods bent as requisite. between you an' me an' frankie, we are the _gnome_, now in the fleet reserve at pompey-- portsmouth, i should say." "the first sea will carry it all away," said moorshed, leaning gloomily outboard, "but it will do for the present." "we've a lot of _prima facie_ evidence about us," mr. pyecroft went on. "a first-class torpedo boat sits lower in the water than a destroyer. hence we artificially raise our sides with a black canvas wash-streak to represent extra freeboard; _at_ the same time paddin' out the cover of the forward three-pounder like as if it was a twelve-pounder, an' variously fakin' up the bows of 'er. as you might say, we've took thought an' added a cubic to our stature. it's our len'th that sugars us. a 'undred an' forty feet, which is our len'th into two 'undred and ten, which is about the _gnome's,_ leaves seventy feet over, which we haven't got." "is this all your own notion, mr. pyecroft?" i asked. "in spots, you might say--yes; though we all contributed to make up deficiencies. but mr. moorshed, not much carin' for further navy after what frankie said, certainly threw himself into the part with avidity." "what the dickens are we going to do?" "speaking as a seaman gunner, i should say we'd wait till the sights came on, an' then fire. speakin' as a torpedo-coxswain, l.t.o., t.i., m.d., etc., i presume we fall in--number one in rear of the tube, etc., secure tube to ball or diaphragm, clear away securin'-bar, release safety-pin from lockin-levers, an' pray heaven to look down on us. as second in command o' , i say wait an' see!" "what's happened? we're off," i said. the timber ship had slid away from us. "we are. stern first, an' broadside on! if we don't hit anything too hard, we'll do." "come on the bridge," said mr. moorshed. i saw no bridge, but fell over some sort of conning-tower forward, near which was a wheel. for the next few minutes i was more occupied with cursing my own folly than with the science of navigation. therefore i cannot say how we got out of weymouth harbour, nor why it was necessary to turn sharp to the left and wallow in what appeared to be surf. "excuse me," said mr. pyecroft behind us, "_i_ don't mind rammin' a bathin'-machine; but if only _one_ of them week-end weymouth blighters has thrown his empty baccy-tin into the sea here, we'll rip our plates open on it; isn't the _archimandrite's_ old cutter." "i am hugging the shore," was the answer. "there's no actual 'arm in huggin', but it can come expensive if pursooed." "right-o!" said moorshed, putting down the wheel, and as we left those scant waters i felt move more freely. a thin cough ran up the speaking-tube. "well, what is it, mr. hinchcliffe?" said moorshed. "i merely wished to report that she is still continuin' to go, sir." "right-o! can we whack her up to fifteen, d'you think?" "i'll try, sir; but we'd prefer to have the engine-room hatch open--at first, sir." whacked up then she was, and for half an hour was careered largely through the night, turning at last with a suddenness that slung us across the narrow deck. "this," said mr. pyecroft, who received me on his chest as a large rock receives a shadow, "represents the _gnome_ arrivin' cautious from the direction o' portsmouth, with admiralty orders." he pointed through the darkness ahead, and after much staring my eyes opened to a dozen destroyers, in two lines, some few hundred yards away. "those are the red fleet destroyer flotilla, which is too frail to panic about among the full-blooded cruisers inside portland breakwater, and several millimetres too excited over the approachin' war to keep a look- out inshore. hence our tattics!" we wailed through our siren--a long, malignant, hyena-like howl--and a voice hailed us as we went astern tumultuously. "the _gnome_--carteret-jones--from portsmouth, with orders--mm--mm-- _stiletto_," moorshed answered through the megaphone in a high, whining voice, rather like a chaplain's. "_who_?" was the answer. "carter--et--jones." "oh, lord!" there was a pause; a voice cried to some friend, "it's podgie, adrift on the high seas in charge of a whole dee-stroyer!" another voice echoed, "podgie!" and from its note i gathered that mr. carteret-jones had a reputation, but not for independent command. "who's your sub?" said the first speaker, a shadow on the bridge of the _dirk_. "a gunner, at present, sir. the _stiletto_--broken down--turns over to us." "when did the _stiletto_ break down?" "off the start, sir; two hours after--after she left here this evening, i believe. my orders are to report to you for the manoeuvre signal-codes, and join commander hignett's flotilla, which is in attendance on _stiletto_." a smothered chuckle greeted this last. moorshed's voice was high and uneasy. said pyecroft, with a sigh: "the amount o' trouble me an' my bright spurs 'ad fishin' out that information from torpedo coxswains and similar blighters in pubs all this afternoon, you would never believe." "but has the _stiletto_ broken down?" i asked weakly. "how else are we to get red fleet's private signal-code? any way, if she 'asn't now, she will before manoeuvres are ended. it's only executin' in anticipation." "go astern and send your coxswain aboard for orders, mr. jones." water carries sound well, but i do not know whether we were intended to hear the next sentence: "they must have given him _one_ intelligent keeper." "that's me," said mr. pyecroft, as a black and coal-stained dinghy--i did not foresee how well i should come to know her--was flung overside by three men. "havin' bought an 'am, we will now see life." he stepped into the boat and was away. "i say, podgie!"--the speaker was in the last of the line of destroyers, as we thumped astern--"aren't you lonely out there?" "oh, don't rag me!" said moorshed. "do you suppose i'll have to manoeuvre with your flo-tilla?" "no, podgie! i'm pretty sure our commander will see you sifting cinders in tophet before you come with our flo-tilla." "thank you! she steers rather wild at high speeds." two men laughed together. "by the way, who is mr. carteret-jones when he's at home?" i whispered. "i was with him in the _britannia_. i didn't like him much, but i'm grateful to him now. i must tell him so some day." "they seemed to know him hereabouts." "he rammed the _caryatid_ twice with her own steam-pinnace." presently, moved by long strokes, mr. pyecroft returned, skimming across the dark. the dinghy swung up behind him, even as his heel spurned it. "commander fasset's compliments to mr. l. carteret-jones, and the sooner he digs out in pursuance of admiralty orders as received at portsmouth, the better pleased commander fasset will be. but there's a lot more----" "whack her up, mr. hinchcliffe! come on to the bridge. we can settle it as we go. well?" mr. pyecroft drew an important breath, and slid off his cap. "day an' night private signals of red fleet _com_plete, sir!" he handed a little paper to moorshed. "you see, sir, the trouble was, that mr. carteret-jones bein', so to say, a little new to his duties, 'ad forgot to give 'is gunner his admiralty orders in writin', but, as i told commander fasset, mr. jones had been repeatin' 'em to me, nervous-like, most of the way from portsmouth, so i knew 'em by heart--an' better. the commander, recognisin' in me a man of agility, cautioned me to be a father an' mother to mr. carteret-jones." "didn't he know you?" i asked, thinking for the moment that there could be no duplicates of emanuel pyecroft in the navy. "what's a torpedo-gunner more or less to a full lootenant commanding six thirty-knot destroyers for the first time? 'e seemed to cherish the 'ope that 'e might use the _gnome_ for 'is own 'orrible purposes; but what i told him about mr. jones's sad lack o' nerve comin' from pompey, an' going dead slow on account of the dark, short-circuited _that_ connection. 'm'rover,' i says to him, 'our orders is explicit; _stiletto's_ reported broke down somewhere off the start, an' we've been tryin' to coil down a new stiff wire hawser all the evenin', so it looks like towin' 'er back, don't it?' i says. that more than ever jams his turrets, an' makes him keen to get rid of us. 'e even hinted that mr. carteret-jones passin' hawsers an' assistin' the impotent in a sea-way might come pretty expensive on the tax-payer. i agreed in a disciplined way. i ain't proud. gawd knows i ain't proud! but when i'm really diggin' out in the fancy line, i sometimes think that me in a copper punt, single-'anded, 'ud beat a cutter-full of de rougemongs in a row round the fleet." at this point i reclined without shame on mr. pyecroft's bosom, supported by his quivering arm. "well?" said moorshed, scowling into the darkness, as 's bows snapped at the shore seas of the broader channel, and we swayed together. "'you'd better go on,' says commander fassett, 'an' do what you're told to do. i don't envy hignett if he has to dry-nurse the _gnome's_ commander. but what d'you want with signals?' 'e says. 'it's criminal lunacy to trust mr. jones with anything that steams.' "'may i make an observation, sir?' i says. 'suppose,' i says, 'you was torpedo-gunner on the _gnome_, an' mr. carteret-jones was your commandin' officer, an' you had your reputation _as_ a second in command for the first time,' i says, well knowin' it was his first command of a flotilla, 'what 'ud you do, sir?' that gouged 'is unprotected ends open--clear back to the citadel." "what did he say?" moorshed jerked over is shoulder. "if you were mr. carteret-jones, it might be disrespect for me to repeat it, sir." "go ahead," i heard the boy chuckle. "'do?' 'e says. 'i'd rub the young blighter's nose into it till i made a perishin' man of him, or a perspirin' pillow-case,' 'e says, 'which,' he adds, 'is forty per cent, more than he is at present.' "whilst he's gettin' the private signals--they're rather particular ones-- i went forrard to see the _dirk's_ gunner about borrowin' a holdin'-down bolt for our twelve-pounder. my open ears, while i was rovin' over his packet, got the followin' authentic particulars." i heard his voice change, and his feet shifted. "there's been a last council o' war of destroyer-captains at the flagship, an' a lot of things 'as come out. to begin with _cryptic_ and _devolution_, captain panke and captain malan--" "_cryptic_ and _devolution_, first-class cruisers," said mr. moorshed dreamily. "go on, pyecroft." "--bein' delayed by minor defects in engine-room, did _not_, as we know, accompany red fleet's first division of scouting cruisers, whose rendezvous is unknown, but presumed to be somewhere off the lizard. _cryptic_ an' _devolution_ left at : p.m. still reportin' copious minor defects in engine-room. admiral's final instructions was they was to put into torbay, an' mend themselves there. if they can do it in twenty-four hours, they're to come on and join the battle squadron at the first rendezvous, down channel somewhere. (i couldn't get that, sir.) if they can't, he'll think about sendin' them some destroyers for escort. but his present intention is to go 'ammer and tongs down channel, usin' 'is destroyers for all they're worth, an' thus keepin' blue fleet too busy off the irish coast to sniff into any eshtuaries." "but if those cruisers are crocks, why does the admiral let 'em out of weymouth at all?" i asked. "the tax-payer," said mr. moorshed. "an' newspapers," added mr. pyecroft. "in torbay they'll look as they was muckin' about for strategical purposes--hammerin' like blazes in the engine room all the weary day, an' the skipper droppin' questions down the engine-room hatch every two or three minutes. _i've_ been there. now, sir?" i saw the white of his eye turn broad on mr. moorshed. the boy dropped his chin over the speaking-tube. "mr. hinchcliffe, what's her extreme economical radius?" "three hundred and forty knots, down to swept bunkers." "can do," said moorshed. "by the way, have her revolutions any bearing on her speed, mr. hinchcliffe?" "none that i can make out yet, sir." "then slow to eight knots. we'll jog down to forty-nine, forty-five, or four about, and three east. that puts us say forty miles from torbay by nine o'clock to-morrow morning. we'll have to muck about till dusk before we run in and try our luck with the cruisers." "yes, sir. their picket boats will be panickin' round them all night. it's considered good for the young gentlemen." "hallo! war's declared! they're off!" said moorshed. he swung 's head round to get a better view. a few miles to our right the low horizon was spangled with small balls of fire, while nearer ran a procession of tiny cigar ends. "red hot! set 'em alight," said mr. pyecroft. "that's the second destroyer flotilla diggin' out for commander fassett's reputation." the smaller lights disappeared; the glare of the destroyers' funnels dwindled even as we watched. "they're going down channel with lights out, thus showin' their zeal an' drivin' all watch-officers crazy. now, if you'll excuse me, i think i'll get you your pyjamas, an' you'll turn in," said pyecroft. he piloted me to the steel tunnel, where the ham still swung majestically over the swaying table, and dragged out trousers and a coat with a monk's hood, all hewn from one hairy inch-thick board. "if you fall over in these you'll be drowned. they're lammies. i'll chock you off with a pillow; but sleepin' in a torpedo-boat's what you might call an acquired habit." i coiled down on an iron-hard horse-hair pillow next the quivering steel wall to acquire that habit. the sea, sliding over 's skin, worried me with importunate, half-caught confidences. it drummed tackily to gather my attention, coughed, spat, cleared its throat, and, on the eve of that portentous communication, retired up stage as a multitude whispering. anon, i caught the tramp of armies afoot, the hum of crowded cities awaiting the event, the single sob of a woman, and dry roaring of wild beasts. a dropped shovel clanging on the stokehold floor was, naturally enough, the unbarring of arena gates; our sucking uplift across the crest of some little swell, nothing less than the haling forth of new worlds; our half-turning descent into the hollow of its mate, the abysmal plunge of god-forgotten planets. through all these phenomena and more--though i ran with wild horses over illimitable plains of rustling grass; though i crouched belly-flat under appalling fires of musketry; though i was livingstone, painless, and incurious in the grip of his lion--my shut eyes saw the lamp swinging in its gimbals, the irregularly gliding patch of light on the steel ladder, and every elastic shadow in the corners of the frail angle-irons; while my body strove to accommodate itself to the infernal vibration of the machine. at the last i rolled limply on the floor, and woke to real life with a bruised nose and a great call to go on deck at once. "it's all right," said a voice in my booming ears. "morgan and laughton are worse than you!" i was gripping a rail. mr. pyecroft pointed with his foot to two bundles beside a torpedo-tube, which at weymouth had been a signaller and a most able seaman. "she'd do better in a bigger sea," said mr. pyecroft. "this lop is what fetches it up." the sky behind us whitened as i laboured, and the first dawn drove down the channel, tipping the wave-tops with a chill glare. to me that round wind which runs before the true day has ever been fortunate and of good omen. it cleared the trouble from my body, and set my soul dancing to 's heel and toe across the northerly set of the waves--such waves as i had often watched contemptuously from the deck of a ten-thousand-ton liner. they shouldered our little hull sideways and passed, scalloped, and splayed out, toward the coast, carrying our white wake in loops along their hollow backs. in succession we looked down a lead-grey cutting of water for half a clear mile, were flung up on its ridge, beheld the channel traffic--full-sailed to that fair breeze--all about us, and swung slantwise, light as a bladder, elastic as a basket, into the next furrow. then the sun found us, struck the wet gray bows to living, leaping opal, the colourless deep to hard sapphire, the many sails to pearl, and the little steam-plume of our escape to an inconstant rainbow. "a fair day and a fair wind for all, thank god!" said emanuel pyecroft, throwing back the cowl-like hood of his blanket coat. his face was pitted with coal-dust and grime, pallid for lack of sleep; but his eyes shone like a gull's. "i told you you'd see life. think o' the _pedantic_ now. think o' her number one chasin' the mobilised gobbies round the lower deck flats. think o' the pore little snotties now bein' washed, fed, and taught, an' the yeoman o' signals with a pink eye wakin' bright 'an brisk to another perishin' day of five-flag hoists. whereas _we_ shall caulk an' smoke cigarettes, same as the spanish destroyers did for three weeks after war was declared." he dropped into the wardroom singing:-- if you're going to marry me, marry me, bill, it's no use muckin' about! the man at the wheel, uniformed in what had once been a tam-o'-shanter, a pair of very worn r.m.l.i. trousers rolled up to the knee, and a black sweater, was smoking a cigarette. moorshed, in a gray balaclava and a brown mackintosh with a flapping cape, hauled at our supplementary funnel guys, and a thing like a waiter from a soho restaurant sat at the head of the engine-room ladder exhorting the unseen below. the following wind beat down our smoke and covered all things with an inch-thick layer of stokers, so that eyelids, teeth, and feet gritted in their motions. i began to see that my previous experiences among battleships and cruisers had been altogether beside the mark. part ii the wind went down with the sunset-- the fog came up with the tide, when the witch of the north took an egg-shell (_bis_) with a little blue devil inside. "sink," she said, "or swim," she said, "it's all you will get from me. and that is the finish of him!" she said, and the egg-shell went to sea. the wind got up with the morning, and the fog blew off with the rain, when the witch of the north saw the egg-shell and the little blue devil again. "did you swim?" she said. "did you sink?" she said, and the little blue devil replied: "for myself i swam, but i think," he said, "there's somebody sinking outside." but for the small detail that i was a passenger and a civilian, and might not alter her course, torpedo-boat no. was mine to me all that priceless day. moorshed, after breakfast--frizzled ham and a devil that pyecroft made out of sardines, anchovies, and french mustard smashed together with a spanner--showed me his few and simple navigating tools, and took an observation. morgan, the signaller, let me hold the chamois leathers while he cleaned the searchlight (we seemed to be better equipped with electricity than most of our class), that lived under a bulbous umbrella-cover amidship. then pyecroft and morgan, standing easy, talked together of the king's service as reformers and revolutionists, so notably, that were i not engaged on this tale i would, for its conclusion, substitute theirs. i would speak of hinchcliffe--henry salt hinchcliffe, first-class engine- room artificer, and genius in his line, who was prouder of having taken part in the hat crusade in his youth than of all his daring, his skill, and his nickel-steel nerve. i consorted with him for an hour in the packed and dancing engine-room, when moorshed suggested "whacking her up" to eighteen knots, to see if she would stand it. the floor was ankle-deep in a creamy batter of oil and water; each moving part flicking more oil in zoetrope-circles, and the gauges invisible for their dizzy chattering on the chattering steel bulkhead. leading stoker grant, said to be a bigamist, an ox-eyed man smothered in hair, took me to the stokehold and planted me between a searing white furnace and some hell-hot iron plate for fifteen minutes, while i listened to the drone of fans and the worry of the sea without, striving to wrench all that palpitating firepot wide open. then i came on deck and watched moorshed--revolving in his orbit from the canvas bustle and torpedo-tubes aft, by way of engine-room, conning-tower, and wheel, to the doll's house of a foc'sle--learned in experience withheld from me, moved by laws beyond my knowledge, authoritative, entirely adequate, and yet, in heart, a child at his play. _i_ could not take ten steps along the crowded deck but i collided with some body or thing; but he and his satellites swung, passed, and returned on their vocations with the freedom and spaciousness of the well-poised stars. even now i can at will recall every tone and gesture, with each dissolving picture inboard or overside--hinchcliffe's white arm buried to the shoulder in a hornet's nest of spinning machinery; moorshed's halt and jerk to windward as he looked across the water; pyecroft's back bent over the berthon collapsible boat, while he drilled three men in expanding it swiftly; the outflung white water at the foot of a homeward-bound chinaman not a hundred yards away, and her shadow-slashed, rope-purfled sails bulging sideways like insolent cheeks; the ribbed and pitted coal-dust on our decks, all iridescent under the sun; the first filmy haze that paled the shadows of our funnels about lunch time; the gradual die-down and dulling over of the short, cheery seas; the sea that changed to a swell: the swell that crumbled up and ran allwhither oilily: the triumphant, almost audible roll inward of wandering fog-walls that had been stalking us for two hours, and--welt upon welt, chill as the grave--the drive of the interminable main fog of the atlantic. we slowed to little more than steerage-way and lay listening. presently a hand-bellows foghorn jarred like a corncrake, and there rattled out of the mist a big ship literally above us. we could count the rivets in her plates as we scrooped by, and the little drops of dew gathered below them. "wonder why they're always barks--always steel--always four-masted--an' never less than two thousand tons. but they are," said pyecroft. he was out on the turtle-backed bows of her; moorshed was at the wheel, and another man worked the whistle. "this fog is the best thing could ha' happened to us," said moorshed. "it gives us our chance to run in on the quiet.... hal-lo!" a cracked bell rang. clean and sharp (beautifully grained, too), a bowsprit surged over our starboard bow, the bobstay confidentially hooking itself into our forward rail. i saw pyecroft's arm fly up; heard at the same moment the severing of the tense rope, the working of the wheel, moorshed's voice down the tube saying, "astern a little, please, mr. hinchcliffe!" and pyecroft's cry, "trawler with her gear down! look out for our propeller, sir, or we'll be wrapped up in the rope." surged quickly under my feet, as the pressure of the downward-bearing bobstay was removed. half-a-dozen men of the foc'sle had already thrown out fenders, and stood by to bear off a just visible bulwark. still going astern, we touched slowly, broadside on, to a suggestive crunching of fenders, and i looked into the deck of a brixham trawler, her crew struck dumb. "any luck?" said moorshed politely. "not till we met yeou," was the answer. "the lard he saved us from they big ships to be spitted by the little wan. where be'e gwine tu with our fine new bobstay?" "yah! you've had time to splice it by now," said pyecroft with contempt. "aie; but we'm all crushed to port like aigs. you was runnin' twenty-seven knots, us reckoned it. didn't us, albert?" "liker twenty-nine, an' niver no whistle." "yes, we always do that. do you want a tow to brixham?" said moorshed. a great silence fell upon those wet men of the sea. we lifted a little toward their side, but our silent, quick-breathing crew, braced and strained outboard, bore us off as though we had been a mere picket-boat. "what for?" said a puzzled voice. "for love; for nothing. you'll be abed in brixham by midnight." "yiss; but trawl's down." "no hurry. i'll pass you a line and go ahead. sing out when you're ready." a rope smacked on their deck with the word; they made it fast; we slid forward, and in ten seconds saw nothing save a few feet of the wire rope running into fog over our stern; but we heard the noise of debate. "catch a brixham trawler letting go of a free tow in a fog," said moorshed listening. "but what in the world do you want him for?" i asked. "oh, he'll came in handy later." "was that your first collision?" "yes." i shook hands with him in silence, and our tow hailed us. "aie! yeou little man-o'-war!" the voice rose muffled and wailing. "after us've upped trawl, us'll be glad of a tow. leave line just slack abaout as 'tis now, and kip a good fine look-out be'ind 'ee." "there's an accommodatin' blighter for you!" said pyecroft. "where does he expect we'll be, with these currents evolutin' like sailormen at the agricultural hall?" i left the bridge to watch the wire-rope at the stern as it drew out and smacked down upon the water. by what instinct or guidance kept it from fouling her languidly flapping propeller, i cannot tell. the fog now thickened and thinned in streaks that bothered the eyes like the glare of intermittent flash-lamps; by turns granting us the vision of a sick sun that leered and fled, or burying all a thousand fathom deep in gulfs of vapours. at no time could we see the trawler though we heard the click of her windlass, the jar of her trawl-beam, and the very flap of the fish on her deck. forward was pyecroft with the lead; on the bridge moorshed pawed a channel chart; aft sat i, listening to the whole of the british mercantile marine (never a keel less) returning to england, and watching the fog-dew run round the bight of the tow back to its mother-fog. "aie! yeou little man-o'-war! we'm done with trawl. you can take us home if you know the road." "right o!" said moorshed. "we'll give the fishmonger a run for his money. whack her up, mr. hinchcliffe." the next few hours completed my education. i saw that i ought to be afraid, but more clearly (this was when a liner hooted down the back of my neck) that any fear which would begin to do justice to the situation would, if yielded to, incapacitate me for the rest of my days. a shadow of spread sails, deeper than the darkening twilight, brooding over us like the wings of azrael (pyecroft said she was a swede), and, miraculously withdrawn, persuaded me that there was a working chance that i should reach the beach--any beach--alive, if not dry; and (this was when an economical tramp laved our port-rail with her condenser water) were i so spared, i vowed i would tell my tale worthily. thus we floated in space as souls drift through raw time. night added herself to the fog, and i laid hold on my limbs jealously, lest they, too, should melt in the general dissolution. "where's that prevaricatin' fishmonger?" said pyecroft, turning a lantern on a scant yard of the gleaming wire-rope that pointed like a stick to my left. "he's doin' some fancy steerin' on his own. no wonder mr. hincheliffe is blasphemious. the tow's sheered off to starboard, sir. he'll fair pull the stern out of us." moorshed, invisible, cursed through the megaphone into invisibility. "aie! yeou little man-o'-war!" the voice butted through the fog with the monotonous insistence of a strayed sheep's. "we don't all like the road you'm takin'. 'tis no road to brixham. you'll be buckled up under prawle point by'mbye." "do you pretend to know where you are?" the megaphone roared. "iss, i reckon; but there's no pretence to me!" "o peter!" said pyecroft. "let's hang him at 'is own gaff." i could not see what followed, but moorshed said: "take another man with you. if you lose the tow, you're done. i'll slow her down." i heard the dinghy splash overboard ere i could cry "murder!" heard the rasp of a boat-hook along the wire-rope, and then, as it had been in my ear, pyecroft's enormous and jubilant bellow astern: "why, he's here! right atop of us! the blighter 'as pouched half the tow, like a shark!" a long pause filled with soft devonian bleatings. then pyecroft, _solo arpeggio_: "rum? rum? rum? is that all? come an' try it, uncle." i lifted my face to where once god's sky had been, and besought the trues i might not die inarticulate, amid these half-worked miracles, but live at least till my fellow-mortals could be made one-millionth as happy as i was happy. i prayed and i waited, and we went slow--slow as the processes of evolution--till the boat-hook rasped again. "he's not what you might call a scientific navigator," said pyecroft, still in the dinghy, but rising like a fairy from a pantomime trap. "the lead's what 'e goes by mostly; rum is what he's come for; an' brixham is 'is 'ome. lay on, mucduff!" a white whiskered man in a frock-coat--as i live by bread, a frock-coat!-- sea-boots, and a comforter crawled over the torpedo-tube into moorshed's grip and vanished forward. "'e'll probably 'old three gallon (look sharp with that dinghy!); but 'is nephew, left in charge of the _agatha_, wants two bottles command- allowance. you're a tax-payer, sir. do you think that excessive?" "lead there! lead!" rang out from forward. "didn't i say 'e wouldn't understand compass deviations? watch him close. it'll be worth it!" as i neared the bridge i heard the stranger say: "let me zmell un!" and to his nose was the lead presented by a trained man of the king's navy. "i'll tell 'ee where to goo, if yeou'll tell your donkey-man what to du. i'm no hand wi' steam." on these lines we proceeded miraculously, and, under moorshed's orders--i was the fisherman's ganymede, even as "m. de c." had served the captain--i found both rum and curaçoa in a locker, and mixed them equal bulk in an enamelled iron cup. "now we'm just abeam o' where we should be," he said at last, "an' here we'll lay till she lifts. i'd take 'e in for another bottle--and wan for my nevvy; but i reckon yeou'm shart-allowanced for rum. that's nivver no navy rum yeou'm give me. knowed 'ee by the smack tu un. anchor now!" i was between pyecroft and moorshed on the bridge, and heard them spring to vibrating attention at my side. a man with a lead a few feet to port caught the panic through my body, and checked like a wild boar at gaze, for not far away an unmistakable ship's bell was ringing. it ceased, and another began. "them!" said pyecroft. "anchored!" "more!" said our pilot, passing me the cup, and i filled it. the trawler astern clattered vehemently on her bell. pyecroft with a jerk of his arm threw loose the forward three-pounder. the bar of the back-sight was heavily blobbed with dew; the foresight was invisible. "no--they wouldn't have their picket-boats out in this weather, though they ought to." he returned the barrel to its crotch slowly. "be yeou gwine to anchor?" said macduff, smacking his lips, "or be yeou gwine straight on to livermead beach?" "tell him what we're driving at. get it into his head somehow," said moorshed; and pyecroft, snatching the cup from me, enfolded the old man with an arm and a mist of wonderful words. "and if you pull it off," said moorshed at the last, "i'll give you a fiver." "lard! what's fivers to me, young man? my nevvy, he likes 'em; but i do cherish more on fine drink than filthy lucre any day o' god's good weeks. leave goo my arm, yeou common sailorman! i tall 'ee, gentlemen, i hain't the ram-faced, ruddle-nosed old fule yeou reckon i be. before the mast i've fared in my time; fisherman i've been since i seed the unsense of sea-dangerin'. baccy and spirits--yiss, an' cigars too, i've run a plenty. i'm no blind harse or boy to be coaxed with your forty-mile free towin' and rum atop of all. there's none more sober to brix'am this tide, i don't care who 'tis--than me. _i_ know--_i_ know. yander'm two great king's ships. yeou'm wishful to sink, burn, and destroy they while us kips 'em busy sellin' fish. no need tall me so twanty taime over. us'll find they ships! us'll find 'em, if us has to break our fine new bowsprit so close as crump's bull's horn!" "good egg!" quoth moorshed, and brought his hand down on the wide shoulders with the smack of a beaver's tail. "us'll go look for they by hand. us'll give they something to play upon; an' do 'ee deal with them faithfully, an' may the lard have mercy on your sowls! amen. put i in dinghy again." the fog was as dense as ever--we moved in the very womb of night--but i cannot recall that i took the faintest note of it as the dinghy, guided by the tow-rope, disappeared toward the _agatha_, pyecroft rowing. the bell began again on the starboard bow. "we're pretty near," said moorshed, slowing down. "out with the berthon. (_we'll_ sell 'em fish, too.) and if any one rows navy-stroke, i'll break his jaw with the tiller. mr. hinchcliffe (this down the tube), "you'll stay here in charge with gregory and shergold and the engine-room staff. morgan stays, too, for signalling purposes." a deep groan broke from morgan's chest, but he said nothing. "if the fog thins and you're seen by any one, keep'em quiet with the signals. i can't think of the precise lie just now, but _you_ can, morgan." "yes, sir." "suppose their torpedo-nets are down?" i whispered, shivering with excitement. "if they've been repairing minor defects all day, they won't have any one to spare from the engine-room, and 'out nets!' is a job for the whole ship's company. i expect they've trusted to the fog--like us. well, pyecroft?" that great soul had blown up on to the bridge like a feather. "'ad to see the first o' the rum into the _agathites_, sir. they was a bit jealous o' their commandin' officer comin' 'ome so richly lacquered, and at first the _conversazione_ languished, as you might say. but they sprang to attention ere i left. six sharp strokes on the bells, if any of 'em are sober enough to keep tally, will be the signal that our consort 'as cast off her tow an' is manceuvrin' on 'er own." "right o! take laughton with you in the dinghy. put that berthon over quietly there! are you all right, mr. hinchcliffe?" i stood back to avoid the rush of half-a-dozen shadows dropping into the berthon boat. a hand caught me by the slack of my garments, moved me in generous arcs through the night, and i rested on the bottom of the dinghy. "i want you for _prima facie_ evidence, in case the vaccination don't take," said pyecroft in my ear. "push off, alf!" the last bell-ringing was high overhead. it was followed by six little tinkles from the _agatha_, the roar of her falling anchor, the clash of pans, and loose shouting. "where be gwine tu? port your 'ellum. aie! you mud-dredger in the fairway, goo astern! out boats! she'll sink us!" a clear-cut navy voice drawled from the clouds: "quiet! you gardeners there. this is the _cryptic_ at anchor." "thank you for the range," said pyecroft, and paddled gingerly. "feel well out in front of you, alf. remember your fat fist is our only marconi installation." the voices resumed: "bournemouth steamer he says she be." "then where be brixham harbor?" "damme, i'm a tax-payer tu. they've no right to cruise about this way. i'll have the laa on 'ee if anything carries away." then the man-of-war: "short on your anchor! heave short, you howling maniacs! you'll get yourselves smashed in a minute if you drift." the air was full of these and other voices as the dinghy, checking, swung. i passed one hand down laughton's stretched arm and felt an iron gooseneck and a foot or two of a backward-sloping torpedo-net boom. the other hand i laid on broad, cold iron--even the flanks of h.m.s. _cryptic_, which is twelve thousand tons. i heard a scrubby, raspy sound, as though pyecroft had chosen that hour to shave, and i smelled paint. "drop aft a bit, alf; we'll put a stencil under the stern six-inch casements." boom by boom laughlin slid the dinghy along the towering curved wall. once, twice, and again we stopped, and the keen scrubbing sound was renewed. "umpires are 'ard-'earted blighters, but this ought to convince 'em.... captain panke's stern-walk is now above our defenceless 'eads. repeat the evolution up the starboard side, alf." i was only conscious that we moved around an iron world palpitating with life. though my knowledge was all by touch--as, for example, when pyecroft led my surrendered hand to the base of some bulging sponson, or when my palm closed on the knife-edge of the stem and patted it timidly--yet i felt lonely and unprotected as the enormous, helpless ship was withdrawn, and we drifted away into the void where voices sang: tom pearce, tom pearce, lend me thy gray mare, all along, out along, down along lea! i want for to go to widdicombe fair with bill brewer, sam sewer, peter gurney, harry hawke, old uncle tom cobley an' all! "that's old sinbad an' 'is little lot from the _agatha_! give way, alf! _you_ might sing somethin', too." "i'm no burnin' patti. ain't there noise enough for you, pye?" "yes, but it's only amateurs. give me the tones of 'earth and 'ome. ha! list to the blighter on the 'orizon sayin' his prayers, navy-fashion. 'eaven 'elp me argue that way when i'm a warrant-officer!" we headed with little lapping strokes toward what seemed to be a fair- sized riot. "an' i've 'eard the _devolution_ called a happy ship, too," said pyecroft. "just shows 'ow a man's misled by prejudice. she's peevish--that's what she is--nasty-peevish. prob'ly all because the _agathites_ are scratching 'er paint. well, rub along, alf. i've got the lymph!" a voice, which mr. pyecroft assured me belonged to a chief carpenter, was speaking through an aperture (starboard bow twelve-pounder on the lower deck). he did not wish to purchase any fish, even at grossly reduced rates. nobody wished to buy any fish. this ship was the _devolution_ at anchor, and desired no communication with shore boats. "mark how the navy 'olds it's own. he's sober. the _agathites_ are not, as you might say, an' yet they can't live with 'im. it's the discipline that does it. 'ark to the bald an' unconvincin' watch-officer chimin' in. i wonder where mr. moorshed has got to?" we drifted down the _devolution's_ side, as we had drifted down her sister's; and we dealt with her in that dense gloom as we had dealt with her sister. "whai! 'tis a man-o'-war, after all! i can see the captain's whisker all gilt at the edges! we took 'ee for the bournemouth steamer. three cheers for the real man-o'-war!" that cry came from under the _devolution's_ stern. pyecroft held something in his teeth, for i heard him mumble, "our mister moorshed!" said a boy's voice above us, just as we dodged a jet of hot water from some valve: "i don't half like that cheer. if i'd been the old man i'd ha' turned loose the quick-firers at the first go-off. aren't they rowing navy-stroke, yonder?" "true," said pyecroft, listening to retreating oars. "it's time to go 'ome when snotties begin to think. the fog's thinnin', too." i felt a chill breath on my forehead, and saw a few feet of the steel stand out darker than the darkness, disappear--it was then the dinghy shot away from it--and emerge once more. "hallo! what boat's that?" said the voice suspiciously. "why, i do believe it's a real man-o'-war, after all," said pyecroft, and kicked laughton. "what's that for?" laughton was no dramatist. "answer in character, you blighter! say somethin' opposite." "what boat's _thatt_?" the hail was repeated. "what do yee say-ay?" pyecroft bellowed, and, under his breath to me: "give us a hand." "it's called the _marietta_--f. j. stokes--torquay," i began, quaveringly. "at least, that's the name on the name-board. i've been dining--on a yacht." "i see." the voice shook a little, and my way opened before me with disgraceful ease. "yesh. dining private yacht. _eshmesheralda_. i belong to torquay yacht club. _are_ you member torquay yacht club?" "you'd better go to bed, sir. good-night." we slid into the rapidly thinning fog. "dig out, alf. put your _nix mangiare_ back into it. the fog's peelin' off like a petticoat. where's two six seven?" "i can't see her," i replied, "but there's a light low down ahead." "the _agatha_!" they rowed desperately through the uneasy dispersal of the fog for ten minutes and ducked round the trawler's bow. "well, emanuel means 'god with us'--so far." pyecroft wiped his brow, laid a hand on the low rail, and as he boosted me up to the trawler, i saw moorshed's face, white as pearl in the thinning dark. "was it all right?" said he, over the bulwarks. "vaccination ain't in it. she's took beautiful. but where's , sir?" pyecroft replied. "gone. we came here as the fog lifted. i gave the _devolution_ four. was that you behind us?" "yes, sir; but i only got in three on the _devolution_. i gave the _cryptic_ nine, though. they're what you might call more or less vaccinated." he lifted me inboard, where moorshed and six pirates lay round the _agatha's_ hatch. there was a hint of daylight in the cool air. "where is the old man?" i asked. "still selling 'em fish, i suppose. he's a darling! but i wish i could get this filthy paint off my hands. hallo! what the deuce is the _cryptic_ signalling?" a pale masthead light winked through the last of the fog. it was answered by a white pencil to the southward. "destroyer signalling with searchlight." pyecroft leaped on the stern- rail. "the first part is private signals. ah! now she's morsing against the fog. 'p-o-s-t'--yes, 'postpone'--'d-e-p-' (go on)! 'departure--till-- further--orders--which--will--be com" (he's dropped the other m) "'unicated--verbally. end,'." he swung round. "_cryptic_ is now answering: 'ready--proceed--immediately. what--news--promised--destroyer-- flotilla?'" "hallo!" said moorshed. "well, never mind, they'll come too late." "whew! that's some 'igh-born suckling on the destroyer. destroyer signals: 'care not. all will be known later.' what merry beehive's broken loose now?" "what odds! we've done our little job." "why--why--it's two six seven!" here pyecroft dropped from the rail among the fishy nets and shook the _agatha_ with heavings. moorshed cast aside his cigarette, looked over the stern, and fell into his subordinate's arms. i heard the guggle of engines, the rattle of a little anchor going over not a hundred yards away, a cough, and morgan's subdued hail. ... so far as i remember, it was laughton whom i hugged; but the men who hugged me most were pyecroft and moorshed, adrift among the fishy nets. there was no semblance of discipline in our flight over the _agatha's_ side, nor, indeed, were ordinary precautions taken for the common safety, because (i was in the berthon) they held that patent boat open by hand for the most part. we regained our own craft, cackling like wild geese, and crowded round moorshed and hinchcliffe. behind us the _agatha's_ boat, returning from her fish-selling cruise, yelled: "have 'ee done the trick? have 'ee done the trick?" and we could only shout hoarsely over the stern, guaranteeing them rum by the hold-full. "fog got patchy here at : ," said henry salt hinchcliffe, growing clearer every instant in the dawn. "went down to brixham harbour to keep out of the road. heard whistles to the south and went to look. i had her up to sixteen good. morgan kept on shedding private red fleet signals out of the signal-book, as the fog cleared, till we was answered by three destroyers. morgan signalled 'em by searchlight: 'alter course to south seventeen east, so as not to lose time,' they came round quick. we kept well away--on their port beam--and morgan gave 'em their orders." he looked at morgan and coughed. "the signalman, acting as second in command," said morgan, swelling, "then informed destroyer flotilla that _cryptic_ and _devolution_ had made good defects, and, in obedience to admiral's supplementary orders (i was afraid they might suspect that, but they didn't), had proceeded at seven knots at : p. m. to rendezvous near channel islands, seven miles n.n.w. the casquet light. (i've rendezvoused there myself, sir.) destroyer flotilla would therefore follow cruisers and catch up with them on their course. destroyer flotilla then dug out on course indicated, all funnels sparking briskly." "who were the destroyers?" "_wraith, kobbold, stiletto_, lieutenant-commander a. l. hignett, acting under admiral's orders to escort cruisers received off the dodman at p. m. they'd come slow on account of fog." "then who were you?" "we were the _afrite_, port-engine broke down, put in to torbay, and there instructed by _cryptic_, previous to her departure with _devolution_) to inform commander hignett of change of plans. lieutenant-commander hignett signalled that our meeting was quite providential. after this we returned to pick up our commanding officer, and being interrogated by _cryptic_, marked time signalling as requisite, which you may have seen. the _agatha_ representing the last known rallying-point--or, as i should say, pivot- ship of the evolution--it was decided to repair to the _agatha_ at conclusion of manoeuvre." "is there such a thing as one fine big drink aboard this one fine big battleship?" "can do, sir," said pyecroft, and got it. beginning with mr. moorshed and ending with myself, junior to the third first-class stoker, we drank, and it was as water of the brook, that two and a half inches of stiff, treacly, navy rum. and we looked each in the other's face, and we nodded, bright-eyed, burning with bliss. moorshed walked aft to the torpedo-tubes and paced back and forth, a captain victorious on his own quarterdeck; and the triumphant day broke over the green-bedded villas of torquay to show us the magnitude of our victory. there lay the cruisers (i have reason to believe that they had made good their defects). they were each four hundred and forty feet long and sixty-six wide; they held close upon eight hundred men apiece, and they had cost, say, a million and a half the pair. and they were ours, and they did not know it. indeed, the _cryptic_, senior ship, was signalling vehement remarks to our address, which we did not notice. "if you take these glasses, you'll get the general run o' last night's vaccination," said pyecroft. "each one represents a torpedo got 'ome, as you might say." i saw on the _cryptic's_ port side, as she lay half a mile away across the glassy water, four neat white squares in outline, a white blur in the centre. "there are five more to starboard. 'ere's the original!" he handed me a paint-dappled copper stencil-plate, two feet square, bearing in the centre the six-inch initials, "g.m." "ten minutes ago i'd ha' eulogised about that little trick of ours, but morgan's performance has short-circuited me. are you happy, morgan?" "bustin'," said the signalman briefly. "you may be. gawd forgive you, morgan, for as queen 'enrietta said to the 'ousemaid, _i_ never will. i'd ha' given a year's pay for ten minutes o' your signallin' work this mornin'." "i wouldn't 'ave took it up," was the answer. "perishin' 'eavens above! look at the _devolution's_ semaphore!" two black wooden arms waved from the junior ship's upper bridge. "they've seen it." "_the_ mote _on_ their neighbour's beam, of course," said pyecroft, and read syllable by syllable: "'captain malan to captain panke. is--sten-- cilled frieze your starboard side new admiralty regulation, or your number one's private expense?' now _cryptic_ is saying, 'not understood.' poor old _crippy_, the _devolute's_ raggin' 'er sore. 'who is g.m.?' she says. that's fetched the _cryptic_. she's answerin': 'you ought to know. examine own paintwork.' oh, lord! they're both on to it now. this is balm. this is beginning to be balm. i forgive you, morgan!" two frantic pipes twittered. from either cruiser a whaler dropped into the water and madly rowed round the ship: as a gay-coloured hoist rose to the _cryptic's_ yardarm: "destroyer will close at once. wish to speak by semaphore." then on the bridge semaphore itself: "have been trying to attract your attention last half hour. send commanding officer aboard at once." "our attention? after all the attention we've given 'er, too," said pyecroft. "what a greedy old woman!" to moorshed: "signal from the _cryptic_, sir." "never mind that!" said the boy, peering through his glasses. "our dinghy quick, or they'll paint our marks out. come along!" by this time i was long past even hysteria. i remember pyecroft's bending back, the surge of the driven dinghy, a knot of amazed faces as we skimmed the _cryptic's_ ram, and the dropped jaw of the midshipman in her whaler when we barged fairly into him. "mind my paint!" he yelled. "you mind mine, snotty," said moorshed. "i was all night putting these little ear-marks on you for the umpires to sit on. leave 'em alone." we splashed past him to the _devolution's_ boat, where sat no one less than her first lieutenant, a singularly unhandy-looking officer. "what the deuce is the meaning of this?" he roared, with an accusing forefinger. "you're sunk, that's all. you've been dead half a tide." "dead, am i? i'll show you whether i'm dead or not, sir!" "well, you may be a survivor," said moorshed ingratiatingly, "though it isn't at all likely." the officer choked for a minute. the midshipman crouched up in stern said, half aloud: "then i _was_ right--last night." "yesh," i gasped from the dinghy's coal-dust. "are you member torquay yacht club?" "hell!" said the first lieutenant, and fled away. the _cryptic's_ boat was already at that cruiser's side, and semaphores flicked zealously from ship to ship. we floated, a minute speck, between the two hulls, while the pipes went for the captain's galley on the _devolution_. "that's all right," said moorshed. "wait till the gangway's down and then board her decently. we oughtn't to be expected to climb up a ship we've sunk." pyecroft lay on his disreputable oars till captain malan, full-uniformed, descended the _devolution's_ side. with due compliments--not acknowledged, i grieve to say--we fell in behind his sumptuous galley, and at last, upon pressing invitation, climbed, black as sweeps all, the lowered gangway of the _cryptic_. at the top stood as fine a constellation of marine stars as ever sang together of a morning on a king's ship. every one who could get within earshot found that his work took him aft. i counted eleven able seamen polishing the breechblock of the stern nine-point-two, four marines zealously relieving each other at the life-buoy, six call-boys, nine midshipmen of the watch, exclusive of naval cadets, and the higher ranks past all census. "if i die o' joy," said pyecroft behind his hand, "remember i died forgivin' morgan from the bottom of my 'eart, because, like martha, we 'ave scoffed the better part. you'd better try to come to attention, sir." moorshed ran his eye voluptuously over the upper deck battery, the huge beam, and the immaculate perspective of power. captain panke and captain malan stood on the well-browned flash-plates by the dazzling hatch. precisely over the flagstaff i saw two six seven astern, her black petticoat half hitched up, meekly floating on the still sea. she looked like the pious abigail who has just spoken her mind, and, with folded hands, sits thanking heaven among the pieces. i could almost have sworn that she wore black worsted gloves and had a little dry cough. but it was captain panke that coughed so austerely. he favoured us with a lecture on uniform, deportment, and the urgent necessity of answering signals from a senior ship. he told us that he disapproved of masquerading, that he loved discipline, and would be obliged by an explanation. and while he delivered himself deeper and more deeply into our hands, i saw captain malan wince. he was watching moorshed's eye. "i belong to blue fleet, sir. i command number two six seven," said moorshed, and captain planke was dumb. "have you such a thing as a frame- plan of the _cryptic_ aboard?" he spoke with winning politeness as he opened a small and neatly folded paper. "i have, sir." the little man's face was working with passion. "ah! then i shall be able to show you precisely where you were torpedoed last night in"--he consulted the paper with one finely arched eyebrow--"in nine places. and since the _devolution_ is, i understand, a sister ship"-- he bowed slightly toward caplain malan--"the same plan----" i had followed the clear precision of each word with a dumb amazement which seemed to leave my mind abnormally clear. i saw captain malan's eye turn from moorshed and seek that of the _cryptic's_ commander. and he telegraphed as clearly as moorshed was speaking: "my dear friend and brother officer, _i_ know panke; _you_ know panke; _we_ know panke--good little panke! in less than three greenwich chronometer seconds panke will make an enormous ass of himself, and i shall have to put things straight, unless you who are a man of tact and discernment----" "carry on." the commander's order supplied the unspoken word. the cruiser boiled about her business around us; watch and watch officers together, up to the limit of noise permissible. i saw captain malan turn to his senior. "come to my cabin!" said panke gratingly, and led the way. pyecroft and i stayed still. "it's all right," said pyecroft. "they daren't leave us loose aboard for one revolution," and i knew that he had seen what i had seen. "you, too!" said captain malan, returning suddenly. we passed the sentry between white enamelled walls of speckless small arms, and since that royal marine light infantryman was visibly suffocating from curiosity, i winked at him. we entered the chintz-adorned, photo-speckled, brass- fendered, tile-stoved main cabin. moorshed, with a ruler, was demonstrating before the frame-plan of h.m.s. _cryptic_. "--making nine stencils in all of my initials g.m.," i heard him say. "further, you will find attached to your rudder, and you, too, sir"--he bowed to captain malan yet again--"one fourteen-inch mark iv practice torpedo, as issued to first-class torpedo-boats, properly buoyed. i have sent full particulars by telegraph to the umpires, and have requested them to judge on the facts as they--appear." he nodded through the large window to the stencilled _devolution_ awink with brass work in the morning sun, and ceased. captain panke faced us. i remembered that this was only play, and caught myself wondering with what keener agony comes the real defeat. "good god, johnny!" he said, dropping his lower lip like a child, "this young pup says he has put us both out of action. inconceivable--eh? my first command of one of the class. eh? what shall we do with him? what shall we do with him--eh?" "as far as i can see, there's no getting over the stencils," his companion answered. "why didn't i have the nets down? why didn't i have the nets down?" the cry tore itself from captain panke's chest as he twisted his hands. "i suppose we'd better wait and find out what the umpires will say. the admiral won't be exactly pleased." captain malan spoke very soothingly. moorshed looked out through the stern door at two six seven. pyecroft and i, at attention, studied the paintwork opposite. captain panke had dropped into his desk chair, and scribbled nervously at a blotting-pad. just before the tension became unendurable, he looked at his junior for a lead. "what--what are you going to do about it, johnny--eh?" "well, if you don't want him, i'm going to ask this young gentleman to breakfast, and then we'll make and mend clothes till the umpires have decided." captain panke flung out a hand swiftly. "come with me," said captain malan. "your men had better go back in the dinghy to--their--own--ship." "yes, i think so," said moorshed, and passed out behind the captain. we followed at a respectful interval, waiting till they had ascended the ladder. said the sentry, rigid as the naked barometer behind him: "for gawd's sake! 'ere, come 'ere! for gawd's sake! what's 'appened? oh! come '_ere_ an' tell." "tell? you?" said pyecroft. neither man's lips moved, and the words were whispers: "your ultimate illegitimate grandchildren might begin to understand, not you--nor ever will." "captain malan's galley away, sir," cried a voice above; and one replied: "then get those two greasers into their dinghy and hoist the blue peter. we're out of action." "can you do it, sir?" said pyecroft at the foot of the ladder. "do you think it is in the english language, or do you not?" "i don't think i can, but i'll try. if it takes me two years, i'll try." * * * * * there are witnesses who can testify that i have used no artifice. i have, on the contrary, cut away priceless slabs of _opus alexandrinum_. my gold i have lacquered down to dull bronze, my purples overlaid with sepia of the sea, and for hell-hearted ruby and blinding diamond i have substituted pale amethyst and mere jargoon. because i would say again "disregarding the inventions of the marine captain whose other name is gubbins, let a plain statement suffice." the comprehension of private copper the king's task after the sack of the city, when rome was sunk to a name, in the years when the lights were darkened, or ever saint wilfrid came. low on the borders of britain, the ancient poets sing, between the cliff and the forest there ruled a saxon king. stubborn all were his people, a stark and a jealous horde-- not to be schooled by the cudgel, scarce to be cowed by the sword; blithe to turn at their pleasure, bitter to cross in their mood, and set on the ways of their choosing as the hogs of andred's wood ... they made them laws in the witan, the laws of flaying and fine, folkland, common and pannage, the theft and the track of kine; statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal, the tax on the bramber packhorse and the tax on the hastings keel. over the graves of the druids and over the wreck of rome rudely but deeply they bedded the plinth of the days to come. behind the feet of the legions and before the northman's ire, rudely but greatly begat they the body of state and of shire. rudely but greatly they laboured, and their labour stands till now if we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough. the comprehension of private copper private copper's father was a southdown shepherd; in early youth copper had studied under him. five years' army service had somewhat blunted private copper's pastoral instincts, but it occurred to him as a memory of the chalk that sheep, or in this case buck, do not move towards one across turf, or in this case, the colesberg kopjes unless a stranger, or in this case an enemy, is in the neighbourhood. copper, helmet back-first advanced with caution, leaving his mates of the picket full a mile behind. the picket, concerned for its evening meal, did not protest. a year ago it would have been an officer's command, moving as such. to-day it paid casual allegiance to a canadian, nominally a sergeant, actually a trooper of irregular horse, discovered convalescent in naauwport hospital, and forthwith employed on odd jobs. private copper crawled up the side of a bluish rock-strewn hill thinly fringed with brush atop, and remembering how he had peered at sussex conies through the edge of furze-clumps, cautiously parted the dry stems before his face. at the foot of the long slope sat three farmers smoking. to his natural lust for tobacco was added personal wrath because spiky plants were pricking his belly, and private copper slid the backsight up to fifteen hundred yards.... "good evening, khaki. please don't move," said a voice on his left, and as he jerked his head round he saw entirely down the barrel of a well-kept lee-metford protruding from an insignificant tuft of thorn. very few graven images have moved less than did private copper through the next ten seconds. "it's nearer seventeen hundred than fifteen," said a young man in an obviously ready-made suit of grey tweed, possessing himself of private copper's rifle. "thank _you_. we've got a post of thirty-seven men out yonder. you've eleven--eh? we don't want to kill 'em. we have no quarrel with poor uneducated khakis, and we do not want prisoners we do not keep. it is demoralising to both sides--eh?" private cooper did not feel called upon to lay down the conduct of guerilla warfare. this dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed stranger was his first intimate enemy. he spoke, allowing for a clipped cadence that recalled to copper vague memories of umballa, in precisely the same offensive accent that the young squire of wilmington had used fifteen years ago when he caught and kicked alf copper, a rabbit in each pocket, out of the ditches of cuckmere. the enemy looked copper up and down, folded and re-pocketed a copy of an english weekly which he had been reading, and said: "you seem an inarticulate sort of swine--like the rest of them--eh?" "you," said copper, thinking, somehow, of the crushing answers he had never given to the young squire, "are a renegid. why, you ain't dutch. you're english, same as me." "_no_, khaki. if you cannot talk civilly to a gentleman i will blow your head off." copper cringed, and the action overbalanced him so that he rolled some six or eight feet downhill, under the lee of a rough rock. his brain was working with a swiftness and clarity strange in all his experience of alf copper. while he rolled he spoke, and the voice from his own jaws amazed him: "if you did, 'twouldn't make you any less of a renegid." as a useful afterthought he added: "i've sprained my ankle." the young man was at his side in a flash. copper made no motion to rise, but, cross-legged under the rock, grunted: "'ow much did old krujer pay you for this? what was you wanted for at 'ome? where did you desert from?" "khaki," said the young man, sitting down in his turn, "you are a shade better than your mates. you did not make much more noise than a yoke of oxen when you tried to come up this hill, but you are an ignorant diseased beast like the rest of your people--eh? when you were at the ragged schools did they teach you any history, tommy--'istory i mean?" "don't need no schoolin' to know a renegid," said copper. he had made three yards down the hill--out of sight, unless they could see through rocks, of the enemy's smoking party. the young man laughed; and tossed the soldier a black sweating stick of "true affection." (private copper had not smoked a pipe for three weeks.) "_you_ don't get this--eh?" said the young man. "_we_ do. we take it from the trains as we want it. you can keep the cake--you po-ah tommee." copper rammed the good stuff into his long-cold pipe and puffed luxuriously. two years ago the sister of gunner-guard de souza, east india railway, had, at a dance given by the sergeants to the allahabad railway volunteers, informed copper that she could not think of waltzing with "a poo-ah tommee." private copper wondered why that memory should have returned at this hour. "i'm going to waste a little trouble on you before i send you back to your picket _quite_ naked--eh? then you can say how you were overpowered by twenty of us and fired off your last round--like the men we picked up at the drift playing cards at stryden's farm--eh? what's your name--eh?" private copper thought for a moment of a far-away housemaid who might still, if the local postman had not gone too far, be interested in his fate. on the other hand, he was, by temperament, economical of the truth. "pennycuik," he said, "john pennycuik." "thank you. well, mr. john pennycuik, i'm going to teach you a little 'istory, as you'd call it--eh?" "'ow!" said copper, stuffing his left hand in his mouth. "so long since i've smoked i've burned my 'and--an' the pipe's dropped too. no objection to my movin' down to fetch it, is there--sir?" "i've got you covered," said the young man, graciously, and private copper, hopping on one leg, because of his sprain, recovered the pipe yet another three yards downhill and squatted under another rock slightly larger than the first. a roundish boulder made a pleasant rest for his captor, who sat cross-legged once more, facing copper, his rifle across his knee, his hand on the trigger-guard. "well, mr. pennycuik, as i was going to tell you. a little after you were born in your english workhouse, your kind, honourable, brave country, england, sent an english gentleman, who could not tell a lie, to say that so long as the sun rose and the rivers ran in their courses the transvaal would belong to england. did you ever hear that, khaki--eh?" "oh no, sir," said copper. this sentence about the sun and the rivers happened to be a very aged jest of mcbride, the professional humorist of d company, when they discussed the probable length of the war. copper had thrown beef-tins at mcbride in the grey dawn of many wet and dry camps for intoning it. "_of_ course you would not. now, mann, i tell you, listen." he spat aside and cleared his throat. "because of that little promise, my father he moved into the transvaal and bought a farm--a little place of twenty or thirty thousand acres, don't--you--know." the tone, in spite of the sing-song cadence fighting with the laboured parody of the english drawl, was unbearably like the young wilmington squire's, and copper found himself saying: "i ought to. i've 'elped burn some." "yes, you'll pay for that later. _and_ he opened a store." "ho! shopkeeper was he?" "the kind you call "sir" and sweep the floor for, pennycuik.... you see, in those days one used to believe in the british government. my father did. _then_ the transvaal wiped thee earth with the english. they beat them six times running. you know _thatt_--eh?" "isn't what we've come 'ere for." "_but_ my father (he knows better now) kept on believing in the english. i suppose it was the pretty talk about rivers and suns that cheated him--eh? anyhow, he believed in his own country. inn his own country. _so_--you see--he was a little startled when he found himself handed over to the transvaal as a prisoner of war. that's what it came to, tommy--a prisoner of war. you know what that is--eh? england was too honourable and too gentlemanly to take trouble. there were no terms made for my father." "so 'e made 'em 'imself. useful old bird." private copper sliced up another pipeful and looked out across the wrinkled sea of kopjes, through which came the roar of the rushing orange river, so unlike quiet cuckmere. the young man's face darkened. "i think i shall sjambok you myself when i've quite done with you. _no_, my father (he was a fool) made no terms for eight years--ninety-six months--and for every day of them the transvaal made his life hell for my father and--his people." "i'm glad to hear that," said the impenitent copper. "are you? you can think of it when i'm taking the skin off your back-- eh?... my father, he lost everything--everything down to his self-respect. you don't know what _thatt_ means--eh?" "why?" said copper. "i'm smokin' baccy stole by a renegid. why wouldn't i know?" if it came to a flogging on that hillside there might be a chance of reprisals. of course, he might be marched to the boer camp in the next valley and there operated upon; but army life teaches no man to cross bridges unnecessarily. "yes, after eight years, my father, cheated by your bitch of a country, he found out who was the upper dog in south africa." "that's me," said copper valiantly. "if it takes another 'alf century, it's me an' the likes of me." "you? heaven help you! you'll be screaming at a wagon-wheel in an hour.... then it struck my father that he'd like to shoot the people who'd betrayed him. you--you--_you_! he told his son all about it. he told him never to trust the english. he told him to do them all the harm he could. mann, i tell you, i don't want much telling. i was born in the transvaal--i'm a burgher. if my father didn't love the english, by the lord, mann, i tell you, i hate them from the bottom of my soul." the voice quavered and ran high. once more, for no conceivable reason, private copper found his inward eye turned upon umballa cantonments of a dry dusty afternoon, when the saddle-coloured son of a local hotel-keeper came to the barracks to complain of a theft of fowls. he saw the dark face, the plover's-egg-tinted eyeballs, and the thin excited hands. above all, he remembered the passionate, queerly-strung words. slowly he returned to south africa, using the very sentence his sergeant had used to the poultry man. "go on with your complaint. i'm listenin'." "complaint! complaint about _you_, you ox! we strip and kick your sort by thousands." the young man rocked to and fro above the rifle, whose muzzle thus deflected itself from the pit of private copper's stomach. his face was dusky with rage. "yess, i'm a transvaal burgher. it took us about twenty years to find out how rotten you were. _we_ know and you know it now. your army--it is the laughing-stock of the continent." he tapped the newspaper in his pocket, "you think you're going to win, you poor fools. your people--your own people--your silly rotten fools of people will crawl out of it as they did after majuba. they are beginning now. look what your own working classes, the diseased, lying, drinking white stuff that you come out of, are saying." he thrust the english weekly, doubled at the leading article, on copper's knee. "see what dirty dogs your masters are. they do not even back you in your dirty work. _we_ cleared the country down to ladysmith-- to estcourt. we cleared the country down to colesberg." "yes, we 'ad to clean up be'ind you. messy, i call it." "you've had to stop farm-burning because your people daren't do it. they were afraid. you daren't kill a spy. you daren't shoot a spy when you catch him in your own uniform. you daren't touch our loyall people in cape town! your masters wont let you. you will feed our women and children till we are quite ready to take them back. _you_ can't put your cowardly noses out of the towns you say you've occupied. _you_ daren't move a convoy twenty miles. you think you've done something? you've done nothing, and you've taken a quarter of a million of men to do it! there isn't a nigger in south africa that doesn't obey us if we lift our finger. you pay the stuff four pounds a month and they lie to you. _we_ flog 'em, as i shall flog you." he clasped his hands together and leaned forward his out-thrust chin within two feet of copper's left, or pipe hand. "yuss," said copper, "it's a fair knock-out." the fist landed to a hair on the chin-point, the neck snicked like a gun-lock, and the back of the head crashed on the boulder behind. copper grabbed up both rifles, unshipped the cross-bandoliers, drew forth the english weekly, and picking up the lax hands, looked long and intently at the fingernails. "no! not a sign of it there," he said. "'is nails are as clean as mine-- but he talks just like 'em, though. and he's a landlord too! a landed proprietor! shockin', i call it." the arms began to flap with returning consciousness. private copper rose up and whispered: "if you open your head, i'll bash it." there was no suggestion of sprain in the flung-back left boot. "now walk in front of me, both arms perpendicularly elevated. i'm only a third-class shot, so, if you don't object, i'll rest the muzzle of my rifle lightly but firmly on your collar-button--coverin' the serviceable vertebree. if your friends see us thus engaged, you pray--'ard." private and prisoner staggered downhill. no shots broke the peace of the afternoon, but once the young man checked and was sick. "there's a lot of things i could say to you," copper observed, at the close of the paroxysm, "but it doesn't matter. look 'ere, you call me 'pore tommy' again." the prisoner hesitated. "oh, i ain't goin' to do anythin' _to_ you. i'm recon-noiterin' in my own. say 'pore tommy' 'alf-a-dozen times." the prisoner obeyed. "_that's_ what's been puzzlin' me since i 'ad the pleasure o' meetin' you," said copper. "you ain't 'alf-caste, but you talk _chee-chee_-- _pukka_ bazar chee-chee. proceed." "hullo," said the sergeant of the picket, twenty minutes later, "where did you round him up?" "on the top o' yonder craggy mounting. there's a mob of 'em sitting round their bibles seventeen 'undred yards (you said it was seventeen 'undred?) t'other side--an' i want some coffee." he sat down on the smoke-blackened stones by the fire. "'ow did you get 'im?" said mcbride, professional humorist, quietly filching the english weekly from under copper's armpit. "on the chin--while 'e was waggin' it at me." "what is 'e? 'nother colonial rebel to be 'orribly disenfranchised, or a cape minister, or only a loyal farmer with dynamite in both boots. tell us all about it, burjer!" "you leave my prisoner alone," said private copper. "'e's 'ad losses an' trouble; an' it's in the family too. 'e thought i never read the papers, so 'e kindly lent me his very own _jerrold's weekly_--an' 'e explained it to me as patronisin' as a--as a militia subaltern doin' railway staff officer. 'e's a left-over from majuba--one of the worst kind, an' 'earin' the evidence as i did, i don't exactly blame 'im. it was this way." to the picket private copper held forth for ten minutes on the life- history of his captive. allowing for some purple patches, it was an absolute fair rendering. "but what i dis-liked was this baccy-priggin' beggar, 'oo's people, on 'is own showin', couldn't 'ave been more than thirty or forty years in the coun--on this gawd-forsaken dust-'eap, comin' the squire over me. they're all parsons--we know _that_, but parson _an'_ squire is a bit too thick for alf copper. why, i caught 'im in the shameful act of tryin' to start a aristocracy on a gun an' a wagon an' a _shambuk_! yes; that's what it was: a bloomin' aristocracy." "no, it weren't," said mcbride, at length, on the dirt, above the purloined weekly. "you're the aristocrat, alf. old _jerrold's_ givin' it you 'ot. you're the uneducated 'ireling of a callous aristocracy which 'as sold itself to the 'ebrew financier. meantime, ducky"--he ran his finger down a column of assorted paragraphs--"you're slakin' your brutal instincks in furious excesses. shriekin' women an' desolated 'omesteads is what you enjoy, alf ..., halloa! what's a smokin' 'ektacomb?" "'ere! let's look. 'aven't seen a proper spicy paper for a year. good old _jerrold's!"_ pinewood and moppet, reservists, flung themselves on mcbride's shoulders, pinning him to the ground. "lie over your own bloomin' side of the bed, an' we can all look," he protested. "they're only po-ah tommies," said copper, apologetically, to the prisoner. "po-ah unedicated khakis. _they_ don't know what they're fightin' for. they're lookin' for what the diseased, lying, drinkin' white stuff that they come from is sayin' about 'em!" the prisoner set down his tin of coffee and stared helplessly round the circle. "i--i don't understand them." the canadian sergeant, picking his teeth with a thorn, nodded sympathetically: "if it comes to that, _we_ don't in my country!... say, boys, when you're through with your english mail you might's well provide an escort for your prisoner. he's waitin'." "arf a mo', sergeant," said mcbride, still reading. "'ere's old barbarity on the ramp again with some of 'is lady friends, 'oo don't like concentration camps. wish they'd visit ours. pinewood's a married man. he'd know how to be'ave!" "well, i ain't goin' to amuse my prisoner alone. 'e's gettin' 'omesick," cried copper. "one of you thieves read out what's vexin' old barbarity an' 'is 'arem these days. you'd better listen, burjer, because, afterwards, i'm goin' to fall out an' perpetrate those nameless barbarities all over you to keep up the reputation of the british army." from that english weekly, to bar out which a large and perspiring staff of press censors toiled seven days of the week at cape town, did pinewood of the reserve read unctuously excerpts of the speeches of the accredited leaders of his majesty's opposition. the night-picket arrived in the middle of it, but stayed entranced without paying any compliments, till pinewood had entirely finished the leading article, and several occasional notes. "gentlemen of the jury," said alf copper, hitching up what war had left to him of trousers--"you've 'eard what 'e's been fed up with. _do_ you blame the beggar? 'cause i don't! ... leave 'im alone, mcbride. he's my first and only cap-ture, an' i'm goin' to walk 'ome with 'im, ain't i, ducky? ... fall in, burjer. it's bermuda, or umballa, or ceylon for you--and i'd give a month's pay to be in your little shoes." as not infrequently happens, the actual moving off the ground broke the prisoner's nerve. he stared at the tinted hills round him, gasped and began to struggle--kicking, swearing, weeping, and fluttering all together. "pore beggar--oh pore, _pore_ beggar!" said alf, leaning in on one side of him, while pinewood blocked him on the other. "let me go! let me go! mann, i tell you, let me go----" "'e screams like a woman!" said mcbride. "they'll 'ear 'im five miles off." "there's one or two ought to 'ear 'im--in england," said copper, putting aside a wildly waving arm. "married, ain't 'e?" said pinewood. "i've seen 'em go like this before-- just at the last. '_old_ on, old man, no one's goin' to 'urt you." the last of the sun threw the enormous shadow of a kopje over the little, anxious, wriggling group. "quit that," said the serjeant of a sudden. "you're only making him worse. hands _up_, prisoner! now you get a holt of yourself, or this'll go off." and indeed the revolver-barrel square at the man's panting chest seemed to act like a tonic; he choked, recovered himself, and fell in between copper and pinewood. as the picket neared the camp it broke into song that was heard among the officers' tents: 'e sent us 'is blessin' from london town, (the beggar that kep' the cordite down,) but what do we care if 'e smile or frown, the beggar that kep' the cordite down? the mildly nefarious wildly barbarious beggar that kept the cordite down! said a captain a mile away: "why are they singing _that?_ we haven't had a mail for a month, have we?" an hour later the same captain said to his servant: "jenkins, i understand the picket have got a--got a newspaper off a prisoner to-day. i wish you could lay hands on it, jenkins. copy of the _times_, i think." "yes, sir. copy of the _times_, sir," said jenkins, without a quiver, and went forth to make his own arrangements. "copy of the _times_" said the blameless alf, from beneath his blanket. "i ain't a member of the soldier's institoot. go an' look in the reg'mental readin'-room--veldt row, kopje street, second turnin' to the left between 'ere an' naauwport." jenkins summarised briefly in a tense whisper the thing that alf copper need not be. "but my particular copy of the _times_ is specially pro'ibited by the censor from corruptin' the morals of the army. get a written order from k. o' k., properly countersigned, an' i'll think about it." "i've got all _you_ want," said jenkins. "'urry up. i want to 'ave a squint myself." something gurgled in the darkness, and private copper fell back smacking his lips. "gawd bless my prisoner, and make me a good boy. amen. 'ere you are, jenkins. it's dirt cheap at a tot." steam tactics the necessitarian i know not in whose hands are laid to empty upon earth from unsuspected ambuscade the very urns of mirth: who bids the heavenly lark arise and cheer our solemn round-- the jest beheld with streaming eyes and grovellings on the ground; who joins the flats of time and chance behind the prey preferred, and thrones on shrieking circumstance the sacredly absurd, till laughter, voiceless through excess. waves mute appeal and sore, above the midriff's deep distress, for breath to laugh once more. no creed hath dared to hail him lord, no raptured choirs proclaim, and nature's strenuous overword hath nowhere breathed his name. yet, may it be, on wayside jape, the selfsame power bestows the selfsame power as went to shape his planet or his rose. steam tactics i caught sight of their faces as we came up behind the cart in the narrow sussex lane; but though it was not eleven o'clock, they were both asleep. that the carrier was on the wrong side of the road made no difference to his language when i rang my bell. he said aloud of motor-cars, and specially of steam ones, all the things which i had read in the faces of superior coachmen. then he pulled slantwise across me. there was a vociferous steam air-pump attached to that car which could be applied at pleasure.... the cart was removed about a bowshot's length in seven and a quarter seconds, to the accompaniment of parcels clattering. at the foot of the next hill the horse stopped, and the two men came out over the tail-board. my engineer backed and swung the car, ready to move out of reach. "the blighted egg-boiler has steam up," said mr. hinchcliffe, pausing to gather a large stone. "temporise with the beggar, pye, till the sights come on!" "i can't leave my 'orse!" roared the carrier; "but bring 'em up 'ere, an' i'll kill 'em all over again." "good morning, mr. pyecroft," i called cheerfully. "can i give you a lift anywhere?" the attack broke up round my forewheels. "well, we _do_ 'ave the knack o' meeting _in puris naturalibus,_ as i've so often said." mr. pyecroft wrung my hand. "yes, i'm on leaf. so's hinch. we're visiting friends among these kopjes." a monotonous bellowing up the road persisted, where the carrier was still calling for corpses. "that's agg. he's hinch's cousin. you aren't fortunit in your family connections, hinch. 'e's usin' language in derogation of good manners. go and abolish 'im." henry salt hinchcliffe stalked back to the cart and spoke to his cousin. i recall much that the wind bore to me of his words and the carrier's. it seemed as if the friendship of years were dissolving amid throes. "'ave it your own silly way, then," roared the carrier, "an' get into linghurst on your own silly feet. i've done with you two runagates." he lashed his horse and passed out of sight still rumbling. "the fleet's sailed," said pyecroft, "leavin' us on the beach as before. had you any particular port in your mind?" "well, i was going to meet a friend at instead wick, but i don't mind--" "oh! that'll do as well as anything! we're on leaf, you see." "she'll hardly hold four," said my engineer. i had broken him of the foolish habit of being surprised at things, but he was visibly uneasy. hinchcliffe returned, drawn as by ropes to my steam-car, round which he walked in narrowing circles. "what's her speed?" he demanded of the engineer. "twenty-five," said that loyal man. "easy to run?" "no; very difficult," was the emphatic answer. "that just shows that you ain't fit for your rating. d'you suppose that a man who earns his livin' by runnin' -knot destroyers for a parstime--for a parstime, mark you!--is going to lie down before any blighted land- crabbing steam-pinnace on springs?" yet that was what he did. directly under the car he lay and looked upward into pipes--petrol, steam, and water--with a keen and searching eye. i telegraphed mr. pyecroft a question. "not--in--the--least," was the answer. "steam gadgets always take him that way. we had a bit of a riot at parsley green through his tryin' to show a traction-engine haulin' gipsy-wagons how to turn corners." "tell him everything he wants to know," i said to the engineer, as i dragged out a rug and spread it on the roadside. "_he_ don't want much showing," said the engineer. now, the two men had not, counting the time we took to stuff our pipes, been together more than three minutes. "this," said pyecroft, driving an elbow back into the deep verdure of the hedge-foot, "is a little bit of all right. hinch, i shouldn't let too much o' that hot muckings drop in my eyes, your leaf's up in a fortnight, an' you'll be wantin' 'em." "here!" said hinchcliffe, still on his back, to the engineer. "come here and show me the lead of this pipe." and the engineer lay down beside him. "that's all right," said mr. hinchcliffe, rising. "but she's more of a bag of tricks than i thought. unship this superstructure aft"--he pointed to the back seat--"and i'll have a look at the forced draught." the engineer obeyed with alacrity. i heard him volunteer the fact that he had a brother an artificer in the navy. "they couple very well, those two," said pyecroft critically, while hinchcliffe sniffed round the asbestos-lagged boiler and turned on gay jets of steam. "now take me up the road," he said. my man, for form's sake, looked at me. "yes, take him," i said. "he's all right." "no, i'm not," said hinchcliffe of a sudden--"not if i'm expected to judge my water out of a little shaving-glass." the water-gauge of that steam-car was reflected on a mirror to the right of the dashboard. i also had found it inconvenient. "throw up your arm and look at the gauge under your armpit. only mind how you steer while you're doing it, or you'll get ditched!" i cried, as the car ran down the road. "i wonder!" said pyecroft, musing. "but, after all, it's your steamin' gadgets he's usin' for his libretto, as you might put it. he said to me after breakfast only this mornin' 'ow he thanked his maker, on all fours, that he wouldn't see nor smell nor thumb a runnin' bulgine till the nineteenth prox. now look at him! only look at 'im!" we could see, down the long slope of the road, my driver surrendering his seat to hinchcliffe, while the car flickered generously from hedge to hedge. "what happens if he upsets?" "the petrol will light up and the boiler may blow up." "how rambunkshus! and"--pyecroft blew a slow cloud--"agg's about three hoops up this mornin', too." "what's that to do with us? he's gone down the road," i retorted. "ye--es, but we'll overtake him. he's a vindictive carrier. he and hinch 'ad words about pig-breeding this morning. o' course, hinch don't know the elements o' that evolution; but he fell back on 'is naval rank an' office, an' agg grew peevish. i wasn't sorry to get out of the cart ... have you ever considered how, when you an' i meet, so to say, there's nearly always a remarkable hectic day ahead of us! hullo! behold the beef-boat returnin'!" he rose as the car climbed up the slope, and shouted: "in bow! way 'nuff!" "you be quiet!" cried hinchcliffe, and drew up opposite the rug, his dark face shining with joy. "she's the poetry o' motion! she's the angel's dream. she's------" he shut off steam, and the slope being against her, the car slid soberly downhill again. "what's this? i've got the brake on!" he yelled. "it doesn't hold backwards," i said. "put her on the mid-link." "that's a nasty one for the chief engineer o' the _djinn_, -knot, t.b.d.," said pyecroft. "_do_ you know what the mid-link is, hinch?" once more the car returned to us; but as pyecroft stooped to gather up the rug, hinchcliffe jerked the lever testily, and with prawn-like speed she retired backwards into her own steam. "apparently 'e don't," said pyecroft. "what's he done now, sir?" "reversed her. i've done it myself." "but he's an engineer." for the third time the car manoeuvred up the hill. "i'll teach you to come alongside properly, if i keep you 'tiffies out all night!" shouted pyecroft. it was evidently a quotation. hinchcliffe's face grew livid, and, his hand ever so slightly working on the throttle, the car buzzed twenty yards uphill. "that's enough. we'll take your word for it. the mountain will go to ma'ommed. stand _fast_!" pyecroft and i and the rug marched up where she and hinchcliffe fumed together. "not as easy as it looks--eh, hinch?" "it is dead easy. i'm going to drive her to instead wick--aren't i?" said the first-class engine-room artificer. i thought of his performances with no. and nodded. after all, it was a small privilege to accord to pure genius. "but my engineer will stand by--at first," i added. "an' you a family man, too," muttered pyecroft, swinging himself into the right rear seat. "sure to be a remarkably hectic day when we meet." we adjusted ourselves and, in the language of the immortal navy doctor, paved our way towards linghurst, distant by mile-post - / miles. mr. hinchcliffe, every nerve and muscle braced, talked only to the engineer, and that professionally. i recalled the time when i, too, had enjoyed the rack on which he voluntarily extended himself. and the county of sussex slid by in slow time. "how cautious is the 'tiffy-bird!" said pyecroft. "even in a destroyer," hinch snapped over his shoulder, "you ain't expected to con and drive simultaneous. don't address any remarks to _me!_" "pump!" said the engineer. "your water's droppin'." "_i_ know that. where the heavens is that blighted by-pass?" he beat his right or throttle hand madly on the side of the car till he found the bent rod that more or less controls the pump, and, neglecting all else, twisted it furiously. my engineer grabbed the steering-bar just in time to save us lurching into a ditch. "if i was a burnin' peacock, with two hundred bloodshot eyes in my shinin' tail, i'd need 'em all on this job!" said hinch. "don't talk! steer! this ain't the north atlantic," pyecroft replied. "blast my stokers! why, the steam's dropped fifty pounds!" hinchcliffe cried. "fire's blown out," said the engineer. "stop her!" "does she do that often?" said hinch, descending. "sometimes." "anytime?" "any time a cross-wind catches her." the engineer produced a match and stooped. that car (now, thank heaven, no more than an evil memory) never lit twice in the same fashion. this time she back-fired superbly, and pyecroft went out over the right rear wheel in a column of rich yellow flame. "i've seen a mine explode at bantry--once--prematoor," he volunteered. "that's all right," said hinchcliffe, brushing down his singed beard with a singed forefinger. (he had been watching too closely.) "has she any more little surprises up her dainty sleeve?" "she hasn't begun yet," said my engineer, with a scornful cough. "some one 'as opened the petrol-supply-valve too wide." "change places with me, pyecroft," i commanded, for i remembered that the petrol-supply, the steam-lock, and the forced draught were all controlled from the right rear seat. "me? why? there's a whole switchboard full o' nickel-plated muckin's which i haven't begun to play with yet. the starboard side's crawlin' with 'em." "change, or i'll kill you!" said hinchcliffe, and he looked like it. "that's the 'tiffy all over. when anything goes wrong, blame it on the lower deck. navigate by your automatic self, then! _i_ won't help you any more." we navigated for a mile in dead silence. "talkin' o' wakes----" said pyecroft suddenly. "we weren't," hinchcliffe grunted. "there's some wakes would break a snake's back; but this of yours, so to speak, would fair turn a tapeworm giddy. that's all i wish to observe, hinch. ... cart at anchor on the port-bow. it's agg!" far up the shaded road into secluded bromlingleigh we saw the carrier's cart at rest before the post-office. "he's bung in the fairway. how'm i to get past?" said hinchcliffe. "there's no room. here, pye, come and relieve the wheel!" "nay, nay, pauline. you've made your own bed. you've as good as left your happy home an' family cart to steal it. now you lie on it." "ring your bell," i suggested. "glory!" said pyecroft, falling forward into the nape of hinchcliffe's neck as the car stopped dead. "get out o' my back-hair! that must have been the brake i touched off," hinchcliffe muttered, and repaired his error tumultuously. we passed the cart as though we had been all bruges belfry. agg, from the port-office door, regarded us with a too pacific eye. i remembered later that the pretty postmistress looked on us pityingly. hinchcliffe wiped the sweat from his brow and drew breath. it was the first vehicle that he had passed, and i sympathised with him. "you needn't grip so hard," said my engineer. "she steers as easy as a bicycle." "ho! you suppose i ride bicycles up an' down my engine-room?" was the answer. "i've other things to think about. she's a terror. she's a whistlin' lunatic. i'd sooner run the old south-easter at simon's town than her!" "one of the nice things they say about her," i interrupted, "is that no engineer is needed to run this machine." "no. they'd need about seven." "'common-sense only is needed,'" i quoted. "make a note of that, hinch. just common-sense," pyecroft put in. "and now," i said, "we'll have to take in water. there isn't more than a couple of inches of water in the tank." "where d'you get it from?" "oh!--cottages and such-like." "yes, but that being so, where does your much-advertised twenty-five miles an hour come in? ain't a dung-cart more to the point?" "if you want to go anywhere, i suppose it would be," i replied. "_i_ don't want to go anywhere. i'm thinkin' of you who've got to live with her. she'll burn her tubes if she loses her water?" "she will." "i've never scorched yet, and i not beginnin' now." he shut off steam firmly. "out you get, pye, an' shove her along by hand." "where to?" "the nearest water-tank," was the reply. "and sussex is a dry county." "she ought to have drag-ropes--little pipe-clayed ones," said pyecroft. we got out and pushed under the hot sun for half-a-mile till we came to a cottage, sparsely inhabited by one child who wept. "all out haymakin', o' course," said pyecroft, thrusting his head into the parlour for an instant. "what's the evolution now?" "skirmish till we find a well," i said. "hmm! but they wouldn't 'ave left that kid without a chaperon, so to say... i thought so! where's a stick?" a bluish and silent beast of the true old sheep-dog breed glided from behind an outhouse and without words fell to work. pyecroft kept him at bay with a rake-handle while our party, in rallying- square, retired along the box-bordered brick-path to the car. at the garden gate the dumb devil halted, looked back on the child, and sat down to scratch. "that's his three-mile limit, thank heaven!" said pyecroft. "fall in, push-party, and proceed with land-transport o' pinnace. i'll protect your flanks in case this sniffin' flea-bag is tempted beyond 'is strength." we pushed off in silence. the car weighed , lb., and even on ball-bearings was a powerful sudorific. from somewhere behind a hedge we heard a gross rustic laugh. "those are the beggars we lie awake for, patrollin' the high seas. there ain't a port in china where we wouldn't be better treated. yes, a boxer 'ud be ashamed of it," said pyecroft. a cloud of fine dust boomed down the road. "some happy craft with a well-found engine-room! how different!" panted hinchcliffe, bent over the starboard mudguard. it was a claret-coloured petrol car, and it stopped courteously, as good cars will at sight of trouble. "water, only water," i answered in reply to offers of help. "there's a lodge at the end of these oak palings. they'll give you all you want. say i sent you. gregory--michael gregory. good-bye!" "ought to 'ave been in the service. prob'ly is," was pyecroft's comment. at that thrice-blessed lodge our water-tank was filled (i dare not quote mr. hinchcliffe's remarks when he saw the collapsible rubber bucket with which we did it) and we re-embarked. it seemed that sir michael gregory owned many acres, and that his park ran for miles. "no objection to your going through it," said the lodge-keeper. "it'll save you a goodish bit to instead wick." but we needed petrol, which could be purchased at pigginfold, a few miles farther up, and so we held to the main road, as our fate had decreed. "we've come seven miles in fifty-four minutes, so far," said hinchcliffe (he was driving with greater freedom and less responsibility), "and now we have to fill our bunkers. this is worse than the channel fleet." at pigginfold, after ten minutes, we refilled our petrol tank and lavishly oiled our engines. mr. hinchcliffe wished to discharge our engineer on the grounds that he (mr. hinchcliffe) was now entirely abreast of his work. to this i demurred, for i knew my car. she had, in the language of the road, held up for a day and a half, and by most bitter experience i suspected that her time was very near. therefore, three miles short of linghurst, i was less surprised than any one, excepting always my engineer, when the engines set up a lunatic clucking, and, after two or three kicks, jammed. "heaven forgive me all the harsh things i may have said about destroyers in my sinful time!" wailed hinchcliffe, snapping back the throttle. "what's worryin' ada now?" "the forward eccentric-strap screw's dropped off," said the engineer, investigating. "that all? i thought it was a propeller-blade." "we must go an' look for it. there isn't another." "not me," said pyecroft from his seat. "out pinnace, hinch, an' creep for it. it won't be more than five miles back." the two men, with bowed heads, moved up the road. "look like etymologists, don't they? does she decant her innards often, so to speak?" pyecroft asked. i told him the true tale of a race-full of ball bearings strewn four miles along a hampshire road, and by me recovered in detail. he was profoundly touched. "poor hinch! poor--poor hinch!" he said. "and that's only one of her little games, is it? he'll be homesick for the navy by night." when the search-party doubled back with the missing screw, it was hinchcliffe who replaced it in less than five minutes, while my engineer looked on admiringly. "your boiler's only seated on four little paperclips," he said, crawling from beneath her. "she's a wicker-willow lunch-basket below. she's a runnin' miracle. have you had this combustible spirit-lamp long?" i told him. "and yet you were afraid to come into the _nightmare's_ engine-room when we were runnin' trials!" "it's all a matter of taste," pyecroft volunteered. "but i will say for you, hinch, you've certainly got the hang of her steamin' gadgets in quick time." he was driving her very sweetly, but with a worried look in his eye and a tremor in his arm. "she don't seem so answer her helm somehow," he said. "there's a lot of play to the steering-gear," said my engineer. "we generally tighten it up every few miles." "'like me to stop now? we've run as much as one mile and a half without incident," he replied tartly. "then you're lucky," said my engineer, bristling in turn. "they'll wreck the whole turret out o' nasty professional spite in a minute," said pyecroft. "that's the worst o' machinery. man dead ahead, hinch--semaphorin' like the flagship in a fit!" "amen!" said hinchcliffe. "shall i stop, or shall i cut him down?" he stopped, for full in the centre of the linghurst road stood a person in pepper-and-salt raiment (ready-made), with a brown telegraph envelope in his hands. "twenty-three and a half miles an hour," he began, weighing a small beam- engine of a waterbury in one red paw. "from the top of the hill over our measured quarter-mile--twenty-three and a half." "you manurial gardener----" hinchcliffe began. i prodded him warningly from behind, and laid the other hand on pyecroft's stiffening knee. "also--on information received--drunk and disorderly in charge of a motor-car--to the common danger--two men like sailors in appearance," the man went on. "like sailors! ... that's agg's little _roose_. no wonder he smiled at us," said pyecroft. "i've been waiting for you some time," the man concluded, folding up the telegram. "who's the owner?" i indicated myself. "then i want you as well as the two seafaring men. drunk and disorderly can be treated summary. you come on." my relations with the sussex constabulary have, so far, been of the best, but i could not love this person. "of course you have your authority to show?" i hinted. "i'll show it you at linghurst," he retorted hotly----"all the authority you want." "i only want the badge, or warrant, or whatever it is a plain-clothes man has to show." he made as though to produce it, but checked himself, repeating less politely the invitation to linghurst. the action and the tone confirmed my many-times tested theory that the bulk of english shoregoing institutions are based on conformable strata of absolutely impervious inaccuracy. i reflected and became aware of a drumming on the back of the front seat that pyecroft, bowed forward and relaxed, was tapping with his knuckles. the hardly-checked fury on hinchcliffe's brow had given place to a greasy imbecility, and he nodded over the steering-bar. in longs and shorts, as laid down by the pious and immortal mr. morse, pyecroft tapped out, "sham drunk. get him in the car." "i can't stay here all day," said the constable. pyecroft raised his head. then was seen with what majesty the british sailor-man envisages a new situation. "met gennelman heavy sheeway," said he. "do tell me british gelman can't give 'ole brish navy lif' own blighted ste' cart. have another drink!" "i didn't know they were as drunk as all that when they stopped me," i explained. "you can say all that at linghurst," was the answer. "come on." "quite right," i said. "but the question is, if you take these two out on the road, they'll fall down or start killing you." "then i'd call on you to assist me in the execution o' my duty." "but i'd see you further first. you'd better come with us in the car. i'll turn this passenger out." (this was my engineer, sitting quite silent.) "you don't want him, and, anyhow, he'd only be a witness for the defence." "that's true," said the constable. "but it wouldn't make any odds--at linghurst." my engineer skipped into the bracken like a rabbit. i bade him cut across sir michael gregory's park, and if he caught my friend, to tell him i should probably be rather late for lunch. "i ain't going to be driven by _him_." our destined prey pointed at hinchcliffe with apprehension. "of course not. you sake my seat and keep the big sailor in order. he's too drunk to do much. i'll change places with the other one. only be quick; i want to pay my fine and get it over." "that's the way to look at it," he said, dropping into the left rear seat. "we're making quite a lot out o' you motor gentry." he folded his arms judicially as the car gathered way under hinchcliffe's stealthy hand. "but _you_ aren't driving?" he cried, half rising. "you've noticed it?" said pyecroft, and embraced him with one anaconda- like left arm. "don't kill him," said hinchcliffe briefly. "i want to show him what twenty-three and a quarter is." we were going a fair twelve, which was about the car's limit. our passenger swore something and then groaned. "hush, darling!" said pyecroft, "or i'll have to hug you." the main road, white under the noon sun, lay broad before us, running north to linghurst. we slowed and looked anxiously for a side track. "and now," said i, "i want to see your authority." "the badge of your ratin'?" pyecroft added. "i'm a constable," he said, and kicked. indeed, his boots would have bewrayed him across half a county's plough; but boots are not legal evidence. "i want your authority," i repeated coldly; "some evidence that you are not a common drunken tramp." it was as i had expected. he had forgotten or mislaid his badge. he had neglected to learn the outlines of the work for which he received money and consideration; and he expected me, the tax-payer, to go to infinite trouble to supplement his deficiencies. "if you don't believe me, come to linghurst," was the burden of his almost national anthem. "but i can't run all over sussex every time a blackmailer jumps up and says he is a policeman." "why, it's quite close," he persisted. "'twon't be--soon," said hinchcliffe. "none of the other people ever made any trouble. to be sure, _they_ was gentlemen," he cried. "all i can say is, it may be very funny, but it ain't fair." i laboured with him in this dense fog, but to no end. he had forgotten his badge, and we were villains for that we did not cart him to the pub or barracks where he had left it. pyecroft listened critically as we spun along the hard road. "if he was a concentrated boer, he couldn't expect much more," he observed. "now, suppose i'd been a lady in a delicate state o' health-- you'd ha' made me very ill with your doings." "i wish i 'ad. 'ere! 'elp! 'elp! hi!" the man had seen a constable in uniform fifty yards ahead, where a lane ran into the road, and would have said more but that hinchcliffe jerked her up that lane with a wrench that nearly capsized us as the constable came running heavily. it seemed to me that both our guest and his fellow-villain in uniform smiled as we fled down the road easterly betwixt the narrowing hedges. "you'll know all about it in a little time," said our guest. "you've only yourselves to thank for runnin' your 'ead into a trap." and he whistled ostentatiously. we made no answer. "if that man 'ad chose, 'e could have identified me," he said. still we were silent. "but 'e'll do it later, when you're caught." "not if you go on talking. 'e won't be able to," said pyecroft. "i don't know what traverse you think you're workin', but your duty till you're put in cells for a highway robber is to love, honour, an' cherish _me_ most special--performin' all evolutions signalled in rapid time. i tell you this, in case o' anything turnin' up." "don't you fret about things turnin' up," was the reply. hinchcliffe had given the car a generous throttle, and she was well set to work, when, without warning, the road--there are two or three in sussex like it--turned down and ceased. "holy muckins!" he cried, and stood on both brakes as our helpless tyres slithered over wet grass and bracken--down and down into forest--early british woodland. it was the change of a nightmare, and that all should fit, fifty yards ahead of us a babbling brook barred our way. on the far side a velvet green ride, sprinkled with rabbits and fern, gently sloped upwards and away, but behind us was no hope. forty horse-power would never have rolled wet pneumatic tyres up that verdurous cliff we had descended. "h'm!" our guest coughed significantly. "a great many cars thinks they can take this road; but they all come back. we walks after 'em at our convenience." "meanin' that the other jaunty is now pursuin' us on his lily feet?" said pyecroft. "_pre_cisely." "an' you think," said pyecroft (i have no hope to render the scorn of the words), "_that'll_ make any odds? get out!" the man obeyed with alacrity. "see those spars up-ended over there? i mean that wickyup-thing. hop-poles, then, you rural blighter. keep on fetching me hop-poles at the double." and he doubled, pyecroft at his heels; for they had arrived at a perfect understanding. there was a stack of hurdles a few yards down stream, laid aside after sheep-washing; and there were stepping-stones in the brook. hinchcliffe rearranged these last to make some sort of causeway; i brought up the hurdles; and when pyecroft and his subaltern had dropped a dozen hop-poles across the stream, laid them down over all. "talk o' the agricultur'l hall!" he said, mopping his brow--"'tisn't in it with us. the approach to the bridge must now be paved with hurdles, owin' to the squashy nature o' the country. yes, an' we'd better have one or two on the far side to lead her on to _terror fermior_. now, hinch! give her full steam and 'op along. if she slips off, we're done. shall i take the wheel?" "no. this is my job," said the first-class engine-room artificer. "get over the far side, and be ready to catch her if she jibs on the uphill." we crossed that elastic structure and stood ready amid the bracken. hinchcliffe gave her a full steam and she came like a destroyer on her trial. there was a crack, a flicker of white water, and she was in our arms fifty yards up the slope; or rather, we were behind her, pushing her madly towards a patch of raw gravel whereon her wheels could bite. of the bridge remained only a few wildly vibrating hop-poles, and those hurdles which had been sunk in the mud of the approaches. "she--she kicked out all the loose ones behind her as she finished with 'em," hinchcliffe panted. "at the agricultural hall they would 'ave been fastened down with ribbons," said pyecroft. "but this ain't olympia." "she nearly wrenched the tiller out of my hand. don't you think i conned her like a cock-angel, pye?" "_i_ never saw anything like it," said our guest propitiatingly. "and now, gentlemen, if you'll let me go back to linghurst, i promise you you won't hear another word from me." "get in," said pyecroft, as we puffed out on to a metalled road once more. "we 'aven't begun on _you_ yet." "a joke's a joke," he replied. "i don't mind a little bit of a joke myself, but this is going beyond it." "miles an' miles beyond it, if this machine stands up. we'll want water pretty soon." our guest's countenance brightened, and pyecroft perceived it. "let me tell you," he said earnestly, "it won't make any difference to you whatever happens. barrin' a dhow or two tajurrah-way, prizes are scarce in the navy. hence we never abandon 'em." there was a long silence. pyecroft broke it suddenly. "robert," he said, "have you a mother?" "yes." "have you a big brother?" "yes." "an' a little sister?" "yes." "robert. does your mamma keep a dog?" "yes. why?" "all right, robert. i won't forget it." i looked for an explanation. "i saw his cabinet photograph in full uniform on the mantelpiece o' that cottage before faithful fido turned up," pyecroft whispered. "ain't you glad it's all in the family somehow?" we filled with water at a cottage on the edge of st. leonard's forest, and, despite our increasing leakage, made shift to climb the ridge above instead wick. knowing the car as i did, i felt sure that final collapse would not be long delayed. my sole concern was to run our guest well into the wilderness before that came. on the roof of the world--a naked plateau clothed with young heather--she retired from active life in floods of tears. her feed-water-heater (hinchcliffe blessed it and its maker for three minutes) was leaking beyond hope of repair; she had shifted most of her packing, and her water- pump would not lift. "if i had a bit of piping i could disconnect this tin cartridge-case an' feed direct into the boiler. it 'ud knock down her speed, but we could get on," said he, and looked hopelessly at the long dun ridges that hove us above the panorama of sussex. northward we could see the london haze. southward, between gaps of the whale-backed downs, lay the channel's zinc- blue. but all our available population in that vast survey was one cow and a kestrel. "it's down hill to instead wick. we can run her there by gravity," i said at last. "then he'll only have to walk to the station to get home. unless we take off 'is boots first," pyecroft replied. "that," said our guest earnestly, "would be theft atop of assault and very serious." "oh, let's hang him an' be done," hinchcliffe grunted. "it's evidently what he's sufferin' for." somehow murder did not appeal to us that warm noon. we sat down to smoke in the heather, and presently out of the valley below came the thick beat of a petrol-motor ascending. i paid little attention to it till i heard the roar of a horn that has no duplicate in all the home counties. "that's the man i was going to lunch with!" i cried. "hold on!" and i ran down the road. it was a big, black, black-dashed, tonneaued twenty-four horse octopod; and it bore not only kysh my friend, and salmon his engineer, but my own man, who for the first time in our acquaintance smiled. "did they get you? what did you get? i was coming into linghurst as witness to character--your man told me what happened--but i was stopped near instead wick myself," cried kysh. "what for?" "leaving car unattended. an infernal swindle, when you think of the loose carts outside every pub in the county. i was jawing with the police for an hour, but it's no use. they've got it all their own way, and we're helpless." hereupon i told him my tale, and for proof, as we topped the hill, pointed out the little group round my car. all supreme emotion is dumb. kysh put on the brake and hugged me to his bosom till i groaned. then, as i remember, he crooned like a mother returned to her suckling. "divine! divine!" he murmured. "command me." "take charge of the situation," i said. "you'll find a mr. pyecroft on the quarter-deck. i'm altogether out of it." "he shall stay there. who am i but the instrument of vengeance in the hands of an over-ruling providence? (and i put in fresh sparking-plugs this morning.) salmon, take that steam-kettle home, somehow. i would be alone." "leggat," i said to my man, "help salmon home with my car." "home? now? it's hard. it's cruel hard," said leggat, almost with a sob. hinchcliffe outlined my car's condition briefly to the two engineers. mr. pyecroft clung to our guest, who stared with affrighted eyes at the palpitating octopod; and the free wind of high sussex whimpered across the ling. "i am quite agreeable to walkin' 'ome all the way on my feet," said our guest. "i wouldn't go to any railway station. it 'ud be just the proper finish to our little joke." he laughed nervously. "what's the evolution?" said pyecroft. "do we turn over to the new cruiser?" i nodded, and he escorted our guest to the tonneau with care. when i was in, he sat himself broad-armed on the little flap-seat which controls the door. hinchcliffe sat by kysh. "you drive?" kysh asked, with the smile that has won him his chequered way through the world. "steam only, and i've about had my whack for to-day, thanks." "i see." the long, low car slid forward and then dropped like a bullet down the descent our steam toy had so painfully climbed. our guest's face blanched, and he clutched the back of the tonneau. "new commander's evidently been trained on a destroyer," said hinchcliffe. "what's 'is wonderful name?" whispered pyecroft. "ho! well, i'm glad it ain't saul we've run up against--nor nimshi, for that matter. this is makin' me feel religious." our impetus carried us half-way up the next slope, where we steadied to a resonant fifteen an hour against the collar. "what do you think?" i called to hinchcliffe. "'taint as sweet as steam, o' course; but for power it's twice the _furious_ against half the _jaseur_ in a head-sea." volumes could not have touched it more exactly. his bright eyes were glued on kysh's hands juggling with levers behind the discreet backward sloping dash. "an' what sort of a brake might you use?" he said politely. "this," kysh replied, as the last of the hill shot up to one in eight. he let the car run back a few feet and caught her deftly on the brake, repeating the performance cup and ball fashion. it was like being daped above the pit at the end of an uncoiled solar plexus. even pyecroft held his breath. "it ain't fair! it ain't fair!" our guest moaned. "you're makin' me sick." "what an ungrateful blighter he is!" said pyecroft. "money couldn't buy you a run like this ... do it well overboard!" "we'll just trundle up the forest and drop into the park row, i think," said kysh. "there's a bit of good going hereabouts." he flung a careless knee over the low raking tiller that the ordinary expert puts under his armpit, and down four miles of yellow road, cut through barren waste, the octopod sang like a six-inch shell. "whew! but you know your job," said hinchcliffe. "you're wasted here. i'd give something to have you in my engine-room." "he's steering with 'is little hind-legs," said pyecroft. "stand up and look at him, robert. you'll never see such a sight again!" "nor don't want to," was our guest's reply. "five 'undred pounds wouldn't begin to cover 'is fines even since i've been with him." park row is reached by one hill which drops three hundred feet in half a mile. kysh had the thought to steer with his hand down the abyss, but the manner in which he took the curved bridge at the bottom brought my few remaining hairs much nearer the grave. "we're in surrey now; better look out," i said. "never mind. i'll roll her into kent for a bit. we've lots of time; it's only three o'clock." "won't you want to fill your bunkers, or take water, or oil her up?" said hinchcliffe. "we don't use water, and she's good for two hundred on one tank o' petrol if she doesn't break down." "two hundred miles from 'ome and mother _and_ faithful fido to-night, robert," said pyecroft, slapping our guest on the knee. "cheer up! why, i've known a destroyer do less." we passed with some decency through some towns, till by way of the hastings road we whirled into cramberhurst, which is a deep pit. "now," said kysh, "we begin." "previous service not reckoned towards pension," said pyecroft. "we are doin' you lavish, robert." "but when's this silly game to finish, any'ow?" our guest snarled. "don't worry about the _when_ of it, robert. the _where's_ the interestin' point for you just now." i had seen kysh drive before, and i thought i knew the octopod, but that afternoon he and she were exalted beyond my knowledge. he improvised on the keys--the snapping levers and quivering accelerators--marvellous variations, so that our progress was sometimes a fugue and sometimes a barn-dance, varied on open greens by the weaving of fairy rings. when i protested, all that he would say was: "i'll hypnotise the fowl! i'll dazzle the rooster!" or other words equally futile. and she--oh! that i could do her justice!--she turned her broad black bows to the westering light, and lifted us high upon hills that we might see and rejoice with her. she whooped into veiled hollows of elm and sussex oak; she devoured infinite perspectives of park palings; she surged through forgotten hamlets, whose single streets gave back, reduplicated, the clatter of her exhaust, and, tireless, she repeated the motions. over naked uplands she droned like a homing bee, her shadow lengthening in the sun that she chased to his lair. she nosed up unparochial byways and accommodation- roads of the least accommodation, and put old scarred turf or new-raised molehills under her most marvellous springs with never a jar. and since the king's highway is used for every purpose save traffic, in mid-career she stepped aside for, or flung amazing loops about, the brainless driver, the driverless horse, the drunken carrier, the engaged couple, the female student of the bicycle and her staggering instructor, the pig, the perambulator, and the infant school (where it disembogued yelping on cross-roads), with the grace of nellie farren (upon whom be the peace) and the lithe abandon of all the vokes family. but at heart she was ever judic as i remember that judic long ago--judic clad in bourgeois black from wrist to ankle, achieving incredible improprieties. we were silent--hinchcliffe and pyecroft through professional appreciation; i with a layman's delight in the expert; and our guest because of fear. at the edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green flats fringed by martello towers. "ain't that eastbourne yonder?" said our guest, reviving. "i've a aunt there--she's cook to a j.p.--could identify me." "don't worry her for a little thing like that," said pyecroft; and ere he had ceased to praise family love, our unpaid judiciary, and domestic service, the downs rose between us and the sea, and the long man of hillingdon lay out upon the turf. "trevington--up yonder--is a fairly isolated little dorp," i said, for i was beginning to feel hungry. "no," said kysh. "he'd get a lift to the railway in no time.... besides, i'm enjoying myself.... three pounds eighteen and sixpence. infernal swindle!" i take it one of his more recent fines was rankling in kysh's brain; but he drove like the archangel of the twilight. about the longitude of cassocks, hinchcliffe yawned. "aren't we goin' to maroon our robert? i'm hungry, too." "the commodore wants his money back," i answered. "if he drives like this habitual, there must be a tidyish little lump owin' to him," said pyecroft. "well, i'm agreeable." "i didn't know it could be done. s'welp me, i didn't," our guest murmured. "but you will," said kysh. and that was the first and last time he addressed the man. we ran through penfield green, half stupefied with open air, drugged with the relentless boom of the octopod, and extinct with famine. "i used to shoot about here," said kysh, a few miles further on. "open that gate, please," and he slowed as the sun touched the sky-line. at this point we left metalled roads and bucked vigorously amid ditches and under trees for twenty minutes. "only cross-country car on the market," he said, as we wheeled into a straw-yard where a lone bull bellowed defiance to our growlings. "open that gate, please. i hope the cattle-bridge will stand up." "i've took a few risks in my time," said pyecroft as timbers cracked beneath us and we entered between thickets, "but i'm a babe to this man, hinch." "don't talk to me. watch _him!_ it's a liberal education, as shakespeare says. fallen tree on the port bow, sir." "right! that's my mark. sit tight!" she flung up her tail like a sounding whale and buried us in a fifteen- foot deep bridle-path buttressed with the exposed roots of enormous beeches. the wheels leaped from root to rounded boulder, and it was very dark in the shadow of the foliage. "there ought to be a hammer-pond somewhere about here." kysh was letting her down this chute in brakeful spasms. "water dead ahead, sir. stack o' brushwood on the starboard beam, and--no road," sang pyecroft. "cr-r-ri-key!" said hinchcliffe, as the car on a wild cant to the left went astern, screwing herself round the angle of a track that overhung the pond. "if she only had two propellers, i believe she'd talk poetry. she can do everything else." "we're rather on our port wheels now," said kysh; "but i don't think she'll capsize. this road isn't used much by motors." "you don't say so," said pyecroft. "what a pity!" she bored through a mass of crackling brushwood, and emerged into an upward sloping fern-glade fenced with woods so virgin, so untouched, that william rufus might have ridden off as we entered. we climbed out of the violet-purple shadows towards the upland where the last of the day lingered. i was filled to my moist eyes with the almost sacred beauty of sense and association that clad the landscape. "does 'unger produce 'alluciations?" said pyecroft in a whisper. "because i've just seen a sacred ibis walkin' arm in arm with a british cock- pheasant." "what are you panickin' at?" said hinchcliffe. "i've been seein' zebra for the last two minutes, but i 'aven't complained." he pointed behind us, and i beheld a superb painted zebra (burchell's, i think), following our track with palpitating nostrils. the car stopped, and it fled away. there was a little pond in front of us from which rose a dome of irregular sticks crowned with a blunt-muzzled beast that sat upon its haunches. "is it catching?" said pyecroft. "yes. i'm seeing beaver," i replied. "it is here!" said kysh, with the air and gesture of captain nemo, and half turned. "no--no--no! for 'eaven's sake--not 'ere!" our guest gasped like a sea- bathed child, as four efficient hands swung him far out-board on to the turf. the car ran back noiselessly down the slope. "look! look! it's sorcery!" cried hinchcliffe. there was a report like a pistol shot as the beaver dived from the roof of his lodge, but we watched our guest. he was on his knees, praying to kangaroos. yea, in his bowler hat he kneeled before kangaroos--gigantic, erect, silhouetted against the light--four buck-kangaroos in the heart of sussex! and we retrogressed over the velvet grass till our hind-wheels struck well-rolled gravel, leading us to sanity, main roads, and, half an hour later, the "grapnel inn" at horsham. * * * * * after a great meal we poured libations and made burnt-offerings in honour of kysh, who received our homage graciously, and, by the way, explained a few things in the natural history line that had puzzled us. england is a most marvellous country, but one is not, till one knows the eccentricities of large land-owners, trained to accept kangaroos, zebras, or beavers as part of its landscape. when we went to bed pyecroft pressed my hand, his voice thick with emotion. "we owe it to you," he said. "we owe it all to you. didn't i say we never met in _pup-pup-puris naturalibus_, if i may so put it, without a remarkably hectic day ahead of us?" "that's all right," i said. "mind the candle." he was tracing smoke- patterns on the wall. "but what i want to know is whether we'll succeed in acclimatisin' the blighter, or whether sir william gardner's keepers 'll kill 'im before 'e gets accustomed to 'is surroundin's?" some day, i think, we must go up the linghurst road and find out. "wireless" kaspar's song in varda (_from the swedish of stagnelius_.) eyes aloft, over dangerous places, the children follow where psyche flies, and, in the sweat of their upturned faces, slash with a net at the empty skies. so it goes they fall amid brambles, and sting their toes on the nettle-tops, till after a thousand scratches and scrambles they wipe their brows, and the hunting stops. then to quiet them comes their father and stills the riot of pain and grief, saying, "little ones, go and gather out of my garden a cabbage leaf. "you will find on it whorls and clots of dull grey eggs that, properly fed, turn, by way of the worm, to lots of radiant psyches raised from the dead." * * * * * "heaven is beautiful, earth is ugly," the three-dimensioned preacher saith, so we must not look where the snail and the slug lie for psyche's birth ... and that is our death! "wireless" "it's a funny thing, this marconi business, isn't it?" said mr. shaynor, coughing heavily. "nothing seems to make any difference, by what they tell me--storms, hills, or anything; but if that's true we shall know before morning." "of course it's true," i answered, stepping behind the counter. "where's old mr. cashell?" "he's had to go to bed on account of his influenza. he said you'd very likely drop in." "where's his nephew?" "inside, getting the things ready. he told me that the last time they experimented they put the pole on the roof of one of the big hotels here, and the batteries electrified all the water-supply, and"--he giggled--"the ladies got shocks when they took their baths." "i never heard of that." "the hotel wouldn't exactly advertise it, would it? just now, by what mr. cashell tells me, they're trying to signal from here to poole, and they're using stronger batteries than ever. but, you see, he being the guvnor's nephew and all that (and it will be in the papers too), it doesn't matter how they electrify things in this house. are you going to watch?" "very much. i've never seen this game. aren't you going to bed?" "we don't close till ten on saturdays. there's a good deal of influenza in town, too, and there'll be a dozen prescriptions coming in before morning. i generally sleep in the chair here. it's warmer than jumping out of bed every time. bitter cold, isn't it?" "freezing hard. i'm sorry your cough's worse." "thank you. i don't mind cold so much. it's this wind that fair cuts me to pieces." he coughed again hard and hackingly, as an old lady came in for ammoniated quinine. "we've just run out of it in bottles, madam," said mr. shaynor, returning to the professional tone, "but if you will wait two minutes, i'll make it up for you, madam." i had used the shop for some time, and my acquaintance with the proprietor had ripened into friendship. it was mr. cashell who revealed to me the purpose and power of apothecaries' hall what time a fellow-chemist had made an error in a prescription of mine, had lied to cover his sloth, and when error and lie were brought home to him had written vain letters. "a disgrace to our profession," said the thin, mild-eyed man, hotly, after studying the evidence. "you couldn't do a better service to the profession than report him to apothecaries' hall." i did so, not knowing what djinns i should evoke; and the result was such an apology as one might make who had spent a night on the rack. i conceived great respect for apothecaries' hall, and esteem for mr. cashell, a zealous craftsman who magnified his calling. until mr. shaynor came down from the north his assistants had by no means agreed with mr. cashell. "they forget," said he, "that, first and foremost, the compounder is a medicine-man. on him depends the physician's reputation. he holds it literally in the hollow of his hand, sir." mr. shaynor's manners had not, perhaps, the polish of the grocery and italian warehouse next door, but he knew and loved his dispensary work in every detail. for relaxation he seemed to go no farther afield than the romance of drugs--their discovery, preparation packing, and export--but it led him to the ends of the earth, and on this subject, and the pharmaceutical formulary, and nicholas culpepper, most confident of physicians, we met. little by little i grew to know something of his beginnings and his hopes --of his mother, who had been a school-teacher in one of the northern counties, and of his red-headed father, a small job-master at kirby moors, who died when he was a child; of the examinations he had passed and of their exceeding and increasing difficulty; of his dreams of a shop in london; of his hate for the price-cutting co-operative stores; and, most interesting, of his mental attitude towards customers. "there's a way you get into," he told me, "of serving them carefully, and i hope, politely, without stopping your own thinking. i've been reading christie's _new commercial plants_ all this autumn, and that needs keeping your mind on it, i can tell you. so long as it isn't a prescription, of course, i can carry as much as half a page of christie in my head, and at the same time i could sell out all that window twice over, and not a penny wrong at the end. as to prescriptions, i think i could make up the general run of 'em in my sleep, almost." for reasons of my own, i was deeply interested in marconi experiments at their outset in england; and it was of a piece with mr. cashell's unvarying thoughtfulness that, when his nephew the electrician appropriated the house for a long-range installation, he should, as i have said, invite me to see the result. the old lady went away with her medicine, and mr. shaynor and i stamped on the tiled floor behind the counter to keep ourselves warm. the shop, by the light of the many electrics, looked like a paris-diamond mine, for mr. cashell believed in all the ritual of his craft. three superb glass jars-- red, green, and blue--of the sort that led rosamund to parting with her shoes--blazed in the broad plate-glass windows, and there was a confused smell of orris, kodak films, vulcanite, tooth-powder, sachets, and almond- cream in the air. mr. shaynor fed the dispensary stove, and we sucked cayenne-pepper jujubes and menthol lozenges. the brutal east wind had cleared the streets, and the few passers-by were muffled to their puckered eyes. in the italian warehouse next door some gay feathered birds and game, hung upon hooks, sagged to the wind across the left edge of our window-frame. "they ought to take these poultry in--all knocked about like that," said mr. shaynor. "doesn't it make you feel fair perishing? see that old hare! the wind's nearly blowing the fur off him." i saw the belly-fur of the dead beast blown apart in ridges and streaks as the wind caught it, showing bluish skin underneath. "bitter cold," said mr. shaynor, shuddering. "fancy going out on a night like this! oh, here's young mr. cashell." the door of the inner office behind the dispensary opened, and an energetic, spade-bearded man stepped forth, rubbing his hands. "i want a bit of tin-foil, shaynor," he said. "good-evening. my uncle told me you might be coming." this to me, as i began the first of a hundred questions. "i've everything in order," he replied. "we're only waiting until poole calls us up. excuse me a minute. you can come in whenever you like--but i'd better be with the instruments. give me that tin-foil. thanks." while we were talking, a girl--evidently no customer--had come into the shop, and the face and bearing of mr. shaynor changed. she leaned confidently across the counter. "but i can't," i heard him whisper uneasily--the flush on his cheek was dull red, and his eyes shone like a drugged moth's. "i can't. i tell you i'm alone in the place." "no, you aren't. who's _that_? let him look after it for half an hour. a brisk walk will do you good. ah, come now, john." "but he isn't----" "i don't care. i want you to; we'll only go round by st. agnes. if you don't----" he crossed to where i stood in the shadow of the dispensary counter, and began some sort of broken apology about a lady-friend. "yes," she interrupted. "you take the shop for half an hour--to oblige _me_, won't you?" she had a singularly rich and promising voice that well matched her outline. "all right," i said. "i'll do it--but you'd better wrap yourself up, mr. shaynor." "oh, a brisk walk ought to help me. we're only going round by the church." i heard him cough grievously as they went out together. i refilled the stove, and, after reckless expenditure of mr. cashell's coal, drove some warmth into the shop. i explored many of the glass- knobbed drawers that lined the walls, tasted some disconcerting drugs, and, by the aid of a few cardamoms, ground ginger, chloric-ether, and dilute alcohol, manufactured a new and wildish drink, of which i bore a glassful to young mr. cashell, busy in the back office. he laughed shortly when i told him that mr. shaynor had stepped out--but a frail coil of wire held all his attention, and he had no word for me bewildered among the batteries and rods. the noise of the sea on the beach began to make itself heard as the traffic in the street ceased. then briefly, but very lucidly, he gave me the names and uses of the mechanism that crowded the tables and the floor. "when do you expect to get the message from poole?" i demanded, sipping my liquor out of a graduated glass. "about midnight, if everything is in order. we've got our installation- pole fixed to the roof of the house. i shouldn't advise you to turn on a tap or anything tonight. we've connected up with the plumbing, and all the water will be electrified." he repeated to me the history of the agitated ladies at the hotel at the time of the first installation. "but what _is_ it?" i asked. "electricity is out of my beat altogether." "ah, if you knew _that_ you'd know something nobody knows. it's just it-- what we call electricity, but the magic--the manifestations--the hertzian waves--are all revealed by _this_. the coherer, we call it." he picked up a glass tube not much thicker than a thermometer, in which, almost touching, were two tiny silver plugs, and between them an infinitesimal pinch of metallic dust. "that's all," he said, proudly, as though himself responsible for the wonder. "that is the thing that will reveal to us the powers--whatever the powers may be--at work--through space--a long distance away." just then mr. shaynor returned alone and stood coughing his heart out on the mat. "serves you right for being such a fool," said young mr. cashell, as annoyed as myself at the interruption. "never mind--we've all the night before us to see wonders." shaynor clutched the counter, his handkerchief to his lips. when he brought it away i saw two bright red stains. "i--i've got a bit of a rasped throat from smoking cigarettes," he panted. "i think i'll try a cubeb." "better take some of this. i've been compounding while you've been away." i handed him the brew. "'twon't make me drunk, will it? i'm almost a teetotaller. my word! that's grateful and comforting." he sat down the empty glass to cough afresh. "brr! but it was cold out there! i shouldn't care to be lying in my grave a night like this. don't _you_ ever have a sore throat from smoking?" he pocketed the handkerchief after a furtive peep. "oh, yes, sometimes," i replied, wondering, while i spoke, into what agonies of terror i should fall if ever i saw those bright-red danger- signals under my nose. young mr. cashell among the batteries coughed slightly to show that he was quite ready to continue his scientific explanations, but i was thinking still of the girl with the rich voice and the significantly cut mouth, at whose command i had taken charge of the shop. it flashed across me that she distantly resembled the seductive shape on a gold-framed toilet-water advertisement whose charms were unholily heightened by the glare from the red bottle in the window. turning to make sure, i saw mr. shaynor's eyes bent in the same direction, and by instinct recognised that the flamboyant thing was to him a shrine. "what do you take for your--cough?" i asked. "well, i'm the wrong side of the counter to believe much in patent medicines. but there are asthma cigarettes and there are pastilles. to tell you the truth, if you don't object to the smell, which is very like incense, i believe, though i'm not a roman catholic, blaudett's cathedral pastilles relieve me as much as anything." "let's try." i had never raided a chemist's shop before, so i was thorough. we unearthed the pastilles--brown, gummy cones of benzoin--and set them alight under the toilet-water advertisement, where they fumed in thin blue spirals. "of course," said mr. shaynor, to my question, "what one uses in the shop for one's self comes out of one's pocket. why, stock-taking in our business is nearly the same as with jewellers--and i can't say more than that. but one gets them"--he pointed to the pastille-box--"at trade prices." evidently the censing of the gay, seven-tinted wench with the teeth was an established ritual which cost something. "and when do we shut up shop?" "we stay like this all night. the gov--old mr. cashell--doesn't believe in locks and shutters as compared with electric light. besides it brings trade. i'll just sit here in the chair by the stove and write a letter, if you don't mind. electricity isn't my prescription." the energetic young mr. cashell snorted within, and shaynor settled himself up in his chair over which he had thrown a staring red, black, and yellow austrian jute blanket, rather like a table-cover. i cast about, amid patent medicine pamphlets, for something to read, but finding little, returned to the manufacture of the new drink. the italian warehouse took down its game and went to bed. across the street blank shutters flung back the gaslight in cold smears; the dried pavement seemed to rough up in goose-flesh under the scouring of the savage wind, and we could hear, long ere he passed, the policeman flapping his arms to keep himself warm. within, the flavours of cardamoms and chloric-ether disputed those of the pastilles and a score of drugs and perfume and soap scents. our electric lights, set low down in the windows before the tunbellied rosamund jars, flung inward three monstrous daubs of red, blue, and green, that broke into kaleidoscopic lights on the facetted knobs of the drug-drawers, the cut-glass scent flagons, and the bulbs of the sparklet bottles. they flushed the white-tiled floor in gorgeous patches; splashed along the nickel-silver counter-rails, and turned the polished mahogany counter- panels to the likeness of intricate grained marbles--slabs of porphyry and malachite. mr. shaynor unlocked a drawer, and ere he began to write, took out a meagre bundle of letters. from my place by the stove, i could see the scalloped edges of the paper with a flaring monogram in the corner and could even smell the reek of chypre. at each page he turned toward the toilet-water lady of the advertisement and devoured her with over-luminous eyes. he had drawn the austrian blanket over his shoulders, and among those warring lights he looked more than ever the incarnation of a drugged moth--a tiger-moth as i thought. he put his letter into an envelope, stamped it with stiff mechanical movements, and dropped it in the drawer. then i became aware of the silence of a great city asleep--the silence that underlaid the even voice of the breakers along the sea-front--a thick, tingling quiet of warm life stilled down for its appointed time, and unconsciously i moved about the glittering shop as one moves in a sick-room. young mr. cashell was adjusting some wire that crackled from time to time with the tense, knuckle-stretching sound of the electric spark. upstairs, where a door shut and opened swiftly, i could hear his uncle coughing abed. "here," i said, when the drink was properly warmed, "take some of this, mr. shaynor." he jerked in his chair with a start and a wrench, and held out his hand for the glass. the mixture, of a rich port-wine colour, frothed at the top. "it looks," he said, suddenly, "it looks--those bubbles--like a string of pearls winking at you--rather like the pearls round that young lady's neck." he turned again to the advertisement where the female in the dove- coloured corset had seen fit to put on all her pearls before she cleaned her teeth. "not bad, is it?" i said. "eh?" he rolled his eyes heavily full on me, and, as i stared, i beheld all meaning and consciousness die out of the swiftly dilating pupils. his figure lost its stark rigidity, softened into the chair, and, chin on chest, hands dropped before him, he rested open-eyed, absolutely still. "i'm afraid i've rather cooked shaynor's goose," i said, bearing the fresh drink to young mr. cashell. "perhaps it was the chloric-ether." "oh, he's all right." the spade-bearded man glanced at him pityingly. "consumptives go off in those sort of doses very often. it's exhaustion... i don't wonder. i dare say the liquor will do him good. it's grand stuff," he finished his share appreciatively. "well, as i was saying--before he interrupted--about this little coherer. the pinch of dust, you see, is nickel-filings. the hertzian waves, you see, come out of space from the station that despatches 'em, and all these little particles are attracted together--cohere, we call it--for just so long as the current passes through them. now, it's important to remember that the current is an induced current. there are a good many kinds of induction----" "yes, but what _is_ induction?" "that's rather hard to explain untechnically. but the long and the short of it is that when a current of electricity passes through a wire there's a lot of magnetism present round that wire; and if you put another wire parallel to, and within what we call its magnetic field--why then, the second wire will also become charged with electricity." "on its own account?" "on its own account." "then let's see if i've got it correctly. miles off, at poole, or wherever it is----" "it will be anywhere in ten years." "you've got a charged wire----" "charged with hertzian waves which vibrate, say, two hundred and thirty million times a second." mr. cashell snaked his forefinger rapidly through the air. "all right--a charged wire at poole, giving out these waves into space. then this wire of yours sticking out into space--on the roof of the house --in some mysterious way gets charged with those waves from poole----" "or anywhere--it only happens to be poole tonight." "and those waves set the coherer at work, just like an ordinary telegraph- office ticker?" "no! that's where so many people make the mistake. the hertzian waves wouldn't be strong enough to work a great heavy morse instrument like ours. they can only just make that dust cohere, and while it coheres (a little while for a dot and a longer while for a dash) the current from this battery--the home battery"--he laid his hand on the thing--"can get through to the morse printing-machine to record the dot or dash. let me make it clearer. do you know anything about steam?" "very little. but go on." "well, the coherer is like a steam-valve. any child can open a valve and start a steamer's engines, because a turn of the hand lets in the main steam, doesn't it? now, this home battery here ready to print is the main steam. the coherer is the valve, always ready to be turned on. the hertzian wave is the child's hand that turns it." "i see. that's marvellous." "marvellous, isn't it? and, remember, we're only at the beginning. there's nothing we sha'n't be able to do in ten years. i want to live--my god, how i want to live, and see it develop!" he looked through the door at shaynor breathing lightly in his chair. "poor beast! and he wants to keep company with fanny brand." "fanny _who_?" i said, for the name struck an obscurely familiar chord in my brain--something connected with a stained handkerchief, and the word "arterial." "fanny brand--the girl you kept shop for." he laughed, "that's all i know about her, and for the life of me i can't see what shaynor sees in her, or she in him." "_can't_ you see what he sees in her?" i insisted. "oh, yes, if _that's_ what you mean. she's a great, big, fat lump of a girl, and so on. i suppose that's why he's so crazy after her. she isn't his sort. well, it doesn't matter. my uncle says he's bound to die before the year's out. your drink's given him a good sleep, at any rate." young mr. cashell could not catch mr. shaynor's face, which was half turned to the advertisement. i stoked the stove anew, for the room was growing cold, and lighted another pastille. mr. shaynor in his chair, never moving, looked through and over me with eyes as wide and lustreless as those of a dead hare. "poole's late," said young mr. cashell, when i stepped back. "i'll just send them a call." he pressed a key in the semi-darkness, and with a rending crackle there leaped between two brass knobs a spark, streams of sparks, and sparks again. "grand, isn't it? _that's_ the power--our unknown power--kicking and fighting to be let loose," said young mr. cashell. "there she goes--kick-- kick--kick into space. i never get over the strangeness of it when i work a sending-machine--waves going into space, you know. t.r. is our call. poole ought to answer with l.l.l." we waited two, three, five minutes. in that silence, of which the boom of the tide was an orderly part, i caught the clear "_kiss--kiss--kiss_" of the halliards on the roof, as they were blown against the installation- pole. "poole is not ready. i'll stay here and call you when he is." i returned to the shop, and set down my glass on a marble slab with a careless clink. as i did so, shaynor rose to his feet, his eyes fixed once more on the advertisement, where the young woman bathed in the light from the red jar simpered pinkly over her pearls. his lips moved without cessation. i stepped nearer to listen. "and threw--and threw--and threw," he repeated, his face all sharp with some inexplicable agony. i moved forward astonished. but it was then he found words--delivered roundly and clearly. these:-- and threw warm gules on madeleine's young breast. the trouble passed off his countenance, and he returned lightly to his place, rubbing his hands. it had never occurred to me, though we had many times discussed reading and prize-competitions as a diversion, that mr. shaynor ever read keats, or could quote him at all appositely. there was, after all, a certain stained-glass effect of light on the high bosom of the highly-polished picture which might, by stretch of fancy, suggest, as a vile chromo recalls some incomparable canvas, the line he had spoken. night, my drink, and solitude were evidently turning mr. shaynor into a poet. he sat down again and wrote swiftly on his villainous note-paper, his lips quivering. i shut the door into the inner office and moved up behind him. he made no sign that he saw or heard. i looked over his shoulder, and read, amid half-formed words, sentences, and wild scratches:-- --very cold it was. very cold the hare--the hare--the hare-- the birds---- he raised his head sharply, and frowned toward the blank shutters of the poulterer's shop where they jutted out against our window. then one clear line came:-- the hare, in spite of fur, was very cold. the head, moving machine-like, turned right to the advertisement where the blaudett's cathedral pastille reeked abominably. he grunted, and went on:-- incense in a censer-- before her darling picture framed in gold-- maiden's picture--angel's portrait-- "hsh!" said mr. cashell guardedly from the inner office, as though in the presence of spirits. "there's something coming through from somewhere; but it isn't poole." i heard the crackle of sparks as he depressed the keys of the transmitter. in my own brain, too, something crackled, or it might have been the hair on my head. then i heard my own voice, in a harsh whisper: "mr. cashell, there is something coming through here, too. leave me alone till i tell you." "but i thought you'd come to see this wonderful thing--sir," indignantly at the end. "leave me alone till i tell you. be quiet." i watched--i waited. under the blue-veined hand--the dry hand of the consumptive--came away clear, without erasure: and my weak spirit fails to think how the dead must freeze-- he shivered as he wrote-- beneath the churchyard mould. then he stopped, laid the pen down, and leaned back. for an instant, that was half an eternity, the shop spun before me in a rainbow-tinted whirl, in and through which my own soul most dispassionately considered my own soul as that fought with an over- mastering fear. then i smelt the strong smell of cigarettes from mr. shaynor's clothing, and heard, as though it had been the rending of trumpets, the rattle of his breathing. i was still in my place of observation, much as one would watch a rifle-shot at the butts, half-bent, hands on my knees, and head within a few inches of the black, red, and yellow blanket of his shoulder. i was whispering encouragement, evidently to my other self, sounding sentences, such as men pronounce in dreams. "if he has read keats, it proves nothing. if he hasn't--like causes _must_ beget like effects. there is no escape from this law. _you_ ought to be grateful that you know 'st. agnes eve' without the book; because, given the circumstances, such as fanny brand, who is the key of the enigma, and approximately represents the latitude and longitude of fanny brawne; allowing also for the bright red colour of the arterial blood upon the handkerchief, which was just what you were puzzling over in the shop just now; and counting the effect of the professional environment, here almost perfectly duplicated--the result is logical and inevitable. as inevitable as induction." still, the other half of my soul refused to be comforted. it was cowering in some minute and inadequate corner--at an immense distance. hereafter, i found myself one person again, my hands still gripping my knees, and my eyes glued on the page before mr. shaynor. as dreamers accept and explain the upheaval of landscapes and the resurrection of the dead, with excerpts from the evening hymn or the multiplication-table, so i had accepted the facts, whatever they might be, that i should witness, and had devised a theory, sane and plausible to my mind, that explained them all. nay, i was even in advance of my facts, walking hurriedly before them, assured that they would fit my theory. and all that i now recall of that epoch-making theory are the lofty words: "if he has read keats it's the chloric-ether. if he hasn't, it's the identical bacillus, or hertzian wave of tuberculosis, _plus_ fanny brand and the professional status which, in conjunction with the main-stream of subconscious thought common to all mankind, has thrown up temporarily an induced keats." mr. shaynor returned to his work, erasing and rewriting as before with swiftness. two or three blank pages he tossed aside. then he wrote, muttering: the little smoke of a candle that goes out. "no," he muttered. "little smoke--little smoke--little smoke. what else?" he thrust his chin forward toward the advertisement, whereunder the last of the blaudett's cathedral pastilles fumed in its holder. "ah!" then with relief:-- the little smoke that dies in moonlight cold. evidently he was snared by the rhymes of his first verse, for he wrote and rewrote "gold--cold--mould" many times. again he sought inspiration from the advertisement, and set down, without erasure, the line i had overheard: and threw warm gules on madeleine's young breast. as i remembered the original it is "fair"--a trite word--instead of "young," and i found myself nodding approval, though i admitted that the attempt to reproduce "its little smoke in pallid moonlight died" was a failure. followed without a break ten or fifteen lines of bald prose--the naked soul's confession of its physical yearning for its beloved--unclean as we count uncleanliness; unwholesome, but human exceedingly; the raw material, so it seemed to me in that hour and in that place, whence keats wove the twenty-sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas of his poem. shame i had none in overseeing this revelation; and my fear had gone with the smoke of the pastille. "that's it," i murmured. "that's how it's blocked out. go on! ink it in, man. ink it in!" mr. shaynor returned to broken verse wherein "loveliness" was made to rhyme with a desire to look upon "her empty dress." he picked up a fold of the gay, soft blanket, spread it over one hand, caressed it with infinite tenderness, thought, muttered, traced some snatches which i could not decipher, shut his eyes drowsily, shook his head, and dropped the stuff. here i found myself at fault, for i could not then see (as i do now) in what manner a red, black, and yellow austrian blanket coloured his dreams. in a few minutes he laid aside his pen, and, chin on hand, considered the shop with thoughtful and intelligent eyes. he threw down the blanket, rose, passed along a line of drug-drawers, and read the names on the labels aloud. returning, he took from his desk christie's _new commercial plants_ and the old culpepper that i had given him, opened and laid them side by side with a clerky air, all trace of passion gone from his face, read first in one and then in the other, and paused with pen behind his ear. "what wonder of heaven's coming now?" i thought. "manna--manna--manna," he said at last, under wrinkled brows. "that's what i wanted. good! now then! now then! good! good! oh, by god, that's good!" his voice rose and he spoke rightly and fully without a falter:-- candied apple, quince and plum and gourd, and jellies smoother than the creamy curd, and lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon, manna and dates in argosy transferred from fez; and spiced dainties, every one from silken samarcand to cedared lebanon. he repeated it once more, using "blander" for "smoother" in the second line; then wrote it down without erasure, but this time (my set eyes missed no stroke of any word) he substituted "soother" for his atrocious second thought, so that it came away under his hand as it is written in the book--as it is written in the book. a wind went shouting down the street, and on the heels of the wind followed a spurt and rattle of rain. after a smiling pause--and good right had he to smile--he began anew, always tossing the last sheet over his shoulder:-- "the sharp rain falling on the window-pane, rattling sleet--the wind-blown sleet." then prose: "it is very cold of mornings when the wind brings rain and sleet with it. i heard the sleet on the window-pane outside, and thought of you, my darling. i am always thinking of you. i wish we could both run away like two lovers into the storm and get that little cottage by the sea which we are always thinking about, my own dear darling. we could sit and watch the sea beneath our windows. it would be a fairyland all of our own--a fairy sea--a fairy sea...." he stopped, raised his head, and listened. the steady drone of the channel along the sea-front that had borne us company so long leaped up a note to the sudden fuller surge that signals the change from ebb to flood. it beat in like the change of step throughout an army--this renewed pulse of the sea--and filled our ears till they, accepting it, marked it no longer. "a fairyland for you and me across the foam--beyond ... a magic foam, a perilous sea." he grunted again with effort and bit his underlip. my throat dried, but i dared not gulp to moisten it lest i should break the spell that was drawing him nearer and nearer to the high-water mark but two of the sons of adam have reached. remember that in all the millions permitted there are no more than five--five little lines--of which one can say: "these are the pure magic. these are the clear vision. the rest is only poetry." and mr. shaynor was playing hot and cold with two of them! i vowed no unconscious thought of mine should influence the blindfold soul, and pinned myself desperately to the other three, repeating and re-repeating: a savage spot as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted by woman wailing for her demon lover. but though i believed my brain thus occupied, my every sense hung upon the writing under the dry, bony hand, all brown-fingered with chemicals and cigarette-smoke. our windows fronting on the dangerous foam, (he wrote, after long, irresolute snatches), and then-- "our open casements facing desolate seas forlorn--forlorn--" here again his face grew peaked and anxious with that sense of loss i had first seen when the power snatched him. but this time the agony was tenfold keener. as i watched it mounted like mercury in the tube. it lighted his face from within till i thought the visibly scourged soul must leap forth naked between his jaws, unable to endure. a drop of sweat trickled from my forehead down my nose and splashed on the back of my hand. "our windows facing on the desolate seas and pearly foam of magic fairyland--" "not yet--not yet," he muttered, "wait a minute. _please_ wait a minute. i shall get it then--" our magic windows fronting on the sea, the dangerous foam of desolate seas .. for aye. "_ouh_, my god!" from head to heel he shook--shook from the marrow of his bones outwards--then leaped to his feet with raised arms, and slid the chair screeching across the tiled floor where it struck the drawers behind and fell with a jar. mechanically, i stooped to recover it. as i rose, mr. shaynor was stretching and yawning at leisure. "i've had a bit of a doze," he said. "how did i come to knock the chair over? you look rather--" "the chair startled me," i answered. "it was so sudden in this quiet." young mr. cashell behind his shut door was offendedly silent. "i suppose i must have been dreaming," said mr. shaynor. "i suppose you must," i said. "talking of dreams--i--i noticed you writing--before--" he flushed consciously. "i meant to ask you if you've ever read anything written by a man called keats." "oh! i haven't much time to read poetry, and i can't say that i remember the name exactly. is he a popular writer?" "middling. i thought you might know him because he's the only poet who was ever a druggist. and he's rather what's called the lover's poet." "indeed. i must dip into him. what did he write about?" "a lot of things. here's a sample that may interest you." then and there, carefully, i repeated the verse he had twice spoken and once written not ten minutes ago. "ah. anybody could see he was a druggist from that line about the tinctures and syrups. it's a fine tribute to our profession." "i don't know," said young mr. cashell, with icy politeness, opening the door one half-inch, "if you still happen to be interested in our trifling experiments. but, should such be the case----" i drew him aside, whispering, "shaynor seemed going off into some sort of fit when i spoke to you just now. i thought, even at the risk of being rude, it wouldn't do to take you off your instruments just as the call was coming through. don't you see?" "granted--granted as soon as asked," he said unbending. "i _did_ think it a shade odd at the time. so that was why he knocked the chair down?" "i hope i haven't missed anything," i said. "i'm afraid i can't say that, but you're just in time for the end of a rather curious performance. you can come in, too, mr. shaynor. listen, while i read it off." the morse instrument was ticking furiously. mr. cashell interpreted: "'_k.k.v. can make nothing of your signals_.'" a pause. "'_m.m.v. m.m.v. signals unintelligible. purpose anchor sandown bay. examine instruments to-morrow.'_ do you know what that means? it's a couple of men-o'-war working marconi signals off the isle of wight. they are trying to talk to each other. neither can read the other's messages, but all their messages are being taken in by our receiver here. they've been going on for ever so long. i wish you could have heard it." "how wonderful!" i said. "do you mean we're overhearing portsmouth ships trying to talk to each other--that we're eavesdropping across half south england?" "just that. their transmitters are all right, but their receivers are out of order, so they only get a dot here and a dash there. nothing clear." "why is that?" "god knows--and science will know to-morrow. perhaps the induction is faulty; perhaps the receivers aren't tuned to receive just the number of vibrations per second that the transmitter sends. only a word here and there. just enough to tantalise." again the morse sprang to life. "that's one of 'em complaining now. listen: '_disheartening--most disheartening_.' it's quite pathetic. have you ever seen a spiritualistic seance? it reminds me of that sometimes--odds and ends of messages coming out of nowhere--a word here and there--no good at all." "but mediums are all impostors," said mr. shaynor, in the doorway, lighting an asthma-cigarette. "they only do it for the money they can make. i've seen 'em." "here's poole, at last--clear as a bell. l.l.l. _now_ we sha'n't be long." mr. cashell rattled the keys merrily. "anything you'd like to tell 'em?" "no, i don't think so," i said. "i'll go home and get to bed. i'm feeling a little tired." the army of a dream song of the old guard "and thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft and its branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be the same. "and there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the candlestick. their knops and their branches shall be the same."--_exodus._ "know this, my brethren, heaven is clear and all the clouds are gone-- the proper sort shall flourish now, good times are coming on"-- the evil that was threatened late to all of our degree, hath passed in discord and debate, and, _hey then up go we!_ a common people strove in vain to shame us unto toil, but they are spent and we remain, and we shall share the spoil according to our several needs as beauty shall decree, as age ordains or birth concedes, and, _hey then up go we!_ and they that with accursed zeal our service would amend, shall own the odds and come to heel ere worse befall their end for though no naked word be wrote yet plainly shall they see what pinneth orders to their coat, and, _hey then up go we!_ our doorways that, in time of fear, we opened overwide shall softly close from year to year till all be purified; for though no fluttering fan be heard nor chaff be seen to flee-- the lord shall winnow the lord's preferred-- and, _hey then up go we!_ our altars which the heathen brake shall rankly smoke anew, and anise, mint, and cummin take their dread and sovereign due, whereby the buttons of our trade shall all restored be with curious work in gilt and braid, and, _hey then up go we!_ then come, my brethren, and prepare the candlesticks and bells, the scarlet, brass, and badger's hair wherein our honour dwells, and straitly fence and strictly keep the ark's integrity till armageddon break our sleep ... and, _hey then up go we!_ the army of a dream part i i sat down in the club smoking-room to fill a pipe. * * * * * it was entirely natural that i should be talking to "boy" bayley. we had met first, twenty odd years ago, at the indian mess of the tyneside tail-twisters. our last meeting, i remembered, had been at the mount nelson hotel, which was by no means india, and there we had talked half the night. boy bayley had gone up that week to the front, where i think he stayed a long, long time. but now he had come back. "are you still a tynesider?" i asked. "i command the imperial guard battalion of the old regiment, my son," he replied. "guard which? they've been fusiliers since fontenoy. don't pull my leg, boy." "i said guard, not guard-s. the i. g. battalion of the tail-twisters. does that make it any clearer?" "not in the least." "then come over to the mess and see for yourself. we aren't a step from barracks. keep on my right side. i'm--i'm a bit deaf on the near." we left the club together and crossed the street to a vast four-storied pile, which more resembled a rowton lodging-house than a barrack. i could see no sentry at the gates. "there ain't any," said the boy lightly. he led me into a many-tabled restaurant full of civilians and grey-green uniforms. at one end of the room, on a slightly raised dais, stood a big table. "here we are! we usually lunch here and dine in mess by ourselves. these are our chaps--but what am i thinking of? you must know most of 'em. devine's my second in command now. there's old luttrell--remember him at cherat?--burgard, verschoyle (you were at school with him), harrison, pigeon, and kyd." with the exception of this last i knew them all, but i could not remember that they had all been tynesiders. "i've never seen this sort of place," i said, looking round. "half the men here are in plain clothes, and what are those women and children doing?" "eating, i hope," boy bayley answered. "our canteens would never pay if it wasn't for the line and militia trade. when they were first started people looked on 'em rather as catsmeat-shops; but we got a duchess or two to lunch in 'em, and they've been grossly fashionable since." "so i see," i answered. a woman of the type that shops at the stores came up the room looking about her. a man in the dull-grey uniform of the corps rose up to meet her, piloted her to a place between three other uniforms, and there began a very merry little meal. "i give it up," i said. "this is guilty splendour that i don't understand." "quite simple," said burgard across the table. "the barrack supplies breakfast, dinner, and tea on the army scale to the imperial guard (which we call i. g.) when it's in barracks as well as to the line and militia. they can all invite their friends if they choose to pay for them. that's where we make our profits. look!" near one of the doors were four or five tables crowded with workmen in the raiment of their callings. they ate steadily, but found time to jest with the uniforms about them; and when one o'clock clanged from a big half-built block of flats across the street, filed out. "those," devine explained, "are either our line or militiamen, as such entitled to the regulation whack at regulation cost. it's cheaper than they could buy it; an' they meet their friends too. a man'll walk a mile in his dinner hour to mess with his own lot." "wait a minute," i pleaded. "will you tell me what those plumbers and plasterers and bricklayers that i saw go out just now have to do with what i was taught to call the line?" "tell him," said the boy over his shoulder to burgard. he was busy talking with the large verschoyle, my old schoolmate. "the line comes next to the guard. the linesman's generally a town-bird who can't afford to be a volunteer. he has to go into camp in an area for two months his first year, six weeks his second, and a month the third. he gets about five bob a week the year round for that and for being on duty two days of the week, and for being liable to be ordered out to help the guard in a row. he needn't live in barracks unless he wants to, and he and his family can feed at the regimental canteen at usual rates. the women like it." "all this," i said politely, but intensely, "is the raving of delirium. where may your precious recruit who needn't live in barracks learn his drill?" "at his precious school, my child, like the rest of us. the notion of allowing a human being to reach his twentieth year before asking him to put his feet in the first position _was_ raving lunacy if you like!" boy bayley dived back into the conversation. "very good," i said meekly. "i accept the virtuous plumber who puts in two months of his valuable time at aldershot----" "aldershot!" the table exploded. i felt a little annoyed. "a camp in an area is not exactly aldershot," said burgard. "the line isn't exactly what you fancy. some of them even come to _us_!" "you recruit from 'em?" "i beg your pardon," said devine with mock solemnity. "the guard doesn't recruit. it selects." "it would," i said, "with a spiers and pond restaurant; pretty girls to play with; and----" "a room apiece, four bob a day and all found," said verschoyle. "don't forget that." "of course!" i said. "it probably beats off recruits with a club." "no, with the ballot-box," said verschoyle, laughing. "at least in all r.c. companies." "i didn't know roman catholics were so particular," i ventured. they grinned. "r.c. companies," said the boy, "mean right of choice. when a company has been very good and pious for a long time it may, if the c.o. thinks fit, choose its own men--all same one-piecee club. all our companies are r.c.'s, and as the battalion is making up a few vacancies ere starting once more on the wild and trackless 'heef' into the areas, the linesman is here in force to-day sucking up to our non-coms." "would some one mind explaining to me the meaning of every other word you've used," i said. "what's a trackless 'heef'? what's an area? what's everything generally?" i asked. "oh, 'heefs' part of the british constitution," said the boy. "it began long ago when they'd first mapped out the big military manoeuvring grounds--we call 'em areas for short--where the i. g. spend two-thirds of their time and the other regiments get their training. it was slang originally for beef on the hoof, because in the military areas two-thirds of your meat-rations at least are handed over to you on the hoof, and you make your own arrangements. the word 'heef' became a parable for camping in the military areas and all its miseries. there are two areas in ireland, one in wales for hill-work, a couple in scotland, and a sort of parade-ground in the lake district; but the real working areas are in india, africa, and australia, and so on." "and what do you do there?" "we 'heef' under service conditions, which are rather like hard work. we 'heef' in an english area for about a year, coming into barracks for one month to make up wastage. then we may 'heef' foreign for another year or eighteen months. then we do sea-time in the war boats----" "_what-t?_" i said. "sea-time," bayley repeated. "just like marines, to learn about the big guns and how to embark and disembark quick. then we come back to our territorial headquarters for six months, to educate the line and volunteer camps, to go to hythe, to keep abreast of any new ideas, and then we fill up vacancies. we call those six months 'schools,' then we begin all over again, thus: home 'heef,' foreign 'heef,' sea-time, schools. 'heefing' isn't precisely luxurious, but it's on 'heef' that we make our head-money." "or lose it," said the sallow pigeon, and all laughed, as men will, at regimental jokes. "the dove never lets me forget that," said boy bayley. "it happened last march. we were out in the second northern area at the top end of scotland where a lot of those silly deer forests used to be. i'd sooner 'heef' in the middle of australia myself--or athabasca, with all respect to the dove--he's a native of those parts. we were camped somewhere near caithness, and the armity (that's the combined navy and army board that runs our show) sent us about eight hundred raw remounts to break in to keep us warm." "why horses for a foot regiment?" "i.g.'s don't foot it unless they're obliged to. no have gee-gee how can move? i'll show you later. well, as i was saying, we broke those beasts in on compressed forage and small box-spurs, and then we started across scotland to applecross to hand 'em over to a horse-depot there. it was snowing cruel, and we didn't know the country overmuch. you remember the th--the old east lancashire--at mian mir? "their guard battalion had been 'heefing' round those parts for six months. we thought they'd be snowed up all quiet and comfy, but burden, their c. o., got wind of our coming, and sent spies in to eschol." "confound him," said luttrell, who was fat and well-liking. "i entertained one of 'em--in a red worsted comforter--under bean derig. he said he was a crofter. 'gave him a drink too." "i don't mind admitting," said the boy, "that, what with the cold and the remounts, we were moving rather base over apex. burden bottled us under sghurr mohr in a snowstorm. he stampeded half the horses, cut off a lot of us in a snow-bank, and generally rubbed our noses in the dirt." "was he allowed to do that?" i said. "there is no peace in a military area. if we'd beaten him off or got away without losing anyone, we'd have been entitled to a day's pay from every man engaged against us. but we didn't. he cut off fifty of ours, held 'em as prisoners for the regulation three days, and then sent in his bill--three days' pay for each man taken. fifty men at twelve bob a head, plus five pounds for the dove as a captured officer, and kyd here, his junior, three, made about forty quid to burden & co. they crowed over us horrid." "couldn't you have appealed to an umpire or--or something?" "we could, but we talked it over with the men and decided to pay and look happy. we were fairly had. the th knew every foot of sghurr mohr. i spent three days huntin' 'em in the snow, but they went off on our remounts about twenty mile that night." "do you always do this sham-fight business?" i asked. "once inside an area you must look after yourself; but i tell you that a fight which means that every man-jack of us may lose a week's pay isn't so damn-sham after all. it keeps the men nippy. still, in the long run, it's like whist on a p. & o. it comes out fairly level if you play long enough. now and again, though, one gets a present--say, when a line regiment's out on the 'heef,' and signifies that it's ready to abide by the rules of the game. you mustn't take head-money from a line regiment in an area unless it says that it'll play you; but, after a week or two, those clever linesmen always think they see a chance of making a pot, and send in their compliments to the nearest i.g. then the fun begins. we caught a line regiment single-handed about two years ago in ireland--caught it on the hop between a bog and a beach. it had just moved in to join its brigade, and we made a forty-two mile march in fourteen hours, and cut it off, lock, stock, and barrel. it went to ground like a badger--i _will_ say those line regiments can dig--but we got out privily by night and broke up the only road it could expect to get its baggage and company-guns along. then we blew up a bridge that some sappers had made for experimental purposes (_they_ were rather stuffy about it) on its line of retreat, while we lay up in the mountains and signalled for the a.c. of those parts." "who's an a.c.?" i asked. "the adjustment committee--the umpires of the military areas. they're a set of superannuated old aunts of colonels kept for the purpose, but they occasionally combine to do justice. our a.c. came, saw our dispositions, and said it was a sanguinary massacre for the line, and that we were entitled to our full pound of flesh--head-money for one whole regiment, with equipment, four company-guns, and all kit! at line rates this worked out as one fat cheque for two hundred and fifty. not bad!" "but we had to pay the sappers seventy-four quid for blowing their patent bridge to pieces," devine interpolated. "that was a swindle." "that's true," the boy went on, "but the adjustment committee gave our helpless victims a talking to that was worth another hundred to hear." "but isn't there a lot of unfairness in this head-money system?" i asked. "can't have everything perfect," said the boy. "head-money is an attempt at payment by results, and it gives the men a direct interest in their job. three times out of five, of course, the a. c. will disallow both sides' claim, but there's always the chance of bringing off a coup." "do all regiments do it?" "heavily. the line pays a bob per prisoner and the militia ninepence, not to mention side-bets which are what really keep the men keen. it isn't supposed to be done by the volunteers, but they gamble worse than anyone. why, the very kids do it when they go to first camp at aldershot or salisbury." "head-money's a national institution--like betting," said burgard. "i should say it was," said pigeon suddenly. "i was roped in the other day as an adjustment committee by the kemptown board school. i was riding under the brighton racecourse, and i heard the whistle goin' for umpire--the regulation, two longs and two shorts. i didn't take any notice till an infant about a yard high jumped up from a furze-patch and shouted: 'guard! guard! come 'ere! i want you _per_fessionally. alf says 'e ain't outflanked. ain't 'e a liar? come an' look 'ow i've posted my men.' you bet i looked. the young demon trotted by my stirrup and showed me his whole army (twenty of 'em) laid out under cover as nicely as you please round a cowhouse in a hollow. he kept on shouting: 'i've drew alf into there. 'is persition ain't tenable. say it ain't tenable, guard!' i rode round the position, and alf with his army came out of his cowhouse an' sat on the roof and protested like a--like a militia colonel; but the facts were in favour of my friend and i umpired according. well, alf abode by my decision. i explained it to him at length, and he solemnly paid up his head-money--farthing points if you please." "did they pay you umpire's fee?" said kyd. "i umpired a whole afternoon once for a village school at home, and they stood me a bottle of hot ginger beer." "i compromised on a halfpenny--a sticky one--or i'd have hurt their feelings," said pigeon gravely. "but i gave 'em sixpence back." "how were they manoeuvring and what with?" i asked. "oh, by whistle and hand-signal. they had the dummy board school guns and flags for positions, but they were rushing their attack much too quick for that open country. i told 'em so, and they admitted it." "but who taught 'em?" i said. "they had learned in their schools, of course, like the rest of us. they were all of 'em over ten; and squad-drill begins when they're eight. they knew their company-drill a heap better than they knew their king's english." "how much drill do the boys put in?" i asked. "all boys begin physical drill to music in the board schools when they're six; squad-drill, one hour a week, when they're eight; company-drill when they're ten, for an hour and a half a week. between ten and twelve they get battalion drill of a sort. they take the rifle at twelve and record their first target-score at thirteen. that's what the code lays down. but it's worked very loosely so long as a boy comes up to the standard of his age." "in canada we don't need your physical drill. we're born fit," said pigeon, "and our ten-year-olds could knock spots out of your twelve-year-olds." "i may as well explain," said the boy, "that the dove is our 'swop' officer. he's an untamed huskie from nootka sound when he's at home. an i. g. corps exchanges one officer every two years with a canadian or australian or african guard corps. we've had a year of our dove, an' we shall be sorry to lose him. he humbles our insular pride. meantime, morten, our 'swop' in canada, keeps the ferocious canuck humble. when pij. goes we shall swop kyd, who's next on the roster, for a cornstalk or a maori. but about the education-drill. a boy can't attend first camp, as we call it, till he is a trained boy and holds his first musketry certificate. the education code says he must be fourteen, and the boys usually go to first camp at about that age. of course, they've been to their little private camps and boys' fresh air camps and public school picnics while they were at school, but first camp is where the young drafts all meet--generally at aldershot in this part of the world. first camp lasts a week or ten days, and the boys are looked over for vaccination and worked lightly in brigades with lots of blank cartridge. second camp--that's for the fifteen to eighteen-year-olds--lasts ten days or a fortnight, and that includes a final medical examination. men don't like to be chucked out on medical certificates much--nowadays. i assure you second camp, at salisbury, say, is an experience for a young i.g. officer. we're told off to 'em in rotation. a wilderness of monkeys isn't in it. the kids are apt to think 'emselves soldiers, and we have to take the edge off 'em with lots of picquet-work and night attacks." "and what happens after second camp?" "it's hard to explain. our system is so illogical. theoretically, the boys needn't show up for the next three or four years after second camp. they are supposed to be making their way in life. actually, the young doctor or lawyer or engineer joins a volunteer battalion that sticks to the minimum of camp--ten days per annum. that gives him a holiday in the open air, and now that men have taken to endowing their volunteer drill-halls with baths and libraries, he finds, if he can't run to a club, that his own drill-hall is an efficient substitute. he meets men there who'll be useful to him later, and he keeps himself in touch with what's going on while he's studying for his profession. the town-birds--such as the chemist's assistant, clerk, plumber, mechanic, electrician, and so forth--generally put in for their town volunteer corps as soon as they begin to walk out with the girls. they like takin' their true-loves to our restaurants. look yonder!" i followed his gaze, and saw across the room a man and a maid at a far table, forgetting in each other's eyes the good food on their plates. "so it is," said i. "go ahead." "then, too, we have some town volunteer corps that lay themselves out to attract promising youths of nineteen or twenty, and make much of 'em on condition that they join their line battalion and play for their county. under the new county qualifications--birth or three years' residence--that means a great deal in league matches, and the same in county cricket." "by jove, that's a good notion," i cried. "who invented it?" "c. b. fry--long ago. he said in his paper, that county cricket and county volunteering ought to be on the same footing--unpaid and genuine. 'no cricketer no corps. no corps no cricketer' was his watchword. there was a row among the pro's at first, but c. b. won, and later the league had to come in. they said at first it would ruin the gate; but when county matches began to be _pukka_ county, _plus_ inter-regimental, affairs the gate trebled, and as two-thirds of the gate goes to the regiments supplying the teams some volunteer corps fairly wallow in cash. it's all unofficial, of course, but league corps, as they call 'em, can take their pick of the second camper. some corps ask ten guineas entrance-fee, and get it too, from the young bloods that want to shine in the arena. i told you we catered for all tastes. now, as regards the line proper, i believe the young artisan and mechanic puts in for that before he marries. he likes the two-months' 'heef' in his first year, and five bob a week is something to go on with between times." "do they follow their trade while they're in the line?" i demanded. "why not? how many well-paid artisans work more than four days a week anyhow? remember a linesman hasn't to be drilled in your sense of the word. he must have had at least eight years' grounding in that, as well as two or three years in his volunteer battalion. he can sleep where he pleases. he can't leave town-limits without reporting himself, of course, but he can get leave if he wants it. he's on duty two days in the week as a rule, and he's liable to be invited out for garrison duty down the mediterranean, but his benefit societies will insure him against that. i'll tell you about that later. if it's a hard winter and trade's slack, a lot of the bachelors are taken into the i. g. barracks (while the i. g. is out on the heef) for theoretical instruction. oh, i assure you the line hasn't half a bad time of it." "amazing!" i murmured. "and what about the others?" "the volunteers? observe the beauty of our system. we're a free people. we get up and slay the man who says we aren't. but as a little detail we never mention, if we don't volunteer in some corps or another--as combatants if we're fit, as non-combatants, if we ain't--till we're thirty-five we don't vote, and we don't get poor-relief, and the women don't love us." "oh, that's the compulsion of it?" said i. bayley inclined his head gravely. "that, sir, is the compulsion. we voted the legal part of it ourselves in a fit of panic, and we have not yet rescinded our resolution. the women attend to the unofficial penalties. but being free british citizens----" "_and_ snobs," put in pigeon. "the point is well taken, pij------we have supplied ourselves with every sort and shape and make of volunteer corps that you can imagine, and we've mixed the whole show up with our odd fellows and our i.o.g.t.'s and our buffaloes, and our burkes and our debretts, not to mention leagues and athletic clubs, till you can't tell t'other from which. you remember the young pup who used to look on soldiering as a favour done to his ungrateful country--the gun-poking, ferret-pettin', landed gentleman's offspring--the suckin' facey romford? well, he generally joins a foreign service corps when he leaves college." "can volunteers go foreign, then?" "can't they just, if their c.o. _or_ his wife has influence! the armity will always send a well-connected f.s. corps out to help a guard battalion in a small campaign. otherwise f.s. corps make their own arrangements about camps. you see, the military areas are always open. they can 'heef' there (and gamble on head-money) as long as their finances run to it; or they can apply to do sea-time in the ships. it's a cheap way for a young man to see the world, and if he's any good he can try to get into the guard later." "the main point," said pigeon, "is that f.s. corps are 'swagger'--the correct thing. it 'ud never do to be drawn for the militia, don't you know," he drawled, trying to render the english voice. "that's what happens to a chap who doesn't volunteer," said bayley. "well, after the f.s. corps (we've about forty of 'em) come our territorial volunteer battalions, and a man who can't suit himself somewhere among 'em must be a shade difficult. we've got those 'league' corps i was talking about; and those studious corps that just scrape through their ten days' camp; and we've crack corps of highly-paid mechanics who can afford a two months' 'heef' in an interesting area every other year; and we've senior and junior scientific corps of earnest boilermakers and fitters and engineers who read papers on high explosives, and do their 'heefing' in a wet picket-boat--mine-droppin'--at the ports. then we've heavy artillery-- recruited from the big manufacturing towns and ship-building yards--and ferocious hard-ridin' yeomanry (they _can_ ride--now), genteel, semi- genteel, and hooligan corps, and so on and so forth till you come to the home defence establishment--the young chaps knocked out under medical certificate at the second camp, but good enough to sit behind hedges or clean up camp, and the old was-birds who've served their time but don't care to drop out of the fun of the yearly camps and the halls. they call 'emselves veterans and do fancy-shooting at bisley, but, between you and me, they're mostly fresh air benefit clubs. they contribute to the volunteer journals and tell the guard that it's no good. but i like 'em. i shall be one of 'em some day--a copper-nosed was-bird! ... so you see we're mixed to a degree on the volunteer side." "it sounds that way," i ventured. "you've overdone it, bayley," said devine. "you've missed our one strong point." he turned to me and continued: "it's embarkation. the volunteers may be as mixed as the colonel says, but they _are_ trained to go down to the sea in ships. you ought to see a big bank-holiday roll-out. we suspend most of the usual railway traffic and turn on the military time-table--say on friday at midnight. by a.m. the trains are running from every big centre in england to the nearest port at two-minute intervals. as a rule, the armity meets us at the other end with shipping of sorts--fleet reserves or regular men of war or hulks--anything you can stick a gang-plank to. we pile the men on to the troop-decks, stack the rifles in the racks, send down the sea-kit, steam about for a few hours, and land 'em somewhere. it's a good notion, because our army to be any use _must_ be an army of embarkation. why, last whit monday we had--how many were down at the dock-edge in the first eight hours? kyd, you're the volunteer enthusiast last from school." "in the first ten hours over a hundred and eighteen thousand," said kyd across the table, "with thirty-six thousand actually put in and taken out of ship. in the whole thirty-six hours we had close on ninety thousand men on the water and a hundred and thirty-three thousand on the quays fallen in with their sea-kit." "that must have been a sight," i said. "one didn't notice it much. it was scattered between chatham, dover, portsmouth, plymouth, bristol, liverpool, and so on, merely to give the inland men a chance to get rid of their breakfasts. we don't like to concentrate and try a big embarkation at any one point. it makes the continent jumpy. otherwise," said kyd, "i believe we could get two hundred thousand men, with their kits, away on one tide." "what d'you want with so many?" i asked. "_we_ don't want one of 'em; but the continent used to point out, every time relations were strained, that nothing would be easier than to raid england if they got command of the sea for a week. after a few years some genius discovered that it cut both ways, an' there was no reason why we, who are supposed to command the sea and own a few ships, should not organise our little raids in case of need. the notion caught on among the volunteers--they were getting rather sick of manoeuvres on dry land--and since then we haven't heard so much about raids from the continent," said bayley. "it's the offensive-defensive," said verschoyle, "that they talk so much about. we learned it _all_ from the continent--bless 'em! they insisted on it so." "no, we learned it from the fleet," said devine. "the mediterranean fleet landed ten thousand marines and sailors, with guns, in twenty minutes once at manoeuvres. that was long ago. i've seen the fleet reserve and a few paddle-steamers, hired for the day, land twenty-five thousand volunteers at bantry in four hours--half the men sea-sick too. you've no notion what a difference that sort of manoeuvre makes in the calculations of our friends on the mainland. the continent knows what invasion means. it's like dealing with a man whose nerve has been shaken. it doesn't cost much after all, and it makes us better friends with the great european family. we're now as thick as thieves." "where does the imperial guard come in in all this gorgeousness?" i asked. "you're unusual modest about yourselves." "as a matter of fact, we're supposed to go out and stay out. we're the permanently mobilised lot. i don't think there are more than eight i.g. battalions in england now. we're a hundred battalions all told. mostly on the 'heef' in india, africa and so forth." "a hundred thousand. isn't that small allowance?" i suggested. "you think so? one hundred thousand _men_, without a single case of venereal, and an average sick list of two per cent, permanently on a war footing? well, perhaps you're right, but it's a useful little force to begin with while the others are getting ready. there's the native indian army also, which isn't a broken reed, and, since 'no volunteer no vote' is the rule throughout the empire, you will find a few men in canada, australia, and elsewhere, that are fairly hefty in their class." "but a hundred thousand isn't enough for garrison duty," i persisted. "a hundred thousand _sound_ men, not sick boys, go quite a way," said pigeon. "we expect the line to garrison the mediterranean ports and thereabouts," said bayley. "don't sneer at the mechanic. he's deuced good stuff. he isn't rudely ordered out, because this ain't a military despotism, and we have to consider people's feelings. the armity usually brackets three line regiments together, and calls for men for six months or a year for malta, gib, or elsewhere, at a bob a day. three battalions will give you nearly a whole battalion of bachelors between 'em. you fill up deficiencies with a call on the territorial volunteer battalion, and away you go with what we call a ports battalion. what's astonishing in that? remember that in this country, where fifty per cent of the able-bodied males have got a pretty fair notion of soldiering, and, which is more, have all camped out in the open, you wake up the spirit of adventure in the young." "not much adventure at malta, gib, or cyprus," i retorted. "don't they get sick of it?" "but you don't realise that we treat 'em rather differently from the soldier of the past. you ought to go and see a ports battalion drawn from a manufacturing centre growin' vines in cyprus in its shirt sleeves; and at gib, and malta, of course, the battalions are working with the fleet half the time." "it seems to me," i said angrily, "you are knocking _esprit de corps_ on the head with all this army-navy jumble. it's as bad as----" "i know what you're going to say. as bad as what kitchener used to do when he believed that a thousand details picked up on the veldt were as good as a column of two regiments. in the old days, when drill was a sort of holy sacred art learned in old age, you'd be quite right. but remember _our_ chaps are broke to drill from childhood, and the theory we work on is that a thousand trained englishmen ought to be about as good as another thousand trained englishmen. we've enlarged our horizon, that's all. some day the army and the navy will be interchangeable." "you've enlarged it enough to fall out of, i think. now where in all this mess of compulsory volunteers----?" "my dear boy, there's no compulsion. you've _got_ to be drilled when you're a child, same as you've got to learn to read, and if you don't pretend to serve in some corps or other till you're thirty-five or medically chucked you rank with lunatics, women, and minors. that's fair enough." "compulsory conscripts," i continued. "where, as i was going to say, does the militia come in?" "as i have said--for the men who can't afford volunteering. the militia is recruited by ballot--pretty comprehensively too. volunteers are exempt, but most men not otherwise accounted for are bagged by the militia. they have to put in a minimum three weeks' camp every other year, and they get fifteen bob a week and their keep when they're at it, and some sort of a yearly fee, i've forgotten how much. 'tisn't a showy service, but it's very useful. it keeps the mass of the men between twenty-five, say, and thirty-five moderately fit, and gives the armity an excuse for having more equipment ready--in case of emergencies." "i don't think you're quite fair on the militia," drawled verschoyle. "they're better than we give 'em credit for. don't you remember the middle moor collieries' strike?" "tell me," i said quickly. evidently the others knew. "we-ell, it was no end of a pitman's strike about eight years ago. there were twenty-five thousand men involved--militia, of course. at the end of the first month--october--when things were looking rather blue, one of those clever labour leaders got hold of the militia act and discovered that any militia regiment could, by a two-thirds vote, go on 'heef' in a military area in addition to its usual biennial camp. two-and-twenty battalions of geordies solemnly applied, and they were turned loose into the irish and scotch areas under an i.g. brigadier who had private instructions to knock clinkers out of 'em. but the pitman is a strong and agile bird. he throve on snowdrifts and entrenching and draggin' guns through heather. _he_ was being fed and clothed for nothing, besides having a chance of making head-money, and his strike-pay was going clear to his wife and family. you see? wily man. but wachtabittje! when that 'heef' finished in december the strike was still on. _then_ that same labour leader found out, from the same act, that if at any time more than thirty or forty men of a militia regiment wished to volunteer to do sea-time and study big guns in the fleet they were in no wise to be discouraged, but were to be taken on as opportunity offered and paid a bob a day. accordingly, about january, geordie began volunteering for sea- time--seven and eight hundred men out of each regiment. anyhow, it made up seventeen thousand men! it was a splendid chance and the armity jumped at it. the home and channel fleets and the north sea and cruiser squadrons were strengthened with lame ducks from the fleet reserve, and between 'em with a little stretching and pushing they accommodated all of that young division." "yes, but you've forgotten how we lied to the continent about it. all europe wanted to know what the dooce we were at," said boy bayley, "and the wretched cabinet had to stump the country in the depths of winter explaining our new system of poor-relief. i beg your pardon, verschoyle." "the armity improvised naval manoeuvres between gib and land's end, with frequent coalings and landings; ending in a cruise round england that fairly paralysed the pitmen. the first day out they wanted the fleet stopped while they went ashore and killed their labour leader, but they couldn't be obliged. then they wanted to mutiny over the coaling--it was too like their own job. oh, they had a lordly timel they came back--the combined fleets anchored off hull--with a nautical hitch to their breeches. they'd had a free fight at gib with the ports battalion there; they cleared out the town of lagos; and they'd fought a pitched battle with the dockyard-mateys at devonport. so they'd done 'emselves well, but they didn't want any more military life for a bit." "and the strike?" "that ended, all right enough, when the strike-money came to an end. the pit-owners were furious. they said the armity had wilfully prolonged the strike, and asked questions in the house. the armity said that they had taken advantage of the crisis to put a six months' polish on fifteen thousand fine young men, and if the masters cared to come out on the same terms they'd be happy to do the same by them." "and then?" "palaver done set," said bayley. "everybody laughed." "i don't quite understand about this sea-time business," i said. "is the fleet open to take any regiment aboard?" "rather. the i.g. must, the line can, the militia may, and the volunteers do put in sea-time. the coast volunteers began it, and the fashion is spreading inland. under certain circumstances, as verschoyle told you, a volunteer or militia regiment can vote whether it 'heefs' wet or dry. if it votes wet and has influence (like some f.s. corps), it can sneak into the channel or the home fleet and do a cruise round england or to madeira or the north sea. the regiment, of course, is distributed among the ships, and the fleet dry nurse 'em. it rather breaks up shore discipline, but it gives the inland men a bit of experience, and, of course, it gives us a fairish supply of men behind the gun, in event of any strain on the fleet. some coast corps make a specialty of it, and compete for embarking and disembarking records. i believe some of the tyneside engineerin' corps put ten per cent of their men through the fleet engine rooms. but there's no need to stay talking here all the afternoon. come and see the i.g. in his lair--the miserable conscript driven up to the colours at the point of the bayonet." part ii the great hall was emptying apace as the clocks struck two, and we passed out through double doors into a huge reading and smoking room, blue with tobacco and buzzing with voices. "we're quieter as a rule," said the boy. "but we're filling up vacancies to-day. hence the anxious faces of the line and militia. look!" there were four tables against the walls, and at each stood a crowd of uniforms. the centres of disturbance were noncommissioned officers who, seated, growled and wrote down names. "come to my table," said burgard. "well, purvis, have you ear-marked our little lot?" "i've been tellin' 'em for the last hour we've only twenty-three vacancies," was the sergeant's answer. "i've taken nearly fifty for trials, and this is what's left." burgard smiled. "i'm very sorry," he said to the crowd, "but c company's full." "excuse me, sir," said a man, "but wouldn't sea-time count in my favour? i've put in three months with the fleet. small quick-firers, sir? company guns? any sort of light machinery?" "come away," said a voice behind. "they've chucked the best farrier between hull and dewsbury. think they'll take _you_ an' your potty quick- firers?" the speaker turned on his heel and swore. "oh, damn the guard, by all means!" said sergeant purvis, collecting his papers. "d'you suppose it's any pleasure to _me_ to reject chaps of your build and make? vote us a second guard battalion and we'll accommodate you. now, you can come into schools and watch trials if you like." most of the men accepted his invitation, but a few walked away angrily. i followed from the smoking-room across a wide corridor into a riding- school, under whose roof the voices of the few hundred assembled wandered in lost echoes. "i'll leave you, if you don't mind," said burgard. "company officers aren't supposed to assist at these games. here, matthews!" he called to a private and put me in his charge. in the centre of the vast floor my astonished eyes beheld a group of stripped men; the pink of their bodies startling the tan. "these are our crowd," said matthews. "they've been vetted, an' we're putting 'em through their paces." "they don't look a bit like raw material," i said. "no, we don't use either raw men or raw meat for that matter in the guard," matthews replied. "life's too short." purvis stepped forward and barked in the professional manner. it was physical drill of the most searching, checked only when he laid his hand over some man's heart. six or seven, i noticed, were sent back at this stage of the game. then a cry went up from a group of privates standing near the line of contorted figures. "white, purvis, white! number nine is spitting white!" "i know it," said purvis. "don't you worry." "unfair!" murmured the man who understood quick-firers. "if i couldn't shape better than that i'd hire myself out to wheel a perambulator. he's cooked." "nah," said the intent matthews. "he'll answer to a month's training like a horse. it's only suet. _you've_ been training for this, haven't you?" "look at me," said the man simply. "yes. you're overtrained," was matthews' comment. "the guard isn't a circus." "guns!" roared purvis, as the men broke off and panted. "number off from the right. fourteen is one, three is two, eleven's three, twenty and thirty-nine are four and five, and five is six." he was giving them their numbers at the guns as they struggled into their uniforms. in like manner he told off three other guncrews, and the remainder left at the double, to return through the further doors with four light quick-firers jerking at the end of man-ropes. "knock down and assemble against time!" purvis called. the audience closed in a little as the crews flung themselves on the guns, which melted, wheel by wheel, beneath their touch. "i've never seen anything like this," i whispered. "huh!" said matthews scornfully. "they're always doin' it in the line and militia drill-halls. it's only circus-work." the guns were assembled again and some one called the time. then followed ten minutes of the quickest firing and feeding with dummy cartridges that was ever given man to behold. "they look as if they might amount to something--this draft," said matthews softly. "what might you teach 'em after this, then?" i asked. "to be guard," said matthews. "spurs," cried purvis, as the guns disappeared through the doors into the stables. each man plucked at his sleeve, and drew up first one heel and then the other. "what the deuce are they doing?" i asked. "this," said matthews. he put his hand to a ticket-pocket inside his regulation cuff, showed me two very small black box-spurs: drawing up a gaitered foot, he snapped them into the box in the heel, and when i had inspected snapped them out again. "that's all the spur you really need," he said. then horses were trotted out into the school barebacked, and the neophytes were told to ride. evidently the beasts knew the game and enjoyed it, for they would not make it easy for the men. a heap of saddlery was thrown in a corner, and from this each man, as he captured his mount, made shift to draw proper equipment, while the audience laughed, derided, or called the horses towards them. it was, most literally, wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished the recruits and the company were weak with fatigue and laughter. "that'll do," said purvis, while the men rocked in their saddles. "i don't see any particular odds between any of you. c company! does anybody here know anything against any of these men?" "that's a bit of the regulations," matthews whispered. "just like forbiddin' the banns in church. really, it was all settled long ago when the names first came up." there was no answer. "you'll take 'em as they stand?" there was a grunt of assent. "very good. there's forty men for twenty-three billets." he turned to the sweating horsemen. "i must put you into the hat." with great ceremony and a shower of company jokes that i did not follow, an enormous ally sloper top-hat was produced, into which numbers and blanks were dropped, and the whole was handed round to the riders by a private, evidently the joker of c company. matthews gave me to understand that each company owned a cherished receptacle (sometimes not a respectable one) for the papers of the final drawing. he was telling me how his company had once stolen the sacred article used by d company for this purpose and of the riot that followed, when through the west door of the schools entered a fresh detachment of stripped men, and the arena was flooded with another company. said matthews as we withdrew, "each company does trials their own way. b company is all for teaching men how to cook and camp. d company keeps 'em to horse-work mostly. we call d the circus-riders and b the cooks. they call us the gunners." "an' you've rejected _me_," said the man who had done sea-time, pushing out before us. "the army's goin' to the dogs." i stood in the corridor looking for burgard. "come up to my room and have a smoke," said matthews, private of the imperial guard. we climbed two flights of stone stairs ere we reached an immense landing flanked with numbered doors. matthews pressed a spring-latch and led me into a little cabin-like room. the cot was a standing bunk, with drawers beneath. on the bed lay a brilliant blanket; by the bed head was an electric light and a shelf of books: a writing table stood in the window, and i dropped into a low wicker chair. "this is a cut above subaltern's quarters," i said, surveying the photos, the dhurri on the floor, the rifle in its rack, the field-kit hung up behind the door, and the knicknacks on the walls. "the line bachelors use 'em while we're away; but they're nice to come back to after 'heef.'" matthews passed me his cigarette-case. "where have you 'heefed'?" i said. "in scotland, central australia, and north-eastern rhodesia and the north- west indian front." "what's your service?" "four years. i'll have to go in a year. i got in when i was twenty-two--by a fluke--from the militia direct--on trials." "trials like those we just saw?" "not so severe. there was less competition then. i hoped to get my stripes, but there's no chance." "why?" "i haven't the knack of handling men. purvis let me have a half-company for a month in rhodesia--over towards lake n'garni. i couldn't work 'em properly. it's a gift." "do colour-sergeants handle half-companies with you?" "they can command 'em on the 'heef.' we've only four company officers-- burgard, luttrell, kyd, and harrison. pigeon's our swop, and he's in charge of the ponies. burgard got his company on the 'heef,' you see burgard had been a lieutenant in the line, but he came into the guards on trials like the men. _he_ could command. they tried him in india with a wing of the battalion for three months. he did well so he got his company. that's what made me hopeful. but it's a gift, you see--managing men--and so i'm only a senior private. they let ten per cent of us stay on for two years extra after our three are finished--to polish the others." "aren't you even a corporal?" "we haven't corporals, or lances for that matter, in the guard. as a senior private i'd take twenty men into action; but one guard don't tell another how to clean himself. you've learned that before you apply. ... come in!" there was a knock at the door, and burgard entered, removing his cap. "i thought you'd be here," he said, as matthews vacated the other chair and sat on the bed. "well, has matthews told you all about it? how did our trials go, matthews?" "forty names in the hat, sir, at the finish. they'll make a fairish lot. their gun-tricks weren't bad; but d company has taken the best horsemen-- as usual." "oh, i'll attend to that on 'heef.' give me a man who can handle company- guns and i'll engage to make him a horse-master. d company will end by thinkin' 'emselves captain pigeon's private cavalry some day." i had never heard a private and a captain talking after this fashion, and my face must have betrayed my astonishment, for burgard said: "these are not our parade manners. in our rooms, as we say in the guard, all men are men. outside we are officers and men." "i begin to see," i stammered. "matthews was telling me that sergeants handled half-companies and rose from the ranks--and i don't see that there are any lieutenants--and your companies appear to be two hundred and fifty strong. it's a shade confusing to the layman." burgard leaned forward didactically. "the regulations lay down that every man's capacity for command must be tested to the uttermost. we construe that very literally when we're on the 'heef.' f'r instance, any man can apply to take the command next above him, and if a man's too shy to ask, his company officer must see that he gets his chance. a sergeant is given a wing of the battalion to play with for three weeks--a month, or six weeks--according to his capacity, and turned adrift in an area to make his own arrangements. that's what areas are for--and to experiment in. a good gunner--a private very often--has all four company-guns to handle through a week's fight, acting for the time as the major. majors of guard battalions (verschoyle's our major) are supposed to be responsible for the guns, by the way. there's nothing to prevent any man who has the gift working his way up to the experimental command of the battalion on 'heef.' purvis, my colour-sergeant, commanded the battalion for three months at the back of coolgardie, an' very well he did it. bayley 'verted to company officer for the time being an' took harrison's company, and harrison came over to me as my colour-sergeant. d'you see? well, purvis is down for a commission when there's a vacancy. he's been thoroughly tested, and we all like him. two other sergeants have passed that three months' trial in the same way (just as second mates go up for extra master's certificate). they have e.c. after their names in the army list. that shows they're capable of taking command in event of war. the result of our system is that you could knock out every single officer of a guard battalion early in the day, and the wheels 'ud still go forward, _not_ merely round. we're allowed to fill up half our commissioned list from the ranks direct. _now_ d'you see why there's such a rush to get into a guard battalion?" "indeed i do. have you commanded the regiment experimentally?" "oh, time and again," burgard laughed. "we've all had our e.c. turn." "doesn't the chopping and changing upset the men?" "it takes something to upset the guard. besides, they're all in the game together. they give each other a fair show you may be sure." "that's true," said matthews. "when i went to n'gami with my--with the half-company," he sighed, "they helped me all they knew. but it's a gift-- handling men. i found _that_ out," "i know you did," said burgard softly. "but you found it out in time, which is the great thing. you see," he turned to me, "with our limited strength we can't afford to have a single man who isn't more than up to any duty--in reason. don't you be led away by what you saw at trials just now. the volunteers and the militia have all the monkey-tricks of the trade--such as mounting and dismounting guns, and making fancy scores and doing record marches; but they need a lot of working up before they can pull their weight in the boat." there was a knock at the door. a note was handed in. burgard read it and smiled. "bayley wants to know if you'd care to come with us to the park and see the kids. it's only a saturday afternoon walk-round before the taxpayer.... very good. if you'll press the button we'll try to do the rest." he led me by two flights of stairs up an iron stairway that gave on a platform, not unlike a ship's bridge, immediately above the barrelled glass roof of the riding-school. through a ribbed ventilator i could see b company far below watching some men who chased sheep. burgard unlocked a glass-fronted fire-alarm arrangement flanked with dials and speaking- tubes, and bade me press the centre button. next moment i should have fallen through the riding-school roof if he had not caught me; for the huge building below my feet thrilled to the multiplied purring of electric bells. the men in the school vanished like minnows before a shadow, and above the stamp of booted feet on staircases i heard the neighing of many horses. "what in the world have i done?" i gasped. "turned out the guard--horse, foot, and guns!" a telephone bell rang imperiously. burgard snatched up the receiver: "yes, sir.... _what_, sir?... i never heard they said that," he laughed, "but it would be just like 'em. in an hour and a half? yes, sir. opposite the statue? yes, sir." he turned to me with a wink as he hung up. "bayley's playing up for you. now you'll see some fun." "who's going to catch it?" i demanded. "only our local foreign service corps. its c.o. has been boasting that it's _en état de partir_, and bayley's going to take him at his word and have a kit-inspection this afternoon in the park. i must tell their drill-hall. look over yonder between that brewery chimney and the mansard roof!" he readdressed himself to the telephone, and i kept my eye on the building to the southward. a blue peter climbed up to the top of the flagstaff that crowned it and blew out in the summer breeze. a black storm-cone followed. "inspection for f.s. corps acknowledged, sir," said burgard down the telephone. "now we'd better go to the riding-school. the battalion falls in there. i have to change, but you're free of the corps. go anywhere. ask anything. in another ten minutes we're off." i lingered for a little looking over the great city, its huddle of houses and the great fringe of the park, all framed between the open windows of this dial-dotted eyrie. when i descended the halls and corridors were as hushed as they had been noisy, and my feet echoed down the broad tiled staircases. on the third floor, matthews, gaitered and armed, overtook me smiling. "i thought you might want a guide," said he. "we've five minutes yet," and piloted me to the sunsplashed gloom of the riding-school. three companies were in close order on the tan. they moved out at a whistle, and as i followed in their rear i was overtaken by pigeon on a rough black mare. "wait a bit," he said, "till the horses are all out of stables, and come with us. d company is the only one mounted just now. we do it to amuse the taxpayer," he explained, above the noise of horses on the tan. "where are the guns?" i asked, as the mare lipped my coat-collar. "gone ahead long ago. they come out of their own door at the back of barracks. we don't haul guns through traffic more than we can help.... if belinda breathes down your neck smack her. she'll be quiet in the streets. she loves lookin' into the shop-windows." the mounted company clattered through vaulted concrete corridors in the wake of the main body, and filed out into the crowded streets. when i looked at the townsfolk on the pavement, or in the double-decked trams, i saw that the bulk of them saluted, not grudgingly or of necessity, but in a light-hearted, even flippant fashion. "those are line and militia men," said pigeon. "that old chap in the top-hat by the lamp-post is an ex-guardee. that's why he's saluting in slow-time. no, there's no regulation governing these things, but we've all fallen into the way of it somehow. steady, mare!" "i don't know whether i care about this aggressive militarism," i began, when the company halted, and belinda almost knocked me down. looking forward i saw the badged cuff of a policeman upraised at a crossing, his back towards us. "horrid aggressive, ain't we?" said pigeon with a chuckle when we moved on again and overtook the main body. here i caught the strains of the band, which pigeon told me did not accompany the battalion on 'heef,' but lived in barracks and made much money by playing at parties in town. "if we want anything more than drums and fifes on 'heef' we sing," said pigeon. "singin' helps the wind." i rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows of surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded town whose people, i could feel, regarded us with comradeship, affection--and more. "by jove," i said at last, watching the eyes about us, "these people are looking us over as if we were horses." "why not? they know the game." the eyes on the pavement, in the trams, the cabs, at the upper windows, swept our lines back and forth with a weighed intensity of regard which at first seemed altogether new to me, till i recalled just such eyes, a thousand of them, at manoeuvres in the channel when one crowded battleship drew past its sister at biscuit-toss range. then i stared at the ground, overborne by those considering eyes. suddenly the music changed to the wail of the dead march in "saul," and once more--we were crossing a large square--the regiment halted. "damn!" said pigeon, glancing behind him at the mounted company. "i believe they save up their saturday corpses on purpose." "what is it?" i asked. "a dead volunteer. we must play him through." again i looked forward and saw the top of a hearse, followed by two mourning-coaches, boring directly up the halted regiment, which opened out company by company to let it through. "but they've got the whole blessed square to funeralise in!" i exclaimed. "why don't they go round?" "not so!" pigeon replied. "in this city it's the volunteer's perquisite to be played through by any corps he happens to meet on his way to the cemetery. and they make the most of it. you'll see." i heard the order, "rest on your arms," run before the poor little procession as the men opened out. the driver pulled the black flanders beasts into a more than funeral crawl, and in the first mourning-coach i saw the tearful face of a fat woman (his mother, doubtless), a handkerchief pressed to one eye, but the other rolling vigilantly, alight with proper pride. last came a knot of uniformed men--privates, i took it --of the dead one's corps. said a man in the crowd beside us to the girl on his arm, "there, jenny! that's what i'll get if i 'ave the luck to meet 'em when my time comes." "you an' your luck," she snapped. "'ow can you talk such silly nonsense?" "played through by the guard," he repeated slowly. "the undertaker 'oo could guarantee _that_, mark you, for all his customers--well, 'e'd monopolise the trade, is all i can say. see the horses passagin' sideways!" "she done it a purpose," said the woman with a sniff. "an' i only hope you'll follow her example. just as long as you think i'll keep, too." we reclosed when the funeral had left us twenty paces behind. a small boy stuck his head out of a carriage and watched us jealously. "amazing! amazing!" i murmured. "is it regulation?" "no. town-custom. it varies a little in different cities, but the people value being played through more than most things, i imagine. duddell, the big ipswich manufacturer--he's a quaker--tried to bring in a bill to suppress it as unchristian." pigeon laughed. "and?" "it cost him his seat next election. you see, we're all in the game." we reached the park without further adventure, and found the four company- guns with their spike teams and single drivers waiting for us. many people were gathered here, and we were halted, so far as i could see, that they might talk with the men in the ranks. the officers broke into groups. "why on earth didn't you come along with me?" said boy bayley at my side. "i was expecting you." "well, i had a delicacy about brigading myself with a colonel at the head of his regiment, so i stayed with the rear company and the horses. it's all too wonderful for any words. what's going to happen next?" "i've handed over to verschoyle, who will amuse and edify the school children while i take you round our kindergarten. don't kill any one, vee. are you goin' to charge 'em?" old verschoyle hitched his big shoulder and nodded precisely as he used to do at school. he was a boy of few words grown into a kindly taciturn man. "now!" bayley slid his arm through mine and led me across a riding road towards a stretch of rough common (singularly out of place in a park) perhaps three-quarters of a mile long and half as wide. on the encircling rails leaned an almost unbroken line of men and women--the women outnumbering the men. i saw the guard battalion move up the road flanking the common and disappear behind the trees. as far as the eye could range through the mellow english haze the ground inside the railings was dotted with boys in and out of uniform, armed and unarmed. i saw squads here, half-companies there; then three companies in an open space, wheeling with stately steps; a knot of drums and fifes near the railings unconcernedly slashing their way across popular airs; and a batch of gamins labouring through some extended attack destined to be swept aside by a corps crossing the ground at the double. they broke out of furze bushes, ducked over hollows and bunkers, held or fell away from hillocks and rough sandbanks till the eye wearied of their busy legs. bayley took me through the railings, and gravely returned the salute of a freckled twelve-year-old near by. "what's your corps?" said the colonel of that imperial guard battalion to that child. "eighth district board school, fourth standard, sir. we aren't out to-day." then, with a twinkle, "i go to first camp next year." "what are those boys yonder--that squad at the double?" "jewboys, sir. jewish voluntary schools, sir." "and that full company extending behind the three elms to the south-west?" "private day-schools, sir, i think. judging distance, sir." "can you come with us?" "certainly, sir." "here's the raw material at the beginning of the process," said bayley to me. we strolled on towards the strains of "a bicycle built for two," breathed jerkily into a mouth-organ by a slim maid of fourteen. some dozen infants with clenched fists and earnest legs were swinging through the extension movements which that tune calls for. a stunted hawthorn overhung the little group, and from a branch a dirty white handkerchief flapped in the breeze. the girl blushed, scowled, and wiped the mouth-organ on her sleeve as we came up. "we're all waiting for our big bruvvers," piped up one bold person in blue breeches--seven if he was a day. "it keeps 'em quieter, sir," the maiden lisped. "the others are with the regiments." "yeth, and they've all lots of blank for _you_," said the gentleman in blue breeches ferociously. "oh, artie! 'ush!" the girl cried. "but why have they lots of blank for _us_?" bayley asked. blue breeches stood firm. "'cause--'cause the guard's goin' to fight the schools this afternoon; but my big bruvver says they'll be dam-well surprised." "_artie!_" the girl leaped towards him. "you know your ma said i was to smack----" "don't. please don't," said bayley, pink with suppressed mirth. "it was all my fault. i must tell old verschoyle this. i've surprised his plan out of the mouths of babes and sucklings." "what plan?" "old vee has taken the battalion up to the top of the common, and he told me he meant to charge down through the kids, but they're on to him already. he'll be scuppered. the guard will be scuppered!" here blue breeches, overcome by the reproof of his fellows, began to weep. "i didn't tell," he roared. "my big bruvver _he_ knew when he saw them go up the road..." "never mind! never mind, old man," said bayley soothingly. "i'm not fighting to-day. it's all right." he rightened it yet further with sixpence, and left that band loudly at feud over the spoil. "oh, vee! vee the strategist," he chuckled. "we'll pull vee's leg to-night." our freckled friend of the barriers doubled up behind us. "so you know that my battalion is charging down the ground," bayley demanded. "not for certain, sir, but we're preparin' for the worst," he answered with a cheerful grin. "they allow the schools a little blank ammunition after we've passed the third standard; and we nearly always bring it on to the ground of saturdays." "the deuce you do! why?" "on account of these amateur volunteer corps, sir. they're always experimentin' upon us, sir, comin' over from their ground an' developin' attacks on our flanks. oh, it's chronic 'ere of a saturday sometimes, unless you flag yourself." i followed his eye and saw white flags fluttering before a drum and fife band and a knot of youths in sweaters gathered round the dummy breech of a four-inch gun which they were feeding at express rates. "the attacks don't interfere with you if you flag yourself, sir," the boy explained. "that's a second camp team from the technical schools loading against time for a bet." we picked our way deviously through the busy groups. apparently it was not etiquette to notice a guard officer, and the youths at the twenty-five pounder were far too busy to look up. i watched the cleanly finished hoist and shove-home of the full-weight shell from a safe distance, when i became aware of a change among the scattered boys on the common, who disappeared among the hillocks to an accompaniment of querulous whistles. a boy or two on bicycles dashed from corps to corps, and on their arrival each corps seemed to fade away. the youths at loading practice did not pause for the growing hush round them, nor did the drum and fife band drop a single note. bayley exploded afresh. "the schools are preparing for our attack, by jove! i wonder who's directin' 'em. do _you_ know?" the warrior of the eighth district looked up shrewdly. "i saw mr. cameron speaking to mr. levitt just as the guard went up the road. 'e's our 'ead-master, mr. cameron, but mr. levitt, of the sixth district, is actin' as senior officer on the ground this saturday. most likely mr. levitt is commandin'." "how many corps are there here?" i asked. "oh, bits of lots of 'em--thirty or forty, p'r'aps, sir. but the whistles says they've all got to rally on the board schools. 'ark! there's the whistle for the private schools! they've been called up the ground at the double." "stop!" cried a bearded man with a watch, and the crews dropped beside the breech wiping their brows and panting. "hullo! there's some attack on the schools," said one. "well, marden, you owe me three half-crowns. i've beaten your record. pay up." the boy beside us tapped his foot fretfully as he eyed his companions melting among the hillocks, but the gun-team adjusted their bets without once looking up. the ground rose a little to a furze-crowned ridge in the centre so that i could not see the full length of it, but i heard a faint bubble of blank in the distance. "the saturday allowance," murmured bayley. "war's begun, but it wouldn't be etiquette for us to interfere. what are you saying, my child?" "nothin', sir, only--only i don't think the guard will be able to come through on so narrer a front, sir. they'll all be jammed up be'ind the ridge if _we_'ve got there in time. it's awful sticky for guns at the end of our ground, sir." "i'm inclined to think you're right, moltke. the guard is hung up: distinctly so. old vee will have to cut his way through. what a pernicious amount of blank the kids seem to have!" it was quite a respectable roar of battle that rolled among the hillocks for ten minutes, always out of our sight. then we heard the "cease fire" over the ridge. "they've sent for the umpires," the board school boy squeaked, dancing on one foot. "you've been hung up, sir. i--i thought the sand-pits 'ud stop you." said one of the jerseyed hobbledehoys at the gun, slipping on his coat: "well, that's enough for this afternoon. i'm off," and moved to the railings without even glancing towards the fray. "i anticipate the worst," said bayley with gravity after a few minutes. "hullo! here comes my disgraced corps!" the guard was pouring over the ridge--a disorderly mob--horse, foot, and guns mixed, while from every hollow of the ground about rose small boys cheering shrilly. the outcry was taken up by the parents at the railings, and spread to a complete circle of cheers, handclappings, and waved handkerchiefs. our eighth district private cast away restraint and openly capered. "we got 'em! we got 'em!" he squealed. the grey-green flood paused a fraction of a minute and drew itself into shape, coming to rest before bayley. verschoyle saluted. "vee, vee," said bayley. "give me back my legions. well, i hope you're proud of yourself?" "the little beasts were ready for us. deuced well posted too," verschoyle replied. "i wish you'd seen that first attack on our flank. rather impressive. who warned 'em?" "i don't know. i got my information from a baby in blue plush breeches. did they do well?" "very decently indeed. i've complimented their c.o. and buttered the whole boiling." he lowered his voice. "as a matter o' fact, i halted five good minutes to give 'em time to get into position." "well, now we can inspect our foreign service corps. we sha'n't need the men for an hour, vee." "very good, sir. colour-sergeants!" cried verschoyle, raising his voice, and the cry ran from company to company. whereupon the officers left their men, people began to climb over the railings, and the regiment dissolved among the spectators and the school corps of the city. "no sense keeping men standing when you don't need 'em," said bayley. "besides, the schools learn more from our chaps in an afternoon than they can pick up in a month's drill. look at those board-schoolmaster captains buttonholing old purvis on the art of war!" "wonder what the evening papers'll say about this," said pigeon. "you'll know in half an hour," burgard laughed. "what possessed you to take your ponies across the sand-pits, pij?" "pride. silly pride," said the canadian. we crossed the common to a very regulation paradeground overlooked by a statue of our queen. here were carriages, many and elegant, filled with pretty women, and the railings were lined with frockcoats and top hats. "this is distinctly social," i suggested to kyd. "ra-ather. our f.s. corps is nothing if not correct, but bayley'll sweat 'em all the same." i saw six companies drawn up for inspection behind lines of long sausage- shaped kit-bags. a band welcomed us with "a life on the ocean wave." "what cheek!" muttered verschoyle. "give 'em beans, bayley." "i intend to," said the colonel, grimly. "will each of you fellows take a company, please, and inspect 'em faithfully. '_en état de partir_' is their little boast, remember. when you've finished you can give 'em a little pillow-fighting." "what does the single cannon on those men's sleeves mean?" i asked. "that they're big gun-men, who've done time with the fleet," bayley returned. "any f.s. corps that has over twenty per cent big-gun men thinks itself entitled to play 'a life on the ocean wave'--when it's out of hearing of the navy." "what beautiful stuff they are! what's their regimental average?" "it ought to be five eight, height, thirty-eight, chest, and twenty-four years, age. what is it?" bayley asked of a private. "five nine and half, sir, thirty-nine, twenty-four and a half," was the reply, and he added insolently, "_en état de partir_." evidently that f.s. corps was on its mettle ready for the worst. "what about their musketry average?" i went on. "not my pidgin," said bayley. "but they wouldn't be in the corps a day if they couldn't shoot; i know _that_ much. now i'm going to go through 'em for socks and slippers." the kit-inspection exceeded anything i had ever dreamed. i drifted from company to company while the guard officers oppressed them. twenty per cent, at least, of the kits were shovelled out on the grass and gone through in detail. "what have they got jumpers and ducks for?" i asked of harrison. "for fleet work, of course. _en état de partir_ with an f. s. corps means they are amphibious." "who gives 'em their kit--government?" "there is a government allowance, but no c. o. sticks to it. it's the same as paint and gold-leaf in the navy. it comes out of some one's pockets. how much does your kit cost you?"--this to the private in front of us. "about ten or fifteen quid every other year, i suppose," was the answer. "very good. pack your bag--quick." the man knelt, and with supremely deft hands returned all to the bag, lashed and tied it, and fell back. "arms," said harrison. "strip and show ammunition." the man divested himself of his rolled greatcoat and haversack with one wriggle, as it seemed to me; a twist of a screw removed the side plate of the rifle breech (it was not a bolt action). he handed it to harrison with one hand, and with the other loosed his clip-studded belt. "what baby cartridges!" i exclaimed. "no bigger than bulletted breech- caps." "they're the regulation . ," said harrison. "no one has complained of 'em yet. they expand a bit when they arrive.... empty your bottle, please, and show your rations." the man poured out his water-bottle and showed the two-inch emergency tin. harrison passed on to the next, but i was fascinated by the way in which the man re-established himself amid his straps and buckles, asking no help from either side. "how long does it take you to prepare for inspection?" i asked him. "well, i got ready this afternoon in twelve minutes," he smiled. "i didn't see the storm-cone till half-past three. i was at the club." "weren't a good many of you out of town?" "not _this_ saturday. we knew what was coming. you see, if we pull through the inspection we may move up one place on the roster for foreign service.... you'd better stand back. we're going to pillow-fight." the companies stooped to the stuffed kit-bags, doubled with them variously, piled them in squares and mounds, passed them from shoulder to shoulder like buckets at a fire, and repeated the evolution. "what's the idea?" i asked of verschoyle, who, arms folded behind him, was controlling the display. many women had descended from the carriages, and were pressing in about us admiringly. "for one thing, it's a fair test of wind and muscle, and for another it saves time at the docks. we'll suppose this first company to be drawn up on the dock-head and those five others still in the troop-train. how would you get their kit into the ship?" "fall 'em all in on the platform, march'em to the gangways," i answered, "and trust to heaven and a fatigue party to gather the baggage and drunks in later." "ye-es, and have half of it sent by the wrong trooper. i know _that_ game," verschoyle drawled. "we don't play it any more. look!" he raised his voice, and five companies, glistening a little and breathing hard, formed at right angles to the sixth, each man embracing his sixty- pound bag. "pack away," cried verschoyle, and the great bean-bag game (i can compare it to nothing else) began. in five minutes every bag was passed along either arm of the t and forward down the sixth company, who passed, stacked, and piled them in a great heap. these were followed by the rifles, belts, greatcoats, and knapsacks, so that in another five minutes the regiment stood, as it were, stripped clean. "of course on a trooper there'd be a company below stacking the kit away," said verschoyle, "but that wasn't so bad." "bad!" i cried. "it was miraculous!" "circus-work--all circus-work!" said pigeon. "it won't prevent 'em bein' sick as dogs when the ship rolls." the crowd round us applauded, while the men looked meekly down their self-conscious noses. a little grey-whiskered man trotted up to the boy. "have we made good, bayley?" he said. "are we _en état de partir_?" "that's what i shall report," said bayley, smiling. "i thought my bit o' french 'ud draw you," said the little man, rubbing his hands. "who is he?" i whispered to pigeon. "ramsay--their c.o. an old guard captain. a keen little devil. they say he spends six hundred a year on the show. he used to be in the lincolns till he came into his property." "take 'em home an' make 'em drunk," i heard bayley say. "i suppose you'll have a dinner to celebrate. but you may as well tell the officers of e company that i don't think much of them. i sha'n't report it, but their men were all over the shop." "well, they're young, you see," colonel ramsay began. "you're quite right. send 'em to me and i'll talk to 'em. youth is the time to learn." "six hundred a year," i repeated to pigeon. "that must be an awful tax on a man. worse than in the old volunteering days." "that's where you make your mistake," said verschoyle. "in the old days a man had to spend his money to coax his men to drill because they weren't the genuine article. you know what i mean. they made a favour of putting in drills, didn't they? and they were, most of 'em, the children we have to take over at second camp, weren't they? well, now that a c. o. is sure of his _men_, now that he hasn't to waste himself in conciliating an' bribin', an' beerin' _kids_, he doesn't care what he spends on his corps, because every pound tells. do you understand?" "i see what you mean, vee. having the male material guaranteed----" "and trained material at that," pigeon put in. "eight years in the schools, remember, as well as----" "precisely. a man rejoices in working them up. that's as it should be," i said. "bayly's saying the very same to those f. s. pups," said verschoyle. the boy was behind us, between two young f. s. officers, a hand on the shoulder of each. "yes, that's all doocid interesting," he growled paternally. "but you forget, my sons, now that your men are bound to serve, you're trebly bound to put a polish on 'em. you've let your company simply go to seed. don't try and explain. i've told all those lies myself in my time. it's only idleness. _i_ know. come and lunch with me to-morrow and i'll give you a wrinkle or two in barracks." he turned to me. "suppose we pick up vee's defeated legion and go home. you'll dine with us to-night. good-bye, ramsay. yes, you're _en état de partir_, right enough. you'd better get lady gertrude to talk to the armity if you want the corps sent foreign. i'm no politician." we strolled away from the great white statue of the widow, with sceptre, orb, and crown, that looked toward the city, and regained the common, where the guard battalion walked with the female of its species and the children of all its relatives. at sight of the officers the uniforms began to detach themselves and gather in companies. a board school corps was moving off the ground, headed by its drums and fifes, which it assisted with song. as we drew nearer we caught the words, for they were launched with intention:-- 'oo is it mashes the country nurse? the guardsman! 'oo is it takes the lydy's purse? the guardsman! calls for a drink, and a mild cigar, batters a sovereign down on the bar, collars the change and says "ta-ta!" the guardsman! "why, that's one of old jemmy fawne's songs. i haven't heard it in ages," i began. "little devils!" said pigeon. "speshul! extra speshul! sports edition!" a newsboy cried. "'ere y'are, captain. defeat o' the guard!" "i'll buy a copy," said the boy, as pigeon blushed wrathfully. "i must, to see how the dove lost his mounted company." he unfolded the flapping sheet and we crowded round it. "'_complete rout of the guard,_'" he read. "'_too narrow a front._' that's one for you, vee! '_attack anticipated by mr. levitt, b. a._' aha! '_the schools stand fast._'" "here's another version," said kyd, waving a tinted sheet. "'_to your tents, o israel! the hebrew schools stop the mounted troops._' pij, were you scuppered by jewboys?" "'_umpires decide all four guns lost,_'" bayley went on. "by jove, there'll have to be an inquiry into this regrettable incident, vee!" "i'll never try to amuse the kids again," said the baited verschoyle. "children and newspapers are low things.... and i was hit on the nose by a wad, too! they oughtn't to be allowed blank ammunition!" so we leaned against the railings in the warm twilight haze while the battalion, silently as a shadow, formed up behind us ready to be taken over. the heat, the hum of the great city, as it might have been the hum of a camped army, the creaking of the belts, and the well-known faces bent above them, brought back to me the memory of another evening, years ago, when verschoyle and i waited for news of guns missing in no sham fight. "a regular sanna's post, isn't it?" i said at last. "d'you remember, vee-- by the market-square--that night when the wagons went out?" then it came upon me, with no horror, but a certain mild wonder, that we had waited, vee and i, that night for the body of boy bayley; and that vee himself had died of typhoid in the spring of . the rustling of the papers continued, but bayley, shifting slightly, revealed to me the three- day old wound on his left side that had soaked the ground about him. i saw pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard himself against a spatter of shrapnel, and luttrell with a foolish tight-lipped smile lurched over all in one jointless piece. only old vee's honest face held steady for awhile against the darkness that had swallowed up the battalion behind us. then his jaw dropped and the face stiffened, so that a fly made bold to explore the puffed and scornful nostril. * * * * * i waked brushing a fly from my nose, and saw the club waiter set out the evening papers on the table. "they" the return of the children neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs' dove-winged races-- holding hands forlornly the children wandered beneath the dome; plucking the radiant robes of the passers by, and with pitiful faces begging what princes and powers refused:--"ah, please will you let us go home?" over the jewelled floor, nigh weeping, ran to them mary the mother, kneeled and caressed and made promise with kisses, and drew them along to the gateway-- yea, the all-iron unbribable door which peter must guard and none other. straightway she took the keys from his keeping, and opened and freed them straightway. then to her son, who had seen and smiled, she said: "on the night that i bore thee what didst thou care for a love beyond mine or a heaven that was not my arm? didst thou push from the nipple o child, to hear the angels adore thee? when we two lay in the breath of the kine?" and he said:--"thou hast done no harm." so through the void the children ran homeward merrily hand in hand, looking neither to left nor right where the breathless heavens stood still; and the guards of the void resheathed their swords, for they heard the command. "shall i that have suffered the children to come to me hold them against their will?" "they" one view called me to another; one hill top to its fellow, half across the county, and since i could answer at no more trouble than the snapping forward of a lever, i let the country flow under my wheels. the orchid- studded flats of the east gave way to the thyme, ilex, and grey grass of the downs; these again to the rich cornland and fig-trees of the lower coast, where you carry the beat of the tide on your left hand for fifteen level miles; and when at last i turned inland through a huddle of rounded hills and woods i had run myself clean out of my known marks. beyond that precise hamlet which stands godmother to the capital of the united states, i found hidden villages where bees, the only things awake, boomed in eighty-foot lindens that overhung grey norman churches; miraculous brooks diving under stone bridges built for heavier traffic than would ever vex them again; tithe-barns larger than their churches, and an old smithy that cried out aloud how it had once been a hall of the knights of the temple. gipsies i found on a common where the gorse, bracken, and heath fought it out together up a mile of roman road; and a little farther on i disturbed a red fox rolling dog-fashion in the naked sunlight. as the wooded hills closed about me i stood up in the car to take the bearings of that great down whose ringed head is a landmark for fifty miles across the low countries. i judged that the lie of the country would bring me across some westward running road that went to his feet, but i did not allow for the confusing veils of the woods. a quick turn plunged me first into a green cutting brimful of liquid sunshine, next into a gloomy tunnel where last year's dead leaves whispered and scuffled about my tyres. the strong hazel stuff meeting overhead had not been cut for a couple of generations at least, nor had any axe helped the moss-cankered oak and beech to spring above them. here the road changed frankly into a carpetted ride on whose brown velvet spent primrose-clumps showed like jade, and a few sickly, white-stalked bluebells nodded together. as the slope favoured i shut off the power and slid over the whirled leaves, expecting every moment to meet a keeper; but i only heard a jay, far off, arguing against the silence under the twilight of the trees. still the track descended. i was on the point of reversing and working my way back on the second speed ere i ended in some swamp, when i saw sunshine through the tangle ahead and lifted the brake. it was down again at once. as the light beat across my face my fore-wheels took the turf of a great still lawn from which sprang horsemen ten feet high with levelled lances, monstrous peacocks, and sleek round-headed maids of honour--blue, black, and glistening--all of clipped yew. across the lawn--the marshalled woods besieged it on three sides--stood an ancient house of lichened and weather-worn stone, with mullioned windows and roofs of rose-red tile. it was flanked by semi-circular walls, also rose-red, that closed the lawn on the fourth side, and at their feet a box hedge grew man-high. there were doves on the roof about the slim brick chimneys, and i caught a glimpse of an octagonal dove-house behind the screening wall. here, then, i stayed; a horseman's green spear laid at my breast; held by the exceeding beauty of that jewel in that setting. "if i am not packed off for a trespasser, or if this knight does not ride a wallop at me," thought i, "shakespeare and queen elizabeth at least must come out of that half-open garden door and ask me to tea." a child appeared at an upper window, and i thought the little thing waved a friendly hand. but it was to call a companion, for presently another bright head showed. then i heard a laugh among the yew-peacocks, and turning to make sure (till then i had been watching the house only) i saw the silver of a fountain behind a hedge thrown up against the sun. the doves on the roof cooed to the cooing water; but between the two notes i caught the utterly happy chuckle of a child absorbed in some light mischief. the garden door--heavy oak sunk deep in the thickness of the wall--opened further: a woman in a big garden hat set her foot slowly on the time- hollowed stone step and as slowly walked across the turf. i was forming some apology when she lifted up her head and i saw that she was blind. "i heard you," she said. "isn't that a motor car?" "i'm afraid i've made a mistake in my road. i should have turned off up above--i never dreamed"--i began. "but i'm very glad. fancy a motor car coming into the garden! it will be such a treat----" she turned and made as though looking about her. "you-- you haven't seen any one have you--perhaps?" "no one to speak to, but the children seemed interested at a distance." "which?" "i saw a couple up at the window just now, and i think i heard a little chap in the grounds." "oh, lucky you!" she cried, and her face brightened. "i hear them, of course, but that's all. you've seen them and heard them?" "yes," i answered. "and if i know anything of children one of them's having a beautiful time by the fountain yonder. escaped, i should imagine." "you're fond of children?" i gave her one or two reasons why i did not altogether hate them. "of course, of course," she said. "then you understand. then you won't think it foolish if i ask you to take your car through the gardens, once or twice--quite slowly. i'm sure they'd like to see it. they see so little, poor things. one tries to make their life pleasant, but----" she threw out her hands towards the woods. "we're so out of the world here." "that will be splendid," i said. "but i can't cut up your grass." she faced to the right. "wait a minute," she said. "we're at the south gate, aren't we? behind those peacocks there's a flagged path. we call it the peacock's walk. you can't see it from here, they tell me, but if you squeeze along by the edge of the wood you can turn at the first peacock and get on to the flags." it was sacrilege to wake that dreaming house-front with the clatter of machinery, but i swung the car to clear the turf, brushed along the edge of the wood and turned in on the broad stone path where the fountain-basin lay like one star-sapphire. "may i come too?" she cried. "no, please don't help me. they'll like it better if they see me." she felt her way lightly to the front of the car, and with one foot on the step she called: "children, oh, children! look and see what's going to happen!" the voice would have drawn lost souls from the pit, for the yearning that underlay its sweetness, and i was not surprised to hear an answering shout behind the yews. it must have been the child by the fountain, but he fled at our approach, leaving a little toy boat in the water. i saw the glint of his blue blouse among the still horsemen. very disposedly we paraded the length of the walk and at her request backed again. this time the child had got the better of his panic, but stood far off and doubting. "the little fellow's watching us," i said. "i wonder if he'd like a ride." "they're very shy still. very shy. but, oh, lucky you to be able to see them! let's listen." i stopped the machine at once, and the humid stillness, heavy with the scent of box, cloaked us deep. shears i could hear where some gardener was clipping; a mumble of bees and broken voices that might have been the doves. "oh, unkind!" she said weariedly. "perhaps they're only shy of the motor. the little maid at the window looks tremendously interested." "yes?" she raised her head. "it was wrong of me to say that. they are really fond of me. it's the only thing that makes life worth living--when they're fond of you, isn't it? i daren't think what the place would be without them. by the way, is it beautiful?" "i think it is the most beautiful place i have ever seen." "so they all tell me. i can feel it, of course, but that isn't quite the same thing." "then have you never---?" i began, but stopped abashed. "not since i can remember. it happened when i was only a few months old, they tell me. and yet i must remember something, else how could i dream about colours. i see light in my dreams, and colours, but i never see _them_. i only hear them just as i do when i'm awake." "it's difficult to see faces in dreams. some people can, but most of us haven't the gift," i went on, looking up at the window where the child stood all but hidden. "i've heard that too," she said. "and they tell me that one never sees a dead person's face in a dream. is that true?" "i believe it is--now i come to think of it." "but how is it with yourself--yourself?" the blind eyes turned towards me. "i have never seen the faces of my dead in any dream," i answered. "then it must be as bad as being blind." the sun had dipped behind the woods and the long shades were possessing the insolent horsemen one by one. i saw the light die from off the top of a glossy-leaved lance and all the brave hard green turn to soft black. the house, accepting another day at end, as it had accepted an hundred thousand gone, seemed to settle deeper into its rest among the shadows. "have you ever wanted to?" she said after the silence. "very much sometimes," i replied. the child had left the window as the shadows closed upon it. "ah! so've i, but i don't suppose it's allowed. ... where d'you live?" "quite the other side of the county--sixty miles and more, and i must be going back. i've come without my big lamp." "but it's not dark yet. i can feel it." "i'm afraid it will be by the time i get home. could you lend me someone to set me on my road at first? i've utterly lost myself." "i'll send madden with you to the cross-roads. we are so out of the world, i don't wonder you were lost! i'll guide you round to the front of the house; but you will go slowly, won't you, till you're out of the grounds? it isn't foolish, do you think?" "i promise you i'll go like this," i said, and let the car start herself down the flagged path. we skirted the left wing of the house, whose elaborately cast lead guttering alone was worth a day's journey; passed under a great rose-grown gate in the red wall, and so round to the high front of the house which in beauty and stateliness as much excelled the back as that all others i had seen. "is it so very beautiful?" she said wistfully when she heard my raptures. "and you like the lead-figures too? there's the old azalea garden behind. they say that this place must have been made for children. will you help me out, please? i should like to come with you as far as the cross-roads, but i mustn't leave them. is that you, madden? i want you to show this gentleman the way to the cross-roads. he has lost his way but--he has seen them." a butler appeared noiselessly at the miracle of old oak that must be called the front door, and slipped aside to put on his hat. she stood looking at me with open blue eyes in which no sight lay, and i saw for the first time that she was beautiful. "remember," she said quietly, "if you are fond of them you will come again," and disappeared within the house. the butler in the car said nothing till we were nearly at the lodge gates, where catching a glimpse of a blue blouse in a shrubbery i swerved amply lest the devil that leads little boys to play should drag me into child- murder. "excuse me," he asked of a sudden, "but why did you do that, sir?" "the child yonder." "our young gentleman in blue?" "of course." "he runs about a good deal. did you see him by the fountain, sir?" "oh, yes, several times. do we turn here?" "yes, sir. and did you 'appen to see them upstairs too?" "at the upper window? yes." "was that before the mistress come out to speak to you, sir?" "a little before that. why d'you want to know?" he paused a little. "only to make sure that--that they had seen the car, sir, because with children running about, though i'm sure you're driving particularly careful, there might be an accident. that was all, sir. here are the cross-roads. you can't miss your way from now on. thank you, sir, but that isn't _our_ custom, not with----" "i beg your pardon," i said, and thrust away the british silver. "oh, it's quite right with the rest of 'em as a rule. goodbye, sir." he retired into the armour-plated conning tower of his caste and walked away. evidently a butler solicitous for the honour of his house, and interested, probably through a maid, in the nursery. once beyond the signposts at the cross-roads i looked back, but the crumpled hills interlaced so jealously that i could not see where the house had lain. when i asked its name at a cottage along the road, the fat woman who sold sweetmeats there gave me to understand that people with motor cars had small right to live--much less to "go about talking like carriage folk." they were not a pleasant-mannered community. when i retraced my route on the map that evening i was little wiser. hawkin's old farm appeared to be the survey title of the place, and the old county gazetteer, generally so ample, did not allude to it. the big house of those parts was hodnington hall, georgian with early victorian embellishments, as an atrocious steel engraving attested. i carried my difficulty to a neighbour--a deep-rooted tree of that soil--and he gave me a name of a family which conveyed no meaning. a month or so later--i went again, or it may have been that my car took the road of her own volition. she over-ran the fruitless downs, threaded every turn of the maze of lanes below the hills, drew through the high- walled woods, impenetrable in their full leaf, came out at the cross roads where the butler had left me, and a little further on developed an internal trouble which forced me to turn her in on a grass way-waste that cut into a summer-silent hazel wood. so far as i could make sure by the sun and a six-inch ordnance map, this should be the road flank of that wood which i had first explored from the heights above. i made a mighty serious business of my repairs and a glittering shop of my repair kit, spanners, pump, and the like, which i spread out orderly upon a rug. it was a trap to catch all childhood, for on such a day, i argued, the children would not be far off. when i paused in my work i listened, but the wood was so full of the noises of summer (though the birds had mated) that i could not at first distinguish these from the tread of small cautious feet stealing across the dead leaves. i rang my bell in an alluring manner, but the feet fled, and i repented, for to a child a sudden noise is very real terror. i must have been at work half an hour when i heard in the wood the voice of the blind woman crying: "children, oh children, where are you?" and the stillness made slow to close on the perfection of that cry. she came towards me, half feeling her way between the tree boles, and though a child it seemed clung to her skirt, it swerved into the leafage like a rabbit as she drew nearer. "is that you?" she said, "from the other side of the county?" "yes, it's me from the other side of the county." "then why didn't you come through the upper woods? they were there just now." "they were here a few minutes ago. i expect they knew my car had broken down, and came to see the fun." "nothing serious, i hope? how do cars break down?" "in fifty different ways. only mine has chosen the fifty first." she laughed merrily at the tiny joke, cooed with delicious laughter, and pushed her hat back. "let me hear," she said. "wait a moment," i cried, "and i'll get you a cushion." she set her foot on the rug all covered with spare parts, and stooped above it eagerly. "what delightful things!" the hands through which she saw glanced in the chequered sunlight. "a box here--another box! why you've arranged them like playing shop!" "i confess now that i put it out to attract them. i don't need half those things really." "how nice of you! i heard your bell in the upper wood. you say they were here before that?" "i'm sure of it. why are they so shy? that little fellow in blue who was with you just now ought to have got over his fright. he's been watching me like a red indian." "it must have been your bell," she said. "i heard one of them go past me in trouble when i was coming down. they're shy--so shy even with me." she turned her face over her shoulder and cried again: "children! oh, children! look and see!" "they must have gone off together on their own affairs," i suggested, for there was a murmur behind us of lowered voices broken by the sudden squeaking giggles of childhood. i returned to my tinkerings and she leaned forward, her chin on her hand, listening interestedly. "how many are they?" i said at last. the work was finished, but i saw no reason to go. her forehead puckered a little in thought. "i don't quite know," she said simply. "sometimes more--sometimes less. they come and stay with me because i love them, you see." "that must be very jolly," i said, replacing a drawer, and as i spoke i heard the inanity of my answer. "you--you aren't laughing at me," she cried. "i--i haven't any of my own. i never married. people laugh at me sometimes about them because-- because------" "because they're savages," i returned. "it's nothing to fret for. that sort laugh at everything that isn't in their own fat lives." "i don't know. how should i? i only don't like being laughed at about _them_. it hurts; and when one can't see.... i don't want to seem silly," her chin quivered like a child's as she spoke, "but we blindies have only one skin, i think. everything outside hits straight at our souls. it's different with you. you've such good defences in your eyes--looking out-- before anyone can really pain you in your soul. people forget that with us." i was silent reviewing that inexhaustible matter--the more than inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the christian peoples, beside which the mere heathendom of the west coast nigger is clean and restrained. it led me a long distance into myself. "don't do that!" she said of a sudden, putting her hands before her eyes. "what?" she made a gesture with her hand. "that! it's--it's all purple and black. don't! that colour hurts." "but, how in the world do you know about colours?" i exclaimed, for here was a revelation indeed. "colours as colours?" she asked. "no. _those_ colours which you saw just now." "you know as well as i do," she laughed, "else you wouldn't have asked that question. they aren't in the world at all. they're in _you_--when you went so angry." "d'you mean a dull purplish patch, like port-wine mixed with ink?" i said. "i've never seen ink or port-wine, but the colours aren't mixed. they are separate--all separate." "do you mean black streaks and jags across the purple?" she nodded. "yes--if they are like this," and zigzagged her finger again, "but it's more red than purple--that bad colour." "and what are the colours at the top of the--whatever you see?" slowly she leaned forward and traced on the rug the figure of the egg itself. "i see them so," she said, pointing with a grass stem, "white, green, yellow, red, purple, and when people are angry or bad, black across the red--as you were just now." "who told you anything about it--in the beginning?" i demanded. "about the colours? no one. i used to ask what colours were when i was little--in table-covers and curtains and carpets, you see--because some colours hurt me and some made me happy. people told me; and when i got older that was how i saw people." again she traced the outline of the egg which it is given to very few of us to see. "all by yourself?" i repeated. "all by myself. there wasn't anyone else. i only found out afterwards that other people did not see the colours." she leaned against the tree-hole plaiting and unplaiting chance-plucked grass stems. the children in the wood had drawn nearer. i could see them with the tail of my eye frolicking like squirrels. "now i am sure you will never laugh at me," she went on after a long silence. "nor at _them_." "goodness! no!" i cried, jolted out of my train of thought. "a man who laughs at a child--unless the child is laughing too--is a heathen!" "i didn't mean that of course. you'd never laugh _at_ children, but i thought--i used to think--that perhaps you might laugh about _them_. so now i beg your pardon.... what are you going to laugh at?" i had made no sound, but she knew. "at the notion of your begging my pardon. if you had done your duty as a pillar of the state and a landed proprietress you ought to have summoned me for trespass when i barged through your woods the other day. it was disgraceful of me--inexcusable." she looked at me, her head against the tree trunk--long and steadfastly-- this woman who could see the naked soul. "how curious," she half whispered. "how very curious." "why, what have i done?" "you don't understand ... and yet you understood about the colours. don't you understand?" she spoke with a passion that nothing had justified, and i faced her bewilderedly as she rose. the children had gathered themselves in a roundel behind a bramble bush. one sleek head bent over something smaller, and the set of the little shoulders told me that fingers were on lips. they, too, had some child's tremendous secret. i alone was hopelessly astray there in the broad sunlight. "no," i said, and shook my head as though the dead eyes could note. "whatever it is, i don't understand yet. perhaps i shall later--if you'll let me come again." "you will come again," she answered. "you will surely come again and walk in the wood." "perhaps the children will know me well enough by that time to let me play with them--as a favour. you know what children are like." "it isn't a matter of favour but of right," she replied, and while i wondered what she meant, a dishevelled woman plunged round the bend of the road, loose-haired, purple, almost lowing with agony as she ran. it was my rude, fat friend of the sweetmeat shop. the blind woman heard and stepped forward. "what is it, mrs. madehurst?" she asked. the woman flung her apron over her head and literally grovelled in the dust, crying that her grandchild was sick to death, that the local doctor was away fishing, that jenny the mother was at her wits end, and so forth, with repetitions and bellowings. "where's the next nearest doctor?" i asked between paroxysms. "madden will tell you. go round to the house and take him with you. i'll attend to this. be quick!" she half-supported the fat woman into the shade. in two minutes i was blowing all the horns of jericho under the front of the house beautiful, and madden, in the pantry, rose to the crisis like a butler and a man. a quarter of an hour at illegal speeds caught us a doctor five miles away. within the half-hour we had decanted him, much interested in motors, at the door of the sweetmeat shop, and drew up the road to await the verdict. "useful things cars," said madden, all man and no butler. "if i'd had one when mine took sick she wouldn't have died." "how was it?" i asked. "croup. mrs. madden was away. no one knew what to do. i drove eight miles in a tax cart for the doctor. she was choked when we came back. this car 'd ha' saved her. she'd have been close on ten now." "i'm sorry," i said. "i thought you were rather fond of children from what you told me going to the cross-roads the other day." "have you seen 'em again, sir--this mornin'?" "yes, but they're well broke to cars. i couldn't get any of them within twenty yards of it." he looked at me carefully as a scout considers a stranger--not as a menial should lift his eyes to his divinely appointed superior. "i wonder why," he said just above the breath that he drew. we waited on. a light wind from the sea wandered up and down the long lines of the woods, and the wayside grasses, whitened already with summer dust, rose and bowed in sallow waves. a woman, wiping the suds off her arms, came out of the cottage next the sweetmeat shop. "i've be'n listenin' in de back-yard," she said cheerily. "he says arthur's unaccountable bad. did ye hear him shruck just now? unaccountable bad. i reckon t'will come jenny's turn to walk in de wood nex' week along, mr. madden." "excuse me, sir, but your lap-robe is slipping," said madden deferentially. the woman started, dropped a curtsey, and hurried away. "what does she mean by 'walking in the wood'?" i asked. "it must be some saying they use hereabouts. i'm from norfolk myself," said madden. "they're an independent lot in this county. she took you for a chauffeur, sir." i saw the doctor come out of the cottage followed by a draggle-tailed wench who clung to his arm as though he could make treaty for her with death. "dat sort," she wailed--"dey're just as much to us dat has 'em as if dey was lawful born. just as much--just as much! an' god he'd be just as pleased if you saved 'un, doctor. don't take it from me. miss florence will tell ye de very same. don't leave 'im, doctor!" "i know. i know," said the man, "but he'll be quiet for a while now. we'll get the nurse and the medicine as fast as we can." he signalled me to come forward with the car, and i strove not to be privy to what followed; but i saw the girl's face, blotched and frozen with grief, and i felt the hand without a ring clutching at my knees when we moved away. the doctor was a man of some humour, for i remember he claimed my car under the oath of Ã�sculapius, and used it and me without mercy. first we convoyed mrs. madehurst and the blind woman to wait by the sick bed till the nurse should come. next we invaded a neat county town for prescriptions (the doctor said the trouble was cerebro-spinal meningitis), and when the county institute, banked and flanked with scared market cattle, reported itself out of nurses for the moment we literally flung ourselves loose upon the county. we conferred with the owners of great houses--magnates at the ends of overarching avenues whose big-boned womenfolk strode away from their tea-tables to listen to the imperious doctor. at last a white-haired lady sitting under a cedar of lebanon and surrounded by a court of magnificent borzois--all hostile to motors--gave the doctor, who received them as from a princess, written orders which we bore many miles at top speed, through a park, to a french nunnery, where we took over in exchange a pallid-faced and trembling sister. she knelt at the bottom of the tonneau telling her beads without pause till, by short cuts of the doctor's invention, we had her to the sweetmeat shop once more. it was a long afternoon crowded with mad episodes that rose and dissolved like the dust of our wheels; cross-sections of remote and incomprehensible lives through which we raced at right angles; and i went home in the dusk, wearied out, to dream of the clashing horns of cattle; round-eyed nuns walking in a garden of graves; pleasant tea-parties beneath shaded trees; the carbolic-scented, grey-painted corridors of the county institute; the steps of shy children in the wood, and the hands that clung to my knees as the motor began to move. * * * * * i had intended to return in a day or two, but it pleased fate to hold me from that side of the county, on many pretexts, till the elder and the wild rose had fruited. there came at last a brilliant day, swept clear from the south-west, that brought the hills within hand's reach--a day of unstable airs and high filmy clouds. through no merit of my own i was free, and set the car for the third time on that known road. as i reached the crest of the downs i felt the soft air change, saw it glaze under the sun; and, looking down at the sea, in that instant beheld the blue of the channel turn through polished silver and dulled steel to dingy pewter. a laden collier hugging the coast steered outward for deeper water and, across copper-coloured haze, i saw sails rise one by one on the anchored fishing-fleet. in a deep dene behind me an eddy of sudden wind drummed through sheltered oaks, and spun aloft the first day sample of autumn leaves. when i reached the beach road the sea-fog fumed over the brickfields, and the tide was telling all the groins of the gale beyond ushant. in less than an hour summer england vanished in chill grey. we were again the shut island of the north, all the ships of the world bellowing at our perilous gates; and between their outcries ran the piping of bewildered gulls. my cap dripped moisture, the folds of the rug held it in pools or sluiced it away in runnels, and the salt-rime stuck to my lips. inland the smell of autumn loaded the thickened fog among the trees, and the drip became a continuous shower. yet the late flowers--mallow of the wayside, scabious of the field, and dahlia of the garden--showed gay in the mist, and beyond the sea's breath there was little sign of decay in the leaf. yet in the villages the house doors were all open, and bare- legged, bare-headed children sat at ease on the damp doorsteps to shout "pip-pip" at the stranger. i made bold to call at the sweetmeat shop, where mrs. madehurst met me with a fat woman's hospitable tears. jenny's child, she said, had died two days after the nun had come. it was, she felt, best out of the way, even though insurance offices, for reasons which she did not pretend to follow, would not willingly insure such stray lives. "not but what jenny didn't tend to arthur as though he'd come all proper at de end of de first year-- like jenny herself." thanks to miss florence, the child had been buried with a pomp which, in mrs. madehurst's opinion, more than covered the small irregularity of its birth. she described the coffin, within and without, the glass hearse, and the evergreen lining of the grave. "but how's the mother?" i asked. "jenny? oh, she'll get over it. i've felt dat way with one or two o' my own. she'll get over. she's walkin' in de wood now." "in this weather?" mrs. madehurst looked at me with narrowed eyes across the counter. "i dunno but it opens de 'eart like. yes, it opens de 'eart. dat's where losin' and bearin' comes so alike in de long run, we do say." now the wisdom of the old wives is greater than that of all the fathers, and this last oracle sent me thinking so extendedly as i went up the road, that i nearly ran over a woman and a child at the wooded corner by the lodge gates of the house beautiful. "awful weather!" i cried, as i slowed dead for the turn. "not so bad," she answered placidly out of the fog. "mine's used to 'un. you'll find yours indoors, i reckon." indoors, madden received me with professional courtesy, and kind inquiries for the health of the motor, which he would put under cover. i waited in a still, nut-brown hall, pleasant with late flowers and warmed with a delicious wood fire--a place of good influence and great peace. (men and women may sometimes, after great effort, achieve a creditable lie; but the house, which is their temple, cannot say anything save the truth of those who have lived in it.) a child's cart and a doll lay on the black-and-white floor, where a rug had been kicked back. i felt that the children had only just hurried away--to hide themselves, most like--in the many turns of the great adzed staircase that climbed statelily out of the hall, or to crouch at gaze behind the lions and roses of the carven gallery above. then i heard her voice above me, singing as the blind sing --from the soul:-- in the pleasant orchard-closes. and all my early summer came back at the call. in the pleasant orchard-closes, god bless all our gains say we-- but may god bless all our losses, better suits with our degree, she dropped the marring fifth line, and repeated-- better suits with our degree! i saw her lean over the gallery, her linked hands white as pearl against the oak. "is that you--from the other side of the county?" she called. "yes, me--from the other side of the county," i answered laughing. "what a long time before you had to come here again." she ran down the stairs, one hand lightly touching the broad rail. "it's two months and four days. summer's gone!" "i meant to come before, but fate prevented." "i knew it. please do something to that fire. they won't let me play with it, but i can feel it's behaving badly. hit it!" i looked on either side of the deep fireplace, and found but a half-charred hedge-stake with which i punched a black log into flame. "it never goes out, day or night," she said, as though explaining. "in case any one conies in with cold toes, you see." "it's even lovelier inside than it was out," i murmured. the red light poured itself along the age-polished dusky panels till the tudor roses and lions of the gallery took colour and motion. an old eagle-topped convex mirror gathered the picture into its mysterious heart, distorting afresh the distorted shadows, and curving the gallery lines into the curves of a ship. the day was shutting down in half a gale as the fog turned to stringy scud. through the uncurtained mullions of the broad window i could see valiant horsemen of the lawn rear and recover against the wind that taunted them with legions of dead leaves. "yes, it must be beautiful," she said. "would you like to go over it? there's still light enough upstairs." i followed her up the unflinching, wagon-wide staircase to the gallery whence opened the thin fluted elizabethan doors. "feel how they put the latch low down for the sake of the children." she swung a light door inward. "by the way, where are they?" i asked. "i haven't even heard them to-day." she did not answer at once. then, "i can only hear them," she replied softly. "this is one of their rooms--everything ready, you see." she pointed into a heavily-timbered room. there were little low gate tables and children's chairs. a doll's house, its hooked front half open, faced a great dappled rocking-horse, from whose padded saddle it was but a child's scramble to the broad window-seat overlooking the lawn. a toy gun lay in a corner beside a gilt wooden cannon. "surely they've only just gone," i whispered. in the failing light a door creaked cautiously. i heard the rustle of a frock and the patter of feet-- quick feet through a room beyond. "i heard that," she cried triumphantly. "did you? children, o children, where are you?" the voice filled the walls that held it lovingly to the last perfect note, but there came no answering shout such as i had heard in the garden. we hurried on from room to oak-floored room; up a step here, down three steps there; among a maze of passages; always mocked by our quarry. one might as well have tried to work an unstopped warren with a single ferret. there were bolt-holes innumerable--recesses in walls, embrasures of deep slitten windows now darkened, whence they could start up behind us; and abandoned fireplaces, six feet deep in the masonry, as well as the tangle of communicating doors. above all, they had the twilight for their helper in our game. i had caught one or two joyous chuckles of evasion, and once or twice had seen the silhouette of a child's frock against some darkening window at the end of a passage; but we returned empty-handed to the gallery, just as a middle-aged woman was setting a lamp in its niche. "no, i haven't seen her either this evening, miss florence," i heard her say, "but that turpin he says he wants to see you about his shed." "oh, mr. turpin must want to see me very badly. tell him to come to the hall, mrs. madden." i looked down into the hall whose only light was the dulled fire, and deep in the shadow i saw them at last. they must have slipped down while we were in the passages, and now thought themselves perfectly hidden behind an old gilt leather screen. by child's law, my fruitless chase was as good as an introduction, but since i had taken so much trouble i resolved to force them to come forward later by the simple trick, which children detest, of pretending not to notice them. they lay close, in a little huddle, no more than shadows except when a quick flame betrayed an outline. "and now we'll have some tea," she said. "i believe i ought to have offered it you at first, but one doesn't arrive at manners somehow when one lives alone and is considered--h'm--peculiar." then with very pretty scorn, "would you like a lamp to see to eat by?" "the firelight's much pleasanter, i think." we descended into that delicious gloom and madden brought tea. i took my chair in the direction of the screen ready to surprise or be surprised as the game should go, and at her permission, since a hearth is always sacred, bent forward to play with the fire. "where do you get these beautiful short faggots from?" i asked idly. "why, they are tallies!" "of course," she said. "as i can't read or write i'm driven back on the early english tally for my accounts. give me one and i'll tell you what it meant." i passed her an unburned hazel-tally, about a foot long, and she ran her thumb down the nicks. "this is the milk-record for the home farm for the month of april last year, in gallons," said she. "i don't know what i should have done without tallies. an old forester of mine taught me the system. it's out of date now for every one else; but my tenants respect it. one of them's coming now to see me. oh, it doesn't matter. he has no business here out of office hours. he's a greedy, ignorant man--very greedy or--he wouldn't come here after dark." "have you much land then?" "only a couple of hundred acres in hand, thank goodness. the other six hundred are nearly all let to folk who knew my folk before me, but this turpin is quite a new man--and a highway robber." "but are you sure i sha'n't be----?" "certainly not. you have the right. he hasn't any children." "ah, the children!" i said, and slid my low chair back till it nearly touched the screen that hid them. "i wonder whether they'll come out for me." there was a murmur of voices--madden's and a deeper note--at the low, dark side door, and a ginger-headed, canvas-gaitered giant of the unmistakable tenant farmer type stumbled or was pushed in. "come to the fire, mr. turpin," she said. "if--if you please, miss, i'll--i'll be quite as well by the door." he clung to the latch as he spoke like a frightened child. of a sudden i realised that he was in the grip of some almost overpowering fear. "well?" "about that new shed for the young stock--that was all. these first autumn storms settin' in ... but i'll come again, miss." his teeth did not chatter much more than the door latch. "i think not," she answered levelly. "the new shed--m'm. what did my agent write you on the th?" "i--fancied p'raps that if i came to see you--ma--man to man like, miss. but----" his eyes rolled into every corner of the room wide with horror. he half opened the door through which he had entered, but i noticed it shut again --from without and firmly. "he wrote what i told him," she went on. "you are overstocked already. dunnett's farm never carried more than fifty bullocks--even in mr. wright's time. and _he_ used cake. you've sixty-seven and you don't cake. you've broken the lease in that respect. you're dragging the heart out of the farm." "i'm--i'm getting some minerals--superphosphates--next week. i've as good as ordered a truck-load already. i'll go down to the station to-morrow about 'em. then i can come and see you man to man like, miss, in the daylight.... that gentleman's not going away, is he?" he almost shrieked. i had only slid the chair a little further back, reaching behind me to tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat. "no. please attend to me, mr. turpin." she turned in her chair and faced him with his back to the door. it was an old and sordid little piece of scheming that she forced from him--his plea for the new cowshed at his landlady's expense, that he might with the covered manure pay his next year's rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. i could not but admire the intensity of his greed, when i saw him out-facing for its sake whatever terror it was that ran wet on his forehead. i ceased to tap the leather--was, indeed, calculating the cost of the shed--when i felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the soft hands of a child. so at last i had triumphed. in a moment i would turn and acquaint myself with those quick-footed wanderers.... the little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm--as a gift on which the fingers were, once, expected to close: as the all faithful half- reproachful signal of a waiting child not used to neglect even when grown-ups were busiest--a fragment of the mute code devised very long ago. then i knew. and it was as though i had known from the first day when i looked across the lawn at the high window. i heard the door shut. the woman turned to me in silence, and i felt that she knew. what time passed after this i cannot say. i was roused by the fall of a log, and mechanically rose to put it back. then i returned to my place in the chair very close to the screen. "now you understand," she whispered, across the packed shadows. "yes, i understand--now. thank you." "i--i only hear them." she bowed her head in her hands. "i have no right, you know--no other right. i have neither borne nor lost--neither borne nor lost!" "be very glad then," said i, for my soul was torn open within me. "forgive me!" she was still, and i went back to my sorrow and my joy. "it was because i loved them so," she said at last, brokenly. "_that_ was why it was, even from the first--even before i knew that they--they were all i should ever have. and i loved them so!" she stretched out her arms to the shadows and the shadows within the shadow. "they came because i loved them--because i needed them. i--i must have made them come. was that wrong, think you?" "no--no." "i--i grant you that the toys and--and all that sort of thing were nonsense, but--but i used to so hate empty rooms myself when i was little." she pointed to the gallery. "and the passages all empty. ... and how could i ever bear the garden door shut? suppose----" "don't! for pity's sake, don't!" i cried. the twilight had brought a cold rain with gusty squalls that plucked at the leaded windows. "and the same thing with keeping the fire in all night. _i_ don't think it so foolish--do you?" i looked at the broad brick hearth, saw, through tears i believe, that there was no unpassable iron on or near it, and bowed my head. "i did all that and lots of other things--just to make believe. then they came. i heard them, but i didn't know that they were not mine by right till mrs. madden told me----" "the butler's wife? what?" "one of them--i heard--she saw. and knew. hers! _not_ for me. i didn't know at first. perhaps i was jealous. afterwards, i began to understand that it was only because i loved them, not because----... oh, you _must_ bear or lose," she said piteously. "there is no other way--and yet they love me. they must! don't they?" there was no sound in the room except the lapping voices of the fire, but we two listened intently, and she at least took comfort from what she heard. she recovered herself and half rose. i sat still in my chair by the screen. "don't think me a wretch to whine about myself like this, but--but i'm all in the dark, you know, and _you_ can see." in truth i could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. yet a little longer i would stay since it was the last time. "you think it is wrong, then?" she cried sharply, though i had said nothing. "not for you. a thousand times no. for you it is right.... i am grateful to you beyond words. for me it would be wrong. for me only...." "why?" she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at our second meeting in the wood. "oh, i see," she went on simply as a child. "for you it would be wrong." then with a little indrawn laugh, "and, d'you remember, i called you lucky--once--at first. you who must never come here again!" she left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and i heard the sound of her feet die out along the gallery above. mrs. bathurst from lyden's "irenius" act iii. sc. ii. gow.--had it been your prince instead of a groom caught in this noose there's not an astrologer of the city---- prince.--sacked! sacked! we were a city yesterday. gow.--so be it, but i was not governor. not an astrologer, but would ha' sworn he'd foreseen it at the last versary of venus, when vulcan caught her with mars in the house of stinking capricorn. but since 'tis jack of the straw that hangs, the forgetful stars had it not on their tablets. prince.--another life! were there any left to die? how did the poor fool come by it? gow.--_simpliciter_ thus. she that damned him to death knew not that she did it, or would have died ere she had done it. for she loved him. he that hangs him does so in obedience to the duke, and asks no more than "where is the rope?" the duke, very exactly he hath told us, works god's will, in which holy employ he's not to be questioned. we have then left upon this finger, only jack whose soul now plucks the left sleeve of destiny in hell to overtake why she clapped him up like a fly on a sunny wall. whuff! soh! prince.--your cloak, ferdinand. i'll sleep now. ferdinand.--sleep, then.. he too, loved his life? gow.--he was born of woman ... but at the end threw life from him, like your prince, for a little sleep ... "have i any look of a king?" said he, clanking his chain--"to be so baited on all sides by fortune, that i must e'en die now to live with myself one day longer?" i left him railing at fortune and woman's love. ferdinand.--ah, woman's love! _(aside)_ who knows not fortune, glutted on easy thrones, stealing from feasts as rare to coneycatch, privily in the hedgerows for a clown with that same cruel-lustful hand and eye, those nails and wedges, that one hammer and lead, and the very gerb of long-stored lightnings loosed yesterday 'gainst some king. mrs. bathurst the day that i chose to visit h.m.s. _peridot_ in simon's bay was the day that the admiral had chosen to send her up the coast. she was just steaming out to sea as my train came in, and since the rest of the fleet were either coaling or busy at the rifle-ranges a thousand feet up the hill, i found myself stranded, lunchless, on the sea-front with no hope of return to cape town before five p.m. at this crisis i had the luck to come across my friend inspector hooper, cape government railways, in command of an engine and a brake-van chalked for repair. "if you get something to eat," he said, "i'll run you down to glengariff siding till the goods comes along. it's cooler there than here, you see." i got food and drink from the greeks who sell all things at a price, and the engine trotted us a couple of miles up the line to a bay of drifted sand and a plank-platform half buried in sand not a hundred yards from the edge of the surf. moulded dunes, whiter than any snow, rolled far inland up a brown and purple valley of splintered rocks and dry scrub. a crowd of malays hauled at a net beside two blue and green boats on the beach; a picnic party danced and shouted barefoot where a tiny river trickled across the flat, and a circle of dry hills, whose feet were set in sands of silver, locked us in against a seven-coloured sea. at either horn of the bay the railway line, cut just above high water-mark, ran round a shoulder of piled rocks, and disappeared. "you see there's always a breeze here," said hooper, opening the door as the engine left us in the siding on the sand, and the strong south-easter buffeting under elsie's peak dusted sand into our tickey beer. presently he sat down to a file full of spiked documents. he had returned from a long trip up-country, where he had been reporting on damaged rolling- stock, as far away as rhodesia. the weight of the bland wind on my eyelids; the song of it under the car roof, and high up among the rocks; the drift of fine grains chasing each other musically ashore; the tramp of the surf; the voices of the picnickers; the rustle of hooper's file, and the presence of the assured sun, joined with the beer to cast me into magical slumber. the hills of false bay were just dissolving into those of fairyland when i heard footsteps on the sand outside, and the clink of our couplings. "stop that!" snapped hooper, without raising his head from his work. "it's those dirty little malay boys, you see: they're always playing with the trucks...." "don't be hard on 'em. the railway's a general refuge in africa," i replied. "'tis--up-country at any rate. that reminds me," he felt in his waistcoat- pocket, "i've got a curiosity for you from wankies--beyond buluwayo. it's more of a souvenir perhaps than----" "the old hotel's inhabited," cried a voice. "white men from the language. marines to the front! come on, pritch. here's your belmont. wha--i--i!" the last word dragged like a rope as mr. pyecroft ran round to the open door, and stood looking up into my face. behind him an enormous sergeant of marines trailed a stalk of dried seaweed, and dusted the sand nervously from his fingers. "what are you doing here?" i asked. "i thought the _hierophant_ was down the coast?" "we came in last tuesday--from tristan d'acunha--for overhaul, and we shall be in dockyard 'ands for two months, with boiler-seatings." "come and sit down," hooper put away the file. "this is mr. hooper of the railway," i exclaimed, as pyecroft turned to haul up the black-moustached sergeant. "this is sergeant pritchard, of the _agaric_, an old shipmate," said he. "we were strollin' on the beach." the monster blushed and nodded. he filled up one side of the van when he sat down. "and this is my friend, mr. pyecroft," i added to hooper, already busy with the extra beer which my prophetic soul had bought from the greeks. "_moi aussi_" quoth pyecroft, and drew out beneath his coat a labelled quart bottle. "why, it's bass," cried hooper. "it was pritchard," said pyecroft. "they can't resist him." "that's not so," said pritchard, mildly. "not _verbatim_ per'aps, but the look in the eye came to the same thing." "where was it?" i demanded. "just on beyond here--at kalk bay. she was slappin' a rug in a back verandah. pritch hadn't more than brought his batteries to bear, before she stepped indoors an' sent it flyin' over the wall." pyecroft patted the warm bottle. "it was all a mistake," said pritchard. "i shouldn't wonder if she mistook me for maclean. we're about of a size." i had heard householders of muizenburg, st. james's, and kalk bay complain of the difficulty of keeping beer or good servants at the seaside, and i began to see the reason. none the less, it was excellent bass, and i too drank to the health of that large-minded maid. "it's the uniform that fetches 'em, an' they fetch it," said pyecroft. "my simple navy blue is respectable, but not fascinatin'. now pritch in 'is number one rig is always 'purr mary, on the terrace'--_ex officio_ as you might say." "she took me for maclean, i tell you," pritchard insisted. "why--why--to listen to him you wouldn't think that only yesterday----" "pritch," said pyecroft, "be warned in time. if we begin tellin' what we know about each other we'll be turned out of the pub. not to mention aggravated desertion on several occasions----" "never anything more than absence without leaf--i defy you to prove it," said the sergeant hotly. "an' if it comes to that how about vancouver in ' ?" "how about it? who pulled bow in the gig going ashore? who told boy niven...?" "surely you were court martialled for that?" i said. the story of boy niven who lured seven or eight able-bodied seamen and marines into the woods of british columbia used to be a legend of the fleet. "yes, we were court-martialled to rights," said pritchard, "but we should have been tried for murder if boy niven 'adn't been unusually tough. he told us he had an uncle 'oo'd give us land to farm. 'e said he was born at the back o' vancouver island, and _all_ the time the beggar was a balmy barnado orphan!" "_but_ we believed him," said pyecroft. "i did--you did--paterson did--an' 'oo was the marine that married the cocoanut-woman afterwards--him with the mouth?" "oh, jones, spit-kid jones. i 'aven't thought of 'im in years," said pritchard. "yes, spit-kid believed it, an' george anstey and moon. we were very young an' very curious." "_but_ lovin' an' trustful to a degree," said pyecroft. "remember when 'e told us to walk in single file for fear o' bears? 'remember, pye, when 'e 'opped about in that bog full o' ferns an' sniffed an' said 'e could smell the smoke of 'is uncle's farm? an' _all_ the time it was a dirty little out-lyin' uninhabited island. we walked round it in a day, an' come back to our boat lyin' on the beach. a whole day boy niven kept us walkin' in circles lookin' for 'is uncle's farm! he said his uncle was compelled by the law of the land to give us a farm!" "don't get hot, pritch. we believed," said pyecroft. "he'd been readin' books. he only did it to get a run ashore an' have himself talked of. a day an' a night--eight of us--followin' boy niven round an uninhabited island in the vancouver archipelago! then the picket came for us an' a nice pack o' idiots we looked!" "what did you get for it?" hooper asked. "heavy thunder with continuous lightning for two hours. thereafter sleet- squalls, a confused sea, and cold, unfriendly weather till conclusion o' cruise," said pyecroft. "it was only what we expected, but what we felt, an' i assure you, mr. hooper, even a sailor-man has a heart to break, was bein' told that we able seamen an' promisin' marines 'ad misled boy niven. yes, we poor back-to-the-landers was supposed to 'ave misled him! he rounded on us, o' course, an' got off easy." "excep' for what we gave him in the steerin'-flat when we came out o' cells. 'eard anything of 'im lately, pye?" "signal boatswain in the channel fleet, i believe--mr. l.l. niven is." "an' anstey died o' fever in benin," pritchard mused. "what come to moon? spit-kid we know about." "moon--moon! now where did i last...? oh yes, when i was in the _palladium_! i met quigley at buncrana station. he told me moon 'ad run when the _astrild_ sloop was cruising among the south seas three years back. he always showed signs o' bein' a mormonastic beggar. yes, he slipped off quietly an' they 'adn't time to chase 'im round the islands even if the navigatin' officer 'ad been equal to the job." "wasn't he?" said hooper. "not so. accordin' to quigley the _astrild_ spent half her commission rompin' up the beach like a she-turtle, an' the other half hatching turtles' eggs on the top o' numerous reefs. when she was docked at sydney her copper looked like aunt maria's washing on the line--an' her 'midship frames was sprung. the commander swore the dockyard 'ad done it haulin' the pore thing on to the slips. they _do_ do strange things at sea, mr. hooper." "ah! i'm not a tax-payer," said hooper, and opened a fresh bottle. the sergeant seemed to be one who had a difficulty in dropping subjects. "how it all comes back, don't it?" he said. "why moon must 'ave 'ad sixteen years' service before he ran." "it takes 'em at all ages. look at--you know," said pyecroft. "who?" i asked. "a service man within eighteen months of his pension, is the party you're thinkin' of," said pritchard. "a warrant 'oose name begins with a v., isn't it?" "but, in a way o' puttin' it, we can't say that he actually did desert," pyecroft suggested. "oh, no," said pritchard. "it was only permanent absence up country without leaf. that was all." "up country?" said hooper. "did they circulate his description?" "what for?" said pritchard, most impolitely. "because deserters are like columns in the war. they don't move away from the line, you see. i've known a chap caught at salisbury that way tryin' to get to nyassa. they tell me, but o' course i don't know, that they don't ask questions on the nyassa lake flotilla up there. i've heard of a p. and o. quartermaster in full command of an armed launch there." "do you think click 'ud ha' gone up that way?" pritchard asked. "there's no saying. he was sent up to bloemfontein to take over some navy ammunition left in the fort. we know he took it over and saw it into the trucks. then there was no more click--then or thereafter. four months ago it transpired, and thus the _casus belli_ stands at present," said pyecroft. "what were his marks?" said hooper again. "does the railway get a reward for returnin' 'em, then?" said pritchard. "if i did d'you suppose i'd talk about it?" hooper retorted angrily. "you seemed so very interested," said pritchard with equal crispness. "why was he called click?" i asked to tide over an uneasy little break in the conversation. the two men were staring at each other very fixedly. "because of an ammunition hoist carryin' away," said pyecroft. "and it carried away four of 'is teeth--on the lower port side, wasn't it, pritch? the substitutes which he bought weren't screwed home in a manner o' sayin'. when he talked fast they used to lift a little on the bed plate. 'ence, 'click.' they called 'im a superior man which is what we'd call a long, black-'aired, genteely speakin', 'alf-bred beggar on the lower deck." "four false teeth on the lower left jaw," said hooper, his hand in his waistcoat pocket. "what tattoo marks?" "look here," began pritchard, half rising. "i'm sure we're very grateful to you as a gentleman for your 'orspitality, but per'aps we may 'ave made an error in--" i looked at pyecroft for aid, hooper was crimsoning rapidly. "if the fat marine now occupying the foc'sle will kindly bring 'is _status quo_ to an anchor yet once more, we may be able to talk like gentlemen-- not to say friends," said pyecroft. "he regards you, mr. hooper, as a emissary of the law." "i only wish to observe that when a gentleman exhibits such a peculiar, or i should rather say, such a _bloomin'_ curiosity in identification marks as our friend here----" "mr. pritchard," i interposed, "i'll take all the responsibility for mr. hooper." "an' _you_'ll apologise all round," said pyecroft. "you're a rude little man, pritch." "but how was i----" he began, wavering. "i don't know an' i don't care. apologise!" the giant looked round bewildered and took our little hands into his vast grip, one by one. "i was wrong," he said meekly as a sheep. "my suspicions was unfounded. mr. hooper, i apologise." "you did quite right to look out for your own end o' the line," said hooper. "i'd ha' done the same with a gentleman i didn't know, you see. if you don't mind i'd like to hear a little more o' your mr. vickery. it's safe with me, you see." "why did vickery run," i began, but pyecroft's smile made me turn my question to "who was she?" "she kep' a little hotel at hauraki--near auckland," said pyecroft. "by gawd!" roared pritchard, slapping his hand on his leg. "not mrs. bathurst!" pyecroft nodded slowly, and the sergeant called all the powers of darkness to witness his bewilderment. "so far as i could get at it mrs. b. was the lady in question." "but click was married," cried pritchard. "an' 'ad a fifteen year old daughter. 'e's shown me her photograph. settin' that aside, so to say, 'ave you ever found these little things make much difference? because i haven't." "good lord alive an' watchin'!... mrs. bathurst...." then with another roar: "you can say what you please, pye, but you don't make me believe it was any of 'er fault. she wasn't _that!_" "if i was going to say what i please, i'd begin by callin' you a silly ox an' work up to the higher pressures at leisure. i'm trying to say solely what transpired. m'rover, for once you're right. it wasn't her fault." "you couldn't 'aven't made me believe it if it 'ad been," was the answer. such faith in a sergeant of marines interested me greatly. "never mind about that," i cried. "tell me what she was like." "she was a widow," said pyecroft. "left so very young and never re-spliced. she kep' a little hotel for warrants and non-coms close to auckland, an' she always wore black silk, and 'er neck--" "you ask what she was like," pritchard broke in. "let me give you an instance. i was at auckland first in ' , at the end o' the _marroquin's_ commission, an' as i'd been promoted i went up with the others. she used to look after us all, an' she never lost by it--not a penny! 'pay me now,' she'd say, 'or settle later. i know you won't let me suffer. send the money from home if you like,' why, gentlemen all, i tell you i've seen that lady take her own gold watch an' chain off her neck in the bar an' pass it to a bosun 'oo'd come ashore without 'is ticker an' 'ad to catch the last boat. 'i don't know your name,' she said, 'but when you've done with it, you'll find plenty that know me on the front. send it back by one o' them.' and it was worth thirty pounds if it was worth 'arf a crown. the little gold watch, pye, with the blue monogram at the back. but, as i was sayin', in those days she kep' a beer that agreed with me--slits it was called. one way an' another i must 'ave punished a good few bottles of it while we was in the bay--comin' ashore every night or so. chaffin across the bar like, once when we were alone, 'mrs. b.,' i said, 'when next i call i want you to remember that this is my particular--just as you're my particular?' (she'd let you go _that_ far!) 'just as you're my particular,' i said. 'oh, thank you, sergeant pritchard,' she says, an' put 'er hand up to the curl be'ind 'er ear. remember that way she had, pye?" "i think so," said the sailor. "yes, 'thank you, sergeant pritchard,' she says. 'the least i can do is to mark it for you in case you change your mind. there's no great demand for it in the fleet,' she says, 'but to make sure i'll put it at the back o' the shelf,' an' she snipped off a piece of her hair ribbon with that old dolphin cigar cutter on the bar--remember it, pye?--an' she tied a bow round what was left--just four bottles. that was ' --no, ' . in ' i was in the _resiliant_--china station--full commission. in nineteen one, mark you, i was in the _carthusian_, back in auckland bay again. of course i went up to mrs. b.'s with the rest of us to see how things were goin'. they were the same as ever. (remember the big tree on the pavement by the side-bar, pye?) i never said anythin' in special (there was too many of us talkin' to her), but she saw me at once." "that wasn't difficult?" i ventured. "ah, but wait. i was comin' up to the bar, when, 'ada,' she says to her niece, 'get me sergeant pritchard's particular,' and, gentlemen all, i tell you before i could shake 'ands with the lady, there were those four bottles o' slits, with 'er 'air ribbon in a bow round each o' their necks, set down in front o' me, an' as she drew the cork she looked at me under her eyebrows in that blindish way she had o' lookin', an', 'sergeant pritchard,' she says, 'i do 'ope you 'aven't changed your mind about your particulars.' that's the kind o' woman she was--after five years!" "i don't _see_ her yet somehow," said hooper, but with sympathy. "she--she never scrupled to feed a lame duck or set 'er foot on a scorpion at any time of 'er life," pritchard added valiantly. "that don't help me either. my mother's like that for one." the giant heaved inside his uniform and rolled his eyes at the car-roof. said pyecroft suddenly:-- "how many women have you been intimate with all over the world, pritch?" pritchard blushed plum colour to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch neck. "'undreds," said pyecroft. "so've i. how many of 'em can you remember in your own mind, settin' aside the first--an' per'aps the last--_and one more_?" "few, wonderful few, now i tax myself," said sergeant pritchard, relievedly. "an' how many times might you 'ave been at aukland?" "one--two," he began. "why, i can't make it more than three times in ten years. but i can remember every time that i ever saw mrs. b." "so can i--an' i've only been to auckland twice--how she stood an' what she was sayin' an' what she looked like. that's the secret. 'tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. it's just it. some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street, but most of 'em you can live with a month on end, an' next commission you'd be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as one might say." "ah," said hooper. "that's more the idea. i've known just two women of that nature." "an' it was no fault o' theirs?" asked pritchard. "none whatever. i know that!" "an' if a man gets struck with that kind o' woman, mr. hooper?" pritchard went on. "he goes crazy--or just saves himself," was the slow answer. "you've hit it," said the sergeant. "you've seen an' known somethin' in the course o' your life, mr. hooper. i'm lookin' at you!" he set down his bottle. "and how often had vickery seen her?" i asked. "that's the dark an' bloody mystery," pyecroft answered. "i'd never come across him till i come out in the _hierophant_ just now, an' there wasn't any one in the ship who knew much about him. you see, he was what you call a superior man. 'e spoke to me once or twice about auckland and mrs. b. on the voyage out. i called that to mind subsequently. there must 'ave been a good deal between 'em, to my way o' thinkin'. mind you i'm only giving you my _sum_ of it all, because all i know is second-hand so to speak, or rather i should say more than second-'and." "how?" said hooper peremptorily. "you must have seen it or heard it." "yes," said pyecroft. "i used to think seein' and hearin' was the only regulation aids to ascertainin' facts, but as we get older we get more accommodatin'. the cylinders work easier, i suppose.... were you in cape town last december when phyllis's circus came?" "no--up country," said hooper, a little nettled at the change of venue. "i ask because they had a new turn of a scientific nature called 'home and friends for a tickey.'" "oh, you mean the cinematograph--the pictures of prize-fights and steamers. i've seen 'em up country." "biograph or cinematograph was what i was alludin' to. london bridge with the omnibuses--a troopship goin' to the war--marines on parade at portsmouth an' the plymouth express arrivin' at paddin'ton." "seen 'em all. seen 'em all," said hooper impatiently. "we _hierophants_ came in just before christmas week an' leaf was easy." "i think a man gets fed up with cape town quicker than anywhere else on the station. why, even durban's more like nature. we was there for christmas," pritchard put in. "not bein' a devotee of indian _peeris_, as our doctor said to the pusser, i can't exactly say. phyllis's was good enough after musketry practice at mozambique. i couldn't get off the first two or three nights on account of what you might call an imbroglio with our torpedo lieutenant in the submerged flat, where some pride of the west country had sugared up a gyroscope; but i remember vickery went ashore with our carpenter rigdon-- old crocus we called him. as a general rule crocus never left 'is ship unless an' until he was 'oisted out with a winch, but _when_ 'e went 'e would return noddin' like a lily gemmed with dew. we smothered him down below that night, but the things 'e said about vickery as a fittin' playmate for a warrant officer of 'is cubic capacity, before we got him quiet, was what i should call pointed." "i've been with crocus--in the _redoubtable_," said the sergeant. "he's a character if there is one." "next night i went into cape town with dawson and pratt; but just at the door of the circus i came across vickery. 'oh!' he says, 'you're the man i'm looking for. come and sit next me. this way to the shillin' places!' i went astern at once, protestin' because tickey seats better suited my so-called finances. 'come on,' says vickery, 'i'm payin'.' naturally i abandoned pratt and dawson in anticipation o' drinks to match the seats. 'no,' he says, when this was 'inted--'not now. not now. as many as you please afterwards, but i want you sober for the occasion.' i caught 'is face under a lamp just then, an' the appearance of it quite cured me of my thirsts. don't mistake. it didn't frighten me. it made me anxious. i can't tell you what it was like, but that was the effect which it 'ad on me. if you want to know, it reminded me of those things in bottles in those herbalistic shops at plymouth--preserved in spirits of wine. white an' crumply things--previous to birth as you might say." "you 'ave a beastial mind, pye," said the sergeant, relighting his pipe. "perhaps. we were in the front row, an' 'home an' friends' came on early. vickery touched me on the knee when the number went up. 'if you see anything that strikes you,' he says, 'drop me a hint'; then he went on clicking. we saw london bridge an' so forth an' so on, an' it was most interestin'. i'd never seen it before. you 'eard a little dynamo like buzzin', but the pictures were the real thing--alive an' movin'." "i've seen 'em," said hooper. "of course they are taken from the very thing itself--you see." "then the western mail came in to paddin'ton on the big magic lantern sheet. first we saw the platform empty an' the porters standin' by. then the engine come in, head on, an' the women in the front row jumped: she headed so straight. then the doors opened and the passengers came out and the porters got the luggage--just like life. only--only when any one came down too far towards us that was watchin', they walked right out o' the picture, so to speak. i was 'ighly interested, i can tell you. so were all of us. i watched an old man with a rug 'oo'd dropped a book an' was tryin' to pick it up, when quite slowly, from be'ind two porters--carryin' a little reticule an' lookin' from side to side--comes out mrs. bathurst. there was no mistakin' the walk in a hundred thousand. she come forward-- right forward--she looked out straight at us with that blindish look which pritch alluded to. she walked on and on till she melted out of the picture--like--like a shadow jumpin' over a candle, an' as she went i 'eard dawson in the ticky seats be'ind sing out: 'christ! there's mrs. b.!'" hooper swallowed his spittle and leaned forward intently. "vickery touched me on the knee again. he was clickin' his four false teeth with his jaw down like an enteric at the last kick. 'are you sure?' says he. 'sure,' i says, 'didn't you 'ear dawson give tongue? why, it's the woman herself.' 'i was sure before,' he says, 'but i brought you to make sure. will you come again with me to-morrow?' "'willingly,' i says, 'it's like meetin' old friends.' "'yes,' he says, openin' his watch, 'very like. it will be four-and-twenty hours less four minutes before i see her again. come and have a drink,' he says. 'it may amuse you, but it's no sort of earthly use to me.' he went out shaking his head an' stumblin' over people's feet as if he was drunk already. i anticipated a swift drink an' a speedy return, because i wanted to see the performin' elephants. instead o' which vickery began to navigate the town at the rate o' knots, lookin' in at a bar every three minutes approximate greenwich time. i'm not a drinkin' man, though there are those present"--he cocked his unforgetable eye at me--"who may have seen me more or less imbued with the fragrant spirit. none the less, when i drink i like to do it at anchor an' not at an average speed of eighteen knots on the measured mile. there's a tank as you might say at the back o' that big hotel up the hill--what do they call it?" "the molteno reservoir," i suggested, and hooper nodded. "that was his limit o' drift. we walked there an' we come down through the gardens--there was a south-easter blowin'--an' we finished up by the docks. then we bore up the road to salt river, and wherever there was a pub vickery put in sweatin'. he didn't look at what he drunk--he didn't look at the change. he walked an' he drunk an' he perspired in rivers. i understood why old crocus 'ad come back in the condition 'e did, because vickery an' i 'ad two an' a half hours o' this gipsy manoeuvre an' when we got back to the station there wasn't a dry atom on or in me." "did he say anything?" pritchard asked. "the sum total of 'is conversation from . p.m. till . p.m. was 'let's have another.' thus the mornin' an' the evenin' were the first day, as scripture says.... to abbreviate a lengthy narrative, i went into cape town for five consecutive nights with master vickery, and in that time i must 'ave logged about fifty knots over the ground an' taken in two gallon o' all the worst spirits south the equator. the evolution never varied. two shilling seats for us two; five minutes o' the pictures, an' perhaps forty-five seconds o' mrs. b. walking down towards us with that blindish look in her eyes an' the reticule in her hand. then out walk--and drink till train time." "what did you think?" said hooper, his hand fingering his waistcoat pocket. "several things," said pyecroft. "to tell you the truth, i aren't quite done thinkin' about it yet. mad? the man was a dumb lunatic--must 'ave been for months--years p'raps. i know somethin' o' maniacs, as every man in the service must. i've been shipmates with a mad skipper--an' a lunatic number one, but never both together i thank 'eaven. i could give you the names o' three captains now 'oo ought to be in an asylum, but you don't find me interferin' with the mentally afflicted till they begin to lay about 'em with rammers an' winch-handles. only once i crept up a little into the wind towards master vickery. 'i wonder what she's doin' in england,' i says. 'don't it seem to you she's lookin' for somebody?' that was in the gardens again, with the south-easter blowin' as we were makin' our desperate round. 'she's lookin' for me,' he says, stoppin' dead under a lamp an' clickin'. when he wasn't drinkin', in which case all 'is teeth clicked on the glass, 'e was clickin' 'is four false teeth like a marconi ticker. 'yes! lookin' for me,' he said, an' he went on very softly an' as you might say affectionately. '_but?_ he went on, 'in future, mr. pyecroft, i should take it kindly of you if you'd confine your remarks to the drinks set before you. otherwise,' he says, 'with the best will in the world towards you, i may find myself guilty of murder! do you understand?' he says. 'perfectly,' i says, 'but would it at all soothe you to know that in such a case the chances o' your being killed are precisely equivalent to the chances o' me being outed.' 'why, no,' he says, 'i'm almost afraid that 'ud be a temptation,' "then i said--we was right under the lamp by that arch at the end o' the gardens where the trams came round--'assumin' murder was done--or attempted murder--i put it to you that you would still be left so badly crippled, as one might say, that your subsequent capture by the police--to 'oom you would 'ave to explain--would be largely inevitable.' 'that's better,' 'e says, passin' 'is hands over his forehead. 'that's much better, because,' he says, 'do you know, as i am now, pye, i'm not so sure if i could explain anything much.' those were the only particular words i had with 'im in our walks as i remember." "what walks!" said hooper. "oh my soul, what walks!" "they were chronic," said pyecroft gravely, "but i didn't anticipate any danger till the circus left. then i anticipated that, bein' deprived of 'is stimulant, he might react on me, so to say, with a hatchet. consequently, after the final performance an' the ensuin' wet walk, i kep' myself aloof from my superior officer on board in the execution of 'is duty as you might put it. consequently, i was interested when the sentry informs me while i was passin' on my lawful occasions that click had asked to see the captain. as a general rule warrant officers don't dissipate much of the owner's time, but click put in an hour and more be'ind that door. my duties kep' me within eyeshot of it. vickery came out first, an' 'e actually nodded at me an' smiled. this knocked me out o' the boat, because, havin' seen 'is face for five consecutive nights, i didn't anticipate any change there more than a condenser in hell, so to speak. the owner emerged later. his face didn't read off at all, so i fell back on his cox, 'oo'd been eight years with him and knew him better than boat signals. lamson--that was the cox's name--crossed 'is bows once or twice at low speeds an' dropped down to me visibly concerned. 'he's shipped 'is court-martial face,' says lamson. 'some one's goin' to be 'ung. i've never seen that look but once before when they chucked the gun-sights overboard in the _fantastic_.' throwin' gun-sights overboard, mr. hooper, is the equivalent for mutiny in these degenerate days. it's done to attract the notice of the authorities an' the _western mornin' news_--generally by a stoker. naturally, word went round the lower deck an' we had a private over'aul of our little consciences. but, barrin' a shirt which a second- class stoker said 'ad walked into 'is bag from the marines flat by itself, nothin' vital transpired. the owner went about flyin' the signal for 'attend public execution,' so to say, but there was no corpse at the yardarm. 'e lunched on the beach an' 'e returned with 'is regulation harbour-routine face about p. m. thus lamson lost prestige for raising false alarms. the only person 'oo might 'ave connected the epicycloidal gears correctly was one pyecroft, when he was told that mr. vickery would go up country that same evening to take over certain naval ammunition left after the war in bloemfontein fort. no details was ordered to accompany master vickery. he was told off first person singular--as a unit---by himself." the marine whistled penetratingly. "that's what i thought," said pyecroft. "i went ashore with him in the cutter an' 'e asked me to walk through the station. he was clickin' audibly, but otherwise seemed happy-ish. "'you might like to know,' he says, stoppin' just opposite the admiral's front gate, 'that phyllis's circus will be performin' at worcester to-morrow night. so i shall see 'er yet once again. you've been very patient with me,' he says. "'look here, vickery,' i said, 'this thing's come to be just as much as i can stand. consume your own smoke. i don't want to know any more.' "'you!' he said. 'what have you got to complain of?--you've only 'ad to watch. i'm _it_,' he says, 'but that's neither here nor there,' he says. 'i've one thing to say before shakin' 'ands. remember,' 'e says--we were just by the admiral's garden-gate then--'remember, that i am _not_ a murderer, because my lawful wife died in childbed six weeks after i came out. that much at least i am clear of,' 'e says. "'then what have you done that signifies?' i said. 'what's the rest of it?' "'the rest,' 'e says, 'is silence,' an' he shook 'ands and went clickin' into simons town station." "did he stop to see mrs. bathurst at worcester?" i asked. "it's not known. he reported at bloemfontein, saw the ammunition into the trucks, and then 'e disappeared. went out--deserted, if you care to put it so--within eighteen months of his pension, an' if what 'e said about 'is wife was true he was a free man as 'e then stood. how do you read it off?" "poor devil!" said hooper. "to see her that way every night! i wonder what it was." "i've made my 'ead ache in that direction many a long night." "but i'll swear mrs. b. 'ad no 'and in it," said the sergeant unshaken. "no. whatever the wrong or deceit was, he did it, i'm sure o' that. i 'ad to look at 'is face for five consecutive nights. i'm not so fond o' navigatin' about cape town with a south-easter blowin' these days. i can hear those teeth click, so to say." "ah, those teeth," said hooper, and his hand went to his waistcoat pocket once more. "permanent things false teeth are. you read about 'em in all the murder trials." "what d'you suppose the captain knew--or did?" i asked. "i never turned my searchlight that way," pyecroft answered unblushingly. we all reflected together, and drummed on empty beer bottles as the picnic-party, sunburned, wet, and sandy, passed our door singing "the honeysuckle and the bee." "pretty girl under that kapje," said pyecroft. "they never circulated his description?" said pritchard. "i was askin' you before these gentlemen came," said hooper to me, "whether you knew wankies--on the way to the zambesi--beyond buluwayo?" "would he pass there--tryin' to get to that lake what's 'is name?" said pritchard. hooper shook his head and went on: "there's a curious bit o' line there, you see. it runs through solid teak forest--a sort o' mahogany really-- seventy-two miles without a curve. i've had a train derailed there twenty- three times in forty miles. i was up there a month ago relievin' a sick inspector, you see. he told me to look out for a couple of tramps in the teak." "two?" pyecroft said. "i don't envy that other man if----" "we get heaps of tramps up there since the war. the inspector told me i'd find 'em at m'bindwe siding waiting to go north. he'd given 'em some grub and quinine, you see. i went up on a construction train. i looked out for 'em. i saw them miles ahead along the straight, waiting in the teak. one of 'em was standin' up by the dead-end of tke siding an' the other was squattin' down lookin' up at 'im, you see." "what did you do for 'em?" said pritchard. "there wasn't much i could do, except bury 'em. there'd been a bit of a thunderstorm in the teak, you see, and they were both stone dead and as black as charcoal. that's what they really were, you see--charcoal. they fell to bits when we tried to shift 'em. the man who was standin' up had the false teeth. i saw 'em shinin' against the black. fell to bits he did too, like his mate squatting down an' watchin' him, both of 'em all wet in the rain. both burned to charcoal, you see. and--that's what made me ask about marks just now--the false-toother was tattooed on the arms and chest--a crown and foul anchor with m.v. above." "i've seen that," said pyecroft quickly. "it was so." "but if he was all charcoal-like?" said pritchard, shuddering. "you know how writing shows up white on a burned letter? well, it was like that, you see. we buried 'em in the teak and i kept... but he was a friend of you two gentlemen, you see." mr. hooper brought his hand away from his waistcoat-pocket--empty. pritchard covered his face with his hands for a moment, like a child shutting out an ugliness. "and to think of her at hauraki!" he murmured--"with 'er 'air-ribbon on my beer. 'ada,' she said to her niece... oh, my gawd!"... "on a summer afternoon, when the honeysuckle blooms, and all nature seems at rest, underneath the bower, 'mid the perfume of the flower, sat a maiden with the one she loves the best----" sang the picnic-party waiting for their train at glengariff. "well, i don't know how you feel about it," said pyecroft, "but 'avin' seen 'is face for five consecutive nights on end, i'm inclined to finish what's left of the beer an' thank gawd he's dead!" below the mill dam "our fathers also" by--they are by with mirth and tears, wit or the works of desire-- cushioned about on the kindly years between the wall and the fire. the grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked-- standeth no more to glean; for the gates of love and learning locked when they went out between. all lore our lady venus bares signalled it was or told by the dear lips long given to theirs and longer to the mould. all profit, all device, all truth written it was or said by the mighty men of their mighty youth. which is mighty being dead. the film that floats before their eyes the temple's veil they call; and the dust that on the shewbread lies is holy over all. warn them of seas that slip our yoke of slow conspiring stars-- the ancient front of things unbroke but heavy with new wars? by--they are by with mirth and tears. wit or the waste of desire-- cushioned about on the kindly years between the wall and the fire. below the mill dam "book--book--domesday book!" they were letting in the water for the evening stint at robert's mill, and the wooden wheel where lived the spirit of the mill settled to its nine hundred year old song: "here azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. _nun-nun-nunquam geldavit_. here reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one plough--and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten shillings--_unum molinum_--one mill. reinbert's mill--robert's mill. then and afterwards and now--_tunc et post et modo_--robert's mill. book--book--domesday book!" "i confess," said the black rat on the crossbeam, luxuriously trimming his whiskers--"i confess i am not above appreciating my position and all it means." he was a genuine old english black rat, a breed which, report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety. "appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy," said the grey cat, coiled up on a piece of sacking. "but i know what you mean," she added. "to sit by right at the heart of things--eh?" "yes," said the black rat, as the old mill shook and the heavy stones thuttered on the grist. "to possess--er--all this environment as an integral part of one's daily life must insensibly of course ... you see?" "i feel," said the grey cat. "indeed, if _we_ are not saturated with the spirit of the mill, who should be?" "book--book--domesday book!" the wheel, set to his work, was running off the tenure of the whole rape, for he knew domesday book backwards and forwards: "_in ferle tenuit abbatia de wiltuna unam hidam et unam virgam et dimidiam. nunquam geldavit_. and agemond, a freeman, has half a hide and one rod. i remember agemond well. charmin' fellow--friend of mine. he married a norman girl in the days when we rather looked down on the normans as upstarts. an' agemond's dead? so he is. eh, dearie me! dearie me! i remember the wolves howling outside his door in the big frost of ten fifty-nine.... _essewelde hundredum nunquam geldum reddidit_. book! book! domesday book!" "after all," the grey cat continued, "atmospere is life. it is the influences under which we live that count in the long run. now, outside"-- she cocked one ear towards the half-opened door--"there is an absurd convention that rats and cats are, i won't go so far as to say natural enemies, but opposed forces. some such ruling may be crudely effective--i don't for a minute presume to set up my standards as final--among the ditches; but from the larger point of view that one gains by living at the heart of things, it seems for a rule of life a little overstrained. why, because some of your associates have, shall i say, liberal views on the ultimate destination of a sack of--er--middlings don't they call them----" "something of that sort," said the black rat, a most sharp and sweet- toothed judge of everything ground in the mill for the last three years. "thanks--middlings be it. _why_, as i was saying, must i disarrange my fur and my digestion to chase you round the dusty arena whenever we happen to meet?" "as little reason," said the black rat, "as there is for me, who, i trust, am a person of ordinarily decent instincts, to wait till you have gone on a round of calls, and then to assassinate your very charming children." "exactly! it has its humorous side though." the grey cat yawned. "the miller seems afflicted by it. he shouted large and vague threats to my address, last night at tea, that he wasn't going to keep cats who 'caught no mice.' those were his words. i remember the grammar sticking in my throat like a herring-bone." "and what did you do?" "what does one do when a barbarian utters? one ceases to utter and removes. i removed--towards his pantry. it was a _riposte_ he might appreciate." "really those people grow absolutely insufferable," said the black rat. "there is a local ruffian who answers to the name of mangles--a builder-- who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of the wheel for the last fortnight. he has constructed cubical horrors in red brick where those deliciously picturesque pigstyes used to stand. have you noticed?" "there has been much misdirected activity of late among the humans. they jabber inordinately. i haven't yet been able to arrive at their reason for existence." the cat yawned. "a couple of them came in here last week with wires, and fixed them all about the walls. wires protected by some abominable composition, ending in iron brackets with glass bulbs. utterly useless for any purpose and artistically absolutely hideous. what do they mean?" "aaah! i have known _four_-and-twenty leaders of revolt in faenza," said the cat, who kept good company with the boarders spending a summer at the mill farm. "it means nothing except that humans occasionally bring their dogs with them. i object to dogs in all forms." "shouldn't object to dogs," said the wheel sleepily.... "the abbot of wilton kept the best pack in the county. he enclosed all the harryngton woods to sturt common. aluric, a freeman, was dispossessed of his holding. they tried the case at lewes, but he got no change out of william de warrenne on the bench. william de warrenne fined aluric eight and fourpence for treason, and the abbot of wilton excommunicated him for blasphemy. aluric was no sportsman. then the abbot's brother married ... i've forgotten her name, but she was a charmin' little woman. the lady philippa was her daughter. that was after the barony was conferred. she rode devilish straight to hounds. they were a bit throatier than we breed now, but a good pack: one of the best. the abbot kept 'em in splendid shape. now, who was the woman the abbot kept? book--book! i shall have to go right back to domesday and work up the centuries: _modo per omnia reddit burgum tunc--tunc--tunc_! was it _burgum_ or _hundredum_? i shall remember in a minute. there's no hurry." he paused as he turned over silvered with showering drops. "this won't do," said the waters in the sluice. "keep moving." the wheel swung forward; the waters roared on the buckets and dropped down to the darkness below. "noisier than usual," said the black rat. "it must have been raining up the valley." "floods maybe," said the wheel dreamily. "it isn't the proper season, but they can come without warning. i shall never forget the big one--when the miller went to sleep and forgot to open the hatches. more than two hundred years ago it was, but i recall it distinctly. most unsettling." "we lifted that wheel off his bearings," cried the waters. "we said, 'take away that bauble!' and in the morning he was five mile down the valley-- hung up in a tree." "vulgar!" said the cat. "but i am sure he never lost his dignity." "we don't know. he looked like the ace of diamonds when we had finished with him.... move on there! keep on moving. over! get over!" "and why on this day more than any other," said the wheel statelily. "i am not aware that my department requires the stimulus of external pressure to keep it up to its duties. i trust i have the elementary instincts of a gentleman." "maybe," the waters answered together, leaping down on the buckets. "we only know that you are very stiff on your bearings. over, get over!" the wheel creaked and groaned. there was certainly greater pressure upon him that he had ever felt, and his revolutions had increased from six and three-quarters to eight and a third per minute. but the uproar between the narrow, weed-hung walls annoyed the grey cat. "isn't it almost time," she said plaintively, "that the person who is paid to understand these things shuts off those vehement drippings with that screw-thing on the top of that box-thing." "they'll be shut off at eight o'clock as usual," said rat; "then we can go to dinner." "but we shan't be shut off till ever so late," said the waters gaily. "we shall keep it up all night." "the ineradicable offensiveness of youth is partially compensated for by its eternal hopefulness," said the cat. "our dam is not, i am glad to say, designed to furnish water for more than four hours at a time. reserve is life." "thank goodness!" said the black rat. "then they can return to their native ditches." "ditches!" cried the waters; "raven's gill brook is no ditch. it is almost navigable, and _we_ come from there away." they slid over solid and compact till the wheel thudded under their weight. "raven's gill brook," said the rat. "_i_ never heard of raven's gill." "we are the waters of harpenden brook--down from under callton rise. phew! how the race stinks compared with the heather country." another five foot of water flung itself against the wheel, broke, roared, gurgled, and was gone. "indeed," said the grey cat, "i am sorry to tell you that raven's gill brook is cut off from this valley by an absolutely impassable range of mountains, and callton rise is more than nine miles away. it belongs to another system entirely." "ah yes," said the rat, grinning, "but we forget that, for the young, water always runs uphill." "oh, hopeless! hopeless! hopeless!" cried the waters, descending open- palmed upon the wheel "there is nothing between here and raven's gill brook that a hundred yards of channelling and a few square feet of concrete could not remove; and hasn't removed!" "and harpenden brook is north of raven's gill and runs into raven's gill at the foot of callton rise, where ilex trees are, and _we_ come from there!" these were the glassy, clear waters of the high chalk. "and batten's ponds, that are fed by springs, have been led through trott's wood, taking the spare water from the old witches' spring under churt haw, and we--we--_we_ are their combined waters!" those were the waters from the upland bogs and moors--a porter-coloured, dusky, and foam- flecked flood. "it's all very interesting," purred the cat to the sliding waters, "and i have no doubt that trott's woods and bott's woods are tremendously important places; but if you could manage to do your work--whose value i don't in the least dispute--a little more soberly, i, for one, should be grateful." "book--book--book--book--book--domesday book!" the urged wheel was fairly clattering now: "in burgelstaltone a monk holds of earl godwin one hide and a half with eight villeins. there is a church--and a monk.... i remember that monk. blessed if he could rattle his rosary off any quicker than i am doing now ... and wood for seven hogs. i must be running twelve to the minute ... almost as fast as steam. damnable invention, steam! ... surely it's time we went to dinner or prayers--or something. can't keep up this pressure, day in and day out, and not feel it. i don't mind for myself, of course. _noblesse oblige_, you know. i'm only thinking of the upper and the nether millstones. they came out of the common rock. they can't be expected to----" "don't worry on our account, please," said the millstones huskily. "so long as you supply the power we'll supply the weight and the bite." "isn't it a trifle blasphemous, though, to work you in this way?" grunted the wheel. "i seem to remember something about the mills of god grinding 'slowly.' _slowly_ was the word!" "but we are not the mills of god. we're only the upper and the nether millstones. we have received no instructions to be anything else. we are actuated by power transmitted through you." "ah, but let us be merciful as we are strong. think of all the beautiful little plants that grow on my woodwork. there are five varieties of rare moss within less than one square yard--and all these delicate jewels of nature are being grievously knocked about by this excessive rush of the water." "umph!" growled the millstones. "what with your religious scruples and your taste for botany we'd hardly know you for the wheel that put the carter's son under last autumn. you never worried about _him_!" "he ought to have known better." "so ought your jewels of nature. tell 'em to grow where it's safe." "how a purely mercantile life debases and brutalises!" said the cat to the rat. "they were such beautiful little plants too," said the rat tenderly. "maiden's-tongue and hart's-hair fern trellising all over the wall just as they do on the sides of churches in the downs. think what a joy the sight of them must be to our sturdy peasants pulling hay!" "golly!" said the millstones. "there's nothing like coming to the heart of things for information"; and they returned to the song that all english water-mills have sung from time beyond telling: there was a jovial miller once lived on the river dee, and this the burden of his song for ever used to be. then, as fresh grist poured in and dulled the note: i care for nobody--no not i, and nobody cares for me. "even these stones have absorbed something of our atmosphere," said the grey cat. "nine-tenths of the trouble in this world comes from lack of detachment." "one of your people died from forgetting that, didn't she?" said the rat. "one only. the example has sufficed us for generations." "ah! but what happened to don't care?" the waters demanded. "brutal riding to death of the casual analogy is another mark of provincialism!" the grey cat raised her tufted chin. "i am going to sleep. with my social obligations i must snatch rest when i can; but, as our old friend here says, _noblesse oblige_.... pity me! three functions to-night in the village, and a barn dance across the valley!" "there's no chance, i suppose, of your looking in on the loft about two. some of our young people are going to amuse themselves with a new sacque- dance--best white flour only," said the black rat. "i believe i am officially supposed not to countenance that sort of thing, but youth is youth. ... by the way, the humans set my milk-bowl in the loft these days; i hope your youngsters respect it." "my dear lady," said the black rat, bowing, "you grieve me. you hurt me inexpressibly. after all these years, too!" "a general crush is so mixed--highways and hedges--all that sort of thing --and no one can answer for one's best friends. _i_ never try. so long as mine are amusin' and in full voice, and can hold their own at a tile- party, i'm as catholic as these mixed waters in the dam here!" "we aren't mixed. we _have_ mixed. we are one now," said the waters sulkily. "still uttering?" said the cat. "never mind, here's the miller coming to shut you off. ye-es, i have known--_four_--or five is it?--and twenty leaders of revolt in faenza.... a little more babble in the dam, a little more noise in the sluice, a little extra splashing on the wheel, and then----" "they will find that nothing has occurred," said the black rat. "the old things persist and survive and are recognised--our old friend here first of all. by the way," he turned toward the wheel, "i believe we have to congratulate you on your latest honour." "profoundly well deserved--even if he had never--as he has---laboured strenuously through a long life for the amelioration of millkind," said the cat, who belonged to many tile and outhouse committees. "doubly deserved, i may say, for the silent and dignified rebuke his existence offers to the clattering, fidgety-footed demands of--er--some people. what form did the honour take?" "it was," said the wheel bashfully, "a machine-moulded pinion." "pinions! oh, how heavenly!" the black rat sighed. "i never see a bat without wishing for wings." "not exactly that sort of pinion," said the wheel, "but a really ornate circle of toothed iron wheels. absurd, of course, but gratifying. mr. mangles and an associate herald invested me with it personally--on my left rim--the side that you can't see from the mill. i hadn't meant to say anything about it--or the new steel straps round my axles--bright red, you know--to be worn on all occasions--but, without false modesty, i assure you that the recognition cheered me not a little." "how intensely gratifying!" said the black rat. "i must really steal an hour between lights some day and see what they are doing on your left side." "by the way, have you any light on this recent activity of mr. mangles?" the grey cat asked. "he seems to be building small houses on the far side of the tail-race. believe me, i don't ask from any vulgar curiosity." "it affects our order," said the black rat simply but firmly. "thank you," said the wheel. "let me see if i can tabulate it properly. nothing like system in accounts of all kinds. book! book! book! on the side of the wheel towards the hundred of burgelstaltone, where till now was a stye of three hogs, mangles, a freeman, with four villeins, and two carts of two thousand bricks, has a new small house of five yards and a half, and one roof of iron and a floor of cement. then, now, and afterwards beer in large tankards. and felden, a stranger, with three villeins and one very great cart, deposits on it one engine of iron and brass and a small iron mill of four feet, and a broad strap of leather. and mangles, the builder, with two villeins, constructs the floor for the same, and a floor of new brick with wires for the small mill. there are there also chalices filled with iron and water, in number fifty-seven. the whole is valued at one hundred and seventy-four pounds.... i'm sorry i can't make myself clearer, but you can see for yourself." "amazingly lucid," said the cat. she was the more to be admired because the language of domesday book is not, perhaps, the clearest medium wherein to describe a small but complete electric-light installation, deriving its power from a water-wheel by means of cogs and gearing. "see for yourself--by all means, see for yourself," said the waters, spluttering and choking with mirth. "upon my word," said the black rat furiously, "i may be at fault, but i wholly fail to perceive where these offensive eavesdroppers--er--come in. we were discussing a matter that solely affected our order." suddenly they heard, as they had heard many times before, the miller shutting off the water. to the rattle and rumble of the labouring stones succeeded thick silence, punctuated with little drops from the stayed wheel. then some water-bird in the dam fluttered her wings as she slid to her nest, and the plop of a water-rat sounded like the fall of a log in the water. "it is all over--it always is all over at just this time. listen, the miller is going to bed--as usual. nothing has occurred," said the cat. something creaked in the house where the pig-styes had stood, as metal engaged on metal with a clink and a burr. "shall i turn her on?" cried the miller. "ay," said the voice from the dynamo-house. "a human in mangles' new house!" the rat squeaked. "what of it?" said the grey cat. "even supposing mr. mangles' cats'-meat- coloured hovel ululated with humans, can't you see for yourself--that--?" there was a solid crash of released waters leaping upon the wheel more furiously than ever, a grinding of cogs, a hum like the hum of a hornet, and then the unvisited darkness of the old mill was scattered by intolerable white light. it threw up every cobweb, every burl and knot in the beams and the floor; till the shadows behind the flakes of rough plaster on the wall lay clear-cut as shadows of mountains on the photographed moon. "see! see! see!" hissed the waters in full flood. "yes, see for yourselves. nothing has occurred. can't you see?" the rat, amazed, had fallen from his foothold and lay half-stunned on the floor. the cat, following her instinct, leaped nigh to the ceiling, and with flattened ears and bared teeth backed in a corner ready to fight whatever terror might be loosed on her. but nothing happened. through the long aching minutes nothing whatever happened, and her wire-brush tail returned slowly to its proper shape. "whatever it is," she said at last, "it's overdone. they can never keep it up, you know." "much you know," said the waters. "over you go, old man. you can take the full head of us now. those new steel axle-straps of yours can stand anything. come along, raven's gill, harpenden, callton rise, batten's ponds, witches' spring, all together! let's show these gentlemen how to work!" "but--but--i thought it was a decoration. why--why--why--it only means more work for _me_!" "exactly. you're to supply about sixty eight-candle lights when required. but they won't be all in use at once----" "ah! i thought as much," said the cat. "the reaction is bound to come." "_and_" said the waters, "you will do the ordinary work of the mill as well." "impossible!" the old wheel quivered as it drove. "aluric never did it-- nor azor, nor reinbert. not even william de warrenne or the papal legate. there's no precedent for it. i tell you there's no precedent for working a wheel like this." "wait a while! we're making one as fast as we can. aluric and co. are dead. so's the papal legate. you've no notion how dead they are, but we're here--the waters of five separate systems. we're just as interesting as domesday book. would you like to hear about the land-tenure in trott's wood? it's squat-right, chiefly." the mocking waters leaped one over the other, chuckling and chattering profanely. "in that hundred jenkins, a tinker, with one dog--_unis canis_--holds, by the grace of god and a habit he has of working hard, _unam hidam_--a large potato patch. charmin' fellow, jenkins. friend of ours. now, who the dooce did jenkins keep? ... in the hundred of callton is one charcoal-burner _irreligiosissimus homo_--a bit of a rip--but a thorough sportsman. _ibi est ecclesia. non multum_. not much of a church, _quia_ because, _episcopus_ the vicar irritated the nonconformists _tunc et post et modo_ --then and afterwards and now--until they built a cut-stone congregational chapel with red brick facings that did not return itself--_defendebat se_ --at four thousand pounds." "charcoal-burners, vicars, schismatics, and red brick facings," groaned the wheel. "but this is sheer blasphemy. what waters have they let in upon me?" "floods from the gutters. faugh, this light is positively sickening!" said the cat, rearranging her fur. "we come down from the clouds or up from the springs, exactly like all other waters everywhere. is that what's surprising you?" sang the waters. "of course not. i know my work if you don't. what i complain of is your lack of reverence and repose. you've no instinct of deference towards your betters--your heartless parody of the sacred volume (the wheel meant domesday book)--proves it." "our betters?" said the waters most solemnly. "what is there in all this dammed race that hasn't come down from the clouds, or----" "spare me that talk, please," the wheel persisted. "you'd _never_ understand. it's the tone--your tone that we object to." "yes. it's your tone," said the black rat, picking himself up limb by limb. "if you thought a trifle more about the work you're supposed to do, and a trifle less about your precious feelings, you'd render a little more duty in return for the power vested in you--we mean wasted on you," the waters replied. "i have been some hundreds of years laboriously acquiring the knowledge which you see fit to challenge so light-heartedly," the wheel jarred. "challenge him! challenge him!" clamoured the little waves riddling down through the tail-race. "as well now as later. take him up!" the main mass of the waters plunging on the wheel shocked that well-bolted structure almost into box-lids by saying: "very good. tell us what you suppose yourself to be doing at the present moment." "waiving the offensive form of your question, i answer, purely as a matter of courtesy, that i am engaged in the trituration of farinaceous substances whose ultimate destination it would be a breach of the trust reposed in me to reveal." "fiddle!" said the waters. "we knew it all along! the first direct question shows his ignorance of his own job. listen, old thing. thanks to us, you are now actuating a machine of whose construction you know nothing, that that machine may, over wires of whose ramifications you are, by your very position, profoundly ignorant, deliver a power which you can never realise, to localities beyond the extreme limits of your mental horizon, with the object of producing phenomena which in your wildest dreams (if you ever dream) you could never comprehend. is that clear, or would you like it all in words of four syllables?" "your assumptions are deliciously sweeping, but may i point out that a decent and--the dear old abbot of wilton would have put it in his resonant monkish latin much better than i can--a scholarly reserve, does not necessarily connote blank vacuity of mind on all subjects." "ah, the dear old abbot of wilton," said the rat sympathetically, as one nursed in that bosom. "charmin' fellow--thorough scholar and gentleman. such a pity!" "oh, sacred fountains!" the waters were fairly boiling. "he goes out of his way to expose his ignorance by triple bucketfuls. he creaks to high heaven that he is hopelessly behind the common order of things! he invites the streams of five watersheds to witness his su-su-su-pernal incompetence, and then he talks as though there were untold reserves of knowledge behind him that he is too modest to bring forward. for a bland, circular, absolutely sincere impostor, you're a miracle, o wheel!" "i do not pretend to be anything more than an integral portion of an accepted and not altogether mushroom institution." "quite so," said the waters. "then go round--hard----" "to what end?" asked the wheel. "till a big box of tanks in your house begins to fizz and fume--gassing is the proper word." "it would be," said the cat, sniffing. "that will show that your accumulators are full. when the accumulators are exhausted, and the lights burn badly, you will find us whacking you round and round again." "the end of life as decreed by mangles and his creatures is to go whacking round and round for ever," said the cat. "in order," the rat said, "that you may throw raw and unnecessary illumination upon all the unloveliness in the world. unloveliness which we shall--er--have always with us. at the same time you will riotously neglect the so-called little but vital graces that make up life." "yes, life," said the cat, "with its dim delicious half-tones and veiled indeterminate distances. its surprisals, escapes, encounters, and dizzying leaps--its full-throated choruses in honour of the morning star, and its melting reveries beneath the sun-warmed wall." "oh, you can go on the tiles, pussalina, just the same as usual," said the laughing waters. "_we_ sha'n't interfere with you." "on the tiles, forsooth!" hissed the cat. "well, that's what it amounts to," persisted the waters. "we see a good deal of the minor graces of life on our way down to our job." "and--but i fear i speak to deaf ears--do they never impress you?" said the wheel. "enormously," said the waters. "we have already learned six refined synonyms for loafing." "but (here again i feel as though preaching in the wilderness) it never occurs to you that there may exist some small difference between the wholly animal--ah--rumination of bovine minds and the discerning, well- apportioned leisure of the finer type of intellect?" "oh, yes. the bovine mind goes to sleep under a hedge and makes no bones about it when it's shouted at. we've seen _that_--in haying-time--all along the meadows. the finer type is wide awake enough to fudge up excuses for shirking, and mean enough to get stuffy when its excuses aren't accepted. turn over!" "but, my good people, no gentleman gets stuffy as you call it. a certain proper pride, to put it no higher, forbids---" "nothing that he wants to do if he really wants to do it. get along! what are you giving us? d'you suppose we've scoured half heaven in the clouds, and half earth in the mists, to be taken in at this time of the day by a bone-idle, old hand-quern of your type?" "it is not for me to bandy personalities with you. i can only say that i simply decline to accept the situation." "decline away. it doesn't make any odds. they'll probably put in a turbine if you decline too much." "what's a turbine?" said the wheel, quickly. "a little thing you don't see, that performs surprising revolutions. but you won't decline. you'll hang on to your two nice red-strapped axles and your new machine-moulded pinions like--a--like a leech on a lily stem! there's centuries of work in your old bones if you'd only apply yourself to it; and, mechanically, an overshot wheel with this head of water is about as efficient as a turbine." "so in future i am to be considered mechanically? i have been painted by at least five royal academicians." "oh, you can be painted by five hundred when you aren't at work, of course. but while you are at work you'll work. you won't half-stop and think and talk about rare plants and dicky-birds and farinaceous fiduciary interests. you'll continue to revolve, and this new head of water will see that you do so continue." "it is a matter on which it would be exceedingly ill-advised to form a hasty or a premature conclusion. i will give it my most careful consideration," said the wheel. "please do," said the waters gravely. "hullo! here's the miller again." the cat coiled herself in a picturesque attitude on the softest corner of a sack, and the rat without haste, yet certainly without rest, slipped behind the sacking as though an appointment had just occurred to him. in the doorway, with the young engineer, stood the miller grinning amazedly. "well--well--well! 'tis true-ly won'erful. an' what a power o' dirt! it come over me now looking at these lights, that i've never rightly seen my own mill before. she needs a lot bein' done to her." "ah! i suppose one must make oneself moderately agreeable to the baser sort. they have their uses. this thing controls the dairy." the cat, pincing on her toes, came forward and rubbed her head against the miller's knee. "ay, you pretty puss," he said, stooping. "you're as big a cheat as the rest of 'em that catch no mice about me. a won'erful smooth-skinned, rough-tongued cheat you be. i've more than half a mind----" "she does her work well," said the engineer, pointing to where the rat's beady eyes showed behind the sacking. "cats and rats livin' together-- see?" "too much they do--too long they've done. i'm sick and tired of it. go and take a swim and larn to find your own vittles honest when you come out, pussy." "my word!" said the waters, as a sprawling cat landed all unannounced in the centre of the tail-race. "is that you, mewsalina? you seem to have been quarrelling with your best friend. get over to the left. it's shallowest there. up on that alder-root with all four paws. good-night!" "you'll never get any they rats," said the miller, as the young engineer struck wrathfully with his stick at the sacking. "they're not the common sort. they're the old black english sort." "are they, by jove? i must catch one to stuff, some day." * * * * * six months later, in the chill of a january afternoon, they were letting in the waters as usual. "come along! it's both gears this evening," said the wheel, kicking joyously in the first rush of the icy stream. "there's a heavy load of grist just in from lamber's wood. eleven miles it came in an hour and a half in our new motor-lorry, and the miller's rigged five new five-candle lights in his cow-stables. i'm feeding 'em to-night. there's a cow due to calve. oh, while i think of it, what's the news from callton rise?" "the waters are finding their level as usual--but why do you ask?" said the deep outpouring waters. "because mangles and felden and the miller are talking of increasing the plant here and running a saw-mill by electricity. i was wondering whether we----" "i beg your pardon," said the waters chuckling. "_what_ did you say?" "whether _we_, of course, had power enough for the job. it will be a biggish contract. there's all harpenden brook to be considered and batten's ponds as well, and witches' fountain, and the churt's hawd system. "we've power enough for anything in the world," said the waters. "the only question is whether you could stand the strain if we came down on you full head." "of course i can," said the wheel. "mangles is going to turn me into a set of turbines--beauties." "oh--er--i suppose it's the frost that has made us a little thick-headed, but to whom are we talking?" asked the amazed waters. "to me--the spirit of the mill, of course." "not to the old wheel, then?" "i happen to be living in the old wheel just at present. when the turbines are installed i shall go and live in them. what earthly difference does it make?" "absolutely none," said the waters, "in the earth or in the waters under the earth. but we thought turbines didn't appeal to you." "not like turbines? me? my dear fellows, turbines are good for fifteen hundred revolutions a minute--and with our power we can drive 'em at full speed. why, there's nothing we couldn't grind or saw or illuminate or heat with a set of turbines! that's to say if all the five watersheds are agreeable." "oh, we've been agreeable for ever so long." "then why didn't you tell me?" "don't know. suppose it slipped our memory." the waters were holding themselves in for fear of bursting with mirth. "how careless of you! you should keep abreast of the age, my dear fellows. we might have settled it long ago, if you'd only spoken. yes, four good turbines and a neat brick penstock--eh? this old wheel's absurdly out of date." "well," said the cat, who after a little proud seclusion had returned to her place impenitent as ever. "praised be pasht and the old gods, that whatever may have happened _i_, at least, have preserved the spirit of the mill!" she looked round as expecting her faithful ally, the black rat; but that very week the engineer had caught and stuffed him, and had put him in a glass case; he being a genuine old english black rat. that breed, the report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety. [illustration: came the whisper, came the vision. came the whisper, came the vision, came the power with the need, till the soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.] a song of the english by rudyard kipling _illustrated by_ w. heath robinson hodder & stoughton, london _this edition of 'a song of the english' is reprinted from 'the seven seas,' and the publishers desire to acknowledge the courtesy of messrs. methuen & co. in consenting to its issue as a separate volume_ a song of the english _fair is our lot--o goodly is our heritage! (humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!) for the lord our god most high he hath made the deep as dry, he hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth!_ _yea, though we sinned--and our rulers went from righteousness-- deep in all dishonour though we stained our garments' hem. oh be ye not dismayed, though we stumbled and we strayed, we were led by evil counsellors--the lord shall deal with them!_ _hold ye the faith--the faith our fathers sealèd us; whoring not with visions--overwise and over-stale. except ye pay the lord single heart and single sword, of your children in their bondage shall he ask them treble-tale!_ _keep ye the law--be swift in all obedience-- clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. make ye sure to each his own that he reap where he hath sown; by the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the lord!_ * * * * * _hear now a song--a song of broken interludes-- a song of little cunning; of a singer nothing worth. through the naked words and mean may ye see the truth between as the singer knew and touched it in the ends of all the earth!_ the coastwise lights our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees; our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas. from reef and rock and skerry--over headland ness, and voe-- the coastwise lights of england watch the ships of england go! through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors; through the yelling channel tempest when the siren hoots and roars-- by day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail-- as the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail. we bridge across the dark and bid the helmsman have a care, the flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer; from our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains the lover from the sea-rim drawn--his love in english lanes. we greet the clippers wing-and-wing that race the southern wool; we warn the crawling cargo-tanks of bremen, leith, and hull; to each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea-- the white wall-sided warships or the whalers of dundee! [illustration: the coastwise lights of england. come up, come in from eastward, from the guardports of the morn! beat up, beat in from southerly, o gipsies of the horn! swift shuttles of an empire's loom that weave us, main to main, the coastwise lights of england give you welcome back again!] come up, come in from eastward, from the guard-ports of the morn! beat up, beat in from southerly, o gipsies of the horn! swift shuttles of an empire's loom that weave us, main to main, the coastwise lights of england give you welcome back again! go, get you gone up-channel with the sea-crust on your plates; go, get you into london with the burden of your freights! haste, for they talk of empire there, and say, if any seek, the lights of england sent you and by silence shall ye speak! the song of the dead [illustration: the song of the dead. follow after--we are waiting, by the trails that we lost, for the sounds of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.] _hear now the song of the dead--in the north by the torn berg-edges-- they that look still to the pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges. song of the dead in the south--in the sun by their skeleton horses, where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses._ _song of the dead in the east--in the heat-rotted jungle hollows, where the dog-ape barks in the kloof--in the brake of the buffalo-wallows. song of the dead in the west--in the barrens, the waste that betrayed them, where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the grave-mound they made them; hear now the song of the dead!_ i we were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; we yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down. came the whisper, came the vision, came the power with the need, till the soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. as the deer breaks--as the steer breaks--from the herd where they graze, in the faith of little children we went on our ways. then the wood failed--then the food failed--then the last water dried-- in the faith of little children we lay down and died. on the sand-drift--on the veldt-side--in the fern-scrub we lay, that our sons might follow after by the bones on the way. follow after--follow after! we have watered the root, and the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit! follow after--we are waiting, by the trails that we lost, for the sounds of many footsteps, for the tread of a host. follow after--follow after--for the harvest is sown: by the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own! [illustration: follow after. follow after--follow after--for the harvest is sown: by the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!] _when drake went down to the horn and england was crowned thereby, 'twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed our lodge--our lodge was born (and england was crowned thereby!)_ _which never shall close again by day nor yet by night, while man shall take his life to stake at risk of shoal or main (by day nor yet by night)_ _but standeth even so as now we witness here, while men depart, of joyful heart adventure for to know (as now bear witness here!)_ ii we have fed our sea for a thousand years and she calls us, still unfed, though there's never a wave of all her waves but marks our english dead: we have strawed our best to the weed's unrest to the shark and the sheering gull. if blood be the price of admiralty, lord god, we ha' paid in full! [illustration: lord god, we ha' paid in full! if blood be the price of admiralty, lord god, we ha' paid in full!] there's never a flood goes shoreward now but lifts a keel we manned; there's never an ebb goes seaward now but drops our dead on the sand-- but slinks our dead on the sands forlore, from the ducies to the swin. if blood be the price of admiralty, if blood be the price of admiralty, lord god, we ha' paid it in! we must feed our sea for a thousand years, for that is our doom and pride, as it was when they sailed with the _golden hind_, or the wreck that struck last tide-- or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef where the ghastly blue-lights flare. if blood be the price of admiralty, if blood be the price of admiralty, if blood be the price of admiralty, lord god, we ha' bought it fair! the deep-sea cables the wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar-- down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. there is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-buried cables creep. here in the womb of the world--here on the tie-ribs of earth words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat-- warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth-- for a power troubles the still that has neither voice nor feet. they have wakened the timeless things; they have killed their father time; joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun. hush! men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime, and a new word runs between: whispering, 'let us be one!' the song of the sons one from the ends of the earth--gifts at an open door-- treason has much, but we, mother, thy sons have more! from the whine of a dying man, from the snarl of a wolf-pack freed, turn, and the world is thine. mother, be proud of thy seed! count, are we feeble or few? hear, is our speech so rude? look, are we poor in the land? judge, are we men of the blood? [illustration: we that were bred overseas. those that have stayed at thy knees, mother, go call them in-- we that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin. not in the dark do we fight--haggle and flout and gibe; selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe.] those that have stayed at thy knees, mother, go call them in-- we that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin. not in the dark do we fight--haggle and flout and gibe; selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe. gifts have we only to-day--love without promise or fee-- hear, for thy children speak, from the uttermost parts of the sea! the song of the cities bombay royal and dower-royal, i the queen fronting thy richest sea with richer hands-- a thousand mills roar through me where i glean all races from all lands. [illustration: bombay. royal and dower-royal, i the queen fronting thy richest sea with richer hands-- a thousand mills roar through me where i glean all races from all lands.] calcutta me the sea-captain loved, the river built, wealth sought and kings adventured life to hold. hail, england! i am asia--power on silt, death in my hands, but gold! madras clive kissed me on the mouth and eyes and brow, wonderful kisses, so that i became crowned above queens--a withered beldame now, brooding on ancient fame. rangoon hail, mother! do they call me rich in trade? little care i, but hear the shorn priest drone, and watch my silk-clad lovers, man by maid, laugh 'neath my shwe dagon. singapore hail, mother! east and west must seek my aid ere the spent gear may dare the ports afar. the second doorway of the wide world's trade is mine to loose or bar. hong-kong hail, mother! hold me fast; my praya sleeps under innumerable keels to-day. yet guard (and landward), or to-morrow sweeps thy warships down the bay! halifax into the mist my guardian prows put forth, behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie, the warden of the honour of the north, sleepless and veiled am i! quebec and montreal peace is our portion. yet a whisper rose, foolish and causeless, half in jest, half hate. now wake we and remember mighty blows, and fearing no man, wait! victoria from east to west the circling word has passed, till west is east beside our land-locked blue; from east to west the tested chain holds fast, the well-forged link rings true! capetown hail! snatched and bartered oft from hand to hand, i dream my dream, by rock and heath and pine, of empire to the northward. ay, one land from lion's head to line! melbourne greeting! nor fear nor favour won us place, got between greed of gold and dread of drouth, loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race that whips our harbour-mouth! sydney greeting! my birth-stain have i turned to good; forcing strong wills perverse to steadfastness; the first flush of the tropics in my blood, and at my feet success! brisbane the northern stirp beneath the southern skies-- i build a nation for an empire's need, suffer a little, and my land shall rise, queen over lands indeed! hobart man's love first found me; man's hate made me hell; for my babes' sake i cleansed those infamies. earnest for leave to live and labour well, god flung me peace and ease. auckland last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart-- on us, on us the unswerving season smiles who wonder 'mid our fern why men depart to seek the happy isles! england's answer truly ye come of the blood; slower to bless than to ban; little used to lie down at the bidding of any man. flesh of the flesh that i bred, bone of the bone that i bare; stark as your sons shall be--stern as your fathers were. deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether, but we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come together. [illustration: my arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by. deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether, but we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come together. my arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by; sons, i have borne many sons, but my dugs are not dry.] my arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by; sons, i have borne many sons, but my dugs are not dry. look, i have made ye a place and opened wide the doors, that ye may talk together, your barons and councillors-- wards of the outer march, lords of the lower seas, ay, talk to your grey mother that bore you on her knees!-- that ye may talk together, brother to brother's face-- thus for the good of your peoples--thus for the pride of the race. also, we will make promise. so long as the blood endures, i shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours: in the day of armageddon, at the last great fight of all, that our house stand together and the pillars do not fall. draw now the threefold knot firm on the ninefold bands, and the law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands. this for the waxen heath, and that for the wattle-bloom, this for the maple-leaf, and that for the southern broom. the law that ye make shall be law and i do not press my will, because ye are sons of the blood and call me mother still. now must ye speak to your kinsmen and they must speak to you, after the use of the english, in straight-flung words and few. go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways, baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise. stand to your work and be wise--certain of sword and pen, who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men! _edinburgh: t. and a. constable, printers to his majesty_ * * * * * transcriber's notes one typo corrected: burred for buried. our peoples (page ) left with capital o as in book text. how shakspere came to write the 'tempest' publications of the dramatic museum of columbia university in the city of new york _third series_ papers on playmaking: i how shakspere came to write the 'tempest'. by rudyard kipling. with an introduction by ashley h. thorndike. ii how plays are written. letters from augier, dumas, sardou, zola and others. translated by dudley miles. with an introduction by william gillette. iii a stage play. by sir william schenck gilbert. with an introduction by william archer. iv a theory of the theater. by francisque sarcey. translated by h. h. hughes. with an introduction and notes by brander matthews. v (extra volume) a catalog of models and of stage-sets in the dramatic museum of columbia university. papers on playmaking i how shakspere came to write the 'tempest' by rudyard kipling with an introduction by ashley h. thorndike printed for the dramatic museum of columbia university _in the city of new york_ mcmxvi introduction and notes copyright by dramatic museum of columbia university contents introduction by ashley h. thorndike how shakspere came to write the 'tempest' notes by a. h. t. introduction mr. kipling's brilliant reconstruction of the genesis of the 'tempest' may remind us how often that play has excited the creative fancy of its readers. it has given rise to many imitations, adaptations, and sequels. fletcher copied its storm, its desert island, and its woman who had never seen a man. suckling borrowed its spirits. davenant and dryden added a man who had never seen a woman, a husband for sycorax, and a sister for caliban. mr. percy mackaye has used its scene, mythology, and persons for his tercentenary shaksperian masque. its suggestiveness has extended beyond the drama, and aroused moral allegories and disquisitions. caliban has been elaborated as the missing link, and in the philosophical drama of renan as the spirit of democracy, and in browning's poem as a satire on the anthropomorphic conception of deity. but apart from such commentaries by poets and philosophers, the poem has lived these many generations in the imaginations of thousands. there, the enchanted island has multiplied and continued its existence. shelley sang, of a land far from ours where music and moonlight and feeling are one. shakspere created that land as the possession of each of us. not far removed, but close to the great continent of our daily routine and drudgery, lies this enchanted island where we may find music and moonlight and feeling, and also fun and mischief and wisdom. there, in tune with the melody and transfigured as by the charm of moonlight, we may encounter the nonsense of drunken clowns, the mingled greed and romance of primitive man, the elfishness of a child, the beauty of girlhood, and the benign philosophy of old age. we may leave the city at the close of business, and, if we avoid the snares of caliban and trinculo, we may sup with prospero, ariel, and miranda. how did shakspere discover this enchanted island? from what materials did he create the "baseless fabric of this vision"? what had london playhouses to do with these spirits of thin air? on what books or plays were these dreams made? out of the issues of rivalry and profit which beset the king's company of players at the globe and the blackfriars, how came this "insubstantial pageant"? we have been told that the sonnets are the key with which to unlock shakspere's heart; and perhaps if we could answer all these questions we might have the key to his imagination. i do not believe, however, that his imagination was lockt up. rather it was open wide to many impulses, hospitable to countless influences. this apparently is the opinion of mr. kipling, who suggests that shakspere's "vision was woven from the most prosaic material, from nothing more promising, in fact, than the chatter of a half-tipsy sailor at the theater." mr. kipling writes as one inventor of tales about another. certainly no one is better qualified to trace out the processes of the creative imagination and to discover the very fabrics of its visions. in those marvelous stories of his, who has not recognized a shaksperian catholicity in the quest of fact and a shaksperian alchemy in its transformation? he has himself created many enchanted islands and he knows whereof they are made. the sailor just home from a famous shipwreck on the bermudas might have stept out of one of mr. kipling's tales; but he becomes a factor in some very acute criticism, for the sailor's "profligate abundance of detail at the beginning, when he was more or less sober, supplied and surely established the earth-basis of the play in accordance with the great law that a story to be truly miraculous must be ballasted with facts." mr. kipling's letter has found a place in all subsequent critical discussions of the play, and has become a contribution to that historical research which seeks to discover the ways and means by which literature is made. it may not be unseemly therefore to bring together as an introduction and commentary some other suggestions that criticism has advanced in regard to the influences and incentives that directed shakspere's art in this play, written at the very close of his career and at the moment when the elizabethan drama had reached its highest development. recent investigation has added to our certainty that the play was written in or , for mr. ernest law has shown that the supposedly forged entry of its performance at court on november , is genuine. various passages in the play indicate that it was not written before july , when sir thomas gates and his ships sailed up the thames with news of the safety of the fleet that had departed from plymouth over a year before. this fleet of nine vessels had started for the new colony in virginia, had been scattered by a great storm, and the ship 'sea venture' with the leaders aboard, sir george somers, sir thomas gates, and captain christopher newport, had been cast ashore on one of the bermudas. but there had been no loss of life; the adventurers had lived comfortably for many months, had built two pinnaces from the materials of the wreck, and had rejoined their comrades in virginia. before the arrival of gates from virginia, reports of the wreck had reached london, so his safe return was a nine days wonder. full accounts were written. two were printed in the autumn, and others circulated in manuscript. shakspere certainly read some of the pamphlets recounting the strange experiences of the expedition, and he made some use of other voyagers' tales, as raleigh's 'discovery of guiana.' but he may have heard much more than he read in the common gossip of the day. or, enter mr. kipling's sailor, "the original stephano fresh from the seas and half-seas over." from this original stephano or from the voyagers' tales may have come some hints for caliban. there were many strange accounts of cannibals and monsters. an earlier narrative tells of "a sea monster ... arms like a man, without hair and at the elbows great fins like a fish." indians had been brought back from america; and only a few years before the play several had been exhibited and aroused much curiosity. as trinculo observes, "when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead indian." caliban was doubtless intended to be of the earth, earthy, the opposite of ariel, the spirit of the air, and was also intended as a sketch of the savage resisting the mastery of the european. but, brutish and savage though he be, he too is a dweller in the enchanted island. for him too life has its romance. there is no finer touch of shakspere's magic in the whole play than this. marco polo had recounted that "you shall heare in the ayre the sound of tabers and other instruments, to put the travellers in fear, &c., by evill spirits that make these sounds and also do call ... travellers by their names." but shakspere's caliban reassures his companions frightened by ariel playing on a tabor. be not afeard. the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices that, if i then had wak'd after long sleep, will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me, that, when i wak'd, i cried to dream again. the enchanted island owes still more to preceding voyagers in the great seas of romance. shakspere had made many earlier voyages thither, but he was not the first columbus to search out the undiscovered lands of illusions and enchantments. fortunately for us he lived in the period of imaginative adventure and steered his crafts on the oceans whence many predecessors had returned treasure-laden. this is no place to relate the various circumstances that placed the men of the sixteenth century in a fortunate position for romance, or to indicate the long development of romantic-comedy in which shakspere played so great a part. but surely the interview between the dramatist and the sailor would have had very different results if the elizabethan theater had not been accustomed to the union of the laughable and the romantic, the comic and the marvellous. such a union is not a common one. there are no romantic-comedies in the literature of antiquity, and very few in modern literature since shakspere's death. he found a stage that was already the home of romance, used to fantasy and medley, and used also to fill out a three hours entertainment with sentiment and fun, music and monsters, idealized heroines and puns. romance had found its readiest entrance to the stage thru the shows and spectacles which delighted the courts of the tudors. venus and diana, or loyalty and sedition, or red cross knight and fairy princess, or whoever else, if sumptuously arrayed and bejeweled and sufficiently attended, might be wheeled in on a huge car representing castle or garden or island, decorated with flowers and spangles, begin with a tableau and end with a dance. along with all this splendor, it would not be thought inappropriate to have a clown dance a jig or mimic the antics of a drunken man. such spectacles soon became the joy of the public as well as of the court, and were imitated by many a rustic holofernes or bottom. nymphs and fairies, the nine worthies, or the golden age might find representation by almost any village pedagog and his school children. out of such entertainments there soon developt a kind of comedy, at first the peculiar property of the children of the royal choirs who performed at court, but soon adapting itself to the adult companies and public theaters. this comedy availed itself of any stories that might come to hand, so they were strange, unusual, marvelous, impossible enough, and accompanied them with music, dancing, and spectacle, and with lively jests in the mouth of the smallest boys, dressed as pages. endymion in love with the moon, the judgment of paris, pandora and her varied actions under the seven planets, the rival magic of friars bacon and bungay, jack the giant killer, alexander the great in love with campaspe who preferred apelles--these are some of the themes. astrologers, amazons, fairies, sirens, witches, ghosts, are some of the personages who appear along with the singing pages and olympian deities. of course, these persons and these marvels are impossible on any stage, most of all by daylight in the roofless public theaters of shakspere's london. but neither audience nor dramatist thought of impossibility. they tried everything on their stage, even their wonderlands. when shakspere began to write plays, the stage was well used to romance. it was the comedies of lyly and greene, with their beautiful and unselfish maidens, their wonders and shows, their witty dialogs and jesters, their lovers' crosses and final happiness, their utopias and fairies, which prepared the way for shakspere's 'two gentlemen of verona' and 'love's labor's lost,' and for his great series of romantic plays from 'a midsummer night's dream' to 'twelfth night.' but by , both dramatists and audiences had become somewhat sophisticated and tired of romance, and the theaters turned to plays of a different fashion, to tragedies that searched the ways of crime and punishment, and to comedies that treated contemporary folly and vice with realism and satire. from the date of 'twelfth night,' , to that of 'cymbeline,' , it is difficult to find a romantic-comedy on the london stage. there are no more marvels and magic, no charming princesses disguised as pages, no moonlit forests and terraces, no rescues and reconciliations, not much sentiment and no fun except what may be found on the seamy side of reality. shakspere seems to have had little taste for satire and he wrote no satirical and realistic plays of the sort temporarily in fashion. but during these eight years, his comedies, like 'measure for measure,' have no romantic charm, and his energies are given to tragedy. he is occupied with the pomp and majesty of human hope and with the inevitable waste and failure of human achievement; but for his hamlet, othello, macbeth, coriolanus and the rest, there were no forests of arden and no enchanted islands. like his associates, he seems to have forsaken romance. what turned his imagination from tragedy back to romance? in my opinion it was the success of two brilliant young dramatists, beaumont and fletcher, who, in a series of remarkable dramas made romance again popular on the london stage. their romantic plays employ many of the old incidents and personages, but in general character differ strikingly from the plays of a decade or two earlier. they are hardly comedies at all, tho they have their humorous passages, but tragedies and tragi-comedies dealing with more thrilling circumstances and less naive wonderments than the earlier plays. instead of a combination of romance and comedy, they aim at a contrast of the tragic and idyllic. they oppose a story of sexual passion with one of idealized sentiment, and delight in a succession of thrills as by clever stagecraft they hurry us from one suspense into another surprise. until the very end you can scarcely guess whether it will be tragic or happy. their land of romance is somewhat artificial and theatrical; but yet it has as of old its adventures, dangers, escapes, rescues, jealousies, suspicions, reconciliations and re-unions. and it has its idyls of forests, and fountains of love-lorn maidens and enraptured princes. it is a land of thrills and surprises, but also of idealization and poetry. for in all that choir of poets who wrote for the london theaters there was no one except shakspere who could excel these young dramatists in their power to turn the affairs and emotions of mankind into copious verse, now tumultuous, now placid, but always bubbling with fancy and flowing melodiously. if shakspere's mind was directed again to romantic themes and situations by the success of beaumont and fletcher's plays, the clearest evidence of his indebtedness to them is to be found in his 'cymbeline', which has many marked similarities to their 'philaster'. in his two plays which follow, the 'winter's tale' and the 'tempest', there is no detailed resemblance to the romantic tragic-comedies of the younger men. shakspere, as well as they, had the whole tradition of romantic drama to draw from, and in particular he had his own past practice. he did not need to be shown how to depict romantic love, or charming heroines, or ardent suitors. for drinking scenes, like those of trinculo and stephano, or for dialog like that not very witty one of gonzalo and the courtiers, he had many passages in his own plays that served as guides. moreover, if 'cymbeline' is an example of only partially successful experimentation with new methods, the 'winter's tale,' and still more, the 'tempest,' seem to me triumphant and unguided excursions of his own in the new field. but i think that shakspere was attracted to this field by contemporary stage-successes, and that in seeking for novel and invented plots, in the contrast of tragic and idyllic elements, in the unusual and rapidly shifting situations, in the loose and parenthetical style, and in the elaboration of the _dénouement_, he was adapting himself to the new formulas and fashions in which beaumont and fletcher were the leaders. still another suggestion came from the theater, but this time from the court. the court shows of the sort which we have noticed as characteristic of the early years of elizabeth's reign had given place to a better ordered and more sumptuous spectacle, the court masque. under james i, with the great architect inigo jones to devise the machines and setting, and with ben jonson to write the librettos, one of these masques was a magnificent affair. it was given on festal occasions at court and often cost thousands of pounds. it had but a single or at most two performances, always at night, and it came to follow a distinct formula. the kernel of the show was the masked dance in which members of the court, even king and queen, took part. this dance or "masque proper," often elaborated into several measures, came near the end of the show. as accompaniments there were ( ) music, instrumental and vocal, ( ) a play of some length, usually with mythological or allegorical motive, ( ) various grotesque dances by professional performers, preceding the main masque and often integrated with the play, and ( ) a spectacular stage-setting. these shows were given in great halls, brilliantly lighted. the stage was splendidly decorated. gods and goddesses floated among the clouds, and elaborate machines and scenes were devised. in one masque, a few years before the 'tempest,' "an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth over the stage as it flowed to land, [this was the main machine--a great stage four feet high on trestles] on which was a great concave shell like mother of pearl" containing the masquers and conveyed by many sea-monsters hidden by the torch-bearers. the costumes of the masquers were in brilliant colors and heavily jeweled. these were often bizarre; but inigo jones knew the monuments of classical antiquity and the artistic achievements of renaissance italy as well as jonson knew classical and humanistic literature. the living pictures were often in richness and color no unworthy rivals of the frescoes with which rubens had decorated the ceiling of the masquing hall. such expensive spectacles were beyond the reach of the professional theaters, but contemporary dramatists frequently found something that could be adapted or imitated for the public stage. so the antick dance of satyrs in a 'winter's tale' (three of whom are announced as having already appeared before the king) seems borrowed from an anti-masque in ben jonson's 'masque of oberon.' in two plays of nearly the same date there is a well defined effort to combine the masque and the regular drama into a distinctive and novel dramatic entertainment, in the 'four plays in one' of beaumont and fletcher and the 'tempest' of shakspere. the 'tempest' has always been a spectacular play on the stage, and so it must have appeared to him--and as a spectacle having many of the features of the court masque. there is music and song. ariel, prospero, and even caliban are proper figures for a court show. the "masque proper" is used to celebrate the betrothal in the fourth act. this is a simplified form of such a masque as would be given at court. there is evidently some machinery--it is the insubstantial pageant that calls forth prospero's famous lines. ariel, iris, ceres, and juno appear, juno descending from the heavens. there is music and a song, and ferdinand cries: this is a most majestic vision, and harmonious charmingly. may i be bold to think these spirits? and when prospero says they are spirits summoned by his art, ferdinand exclaims let me live here ever; so rare a wond'red father and a wise makes this place paradise. it is not miranda now, but the machine and costumes used in court-spectacles that turn the platform into a land of romance. then enter nymphs, "naiads of the winding brooks with sedg'd crowns," and sun burnt reapers, "with rye-straw hats." these are the main masquers and join in a graceful dance, until upon prospero's sudden start--"to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish." more ingenious is shakspere's use of the anti-masques--i.e. dances by professional performers drest in fantastic costumes as animals, satyrs, statues, witches, etc. such are the several strange shapes of iii. , who first bring in the banquet and again enter "and dance with mocks and mows and carrying out the table"; and in iv. , the divers spirits who "in shape of dogs and hounds" hunt about the drunken conspirators while prospero and ariel set them on. for a stage, then, that had long been used to romance, shakspere planned a new wonderment. for it he revived some of his old creations from illyria and arden, and fairyland, all transformed by a sea change into something rich and strange. and he added some excitements and novelties to keep pace with the thrilling tragi-comedies of beaumont and fletcher. and just as years before, in the 'midsummer night's dream,' he had drawn hints from the court entertainments by children, so now he conceived a spectacle that--so far as was possible--might rival the great shows of the jacobean court. he did not need to go beyond the drama to find abundant suggestions for his new venture. but this was to be a play as well as a show, and must have some kind of plot. perhaps he found an italian novella with the story. no one has been able to find it since then. but stories somewhat similar to that of the 'tempest' occur in a spanish tale and in a german play. there was indeed a real alfonso, king of naples, and a duke of milan who was dispossesst, and another named prospero. but whatever story shakspere found, it is my notion that he forgot most of it. the palace intrigues, the rivalries of the banisht and usurping dukes, set at naught by the love at first sight of their children, the perilous adventures, and the _dénouement_ brought about by magic, were commonplaces of fiction. shakspere wanted to weld them into a more surprising fable. perhaps it was at the very moment when he was most intent on this problem that the sailor from the fleet of sir thomas gates hove into view. even the mariner's ballast of facts did not quite suffice. as shakspere wrote he recalled some lines from his old favorite ovid to fill out one of prospero's descriptions; and he used the newly-read montaigne for gonzalo's account of a utopian commonwealth. and some fine lines from sir william alexander's tragedy of 'darius' seem to have lingered in his recollection when he wrote of the great globe which is like a pageant and life that is like a dream. as he wrote of prospero he thought too of his own career, of his own so potent art, of his promised retirement, and the fading pageants of both life and art. perhaps, too, he may have thought of some of his battles of wit with ben jonson in the mermaid tavern. ben was a great stickler for the rules, though he lamented that the unity of time was very difficult to secure on the english stage. he thought masques should be kept distinct from comedies, and he had no liking for fantastic medleys. indeed, a few years later he indulged in a scoff at shakspere's "servant-monster" and at "those who beget tales, tempests, and such like drolleries." shakspere, recalling some such discussion may have said to himself, "well, here is a play as fantastic as possible, and just to show benjamin what can be done, i will keep it in strict accord with his classical unities of time and place." for this or some other propose he was for once at great pains to keep all the action within the time of the stage-performance, tho in doing so he makes his one nautical error by forgetting that the seaman's measure of time was a half-hour glass. when prospero first consults ariel we are precisely told that it is two o'clock in the afternoon, and just before the end of the drama we are told that three hours have elapst. it has taken me too long to enumerate some of the materials in addition to those of mr. kipling's sailor with which shakspere's fantasy worked. i hope i may have suggested that almost always, as here in this extraordinary flight of his imagination, he was writing as a playwright and not without full use of the hints and opportunities which the contemporary theater afforded. and i should like to suggest also that to the playwrights of that theater there were open many and great opportunities. sailors home from a new world might cross the threshold of the dramatist; and dramatists then could think of magicians and monsters and fairies, of goddesses and drunken boors, of ideal commonwealths, the three unities, and beautiful verse, all in terms of the stage. thru some such processes as have been rehearst, by some such influences, shakspere's imagination must have been led to the construction of a spectacular play that would win applause both in the blackfriars playhouse and at court. perhaps it is out of such varied driftwood that all enchanted islands are created. ashley h. thorndike. (april , ). how shakspere came to write the 'tempest' how shakspere came to write the 'tempest' _to the editor of the spectator._ sir:--your article on 'landscape and literature' in the _spectator_ of june th has the following, among other suggestive passages:--"but whence came the vision of the enchanted island in the 'tempest'? it had no existence in shakspere's world, but was woven out of such stuff as dreams are made of." may i cite malone's suggestion connecting the play with the casting away of sir george somers on the island of bermuda in ; and further may i be allowed to say how it seems to me possible that the vision was woven from the most prosaic material--from nothing more promising in fact, than the chatter of a half-tipsy sailor at a theater? thus: a stage-manager, who writes and vamps plays, moving among his audience, overhears a mariner discoursing to his neighbor of a grievous wreck, and of the behavior of the passengers, for whom all sailors have ever entertained a natural contempt. he describes, with the wealth of detail peculiar to sailors, measures taken to claw the ship off a lee-shore, how helm and sails were workt, what the passengers did and what he said. one pungent phrase--to be rendered later into: 'what care these brawlers for the name of king?' --strikes the manager's ear, and he stands behind the talkers. perhaps only one-tenth of the earnestly delivered, hand-on-shoulder sea talk was actually used of all that was automatically and unconsciously stored by the island man who knew all inland arts and crafts. nor is it too fanciful to imagine a half-turn to the second listener as the mariner, banning his luck as mariners will, says there are those who would not give a doit to a poor man while they will lay out ten to see a raree-show,--a dead indian. were he in foreign parts, as he now is in england, he could show people something in the way of strange fish. is it to consider too curiously to see a drink ensue on this hint (the manager dealt but little in his plays with the sea at first hand, and his instinct for new words would have been waked by what he had already caught), and with the drink a sailor's minute description of how he went across the reefs to the island of his calamity,--or islands rather, for there were many? some you could almost carry away in your pocket. they were sown broadcast like--like the nut-shells on the stage there. "many islands, in truth," says the manager patiently, and afterwards his sebastian says to antonio: i think he will carry the island home in his pocket and give it to his son for an apple. to which antonio answers: and sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands. "but what was the island like?" says the manager. the sailor tries to explain. "it was green, with yellow in it; a tawny-colored country"--the color, that is to say, of the coral-beached, cedar-covered bermuda of to-day--"and the air made one sleepy, and the place was full of noises"--the muttering and roaring of the sea among the islands and between the reefs--"and there was a sou'-west wind that blistered one all over." the elizabethan mariner would not discriminate finely between blisters and prickly heat; but the bermudian of to-day will tell you that the sou'-west or lighthouse wind in summer brings that plague and general discomfort. that the coral rock, battered by the sea, rings hollow with strange sounds, answered by the winds in the little cramped valleys, is a matter of common knowledge. the man, refresht with some drink, then describes the geography of his landing place,--the spot where trinculo makes his first appearance. he insists and reinsists on details which to him at one time meant life or death, and the manager follows attentively. he can give his audience no more than a few hangings and a placard for scenery, but that his lines shall lift them beyond that bare show to the place he would have them, the manager needs for himself the clearest possible understanding,--the most ample detail. he must see the scene in the round--solid--ere he peoples it. much, doubtless, he discarded, but so closely did he keep to his original informations that those who go to-day to a certain beach some two miles from hamilton will find the stage set for act ii, scene of the 'tempest,'--a bare beach, with the wind singing through the scrub at the land's edge, a gap in the reefs wide enough for the passage of stephano's butt of sack, and (these eyes have seen it) a cave in the coral within easy reach of the tide, whereto such a butt might be conveniently rolled. (my cellar is in a rock by the seaside where my wine is hid). there is no other cave for some two miles. here's neither bush nor shrub; one is exposed to the wrath of "'yond same black cloud," and here the currents strand wreckage. it was so well done that, after three hundred years, a stray tripper and no shakspere scholar, recognized in a flash that old first set of all. so far good. up to this point the manager has gained little except some suggestions for an opening scene, and some notion of an uncanny island. the mariner (one cannot believe that shakspere was mean in these little things) is dipping to a deeper drunkenness. suddenly he launches into a preposterous tale of himself and his fellows, flung ashore, separated from their officers, horribly afraid of the devil-haunted beach of noises, with their heads full of the fumes of broacht liquor. one castaway was found hiding under the ribs of a dead whale which smelt abominably. they hauled him out by the legs--he mistook them for imps--and gave him drink. and now, discipline being melted, they would strike out for themselves, defy their officers, and take possession of the island. the narrator's mates in this enterprise were probably described as fools. he was the only sober man in the company. so they went inland, faring badly as they staggered up and down this pestilent country. they were prickt with palmettoes, and the cedar branches raspt their faces. then they found and stole some of their officers' clothes which were hanging up to dry. but presently they fell into a swamp, and, what was worse, into the hands of their officers; and the great expedition ended in muck and mire. truly an island bewicht. else why their cramps and sickness? sack never made a man more than reasonably drunk. he was prepared to answer for unlimited sack; but what befell his stomach and head was the purest magic that honest man ever met. a drunken sailor of to-day wandering about bermuda would probably sympathize with him; and to-day, as then, if one takes the easiest inland road from trinculo's beach, near hamilton, the path that a drunken man would infallibly follow, it ends abruptly in swamp. the one point that our mariner did not dwell upon was that he and the others were suffering from acute alcoholism combined with the effects of nerve-shattering peril and exposure. hence the magic. that a wizard should control such an island was demanded by the beliefs of all seafarers of that date. accept this theory, and you will concede that the 'tempest' came to the manager sanely and normally in the course of his daily life. he may have been casting about for a new play; he may have purposed to vamp an old one--say, 'aurelio and isabella'; or he may have been merely waiting on his demon. but it is all prospero's wealth against caliban's pignuts that to him in a receptive hour, sent by heaven, entered the original stephano fresh from the seas and half-seas over. to him stephano told his tale all in one piece, a two hours' discourse of most glorious absurdities. his profligate abundance of detail at the beginning, when he was more or less sober, supplied and surely establisht the earth-basis of the play in accordance with the great law that a story to be truly miraculous must be ballasted with facts. his maunderings of magic and incomprehensible ambushes, when he was without reservation drunk (and this is just the time when a lesser-minded man than shakspere would have paid the reckoning and turned him out) suggested to the manager the peculiar note of its supernatural mechanism. truly it was a dream, but that there may be no doubt of its source or of his obligation, shakspere has also made the dreamer immortal. rudyard kipling. notes notes mr. kipling's letter was originally publisht in the (london) _spectator_ for july , . he allowed it to appear as his contribution to 'a book of homage to shakspere' (oxford university press, , pp. - ). but he has not yet included it in any collection of his miscellaneous writings; and for his permission to reprint it in this series the committee in charge of the dramatic museum desires to express its thanks. malone's suggestion was presented in his essay, 'an account of the incidents from which the title and a part of the story of shakspere's "tempest" were derived; and its true date ascertained.' this was privately printed in and supplemented by an additional pamphlet in . both were reprinted in volume xv of the boswell-malone variorum edition of shakspere in . malone's essay gives a careful analysis of the several contemporary accounts of the shipwreck of sir george somers, and of their relations to the 'tempest.' in his preface malone states that his 'account' was written "some years ago" but acknowledges that his discovery had been anticipated by douce in his 'illustrations of shakspere' published in . in his little book, 'shakspere's sea forms explained,' (bristol, ) mr. w. b. whall, master mariner, expresses his belief that shakspere's use of sea phrases is copious and accurate. he declares that "words and phrases of an extremely technical nature are scattered thru" shakspere's plays; "and a mistake in their use is never made." then he asks: "could a mere lubber have steered clear of error in the use of such terms?" (p. ). mr. whall had earlier noted that there are seven years of shakspere's life as to which we have scarcely any information, and that one of these years was the year of the armada, , when he had only just attained his majority. where was shakspere and what was he doing? "there was a hot press for men to man the fleet. is it possible that he was among the prest?" (p. ). it was a time of exaltation of all things pertaining to sea things; and it is no wonder that the playwrights of the day, heywood for one, made frequent use of sea words. "the wonder is that without professional acquaintance" shakspere "should always use these terms correctly," (p. ). he abounds in "elizabethan sailor talk pure and simple." and a little later mr. whall draws attention to the fact that "sea expressions crop up in quite unexpected places"--just as theatrical expressions crop up; "and that they are all phrased _as by a sailor_," (p. ). then mr. whall quotes a remark from another master mariner, captain basil hall, who had earlier noticed this striking characteristic: "one would like to know how shakspere pickt it up." when he comes to deal with the 'tempest' mr. whall cites the saying of lord mulgrave, some time first lord of the admiralty: "the first scene of the 'tempest' is a very striking instance of the great accuracy of shakspere's knowledge in a professional science." with this mr. whall disagrees: "now this does not of necessity follow. a playwright with any sense would, if about to write such a scene, obtain professional assistance unless he himself had professional knowledge to steer clear of error. the whole scene is graphic, accurate and correct in the terms of nautical speech.... but it is by no means such a proof of the writer's sea knowledge as are the scattered and wholly unexpected nautical references in many other plays, every one of which might have been written by an experienced seaman." the most recent and the most careful consideration of shakspere's acquaintance with seafaring life is contained in mr. l. g. carr laughton's essay on 'the navy: ships and sailors,' contributed to 'shakspere's england,' (oxford university press, ), - . a. h. t. of this book three hundred and thirty-three copies were printed from type by corlies, macy and company in september : mcmxvi transcriber's notes this ebook is a set of two volumes. the table of contents for part ii is copied to follow the table of contents of part i. this seems to make the book more accessible. the table of contents of part ii is also located at its original location. from sea to sea from sea to sea letters of travel by rudyard kipling complete in one volume garden city new york doubleday, page & company copyright, , , by rudyard kipling. preface in these two volumes i have got together the bulk of the special correspondence and occasional articles written by me for the _civil and military gazette_ and the _pioneer_ between - . i have been forced to this action by the enterprise of various publishers who, not content with disinterring old newspaper work from the decent seclusion of the office files, have in several instances seen fit to embellish it with additions and interpolations. rudyard kipling. contents of part i letters of marque i page of the beginning of things. of the taj and the globe-trotter. the young man from manchester and certain moral reflections ii shows the charm of rajputana and of jeypore, the city of the globe-trotter. of its founder and its embellishment. explains the use and destiny of the stud-bred, and fails to explain many more important matters iii does not in any sort describe the dead city of amber, but gives detailed information about a cotton-press iv the temple of mahadeo and the manners of such as see india. the man by the water-troughs and his knowledge. the voice of the city and what it said. personalities and the hospital. the house beautiful of jeypore and its builders v of the sordidness of the supreme government on the revenue side; and of the palace of jeypore. a great king's pleasure-house, and the work of the servants of state vi showing how her majesty's mails went to udaipur and fell out by the way vii touching the children of the sun and their city, and the hat-marked caste and their merits, and a good man's works in the wilderness viii divers passages of speech and action whence the nature, arts, and disposition of the king and his subjects may be observed ix of the pig-drive which was a panther-killing, and of the departure to chitor x a little of the history of chitor, and the malpractices of a she-elephant xi proves conclusively the existence of the dark tower visited by childe rolande, and of "bogey" who frightens children xii contains the history of the bhumia of jhaswara, and the record of a visit to the house of strange stories. demonstrates the felicity of loaferdom, which is the veritable companionship of the indian empire, and proposes a scheme for the better officering of two departments xiii a king's house and country. further consideration of the hat-marked caste xiv among the houyhnhnms xv treats of the startling effect of a reduction in wages and the pleasures of loaferdom. paints the state of the boondi road and the treachery of ganesh of situr xvi the comedy of errors and the exploitation of boondi. the castaway of the dispensary and the children of the schools. a consideration of the shields of rajasthan and other trifles xvii shows that there may be poetry in a bank, and attempts to show the wonders of the palace of boondi xviii of the uncivilised night and the departure to things civilised. showing how a friend may keep an appointment too well xix comes back to the railway, after reflections on the management of the empire; and so home again, with apology to all who have read thus far from sea to sea i of freedom and the necessity of using her. the motive and the scheme that will come to nothing. a disquisition upon the otherness of things and the torments of the damned ii the river of the lost footsteps and the golden mystery upon its banks. the iniquity of jordan. shows how a man may go to the shway dagon pagoda and see it not and to the pegu club and hear too much. a dissertation on mixed drinks iii the city of elephants which is governed by the great god of idleness, who lives on the top of a hill. the history of three great discoveries and the naughty children of iquique iv showing how i came to palmiste island and the place of paul and virginia, and fell asleep in a garden. a disquisition on the folly of sight-seeing v of the threshold of the far east and the dwellers thereon. a dissertation upon the use of the british lion vi of the well-dressed islanders of singapur and their diversions; proving that all stations are exactly alike. shows how one chicago jew and an american child can poison the purest mind vii shows how i arrived in china and saw entirely through the great wall and out upon the other side viii of jenny and her friends. showing how a man may go to see life and meet death there. of the felicity of life and the happiness of corinthian kate. the woman and the cholera ix some talk with a taipan and a general: proves in what manner a sea picnic may be a success x shows how i came to goblin market and took a scunner at it and cursed the chinese people. shows further how i initiated all hong-kong into our fraternity xi of japan at ten hours' sight, containing a complete account of the manners and customs of its people, a history of its constitution, products, art, and civilisation, and omitting a tiffin in a tea-house with o-toyo xii a further consideration of japan. the inland sea and good cookery. the mystery of passports and consulates and certain other matters xiii the japanese theatre and the story of the thunder cat. treating also of the quiet places and the dead man in the street xiv explains in what manner i was taken to venice in the rain and climbed into a devil fort; a tin-pot exhibition and a bath. of the maiden and the boltless door, the cultivator and his fields, and the manufacture of ethnological theories at railroad speed. ends with kioto xv kioto, and how i fell in love with the chief belle there after i had conferred with certain china merchants who trafficked in tea. shows further how, in a great temple, i broke the tenth commandment in fifty-three places and bowed down before kano and a carpenter. takes me to arashima xvi the party in the parlour who played games. a complete history of all modern japanese art; a survey of the past and a prophecy of the future, arranged and composed in the kioto factories xvii of the nature of the tokaido and japanese railway construction. one traveller explains the life of the sahib-log, and another the origin of dice. of the babies in the bath tub and the man in d. t. xviii concerning a hot-water tap, and some general conversation xix the legend of nikko ford and the story of the avoidance of misfortune xx shows how i grossly libelled the japanese army, and edited a civil and military gazette which is not in the least trustworthy xxi shows the similarity between the babu and the japanese. contains the earnest outcry of an unbeliever. the explanation of mr. smith of california and elsewhere. takes me on board ship after due warning to those who follow xxii shows how i came to america before my time and was much shaken in body and soul xxiii how i got to san francisco and took tea with the natives there xxiv shows how through folly i assisted at a murder and was afraid. the rule of the democracy and the despotism of the alien contents of part ii from sea to sea xxv page tells how i dropped into politics and the tenderer sentiments. contains a moral treatise on american maidens and an ethnological one on the negro. ends with a banquet and a type-writer xxvi takes me through bret harte's country and to portland with "old man california." explains how two vagabonds became homesick through looking at other people's houses xxvii shows how i caught salmon in the clackamas xxviii takes me from vancouver to the yellowstone national park xxix shows how yankee jim introduced me to diana of the crossways on the banks of the yellowstone and how a german jew said i was no true citizen. ends with the celebration of the th of july and a few lessons therefrom xxx shows how i entered mazanderan of the persians and saw devils of every colour, and some troopers. hell and the old lady from chicago. the captain and the lieutenant xxxi ends with the cañon of the yellowstone. the maiden from new hampshire--larry--"wrap-up-his-tail"--tom--the old lady from chicago--and a few natural phenomena--including one briton xxxii of the american army and the city of the saints. the temple, the book of mormon, and the girl from dorset. an oriental consideration of polygamy xxxiii how i met certain people of importance between salt lake and omaha xxxiv across the great divide; and how the man gring showed me the garments of the ellewomen xxxv how i struck chicago, and how chicago struck me. of religion, politics, and pig-sticking, and the incarnation of the city among shambles xxxvi how i found peace at musquash on the monongahela xxxvii an interview with mark twain the city of dreadful night i a real live city ii the reflections of a savage iii the council of the gods iv on the banks of the hugli v with the calcutta police vi the city of dreadful night vii deeper and deeper still viii concerning lucia among the railway folk i a railway settlement ii the shops iii vulcan's forge the giridih coal-fields i on the surface ii in the depths iii the perils of the pits part i letters of marque letters of marque i of the beginning of things. of the taj and the globe-trotter. the young man from manchester and certain moral reflections. nov.-dec., except for those who, under compulsion of a sick certificate, are flying bombaywards, it is good for every man to see some little of the great indian empire and the strange folk who move about it. it is good to escape for a time from the house of rimmon--be it office or cutchery--and to go abroad under no more exacting master than personal inclination, and with no more definite plan of travel than has the horse, escaped from pasture, free upon the countryside. the first result of such freedom is extreme bewilderment, and the second reduces the freed to a state of mind which, for his sins, must be the normal portion of the globe-trotter--the man who "does" kingdoms in days and writes books upon them in weeks. and this desperate facility is not as strange as it seems. by the time that an englishman has come by sea and rail _via_ america, japan, singapur, and ceylon, to india, he can--these eyes have seen him do so--master in five minutes the intricacies of the _indian bradshaw_, and tell an old resident exactly how and where the trains run. can we wonder that the intoxication of success in hasty assimilation should make him overbold, and that he should try to grasp--but a full account of the insolent globe-trotter must be reserved. he is worthy of a book. given absolute freedom for a month, the mind, as i have said, fails to take in the situation and, after much debate, contents itself with following in old and well-beaten ways--paths that we in india have no time to tread, but must leave to the country cousin who wears his _pagri_ tail-fashion down his back, and says "cabman" to the driver of the _ticca-ghari_. now, jeypore from the anglo-indian point of view is a station on the rajputana-malwa line, on the way to bombay, where half an hour is allowed for dinner, and where there ought to be more protection from the sun than at present exists. some few, more learned than the rest, know that garnets come from jeypore, and here the limits of our wisdom are set. we do not, to quote the calcutta shopkeeper, come out "for the good of our 'ealth," and what touring we accomplish is for the most part off the line of rail. for these reasons, and because he wished to study our winter birds of passage, one of the few thousand englishmen in india on a date and in a place which have no concern with the story, sacrificed all his self-respect and became--at enormous personal inconvenience--a globe-trotter going to jeypore, and leaving behind him for a little while all that old and well-known life in which commissioners and deputy-commissioners, governors and lieutenant-governors, aides-de-camp, colonels and their wives, majors, captains, and subalterns after their kind move and rule and govern and squabble and fight and sell each other's horses and tell wicked stories of their neighbours. but before he had fully settled into his part or accustomed himself to saying, "please take out this luggage," to the coolies at the stations, he saw from the train the taj wrapped in the mists of the morning. there is a story of a frenchman who feared not god, nor regarded man, sailing to egypt for the express purpose of scoffing at the pyramids and--though this is hard to believe--at the great napoleon who had warred under their shadow. it is on record that that blasphemous gaul came to the great pyramid and wept through mingled reverence and contrition; for he sprang from an emotional race. to understand his feelings it is necessary to have read a great deal too much about the taj, its design and proportions; to have seen execrable pictures of it at the simla fine arts exhibition, to have had its praises sung by superior and travelled friends till the brain loathed the repetition of the word; and then, sulky with want of sleep, heavy-eyed, unwashed, and chilled, to come upon it suddenly. under these circumstances everything, you will concede, is in favour of a cold, critical, and not too impartial verdict. as the englishman leaned out of the carriage he saw first an opal-tinted cloud on the horizon, and, later, certain towers. the mists lay on the ground, so that the splendour seemed to be floating free of the earth; and the mists rose in the background, so that at no time could everything be seen clearly. then as the train sped forward, and the mists shifted, and the sun shone upon the mists, the taj took a hundred new shapes, each perfect and each beyond description. it was the ivory gate through which all good dreams come; it was the realization of "the gleaming halls of dawn" that tennyson sings of; it was veritably the "aspiration fixed," the "sigh made stone" of a lesser poet; and, over and above concrete comparisons, it seemed the embodiment of all things pure, all things holy, and all things unhappy. that was the mystery of the building! it may be that the mists wrought the witchery, and that the taj seen in the dry sunlight is only, as guide-books say, a noble structure. the englishman could not tell, and has made a vow that he will never go nearer the spot, for fear of breaking the charm of the unearthly pavilions. it may be, too, that each must view the taj for himself with his own eyes, working out his own interpretation of the sight. it is certain that no man can in cold blood and colder ink set down his impressions if he has been in the least moved. to the one who watched and wondered that november morning the thing seemed full of sorrow--the sorrow of the man who built it for the woman he loved, and the sorrow of the workmen who died in the building--used up like cattle. and in the face of this sorrow the taj flushed in the sunlight and was beautiful, after the beauty of a woman who has done no wrong. here the train ran in under the walls of agra fort, and another train--of thought incoherent as that written above--came to an end. let those who scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the taj and thenceforward be dumb. it is well on the threshold of a journey to be taught reverence and awe. but there is no reverence in the globe-trotter: he is brazen. a young man from manchester was travelling to bombay in order--how the words hurt!--to be home by christmas. he had come through america, new zealand, and australia, and finding that he had ten days to spare at bombay, conceived the modest idea of "doing india." "i don't say that i've done it all; but you may say that i've seen a good deal." then he explained that he had been "much pleased" at agra; "much pleased" at delhi; and, last profanation, "very much pleased" at the taj. indeed, he seemed to be going through life just then "much pleased" at everything. with rare and sparkling originality he remarked that india was a "big place," and that there were many things to buy. verily, this young man must have been a delight to the delhi boxwallahs. he had purchased shawls and embroidery "to the tune of" a certain number of rupees duly set forth, and he had purchased jewellery to another tune. these were gifts for friends at home, and he considered them "very eastern." if silver filigree work modelled on palais royal patterns, or aniline blue scarves be eastern, he had succeeded in his heart's desire. for some inscrutable end it had been decreed that man shall take a delight in making his fellow-man miserable. the englishman began to point out gravely the probable extent to which the young man from manchester had been swindled, and the young man said: "by jove! you don't say so? i hate being done. if there's anything i hate, it's being done!" he had been so happy in the thought of "getting home by christmas," and so charmingly communicative as to the members of his family for whom such and such gifts were intended, that the englishman cut short the record of fraud and soothed him by saying that he had not been so very badly "done," after all. this consideration was misplaced, for, his peace of mind restored, the young man from manchester looked out of the window and, waving his hand over the empire generally, said: "i say. look here. all those wells are wrong, you know!" the wells were on the wheel and inclined plane system; but he objected to the incline, and said that it would be much better for the bullocks if they walked on level ground. then light dawned upon him, and he said: "i suppose it's to exercise all their muscles. y' know a canal horse is no use after he has been on the tow-path for some time. he can't walk anywhere but on the flat, y' know, and i suppose it's just the same with bullocks." the spurs of the aravalis, under which the train was running, had evidently suggested this brilliant idea which passed uncontradicted, for the englishman was looking out of the window. if one were bold enough to generalise after the manner of globe-trotters, it would be easy to build up a theory on the well incident to account for the apparent insanity of some of our cold weather visitors. even the young man from manchester could evolve a complete idea for the training of well-bullocks in the east at thirty seconds' notice. how much the more could a cultivated observer from, let us say, an english constituency, blunder and pervert and mangle? we in this country have no time to work out the notion, which is worthy of the consideration of some leisurely teuton intellect. envy may have prompted a too bitter judgment of the young man from manchester; for, as the train bore him from jeypore to ahmedabad, happy in his "getting home by christmas," pleased as a child with his delhi atrocities, pink-cheeked, whiskered, and superbly self-confident, the englishman whose home for the time was a dark bungaloathsome hotel, watched his departure regretfully; for he knew exactly to what sort of genial, cheery british household, rich in untravelled kin, that young man was speeding. it is pleasant to play at globe-trotting; but to enter fully into the spirit of the piece, one must also be "going home for christmas." ii shows the charm of rajputana and of jeypore, the city of the globe-trotter. of its founder and its embellishment. explains the use and destiny of the stud-bred, and fails to explain many more important matters. if any part of a land strewn with dead men's bones have a special claim to distinction, rajputana, as the cock-pit of india, stands first. east of suez men do not build towers on the tops of hills for the sake of the view, nor do they stripe the mountain sides with bastioned stone walls to keep in cattle. since the beginning of time, if we are to credit the legends, there was fighting--heroic fighting--at the foot of the aravalis and beyond, in the great deserts of sand penned by those kindly mountains from spreading over the heart of india. the "thirty-six royal races" fought as royal races know how to do, chohan with rahtor, brother against brother, son against father. later--but excerpts from the tangled tale of force, fraud, cunning, desperate love and more desperate revenge, crime worthy of demons and virtues fit for gods, may be found, by all who care to look, in the book of the man who loved the rajputs and gave a life's labours in their behalf. from delhi to abu, and from the indus to the chambul, each yard of ground has witnessed slaughter, pillage, and rapine. but, to-day, the capital of the state, that dhola rae, son of soora singh, hacked out more than nine hundred years ago with the sword from some weaker ruler's realm, is lighted with gas, and possesses many striking and english peculiarities. dhola rae was killed in due time, and for nine hundred years jeypore, torn by the intrigues of unruly princes and princelings, fought asiatically. when and how jeypore became a feudatory of british power and in what manner we put a slur upon rajput honour--punctilious as the honour of the pathan--are matters of which the globe-trotter knows more than we do. he "reads up"--to quote his own words--a city before he comes to us, and, straightway going to another city, forgets, or, worse still, mixes what he has learnt--so that in the end he writes down the rajput a mahratta, says that lahore is in the northwest provinces, and was once the capital of sivaji, and piteously demands a "guide-book on all india, a thing that you can carry in your trunk y' know--that gives you plain descriptions of things without mixing you up." here is a chance for a writer of discrimination and void of conscience! but to return to jeypore--a pink city set on the border of a blue lake, and surrounded by the low, red spurs of the aravalis--a city to see and to puzzle over. there was once a ruler of the state, called jey singh, who lived in the days of aurungzeb, and did him service with foot and horse. he must have been the solomon of rajputana, for through the forty-four years of his reign his "wisdom remained with him." he led armies, and when fighting was over, turned to literature; he intrigued desperately and successfully, but found time to gain a deep insight into astronomy, and, by what remains above ground now, we can tell that whatsoever his eyes desired, he kept not from him. knowing his own worth, he deserted the city of amber founded by dhola rae among the hills, and, six miles further, in the open plain, bade one vedyadhar, his architect, build a new city, as seldom indian city was built before--with huge streets straight as an arrow, sixty yards broad, and cross-streets broad and straight. many years afterward the good people of america builded their towns after this pattern, but knowing nothing of jey singh, they took all the credit to themselves. he built himself everything that pleased him, palaces and gardens and temples, and then died, and was buried under a white marble tomb on a hill overlooking the city. he was a traitor, if history speak truth, to his own kin, and he was an accomplished murderer; but he did his best to check infanticide, he reformed the mahometan calendar; he piled up a superb library and he made jeypore a marvel. later on came a successor, educated and enlightened by all the lamps of british progress, and converted the city of jey singh into a surprise--a big, bewildering, practical joke. he laid down sumptuous _trottoirs_ of hewn stone, and central carriage drives, also of hewn stone, in the main street, he, that is to say, colonel jacob, the superintending engineer of the state, devised a water supply for the city and studded the ways with standpipes. he built gas works, set afoot a school of art, a museum--all the things in fact which are necessary to western municipal welfare and comfort, and saw that they were the best of their kind. how much colonel jacob has done, not only for the good of jeypore city but for the good of the state at large, will never be known, because the officer in question is one of the not small class who resolutely refuse to talk about their own work. the result of the good work is that the old and the new, the rampantly raw and the sullenly old, stand cheek-by-jowl in startling contrast. thus, the sacred bull of shira trips over the rails of a steel tramway which brings out the city rubbish; the lacquered and painted cart behind the two little stag-like trotting bullocks catches its primitive wheels in the cast-iron gas-lamp post with the brass nozzle atop, and all rajputana, gayly clad, small-turbaned swaggering rajputana, circulates along the magnificent pavements. the fortress-crowned hills look down upon the strange medley. one of them bears on its flank in huge white letters the cheery inscription, "welcome!" this was made when the prince of wales visited jeypore to shoot his first tiger; but the average traveller of to-day may appropriate the message to himself, for jeypore takes great care of strangers and shows them all courtesy. this, by the way, demoralises the globe-trotter, whose first cry is, "where can we get horses? where can we get elephants? who is the man to write to for all these things?" thanks to the courtesy of the maharaja, it is possible to see everything, but for the incurious who object to being driven through their sights, a journey down any one of the great main streets is a day's delightful occupation. the view is as unobstructed as that of the champs Élysées; but in place of the white-stone fronts of paris, rises a long line of open-work screen-wall, the prevailing tone of which is pink, caramel-pink, but house-owners have unlimited license to decorate their tenements as they please. jeypore, broadly considered, is hindu, and her architecture of the riotous, many-arched type which even the globe-trotter after a short time learns to call hindu. it is neither temperate nor noble, but it satisfies the general desire for something that "really looks indian." a perverse taste for low company drew the englishman from the pavement--to walk upon a real stone pavement is in itself a privilege--up a side-street, where he assisted at a quail fight and found the low-caste rajput a cheery and affable soul. the owner of the losing quail was a trooper in the maharaja's army. he explained that his pay was six rupees a month paid bimonthly. he had to pay the cost of his khaki blouse, brown-leather accoutrements, and jack-boots; lance, saddle, sword, and horse were given free. he refused to tell for how many months in the year he was drilled, and said vaguely that his duties were mainly escort ones, and he had no fault to find with them. the defeat of his quail had vexed him, and he desired the sahib to understand that the sowars of his highness's army could ride. a clumsy attempt at a compliment so fired his martial blood that he climbed into his saddle, and then and there insisted on showing off his horsemanship. the road was narrow, the lance was long, and the horse was a big one, but no one objected, and the englishman sat him down on a doorstep and watched the fun. the horse seemed in some shadowy way familiar. his head was not the lean head of the kathiawar, nor his crest the crest of the marwarri, and his forelegs did not belong to these stony districts. "where did he come from?" the sowar pointed northward and said, "from amritsar," but he pronounced it "armtzar." many horses had been bought at the spring fairs in the punjab; they cost about two hundred rupees each--perhaps more, the sowar could not say. some came from hissar and some from other places beyond delhi. they were very good horses. "that horse there," he pointed to one a little distance down the street, "is the son of a big government horse--the kind that the sirkar make for breeding horses--so high!" the owner of "that horse" swaggered up, jaw bandaged and cat-moustached, and bade the englishman look at his mount; bought, of course, when a colt. both men together said that the sahib had better examine the maharaja sahib's stable, where there were hundreds of horses, huge as elephants or tiny as sheep. to the stables the englishman accordingly went, knowing beforehand what he would find, and wondering whether the sirkar's "big horses" were meant to get mounts for rajput sowars. the maharaja's stables are royal in size and appointments. the enclosure round which they stand must be about half a mile long--it allows ample space for exercising, besides paddocks for the colts. the horses, about two hundred and fifty, are bedded in pure white sand--bad for the coat if they roll, but good for the feet--the pickets are of white marble, the heel-ropes in every case of good sound rope, and in every case the stables are exquisitely clean. each stall contains above the manger, a curious little bunk for the syce who, if he uses the accommodation, must assuredly die once each hot weather. a journey round the stables is saddening, for the attendants are very anxious to strip their charges, and the stripping shows so much. a few men in india are credited with the faculty of never forgetting a horse they have once seen, and of knowing the produce of every stallion they have met. the englishman would have given something for their company at that hour. his knowledge of horse-flesh was very limited; but he felt certain that more than one or two of the sleek, perfectly groomed country-breds should have been justifying their existence in the ranks of the british cavalry, instead of eating their heads off on six seers[ ] of gram and one of sugar per diem. but they had all been honestly bought and honestly paid for; and there was nothing in the wide world to prevent his highness, if he wished to do so, from sweeping up the pick and pride of all the stud-bred horses in the punjab. the attendants appeared to take a wicked delight in saying "eshtud-bred"[ ] very loudly and with unnecessary emphasis as they threw back the loin-cloth. sometimes they were wrong, but in too many cases they were right. [ ] a seer is about two pounds. [ ] stud-bred, _i.e._ bred at the indian government studs. the englishman left the stables and the great central maidan, where a nervous biluchi was being taught, by a perfect network of ropes, to "monkey-jump," and went out into the streets reflecting on the working of horse-breeding operations under the government of india, and the advantages of having unlimited money wherewith to profit by other people's mistakes. then, as happened to the great tartarin of tarescon, wild beasts began to roar, and a crowd of little boys laughed. the lions of jeypore are tigers, caged in a public place for the sport of the people, who hiss at them and disturb their royal feelings. two or three of the six great brutes are magnificent. all of them are short-tempered, and the bars of their captivity not too strong. a pariah-dog was furtively trying to scratch out a fragment of meat from between the bars of one of the cages, and the occupant tolerated him. growing bolder, the starveling growled; the tiger struck at him with his paw, and the dog fled howling with fear. when he returned, he brought two friends with him, and the three mocked the captive from a distance. it was not a pleasant sight and suggested globe-trotters--gentlemen who imagine that "more curricles" should come at their bidding, and on being undeceived become abusive. iii does not in any sort describe the dead city of amber, but gives detailed information about a cotton-press. and what shall be said of amber, queen of the pass--the city that jey singh bade his people slough as snakes cast their skins? the globe-trotter will assure you that it must be "done" before anything else, and the globe-trotter is, for once, perfectly correct. amber lies between six and seven miles from jeypore among the "tumbled fragments of the hills," and is reachable by so prosaic a conveyance as a _ticca-ghari_, and so uncomfortable a one as an elephant. _he_ is provided by the maharaja, and the people who make india their prey, are apt to accept his services as a matter of course. rise very early in the morning, before the stars have gone out, and drive through the sleeping city till the pavement gives place to cactus and sand, and educational and enlightened institutions to mile upon mile of semi-decayed hindu temples--brown and weather-beaten--running down to the shores of the great man sagar lake, wherein are more ruined temples, palaces, and fragments of causeways. the water-birds have their home in the half-submerged arcades and the crocodile nuzzles the shafts of the pillars. it is a fitting prelude to the desolation of amber. beyond the man sagar the road of to-day climbs up-hill, and by its side runs the huge stone causeway of yesterday--blocks sunk in concrete. down this path the swords of amber went out to kill. a triple wall rings the city, and, at the third gate, the road drops into the valley of amber. in the half light of dawn, a great city sunk between hills and built round three sides of a lake is dimly visible, and one waits to catch the hum that should arise from it as the day breaks. the air in the valley is bitterly chill. with the growing light, amber stands revealed, and the traveller sees that it is a city that will never wake. a few beggars live in huts at the end of the valley, but the temples, the shrines, the palaces, and the tiers-on-tiers of houses are desolate. trees grow upon and split the walls, the windows are filled with brushwood, and the cactus chokes the street. the englishman made his way up the side of the hill to the great palace that overlooks everything except the red fort of jeighur, guardian of amber. as the elephant swung up the steep roads paved with stone and built out on the sides of the hill, he looked into empty houses where the little grey squirrel sat and scratched its ears. the peacock walked on the house-tops, and the blue pigeon roosted within. he passed under iron-studded gates whose hinges were eaten out with rust, and by walls plumed and crowned with grass, and under more gate-ways, till, at last, he reached the palace and came suddenly into a great quadrangle where two blinded, arrogant stallions, covered with red and gold trappings, screamed and neighed at each other from opposite ends of the vast space. for a little time these were the only visible living beings, and they were in perfect accord with the spirit of the spot. afterwards certain workmen appeared; for it seems that the maharaja keeps the old palace of his forefathers in good repair, but they were modern and mercenary, and with great difficulty were detached from the skirts of the traveller. a somewhat extensive experience of palace-seeing had taught him that it is best to see palaces alone, for the oriental as a guide is undiscriminating and sets too great a store on corrugated iron roofs and glazed drain-pipes. so the englishman went into this palace built of stone, bedded on stone, springing out of scarped rock, and reached by stone ways--nothing but stone. presently, he stumbled across a little temple of kali, a gem of marble tracery and inlay, very dark and, at that hour of the morning, very cold. if, as viollet-le-duc tells us to believe, a building reflects the character of its inhabitants, it must be impossible for one reared in an eastern palace to think straightly or speak freely or--but here the annals of rajputana contradict the theory--to act openly. the cramped and darkened rooms, the narrow smooth-walled passages with recesses where a man might wait for his enemy unseen, the maze of ascending and descending stairs leading nowhither, the ever-present screens of marble tracery that may hide or reveal so much,--all these things breathe of plot and counter-plot, league and intrigue. in a living palace where the sightseer knows and feels that there are human beings everywhere, and that he is followed by scores of unseen eyes, the impression is almost unendurable. in a dead palace--a cemetery of loves and hatreds done with hundreds of years ago, and of plottings that had for their end, though the greybeards who plotted knew it not, the coming of the british tourist with guide-book and sun-hat--oppression gives place to simply impertinent curiosity. the englishman wandered into all parts of the palace, for there was no one to stop him--not even the ghosts of the dead queens--through ivory-studded doors, into the women's quarters, where a stream of water once flowed over a chiselled marble channel. a creeper had set its hands upon the lattice there, and there was dust of old nests in one of the niches in the wall. did the lady of light virtue who managed to become possessed of so great a portion of jey singh's library ever set her dainty feet in the trim garden of the hall of pleasure beyond the screen-work? was it in the forty-pillared hall of audience that the order went forth that the chief of birjooghar was to be slain, and from what wall did the king look out when the horsemen clattered up the steep stone path to the palace, bearing on their saddle-bows the heads of the bravest of rajore? there were questions innumerable to be asked in each court and keep and cell; but the only answer was the cooing of the pigeons. if a man desired beauty, there was enough and to spare in the palace; and of strength more than enough. with inlay and carved marble, with glass and colour, the kings who took their pleasure in that now desolate pile, made all that their eyes rested upon royal and superb. but any description of the artistic side of the palace, if it were not impossible, would be wearisome. the wise man will visit it when time and occasion serve, and will then, in some small measure, understand what must have been the riotous, sumptuous, murderous life to which our governors and lieutenant-governors, commissioners and deputy commissioners, colonels and captains and the subalterns, have put an end. from the top of the palace you may read if you please the book of ezekiel written in stone upon the hillside. coming up, the englishman had seen the city from below or on a level. he now looked into its very heart--the heart that had ceased to beat. there was no sound of men or cattle, or grind-stones in those pitiful streets--nothing but the cooing of the pigeons. at first it seemed that the palace was not ruined at all--that soon the women would come up on the house-tops and the bells would ring in the temples. but as he attempted to follow with his eye the turns of the streets, the englishman saw that they died out in wood tangle and blocks of fallen stone, that some of the houses were rent with great cracks, and pierced from roof to road with holes that let in the morning sun. the drip-stones of the eaves were gap-toothed, and the tracery of the screens had fallen out so that zenana-rooms lay shamelessly open to the day. on the outskirts of the city, the strong-walled houses dwindled and sank down to mere stone-heaps and faint indications of plinth and wall, hard to trace against the background of stony soil. the shadow of the palace lay over two-thirds of the city and the trees deepened the shadow. "he who has bent him o'er the dead" _after_ the hour of which byron sings, knows that the features of the man become blunted as it were--the face begins to fade. the same hideous look lies on the face of the queen of the pass, and when once this is realised, the eye wonders that it could have ever believed in the life of her. she is the city "whose graves are set in the side of the pit, and her company is round about her graves," sister of pathros, zoan, and no. moved by a thoroughly insular instinct, the englishman took up a piece of plaster and heaved it from the palace wall into the dark streets. it bounded from a house-top to a window-ledge, and thence into a little square, and the sound of its fall was hollow and echoing, as the sound of a stone in a well. then the silence closed up upon the sound, till in the far-away courtyard below the roped stallions began screaming afresh. there may be desolation in the great indian desert to the westward, and there is desolation on the open seas; but the desolation of amber is beyond the loneliness either of land or sea. men by the hundred thousand must have toiled at the walls that bound it, the temples and bastions that stud the walls, the fort that overlooks all, the canals that once lifted water to the palace, and the garden in the lake of the valley. renan could describe it as it stands to-day, and verestchaguin could paint it. arrived at this satisfactory conclusion, the englishman went down through the palace and the scores of venomous and suggestive little rooms, to the elephant in the courtyard, and was taken back in due time to the nineteenth century in the shape of his highness, the maharaja's cotton-press, returning a profit of twenty-seven per cent, and fitted with two engines, of fifty horse-power each, an hydraulic press, capable of exerting a pressure of three tons per square inch, and everything else to correspond. it stood under a neat corrugated iron roof close to the jeypore railway station, and was in most perfect order, but somehow it did not taste well after amber. there was aggressiveness about the engines and the smell of the raw cotton. the modern side of jeypore must not be mixed with the ancient. iv the temple of mahadeo and the manners of such as see india. the man by the water-troughs and his knowledge. the voice of the city and what it said. personalities and the hospital. the house beautiful of jeypore and its builders. from the cotton-press the englishman wandered through the wide streets till he came into an hindu temple--rich in marble stone and inlay, and a deep and tranquil silence, close to the public library of the state. the brazen bull was hung with flowers, and men were burning the evening incense before mahadeo; while those who had prayed their prayer beat upon the bells hanging from the roof and passed out, secure in the knowledge that the god had heard them. if there be much religion, there is little reverence, as westerns understand the term, at the services of the gods of the east. a tiny little maiden, child of a monstrously ugly, wall-eyed priest, staggered across the marble pavement to the shrine and threw, with a gust of childish laughter, the blossoms she was carrying into the lap of the great mahadeo himself. then she made as though she would leap up to the bell and ran away, still laughing, into the shadow of the cells behind the shrine, while her father explained that she was but a baby and that mahadeo would take no notice. the temple, he said, was specially favoured by the maharaja, and drew from lands an income of twenty thousand rupees a year. thakoors and great men also gave gifts out of their benevolence; and there was nothing in the wide world to prevent an englishman from following their example. by this time--for amber and the cotton-press had filled the hours--night was falling, and the priests unhooked the swinging jets and began to light up the impassive face of mahadeo with gas. they used swedish matches! full night brought the hotel and its curiously composed human menagerie. there is, if a work-a-day world will believe, a society entirely outside, and unconnected with, that of the station--a planet within a planet, where nobody knows anything about the collector's wife, the colonel's dinner-party, or what was really the matter with the engineer. it is a curious, an insatiably curious, thing, and its literature is newman's _bradshaw_. wandering "old arms-sellers" and others live upon it, and so do the garnetmen and the makers of ancient rajput shields. the world of the innocents abroad is a touching and unsophisticated place, and its very atmosphere urges the anglo-indian unconsciously to an extravagant mendacity. can you wonder, then, that a guide of long-standing should in time grow to be an accomplished liar? into this world sometimes breaks the anglo-indian returned from leave, or a fugitive to the sea, and his presence is like that of a well-known land-mark in the desert. the old arms-seller knows and avoids him, and he is detested by the jobber of gharis who calls every one "my lord" in english, and panders to the "glaring race anomaly" by saying that every carriage not under his control is "rotten, my lord, having been used by natives." one of the privileges of playing at tourist is the brevet-rank of "lord." there are many, and some very curious, methods of seeing india. one of these is buying english translations of the more zolaistic of zola's novels and reading them from breakfast to dinner-time in the verandah. yet another, even simpler, is american in its conception. take a newman's _bradshaw_ and a blue pencil, and race up and down the length of the empire, ticking off the names of the stations "done." to do this thoroughly, keep strictly to the railway buildings and form your conclusions through the carriage-windows. these eyes have seen both ways of working in full blast; and, on the whole, the first is the most commendable. let us consider now with due reverence the modern side of jeypore. it is difficult to write of a nickel-plated civilisation set down under the immemorial aravalis in the first state of rajputana. the red-grey hills seem to laugh at it, and the ever-shifting sand-dunes under the hills take no account of it, for they advance upon the bases of the monogrammed, coronet-crowned lamp-posts, and fill up the points of the natty tramways near the waterworks, which are the outposts of the civilisation of jeypore. escape from the city by the railway station till you meet the cactus and the mud-bank and the maharaja's cotton-press. pass between a tramway and a trough for wayfaring camels till your foot sinks ankle-deep in soft sand, and you come upon what seems to be the fringe of illimitable desert--mound upon mound of tussocks overgrown with plumed grass where the parrots sit and swing. here, if you have kept to the road, you shall find a dam faced with stone, a great tank, and pumping machinery fine as the heart of a municipal engineer can desire--pure water, sound pipes, and well-kept engines. if you belong to what is sarcastically styled an "able and intelligent municipality" under the british rule, go down to the level of the tank, scoop up the water in your hands and drink, thinking meanwhile of the defects of the town whence you came. the experience will be a profitable one. there are statistics in connection with the waterworks figures relating to "three-throw-plungers," delivery and supply, which should be known to the professional reader. they would not interest the unprofessional who would learn his lesson among the thronged standpipes of the city. while the englishman was preparing in his mind a scathing rebuke for an erring municipality that he knew of, a camel swung across the sands, its driver's jaw and brow bound mummy-fashion to guard against the dust. the man was evidently a stranger to the place, for he pulled up and asked the englishman where the drinking-troughs were. he was a gentleman and bore very patiently with the englishman's absurd ignorance of his dialect. he had come from some village, with an unpronounceable name, thirty _kos_ away, to see his brother's son, who was sick in the big hospital. while the camel was drinking the man talked, lying back along his mount. he knew nothing of jeypore, except the names of certain englishmen in it, the men who, he said, had made the waterworks and built the hospital for his brother's son's comfort. and this is the curious feature of jeypore; though happily the city is not unique in its peculiarity. when the late maharaja ascended the throne, more than fifty years ago, it was his royal will and pleasure that jeypore should advance. whether he was prompted by love for his subjects, desire for praise, or the magnificent vanity with which jey singh must have been so largely dowered, are questions that concern nobody. in the latter years of his reign, he was supplied with englishmen who made the state their fatherland, and identified themselves with its progress as only englishmen can. behind them stood the maharaja ready to spend money with a lavishness that no supreme government would dream of; and it would not be too much to say that they together made the state what it is. when ram singh died, madho singh, his successor, a conservative hindu, forbore to interfere in any way with the work that was going forward. it is said in the city that he does not overburden himself with the cares of state, the driving power being mainly in the hands of a bengali, who has everything but the name of minister. nor do the englishmen, it is said in the city, mix themselves with the business of government; their business being wholly executive. they can, according to the voice of the city, do what they please, and the voice of the city--not in the main roads, but in the little side-alleys where the stall-less bull blocks the path--attests how well their pleasure has suited the pleasure of the people. in truth, to men of action few things could be more delightful than having a state of fifteen thousand square miles placed at their disposal, as it were, to leave their mark on. unfortunately for the vagrant traveller, those who work hard for practical ends prefer not to talk about their doings, and he must, therefore, pick up what information he can at second-hand or in the city. the men at the standpipes explain that the maharaja sahib's father gave the order for the waterworks and that yakub (jacob) sahib made them--not only in the city, but out away in the district. "did the people grow more crops thereby?" "of course they did. were canals made only to wash in?" "how much more crops?" "who knows? the sahib had better go and ask some official." increased irrigation means increase of revenue for the state somewhere, but the man who brought about the increase does not say so. after a few days of amateur globe-trotting, a shamelessness great as that of the other loafer--the red-nosed man who hangs about one garden and is always on the eve of starting for calcutta--possesses the masquerader; so that he feels equal to asking a resident for a parcel-gilt howdah, or dropping into dinner with a lieutenant-governor. no man has a right to keep anything back from a globe-trotter, who is a mild, temperate, gentlemanly, and unobtrusive seeker after truth. therefore he who, without a word of enlightenment, sends the visitor into a city which he himself has beautified and adorned and made clean and wholesome, deserves unsparing exposure. and the city may be trusted to betray him. the _malli_ in the ram newas gardens--gardens which are finer than any in india and fit to rank with the best in paris--says that the maharaja gave the order and yakub sahib made the gardens. he also says that the hospital just outside the gardens was built by yakub sahib, and if the sahib will go to the centre of the gardens, he will find another big building, a museum by the same hand. but the englishman went first to the hospital, and found the out-patients beginning to arrive. a hospital cannot tell lies about its own progress as a municipality can. sick folk either come or lie in their own villages. in the case of the mayo hospital, they came, and the operation book showed that they had been in the habit of coming. doctors at issue with provincial and local administrations, civil surgeons who cannot get their indents complied with, ground-down and mutinous practitioners all india over, would do well to visit the mayo hospital, jeypore. they might, in the exceeding bitterness of their envy, be able to point out some defects in its supplies, or its beds, or its splints, or in the absolute isolation of the women's quarters from the men's. from the hospital the englishman went to the museum in the centre of the gardens, and was eaten up by it, for museums appealed to him. the casing of the jewel was in the first place superb--a wonder of carven white stone of the indo-saracenic style. it stood on a stone plinth, and was rich in stone-tracery, green marble columns from ajmir, red marble, white marble colonnades, courts with fountains, richly carved wooden doors, frescoes, inlay, and colour. the ornamentation of the tombs of delhi, the palaces of agra, and the walls of amber have been laid under contribution to supply the designs in bracket, arch, and soffit; and stone-masons from the jeypore school of art have woven into the work the best that their hands could produce. the building in essence if not in the fact of to-day, is the work of freemasons. the men were allowed a certain scope in their choice of detail and the result--but it should be seen to be understood, as it stands in those imperial gardens. and, observe, the man who had designed it, who had superintended its erection, had said no word to indicate that there were such a thing in the place, or that every foot of it, from the domes of the roof to the cool green chunam dadoes and the carving of the rims of the fountains in the courtyard, was worth studying! round the arches of the great centre court are written in sanskrit and hindi, texts from the great hindu writers of old, bearing on the beauty of wisdom and the sanctity of true knowledge. in the central corridor are six great frescoes, each about nine feet by five, copies of illustrations in the royal folio of the _razmnameh_, the _mahabharata_, which abkar caused to be done by the best artists of his day. the original is in the museum, and he who can steal it will find a purchaser at any price up to fifty thousand pounds. v of the sordidness of the supreme government on the revenue side; and of the palace of jeypore. a great king's pleasure-house, and the work of the servants of state. internally, there is, in all honesty, no limit to the luxury of the jeypore museum. it revels in "south kensington" cases--of the approved pattern--that turn the beholder homesick, and south kensington labels, whereon the description, measurements, and price of each object are fairly printed. these make savage one who knows how labelling is bungled in some of the government museums--our starved barns that are supposed to hold the economic exhibits, not of little states, but of great provinces. the floors are of dark red chunam, overlaid with a discreet and silent matting; the doors, where they are not plate glass, are of carved wood, no two alike, hinged by sumptuous brass hinges on to marble jambs and opening without noise. on the carved marble pillars of each hall are fixed revolving cases of the south kensington pattern to show textile fabrics, gold lace, and the like. in the recesses of the walls are more cases, and on the railing of the gallery that runs round each of the three great central rooms, are fixed low cases to hold natural history specimens and wax models of fruits and vegetables. hear this, governments of india from the punjab to madras! the doors come true to the jamb, the cases, which have been through a hot weather, are neither warped nor cracked, nor are there unseemly tallow-drops and flaws in the glasses. the maroon cloth, on or against which the exhibits are placed, is of close texture, untouched by the moth, neither stained nor meagre nor sunfaded; the revolving cases revolve freely without rattling; there is not a speck of dust from one end of the building to the other, because the menial staff are numerous enough to keep everything clean, and the curator's office is a veritable office--not a shed or a bath-room, or a loose-box partitioned from the main building. these things are so because money has been spent on the museum, and it is now a rebuke to all other museums in india from calcutta downwards. whether it is not too good to be buried away in a native state is a question which envious men may raise and answer as they choose. not long ago, the editor of a bombay paper passed through it, but having the interests of the egocentric presidency before his eyes, dwelt more upon the idea of the building than its structural beauties; saying that bombay, who professed a weakness for technical education, should be ashamed of herself. and he was quite right. the system of the museum is complete in intention, as are its appointments in design. at present there are some fifteen thousand objects of art, covering a complete exposition of the arts, from enamels to pottery and from brass-ware to stone-carving, of the state of jeypore. they are compared with similar arts of other lands. thus a damio's sword--a gem of lacquer-plated silk and stud-work--flanks the _tulwars_ of marwar and the _jezails_ of tonk; and reproductions of persian and russian brass-work stand side by side with the handicrafts of the pupils of the jeypore school of art. a photograph of his highness the present maharaja is set among the arms, which are the most prominent features of the first or metal-room. as the villagers enter, they salaam reverently to the photo, and then move on slowly, with an evidently intelligent interest in what they see. ruskin could describe the scene admirably--pointing out how reverence must precede the study of art, and how it is good for englishmen and rajputs alike to bow on occasion before geisler's cap. they thumb the revolving cases of cloths do those rustics, and artlessly try to feel the texture through the protecting glass. the main object of the museum is avowedly provincial--to show the craftsman of jeypore the best that his predecessors could do, and what foreign artists have done. in time--but the curator of the museum has many schemes which will assuredly bear fruit in time, and it would be unfair to divulge them. let those who doubt the thoroughness of a museum under one man's control, built, filled, and endowed with royal generosity--an institution perfectly independent of the government of india--go and exhaustively visit dr. hendley's charge at jeypore. like the man who made the building, he refuses to talk, and so the greater part of the work that he has in hand must be guessed at. at one point, indeed, the curator was taken off his guard. a huge map of the kingdom showed in green the portions that had been brought under irrigation, while blue circles marked the towns that owned dispensaries. "i want to bring every man in the state within twenty miles of a dispensary--and i've nearly done it," said he. then he checked himself, and went off to food-grains in little bottles as being neutral and colourless things. envy is forced to admit that the arrangement of the museum--far too important a matter to be explained off-hand--is continental in its character, and has a definite end and bearing--a trifle omitted by many institutions other than museums. but--in fine, what can one say of a collection whose very labels are gilt-edged! shameful extravagance? nothing of the kind--only finish, perfectly in keeping with the rest of the fittings--a finish that we in _kutcha_[ ] india have failed to catch. [ ] casual: half-finished. from the museum go out through the city to the maharaja's palace--skilfully avoiding the man who would show you the maharaja's european billiard-room,--and wander through a wilderness of sunlit, sleepy courts, gay with paint and frescoes, till you reach an inner square, where smiling grey-bearded men squat at ease and play _chaupur_[ ]--just such a game as cost the pandavs the fair draupadi--with inlaid dice and gayly lacquered pieces. these ancients are very polite and will press you to play, but give no heed to them, for _chaupur_ is an expensive game--expensive as quail-fighting, when you have backed the wrong bird and the people are laughing at your inexperience. the maharaja's palace is gay, overwhelmingly rich in candelabra, painted ceilings, gilt mirrors, and other evidences of a too hastily assimilated civilisation; but, if the evidence of the ear can be trusted, the old, old game of intrigue goes on as merrily as of yore. a figure in saffron came out of a dark arch into the sunlight, almost falling into the arms of one in pink. "where have you come from?" "i have been to see ----" the name was unintelligible. "that is a lie; you have _not_!" then, across the court, some one laughed a low, croaking laugh. the pink and saffron figures separated as though they had been shot, and disappeared into separate bolt-holes. it was a curious little incident, and might have meant a great deal or just nothing at all. it distracted the attention of the ancients bowed above the _chaupur_ cloth. [ ] something like _parchesi_. in the palace-gardens there is even a greater stillness than that about the courts, and here nothing of the west, unless a critical soul might take exception to the lamp-posts. at the extreme end lies a lake-like tank swarming with _muggers_.[ ] it is reached through an opening under a block of zenana buildings. remembering that all beasts by the palaces of kings or the temples of priests in this country would answer to the name of "brother," the englishman cried with the voice of faith across the water. and the mysterious freemasonry did not fail. at the far end of the tank rose a ripple that grew and grew and grew like a thing in a nightmare, and became presently an aged _mugger_. as he neared the shore, there emerged, the green slime thick upon his eyelids, another beast, and the two together snapped at a cigar-butt--the only reward for their courtesy. then, disgusted, they sank stern first with a gentle sigh. now a _mugger's_ sigh is the most suggestive sound in animal speech. it suggested first the zenana buildings overhead, the walled passes through the purple hills beyond, a horse that might clatter through the passes till he reached the man sagar lake below the passes, and a boat that might row across the man sagar till it nosed the wall of the palace-tank, and then--then uprose the _mugger_ with the filth upon his forehead and winked one horny eyelid--in truth he did!--and so supplied a fitting end to a foolish fiction of old days and things that might have been. but it must be unpleasant to live in a house whose base is washed by such a tank. [ ] crocodiles. and so back through the chunamed courts, and among the gentle sloping paths between the orange trees, up to an entrance of the palace, guarded by two rusty brown dogs from kabul, each big as a man, and each requiring a man's charpoy to sleep upon. very gay was the front of the palace, very brilliant were the glimpses of the damask-couched, gilded rooms within, and very, very civilised were the lamp-posts with ram singh's monogram, devised to look like v. r., at the bottom, and a coronet at the top. an unseen brass band among the orange bushes struck up the overture of the _bronze horse_. those who know the music will see at once that that was the only tune which exactly and perfectly fitted the scene and its surroundings. it was a coincidence and a revelation. in his time and when he was not fighting, jey singh, the second, who built the city, was a great astronomer--a royal omar khayyam, for he, like the tent-maker of nishapur, reformed a calendar, and strove to wring their mysteries from the stars with instruments worthy of a king. but in the end he wrote that the goodness of the almighty was above everything, and died, leaving his observatory to decay without the palace-grounds. from the _bronze horse_ to the grass-grown enclosure that holds the yantr samrat, or prince of dials, is rather an abrupt passage. jey singh built him a dial with a gnomon some ninety feet high, to throw a shadow against the sun, and the gnomon stands to-day, though there is grass in the kiosque at the top and the flight of steps up the hypotenuse is worn. he built also a zodiacal dial--twelve dials upon one platform--to find the moment of true noon at any time of the year, and hollowed out of the earth place for two hemispherical cups, cut by belts of stone, for comparative observations. he made cups for calculating eclipses, and a mural quadrant and many other strange things of stone and mortar, of which people hardly know the names and but very little of the uses. once, said a man in charge of two tiny elephants, _indur_ and _har_, a sahib came with the viceroy, and spent eight days in the enclosure of the great neglected observatory, seeing and writing things in a book. but _he_ understood _sanskrit_--the sanskrit upon the faces of the dials, and the meaning of the gnoma and pointers. nowadays no one understands sanskrit--not even the pundits; but without doubt jey singh was a great man. the hearer echoed the statement, though he knew nothing of astronomy, and of all the wonders in the observatory was only struck by the fact that the shadow of the prince of dials moved over its vast plate so quickly that it seemed as though time, wroth at the insolence of jey singh, had loosed the horses of the sun and were sweeping everything--dainty palace-gardens and ruinous instruments--into the darkness of eternal night. so he went away chased by the shadow on the dial, and returned to the hotel, where he found men who said--this must be a catch-word of globe-trotters--that they were "much pleased at" amber. they further thought that "house-rent would be cheap in those parts," and sniggered over the witticism. there is a class of tourists, and a strangely large one, who individually never get farther than the "much pleased" state under any circumstances. this same class of tourists, it has also been observed, are usually free with hackneyed puns, vapid phrases, and alleged or bygone jokes. jey singh, in spite of a few discreditable _laches_, was a temperate and tolerant man; but he would have hanged those globe-trotters in their trunk-straps as high as the yantr samrat. next morning, in the grey dawn, the englishman rose up and shook the sand of jeypore from his feet, and went with master coryatt and sir thomas roe to "adsmir," wondering whether a year in jeypore would be sufficient to exhaust its interest, and why he had not gone out to the tombs of the dead kings and the passes of gulta and the fort of motee dungri. but what he wondered at most--knowing how many men who have in any way been connected with the birth of an institution, do, to the end of their days, continue to drag forward and exhume their labours and the honours that did _not_ come to them--was the work of the two men who, together for years past, have been pushing jeypore along the stone-dressed paths of civilisation, peace, and comfort. "servants of the raj" they called themselves, and surely they have served the raj past all praise. the people in the city and the camel-driver from the sand-hills told of their work. they themselves held their peace as to what they had done, and, when pressed, referred--crowning baseness--to reports. printed ones! vi showing how her majesty's mails went to udaipur and fell out by the way. arrived at ajmir, the englishman fell among tents pitched under the shadow of a huge banian tree, and in them was a punjabi. now there is no brotherhood like the brotherhood of the pauper province; for it is even greater than the genial and unquestioning hospitality which, in spite of the loafer and the globe-trotter, seems to exist throughout india. ajmir being british territory, though the inhabitants are allowed to carry arms, is the headquarters of many of the banking firms who lend to the native states. the complaint of the setts[ ] to-day is that their trade is bad, because an unsympathetic government induces native states to make railways and become prosperous. "look at jodhpur!" said a gentleman whose possessions might be roughly estimated at anything between thirty and forty-five lakhs. "time was when jodhpur was always in debt--and not so long ago, either. now, they've got a railroad and are carrying salt over it, and, as sure as i stand here, they have a _surplus_! what can we do?" poor pauper! however, he makes a little profit on the fluctuations in the coinage of the states round him, for every small king seems to have the privilege of striking his own image and inflicting the great exchange question on his subjects. it is a poor state that has not two seers and five different rupees. [ ] native bankers. from a criminal point of view, ajmir is not a pleasant place. the native states lie all round and about it, and portions of the district are ten miles off, native state-locked on every side. thus the criminal, who may be a burglarious meena lusting for the money bags of the setts, or a peshawari down south on a cold weather tour, has his plan of campaign much simplified. the englishman made only a short stay in the town, hearing that there was to be a ceremony--_tamasha_ covers a multitude of things--at the capital of his highness the maharana of udaipur--a town some hundred and eighty miles south of ajmir, not known to many people beyond viceroys and their staffs and the officials of the rajputana agency. so he took a neemuch train in the very early morning and, with the punjabi, went due south to chitor, the point of departure for udaipur. in time the aravalis gave place to a dead, flat, stone-strewn plain, thick with dhak-jungle. later the date-palm fraternised with the dhak, and low hills stood on either side of the line. to this succeeded a tract rich in pure white stone--the line was ballasted with it. then came more low hills, each with a cock's comb of splintered rock, overlooking dhak-jungle and villages fenced with thorns--places that at once declared themselves tigerish. last, the huge bulk of chitor showed itself on the horizon. the train crossed the gumber river and halted almost in the shadow of the hills on which the old pride of udaipur was set. it is difficult to give an idea of the chitor fortress; but the long line of brown wall springing out of bush-covered hill suggested at once those pictures, such as the _graphic_ publishes, of the _inflexible_ or the _devastation_--gigantic men-of-war with a very low free-board ploughing through green sea. the hill on which the fort stands is ship-shaped and some miles long, and, from a distance, every inch appears to be scarped and guarded. but there was no time to see chitor. the business of the day was to get, if possible, to udaipur from chitor station, which was composed of one platform, one telegraph-room, a bench, and several vicious dogs. the state of udaipur is as backward as jeypore is advanced--if we judge it by the standard of civilisation. it does not approve of the incursions of englishmen, and, to do it justice, it thoroughly succeeds in conveying its silent sulkiness. still, where there is one english resident, one doctor, one engineer, one settlement officer, and one missionary, there must be a mail at least once a day. there was a mail. the englishman, men said, might go by it if he liked, or he might not. then, with a great sinking of the heart, he began to realise that his caste was of no value in the stony pastures of mewar, among the swaggering gentlemen, who were so lavishly adorned with arms. there was a mail, the ghost of a tonga, with tattered side-cloths and patched roof, inconceivably filthy within and without, and it was her majesty's. there was another tonga,--an _aram_ tonga, a carriage of ease--but the englishman was not to have it. it was reserved for a rajput thakur who was going to udaipur with his "tail." the thakur, in claret-coloured velvet with a blue turban, a revolver--army pattern--a sword, and five or six friends, also with swords, came by and indorsed the statement. now, the mail tonga had a wheel which was destined to become the wheel of fate, and to lead to many curious things. two diseased yellow ponies were extracted from a dung-hill and yoked to the tonga; and after due deliberation her majesty's mail started, the thakur following. in twelve hours, or thereabouts, the seventy miles between chitor and udaipur would be accomplished. behind the tonga cantered an armed sowar. he was the guard. the thakur's tonga came up with a rush, ran deliberately across the bows of the englishman, chipped a pony, and passed on. one lives and learns. the thakur seems to object to following the foreigner. at the halting-stages, once in every six miles, that is to say, the ponies were carefully undressed and all their accoutrements fitted more or less accurately on to the backs of any ponies that might happen to be near; the released animals finding their way back to their stables alone and unguided. there were no grooms, and the harness hung on by special dispensation of providence. still the ride over a good road, driven through a pitilessly stony country, had its charms for a while. at sunset the low hills turned to opal and wine-red and the brown dust flew up pure gold; for the tonga was running straight into the sinking sun. now and again would pass a traveller on a camel, or a gang of _bunjarras_[ ] with their pack-bullocks and their women; and the sun touched the brasses of their swords and guns till the poor wretches seemed rich merchants come back from travelling with sindbad. [ ] gipsy traders. on a rock on the right-hand side, thirty-four great vultures were gathered over the carcass of a steer. and this was an evil omen. they made unseemly noises as the tonga passed, and a raven came out of a bush on the right and answered them. to crown all, one of the hide and skin castes sat on the left-hand side of the road, cutting up some of the flesh that he had stolen from the vultures. could a man desire three more inauspicious signs for a night's travel? twilight came, and the hills were alive with strange noises, as the red moon, nearly at her full, rose over chitor. to the low hills of the mad geological formation, the tumbled strata that seem to obey no law, succeeded level ground, the pasture lands of mewar, cut by the beruch and wyan, streams running over smooth water-worn rock, and, as the heavy embankments and ample waterways showed, very lively in the rainy season. in this region occurred the last and most inauspicious omen of all. something had gone wrong with a crupper, a piece of blue and white punkah-cord. the englishman pointed it out, and the driver, descending, danced on that lonely road an unholy dance, singing the while: "the _dumchi_![ ] the _dumchi_! the _dumchi_!" in a shrill voice. then he returned and drove on, while the englishman wondered into what land of lunatics he was heading. at an average speed of six miles an hour, it is possible to see a great deal of the country; and, under brilliant moonlight, mewar was desolately beautiful. there was no night traffic on the road, no one except the patient sowar, his shadow an inky blot on white, cantering twenty yards behind. once the tonga strayed into a company of date trees that fringed the path, and once rattled through a little town, and once the ponies shied at what the driver said was a rock. but it jumped up in the moonlight and went away. [ ] the crupper. then came a great blasted heath whereon nothing was more than six inches high--a wilderness covered with grass and low thorn; and here, as nearly as might be midway between chitor and udaipur, the wheel of fate, which had been for some time beating against the side of the tonga, came off, and her majesty's mails, two bags including parcels, collapsed on the wayside: while the englishman repented him that he had neglected the omens of the vultures and the raven, the low-caste man and the mad driver. there was a consultation and an examination of the wheel, but the whole tonga was rotten, and the axle was smashed and the axle pins were bent and nearly red-hot. "it is nothing," said the driver, "the mail often does this. what is a wheel?" he took a big stone and began hammering proudly on the tire, to show that that at least was sound. a hasty court-martial revealed that there was absolutely not one single relief vehicle on the whole road between chitor and udaipur. now this wilderness was so utterly waste that not even the barking of a dog or the sound of a night-fowl could be heard. luckily the thakur had, some twenty miles back, stepped out to smoke by the roadside, and his tonga had been passed meanwhile. the sowar was sent back to find that tonga and bring it on. he cantered into the haze of the moonlight and disappeared. then said the driver: "had there been no tonga behind us, i should have put the mails on a horse, because the sirkar's mail cannot stop." the englishman sat down upon the parcels-bag, for he felt that there was trouble coming. the driver looked east and west and said: "i, too, will go and see if the tonga can be found, for the sirkar's dak cannot stop. meantime, oh, sahib, do you take care of the mails--one bag and one bag of parcels." so he ran swiftly into the haze of the moonlight and was lost, and the englishman was left alone in charge of her majesty's mails, two unhappy ponies, and a lop-sided tonga. he lit a fire, for the night was bitterly cold, and only mourned that he could not destroy the whole of the territories of his highness, the maharana of udaipur. but he managed to raise a very fine blaze, before he reflected that all this trouble was his own fault for wandering into native states undesirous of englishmen. the ponies coughed dolorously from time to time, but they could not lift the weight of a dead silence that seemed to be crushing the earth. after an interval measurable by centuries, sowar, driver, and thakur's tonga reappeared; the latter full to the brim and bubbling over with humanity and bedding. "we will now," said the driver, not deigning to notice the englishman who had been on guard over the mails, "put the sirkar's mail into this tonga and go forward." amiable heathen! he was going--he said so--to leave the englishman to wait in the sahara, for certainly thirty hours and perhaps forty-eight. tongas are scarce on the udaipur road. there are a few occasions in life when it is justifiable to delay her majesty's mail. this was one of them. seating himself upon the parcels-bag, the englishman cried in what was intended to be a very terrible voice, but the silence soaked it up and left only a thin trickle of sound, that any one who touched the bags would be hit with a stick, several times, over the head. the bags were the only link between him and the civilisation he had so rashly foregone. and there was a pause. the thakur put his head out of the tonga and spoke shrilly in mewari. the englishman replied in english-urdu. the thakur withdrew his head, and from certain grunts that followed seemed to be wakening his retainers. then two men fell sleepily out of the tonga and walked into the night. "come in," said the thakur, "you and your baggage. my pistol is in that corner; be careful." the englishman, taking a mail-bag in one hand for safety's sake,--the wilderness inspires an anglo-indian cockney, with unreasoning fear,--climbed into the tonga, which was then loaded far beyond plimsoll mark, and the procession resumed its journey. every one in the vehicle--it seemed as full as the railway carriage that held alice through the looking-glass--was _sahib_ and _hazur_. except the englishman. he was simple _tum_ (thou), and a revolver, army pattern, was printing every diamond in the chequer-work of its handle, on his right hip. when men desired him to move, they prodded him with the handles of _tulwars_ till they had coiled him into an uneasy lump. then they slept upon him, or cannoned against him as the tonga bumped. it was an _aram_ tonga, a tonga for ease. that was the bitterest thought of all! in due season the harness began to break once every five minutes, and the driver vowed that the wheels would give way also. after eight hours in one position, it is excessively difficult to walk, still more difficult to climb up an unknown road into a dak-bungalow; but he who has sought sleep on an arsenal and under the bodies of burly rajputs can do it. the grey dawn brought udaipur and a french bedstead. as the tonga jingled away, the englishman heard the familiar crack of broken harness. so he was not the jonah he had been taught to consider himself all through that night of penance! a jackal sat in the verandah and howled him to sleep, and he dreamed that he caught a viceroy under the walls of chitor and beat him with a _tulwar_ till he turned into a dak-pony whose near foreleg was perpetually coming off and who would say nothing but _tum_ when he was asked why he had not built a railway from chitor to udaipur. vii touching the children of the sun and their city, and the hat-marked caste and their merits, and a good man's works in the wilderness. it was worth a night's discomfort and revolver-beds to sleep upon--this city of the suryavansi, hidden among the hills that encompass the great pichola lake. truly, the king who governs to-day is wise in his determination to have no railroad to his capital. his predecessor was more or less enlightened, and had he lived a few years longer, would have brought the iron horse through the dobarri--the green gate which is the entrance of the girwa or girdle of hills around udaipur; and, with the train, would have come the tourist who would have scratched his name upon the temple of garuda and laughed horse-laughs upon the lake. let us, therefore, be thankful that the capital of mewar is hard to reach. each man in this land who has any claims to respectability walks armed, carrying his tulwar sheathed in his hand, or hung by a short sling of cotton passing over the shoulder, under his left armpit. his matchlock, or smooth-bore, if he has one, is borne naked on the shoulder. now it is possible to carry any number of lethal weapons without being actually dangerous. an unhandy revolver, for instance, may be worn for years, and, at the end, accomplish nothing more noteworthy than the murder of its owner. but the rajput's weapons are not meant for display. the englishman caught a camel-driver who talked to him in mewari, which is a heathenish dialect, something like multani to listen to; and the man, very gracefully and courteously, handed him his sword and matchlock, the latter a heavy stump-stock arrangement without pretence of sights. the blade was as sharp as a razor, and the gun in perfect working order. the coiled fuse on the stock was charred at the end, and the curled ram's-horn powder-horn opened as readily as a much-handled whisky-flask. unfortunately, ignorance of mewari prevented conversation; so the camel-driver resumed his accoutrements and jogged forward on his beast--a superb black one, with the short curled _hubshee_ hair--while the englishman went to the city, which is built on hills on the borders of the lake. by the way, everything in udaipur is built on a hill. there is no level ground in the place, except the durbar gardens, of which more hereafter. because colour holds the eye more than form, the first thing noticeable was neither temple nor fort, but an ever-recurring picture, painted in the rudest form of native art, of a man on horseback armed with a lance, charging an elephant-of-war. as a rule, the elephant was depicted on one side the house-door and the rider on the other. there was no representation of an army behind. the figures stood alone upon the whitewash on house and wall and gate, again and again and again. a highly intelligent priest grunted that it was a picture; a private of the maharana's regular army suggested that it was an elephant; while a wheat-seller, his sword at his side, was equally certain that it was a raja. beyond that point, his knowledge did not go. the explanation of the picture is this. in the days when raja maun of amber put his sword at akbar's service and won for him great kingdoms, akbar sent an army against mewar, whose then ruler was pertap singh, most famous of all the princes of mewar. selim, akbar's son, led the army of the toork; the rajputs met them at the pass of huldighat and fought till one-half of their band was slain. once, in the press of battle, pertap on his great horse, chytak, came within striking distance of selim's elephant, and slew the mahout, but selim escaped, to become jehangir afterwards, and the rajputs were broken. that was three hundred years ago, and men have reduced the picture to a sort of diagram that the painter dashes in, in a few minutes, without, it would seem, knowing what he is commemorating. thinking of these things, the englishman made shift to get to the city, and presently came to a tall gate, the gate of the sun, on which the elephant-spikes, that he had seen rotted with rust at amber, were new and pointed and effective. the city gates are said to be shut at night, and there is a story of a viceroy's guard-of-honour which arrived before daybreak, being compelled to crawl ignominiously man by man through a little wicket-gate, while the horses had to wait without till sunrise. but a civilised yearning for the utmost advantages of octroi, and not a fierce fear of robbery and wrong, is at the bottom of the continuance of this custom. the walls of the city are loopholed for musketry, but there seem to be no mounting for guns, and the moat without the walls is dry and gives cattle pasture. coarse rubble in concrete faced with stone makes the walls moderately strong. internally, the city is surprisingly clean, though with the exception of the main street, paved after the fashion of jullundur, of which, men say, the pavement was put down in the time of alexander and worn by myriads of naked feet into deep barrels and grooves. in the case of udaipur, the feet of the passengers have worn the rock veins that crop out everywhere, smooth and shiny; and in the rains the narrow gullies must spout like fire-hoses. the people have been untouched by cholera for four years, proof that providence looks after those who do not look after themselves, for neemuch cantonment, a hundred miles away, suffered grievously last summer. "and what do you make in udaipur?" "swords," said the man in the shop, throwing down an armful of _tulwars_, _kuttars_, and _khandas_ on the stones. "do you want any? look here!" hereat, he took up one of the commoner swords and flourished it in the sunshine. then he bent it double, and, as it sprang straight, began to make it "speak." arm-venders in udaipur are a sincere race, for they sell to people who really use their wares. the man in the shop was rude--distinctly so. his first flush of professional enthusiasm abated, he took stock of the englishman and said calmly: "what do _you_ want with a sword?" then he picked up his goods and retreated, while certain small boys, who deserved a smacking, laughed riotously from the coping of a little temple hard by. swords seem to be the sole manufacture of the place. at least, none of the inhabitants the englishman spoke to could think of any other. there is a certain amount of personal violence in and about the state, or else where would be the good of the weapons? there are occasionally dacoities more or less important; but these are not often heard of, and, indeed, there is no special reason why they should be dragged into the light of an unholy publicity, for the land governs itself in its own way, and is always in its own way, which is by no means ours, very happy. the thakurs live, each in his own castle on some rock-faced hill, much as they lived in the days of tod; though their chances of distinguishing themselves, except in the school, and dispensary line, are strictly limited. nominally, they pay _chutoond_, or a sixth of their revenues to the state, and are under feudal obligations to supply their head with so many horsemen per thousand rupees; but whether the _chutoond_ justifies its name and what is the exact extent of the "tail" leviable, they, and perhaps the rajputana agency, alone know. they are quiet, give no trouble except to the wild boar, and personally are magnificent men to look at. the rajput shows his breeding in his hands and feet, which are almost disproportionately small, and as well shaped as those of a woman. his stirrups and sword-handles are even more unusable by westerns than those elsewhere in india, whereas the bhil's knife-handle gives as large a grip as an english one. now the little bhil is an aborigine, which is humiliating to think of. his tongue, which may frequently be heard in the city, seems to possess some variant of the zulu click, which gives it a weird and unearthly character. from the main gate of the city the englishman climbed uphill towards the palace and the jugdesh temple built by one juggat singh at the beginning of the last century. this building must be--but ignorance is a bad guide--jain in character. from basement to the stone socket of the temple flagstaff, it is carved in high relief with elephants, men, gods, and monsters in friezes of wearying profusion. the management of the temple have daubed a large portion of the building with whitewash, for which their revenues should be "cut" for a year or two. the main shrine holds a large brazen image of garuda, and, in the corners of the courtyard of the main pile, are shrines to mahadeo, and the jovial, pot-bellied ganesh. there is no repose in this architecture, and the entire effect is one of repulsion; for the clustered figures of man and brute seem always on the point of bursting into unclean, wriggling life. but it may be that the builders of this form of house desired to put the fear of all their many gods into the hearts of the worshippers. from the temple whose steps are worn smooth by the feet of men, and whose courts are full of the faint smell of stale flowers and old incense, the englishman went to the palaces which crown the highest hill overlooking the city. here, too, whitewash had been unsparingly applied, but the excuse was that the stately fronts and the pierced screens were built of a perishable stone which needed protection against the weather. one projecting window in the façade of the main palace had been treated with minton tiles. luckily it was too far up the wall for anything more than the colour to be visible, and the pale blue against the pure white was effective. a picture of ganesh looks out over the main courtyard, which is entered by a triple gate, and hard by is the place where the king's elephants fight over a low masonry wall. in the side of the hill on which the palaces stand is built stabling for horses and elephants--proof that the architects of old must have understood their business thoroughly. the palace is not a "show place," and, consequently, the englishman did not see much of the interior. but he passed through open gardens with tanks and pavilions, very cool and restful, till he came suddenly upon the pichola lake, and forgot altogether about the palace. he found a sheet of steel-blue water, set in purple and grey hills, bound in, on one side, by marble bunds, the fair white walls of the palace, and the grey, time-worn ones of the city; and, on the other, fading away through the white of shallow water, and the soft green of weed, marsh, and rank-pastured river-field, into the land. to enjoy open water thoroughly, live for a certain number of years barred from anything better than the yearly swell and shrinkage of one of the five rivers, and then come upon two and a half miles of solid, restful lake, with a cool wind blowing off it and little waves spitting against the piers of a veritable, albeit hideously ugly, boat-house. on the faith of an exile from the sea, you will not stay long among palaces, be they never so lovely, or in little rooms panelled with dutch tiles. and here follows a digression. there is no life so good as the life of a loafer who travels by rail and road; for all things and all people are kind to him. from the chill miseries of a dak-bungalow where they slew one hen with as much parade as the french guillotined pranzini, to the well-ordered sumptuousness of the residency, was a step bridged over by kindly and unquestioning hospitality. so it happened that the englishman was not only able to go upon the lake in a soft-cushioned boat, with everything handsome about him, but might, had he chosen, have killed wild-duck with which the lake swarms. the mutter of water under a boat's nose was a pleasant thing to hear once more. starting at the head of the lake, he found himself shut out from sight of the main sheet of water in a loch bounded by a sunk, broken bund to steer across which was a matter of some nicety. beyond that lay a second pool, spanned by a narrow-arched bridge built, men said, long before the city of the rising sun, which is little more than three hundred years old. the bridge connects the city with brahmapura--a whiter walled enclosure filled with many brahmins and ringing with the noise of their conches. beyond the bridge, the body of the lake, with the city running down to it, comes into full view; and providence has arranged for the benefit of such as delight in colours, that the rajputni shall wear the most striking tints that she can buy in the bazaars, in order that she may beautify the ghâts where she comes to bathe. the bathing-ledge at the foot of the city wall was lighted with women clad in raw vermilion, dull red, indigo and sky-blue, saffron and pink and turquoise; the water faithfully doubling everything. but the first impression was of the unreality of the sight, for the englishman found himself thinking of the simla fine arts exhibition and the overdaring amateurs who had striven to reproduce scenes such as these. then a woman rose up, and clasping her hands behind her head, looked at the passing boat, and the ripples spread out from her waist, in blinding white silver, far across the water. as a picture, a daringly insolent picture, it was superb. the boat turned aside to shores where huge turtles were lying, and a stork had built her a nest, big as a haycock, in a withered tree, and a bevy of coots were flapping and gabbling in the weeds or between great leaves of the _victoria regia_--an "escape" from the state gardens. here were divers and waders, kingfishers and snaky-necked birds of the cormorant family, but no duck. they had seen the guns in the boat and were flying to and fro in companies across the lake, or settling--wise things!--in the glare of the sun on the water. the lake was swarming with them, but they seemed to know exactly how far a twelve-bore would carry. perhaps their knowledge had been gained from the englishman at the residency. later, as the sun left the lake, and the hills began to glow like opals, the boat made her way to the shallow side of the lake, through fields of watergrass and dead lotus-raffle that rose as high as the bows, and clung lovingly about the rudder, and parted with the noise of silk when it is torn. there she waited for the fall of twilight when the duck would come home to bed, and the englishman sprawled upon the cushions in deep content and laziness, as he looked across to where two marble palaces floated upon the waters, and saw all the glory and beauty of the city, and wondered whether tod, in cocked hat and stiff stock, had ever come shooting among the reeds, and, if so, how in the world he had ever managed to bowl over.... "duck and drake, by jove! confiding beasts, weren't they. hi! lalla, jump out and get them!" it was a brutal thing, this double-barrelled murder perpetrated in the silence of the marsh when the kingly wild-duck came back from his wanderings with his mate at his side, but--but--the birds were very good to eat. if the venetian owned the pichola sagar he might say with justice: "see it and die." but it is better to live and go to dinner, and strike into a new life--that of the men who bear the hat-mark on their brow as plainly as the well-born native carries the _trisul_ of shiva. they are of the same caste as the toilers on the frontier--tough, bronzed men, with wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, gotten by looking across much sun-glare. when they would speak of horses they mention arab ponies, and their talk, for the most part, drifts bombaywards, or to abu, which is their simla. by these things the traveller may see that he is far away from the presidency; and will presently learn that he is in a land where the railway is an incident and not an indispensable luxury. folk tell strange stories of drives in bullock-carts in the rains, of breakdowns in nullahs fifty miles from everywhere, and of elephants that used to sink for rest and refreshment half-way across swollen streams. every place here seems fifty miles from everywhere, and the legs of a horse are regarded as the only natural means of locomotion. also, and this to the indian cockney, who is accustomed to the bleached or office man, is curious, there are to be found many veritable "tiger-men"--not story-spinners, but such as have, in their wanderings from bikaneer to indore, dropped their tiger in the way of business. they are enthusiastic over princelings of little known fiefs, lords of austere estates perched on the tops of unthrifty hills, hard riders, and good sportsmen. and five, six, yes fully nine hundred miles to the northward, lives the sister branch of the same caste--the men who swear by pathan, biluch, and brahui, with whom they have shot or broken bread. there is a saying in upper india that the more desolate the country, the greater the certainty of finding a padre-sahib. the proverb seems to hold good in udaipur, where the scotch presbyterian mission have a post, and others at todgarh to the north and elsewhere. to arrive, under providence, at the cure of souls through the curing of bodies certainly seems the rational method of conversion; and this is exactly what the missions are doing. their padre in udaipur is also an m.d., and of him a rather striking tale is told. conceiving that the city could bear another hospital in addition to the state one, he took furlough, went home, and there, by crusade and preaching, raised sufficient money for the scheme, so that none might say that he was beholden to the state. returning, he built his hospital, a very model of neatness and comfort, and, opening the operation-book, announced his readiness to see any one and every one who was sick. how the call was and is now responded to, the dry records of that book will show; and the name of the padre-sahib is honoured, as these ears have heard, throughout udaipur and far around. the faith that sends a man into the wilderness, and the secular energy which enables him to cope with an ever-growing demand for medical aid, must, in time, find their reward. if patience and unwearying self-sacrifice carry any merit, they should do so soon. to-day the people are willing enough to be healed, and the general influence of the padre-sahib is very great. but beyond that.... still it was impossible to judge aright. viii divers passages of speech and action whence the nature, arts, and disposition of the king and his subjects may be observed. in this land men tell "sad stories of the death of kings" not easily found elsewhere; and also speak of _sati_, which is generally supposed to be out of date in a manner which makes it seem very near and vivid. be pleased to listen to some of the tales, but with all the names cut out, because a king has just as much right to have his family affairs respected as has a british householder paying income tax. once upon a time, that is to say when the british power was well established in the land and there were railways, was a king who lay dying for many days, and all, including the englishmen about him, knew that his end was certain. but he had chosen to lie in an outer court or pleasure-house of his palace; and with him were some twenty of his favourite wives. the place in which he lay was very near to the city; and there was a fear that his womankind should, on his death, going mad with grief, cast off their veils and run out into the streets, uncovered before all men. in which case nothing, not even the power of the press, and the locomotive, and the telegraph, and cheap education and enlightened municipal councils, could have saved them from the burning-pyre, for they were the wives of a king. so the political did his best to induce the dying man to go to the fort of the city, a safe place close to the regular zenana, where all the women could be kept within walls. he said that the air was better in the fort, but the king refused; and that he would recover in the fort; but the king refused. after some days, the latter turned and said: "_why_ are you so keen, sahib, upon getting my old bones up to the fort?" driven to his last defences, the political said simply: "well, maharana sahib, the place is close to the road, you see, and ..." the king saw and said: "oh, _that's_ it? i've been puzzling my brain for four days to find out what on earth you were driving at. i'll go to-night." "but there may be some difficulty," began the political. "you think so," said the king. "if i only hold up my little finger, the women will obey me. go now, and come back in five minutes, and all will be ready for departure." as a matter of fact, the political withdrew for the space of fifteen minutes, and gave orders that the conveyances which he had kept in readiness day and night should be got ready. in fifteen minutes those twenty women, with their handmaidens, were packed and ready for departure; and the king died later at the fort, and nothing happened. here the englishman asked why a frantic woman must of necessity become a _sati_, and felt properly abashed when he was told that she _must_. there was nothing else for her if she went out unveiled. the rush-out forces the matter. and, indeed, if you consider the matter from the rajput point of view it does. then followed a very grim tale of the death of another king; of the long vigil by his bedside, before he was taken off the bed to die upon the ground; of the shutting of a certain mysterious door behind the bed-head, which shutting was followed by a rustle of women's dress; of a walk on the top of the palace, to escape the heated air of the sick room; and then, in the grey dawn, the wail upon wail breaking from the zenana as the news of the king's death went in. "i never wish to hear anything more horrible and awful in my life. you could see nothing. you could only hear the poor wretches," said the political, with a shiver. the last resting-place of the maharanas of udaipur is at ahar, a little village two miles east of the city. here they go down in their robes of state, their horse following behind, and here the political saw, after the death of a maharana, the dancing-girls dancing before the poor white ashes, the musicians playing among the cenotaphs, and the golden hookah, sword, and water-vessel laid out for the naked soul doomed to hover twelve days round the funeral pyre, before it could depart on its journey toward a fresh birth. once, in a neighbouring state it is said, one of the dancing-girls stole a march in the next world's precedence and her lord's affections, upon the legitimate queens. the affair happened, by the way, after the mutiny, and was accomplished with great pomp in the light of day. subsequently those who might have stopped it but did not, were severely punished. the girl said that she had no one to look to but the dead man, and followed him, to use tod's formula, "through the flames." it would be curious to know whether _sati_ is altogether abolished among these lonely hills in the walled holds of the thakurs. but to return from the burning-ground to modern udaipur, as at present worked under the maharana and his prime minister rae punna lal, _c. i. e._ to begin with, his highness is a racial anomaly in that, judged by the strictest european standard, he is a man of temperate life, the husband of one wife whom he married before he was chosen to the throne after the death of the maharana sujjun singh in . sujjun singh died childless and gave no hint of his desires as to succession and--omitting all the genealogical and political reasons which would drive a man mad--futteh singh was chosen, by the thakurs, from the seorati branch of the family which sangram singh ii. founded. he is thus a younger son of a younger branch of a younger family, which lucid statement should suffice to explain everything. the man who could deliberately unravel the succession of any one of the rajput states would be perfectly capable of explaining the politics of all the frontier tribes from jumrood to quetta. roughly speaking, the maharana and the prime minister--in whose family the office has been hereditary for many generations--divide the power of the state. they control, more or less, the mahand raj sabha or council of direction and revision. this is composed of many of the rawats and thakurs of the state, _and_ the poet laureate who, under a less genial administration, would be presumably the registrar. there are also district officers, officers of customs, superintendents of the mint, masters of the horses, and supervisor of doles, which last is pretty and touching. the state officers itself, and the englishman's investigations failed to unearth any bengalis. the commandant of the state army, about five thousand men of all arms, is a retired non-commissioned officer, a mr. lonergan; who, as the medals on his breast attest, has done the state some service, and now in his old age rejoices in the local rank of major-general, and teaches the maharaja's guns to make uncommonly good practice. the infantry are smart and well set up, while the cavalry--rare thing in native states--have a distinct notion of keeping their accoutrements clean. they are, further, well mounted on light, wiry mewar and kathiawar horses. incidentally, it may be mentioned that the pathan comes down with his pickings from the punjab to udaipur, and finds a market there for animals that were much better employed in our service--but the complaint is a stale one. let us see, later on, what the jodhpur stables hold; and then formulate an indictment against the government. so much for the indigenous administration of udaipur. the one drawback in the present maharaja, from the official point of view, is his want of education. he is a thoroughly good man, but was not brought up with the kingship before his eyes, consequently he is not an english-speaking man. there is a story told of him which is worth the repeating. an englishman who flattered himself that he could speak the vernacular fairly well, paid him a visit and discoursed with a round mouth. the maharana heard him politely, and turning to a satellite, demanded a translation; which was given. then said the maharana:--"speak to him in _angrezi_." the _angrezi_ spoken by the interpreter was urdu as the sahibs speak it, and the englishman, having ended his conference, departed abashed. but this backwardness is eminently suited to a place like udaipur, and a european prince is not always a desirable thing. the curious and even startling simplicity of his life is worth preserving. here is a specimen of one of his days. rising at four--and the dawn can be bitterly chill--he bathes and prays after the custom of his race, and at six is ready to take in hand the first instalment of the day's work which comes before him through his prime minister, and occupies him for three or four hours till the first meal of the day is ready. at two o'clock he attends the mahand raj sabha, and works till five, retiring at a healthily primitive hour. he is said to have his hand fairly, firmly upon the reins of rule, and to know as much as most monarchs know of the way in which his revenues--some thirty lakhs--are disposed of. the prime minister's career has been a chequered and interesting one, including a dismissal from power (this was worked by the queens from behind the screen), an arrest, and an attack with swords which all but ended in his murder. he has not so much power as his predecessors had, for the reason that the present maharaja allows little but tiger-shooting to distract him from the supervision of the state. his highness, by the way, is a first-class shot and has bagged eighteen tigers already. he preserves his game carefully, and permission to kill tigers is not readily obtainable. a curious instance of the old order giving place to the new is in process of evolution and deserves notice. the prime minister's son, futteh lal, a boy of twenty years old, has been educated at the mayo college, ajmir, and speaks and writes english. there are few native officials in the state who do this; and the consequence is that the lad has won a very fair insight into state affairs, and knows generally what is going forward both in the eastern and western spheres of the little court. in time he may qualify for direct administrative powers, and udaipur will be added to the list of the states that are governed english fashion. what the end will be, after three generations of princes and dewans have been put through the mill of the rajkumar colleges, those who live will learn. more interesting is the question, for how long can the vitality of a people whose life was arms be suspended? men in the north say that, by the favour of the government which brings peace, the sikh sirdars are rotting on their lands; and the rajput thakurs say of themselves that they are growing rusty. the old, old problem forces itself on the most unreflective mind at every turn in the gay streets of udaipur. a frenchman might write: "behold there the horse of the rajput--foaming, panting, caracoling, but always fettered with his head so majestic upon his bosom so amply filled with a generous heart. he rages, but he does not advance. see there the destiny of the rajput who bestrides him, and upon whose left flank bounds the sabre useless--the haberdashery of the ironmonger only! pity the horse in reason, for that life there is his _raison d'être_. pity ten thousand times more the rajput, for he has no _raison d'être_. he is an anachronism in a blue turban." the gaul might be wrong, but tod wrote things which seem to support this view, in the days when he wished to make "buffer-states" of the land he loved so well. let us visit the durbar gardens, where little naked cupids are trampling upon fountains of fatted fish, all in bronze, where there are cypresses and red paths, and a deer-park full of all varieties of deer, besides two growling, fluffy little panther cubs, a black panther who is the prince of darkness and a gentleman, and a terrace-full of tigers, bears, and guzerat lions brought from the king of oudh's sale. ix of the pig-drive which was a panther-killing, and of the departure to chitor. above the durbar gardens lie low hills, in which the maharana keeps, very strictly guarded, his pig and his deer, and anything else that may find shelter in the low scrub or under the scattered boulders. these preserves are scientifically parcelled out with high, red-stone walls; and here and there are dotted tiny shooting-stands--masonry sentry-boxes, in which five or six men may sit at ease and shoot. it had been arranged to entertain the englishmen who were gathered at the residency to witness the investiture of the king with the g. c. s. i.--that there should be a little pig-drive in front of the kala odey or black shooting-box. the rajput is a man and a brother, in respect that he will ride, shoot, eat pig, and drink strong waters like an englishman. of the pig-hunting he makes almost a religious duty, and of the wine-drinking no less. read how desperately they used to ride in udaipur at the beginning of the century when tod, always in his cocked hat to be sure, counted up the tale of accidents at the end of the day's sport. there is something unfair in shooting pig; but each man who went out consoled himself with the thought that it was utterly impossible to ride the brutes up the almost perpendicular hillsides, or down rocky ravines, and that he individually would only go "just for the fun of the thing." those who stayed behind made rude remarks on the subject of "pork butchers," and the dangers that attended shooting from a balcony. there are ways and ways of slaying pig--from the orthodox method which begins with "_the boar--the boar--the mighty boar!_" overnight, and ends with a shaky bridle-hand next morn, to the sober and solitary pot-shot at dawn, from a railway embankment running through river marsh; but the perfect way is this. get a large, four-horse break, and drive till you meet an unlimited quantity of pad-elephants waiting at the foot of rich hill-preserves. mount slowly and with dignity, and go in swinging procession, by the marble-faced border of one of the most lovely lakes on earth. strike off on a semi-road, semi-hill-torrent path through unthrifty, thorny jungle, and so climb up and up and up, till you see, spread like a map below, the lake and the palace and the city, hemmed in by the sea of hills that lies between udaipur and mount abu a hundred miles away. then take your seat in a comfortable chair, in a fine two-storied grand stand, with an awning spread atop to keep off the sun, while the rawat of amet and the prime minister's heir--no less--invite you to take your choice of the many rifles spread on a ledge at the front of the building. this, gentlemen who screw your pet ponies at early dawn after the sounder that vanishes into cover soon as sighted, or painfully follow the tiger through the burning heats of mewar in may, this is shooting after the fashion of ouida--in musk and ambergris and patchouli. it is demoralising. one of the best and hardest riders of the lahore tent club in the old days, as the boars of bouli lena singh knew well, said openly: "this is a first-class scheme," and fell to testing his triggers as though he had been a pot-hunter from his birth. derision and threats of exposure moved him not. "give me an arm-chair!" said he. "this is the proper way to deal with pig!" and he put up his feet on the ledge and stretched himself. there were many weapons to choose from the double-barrelled ' express, whose bullet is a tearing, rending shell, to the rawat of amet's regulation military martini-henri. a profane public at the residency had suggested clubs and saws as amply sufficient for the work in hand. here they were moved by envy, which passion was ten-fold increased when--but this comes later on. the beat was along a deep gorge in the hills, flanked on either crest by stone walls, manned with beaters. immediately opposite the shooting-box, the wall on the upper or higher hill made a sharp turn downhill, contracting the space through which the pig would have to pass to a gut which was variously said to be from one hundred and fifty to four hundred yards across. most of the shooting was up or down hill. a philanthropic desire not to murder more bhils than were absolutely necessary to maintain a healthy current of human life in the hilly tracts, coupled with a well-founded dread of the hinder, or horse, end of a double-barrelled ' express which would be sure to go off both barrels together, led the englishman to take a gunless seat in the background. then a silence fell upon the party, and very far away up the gorge the heated afternoon air was cut by the shrill tremolo squeal of the bhil beaters. now a man may be in no sort or fashion a _shikari_--may hold buddhistic objections to the slaughter of living things--but there is something in the extraordinary noise of an agitated bhil, which makes even the most peaceful mortals get up and yearn, like tartarin of tarescon for "lions," always at a safe distance be it understood. as the beat drew nearer, under the squealing--the "_ul-al-lu-lu-lu_"--was heard a long-drawn bittern-like boom of "_so-oor!_" "_so-oor!_" (pig! pig!) and the crashing of boulders. the guns rose in their places, forgetting that each and all had merely come "to see the fun," and began to fumble among the little mounds of cartridges under the chairs. presently, tripping delicately over the rocks, a pig stepped out of a cactus-bush, and the fusillade began. the dust flew and the branches chipped, but the pig went on--a blue-grey shadow almost undistinguishable against the rocks, and took no harm. "sighting shots," said the guns, sulkily. the beat came nearer, and then the listener discovered what the bubbling scream was like; for he forgot straightway about the beat and went back to the dusk of an easter monday in the gardens of the crystal palace before the bombardment of kars, "set piece ten thousand feet square" had been illuminated, and about five hundred 'arries were tickling a thousand 'arriets. their giggling and nothing else was the noise of the bhil. so curiously does sydenham and western rajputana meet. then came another pig, who was smitten to the death and rolled down among the bushes, drawing his last breath in a human and horrible manner. but full on the crest of the hill, blown along--there is no other word to describe it--like a ball of thistle-down, passed a brown shadow, and men cried: "_bagheera_," or "panther!" according to their nationalities, and blazed. the shadow leaped the wall that had turned the pig downhill, and vanished among the cactus. "never mind," said the prime minister's son, consolingly, "we'll beat the other side of the hill afterwards and get him yet." "oh, he's a mile off by this time," said the guns; but the rawat of amet, a magnificent young man, smiled a sweet smile and said nothing. more pig passed and were slain, and many more broke back through the beaters who presently came through the cover in scores. they were in russet green and red uniform, each man bearing a long spear, and the hillside was turned on the instant to a camp of robin hood's foresters. then they brought up the dead from behind bushes and under rocks--among others a twenty-seven-inch brute who bore on his flank (all pigs shot in a beat are _ex-officio_ boars) a hideous, half-healed scar, big as a man's hand, of a bullet wound. express bullets are ghastly things in their effects, for, as the _shikari_ is never tired of demonstrating, they knock the inside of animals into pulp. the second beat, of the reverse side of the hill, had barely begun when the panther returned--uneasily as if something were keeping her back--much lower down the hill. then the face of the rawat of amet changed, as he brought his gun up to his shoulder. looking at him as he fired, one forgot all about the mayo college at which he had been educated, and remembered only some trivial and out-of-date affairs, in which his forefathers had been concerned, when a bridegroom, with his bride at his side, charged down the slope of the chitor road and died among akbar's men. there are stories connected with the house of amet, which are told in mewar to-day. the young man's face, for as short a time as it takes to pull trigger and see where the bullet falls, was a white light upon all these tales. then the mask shut down, as he clicked out the cartridge, and, very sweetly, gave it as his opinion that some other gun, not his own, had bagged the panther who lay shot through the spine, feebly trying to drag herself downhill into cover. it is an awful thing to see a big beast die, when the soul is wrenched out of the struggling body in ten seconds. wild horses shall not make the englishman disclose the exact number of shots that were fired. it is enough to say that four englishmen, now scattered to the four winds of heaven, are each morally certain that he and he alone shot that panther. in time, when distance and the mirage of the sands of uodhpur shall have softened the harsh outlines of truth, the englishman who did _not_ fire a shot will come to believe that he was the real slayer, and will carefully elaborate that lie. a few minutes after the murder, a two-year-old cub came trotting along the hillside, and was bowled over by a very pretty shot behind the left ear and through the palate. then the beaters' lances showed through the bushes, and the guns began to realise that they had allowed to escape, or had driven back by their fire, a multitude of pig. this ended the beat, and the procession returned to the residency to heap dead panthers upon those who had called them "pork butchers," and to stir up the lake of envy with the torpedo of brilliant description. the englishman's attempt to compare the fusillade which greeted the panther to the continuous drumming of a ten-barrelled nordenfeldt was, however, coldly received. thus harshly is truth treated all the world over. and then, after a little time, came the end, and a return to the road in search of new countries. but shortly before the departure, the padre-sahib, who knows every one in udaipur, read a sermon in a sentence. the maharana's investiture, which has already been described in the indian papers, had taken place, and the carriages, duly escorted by the erinpura horse, were returning to the residency. in a niche of waste land, under the shadow of the main gate, a place strewn with rubbish and shards of pottery, a dilapidated old man was trying to control his horse and a _hookah_ on the saddle-bow. the blundering garron had been made restive by the rush past, and the _hookah_ all but fell from the hampered hands. "see that man," said the padre, tersely. "that's ---- singh. he intrigued for the throne not so very long ago." it was a pitiful little picture, and needed no further comment. for the benefit of the loafer it should be noted that udaipur will never be pleasant or accessible until the present mail contractors have been hanged. they are extortionate and untruthful, and their one set of harness and one tonga are as rotten as pears. however, the weariness of the flesh must be great indeed, to make the wanderer blind to the beauties of a journey by clear starlight and in biting cold to chitor. about six miles from udaipur, the granite hills close in upon the road, and the air grows warmer until, with a rush and a rattle, the tonga swings through the great dobarra, the gate in the double circle of hills round udaipur on to the pastures of mewar. more than once the girwa has been a death-trap to those who rashly entered it; and an army has been cut up on the borders of the pichola lake. even now the genius of the place is strong upon the hills, and as he felt the cold air from the open ground without the barrier, the englishman found himself repeating the words of one of the hat-marked tribe whose destiny kept him within the dobarra. "you must have a hobby of some kind in these parts or you'll die." very lovely is udaipur, and thrice pleasant are a few days spent within her gates, but ... read what tod said who stayed two years behind the dobarra, and accepted the deserts of marwar as a delightful change. it is good to be free, a wanderer upon the highways, knowing not what to-morrow will bring forth--whether the walled-in niceties of an english household, rich in all that makes life fair and desirable, or a sleepless night in the society of a goods-_cum_-booking-office-_cum_-parcels-clerk, on fifteen rupees a month, who tells in stilted english the story of his official life, while the telegraph gibbers like a maniac once in an hour and then is dumb, and the pariah-dogs fight and howl over the cotton-bales on the platform. verily, there is no life like life on the road--when the skies are cool and all men are kind. x a little of the history of chitor, and the malpractices of a she-elephant. there is a certain want of taste, an almost actual indecency, in seeing the sun rise on the earth. until the heat-haze begins and the distances thicken, nature is so very naked that the actæon who has surprised her dressing, blushes. sunrise on the plains of mewar is an especially brutal affair. the moon was burnt out and the air was bitterly cold, when the englishman headed due east in his tonga, and the patient sowar behind nodded and yawned in the saddle. there was no warning of the day's advent. the horses were unharnessed, at one halting-stage, in the thick, soft shadows of night, and ere their successors had limped under the bar, a raw and cruel light was upon all things, so that the englishman could see every rent seam in the rocks around. a little further, and he came upon the black bulk of chitor between him and the morning sun. it has already been said that the fort resembles a man-of-war. every distant view heightens this impression, for the swell of the sides follows the form of a ship, and the bastions on the south wall make the sponsons in which the machine-guns are mounted. from bow to stern, the thing more than three miles long, is between three and five hundred feet high, and from one-half to one-quarter of a mile broad. have patience, now, to listen to a rough history of chitor. in the beginning, no one knows clearly who scraped the hillsides of the hill rising out of the bare plain, and made of it a place of strength. it is written that, eleven and a half centuries ago, bappa rawul, the demi-god whose stature was twenty cubits, whose loin-cloth was five hundred feet long, and whose spear was beyond the power of mortal man to lift, took chitor from "man singh, the mori prince," and wrote the first chapter of the history of mewar, which he received ready-made from man singh who, if the chronicles speak sooth, was his uncle. many and very marvellous legends cluster round the name of bappa rawul; and he is said to have ended his days far away from india, in khorasan, where he married an unlimited number of the daughters of heth, and was the father of all the nowshera pathans. some who have wandered, by the sign-posts of inscription, into the fogs of old time, aver that, two centuries before bappa rawul took chitor the mori division of the pramar rajputs, who are the ruling family of mewar, had found a hold in bhilwara, and for four centuries before that time had ruled in kathiawar; and had royally sacked and slain, and been sacked and slain in turn. but these things are for the curious and the scholar, and not for the reader who reads lightly. nine princes succeeded bappa, between and a.d., and among these was one alluji, who built a jain tower upon the brow of the hill, for in those days, though the sun was worshipped, men were all jains. and here they lived and sallied into the plains, and fought and increased the borders of their kingdom, or were suddenly and stealthily murdered, or stood shoulder to shoulder against the incursions of the "devil men" from the north. in a.d. was born samar singh, and he married into the family of prithi raj, the last hindu emperor of delhi, who was at feud, in regard to a succession question, with the prince of kanauj. in the war that followed, kanauj, being hard pressed by prithi raj, and samar singh, called shahabuddin ghori to his aid. at first, samar singh and prithi raj broke the army of the northern somewhere in the lower punjab, but two years later shahabuddin came again, and, after three days' fighting on the banks of the kaggar, slew samar singh, captured and murdered prithi raj, and sacked delhi and amber, while samar singh's favourite queen became _sati_ at chitor. but another wife, a princess of patun, kept her life, and when shahabuddin sent down kutbuddin to waste her lands, led the rajput army, in person, from chitor, and defeated kutbuddin. then followed confusion, through eleven turbulent reigns that the annalist has failed to unravel. once in the years between and the opening of the fourteenth century, chitor must have been taken by the mussulman, for it is written that one prince "recovered chitor and made the name of rana to be recognised by all." six princes were slain in battles against the mussulman, in vain attempts to clear the land from the presence of the infidel. then ala-ud-din khilji, the pathan emperor, swept the country to the dekkan. in those days, and these things are confusedly set down as having happened at the end of the thirteenth century, a relative of rana lakhsman singh, the then rana of chitor, had married a rajput princess of ceylon--pudmini, "and she was fairest of all flesh on earth." her fame was sung through the land by the poets, and she became, in some sort, the helen of chitor. ala-ud-din heard of her beauty and promptly besieged the fort. when he found his enterprise too difficult, he prayed that he might be permitted to see pudmini's face in a mirror, and this wish, so says the tale, was granted. knowing that the rajput was a gentleman, he entered chitor almost unarmed, saw the face in the mirror, and was well treated; the husband of the fair pudmini accompanying him, in return, to the camp at the foot of the hill. like raja runjeet in the ballad the rajput he-- "... trusted a mussulman's word wah! wah! trust a liar to lie. out of his eyrie they tempted my bird, fettered his wings that he could not fly." pudmini's husband was caught by a trick, and ala-ud-din demanded pudmini as the price of his return. the rajputs here showed that they too could scheme, and sent, in great state, pudmini's litter to the besiegers' intrenchments. but there was no pudmini in the litter, and her following of handmaidens was a band of seven hundred armed men. thus, in the confusion of a camp-fight, pudmini's husband was rescued, and ala-ud-din's soldiery followed hard on his heels to the gates of chitor, where the best and bravest on the rock were killed before ala-ud-din withdrew, only to return soon after and, with a doubled army, besiege in earnest. his first attack men called the half-sack of chitor, for, though he failed to win within the walls, he killed the flower of the rajputs. the second attack ended in the first sack and the awful _sati_ of the women on the rock. when everything was hopeless and the very terrible goddess, who lives in the bowels of chitor, had spoken and claimed for death eleven out of the twelve of the rana's sons, all who were young or fair women betook themselves to a great underground chamber, and the fires were lit and the entrance was walled up and they died. the rajputs opened the gates and fought till they could fight no more, and ala-ud-din the victorious entered a wasted and desolated city. he wrecked everything except only the palace of pudmini and the old jain tower before mentioned. that was all he could do, for there were few men alive of the defenders of chitor when the day was won, and the women were ashes underground. ajai singh, the one surviving son of lakshman singh, had at his father's insistence, escaped from chitor to "carry on the line" when better days should come. he brought up hamir, son of one of his elder brothers, to be a thorn in the side of the invader, and hamir overthrew maldeo, chief of jhalore and vassal of ala-ud-din, into whose hands ala-ud-din had, not too generously, given what was left of chitor. so the sesodias came to their own again, and the successors of hamir extended their kingdoms and rebuilt chitor, as kings know how to rebuild cities in a land where human labour and life are cheaper than bread and water. for two centuries, saith tod, mewar flourished exceedingly and was the paramount kingdom of all rajasthan. greatest of all the successors of hamir, was kumbha rana who, when the ghilzai dynasty was rotting away and viceroys declared themselves kings, met, defeated, took captive, and released without ransom, mahmoud of malwa. kumbha rana built a tower of victory, nine stories high, to commemorate this and the other successes of his reign, and the tower stands to-day a mark for miles across the plains. but the well-established kingdom weakened, and the rulers took favourites and disgusted their best supporters--after the immemorial custom of too prosperous rulers. also they murdered one another. in a.d. bahadur shah, king of gujarat, seeing the decay, and remembering how one of his predecessors, together with mahmoud of malwa, had been humbled by mewar in years gone by, set out to take his revenge of time and mewar then ruled by rana bikrmajit, who had made a new capital at deola. bikrmajit did not stay to give battle in that place. his chiefs were out of hand, and chitor was the heart and brain of mewar; so he marched thither, and the gods were against him. bahadur shah mined one of the chitor bastions, and wiped out in the explosion the hara prince of boondee, with five hundred followers. jowahir bae, bikrmajit's mother, headed a sally from the walls, and was slain. there were frank gunners among bahadur shah's forces, and they hastened the end. the rajputs made a second _johur_, a sacrifice greater than the sacrifice of pudmini; and thirteen thousand were blown up in the magazines, or stabbed or poisoned, before the gates were opened and the defenders rushed down. out of the carnage was saved udai singh, a babe of the blood royal, who grew up to be a coward, and a shame to his line. the story of his preservation is written large in tod, and edwin arnold sings it. read it, who are interested. but, when udai singh came to the throne of chitor, through blood and misrule, after bahadur shah had withdrawn from the wreck of the fort, akbar sat on the throne of delhi, and it was written that few people should withstand the "guardian of mankind." moreover, udai singh was the slave of a woman. it was akbar's destiny to subdue the rajputs, and to win many of them to his own service; sending a rajput prince of amber to get him far-away arrakan. akbar marched against chitor once, and was repulsed; the woman who ruled udai singh heading a charge against the besiegers because of the love she bore to her lover. something of this sort had happened in ala-ud-din's time, and, like ala-ud-din, akbar returned and sat down, in a huge camp, before chitor in a.d. udai singh fled what was coming; and because the goddess of chitor demands always that a crowned head must fall if the defence of her home is to be successful, chitor fell as it had fallen before--in a _johur_ of thousands, a last rush of the men, and the entry of the conqueror into a reeking, ruined slaughter-pen. akbar's sack was the most terrible of the three, for he killed everything that had life upon the rock, and wrecked and overturned and spoiled. the wonder, the lasting wonder, is that he did not destroy kumbha rana's tower of victory, the memorial of the defeat of a mahometan prince. with the third sack the glory of chitor departed, and udai singh founded himself a new capital, the city of udaipur. though chitor was recovered in jehangir's time by udai singh's grandson, it was never again made the capital of mewar. it stood, and rotted where it stood, till enlightened and loyal feudatories, in the present years of grace, made attempts, with the help of executive engineers, to sweep it up and keep it in repair. the above is roughly, very roughly indeed, the tale of the sacks of chitor. follows an interlude, for the study even of inaccurate history is indigestible to many. there was an elephant at chitor, to take birds of passage up the hill, and she--she was fifty-one years old, and her name was gerowlia--came to the dak-bungalow for the englishman. let not the word dak-bungalow deceive any man into believing that there is even moderate comfort at chitor. gerowlia waited in the sunshine, and chuckled to herself like a female pauper when she receives snuff. her _mahout_ said that he would go away for a drink of water. so he walked, and walked, and walked, till he disappeared on the stone-strewn plains, and the englishman was left alone with gerowlia, aged fifty-one. she had been tied by the chain on her near hind leg to a pillar of the verandah; but the string was coir, and more an emblem of authority than a means of restraint. when she had thoroughly exhausted all the resources of the country within range of her trunk, she ate up the string and began to investigate the verandah. there was more coir string, and she ate it all, while the carpenter, who was repairing the dak-bungalow, cursed her and her ancestry from afar. about this time the englishman was roused to a knowledge of the business, for gerowlia, having exhausted the string, tried to come into the verandah. she had, most unwisely, been pampered with biscuits an hour before. the carpenter stood on an outcrop of rock, and said angrily: "see what damage your _hathi_ has done, sahib." "'tisn't my _hathi_," said the sahib, plaintively. "you ordered it," quoth he, "and it has been here ever so long, eating up everything." he threw pieces of stone at gerowlia, and went away. it is a terrible thing to be left alone with an unshackled elephant, even though she be a venerable spinster. gerowlia moved round the dak-bungalow, blowing her nose in a nervous and undecided manner, and presently found some more string and thatch, which she ate. this was too much. the englishman went out and spoke to her. she opened her mouth and salaamed; meaning thereby "biscuits." so long as she remained in this position she could do no harm. imagine a boundless rock-strewn plain, broken here and there by low hills, dominated by the rock of chitor, and bisected by a single metre-gauge railway track running into the infinite, and unrelieved by even a way-inspector's trolly. in the foreground put a brand-new dak-bungalow, furnished with a french bedstead, and nothing else; in the verandah place an embarrassed englishman, smiling into the open mouth of an idiotic female elephant. but gerowlia could not live on smiles alone. finding that no food was forthcoming, she shut her mouth, and renewed her attempts to get into the verandah, and ate more thatch. to say "hi!" to an elephant is a misdirected courtesy. it quickens the pace, and if you flick her on the trunk with a wet towel, she curls the trunk out of harm's way. special education is necessary. a little breechless boy passed, carrying a lump of stone. "hit her on the feet, sahib," said he; "hit her on the feet." gerowlia had by this time nearly scraped off her pad, and there were no signs of the _mahout_. the englishman went out and found a tent-peg, and returning, in the extremity of his wrath smote her bitterly on the nails of the near forefoot. gerowlia held up her foot to be beaten, and made the most absurd noises--squawked in fact, exactly like an old lady who has narrowly escaped being run over. she backed out of the verandah, still squawking, on three feet and in the open held up near and off forefoot alternately to be beaten. it was very pitiful, for one swing of her trunk could have knocked the englishman flat. he ceased whacking her, but she squawked for some minutes and then fell placidly asleep in the sunshine. when the _mahout_ returned, he beat her for breaking her tether exactly as the englishman had done, but much more severely, and the ridiculous old thing hopped on three legs for fully five minutes. "come along, sahib," said the _mahout_. "i will show this mother of bastards who is the driver. fat daughter of the devil, sit down. you would eat thatch, would you? how does the iron taste?" and he gave gerowlia a headache, which affected her temper all through the afternoon. she set off, across the railway line which runs below the rock of chitor, into broken ground cut up with _nullahs_ and covered with low scrub, over which it would have been difficult to have taken a sure-footed horse, so fragmentary and disconnected was its nature. xi. proves conclusively the existence of the dark tower visited by childe rolande, and of "bogey" who frightens children. the gamberi river--clear as a trout-stream--runs through the waste round chitor, and is spanned by an old bridge, very solid and massive, said to have been built before the sack of ala-ud-din. the bridge is in the middle of the stream--the floods have raced round either end of it--and is reached by a steeply sloping stone causeway. from the bridge to the new town of chitor, which lies at the foot of the hill, runs a straight and well-kept road, flanked on either side by the scattered remnants of old houses, and, here and there, fallen temples. the road, like the bridge, is no new thing, and is wide enough for twenty horsemen to ride abreast. new chitor is a very dirty, and apparently thriving, little town, full of grain-merchants and sellers of arms. the ways are barely wide enough for the elephant of dignity and the little brown babies of impudence. the englishman went through, always on a slope painfully accentuated by gerowlia who, with all possible respect to her years, must have been a baggage-animal and no true _sahib's_ mount. let the local baedeker speak for a moment: "the ascent to chitor, which begins from within the southeast angle of the town, is nearly a mile to the upper gate, with a slope of about in . there are two zig-zag bends, and on the three portions thus formed, are seven gates, of which one, however, has only the basement left." this is the language of fact, which, very properly, leaves out of all account the genius of the place who sits at the gate nearest the new city and is with the sightseer throughout. the first impression of repulsion and awe is given by a fragment of tumbled sculpture close to a red daubed _lingam_, near the padal pol or lowest gate. it is a piece of frieze, and the figures of the men are worn nearly smooth by time. what is visible is finely and frankly obscene to an english mind. the road is protected on the cliff side by a thick stone wall, loopholed for musketry, one aperture to every two feet, between fifteen and twenty feet high. this wall is being repaired throughout its length by the maharana of udaipur. on the hillside, among the boulders, loose stones, and _dhak_-scrub, lips stone wreckage that must have come down from the brown bastions above. as gerowlia laboured up the stone-shod slope, the englishman wondered how much life had flowed down this sluice of battles, and been lost at the padal pol--the last and lowest gate--where, in the old days, the besieging armies put their best and bravest battalions. once at the head of the lower slope, there is a clear run-down of a thousand yards with no chance of turning aside either to the right or left. even as he wondered, he was brought abreast of two stone chhatris, each carrying a red daubed stone. they were the graves of two very brave men, jeemal of bedmore, and kalla, who fell in akbar's sack fighting like rajputs. read the story of their deaths, and learn what manner of warriors they were. their graves were all that spoke openly of the hundreds of struggles on the lower slope where the fight was always fiercest. at last, after half an hour's climb, the main gate, the ram pol, was gained, and the englishman passed into the city of chitor and--then and there formed a resolution, since broken, not to write one word about it for fear that he should be set down as a babbling and a gushing enthusiast. objects of archæological interest are duly described in an admirable little book of chitor which, after one look, the englishman abandoned. one cannot "do" chitor with a guide-book. the chaplain of the english mission to jehangir said the best that was to be said, when he described the place three hundred years ago, writing quaintly: "chitor, an ancient great kingdom, the chief city so called which standeth on a mighty high hill, flat on the top, walled about at the least ten english miles. there appear to this day above a hundred churches ruined and divers fair palaces which are lodged in like manner among their ruins, as many englishmen by the observation have guessed. its chief inhabitants to-day are zum and ohim, birds and wild beasts, but the stately ruins thereof give a shadow of its beauty while it flourished in its pride." gerowlia struck into a narrow pathway, forcing herself through garden-trees and disturbing the peacocks. an evil guide-man on the ground waved his hand, and began to speak; but was silenced. the death of amber was as nothing to the death of chitor--a body whence the life had been driven by riot and the sword. men had parcelled the gardens of her palaces and the courtyards of her temples into fields; and cattle grazed among the remnants of the shattered tombs. but over all--over rent and bastion, split temple-wall, pierced roof, and prone pillar--lay the "shadow of its beauty while it flourished in its pride." the englishman walked into a stately palace of many rooms, where the sunlight streamed in through wall and roof, and up crazy stone stairways, held together, it seemed, by the marauding trees. in one bastion, a wind-sown peepul had wrenched a thick slab clear of the wall, but held it tight pressed in a crook of a branch, as a man holds down a fallen enemy under his elbow, shoulder, and forearm. in another place, a strange, uncanny wind sprung from nowhere, was singing all alone among the pillars of what may have been a hall of audience. the englishman wandered so far in one palace that he came to an almost black-dark room, high up in a wall, and said proudly to himself: "i must be the first man who has been here;" meaning no harm or insult to any one. but he tripped and fell, and as he put out his hands, he felt that the stairs had been worn hollow and smooth by the thread of innumerable naked feet. then he was afraid, and came away very quickly, stepping delicately over fallen friezes and bits of sculptured men, so as not to offend the dead; and was mightily relieved when he recovered his elephant and allowed the guide to take him to kumbha rana's tower of victory. this stands, like all things in chitor, among ruins, but time and the other enemies have been good to it. it is a jain edifice, nine storeys high, crowned atop--was this designed insult or undesigned repair?--with a purely mahometan dome, where the pigeons and the bats live. excepting this blemish, the tower of victory is nearly as fair as when it left the hands of the builder whose name has not been handed down to us. it is to be observed here that the first, or more ruined, tower of victory, built in alluji's days, when chitor was comparatively young, was raised by some pious jain as proof of conquest over things spiritual. the second tower is more worldly in intent. those who care to look, may find elsewhere a definition of its architecture and its more striking peculiarities. it was in kind, but not in degree, like the jugdesh temple at udaipur, and, as it exceeded it in magnificence, so its effect upon the mind was more intense. the confusing intricacy of the figures with which it was wreathed from top to bottom, the recurrence of the one calm face, the god enthroned, holding the wheel of the law, and the appalling lavishness of decoration, all worked toward the instilment of fear and aversion. surely this must have been one of the objects of the architect. the tower, in the arrangement of its stairways, is like the interior of a chinese carved ivory puzzle-ball. the idea given is that, even while you are ascending, you are wrapping yourself deeper and deeper in the tangle of a mighty maze. add to this the half-light, the thronging armies of sculptured figures, the mad profusion of design splashed as impartially upon the undersides of the stone window-slabs as upon the door-beam of the threshold--add, most abhorrent of all, the slippery sliminess of the walls always worn smooth by naked men, and you will understand that the tower is not a soothing place to visit. the englishman fancied presumptuously that he had, in a way, grasped the builder's idea; and when he came to the top storey and sat among the pigeons his theory was this: to attain power, wrote the builder of old, in sentences of fine stone, it is necessary to pass through all sorts of close-packed horrors, treacheries, battles, and insults, in darkness and without knowledge whether the road leads upward or into a hopeless _cul-de-sac_. kumbha rana must many times have climbed to the top storey, and looked out toward the uplands of malwa on the one side and his own great mewar on the other, in the days when all the rock hummed with life and the clatter of hooves upon the stony ways, and mahmoud of malwa was safe in hold. how he must have swelled with pride--fine insolent pride of life and rule and power--power not only to break things but to compel such builders as those who piled the tower to his royal will! there was no decoration in the top storey to bewilder or amaze--nothing but well-grooved stone-slabs, and a boundless view fit for kings who traced their ancestry-- "from times when forth from the sunlight, the first of our kings came down, and had the earth for his footstool, and wore the stars for his crown." the builder had left no mark behind him--not even a mark on the threshold of the door, or a sign in the head of the topmost step. the englishman looked in both places, believing that those were the places generally chosen for mark-cutting. so he sat and meditated on the beauties of kingship and the unholiness of hindu art, and what power a shadowland of lewd monstrosities had upon those who believed in it, and what lord dufferin, who is the nearest approach to a king in this india, must have thought when aide-de-camps clanked after him up the narrow steps. but the day was wearing, and he came down--in both senses--and, in his descent, the carven things on every side of the tower, and above and below, once more took hold of and perverted his fancy, so that he arrived at the bottom in a frame of mind eminently fitted for a descent into the gau-mukh, which is nothing more terrible than a little spring, falling into a reservoir, in the side of the hill. he stumbled across more ruins and passed between tombs of dead ranis, till he came to a flight of steps, built out and cut out from rock, going down as far as he could see into a growth of trees on a terrace below him. the stone of the steps had been worn and polished by the terrible naked feet till it showed its markings clearly as agate; and where the steps ended in a rock-slope, there was a visible glair, a great snail-track, upon the rocks. it was hard to keep safe footing upon the sliminess. the air was thick with the sick smell of stale incense, and grains of rice were scattered upon the steps. but there was no one to be seen. now this in itself was not specially alarming; but the genius of the place must be responsible for making it so. the englishman slipped and bumped on the rocks, and arrived, more suddenly than he desired, upon the edge of a dull blue tank, sunk between walls of timeless masonry. in a slabbed-in recess, water was pouring through a shapeless stone gargoyle, into a trough; which trough again dripped into the tank. almost under the little trickle of water, was the loathsome emblem of creation, and there were flowers and rice around it. water was trickling from a score of places in the cut face of the hill; oozing between the edges of the steps and welling up between the stone slabs of the terrace. trees sprouted in the sides of the tank and hid its surroundings. it seemed as though the descent had led the englishman, firstly, two thousand years away from his own century, and secondly, into a trap, and that he would fall off the polished stones into the stinking tank, or that the gau-mukh would continue to pour water until the tank rose up and swamped him, or that some of the stone slabs would fall forward and crush him flat. then he was conscious of remembering, with peculiar and unnecessary distinctness, that, from the gau-mukh, a passage led to the subterranean chambers in which the fair pudmini and her handmaids had slain themselves. and, that tod had written and the station-master at chitor had said, that some sort of devil, or ghoul, or something, stood at the entrance of that approach. all of which was a nightmare bred in full day and folly to boot; but it was the fault of the genius of the place, who made the englishman feel that he had done a great wrong in trespassing into the very heart and soul of all chitor. and, behind him, the gau-mukh guggled and choked like a man in his death-throe. the englishman endured as long as he could--about two minutes. then it came upon him that he must go quickly out of this place of years and blood--must get back to the afternoon sunshine, and gerowlia, and the dak-bungalow with the french bedstead. he desired no archæological information, he wished to take no notes, and, above all, he did not care to look behind him, where stood the reminder that he was no better than the beasts that perish. but he had to cross the smooth, worn rocks, and he felt their sliminess through his bootsoles. it was as though he were treading on the soft, oiled skin of a hindu. as soon as the steps gave refuge, he floundered up them, and so came out of the gau-mukh, bedewed with that perspiration which follows alike on honest toil or--childish fear. "this," said he to himself, "is absurd!" and sat down on the fallen top of a temple to review the situation. but the gau-mukh had disappeared. he could see the dip in the ground and the beginning of the steps, but nothing more. perhaps it was absurd. it undoubtedly appeared so, later. yet there was something uncanny about it all. it was not exactly a feeling of danger or pain, but an apprehension of great evil. in defence, it may be urged that there is moral, just as much as there is mine, choke-damp. if you get into a place laden with the latter you die, and if into the home of the former you ... behave unwisely, as constitution and temperament prompt. if any man doubt this, let him sit for two hours in a hot sun on an elephant, stay half an hour in the tower of victory, and then go down into the gau-mukh, which, it must never be forgotten, is merely a set of springs "three or four in number, issuing from the cliff face at cow-mouth carvings, now mutilated. the water, evidently percolating from the hathi kund above, falls first in an old pillared hall and thence into the masonry reservoir below, eventually, when abundant enough, supplying a little waterfall lower down." that, gentlemen and ladies, on the honour of one who has been frightened of the dark in broad daylight, is the gau-mukh, as though photographed. the englishman regained gerowlia and demanded to be taken away, but gerowlia's driver went forward instead and showed him a new mahal just built by the present maharana. carriage drives, however, do not consort well with chitor and the "shadow of her ancient beauty." the return journey, past temple after temple and palace upon palace, began in the failing light, and gerowlia was still blundering up and down narrow by-paths--for she possessed all an old woman's delusion as to the slimness of her waist when the twilight fell, and the smoke from the town below began to creep up the brown flanks of chitor, and the jackals howled. then the sense of desolation, which had been strong enough in all conscience in the sunshine, began to grow and grow. near the ram pol there was some semblance of a town with living people in it, and a priest sat in the middle of the road and howled aloud upon his gods, until a little boy came and laughed in his face and he went away grumbling. this touch was deeply refreshing; in the contemplation of it, the englishman clean forgot that he had overlooked the gathering in of materials for an elaborate statistical, historical, geographical account of chitor. all that remained to him was a shuddering reminiscence of the gau-mukh and two lines of the "holy grail," "and up into the sounding halls he passed, but nothing in the sounding halls he saw." _post scriptum._--there was something very uncanny about the genius of the place. he dragged an ease-loving egotist out of the french bedstead with the gilt knobs at head and foot, into a more than usually big folly--nothing less than a seeing of chitor by moonlight. there was no possibility of getting gerowlia out of _her_ bed, and a mistrust of the maharana's soldiery who in the day-time guarded the gates, prompted the englishman to avoid the public way, and scramble straight up the hillside, along an attempt at a path which he had noted from gerowlia's back. there was no one to interfere, and nothing but an infinity of pestilent nullahs and loose stones to check. owls came out and hooted at him, and animals ran about in the dark and made uncouth noises. it was an idiotic journey, and it ended--oh, horror! in that unspeakable gau-mukh--this time entered from the opposite or brushwooded side, as far as could be made out in the dusk and from the chuckle of the water which, by night, was peculiarly malevolent. escaping from this place, crab-fashion, the englishman crawled into chitor and sat upon a flat tomb till the moon, a very inferior and second-hand one, rose, and turned the city of the dead into a city of scurrying ghouls--in sobriety, jackals. the ruins took strange shapes and shifted in the half light and cast objectionable shadows. it was easy enough to fill the rock with the people of old times, and a very beautiful account of chitor restored, made out by the help of tod, and bristling with the names of the illustrious dead, would undoubtedly have been written, had not a woman, a living breathing woman, stolen out of a temple--what was she doing in that galley?--and screamed in piercing and public-spirited fashion. the englishman got off the tomb and departed rather more noisily than a jackal; feeling for the moment that he was not much better. somebody opened a door with a crash, and a man cried out: "who is there?" but the cause of the disturbance was, for his sins, being most horribly scratched by some thorny scrub over the edge of the hill--there are no bastions worth speaking of near the gau-mukh--and the rest was partly rolling, partly scrambling, and mainly bad language. when you are too lucky sacrifice something, a beloved pipe for choice, to ganesh. the englishman has seen chitor by moonlight--not the best moonlight truly, but the watery glare of a nearly spent moon--and his sacrifice to luck is this. he will never try to describe what he has seen--but will keep it as a love-letter, a thing for one pair of eyes only--a memory that few men to-day can be sharers in. and does he, through this fiction, evade insulting, by pen and ink, a scene as lovely, wild, and unmatchable as any that mortal eyes have been privileged to rest upon? an intelligent and discriminating public are perfectly at liberty to form their own opinions. xii contains the history of the bhumia of jhaswara, and the record of a visit to the house of strange stories. demonstrates the felicity of loaferdom, which is the veritable companionship of the indian empire, and proposes a scheme for the better officering of two departments. come away from the monstrous gloom of chitor and escape northwards. the place is unclean and terrifying. let us catch to-day by both hands and return to the station-master who is also booking-parcels and telegraph-clerk, and who never seems to go to bed--and to the comfortably wadded bunks of the rajputana-malwa line. while the train is running, be pleased to listen to the perfectly true story of the _bhumia_ of jhaswara, which is a story the sequel whereof has yet to be written. once upon a time, a rajput landholder; a _bhumia_, and a mahometan _jaghirdar_, were next-door neighbours in ajmir territory. they hated each other thoroughly for many reasons, all connected with land; and the _jaghirdar_ was the bigger man of the two. in those days, it was the law that the victims of robbery or dacoity should be reimbursed by the owner of the lands on which the affair had taken place. the ordinance is now swept away as impracticable. there was a highway robbery on the _bhumia's_ holding; and he vowed that it had been "put up" by the mahometan who, he said, was an ahab. the reive-gelt payable nearly ruined the rajput, and he, labouring under a galling grievance or a groundless suspicion, fired the _jaghirdar's_ crops, was detected and brought up before the english judge who gave him four years' imprisonment. to the sentence was appended a recommendation that, on release, the rajput should be put on heavy securities for good behaviour. "otherwise," wrote the judge, who seems to have known the people he was dealing with, "he will certainly kill the _jaghirdar_." four years passed, and the _jaghirdar_ obtained wealth and consideration, and was made, let us say, a khan bahadur, and an honorary magistrate; but the _bhumia_ remained in gaol and thought over the highway robbery. when the day of release came, a new judge hunted up his predecessor's finding and recommendation, and would have put the _bhumia_ on security. "sahib," said the _bhumia_, "i have no people. i have been in gaol. what am i now? and who will find security for me? if you will send me back to gaol again i can do nothing, and i have no friends." so they released him, and he went away into an outlying village and borrowed a sword from one house, and had it sharpened in another, for love. two days later fell the birthday of the khan bahadur and the honorary magistrate, and his friends and servants and dependants made a little levee and did him honour after the native custom. the _bhumia_ also attended the levee, but no one knew him, and he was stopped at the door of the courtyard by the servant. "say that the _bhumia_ of jhaswara has come to pay his salaams," said he. they let him in, and in the heart of ajmir city, in broad daylight, and before all the _jaghirdar's_ household, he smote off his enemy's head so that it rolled upon the ground. then he fled, and though they raised the countryside against him he was never caught, and went into bikanir. five years later, word came to ajmir that chimbo singh, the _bhumia_ of jhaswara, had taken service under the thakur sahib of palitana. the case was an old one, and the chances of identification misty, but the suspected was caught and brought in, and one of the leading native barristers of the bombay bar was retained to defend him. he said nothing and continued to say nothing, and the case fell through. he is believed to be "wanted" now for a fresh murder committed within the last few months, out bikanir way. and now that the train has reached ajmir, the crewe of rajputana, whither shall a tramp turn his feet? the englishman set his stick on end, and it fell with its point northwest as nearly as might be. this being translated, meant jodhpur, which is the city of the houyhnhnms. if you would enjoy jodhpur thoroughly, quit at ajmir the decent conventionalities of "station" life, and make it your business to move among gentlemen--gentlemen in the ordnance or the commissariat, or, better still, gentlemen on the railway. at ajmir, gentlemen will tell you what manner of place jodhpur is, and their accounts, though flavoured with oaths, are amusing. in their eyes the desert that rings the city has no charms, and they discuss affairs of the state, as they understand them, in a manner that would curl the hair on a political's august head. jodhpur has been, but things are rather better now, a much-favoured camping ground for the light-cavalry of the road--the loafers with a certain amount of brain and great assurance. the explanation is simple. there are more than four hundred horses in his highness's city stables alone; and where the houyhnhnm is, there also will be the yahoo. this is sad but true. besides the uhlans who come and go on heaven knows what mysterious errands, there are bag-men travelling for the big english firms. jodhpur is a good customer, and purchases all sorts of things, more or less useful, for the state or its friends. these are the gentlemen to know, if you would understand something of matters which are not written in reports. the englishman took a train from ajmir to marwar junction, which is on the road to mount abu, westward from ajmir, and at five in the morning, under pale moonlight, was uncarted at the beginning of the jodhpur state railway--one of the quaintest little lines that ever ran a locomotive. it is the maharaja's very own, and pays about ten per cent; but its quaintness does not lie in these things. it is worked with rude economy, and started life by singularly and completely falsifying the government estimates for its construction. an intelligent bureau asserted that it could not be laid down for less than--but the error shall be glossed over. it was laid down for a little more than seventeen thousand rupees a mile, with the help of second-hand rails and sleepers; and it is currently asserted that the station-masters are flagmen, pointsmen, ticket-collectors, and everything else, except platforms, and lamp-rooms. as only two trains are run in the twenty-four hours, this economy of staff does not matter. the state line, with the comparatively new branch to the pachpadra salt-pits, pays handsomely and is exactly suited to the needs of its users. true, there is a certain haziness as to the hour of starting, but this allows laggards more time, and fills the packed carriages to overflowing. from marwar junction to jodhpur, the train leaves the aravalis and goes northwards into the region of death that lies beyond the luni river. sand, _ak_ bushes, and sand-hills, varied with occasional patches of unthrifty cultivation, make up the scenery. rain has been very scarce in marwar this year, and the country, consequently, shows at its worst, for almost every square mile of a kingdom nearly as large as scotland is dependent on the sky for its crops. in a good season, a large village can pay from seven to nine thousand rupees revenue without blenching. in a bad one, "all the king's horses and all the king's men" may think themselves lucky if they raise fifteen rupees from the same place. the fluctuation is startling. from a countryside, which to the uninitiated seems about as valuable as a stretch of west african beach, the state gets a revenue of nearly forty lakhs; and men who know the country vow that it has not been one tithe exploited, and that there is more to be made from salt marble and--curious thing in this wilderness--good forest conservancy, than an open-handed durbar dreams of. an amiable weakness for unthinkingly giving away villages where ready cash failed, has somewhat hampered the revenue in past years; but now--and for this the maharaja deserves great credit--jodhpur has a large and genuine surplus and a very compact little scheme of railway extension. before turning to a consideration of the city of jodhpur, hear a true story in connection with the hyderabad-pachpadra project which those interested in the scheme may lay to heart. his state line, his "ownest own," as has been said, very much delighted the maharaja who, in one or two points, is not unlike sir theodore hope of sainted memory. pleased with the toy, he said effusively, in words which may or may not have reached the ears of the hyderabad-pachpadra people: "this is a good business. if the government will give me independent jurisdiction, i'll make and open the line straight away from pachpadra to the end of my dominions, _i.e._, all but to hyderabad." then "up and spake an elder knight, sat at the king's right knee," who knew something about the railway map of india and the controlling power of strategical lines: "maharaja sahib--here is the indus valley state line and here is the bombay-baroda line. where would _you_ be?" "by jove," quoth the maharaja, though he swore by quite another god: "i see!" and thus he abandoned the idea of a hyderabad line, and turned his attention to an extension to nagore, with a branch to the makrana marble quarries which are close to the sambhar salt lake near jeypore. and, in the fulness of time, that extension will be made and perhaps extended to bahawalpur. the englishman came to jodhpur at midday, in a hot, fierce sunshine that struck back from the sands and the ledges of red rock, as though it were may instead of december. the line scorned such a thing as a regular ordained terminus. the single track gradually melted away into the sands. close to the station was a grim stone dak-bungalow, and in the verandah stood a brisk, bag-and-flask-begirdled individual, cracking his joints with excess of irritation. _nota bene._--when one is on the road it is above all things necessary to "pass the time o' day" to fellow-wanderers. failure to comply with this law implies that the offender is "too good for his company"; and this, on the road, is the unpardonable sin. the englishman "passed the time o' day" in due and ample form. "ha! ha!" said the gentleman with the bag. "isn't this a sweet place? there ain't no _ticca-gharies_, and there ain't nothing to eat, if you haven't brought your vittles, an' they charge you three-eight for a bottle of whisky. oh! it's a sweet place." here he skipped about the verandah and puffed. then turning upon the englishman, he said fiercely: "what have you come here for?" now this was rude, because the ordinary form of salutation on the road is usually "and what are you for?" meaning "what house do you represent?" the englishman answered dolefully that he was travelling for pleasure, which simple explanation offended the little man with the courier-bag. he snapped his joints more excruciatingly than ever: "for pleasure? my god! for pleasure? come here an' wait five weeks for your money, an', mark what i'm tellin' you now, you don't get it then! but per'aps your ideas of pleasure is different from most people's. for pleasure! yah!" he skipped across the sands toward the station, for he was going back with the down train, and vanished in a whirlwind of luggage and the fluttering of female skirts: in jodhpur the women are baggage coolies. a level, drawling voice spoke from an inner room: "'e's a bit upset. that's what 'e is! i remember when i was at gworlior"--the rest of the story was lost, and the englishman set to work to discover the nakedness of the dak-bungalow. for reasons which do not concern the public, it is made as bitterly uncomfortable as possible. the food is infamous, and the charges seem to be wilfully pitched about eighty per cent above the tariff, so that some portion of the bill, at least, may be paid without bloodshed, or the unseemly defilement of walls with the contents of drinking glasses. this is short-sighted policy, and it would, perhaps, be better to lower the prices and hide the tariff, and put a guard about the house to prevent jackal-molested donkeys from stampeding into the verandahs. but these be details. jodhpur dak-bungalow is a merry, merry place, and any writer in search of new ground to locate a madly improbable story in, could not do better than study it diligently. in front lies sand, riddled with innumerable ant-holes, and beyond the sand the red sandstone wall of the city, and the mahometan burying-ground that fringes it. fragments of sandstone set on end mark the resting places of the faithful, who are of no great account here. above everything, a mark for miles around, towers the dun-red pile of the fort which is also a palace. this is set upon sandstone rock whose sharper features have been worn smooth by the wash of the windblown sand. it is as monstrous as anything in dore's illustrations of the _contes drolatiques_ and, wherever it wanders, the eye comes back at last to its fantastic bulk. there is no greenery on the rock, nothing but fierce sunlight or black shadow. a line of red hills forms the background of the city, and this is as bare as the picked bones of camels that lie bleaching on the sand below. wherever the eye falls, it sees a camel or a string of camels--lean, racer-built _sowarri_ camels, or heavy, black, shag-haired trading ships bent on their way to the railway station. through the night the air is alive with the bubbling and howling of the brutes, who assuredly must suffer from nightmare. in the morning the chorus round the station is deafening. knowing what these camels meant, but trusting nevertheless that the road would not be _very_ bad, the englishman went into the city, left a well-kunkered road, turned through a sand-worn, red sandstone gate, and sank ankle-deep in fine reddish white sand. this was the main thoroughfare of the city. two tame lynxes shared it with a donkey; and the rest of the population seemed to have gone to bed. in the hot weather, between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon all jodhpur stays at home for fear of death by sun-stroke, and it is possible that the habit extends far into what is officially called the "cold weather"; or, perhaps, being brought up among sands, men do not care to tramp them for pleasure. the city internally is a walled and secret place; each courtyard being hidden from view by a red sandstone wall except in a few streets where the shops are poor and mean. in an old house now used for the storing of tents, akbar's mother lay two months, before the "guardian of mankind" was born, drawing breath for her flight to umarkot across the desert. seeing this place, the englishman thought of many things not worth the putting down on paper, and went on till the sand grew deeper and deeper, and a great camel, heavily laden with stone, came round a corner and nearly stepped on him. as the evening fell, the city woke up, and the goats and the camels and the kine came in by hundreds, and men said that wild pig, which are strictly preserved by the princes for their own sport, were in the habit of wandering about the roads. now if they do this in the capital, what damage must they not do to the crops in the district? men said that they did a very great deal of damage, and it was hard to keep their noses out of anything they took a fancy to. on the evening of the englishman's visit, the maharaja went out, as is his laudable custom, alone and unattended, to a road actually _in_ the city along which one specially big pig was in the habit of passing. his highness got his game with a single shot behind the shoulder, and in a few days it was pickled and sent off to the maharana of udaipur, as a love-gift. there is great friendship between jodhpur and udaipur, and the idea of one king going abroad to shoot game for another has something very pretty and quaint in it. night fell and the englishman became aware that the conservancy of jodhpur might be vastly improved. strong stenches, say the doctors, are of no importance; but there came upon every breath of heated air--and in jodhpur city the air is warm in mid-winter--the faint, sweet, sickly reek that one has always been taught to consider specially deadly. a few months ago there was an impressive outbreak of cholera in jodhpur, and the residency doctor, who really hoped that the people would be brought to see sense, did his best to bring forward a general cleansing-scheme. but the city fathers would have none of it. their fathers had been trying to poison themselves in well-defined ways for an indefinite number of years; and they were not going to have any of the sahib's "sweeper-nonsense." to clinch everything, one travelled member of the community rose in his place and said: "why, i've been to simla. yes, to simla! and even _i_ don't want it!" when the black dusk had shut down, the englishman climbed up a little hill and saw the stars come out and shine over the desert. very far away, some camel-drivers had lighted a fire and were singing as they sat by the side of their beasts. sound travels as far over sand as over water, and their voices came into the city wall and beat against it in multiplied echoes. then he returned to the house of strange stories--the dak-bungalow--and passed the time o' day with a light-hearted bagman--a cockney, in whose heart there was no thought of india, though he had travelled for years throughout the length and breadth of the empire and over new burma as well. there was a fort in jodhpur, but you see that was not in his line of business exactly, and there were stables, but "you may take my word for it, them who has much to do with horses is a bad lot. you get hold of the maharaja's coachman and he'll drive you all round the shop. i'm only waiting here collecting money." jodhpur dak-bungalow seems to be full of men "waiting here." they lie in long chairs in the verandah and tell each other interminable stories, or stare citywards and express their opinion of some dilatory debtor. they are all waiting for something; and they vary the monotony of a life they make wilfully dull beyond words, by waging war with the dak-bungalow khansama. then they return to their long chairs or their couches, and sleep. some of them, in old days, used to wait as long as six weeks--six weeks in may, when the sixty miles from marwar junction to jodhpur was covered in three days by slow-pacing bullock carts! some of them are bagmen, able to describe the demerits of every dak-bungalow from the peshin to pagan, and southward to hyderabad--men of substance who have "the trades" at their back. it is a terrible thing to be in "the trades," that great doomsday book of calcutta, in whose pages are written the names of doubtful clients. let light-hearted purchasers take note. and the others, who wait and swear and spit and exchange anecdotes--what are they? bummers, land-sharks, skirmishers for their bread. it would be cruel in a fellow-tramp to call them loafers. their lien upon the state may have its origin in horses, or anything else; for the state buys anything vendible, from abdul rahman's most promising importations to a patent, self-acting corkscrew. they are a mixed crew, but amusing and full of strange stories of adventure by land and sea. and their ends are as curiously brutal as their lives. a wanderer was once swept into the great, still back-water that divides the loaferdom of upper india--that is to say, calcutta and bombay--from the north-going current of madras, where nym and pistol are highly finished articles with certificates of education. this back-water is a dangerous place to break down in, as the men on the road know well. "you can run rajputana in a pair o' sack breeches an' an old hat, but go to central injia with money," says the wisdom of the road. so the waif died in the bazaar, and the barrack-master sahib gave orders for his burial. it might have been the bazaar sergeant, or it might have been an hireling who was charged with the disposal of the body. at any rate, it was an irishman who said to the barrack-master sahib: "fwhat about that loafer?" "well, what's the matter?" "i'm considtherin whether i'm to mash in his thick head, or to break his long legs. he won't fit the store-coffin anyways." here the story ends. it may be an old one; but it struck the englishman as being rather unsympathetic in its nature; and he has preserved it for this reason. were the englishman a mere secretary of state instead of an enviable and unshackled vagabond, he would remodel that philanthropic institution of teaching young subalterns how to spell--variously called the intelligence and the political department--and giving each boy the pair of sack breeches and old hat, above prescribed, would send him out for a twelvemonth on the road. not that he might learn to swear australian oaths (which are superior to any ones in the market) or to drink bazaar-drinks (which are very bad indeed), but in order that he might gain an insight into the tertiary politics of states--things less imposing than succession-cases and less wearisome than boundary disputes, but very well worth knowing. a small volume might be written of the ways and the tales of indian loafers of the more brilliant order--such chevaliers of the order of industry as would throw their glasses in your face did you call them loafers. they are a genial, blasphemous, blustering crew, and preëminent even in a land of liars. xiii a king's house and country. further consideration of the hat-marked caste. the hospitality that spreads tables in the wilderness, and shifts the stranger from the back of the hired camel into a two-horse victoria, must be experienced to be appreciated. to those unacquainted with the peculiarities of the native-trained horse, this advice may be worth something. sit as far back as ever you can, and, if oriental courtesy have put an english bit and bridoon in a mouth by education intended for a spiked curb, leave the whole contraption alone. once acquainted with the comparative smoothness of english iron-mongery, your mount will grow frivolous. in which event a four-pound steeplechase saddle, accepted through sheer shame, offers the very smallest amount of purchase to untrained legs. the englishman rode up to the fort, and by the way learnt all these things and many more. he was provided with a racking, female horse who swept the gullies of the city by dancing sideways. the road to the fort, which stands on the hill of strife, wound in and out of sixty-foot hills, with a skilful avoidance of all shade; and this was at high noon, when puffs of heated air blew from the rocks on all sides. "what must the heat be in may?" the englishman's companion was a cheery brahmin, who wore the lightest of turbans and sat the smallest of neat little country-breds. "awful!" said the brahmin. "but not so bad as in the district. look there!" and he pointed from the brow of a bad eminence, across the quivering heat-haze, to where the white sand faded into bleach blue sky and the horizon was shaken and tremulous. "it's very bad in summer. would knock you--oh yes--all to smash, but _we_ are accustomed to it." a rock-strewn hill, about half a mile, as the crow flies, from the fort was pointed out as the place whence, at the beginning of this century, the pretender sowae besieged raja maun for five months, but could make no headway against his foe. one gun of the enemy's batteries specially galled the fort, and the jodhpur king offered a village to any of his gunners who should dismount it. "it was smashed," said the brahmin. "oh yes, all to pieces." practically, the city which lies below the fort is indefensible, and during the many wars of marwar has generally been taken up by the assailants without resistance. entering the fort by the jeypore gate, and studiously refraining from opening his umbrella, the englishman found shadow and coolth, took off his hat to the tun-bellied, trunk-nosed god of good-luck who had been very kind to him in his wanderings, and sat down near half a dozen of the maharaja's guns bearing the mark, "a. broome, cossipore, ," or "g. hutchinson, cossipore, ." now rock and masonry are so curiously blended in this great pile that he who walks through it loses sense of being among buildings. it is as though he walked through mountain-gorges. the stone-paved, inclined planes, and the tunnel-like passages driven under a hundred feet height of buildings, increase this impression. in many places the wall and rock runs up unbroken by any window for forty feet. it would be a week's work to pick out even roughly the names of the dead who have added to the buildings, or to describe the bewildering multiplicity of courts and ranges of rooms; and, in the end, the result would be as satisfactory as an attempt to describe a nightmare. it is said that the rock on which the fort stands is four miles in circuit, but no man yet has dared to estimate the size of the city that they call the palace, or the mileage of its ways. ever since ras joda, four hundred years ago, listened to the voice of a _jogi_, and leaving mundore built his eyrie on the "bird's nest" as the hill of strife was called, the palaces have grown and thickened. even to-day the builders are still at work. takht singh, the present ruler's predecessor, built royally. an incomplete bastion and a hall of flowers are among the works of his pleasure. hidden away behind a mighty wing of carved red sandstone lie rooms set apart for viceroys, durbar halls and dinner-rooms without end. a gentle gloom covers the evidences of the catholic taste of the state in articles of "bigotry and virtue"; but there is enough light to show the _raison d'être_ of the men who wait in the dak-bungalow. and, after all, what is the use of royalty in these days if a man may not take delight in the pride of the eye? kumbha rana, the great man of chitor, fought like a rajput, but he had an instinct which made him build the tower of victory at, who knows what cost of money and life. the fighting-instinct thrown back upon itself must have some sort of outlet; and a merciful providence wisely ordains that the kings of the east in the nineteenth century shall take pleasure in shopping on an imperial scale. dresden china snuff-boxes, mechanical engines, electro-plated fish-slicers, musical boxes, and gilt blown-glass christmas-tree balls do not go well with the splendours of a palace that might have been built by titans and coloured by the morning sun. but there are excuses to be made for kings who have no fighting to do. in one of the higher bastions stands a curious specimen of one of the earliest _mitrailleuses_--a cumbrous machine carrying twenty gun-barrels in two rows, which small-arm fire is flanked by two tiny cannon. as a muzzle-loading implement its value after the first discharge would be insignificant; but the soldiers lounging by assured the englishman that it had done good service in its time. a man may spend a long hour in the upper tiers of the palaces, but still far from the roof-tops, in looking out across the desert. there are englishmen in these wastes, who say gravely that there is nothing so fascinating as the sand of bikanir and marwar. "you see," explained an enthusiast of the hat-marked caste, "you are not shut in by roads, and you can go just as you please. and, somehow, it grows upon you as you get used to it, and you end, y'know, by falling in love with the place." look steadily from the palace westward where the city with its tanks and serais is spread at your feet, and you will, in a lame way, begin to understand the fascination of the desert which, by those who have felt it, is said to be even stronger than the fascination of the road. the city is of red sandstone and dull and sombre to look at. beyond it, where the white sand lies, the country is dotted with camels limping into the eiwigkeit or coming from the same place. trees appear to be strictly confined to the suburbs of the city. very good. if you look long enough across the sands, while a voice in your ear is telling you of half-buried cities, old as old time, and wholly unvisited by sahibs, of districts where the white man is unknown, and of the wonders of far-away jeysulmir ruled by a half-distraught king, sand-locked and now smitten by a terrible food and water famine, you will, if it happen that you are of a sedentary and civilised nature, experience a new emotion--will be conscious of a great desire to take one of the lobbing camels and get away into the desert, away from the last touch of to-day, to meet the past face to face. some day a novelist will exploit the unknown land from the rann, where the wild ass breeds, northward and eastward, till he comes to the indus. but the officials of marwar do not call their country a desert. on the contrary, they administer it very scientifically and raise, as has been said, about thirty-eight lakhs from it. to come back from the influence and the possible use of the desert to more prosaic facts. read quickly a rough record of things in modern marwar. the old is drawn in tod, who speaks the truth. the maharaja's right hand in the work of the state is maharaj sir pertab singh, prime minister a.--d.--c. to the prince of wales, capable of managing the marwari who intrigues like a--marwari, equally capable, as has been seen, of moving in london society, and colonel of a newly raised crack cavalry corps. the englishman would have liked to have seen him, but he was away in the desert somewhere, either marking a boundary or looking after a succession case. not very long ago, as the setts of ajmir knew well, there was a state debt of fifty lakhs. this has now been changed into a surplus of three lakhs, and the revenue is growing. also, the simple dacoit who used to enjoy himself very pleasantly, has been put into a department, and the thug with him. consequently, for the department takes a genuine interest in this form of _shikar_, and the gaol leg-irons are not too light, dacoities have been reduced to such an extent that men say "you may send a woman, with her ornaments upon her, from sojat to phalodi, and she will not lose a nose-ring." again, and this in a rajput state is an important matter, the boundaries of nearly every village in marwar have been demarcated, and boundary fights, in which both sides preferred small-arm fire to the regulation club, are unknown. the open-handed system of giving away villages had raised a large and unmannerly crop of _jaghirdars_. these have been taken up and brought in hand by sir pertab singh, to the better order of the state. a punjabi sirdar, har dyal singh, has reformed, or made rather, courts on the civil and criminal side; and his hand is said to be found in a good many sweepings out of old corners. it must always be borne in mind that everything that has been done, was carried through over and under unlimited intrigue, for jodhpur is a native state. intrigue must be met with intrigue by all except gordons or demi-gods; and it is curious to hear how a reduction in tariff, or a smoothing out of some tangled court, had to be worked by shift and byway. the tales are comic, but not for publication. howbeit, har dyal singh got his training in part under the punjab government, and in part in a little native state far away in the himalayas, where intrigue is not altogether unknown. to the credit of the "pauper province" be it said, it is not easy to circumvent a punjabi. the details of his work would be dry reading. the result of it is good, and there is justice in marwar, and order and firmness in its administration. naturally, the land-revenue is the most interesting thing in marwar from an administrative point of view. the basis of it is a tank about the size of a swimming-bath, with a catchment of several hundred square yards, draining through leeped channels. when god sends the rain, the people of the village drink from the tank. when the rains fail, as they failed this year, they take to their wells, which are brackish and breed guinea-worm. for these reasons the revenue, like the republic of san domingo, is never alike for two years running. there are no canal questions to harry the authorities; but the fluctuations are enormous. under the aravalis the soil is good: further north they grow millet and pasture cattle, though, said a revenue officer cheerfully, "god knows what the brutes find to eat." _apropos_ of irrigation, the one canal deserves special mention, as showing how george stephenson came to jodhpur and astonished the inhabitants. six miles from the city proper lies the balsaman sagar, a great tank. in the hot weather, when the city tanks ran out or stank, it was the pleasant duty of the women to tramp twelve miles at the end of the day's work to fill their lotahs. in the hot weather jodhpur is--let a simile suffice. sukkur in june would be simla to jodhpur. the state engineer, who is also the jodhpur state line, for he has no european subordinates, conceived the idea of bringing the water from the balsaman into the city. was the city grateful? not in the least. it is said that the sahib wanted the water to run uphill and was throwing money into the tank. being true marwaris, men betted on the subject. the canal--a built out one, for water must not touch earth in these parts--was made at a cost of something over a lakh, and the water came down because its source was a trifle higher than the city. now, in the hot weather, the women need not go for long walks, but the marwari cannot understand how it was that the waters came down to jodhpur. from the marwari to money matters is an easy step. formerly, that is to say, up to within a very short time, the treasury of jodhpur was conducted in a shiftless, happy-go-lucky sort of fashion, not uncommon in native states, whereby the mahajuns "held the bag" and made unholy profits on discount and other things, to the confusion of the durbar funds and their own enrichment. there is now a treasury modelled on english lines, and english in the important particular that money is not to be got from it for the asking, and the items of expenditure are strictly looked after. in the middle of all this bustle of reform planned, achieved, frustrated, and replanned, and the never-ending underground warfare that surges in a native state, move the english officers--the irreducible minimum of exiles. as a caste, the working englishmen in native states are curiously interesting; and the traveller whose tact by this time has been blunted by tramping, sits in judgment upon them as he has seen them. in the first place, they are, they must be, the fittest who have survived; for though, here and there, you shall find one chafing bitterly against the burden of his life in the wilderness, one to be pitied more than any chained beast, the bulk of the caste are honestly and unaffectedly fond of their work, fond of the country around them, and fond of the people they deal with. in each state their answer to a question is the same. the men with whom they are in contact are "all right" when you know them, but you've got to "know them first," as the music-hall song says. their hands are full of work; so full that, when the incult wanderer said: "what do you find to do?" they look upon him with contempt and amazement, exactly as the wanderer himself had once looked upon a globe-trotter, who had put to him the same impertinent query. and--but here the englishman may be wrong--it seemed to him that in one respect their lives were a good deal more restful and concentrated than those of their brethren under the british government. there was no talk of shiftings and transfers and promotions, stretching across a province and a half, and no man said anything about simla. to one who has hitherto believed that simla is the hub of the empire, it is disconcerting to hear: "oh, simla! that's where you bengalis go. we haven't anything to do with simla down here." and no more they have. their talk and their interests run in the boundaries of the states they serve, and, most striking of all, the gossipy element seems to be cut altogether. it is a backwater of the river of anglo-indian life--or is it the main current, the broad stream that supplies the motive power, and is the other life only the noisy ripple on the surface? you who have lived, not merely looked at, both lives, decide. much can be learnt from the talk of the caste, many curious, many amusing, and some startling things. one hears stories of men who take a poor, impoverished state as a man takes a wife, "for better or worse," and, moved by some incomprehensible ideal of virtue, consecrate--that is not too big a word--consecrate their lives to that state in all single-heartedness and purity. such men are few, but they exist to-day, and their names are great in lands where no englishman travels. again the listener hears tales of grizzled diplomats of rajputana--machiavellis who have hoisted a powerful intriguer with his own intrigue, and bested priestly cunning, and the guile of the oswal, simply that the way might be clear for some scheme which should put money into a tottering treasury, or lighten the taxation of a few hundred thousand men--or both; for this can be done. one tithe of that force spent on their own personal advancement would have carried such men very far. truly the hat-marked caste are a strange people. they are so few and so lonely and so strong. they can sit down in one place for years, and see the works of their hands and the promptings of their brain grow to actual and beneficent life, bringing good to thousands. less fettered than the direct servant of the indian government, and working over a much vaster charge, they seem a bigger and a more large-minded breed. and that is saying a good deal. but let the others, the little people bound down and supervised, and strictly limited and income-taxed, always remember that the hat-marked are very badly off for shops. if they want a neck-tie they must get it up from bombay, and in the rains they can hardly move about; and they have no amusements and must go a day's railway journey for a rubber, and their drinking-water is doubtful: and there is less than one white woman _per_ ten thousand square miles. after all, comparative civilisation has its advantages. xiv among the houyhnhnms. jodhpur differs from the other states of rajputana in that its royalty are peculiarly accessible to an inquiring public. there are wanderers, the desire of whose life it is "to see nabobs," which is the globe-trotter's title for any one in unusually clean clothes, or an oudh taluqdar in gala dress. men asked in jodhpur whether the englishman would like to see his highness. the englishman had a great desire to do so, if his highness would be in no way inconvenienced. then they scoffed: "oh, he won't _durbar_ you, you needn't flatter yourself. if he's in the humour he'll receive you like an english country-gentleman." how in the world could the owner of such a place as jodhpur palace be in any way like an english country-gentleman? the englishman had not long to wait in doubt. his highness intimated his readiness to see the englishman between eight and nine in the morning at the raika-bagh. the raika-bagh is not a palace, for the lower storey and all the detached buildings round it are filled with horses. nor can it in any way be called a stable, because the upper storey contains sumptuous apartments full of all manner of valuables both of the east and the west. nor is it in any sense a pleasure-garden, for it stands on soft white sand, close to a multitude of litter and sand training tracks, and is devoid of trees for the most part. therefore the raika-bagh is simply the raika-bagh and nothing else. it is now the chosen residence of the maharaja who loves to live among his four hundred or more horses. all jodhpur is horse-mad by the way, and it behoves any one who wishes to be any one to keep his own race-course. the englishman went to the raika-bagh, which stands half a mile or so from the city, and passing through a long room filled with saddles by the dozen, bridles by the score, and bits by the hundred, was aware of a very small and lively little cherub on the roof of a garden-house. he was carefully muffled, for the morning was chill. "good morning," he cried cheerfully in english, waving a mittened hand. "are you going to see my faver and the horses?" it was the maharaja kanwar, the crown prince, the apple of the maharaja's eye, and one of the quaintest little bodies that ever set an englishman disrespectfully laughing. he studies english daily with one of the english officials of the state, and stands a very good chance of being thoroughly spoiled, for he is a general pet. as befits his dignity, he has his own carriage or carriages, his own twelve-hand stable, his own house and retinue. a few steps further on, in a little enclosure in front of a small two-storied white bungalow, sat his highness the maharaja, deep in discussion with the state engineer. he wore an english ulster, and within ten paces of him was the first of a long range of stalls. there was an informality of procedure about jodhpur which, after the strained etiquette of other states, was very refreshing. the state engineer, who has a growing line to attend to, cantered away and his highness after a few introductory words, knowing what the englishman would be after, said: "come along, and look at the horses." other formality there was absolutely none. even the indispensable knot of hangers-on stood at a distance, and behind a paling, in this most rustic country residence. a well-bred fox-terrier took command of the proceedings, after the manner of dogs the world over, and the maharaja led to the horse-boxes. but a man turned up, bending under the weight of much bacon. "oh! here's the pig i shot for udaipur last night. you see that is the best piece. it's pickled, and that's what makes it yellow to look at." he patted the great side that was held up. "there will be a camel sowar to meet it half way to udaipur; and i hope udaipur will be pleased with it. it was a very big pig." "and where did you shoot it, maharaja sahib?" "here," said his highness, smiting himself high up under the armpit. "where else would you have it?" certainly this descendant of raja maun was more like an english country-gentleman than the englishman in his ignorance had deemed possible. he led on from horse-box to horse-box, the terrier at his heels, pointing out each horse of note; and jodhpur has many. "there's _raja_, twice winner of the civil service cup." the englishman looked reverently and _raja_ rewarded his curiosity with a vicious snap, for he was being dressed over, and his temper was out of joint. close to him stood _autocrat_, the grey with the nutmeg marks on the off-shoulder, a picture of a horse, also disturbed in his mind. next to him was a chestnut arab, a hopeless cripple, for one of his knees had been smashed and the leg was doubled up under him. it was _turquoise_, who, six or eight years ago, rewarded good feeding by getting away from his groom, falling down and ruining himself, but who, none the less, has lived an honoured pensioner on the maharaja's bounty ever since. no horses are shot in the jodhpur stables, and when one dies--they have lost not more than twenty-five in six years--his funeral is an event. he is wrapped in a white sheet which is strewn with flowers, and, amid the weeping of the _saises_, is borne away to the burial ground. after doing the honours for nearly half an hour the maharaja departed, and as the englishman has not seen more than forty horses, he felt justified in demanding more. and he got them. _eclipse_ and _young revenge_ were out down-country, but _sherwood_ at the stud, _shere ali_, _conqueror_, _tynedale_, _sherwood ii_, a maiden of abdul rahman's, and many others of note, were in, and were brought out. among the veterans, a wrathful, rampant, red horse still, came _brian boru_, whose name has been written large in the chronicles of the indian turf, jerking his _sais_ across the road. his near-fore is altogether gone, but as a pensioner he condescends to go in harness, and is then said to be a "handful." he certainly looks it. at the two hundred and fifty-seventh horse, and perhaps the twentieth block of stables, the englishman's brain began to reel, and he demanded rest and information on a certain point. he had gone into some fifty stalls, and looked into all the rest, and in the looking had searchingly sniffed. but, as truly as he was then standing far below _brian boru's_ bony withers, never the ghost of a stench had polluted the keen morning air. the city of the houyhnhnms was specklessly clean--cleaner than any stable, racing or private, that he had been into. how was it done? the pure white sand accounted for a good deal, and the rest was explained by one of the masters of horse: "each horse has one _sais_ at least--old _ringwood_ has four--and we make 'em work. if we didn't, we'd be mucked up to the horses' bellies in no time. everything is cleaned off at once; and whenever the sand's tainted it's renewed. there's quite enough sand you see hereabouts. of course we can't keep their coats so good as in other stables, by reason of the rolling; but we can keep 'em pretty clean." to the eye of one who knew less than nothing about horse-flesh, this immaculate purity was very striking, and quite as impressive was the condition of the horses, which was english--quite english. naturally, none of them were in any sort of training beyond daily exercise, but they were fit and in such thoroughly good fettle. many of them were out on the various tracks, and many were coming in. roughly, two hundred go out of a morning, and, it is to be feared, learn from the heavy going of the jodhpur courses how to hang in their stride. this is a matter for those who know, but it struck the englishman that a good deal of the unsatisfactory performances of the jodhpur stables might be accounted for by their having lost their clean stride on the sand, and having to pick it up gradually on the less holding down-country courses--unfortunately when they were _not_ doing training gallops, but the real thing. it was pleasant to sit down and watch the rush of the horses through the great opening--gates are not affected--going on to the countryside where they take the air. here a boisterous, unschooled arab shot out across the road and cried, "ha! ha!" in the scriptural manner, before trying to rid himself of the grinning black imp on his back. behind him a cabuli--surely all cabulis must have been born with pelhams in their mouths--bored sulkily across the road, or threw himself across the path of a tall, mild-eyed kurnal-bred youngster, whose cocked ears and swinging head showed that, though he was so sedate, he was thoroughly taking in his surroundings, and would very much like to know if there were anybody better than himself on the course that morning. impetuous as a schoolboy and irresponsible as a monkey, one of the prince's polo ponies, not above racing in his own set, would answer the question by rioting past the pupil of parrott, the monogram on his bodycloth flapping free in the wind, and his head and hogged tail in the elements. the youngster would swing himself round, and polka-mazurka for a few paces, till his attention would be caught by some dainty child of the desert, fresh from the bombay stables, sweating at every sound, backing and filling like a rudderless ship. then, thanking his stars that he was wiser than some people, number would lob on to the track and settle down to his spin like the gentleman he was. elsewhere, the eye fell upon a cloud of nameless ones, purchases from abdul rahman, whose worth will be proved next hot weather, when they are seriously taken in hand--skirmishing over the face of the land and enjoying themselves immensely. high above everything else, like a collier among barges, screaming shrilly, a black, flamboyant marwari stallion, with a crest like the crest of a barb, barrel-bellied, goose-rumped, and river-maned, pranced through the press, while the slow-pacing waler carriage-horses eyed him with deep disfavour, and the maharaja kanwar's tiny mount capered under his pink, roman nose, kicking up as much dust as the _foxhall_ colt who had got on to a lovely patch of sand and was dancing a saraband in it. in and out of the tangle, going down to or coming back from the courses, ran, shuffled, rocketed, plunged, sulked, or stampeded countless horses of all kinds, shapes, and descriptions--so that the eye at last failed to see what they were, and only retained a general impression of a whirl of bays, greys, iron greys, and chestnuts with white stockings, some as good as could be desired, others average, but not one distinctly bad. "we have no downright bad 'uns in this stable. what's the use?" said the master of horse, calmly. "they are all good beasts and, one with another, must cost more than a thousand rupees each. this year's new ones bought from bombay and the pick of our own studs are a hundred strong about. may be more. yes, they look all right enough; but you can never know what they are going to turn out. live-stock is very uncertain." "and how are the stables managed? how do you make room for the fresh stock?" something this way. here are all the new ones and parrott's lot, and the english colts that maharaja pertab singh brought out with him from home. _winterlake_ out o' _queen's consort_ that chestnut is with the two white stockings you're looking at now. well, next hot weather we shall see what they're made of and which is who. there's so many that the trainer hardly knows 'em one from another till they begin to be a good deal forward. those that haven't got the pace, or that the maharaja don't fancy, they're taken out and sold for what they'll bring. the man who takes the horses out has a good job of it. he comes back and says: "i sold such and such for so much, and here's the money." that's all. well, our rejections are worth having. they have taken prizes at the poona horse show. see for yourself. is there one of those that you wouldn't be glad to take for a hack, and look well after too? only they're no use to us, and so out they go by the score. we've got sixty riding-boys, perhaps more, and they've got their work cut out to keep them all going. what you've seen are only the stables. we've got one stud at bellara, eighty miles out, and they come in sometimes in droves of three and four hundred from the stud. they raise marwaris there too, but that's entirely under native management. we've got nothing to do with that. the natives reckon a marwari the best country-bred you can lay hands on; and some of them are beauties! crests on 'em like the top of a wave. well, there's that stud and another stud and, reckoning one with another, i should say the maharaja has nearer twelve hundred than a thousand horses of his own. for this place here, two wagon-loads of grass come in every day from marwar junction. lord knows how many saddles and bridles we've got. i never counted. i suppose we've about forty carriages, not counting the ones that get shabby and are stacked in places in the city, as i suppose you've seen. we take 'em out in the morning, a regular string altogether, brakes and all; but the prettiest turn-out we ever turned out was lady dufferin's pony four-in-hand. walers--thirteen-two the wheelers, i think, and thirteen-one the leaders. they took prizes in poona. that _was_ a pretty turn-out. the prettiest in india. lady dufferin, she drove it when the viceroy was down here last year. there are bicycles and tricycles in the carriage department too. i don't know how many, but when the viceroy's camp was held, there was about one apiece for the gentlemen, with remounts. they're somewhere about the place now, if you want to see them. how do we manage to keep the horses so quiet? you'll find some o' the youngsters play the goat a good deal when they come out o' stable, but, as you say, there's no vice generally. it's this way. we don't allow any curry-combs. if we did, the _saises_ would be wearing out their brushes on the combs. it's all elbow-grease here. they've got to go over the horses with their hands. they must handle 'em, and a native he's afraid of a horse. now an english groom, when a horse is doing the fool, clips him over the head with a curry-comb, or punches him in the belly; and that hurts the horse's feelings. a native, he just stands back till the trouble is over. he _must_ handle the horse or he'd get into trouble for not dressing him, so it comes to all handling and no licking, and that's why you won't get hold of a really vicious brute in these stables. old _ringwood_ he had four _saises_, and he wanted 'em every one, but the other horses have no more than one _sais_ apiece. the maharaja he keeps fourteen or fifteen horses for his own riding. not that he cares to ride now, but he likes to have his horses; and no one else can touch 'em. then there's the horses that he mounts his visitors on, when they come for pig-sticking and such like, and then there's a lot of horses that go to maharaja pertab singh's new cavalry regiment. so you see a horse can go through all three degrees sometimes before he gets sold, and be a good horse at the end of it. and i think that's about all!" a cloud of youngsters, sweating freely and ready for any mischief, shot past on their way to breakfast, and the conversation ended in a cloud of sand and the drumming of hurrying hooves. in the raika-bagh are more racing cups than this memory holds the names of. chiefest of all was the delhi assemblage cup--the imperial vase, of solid gold, won by _crown prince_. the other pieces of plate were not so imposing. but of all the crown jewels, the most valuable appeared at the end of the inspection. it was the small maharaja kanwar lolling in state in a huge barouche--his toes were at least two feet off the floor--that was taking him from his morning drive. "have you seen _my_ horses?" said the maharaja kanwar. the four twelve-hand ponies had been duly looked over, and the future ruler of jodhpur departed satisfied. xv treats of the startling effect of a reduction in wages and the pleasures of loaferdom. paints the state of the boondi road and the treachery of ganesh of situr. "a twenty-five per cent reduction all roun' an' no certain leave when you wants it. _of_ course the best men goes somewhere else. that's only natural, and 'ere's this sanguinary down mail a-stickin' in the eye of the khundwa down! i tell you, sir, injia's a bad place--a very bad place. 'tisn't what it was when i came out one and thirty year ago, an' the drivers was getting their seven and eight 'undred rupees a month an' was treated as _men_." the englishman was on his way to nasirabad, and a gentleman in the railway was explaining to him the real reason of the decadence of the empire. it was because, the rajputana-malwa railway had cut all its employés twenty-five per cent. it is ungenerous to judge a caste by a few samples; but the englishman had on the road and elsewhere seen a good deal of gentlemen on the railway, and they spend their pay in a manner that would do credit to an income of a thousand a month. now they say that the twenty-five per cent reduction deprives them of all the pleasures of life. so much the better if it makes them moderately economical in their expenditure. revolving these things in his mind, together with one or two stories of extravagances not quite fit for publication, the englishman came to nasirabad, before sunrise, and there to an evil-looking tonga. quoth ram baksh, proprietor, driver, _sais_, and everything else, calmly: "at this time of the year and having regard to the heat of the sun who wants a top to a tonga? i have no top. i have a top, but it would take till twelve o'clock to put it on. and behold sahib, padre martum sahib went in this tonga to deoli. all the officer sahibs of deoli and nasirabad go in this tonga for _shikar_. this is a 'shutin-tonga'!" "when church and army are brought against one, argument is in vain." but to take a soft, office-bred unfortunate into the wilderness, upon a skeleton, a diagram of a conveyance, is brutality. ram baksh did not see it, and headed his two thirteen-hand rats straight towards the morning sun, along a beautiful military road. "we shall get to deoli in six hours," said ram baksh the boastful, and, even as he spoke, the spring of the tonga bar snapt "mit a harp-like melodious twang." "what does it matter?" said ram baksh. "has the sahib never seen a tonga-iron break before? padre martum sahib and all the officer sahibs in deoli--" "ram baksh," said the englishman, sternly, "i am not a padre sahib nor an officer sahib, and if you say anything more about padre martum sahib or the officer in deoli i shall grow very angry, ram baksh." "humph," said ram baksh, "i knew you were not a padre sahib." the little mishap was patched up with string, and the tonga went on merrily. it is stevenson who says that the "invitation to the road," nature's great morning song, has not yet been properly understood or put to music. the first note of it is the sound of the dawn-wind through long grass. it is good, good beyond expression, to see the sun rise upon a strange land and to know that you have only to go forward and possess that land--that it will dower you before the day is ended with a hundred new impressions and, perhaps, one idea. it is good to snuff the wind when it comes in over large uplands or down from the tops of the blue aravalis--dry and keen as a new-ground sword. best of all is to light the first pipe--is there any tobacco so good as that we burn in honour of the breaking day?--and, while the ponies wake the long white road with their hooves and the birds go abroad in companions together, to thank your stars that you are neither the subaltern who has orderly room, the 'stunt who has office, or the judge who has the court to attend; but are only a loafer in a flannel shirt bound, if god pleases, to "little boondi," somewhere beyond the faint hills beyond the plain. but there was alloy in this delight. men had told the englishman darkly that boondi state had no love for englishmen, that there was nowhere to stop, and that no one would do anything for money. love was out of the question. further, it was an acknowledged fact that there were no englishmen of any kind in boondi. but the englishman trusted that ganesh would be good to him, and that he would, somehow or other, fall upon his feet as he had fallen before. the road from nasirabad to deoli, being military in its nature, is nearly as straight as a ruler and about as smooth. here and there little rocky hills, the last off-shoots of the aravalis to the west, break the ground; but the bulk of it is fair and without pimples. the deoli force are apparently so utterly irregular that they can do without a telegraph, have their mails carried by runners, and dispense with bridges over all the fifty-six miles that separate them from nasirabad. however, a man who goes shikarring for any length of time in one of ram baksh's tongas would soon learn to dispense with anything and everything. "_all_ the sahibs use my tonga; i've got eight of them and twenty pairs of horses," said ram baksh. "they go as far as gangra, where the tigers are, for they are 'shutin-tongas.'" now the englishman knew gangra slightly, having seen it on the way to udaipur; and it was as perverse and rocky a place as any man would desire to see. he politely expressed doubt. "i tell you my tongas go anywhere," said ram baksh, testily. a hay-wagon--they cut and stack their hay in these parts--blocked the road. ram baksh ran the tonga to one side, into a rut, fetched up on a tree-stump, rebounded on to a rock, and struck the road again. "observe," said ram baksh; "but that is nothing. you wait till we get on the boondi road, and i'll make you shake, shake like a bottle." "is it _very_ bad?" "i've never been to boondi myself, but i hear it is all rocks--great rocks as big as this tonga." but though he boasted himself and his horses nearly all the way, he could not reach deoli in anything like the time he had set forth. "if i am not at boondi by four," he had said, at six in the morning, "let me go without my fee." but by midday he was still far from deoli, and boondi lay twenty-eight miles beyond that station. "what can i do?" said he. "i've laid out lots of horses--any amount. but the fact is i've never been to boondi. i shan't go there in the night." ram baksh's "lots of horses" were three pair between nasirabad and deoli--three pair of undersized ponies who did wonders. at one place, after he had quitted a cotton wagon, a drove of gipsies, and a man on horseback, with his carbine across his saddle-bow, the englishman came to a stretch of road so utterly desolate that he said: "now i am clear of everybody who ever knew me. this is the beginning of the waste into which the scape-goat was sent." from a bush by the roadside sprang up a fat man who cried aloud in english: "how does your honour do? i met your honour in simla this year. are you quite well? ya-as, i am here. your honour remembers me? i am travelling. ya-as. ha! ha!" and he went on, leaving his honour bemazed. it was a babu--a simla babu, of that there could be no doubt; but who he was or what he was doing, thirty miles from anywhere, his honour could not make out. the native moves about more than most folk, except railway people, imagine. the big banking firms of upper india naturally keep in close touch with their great change-houses in ajmir, despatching and receiving messengers regularly. so it comes to pass that the necessitous circumstances of lieutenant mcrannamack, of the tyneside tailtwisters, quartered on the frontier, are thoroughly known and discussed, a thousand miles south of the cantonment where the light-hearted lieutenant goes to his money-lender. this is by the way. let us return to the banks of the banas river, where "poor carey," as tod calls him, came when he was sickening for his last illness. the banas is one of those streams which runs "over golden sands with feet of silver," but, from the scarp of its banks, deoli in the rains must be isolated. ram baksh, questioned hereon, vowed that all the officer sahibs never dreamed of halting, but went over in boats or on elephants. according to ram baksh the men of deoli must be wonderful creatures. they do nothing but use his tongas. a break in some low hills gives on to the dead flat plain in which deoli stands. "you must stop here for the night," said ram baksh. "i will _not_ take my horses forward in the dark; god knows where the dak-bungalow is. i've forgotten, but any one of the officer sahibs in deoli will tell you." those in search of a new emotion would do well to run about an apparently empty cantonment, in a disgraceful shooting-tonga, hunting for a place to sleep in. chaprassis come out of back verandahs, and are rude, and regimental babus hop off godowns, and are flippant, while in the distance a sahib looks out of his room, and eyes the dusty forlorn-hope with silent contempt. it should be mentioned that the dust on the deoli road not only powders but masks the face and raiment of the passenger. next morning ram baksh was awake with the dawn, and clamorous to go on to boondi. "i've sent a pair of horses, big horses, out there and the _sais_ is a fool. perhaps they will be lost; i want to find them." he dragged his unhappy passenger on the road once more and demanded of all who passed the dak-bungalow which was the way to boondi. "observe," said he, "there can be only one road, and if i hit it we are all right, and i'll show you what the tonga can do." "amen," said the englishman, devoutly, as the tonga jumped into and out of a larger hole. "without doubt this is the boondi road," said ram baksh; "it is so bad." it has been before said that the boondi state has no great love for sahibs. the state of the road proves it. "this," said ram baksh, tapping the wheel to see whether the last plunge had smashed a spoke, "is a very good road. you wait till you see what is ahead." and the funeral staggered on--over irrigation cuts, through buffalo wallows, and dried pools stamped with the hundred feet of kine (this, by the way, is the most cruel road of all), up rough banks where the rock ledges peered out of the dust, down steep-cut dips ornamented with large stones, and along two-feet deep ruts of the rains, where the tonga went slantwise even to the verge of upsetting. it was a royal road--a native road--a raj road of the roughest, and, through all its jolts and bangs and bumps and dips and heaves, the eye of ram baksh rolled in its blood-shot socket, seeking for the "big horses" he had so rashly sent into the wilderness. the ponies that had done the last twenty miles into deoli were nearly used up, and did their best to lie down in the dry beds of nullahs. a man came by on horseback, his servant walking before with platter and meal-bag. "have you seen any horses hereabouts?" cried ram baksh. "horses? what the devil have i to do with your horses? d'you think i've stolen them?" now this was decidedly a strange answer, and showed the rudeness of the land. an old woman under a tree cried out in a strange tongue and ran away. it was a dream-like experience, this hunting for horses in a wilderness with neither house nor hut nor shed in sight. "if we keep to the road long enough we must find them. look at the road. this raj ought to be smitten with bullets." ram baksh had been pitched forward nearly on the off-pony's rump, and was in a very bad temper indeed. the funeral found a house--a house walled with thorns--and near by were two big horses, thirteen-two if an inch, and harnessed quite regardless of expense. everything was repacked and rebound with triple ropes, and the sahib was provided with an extra cushion; but he had reached a sort of dreamsome nirvana, having several times bitten his tongue through, cut his boot against the wheel-edge, and twisted his legs into a true-lovers'-knot. there was no further sense of suffering in him. he was even beginning to enjoy himself faintly and by gasps. the road struck boldly into hills with all their teeth on edge, that is to say, their strata breaking across the road in little ripples. the effect of this was amazing. the tonga skipped merrily as a young fawn, from ridge to ridge. it shivered, it palpitated, it shook, it slid, it hopped, it waltzed, it ricochetted, it bounded like a kangaroo, it blundered like a sledge, it swayed like a top-heavy coach on a down-grade, it "kicked" like a badly coupled railway carriage, it squelched like a country-cart, it squeaked in its torment, and lastly, it essayed to plough up the ground with its nose. after three hours of this performance, it struck a tiny little ford, set between steeply sloping banks of white dust, where the water was clear brown and full of fish. and here a blissful halt was called under the shadow of the high bank of a tobacco field. would you taste one of the real pleasures of life? go through severe acrobatic exercises in and about a tonga for four hours; then, having eaten and drank till you can no more, sprawl in the cool of a nullah bed with your head among the green tobacco, and your mind adrift with the one little cloud in a royally blue sky. earth has nothing more to offer her children than this deep delight of animal well-being. there were butterflies in the tobacco--six different kinds, and a little rat came out and drank at the ford. to him succeeded the flight into egypt. the white banks of the ford framed the picture perfectly--the mother in blue, on a great white donkey, holding the child in her arms, and joseph walking beside, his hand upon the donkey's withers. by all the laws of the east, joseph should have been riding and the mother walking. this was an exception decreed for the englishman's special benefit. it was very warm and very pleasant, and, somehow, the passers by the ford grew indistinct, and the nullah became a big english garden, with a cuckoo singing far down in the orchard, among the apple-blossoms. the cuckoo started the dream. he was the only real thing in it, for on waking the garden slipped back into the water, but the cuckoo remained and called and called for all the world as though he had been a veritable english cuckoo. "cuckoo--cuckoo--cuck;" then a pause and renewal of the cry from another quarter of the horizon. after that the ford became distasteful, so the procession was driven forward and in time plunged into what must have been a big city once, but the only inhabitants were oil-men. there were abundance of tombs here, and one carried a life-like carving in high relief of a man on horseback spearing a foot-soldier. hard by this place the road or rut turned by great gardens, very cool and pleasant, full of tombs and black-faced monkeys who quarrelled among the tombs, and shut in from the sun by gigantic banians and mango trees. under the trees and behind the walls, priests sat singing; and the englishman would have inquired into what strange place he had fallen, but the men did not understand him. ganesh is a mean little god of circumscribed powers. he was dreaming, with a red and flushed face, under a banian tree; and the englishman gave him four annas to arrange matters comfortably at boondi. his priest took the four annas, but ganesh did nothing whatever, as shall be shown later. his only excuse is that his trunk was a good deal worn, and he would have been better for some more silver leaf, but that was no fault of the englishman. beyond the dead city was a jhil, full of snipe and duck, winding in and out of the hills; and beyond the jhil, hidden altogether among the hills, was boondi. the nearer to the city the viler grew the road and the more overwhelming the curiosity of the inhabitants. but what befel at boondi must be reserved for another chapter. xvi the comedy of errors and the exploitation of boondi. the castaway of the dispensary and the children of the schools. a consideration of the shields of rajasthan and other trifles. it is high time that a new treaty were made with maha rao raja ram singh, bahadur, raja of boondi. he keeps the third article of the old one too faithfully, which says that he "shall not enter into negotiations with any one without the consent of the british government." he does not negotiate at all. arrived at boondi gate, the englishman asked where he might lay his head for the night, and the quarter guard with one accord said: "the sukh mahal, which is beyond the city," and the tonga went thither through the length of the town till it arrived at a pavilion on a lake--a place of two turrets connected by an open colonnade. the "house" was open to the winds of heaven and the pigeons of the raj; but the latter had polluted more than the first could purify. a snowy-bearded _chowkidar_ crawled out of a place of tombs, which he seemed to share with some monkeys, and threw himself into anglo-saxon attitudes. he was a great deal worse than ram baksh, for he said that all the officer sahibs of deoli came to the sukh mahal for _shikar_ and--never went away again, so pleased were they. the sahib had brought the honour of his presence, and he was a very old man, and without a written permit could do nothing. then he fell deeply asleep without warning; and there was a pause, of one hour only, which the englishman spent in seeing the lake. it, like the jhils on the road, wound in and out among the hills, and, on the bund side, was bounded by a hill of black rock crowned with a _chhatri_ of grey stone. below the bund was a garden as fair as eye could wish, and the shores of the lake were dotted with little temples. given a habitable house,--a mere dak-bungalow,--it would be a delightful spot to rest in. warned by some bitter experiences in the past, the englishman knew that he was in for the demi-semi-royal or embarrassing reception, when a man, being the unwelcome guest of a paternal state, is neither allowed to pay his way and make himself comfortable, nor is he willingly entertained. when he saw a one-eyed _munshi_ (clerk), he felt certain that ganesh had turned upon him at last. the _munshi_ demanded and received the _purwana_, or written permit. then he sat down and questioned the traveller exhaustively as to his character and profession. having thoroughly satisfied himself that the visitor was in no way connected with the government or the "agenty sahib bahadur," he took no further thought of the matter and the day began to draw in upon a grassy bund, an open-work pavilion, and a disconsolate tonga. at last the faithful servitor, who had helped to fight the battle of the mail bags at udaipur, broke his silence, and vowing that all these devil-people--not more than twelve--had only come to see the fun, suggested the breaking of the _munshi's_ head. and, indeed, that seemed the best way of breaking the ice; for the _munshi_ had, in the politest possible language, put forward the suggestion that there was nothing particular to show that the sahib who held the _purwana_ had really any right to hold it. the _chowkidar_ woke up and chanted a weird chant, accompanied by the anglo-saxon attitudes, a new set. he was an old man, and all the sahib-log said so, and within the pavilion were tables and chairs and lamps and bath-tubs, and everything that the heart of man could desire. even now an enormous staff of menials were arranging all these things for the comfort of the sahib bahadur and protector of the poor, who had brought the honour and glory of his presence all the way from deoli. what did tables and chairs and eggs and fowls and very bright lamps matter to the raj? he was an old man and ... "who put the present raja on the throne?" "lake sahib," promptly answered the _chowkidar_. "i was there. that is the news of many old years." now tod says it was he himself who installed "lalji the beloved" in the year . the englishman began to lose faith in the _chowkidar_. the _munshi_ said nothing but followed the englishman with his one workable eye. a merry little breeze crisped the waters of the lake, and the fish began to frolic before going to bed. "is nobody going to do or bring anything?" said the englishman, faintly, wondering whether the local gaol would give him a bed if he killed the _munshi_. "i am an old man," said the _chowkidar_, "and because of their great respect and reverence for the sahib in whose presence i am only a bearer of orders and a servant awaiting them, men, many men, are bringing now tent-flies which i with my own hands will wrap, here and there, there and here, in and about the pillars of the place; and thus you, o sahib, who have brought the honour of your presence to the boondi raj over the road to deoli, which is a _kutcha_ road, will be provided with a very fine and large apartment over which i will watch while you go to kill the tigers in these hills." by this time two youths had twisted _canvas_ round some of the pillars of the colonnade, making a sort of loose-box with a two-foot air-way all round the top. there was no door, but there were unlimited windows. into this enclosure the _chowkidar_ heaped furniture on which many generations of pigeons had evidently been carried off by cholera, until he was entreated to desist. "what," said he, scornfully, "are tables and chairs to this raj? if six be not enough, let the presence give an order, and twelve shall be forthcoming. everything shall be forthcoming." here he filled a native lamp with kerosene oil and set it in a box upon a stick. luckily, the oil which he poured so lavishly from a quart bottle was bad, or he would have been altogether consumed. night had fallen long before this magnificence was ended. the superfluous furniture--chairs for the most part--was shovelled out into the darkness, and by the light of a flamboyant lamplet--a merry wind forbade candles--the englishman went to bed, and was lulled to sleep by the rush of the water escaping from the overflow trap and the splash of the water-turtle as he missed the evasive fish. it was a curious sight. cats and dogs rioted about the enclosure, and a wind from the lake bellied the canvas. the brushwood of the hills around snapped and cracked as beasts went through it, and creatures--not jackals--made dolorous noises. on the lake it seemed that hundreds of water-birds were keeping a hotel, and that there were arrivals and departures throughout the night. the raj insisted upon providing a guard of two sepoys, very pleasant men, on four rupees a month. these said that tigers sometimes wandered about on the hills above the lake, but were most generally to be found five miles away. and the englishman promptly dreamed that a one-eyed tiger came into his tent without a _purwana_. but it was only a wild cat after all; and it fled before the shoes of civilisation. the sukh mahal was completely separated from the city, and might have been a country-house. it should be mentioned that boondi is jammed into a v-shaped gorge--the valley at the main entrance being something less than five hundred yards across. as it splays out, the thickly packed houses follow its lines, and, seen from above, seem like cattle herded together preparatory to a stampede through the gate. owing to the set of the hills, very little of the city is visible except from the palace. it was in search of this latter that the englishman went abroad and became so interested in the streets that he forgot all about it for a time. jeypore is a show-city and is decently drained; udaipur is blessed with a state engineer and a printed form of government; for jodhpur the dry sand, the burning sun, and an energetic doctor have done a good deal, but boondi has none of these things. the crampedness of the locality aggravates the evil, and it can only be in the rains which channel and furrow the rocky hillsides that boondi is at all swept out. the nal sagar, a lovely little stretch of water, takes up the head of the valley called banda gorge, and must, in the nature of things, receive a good deal of unholy drainage. but setting aside this weakness, it is a fascinating place--this jumbled city of straight streets and cool gardens, where gigantic mangoes and peepuls intertwine over gurgling watercourses, and the cuckoo comes at midday. it boasts no foolish municipality to decree when a house is dangerous and uninhabitable. the newer shops are built into, on to, over, and under time-blackened ruins of an older day, and the little children skip about tottering arcades and grass-grown walls, while their parents chatter below in the crowded bazaar. in the black slums, the same stones seem to be used over and over again for house-building. wheeled conveyances are scarce in boondi city--there is scant room for carts, and the streets are paved with knobsome stones, unpleasant to walk over. from time to time an inroad of _bunjaras'_ pack-bullocks sweeps the main streets clear of life, or one of the raja's elephants--he has twelve of them--blocks the way. but, for the most part, the foot-passengers have all the city for their own. they do not hurry themselves. they sit in the sun and think, or put on all the arms in the family, and, hung with ironmongery, parade before their admiring friends. others, lean, dark men, with bound jaws and only a tulwar for weapon, dive in and out of the dark alleys, on errands of state. it is a beautifully lazy city, doing everything in the real, true, original native way, and it is kept in very good order by the durbar. there either is or is not an order for everything. there is no order to sell fishing-hooks, or to supply an englishman with milk, or to change for him currency notes. he must only deal with the durbar for whatever he requires; and wherever he goes he must be accompanied by at least two armed men. they will tell him nothing, for they know or affect to know nothing of the city. they will do nothing except shout at the little innocents who joyfully run after the stranger and demand _pice_, but there they are, and there they will stay till he leaves the city, accompanying him to the gate, and waiting there a little to see that he is fairly off and away. englishmen are not encouraged in boondi. the intending traveller would do well to take a full suit of political uniform with the sunflowers, and the little black sword to sit down upon. the local god is the "agenty sahib," and he is an incarnation without a name--at least among the lower classes. the educated, when speaking of him, always use the courtly "bahadur" affix; and yet it is a mean thing to gird at a state which, after all, is not bound to do anything for intrusive englishmen without any visible means of livelihood. the king of this fair city should declare the blockade absolute, and refuse to be troubled with any one except "colon-nel baltah, agenty sahib bahadur" and the politicals. if ever a railway is run through kotah, as men on the bombay side declare it must be, the cloistered glory of boondi will depart, for kotah is only twenty miles easterly of the city and the road is moderately good. in that day the globe-trotter will pry about the place, and the charitable dispensary--a gem among dispensaries--will be public property. the englishman was hunting for the statue of a horse, a great horse hight hunja, who was a steed of irak, and a king's gift to rao omeda, one time monarch of boondi. he found it in the city square as tod had said; and it was an unlovely statue, carven after the dropsical fashion of later hindu art. no one seemed to know anything about it. a little further on, one cried from a byway in rusty english: "come and see my dispensary." there are only two men in boondi who speak english. one is the head, and the other the assistant, teacher of the english side of boondi free school. the third was, some twenty years ago, a pupil of the lahore medical college when that institution was young; and he only remembered a word here and there. he was head of the charitable dispensary; and insisted upon, then and there, organising a small levee and pulling out all his books. escape was hopeless: nothing less than a formal inspection and introduction to all the native physicians would serve. there were sixteen beds in and about the courtyard, and between twenty and thirty out-patients stood in attendance. making allowances for untouched orientalism, the dispensary is a good one, and must relieve a certain amount of human misery. there is no other in all boondi. the operation-book, kept in english, showed the principal complaints of the country. they were: "asthama," "numonia," "skindiseas," "dabalaty" and "loin-bite." this last item occurred again and again--three and four cases per week--and it was not until the doctor said "_sher se mara_" that the englishman read it aright. it was "lion-bite," or tiger, if you insist upon zoological accuracy. there was one incorrigible idiot, a handsome young man, naked as the day, who sat in the sunshine, shivering and pressing his hands to his head. "i have given him blisters and setons--have tried native and english treatment for two years, but it is no use. he is always as you see him, and now he stays here by the favour of the durbar, which is a very good and pitiful durbar," said the doctor. there were many such pensioners of the durbar--men afflicted with chronic "asthama" who stayed "by favour," and were kindly treated. they were resting in the sunshine their hands on their knees, sure that their daily dole of grain and tobacco and opium would be forthcoming. "all folk, even little children, eat opium here," said the doctor, and the diet-book proved it. after laborious-investigation of everything, down to the last indent to bombay for europe medicines, the englishman was suffered to depart. "sir, i thank ...," began the native doctor, but the rest of the sentence stuck. sixteen years in boondi does not increase knowledge of english; and he went back to his patients, gravely conning over the name of the principal of the lahore medical school--a college now--who had taught him all he knew, and to whom he intended to write. there was something pathetic in the man's catching at news from the outside world of men he had known as assistant and house surgeons who are now rai bahadurs, and his parade of the few shreds of english that still clung to him. may he treat "loin-bites" and "catrack" successfully for many years. in the happy, indolent fashion that must have merits which we cannot understand, he is doing a good work, and the durbar allows his dispensary as much as it wants. close to the dispensary stood the free school, and thither an importunate _munshi_ steered the englishman, who, by this time, was beginning to persuade herself that he really was an accredited agent of government, sent to report on the progress of boondi. from a peepul-shaded courtyard came a clamour of young voices. thirty or forty little ones, from five to eight years old, were sitting in an open verandah learning accounts and hindustani, said the teacher. no need to ask from what castes they came, for it was written on their faces that they were mahajans, oswals, aggerwals, and in one or two cases, it seemed, sharawaks of guzerat. they were learning the business of their lives, and, in time, would take their father's places, and show in how many ways money might be manipulated. here the profession-type came out with startling distinctness. through the chubbiness of almost babyhood, or the delicate suppleness of maturer years, in mouth and eyes and hands, it betrayed itself. the rahtor, who comes of a fighting stock, is a fine animal, and well bred; the hara, who seems to be more compactly built, is also a fine animal; but for a race that show blood in every line of their frame, from the arch of the instep to the modelling of the head, the financial--trading is too coarse a word--the financial class of rajputana appears to be the most remarkable. later in life may become clouded with fat jowl and paunch; but in his youth, his quick-eyed, nimble youth, the young marwar, to give him his business title, is really a thing of beauty. his manners are courtly. the bare ground and a few slates sufficed for the children who were merely learning the ropes that drag states; but the english class, of boys from ten to twelve, was supplied with real benches and forms and a table with a cloth top. the assistant teacher, for the head was on leave, was a self-taught man of boondi, young and delicate looking, who preferred reading to speaking english. his youngsters were supplied with "the third english reading book," and were painfully thumbing their way through a doggerel poem about an "old man with hoary hair." one boy, bolder than the rest, slung an english sentence at the visitor, and collapsed. it was his little stock-in-trade, and the rest regarded him enviously. the durbar supports the school, which is entirely free and open; a just distinction being maintained between the various castes. the old race prejudice against payment for knowledge came out in reply to a question. "you must not sell teaching," said the teacher; and the class murmured applausively, "you must not sell teaching." the population of boondi seems more obviously mixed than that of the other states. there are four or five thousand mahometans within its walls, and a sprinkling of aborigines of various varieties, besides the human raffle that the bunjaras bring in their train, with pathans and sleek delhi men. the new heraldry of the state is curious--something after this sort. _or_, a demi-god, _sable_, issuant of flames, holding in right hand a sword and in the left a bow--_all proper_. in chief, a dagger of the _second_, sheathed _vert_, fessewise over seven arrows in sheaf of the _second_. this latter blazon boondi holds in commemoration of the defeat of an imperial prince who rebelled against the delhi throne in the days of jehangir, when boondi, for value received, took service under the mahometan. it might also be, but here there is no certainty, the memorial of rao rutton's victory over prince khoorm, when the latter strove to raise all rajputana against jehangir his father; or of a second victory over a riotous lordling who harried mewar a little later. for this exploit, the annals say, jehangir gave rao rutton honorary flags and kettle-drums which may have been melted down by the science of the heralds college into the blazon aforesaid. all the heraldry of rajputana is curious, and, to such as hold that there is any worth in the "royal science," interesting. udaipur's shield is, naturally _gules_, a sun in splendour, as befits the "children of the sun and fire," and one of the most ancient houses in india. her crest is the straight rajput sword, the _khanda_, for an account of the worship of which very powerful divinity read tod. the supporters are a bhil and a rajput, attired for the forlorn-hope; commemorating not only the defences of chitor, but also the connection of the great bappa rawul with the bhils, who even now play the principal part in the crown-marking of a rana of udaipur. here, again, tod explains the matter at length. banswara claims alliance with udaipur, and carries a sun, with a label of difference of some kind. jeypore has the five-coloured flag of amber with a sun, because the house claim descent from rama, and her crest is a kuchnar tree, which is the bearing of dasaratha, father of rama. the white horse, which faces the tiger as supporter, may or may not be memorial of the great _aswamedha yuga_, or horse sacrifice, that jey singh, who built jeypore, did--_not_ carry out. jodhpur has the five-coloured flag, with a falcon, in which shape durga, the patron goddess of the state, has been sometimes good enough to appear. she has perched in the form of a wagtail on the howdah of the chief of jeysulmir, whose shield is blazoned with "forts in a desert land," and a naked left arm holding a broken spear, because, the legend goes, jeysulmir was once galled by a horse with a magic spear. they tell the story to-day, but it is a long one. the supporters of the shield--this is canting heraldry with a vengeance!--are antelopes of the desert spangled with gold coin, because the state was long the refuge of the wealthy bankers of india. bikanir, a younger house of jodhpur, carries three white hawks on the five-coloured flag. the patron goddess of bikanir once turned the thorny jungle round the city to fruit trees, and the crest therefore is a green tree--strange emblem for a desert principality. the motto, however, is a good one. when the greater part of the rajput states were vassals of akbar, and he sent them abroad to do his will, certain princes objected to crossing the indus, and asked bikanir to head the mutiny because his state was the least accessible. he consented, on condition that they would all for one day greet him thus: "_jey jangal dar badshah!_" history shows what became of the objectors, and bikanir's motto: "hail to the king of the waste!" proves that the tale _must_ be true. but from boondi to bikanir is a long digression, bred by idleness on the bund of the burra. it would have been sinful not to let down a line into those crowded waters, and the guards, who were mahometans, said that if the sahib did not eat fish, they did. and the sahib fished luxuriously, catching two and three pounders, of a perch-like build, whenever he chose to cast. he was wearied of schools and dispensaries, and the futility of heraldry accorded well with sloth--that is to say boondi. it should be noted, none the less, that in this part of the world the soberest mind will believe anything--believe in the ghosts by the gau mukh, and the dead thakurs who get out of their tombs and ride round the burra talao at boondi--will credit every legend and lie that rises as naturally as the red flush of sunset, to gild the dead glories of rajasthan. xvii shows that there may be poetry in a bank, and attempts to show the wonders of the palace of boondi. "this is a devil's place you have come to, sahib. no grass for the horses, and the people don't understand anything, and their dirty _pice_ are no good in nasirabad. look here." ram baksh wrathfully exhibited a handful of lumps of copper. the nuisance of taking a native out of his own beat is that he forthwith regards you not only as the author of his being, but of all his misfortunes as well. he is as hampering as a frightened child and as irritating as a man. "padre martum sahib never came here," said ram baksh, with an air of one who had been led against his will into bad company. a story about a rat that found a piece of turmeric and set up a bunnia's shop had sent the one-eyed _munshi_ away, but a company of lesser _munshis_, runners, and the like were in attendance, and they said that money might be changed at the treasury, which was in the palace. it was quite impossible to change it anywhere else--there was no order. from the sukh mahal to the palace the road ran through the heart of the city, and by reason of the continual shouting of the _munshis_, not more than ten thousand of the fifty thousand people of boondi knew for what purpose the sahib was journeying through their midst. cataract was the most prevalent affliction, cataract in its worst forms, and it was, therefore, necessary that men should come very close to look at the stranger. they were in no sense rude, but they stared devoutly. "he has not come for _shikar_, and he will not take petitions. he has come to see the place, and god knows what he is." the description was quite correct, as far as it went; but, somehow or another, when shouted out at four crossways in the midst of a very pleasant little gathering it did not seem to add to dignity or command respect. it has been written "the _coup d'oeil_ of the castellated palace of boondi, from whichever side you approach it, is perhaps the most striking in india. whoever has seen the palace of boondi can easily picture to himself the hanging gardens of semiramis." this is true--and more too. to give on paper any adequate idea of the boondi-ki-mahal is impossible. jeypore palace may be called the versailles of india; udaipur's house of state is dwarfed by the hills round it and the spread of the pichola lake; jodhpur's house of strife, grey towers on red rock, is the work of giants, but the palace of boondi, even in broad daylight, is such a palace as men build for themselves in uneasy dreams--the work of goblins more than of men. it is built into and out of the hillside, in gigantic terrace on terrace, and dominates the whole of the city. but a detailed description of it were useless. owing to the dip of the valley in which the city stands, it can only be well seen from one place, the main road of the city; and from that point looks like an avalanche of masonry ready to rush down and block the gorge. like all the other palaces of rajputana, it is the work of many hands, and the present raja has thrown out a bastion of no small size on one of the lower levels, which has been four or five years in the building. no one knows where the hill begins and where the palace ends. men say that there are subterranean chambers leading into the heart of the hills, and passages communicating with the extreme limits of taragarh, the giant fortress that crowns the hill and flanks the whole of the valley on the palace side. they say that there is as much room under as above ground, and that none have traversed the whole extent of the palace. looking at it from below, the englishman could readily believe that nothing was impossible for those who had built it. the dominant impression was of height--height that heaved itself out of the hillside and weighed upon the eyelids of the beholder. the steep slope of the land had helped the builders in securing this effect. from the main road of the city a steep stone-paved ascent led to the first gate--name not communicated by the zealous following. two gaudily painted fishes faced each other over the arch, and there was little except glaring colour ornamentation visible. this gate gave into what they called the _chowk_ of the palace, and one had need to look twice ere realising that this open space, crammed with human life, was a spur of the hill on which the palace stood, paved and built over. there had been little attempt at levelling the ground. the foot-worn stones followed the contours of the ground, and ran up to the walls of the palace smooth as glass. immediately facing the gate of the fish was the quarter-guard barracks, a dark and dirty room, and here, in a chamber hollowed out in a wall, were stored the big drums of state, the _nakarras_. the appearance of the englishman seemed to be the signal for smiting the biggest of all, and the dull thunder rolled up the palace _chowk_, and came back from the unpierced palace walls in hollow groaning. it was an eerie welcome--this single, sullen boom. in this enclosure, four hundred years ago, if the legend be true, a son of the great rao bando, who dreamed a dream as pharaoh did and saved boondi from famine, left a little band of haras to wait his bidding while he went up into the palace and slew his two uncles who had usurped the throne and abandoned the faith of their fathers. when he had pierced one and hacked the other, as they sat alone and unattended, he called out to his followers, who made a slaughter-house of the enclosure and cut up the usurpers' adherents. at the best of times men slip on these smooth stones; and when the place was swimming in blood, foothold must have been treacherous indeed. an inquiry for the place of the murder of the uncles--it is marked by a staircase slab, or tod, the accurate, is at fault--was met by the answer that the treasury was close at hand. they speak a pagan tongue in boondi, swallow half their words, and adulterate the remainder with local patois. what can be extracted from a people who call four miles variously _do kosh_, _do kush_, _dhi hkas_, _doo-a koth_, and _diakast_ all one word? the country-folk are quite unintelligible; which simplifies matters. it is the catching of a shadow of a meaning here and there, the hunting for directions cloaked in dialect, that is annoying. foregoing his archæological researches, the englishman sought the treasury. he took careful notes; he even made a very bad drawing, but the treasury of boondi defied pinning down before the public. there was a gash in the brown flank of the palace--and this gash was filled with people. a broken bees' comb with the whole hive busily at work on repairs will give a very fair idea of this extraordinary place--the heart of boondi. the sunlight was very vivid without and the shadows were heavy within, so that little could be seen except this clinging mass of humanity wriggling like maggots in a carcass. a stone staircase ran up to a rough verandah built out of the wall, and in the wall was a cave-like room, the guardian of whose depths was one of the refined financial classes, a man with very small hands and soft, low voice. he was girt with a sword, and held authority over the durbar funds. he referred the englishman courteously to another branch of the department, to find which necessitated a blundering progress up another narrow staircase crowded with loungers of all kinds. here everything shone from constant contact of bare feet and hurrying bare shoulders. the staircase was the thing that, seen from without, had produced the bees' comb impression. at the top was a long verandah shaded from the sun, and here the boondi treasury worked, under the guidance of a grey-haired old man, whose sword lay by the side of his comfortably wadded cushion. he controlled twenty or thirty writers, each wrapped round a huge, country paper account-book, and each far too busy to raise his eyes. the babble on the staircase might have been the noise of the sea so far as these men were concerned. it ebbed and flowed in regular beats, and spread out far into the courtyard below. now and again the _click-click-click_ of a scabbard tip being dragged against the wall, cut the dead sound of tramping naked feet, and a soldier would stumble up the narrow way into the sunlight. he was received, and sent back or forward by a knot of keen-eyed loungers, who seemed to act as a buffer between the peace of the secretariat and the pandemonium of the administrative. _saises_ and grass-cutters, mahouts of elephants, brokers, mahajuns, villagers from the district, and here and there a shock-headed aborigine, swelled the mob on and at the foot of the stairs. as they came up, they met the buffer-men who spoke in low voices and appeared to filter them according to their merits. some were sent to the far end of the verandah, where everything melted away in a fresh crowd of dark faces. others were sent back, and joined the detachment shuffling for their shoes in the _chowk_. one servant of the palace withdrew himself to the open, underneath the verandah, and there sat yapping from time to time like a hungry dog: "the grass! the grass! the grass!" but the men with the account-books never stirred. and they bowed their heads gravely and made entry or erasure, turning back the rustling leaves. not often does a reach of the river of life so present itself that it can without alteration be transferred to canvas. but the treasury of boondi, the view up the long verandah, stood complete and ready for any artist who cared to make it his own. and by that lighter and less malicious irony of fate, who is always giving nuts to those who have no teeth, the picture was clinched and brought together by a winking, brass hookah-bowl of quaint design, pitched carelessly upon a roll of dull red cloth in the foreground. the faces of the accountants were of pale gold, for they were an untanned breed, and the face of the old man, their controller, was frosted silver. it was a strange treasury, but no other could have suited the palace. the englishman watched, open-mouthed, blaming himself because he could not catch the meaning of the orders given to the flying chaprassies, nor make anything of the hum in the verandah and the tumult on the stairs. the old man took the commonplace currency note and announced his willingness to give change in silver. "we have no small notes here," he said. "they are not wanted. in a little while, when you next bring the honour of your presence this way, you shall find the silver." the englishman was taken down the steps and fell into the arms of a bristly giant who had left his horse in the courtyard, and the giant spoke at length waving his arms in the air, but the englishman could not understand him and dropped into the hubbub at the palace foot. except the main lines of the building there is nothing straight or angular about it. the rush of people seems to have rounded and softened every corner, as a river grinds down boulders. from the lowest tier, two zigzags, all of rounded stones sunk in mortar, took the englishman to a gate where two carved elephants were thrusting at each other over the arch; and, because neither he nor any one round him could give the gate a name, he called it the "gate of the elephants." here the noise from the treasury was softened, and entry through the gate brought him into a well-known world, the drowsy peace of a king's palace. there was a courtyard surrounded by stables, in which were kept chosen horses, and two or three grooms were sleeping in the sun. there was no other life except the whir and coo of the pigeons. in time--though there really is no such a thing as time off the line of railway--an official appeared begirt with the skewer-like keys that open the native bayonet-locks, each from six inches to a foot long. where was the raj mahal in which, sixty-six years ago, tod formally installed ram singh, "who is now in his eleventh year, fair and with a lively, intelligent cast of face"? the warden made no answer, but led to a room, overlooking the courtyard, in which two armed men stood before an empty throne of white marble. they motioned silently that none must pass immediately before the seat of the king, but go round, keeping to the far side of the double row of pillars. near the walls were stone slabs pierced to take the butts of long, venomous, black bamboo lances; rude coffers were disposed about the room, and ruder sketches of ganesh adorned the walls. "the men," said the warden, "watch here day and night because this place is the rutton daulat." that, you will concede, is lucid enough. he who does not understand it, may go to for a thick-headed barbarian. from the rutton daulat the warden unlocked doors that led into a hall of audience--the chutter mahal--built by raja chutter lal, who was killed more than two hundred years ago in the latter days of shah jehan for whom he fought. two rooms, each supported on double rows of pillars, flank the open space, in the centre of which is a marble reservoir. here the englishman looked anxiously for some of the atrocities of the west, and was pleased to find that, with the exception of a vase of artificial flowers and a clock, there was nothing that jarred with the exquisite pillars, and the raw blaze of colour in the roofs of the rooms. in the middle of these impertinent observations, something sighed--sighed like a distressed ghost. unaccountable voices are at all times unpleasant, especially when the hearer is some hundred feet or so above ground in an unknown palace in an unknown land. a gust of wind had found its way through one of the latticed balconies, and had breathed upon a thin plate of metal, some astrological instrument, slung gongwise on a tripod. the tone was as soft as that of an Æolian harp, and, because of the surroundings, infinitely more plaintive. there was an inlaid ivory door, set in lintel and posts crusted with looking-glass--all apparently old work. this opened into a darkened room where there were gilt and silver charpoys, and portraits, in the native fashion, of the illustrious dead of boondi. beyond the darkness was a balcony clinging to the sheer side of the palace, and it was then that the englishman realised to what a height he had climbed without knowing it. he looked down upon the bustle of the treasury and the stream of life flowing into and out of the gate of the fishes where the big drums lie. lifting his eyes, he saw how boondi city had built itself, spreading from west to east as the confined valley became too narrow and the years more peaceable. the boondi hills are the barrier that separates the stony, uneven ground near deoli from the flats of kotah, twenty miles away. from the palace balcony the road to the eye is clear to the banks of the chumbul river, which was the debatable ford in times gone by and was leaped, as all rivers with any pretensions to a pedigree have been, by more than one magic horse. northward and easterly the hills run out to indurgarh, and southward and westerly to territory marked "disputed" on the map in the present year of grace. from this balcony the raja can see to the limit of his territory eastward, his empire all under his hand. he is, or the politicals err, that same ram singh who was installed by tod in , and for whose success in killing his first deer, tod was, by the queen-mother of boondi, bidden to rejoice. to-day the people of boondi say: "this durbar is very old; so old that few men remember its beginning, for that was in our father's time." it is related also of boondi that, on the occasion of the queen's jubilee, they said proudly that their ruler had reigned for sixty years, and he was a man. they saw nothing astonishing in the fact of a woman having reigned for fifty. history does not say whether they jubilated; for there are no englishmen in boondi to write accounts of demonstrations and foundation-stone laying to the daily newspaper, and boondi is very, very small. in the early morning you may see a man pantingly chased out of the city by another man with a naked sword. this is the mail and the mail-guard; and the effect is as though runner and swordsman lay under a doom--the one to fly with the fear of death always before him, as men fly in dreams, and the other to perpetually fail of his revenge. the warden unlocked more doors and led the englishman still higher, but into a garden--a heavily timbered garden with a tank for gold fish in the midst. for once the impassive following smiled when they saw that the englishman was impressed. "this," said they, "is the rang bilas." "but who made it?" "who knows? it was made long ago." the englishman looked over the garden-wall, a foot-high parapet, and shuddered. there was only the flat side of the palace, and a drop on to the stones of the zigzag scores of feet below. above him was the riven hillside and the decaying wall of taragarh, and behind him this fair garden, hung like mahomet's coffin, but full of the noise of birds and the talking of the wind in the branches. the warden entered into a lengthy explanation of the nature of the delusion, showing how--but he was stopped before he was finished. his listener did not want to know "how the trick was done." here was the garden, and there were three or four storeys climbed to reach it. at one end of the garden was a small room, under treatment by native artists who were painting the panels with historical pictures, in distemper. theirs was florid polychromatic art, but skirting the floor was a series of frescoes in red, black, and white, of combats with elephants, bold and temperate as good german work. they were worn and defaced in places; but the hand of some bygone limner, who did not know how to waste a line, showed under the bruises and scratches, and put the newer work to shame. here the tour of the palace ended; and it must be remembered that the englishman had not gone the depth of three rooms into one flank. acres of building lay to the right of him, and above the lines of the terraces he could see the tops of green trees. "who knew how many gardens, such as the rang bilas, were to be found in the palace?" no one answered directly, but all said that there were many. the warden gathered up his keys, and, locking each door behind him as he passed, led the way down to earth. but before he had crossed the garden the englishman heard, deep down in the bowels of the palace, a woman's voice singing, and the voice rang as do voices in caves. all palaces in india excepting dead ones, such as that of amber, are full of eyes. in some, as has been said, the idea of being watched is stronger than in others. in boondi palace it was overpowering--being far worse than in the green shuttered corridors of jodhpur. there were trap-doors on the tops of terraces, and windows veiled in foliage, and bull's-eyes set low in unexpected walls, and many other peep-holes and places of vantage. in the end, the englishman looked devoutly at the floor, but when the voice of the woman came up from under his feet, he felt that there was nothing left for him but to go. yet, excepting only this voice, there was deep silence everywhere, and nothing could be seen. the warden returned to the chutter mahal to pick up a lost key. the brass table of the planets was sighing softly to itself as it swung to and fro in the wind. that was the last view of the interior of the palace, the empty court, and the swinging, sighing astrolabe. about two hours afterwards, when he had reached the other side of the valley and seen the full extent of the buildings, the englishman began to realise first that he had not been taken through one-tenth of the palace; and secondly, that he would do well to measure its extent by acres, in preference to meaner measures. but what made him blush hotly, all alone among the tombs on the hillside, was the idea that he with his ridiculous demands for eggs, firewood, and sweet drinking water should have clattered and chattered through any part of it at all. he began to understand why boondi does not encourage englishmen. xviii of the uncivilised night and the departure to things civilised. showing how a friend may keep an appointment too well. "let us go hence my songs, she will not hear. let us go hence together without fear." but ram baksh the irrepressible sang it in altogether a baser key. he came by night to the pavilion on the lake, while the sepoys were cooking their fish, and reiterated his whine about the devildom of the country into which the englishman had dragged him. padre martum sahib would never have thus treated the owner of sixteen horses, all fast and big ones, and eight superior "shutin-tongas." "let us get away," said ram baksh. "you are not here for _shikar_, and the water is very bad." it was indeed, except when taken from the lake, and then it only tasted fishy. "we will go, ram baksh," said the englishman. "we will go in the very early morning, and in the meantime here is fish to stay your stomach with." when a transparent piece of canvas, which fails by three feet to reach ceiling or floor, is the only bar between the east and the west, he would be a churl indeed who stood upon invidious race distinctions. the englishman went out and fraternised with the military--the four-rupee soldiers of boondi who guarded him. they were armed, one with an old tower musket crazy as to nipple and hammer, one with a native-made smooth-bore, and one with a composite contrivance--english sporting muzzle-loader stock with a compartment for a jointed cleaning-rod, and hammered octagonal native barrel, wire-fastened, a tuft of cotton on the foresight. all three guns were loaded, and the owners were very proud of them. they were simple folk, these men-at-arms, with an inordinate appetite for broiled fish. they were not _always_ soldiers they explained. they cultivated their crops until called for any duty that might turn up. they were paid now and again, at intervals, but they were paid in coin and not in kind. the _munshis_ and the vakils and the runners had departed after seeing that the englishman was safe for the night, so the freedom of the little gathering on the bund was unrestrained. the _chowkidar_ came out of his cave into the firelight. he took a fish and incontinently choked, for he was a feeble old man. set right again, he launched into a very long and quite unintelligible story while the sepoys said reverently: "he is an old man and remembers many things." as he babbled, the night shut in upon the lake and the valley of boondi. the last cows were driven into the water for their evening drink, the waterfowl and the monkeys went to bed, and the stars came out and made a new firmament in the untroubled bosom of the lake. the light of the fire showed the ruled lines of the bund springing out of the soft darkness of the wooded hill on the left and disappearing into the solid darkness of a bare hill on the right. below the bund a man cried aloud to keep wandering pigs from the gardens whose tree-tops rose to a level with the bund-edge. beyond the trees all was swaddled in gloom. when the gentle buzz of the unseen city died out, it seemed as though the bund were the very swordwide bridge that runs, as every one knows, between this world and the next. the water lapped and muttered, and now and again a fish jumped, with the shatter of broken glass, blurring the peace of the reflected heavens. "and duller should i be than some fat weed that rolls itself at ease on lethe's wharf." the poet who wrote those lines knew nothing whatever of lethe's wharf. the englishman had found it, and it seemed to him, at that hour and in that place, that it would be good and desirable never to return to the commissioners and the deputy commissioners any more, but to lie at ease on the warm sunlit bund by day, and, at night, near a shadow-breeding fire, to listen for the strangled voices and whispers of the darkness in the hills. thus after as long a life as the _chowkidar's_, dying easily and pleasantly, and being buried in a red tomb on the borders of the lake. surely no one would come to reclaim him, across those weary, weary miles of rock-strewn road.... "and this," said the _chowkidar_, raising his voice to enforce attention, "is true talk. everybody knows it, and now the sahib knows it. i am an old man." he fell asleep at once, with his head on the clay pipe that was doing duty for a whole _huqa_ among the company. he had been talking for nearly a quarter of an hour. see how great a man is the true novelist! six or seven thousand miles away, walter besant of the golden pen had created mr. maliphant--the ancient of figure-heads in the _all sorts and conditions of men_, and here, in boondi, the englishman had found mr. maliphant in the withered flesh. so he drank walter besant's health in the water of the burra talao. one of the sepoys turned himself round, with a clatter of accoutrements, shifted his blanket under his elbow, and told a tale. it had something to do with his _khet_, and a _gunna_ which certainly was not sugar-cane. it was elusive. at times it seemed that it was a woman, then changed to a right of way, and lastly appeared to be a tax; but the more he attempted to get at its meaning through the curious patois in which its doings or its merits were enveloped, the more dazed the englishman became. none the less the story was a fine one, embellished with much dramatic gesture which told powerfully against the firelight. then the second sepoy, who had been enjoying the pipe all the time, told a tale, the purport of which was that the dead in the tombs round the lake were wont to get up of nights and go hunting. this was a fine and ghostly story; and its dismal effect was much heightened by some clamour of the night far up the lake beyond the floor of stars. the third sepoy said nothing. he had eaten too much fish and was fast asleep by the side of the _chowkidar_. they were all mahometans, and consequently all easy to deal with. a hindu is an excellent person, but ... but ... there is no knowing what is in his heart, and he is hedged about with so many strange observances. this hindu or musalman bent, which each englishman's mind must take before he has been three years in the country, is, of course, influenced by province or presidency. in rajputana generally, the political swears by the hindu, and holds that the mahometan is untrustworthy. but a man who will eat with you and take your tobacco, sinking the fiction that it has been doctored with infidel wines, cannot be very bad after all. that night when the tales were all told and the guard, bless them, were snoring peaceably in the starlight, a man came stealthily into the enclosure of canvas and woke the englishman, muttering "sahib, sahib," in his ear. it was no robber but some poor devil with a petition--a grimy, welted paper. he was absolutely unintelligible, and stammered almost to dumbness. he stood by the bed, alternately bowing to the earth and standing erect, his arms spread aloft, and his whole body working as he tried to force out some rebellious word in a key that should not wake the men without. what could the englishman do? he was no government servant, and had no concern with petitions. the man clicked and choked and gasped in his desperate desire to make the sahib understand. but it was no use; and in the end he departed as he had come-bowed, abject, and unintelligible. * * * * * let every word written against ganesh be rescinded. it was by his ordering that the englishman saw such a dawn on the burra talao as he had never before set eyes on. every fair morning is a reprint, blurred perhaps, of the first day; but this splendour was a thing to be put aside from all other days and remembered. the stars had no fire in them and the fish had stopped jumping, when the black water of the lake paled and grew grey. while he watched it seemed to the englishman that voices on the hills were intoning the first verses of genesis. the grey light moved on the face of the waters till, with no interval, a blood-red glare shot up from the horizon and, inky black against the intense red, a giant crane floated out towards the sun. in the still-shadowed city the great palace drum boomed and throbbed to show that the gates were open, while the dawn swept up the valley and made all things clear. the blind man who said, "the blast of a trumpet is red," spoke only the truth. the breaking of the red dawn is like the blast of a trumpet. "what," said the _chowkidar_, picking the ashes of the overnight fire out of his beard, "what, i say, are five eggs or twelve eggs to such a raj as ours? what also are fowls--what are" ... "there was no talk of fowls. where is the fowl-man from whom you got the eggs?" "he is here. no, he is there. i do not know. i am an old man, and i and the raj supply everything without price. the fowl-man will be paid by the state--liberally paid. let the sahib be happy. _wah. wah._" experience of forced labour in himalayan villages had made the englishman very tender in raising supplies that were given gratis; but the fowl-man could not be found, and the value of his wares was, later, paid to ganesh--ganesh of situr, for that is the name of the village full of priests, through which the englishman had passed in ignorance two days before. a double handful of sweet smelling flowers made the receipt. boondi was wide-awake before half-past seven in the morning. her hunters, on foot and on horse, were filing towards the deoli gate. they would hunt tiger and deer they said, even with matchlocks and muzzle loaders as uncouth as those the sahib saw. they were a merry company and chaffed the quarter-guard at the gate unmercifully when a bullock-cart, laden with the cases of the "batoum naphtha and oil company" blocked the road. one of them had been a soldier of the queen, and, excited by the appearance of a sahib, did so rebuke and badger the quarter-guard for their slovenliness that they threatened to come out of the barracks and destroy him. so, after one last look at the palace high up the hillside, the englishman was borne away along the deoli road. the peculiarity of boondi is the peculiarity of the covered pitfall. one does not see it till one falls into it. a quarter of a mile from the gate, town and palace were invisible. but the englishman was grieved at heart. he had fallen in love with boondi the beautiful, and believed that he would never again see anything half so fair. the utter untouchedness of the town was one-half the charm and its association the other. read tod, who is far too good to be chipped or sampled; read tod luxuriously on the bund of the burra talao, and the spirit of the place will enter into you and you will be happy. to enjoy life thoroughly, haste and bustle must be abandoned. ram baksh has said that englishmen are always bothering to go forward, and for this reason, though beyond doubt they pay well and readily, are not wise men. he gave utterance to this philosophy after he had mistaken his road and pulled up in what must have been a disused quarry hard by a cane-field. there were patches and pockets of cultivation along the rocky road, where men grew cotton, chillies, tobacco, and sugar-cane. "i will get you sugar-cane," said ram baksh. "then we will go forward, and perhaps some of these jungly-fools will tell us where the road is." a "jungly fool," a tender of goats, did in time appear, but there was no hurry; the sugar-cane was sweet and purple and the sun warm. the englishman lay out at high noon on the crest of a rolling upland crowned with rock, and heard, as a loafer had told him he would hear, the "set of the day," which is as easily discernible as the change of tone between the rising and the falling tide. at a certain hour the impetus of the morning dies out, and all things, living and inanimate, turn their thoughts to the prophecy of the coming night. the little wandering breezes drop for a time, and, when they blow afresh, bring the message. the "set of the day," as the loafer said, has changed, the machinery is beginning to run down, the unseen tides of the air are falling. this moment of change can only be felt in the open and in touch with the earth, and once discovered, seems to place the finder in deep accord and fellowship with all things on earth. perhaps this is why the genuine loafer, though "frequently drunk," is "always polite to the stranger," and shows such a genial tolerance towards the weaknesses of mankind, black, white, or brown. in the evening when the jackals were scuttling across the roads and the cranes had gone to roost, came deoli the desolate, and an unpleasant meeting. six days away from his kind had bred in a cockney heart a great desire to see a fellow-subject. an elaborate loaf through the cantonment--fifteen minutes' walk from end to end--showed only one distant dog-cart and a small english child with an ayah. there was grass in the soldierly straight roads, and some of the cross-cuts had never been used at all since the days when the cantonment had been first laid out. in the western corner lay the cemetery--the only carefully tended and newly whitewashed thing in this god-forgotten place. some years ago a man had said good-by to the englishman; adding cheerily: "we shall meet again. the world's a very little place y' know." his prophecy was a true one, for the two met indeed, but the prophet was lying in deoli cemetery near the well, which is decorated so ecclesiastically with funeral urns. xix comes back to the railway, after reflections on the management of the empire; and so home again, with apology to all who have read thus far. in the morning the tonga rattled past deoli cemetery into the open, where the deoli irregulars were drilling. they marked the beginning of civilisation and white shirts; and so they seemed altogether detestable. yet another day's jolting, enlivened by the philosophy of ram baksh, and then came nasirabad. the last pair of ponies suggested serious thought. they had covered eighteen miles at an average speed of eight miles an hour, and were well-conditioned little rats. "a colonel sahib gave me this one for a present," said ram baksh, flicking the near one. "it was his child's pony. the child was five years old." when he went away, the colonel sahib said: "ram baksh, you are a good man. never have i seen such a good man. this horse is yours." ram baksh was getting a horse's work out of a child's pony. surely we in india work the land much as the colonel sahib worked his son's mount; making it do child's work when so much more can be screwed out of it. a native and a native state deals otherwise with horse and holding. perhaps our extreme scrupulousness in handling may be statecraft, but, after even a short sojourn in places which are dealt with not so tenderly, it seems absurd. there are states where things are done, and done without protest, that would make the hair of the educated native stand on end with horror. these things are of course not expedient to write; because their publication would give a great deal of unnecessary pain and heart-searching to estimable native administrators who have the hope of a star before their eyes and would not better matters in the least. note this fact though. with the exception of such journals as, occupying a central position in british territory, levy blackmail from the neighbouring states, there are no independent papers in rajputana. a king may start a weekly, to encourage a taste for sanskrit and high hindi, or a prince may create a court chronicle; but that is all. a "free press" is not allowed, and this the native journalist knows. with good management he can, keeping under the shadow of our flag, raise two hundred rupees from a big man here, and five hundred from a rich man there, but he does not establish himself across the border. to one who has reason to hold a stubborn disbelief in even the elementary morality of the native press, this bashfulness and lack of enterprise is amusing. but to return to the native states' administrations. there is nothing exactly wrong in the methods of government that are overlaid with english terms and forms. they are vigorous, in certain points; and where they are not vigorous, there is a cheery happy-go-luckiness about the arrangement that must be seen to be understood. the shift and play of a man's fortune across the border is as sudden as anything in the days of haroun-al-raschid of blessed memory, and there are stories, to be got for the unearthing, as wild and as improbable as those in the _thousand and one nights_. most impressive of all is the way in which the country is "used," and its elasticity under pressure. in the good old days the durbar raised everything it could from the people, and the king spent as much as ever he could on his personal pleasures. now the institution of the political agent has stopped the grabbing, for which, by the way, some of the monarchs are not in the least grateful--and smoothed the outward face of things. but there is still a difference, between our ways and the ways of the other places. a year spent among native states ought to send a man back to the decencies and the law courts and the rights of the subject with a supreme contempt for those who rave about the oppressions of our brutal bureaucracy. one month nearly taught an average englishman that it was the proper thing to smite anybody of mean aspect and obstructive tendencies on the mouth with a shoe. hear what an intelligent loafer said. his words are at least as valuable as these babblings. he was, as usual, wonderfully drunk, and the gift of speech came upon him. the conversation--he was a great politician, this loafer--had turned on the poverty of india. "poor?" said he. "of course, it's poor. oh, yes, d----d poor. and i'm poor, an' you're poor, altogether. do you expect people will give you money without you ask 'em? no, i tell you, sir, there's enough money in india to pave hell with if you could only get at it. i've kep' servants in my day. did they ever leave me without a hundred or a hundred and fifty rupees put by--and never touched? you mark that. does any black man who had been in guv'ment service go away without hundreds an' hundreds put by, and never touched? you mark that. money? the place stinks o' money--just kept out o' sight. do you ever know a native that didn't say _garib admi_ (i'm a poor man)? they've been sayin' _garib admi_ so long that the guv'ment learns to believe 'em, and now they're all bein' treated as though they was paupers. i'm a pauper, an' you're a pauper--_we_ 'aven't got anything hid in the ground--an' so's every white man in this forsaken country. but the injian he's a rich man. how do i know? because i've tramped on foot, or warrant pretty well from one end of the place to the other, an' i know what i'm talkin' about, and this 'ere guv'ment goes peckin' an' fiddlin' over its tuppenny-ha'penny little taxes as if it was afraid. which it is. you see how they do things in ----. it's six sowars here, and ten sowars there, and--'pay up, you brutes, or we'll pull your ears over your head.' and when they've taken all they can get, the headman, he says: 'this is a dashed poor yield. i'll come again.' _of course_ the people digs up something out of the ground, and they pay. i know the way it's done, and that's the way to do it. you can't go to an injian an' say: 'look here. can you pay me five rupees?' he says: '_garib admi_,' of course, an' would say it if he was as rich as banker. but if you send half a dozen swords at him and shift the thatch off of his roof, he'll pay. guv'ment can't do that. i don't suppose it could. there is no reason why it shouldn't. but it might do something like it, to show that it wasn't going to have no nonsense. why, i'd undertake to raise a hundred million--what am i talking of?--a hundred and fifty million pounds from this country _per annum_, and it wouldn't be strained _then_. one hundred and fifty millions you could raise as easy as paint, if you just made these 'ere injians understand that they had to pay an' make no bones about it. it's enough to make a man sick to go in over yonder to ---- and see what they do; and then come back an' see what we do. perfectly sickenin' it is. borrer money? why the country could pay herself an' everything she wants, if she was only made to do it. it's this blooomin' _garib admi_ swindle that's been going on all these years, that has made fools o' the guv'ment." then he became egotistical, this ragged ruffian who conceived that he knew the road to illimitable wealth and told the story of his life, interspersed with anecdotes that would blister the paper they were written on. but through all his ravings, he stuck to his hundred-and-fifty-million theory, and though the listener dissented from him and the brutal cruelty with which his views were stated, an unscientific impression remained not to be shaken off. across the border one feels that the country is being used, exploited, "made to sit up," so to speak. in our territories the feeling is equally strong of wealth "just round the corner," as the loafer said, of a people wrapped up in cotton wool and ungetatable. will any man, who really knows something of a little piece of india and has not the fear of running counter to custom before his eyes, explain how this impression is produced, and why it is an erroneous one? nasirabad marked the end of the englishman's holiday, and there was sorrow in his heart. "come back again," said ram baksh, cheerfully, "and bring a gun with you. then i'll take you to gungra, and i'll drive you myself. 'drive you just as well as i've driven these four days past." an amicable open-minded soul was ram baksh. may his tongas never grow less! * * * * * "this 'ere burma fever is a bad thing to have. it's pulled me down awful; an' now i am going to peshawar. are you the station-master?" it was thomas--white-cheeked, sunken-eyed, drawn-mouthed thomas--travelling from nasirabad to peshawar on pass; and with him was a corporal new to his stripes and doing station duty. every thomas is interesting, except when he is too drunk to speak. this thomas was an enthusiast. he had volunteered, from a home-going regiment shattered by burma fever, into a regiment at peshawar, had broken down at nasirabad on his way up with his draft, and was now journeying into the unknown to pick up another medal. "there's sure to be something on the frontier," said this gaunt, haggard boy--he was little more, though he reckoned four years' service and considered himself somebody. "when there's anything going, peshawar's the place to be in, they tell me; but i hear we shall have to march down to calcutta in no time." the corporal was a little man and showed his friend off with great pride: "ah, you should have come to _us_," said he; "we're the regiment, we are." "well, i went with the rest of our men," said thomas. "there's three hundred of us volunteered to stay on, and we all went for the same regiment. not but what i'm saying yours is a good regiment," he added with grave courtesy. this loosed the corporal's tongue, and he descanted on the virtues of the regiment and the merits of the officers. it has been written that thomas is devoid of _esprit de corps_, because of the jerkiness of the arrangements under which he now serves. if this be true, he manages to conceal his feelings very well; for he speaks most fluently in praise of his own regiment; and, for all his youth, has a keen appreciation of the merits of his officers. go to him when his heart is opened, and hear him going through the roll of the subalterns, by a grading totally unknown in the army list, and you will pick up something worth the hearing. thomas, with the burma fever on him, tried to cut in, from time to time, with stories of his officers and what they had done "when we was marchin' all up and down burma," but the little corporal went on gayly. they made a curious contrast--these two types. the lathy, town-bred thomas with hock-bottle shoulders, a little education, and a keen desire to get more medals and stripes; and the little, deep-chested, bull-necked corporal brimming over with vitality and devoid of any ideas beyond the "regiment." and the end of both lives, in all likelihood, would be a nameless grave in some cantonment burying-ground with, if the case were specially interesting and the regimental doctor had a turn for the pen, an obituary notice in the indian medical journal. it was an unpleasant thought. from the army to the navy is a perfectly natural transition, but one hardly to be expected in the heart of india. dawn showed the railway carriage full of riotous boys, for the agra and mount abu schools had broken up for holidays. surely it was natural enough to ask a child--not a boy, but a child--whether he was going home for the holidays; and surely it was a crushing, a petrifying thing to hear in a clear treble tinged with icy scorn: "no. i'm on leave. i'm a midshipman." two "officers of her majesty's navy"--mids of a man-o'-war at bombay--were going up-country on ten days' leave. they had not travelled much more than twice round the world; but they should have printed the fact on a label. they chattered like daws, and their talk was as a whiff of fresh air from the open sea, while the train ran eastward under the aravalis. at that hour their lives were bound up in and made glorious by the hope of riding a horse when they reached their journey's end. much had they seen "cities and men," and the artless way in which they interlarded their conversation with allusions to "one of those shore-going chaps, you see," was delicious. they had no cares, no fears, no servants, and an unlimited stock of wonder and admiration for everything they saw, from the "cute little well-scoops" to a herd of deer grazing on the horizon. it was not until they had opened their young hearts with infantile abandon that the listener could guess from the incidental _argot_ where these pocket-ulysseses had travelled. south african, norwegian, and arabian words were used to help out the slang of shipboard, and a copious vocabulary of shipboard terms, complicated with modern greek. as free from self-consciousness as children, as ignorant as beings from another planet of the anglo-indian life into which they were going to dip for a few days, shrewd and observant as befits men of the world who have authority, and neat-handed and resourceful as ---- blue-jackets, they were a delightful study, and accepted freely and frankly the elaborate apologies tendered to them for the unfortunate mistake about the "holidays." the roads divided and they went their way; and there was a shadow after they had gone, for the globe-trotter said to his wife, "what i like about jeypore"--accent on the first syllable, if you please--"is its characteristic easternness." and the globe-trotter's wife said: "yes. it is purely oriental." this was jeypore with the gas-jets and the water-pipes as was shown at the beginning of these trivial letters; and the globe-trotter and his wife had not been to amber. joyful thought! they had not seen the soft splendours of udaipur, the nightmare of chitor, the grim power of jodhpur, and the virgin beauties of boondi--fairest of all places that the englishman had set eyes on. the globe-trotter was great in the matter of hotels and food, but he had not lain under the shadow of a tonga in soft warm sand, eating cold pork with a pocket-knife, and thanking providence who put sweet-water streams where wayfarers wanted them. he had not drunk out the brilliant cold-weather night in the company of a king of loafers, a grimy scallawag with a six days' beard and an unholy knowledge of native states. he had attended service in cantonment churches; but he had not known what it was to witness the simple, solemn ceremonial in the dining room of a far-away residency, when all the english folk within a hundred-mile circuit bowed their heads before the god of the christians. he had blundered about temples of strange deities with a guide at his elbow; but he had not known what it was to attempt conversation, with a temple dancing-girl (_not_ such an one as edwin arnold invented), and to be rewarded for a misturned compliment with a deftly heaved bunch of marigold buds in his respectable bosom. yet he had undoubtedly lost much, and the measure of his loss was proven in his estimate of the orientalism of jeypore. but what had he who sat in judgment upon him gained? one perfect month of loaferdom, to be remembered above all others and the night of the visit to chitor, to be remembered even when the month is forgotten. also the sad knowledge that of all the fair things seen, the inept pen gives but a feeble and blurred picture. let those who have read to the end, pardon a hundred blemishes. from sea to sea from sea to sea march-september, no. i of freedom and the necessity of using her. the motive and the scheme that will come to nothing. a disquisition upon the otherness of things and the torments of the damned. when all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green, and every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen,-- then hey for boot and horse, lad, and o'er the world away-- young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day. after seven years it pleased necessity, whom we all serve, to turn to me and say: "now you need do nothing whatever. you are free to enjoy yourself. i will take the yoke of bondage from your neck for one year. what do you choose to do with my gift?" and i considered the matter in several lights. at first i held notions of regenerating society; but it appeared that this would demand more than a year, and perhaps society would not be grateful after all. then i would fain enter upon one monumental "bust"; but i reflected that this at the outside could endure but three months, while the headache would last for nine. then came by the person that i most hate,--a globe-trotter. he, sitting in my chair, discussed india with the unbridled arrogance of five weeks on a cook's ticket. he was from england and had dropped his manners in the suez canal. "i assure you," said he, "that you who live so close to the actual facts of things cannot form dispassionate judgments of their merits. you are too near. now i--" he waved his hand modestly and left me to fill the gaps. i considered him, from his new helmet to his deck-shoes, and i perceived that he was but an ordinary man. i thought of india, maligned and silent india, given up to the ill-considered wanderings of such as he--of the land whose people are too busy to reply to the libels upon their life and manners. it was my destiny to avenge india upon nothing less than three-quarters of the world. the idea necessitated sacrifices,--painful sacrifices,--for i had to become a globe-trotter, with a helmet and deck-shoes. in the interests of our little world i would endure these things and more. i would deliver "brawling judgments all day long; on all things unashamed." i would go toward the rising sun till i reached the heart of the world and once more smelt london asphalt. the indian public never gave me a brief. i took it, appointing myself commissioner in general for our own sweet selves. then all the aspects of life changed, as, they say, the appearance of his room grows strange to a dying man when he sees it upon the last morning, and knows that it will confront him no more. i had wilfully stepped aside from the current of our existence, and had no part in any of our interests. up-country the peach was beginning to bud, and men said that by cause of the heavy snows in the hills the hot weather would be a short one. that was nothing to me. the punkahs and their pullers sat together in the verandah, and the public buildings spawned thermantidotes. the copper-smith sang in the garden and the early wasp hummed low down by the door-handle, and they prophesied of the hot weather to come. these things were no concern of mine. i was dead, and looked upon the old life as a dead man--without interest and without concern. it was a strange life; i had lived it for seven years or one day, i could not be certain which. all that i knew was that i could watch men going to their offices, while i slept luxuriously; could go out at any hour of the day and sit up to any hour of the night, secure that each morning would bring no toil. i understood with what emotions the freed convict regards the prison he has quitted--insight which had hitherto been denied me; and i further saw how intense is the selfishness of the irresponsible man. some said that the coming year would be one of scarcity and distress because unseasonable rains were falling. i was grieved. i feared that the rains might break the railway line to the sea, and so delay my departure. again, the season would be a sickly one. i fancied that necessity might repent of her gift and for mere jest wipe me off the face of the earth ere i had seen anything of what lay upon it. there was trouble on the afghan frontier; perhaps an army-corps would be mobilised, and perhaps many men would die, leaving folk to mourn for them at the hill-stations. my dread was that a russian man-of-war might intercept the steamer which carried my precious self between yokohama and san francisco. let armageddon be postponed, i prayed, for my sake, that my personal enjoyments may not be interfered with. war, famine, and pestilence would be so inconvenient to me. and i abased myself before necessity, the great goddess, and said ostentatiously: "it is naught, it is naught, and you needn't look at me when i wander about." surely we are only virtuous by compulsion of earning our daily bread. so i looked upon men with new eyes, and pitied them very much indeed. they worked. they had to. i was an aristocrat. i could call upon them at inconvenient hours and ask them why they worked, and whether they did it often. then they grunted, and the envy in their eyes was a delight to me. i dared not, however, mock them too pointedly, lest necessity should drag me back by the collar to take my still warm place by their side. when i had disgusted all who knew me, i fled to calcutta, which, i was pained to see, still persisted in being a city and transacting commerce after i had formally cursed it one year ago. that curse i now repeat, in the hope that the unsavoury capital will collapse. one must begin to smoke at five in the morning--which is neither night nor day--on coming across the howrah bridge, for it is better to get a headache from honest nicotine than to be poisoned by evil smells. and a man, who otherwise was a nice man, though he worked with his hands and his head, asked me why the scandal of the simla exodus was allowed to continue. to him i made answer: "it is because this sewer is unfit for human habitation. it is because you are all one gigantic mistake,--you and your monuments and your merchants and everything about you. i rejoice to think that scores of lakhs of rupees have been spent on public offices at a place called simla, that scores and scores will be spent on the delhi-kalka line, in order that civilised people may go there in comfort. when that line is opened, your big city will be dead and buried and done with, and i hope it will teach you a lesson. your city will rot, sir." and he said: "when people are buried here, they turn into adipocere in five days if the weather is rainy. they saponify, you know." i said: "go and saponify, for i hate calcutta." but he took me to the eden gardens instead, and begged me for my own sake not to go round the world in this prejudiced spirit. i was unhappy and ill, but he vowed that my spleen was due to my "simla way of looking at things." all this world of ours knows something about the eden gardens, which are supposed by the uninitiated of the mofussil to represent the gilded luxury of the metropolis. as a matter of fact they are hideously dull. the inhabitants appear in top-hats and frock-coats, and walk dolorously to and fro under the glare of jerking electric lamps, when they ought to be sitting in their shirt-sleeves round little tables and treating their wives to iced lager beer. my friend--it was a muggy march night--wrapped himself in the prescribed garments and said graciously: "you can wear a round hat, but you mustn't wear deck-shoes; and for goodness' sake, my dear fellow, don't smoke on the red road--all the people one knows go there." most of the people who were people sat in their carriages, in an atmosphere of hot horse, harness, and panel-lacquer, outside the gardens, and the remnant tramped up and down, by twos and threes, upon squashy green grass, until they were wearied, while a band played at them. "and is this all you do?" i asked. "it is," said my friend. "isn't it good enough? we meet every one we know here, and walk with him or her, unless he or she is among the carriages." overhead was a woolly warm sky; underfoot feverish soft grass; and from all quarters the languorous breeze bore faint reminiscences of stale sewage upon its wings. round the horizon were stacked lines of carriages, and the electric flare bred aches in the strained eyebrow. it was a strange sight and fascinating. the doomed creatures walked up and down without cessation, for when one fled away into the lamp-spangled gloom twenty came to take his place. slop-hatted members of the mercantile marine, armenian merchants, bengal civilians, shop-girls and shop-men, jews, parthians, and mesopotamians, were all there in the tepid heat and the fetid smell. "this," said my friend, "is how we enjoy ourselves. there are the viceregal liveries. lady lansdowne comes here." he spoke as though reading to me the government house list of paradise. i reflected that these people would continue to walk up and down until they died, drinkless, dusty, sad, and blanched. in saying this last thing i had made a mistake. calcutta is no more anglo-indian than west brompton. in common with bombay, it has achieved a mental attitude several decades in advance of that of the raw and brutal india of fact. an intelligent and responsible financier, discussing the empire, said: "but why do we want so large an army in india? look at the country all about." i think he meant as far as the circular road or perhaps raneegunge. some of these days, when the voice of the two uncomprehending cities carries to london, and its advice is acted upon, there will be trouble. till this second journey to calcutta i was unable to account for the acid tone and limited range of the presidency journals. i see now that they are ward papers and ought to be treated as such. in the fulness of time--there was no hurry--imagine that, o you toilers of the land--i took ship and fled from calcutta by that which they call the mutton-mail, because it takes sheep and correspondence to rangoon. half the punjab was going with us to serve the queen in the burma military police, and it was grateful to catch once more the raw, rasping up-country speech amid the jabber of burmese and bengali. to rangoon, then, aboard the _madura_, come with me down the hughli, and try to understand what sort of life is led by the pilots, those strange men who only seem to know the land by watching it from the river. "and i fetched up under the north ridge with six inches o' water under me, with a sou'west monsoon blowing, an' me not knowing any more than the dead where in--paradise--i was taking her," says one deep voice. "well, what do you expect?" says another. "they ought not all to be occulting lights. give me a red with two flashes for outlying danger anyhow. the hughli's the worst river in the world. why, off the lower gasper only last year...." "and look at the way government treats you!" the hughli pilot is human. he may talk greek in the exercise of his profession, but he can unite at swearing at the government as thoroughly as though he were an uncovenanted civilian. his life is a hard one; but he is full of strange stories, and when treated with proper respect may condescend to tell some of them. if he has served on the river for six years as a "cub," and is neither dead nor decrepit, i believe he can earn as much as fifty rupees by sending two thousand tons of ship and a few hundred souls flying down the reaches at twelve miles an hour. then he drops over the side with your last love-letters and wanders about the estuary in a tug until he finds another steamer and brings her up. it does not take much to comfort him. * * * * * _somewhere in the open sea some days later._ i give it up. i _cannot_ write, and to sleep i am not ashamed. a glorious idleness has taken entire possession of me; journalism is an imposture; so is literature; so is art. all india dropped out of sight yesterday and the rocking pilot-brig at the sandheads bore my last message to the prison that i quit. we have reached blue water--crushed sapphire--and a little breeze is bellying the awning. three flying-fish were sighted this morning; the tea at _chota-hazri_ is not nice, but the captain is excellent. is this budget of news sufficiently exciting, or must i in strict confidence tell you the story of the professor and the compass? you will hear more about the professor later, if, indeed, i ever touch pen again. when he was in india he worked about nine hours a day. at noon to-day he conceived an interest in cyclones and things of that kind--would go to his cabin to get a compass and a meteorological book. he went, but stopped to reflect by the brink of a drink. "the compass is in a box," said he, drowsily, "but the nuisance of it is that to get it i shall have to pull the box out from under my berth. all things considered, i don't think it's worth while." he loafed on deck, and i think by this time is fast asleep. there was no trace of shame in his voice for his mighty sloth. i would have reproved him, but the words died on my tongue. i was guiltier than he. "professor," said i, "there is a foolish little paper in allahabad called the _pioneer_. i am supposed to be writing it a letter--a letter with my hands! did you ever hear of anything so absurd?" "i wonder if angostura bitters really go with whisky," said the professor, toying with the neck of the bottle. there is no such place as india; there never was a daily paper called the _pioneer_. it was all a weary dream. the only real things in the world are crystal seas, clean-swept decks, soft rugs, warm sunshine, the smell of salt in the air, and fathomless, futile indolence. no. ii the river of the lost footsteps and the golden mystery upon its banks. the iniquity of jordan. shows how a man may go to the shway dagon pagoda and see it not and to the pegu club and hear too much. a dissertation on mixed drinks. "i am a part of all that i have met, yet all experience is an arch where through gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when i move." there was a river and a bar, a pilot and a great deal of nautical mystery, and the captain said the journey from calcutta was ended and that we should be in rangoon in a few hours. it is not an impressive stream, being low-banked, scrubby, and muddy; but as we gave the staggering rice-boats the go-by, i reflected that i was looking upon the river of the lost footsteps--the road that so many, many men of my acquaintance had travelled, never to return, within the past three years. such a one had gone up to open out upper burma, and had himself been opened out by a burmese dah in the cruel scrub beyond minhla; such another had gone to rule the land in the queen's name, but could not rule a hill stream and was carried down under his horse. one had been shot by his servant; another by a dacoit while he sat at dinner; and a pitifully long list had found in jungle-fever their sole reward for "the difficulties and privations inseparably connected with military service," as the bengal army regulations put it. i ran over half a score of names--policemen, subalterns, young civilians, employés of big trading firms, and adventurers. they had gone up the river and they had died. at my elbow stood one of the workers in new burma, going to report himself at rangoon, and he told tales of interminable chases after evasive dacoits, of marchings and counter-marchings that came to nothing, and of deaths in the wilderness as noble as they were sad. then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon--a beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither muslim dome nor hindu temple spire. it stood upon a green knoll, and below it were lines of warehouses, sheds, and mills. under what new god, thought i, are we irrepressible english sitting now? "there's the old shway dagon" (pronounced dagone, _not_ like the god in the scriptures), said my companion. "confound it!" but it was not a thing to be sworn at. it explained in the first place why we took rangoon, and in the second why we pushed on to see what more of rich or rare the land held. up till that sight my uninstructed eyes could not see that the land differed much in appearance from the sunderbuns, but the golden dome said: "this is burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about." "it's a famous old shrine o' sorts," said my companion, "and now the tounghoo-mandalay line is open, pilgrims are flocking down by the thousand to see it. it lost its big gold top--'thing that they call a _'htee_--in an earthquake: that's why it's all hidden by bamboo-work for a third of its height. you should see it when it's all uncovered. they're regilding it now." why is it that when one views for the first time any of the wonders of the earth a bystander always strikes in with, "you should see it, etc."? such men given twenty minutes from the tomb at the day of judgment, would patronize the naked souls as they hurried up with the glare of tophet on their faces, and say: "you should have seen this when gabriel first began to blow." what the shway dagon really is and how many books may have been written upon its history and archæology is no part of my business. as it stood overlooking everything it seemed to explain all about burma--why the boys had gone north and died, why the troopers bustled to and fro, and why the steamers of the irrawaddy flotilla lay like black-backed gulls upon the water. then we came to a new land, and the first thing that one of the regular residents said was: "this place isn't india at all. they ought to have made it a crown colony." judging the empire as it ought to be judged, by its most prominent points--_videlicet_, its smells--he was right; for though there is one stink in calcutta, another in bombay, and a third and most pungent one in the punjab, yet they have a kinship of stinks, whereas burma smells quite otherwise. it is not exactly what china ought to smell like, but it is not india. "what is it?" i asked; and the man said "_napi_," which is fish pickled when it ought to have been buried long ago. this food, in guide-book language, is inordinately consumed by ... but everybody who has been within downwind range of rangoon knows what _napi_ means, and those who do not will not understand. yes, it was a very new land--a land where the people understood colour--a delightfully lazy land full of pretty girls and very bad cheroots. the worst of it was that the anglo-indian was a foreigner, a creature of no account. he did not know burman,--which was no great loss,--and the madrassi insisted upon addressing him in english. the madrassi, by the way, is a great institution. he takes the place of the burman, who will not work, and in a few years returns to his native coast with rings on his fingers and bells on his toes. the consequences are obvious. the madrassi demands, and receives, enormous wages, and gets to know that he is indispensable. the burman exists beautifully, while his women-folk marry the madrassi and the chinaman, because these support them in affluence. when the burman wishes to work he gets a madrassi to do it for him. how he finds the money to pay the madrassi i was not informed, but all men were agreed in saying that under no circumstances will the burman exert himself in the paths of honest industry. now, if a bountiful providence had clothed you in a purple, green, amber or puce petticoat, had thrown a rose-pink scarf-turban over your head, and had put you in a pleasant damp country where rice grew of itself and fish came up to be caught, putrified and pickled, would _you_ work? would you not rather take a cheroot and loaf about the streets seeing what was to be seen? if two-thirds of your girls were grinning, good-humoured little maidens and the remainder positively pretty, would you not spend your time in making love? the burman does both these things, and the englishman, who after all worked himself to burma, says hard things about him. personally i love the burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. when i die i will be a burman, with twenty yards of real king's silk, that has been made in mandalay, about my body, and a succession of cigarettes between my lips. i will wave the cigarette to emphasise my conversation, which shall be full of jest and repartee, and i will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. she shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when i walk: for these are the customs of india. she shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship, and i will teach her not to defile her pretty mouth with chopped tobacco in a cabbage leaf, but to inhale good cigarettes of egypt's best brand. seriously, the burmese girls are very pretty, and when i saw them i understood much that i had heard about--about our army in flanders let us say. providence really helps those who do not help themselves. i went up a street, name unknown, attracted by the colour that was so wantonly flashed down its length. there is colour in rajputana and in southern india, and you can find a whole paletteful of raw tints at any down-country durbar; but the burmese way of colouring is different. with the women the scarf, petticoat, and jacket are of three lively hues, and with the men putso and head-wrap are gorgeous. thus you get your colours dashed down in dots against a background of dark timber houses set in green foliage. there are no canons of art anywhere, and every scheme of colouring depends on the power of the sun above. that is why men in a london fog do still believe in pale greens and sad reds. give me lilac, pink, vermilion, lapis lazuli, and blistering blood red under fierce sunlight that mellows and modifies all. i had just made this discovery and was noting that the people treated their cattle kindly, when the driver of an absurd little hired carriage built to the scale of a fat burma pony, volunteered to take me for a drive, and we drove in the direction of the english quarter of the town where the sahibs live in dainty little houses made out of the sides of cigar boxes. they looked as if they could be kicked in at a blow and (trust a globe-trotter for evolving a theory at a minute's notice) it is to avoid this fate that they are built for the most part on legs. the houses are not cantonment bred in any way--nor did the uneven ground and dusty reddish roads fit in with any part of the indian empire except it may be ootacamund. the pony wandered into a garden studded with lovely little lakes which, again, were studded with islands, and there were sahibs in flannels in the boats. outside the park were pleasant little monasteries full of clean-shaved gentlemen in gold amber robes learning to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil by chatting furiously amongst themselves, and at every corner stood the three little maids from school, almost exactly as they had been dismissed from the side scenes of the savoy after the _mikado_ was over: and the strange part of it all was that every one laughed--laughed, so it seemed, at the sky above them because it was blue, at the sun because it was sinking, and at each other because they had nothing better to do. a small fat child laughed loudest of all, in spite of the fact that it was smoking a cheroot that ought to have made it deathly sick. the pagoda was always close at hand--as brilliant a mystery as when first sighted far down the river; but it changed its shape as we came nearer, and showed in the middle of a nest of hundreds of smaller pagodas. there appeared suddenly two colossal tigers (after the burmese canons) in plaster on a hillside, and they were the guardians of burma's greatest pagoda. round them rustled a great crowd of happy people in pretty dresses, and the feet of all were turned towards a great stoneway that ran from between the tigers even to the brow of the mound. but the nature of the stairs was peculiar. they were covered in for the most part by a tunnel, or it may have been a walled-in colonnade, for there were heavily gilt wooden pillars visible in the gloom. the afternoon was drawing on as i came to this strange place and saw that i should have to climb up a long, low hill of stairs to get to the pagoda. once or twice in my life i have seen a globe-trotter literally gasping with jealous emotion because india was so much larger and more lovely than he had ever dreamed, and because he had only set aside three months to explore it in. my own sojourn in rangoon was countable by hours, so i may be forgiven when i pranced with impatience at the bottom of the staircase because i could not at once secure a full, complete, and accurate idea of everything that was to be seen. the meaning of the guardian tigers, the inwardness of the main pagoda, and the countless little ones, was hidden from me. i could not understand why the pretty girls with cheroots sold little sticks and coloured candles to be used before the image of buddha. everything was incomprehensible to me, and there was none to explain. all that i could gather was that in a few days the great golden _'htee_ that has been defaced by the earthquake would be hoisted into position with feasting and song, and that half upper burma was coming down to see the show. i went forward between the two great beasts, across a whitewashed court, till i came to a flat-headed arch guarded by the lame, the blind, the leper, and the deformed. these plucked at my clothes as i passed, and moaned and whined: but the stream that disappeared up the gentle slope of the stairway took no notice of them. and i stepped into the semi-darkness of a long, long corridor flanked by booths, and floored with stones worn very smooth by human feet. at the far end of the roofed corridor there was a breadth of evening sky, and at this point rose a second and much steeper flight of stairs, leading directly to the shwedagon (this, by the way, is its real spelling). down this staircase fell, from gloom to deeper gloom, a cascade of colour. at this point i stayed, because there was a beautiful archway of burmese build, and adorned with a chinese inscription, directly in front of me, and i conceived foolishly that i should find nothing more pleasant to look at if i went farther. also, i wished to understand how such a people could produce the dacoit of the newspaper, and i knew that a great deal of promiscuous knowledge comes to him who sits down by the wayside. then i saw a face--which explained a good deal. the chin, jowl, lips, and neck were modelled faithfully on the lines of the worst of the roman empresses--the lolloping, walloping women that swinburne sings about, and that we sometimes see pictures of. above this gross perfection of form came the mongoloid nose, narrow forehead, and flaring pig's eyes. i stared intently, and the man stared back again, with admirable insolence, that puckered one corner of his mouth. then he swaggered forward, and i was richer by a new face and a little knowledge. "i must make further inquiries at the club," said i, "but that man seems to be of the proper dacoit type. he could crucify on occasion." then a brown baby came by in its mother's arms and laughed, wherefore i much desired to shake hands with it, and grinned to that effect. the mother held out the tiny soft pud and laughed, and the baby laughed, and we all laughed together, because that seemed to be the custom of the country, and returned down the now dark corridor where the lamps of the stall-keepers were twinkling and scores of people were helping us to laugh. they must be a mild-mannered nation, the burmese, for they leave little three-year-olds in charge of a whole wilderness of clay dolls or a menagerie of jointed tigers. i had not actually entered the shwedagon, but i felt just as happy as though i had. in the pegu club i found a friend--a punjabi--upon whose broad bosom i threw myself and demanded food and entertainment. he had not long since received a visit from the commissioner of peshawar, of all places in the world, and was not to be upset by sudden arrivals. but he had come down in the world hideously. years ago in the black north he used to speak the vernacular as it should be spoken, and was one of us. "_daniel, how many socks master got?_" the unfinished peg fell from my fist. "good heavens!" said i, "is it possible that you--you--speak that disgusting pidgin-talk to your _nauker_? it's enough to make one cry. you're no better than a bombaywallah." "i'm a madrassi," said he, calmly. "we all talk english to our boys here. isn't it beautiful? now come along to the gymkhana and then we'll dine here. daniel, master's hat and stick get." there must be a few hundred men who are fairly behind the scenes of the burma war--one of the least known and appreciated of any of our little affairs. the pegu club seemed to be full of men on their way up or down, and the conversation was but an echo of the murmur of conquest far away to the north. "see that man over there. he was cut over the head the other day at zoungloung-goo. awfully tough man. that chap next him has been on the dacoit-hunt for about a year. he broke up boh mango's gang: caught the boh in a paddy field, y'know. the other man's going home on sick leave--got a lump of iron somewhere in his system. try our mutton; i assure you the club is the only place in rangoon where you get mutton. look here, you must _not_ speak vernacular to our boys. hi, boy! get master some more ice. they're all bombay men or madrassis. up at the front there are some burman servants: but a real burman will never work. he prefers being a simple little _daku_." "how much?" "dear little dacoit. we call 'em _dakus_ for short--sort o' pet name. that's the butter-fish. i forgot you didn't get much fish up-country. yes, i s'pose rangoon has its advantages. you pay like a prince. take an ordinary married establishment. little furnished house--one hundred and fifty rupees. servants' wages two twenty or two fifty. that's four hundred at once. my dear fellow, a sweeper won't take less than twelve or sixteen rupees a month here, and even then he'll work for other houses. it's worse than quetta. any man who comes to lower burma in the hope of living on his pay is a fool." _voice from lower end of table._ "dee fool. it's different in upper burma, where you get command and travelling allowances." _another voice in the middle of a conversation._ "they never got that story into the papers, but i can tell you we weren't quite as quick in rushing the fort as they made believe. you see boh gwee had us in a regular trap, and by the time we had closed the line our men were being peppered front and rear: that jungle-fighting is the deuce and all. more ice please." then they told me of the death of an old school-fellow under the ramp of the minhla redoubt--does any one remember the affair at minhla that opened the third burmese ball? "i was close to him," said a voice. "he died in a.'s arms, i fancy, but i'm not quite sure. anyhow, i know he died easily. he was a good fellow." "thank you," said i, "and now i think i'll go;" and i went out into the steamy night, my head ringing with stories of battle, murder, and sudden death. i had reached the fringe of the veil that hides upper burma, and i would have given much to have gone up the river and seen a score of old friends, now jungle-worn men of war. all that night i dreamed of interminable staircases down which swept thousands of pretty girls, so brilliantly robed that my eyes ached at the sight. there was a great golden bell at the top of the stairs, and at the bottom, his face turned to the sky, lay poor old d----dead at minhla, and a host of unshaven ragamuffins in khaki were keeping guard over him. no. iii the city of elephants which is governed by the great god of idleness, who lives on the top of a hill. the history of three great discoveries and the naughty children of iquique. "i built my soul a lordly pleasure-house wherein at ease for aye to dwell, i said: oh, soul, make merry and carouse, dear soul, for all is well." so much for making definite programmes of travel beforehand. in my first letter i told you that i would go from rangoon to penang direct. now we are lying off moulmein in a new steamer which does not seem to run anywhere in particular. why she should go to moulmein is a mystery; but as every soul on the ship is a loafer like myself, no one is discontented. imagine a shipload of people to whom time is no object, who have no desires beyond three meals a day and no emotions save those caused by a casual cockroach. moulmein is situated up the mouth of a river which ought to flow through south america, and all manner of dissolute native craft appear to make the place their home. ugly cargo-steamers that the initiated call "geordie tramps" grunt and bellow at the beautiful hills all round, and the pot-bellied british india liners wallow down the reaches. visitors are rare in moulmein--so rare that few but cargo-boats think it worth their while to come off from the shore. strictly in confidence i will tell you that moulmein is not a city of this earth at all. sindbad the sailor visited it, if you recollect, on that memorable voyage when he discovered the burial-ground of the elephants. as the steamer came up the river we were aware of first one elephant and then another hard at work in timber-yards that faced the shore. a few narrow-minded folk with binoculars said that there were _mahouts_ upon their backs, but this was never clearly proven. i prefer to believe in what i saw--a sleepy town, just one house thick, scattered along a lovely stream and inhabited by slow, solemn elephants, building stockades for their own diversion. there was a strong scent of freshly sawn teak in the air--we could not see any elephants sawing--and occasionally the warm stillness was broken by the crash of the log. when the elephants had got an appetite for luncheon they loafed off in couples to their club, and did not take the trouble to give us greeting and the latest mail papers; at which we were much disappointed, but took heart when we saw upon a hill a large white pagoda surrounded by scores of little pagodas. "this," we said with one voice, "is the place to make an excursion to," and then shuddered at our own profanity, for above all things we did not wish to behave like mere vulgar tourists. the _ticca-gharies_ at moulmein are three sizes smaller than those of rangoon, as the ponies are no bigger than decent sheep. their drivers trot them uphill and down, and as the _ghari_ is extremely narrow and the roads are anything but good, the exercise is refreshing. here again all the drivers are madrassis. i should better remember what that pagoda was like had i not fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with a burmese girl at the foot of the first flight of steps. only the fact of the steamer starting next noon prevented me from staying at moulmein forever and owning a pair of elephants. these are so common that they wander about the streets, and, i make no doubt, could be obtained for a piece of sugar-cane. leaving this far too lovely maiden, i went up the steps only a few yards, and, turning me round, looked upon a view of water, island, broad river, fair grazing ground, and belted wood that made me rejoice that i was alive. the hillside below me and above me was ablaze with pagodas--from a gorgeous golden and vermilion beauty to a delicate grey stone one just completed in honour of an eminent priest lately deceased at mandalay. far above my head there was a faint tinkle, as of golden bells, and a talking of the breezes in the tops of the toddy-palms. wherefore i climbed higher and higher up the steps till i reached a place of great peace, dotted with burmese images, spotlessly clean. here women now and again paid reverence. they bowed their heads and their lips moved, because they were praying. i had an umbrella--a black one--in my hand, deck-shoes upon my feet, and a helmet upon my head. i did not pray--i swore at myself for being a globe-trotter, and wished that i had enough burmese to explain to these ladies that i was sorry and would have taken off my hat but for the sun. a globe-trotter is a brute. i had the grace to blush as i tramped round the pagoda. that will be remembered to me for righteousness. but i stared horribly--at a gold and red side-temple with a beautifully gilt image of buddha in it--at the grim figures in the niches at the base of the main pagoda--at the little palms that grew out of the cracks in the tiled paving of the court--at the big palms above, and at the low hung bronze bells that stood at each corner for the women to smite with stag-horns. upon one bell rang this amazing triplet in english, evidently the composition of the caster, who completed his work--and now, let us hope, has reached nibban--thirty-five years ago:-- "he who destroyed this bell they must be in the great hel and unable to coming out." i respect a man who is not able to spell hell properly. it shows that he has been brought up in an amiable creed. you who come to moulmein treat this bell with respect, and refrain from playing with it, for that hurts the feelings of the worshippers. in the base of the pagoda were four rooms, lined as to three sides with colossal plaster figures, before each of whom burned one solitary dip whose rays fought with the flood of evening sunshine that came through the windows, and the room was filled with a pale yellow light--unearthly to stand in. occasionally a woman crept in to one of these rooms to pray, but nearly all the company stayed in the courtyard; but those that faced the figures prayed more zealously than the others, so i judged that their troubles were the greater. of the actual cult i knew less than nothing; for the neatly bound english books that we read make no mention of pointing red-tipped straws at a golden image, or of the banging of bells after the custom of worshippers in a hindu temple. it must be a genial one, however. to begin with, it is quiet and carried on among the fairest possible surroundings that ever landscape offered. in this particular case, the massive white pagoda shot into the blue from the west of a walled hill that commanded four separate and desirable views as you looked either at the steamer in the river below, the polished silver reaches to the left, the woods to the right, or the roofs of moulmein to the landward. between each pause of the rustling of dresses and the low-toned talk of the women fell, from far above, the tinkle of innumerable metal leaves which were stirred by the breeze as they hung from the _'htee_ of the pagoda. a golden image winked in the sun; the painted ones stared straight in front of them over the heads of the worshippers, and somewhere below a mallet and a plane were lazily helping to build yet another pagoda in honour of the lord of the earth. sitting in meditation while the professor went round with a sacrilegious camera, to the vast terror of the burmese youth, i made two notable discoveries and nearly went to sleep over them. the first was that the lord of the earth is idleness--thick slab idleness with a little religion stirred in to keep it sweet, and the second was that the shape of the pagoda came originally from a bulging toddy-palm trunk. there was one between me and the far-off sky line, and it exactly duplicated the outlines of a small grey stone building. yet a third discovery, and a much more important one, came to me later on. a dirty little imp of a boy ran by clothed more or less in a beautifully worked silk putso, the like of which i had in vain attempted to secure at rangoon. a bystander told me that such an article would cost one hundred and ten rupees--exactly ten rupees in excess of the price demanded at rangoon, when i had been discourteous to a pretty burmese girl with diamonds in her ears, and had treated her as though she were a delhi boxwallah. "professor," said i, when the camera spidered round the corner, "there is something wrong with this people. they won't work, they aren't all dacoits, and their babies run about with hundred-rupees putsoes on them, while their parents speak the truth. how in the world do they get a living?" "they exist beautifully," said the professor; "and i only brought half a dozen plates with me. i shall come again in the morning with some more. did i ever dream of a place like this?" "no," said i. "it's perfect, and for the life of me i can't quite see where the precise charm lies." "in its beastly laziness," said the professor, as he packed the camera, and we went away, regretfully, haunted by the voices of many wind-blown bells. not ten minutes from the pagoda we saw a real british bandstand, a shanty labelled "municipal office," a collection of p. w. d. bungalows that in vain strove to blast the landscape, and a madras band. i had never seen madrassi troops before. they seem to dress just like tommies, and have an air of much culture and refinement. it is said that they read english books and know all about their rights and privileges. for further details apply to the pegu club, second table from the top on the right hand side as you enter. in an evil hour i attempted to revive the drooping trade of moulmein, and to this end bound a native of the place to come on board the steamer next morn with a collection of burmese silks. it was only a five minutes' pull, and he could have sat in the stern all the while. morning came, but not the man. not a boat of watermelons, pink fleshy watermelons, neared the ship. we might have been in quarantine. as we slipped down the river on our way to penang, i saw the elephants playing with the teak logs as solemnly and as mysteriously as ever. they were the chief inhabitants, and, for aught i know, the rulers of the place. their lethargy had corrupted the town, and when the professor wished to photograph them, i believe they went away in scorn. we are now running down to penang with the thermometer ° in the cabins, and anything you please on deck. we have exhausted all our literature, drunk two hundred lemon squashes; played forty different games of cards (patience mostly), organised a lottery on the run (had it been a thousand rupees instead of ten i should not have won it), and slept seventeen hours out of the twenty-four. it is perfectly impossible to write, but you may be morally the better for the story of the bad people of iquique which, "as you have not before heard, i will now proceed to relate." it has just been told me by a german orchid-hunter, fresh from nearly losing his head in the lushai hills, who has been over most of the world. iquique is somewhere in south america--at the back of or beyond brazil--and once upon a time there came to it a tribe of aborigines from out of the woods, so innocent that they wore nothing at all--absolutely nothing at all. they had a grievance, but no garments, and the former they came to lay before his excellency, the governor of iquique. but the news of their coming and their exceeding nakedness had gone before them, and good spanish ladies of the town agreed that the heathen should first of all be clothed. so they organised a sewing-bee, and the result, which was mainly aprons, was served out to the bad people with hints as to its use. nothing could have been better. they appeared in their aprons before the governor and all the ladies of iquique, ranged on the steps of the cathedral, only to find that the governor could not grant their demands. and do you know what these children of nature did? in the twinkling of an eye they had off those aprons, slung them round their necks, and were dancing naked as the dawn before the scandalised ladies of iquique, who fled with their fans before their eyes into the sanctuary of the cathedral. and when the steps were deserted the bad people withdrew, shouting and leaping, their aprons still round their necks, for good cloth is valuable property. they encamped near the town, knowing their own power. 'twas impossible to send the military against them, and equally impossible that donnas and señoritas should be exposed to the chance of being shocked whenever they went abroad. no one knew at what hour the bad people would sweep through the streets. their demands were therefore granted and iquique had rest. nuda est veritas et prevalebit. "but," said i, "what is there so awful in a naked indian--or two hundred naked indians for that matter?" "my friend," said the german, "dey vas indians of sout' america. i dell you dey do not demselves shtrip vell." i put my hand on my mouth and went away. no. iv showing how i came to palmiste island and the place of paul and virginia, and fell asleep in a garden. a disquisition on the folly of sight-seeing. "some for the glories of this world and some sigh for the prophet's paradise to come. ah, take the cash and let the credit go, nor heed the rumble of a distant drum." there is something very wrong in the anglo-saxon character. hardly had the _africa_ dropped anchor in penang straits when two of our fellow-passengers were smitten with madness because they heard that another steamer was even then starting for singapur. if they went by it they would gain several days. heaven knows why time should have been so precious to them. the news sent them flying into their cabins, and packing their trunks as though their salvation depended upon it. then they tumbled over the side and were rowed away in a sampan, hot, but happy. they were on a pleasure-trip, and they had gained perhaps three days. that was their pleasure. do you recollect besant's description of palmiste island in _my little girl_ and _so they were married_? penang is palmiste island. i found this out from the ship, looking at the wooded hills that dominate the town, and at the regiments of palm trees three miles away that marked the coast of wellesley province. the air was soft and heavy with laziness, and at the ship's side were boat-loads of much jewelled madrassis--even those to whom besant has alluded. a squall swept across the water and blotted out the rows of low, red-tiled houses that made up penang, and the shadows of night followed the storm. i put my twelve-inch rule in my pocket to measure all the world by, and nearly wept with emotion when on landing at the jetty i fell against a sikh--a beautiful bearded sikh, with white leggings and a rifle. as is cold water in a thirsty land so is a face from the old country. my friend had come from jandiala in the umritsar district. did i know jandiala? did i not? i began to tell all the news i could recollect about crops and armies and the movements of big men in the far, far north while the sikh beamed. he belonged to the military police, and it was a good service, but of course it was far from the old country. there was no hard work, and the chinamen gave but little trouble. they had fights among themselves, but "they do not care to give _us_ any impudence;" and the big man swaggered off with the long roll and swing of a whole pioneer regiment, while i cheered myself with the thought that india--the india i pretend to hold in hatred--was not so far off, after all. you know our ineradicable tendency to damn everything in the mofussil. calcutta professes astonishment that allahabad has a good dancing floor; allahabad wonders if it is true that lahore really has an ice-factory; and lahore pretends to believe that everybody in peshawar sleeps armed. very much in the same way i was amused at seeing a steam tramway in rangoon, and after we had quitted moulmein fully expected to find the outskirts of civilisation. vanity and ignorance were severely shocked when they confronted a long street of business--a street of two-storied houses, full of _ticca-gharies_, shop signs, and above all _jinrickshaws_. you in india have never seen a proper _'rickshaw_. there are about two thousand of them in penang, and no two seem alike. they are lacquered with bold figures of dragons and horses and birds and butterflies: their shafts are of black wood bound with white metal, and so strong that the coolie sits upon them when he waits for his fare. there is only one coolie, but he is strong, and he runs just as well as six bell-men. he ties up his pigtail,--being a cantonese,--and this is a disadvantage to sahibs who cannot speak tamil, malay, or cantonese. otherwise he might be steered like a camel. the _'rickshaw_ men are patient and long-suffering. the evil-visaged person who drove my carriage lashed at them when they came within whip range, and did his best to drive over them as he headed for the waterfalls, which are five miles away from penang town. i expected that the buildings should stop, choked out among the dense growth of cocoanut. but they continued for many streets, very like park and middleton streets in calcutta, where shuttered houses, which were half-bred between an indian bungalow and a rangoon rabbit-hutch, fought with the greenery and crotons as big as small trees. now and again there blazed the front of a chinese house, all open-work vermilion, lamp-black, and gold, with six-foot chinese lanterns over the doorways and glimpses of quaintly cut shrubs in the well-kept gardens beyond. we struck into roads fringed with native houses on piles, shadowed by the everlasting cocoanut palms heavy with young nuts. the heat was heavy with the smell of vegetation, and it was not the smell of the earth after the rains. some bird-thing called out from the deeps of the foliage, and there was a mutter of thunder in the hills which we were approaching: but all the rest was very still--and the sweat ran down our faces in drops. "now you've got to walk up that hill," said the driver, pointing to a small barrier outside a well-kept botanical garden; "all the carriages stop here." one's limbs moved as though leaden, and the breath came heavily, drawing in each time the vapour of a turkish bath. the soil was alive with wet and warmth, and the unknown trees--i was too sleepy to read the labels that some offensively energetic man has written--were wet and warm too. up on the hillside the voice of the water was saying something, but i was too sleepy to listen; and on the top of the hill lay a fat cloud just like an eider-down quilt tucking everything in safely. "and in the afternoon they came unto a land in which it seemed always afternoon." i sat down where i was, for i saw that the upward path was very steep and was cut into rude steps, and an exposition of sleep had come upon me. i was at the mouth of a tiny gorge, exactly where the lotus-eaters had sat down when they began their song, for i recognised the waterfall and the air round my ears "breathing as one that has a weary dream." i looked and beheld that i could not give in words the genius of the place. "i can't play the flute, but i have a cousin who plays the violin." i knew a man who could. some people said he was not a nice man, and i might run the risk of contaminating morals, but nothing mattered in such a climate. see now, go to the very worst of zola's novels and read there his description of a conservatory. that was it. several months passed away, but there was neither chill nor burning heat to mark the passage of time. only, with a sense of acute pain i felt that i must "do" the waterfall, and i climbed up the steps in the hillside, though every boulder cried "sit down," until i found a small stream of water coursing down the face of a rock, and a much bigger one down my own. then we went away to breakfast, the stomach being always more worthy than any amount of sentiment. a turn in the road hid the gardens and stopped the noise of the waters, and that experience was over for all time. experiences are very like cheroots. they generally begin badly, taste perfect half way through, and at the butt-end are things to be thrown away and never picked up again.... his name was john, and he had a pigtail five feet long--all real hair and no silk braided, and he kept an hotel by the way and fed us with a chicken, into whose innocent flesh onions and strange vegetables had been forced. till then we had feared chinamen, especially when they brought food, but now we will eat anything at their hands. the conclusion of the meal was a half-guinea pineapple and a siesta. this is a beautiful thing which we of india--but i am of india no more--do not understand. you lie down and wait for time to pass. you are not in the least wearied--and you would not go to sleep. you are filled with a divine drowsiness--quite different from the heavy sodden slumber of a hot-weather sunday, or the businesslike repose of a europe morning. now i begin to despise novelists who write about _siestas_ in cold climates. i know what the real thing means. * * * * * i have been trying to buy a few things--a _sarong_, which is a _putso_ which is a _dhoti_; a pipe; and a "damned malayan kris." the _sarongs_ come chiefly from germany, the pipes from the pawn-shops, and there are no krises except little toothpick things that could not penetrate the hide of a malay. in the native town, i found a large army of chinese--more than i imagined existed in china itself--encamped in spacious streets and houses, some of them sending block-tin to singapur, some driving fine carriages, others making shoes, chairs, clothes, and every other thing that a large town desires. they were the first army corps on the march of the mongol. the scouts are at calcutta, and a flying column at rangoon. here begins the main body, some hundred thousand strong, so they say. was it not de quincey that had a horror of the chinese--of their inhumaneness and their inscrutability? certainly the people in penang are not nice; they are even terrible to behold. they work hard, which in this climate is manifestly wicked, and their eyes are just like the eyes of their own pet dragons. our hindu gods are passable, some of them even jolly--witness our pot-bellied ganesh; but what can you do with a people who revel in d. t. monsters and crown their roof-ridges with flames of fire, or the waves of the sea? they swarmed everywhere, and wherever three or four met, there they eat things without name--the insides of ducks for choice. our deck passengers, i know, fared sumptuously on offal begged from the steward and flavoured with insect-powder to keep the ants off. this, again, is not natural, for a man should eat like a man if he works like one. i could quite understand after a couple of hours (this has the true globe-trotter twang to it) spent in chinatown why the lower-caste anglo-saxon hates the celestial. he frightened me, and so i could take no pleasure in looking at his houses, at his wares, or at himself.... the smell of printer's ink is marvellously penetrating. it drew me up two pair of stairs into an office where the exchanges lay about in delightful disorder, and a little hand-press was clacking out proofs just in the old sweet way. something like the _gazette of india_ showed that the straits settlements--even they--had a government of their own, and i sighed for a dead past as my eye caught the beautiful official phraseology that never varies. how alike we english are! here is an extract from a report: "and the chinese form of decoration which formerly covered the office has been wisely obliterated with whitewash." that was just what i came to inquire about. what were they going to do with the chinese decoration all over penang? would they try to wisely obliterate that? the straits settlement council which lives at singapur had just passed a bill (ordinance they call it) putting down all chinese secret societies in the colony, which measure only awaited the imperial assent. a little business in singapur connected with some municipal measure for clearing away overhanging verandahs created a storm, and for three days those who were in the place say the town was entirely at the mercy of the chinese, who rose all together and made life unpleasant for the authorities. this incident forced the government to take serious notice of the secret societies who could so control the actions of men, and the result has been a measure which it will not be easy to enforce. a chinaman _must_ have a secret society of some kind. he has been bred up in a country where they were necessary to his comfort, his protection, and the maintenance of his scale of wages from time immemorial, and he will carry them with him as he will carry his opium and his coffin. "do you expect then that the societies will collapse by proclamation?" i asked the editor. "no. there will be a row." "what row? what sort of a row?" "more troops, perhaps, and perhaps some gunboats. you see, we shall have sir charles warren then as our commander-in-chief at singapur. up till the present our military administration has been subordinate to that of hong-kong; when that is done away with and we have sir charles warren, things will be different. but there will be a row. neither you nor i nor any one else will be able to put these things down. every joss house will be the head of a secret society. what can one do? in the past the government made some use of them for the detection of crime. now they are too big and too important to be treated in that way. you will know before long whether we have been able to suppress them. there will be a row." certainly the great grievance of penang is the chinese question. she would not be human did she not revile her municipal commissioners and talk about the unsanitary condition of the island. if nose and eyes and ears be any guide, she is far cleaner even in her streets than many an indian cantonment, and her water-supply seems perfection. but i sat in that little newspaper office and listened to stories of municipal intrigue that might have suited serampore or calcutta, only the names were a little different, and in place of ghose and chuckerbutty one heard titles such as yih tat, lo eng, and the like. the englishman's aggressive altruism always leads him to build towns for others, and incite aliens to serve on municipal boards. then he gets tired of his weakness and starts papers to condemn himself. they had a chinaman on the municipality last year. they have now got rid of him, and the present body is constituted of two officials and four non-officials. _therefore_ they complain of the influence of officialdom. having thoroughly settled all the differences of penang to my own great satisfaction, i removed myself to a chinese theatre set in the open road, and made of sticks and old gunny-bags. the orchestra alone convinced me that there was something radically wrong with the chinese mind. once, long ago in jummu, i heard the infernal clang of the horns used by the devil-dancers who had come from far beyond ladakh to do honour to the prince that day set upon his throne. that was about three thousand miles to the north, but the character of the music was unchanged. a thousand chinamen stood as close as possible to the horrid din and enjoyed it. once more, can anything be done to a people without nerves as without digestion, and, if reports speak truly, without morals? but it is not true that they are born with full-sized pigtails. the thing grows, and in its very earliest stages is the prettiest head-dressing imaginable, being soft brown, very fluffy, about three inches long, and dressed as to the end with red silk. an infant pigtail is just like the first tender sprout of a tulip bulb, and would be lovable were not the chinese baby so very horrible of hue and shape. he isn't as pretty as the pig that alice nursed in wonderland, and he lies quite still and never cries. this is because he is afraid of being boiled and eaten. i saw cold boiled babies on a plate being carried through the heart of the town. they said it was only sucking-pig, but i knew better. dead sucking-pigs don't grin with their eyes open. about this time the faces of the chinese frightened me more than ever, so i ran away to the outskirts of the town and saw a windowless house that carried the square and compass in gold and teakwood above the door. i took heart at meeting these familiar things again, and knowing that where they were was good fellowship and much charity, in spite of all the secret societies in the world. penang is to be congratulated on one of the prettiest little lodges in the east. no. v of the threshold of the far east and the dwellers thereon. a dissertation upon the use of the british lion. "how the world is made for each of us, how all we perceive and know in it tends to some moment's product--thus when a soul declares itself--to wit by its fruit, the thing it does." "i assure you, sir, weather as hot as this has not been felt in singapur for years and years. march is always reckoned our hottest month, but this is quite abnormal." and i made answer to the stranger wearily:-- "yes, of course. they always told that lie in the other places. leave me alone and let me drip." this is the heat of an orchid-house,--a clinging, remorseless, steam-sweat that knows no variation between night and day. singapur is another calcutta, but much more so. in the suburbs they are building rows of cheap houses; in the city they run over you and jostle you into the kennel. these are unfailing signs of commercial prosperity. india ended so long ago that i cannot even talk about the natives of the place. they are all chinese, except where they are french or dutch or german. england is by the uninformed supposed to own the island. the rest belongs to china and the continent, but chiefly china. i knew i had touched the borders of the celestial empire when i was thoroughly impregnated with the reek of chinese tobacco, a fine-cut, greasy, glossy weed, to whose smoke the aroma of a huqa in the cookhouse is all rimmell's shop. providence conducted me along a beach, in full view of five miles of shipping,--five solid miles of masts and funnels,--to a place called raffles hotel, where the food is as excellent as the rooms are bad. let the traveller take note. feed at raffles and sleep at the hotel de l'europe. i would have done this but for the apparition of two large ladies tastefully attired in bedgowns, who sat with their feet propped on a chair. this joseph ran; but it turned out that they were dutch ladies from batavia, and that that was their national costume till dinner time. "if, as you say, they had on stockings and dressing-gowns, you have nothing to complain of. they generally wear nothing but a night-gown till five o'clock," quoth a man versed in the habits of the land. i do not know whether he spoke the truth; i am inclined to think that he did; but now i know what "batavian grace" really means, i don't approve of it. a lady in a dressing-gown disturbs the mind and prevents careful consideration of the political outlook in singapur, which is now supplied with a set of very complete forts, and is hopefully awaiting some nine-inch breach-loaders that are to adorn them. there is something very pathetic in the trustful, clinging attitude of the colonies, who ought to have been soured and mistrustful long ago. "we hope the home government may do this. it is possible that the home government may do that," is the burden of the song, and in every place where the englishman cannot breed successfully must continue to be. imagine an india fit for permanent habitation by our kin, and consider what a place it would be this day, with the painter cut fifty years ago, fifty thousand miles of railways laid down and ten thousand under survey, and possibly an annual surplus. is this sedition? forgive me, but i am looking at the shipping outside the verandah, at the chinamen in the streets, and at the lazy, languid englishmen in banians and white jackets stretched on the cane chairs, and these things are not nice. the men are not really lazy, as i will try to show later on, but they lounge and loaf and seem to go to office at eleven, which must be bad for work. and they all talk about going home at indecently short intervals, as though that were their right. once more, if we could only rear children that did not run to leg and nose in the second generation in this part of the world and one or two others, what an amazing disruption of the empire there would be before half of a parnell commission sitting was accomplished! and then, later, when the freed states had plunged into hot water, fought their fights, overborrowed, overspeculated, and otherwise conducted themselves like younger sons, what a coming together and revision of tariffs, ending in one great iron band girdling the earth. within that limit free trade. without, rancorous protection. it would be too vast a hornet's nest for any combination of powers to disturb. the dream will not come about for a long time, but we shall accomplish something like it one of these days. the birds of passage from canada, from borneo,--borneo that will have to go through a general rough-and-tumble before she grips her possibilities,--from australia, from a hundred scattered islands, are saying the same thing: "we are not strong enough yet, but some day we shall be." oh! dear people, stewing in india and swearing at all the governments, it is a glorious thing to be an englishman. "our lot has fallen unto us in a fair ground. yea, we have a goodly heritage." take a map and look at the long stretch of the malay peninsula,--a thousand miles southerly it runs, does it not?--whereon penang, malacca, and singapur are so modestly underlined in red ink. see, now. we have our residents at every one of the malay native states of any importance, and right up the line to kedah and siam our influence regulates and controls all. into this land god put first gold and tin, and after these the englishman, who floats companies, obtains concessions and goes forward. just at present, one company alone holds a concession of two thousand square miles in the interior. that means mining rights; and that means a few thousand coolies and a settled administration such as obtains in the big indian collieries, where the heads of the mines are responsible kings. with the companies will come the railroads. so far the straits papers spend their space in talking about them, for at present there are only twenty-three or twenty-four miles of narrow-gauge railway open, near a civilised place called pirates' creek, in the peninsula. the sultan of johore is, or has been, wavering over a concession for a railway through his country, which will ultimately connect with this pirates' creek line. singapur is resolved ere long to bridge over the mile or mile-and-a-half straits between herself and the state of johore. in this manner a beginning will be made of the southerly extension of colquhoun's great line running, let us say, from singapur through the small states and siam, without a break, into the great indian railway systems, so that a man will be able to book from here to calcutta direct. anything like a business summary of the railway schemes that come up for discussion from time to time would fill a couple of these letters, and would be uncommonly dry reading. you know the sort of "shop" talk that rages among engineers when a new line is being run in india through perfectly known ground, whose traffic-potentialities may be calculated to the last pie. it is very much the same here, with the difference that no one knows for a certainty what the country ahead of the surveys is like, or where the development is likely to stop. this gives breeziness to the conversation. the audacity of the speakers is amazing to one who has been accustomed to see things through indian eyes. they hint at "running up the peninsula," establishing communications here, consolidating influence there, and providence only knows what else; but never a word do they breathe about the necessity for increased troops to stand by and back these little operations. perhaps they assume that the home government will provide, but it does seem strange to hear them cold-bloodedly discussing notions that will inevitably demand doubled garrisons to keep the ventures out of alien hands. however, the merchant-men will do their work, and i suppose we shall borrow three files and a sergeant from somewhere or other when the time comes, and people begin to realise what sort of a gift our straits settlements are. it is so cheap to prophesy. they will in the near future grow into-- the professor looked over my shoulder at this point. "bosh!" said he. "they will become just a supplementary china--another field for chinese cheap labour. when the dutch settlements were returned in ,--all these islands hereabouts, you know,--we should have handed over these places as well. look!" he pointed at the swarming chinamen below. "let me dream my dream, 'fessor. i'll take my hat in a minute and settle the question of chinese immigration in five minutes." but i confess it was mournful to look into the street, which ought to have been full of beharis, madrassis, and men from the konkan--from our india. then up and spake a sunburned man who had interests in north borneo--he owned caves in the mountains, some of them nine hundred feet high, so please you, and filled with the guano of ages, and had been telling me leech-stories till my flesh crawled. "north borneo," said he, calmly, "wants a million of labourers to do her any good. one million coolies. men are wanted everywhere,--in the peninsula, in sumatra for the tobacco planting, in java,--everywhere; but borneo--the company's provinces that is to say--needs a million coolies." it is pleasant to oblige a stranger, and i felt that i spoke with india at my back. "we could oblige you with two million or twenty, for the matter of that," said i, generously. "your men are no good," said the north borneo man. "if one man goes away, he must have a whole village to look after his wants. india as a labour field is no good to us, and the sumatra men say that your coolies either can't or won't tend tobacco properly. we must have china coolies as the land develops." oh, india, oh, my country! this it is to have inherited a highly organised civilisation and an ancient precedence code. that your children shall be scoffed at by the alien as useless outside their own pot-bound provinces. here was a labour outlet, a door to full dinners, through which men--yellow men with pigtails--were pouring by the ten thousand, while in bengal the cultured native editor was shrieking over "atrocities" committed in moving a few hundred souls a few hundred miles into assam. no. vi of the well-dressed islanders of singapur and their diversions; proving that all stations are exactly alike. shows how one chicago jew and an american child can poison the purest mind. "we are not divided, all one body we-- one in hope and doctrine, one in charity." when one comes to a new station the first thing to do is to call on the inhabitants. this duty i had neglected, preferring to consort with chinese till the sabbath, when i learnt that singapur went to the botanical gardens and listened to secular music. all the englishmen in the island congregated there. the botanical gardens would have been lovely at kew, but here, where one knew that they were the only place of recreation open to the inhabitants, they were not pleasant. all the plants of all the tropics grew there together, and the orchid-house was roofed with thin battens of wood--just enough to keep off the direct rays of the sun. it held waxy-white splendours from manila, the philippines, and tropical africa--plants that were half-slugs, drawing nourishment apparently from their own wooden labels; but there was no difference between the temperature of the orchid-house and the open air; both were heavy, dank, and steaming. i would have given a month's pay--but i have no month's pay--for a clear breath of stifling hot wind from the sands of sirsa, for the darkness of a punjab dust-storm, in exchange for the perspiring plants, and the tree-fern that sweated audibly. just when i was most impressed with my measureless distance from india, my carriage advanced to the sound of slow music, and i found myself in the middle of an indian station--not quite as big as allahabad, and infinitely prettier than lucknow. it overlooked the gardens that sloped in ridge and hollow below; and the barracks were set in much greenery, and there was a mess-house that suggested long and cooling drinks, and there walked round about a british band. it was just we our noble selves. in the centre was the pretty _memsahib_ with light hair and fascinating manners, and the plump little _memsahib_ that talks to everybody and is in everybody's confidence, and the spinster fresh from home, and the bean-fed, well-groomed subaltern with the light coat and fox-terrier. on the benches sat the fat colonel, and the large judge, and the engineer's wife, and the merchant-man and his family after their kind--male and female met i them, and but for the little fact that they were entire strangers to me, i would have saluted them all as old friends. i knew what they were talking about, could see them taking stock of one another's dresses out of the corners of their eyes, could see the young men backing and filling across the ground in order to walk with the young maidens, and could hear the "do you think so's" and "not really's" of our polite conversation. it is an awful thing to sit in a hired carriage and watch one's own people, and know that though you know their life, you have neither part nor lot in it. "i am a shadow now; alas! alas! upon the skirts of human nature dwelling," i said mournfully to the professor. he was looking at mrs. ----, or some one so like her that it came to the same thing. "am i travelling round the world to discover _these_ people?" said he. "i've seen 'em all before. there's captain such-an-one and colonel such-another and miss what's-its-name as large as life and twice as pale." the professor had hit it. that was the difference. people in singapur are dead-white--as white as naaman--and the veins on the backs of their hands are painted in indigo. it is as though the rains were just over, and none of the womenfolk had been allowed to go to the hills. yet no one talks about the unhealthiness of singapur. a man lives well and happily until he begins to feel unwell. then he feels worse because the climate allows him no chance of pulling himself together--and then he dies. typhoid fever appears to be one gate of death, as it is in india; also liver. the nicest thing in the civil station which lies, of course, far from the native town, and boasts pretty little bungalows--is thomas--dear, white-robed, swaggering, smoking, swearing thomas atkins the unchangeable, who listens to the band and wanders down the bazaars, and slings the unmentionable adjective about the palm trees exactly as though he were in mian mir. the th (northamptonshire) live in these parts; so singapur is quite safe, you see. nobody would speak to me in the gardens, though i felt that they ought to have invited me to drink, and i crept back to my hotel to eat six different fresh chutnies with one curry. * * * * * i want to go home! i want to go back to india! i am miserable. the steamship _nawab_ at this time of the year ought to have been empty, instead of which we have one hundred first-class passengers and sixty-six second. all the pretty girls are in the latter class. something must have happened at colombo--two steamers must have clashed. we have the results of the collision, and we are a menagerie. the captain says that there ought to have been only ten or twelve passengers by rights, and had the rush been anticipated, a larger steamer would have been provided. personally, i consider that half our shipmates ought to be thrown overboard. they are only travelling round the world for pleasure, and that sort of dissipation leads to the forming of hasty and intemperate opinions. anyhow, give me freedom and the cockroaches of the british india, where we dined on deck, altered the hours of the meals by plebiscite, and were lords of all we saw. you know the chain-gang regulations of the p. and o.: how you must approach the captain standing on your head with your feet waving reverently; how you must crawl into the presence of the chief steward on your belly and call him thrice-puissant bottle-washer; how you must not smoke abaft the sheep-pens; must not stand in the companion; must put on a clean coat when the ship's library is opened; and crowning injustice, must order your drinks for tiffin and dinner one meal in advance? how can a man full of pilsener beer reach that keen-set state of quiescence needful for ordering his dinner liquor? this shows ignorance of human nature. the p. and o. want healthy competition. they call their captains commanders and act as though 'twere a favour to allow you to embark. again, freedom and the british india for ever, and down with the comforts of a coolie ship and the prices of a palace! there are about thirty women on board, and i have been watching with a certain amount of indignation their concerted attempt at killing the stewardess,--a delicate and sweet-mannered lady. i think they will accomplish their end. the saloon is ninety feet long, and the stewardess runs up and down it for nine hours a day. in her intervals of relaxation she carries cups of beef-tea to the frail sylphs who cannot exist without food between a.m. and p.m. this morning she advanced to me and said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world: "shall i take away your tea-cup, sir?" she was a real white woman, and the saloon was full of hulking, half-bred portuguese. one young englishman let her take his cup, and actually did not turn round when he handed it. this is awful, and teaches me, as nothing else has done, how far i am from the blessed east. she (the stewardess) talks standing up, to men who sit down! we in india are currently supposed to be unkind to our servants. i should very much like to see a sweeper doing one-half of the work these strapping white matrons and maids exact from their sister. they make her carry things about and don't even say, "thank you." she has no name, and if you bawl, "stewardess," she is bound to come. isn't it degrading? but the real reason of my wish to return is because i have met a lump of chicago jews and am afraid that i shall meet many more. the ship is full of americans, but the american-german-jew boy is the most awful of all. one of them has money, and wanders from bow to stern asking strangers to drink, bossing lotteries on the run, and committing other atrocities. it is currently reported that he is dying. unfortunately he does not die quickly enough. but the real monstrosity of the ship is an american who is not quite grown up. i cannot call it a boy, though officially it is only eight, wears a striped jacket, and eats with the children. it has the wearied appearance of an infant monkey--there are lines round its mouth and under its eyebrows. when it has nothing else to do it will answer to the name of albert. it has been two years on the continuous travel; has spent a month in india; has seen constantinople, tripoli, spain; has lived in tents and on horseback for thirty days and thirty nights, as it was careful to inform me; and has exhausted the round of this world's delights. there is no flesh on its bones, and it lives in the smoking-room financing the arrangements of the daily lottery. i was afraid of it, but it followed me, and in a level expressionless voice began to tell me how lotteries were constructed. when i protested that i knew, it continued without regarding the interruption, and finally, as a reward for my patience, volunteered to give me the names and idiosyncracies of all on board. then it vanished through the smoking-room window because the door was only eight feet high, and therefore too narrow for that bulk of abnormal experiences. on certain subjects it was partly better informed than i; on others it displayed the infinite credulity of a two-year-old. but the wearied eyes were ever the same. they will be the same when it is fifty. i was more sorry for it than i could say. all its reminiscences had got jumbled, and incidents of spain were baled into turkey and india. some day a schoolmaster will get hold of it and try to educate it, and i should dearly like to see at which end he will begin. the head is too full already and the--the other part does not exist. albert is, i presume, but an ordinary american child. he was to me a revelation. now i want to see a little american girl--but not now--not just now. my nerves are shattered by the jews and albert; and unless they recover their tone i shall turn back at yokohama. no. vii shows how i arrived in china and saw entirely through the great wall and out upon the other side. "where naked ignorance delivers brawling judgments all day long on all things unashamed." the past few days on the _nawab_ have been spent amid a new people and a very strange one. there were speculators from south africa: financiers from home (these never talked in anything under hundreds of thousands of pounds and, i fear, bluffed awfully); there were consuls of far-off china ports and partners of china shipping houses talking a talk and thinking thoughts as different from ours as is our slang from the slang of london. but it would not interest you to learn the story of our shipload--to hear about the hard-headed scotch merchant with a taste for spiritualism, who begged me to tell him whether there was really anything in theosophy and whether tibet was full of levitating _chelas_, as he believed; or of the little london curate out for a holiday who had seen india and had faith in the progress of missionary work there--who believed that the c. m. s. was shaking the thoughts and convictions of the masses, and that the word of the lord would ere long prevail above all other councils. he in the night-watches tackled and disposed of the great mysteries of life and death, and was looking forward to a lifetime of toil amid a parish without a single rich man in it. when you are in the china seas be careful to keep all your flannel-wear to hand. in an hour the steamer swung from tropical heat (including prickly) to a cold raw fog, as wet as a scotch mist. morning gave us a new world--somewhere between heaven and earth. the sea was smoked glass: reddish grey islands lay upon it under fog-banks that hovered fifty feet above our heads. the squat sails of junks danced for an instant like autumn leaves in the breeze and disappeared, and there was no solidity in the islands against which the glassy levels splintered in snow. the steamer groaned and grunted and howled because she was so damp and miserable, and i groaned also because the guide-book said that hong-kong had the finest harbour in the world, and i could not see two hundred yards in any direction. yet this ghost-like in-gliding through the belted fog was livelily mysterious, and became more so when the movement of the air vouchsafed us a glimpse of a warehouse and a derrick, both apparently close aboard, and behind them the shoulder of a mountain. we made our way into a sea of flat-nosed boats all manned by most muscular humans, and the professor said that the time to study the chinese question was now. we, however, were carrying a new general to these parts, and nice, new, well-fitting uniforms came off to make him welcome; and in the contemplation of things too long withheld from me i forgot about the pigtails. gentlemen of the mess-room, who would wear linen coats on parade if you could, wait till you have been a month without seeing a patrol-jacket or hearing a spur go _ling-a-ling_, and you will know why civilians want you always to wear uniform. the general, by the way, was a nice general. he did not know much about the indian army or the ways of a gentleman called roberts, if i recollect aright; but he said that lord wolseley was going to be commander-in-chief one of these days on account of the pressing needs of our army. he was a revelation because he talked about nothing but english military matters, which are very, very different from indian ones, and are mixed up with politics. all hong-kong is built on the sea face; the rest is fog. one muddy road runs for ever in front of a line of houses which are partly chowringhee and partly rotherhithe. you live in the houses, and when wearied of this, walk across the road and drop into the sea, if you can find a square foot of unencumbered water. so vast is the accumulation of country shipping, and such is its dirtiness as it rubs against the bund, that the superior inhabitants are compelled to hang their boats from davits above the common craft, who are greatly disturbed by a multitude of steam-launches. these ply for amusement and the pleasure of whistling, and are held in such small esteem that every hotel owns one, and the others are masterless. beyond the launches lie more steamers than the eye can count, and four out of five of these belong to us. i was proud when i saw the shipping at singapur, but i swell with patriotism as i watch the fleets of hong-kong from the balcony of the victoria hotel. i can almost spit into the water; but many mariners stand below and they are a strong breed. how recklessly selfish does a traveller become! we had dropped for more than ten days all the world outside our trunks, and almost the first word in the hotel was: "john bright is dead, and there has been an awful hurricane at samoa." "ah! indeed that's very sad; but look here, where do you say my rooms are?" at home the news would have given talk for half a day. it was dismissed in half the length of a hotel corridor. one cannot sit down to think with a new world humming outside the window--with all china to enter upon and possess. a rattling of trunks in the halls--a click of heels--and the apparition of an enormous gaunt woman wrestling with a small madrassi servant.... "yes--i haf travelled everywhere and i shall travel everywhere else. i go now to shanghai and pekin. i have been in moldavia, russia, beyrout, all persia, colombo, delhi, dacca, benares, allahabad, peshawar, the ali musjid in that pass, malabar, singapur, penang, here in this place, and canton. i am austrian-croat, and i shall see the states of america and perhaps ireland. i travel for ever; i am--how you call?--_veuve_--widow. my husband, he was dead; and so i am sad--i am always sad und so i trafel. i am alife of course, but i do not live. you onderstandt? always sad. vill you tell them the name of the ship to which they shall warf my trunks now. you trafel for pleasure? so! i trafel because i am alone und sad--always sad." the trunks disappeared, the door shut, the heels clicked down the passage, and i was left scratching my head in wonder. how did that conversation begin--why did it end, and what is the use of meeting eccentricities who never explained themselves? i shall never get an answer, but that conversation is true, every word of it. i see now where the fragmentary school of novelists get their material from. when i went into the streets of hong-kong i stepped into thick slushy london mud of the kind that strikes chilly through the boot, and the rattle of innumerable wheels was as the rattle of hansoms. a soaking rain fell, and all the sahibs hailed 'rickshaws,--they call them 'ricks here,--and the wind was chillier than the rain. it was the first touch of honest weather since calcutta. no wonder with such a climate that hong-kong was ten times livelier than singapur, that there were signs of building everywhere, and gas-jets in all the houses, that colonnades and domes were scattered broadcast, and the englishmen walked as englishmen should--hurriedly and looking forward. all the length of the main street was verandahed, and the europe shops squandered plate glass by the square yard. (_nota bene._--as in simla so elsewhere: mistrust the plate glass shops. you pay for their fittings in each purchase.) the same providence that runs big rivers so near to large cities puts main thoroughfares close to big hotels. i went down queen street, which is not very hilly. all the other streets that i looked up were built in steps after the fashion of clovelly, and under blue skies would have given the professor scores of good photographs. the rain and the fog blotted the views. each upward-climbing street ran out in white mist that covered the sides of a hill, and the downward-sloping ones were lost in the steam from the waters of the harbour, and both were very strange to see. "hi-yi-yow," said my 'rickshaw coolie and balanced me on one wheel. i got out and met first a german with a beard, then three jolly sailor boys from a man-of-war, then a sergeant of sappers, then a parsee, then two arabs, then an american, then a jew, then a few thousand chinese all carrying something, and then the professor. "they make plates--instantaneous plates--in tokio, i'm told. what d'you think of that?" he said. "why, in india, the survey department are the only people who make their own plates. instantaneous plates in tokio; think of it!" i had owed the professor one for a long time. "after all," i replied, "it strikes me that we have made the mistake of thinking too much of india. we thought we were civilised, for instance. let us take a lower place. this beats calcutta into a hamlet." and in good truth it did, because it was clean beyond the ordinary, because the houses were uniform, three storied, and verandahed, and the pavements were of stone. i met one horse, very ashamed of himself, who was looking after a cart on the sea road, but upstairs there are no vehicles save 'rickshaws. hong-kong has killed the romance of the 'rickshaw in my mind. they ought to be sacred to pretty ladies, instead of which men go to office in them, officers in full canonicals use them; tars try to squeeze in two abreast, and from what i have heard down at the barracks they do occasionally bring to the guard-room the drunken defaulter. "he falls asleep inside of it, sir, and saves trouble." the chinese naturally have the town for their own, and profit by all our building improvements and regulations. their golden and red signs flame down the queen's road, but they are careful to supplement their own tongue by well-executed europe lettering. i found only one exception, thus:-- fussing, garpenter and gabinet naktr has good gabi nets tor sale. the shops are made to catch the sailor and the curio hunter, and they succeed admirably. when you come to these parts put all your money in a bank and tell the manager man not to give it you, however much you ask. so shall you be saved from bankruptcy. the professor and i made a pilgrimage from kee sing even unto yi king, who sells the decomposed fowl, and each shop was good. though it sold shoes or sucking pigs, there was some delicacy of carving or gilded tracery in front to hold the eye, and each thing was quaint and striking of its kind. a fragment of twisted roots helped by a few strokes into the likeness of huddled devils, a running knop and flower cornice, a dull red and gold half-door, a split bamboo screen--they were all good, and their joinings and splicings and mortisings were accurate. the baskets of the coolies were good in shape, and the rattan fastenings that clenched them to the polished bamboo yoke were whipped down, so that there were no loose ends. you could slide in and out the drawers in the slung chests of the man who sold dinners to the 'rickshaw coolies; and the pistons of the little wooden hand-pumps in the shops worked accurately in their sockets. i was studying these things while the professor was roaming through carved ivories, broidered silks, panels of inlay, tortoise-shell filigree, jade-tipped pipes, and the god of art only knows what else. "i don't think even as much of him (meaning our indian craftsman) as i used to do," said the professor, taking up a tiny ivory grotesque of a small baby trying to pull a water-buffalo out of its wallow--the whole story of beast and baby written in the hard ivory. the same thought was in both our minds; we had gone near the subject once or twice before. "they are a hundred times his superior in mere idea--let alone execution," said the professor, his hand on a sketch in woods and gems of a woman caught in a gale of wind protecting her baby from its violence. "yes; and don't you see that _they_ only introduce aniline dyes into things intended for _us_. whereas _he_ wears them on his body whenever he can. what made this yellow image of a shopman here take delight in a dwarf orange tree in a turquoise blue pot?" i continued, sorting a bundle of cheap china spoons--all good in form, colour, and use. the big-bellied chinese lanterns above us swayed in the wind with a soft chafing of oiled paper, but they made no sign, and the shopkeeper in blue was equally useless. "you wanchee buy? heap plitty things here," said he; and he filled a tobacco-pipe from a dull green leather pouch held at the mouth with a little bracelet of plasma, or it might have been the very jade. he was playing with a brown-wood abacus, and by his side was his day-book bound in oiled paper, and the tray of indian ink, with the brushes and the porcelain supports for the brushes. he made an entry in his book and daintily painted in his latest transaction. the chinese of course have been doing this for a few thousand years, but life, and its experiences, is as new to me as it was to adam, and i marvelled. "wanchee buy?" reiterated the shopman after he had made his last flourish. "you," said i, in the new tongue which i am acquiring, "wanchee know one piecee information b'long my pidgin. savvy these things? have got soul, you?" "have got how?" "have got one piecee soul--allee same spilit? no savvy? this way then--your people lookee allee same devil; but makee culio allee same pocket-joss, and not giving any explanation. why-for are you such a horrible contradiction?" "no savvy. two dollar an' half," he said, balancing a cabinet in his hand. the professor had not heard. his mind was oppressed with the fate of the hindu. "there are three races who can work," said the professor, looking down the seething street where the 'rickshaws tore up the slush, and the babel of cantonese, and pidgin went up to the yellow fog in a jumbled snarl. "but there is only one that can swarm," i answered. "the hindu cuts his own throat and dies, and there are too few of the sahib-log to last for ever. these people work and spread. they must have souls or they couldn't understand pretty things." "i can't make it out," said the professor. "they are better artists than the hindu,--that carving you are looking at is japanese, by the way,--better artists and stronger workmen, man for man. they pack close and eat everything, and they can live on nothing." "and i've been praising the beauties of indian art all my days." it was a little disappointing when you come to think of it, but i tried to console myself by the thought that the two lay so far apart there was no comparison possible. and yet accuracy is surely the touchstone of all art. "they will overwhelm the world," said the professor, calmly, and he went out to buy tea. neither at penang, singapur, nor this place have i seen a single chinaman asleep while daylight lasted. nor have i seen twenty men who were obviously loafing. all were going to some definite end--if it were only like the coolie on the wharf, to steal wood from the scaffolding of a half-built house. in his own land, i believe, the chinaman is treated with a certain amount of carelessness, not to say ferocity. where he hides his love of art, the heaven that made him out of the yellow earth that holds so much iron only knows. his love is for little things, or else why should he get quaint pendants for his pipe, and at the backmost back of his shop build up for himself a bowerbird's collection of odds and ends, every one of which has beauty if you hold it sufficiently close to the eye. it grieves me that i cannot account for the ideas of a few hundred million men in a few hours. this much, however, seems certain. if we had control over as many chinamen as we have natives of india, and had given them one tithe of the cossetting, the painful pushing forward, and studious, even nervous, regard of their interests and aspirations that we have given to india, we should long ago have been expelled from, or have reaped the reward of, the richest land on the face of the earth. a pair of my shoes have been, oddly enough, wrapped in a newspaper which carries for its motto the words, "there is no indian nation, though there exists the germs of an indian nationality," or something very like that. this thing has been moving me to unholy laughter. the great big lazy land that we nurse and wrap in cotton-wool, and ask every morning whether it is strong enough to get out of bed, seems like a heavy soft cloud on the far-away horizon; and the babble that we were wont to raise about its precious future and its possibilities, no more than the talk of children in the streets who have made a horse out of a pea-pod and match-sticks, and wonder if it will ever walk. i am sadly out of conceit of mine own other--not mother--country now that i have had my boots blacked at once every time i happened to take them off. the blacker did not do it for the sake of a gratuity, but because it was his work. like the beaver of old, he had to climb that tree; the dogs were after him. there was competition. * * * * * is there really such a place as hong-kong? people say so, but i have not yet seen it. once indeed the clouds lifted and i saw a granite house perched like a cherub on nothing, a thousand feet above the town. it looked as if it might be the beginning of a civil station, but a man came up the street and said, "see this fog it will be like this till september. you'd better go away." i shall not go. i shall encamp in front of the place until the fog lifts and the rain ceases. at present, and it is the third day of april, i am sitting in front of a large coal fire and thinking of the "frosty caucasus"--you poor creatures in torment afar. and you think as you go to office and orderly-room that you are helping forward england's mission in the east. 'tis a pretty delusion, and i am sorry to destroy it, but you have conquered the wrong country. let us annex china. no. viii of jenny and her friends. showing how a man may go to see life and meet death there. of the felicity of life and the happiness of corinthian kate. the woman and the cholera. "love and let love, and so will i, but, sweet, for me no more with you, not while i live, not though i die. good night, good-by!" i am entirely the man about town, and sickness is no word for my sentiments. it began with an idle word in a bar-room. it ended goodness knows where. that the world should hold french, german, and italian ladies of the ancient profession is no great marvel; but it is, to one who has lived in india, something shocking to meet again englishwomen in the same sisterhood. when an opulent papa sends his son and heir round the world to enlarge his mind, does he reflect, i wonder, on the places into which the innocent strolls under the guidance of equally inexperienced friends? i am disposed to think that he does not. in the interest of the opulent papa, and from a genuine desire to see what they call life, with a capital hell, i went through hong-kong for the space of a night. i am glad that i am not a happy father with a stray son who thinks that he knows all the ropes. vice must be pretty much the same all the round world over, but if a man wishes to get out of pleasure with it, let him go to hong-kong. "of course things are out and away better at 'frisco," said my guide, "but we consider this very fair for the island." it was not till a fat person in a black dressing-gown began to squeal demands for horrible stuff called "a bottle of wine" that i began to understand the glory of the situation. i was seeing life. "life" is a great thing. it consists in swigging sweet champagne that was stolen from a steward of the p. and o., and exchanging bad words with pale-faced baggages who laugh demnibly without effort and without emotion. the _argot_ of the real "chippy" (this means man of the world--_anglice_, a half-drunk youth with his hat on the back of his head) is not easy to come at. it requires an apprenticeship in america. i stood appalled at the depth and richness of the american language, of which i was privileged to hear a special dialect. there were girls who had been to leadville and denver and the wilds of the wilder west, who had acted in minor companies, and who had generally misconducted themselves in a hundred weary ways. they chattered like daws and shovelled down the sickly liquor that made the rooms reek. as long as they talked sensibly things were amusing, but a sufficiency of liquor made the mask drop, and verily they swore by all their gods, chief of whom is obidicut. very many men have heard a white woman swear, but some few, and among these i have been, are denied the experience. it is quite a revelation; and if nobody tilts you backwards out of your chair, you can reflect on heaps of things connected with it. so they cursed and they drank and they told tales, sitting in a circle, till i felt that this was really life and a thing to be quitted if i wished to like it. the young man who knew a thing or two, and gave the girls leave to sell him if they could, was there of course, and the hussies sold him as he stood for all he considered himself worth; and i saw the by-play. surely the safest way to be fooled is to know everything. then there was an interlude and some more shrieks and howls, which the generous public took as indicating immense mirth and enjoyment of life; and i came to yet another establishment, where the landlady lacked the half of her left lung, as a cough betrayed, but was none the less amusing in a dreary way, until she also dropped the mask and the playful jesting began. all the jokes i had heard before at the other place. it is a poor sort of life that cannot spring one new jest a day. more than ever did the youth cock his hat and explain that he was a real "chippy," and that there were no flies on him. any one without a cast-iron head would be "real chippy" next morning after one glass of that sirupy champagne. i understand now why men feel insulted when sweet fizz is offered to them. the second interview closed as the landlady gracefully coughed us into the passage, and so into the healthy, silent streets. she was very ill indeed, and announced that she had but four months more to live. "are we going to hold these dismal levees all through the night?" i demanded at the fourth house, where i dreaded the repetition of the thrice-told tales. "it's better in 'frisco. must amuse the girls a little bit, y'know. walk round and wake 'em up. that's life. you never saw it in india?" was the reply. "no, thank god, i didn't. a week of this would make me hang myself," i returned, leaning wearily against a door-post. there were very loud sounds of revelry by night here, and the inmates needed no waking up. one of them was recovering from a debauch of three days, and the other was just entering upon the same course. providence protected me all through. a certain austere beauty of countenance had made every one take me for a doctor or a parson--a qualified parson, i think; and so i was spared many of the more pronounced jokes, and could sit and contemplate the life that was so sweet. i thought of the oxonian in _tom and jerry_ playing jigs at the spinet,--you seen the old-fashioned plate,--while corinthian tom and corinthian kate danced a stately saraband in a little carpeted room. the worst of it was, the women were real women and pretty, and like some people i knew, and when they stopped the insensate racket for a while they were well behaved. "pass for real ladies anywhere," said my friend. "aren't these things well managed?" then corinthian kate began to bellow for more drinks,--it was three in the morning,--and the current of hideous talk recommenced. they spoke about themselves as "gay." this does not look much on paper. to appreciate the full grimness of the sarcasm hear it from their lips amid their own surroundings. i winked with vigour to show that i appreciated life and was a real chippy, and that upon me, too, there were no flies. there is an intoxication in company that carries a man to excess of mirth; but when a party of four deliberately sit down to drink and swear, the bottom tumbles out of the amusement somehow, and loathing and boredom follow. a night's reflection has convinced me that there is no hell for these women in another world. they have their own in this life, and i have been through it a little way. still carrying the brevet rank of doctor, it was my duty to watch through the night to the dawn a patient--gay, _toujours_ gay, remember--quivering on the verge of a complaint called the "jumps." corinthian kate will get hers later on. her companion, emerging from a heavy drink, was more than enough for me. she was an unmitigated horror, until i lost detestation in genuine pity. the fear of death was upon her for a reason that you shall hear. "i say, you say you come from india. do you know anything about cholera?" "a little," i answered. the voice of the questioner was cracked and quavering. a long pause. "i say, doctor, what are the symptoms of cholera? a woman died just over the street there last week." "this is pleasant," i thought. "but i must remember that it is life." "she died last week--cholera. my god, i tell you she was dead in six hours! i guess i'll get cholera, too. i can't, though. can i? i thought i had it two days ago. it hurt me terribly. i can't get it, can i? it never attacks people twice, does it? oh, say it doesn't and be damned to you. doctor, what are the symptoms of cholera?" i waited till she had detailed her own attack, assured her that these and no others were the symptoms, and--may this be set to my credit--that cholera never attacked twice. this soothed her for ten minutes. then she sprang up with an oath and shrieked:-- "i won't be buried in hong-kong. that frightens me. when i die--of cholera--take me to 'frisco and bury me there. in 'frisco--lone mountain 'frisco--you hear, doctor?" i heard and promised. outside the birds were beginning to twitter and the dawn was pencilling the shutters. "i say, doctor, did you ever know cora pearl?" "'knew _of_ her." i wondered whether she was going to walk round the room to all eternity with her eyes glaring at the ceiling and her hands twisting and untwisting one within the other. "well," she began, in an impressive whisper, "it was young duval shot himself on her mat and made a bloody mess there. i mean real bloody. you don't carry a pistol, doctor? savile did. you didn't know savile. he was my husband in the states. but i'm english, pure english. that's what i am. let's have a bottle of wine, i'm so nervous. not good for me? what the--no, you're a doctor. you know what's good against cholera. tell me! tell me." she crossed to the shutters and stared out, her hand upon the bolt, and the bolt clacked against the wood because of the tremulous hand. "i tell you corinthian kate's drunk--full as she can hold. she's always drinking. did you ever see my shoulder--these two marks on it? they were given me by a man--a gentleman--the night before last. i _didn't_ fall against any furniture. he struck me with his cane twice, the beast, the beast, the beast! if i had been full, i'd have knocked the dust out of him. the beast! but i only went into the verandah and cried fit to break my heart. oh, the beast!" she paced the room, chafing her shoulder and crooning over it as though it were an animal. then she swore at the man. then she fell into a sort of stupor, but moaned and swore at the man in her sleep, and wailed for her _amah_ to come and dress her shoulder. asleep she was not unlovely, but the mouth twitched and the body was shaken with shiverings, and there was no peace in her at all. daylight showed her purple-eyed, slack-cheeked, and staring, racked with a headache and the nervous twitches. indeed i was seeing life; but it did not amuse me, for i felt that i, though i only made capital of her extreme woe, was guilty equally with the rest of my kind that had brought her here. then she told lies. at least i was informed that they were lies later on by the real man of the world. they related to herself and her people, and if untrue must have been motiveless, for all was sordid and sorrowful, though she tried to gild the page with a book of photos which linked her to her past. not being a man of the world, i prefer to believe that the tales were true, and thank her for the honour she did me in the telling. i had fancied that the house had nothing sadder to show me than her face. here was i wrong. corinthian kate had really been drinking, and rose up reeling drunk, which is an awful thing to witness, and makes one's head ache sympathetically. something had gone wrong in the slatternly menage where the plated tea-services were mixed with cheap china; and the household was being called to account. i watched her clutching the mosquito net for support, a horror and an offence in the eye of the guiltless day. i heard her swear in a thick, sodden voice as i have never yet heard a man swear, and i marvelled that the house did not thunder in on our heads. her companion interposed, but was borne down by a torrent of blasphemy, and the half a dozen little dogs that infested the room removed themselves beyond reach of corinthian kate's hand or foot. that she was a handsome woman only made the matter worse. the companion collapsed shivering on one of the couches, and kate swayed to and fro and cursed god and man and earth and heaven with puffed lips. if alma tadema could have painted her,--an arrangement in white, black hair, flashing eyes, and bare feet,--we should have seen the true likeness of the eternal priestess of humanity. or she would have been better drawn when the passion was over, tottering across the room, a champagne glass held high above her head, shouting, at ten o'clock in the morning, for some more of the infamous brewage that was even then poisoning the air of the whole house. she got her liquor, and the two women sat down to share it together. that was their breakfast. i went away very sick and miserable, and as the door closed i saw the two drinking. "out and away better in 'frisco," said the real "chippy" one. "but you see they are awfully nice--could pass for ladies any time they like. i tell you a man has to go round and keep his eyes open among them when he's seeing a little sporting life." i have seen all that i wish to see, and henceforward i will pass. there may be better champagne and better drinkers in 'frisco and elsewhere, but the talk will be the same, and the mouldiness and staleness of it all will be the same till the end of time. if this be life, give me a little honest death, without drinks and without foul jesting. anyway you look at it 'tis a poor performance, badly played, and too near to a tragedy to be pleasant. but it seems to amuse the young man wandering about the world, and i cannot believe that it is altogether good for him--unless, indeed, it makes him fonder of his home. and mine was the greater sin! i was driven by no gust of passion, but went in cold blood to make my account of this inferno, and to measure the measureless miseries of life. for the wholly insignificant sum of thirty dollars i had purchased information and disgust more than i required, and the right to look after a woman half crazed with drink and fear the third part of a terrible night. mine was the greater sin. when we stepped back into the world i was glad that the fog stood between myself and the heaven above. no. ix some talk with a taipan and a general; proves in what manner a sea picnic may be a success. "i should like to rise and go where the golden apples grow, where beneath another sky parrot-islands anchored lie." --_r. l. stevenson._ hong-kong was so much alive, so built, so lighted, and so bloatedly rich to all outward appearance that i wanted to know how these things came about. you can't lavish granite by the cubic ton for nothing, or rivet your cliffs with portland cement, or build a five-mile bund, or establish a club like a small palace. i sought a _taipan_, which means the head of an english trading firm. he was the biggest _taipan_ on the island, and quite the nicest. he owned ships and wharves and houses and mines and a hundred other things. to him said i:-- "o _taipan_, i am a poor person from calcutta, and the liveliness of your place astounds me. how is it that every one smells of money; whence come your municipal improvements; and why are the white men so restless?" said the _taipan_: "it is because the island is going ahead mightily. because everything pays. observe this share-list." he took me down a list of thirty or less companies--steam-launch companies, mining, rope-weaving, dock, trading, agency and general companies--and with five exceptions all the shares were at premium--some a hundred, some five hundred, and others only fifty. "it is not a boom," said the _taipan_. "it is genuine. nearly every man you meet in these parts is a broker, and he floats companies." i looked out of the window and beheld how companies were floated. three men with their hats on the back of their heads converse for ten minutes. to these enters a fourth with a pocket-book. then all four dive into the hong-kong hotel for material wherewith to float themselves and--there is your company! "from these things," said the _taipan_, "comes the wealth of hong-kong. every notion here pays, from the dairy-farm upwards. we have passed through our bad times and come to the fat years." he told me tales of the old times--pityingly because he knew i could not understand. all i could tell was that the place dressed by america--from the hair-cutters' saloons to the liquor-bars. the faces of men were turned to the golden gate even while they floated most of the singapur companies. there is not sufficient push in singapur alone, so hong-kong helps. circulars of new companies lay on the bank counters. i moved amid a maze of interests that i could not comprehend, and spoke to men whose minds were at hankow, foochoo, amoy, or even further--beyond the yangtze gorges where the englishman trades. after a while i escaped from the company-floaters because i knew i could not understand them, and ran up a hill. hong-kong is all hill except when the fog shuts out everything except the sea. tree ferns sprouted on the ground and azaleas mixed with the ferns, and there were bamboos over all. consequently it was only natural that i should find a tramway that stood on its head and waved its feet in the mist. they called it the victoria gap tramway and hauled it up with a rope. it ran up a hill into space at an angle of °, and to those who have seen the rigi, mount washington, a switchback railway, and the like would not have been impressive. but neither you nor i have ever been hauled from annandale to the chaura maidàn in a bee-line with a five-hundred-foot drop on the off-side, and we are at liberty to marvel. it is not proper to run up inclined ways at the tail of a string, more especially when you cannot see two yards in front of you and all earth below is a swirling cauldron of mist. nor, unless you are warned of the opticalness of the delusion, is it nice to see from your seat, houses and trees at magic-lantern angles. such things, before tiffin, are worse than the long roll of the china seas. they turned me out twelve hundred feet above the city on the military road to dalhousie, as it will be when india has a surplus. then they brought me a glorified dandy which, not knowing any better, they called a chair. except that it is too long to run corners easily, a chair is vastly superior to a dandy. it is more like a bombay side _tonjon_--the kind we use at mahableshwar. you sit in a wicker chair, slung low on ten feet of elastic wooden shafting, and there are light blinds against the rain. "we are now," said the professor, as he wrung out his hat gemmed with the dews of the driving mist, "we are now on a pleasure trip. this is the road to chakrata in the rains." "nay," said i; "it is from solon to kasauli that we are going. look at the black rocks." "bosh!" said the professor. "this is a civilised country. look at the road, look at the railings--look at the gutters." and as i hope never to go to solon again, the road was cemented, the railings were of iron mortised into granite blocks, and the gutters were paved. 'twas no wider than a hill-path, but if it had been the viceroy's pet promenade it could not have been better kept. there was no view. that was why the professor had taken his camera. we passed coolies widening the road, and houses shut up and deserted, solid squat little houses made of stone, with pretty names after our hill-station custom--townend, craggylands, and the like--and at these things my heart burned within me. hong-kong has no right to mix itself up with mussoorie in this fashion. we came to the meeting-place of the winds, eighteen hundred feet above all the world, and saw forty miles of clouds. that was the peak--the great view-place of the island. a laundry on a washing day would have been more interesting. "let us go down, professor," said i, "and we'll get our money back. this isn't a view." we descended by the marvellous tramway, each pretending to be as little upset as the other, and started in pursuit of a chinese burying-ground. "go to the happy valley," said an expert. "the happy valley, where the racecourse and the cemeteries are." "it's mussoorie," said the professor. "i knew it all along." it was mussoorie, though we had to go through a half-mile of portsmouth hard first. soldiers grinned at us from the verandahs of their most solid three-storied barracks; all the blue-jackets of all the china squadron were congregated in the royal navy seaman's club, and they beamed upon us. the bluejacket is a beautiful creature, and very healthy, but ... i gave my heart to thomas atkins long ago, and him i love. by the way, how is it that a highland regiment--the argyll and southerlandshire for instance--get such good recruits? do the kilt and sporran bring in brawny youngsters of five-foot nine, and thirty-nine inch round the chest? the navy draws well-built men also. how is it that our infantry regiments fare so badly? we came to the happy valley by way of a monument to certain dead englishmen. such things cease to move emotion after a little while. they are but the seed of the great harvest whereof our children's children shall assuredly reap the fruits. the men were killed in a fight, or by disease. we hold hong-kong, and by our strength and wisdom it is a great city, built upon a rock, and furnished with a dear little seven-furlong racecourse set in the hills, and fringed as to one side with the homes of the dead--mahometan, christian, and parsee. a wall of bamboos shuts off the course and the grand-stand from the cemeteries. it may be good enough for hong-kong, but would you care to watch your pony running with a grim reminder of "gone to the drawer" not fifty feet behind you? very beautiful are the cemeteries, and very carefully tended. the rocky hillside rises so near to them that the more recent dead can almost command a view of the racing as they lie. even this far from the strife of the churches they bury the different sects of christians apart. one creed paints its wall white, and the other blue. the latter, as close to the race-stand as may be, writes in straggling letters, "_hodie mihi cras tibi._" no, i should _not_ care to race in hong-kong. the scornful assemblage behind the grand-stand would be enough to ruin any luck. chinamen do not approve of showing their cemeteries. we hunted ours from ledge to ledge of the hillsides, through crops and woods and crops again, till we came to a village of black and white pigs and riven red rocks beyond which the dead lay. it was a third-rate place, but was pretty. i have studied that oilskin mystery, the chinaman, for at least five days, and why he should elect to be buried in good scenery, and by what means he knows good scenery when he sees it, i cannot fathom. but he gets it when the sight is taken from him, and his friends fire crackers above him in token of the triumph. that night i dined with the _taipan_ in a palace. they say the merchant prince of calcutta is dead--killed by exchange. hong-kong ought to be able to supply one or two samples. the funny thing in the midst of all this wealth--wealth such as one reads about in novels--is to hear the curious deference that is paid to calcutta. console yourselves with that, gentlemen of the ditch, for by my faith, it is the one thing that you can boast of. at this dinner i learned that hong-kong was impregnable and that china was rapidly importing twelve and forty ton guns for the defence of her coasts. the one statement i doubted, but the other was truth. those who have occasion to speak of china in these parts do so deferentially, as who should say: "germany intends such and such," or "these are the views of russia." the very men who talk thus are doing their best to force upon the great empire all the stimulants of the west--railways, tram lines, and so forth. what will happen when china really wakes up, runs a line from shanghai to lhassa, starts another line of imperial yellow flag immigrant steamers, and really works and controls her own gun-factories and arsenals? the energetic englishmen who ship the forty-tonners are helping to this end, but all they say is: "we're well paid for what we do. there's no sentiment in business, and anyhow, china will never go to war with england." indeed, there is no sentiment in business. the _taipan's_ palace, full of all things beautiful, and flowers more lovely than the gem-like cabinets they adorned, would have made happy half a hundred young men craving for luxury, and might have made them writers, singers, and poets. it was inhabited by men with big heads and straight eyes, who sat among the splendours and talked business. if i were not going to be a burman when i die i would be a _taipan_ at hong-kong. he knows so much and he deals so largely with princes and powers, and he has a flag of his very own which he pins on to all his steamers. the blessed chance that looks after travellers sent me next day on a picnic, and all because i happened to wander into the wrong house. this is quite true, and very like our anglo-indian ways of doing things. "perhaps," said the hostess, "this will be our only fine day. let us spend it in a steam-launch." forthwith we embarked upon a new world--that of hong-kong harbour--and with a dramatic regard for the fitness of things our little ship was the _pioneer_. the picnic included the new general--he that came from england in the _nawab_ and told me about lord wolseley--and his aide-de-camp, who was quite english and altogether different from an indian officer. he never once talked shop, and if he had a grievance hid it behind his mustache. the harbour is a great world in itself. photographs say that it is lovely, and this i can believe from the glimpses caught through the mist as the _pioneer_ worked her way between the lines of junks, the tethered liners, the wallowing coal hulks, the trim, low-lying american corvette, the _orontes_, huge and ugly, the _cockchafer_, almost as small as its namesake, the ancient three-decker converted into a military hospital,--thomas gets change of air thus,--and a few hundred thousand sampans manned by women with babies tied on to their backs. then we swept down the sea face of the city and saw that it was great, till we came to an unfinished fort high up on the side of a green hill, and i watched the new general as men watch an oracle. have i told you that he is an engineer general, specially sent out to attend to the fortifications? he looked at the raw earth and the granite masonry, and there was keen professional interest in his eye. perhaps he would say something. i edged nearer in that hope. he did:-- "sherry and sandwiches? thanks, i will. 'stonishing how hungry the sea-air makes a man feel," quoth the general; and we went along under the grey-green coast, looking at stately country houses made of granite, where jesuit fathers and opulent merchants dwell. it was the mashobra of this simla. it was also the highlands, it was also devonshire, and it was specially grey and chilly. never did _pioneer_ circulate in stranger waters. on the one side was a bewildering multiplicity of islets; on the other, the deeply indented shores of the main island, sometimes running down to the sea in little sandy coves, at others falling sheer in cliff and sea-worn cave full of the boom of the breakers. behind, rose the hills into the mist, the everlasting mist. "we are going to aberdeen," said the hostess; "then to stanley, and then across the island on foot by way of the ti-tam reservoir. that will show you a lot of the country." we shot into a fiord and discovered a brown fishing village which kept sentry over two docks, and a sikh policeman. all the inhabitants were rosy-cheeked women, each owning one-third of a boat, and a whole baby, wrapped up in red cloth and tied to the back. the mother was dressed in blue for a reason,--if her husband whacked her over the shoulders, he would run a fair chance of crushing the baby's head unless the infant were of a distinct colour. then we left china altogether, and steamed into far lochaber, with a climate to correspond. good people under the punkah, think for a moment of cloud-veiled headlands running out into a steel-grey sea, crisped with a cheek-rasping breeze that makes you sit down under the bulwarks and gasp for breath. think of the merry pitch and roll of a small craft as it buzzes from island to island, or venturously cuts across the mouth of a mile-wide bay, while you mature amid fresh scenery, fresh talk, and fresh faces, an appetite that shall uphold the credit of the great empire in a strange land. once more we found a village which they called stanley; but it was different from aberdeen. tenantless buildings of brownstone stared seaward from the low downs, and there lay behind them a stretch of weather-beaten wall. no need to ask what these things meant. they cried aloud: "it is a deserted cantonment, and the population is in the cemetery." i asked, "what regiment?" "the ninety-second, i think," said the general. "but that was in the old times--in the sixties. i believe they quartered a lot of troops here and built the barracks on the ground; and the fever carried all the men off like flies. isn't it a desolate place?" my mind went back to a neglected graveyard a stone's throw from jehangir's tomb in the gardens of shalimar, where the cattle and the cowherd look after the last resting-places of the troops who first occupied lahore. we are a great people and very strong, but we build our empire in a wasteful manner--on the bones of the dead that have died of disease. "but about the fortifications, general? is it true that etc., etc.?" "the fortifications are right enough as things go; what we want is men." "how many?" "say about three thousand for the island--enough to stop any expedition that might come. look at all these little bays and coves. there are twenty places at the back of the island where you could land men and make things unpleasant for hong-kong." "but," i ventured, "isn't it the theory that any organised expedition ought to be stopped by our fleet before it got here? whereas the forts are supposed to prevent cutting out, shelling, and ransoming by a disconnected man-of-war or two." "if you go on that theory," said the general, "the men-of-war ought to be stopped by our fleets, too. that's all nonsense. if any power can throw troops here, you want troops to turn 'em out, and--don't we wish we may get them!" "and you? your command here is for five years, isn't it?" "oh, no! eighteen months ought to see me out. i don't want to stick here for ever. i've other notions for myself," said the general, scrambling over the boulders to get at his tiffin. and that is just the worst of it. here was a nice general helping to lay out fortifications, with one eye on hong-kong and the other, his right one, on england. he would be more than human not to sell himself and his orders for the command of a brigade in the next english affair. he would be afraid of being too long away from home lest he should drop out of the running and ... well, we are just the same in india, and there is not the least hope of raising a legion of the lost for colonial service--of men who would do their work in one place for ever and look for nothing beyond it. but remember that hong-kong--with five million tons of coal, five miles of shipping, docks, wharves, huge civil station, forty million pounds of trade, and the nicest picnic parties that you ever did see--wants three thousand men and--she won't get them. she has two batteries of garrison artillery, a regiment, and a lot of gun lascars--about enough to prevent the guns from rusting on their carriages. there are three forts on an island--stonecutter's island--between hong-kong and the mainland, three on hong-kong itself, and three or four scattered about elsewhere. naturally the full complement of guns has not arrived. even in india you cannot man forts without trained gunners. but tiffin under the lee of a rock was more interesting than colonial defence. a man cannot talk politics if he be empty. our one fine day shut in upon the empty plates in wind and rain, and the march across the island began. as the launch was blotted out in the haze we squelched past sugar-cane crops and fat pigs, past the bleak cemetery of dead soldiers on the hill, across a section of moor, till we struck a hill-road above the sea. the views shifted and changed like a kaleidoscope. first a shaggy shoulder of land tufted with dripping rushes and naught above, beneath, or around but mist and the straight spikes of the rain; then red road swept by water that fell into the unknown; then a combe, straight walled almost as a house, at the bottom of which crawled the jade-green sea; then a vista of a bay, a bank of white sand, and a red-sailed junk beating out before the squall; then only wet rock and fern, and the voice of thunder calling from peak to peak. a landward turn in the road brought us to the pine woods of theog and the rhododendrons--but they called them azaleas--of simla, and ever the rain fell as though it had been july in the hills instead of april at hong-kong. an invading army marching upon victoria would have a sad time of it even if the rain did not fall. there are but one or two gaps in the hills through which it could travel, and there is a scheme in preparation whereby they shall be cut off and annihilated when they come. when i had to climb a clay hill backwards digging my heels into the dirt, i very much pitied that invading army. whether the granite-faced reservoir and two-mile tunnel that supplies hong-kong with water be worth seeing i cannot tell. there was too much water in the air for comfort even when one tried to think of home. but go you and take the same walk--ten miles, and only two of 'em on level ground. steam to the forsaken cantonment of stanley and cross the island, and tell me whether you have seen anything so wild and wonderful in its way as the scenery. i am going up the river to canton, and cannot stay for word-paintings. no. x shows how i came to goblin market and took a scunner at it and cursed the chinese people. shows further how i initiated all hong-kong into our fraternity. providence is pleased to be sarcastic. it sent rain and a raw wind from the beginning till the end. that is one of the disadvantages of leaving india. you cut yourself adrift, from the only trustworthy climate in the world. i despise a land that has to waste half its time in watching the clouds. the canton trip (i have been that way) introduces you to the american river steamer, which is not in the least like one of the irrawaddy flotilla or an omnibus, as many people believe. it is composed almost entirely of white paint, sheet-lead, a cow-horn, and a walking-beam, and holds about as much cargo as a p. and o. the trade between canton and hong-kong seems to be immense, and a steamer covers the ninety miles between port and port daily. none the less are the chinese passengers daily put under hatches or its equivalent after they leave port, and daily is the stand of loaded sniders in the cabin inspected and cleaned up. daily, too, i should imagine, the captain of each boat tells his globe-trotting passengers the venerable story of the looting of a river steamer--how two junks fouled her at a convenient bend in the river, while the native passengers on her rose and made things very lively for the crew, and ended by clearing out that steamer. the chinese are a strange people! they had a difficulty at hong-kong not very long ago about photographing labour coolies, and in the excitement, which was considerable, a rickety old war junk got into position off the bund with the avowed intention of putting a three-pound shot through the windows of the firm who had suggested the photographing. and this though vessel and crew could have been blown in cigarette-ash in ten minutes! but no one pirated the _ho-nam_, though the passengers did their best to set her on fire by upsetting the lamps of their opium pipes. she blared her unwieldy way across the packed shipping of the harbour and ran into grey mist and driving rain. when i say that the scenery was like the west highlands you will by this time understand what i mean. large screw steamers, china pig-boats very low in the water and choked with live-stock, wallowing junks and ducking sampans filled the waterways of a stream as broad as the hughli and much better defended so far as the art of man was concerned. their little difficulty with the french a few years ago has taught the chinese a great many things which, perhaps, it were better for us that they had left alone. the first striking object of canton city is the double tower of the big catholic church. take off your hat to this because it means a great deal, and stands as the visible standard of a battle that has yet to be fought. never have the missionaries of the mother of the churches wrestled so mightily with any land as with china, and never has nation so scientifically tortured the missionary as has china. perhaps when the books are audited somewhere else, each race, the white and the yellow, will be found to have been right according to their lights. i had taken one fair look at the city from the steamer, and threw up my cards. "i can't describe this place, and besides, i hate chinamen." "bosh! it is only benares, magnified about eight times. come along." it was benares, without any wide streets or chauks, and yet darker than benares, in that the little skyline was entirely blocked by tier on tier of hanging signs,--red, gold, black, and white. the shops stood on granite plinths, pukka brick above, and tile-roofed. their fronts were carved wood, gilt, and coloured savagely. john knows how to dress a shop, though he may sell nothing more lovely than smashed fowl and chitterlings. every other shop was a restaurant, and the space between them crammed with humanity. do you know those horrible sponges full of worms that grow in warm seas? you break off a piece of it and the worms break too. canton was that sponge. "hi, low yah. to hoh wang!" yelled the chair-bearers to the crowd, but i was afraid that if the poles chipped the corner of a house the very bricks would begin to bleed. hong-kong showed me how the chinaman could work. canton explained why he set no value on life. the article was cheaper than in india. i hated the chinaman before; i hated him doubly as i choked for breath in his seething streets where nothing short of the pestilence could clear a way. there was of course no incivility from the people, but the mere mob was terrifying. there are three or four places in the world where it is best for an englishman to agree with his adversary swiftly, whatever the latter's nationality may be. canton heads the list. never argue with anybody in canton. let the guide do it for you. then the stinks rose up and overwhelmed us. in this respect canton was benares twenty times magnified. the hindu is a sanitating saint compared to the chinaman. he is a rigid malthusian in the same regard. "very bad stink, this place. you come right along," said ah cum, who had learned his english from americans. he was very kind. he showed me feather-jewellery shops where men sat pinching from the gorgeous wings of jays, tiny squares of blue and lilac feathers, and pasting them into gold settings, so that the whole looked like jeypore enamel of the rarest. but we went into a shop. ah cum drew us inside the big door and bolted it, while the crowd blocked up the windows and shutter-bars. i thought more of the crowd than the jewellery. the city was so dark and the people were so very many and so unhuman. the march of the mongol is a pretty thing to write about in magazines. hear it once in the gloom of an ancient curio shop, where nameless devils of the chinese creed make mouths at you from back-shelves, where brazen dragons, revelations of uncleanliness, all catch your feet as you stumble across the floor--hear the tramp of the feet on the granite blocks of the road and the breaking wave of human speech, that is not human! "watch the yellow faces that glare at you between the bars, and you will be afraid, as i was afraid. "it's beautiful work," said the professor, bending over a cantonese petticoat--a wonder of pale green, blue, and silver. "now i understand why the civilised european of irish extraction kills the chinaman in america. it is justifiable to kill him. it would be quite right to wipe the city of canton off the face of the earth, and to exterminate all the people who ran away from the shelling. the chinaman ought not to count." i had gone off on my own train of thought, and it was a black and bitter one. "why on earth can't you look at the lions and enjoy yourself, and leave politics to the men who pretend to understand 'em?" said the professor. "it's no question of politics," i replied. "this people ought to be killed off because they are unlike any people i ever met before. look at their faces. they despise us. you can see it, and they aren't a bit afraid of us either." then ah cum took us by ways that were dark to the temple of the five hundred genii, which was one of the sights of the rabbit-warren. this was a buddhist temple with the usual accessories of altars and altar lights and colossal figures of doorkeepers at the gates. round the inner court runs a corridor lined on both sides with figures about half life-size, representing most of the races of asia. several of the jesuit fathers are said to be in that gallery,--you can find it all in the guide-books,--and there is one image of a jolly-looking soul in a hat and full beard, but, like the others, naked to the waist. "that european gentleman," said ah cum. "that marco polo." "make the most of him," i said. "the time is coming when there will be no european gentlemen--nothing but yellow people with black hearts--black hearts, ah cum--and a devil-born capacity for doing more work than they ought." "come and see a clock," said he. "old clock. it runs by water. come on right along." he took us to another temple and showed us an old water-clock of four _gurrahs_: just the same sort of thing as they have in out-of-the-way parts of india for the use of the watchmen. the professor vows that the machine, which is supposed to give the time to the city, is regulated by the bells of the steamers in the river, canton water being too thick to run through anything smaller than a half-inch pipe. from the pagoda of this temple we could see that the roofs of all the houses below were covered with filled water-jars. there is no sort of fire organisation in the city. when lighted it burns till it stops. ah cum led us to the potter's field, where the executions take place. the chinese slay by the hundred, and far be it from me to say that such generosity of bloodshed is cruel. they could afford to execute in canton alone at the rate of ten thousand a year without disturbing the steady flow of population. an executioner who happened to be wandering about--perhaps in search of employment--offered us a sword under guarantee that it had cut off many heads. "keep it," i said. "keep it, and let the good work go on. my friend, you cannot execute too freely in this land. you are blessed, i apprehend, with a purely literary bureaucracy recruited--correct me if i am wrong--from all social strata, more especially those in which the idea of cold-blooded cruelty has, as it were, become embedded. now, when to inherited devildom is superadded a purely literary education of grim and formal tendencies, the result, my evil-looking friend,--the result, i repeat,--is a state of affairs which is faintly indicated in the little pilgrim's account of the hell of selfishness. you, i presume, have not yet read the works of the little pilgrim." "he looks as if he was going to cut at you with that sword," said the professor. "come away and see the temple of horrors." that was a sort of chinese madame tussaud's--life-like models of men being brayed in mortars, sliced, fried, toasted, stuffed, and variously bedevilled--that made me sick and unhappy. but the chinese are merciful even in their tortures. when a man is ground in a mill, he is, according to the models, popped in head first. this is hard on the crowd who are waiting to see the fun, but it saves trouble to the executioners. a half-ground man has to be carefully watched, or else he wriggles out of his place. to crown all, we went to the prison, which was a pest-house in a back street. the professor shuddered. "it's all right," i said. "the people who sent the prisoners here don't care. the men themselves look hideously miserable, but i suppose they don't care, and goodness knows i don't care. they are only chinamen. if they treat each other like dogs, why should we regard 'em as human beings? let 'em rot. i want to get back to the steamer. i want to get under the guns of hong-kong. phew!" then we ran through a succession of second-rate streets and houses till we reached the city wall on the west by a long flight of steps. it was clean here. the wall had a drop of thirty or forty feet to paddy fields. beyond these were a semicircle of hills, every square yard of which is planted out with graves. her dead watch canton the abominable, and the dead are more than the myriads living. on the grass-grown top of the wall were rusty english guns spiked and abandoned after the war. they ought not to be there. a five-storied pagoda gave us a view of the city, but i was wearied of these rats in their pit--wearied and scared and sullen. the excellent ah cum led us to the viceroy's summer garden-house on the cityward slope of an azalea-covered hill surrounded by cotton trees. the basement, was a handsome joss house: upstairs was a durbar-hall with glazed verandahs and ebony furniture ranged across the room in four straight lines. it was only an oasis of cleanliness. ten minutes later we were back in the swarming city, cut off from light and sweet air. once or twice we met a mandarin with thin official mustache and "little red button a-top." ah cum was explaining the nature and properties of a mandarin when we came to a canal spanned by an english bridge and closed by an iron gate, which was in charge of a hong-kong policeman. we were in an indian station with europe shops and parsee shops and everything else to match. this was english canton, with two hundred and fifty sahibs in it. 'twould have been better for a gatling behind the bridge gate. the guide-books tell you that it was taken from the chinese by the treaty of , the french getting a similar slice of territory. owing to the binding power of french officialism, "la concession française" has never been let or sold to private individuals, and now a chinese regiment squats on it. the men who travel tell you somewhat similar tales about land in saigon and cambodia. something seems to attack a frenchman as soon as he dons a colonial uniform. let us call it the red-tape-worm. "now where did you go and what did you see?" said the professor, in the style of the pedagogue, when we were once more on the _ho-nam_ and returning as fast as steam could carry us to hong-kong. "a big blue sink of a city full of tunnels, all dark and inhabited by yellow devils, a city that doré ought to have seen. i'm devoutly thankful that i'm never going back there. the mongol will begin to march in his own good time. i intend to wait until he marches up to me. let us go away to japan by the next boat." the professor says that i have completely spoiled the foregoing account by what he calls "intemperate libels on a hard-working nation." he did not see canton as i saw it--through the medium of a fevered imagination. once, before i got away, i climbed to the civil station of hong-kong, which overlooks the town. there in sumptuous stone villas built on the edge of the cliff and facing shaded roads, in a wilderness of beautiful flowers and a hushed calm unvexed even by the roar of the traffic below, the residents do their best to imitate the life of an india up-country station. they are better off than we are. at the bandstand the ladies dress all in one piece--shoes, gloves, and umbrellas come out from england with the dress, and every _memsahib_ knows what that means--but the mechanism of their life is much the same. in one point they are superior. the ladies have a club of their very own to which, i believe, men are only allowed to come on sufferance. at a dance there are about twenty men to one lady, and there are practically no spinsters in the island. the inhabitants complain of being cooped in and shut up. they look at the sea below them and they long to get away. they have their "at homes" on regular days of the week, and everybody meets everybody else again and again. they have amateur theatricals and they quarrel and all the men and women take sides, and the station is cleaved asunder from the top to the bottom. then they become reconciled and write to the local papers condemning the local critic's criticism. isn't it touching? a lady told me these things one afternoon, and i nearly wept from sheer home-sickness. "and then, you know, after she had said _that_ he was obliged to give the part to the other, and that made _them_ furious, and the races were so near that nothing could be done, and mrs. ---- said that it was altogether impossible. you understand how very unpleasant it must have been, do you not?" "madam," said i, "i do. i have been there before. my heart goes out to hong-kong. in the name of the great indian mofussil i salute you. henceforward hong-kong is one of us, ranking before meerut, but after allahabad, at all public ceremonies and parades." i think she fancied i had sunstroke; but you at any rate will know what i mean. we do not laugh any more on the p. and o. s. s. _ancona_ on the way to japan. we are deathly sick, because there is a cross-sea beneath us and a wet sail above. the sail is to steady the ship who refuses to be steadied. she is full of globe-trotters who also refuse to be steadied. a globe-trotter is extreme cosmopolitan. he will be sick anywhere. no. xi of japan at ten hours' sight, containing a complete account of the manners and customs of its people, a history of its constitution, products, art, and civilisation, and omitting a meal in a tea-house with o-toyo. "thou canst not wave thy staff in air or dip thy paddle in the lake, but it carves the bow of beauty there, and ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."--_emerson._ this morning, after the sorrows of the rolling night, my cabin porthole showed me two great grey rocks studded and streaked with green and crowned by two stunted blue-black pines. below the rocks a boat, that might have been carved sandal wood for colour and delicacy, was shaking out an ivory-white frilled sail to the wind of the morning. an indigo-blue boy with an old ivory face hauled on a rope. rock and tree and boat made a panel from a japanese screen, and i saw that the land was not a lie. this "good brown earth" of ours has many pleasures to offer her children, but there be few in her gift comparable to the joy of touching a new country, a completely strange race, and manners contrary. though libraries may have been written aforetime, each new beholder is to himself another cortez. and i was in japan--the japan of cabinets and joinery, gracious folk and fair manners. japan, whence the camphor and the lacquer and the shark-skin swords come: among what was it the books said?--a nation of artists. to be sure, we should only stop at nagasaki for twelve hours ere going on to kobé, but in twelve hours one can pack away a very fair collection of new experiences. an execrable man met me on the deck, with a pale-blue pamphlet fifty pages thick. "have you," said he, "seen the constitution of japan? the emperor made it himself only the other day. it is on entirely european lines." i took the pamphlet and found a complete paper constitution stamped with the imperial chrysanthemum--an excellent little scheme of representation, reforms, payment of members, budget estimates, and legislation. it is a terrible thing to study at close quarters, because it is so pitifully english. there was a yellow-shot greenness upon the hills round nagasaki different, so my willing mind was disposed to believe, from the green of other lands. it was the green of a japanese screen, and the pines were screen pines. the city itself hardly showed from the crowded harbour. it lay low among the hills, and its business face--a grimy bund--was sloppy and deserted. business, i was rejoiced to learn, was at a low ebb in nagasaki. the japanese should have no concern with business. close to one of the still wharves lay a ship of the bad people; a russian steamer down from vladivostok. her decks were cumbered with raffle of all kinds; her rigging was as frowsy and draggled as the hair of a lodging-house slavey, and her sides were filthy. "that," said a man of my people, "is a very fair specimen of a russian. you should see their men-of-war; they are just as filthy. some of 'em come into nagasaki to clean." it was a small piece of information and perhaps untrue, but it put the roof to my good humour as i stepped on to the bund and was told in faultless english by a young gentleman, with a plated chrysanthemum in his forage cap and badly fitting german uniform on his limbs, that he did not understand my language. he was a japanese customs official. had our stay been longer, i would have wept over him because he was a hybrid--partly french, partly german, and partly american--a tribute to civilisation. all the japanese officials from police upwards seem to be clad in europe clothes, and never do those clothes fit. i think the mikado made them at the same time as the constitution. they will come right in time. when the 'rickshaw, drawn by a beautiful apple-cheeked young man with a basque face, shot me into the _mikado_, first act, i did not stop and shout with delight, because the dignity of india was in my keeping. i lay back on the velvet cushions and grinned luxuriously at pittising, with her sash and three giant hair-pins in her blue-black hair, and three-inch clogs on her feet. she laughed--even as did the burmese girl in the old pagoda at moulmein. and her laugh, the laugh of a lady, was my welcome to japan. can the people help laughing? i think not. you see they have such thousands of children in their streets that the elders must perforce be young lest the babes should grieve. nagasaki is inhabited entirely by children. the grown-ups exist on sufferance. a four-foot child walks with a three-foot child, who is holding the hand of a two-foot child, who carries on her back a one-foot child, who--but you will not believe me if i say that the scale runs down to six-inch little jap dolls such as they used to sell in the burlington arcade. these dolls wriggle and laugh. they are tied up in a blue bed-gown which is tied by a sash, which again ties up the bed-gown of the carrier. thus if you untie that sash, baby and but little bigger brother are at once perfectly naked. i saw a mother do this, and it was for all the world like the peeling of hard-boiled eggs. if you look for extravagance of colour, for flaming shop fronts and glaring lanterns, you shall find none of these things in the narrow stone-paved streets of nagasaki. but if you desire details of house construction, glimpses of perfect cleanliness, rare taste, and perfect subordination of the thing made to the needs of the maker, you shall find all you seek and more. all the roofs are dull lead colour, being shingled or tiled, and all the house fronts are of the colour of the wood as god made it. there is neither smoke nor haze, and in the clear light of a clouded sky i could see down the narrowest alleyway as into the interior of a cabinet. the books have long ago told you how a japanese house is constructed, chiefly of sliding screens and paper partitions, and everybody knows the story of the burglar of tokio who burgled with a pair of scissors for jimmy and centrebit and stole the consul's trousers. but all the telling in print will never make you understand the exquisite finish of a tenement that you could kick in with your foot and pound to match-wood with your fists. behold a _bunnia's_[ ] shop. he sells rice and chillies and dried fish and wooden scoops made of bamboo. the front of his shop is very solid. it is made of half-inch battens nailed side by side. not one of the battens is broken; and each one is foursquare perfectly. feeling ashamed of himself for this surly barring up of his house, he fills one-half the frontage with oiled paper stretched upon quarter-inch framing. not a single square of oil paper has a hole in it, and not one of the squares, which in more uncivilised countries would hold a pane of glass if strong enough, is out of line. and the _bunnia_, clothed in a blue dressing-gown, with thick white stockings on his feet, sits behind, not among his wares, on a pale gold-coloured mat of soft rice straw bound with black list at the edges. this mat is two inches thick, three feet wide and six long. you might, if you were a sufficient pig, eat your dinner off any portion of it. the _bunnia_ lies with one wadded blue arm round a big brazier of hammered brass on which is faintly delineated in incised lines a very terrible dragon. the brazier is full of charcoal ash, but there is no ash on the mat. by the _bunnia's_ side is a pouch of green leather tied with a red silk cord, holding tobacco cut fine as cotton. he fills a long black and red lacquered pipe, lights it at the charcoal in the brazier, takes two whiffs, and the pipe is empty. still there is no speck on the mat. behind the _bunnia_ is a shadow-screen of bead and bamboo. this veils a room floored with pale gold and roofed with panels of grained cedar. there is nothing in the room save a blood-red blanket laid out smoothly as a sheet of paper. beyond the room is a passage of polished wood, so polished that it gives back the reflections of the white paper wall. at the end of the passage and clearly visible to this unique _bunnia_ is a dwarfed pine two feet high in a green glazed pot, and by its side is a branch of azalea, blood red as the blanket, set in a pale grey crackle-pot. the _bunnia_ has put it there for his own pleasure, for the delight of his eyes, because he loves it. the white man has nothing whatever to do with his tastes, and he keeps his house specklessly pure because he likes cleanliness and knows it is artistic. what shall we say to such a _bunnia_? [ ] grain-dealer's. his brother in northern india may live behind a front of time-blackened open-work wood, but ... i do not think he would grow anything save _tulsi_[ ] in a pot, and that only to please the gods and his womenfolk. [ ] a sacred herb of the hindus. let us not compare the two men, but go on through nagasaki. except for the horrible policemen who insist on being continental, the people--the common people, that is--do not run after unseemly costumes of the west. the young men wear round felt hats, occasionally coats and trousers, and semi-occasionally boots. all these are vile. in the more metropolitan towns men say western dress is rather the rule than the exception. if this be so, i am disposed to conclude that the sins of their forefathers in making enterprising jesuit missionaries into beefsteak have been visited on the japanese in the shape of a partial obscuration of their artistic instincts. yet the punishment seems rather too heavy for the offence. then i fell admiring the bloom on the people's cheeks, the three-cornered smiles of the fat babes, and the surpassing "otherness" of everything round me. it is so strange to be in a clean land, and stranger to walk among doll's houses. japan is a soothing place for a small man. nobody comes to tower over him, and he looks down upon all the women, as is right and proper. a dealer in curiosities bent himself double on his own door-mat, and i passed in, feeling for the first time that i was a barbarian, and no true sahib. the slush of the streets was thick on my boots, and he, the immaculate owner, asked me to walk across a polished floor and white mats to an inner chamber. he brought me a foot-mat, which only made matters worse, for a pretty girl giggled round the corner as i toiled at it. japanese shopkeepers ought not to be so clean. i went into a boarded passage about two feet wide, found a gem of a garden of dwarfed trees, in the space of half a tennis court, whacked my head on a fragile lintel, and arrived at a four-walled daintiness where i involuntarily lowered my voice. do you recollect mrs. molesworth's _cuckoo clock_, and the big cabinet that griselda entered with the cuckoo? i was not griselda, but my low-voiced friend, in his long, soft wraps, was the cuckoo, and the room was the cabinet. again i tried to console myself with the thought that i could kick the place to pieces; but this only made me feel large and coarse and dirty,--a most unfavourable mood for bargaining. the cuckoo-man caused pale tea to be brought,--just such tea as you read of in books of travel,--and the tea completed my embarrassment. what i wanted to say was, "look here, you person. you're much too clean and refined for this life here below, and your house is unfit for a man to live in until he has been taught a lot of things which i have never learned. consequently i hate you because i feel myself your inferior, and you despise me and my boots because you know me for a savage. let me go, or i'll pull your house of cedar-wood over your ears." what i really said was, "oh, ah yes. awf'ly pretty. awful queer way of doing business." the cuckoo-man proved to be a horrid extortioner; but i was hot and uncomfortable till i got outside, and was a bog-trotting briton once more. you have never blundered into the inside of a three-hundred-dollar cabinet, therefore you will not understand me. we came to the foot of a hill, as it might have been the hill on which the shway dagon stands, and up that hill ran a mighty flight of grey, weather-darkened steps, spanned here and there by monolithic _torii_. every one knows what a _torii_ is. they have them in southern india. a great king makes a note of the place where he intends to build a huge arch, but being a king does so in stone, not ink--sketches in the air two beams and a cross-bar, forty or sixty feet high, and twenty or thirty wide. in southern india the cross-bar is humped in the middle. in the further east it flares up at the ends. this description is hardly according to the books, but if a man begins by consulting books in a new country he is lost. over the steps hung heavy blue-green or green-black pines, old, gnarled, and bossed. the foliage of the hillside was a lighter green, but the pines set the keynote of colour, and the blue dresses of the few folk on the steps answered it. there was no sunshine in the air, but i vow that sunshine would have spoilt all. we climb for five minutes,--i and the professor and the camera,--and then we turned, and saw the roofs of nagasaki lying at our feet--a sea of lead and dull-brown, with here and there a smudge of creamy pink to mark the bloom of the cherry trees. the hills round the town were speckled with the resting-places of the dead, with clumps of pine and feathery bamboo. "what a country!" said the professor, unstrapping his camera. "and have you noticed, wherever we go there's always some man who knows how to carry my kit? the _gharri_ driver at moulmein handed me my stops; the fellow at penang knew all about it, too; and the 'rickshaw coolie has seen a camera before. curious, isn't it?" "professor," said i, "it's due to the extraordinary fact that we are not the only people in the world. i began to realise it at hong-kong. it's getting plainer now. i shouldn't be surprised if we turned out to be ordinary human beings, after all." we entered a courtyard where an evil-looking bronze horse stared at two stone lions, and a company of children babbled among themselves. there is a legend connected with the bronze horse, which may be found in the guide-books. but the real true story of the creature is that he was made long ago out of the fossil ivory of siberia by a japanese prometheus, and got life and many foals, whose descendants closely resemble their father. long years have almost eliminated the ivory in the blood, but it crops out in creamy mane and tail; and the pot-belly and marvellous feet of the bronze horse may be found to this day among the pack-ponies of nagasaki, who carry pack-saddles adorned with velvet and red cloth, who wear grass shoes on their hind feet, and who are made like to horses in a pantomime. we could not go beyond this courtyard because a label said, "no admittance," and thus all we saw of the temple was rich-brown high roofs of blackened thatch, breaking back and back in wave and undulation till they were lost in the foliage. the japanese can play with thatch as men play with modelling clay, but how their light underpinnings can carry the weight of the roof is a mystery to the lay eye. we went down the steps to tiffin, and a half-formed resolve was shaping itself in my heart the while. burma was a very nice place, but they eat _gnapi_ there, and there were smells, and after all, the girls weren't so pretty as some others-- "you must take off your boots," said y-tokai. i assure you there is no dignity in sitting down on the steps of a tea-house and struggling with muddy boots. and it is impossible to be polite in your stockinged feet when the floor under you is as smooth as glass and a pretty girl wants to know where you would like tiffin. take at least one pair of beautiful socks with you when you come this way. get them made of embroidered _sambhur_ skin, of silk if you like; but do not stand as i did in cheap striped brown things with a darn at the heel, and try to talk to a tea-girl. they led us--three of them and all fresh and pretty--into a room furnished with a golden-brown bearskin. the _tokonoma_, recess aforementioned, held one scroll-picture of bats wheeling in the twilight, a bamboo flower-holder, and yellow flowers. the ceiling was of panelled wood, with the exception of one strip at the side nearest the window, and this was made of plaited shavings of cedar-wood, marked off from the rest of the ceiling by a wine-brown bamboo so polished that it might have been lacquered. a touch of the hand sent one side of the room flying back, and we entered a really large room with another _tokonoma_ framed on one side by eight or ten feet of an unknown wood, bearing the same grain as a penang lawyer, and above by a stick of unbarked tree set there purely because it was curiously mottled. in this second _tokonoma_ was a pearl-grey vase, and that was all. two sides of the room were of oiled paper, and the joints of the beams were covered by the brazen images of crabs, half life-size. save for the sill of the _tokonoma_, which was black lacquer, every inch of wood in the place was natural grain without flaw. outside was the garden, fringed with a hedge of dwarf-pines and adorned with a tiny pond, water-smoothed stones sunk in the soil, and a blossoming cherry tree. they left us alone in this paradise of cleanliness and beauty, and being only a shameless englishman without his boots--a white man is always degraded when he goes barefoot--i wandered round the wall, trying all the screens. it was only when i stooped to examine the sunk catch of a screen that i saw it was a plaque of inlay work representing two white cranes feeding on fish. the whole was about three inches square and in the ordinary course of events would never be looked at. the screens hid a cupboard in which all the lamps and candlesticks and pillows and sleeping-bags of the household seemed to be stored. an oriental nation that can fill a cupboard tidily is a nation to bow down to. upstairs i went by a staircase of grained wood and lacquer, into rooms of rarest device with circular windows that opened on nothing, and so were filled with bamboo tracery for the delight of the eye. the passages floored with dark wood shone like ice, and i was ashamed. "professor," said i, "they don't spit; they don't eat like pigs; they can't quarrel, and a drunken man would reel straight through every portion in the house and roll down the hill into nagasaki. they can't have any children." here i stopped. downstairs was full of babies. the maidens came in with tea in blue china and cake in a red lacquered bowl--such cake as one gets at one or two houses in simla. we sprawled ungracefully on red rugs over the mats, and they gave us chopsticks to separate the cake with. it was a long task. "is that all?" growled the professor. "i'm hungry, and cake and tea oughtn't to come till four o'clock." here he took a wedge of cake furtively with his hands. they returned--five of them this time--with black lacquer stands a foot square and four inches high. those were our tables. they bore a red lacquered bowlful of fish boiled in brine, and sea-anemones. at least they were not mushrooms. a paper napkin tied with gold thread enclosed our chopsticks; and in a little flat saucer lay a smoked crayfish, a slice of a compromise that looked like yorkshire pudding and tasted like sweet omelette, and a twisted fragment of some translucent thing that had once been alive but was now pickled. they went away, but not empty handed, for thou, oh, o-toyo, didst take away my heart--same which i gave to the burmese girl in the shway dagon pagoda! the professor opened his eyes a little, but said no word. the chopsticks demanded all his attention, and the return of the girls took up the rest. o-toyo, ebon-haired, rosy-cheeked, and made throughout of delicate porcelain, laughed at me because i devoured all the mustard sauce that had been served with my raw fish, and wept copiously till she gave me _saki_ from a lordly bottle about four inches high. if you took some very thin hock, and tried to mull it and forgot all about the brew till it was half cold, you would get _saki_. i had mine in a saucer so tiny that i was bold to have it filled eight or ten times and loved o-toyo none the less at the end. after raw fish and mustard sauce came some other sort of fish cooked with pickled radishes, and very slippery on the chopsticks. the girls knelt in a semicircle and shrieked with delight at the professor's clumsiness, for indeed it was not i that nearly upset the dinner table in a vain attempt to recline gracefully. after the bamboo-shoots came a basin of white beans in sweet sauce--very tasty indeed. try to convey beans to your mouth with a pair of wooden knitting-needles and see what happens. some chicken cunningly boiled with turnips, and a bowlful of snow-white boneless fish and a pile of rice, concluded the meal. i have forgotten one or two of the courses, but when o-toyo handed me the tiny lacquered japanese pipe full of hay-like tobacco, i counted nine dishes in the lacquer stand--each dish representing a course. then o-toyo and i smoked by alternate pipefuls. my very respectable friends at all the clubs and messes, have you ever after a good tiffin lolled on cushions and smoked, with one pretty girl to fill your pipe and four to admire you in an unknown tongue? you do not know what life is. i looked round me at that faultless room, at the dwarf pines and creamy cherry blossoms without, at o-toyo bubbling with laughter because i blew smoke through my nose, and at the ring of _mikado_ maidens over against the golden-brown bearskin rug. here was colour, form, food, comfort, and beauty enough for half a year's contemplation. i would not be a burman any more. i would be a japanese--always with o-toyo--in a cabinet workhouse on a camphor-scented hillside. "heigho!" said the professor. "there are worse places than this to live and die in. d'you know our steamer goes at four? let's ask for the bill and get away." now i have left my heart with o-toyo under the pines. perhaps i shall get it back at kobé. no. xii a further consideration of japan. the inland sea, and good cookery. the mystery of passports and consulates, and certain other matters. "rome! rome! wasn't that the place where i got the good cigars?" --_memoirs of a traveller._ alas for the incompleteness of the written word! there was so much more that i meant to tell you about nagasaki and the funeral procession that i found in her streets. you ought to have read about the wailing women in white who followed the dead man shut up in a wooden sedan chair that rocked on the shoulders of the bearers, while the bronze-hued buddhist priest tramped on ahead, and the little boys ran alongside. i had prepared in my mind moral reflections, purviews of political situations, and a complete essay on the future of japan. now i have forgotten everything except o-toyo in the tea-garden. from nagasaki we--the p. and o. steamer--are going to kobé by way of the inland sea. that is to say, we have for the last twenty hours been steaming through a huge lake, studded as far as the eye can reach with islands of every size, from four miles long and two wide to little cocked-hat hummocks no bigger than a decent hayrick. messrs. cook and son charge about one hundred rupees extra for the run through this part of the world, but they do not know how to farm the beauties of nature. under any skies the islands--purple, amber, grey, green, and black--are worth five times the money asked. i have been sitting for the last half-hour among a knot of whooping tourists, wondering how i could give you a notion of them. the tourists, of course, are indescribable. they say, "oh my!" at thirty-second intervals, and at the end of five minutes call one to another: "sa-ay, don't you think it's vurry much the same all along?" then they play cricket with a broomstick till an unusually fair prospect makes them stop and shout "oh my!" again. if there were a few more oaks and pines on the islands, the run would be three hundred miles of naini tal lake. but we are not near naini tal; for as the big ship drives down the alleys of water, i can see the heads of the breakers flying ten feet up the side of the echoing cliffs, albeit the sea is dead-still. now we have come to a stretch so densely populated with islands that all looks solid ground. we are running through broken water thrown up by the race of the tide round an outlying reef, and apparently are going to hit an acre of solid rock. somebody on the bridge saves us, and we head out for another island, and so on, and so on, till the eye wearies of watching the nose of the ship swinging right and left, and the finite human soul, which, after all, cannot repeat "oh my!" through a chilly evening, goes below. when you come to japan--it can be done comfortably in three months, or even ten weeks--sail through this marvellous sea, and see how quickly wonder sinks to interest, and interest to apathy. we brought oysters with us from nagasaki. i am much more interested in their appearance at dinner to-night than in the shag-backed starfish of an islet that has just slidden by like a ghost upon the silver-grey waters, awakening under the touch of the ripe moon. yes, it is a sea of mystery and romance, and the white sails of the junks are silver in the moonlight. but if the steward curries those oysters instead of serving them on the shell, all the veiled beauties of cliff and water-carven rock will not console me. to-day being the seventeenth of april, i am sitting in an ulster under a thick rug, with fingers so cold i can barely hold the pen. this emboldens me to ask how your thermantidotes are working. a mixture of steatite and kerosene is very good for creaking cranks, i believe, and if the coolie falls asleep, and you wake up in hades, try not to lose your temper. i go to my oysters. _two days later._ this comes from kobé (thirty hours from nagasaki), the european portion of which is a raw american town. we walked down the wide, naked streets between houses of sham stucco, with corinthian pillars of wood, wooden verandahs and piazzas, all stony grey beneath stony grey skies, and keeping guard over raw green saplings miscalled shade trees. in truth, kobé is hideously american in externals. even i, who have only seen pictures of america, recognised at once that it was portland, maine. it lives among hills, but the hills are all scalped, and the general impression is of out-of-the-wayness. yet, ere i go further, let me sing the praises of the excellent m. begeux, proprietor of the oriental hotel, upon whom be peace. his is a house where you can dine. he does not merely feed you. his coffee is the coffee of the beautiful france. for tea he gives you peliti cakes (but better) and the _vin ordinaire_ which is _compris_, is good. excellent monsieur and madame begeux! if the _pioneer_ were a medium for puffs, i would write a leading article upon your potato salad, your beefsteaks, your fried fish, and your staff of highly trained japanese servants in blue tights, who looked like so many small hamlets without the velvet cloak, and who obeyed the unspoken wish. no, it should be a poem--a ballad of good living. i have eaten curries of the rarest at the oriental at penang, the turtle steaks of raffles's at singapur still live in my regretful memory, and they gave me chicken liver and sucking-pig in the victoria at hong-kong which i will always extol. but the oriental at kobé was better than all three. remember this, and so shall you who come after slide round a quarter of the world upon a sleek and contented stomach. we are going from kobé to yokohama by various roads. this necessitates a passport, because we travel in the interior and do not run round the coast on shipboard. we take a railroad, which may or may not be complete as to the middle, and we branch off from that railroad, complete or not, as the notion may prompt. this will be an affair of some twenty days, and ought to include forty or fifty miles by 'rickshaw, a voyage on a lake, and, i believe, bedbugs. _nota bene._--when you come to japan stop at hong-kong and send on a letter to the "envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at tokio," if you want to travel in the interior of this fairyland. indicate your route as roughly as ever you choose, but for your own comfort give the two extreme towns you intend to touch. throw in any details about your age, profession, colour of hair, and the like that may occur to you, and ask to have a passport sent to the british consulate at kobé to meet you. allow the man with a long title a week's time to prepare the passport, and you will find it at your service when you land. only write distinctly, to save your vanity. my papers are addressed to a mister kyshrig--radjerd kyshrig. as in nagasaki, the town was full of babies, and as in nagasaki, every one smiled except the chinamen. i do not like chinamen. there was something in their faces which i could not understand, though it was familiar enough. "the chinaman's a native," i said. "that's the look on a native's face, but the jap isn't a native, and he isn't a sahib either. what is it?" the professor considered the surging street for a while. "the chinaman's an old man when he's young, just as a native is, but the jap is a child all his life. think how grown-up people look among children. that's the look that's puzzling you." i dare not say that the professor is right, but to my eyes it seemed he spoke sooth. as the knowledge of good and evil sets its mark upon the face of a grown man of our people, so something i did not understand had marked the faces of the chinamen. they had no kinship with the crowd beyond that which a man has to children. "they are the superior race," said the professor, ethnologically. "they can't be. they don't know how to enjoy life," i answered immorally. "and, anyway, their art isn't human." "what does it matter?" said the professor. "here's a shop full of the wrecks of old japan. let's go in and look." we went in, but i want somebody to solve the chinese question for me. it's too large to handle alone. we entered the curio-shop aforementioned, with our hats in our hands, through a small avenue of carved stone lanterns and wooden sculptures of devils unspeakably hideous, to be received by a smiling image who had grown grey among _netsukes_ and lacquer. he showed us the banners and insignia of daimios long since dead, while our jaws drooped in ignorant wonder. he showed us a sacred turtle of mammoth size, carven in wood down to minutest detail. through room after room he led us, the light fading as we went, till we reached a tiny garden and a woodwork cloister that ran round it. suits of old-time armour made faces at us in the gloom, ancient swords clicked at our feet, quaint tobacco pouches as old as the swords swayed to and fro from some invisible support, and the eyes of a score of battered buddhas, red dragons, jain _tirthankars_, and burmese _beloos_ glared at us from over the fence of tattered gold brocade robes of state. the joy of possession lives in the eye. the old man showed us his treasures, from crystal spheres mounted in sea-worn wood to cabinet on cabinet full of ivory and wood carvings, and we were as rich as though we owned all that lay before us. unfortunately the merest scratch of japanese characters is the only clew to the artist's name, so i am unable to say who conceived, and in creamy ivory executed, the old man horribly embarrassed by a cuttle-fish; the priest who made the soldier pick up a deer for him and laughed to think that the brisket would be his and the burden his companion's; or the dry, lean snake coiled in derision on a jawless skull mottled with the memories of corruption; or the rabelaisan badger who stood on his head and made you blush though he was not half an inch long; or the little fat boy pounding his smaller brother; or the rabbit that had just made a joke; or--but there were scores of these notes, born of every mood of mirth, scorn, and experience that sways the heart of man; and by this hand that has held half a dozen of them in its palm i winked at the shade of the dead carver! he had gone to his rest, but he had worked out in ivory three or four impressions that i had been hunting after in cold print. the englishman is a wonderful animal. he buys a dozen of these things and puts them on the top of an overcrowded cabinet, where they look like blobs of ivory, and forgets them in a week. the japanese hides them in a beautiful brocaded bag or a quiet lacquer box till three congenial friends come to tea. then he takes them out slowly, and they are looked over with appreciation amid quiet chuckles to the deliberative clink of cups, and put back again till the mood for inspection returns. that is the way to enjoy what we call curios. every man with money is a collector in japan, but you shall find no crowds of "things" outside the best shops. we stayed long in the half-light of that quaint place, and when we went away we grieved afresh that such a people should have a "constitution" or should dress every tenth young man in european clothes, put a white ironclad in kobé harbour, and send a dozen myoptic lieutenants in baggy uniforms about the streets. "it would pay us," said the professor, his head in a clog-shop, "it would pay us to establish an international suzerainty over japan to take, away any fear of invasion or annexation, and pay the country as much as ever it chose, on condition that it simply sat still and went on making beautiful things while our men learned. it would pay us to put the whole empire in a glass case and mark it, '_hors concours_,' exhibit a." "h'mm," said i. "who's us?" "oh, we generally--the _sahib log_ all the world over. our workmen--a few of them--can do as good work in certain lines, but you don't find whole towns full of clean, capable, dainty, designful people in europe." "let's go to tokio and speak to the emperor about it," i said. "let's go to a japanese theatre first," said the professor. "it's too early in the tour to start serious politics." no. xiii the japanese theatre and the story of the thunder cat. treating also of the quiet places and the dead man in the street. to the theatre we went, through the mud and much rain. internally it was nearly dark, for the deep blue of the audience's dress soaked up the scanty light of the kerosene lamps. there was no standing room anywhere except next to the japanese policeman, who in the cause of morals and the lord chamberlain had a corner in the gallery and four chairs all to himself. he was quite four feet eight inches high, and napoleon at st. helena could not have folded his arms more dramatically. after some grunting--i fear we were upsetting the principles of the constitution--he consented to give us one chair, receiving in return a burma cheroot which i have every reason to believe blew his little head off. a pit containing fifty rows of fifty people and a bonding layer of babies, with a gallery which might have held twelve hundred, made up the house. the building was as delicate a piece of cabinet work as any of the houses; roof, floor, beams, props, verandahs, and partitions were of naked wood, and every other person in the house was smoking a tiny pipe and knocking out the ashes every two minutes. then i wished to fly; death by the _auto da fe_ not being anywhere paid for in the tour; but there was no escape by the one little door where pickled fish was being sold between the acts. "yes, it's not exactly safe," said the professor, as the matches winked and sputtered all round and below. "but if that curtain catches that naked light on the stage, or you see this matchwood gallery begin to blaze, i'll kick out the back of the refreshment buffet, and we can walk away." with this warm comfort the drama began. the green curtain dropped from above and was whisked away, and three gentlemen and a lady opened the ball by a dialogue conducted in tones between a "burble" and a falsetto whisper. if you wish to know their costumes, look at the nearest japanese fan. real japs of course are like men and women, but stage japs in their stiff brocades are line for line as japs are drawn. when the four sat down, a little boy ran among them and settled their draperies, pulling out a sash bow here, displaying a skirt-fold there. the costumes were as gorgeous as the plot was incomprehensible. but we will call the play "_the thunder cat_, or _harlequin bag o' bones and the amazing old woman_, or _the mammoth radish_, or _the superfluous badger and the swinging lights_." a two-sworded man in the black and gold brocade rose up and imitated the gait of an obscure actor called henry irving, whereat, not knowing that he was serious, i cackled aloud till the japanese policeman looked at me austerely. then the two-sworded man wooed the japanese-fan lady, the other characters commenting on his proceedings like a greek chorus till something--perhaps a misplaced accent--provoked trouble, and the two-sworded man and a vermilion splendour enjoyed a vincent crummles fight to the music of all the orchestra--one guitar and something that clicked--not castanets. the small boy removed their weapons when the men had sufficiently warred, and, conceiving that the piece wanted light, fetched a ten-foot bamboo with a naked candle at the end, and held this implement about a foot from the face of the two-sworded man, following his every movement with the anxious eye of a child intrusted with a typewriter. then the japanese-fan girl consented to the wooing of the two-sworded man, and with a scream of eldritch laughter turned into a hideous old woman--a boy took off her hair, but she did the rest herself. at this terrible moment a gilded thunder cat, which is a cat issuing from a cloud, ran on wires from the flies to the centre of the gallery, and a boy with a badger's tail mocked at the two-sworded man. then i knew that the two-sworded man had offended a cat and a badger, and would have a very bad time of it, for these two animals and the fox are to this day black sorcerers. fearful things followed, and the scenery was changed once every five minutes. the prettiest effect was secured by a double row of candles hung on strings behind a green gauze far up the stage and set swinging with opposite motions. this, besides giving a fine idea of uncanniness, made one member of the audience sea-sick. but the two-sworded man was far more miserable than i. the bad thunder cat cast such spells upon him that i gave up trying to find out what he meant to be. he was a fat-faced low comedian king of the rats, assisted by other rats, and he ate a magic radish with side-splitting pantomime till he became a man once more. then all his bones were taken away,--still by the thunder cat,--and he fell into a horrid heap, illuminated by the small boy with the candle--and would not recover himself till somebody spoke to a magic parrot, and a huge hairy villain and several coolies had walked over him. then he was a girl, but, hiding behind a parasol, resumed his shape, and then the curtain came down and the audience ran about the stage and circulated generally. one small boy took it into his head that he could turn head-over-heels from the prompt side across. with great gravity, before the unregarding house, he set to work; but rolled over sideways with a flourish of chubby legs. nobody cared, and the polite people in the gallery could not understand why the professor and i were helpless with laughter when the child, with a clog for a sword, imitated the strut of the two-sworded man. the actors changed in public, and any one who liked might help shift scenes. why should not a baby enjoy himself if he liked? a little later we left. the thunder cat was still working her wicked will on the two-sworded man, but all would be set right next day. there was a good deal to be done, but justice was at the end of it. the man who sold pickled fish and tickets said so. "good school for a young actor," said the professor. "he'd see what unpruned eccentricities naturally develop into. there's every trick and mannerism of the english stage in that place, magnified thirty diameters, but perfectly recognisable. how do you intend to describe it?" "the japanese comic opera of the future has yet to be written," i responded, grandiloquently. "yet to be written in spite of the _mikado_. the badger has not yet appeared on an english stage, and the artistic mask as an accessory to the legitimate drama has never been utilised. just imagine the _thunder cat_ as a title for a serio-comic opera. begin with a domestic cat possessed of magic powers, living in the house of a london tea-merchant who kicks her. consider--" "the lateness of the hour," was the icy answer. "to-morrow we will go and write operas in the temple close to this place." * * * * * to-morrow brought fine drizzling rain. the sun, by the way, has been hidden now for more than three weeks. they took us to what must be the chief temple of kobé and gave it a name which i do not remember. it is an exasperating thing to stand at the altars of a faith that you know nothing about. there be rites and ceremonies of the hindu creed that all have read of and must have witnessed, but in what manner do they pray here who look to buddha, and what worship is paid at the shinto shrines? the books say one thing; the eyes, another. the temple would seem to be also a monastery and a place of great peace disturbed only by the babble of scores of little children. it stood back from the road behind a sturdy wall, an irregular mass of steep pitched roofs bound fantastically at the crown, copper-green where the thatch had ripened under the touch of time, and dull grey-black where the tiles ran. under the eaves a man who believed in his god, and so could do good work, had carved his heart into wood till it blossomed and broke into waves or curled with the ripple of live flames. somewhere on the outskirts of lahore city stands a mazy gathering of tombs and cloister walks called chajju bhagat's chubara, built no one knows when and decaying no one cares how soon. though this temple was large and spotlessly clean within and without, the silence and rest of the place were those of the courtyards in the far-off punjab. the priests had made many gardens in corners of the wall--gardens perhaps forty feet long by twenty wide, and each, though different from its neighbour, containing a little pond with goldfish, a stone lantern or two, hummocks of rock, flat stones carved with inscriptions, and a cherry or peach tree all blossom. stone-paved paths ran across the courtyard and connected building with building. in an inner enclosure, where lay the prettiest garden of all, was a golden tablet ten or twelve feet high, against which stood in high relief of hammered bronze the figure of a goddess in flowing robes. the space between the paved paths here was strewn with snowy-white pebbles, and in white pebbles on red they had written on the ground, "how happy." you might take them as you pleased--for the sigh of contentment or the question of despair. the temple itself, reached by a wooden bridge, was nearly dark, but there was light enough to show a hundred subdued splendours of brown and gold, of silk and faithfully painted screen. if you have once seen a buddhist altar where the master of the law sits among golden bells, ancient bronzes, flowers in vases, and banners of tapestry, you will begin to understand why the roman catholic church once prospered so mightily in this country, and will prosper in all lands where it finds an elaborate ritual already existing. an art-loving folk will have a god who is to be propitiated with pretty things as surely as a race bred among rocks and moors and driving clouds will enshrine their deity in the storm, and make him the austere recipient of the sacrifice of the rebellious human spirit. do you remember the story of the bad people of iquique? the man who told me that yarn told me another--of the good people of somewhere else. they also were simple south americans with nothing to wear, and had been conducting a service of their own in honour of their god before a black-jowled jesuit father. at a critical moment some one forgot the ritual, or a monkey invaded the sanctity of that forest shrine and stole the priest's only garment. anyhow, an absurdity happened, and the good people burst into shouts of laughter and broke off to play for a while. "but what will your god say?" asked the jesuit, scandalised at the levity. "oh! he knows everything. he knows that we forget, and can't attend, and do it all wrong, but he is very wise and very strong," was the reply. "well, that doesn't excuse you." "of course it does. he just lies back and laughs," said the good people of somewhere else, and fell to pelting each other with blossoms. i forget what is the precise bearing of this anecdote. but to return to the temple. hidden away behind a mass of variegated gorgeousness was a row of very familiar figures with gold crowns on their heads. one does not expect to meet krishna the butter thief and kali the husband beater so far east as japan. "what are these?" "they are other gods," said a young priest, who giggled deprecatingly at his own creed every time he was questioned about it. "they are very old. they came from india in the past. i think they are indian gods, but i do not know why they are here." i hate a man who is ashamed of his faith. there was a story connected with those gods, and the priest would not tell it to me. so i sniffed at him scornfully, and went my way. it led me from the temple straight into the monastery, which was all made of delicate screens, polished floors, and brown wood ceilings. except for my tread on the boards there was no sound in the place till i heard some one breathing heavily behind a screen. the priest slid back what had appeared to me a dead wall, and we found a very old priest half-asleep over his charcoal handwarmer. this was the picture. the priest in olive-green, his bald head, pure silver, bowed down before a sliding screen of white oiled paper which let in dull silver light. to his right a battered black lacquer stand containing the indian ink and brushes with which he feigned to work. to the right of these, again, a pale yellow bamboo table holding a vase of olive-green crackle, and a sprig of almost black pine. there were no blossoms in this place. the priest was too old. behind the sombre picture stood a gorgeous little buddhist shrine,--gold and vermilion. "he makes a fresh picture for the little screen here every day," said the young priest, pointing first to his senior, and then to a blank little tablet on the wall. the old man laughed pitifully, rubbed his head, and handed me his picture for the day. it represented a flood over rocky ground; two men in a boat were helping two others on a tree half-submerged by the water. even i could tell that the power had gone from him. he must have drawn well in his manhood, for one figure in the boat had action and purpose as it leaned over the gunwale; but the rest was blurred, and the lines had wandered astray as the poor old hand had quavered across the paper. i had no time to wish the artist a pleasant old age, and an easy death in the great peace that surrounded him, before the young man drew me away to the back of the shrine, and showed me a second smaller altar facing shelves on shelves of little gold and lacquer tablets covered with japanese characters. "these are memorial tablets of the dead," he giggled. "once and again the priest he prays here--for those who are dead, you understand?" "perfectly. they call 'em masses where i come from. i want to go away and think about things. you shouldn't laugh, though, when you show off your creed." "ha, ha!" said the young priest, and i ran away down the dark polished passages with the faded screens on either hand, and got into the main courtyard facing the street, while the professor was trying to catch temple fronts with his camera. a procession passed, four abreast tramping through the sloshy mud. they did not laugh, which was strange, till i saw and heard a company of women in white walking in front of a little wooden palanquin carried on the shoulders of four bearers and suspiciously light. they sang a song, half under their breaths--a wailing, moaning song that i had only heard once before, from the lips of a native far away in the north of india, who had been clawed past hope of cure by a bear, and was singing his own death-song as his friends bore him along. "have makee die," said my 'rickshaw coolie. "few-yu-ne-ral." i was aware of the fact. men, women, and little children poured along the streets, and when the death-song died down, helped it forward. the half-mourners wore only pieces of white cloth about their shoulders. the immediate relatives of the dead were in white from head to foot. "aho! ahaa! aho!" they wailed very softly, for fear of breaking the cadence of the falling rain, and they disappeared. all except one old woman, who could not keep pace with the procession, and so came along alone, crooning softly to herself. "aho! ahaa! aho!" she whispered. the little children in the courtyard were clustered round the professor's camera. but one child had a very bad skin disease on his innocent head,--so bad that none of the others would play with him,--and he stood in a corner and sobbed and sobbed as though his heart would break. poor little gehazi! no. xiv explains in what manner i was taken to venice in the rain, and climbed into a devil fort; a tin-pot exhibition, and a bath. of the maiden and the boltless door, the cultivator and his fields, and the manufacture of ethnological theories at railroad speed. ends with kioto. "there's a deal o' fine confused feedin' about sheep's head." --_christopher north._ "come along to osaka," said the professor. "why? i'm quite comfy here, and we shall have lobster cutlets for tiffin; and, anyhow, it is raining heavily, and we shall get wet." sorely against my will--for it was in my mind to fudge japan from a guide-book while i enjoyed the cookery of the oriental at kobé--i was dragged into a 'rickshaw and the rain, and conveyed to a railway station. even the japanese cannot make their railway stations lovely, though they do their best. their system of baggage-booking is borrowed from the americans; their narrow-gauge lines, locos, and rolling stock are english; their passenger-traffic is regulated with the precision of the gaul, and the uniforms of their officials come from the nearest ragbag. the passengers themselves were altogether delightful. a large number of them were modified europeans, and resembled nothing more than tenniel's picture of the white rabbit on the first page of _alice in wonderland_. they were dressed in neat little tweed suits with fawn-coloured overcoats, and they carried ladies' reticules of black leather and nickel platings. they wore paper and celluloid stuck-up collars which must have been quite thirteen inches round the neck, and their boots were number fours. on their hands--their wee-wee hands--they had white cotton gloves, and they smoked cigarettes from fairy little cigarette cases. that was young japan--the japan of the present day. "wah, wah, god is great," said the professor. "but it isn't in human nature for a man who sprawls about on soft mats by instinct to wear europe clothes as though they belonged to him. if you notice, the last thing that they take to is shoes." a lapis-lazuli coloured locomotive which, by accident, had a mixed train attached to it happened to loaf up to the platform just then, and we entered a first-class english compartment. there was no stupid double roof, window shade, or abortive thermantidote. it was a london and south-western carriage. osaka is about eighteen miles from kobé, and stands at the head of the bay of osaka. the train is allowed to go as fast as fifteen miles an hour and to play at the stations all along the line. you must know that the line runs between the hills and the shore, and the drainage-fall is a great deal steeper than anything we have between saharunpur and umballa. the rivers and the hill torrents come down straight from the hills on raised beds of their own formation, which beds again have to be bunded and spanned with girder bridges or--here, perhaps, i may be wrong--tunnelled. the stations are black-tiled, red-walled, and concrete-floored, and all the plant from signal levers to goods-truck is english. the official colour of the bridges is a yellow-brown most like unto a faded chrysanthemum. the uniform of the ticket-collectors is a peaked forage cap with gold lines, black frock-coat with brass buttons, very long in the skirt, trousers with black mohair braid, and buttoned kid boots. you cannot be rude to a man in such raiment. but the countryside was the thing that made us open our eyes. imagine a land of rich black soil, very heavily manured, and worked by the spade and hoe almost exclusively, and if you split your field (of vision) into half-acre plots, you will get a notion of the raw material the cultivator works on. but all i can write will give you no notion of the wantonness of neatness visible in the fields, of the elaborate system of irrigation, and the mathematical precision of the planting. there was no mixing of crops, no waste of boundary in footpath, and no difference of value in the land. the water stood everywhere within ten feet of the surface, as the well-sweeps attested. on the slopes of the foot-hills each drop between the levels was neatly riveted with unmortared stones, and the edges of the watercuts were faced in like manner. the young rice was transplanted very much as draughts are laid on the board; the tea might have been cropped garden box; and between the lines of the mustard the water lay in the drills as in a wooden trough, while the purple of the beans ran up to the mustard and stopped as though cut with a rule. on the seaboard we saw an almost continuous line of towns variegated with factory chimneys; inland, the crazy-quilt of green, dark-green and gold. even in the rain the view was lovely, and exactly as japanese pictures had led me to hope for. only one drawback occurred to the professor and myself at the same time. crops don't grow to the full limit of the seed on heavily worked ground dotted with villages except at a price. "cholera?" said i, watching a stretch of well-sweeps. "cholera," said the professor. "must be, y'know. it's all sewage irrigation." i felt that i was friends with the cultivators at once. these broad-hatted, blue-clad gentlemen who tilled their fields by hand--except when they borrowed the village buffalo to drive the share through the rice-slough--knew what the scourge meant. "how much do you think the government takes in revenue from vegetable gardens of that kind?" i demanded. "bosh," said he, quietly, "you aren't going to describe the land-tenure of japan. look at the yellow of the mustard!" it lay in sheets round the line. it ran up the hills to the dark pines. it rioted over the brown sandbars of the swollen rivers, and faded away by mile after mile to the shores of the leaden sea. the high-peaked houses of brown thatch stood knee-deep in it, and it surged up to the factory chimneys of osaka. "great place, osaka," said the guide. "all sorts of manufactures there." osaka is built into and over and among one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four canals, rivers, dams, and watercuts. what the multitudinous chimneys mean i cannot tell. they have something to do with rice and cotton; but it is not good that the japs should indulge in trade, and i will not call osaka a "great commercial _entrepot_." "people who live in paper houses should never sell goods," as the proverb says. because of his many wants there is but one hotel for the englishman in osaka, and they call it juter's. here the views of two civilisations collide and the result is awful. the building is altogether japanese; wood and tile and sliding screen from top to bottom; but the fitments are mixed. my room, for instance, held a _tokonoma_, made of the polished black stem of a palm and delicate woodwork, framing a scroll picture representing storks. but on the floor over the white mats lay a brussels carpet that made the indignant toes tingle. from the back verandah one overhung the river which ran straight as an arrow between two lines of houses. they have cabinet-makers in japan to fit the rivers to the towns. from my verandah i could see three bridges--one a hideous lattice-girder arrangement--and part of a fourth. we were on an island and owned a watergate if we wanted to take a boat. _apropos_ of water, be pleased to listen to a shocking story. it is written in all the books that the japanese though cleanly are somewhat casual in their customs. they bathe often with nothing on and together. this notion my experience of the country, gathered in the seclusion of the oriental at kobé, made me scoff at. i demanded a tub at juter's. the infinitesimal man led me down verandahs and upstairs to a beautiful bath-house full of hot and cold water and fitted with cabinet-work, somewhere in a lonely out-gallery. there was naturally no bolt to the door any more than there would be a bolt to a dining-room. had i been sheltered by the walls of a big europe bath, i should not have cared, but i was preparing to wash when a pretty maiden opened the door, and indicated that she also would tub in the deep, sunken japanese bath at my side. when one is dressed only in one's virtue and a pair of spectacles it is difficult to shut the door in the face of a girl. she gathered that i was not happy, and withdrew giggling, while i thanked heaven, blushing profusely the while, that i had been brought up in a society which unfits a man to bathe _à deux_. even an experience of the paddington swimming baths would have helped me; but coming straight from india lady godiva was a ballet-girl in sentiment compared to this actæon. it rained monsoonishly, and the professor discovered a castle which he needs must see. "it's osaka castle," he said, "and it has been fought over for hundreds of years. come along." "i've seen castles in india. raighur, jodhpur--all sorts of places. let's have some more boiled salmon. it's good in this station." "pig," said the professor. we threaded our way over the four thousand and fifty-two canals, etc., where the little children played with the swiftly running water, and never a mother said "don't," till our 'rickshaw stopped outside a fort ditch thirty feet deep, and faced with gigantic granite slabs. on the far side uprose the walls of a fort. but such a fort! fifty feet was the height of the wall, and never a pinch of mortar in the whole. nor was the face perpendicular, but curved like the ram of a man-of-war. they know the curve in china, and i have seen french artists, introduce it into books describing a devil-besieged city of tartary. possibly everybody else knows it too, but that is not my affair; life as i have said being altogether new to me. the stone was granite, and the men of old time had used it like mud. the dressed blocks that made the profile of the angles were from twenty feet long, ten or twelve feet high, and as many in thickness. there was no attempt at binding, but there was no fault in the jointing. "and the little japs built this!" i cried, awe-stricken at the quarries that rose round me. "cyclopean masonry," grunted the professor, punching with a stick a monolith of seventeen feet cube. "not only did they build it, but they took it. look at this. fire!" the stones had been split and bronzed in places, and the cleavage was the cleavage of fire. evil must it have been for the armies that led the assault on these monstrous walls. castles in india i know, and the forts of great emperors i had seen, but neither akbar in the north, nor scindia in the south, had built after this fashion--without ornament, without colour, but with a single eye to savage strength and the utmost purity of line. perhaps the fort would have looked less forbidding in sunlight. the grey, rain-laden atmosphere through which i saw it suited its spirit. the barracks of the garrison, the commandant's very dainty house, a peach-garden, and two deer were foreign to the place. they should have peopled it with giants from the mountains, instead of--gurkhas! a jap infantryman is not a gurkha, though he might be mistaken for one as long as he stood still. the sentry at the quarter-guard belonged, i fancy, to the th regiment. his uniform was black or blue, with red facings, and shoulder-straps carrying the number of the regiment in cloth. the rain necessitated an overcoat, but why he should have carried knapsack, blanket, boots, _and_ binoculars i could not fathom. the knapsack was of cowskin with the hair on, the boots were strapped soles, cut on each side, while a heavy country blanket was rolled u-shape over the head of the knapsack, fitting close to the back. in the place usually occupied by the mess-tin was a black leather case shaped like a field-glass. this must be a mistake of mine, but i can only record as i see. the rifle was a side-bolt weapon of some kind, and the bayonet an uncommonly good sword one, locked to the muzzle, english fashion. the ammunition pouches, as far as i could see under the greatcoat, ran on the belt in front, and were double-strapped down. white spatterdashes--very dirty--and peaked cap completed the outfit. i surveyed the man with interest, and would have made further examination of him but for fear of the big bayonet. his arms were well kept,--not speckless by any means,--but his uniform would have made an english colonel swear. there was no portion of his body except the neck that it pretended to fit. i peeped into the quarter-guard. fans and dainty tea-sets do not go with one's notions of a barrack. one drunken defaulter of certain far-away regiments that i could name would not only have cleared out that quarter-guard, but brought away all its fittings except the rifle-racks. yet the little men, who were always gentle, and never got drunk, were mounting guard over a pile that, with a blue fire on the bastions, might have served for the guard-gates of hell. i climbed to the top of the fort and was rewarded by a view of thirty miles of country, chiefly pale yellow mustard and blue-green pine, and the sight of the very large city of osaka fading away into mist. the guide took most pleasure in the factory chimneys. "there is an exposition here--an exposition of industrialities. come and see," said he. he took us down from that high place and showed us the glory of the land in the shape of corkscrews, tin mugs, egg-whisks, dippers, silks, buttons, and all the trumpery that can be stitched on a card and sold for five-pence three farthings. the japanese unfortunately make all these things for themselves, and are proud of it. they have nothing to learn from the west as far as finish is concerned, and by intuition know how to case and mount wares tastefully. the exposition was in four large sheds running round a central building which held only screens, pottery, and cabinet-ware loaned for the occasion. i rejoiced to see that the common people did not care for the penknives, and the pencils, and the mock jewellery. they left those sheds alone and discussed the screens, first taking off their clogs that the inlaid floor of the room might not suffer. of all the gracious things i beheld, two only remain in my memory,--one a screen in grey representing the heads of six devils instinct with malice and hate; the other, a bold sketch in monochrome of an old woodcutter wrestling with the down-bent branch of a tree. two hundred years have passed since the artist dropped his pencil, but you may almost hear the tough wood jar under the stroke of the chopper, as the old man puts his back into the task and draws in the labouring breath. there is a picture by legros of a beggar dying in a ditch, which might have been suggested by that screen. next morning, after a night's rain, which sent the river racing under the frail balconies at eight miles an hour, the sun broke through the clouds. is this a little matter to you who can count upon him daily? i had not seen him since march, and was beginning to feel anxious. then the land of peach blossom spread its draggled wings abroad and rejoiced. all the pretty maidens put on their loveliest crêpe sashes,--fawn colour, pink, blue, orange, and lilac,--all the little children picked up a baby each, and went out to be happy. in a temple garden full of blossom i performed the miracle of deucalion with two cents' worth of sweets. the babies swarmed on the instant, till, for fear of raising all the mothers too, i forbore to give them any more. they smiled and nodded prettily, and trotted after me, forty strong, the big ones helping the little, and the little ones skipping in the puddles. a jap child never cries, never scuffles, never fights, and never makes mud pies except when it lives on the banks of a canal. yet, lest it should spread its sash-bow and become a bald-headed angel ere its time, providence has decreed that it should never, never blow its little nose. notwithstanding the defect, i love it. there was no business in osaka that day because of the sunshine and the budding of the trees. everybody went to a tea-house with his friends. i went also, but first ran along a boulevard by the side of the river, pretending to look at the mint. this was only a common place of solid granite where they turn out dollars and rubbish of that kind. all along the boulevard the cherry, peach, and plum trees, pink, white, and red, touched branches and made a belt of velvety soft colour as far as the eye could reach. weeping willows were the normal ornaments of the waterside, this revel of bloom being only part of the prodigality of spring. the mint may make a hundred thousand dollars a day, but all the silver in its keeping will not bring again the three weeks of the peach blossom which, even beyond the chrysanthemum, is the crown and glory of japan. for some act of surpassing merit performed in a past life i have been enabled to hit those three weeks in the middle. "now is the japanese festival of the cherry blossom," said the guide. "all the people will be festive. they will pray too and go to the tea-gardens." now you might wall an englishman about with cherry trees in bloom from head to heel, and after the first day he would begin to complain of the smell. as you know, the japanese arrange a good many of their festivals in honour of flowers, and this is surely commendable, for blossoms are the most tolerant of gods. the tea-house system of the japanese filled me with pleasure at a pleasure that i could not fully comprehend. it pays a company in osaka to build on the outskirts of the town a nine-storied pagoda of wood and iron, to lay out elaborate gardens round it, and to hang the whole with strings of blood-red lanterns, because the japanese will come wherever there is a good view to sit on a mat and discuss tea and sweetmeats and _saki_. this eiffel tower is, to tell the truth, anything but pretty, yet the surroundings redeem it. although it was not quite completed, the lower storeys were full of tea-stalls and tea-drinkers. the men and women were obviously admiring the view. it is an astounding thing to see an oriental so engaged; it is as though he had stolen something from a sahib. from osaka--canal-cut, muddy, and fascinating osaka--the professor, mister yamagutchi,--the guide,--and i took train to kioto, an hour from osaka. on the road i saw four buffaloes at as many rice-ploughs--which was noticeable as well as wasteful. a buffalo at rest must cover the half of a japanese field; but perhaps they are kept on the mountain ledges and only pulled down when wanted. the professor says that what i call buffalo is really bullock. the worst of travelling with an accurate man is his accuracy. we argued about the japanese in the train, about his present and his future, and the manner in which he has ranged himself on the side of the grosser nations of the earth. "did it hurt his feelings very much to wear our clothes? didn't he rebel when he put on a pair of trousers for the first time? won't he grow sensible some day and drop foreign habits?" these were some of the questions i put to the landscape and the professor. "he was a baby," said the latter, "a big baby. i think his sense of humour was at the bottom of the change, but he didn't know that a nation which once wears trousers never takes 'em off. you see 'enlightened' japan is only one-and-twenty years old, and people are not very wise at one-and-twenty. read reed's _japan_ and learn how the change came about. there was a mikado and a _shogun_ who was sir frederick roberts, but he tried to be the viceroy and--" "bother the _shogun_! i've seen something like the babu class, and something like the farmer class. what i want to see is the rajput class--the man who used to wear the thousands and thousands of swords in the curio-shops. those swords were as much made for use as a rajputana sabre. where are the men who used 'em? show me a samurai." the professor answered not a word, but scrutinised heads on the wayside platforms. "i take it that the high-arched forehead, club nose, and eyes close together--the spanish type--are from rajput stock, while the german-faced jap is the khattri--the lower class." thus we talked of the natures and dispositions of men we knew nothing about till we had decided ( ) that the painful politeness of the japanese nation rose from the habit, dropped only twenty years ago, of extended and emphatic sword-wearing, even as the rajput is the pink of courtesy because his friend goes armed; ( ) that this politeness will disappear in another generation, or will at least be seriously impaired; ( ) that the cultured japanese of the english pattern will corrupt and defile the tastes of his neighbours till ( ) japan altogether ceases to exist as a separate nation and becomes a button-hook manufacturing appanage of america; ( ) that these things being so, and sure to happen in two or three hundred years, the professor and i were lucky to reach japan betimes; and ( ) that it was foolish to form theories about the country until we had seen a little of it. so we came to the city of kioto in regal sunshine, tempered by a breeze that drove the cherry blossoms in drifts about the streets. one japanese town, in the southern provinces at least, is very like another to look at--a grey-black sea of house roofs, speckled with the white walls of the fire-proof godowns where merchants and rich men keep their chief treasures. the general level is broken by the temple roofs, which are turned up at the edges, and remotely resemble so many terai-hats. kioto fills a plain almost entirely surrounded by wooded hills, very familiar in their aspect to those who have seen the siwaliks. once upon a time it was the capital of japan, and to-day numbers two hundred and fifty thousand people. it is laid out like an american town. all the streets run at right angles to each other. that, by the way, is exactly what the professor and i are doing. we are elaborating the theory of the japanese people, and we can't agree. no. xv kioto and how i fell in love with the chief belle there after i had conferred with certain china merchants who trafficked in tea. shows further how, in a great temple, i broke the tenth commandment in fifty-three places and bowed down before kano and a carpenter. takes me to arashima. "could i but write the things i see, my world would haste to gaze with me. but since the traitor pen hath failed to paint earth's loveliness unveiled, i can but pray my folk who read:-- 'for lavish will take starveling deed.'" we are consorting with sixty of the _sahib-log_ in the quaintest hotel that ever you saw. it stands on the hillside overlooking the whole town of kioto, and its garden is veritable japanese. fantastically trimmed tea trees, junipers, dwarfed pine, and cherry, are mixed up with ponds of goldfish, stone lanterns, quaint rock-work, and velvety turf all at an angle of thirty-five degrees. behind us the pines, red and black, cover the hill and run down in a long spur to the town. but an auctioneer's catalogue cannot describe the charms of the place or deal justly with the tea-garden full of cherry trees that lies a hundred yards below the hotel. we were solemnly assured that hardly any one came to kioto. that is why we meet every soul in the ship that had brought us to nagasaki; and that is why our ears are constantly assailed with the clamour of people who are discussing places which must be "done." an englishman is a very horrible person when he is on the war-path; so is an american, a frenchman, or a german. i had been watching the afternoon sunlight upon the trees and the town, the shift and play of colour in the crowded street of the cherry, and crooning to myself because the sky was blue and i was alive beneath it with a pair of eyes in my head. immediately the sun went down behind the hills the air became bitterly cold, but the people in crêpe sashes and silk coats never ceased their sober frolicking. there was to be a great service in honour of the cherry blossom the next day at the chief temple of kioto, and they were getting ready for it. as the light died in a wash of crimson, the last thing i saw was a frieze of three little japanese babies with fuzzy top-knots and huge sashes trying to hang head downwards from a bamboo rail. they did it, and the closing eye of day regarded them solemnly as it shut. the effect in _silhouette_ was immense! a company of china tea-merchants were gathered in the smoking-room after dinner, and by consequence talked their own "shop," which was interesting. their language is not our language, for they know nothing of the tea-gardens, of drying and withering and rolling, of the assistant who breaks his collar-bone in the middle of the busiest season, or of the sickness that smites the coolie lines at about the same time. they are happy men who get their tea by the break of a thousand chests from the interior of the country and play with it upon the london markets. none the less they have a very wholesome respect for indian tea, which they cordially detest. here is the sort of argument that a foochow man, himself a very heavy buyer, flung at me across the table. "you may talk about your indian teas,--assam and kangra, or whatever you call them,--but i tell _you_ that if ever they get a strong hold in england, the doctors will be down on them, sir. they'll be medically forbidden. see if they aren't. they shatter your nerves to pieces. unfit for human consumption--that's what they are. though i don't deny they _are_ selling at home. they don't keep, though. after three months, the sorts that i've seen in london turn to hay." "i think you are wrong there," said a hankow man. "my experience is that the indian teas keep better than ours by a long way. but"--turning to me--"if we could only get the china government to take off the duties, we could smash indian tea and every one connected with it. we could lay down tea in mincing lane at threepence a pound. no, we do not adulterate our teas. that's one of _your_ tricks in india. we get it as pure as yours--every chest in the break equal to sample." "you can trust your native buyers then?" i interrupted. "trust 'em? of course we can," cut in the foochow merchant. "there are no tea-gardens in china as you understand them. the peasantry cultivate the tea, and the buyers buy from them for cash each season. you can give a chinaman a hundred thousand dollars and tell him to turn it into tea of your own particular chop--up to sample. of course the man may be a thorough-paced rogue in many ways, but he knows better than to play the fool with an english house. back comes your tea--a thousand half-chests, we'll say. you open perhaps five, and the balance go home untried. but they are all equal to sample. that's business, that is. the chinaman's a born merchant and full of backbone. i like him for business purposes. the jap's no use. he isn't man enough to handle a hundred thousand dollars. very possibly he'd run off with it--or try to." "the jap has no business savvy. god knows i hate the chinamen," said a bass voice behind the tobacco smoke, "but you can do business with him. the jap's a little huckster who can't see beyond his nose." they called for drinks and told tales, these merchants of china,--tales of money and bales and boxes,--but through all their stories there was an implied leaning upon native help which, even allowing for the peculiarities of china, was rather startling. "the compradore did this: ho whang did that: a syndicate of pekin bankers did the other thing"--and so on. i wondered whether a certain lordly indifference as to details had anything to do with eccentricities in the china tea-breaks and fluctuations of quality, which do occur in spite of all the men said to the contrary. again, the merchants spoke of china as a place where fortunes are made--a land only waiting to be opened up to pay a hundredfold. they told me of the home government helping private trade, in kind and unobtrusive ways, to get a firmer hold on the public works department contracts that are now flying abroad. this was pleasant hearing. but the strangest thing of all was the tone of hope and almost contentment that pervaded their speech. they were well-to-do men making money, and they liked their lives. you know how, when two or three of us are gathered together in our own barren pauper land, we groan in chorus and are disconsolate. the civilian, the military man, and the merchant, they are all alike. the one overworked and broken by exchange, the second a highly organised beggar, and the third a nobody in particular, always at loggerheads with what he considers an academical government. i knew in a way that we were a grim and miserable community in india, but i did not know the measure of our fall till i heard men talking about fortunes, success, money, and the pleasure, good living, and frequent trips to england that money brings. their friends did not seem to die with unnatural swiftness, and their wealth enabled them to endure the calamity of exchange with calm. yes, we of india are a wretched folk. very early in the dawn, before the nesting sparrows were awake, there was a sound in the air which frightened me out of my virtuous sleep. it was a lisping mutter--very deep and entirely strange. "that's an earthquake, and the hillside is beginning to slide," quoth i, taking measures of defence. the sound repeated itself again and again, till i argued, that if it were the precursor of an earthquake, the affair had stuck half-way. at breakfast men said: "that was the great bell of kioto just next door to the hotel a little way up the hillside. as a bell, y'know, it's rather a failure, from an english point of view. they don't ring it properly, and the volume of sound is comparatively insignificant." "so i fancied when i first heard it," i said casually, and went out up the hill under sunshine that filled the heart and trees, that filled the eye with joy. you know the unadulterated pleasure of that first clear morning in the hills when a month's solid idleness lies before the loafer, and the scent of the deodars mixes with the scent of the meditative cigar. that was my portion when i stepped through the violet-studded long grass into forgotten little japanese cemeteries--all broken pillars and lichened tablets--till i found, under a cut in the hillside, the big bell of kioto--twenty feet of green bronze hung inside a fantastically roofed shed of wooden beams. a beam, by the way, _is_ a beam in japan; anything under a foot thick is a stick. these beams were the best parts of big trees, clamped with bronze and iron. a knuckle rapped lightly on the lip of the bell--it was not more than five feet from the ground--made the great monster breathe heavily, and the blow of a stick started a hundred shrill-voiced echoes round the darkness of its dome. at one side, guyed by half a dozen small hawsers, hung a battering-ram, a twelve-foot spar bound with iron, its nose pointing full-butt at a chrysanthemum in high relief on the belly of the bell. then, by special favour of providence, which always looks after the idle, they began to sound sixty strokes. half a dozen men swung the ram back and forth with shoutings and outcries, till it had gathered sufficient way, and the loosened ropes let it hurl itself against the chrysanthemum. the boom of the smitten bronze was swallowed up by the earth below and the hillside behind, so that its volume was not proportionate to the size of the bell, exactly as the men had said. an english ringer would have made thrice as much of it. but then he would have lost the crawling jar that ran through rock-stone and pine for twenty yards round, that beat through the body of the listener and died away under his feet like the shock of a distant blasting. i endured twenty strokes and removed myself, not in the least ashamed of mistaking the sound for an earthquake. many times since i have heard the bell speak when i was far off. it says _b-r-r-r_ very deep down in its throat, but when you have once caught the noise you will never forget it. and so much for the big bell of kioto. from its house a staircase of cut stone takes you down to the temple of chion-in, where i arrived on easter sunday just before service, and in time to see the procession of the cherry blossom. they had a special service at a place called st. peter's at rome about the same time, but the priests of buddha excelled the priests of the pope. thus it happened. the main front of the temple was three hundred feet long, a hundred feet deep, and sixty feet high. one roof covered it all, and saving for the tiles there was no stone in the structure; nothing but wood three hundred years old, as hard as iron. the pillars that upheld the roof were three feet, four feet, and five feet in diameter, and guiltless of any paint. they showed the natural grain of the wood till they were lost in the rich brown darkness far overhead. the cross-beams were of grained wood of great richness; cedar-wood and camphor-wood and the hearts of gigantic pine had been put under requisition for the great work. one carpenter--they call him only a carpenter--had designed the whole, and his name is remembered to this day. a half of the temple was railed off for the congregation by a two-foot railing, over which silks of ancient device had been thrown. within the railing were all the religious fittings, but these i cannot describe. all i remember was row upon row of little lacquered stands each holding a rolled volume of sacred writings; an altar as tall as a cathedral organ where gold strove with colour, colour with lacquer, and lacquer with inlay, and candles such as holy mother church uses only on her greatest days, shed a yellow light that softened all. bronze incense-burners in the likeness of dragons and devils fumed under the shadow of silken banners, behind which, wood tracery, as delicate as frost on a window-pane, climbed to the ridge-pole. only there was no visible roof to this temple. the light faded away under the monstrous beams, and we might have been in a cave a hundred fathoms below the earth but for the sunshine and blue sky at the portals where the little children squabbled and shouted. on my word, i tried to note down soberly what lay before me, but the eye tired, and the pencil ran off into fragmentary ejaculations. but what would you have done if you had seen what i saw when i went round the temple verandah to what we must call a vestry at the back? it was a big building connected with the main one by a wooden bridge of deepest time-worn brown. down the bridge ran a line of saffron-coloured matting, and down the matting, very slowly and solemnly, as befitted their high office, filed three and fifty priests, each one clad in at least four garments of brocade, crêpe, and silk. there were silks that do not see the light of the markets, and brocades that only temple wardrobes know. there was sea-green watered silk with golden dragons; terra-cotta crêpe with ivory-white chrysanthemums clustering upon it; black-barred silk shot with yellow flames; lapis-lazuli silk and silver fishes; avanturine silk with plaques of grey-green let in; cloth of gold over dragon's blood; and saffron and brown silk stiff as a board with embroidery. we returned to the temple now filled with the gorgeous robes. the little lacquer stands were the priests' book-racks. some lay down among them, while others moved very softly about the golden altars and the incense-burners; and the high priest disposed himself, with his back to the congregation, in a golden chair through which his robe winked like the shards of a tiger-beetle. in solemn calm the books were unrolled, and the priests began chanting pali texts in honour of the apostle of unworldliness, who had written that they were not to wear gold or mixed colours, or touch the precious metals. but for a few unimportant accessories in the way of half-seen images of great men--but these could have been called saints--the scene before me might have been unrolled in a roman catholic cathedral, say the rich one at arundel. the same thought was in other minds, for in a pause of the slow chant a voice behind me whispered:-- "to hear the blessed mutter of the mass and see god made and eaten all day long." it was a man from hong-kong, very angry that he too had not been permitted to photograph an interior. he called all this splendour of ritual and paraphernalia just "an interior," and revenged himself by spitting browning at it. the chant quickened as the service drew to an end, and the candles burned low. we went away to other parts of the temple pursued by the chorus of the devout till we were out of earshot in a paradise of screens. two or three hundred years ago there lived a painterman of the name of kano. him the temple of chion-in brought to beautify the walls of the rooms. since a wall is a screen, and a screen is a wall, kano, r. a., had rather a large job. but he was helped by pupils and imitators, and in the end left a few hundred screens which are all finished pictures. as you already know, the interior of a temple is very simple in its arrangements. the priests live on white mats, in little rooms, with brown ceilings, that can at pleasure be thrown into one large room. this also was the arrangement at chion-in, though the rooms were comparatively large and gave on to sumptuous verandahs and passages. since the emperor occasionally visited the place there was a room set apart for him of more than ordinary splendour. twisted silk tassels of intricate design served in lieu of catches to pull back the sliding screens, and the woodwork was lacquered. these be only feeble words, but it is not in my grip to express the restfulness of it all, or the power that knew how to secure the desired effect with a turn of the wrist. the great kano drew numbed pheasants huddled together on the snow-covered bough of a pine; or a peacock in his pride spreading his tail to delight his womenfolk; or a riot of chrysanthemums poured out of a vase; or the figures of toilworn countryfolk coming home from market; or a hunting scene at the foot of fujiyama. the equally great carpenter who built the temple framed each picture with absolute precision under a ceiling that was a miracle of device, and time, the greatest artist of the three, touched the gold so that it became amber, and the woodwork so that it grew dark honey-colour, and the shining surface of the lacquer so that it became deep and rich and semi-transparent. as in one room, so in all the others. sometimes we slid back the screens and discovered a tiny bald-pated acolyte praying over an incense-burner, and sometimes a lean priest eating his rice; but generally the rooms were empty, swept and garnished. minor artists had worked with kano the magnificent. these had been allowed to lay brush upon panels of wood in the outer verandahs, and very faithfully had they toiled. it was not till the guide called my attention to them that i discovered scores of sketches in monochrome low down on the verandah doors. an iris broken by the fall of a branch torn off by a surly ape; a bamboo spray bowed before the wind that was ruffling a lake; a warrior of the past ambushing his enemy in a thicket, hand on sword, and mouth gathered into puckers of intensest concentration, were among the many notes that met my eye. how long, think you, would a sepia-drawing stand without defacement in the midst of our civilisation were it put on the bottom panel of a door, or the scantling of a kitchen passage? yet in this gentle country a man may stoop down and write his name in the very dust, certain that, if the writing be craftily done, his children's children will reverently let it stand. "of course there are no such temples made nowadays," i said, when we regained the sunshine, and the professor was trying to find out how panel pictures and paper screens went so well with the dark dignity of massive woodwork. "they are building a temple on the other side of the city," said mister yamagutchi. "come along, and see the hair-ropes which hang there." we came flying in our 'rickshaws across kioto, till we saw netted in a hundred cobwebs of scaffolding a temple even larger than the great chion-in. "that was burned down long ago,--the old temple that was here, you know. then the people made a penny subscription from all parts of japan, and those who could not send money sent their hair to be made into rope. they have been ten years building this new temple. it is all wood," said the guide. the place was alive with men who were putting the finishing touches to the great tiled roof and laying down the floors. wooden pillars as gigantic, carving as wantonly elaborate, eaves as intricate in their mouldings, and joinery as perfect as anything in the chion-in temple met me at every turn. but the fresh-cut wood was creamy white and lemon where, in the older building, it had been iron-hard and brown. only the raw ends of the joists were stopped with white lacquer to prevent the incursions of insects, and the deeper tracery was protected against birds by fine wire netting. everything else was wood--wood down to the massive clamped and bolted beams of the foundation which i investigated through gaps in the flooring. japan is a great people. her masons play with stone, her carpenters with wood, her smiths with iron, and her artists with life, death, and all the eye can take in. mercifully she has been denied the last touch of firmness in her character which would enable her to play with the whole round world. we possess that--we, the nation of the glass flower-shade, the pink worsted mat, the red and green china puppy-dog, and the poisonous brussels carpet. it is our compensation.... "temples!" said a man from calcutta, some hours later as i raved about what i had seen. "temples! i'm sick of temples. if i've seen one, i've seen fifty thousand of 'em--all exactly alike. but i tell you what is exciting. go down the rapids at arashima,--eight miles from here. it's better fun than any temple with a fat-faced buddha in the middle." but i took my friend's advice. have i managed to convey the impression that april is fine in japan? then i apologise. it is generally rainy, and the rain is cold; but the sunshine when it comes is worth it all. we shouted with joy of living when our fiery, untamed 'rickshaws bounded from stone to stone of the vilely paved streets of the suburbs and brought us into what ought to have been vegetable gardens but were called fields. the face of the flat lands was cut up in every direction by bunds, and all the roads seem to run on the top of them. "never," said the professor, driving his stick into the black soil, "never have i imagined irrigation so perfectly controlled as this is. look at the _rajbahars_ faced with stone and fitted with sluices; look at the water-wheels and,--phew! but they manure their fields too well." the first circle of fields round any town is always pretty rank, but this superfluity of scent continued throughout the country. saving a few parts near dacca and patna, the face of the land was more thickly populated than bengal and was worked five times better. there was no single patch untilled, and no cultivation that was not up to the full limit of the soil's productiveness. onions, barley, in little ridges between the ridges of tea, beans, rice, and a half a dozen other things that we did not know the names of, crowded the eye already wearied with the glare of the golden mustard. manure is a good thing, but manual labour is better. we saw both even to excess. when a japanese ryot has done everything to his field that he can possibly think of, he weeds the barley stalk by stalk with his finger and thumb. this is true. i saw a man doing it. we headed through the marvellous country straight across the plain on which kioto stands, till we reached the range of hills on the far side, and found ourselves mixed up with half a mile of lumber-yard. cultivation and water-cuts were gone, and our tireless 'rickshaws were running by the side of a broad, shallow river, choked with logs of every size. i am prepared to believe anything of the japanese, but i do not see why nature, which they say is the same pitiless power all the world over, should send them their logs unsplintered by rocks, neatly barked, and with a slot neatly cut at the end of each pole for the reception of a rope, i have seen timber fly down the ravi in spate, and it was hooked out as ragged as a tooth-brush. this material comes down clean. consequently the slot is another miracle. "when the day is fine," said the guide, softly, "all the people of kioto come to arashima to have picnics." "but they are always having picnics in the cherry-tree gardens. they picnic in the tea-houses. they--they--" "yes, when it is a fine day, they always go somewhere and picnic." "but why? man isn't made to picnic." "but why? because it is a fine day. englishmen say that the money of the japanese comes from heaven, because they always do nothing--so you think. but look now, here is a pretty place." the river charged down a turn in the pine-grown hills, and broke in silver upon the timber and the remains of a light bridge washed away some days before. on our side, and arranged so as to face the fairest view of the young maples, stood a row of tea-houses and booths built over the stream. the sunlight that could not soften the gloom of the pines dwelt tenderly among the green of the maples and touched the reaches below where the cherry blossom broke in pink foam against the black-roofed houses of a village across the water. there i stopped. no. xvi the party in the parlour who played games. a complete history of all modern japanese art; a survey of the past, and a prophecy of the future, arranged and composed in the kioto factories. "oh, brave new world that has such creatures in it, how beautiful mankind is!" how i got to the tea-house i cannot tell. perhaps a pretty girl waved a bough of cherry blossom at me, and i followed the invitation. i know that i sprawled upon the mats and watched the clouds scudding across the hills and the logs flying down the rapids, and smelt the smell of the raw peeled timber, and listened to the grunts of the boatmen as they wrestled with that and the rush of the river, and was altogether happier than it is lawful for a man to be. the lady of the tea-house insisted upon screening us off from the other pleasure-parties who were tiffining in the same verandah. she brought beautiful blue screens with storks on them and slid them into grooves. i stood it as long as i could. there were peals of laughter in the next compartment, the pattering of soft feet, the clinking of little dishes, and at the chinks of the screens the twinkle of diamond eyes. a whole family had come in from kioto for the day's pleasuring. mamma looked after grandmamma, and the young aunt looked after a guitar, and the two girls of fourteen and fifteen looked after a merry little tomboy of eight, who, when she thought of it, looked after the baby who had the air of looking after the whole party. grandmamma was dressed in dark blue, mamma in blue and grey, the girls had gorgeous dresses of lilac, fawn, and primrose crêpe with silk sashes, the colour of apple blossom and the inside of a newly cut melon; the tomboy was in old gold and russet brown; but the baby tumbled his fat little body across the floor among the dishes in the colours of the japanese rainbow, which owns no crude tints. they were all pretty, all except grandmamma, who was merely good-humoured and very bald, and when they had finished their dainty dinner, and the brown lanquer stands, the blue and white crockery, and the jade-green drinking-cups had been taken away, the aunt played a little piece on the _samisen_, and the girls played blindman's-buff all round the tiny room. flesh and blood could not have stayed on the other side of the screens. i wanted to play too, but i was too big and too rough, and so could only sit in the verandah, watching these dainty bits of dresden at their game. they shrieked and giggled and chattered and sat down on the floor with the innocent abandon of maidenhood, and broke off to kiss the baby when he showed signs of being overlooked. they played puss-in-the-corner, their feet tied with blue and white handkerchiefs because the room did not allow unfettered freedom of limb, and when they could play no more for laughing, they fanned themselves as they lay propped up against the blue screens,--each girl a picture no painter could reproduce,--and i shrieked with the best of them till i rolled off the verandah and nearly dropped into the laughing street. was i a fool? then i fooled in good company, for an austere man from india--a person who puts his faith in race-horses and believes nothing except the civil code--was also at arashima that day. i met him flushed and excited. "'had a lively time," he panted, with a hundred children at his heels. "there's a sort of roulette table here where you can gamble for cakes. i bought the owner's stock-in-trade for three dollars and ran the monte carlo for the benefit of the kids--about five thousand of 'em. never had such fun in my life. it beats the simla lotteries hollow. they were perfectly orderly till they had cleared the tables of everything except a big sugar-tortoise. then they rushed the bank, and i ran away." and he was a hard man who had not played with anything as innocent as sweetmeats for many years! when we were all weak with laughing, and the professor's camera was mixed up in a tangle of laughing maidens to the confusion of his pictures, we too ran away from the tea-house and wandered down the river bank till we found a boat of sewn planks which poled us across the swollen river, and landed us on a little rocky path overhanging the water where the iris and the violet ran riot together and jubilant waterfalls raced through the undergrowth of pine and maple. we were at the foot of the arashima rapids, and all the pretty girls of kioto were with us looking at the view. up-stream a lonely black pine stood out from all its fellows to peer up the bend where the racing water ran deep in oily swirls. down-stream the river threshed across the rocks and troubled the fields of fresh logs on its bosom, while men in blue drove silver-white boats gunwale-deep into the foam of its onset and hooked the logs away. underfoot the rich earth of the hillside sent up the breath of the turn of the year to the maples that had already caught the message from the fire-winds of april. oh! it was good to be alive, to trample the stalks of the iris, to drag down the cherry-bloom spray in a wash of dew across the face, and to gather the violets for the mere pleasure of heaving them into the torrent and reaching out for fairer flowers. "what a nuisance it is to be a slave to the camera," said the professor, upon whom the dumb influences of the season were working though he knew it not. "what a nuisance it is to be a slave to the pen," i answered, for the spring had come to the land. i had hated the spring for seven years because to me it meant discomfort. "let us go straight home and see the flowers come out in the parks." "let us enjoy what lies to our hand, you philistine." and we did till a cloud darkened and a wind ruffled the river reaches, and we returned to our 'rickshaws sighing with contentment. "how many people do you suppose the land supports to the square mile?" said the professor, at a turn in the homeward road. he had been reading statistics. "nine hundred," i said at a venture. "it's thicker set with humans than sarun or behar. say one thousand." "two thousand two hundred and fifty odd. can you believe it?" "looking at the landscape i can, but i don't suppose india will believe it. s'pose i write fifteen hundred?" "they'll say you exaggerate just the same. better stick to the true total. two thousand two hundred and fifty-six to the square mile, and not a sign of poverty in the houses. how do they do it?" i should like to know the answer to that question. japan of my limited view is inhabited almost entirely by little children whose duty is to prevent their elders from becoming too frivolous. the babies do a little work occasionally, but their parents interfere by petting them. at yami's hotel the attendance is in the hands of ten-year-olds because everybody else has gone out picnicing among the cherry trees. the little imps find time to do a man's work and to scuffle on the staircase between whiles. my special servitor, called "the bishop" on account of the gravity of his appearance, his blue apron, and gaiters, is the liveliest of the lot, but even his energy cannot account for the professor's statistics of population.... i have seen one sort of work among the japanese, but it was not the kind that makes crops. it was purely artistic. a ward of the city of kioto is devoted to manufactures. a manufacturer in this part of the world does not hang out a sign. he may be known in paris and new york: that is the concern of the two cities. the englishman who wishes to find his establishment in kioto has to hunt for him up and down slums with the aid of a guide. i have seen three manufactories. the first was of porcelain-ware, the second of _cloissonnée_, and the third of lacquer, inlay, and bronzes. the first was behind black wooden palings, and for external appearance might just as well have been a tripe-shop. inside sat the manager opposite a tiny garden four feet square in which a papery-looking palm grew out of a coarse stoneware pot and overshadowed a dwarfed pine. the rest of the room was filled with pottery waiting to be packed--modern satsuma for the most part, the sort of thing you get at an auction. "this made send europe--india--america," said the manager, calmly. "you come to see?" he took us along a verandah of polished wood to the kilns, to the clay vats, and the yards where the tiny "saggers" were awaiting their complement of pottery. there are differences many and technical between japanese and burslem pottery in the making, but these are of no consequence. in the moulding house, where they were making the bodies of satsuma vases, the wheels, all worked by hand, ran true as a hair. the potter sat on a clean mat with his tea-things at his side. when he had turned out a vase-body he saw that it was good, nodded appreciatively to himself, and poured out some tea ere starting the next one. the potters lived close to the kilns and had nothing pretty to look at. it was different in the painting rooms. here in a cabinet-like house sat the men, women, and boys who painted the designs on the vases after the first firing. that all their arrangements were scrupulously neat is only saying that they were japanese; that their surroundings were fair and proper is only saying that they were artists. a sprig of a cherry blossom stood out defiantly against the black of the garden paling; a gnarled pine cut the blue of the sky with its spiky splinters as it lifted itself above the paling, and in a little pond the iris and the horsetail nodded to the wind. the workers when at fault had only to lift their eyes, and nature herself would graciously supply the missing link of a design. somewhere in dirty england men dream of craftsmen working under conditions which shall help and not stifle the half-formed thought. they even form guilds and write semi-rhythmical prayers to time and chance and all the other gods that they worship, to bring about the desired end. would they have their dream realised, let them see how they make pottery in japan, each man sitting on a snowy mat with loveliness of line and colour within arm's length of him, while with downcast eyes he--splashes in the conventional diaper of a satsuma vase as fast as he can! the barbarians want satsuma and they shall have it, if it has to be made in kioto one piece per twenty minutes. so much for the baser forms of the craft! the owner of the second establishment lived in a blackwood cabinet--it was profanation to call it a house--alone with a bronze of priceless workmanship, a set of blackwood furniture, and all the medals that his work had won for him in england, france, germany, and america. he was a very quiet and cat-like man, and spoke almost in a whisper. would we be pleased to inspect the manufactory? he led us through a garden--it was nothing in his eyes, but we stopped to admire long. stone lanterns, green with moss, peeped through clumps of papery bamboos where bronze storks were pretending to feed. a dwarfed pine, its foliage trimmed to dish-like plaques, threw its arms far across a fairy pond where the fat, lazy carp grubbed and rooted, and a couple of eared grebes squawked at us from the protection of the--waterbutt. so perfect was the silence of the place that we heard the cherry blossoms falling into the water and the lisping of the fish against the stones. we were in the very heart of the willow-pattern plate and loath to move for fear of breaking it. the japanese are born bower-birds. they collect water-worn stones, quaintly shaped rocks, and veined pebbles for the ornamentation of their homes. when they shift house they take the garden away with them--pine trees and all--and the incoming tenant has a free hand. half a dozen steps took us over the path of mossy stones to a house where the whole manufactory was at work. one room held the enamel powders all neatly arranged in jars of scrupulous cleanliness, a few blank copper vases ready to be operated on, an invisible bird who whistled and whooped in his cage, and a case of gaily painted butterflies ready for reference when patterns were wanted. in the next room sat the manufactory--three men, five women, and two boys--all as silent as sleep. it is one thing to read of _cloissonnée_ making, but quite another to watch it being made. i began to understand the cost of the ware when i saw a man working out a pattern of sprigs and butterflies on a plate about ten inches in diameter. with finest silver ribbon wire, set on edge, less than the sixteenth of an inch high, he followed the curves of the drawing at his side, pinching the wire into tendrils and the serrated outlines of leaves with infinite patience. a rough touch on the raw copper-plate would have sent the pattern flying into a thousand disconnected threads. when all was put down on the copper, the plate would be warmed just sufficiently to allow the wires to stick firmly to the copper, the pattern then showing in raised lines. followed the colouring, which was done by little boys in spectacles. with a pair of tiniest steel chopsticks they filled from bowls at their sides each compartment of the pattern with its proper hue of paste. there is not much room allowed for error in filling the spots on a butterfly's wing with avanturine enamel when the said wings are less than an inch across. i watched the delicate play of wrist and hand till i was wearied, and the manager showed me his patterns--terrible dragons, clustered chrysanthemums, butterflies, and diapers as fine as frost on a window-pane--all drawn in unerring line. "those things are our subjects. i compile from them, and when i want some new colours i go and look at those dead butterflies," said he. after the enamel has been filled in, the pot or plate goes to be fired, and the enamel bubbles all over the boundary lines of wires, and the whole comes from the furnace looking like delicate majolica. it may take a month to put a pattern on the plate in outline, another month to fill in the enamel, but the real expenditure of time does not commence till the polishing. a man sits down with the rough article, all his tea-things, a tub of water, a flannel, and two or three saucers full of assorted pebbles from the brook. he does not get a wheel with tripoli, or emery, or buff. he sits down and rubs. he rubs for a month, three months, or a year. he rubs lovingly, with his soul in his finger ends, and little by little the efflorescence of the fired enamel gives way, and he comes down to the lines of silver, and the pattern in all its glory is there waiting for him. i saw a man who had only been a month over the polishing of one little vase five inches high. he would go on for two months. when i am in america he will be rubbing still, and the ruby-coloured dragon that romped on a field of lazuli, each tiny scale and whisker a separate compartment of enamel, will be growing more lovely. "there is also cheap _cloissonnée_ to be bought," said the manager, with a smile. "we cannot make that. the vase will be seventy dollars." i respected him for saying "cannot" instead of "do not." there spoke the artist. our last visit was paid to the largest establishment in kioto, where boys made gold inlay on iron, sitting in camphor-wood verandahs overlooking a garden lovelier than any that had gone before. they had been caught young, even as is the custom in india. a real grown-up man was employed on the horrible story, in iron, gold, and silver, of two priests who waked up a rain-dragon and had to run for it, all round the edge of a big shield; but the liveliest worker of the batch was a small fat baby who had been given a tenpenny nail, a hammer, and a block of metal to play with, that he might soak in the art by which he would live, through the pores of his skin. he crowed and chuckled as he whacked. there are not many five-year-olds in england who could hammer anything without pulping their little pink fingers. the baby had learned how to hit straight. on the wall of the room hung a japanese painting of the apotheosis of art. it represented with fidelity all the processes of pottery from the digging of the clay to the last firing. but all the pencilled scorn of the artist was reserved for the closing scene, where an englishman, his arm round his wife's waist, was inspecting a shop full of curios. the japanese are not impressed with the grace of our clothing or the beauty of our countenances. later we beheld the manufacture of gold lacquer, which is laid on speck by speck from an agate palette fitted on the artist's thumb; and the carving of ivory, which is exciting until you begin to realise that the graver never slips. "a lot of their art is purely mechanical" said the professor, when he was safe back in the hotel. "so's a lot of ours--'specially our pictures. only we can't be spiritedly mechanical," i answered. "fancy a people like the japanese solemnly going in for a constitution. observe! the only two nations with constitution worth having are the english and the americans. the english can only be artistic in spots and by way of the art of other nations--sicilian tapestries, persian saddle-bags, khoten carpets, and the sweepings of pawn-brokers' shops. the americans are artistic so long as a few of 'em can buy their art to keep abreast of the times with. spain is artistic, but she is also disturbed at intervals; france is artistic, but she must have her revolution every twenty years for the sake of fresh material; russia is artistic, but she occasionally wishes to kill her czar, and has no sort of government; germany is not artistic, because she experienced religion; and italy is artistic, because she did very badly. india--" "when you have finished your verdict on the world, perhaps you'll go to bed." "consequently," i continued, with scorn, "i am of opinion that a constitution is the worst thing in the world for a people who are blessed with souls above the average. now the first demand of the artistic temperament is mundane uncertainty. the second is--" "sleep," said the professor, and left the room. no. xvii of the nature of the tokaido and japanese railway construction. one traveller explains the life of the sahib-log, and another the origin of dice. of the babies in the bath tub and the man in d. t. "when i went to hell i spoke to the man on the road." --_old saw._ you know the story of the miner who borrowed a dictionary and returned it with the remark that the stories, though interesting in the main, were too various. i have the same complaint to make against japanese scenery--twelve hours of it by train from nagoya to yokohama. about seven hundred years ago the king of those days built a sea-road which he called the tokaido (or else all the sea-coast was called the tokaido, but it's of no importance), which road endures to the present. later on, when the english engineer appeared, he followed the grand trunk more or less closely, and the result has been a railway that any nation might take off their hat to. the last section of the through line from kioto to yokohama was only opened five days before the professor and i honoured it with an unofficial inspection. the accommodation of all kinds is arranged for the benefit of the japanese; and this is distressing to the foreigner, who expects in a carriage remotely resembling e. i. r. rolling-stock the conveniences of that pea-green and very dusty old line. but it suits the japanese admirably: they hop out at every other station--_pro re nata_--and occasionally get left behind. two days ago they managed to kill a government official of high standing between a footboard and a platform, and to-day the japanese papers are seriously discussing the advantages of lavatories. far be it from me to interfere with the arrangements of an artistic empire; but for a twelve hours' run there might at least be arrangements. we had left the close-packed cultivation at the foot of the hills and were running along the shores of a great lake, all steel-blue from one end to the other, except where it was dotted with little islands. then the lake turned into an arm of the sea, and we ran across it on a cut-stone causeway, and the profligacy of the pines ceased, as the trees had to come down from clothing dank hills, and fight with bowed head, outstretched arms, and firmly planted feet, against the sands of the pacific, whose breakers were spouting and blowing not a quarter of a mile away from the causeway. the japs know all about forestry. they stake down wandering sand-torrents, which are still allowed to ruin our crops in the hoshiarpur district, and they plug a shifting sand-dune with wattle dams and pine seedlings as cleverly as they would pin plank to plank. were their forest officers trained at nancy, or are they local products? the stake-binding used to hold the sand is of french pattern, and the diagonal planting out of the trees is also french. half a minute after the train dropped this desolate, hardly controlled beach it raced through four or five miles of the suburbs of patna, but a clean and glorified patna bowered in bamboo plantations. then it hit a tunnel and sailed forth into a section of the london, brighton, and south coast, or whatever the line is that wants to make the channel tunnel. at any rate, the embankment was on the beach, and the waves lapped the foot of it, and there was a wall of cut rock to landward. then we disturbed many villages of fishermen, whose verandahs gave on to the track, and whose nets lay almost under our wheels. the railway was still a new thing in that particular part of the world, for mothers held up their babes to see it. any one can keep pace with indian scenery, arranged as it is in reaches of five hundred miles. this blinding alternation of field, mountain, sea-beach, forest, bamboo grove, and rolling moor covered with azalea blossoms was too much for me, so i sought the society of a man who had lived in japan for twenty years. "yes, japan's an excellent country as regards climate. the rains begin in may or latter april. june, july, and august are hot months. i've known the thermometer as high as ° at night, but i'd defy the world to produce anything more perfect than the weather between september and may. when one gets seedy, one goes to the hot springs in the hakone mountains close to yokohama. there are heaps of places to recruit in, but we english are a healthy lot. of course we don't have half as much fun as you do in india. we are a small community, and all our amusements are organised by ourselves for our own benefit--concerts, races, and amateur theatricals and the like. you have heaps of 'em in india, haven't you?" "oh, yes!" i said, "we enjoy ourselves awfully, 'specially about this time of the year. i quite understand, though, that small communities dependent on themselves for enjoyment are apt to feel a little slow and isolated--almost bored, in fact. but you were saying--?" "well, living is not very dear, and house rent is. a hundred dollars a month gets you a decent house and you can get one for sixty. but house property is down just now in yokohama. the races are on in yokohama to-day and monday. are you going? no? you ought to go and see all the foreigners enjoying themselves. but i suppose you've seen much better things in india, haven't you? you haven't anything better than old fuji--fujiyama. there he is now to the left of the line. what do you think of him?" i turned and beheld fujiyama across a sea of upward-sloping fields and woods. it is about fourteen thousand feet high--not very much, according to our ideas. but fourteen thousand feet above the sea when one stands in the midst of sixteen-thousand-foot peaks, is quite another thing from the same height noted at sea-level in a comparatively flat country. the labouring eye crawls up every foot of the dead crater's smooth flank, and at the summit confesses that it has seen nothing in all the himalayas to match the monster. i was satisfied. fujiyama was exactly as i had seen it on fans and lacquer boxes; i would not have sold my sight of it for the crest of kinchinjunga flushed with the morning. fujiyama is the keynote of japan. when you understand the one you are in a position to learn something about the other. i tried to get information from my fellow-traveller. "yes, the japanese are building railways all over the island. what i mean to say is that the companies are started and financed by japs, and they make 'em pay. i can't quite tell you where the money comes from, but it's all to be found in the country. japan's neither rich nor poor, but just comfortable. i'm a merchant myself. can't say that i altogether like the jap way o' doing business. you can never be certain whether the little beggar means what he says. give me a chinaman to deal with. other men have told you that, have they? you'll find that opinion at most of the treaty ports. but what i will say is, that the japanese government is about as enterprising a government as you could wish, and a good one to have dealings with. when japan has finished reconstructing herself on the new lines, she'll be quite a respectable little power. see if she isn't. now we are coming into the hakone mountains. watch the railway. it's rather a curiosity." we came into the hakone mountains by way of some irish scenery, a scotch trout-stream, a devonshire combe, and an indian river running masterless over half a mile of pebbles. this was only the prelude to a set of geological illustrations, including the terraces formed by ancient river-beds, denudation, and half a dozen other ations. i was so busy telling the man from yokohama lies about the height of the himalayas that i did not watch things closely, till we got to yokohama, at eight in the evening, and went to the grand hotel, where all the clean and nicely dressed people who were just going in to dinner regarded us with scorn, and men, whom we had met on steamers aforetime, dived into photograph books and pretended not to see us. there's a deal of human nature in a man--got up for dinner--when a woman is watching him--and you look like a brick-layer--even in yokohama. the grand is the semi or cottage grand really, but you had better go there unless a friend tells you of a better. a long course of good luck has spoiled me for even average hotels. they are too fine and large at the grand, and they don't always live up to their grandeur; unlimited electric bells, but no one in particular to answer 'em; printed menu, but the first comers eat all the nice things, and so forth. none the less there are points about the grand not to be despised. it is modelled on the american fashion, and is but an open door through which you may catch the first gust from the pacific slope. officially, there are twice as many english as americans in the port. actually, you hear no languages but french, german, or american in the street. my experience is sadly limited, but the american i have heard up to the present, is a tongue as distinct from english as patagonian. a gentleman from boston was kind enough to tell me something about it. he defended the use of "i guess" as a shakespearian expression to be found in _richard the third_. i have learned enough never to argue with a bostonian. "all right," i said, "i've never heard a real american say 'i guess'; but what about the balance of your extraordinary tongue? do you mean to say that it has anything in common with ours except the auxiliary verbs, the name of the creator, and damn? listen to the men at the next table." "they are westerners," said the man from boston, as who should say "observe this cassowary." "they are westerners, and if you want to make a westerner mad tell him he is not like an englishman. they think they are like the english. they are awfully thin-skinned in the west. now in boston it's different. _we_ don't care what the english people think of us." the idea of the english people sitting down to think about boston, while boston on the other side of the water ostentatiously "didn't care," made me snigger. the man told me stories. he belonged to a republic. that was why every man of his acquaintance belonged either "to one of the first families in boston" or else "was of good salem stock, and his fathers had come over in the _mayflower_." i felt as though i were moving in the midst of a novel. fancy having to explain to the casual stranger the blood and breeding of the hero of every anecdote. i wonder whether many people in boston are like my friend with the salem families. i am going there to see. "there's no romance in america--it's all hard, business facts," said a man from the pacific slope, after i had expressed my opinion about some rather curious murder cases which might have been called miscarriages of justice. ten minutes later, i heard him say slowly, _apropos_ of a game called "round the horn" (this is a bad game. don't play it with a stranger.) "well, it's a good thing for this game that omaha came up. dice were invented in omaha, and the man who invented 'em he made a colossal fortune." i said nothing. i began to feel faint. the man must have noticed it. "six-and-twenty years ago, omaha came up," he repeated, looking me in the eye, "and the number of dice that have been made in omaha since that time is incalculable." "there is no romance in america," i moaned like a stricken ring-dove, in the professor's ear. "nothing but hard business facts, and the first families of boston, massachusetts, invented dice at omaha when it first came up, twenty-six years ago, and that's the solid truth. what am i to do with a people like this?" "are you describing japan or america? for goodness' sake, stick to one or the other," said the professor. "it wasn't my fault. there's a bit of america in the bar-room, and on my word it's rather more interesting than japan. let's go across to 'frisco and hear some more lies." "let's go and look at photographs, and refrain from mixing our countries or our drinks." by the way, wherever you go in the further east be humble to the white trader. recollect that you are only a poor beast of a buyer with a few dirty dollars in your pockets, and you can't expect a man to demean himself by taking them. and observe humility not only in the shops, but elsewhere. i was anxious to know how i should cross the pacific to 'frisco, and very foolishly went to an office where they might, under certain circumstances, be supposed to attend to these things. but no anxiety troubled the sprightly soul who happened to be in the office-chair. "there's heaps of time for finding out later on," he said, "and anyhow, i'm going to the races this afternoon. come later on." i put my head in the spittoon, and crawled out under the door. when i am left behind by the steamer it will console me to know that that young man had a good time, and won heavily. everybody keeps horses in yokohama, and the horses are nice little fat little tubs, of the circus persuasion. i didn't go to the races, but a calcutta man did, and returned saying that "they ran - cart-horses, and even time for a mile was four minutes and twenty-seven seconds." perhaps he had lost heavily, but i can vouch for the riding of the few gentlemen i saw outside the animals. it is very impartial and remarkably all round. just when the man from boston was beginning to tell me some more stories about first families, the professor developed an unholy taste for hot springs, and bore me off to a place called myanoshita to wash myself. "we'll come back and look at yokohama later on, but we must go to this because it's so beautiful." "i'm getting tired of scenery. it's all beautiful and it can't be described, but these men here tell you stories about america. did you ever hear how the people of carmel lynched edward m. petree for preaching the gospel without making a collection at the end of the service? there's no romance in america--it's all hard business facts. edward m. petree was--" "_are_ you going to see japan or are you not?" i went to see. first in a train for one hour in the company of a carriageful of howling globe-trotters, then in a 'rickshaw for four. you cannot appreciate scenery unless you sit in a 'rickshaw. we struck after seven miles of modified flat--the flattery of nature that lures you to her more rugged heart--a mountain river all black pools and boiling foam. him we followed into the hills along a road cut into the crumbling volcanic rock and entirely unmetalled. it was as hard as the simla cartroad, but those far hills behind kalka have no such pine and maple, ash and willow. it was a land of green-clothed cliff and silver waterfall, lovely beyond the defilement of the pen. at every turn in the road whence a view could be commanded, stood a little tea-house full of admiring japanese. the jap dresses in blue because he knows that it contrasts well with the colour of the pines. when he dies he goes to a heaven of his own because the colouring of ours is too crude to suit him. we kept the valley of the glorified stream till the waters sank out of sight down the cliff side and we could but hear them calling to one another through the tangle of the trees. where the woodlands were lovelier, the gorge deepest, and the colours of the young hornbeam most tender, they had clapped down two vile hostelries of wood and glass, and a village that lived by selling turned wood and glass inlay things to the tourist. australians, anglo-indians, dwellers in london and the parts beyond the channel were running up and down the slopes of the hotel garden, and by their strange dresses doing all they knew to deface the landscape. the professor and i slid down the cliff at the back and found ourselves back in japan once more. rough steps took us five or six hundred feet down through dense jungle to the bed of that stream we had followed all the day. the air vibrated with the rush of a hundred torrents, and whenever the eye could pierce the undergrowth it saw a headlong stream breaking itself on a boulder. up at the hotel we had left the gray chill of a november day and cold that numbed the fingers; down in the gorge we found the climate of bengal with real steam thrown in. green bamboo pipes led the hot water to a score of bathing-houses in whose verandahs japanese in blue and white dressing-gowns lounged and smoked. from unseen thickets came the shouts of those who bathed, and--oh shame! round the corner strolled a venerable old lady chastely robed in a white bathing towel, and not too much of that. then we went up the gorge, mopping our brows, and staring to the sky through arches of rampant foliage. japanese maids of fourteen or fifteen are not altogether displeasing to behold. i have not seen more than twenty or thirty of them. of these none were in the least disconcerted at the sight of the stranger. after all, 'twas but brighton beach without the bathing-gowns. at the head of the gorge the heat became greater, and the hot water more abundant. the joints of the water-pipes on the ground gave off jets of steam; there was vapour rising from boulders on the river-bed, and the stab of a stick into the warm, moist soil was followed by a little pool of warm water. the existing supply was not enough for the inhabitants. they were mining for more in a casual and disconnected fashion. i tried to crawl down a shaft eighteen inches by two feet in the hillside, but the steam, which had no effect on the japanese hide, drove me out. what happens, i wonder, when the pick strikes the liquid, and the miner has to run or be parboiled? in the twilight, when we had reached upper earth once more and were passing through the one street of myanoshita, we saw two small fat cherubs about three years old taking their evening tub in a barrel sunk under the eaves of a shop. they feigned great fear, peeping at us behind outspread fingers, attempting futile dives, and trying to hide one behind the other in a hundred poses of spankable chubbiness, while their father urged them to splash us. it was the prettiest picture of the day, and one worth coming even to the sticky, paint-reeking hotel to see. * * * * * he was dressed in a black frock-coat, and at first i took him for a missionary as he mooned up and down the empty corridor. "i have been under a ban for three days," he whispered in a husky voice, "through no fault of mine--no fault of mine. they told me to take the third watch, but they didn't give me a printed notification which i always require, and the manager of this place says that whisky would hurt me. through no fault of mine, god knows, no fault of mine!" i do not like being shut up in an echoing wooden hotel next door to a gentleman of the marine persuasion, who is just recovering from d. t., and who talks to himself all through the dark hours. no. xviii concerning a hot-water tap, and some general conversation. "always speak to the stranger. if he doesn't shoot, the chances are he'll answer you."--_western proverb._ it is a far cry from myanoshita to michni and mandalay. that is why we have met men from both those stations, and have spent a cheerful time talking about dacoits and the black mountain expedition. one of the advantages of foreign travel is that one takes such a keen interest in, and hears so much about, home. truly, they change their trains, but not their train of thought, who run across the sea. "this is a most extraordinary place," said the professor, red as a boiled lobster. "you sit in your bath and turn on the hot or cold spring, as you choose, and the temperature is phenomenal. let's go and see where it all comes from, and then let's go away." there is a place called the burning mountain five miles in the hills. there went we, through unbroken loveliness of bamboo-copse, pine wood, grass downs, and pine wood again, while the river growled below. in the end we found an impoverished and second-hand hell, set out orderly on the side of a raw and bleeding hillside. it looked as though a match-factory had been whelmed by a landslip. water, in which bad eggs had been boiled, stood in blister-lipped pools, and puffs of thin white smoke went up from the labouring under-earth. despite the smell and the sulphur incrustations on the black rocks, i was disappointed, till i felt the heat of the ground, which was the heat of a boiler-sheathing. they call the mountain extinct. if untold tons of power, cased in a few feet of dirt, be the japanese notion of extinction, glad i am that i have not been introduced to a lively volcano. indeed, it was not an overweening notion of my own importance, but a tender regard for the fire-crust below, and a dread of starting the machinery by accident, that made me step so delicately, and urge return upon the professor. "huh! it's only the boiler of your morning bath. all the sources of the springs are here," said he. "i don't care. let 'em alone. did you never hear of a boiler bursting? don't prod about with your stick in that amateur way. you'll turn on the tap." when you have seen a burning mountain you begin to appreciate japanese architecture. it is not solid. every one is burned out once or twice casually. a business isn't respectable until it has received its baptism of fire. but fire is of no importance. the one thing that inconveniences a jap is an earthquake. consequently, he arranges his house that it shall fall lightly as a bundle of broom upon his head. still further safeguarding himself, he has no foundations, but the corner-posts rest on the crowns of round stones sunk in the earth. the corner-posts take the wave of the shock, and, though the building may give way like an eel-trap, nothing very serious happens. this is what epicures of earthquakes aver. i wait for mine own experiences, but not near a suspected district such as the burning mountain. it was only to escape from one terror to another that i fled myanoshita. a blue-breeched dwarf thrust me into a dwarf 'rickshaw on spidery wheels, and down the rough road that we had taken four hours to climb ran me clamorously in half an hour. take all the parapets off the simla road and leave it alone for ten years. then run down the steepest four miles of any section,--not steeper than the drop to the old gaiety theatre,--behind one man! "we couldn't get six hill-men to take us in this style," shouted the professor as he spun by, his wheels kicking like a duck's foot, and the whole contraption at an angle of thirty. i am proud to think that not even sixty hill-men would have gambolled with a sahib in that disgraceful manner. nor would any tramway company in the real east have run its cars to catch a train that used to start last year, but now--rest its soul--is as dead as queen anne. this thing a queer little seven-mile tramway accomplished with much dignity. it owned a first-class car and a second-class car,--two horses to each,--and it ran them with a hundred yards headway--the one all but empty, and the other half full. when the very small driver could not control his horses, which happened on the average once every two minutes, he did not waste time by pulling them in. he screwed down the brake and laughed--possibly at the company who had paid for the very elaborate car. yet he was an artistic driver. he wore no philistine brass badge. between the shoulders of his blue jerkin were done in white, three railheads in a circle, and on the skirts as many tram-wheels conventionalised. only the japanese know how to conventionalise a tram-wheel or make a key-pattern of railheads. though we took twelve hours to cover the thirty miles that separated us from yokohama, we admitted this much while we waited for our train in a village by the sea. a village of any size is about three miles long in the main street. villages with a population of more than ten thousand souls take rank as towns. "and yet," said a man at yokohama that night, "you have not seen the densest population. that's away in the western _kens_--districts, as you call them. the folk really are crowded thereabouts, but virtually poverty does not exist in the country. you see, an agricultural labourer can maintain himself and his family, as far as rice goes, for four cents a day, and the price of fish is nominal. rice now costs a hundred pounds to the dollar. what do you make it by indian standards? from twenty to twenty-five seers the rupee. yes, that's about it. well, he gets, perhaps, three dollars and a-half a month. the people spend a good deal in pleasuring. they must enjoy themselves. i don't think they save much. how do they invest their savings? in jewellery? no, not exactly; though you'll find that the women's hair-pins, which are about the only jewellery they wear, cost a good deal. seven and eight dollars are paid for a good hair-pin, and of course jade may cost anything. what the women really lock their money up in is in their _obis_--the things you call sashes. an _obi_ is ten or twelve yards long, and i've known them sold wholesale for fifty dollars each. every woman above the poorest class has at least one good dress of silk and an _obi_. yes, all their savings go in dress, and a handsome dress is always worth having. the western _kens_ are the richest taken all round. a skilled mechanic there gets a dollar or dollar and a-half a day, and, as you know, lacquer-workers and inlayers--artists--get two. there's enough money in japan for all current expenses. they won't borrow any for railroads. they raise it 'emselves. most progressive people the japanese are as regards railways. they make them very cheaply, much more cheaply than any european lines. i've some experience, and i take it that two thousand pounds a mile is the average cost of construction. not on the tokaido, of course--the line that you came up by. that's a government line, state built, and a very expensive one. i'm speaking of the japanese railway company with a mileage of three hundred, and the line from kobé south, and the kinshin line in the southern island. there are lots of little companies with a few score miles of line, but all the companies are extending. the reason why the construction is so cheap is the nature of the land. there's no long haulage of rails, because you can nearly always find a creek running far up into the country, and dump out your rails within a few miles of the place where they are wanted. then, again, all your timber lies to your hand, and your staff are japs. there are a few european engineers, but they are quite the heads of the departments, and i believe if they were cleared out to-morrow, the japs would go on building their lines. they know how to make 'em pay. one line started on a state guarantee of eight per cent. it hasn't called for the guarantee yet. it's making twelve per cent on its own hook. there's a very heavy freight traffic in wood and provisions for the big towns, and there's a local traffic that you can have no idea of unless you've watched it. the people seem to move in twenty-mile circles for business or pleasure--'specially pleasure. oh, i tell you, japan will be a gridiron of railways before long. in another month or two you'll be able to travel nearly seven hundred miles on and by the tokaido line alone from one end to the other, of the central islands. getting from east to west is harder work. the backbone-hills of the country are just cruel, and it will be some time before the japs run many lines across. but they'll do it, of course. their country must go forward. "if you want to know anything about their politics, i'm afraid i can't help you much. they are, so to speak, drunk with western liquor, and are sucking it up by the hogshead. in a few years they will see how much of what we call civilisation they really want, and how much they can discard. 'tisn't as if they had to learn the arts of life or how to make themselves comfortable. they knew all that long ago. when their railway system is completed, and they begin to understand their new constitution, they will have learned as much as we can teach 'em. that's my opinion; but it needs time to understand this country. i've been a matter of eight or ten years in it, and my views aren't worth much. i've come to know some of the old families that used to be of the feudal nobility. they keep themselves to themselves and live very quietly. i don't think you'll find many of them in the official classes. their one fault is that they entertain far beyond their means. they won't receive you informally and take you into their houses. they raise dancing-girls, or take you to their club and have a big feed. they don't introduce you to their wives, and they haven't yet given up the rule of making the wife eat after the husband. like the native of india you say? well, i am very fond of the jap; but i suppose he _is_ a native any way you look at him. you wouldn't think that he is careless in his workmanship and dishonest. a chinaman, on an average, is out and away a bigger rogue than a jap; but he has sense enough to see that honesty is the best policy, and to act by that light. a jap will be dishonest just to save himself trouble. he's like a child that way." how many times have i had to record such an opinion as the foregoing? everywhere the foreigner says the same thing of the neat-handed, polite little people that live among flowers and babies, and smoke tobacco as mild as their own manners. i am sorry; but when you come to think of it, a race without a flaw would be perfect. and then all the other nations of the earth would rise up and hammer it to pieces. and then there would be no japan. "i'll give you a day to think over things generally," said the professor. "after that we'll go to nikko and tokio. who has not seen nikko does not know how to pronounce the world 'beautiful.'" yokohama is not the proper place to arrange impressions in. the pacific ocean knocks at your door, asking to be looked at; the japanese and american men-of-war demand serious attention through a telescope; and if you wander about the corridors of the grand hotel, you stop to play with spanish generals, all gold lace and spurs, or are captured by touts for curio-shops. it is not a nice experience to find a sahib in a panama hat handing you the card of his firm for all the world like a delhi silk-merchant. you are inclined to pity that man, until he sits down, gives you a cigar, and tells you all about his diseases, his past career in california, where he was always making money and always losing it, and his hopes for the future. you see then that you are entering upon a new world. talk to every one you meet, if they show the least disposition to talk to you, and you will gather, as i have done, a host of stories that will be of use to you hereafter. unfortunately, they are not all fit for publication. when i tore myself away from the distractions of the outer world, and was just sitting down to write seriously on the future of japan, there entered a fascinating man, with heaps of money, who had collected indian and japanese curios all his life, and was now come to this country to get some old books which his collection lacked. can you imagine a more pleasant life than his wanderings over the earth, with untold special knowledge to back each signature of his cheque-book? in five minutes he had carried me far away from the clattering, fidgetty folk around, to a quiet world where men meditated for three weeks over a bronze, and scoured all japan for a sword-guard designed by a great artist and--were horribly cheated in the end. "who is the best artist in japan now?" i asked. "he died in tokio, last friday, poor fellow, and there is no one to take his place. his name was k----, and as a general rule he could never be persuaded to work unless he was drunk. he did his best pictures when he was drunk." "_Ému._ artists are never drunk." "quite right. i'll show you a sword-guard that he designed. all the best artists out here do a lot of designing. k---- used to fritter away his time on designs for old friends. had he stuck to pictures he could have made twice as much. but he never turned out potboilers. when you go to tokio, make it your business to get two little books of his called _drunken sketches_--pictures that he did, when he was--_ému_. there is enough dash and go in them to fill half a dozen studios. an english artist studied under him for some time. but k----'s touch was not communicable, though he might have taught his pupil something about technique. have you ever come across one of k----'s crows? you could tell it anywhere. he could put all the wicked thoughts that ever came into the mind of a crow--and a crow is first cousin to the devil--on a piece of paper six inches square, with a brush of indian ink and two turns of his wrist. look at the sword-guard i spoke of. how is that for feeling?" on a circular piece of iron four inches in diameter and pierced by the pole for the tang of the blade, poor k----, who died last friday, had sketched the figure of a coolie trying to fold up a cloth which was bellying to a merry breeze--not a cold wind, but a sportive summer gust. the coolie was enjoying the performance, and so was the cloth. it would all be folded up in another minute and the coolie would go on his way with a grin. this thing had k---- conceived, and the faithful workman executed, with the lightest touches of the graver, to the end that it might lie in a collector's cabinet in london. "wah! wah!" i said, and returned it reverently. "it would kill a man who could do that to live after his touch had gone. well for him he died--but i wish i had seen him. show me some more." "i've got a painting by hokusai--the great artist who lived at the end of the last century and the beginning of this. even _you_ have heard of hokusai, haven't you?" "a little. i have heard it was impossible to get a genuine painting with his signature attached." "that's true; but i've shown this one to the japanese government expert in pictures--the man the mikado consults in cases of doubt--to the first european authority on japanese art, and of course i have my own opinion to back the signed guarantee of the seller. look!" he unrolled a silk-scroll and showed me the figure of a girl in pale blue and grey crêpe, carrying in her arms a bundle of clothes that, as the tub behind her showed, had just been washed. a dark-blue handkerchief was thrown lightly over the left forearm, shoulder, and neck, ready to tie up the clothes when the bundle should be put down. the flesh of the right arm showed through the thin drapery of the sleeve. the right hand merely steadied the bundle from above; the left gripped it firmly from below. through the stiff blue-black hair showed the outline of the left ear. that there was enormous elaboration in the picture, from the ornamentation of the hair-pins to the graining of the clogs, did not strike me till after the first five minutes, when i had sufficiently admired the certainty of touch. "recollect there is no room for error in painting on silk," said the proud possessor. "the line must stand under any circumstances. all that is possible before painting is a little dotting with charcoal, which is rubbed off with a feather-brush. did he know anything about drapery or colour or the shape of a woman? is there any one who could teach him more if he were alive to-day?" then we went to nikko. no. xix the legend of nikko ford and the story of the avoidance of misfortune. a rose-red city, half as old as time. five hours in the train took us to the beginning of a 'rickshaw journey of twenty-five miles. the guide unearthed an aged cart on japanese lines, and seduced us into it by promises of speed and comfort beyond anything that a 'rickshaw could offer. never go to nikko in a cart. the town of departure is full of pack-ponies who are not used to it, and every third animal tries to get a kick at his friends in the shafts. this renders progress sufficiently exciting till the bumpsomeness of the road quenches all emotions save one. nikko is reached through one avenue of _cryptomerias_--cypress-like trees eighty feet high, with red or dull silver trunks and hearse-plume foliage of darkest green. when i say one avenue, i mean one continuous avenue twenty-five miles long, the trees so close to each other throughout that their roots interlace and form a wall of wood on either side of the sunken road. where it was necessary to make a village along the line of march,--that is to say once every two or three miles,--a few of the giants had been wrenched out--as teeth are wrenched from a full-planted jaw--to make room for the houses. then the trees closed up as before to mount guard over the road. the banks between which we drove were alight with azaleas, camelias, and violets. "glorious! stupendous! magnificent!" sang the professor and i in chorus for the first five miles, in the intervals of the bumps. the avenue took not the least notice of our praise except by growing the trees even more closely together. "vistas of pillared shade" are very pleasant to read about, but on a cold day the ungrateful heart of man could cheerfully dispense with a mile or two of it if that would shorten the journey. we were blind to the beauty around; to the files of pack-ponies with manes like hearth-brooms and the tempers of eblis kicking about the path; to the pilgrims with blue and white handkerchiefs on their heads, enviable silver-grey leggings on their feet, and buddha-like babies on their backs; to the trim country drays pulled by miniature cart-horses bringing down copper from the mines and _saki_ from the hills; to the colour and movement in the villages where all the little children shouted "ohio's!" and all the old people laughed. the grey tree-trunks marched us solemnly along over that horrid bad road which had been mended with brushwood, and after five hours we got nikko in the shape of a long village at the foot of a hill, and capricious nature, to reward us for our sore bones, laughed on the instant in floods of sunshine. and upon what a mad scene did the light fall! the _cryptomerias_ rose in front of us a wall of green darkness, a tearing torrent ran deep-green over blue boulders, and between stream and trees was thrown a blood-red bridge--the sacred bridge of red lacquer that no foot save the mikado's may press. very cunning artists are the japanese. long ago a great-hearted king came to nikko river and looked across at the trees, up-stream at the torrent and the hills whence it came, and down-stream at the softer outlines of the crops and spurs of wooded mountains. "it needs only a dash of colour in the foreground to bring this all together," said he, and he put a little child in a blue and white dressing-gown under the awful trees to judge the effect. emboldened by his tenderness, an aged beggar ventured to ask for alms. now it was the ancient privilege of the great to try the temper of their blades upon beggars and such cattle. mechanically the king swept off the old man's head, for he did not wish to be disturbed. the blood spurted across the granite slabs of the river-ford in a sheet of purest vermilion. the king smiled. chance had solved the problem for him. "build a bridge here," he said to the court carpenter, "of just such a colour as that stuff on the stones. build also a bridge of grey stone close by, for i would not forget the wants of my people." so he gave the little child across the stream a thousand pieces of gold and went his way. he had composed a landscape. as for the blood, they wiped it up and said no more about it; and that is the story of nikko bridge. you will not find it in the guide-books. i followed the voice of the river through a rickety toy-village, across some rough bottom-land, till, crossing a bridge, i found myself among lichened stones, scrub, and the blossoms of spring. a hillside, steep and wooded as the flanks of the red aravallis, rose on my left; on my right, the eye travelled from village to cropland, crop to towering cypress, and rested at last on the cold blue of an austere hill-top encircled by streaks of yet unmelted snow. the nikko hotel stood at the foot of this hill; and the time of the year was may. then a sparrow came by with a piece of grass in her beak, for she was building her nest; and i knew that the spring was come to nikko. one is so apt to forget the changes of the year over there with you in india. sitting in a solemn line on the banks of the river were fifty or sixty cross-legged images which the untrained eye put down immediately as so many small buddhas. they had all, even when the lichen had cloaked them with leprosy, the calm port and unwinking regard of the lord of the world. they are not buddhas really, but other things--presents from forgotten great men to dead and gone institutions, or else memorials of ancestors. the guide-book will tell you. they were a ghostly crew. as i examined them more closely i saw that each differed from the other. many of them held in their joined arms a little store of river pebbles, evidently put there by the pious. when i inquired the meaning of the gift from a stranger who passed, he said: "those so distinguished are images of the god who plays with little children up in the sky. he tells them stories and builds them houses of pebbles. the stones are put in his arms either that he may not forget to amuse the babies or to prevent his stock running low." i have no means of telling whether the stranger spoke the truth, but i prefer to believe that tale as gospel truth. only the japanese could invent the god who plays with little children. thereafter the images took a new aspect in my eyes and were no longer "græco-buddhist sculptures," but personal friends. i added a great heap of pebbles to the stock of the cheeriest among them. his bosom was ornamented with small printed slips of prayers which gave him the appearance of a disreputable old parson with his bands in disorder. a little further up the bank of the river was a rough, solitary rock hewn with what men called a shinto shrine. i knew better: the thing was hindu, and i looked at the smooth stones on every side for the familiar dab of red paint. on a flat rock overhanging the water were carved certain characters in sanscrit, remotely resembling those on a thibetan prayer-wheel. not comprehending these matters, and grateful that i had brought no guide-book with me, i clambered down to the lip of the river--now compressed into a raging torrent. do you know the strid near bolton--that spot where the full force of the river is pent up in two yards' breadth? the nikko strid is an improvement upon the yorkshire one. the blue rocks are hollowed like soapstone by the rush of the water. they rise above head-level and in spring are tufted with azalea blossom. the stranger of the godlings came up behind me as i basked on a boulder. he pointed up the little gorge of rocks, "now if i painted that as it stands, every critic in the papers would say i was a liar." the mad stream came down directly from a blue hill blotched with pink, through a sky-blue gorge also pink-blotched. an obviously impossible pine mounted guard over the water. i would give much to see an accurate representation of that view. the stranger departed growling over some hidden grief--connected with the academy perhaps. hounded on by the professor, the guide sought me by banks of the river and bade me "come and see temples." then i fairly and squarely cursed all temples, being stretched at my ease on some warm sand in the hollow of a rock, and ignorant as the grass-shod cattle that tramped the further bank. "very fine temples," said the guide, "you come and see. by and by temple be shut up because priests make half an hour more time." nikko time is half an hour ahead of the standard, because the priests of the temples have discovered that travellers arriving at three p.m. try to do all the temples before four--the official-hour of closing. this defrauds the church of her dues, so her servants put the clock on, and nikko, knowing naught of the value of time, is well content. when i cursed the temples i did a foolish thing, and one for which this poor pen can never make fitting reparation. we went up a hill by way of a flight of grey stone slabs. the _cryptomerias_ of the nikko road were as children to the giants that overshadowed us here. between their iron-grey boles were flashes of red--the blood-red of the mikado's bridge. that great king who killed the beggar at the ford had been well pleased with the success of his experiment. passing under a mighty stone arch we came into a square of splendour alive with the sound of hammers. thirty or forty men were tapping the pillars and steps of a carnelian shrine heavy with gold. "that," said the guide, impassively, "is a godown. they are renewing the lacquer. first they extract it." have you ever "extracted" lacquer from wood? i smote the foot of a pillar with force, and after half a dozen blows chipped off one small fragment of the stuff, in texture like red horn. betraying no surprise, i demanded the name of a yet more magnificent shrine across the courtyard. it was red lacquered like the others, but above its main door were carved in open work three apes--one with his hands to his ears, another covering his mouth, and a third blinding his eyes. "that place," said the guide, "used to be a stable when the daimio kept his horses there. the monkeys are the three who hear no wrong, say no wrong, and see no wrong." "of course," i said. "what a splendid device for a stable where the grooms steal the grain!" i was angry because i had grovelled before a godown and a stable, though the round world cannot hold their equals. we entered a temple, or a tomb, i do not know which, through a gateway of carven pillars. eleven of them bore a running pattern of trefoil--the apex pointing earthward--the twelfth had its pattern reversed. "make 'em all the same--no good," said the guide, emphatically. "something sure to come bad by an' by. make one different all right. save him so. nothing happen then." unless i am mistaken, that voluntarily breaking of the set was the one sacrifice that the designer had made to the great gods above who are so jealous of the craft of men. for the rest he had done what he pleased--even as a god might have done--with the wood in its gleaming lacquer sheath, with enamel and inlay and carving and bronze, hammered work, and the work of the inspired chisel. when he went to his account he saved himself from the jealousy of his judges, by pointing to the trefoil pillars for proof that he was only a weak mortal and in no sense their equals. men say that never man has given complete drawings, details, or descriptions of the temples of nikko. only a german would try, and he would fail in spirit. only a frenchman could succeed in spirit, but he would be inaccurate. i have a recollection of passing through a door with _cloisonnée_ hinges, with a golden lintel and red lacquer jambs, with panels of tortoise-shell lacquer and clamps of bronze tracery. it opened into a half-lighted hall on whose blue ceiling a hundred golden dragons romped and spat fire. a priest moved about the gloom with noiseless feet, and showed me a pot-bellied lantern four feet high, that the dutch traders of old time had sent as a present to the temple. there were posts of red lacquer dusted over with gold, to support the roof. on one post lay a rib of lacquer, six inches thick, that had been carved or punched over with high relief carvings and had set harder than crystal. the temple steps were of black lacquer, and the frames of the sliding screens red. that money, lakhs and lakhs of money, had been lavished on the wonder impressed me but little. i wished to know who were the men that, when the _cryptomerias_ were saplings, had sat down and spent their lives on a niche or corner of the temple, and dying passed on the duty of adornment to their sons, though neither father nor child hoped to see the work completed. this question i asked the guide, who plunged me in a tangle of daimios and shoguns, all manifestly extracted from a guide-book. after a while the builder's idea entered into my soul. he had said: "let us build blood-red chapels in a cathedral." so they planted the cathedral three hundred years ago, knowing that tree-boles would make the pillars and the sky the roof. round each temple stood a small army of priceless bronze or stone lanterns, stamped, as was everything else, with the three leaves that make the daimio's crest. the lanterns were dark green or lichened grey, and in no way lightened the gloom of the red. down below, by the sacred bridge, i believed red was a joyous colour. up the hillside under the trees and the shadow of the temple eaves i saw that it was the hue of sorrow. when the great king killed the beggar at the ford he did not laugh, as i have said. he was very sorry, and said: "art is art, and worth any sacrifice. take that corpse away and pray for the naked soul." once, in one of the temple courtyards, nature dared to rebel against the scheme of the hillside. some forest tree, all unimpressed by the _cryptomerias_, had tossed a torrent of tenderest pink flowers down the face of a grey retaining wall that guarded a cutting. it was as if a child had laughed aloud at some magnificence it could not understand. "you see that cat?" said the guide, pointing out a pot-bellied pussy painted above a door. "that is the sleeping cat. the artist he paint it left-handed. we are proud of that cat." "and did they let him remain left-handed after he had painted that thing?" "oh yes. you see he was always left-handed." the infinite tenderness of the japanese towards their children extends, it would seem, even to artists. every guide will take you to see the sleeping cat. don't go. it is bad. coming down the hill, i learned that all nikko was two feet under snow in the winter, and while i was trying to imagine how fierce red, white, and black-green would look under the light of a winter sun i met the professor murmuring expletives of admiration. "what have you done? what have you seen?" said he. "nothing. i've accumulated a lot of impressions of no use to any one but the owner." "which means you are going to slop over for the benefit of the people in india," said the professor. and the notion so disgusted me that i left nikko that very afternoon, the guide clamouring that i had not seen half its glories. "there is a lake," he said; "there are mountains. you must go see!" "i will return to tokio and study the modern side of japan. this place annoys me because i do not understand it." "yet i am _the_ good guide of yokohama," said the guide. no. xx shows how i grossly libelled the japanese army, and edited a civil and military gazette which is not in the least trustworthy. "and the duke said, 'let there be cavalry,' and there were cavalry. and he said, 'let them be slow,' and they were slow, d----d slow; and the japanese imperial horse called he them." i was wrong. i know it. i ought to have clamoured at the doors of the legation for a pass to see the imperial palace. i ought to have investigated tokio and called upon some of the political leaders of the liberal and radical parties. there are a hundred things which i ought to have done, but somehow or other the bugles began to blare through the chill of the morning, and i heard the tramp of armed men under my window. the parade-ground was within a stone's throw of the tokio hotel; the imperial troops were going on parade. would _you_ have bothered your head about politics or temples? i ran after them. it is rather difficult to get accurate information about the japanese army. it seems to be in perpetual throes of reorganisation. at present, so far as one can gather, it is about one hundred and seventy thousand strong. everybody has to serve for three years, but payment of one hundred dollars will shorten the term of service by one year at least. this is what a man who had gone through the mill told me. he capped his information with this verdict: "english army no use. only navy any good. have seen two hundred english army. no use." on the parade-ground they had a company of foot and a wing of what, for the sake of brevity, i will call cavalry under instruction. the former were being put through some simple evolutions in close order; the latter were variously and singularly employed. to the former i took off the hat of respect; at the latter i am ashamed to say i pointed the finger of derision. but let me try to describe what i saw. the likeness of the jap infantryman to the gurkha grows when you see him in bulk. thanks to their wholesale system of conscription the quality of conscripts varies immensely. i have seen scores of persons with spectacles whom it were base flattery to call soldiers, and who i hope were in the medical or commissariat departments. again i have seen dozens of bull-necked, deep-chested, flat-backed, thin-flanked little men who were as good as a colonel commanding could desire. there was a man of the d infantry whom i met at an up-country railway station. he carried just the proper amount of insolent swagger that a soldier should, refused to answer any questions of mine, and parted the crowd round him without ceremony. a gurkha of the prince of wales' own could not have been trimmer. in the crush of a ticket-collecting--we both got out together--i managed to run my hand over that small man's forearm and chest. they must have a very complete system of gymnastics in the japanese army, and i would have given much to have stripped my friend and seen how he peeled. if the d infantry are equal to sample, they are good. the men on parade at tokio belonged either to the th or the th, and turned out with their cowskin valises strapped, but i think not packed. under full kit, such as i saw on the sentry at osaka castle, they ought to be much too heavily burdened. their officers were as miserable a set of men as japan could furnish--spectacled, undersized even for japan, hollow-backed and hump-shouldered. they squeaked their words of command and had to trot by the side of their men to keep up with them. the jap soldier has the long stride of the gurkha, and he doubles with the easy lope of the 'rickshaw coolie. throughout the three hours that i watched them they never changed formation but once, when they doubled in pairs across the plain, their rifles at the carry. their step and intervals were as good as those of our native regiments, but they wheeled rather promiscuously, and were not checked for this by their officers. so far as my limited experience goes, their formation was not ours, but continental. the words of command were as beautifully unintelligible as anything our parade-grounds produce; and between them the officers of each half-company vehemently harangued their men, and shook their swords at 'em in distinctly unmilitary style. the precision of their movements was beyond praise. they enjoyed three hours of steady drill, and in the rare intervals when they stood easy to draw breath i looked for slackness all down the ranks, inasmuch as "standing easy" is the crucial test of men after the first smartness of the morning has worn off. they stood "easy," neither more nor less, but never a hand went to a shoe or stock or button while they were so standing. when they knelt, still in this queer column of company, i understood the mystery of the long-sword bayonet which has puzzled me sorely. i had expected to see the little fellows lifted into the air as the bayonet-sheath took ground; but they were not. they kicked it sideways as they dropped. all the same, the authorities tie men to the bayonets instead of bayonets to the men. when at the double there was no grabbing at the cartridge pouch with one hand or steadying the bayonet with the other, as may be seen any day at running-firing on indian ranges. they ran cleanly--as our gurkhas run. it was an unchristian thought, but i would have given a good deal to see that company being blooded on an equal number of our native infantry--just to know how they would work. if they have pluck, and there is not much in their past record to show that they have not, they ought to be first-class enemies. under british officers instead of the little anatomies at present provided, and with a better rifle, they should be as good as any troops recruited east of suez. i speak here only for the handy little men i saw. the worst of conscription is that it sweeps in such a mass of fourth and fifth-rate citizens who, though they may carry a gun, are likely, by their own excusable ineptitude, to do harm to the morale and set-up of a regiment. in their walks abroad the soldiery never dream of keeping step. they tie things to their side-arms, they carry bundles, they slouch, and dirty their uniforms. and so much for a raw opinion on japanese infantry. the cavalry were having a picnic on the other side of the parade-ground--circling right and left by sections, trying to do something with a troop, and so forth. i would fain believe that the gentlemen i saw were recruits. but they wore all their arms, and their officers were just as clever as themselves. half of them were in white fatigue-dress and flat cap,--and wore half-boots of brown leather with short hunting-spurs and black straps; no chains. they carried carbine and sword--the sword fixed to the man, and the carbine slung over the back. no martingales, but breastplates and crupper, a huge, heavy saddle, with single hide-girth, over two _numdahs_, completed the equipment which a thirteen-hand pony, all mane and tail, was trying to get rid of. when you thrust a two-pound bit and bridoon into a small pony's mouth, you hurt his feelings. when the riders wear, as did my friends, white worsted gloves, they cannot take a proper hold of the reins. when they ride with both hands, sitting well on the mount's neck, knuckles level with its ears and the stirrup leathers as short as they can be, the chances of the pony getting rid of the rider are manifestly increased. never have i seen such a wild dream of equitation as the tokio parade-ground showed. do you remember the picture in _alice in wonderland_, just before alice found the lion and the unicorn; when she met the armed men coming through the woods? i thought of that, and i thought of the white knight in the same classic, and i laughed aloud. here were a set of very fair ponies, sure-footed as goats, mostly entires, and full of go. under japanese weights they would have made very thorough mounted infantry. and here was this blindly imitative nation trying to turn them into heavy cavalry. as long as the little beasts were gravely trotting in circles they did not mind their work. but when it came to slashing at the turk's head they objected very much indeed. i affiliated myself to a section who, armed with long wooden swords, were enjoying some turk's-heading. out started a pony at the gentlest of canters, while the rider bundled all the reins into one hand, and held his sword like a lance. then the pony shied a little shy, shook his shaggy head, and began to passage round the turk's head. there was no pressure of knee or rein to tell him what was wanted. the man on top began kicking with the spurs from shoulder to rump, and shaking up the ironmongery in the poor brute's mouth. the pony could neither rear, nor kick, nor buck; but it shook itself free of the incubus who slid off. three times i saw this happen. the catastrophe didn't rise to the dignity of a fall. it was the blundering collapse of incompetence plus worsted gloves, two-handed riding, and a haystack of equipment. very often the pony went at the post, and the man delivered a back-handed cut at the turk's head which nearly brought him out of his world-too-wide saddle. again and again this solemn performance was repeated. i can honestly say that the ponies are very willing to break rank and leave their companions, which is what an english troop-horse fails in; but i fancy this is more due to the urgent private affairs of the pony than any skill in training. the troops charged once or twice in a terrifying canter. when the men wished to stop they leaned back and tugged, and the pony put his head to the ground, and bored all he knew. they charged me, but i was merciful, and forebore to empty half the saddles, as i assuredly could have done by throwing up my arms and yelling "hi!" the saddest thing of all was the painful conscientiousness displayed by all the performers in the circus. they had to turn these rats into cavalry. they knew nothing about riding, and what they did know was wrong; but the rats must be made troop-horses. why wouldn't the scheme work? there was a patient, pathetic wonder on the faces of the men that made me long to take one of them in my arms and try to explain things to him--bridles, for instance, and the futility of hanging on by the spurs. just when the parade was over, and the troops were ambling off, providence sent diagonally across the parade-ground, at a gallop, a big, rawboned man on a lathy-red american horse. the brute cracked his nostrils, and switched his flag abroad, and romped across the plain, while his rider dropped one hand and sat still, swaying lightly from the hips. the two served to scale the surroundings. some one really ought to tell the mikado that ponies were never intended for dragoons. if the changes and chances of military service ever send you against japanese troops, be tender with their cavalry. they mean no harm. put some fusees down for the horses to step on, and send a fatigue-party out to pick up the remnants. but if you meet japanese infantry, led by a continental officer, commence firing early and often and at the longest ranges compatible with getting at them. they are bad little men who know too much. having thoroughly settled the military side of the nation exactly as my japanese friend at the beginning of this letter settled us,--on the strength of two hundred men caught at random,--i devoted myself to a consideration of tokio. i am wearied of temples. their monotony of splendour makes my head ache. you also will weary of temples unless you are an artist, and then you will be disgusted with yourself. some folk say that tokio covers an area equal to london. some folk say that it is not more than ten miles long and eight miles broad. there are a good many ways of solving the question. i found a tea-garden situated on a green plateau far up a flight of steps, with pretty girls smiling on every step. from this elevation i looked forth over the city, and it stretched away from the sea, far as the eye could reach--one grey expanse of packed house-roof, the perspective marked by numberless factory chimneys. then i went several miles away and found a park, another eminence, and some more tea-girls prettier than the last; and, looking again, the city stretched out in a new direction as far as the eye could reach. taking the scope of the eye on a clear day at eighteen miles, i make tokio thirty-six miles long by thirty-six miles broad exactly; and there may be some more which i missed. the place roared with life through all its quarters. double lines of trams ran down the main streets for mile on mile, rows of omnibuses stood at the principal railway station, and the "compagnie general des omnibus de tokio" paraded the streets with gold and vermilion cars. all the trams were full, all the private and public omnibuses were full, and the streets were full of 'rickshaws. from the sea-shore to the shady green park, from the park to the dim distance, the land pullulated with people. here you saw how western civilisation had eaten into them. every tenth man was attired in europe clothes from hat to boots. it is a queer race. it can parody every type of humanity to be met in a large english town. eat and prosperous merchant with mutton-chop whiskers; mild-eyed, long-haired professor of science, his clothes baggy about him; schoolboy in eton jacket, broadcloth trousers; young clerk, member of the clapham athletic club in tennis flannels; artisans in sorely worn tweeds; top-hatted lawyer with clean-shaven upper lip and black leather bag; sailor out of work; and counter-jumper; all these and many, many more you shall find in the streets of tokio in half an hour's walk. but when you come to speak to the imitation, behold it can only talk japanese. you touch it, and it is not what you thought. i fluctuated down the streets addressing myself to the most english-looking folk i saw. they were polite with a graciousness that in no way accorded with their raiment, but they knew not a word of my tongue. one small boy in the uniform of the naval college said suddenly: "i spik inglees," and collapsed. the rest of the people in our clothes poured their own vernacular upon my head. yet the shop-signs were english, the tramway under my feet was english gauge, the commodities sold were english, and the notices on the streets were in english. it was like walking in a dream. i reflected. far away from tokio and off the line of rail i had met men like these men in the streets. perfectly dressed englishmen to the outer eye, but dumb. the country must be full of their likes. "good gracious! here is japan going to run its own civilisation without learning a language in which you can say damn satisfactorily. i must inquire into this." chance had brought me opposite the office of a newspaper, and i ran in demanding an editor. he came--the editor of the _tokio public opinion_, a young man in a black frock-coat. there are not many editors in other parts of the world who would offer you tea and a cigarette ere beginning a conversation. my friend had but little english. his paper, though the name was printed in english, was japanese. but he knew his business. almost before i had explained my errand, which was the pursuit of miscellaneous information, he began: "you are english. how you think now the american revision treaty?" out came a note-book and i sweated cold. it was not in the bargain that he should interview me. "there's a great deal," i answered, remembering sir roger, of blessed memory,--"a great deal to be said on both sides. the american revision treaty--h'm--demands an enormous amount of matured consideration and may safely be referred--" "but we of japan are now civilised." japan says that she is now civilised. that is the crux of the whole matter so far as i understand it. "let us have done with the idiotic system of treaty-ports and passports for the foreigner who steps beyond them," says japan in effect. "give us our place among the civilised nations of the earth, come among us, trade with us, hold land in our midst. only be subject to our jurisdiction and submit to our--tariffs." now since one or two of the foreign nations have won special tariffs for their goods in the usual way, they are not over-anxious to become just ordinary folk. the effect of accepting japan's views would be excellent for the individual who wanted to go up-country and make his money, but bad for the nation. for our nation in particular. all the same i was not prepared to have my ignorance of a burning question put down in any note-book save my own. i gladstoned about the matter with the longest words i could. my friend recorded them much after the manner of count smorltork. then i attacked him on the subject of civilisation--speaking very slowly because he had a knack of running two words of mine together, and turning them into something new. "you are right," said he. "we are becoming civilised. but not too quick, for that is bad. now there are two parties in the state--the liberal and the radical: one count he lead one, one count lead the other. the radical say that we should swiftly become all english. the liberal he says not so quick, because that nation which too swiftly adopt other people's customs he decay. that question of civilisation and the american revision treaty he occupied our chief attentions. now we are not so zealous to become civilised as we were two--three years gone. not so quick--that is our watchword. yes." if matured deliberation be the wholesale adoption of imperfectly understood arrangements, i should dearly like to see japan in a hurry. we discussed comparative civilisations for a short time, and i protested feebly against the defilement of the streets of tokio by rows of houses built after glaring european models. surely there is no need to discard your own architecture, i said. "ha," snorted the chief of the _public opinion_. "you call it picturesque. i call it too. wait till he light up--incendiate. a japanese house then is one only fire box. _that_ is why we think good to build in european fashion. i tell you, and you must believe, that we take up no change without thinking upon it. truth, indeed, it is not because we are curious children, wanting new things, as some people have said. we have done with that season of picking up things and throwing them down again. you see?" "where did you pick up your constitution, then?" i did not know what the question would bring forth, yet i ought to have been wise. the first question that a japanese on the railway asks an englishman is: "have you got the english translation of our constitution?" all the book-stalls sell it in english and japanese, and all the papers discuss it. the child is not yet three months old. "our constitution?--that was promised to us--promised twenty years ago. fourteen years ago the provinces they have been allowed to elect their big men--their heads. three years ago they have been allowed to have assemblies, and thus civil liberty was assured." i was baffled here for some time. in the end i thought i made out that the municipalities had been given certain control over police funds and the appointment of district officials. i may have been entirely wrong, but the editor bore me along on a torrent of words, his body rocking and his arms waving with the double agony of twisting a foreign tongue to his service and explaining the to-be-taken-seriouslyness of japan. whack come the little hand on the little table, and the little tea-cups jumped again. "truly, and indeed, this constitution of ours has _not_ come too soon. it proceeded step-by. you understand that? now your constitution, the constitutions of the foreign nations, are all bloody--bloody constitutions. ours has come step-by. we did not fight as the barons fought with king john at runnymede." this was a quotation from a speech delivered at otsu, a few days previously, by a member of the government. i grinned at the brotherhood of editors all the world over. up went the hand anew. "we shall be happy with this constitution and a people civilised among civilisations." "of course. but what will you actually do with it? a constitution is rather a monotonous thing to work after the fun of sending members to parliament has died out. you have a parliament, have you not?" "oh yes, _with_ parties--liberal and radical." "then they will both tell lies to you and to each other. then they will pass bills, and spend their time fighting each other. then all the foreign governments will discover that you have no fixed policy." "ah, yes. but the constitution." the little hands were crossed in his lap. the cigarette hung limply from his mouth. "no fixed policy. then, when you have sufficiently disgusted the foreign powers, they will wait until the liberals and radicals are fighting very hard, and then they will blow you out of the water." "you are not making fun? i do not quite understand," said he. "your constitutions are all so bloody." "yes. that is exactly what they are. you are very much in earnest about yours, are you not?" "oh yes, we all talk politics now." "and write politics, of course. by the way, under what--h'm, arrangements with the government is a japanese paper published? i mean, must you pay anything before starting a press?" "literary, scientific, and religious papers--no. quite free. all purely political papers pay five hundred yen--give to the government to keep, or else some man says he will pay." "you must give security, you mean?" "i do not know, but sometimes the government can keep the money. we are purely political." then he asked questions about india, and appeared astonished to find that the natives there possessed considerable political power, and controlled districts. "but have you a constitution in india?" "i am afraid that we have not." "ah!" he crushed me there, and i left very humbly, but cheered by the promise that the _tokio public opinion_ would contain an account of my words. mercifully, that respectable journal is printed in japanese, so the hash will not be served up to a large table. i would give a good deal to discover what meaning he attached to my forecast of constitutional government in japan. "we all talk politics now." that was the sentence which remained to me. it was true talk. men of the educational department in tokio told me that the students would "talk politics" by the hour if you allowed them. at present they were talking in the abstract about their new plaything, the constitution, with its upper house and its lower house, its committees, its questions of supply, its rules of procedure, and all the other skittles we have played with for six hundred years. japan is the second oriental country which has made it impossible for a strong man to govern alone. this she has done of her own free will. india, on the other hand, has been forcibly ravished by the secretary of state and the english m. p. japan is luckier than india. no. xxi shows the similarity between the babu and the japanese. contains the earnest outcry of an unbeliever. the explanation of mr. smith of california and elsewhere. takes me on board ship after due warning to those who follow. very sadly did we leave it, but we gave our hearts in pledge to the pine above the city, to the blossoms by the hedge, to the cherry and the maple and the plum tree and the peach, and the babies--oh, the babies!--romping fatly under each. eastward ho! across the water see the black bow drives and swings from the land of little children, where the babies are the kings. the professor discovered me in meditation amid tea-girls at the back of the ueno park in the heart of tokio. my 'rickshaw coolie sat by my side drinking tea from daintiest china, and eating maccaroons. i thought of sterne's donkey and smiled vacuously into the blue above the trees. the tea-girls giggled. one of them captured my spectacles, perched them on her own snubby-chubby nose, and ran about among her cackling fellows. "and loose thy fingers in the tresses of the cypress-slender minister of wine," quoted the professor, coming round a booth suddenly. "why aren't you at the mikado's garden party?" "because he didn't invite me, and, anyhow, he wears europe clothes--so does the empress--so do all the court people. let's sit down and consider things. this people puzzles me." and i told my story of the interview with the editor of the _tokio public opinion_. the professor had been making investigation into the educational department. "and further," said he at the end of the tale, "the ambition of the educated student is to get a place under government. therefore he comes to tokio: will accept any situation at tokio that he may be near to his chance." "whose son is that student?" "son of the peasant, yeoman farmer, and shopkeeper, _ryot_, _tehsildar_, and _bunnia_. while he waits he imbibes republican leanings on account of the nearness of japan to america. he talks and writes and debates, and is convinced he can manage the empire better than the mikado." "does he go away and start newspapers to prove that?" "he may; but it seems to be unwholesome work. a paper can be suspended without reason given under the present laws; and i'm told that one enterprising editor has just got three years' simple imprisonment for caricaturing the mikado." "then there is yet hope for japan. i can't quite understand how a people with a taste for fighting and quick artistic perceptions can care for the things that delight our friends in bengal." "you make the mistake of looking on the bengali as unique. so he is in his own peculiar style; but i take it that the drunkenness of western wine affects all oriental folk in much the same way. what misleads you is that very likeness. followest thou? because a jap struggles with problems beyond his grip in much the same phraseology as a calcutta university student, and discusses administration with a capital a, you lump jap and chatterjee together." "no, i don't. chatterjee doesn't sink his money in railway companies, or sit down and provide for the proper sanitation of his own city, or of his own notion cultivate the graces of life, as the jap does. he is like the _tokio public opinion_--'purely political.' he has no art whatever, he has no weapons, and there is no power of manual labour in him. yet he is like the jap in the pathos of his politics. have you ever studied pathetic politics? _why_ is he like the jap?" "both drunk, i suppose," said the professor. "get that girl to give back your gig-lamps, and you will be able to see more clearly into the soul of the far east." "the 'far east' hasn't got a soul. she swapped it for a constitution on the eleventh of february last. can any constitution make up for the wearing of europe clothes? i saw a jap lady just now in full afternoon calling-kit. she looked atrocious. have you seen the later japanese art--the pictures on the fans and in the shop windows? they are faithful reproductions of the changed life--telegraph poles down the streets, conventionalised tram-lines, top-hats, and carpet-bags in the hands of the men. the artists can make those things almost passable, but when it comes to conventionalising a europe dress, the effect is horrible." "japan wishes to take her place among civilised nations," said the professor. "that's where the pathos comes in. it's enough to make you weep to watch this misdirected effort--this wallowing in unloveliness for the sake of recognition at the hands of men who paint their ceilings white, their grates black, their mantelpieces french grey, and their carriages yellow and red. the mikado wears blue and gold and red, his guards wear orange breeches with a stone-blue stripe down them; the american missionary teaches the japanese girl to wear bangs--"shingled bangs"--on her forehead, plait her hair into a pigtail, and to tie it up with magenta and cobalt ribbons. the german sells them the offensive chromos of his own country and the labels of his beer-bottles. allen and ginter devastate tokio with their blood-red and grass-green tobacco-tins. and in the face of all these things the country wishes to progress toward civilisation! i have read the entire constitution of japan, and it is dearly bought at the price of one of the kaleidoscope omnibuses plying in the street there." "are you going to inflict all that nonsense on them at home?" said the professor. "i am. for this reason. in the years to come, when japan has sold her birthright for the privilege of being cheated on equal terms by her neighbours; when she has so heavily run into debt for her railways and public works that the financial assistance of england and annexation is her only help; when the daimios through poverty have sold the treasures of their houses to the curio-dealer, and the dealer has sold them to the english collector; when all the people wear slop-trousers and ready-made petticoats, and the americans have established soap factories on the rivers and a boarding-house on the top of fujiyama, some one will turn up the files of the _pioneer_ and say: 'this thing was prophesied.' then they will be sorry that they began tampering with the great sausage-machine of civilisation. what is put into the receiver must come out at the spout; but it must come out mincemeat. _dixi!_ and now let us go to the tomb of the forty-seven ronins." "it has been said some time ago, and much better than you can say it," said the professor, _apropos_ of nothing that i could see. distances are calculated by the hour in tokio. forty minutes in a 'rickshaw, running at full speed, will take you a little way into the city; two hours from the ueno park brings you to the tomb of the famous forty-seven, passing on the way the very splendid temples of shiba, which are all fully described in the guide-books. lacquer, gold-inlaid bronze-work, and crystals carved with the words "om" and "shri" are fine things to behold, but they do not admit of very varied treatment in print. in one tomb of one of the temples was a room of lacquer panels overlaid with gold leaf. an animal of the name of v. gay had seen fit to scratch his entirely uninteresting name on the gold. posterity will take note that v. gay never cut his fingernails, and ought not to have been trusted with anything prettier than a hog-trough. "it is the handwriting upon the wall," i said. "presently there will be neither gold nor lacquer--nothing but the finger-marks of foreigners. let us pray for the soul of v. gay all the same. perhaps he was a missionary." * * * * * the japanese papers occasionally contain, sandwiched between notes of railway, mining, and tram concessions, announcements like the following: "dr. ---- committed _hara-kiri_ last night at his private residence in such and such a street. family complications are assigned as the reason of the act." nor does _hara-kiri_ merely mean suicide by any method. _hara-kiri_ is _hara-kiri_, and the private performance is even more ghastly than the official one. it is curious to think that any one of the dapper little men with top-hats and reticules who have a constitution of their own, may in time of mental stress, strip to the waist, shake their hair over their brows, and, after prayer, rip themselves open. when you come to japan, look at farsari's _hara-kiri_ pictures and his photos of the last crucifixion (twenty years ago) in japan. then at deakin's, inquire for the modelled head of a gentleman who was not long ago executed in tokio. there is a grim fidelity in the latter work of art that will make you uncomfortable. the japanese, in common with the rest of the east, have a strain of blood-thirstiness in their compositions. it is very carefully veiled now, but some of hokusai's pictures show it, and show that not long ago the people revelled in its outward expression. yet they are tender to all children beyond the tenderness of the west, courteous to each other beyond the courtesy of the english, and polite to the foreigner alike in the big towns and in the mofussil. what they will be after their constitution has been working for three generations the providence that made them what they are alone knows! all the world seems ready to proffer them advice. colonel olcott is wandering up and down the country now, telling them that the buddhist religion needs reformation, offering to reform it, and eating with ostentation rice gruel which is served to him in cups by admiring handmaidens. a wanderer from kioto tells me that in the chion-in, loveliest of all the temples, he saw only three days ago the colonel mixed up with a procession of buddhist priests, just such a procession as the one i tried vainly to describe, and "tramping about as if the whole show belonged to him." you cannot appreciate the solemnity of this until you have seen the colonel and the chion-in temple. the two are built on entirely different lines, and they don't seem to harmonise. it only needs now madame blavatsky, cigarette in mouth, under the _cryptomerias_ of nikko, and the return of mr. caine, m. p., to preach the sin of drinking _saki_, and the menagerie would be full. something should be done to america. there are many american missionaries in japan, and some of them construct clapboard churches and chapels for whose ugliness no creed could compensate. they further instil into the japanese mind wicked ideas of "progress," and teach that it is well to go ahead of your neighbour, to improve your situation, and generally to thresh yourself to pieces in the battle of existence. they do not mean to do this; but their own restless energy enforces the lesson. the american is objectionable. and yet--this is written from yokohama--how pleasant in every way is a nice american whose tongue is cleansed of "right there," "all the time," "noos," "revoo," "raound," and the falling cadence. i have met such an one even now--a californian ripened in spain, matured in england, polished in paris, and yet always a californian. his voice and manners were soft alike, temperate were his judgments and temperately expressed, wide was his range of experience, genuine his humour, and fresh from the mint of his mind his reflections. it was only at the end of the conversation that he startled me a little. "i understand that you are going to stay some time in california. do you mind my giving you a little advice? i am speaking now of towns that are still rather brusque in their manners. when a man offers you a drink accept at once, and then stand drinks all round. i don't say that the second part of the programme is as necessary as the first, but it puts you on a perfectly safe footing. above all, remember that where you are going you must never carry anything. the men you move among will do that for you. they have been accustomed to it. it is in some places, unluckily, a matter of life and death as well as daily practice to draw first. i have known really lamentable accidents occur from a man carrying a revolver when he did not know what to do with it. do you understand anything about revolvers?" "n-no," i stammered, "of course not." "do you think of carrying one?" "of course not. i don't want to kill myself." "then you are safe. but remember you will be moving among men who go heeled, and you will hear a good deal of talk about the thing and a great many tall stories. you may listen to the yarns, but you must not conform to the custom however much you may feel tempted. you invite your own death if you lay your hand on a weapon you don't understand. no man flourishes a revolver in a bad place. it is produced for one specified purpose and produced before you can wink." "but surely if you draw first you have an advantage over the other man," said i, valorously. "you think so? let me show you. i have no use for any weapon, but i believe i have one about me somewhere. an ounce of demonstration is worth a ton of theory. your pipe-case is on the table. my hands are on the table too. use that pipe case as a revolver and as quickly as you can." i used it in the approved style of the penny dreadful--pointed it with a stiff arm at my friend's head. before i knew how it came about the pipe case had quitted my hand, which was caught close to the funny-bone and tingled horribly. i heard four persuasive clicks under the table almost before i knew that my arm was useless. the gentleman from california had jerked out his pistol from its pocket and drawn the trigger four times, his hand resting on his hip while i was lifting my right arm. "now, do you believe?" he said. "only an englishman or an eastern man fires from the shoulder in that melodramatic manner. i had you safe before your arm went out, merely because i happened to know the trick; and there are men out yonder who in a trouble could hold me as safe as i held you. they don't reach round for their revolver, as novelists say. it's here in front, close to the second right brace-button, and it is fired, without aim, at the other man's stomach. you will understand now why in event of a dispute you should show very clearly that you are unarmed. you needn't hold up your hands ostentatiously; keep them out of your pockets, or somewhere where your friend can see them. no man will touch you then. or if he does, he is pretty sure to be shot by the general sense of the room." "that must be a singular consolation to the corpse," i said. "i see i've misled you. don't fancy that any part in america is as free and easy as my lecture shows. only in a few really tough towns do you require _not_ to own a revolver. elsewhere you are all right. most americans of my acquaintance have got into the habit of carrying something; but it's only a habit. they'd never dream of using it unless they are hard pressed. it's the man who draws to enforce a proposition about canning peaches, orange-culture, or town lots or water-rights that's a nuisance." "thank you," i said faintly. "i purpose to investigate these things later on. i'm much obliged to you for your advice." when he had departed it struck me that, in the language of the east, "he might have been pulling my leg." but there remained no doubt whatever as to his skill with the weapon he excused so tenderly. i put the case before the professor. "we will go to america before you forejudge it altogether," said he. "to america in an american ship will we go, and say good-by to japan." that night we counted the gain of our sojourn in the land of little children more closely than many men count their silver. nagasaki with the grey temples, green hills, and all the wonder of a first-seen shore; the inland sea, a thirty-hour panorama of passing islets drawn in grey and buff and silver for our delight; kobé, where we fed well and went to a theatre; osaka of the canals and the peach blossom; kioto--happy, lazy, sumptuous kioto, and the blue rapids and innocent delights of arashima; otzu on the shoreless, rainy lake; myanoshita in the hills; kamakura by the tumbling pacific, where the great god buddha sits and equably hears the centuries and the seas murmur in his ears; nikko, fairest of all places under the sun; tokio, the two-thirds civilised and altogether progressive warren of humanity; and composite franco-american yokohama; we renewed them all, sorting out and putting aside our special treasures of memory. if we stayed longer, we might be disillusioned, and yet--surely, that would be impossible. "what sort of mental impression do you carry away?" said the professor. "a tea-girl in fawn-coloured crêpe under a cherry tree all blossom. behind her, green pines, two babies, and a hog-backed bridge spanning a bottle-green river running over blue boulders. in the foreground a little policeman in badly fitting europe clothes drinking tea from blue and white china on a black lacquered stand. fleecy white clouds above and a cold wind up the street," i said, summarising hastily. "mine is a little different. a japanese boy in a flat-headed german cap and baggy eton jacket; a king taken out of a toy-shop, a railway taken out of a toy-shop, hundreds of little noah's ark trees and fields made of green-painted wood. the whole neatly packed in a camphor-wood box with an explanatory book called the constitution--price twenty cents." "you looked on the darker side of things. but what's the good of writing impressions? every man has to get his own at first hand. suppose i give an itinerary of what we saw?" "you couldn't do it," said the professor, blandly. "besides, by the time the next anglo-indian comes this way there will be a hundred more miles of railway and all the local arrangements will have changed. write that a man should come to japan without any plans. the guide-books will tell him a little, and the men he meets will tell him ten times more. let him get first a good guide at kobé, and the rest will come easily enough. an itinerary is only a fresh manifestation of that unbridled egoism which--" "i shall write that a man can do himself well from calcutta to yokohama, stopping at rangoon, moulmein, penang, singapur, hong-kong, canton, and taking a month in japan, for about sixty pounds--rather less than more. but if he begins to buy curios, that man is lost. five hundred rupees cover his month in japan and allow him every luxury. above all, he should bring with him thousands of cheroots--enough to serve him till he reaches 'frisco. singapur is the last place on the line where you can buy burmas. beyond that point wicked men sell manila cigars with fancy names for ten, and havanas for thirty-five, cents. no one inspects your boxes till you reach 'frisco. bring, therefore, at least one thousand cheroots." "do you know, it seems to me you have a very queer sense of proportion?" and that was the last word the professor spoke on japanese soil. no. xxii shows how i came to america before my time and was much shaken in body and soul. "then spoke der captain stossenheim who had theories of god, 'oh, breitmann, this is judgment on der ways dot you have trod. you only lifs to enjoy yourself while you yourself agree dot self-development requires der religious idee.'"--_c. g. leland._ this is america. they call her the _city of peking_, and she belongs to the pacific mail company, but for all practical purposes she is the united states. we are divided between missionaries and generals--generals who were at vicksburg and shiloh, and german by birth, but more american than the americans, who in confidence tell you that they are not generals at all, but only brevet majors of militia corps. the missionaries are perhaps the queerest portion of the cargo. did you ever hear an english minister lecture for half an hour on the freight-traffic receipts and general working of, let us say, the midland? the professor has been sitting at the feet of a keen-eyed, close-bearded, swarthy man who expounded unto him kindred mysteries with a fluency and precision that a city leader-writer might have envied. "who's your financial friend with the figures at his fingers' ends?" i asked. "missionary--presbyterian mission to the japs," said the professor. i laid my hand upon my mouth and was dumb. as a counterpoise to the missionaries, we carry men from manila--lean scotchmen who gamble once a month in the manila state lottery and occasionally turn up trumps. one, at least, drew a ten-thousand-dollar prize last december and is away to make merry in the new world. everybody on the staff of an american steamer this side the continent seems to gamble steadily in that lottery, and the talk of the smoking-room runs almost entirely on prizes won by accident or lost through a moment's delay. the tickets are sold more or less openly at yokahama and hong-kong, and the drawings--losers and winners both agree here--are above reproach. we have resigned ourselves to the infinite monotony of a twenty days' voyage. the pacific mail advertises falsely. only under the most favorable circumstances of wind and steam can their under-engined boats cover the distance in fifteen days. our _city of peking_, for instance, had been jogging along at a gentle ten knots an hour, a pace out of all proportion to her bulk. "when we get a wind," says the captain, "we shall do better." she is a four-master and can carry any amount of canvas. it is not safe to run steamers across this void under the poles of atlantic liners. the monotony of the sea is paralysing. we have passed the wreck of a little sealing-schooner lying bottom up and covered with gulls. she weltered by in the chill dawn, unlovely as the corpse of a man, and the wild birds piped thinly at us as they steered her across the surges. the pulse of the pacific is no little thing even in the quieter moods of the sea. it set our bows swinging and nosing and ducking ere we were a day clear of yokohama, and yet there was never swell nor crested wave in sight. "we ride very high," said the captain, "and she's a dry boat. she has a knack of crawling over things somehow; but we shan't need to put her to the test this journey." * * * * * the captain was mistaken. for four days we have endured the sullen displeasure of the north pacific, winding up with a night of discomfort. it began with a grey sea, flying clouds, and a head-wind that smote fifty knots off the day's run. then rose from the southeast a beam sea warranted by no wind that was abroad upon the waters in our neighbourhood, and we wallowed in the trough of it for sixteen mortal hours. in the stillness of the harbour, when the newspaper man is lunching in her saloon and the steam-launch is crawling round her sides, a ship of pride is a "stately liner." out in the open, one rugged shoulder of a sea between you and the horizon, she becomes "the old hooker," a "lively boat," and other things of small import, for this is necessary to propitiate the ocean. "there's a storm to the southeast of us," explained the captain. "that's what's kicking up this sea." the _city of peking_ did not belie her reputation. she crawled over the seas in liveliest wise, never shipping a bucket till--she was forced to. then she took it green over the bows to the vast edification of, at least, one passenger who had never seen the scuppers full before. later in the day the fun began. "oh, she's a daisy at rolling," murmured the chief steward, flung starfish-wise on a table among his glassware. "she's rolling some," said a black apparition new risen from the stoke-hold. "is she going to roll any more?" demanded the ladies grouped in what ought to have been the ladies' saloon, but, according to american custom, was labelled "social hall." passed in the twilight the chief officer--a dripping, bearded face. "shall i mark out the bull-board?" said he, and lurched aft, followed by the tongue of a wave. "she'll roll her guards under to-night," said a man from louisiana, where their river-steamers do not understand the meaning of bulwarks. we dined to a dashing accompaniment of crockery, the bounds of emancipated beer-bottles livelier than their own corks, and the clamour of the ship's gong broken loose and calling to meals on its own account. after dinner the real rolling began. she did roll "guards under," as the louisiana man had prophesied. at thirty-minute intervals to the second arrived one big sea, when the electric lamps died down to nothing, and the screw raved and the blows of the sea made the decks quiver. on those occasions we moved from our chairs, not gently, but discourteously. at other times we were merely holding on with both hands. it was then that i studied fear--terror bound in black silk and fighting hard with herself. for reasons which will be thoroughly understood, there was a tendency among the passengers to herd together and to address inquiries to every officer who happened to stagger through the saloon. no one was in the least alarmed,--oh dear, no!--but all were keenly anxious for information. this anxiety redoubled after a more than usually vicious roll. terror was a large, handsome, and cultured lady who knew the precise value of human life, the inwardness of _robert elsmere_, the latest poetry--everything in fact that a clever woman should know. when the rolling was near its worst, she began to talk swiftly. i do not for a moment believe that she knew what she was talking about. the rolling increased. she buckled down to the task of making conversation. by the heave of the labouring bust, the restless working of the fingers on the tablecloth, and the uncontrollable eyes that turned always to the companion stairhead, i was able to judge the extremity of her fear. yet her words were frivolous and commonplace enough; they poured forth unceasingly, punctuated with little laughs and giggles, as a woman's speech should be. presently, a member of her group suggested going to bed. no, she wanted to sit up; she wanted to go on talking, and as long as she could get a soul to sit with her she had her desire. when for sheer lack of company she was forced to get to her cabin, she left reluctantly, looking back to the well-lighted saloon over her shoulder. the contrast between the flowing triviality of her speech and the strained intentness of eye and hand was a quaint thing to behold. i know now how fear should be painted. no one slept very heavily that night. both arms were needed to grip the berth, while the trunks below wound the carpet-slips into knots and battered the framing of the cabins. once it seemed to me that the whole of the labouring fabric that cased our trumpery fortunes stood on end and in this undignified posture hopped a mighty hop. twice i know i shot out of my berth to join the adventurous trunks on the floor. a hundred times the crash of the wave on the ship's side was followed by the roar of the water, as it swept the decks and raved round the deckhouses. in a lull i heard the flying feet of a man, a shout, and a far-away chorus of lost spirits singing somebody's requiem. _may _ (queen's birthday).--if ever you meet an american, be good to him. this day the ship was dressed with flags from stem to stern, and chiefest of the bunting was the union-jack. they had given no word of warning to the english, who were proportionately pleased. at dinner up rose an ex-commissioner of the lucknow division (on my honour, anglo-india extends to the ends of the earth!) and gave us the health of her majesty and the president. it was afterwards that the trouble began. a small american penned half a dozen english into a corner and lectured them soundly on--their want of patriotism! "what sort of queen's birthday do you call this?" he thundered. "what did you drink our president's health for? what's the president to you on this day of all others? well, suppose you _are_ in the minority, all the more reason for standing by your country. don't talk to me. you britishers made a mess of it--a mighty bungle of the whole thing. i'm an american of the americans; but if no one can propose her majesty's health better than by just throwing it at your heads, i'm going to try." then and there he delivered a remarkably neat little oration--pat, well put together, and clearly delivered. so it came to pass that the queen's health was best honoured by an american. we english were dazed. i wondered how many englishmen not trained to addressing their fellows would have spoken half so fluently as the gentleman from 'frisco. "well, you see," said one of us feebly, "she's our queen, anyhow, and--and--she's been ours for fifty years, and not one of us here has seen england for seven years, and we can't enthuse over the matter. we've lived to be hauled over the coals for want of patriotism by an american! we'll be more careful next time." and the conversation drifted naturally into the question of the government of men--english, japanese (we have several travelled japanese aboard), and americans throwing the ball from one to another. we bore in mind the golden rule: "never agree with a man who abuses his own country," and got on well enough. "japan," said a little gentleman who was a rich man there, "japan is divided into two administrative sides. on the one the remains of a very strict and quite oriental despotism; on the other a mass of--what do you call it?--red-tapeism which is not understood even by the officials who handle it. we copy the red tape, and when it is copied we believe that we administer. that is a vice of all oriental nations. we are orientals." "oh no, say the most westerly of the westerns," purred an american, soothingly. the little man was pleased. "thanks. that is what we hope to believe, but up to the present it is not so. look now. a farmer in my country holds a hillside cut into little terraces. every year he must submit to his government a statement of the size and revenue paid, not on the whole hillside, but on each terrace. the complete statement makes a pile three inches high, and is of no use when it is made except to keep in work thousands of officials to check the returns. is that administration? by god! we call it so, but we multiply officials by the twenty, and _they_ are not administration. what country is such a fool? look at our government offices eaten up with clerks! some day, i tell you, there will be a smash." this was new to me, but i might have guessed it. in every country where swords and uniforms accompany civil office there is a natural tendency towards an ill-considered increase of officialdom. "you might pay india a visit some day," i said. "i fancy that you would find that our country shares your trouble." thereupon a japanese gentleman in the educational department began to cross-question me on the matters of his craft in india, and in a quarter of an hour got from me the very little that i knew about primary schools, higher education, and the value of an m. a. degree. he knew exactly what he wanted to ask, and only dropped me when the tooth of desire had clean picked the bone of ignorance. then an american held forth, harping on a string that has already been too often twanged in my ear. "what will it be in america itself?" "the whole system is rotten from top to bottom," he said. "as rotten as rotten can be." "that's so," said the louisiana man, with an affirmative puff of smoke. "they call us a republic. we may be. i don't think it. you britishers have got the only republic worth the name. you choose to run your ship of state with a gilt figurehead; but i know, and so does every man who has thought about it, that your queen doesn't cost you one-half what our system of pure democracy costs us. politics in america? there aren't any. the whole question of the day is spoils. that's all. we fight our souls out over tram-contracts, gas-contracts, road-contracts, and any darned thing that will turn a dishonest dollar, and we call that politics. no one but a low-down man will run for congress and the senate--the senate of the freest people on earth are bound slaves to some blessed monopoly. if i had money enough, i could buy the senate of the united states, the eagle, and the star-spangled banner complete." "and the irish vote included?" said some one--a britisher, i fancy. "certainly, if i chose to go yahooing down the street at the tail of the british lion. anything dirty will buy the irish vote. that's why our politics are dirty. some day you britishers will grant home rule to the vermin in our blankets. then the real americans will invite the irish to get up and git to where they came from. 'wish you'd hurry up that time before we have another trouble. we're bound hand and foot by the irish vote; or at least that's the excuse for any unusual theft that we perpetrate. i tell you there's no good in an irishman except as a fighter. he doesn't understand work. he has a natural gift of the gab, and he can drink a man blind. these three qualifications make him a first-class politician." with one accord the americans present commenced to abuse ireland and its people as they had met them, and each man prefaced his commination service with: "i am an american by birth--an american from way back." it must be an awful thing to live in a country where you have to explain that you really belong there. louder grew the clamour and crisper the sentiments. "if we weren't among americans, i should say we were consorting with russians," said a fellow-countryman in my ear. "they can't mean what they say," i whispered. "listen to this fellow." he was saying: "and i know, for i have been three times round the world and resided in most countries on the continent, that there was never people yet could govern themselves." "allah! this from an american!" "and who should know better than an american?" was the retort. "for the ignorant--that is to say for the majority--there is only one argument--fear; the fear of death. in our case we give any scallawag who comes across the water all the same privileges that we have made for ourselves. there we make a mistake. they thank us by playing the fool. then we shoot them down. you can't persuade the mob of any country to become decent citizens. if they misbehave themselves, shoot them. i saw the bombs thrown at chicago when our police were blown to bits. i saw the banners in the procession that threw the bombs. all the mottoes on them were in german. the men were aliens in our midst, and they were shot down like dogs. i've been in labour riots and seen the militia go through a crowd like a finger through tissue paper." "i was in the riots at new orleans," said the man from louisiana. "we turned the gatling on the other crowd, and they were sick." "whew! i wonder what would have happened if a gatling had been used when the west end riots were in full swing?" said an englishman. "if a single rioter were killed in an english town by the police, the chances are that the policeman would have to stand his trial for murder and the ministry of the day would go out." "then you've got all your troubles before you. the more power you give the people, the more trouble they will give. with us our better classes are corrupt and our lower classes are lawless. there are millions of useful, law-abiding citizens, and they are very sick of this thing. we execute our justice in the streets. the law courts are no use. take the case of the chicago anarchists. it was all we could do to get 'em hanged: whereas the dead in the streets had been punished off-hand. we were sure of _them_. guess that's the reason we are so quick to fire on a mob. but it's unfair, all the same. we receive all these cattle--anarchists, socialists, and ruffians of every sort--and then we shoot them. the states are as republican as they make 'em. we have no use for a man who wants to try any more experiments on the constitution. we are the biggest people on god's earth. all the world knows that. we've been shouting that we are also the greatest people. no one cares to contradict us but ourselves; and we are now wondering whether we are what we claim to be. never mind; you britishers will have the same experiences to go through. you're beginning to rot now. your county councils will make you more rotten because you are putting power into the hands of untrained people. when you reach our level,--every man with a vote and the right to sell it; the right to nominate fellows of his own kidney to swamp out better men,--you'll be what we are now--rotten, rotten, rotten!" the voice ceased, and no man rose up to contradict. "we'll worry through it somehow," said the man from louisiana. "what would do us a world of good now would be a big european war. we're getting slack and sprawly. now a war outside our borders would make us all pull together. but that's a luxury we shan't get." "can't you raise one within your own borders?" i said flippantly, to get rid of the thought of the great blind nation in her unrest putting out her hand to the sword. mine was a most unfortunate remark. "i hope not," said an american, very seriously. "we have paid a good deal to keep ourselves together before this, and it is not likely that we shall split up without protest. yet some say we are too large, and some say that washington and the eastern states are running the whole country. if ever we do divide,--god help us when we do,--it will be east and west this time." "we built the old hooker too long in the run. we put the engine room aft. break her back," said an american who had not yet spoken. "'wonder if our forbears knew how she was going to grow." "a very large country." the speaker sighed as though the weight of it from new york to 'frisco lay upon his shoulders. "if ever we do divide, it means that we are done for. there is no room for four first-class empires in the states. one split will lead to another if the first is successful. what's the use of talking?" what was the use? here's our conversation as it ran, the night of the queen's birthday. what do _you_ think? no. xxiii how i got to san francisco and took tea with the natives there. "serene, indifferent to fate, thou sittest at the western gate, thou seest the white seas fold their tents, oh warder of two continents. thou drawest all things small and great to thee beside the western gate." this is what bret harte has written of the great city of san francisco, and for the past fortnight i have been wondering what made him do it. there is neither serenity nor indifference to be found in these parts; and evil would it be for the continent whose wardship were intrusted to so reckless a guardian. behold me pitched neck-and-crop from twenty days of the high seas, into the whirl of california, deprived of any guidance, and left to draw my own conclusions. protect me from the wrath of an outraged community if these letters be ever read by american eyes. san francisco is a mad city--inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty. when the _city of peking_ steamed through the golden gate i saw with great joy that the block-house which guarded the mouth of the "finest harbour in the world, sir," could be silenced by two gunboats from hong-kong with safety, comfort, and despatch. then a reporter leaped aboard, and ere i could gasp held me in his toils. he pumped me exhaustively while i was getting ashore, demanding, of all things in the world, news about indian journalism. it is an awful thing to enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. i spoke the truth to the evil-minded custom-house man who turned my most sacred raiment on a floor composed of stable-refuse and pine-splinters; but the reporter overwhelmed me not so much by his poignant audacity as his beautiful ignorance. i am sorry now that i did not tell him more lies as i passed into a city of three hundred thousand white men. think of it! three hundred thousand white men and women gathered in one spot, walking upon real pavements in front of real plate-glass windowed shops, and talking something that was not very different from english. it was only when i had tangled myself up in a hopeless maze of small wooden houses, dust, street-refuse, and children who play with empty kerosene tins, that i discovered the difference of speech. "you want to go to the palace hotel?" said an affable youth on a dray. "what in hell are you doing here, then? this is about the lowest place in the city. go six blocks north to corner of geary and market; then walk around till you strike corner of gutter and sixteenth, and that brings you there." i do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions, quoting but from a disordered memory. "amen," i said. "but who am i that i should strike the corners of such as you name? peradventure they be gentlemen of repute, and might hit back. bring it down to dots, my son." i thought he would have smitten me, but he didn't. he explained that no one ever used the word "street," and that every one was supposed to know how the streets run; for sometimes the names were upon the lamps and sometimes they weren't. fortified with these directions i proceeded till i found a mighty street full of sumptuous buildings four or five stories high, but paved with rude cobble stones in the fashion of the year one. a cable-car without any visible means of support slid stealthily behind me and nearly struck me in the back. a hundred yards further there was a slight commotion in the street--a gathering together of three or four--and something that glittered as it moved very swiftly. a ponderous irish gentleman with priest's cords in his hat and a small nickel-plated badge on his fat bosom emerged from the knot, supporting a chinaman who had been stabbed in the eye and was bleeding like a pig. the bystanders went their ways, and the chinaman, assisted by the policeman, his own. of course this was none of my business, but i rather wanted to know what had happened to the gentleman who had dealt the stab. it said a great deal for the excellence of the municipal arrangements of the town that a surging crowd did not at once block the street to see what was going forward. i was the sixth man and the last who assisted at the performance, and my curiosity was six times the greatest. indeed, i felt ashamed of showing it. there were no more incidents till i reached the palace hotel, a seven-storied warren of humanity with a thousand rooms in it. all the travel-books will tell you about hotel arrangements in this country. they should be seen to be appreciated. understand clearly--and this letter is written after a thousand miles of experiences--that money will not buy you service in the west. when the hotel clerk--the man who awards your room to you and who is supposed to give you information--when that resplendent individual stoops to attend to your wants, he does so whistling or humming, or picking his teeth, or pauses to converse with some one he knows. these performances, i gather, are to impress upon you that he is a free man and your equal. from his general appearance and the size of his diamonds he ought to be your superior. there is no necessity for this swaggering, self-consciousness of freedom. business is business, and the man who is paid to attend to a man might reasonably devote his whole attention to the job. in a vast marble-paved hall under the glare of an electric light sat forty or fifty men; and for their use and amusement were provided spittoons of infinite capacity and generous gape. most of the men wore frock-coats and top-hats,--the things that we in india put on at a wedding breakfast if we possessed them,--but they all spat. they spat on principle. the spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom--yea, and in chambers even more sacred than these. they chased one into retirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendour round the bar, and they were all used, every reeking one of 'em. just before i began to feel deathly sick, another reporter grappled me. what he wanted to know was the precise area of india in square miles. i referred him to whittaker. he had never heard of whittaker. he wanted it from my own mouth, and i would not tell him. then he swerved off, like the other man, to details of journalism in our own country. i ventured to suggest that the interior economy of a paper most concerned the people who worked it. "that's the very thing that interests us," he said. "have you got reporters anything like our reporters on indian news papers?" "we have not," i said, and suppressed the "thank god" rising to my lips. "_why_ haven't you?" said he. "because they would die," i said. it was exactly like talking to a child--a very rude little child. he would begin almost every sentence with: "now tell me something about india," and would turn aimlessly from one question to another without the least continuity. i was not angry, but keenly interested. the man was a revelation to me. to his questions i returned answers mendacious and evasive. after all, it really did not matter what i said. he could not understand. i can only hope and pray that none of the readers of the _pioneer_ will ever see that portentous interview. the man made me out to be an idiot several sizes more drivelling than my destiny intended, and the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort the few poor facts with which i supplied him into large and elaborate lies. then thought i: "the matter of american journalism shall be looked into later on. at present i will enjoy myself." no man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. no one volunteered any sort of conveyance. i was absolutely alone in this big city of white folk. by instinct i sought refreshment and came upon a bar-room, full of bad salon pictures, in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. it was the institution of the "free lunch" that i had struck. you paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. for something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in san francisco, even though he be bankrupt. remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. later, i began a vast but unsystematic exploration of the streets. i asked for no names. it was enough that the pavements were full of white men and women, the streets clanging with traffic, and that the restful roar of a great city rang in my ears. the cable-cars glided to all points of the compass. i took them one by one till i could go no farther. san francisco has been pitched down on the sand-bunkers of the bikaneer desert. about one-fourth of it is ground reclaimed from the sea--any old-timer will tell you all about that. the remainder is ragged, unthrifty sand-hills, pegged down by houses. from an english point of view there has not been the least attempt at grading those hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade the hillocks of sind. the cable-cars have for all practical purposes made san francisco a dead level. they take no count of rise or fall, but slide equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of a six-mile street. they turn corners almost at right angles; cross other lines, and, for aught i know, may run up the sides of houses. there is no visible agency of their flight; but once in a while you shall pass a five-storied building, humming with machinery that winds up an everlasting wire-cable, and the initiated will tell you that here is the mechanism. i gave up asking questions. if it pleases providence to make a car run up and down a slit in the ground for many miles, and if for twopence-halfpenny i can ride in that car, why shall i seek the reasons of the miracle? rather let me look out of the windows till the shops give place to thousands and thousands of little houses made of wood--each house just big enough for a man and his family. let me watch the people in the cars, and try to find out in what manner they differ from us, their ancestors. they delude themselves into the belief that they talk english,--_the_ english,--and i have already been pitied for speaking with "an english accent." the man who pitied me spoke, so far as i was concerned, the language of thieves. and they all do. where we put the accent forward, they throw it back, and _vice versa_; where we use the long _a_, they use the short; and words so simple as to be past mistaking, they pronounce somewhere up in the dome of their heads. how do these things happen? oliver wendell holmes says that yankee schoolmarms, the cider, and the salt codfish of the eastern states are responsible for what he calls a nasal accent. a hindu is a hindu, and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular; and a frenchman is french because he speaks his own language; but the american has no language. he is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent, and so forth. now that i have heard their voices, all the beauty of bret harte is being ruined for me, because i find myself catching through the roll of his rhythmical prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland. get an american lady to read to you "how santa claus came to simpson's bar," and see how much is, under her tongue, left of the beauty of the original. but i am sorry for bret harte. it happened this way. a reporter asked me what i thought of the city, and i made answer suavely that it was hallowed ground to me because of bret harte. that was true: "well," said the reporter, "bret harte claims california, but california don't claim bret harte. he's been so long in england that he's quite english. have you seen our cracker-factories and the new offices of the _examiner_?" he could not understand that to the outside world the city was worth a great deal less than the man. * * * * * night fell over the pacific, and the white sea-fog whipped through the streets, dimming the splendours of the electric lights. it is the use of this city, her men and women, to parade between the hours of eight and ten a certain street, called kearney street, where the finest shops are situated. here the click of heels on the pavement is loudest, here the lights are brightest, and here the thunder of the traffic is most overwhelming. i watched young california and saw that it was at least expensively dressed, cheerful in manner, and self-asserting in conversation. also the women are very fair. the maidens were of generous build, large, well-groomed, and attired in raiment that even to my inexperienced eyes must have cost much. kearney street, at nine o'clock, levels all distinctions of rank as impartially as the grave. again and again i loitered at the heels of a couple of resplendent beings, only to overhear, when i expected the level voice of culture, the _staccato_ "sez he," "sez i," that is the mark of the white servant-girl all the world over. this was depressing because, in spite of all that goes to the contrary, fine feathers ought to make fine birds. there was wealth--unlimited wealth--in the streets, but not an accent that would not have been dear at fifty cents. wherefore, revolving in my mind that these folk were barbarians, i was presently enlightened and made aware that they also were the heirs of all the ages, and civilised after all. there appeared before me an affable stranger of prepossessing appearance, with a blue and an innocent eye. addressing me by name, he claimed to have met me in new york at the windsor, and to this claim i gave a qualified assent. i did not remember the fact, but since he was so certain of it, why then--i waited developments. "and what did you think of indiana when you came through?" was the next question. it revealed the mystery of previous acquaintance, and one or two other things. with reprehensible carelessness, my friend of the light-blue eye had looked up the name of his victim in the hotel register and read "india" for indiana. he could not imagine an englishman coming through the states from west to east instead of by the regularly ordained route. my fear was that in his delight at finding me so responsive he would make remarks about new york and the windsor which i could not understand. and indeed, he adventured in this direction once or twice, asking me what i thought of such and such streets, which, from his tone, i gathered were anything but respectable. it is trying to talk unknown new york in almost unknown san francisco. but my friend was merciful. he protested that i was one after his own heart, and pressed upon me rare and curious drinks at more than one bar. these drinks i accepted with gratitude, as also the cigars with which his pockets were stored. he would show me the life of the city. having no desire to watch a weary old play again, i evaded the offer, and received in lieu of the devil's instruction much coarse flattery. curiously constituted is the soul of man. knowing how and where this man lied, waiting idly for the finale, i was distinctly conscious, as he bubbled compliments in my ear, of soft thrills of gratified pride. i was wise, quoth he, anybody could see that with half an eye; sagacious; versed in the affairs of the world; an acquaintance to be desired; one who had tasted the cup of life with discretion. all this pleased me, and in a measure numbed the suspicion that was thoroughly aroused. eventually the blue-eyed one discovered, nay insisted, that i had a taste for cards (this was clumsily worked in, but it was my fault, in that i met him half-way, and allowed him no chance of good acting). hereupon, i laid my head to one side, and simulated unholy wisdom, quoting odds and ends of poker-talk, all ludicrously misapplied. my friend kept his countenance admirably; and well he might, for five minutes later we arrived, always by the purest of chances, at a place where we could play cards, and also frivol with louisiana state lottery tickets. would i play? "nay," said i, "for to me cards have neither meaning nor continuity; but let us assume that i am going to play. how would you and your friends get to work? would you play a straight game, or make me drunk, or--well, the fact is i'm a newspaper man, and i'd be much obliged if you'd let me know something about bunco-steering." my blue-eyed friend cursed me by his gods,--the right and the left bower; he even cursed the very good cigars he had given me. but, the storm over, he quieted down and explained. i apologised for causing him to waste an evening, and we spent a very pleasant time together. inaccuracy, provincialism, and a too hasty rushing to conclusions were the rocks that he had split on; but he got his revenge when he said: "how would i play with you? from all the poppycock" (_anglice_, bosh) "you talked about poker, i'd ha' played a straight game and skinned you. i wouldn't have taken the trouble to make you drunk. you never knew anything of the game; but the way i was mistaken in you makes me sick." he glared at me as though i had done him an injury. to-day i know how it is that, year after year, week after week, the bunco-steerer, who is the confidence-trick and the card-sharper man of other climes, secures his prey. he slavers them over with flattery, as the snake slavers the rabbit. the incident depressed me because it showed i had left the innocent east far behind, and was come to a country where a man must look out for himself. the very hotel bristled with notices about keeping my door locked, and depositing my valuables in a safe. the white man in a lump is bad. weeping softly for o-toyo (little i knew then that my heart was to be torn afresh from my bosom!), i fell asleep in the clanging hotel. next morning i had entered upon the deferred inheritance. there are no princes in america,--at least with crowns on their heads,--but a generous-minded member of some royal family received my letter of introduction. ere the day closed i was a member of the two clubs and booked for many engagements to dinner and party. now this prince, upon whose financial operations be continual increase, had no reason, nor had the others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one briton more or less; but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my behalf that a mother could think of for her _débutante_ daughter. do you know the bohemian club of san francisco? they say its fame extends over the world. it was created somewhat on the lines of the savage by men who wrote or drew things, and it has blossomed into most unrepublican luxury. the ruler of the place is an owl--an owl standing upon a skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man of letters and the end of his hopes for immortality. the owl stands on the staircase, a statue four feet high, is carved in the woodwork, flutters on the frescoed ceilings, is stamped on the note paper, and hangs on the walls. he is an ancient and honourable bird. under his wing 'twas my privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chained down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of reading them hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures instead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up at another man's sale of effects. mine were all the rights of social intercourse that india, stony-hearted step-mother of collectors, has swindled us out of. treading soft carpets and breathing the incense of superior cigars, i wandered from room to room studying the paintings in which the members of the club had caricatured themselves, their associates, and their aims. there was a slick french audacity about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went straight to the heart of the beholder. and yet it was not altogether french. a dry grimness of treatment, almost dutch, marked the difference. the men painted as they spoke--with certainty. the club indulges in revelries which it calls "jinks"--high and low,--at intervals,--and each of these gatherings is faithfully portrayed in oils by hands that know their business. in this club were no amateurs spoiling canvas because they fancied they could handle oils without knowledge of shadows or anatomy--no gentleman of leisure ruining the temper of publishers and an already ruined market with attempts to write "because everybody writes something these days." my hosts were working, or had worked, for their daily bread with pen or paint, and their talk for the most part was of the shop shoppy--that is to say, delightful. they extended a large hand of welcome and were as brethren, and i did homage to the owl and listened to their talk. an indian club about christmas-time will yield, if properly worked, an abundant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of americans from the uttermost ends of their own continent the tales are larger, thicker, more spinous, and even more azure than any indian variety. tales of the war i heard told by an ex-officer of the south over his evening drink to a colonel of the northern army; my introducer, who had served as a trooper in the northern horse, throwing in emendations from time to time. other voices followed with equally wondrous tales of riata-throwing in mexico or arizona, of gambling at army posts in texas, of newspaper wars waged in godless chicago, of deaths sudden and violent in montana and dakota, of the loves of half-breed maidens in the south, and fantastic huntings for gold in mysterious alaska. above all, they told the story of the building of old san francisco, when the "finest collection of humanity on god's earth, sir, started this town, and the water came up to the foot of market street." very terrible were some of the tales, grimly humorous the others, and the men in broadcloth and fine linen who told them had played their parts in them. "and now and again when things got too bad they would toll the city bell, and the vigilance committee turned out and hanged the suspicious characters. a man didn't begin to be suspected in those days till he had committed at least one unprovoked murder," said a calm-eyed, portly old gentleman. i looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed waiter behind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvety carpet beneath. it was hard to realise that even twenty years ago you could see a man hanged with great pomp. later on i found reason to change my opinion. the tales gave me a headache and set me thinking. how in the world was it possible to take in even one-thousandth of this huge, roaring, many-sided continent? in the silence of the sumptuous library lay professor bryce's book on the american republic. "it is an omen," said i. "he has done all things in all seriousness, and he may be purchased for half a guinea. those who desire information of the most undoubted must refer to his pages. for me is the daily round of vagabondage, the recording of the incidents of the hour, and talk with the travelling companion of the day. i will not 'do' this country at all." and i forgot all about india for ten days while i went out to dinners and watched the social customs of the people, which are entirely different from our customs, and was introduced to the men of many millions. these persons are harmless in their earlier stages; that is to say, a man worth three or four million dollars may be a good talker, clever, amusing, and of the world; a man with twice that amount is to be avoided; and a twenty-million man is--just twenty millions. take an instance. i was speaking to a newspaper man about seeing the proprietor of his journal. my friend snorted indignantly: "see _him_! great scott! _no!_ if he happens to appear in the office, i have to associate with him; but, thank heaven, outside of that i move in circles where he cannot come." and yet the first thing i have been taught to believe is that money was everything in america! no. xxiv shows how through folly i assisted at a murder and was afraid. the rule of the democracy and the despotism of the alien. "poor men--god made, and all for that!" it was a bad business throughout, and the only consolation is that it was all my fault. a man took me round the chinese quarter of san francisco, which is a ward of the city of canton set down in the most eligible business-quarter of the place. the chinaman with his usual skill has possessed himself of good brick fire-proof buildings and, following instinct, has packed each tenement with hundreds of souls, all living in filth and squalor not to be appreciated save by you in india. that cursory investigation ought to have sufficed; but i wanted to know how deep in the earth the pig-tail had taken root. therefore i explored the chinese quarter a second time and alone, which was foolishness. no one in the filthy streets (but for the blessed sea breezes san francisco would enjoy cholera every season) interfered with my movements, though many asked for _cumshaw_. i struck a house about four stories high full of celestial abominations, and began to burrow down; having heard that these tenements were constructed on the lines of icebergs--two-thirds below sight level. downstairs i crawled past chinamen in bunks, opium-smokers, brothels, and gambling hells, till i had reached the second cellar--was in fact, in the labyrinths of a warren. great is the wisdom of the chinaman. in time of trouble that house could be razed to the ground by the mob, and yet hide all its inhabitants in brick-walled and wooden-beamed subterranean galleries, strengthened with iron-framed doors and gates. on the second underground floor a man asked for _cumshaw_ and took me downstairs to yet another cellar, where the air was as thick as butter, and the lamps burned little holes in it not more than an inch square. in this place a poker club had assembled and was in full swing. the chinaman loves "pokel," and plays it with great skill, swearing like a cat when he loses. most of the men round the table were in semi-european dress, their pigtails curled up under billy-cock hats. one of the company looked like a eurasian, whence i argued that he was a mexican--a supposition that later inquiries confirmed. they were a picturesque set of fiends and polite, being too absorbed in their game to look at the stranger. we were all deep down under the earth, and save for the rustle of a blue gown sleeve and the ghostly whisper of the cards as they were shuffled and played, there was no sound. the heat was almost unendurable. there was some dispute between the mexican and the man on his left. the latter shifted his place to put the table between himself and his opponent, and stretched a lean yellow hand towards the mexican's winnings. mark how purely man is a creature of instinct. rarely introduced to the pistol, i saw the mexican half rise in his chair and at the same instant found myself full length on the floor. none had told me that this was the best attitude when bullets are abroad. i was there prone before i had time to think--dropping as the room was filled with an intolerable clamour like the discharge of a cannon. in those close quarters the pistol report had no room to spread any more than the smoke--then acrid in my nostrils. there was no second shot, but a great silence in which i rose slowly to my knees. the chinaman was gripping the table with both hands and staring in front of him at an empty chair. the mexican had gone, and a little whirl of smoke was floating near the roof. still gripping the table, the chinaman said: "ah!" in the tone that a man would use when, looking up from his work suddenly, he sees a well-known friend in the doorway. then he coughed and fell over to his own right, and i saw that he had been shot in the stomach. i became aware that, save for two men leaning over the stricken one, the room was empty; and all the tides of intense fear, hitherto held back by intenser curiosity, swept over my soul. i ardently desired the outside air. it was possible that the chinamen would mistake me for the mexican,--everything horrible seemed possible just then,--and it was more than possible that the stairways would be closed while they were hunting for the murderer. the man on the floor coughed a sickening cough. i heard it as i fled, and one of his companions turned out the lamp. those stairs seemed interminable, and to add to my dismay there was no sound of commotion in the house. no one hindered, no one even looked at me. there was no trace of the mexican. i found the doorway and, my legs trembling under me, reached the protection of the clear cool night, the fog, and the rain. i dared not run, and for the life of me i could not walk. i must have effected a compromise, for i remember the light of a street lamp showed the shadow of one half skipping--caracoling along the pavements in what seemed to be an ecstacy of suppressed happiness. but it was fear--deadly fear. fear compounded of past knowledge of the oriental--only other white man--available witness--three stories underground--and the cough of the chinaman now some forty feet under my clattering boot-heels. it was good to see the shop-fronts and electric lights again. not for anything would i have informed the police, because i firmly believed that the mexican had been dealt with somewhere down there on the third floor long ere i had reached the air; and, moreover, once clear of the place, i could not for the life of me tell where it was. my ill-considered flight brought me out somewhere a mile distant from the hotel; and the clank of the lift that bore me to a bed six stories above ground was music in my ears. wherefore i would impress it upon you who follow after, do not knock about the chinese quarters at night and alone. you may stumble across a picturesque piece of human nature that will unsteady your nerves for half a day. * * * * * and this brings me by natural sequence to the great drink question. as you know, of course, the american does not drink at meals as a sensible man should. indeed, he has no meals. he stuffs for ten minutes thrice a day. also he has no decent notions about the sun being over the yard-arm or below the horizon. he pours his vanity into himself at unholy hours, and indeed he can hardly help it. you have no notion of what "treating" means on the western slope. it is more than an institution; it is a religion, though men tell me that it is nothing to what it was. take a very common instance. at . a.m. a man is smitten with desire for stimulants. he is in the company of two friends. all three adjourn to the nearest bar,--seldom more than twenty yards away,--and take three straight whiskys. they talk for two minutes. the second and third man then treats in order; and thus each walks into the street, two of them the poorer by three goes of whisky under their belt and one with two more liquors than he wanted. it is not etiquette yet to refuse a treat. the result is peculiar. i have never yet, i confess, seen a drunken man in the streets, but i have heard more about drunkenness among white men, and seen more decent men above or below themselves with drink, than i care to think about. and the vice runs up into all sorts of circles and societies. never was i more astonished than at one pleasant dinner party to hear a pair of pretty lips say casually of a gentleman friend then under discussion, "he was drunk." the fact was merely stated without emotion. that was what startled me. but the climate of california deals kindly with excess, and treacherously covers up its traces. a man neither bloats nor shrivels in this dry air. he continues with the false bloom of health upon his cheeks, an equable eye, a firm mouth, and a steady hand till a day of reckoning arrives, and suddenly breaking up, about the head, he dies, and his friends speak his epitaph accordingly. why people who in most cases cannot hold their liquor should play with it so recklessly i leave to others to decide. this unhappy state of affairs has, however, produced one good result which i will confide to you. in the heart of the business quarter, where banks and bankers are thickest, and telegraph wires most numerous, stands a semi-subterranean bar tended by a german with long blond locks and a crystalline eye. go thither softly, treading on the tips of your toes, and ask him for a button punch. 'twill take ten minutes to brew, but the result is the highest and noblest product of the age. no man but one knows what is in it. i have a theory it is compounded of the shavings of cherubs' wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and fragments of lost epics by dead masters. but try you for yourselves, and pause a while to bless me, who am always mindful of the truest interests of my brethren. but enough of the stale spilth of bar-rooms. turn now to the august spectacle of a government of the people, by the people, for the people, as it is understood in the city of san francisco. professor bryce's book will tell you that every american citizen over twenty-one years of age possesses a vote. he may not know how to run his own business, control his wife, or instil reverence into his children, may be pauper, half-crazed with drink, bankrupt, dissolute, or merely a born fool; but he has a vote. if he likes, he can be voting most of his time--voting for his state governor, his municipal officers, local option, sewage contracts, or anything else of which he has no special knowledge. once every four years he votes for a new president. in his spare moments he votes for his own judges--the men who shall give him justice. these are dependent on popular favour for re-election inasmuch as they are but chosen for a term of years--two or three, i believe. such a position is manifestly best calculated to create an independent and unprejudiced administrator. now this mass of persons who vote is divided into two parties--republican and democrat. they are both agreed in thinking that the other part is running creation (which is america) into red flame. also the democrat as a party drinks more than the republican, and when drunk may be heard to talk about a thing called the tariff, which he does not understand, but which he conceives to be the bulwark of the country or else the surest power for its destruction. sometimes he says one thing and sometimes another, in order to contradict the republican, who is always contradicting himself. and this is a true and lucid account of the forepart of american politics. the behind-part is otherwise. since every man has a vote and may vote on every conceivable thing, it follows that there exist certain wise men who understand the art of buying up votes retail, and vending them wholesale to whoever wants them most urgently. now an american engaged in making a home for himself has not time to vote for turn-cocks and district attorneys and cattle of that kind, but the unemployed have much time because they are always on hand somewhere in the streets. they are called "the boys," and form a peculiar class. the boys are young men; inexpert in war, unskilled in labour; who have neither killed a man, lifted cattle, or dug a well. in plain english, they are just the men in the streets who can always be trusted to rally round any cause that has a glass of liquor for a visible heart. they wait--they are on hand--; and in being on hand lies the crown and the glory of american politics. the wise man is he who, keeping a liquor-saloon and judiciously dispensing drinks, knows how to retain within arm's reach a block of men who will vote for or against anything under the canopy of heaven. not every saloon-keeper can do this. it demands careful study of city politics, tact, the power of conciliation, and infinite resources of anecdote to amuse and keep the crowd together night after night, till the saloon becomes a salon. above all, the liquor side of the scheme must not be worked for immediate profit. the boys who drink so freely will ultimately pay their host a thousandfold. an irishman, and an irishman pre-eminently, knows how to work such a saloon parliament. observe for a moment the plan of operations. the rank and file are treated to drink and a little money--and they vote. he who controls ten votes receives a proportionate reward; the dispenser of a thousand votes is worthy of reverence, and so the chain runs on till we reach the most successful worker of public saloons--the man most skilful in keeping his items together and using them when required. such a man governs the city as absolutely as a king. and you would know where the gain comes in? the whole of the public offices of a city (with the exception of a very few where special technical skill is required) are short-term offices distributed according to "political" leanings. what would you have? a big city requires many officials. each office carries a salary and influence worth twice the pay. the offices are for the representatives of the men who keep together and are on hand to vote. the commissioner of sewage, let us say, is a gentleman who has been elected to his office by a republican vote. he knows little and cares less about sewage, but he has sense enough to man the pumping-works and the street-sweeping-machines with the gentlemen who elected him. the commissioner of police has been helped to his post very largely by the influence of the boys at such and such a saloon. he may be the guardian of city morals, but he is not going to allow his subordinates to enforce early closing or abstention from gambling in that saloon. most offices are limited to four years, consequently he is a fool who does not make his office pay him while he is in it. the only people who suffer by this happy arrangement are, in fact, the people who devised the lovely system. and they suffer because they are americans. let us explain. as you know, every big city here holds at least one big foreign vote--generally irish, frequently german. in san francisco, the gathering place of the races, there is a distinct italian vote to be considered, but the irish vote is more important. for this reason the irishman does not kill himself with overwork. he is made for the cheery dispensing of liquors, for everlasting blarney, and possesses a wonderfully keen appreciation of the weaknesses of lesser human nature. also he has no sort of conscience, and only one strong conviction--that of deep-rooted hatred toward england. he keeps to the streets, he is on hand, he votes joyously, spending days lavishly,--and time is the american's dearest commodity. behold the glorious result. to-day the city of san francisco is governed by the irish vote and the irish influence, under the rule of a gentleman whose sight is impaired, and who requires a man to lead him about the streets. he is called officially "boss buckley," and unofficially the "blind white devil." i have before me now the record of his amiable career in black and white. it occupies four columns of small print, and perhaps you would think it disgraceful. summarised, it is as follows: boss buckley, by tact and deep knowledge of the seamy side of the city, won himself a following of voters. he sought no office himself, or rarely: but as his following increased he sold their services to the highest bidder, himself taking toll of the revenues of every office. he controlled the democratic party in the city of san francisco. the people appoint their own judges. boss buckley's people appointed judges. these judges naturally were boss buckley's property. i have been to dinner parties and heard educated men, not concerned with politics, telling stories one to another of "justice," both civil and criminal, being bought with a price from the hands of these judges. such tales they told without heat, as men recording facts. contracts for road-mending, public buildings, and the like are under the control of boss buckley, because the men whom buckley's following sent to the city council adjudicate on these contracts; and on each and every one of these contracts boss buckley levies his percentage for himself and his allies. the republican party in san francisco also have their boss. he is not so great a genius as boss buckley, but i decline to believe that he is any whit more virtuous. he has a smaller number of votes at his command. from sea to sea letters of travel by rudyard kipling new york doubleday, page & company copyright, , , by rudyard kipling. contents of part ii from sea to sea xxv page tells how i dropped into politics and the tenderer sentiments. contains a moral treatise on american maidens and an ethnological one on the negro. ends with a banquet and a type-writer xxvi takes me through bret harte's country and to portland with "old man california." explains how two vagabonds became homesick through looking at other people's houses xxvii shows how i caught salmon in the clackamas xxviii takes me from vancouver to the yellowstone national park xxix shows how yankee jim introduced me to diana of the crossways on the banks of the yellowstone and how a german jew said i was no true citizen. ends with the celebration of the th of july and a few lessons therefrom xxx shows how i entered mazanderan of the persians and saw devils of every colour, and some troopers. hell and the old lady from chicago. the captain and the lieutenant xxxi ends with the cañon of the yellowstone. the maiden from new hampshire--larry--"wrap-up-his-tail"--tom--the old lady from chicago--and a few natural phenomena--including one briton xxxii of the american army and the city of the saints. the temple, the book of mormon, and the girl from dorset. an oriental consideration of polygamy xxxiii how i met certain people of importance between salt lake and omaha xxxiv across the great divide; and how the man gring showed me the garments of the ellewomen xxxv how i struck chicago, and how chicago struck me. of religion, politics, and pig-sticking, and the incarnation of the city among shambles xxxvi how i found peace at musquash on the monongahela xxxvii an interview with mark twain the city of dreadful night i a real live city ii the reflections of a savage iii the council of the gods iv on the banks of the hugli v with the calcutta police vi the city of dreadful night vii deeper and deeper still viii concerning lucia among the railway folk i a railway settlement ii the shops iii vulcan's forge the giridih coal-fields i on the surface ii in the depths iii the perils of the pits part ii from sea to sea no. xxv tells how i dropped into politics and the tenderer sentiments. contains a moral treatise on american maidens and an ethnological one on the negro. ends with a banquet and a type-writer. i have been watching machinery in repose after reading about machinery in action. an excellent gentleman who bears a name honoured in the magazines writes, much as disraeli orated, of "the sublime instincts of an ancient people," the certainty with which they can be trusted to manage their own affairs in their own way, and the speed with which they are making for all sorts of desirable goals. this he called a statement or purview of american politics. i went almost directly afterwards to a saloon where gentlemen interested in ward politics nightly congregate. they were not pretty persons. some of them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy gold watch-chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talked over their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to places of trust and profit. the magazine-writer discussed theories of government; these men the practice. they had been there. they knew all about it. they banged their fists on the table and spoke of political "pulls," the vending of votes, and so forth. theirs was not the talk of village babblers reconstructing the affairs of the nation, but of strong, coarse, lustful men fighting for spoil and thoroughly understanding the best methods of reaching it. i listened long and intently to speech i could not understand, or only in spots. it was the speech of business, however. i had sense enough to know _that_, and to do my laughing outside the door. then i began to understand why my pleasant and well-educated hosts in san francisco spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties of citizenship as voting and taking an interest in the distribution of offices. scores of men have told me with no false pride that they would as soon concern themselves with the public affairs of the city or state as rake muck. read about politics as the cultured writer of the magazines regards 'em, and then, _and not till then_, pay your respects to the gentlemen who run the grimy reality. i'm sick of interviewing night-editors, who, in response to my demand for the record of a prominent citizen, answer: "well, you see, he began by keeping a saloon," etc. i prefer to believe that my informants are treating me as in the old sinful days in india i was used to treat our wandering globe-trotters. they declare that they speak the truth, and the news of dog-politics lately vouchsafed to me in groggeries incline me to believe--but i won't. the people are much too nice to slangander as recklessly as i have been doing. besides, i am hopelessly in love with about eight american maidens--all perfectly delightful till the next one comes into the room. o-toyo was a darling, but she lacked several things; conversation, for one. you cannot live on giggles. she shall remain unmoved at nagasaki while i roast a battered heart before the shrine of a big kentucky blonde who had for a nurse, when she was little, a negro "mammy." by consequence she has welded on to californian beauty, paris dresses, eastern culture, europe trips, and wild western originality, the queer dreamy superstitions of the negro quarters, and the result is soul-shattering. and she is but one of many stars. _item_, a maiden who believes in education and possesses it, with a few hundred thousand dollars to boot, and a taste for slumming. _item_, the leader of a sort of informal salon where girls congregate, read papers, and daringly discuss metaphysical problems and candy--a sloe-eyed, black-browed, imperious maiden. _item_, a very small maiden, absolutely without reverence, who can in one swift sentence trample upon and leave gasping half a dozen young men. _item_, a millionnairess, burdened with her money, lonely, caustic, with a tongue keen as a sword, yearning for a sphere, but chained up to the rock of her vast possessions. _item_, a typewriter-maiden earning her own bread in this big city, because she doesn't think a girl ought to be a burden on her parents. she quotes théophile gautier, and moves through the world manfully, much respected, for all her twenty inexperienced summers. _item_, a woman from cloudland who has no history in the past, but is discreetly of the present, and strives for the confidences of male humanity on the grounds of "sympathy." (this is not altogether a new type.) _item_, a girl in a "dive" blessed with a greek head and eyes that seem to speak all that is best and sweetest in the world. but woe is me!--she has no ideas in this world or the next, beyond the consumption of beer (a commission on each bottle), and protests that she sings the songs allotted to her nightly with no more than the vaguest notion of their meaning. sweet and comely are the maidens of devonshire; delicate and of gracious seeming those who live in the pleasant places of london; fascinating for all their demureness the damsels of france clinging closely to their mothers, and with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in her own place and to those who understand her is the anglo-indian "spin" in her second season; but the girls of america are above and beyond them all. they are clever; they can talk. yea, it is said that they think. certainly they have an appearance of so doing. they are original, and look you between the brows with unabashed eyes as a sister might look at her brother. they are instructed in the folly and vanity of the male mind, for they have associated with "the boys" from babyhood, and can discerningly minister to both vices, or pleasantly snub the possessor. they possess, moreover, a life among themselves, independent of masculine associations. they have societies and clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the guests are girls. they are self-possessed without parting with any tenderness that is their sex-right; they understand; they can take care of themselves; they are superbly independent. when you ask them what makes them so charming, they say: "it is because we are better educated than your girls and--and we are more sensible in regard to men. we have good times all round, but we aren't taught to regard every man as a possible husband. nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls on regularly." yes, they have good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuse it. they can go driving with young men, and receive visits from young men to an extent that would make an english mother wink with horror; and neither driver nor drivee have a thought beyond the enjoyment of a good time. as certain also of their own poets have said:-- "man is fire and woman is tow, and the devil he comes and begins to blow." in america the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof, in absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently accidents do not exceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class and climate under the skies. but the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. she is--i say it with all reluctance--irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. she talks flippantly to her parents and men old enough to be her grandfather. she has a prescriptive right to the society of the man who arrives. the parents admit it. this is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man and his wife for the sake of information; the one being a merchant of varied knowledge, the other a woman of the world. in five minutes your host has vanished. in another five his wife has followed him, and you are left with a very charming maiden doubtless, but certainly not the person you came to see. she chatters and you grin; but you leave with the very strong impression of a wasted morning. this has been my experience once or twice. i have even said as pointedly as i dared to a man: "i came to see you." "you'd better see me in my office, then. the house belongs to my women-folk--to my daughter, that is to say." he spoke with truth. the american of wealth is owned by his family. they exploit him for bullion, and sometimes it seems to me that his lot is a lonely one. the women get the ha'pence; the kicks are all his own. nothing is too good for an american's daughter (i speak here of the moneyed classes). the girls take every gift as a matter of course. yet they develop greatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many millions goes up or goes down and his daughters take to stenography or type-writing. i have heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the principals among their friends. the crash came; mamie or hattie or sadie gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with a no. remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread. "and did i drop her from the list of my friends? no, sir," said a scarlet-lipped vision in white lace. "that might happen to me any day." it may be this sense of possible disaster in the air that makes san franciscan society go with so captivating a rush and whirl. recklessness is in the air. i can't explain where it comes from, but there it is. the roaring winds off the pacific make you drunk to begin with. the aggressive luxury on all sides helps out the intoxication, and you spin for ever "down the ringing groves of change" (there is no small change, by the way, west of the rockies) as long as money lasts. they make greatly and they spend lavishly; not only the rich but the artisans, who pay nearly five pounds for a suit of clothes and for other luxuries in proportion. the young men rejoice in the days of their youth. they gamble, yacht, race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights--the one openly, the other in secret--they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over horse-flesh and--other things; and they are instant in quarrel. at twenty they are experienced in business; embark in vast enterprises, take partners as experienced as themselves, and go to pieces with as much splendour as their neighbours. remember that the men who stocked california in the fifties were physically, and as far as regards certain tough virtues, the pick of the earth. the inept and the weakly died _en route_ or went under in the days of construction. to this nucleus were added all the races of the continent--french, italian, german, and, of course, the jew. the result you shall see in large-boned, deep-chested, delicate-handed women, and long, elastic, well-built boys. it needs no little golden badge swinging from his watch-chain to mark the native son of the golden west--the country-bred of california. him i love because he is devoid of fear, carries himself like a man, and has a heart as big as his boots. i fancy, too, he knows how to enjoy the blessings of life that his world so abundantly bestows upon him. at least i heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle shoulders explaining that a man from chicago could pull the eye-teeth of a californian in business. well, if i lived in fairyland, where cherries were as big as plums, plums as big as apples, and strawberries of no account; where the procession of the fruits of the seasons was like a pageant in a drury lane pantomime and where the dry air was wine, i should let business slide once in a way and kick up my heels with my fellows. the tale of the resources of california--vegetable and mineral--is a fairy tale. you can read it in books. you would never believe me. all manner of nourishing food from sea-fish to beef may be bought at the lowest prices; and the people are well developed and of a high stomach. they demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of a trunk; they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters; they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, and they go mad over a prize-fight. when they disagree, they do so fatally, with firearms in their hands, and on the public streets. i was just clear of mission street when the trouble began between two gentlemen, one of whom perforated the other. when a policeman, whose name i do not recollect, "fatally shot ed. kearney," for attempting to escape arrest, i was in the next street. for these things i am thankful. it is enough to travel with a policeman in a tram-car and while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, to catch sight of a loaded revolver. it is enough to know that fifty per cent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them. the chinaman waylays his adversary and methodically chops him to pieces with his hatchet. then the press roar about the brutal ferocity of the pagan. the italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. the press complains of the waywardness of the alien. the irishman and the native californian in their hours of discontent use the revolver, not once, but six times. the press records the fact, and asks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress of san francisco. the american who loves this country will tell you that this sort of thing is confined to the lower classes. just at present an ex-judge who was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word, i cannot tell whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance against his enemy. the papers have interviewed both parties and confidently expect a fatal issue. now let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter and through him the negro in service generally. he has been made a citizen with a vote; consequently both political parties play with him. but that is neither here nor there. he will commit in one meal every _bétise_ that a scullion fresh from the plough-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat those faults. he is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending, bungle-fisted fool as any _memsahib_ in the east ever took into her establishment. but he is according to law a free and independent citizen--consequently above reproof or criticism. he, and he alone, in this insane city will wait at table (the chinaman doesn't count). he is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay. now god and his father's kismet made him intellectually inferior to the oriental. he insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident--as a sort of amusement. he wishes you to understand this little fact. you wish to eat your meals, and if possible to have them properly served. he is a big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into one. a coloured gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when i wanted something else, demanded information about india. i gave him some facts about wages. "oh hell," said he, cheerfully, "that wouldn't keep me in cigars for a month." then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. later he took it upon himself to pity the natives of india--"heathen" he called them, this woolly one whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the asiatic stage since the beginning. and i turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes. he did his thinking in english, but he was a yoruba negro, and the race type had remained the same throughout his generations. and the room was full of other races--some that looked exactly like gallas (but the trade was never recruited from that side of africa), some duplicates of cameroon heads, and some kroomen, if ever kroomen wore evening dress. the american does not consider little matters of descent, though by this time he ought to know all about "damnable heredity." as a general rule he keeps himself very far from the negro and says unpretty things about him. there are six million negroes more or less in the states, and they are increasing. the americans once having made them citizens cannot unmake them. he says, in his newspapers, they ought to be elevated by education. he is trying this: but it is like to be a long job, because black blood is much more adhesive than white, and throws back with annoying persistence. when the negro gets a religion he returns, directly as a hiving bee, to the first instincts of his people. just now a wave of religion is sweeping over some of the southern states. up to the present, two messiahs and one daniel have appeared; and several human sacrifices have been offered up to these incarnations. the daniel managed to get three young men, who he insisted were shadrach, meshach, and abednego, to walk into a blast furnace; guaranteeing non-combustion. they did not return. i have seen nothing of this kind, but i have attended a negro church. the congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and tears, and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners' bench. the motive may have been genuine. the movements of the shaken body were those of a zanzibar stick-dance, such as you see at aden on the coal boats; and even as i watched the people, the links that bound them to the white man snapped one by one, and i saw before me--the _hubshi_ (the woolly one) praying to the god he did not understand. those neatly dressed folk on the benches, the grey-headed elder by the window, were savages--neither more nor less. what will the american do with the negro? the south will not consort with him. in some states miscegenation is a penal offence. the north is every year less and less in need of his services. and he will not disappear. he will continue as a problem. his friends will urge that he is as good as the white man. his enemies ... it is not good to be a negro in the land of the free and the home of the brave. but this has nothing to do with san francisco and her merry maidens, her strong, swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and pride. they bore me to a banquet in honour of a brave lieutenant--carlin, of the _vandalia_--who stuck by his ship in the great cyclone at apia and comported himself as an officer should. on that occasion--'twas at the bohemian club--i heard oratory with the roundest of o's; and devoured a dinner the memory of which will descend with me into the hungry grave. there were about forty speeches delivered; and not one of them was average or ordinary. it was my first introduction to the american eagle screaming for all it was worth. the lieutenant's heroism served as a peg from which those silver-tongued ones turned themselves loose and kicked. they ransacked the clouds of sunset, the thunderbolts of heaven, the deeps of hell, and the splendours of the resurrection, for tropes and metaphors, and hurled the result at the head of the guest of the evening. never since the morning stars sang together for joy, i learned, had an amazed creation witnessed such superhuman bravery as that displayed by the american navy in the samoa cyclone. till earth rotted in the phosphorescent star-and-stripe slime of a decayed universe that god-like gallantry would not be forgotten. i grieve that i cannot give the exact words. my attempt at reproducing their spirit is pale and inadequate. i sat bewildered on a coruscating niagara of--blatherumskite. it was magnificent--it was stupendous; and i was conscious of a wicked desire to hide my face in a napkin and grin. then, according to rule, they produced their dead, and across the snowy tablecloths dragged the corpse of every man slain in the civil war, and hurled defiance at "our natural enemy" (england, so please you!) "with her chain of fortresses across the world." thereafter they glorified their nation afresh, from the beginning, in case any detail should have been overlooked, and that made me uncomfortable for their sakes. how in the world can a white man, a sahib of our blood, stand up and plaster praise on his own country? he can think as highly as he likes, but his open-mouthed vehemence of adoration struck me almost as indelicate. my hosts talked for rather more than three hours, and at the end seemed ready for three hours more. but when the lieutenant--such a big, brave, gentle giant!--rose to his feet, he delivered what seemed to me as the speech of the evening. i remember nearly the whole of it, and it ran something in this way: "gentlemen--it's very good of you to give me this dinner and to tell me all these pretty things, but what i want you to understand--the fact is--what we want and what we ought to get at once is a navy--more ships--lots of 'em--" then we howled the top of the roof off, and i, for one, fell in love with carlin on the spot. wallah! he was a man. the prince among merchants bade me take no heed to the warlike sentiments of some of the old generals. "the sky-rockets are thrown in for effect," quoth he, "and whenever we get on our hind legs we always express a desire to chaw up england. it's a sort of family affair." and indeed, when you come to think of it, there is no other country for the american public speaker to trample upon. france has germany; we have russia; for italy, austria is provided; and the humblest pathan possesses an ancestral enemy. only america stands out of the racket; and therefore, to be in fashion, makes a sand-bag of the mother-country, and bangs her when occasion requires. "the chain of fortresses" man, a fascinating talker, explained to me after the affair that he was compelled to blow off steam. everybody expected it. when we had chanted "the star-spangled banner" not more than eight times, we adjourned. america is a very great country, but it is not yet heaven with electric lights and plush fittings, as the speakers professed to believe. my listening mind went back to the politicians in the saloon who wasted no time in talking about freedom, but quietly made arrangements to impose their will on the citizens. "the judge is a great man, but give thy presents to the clerk," as the proverb saith. and what more remains to tell? i cannot write connectedly, because i am in love with all those girls aforesaid and some others who do not appear in the invoice. the type-writer girl is an institution of which the comic papers make much capital, but she is vastly convenient. she and a companion rent a room in a business quarter, and copy manuscript at the rate of six annas a page. only a woman can manage a type-writing machine, because she has served apprenticeship to the sewing-machine. she can earn as much as a hundred dollars a month, and professes to regard this form of bread-winning as her natural destiny. but oh how she hates it in her heart of hearts! when i had got over the surprise of doing business and trying to give orders to a young woman of coldly clerkly aspect, intrenched behind gold-rimmed spectacles, i made inquiries concerning the pleasures of this independence. they liked it--indeed, they did. 'twas the natural fate of almost all girls,--the recognised custom in america,--and i was a barbarian not to see it in that light. "well, and after?" said i. "what happens?" "we work for our bread." "and then what do you expect?" "then we shall work for our bread." "till you die?" "ye-es--unless--" "unless what? a man works till he dies." "so shall we." this without enthusiasm--"i suppose." said the partner in the firm audaciously: "sometimes we marry our employers--at least that's what the newspapers say." the hand banged on half a dozen of the keys of the machine at once. "yes, i don't care. i hate it--i _hate_ it--i hate it, and you needn't look so!" the senior partner was regarding the rebel with grave-eyed reproach. "i thought you did," said i. "i don't suppose american girls are much different from english ones in instinct." "isn't it théophile gautier who says that the only differences between country and country lie in the slang and the uniform of the police?" now in the name of all the gods at once, what is one to say to a young lady (who in england would be a person) who earns her own bread, and very naturally hates the employ, and slings out-of-the-way quotations at your head? that one falls in love with her goes without saying; but that is not enough. a mission should be established. no. xxvi takes me through bret harte's country, and to portland with "old man california." explains how two vagabonds became homesick through looking at other people's houses. "i walked in the lonesome even, and who so sad as i, as i saw the young men and maidens merrily passing by?" san francisco has only one drawback. 'tis hard to leave. when like the pious hans breitmann i "cut that city by the sea" it was with regrets for the pleasant places left behind, for the men who were so clever, and the women who were so witty, for the "dives," the beer-halls, the bucket-shops, and the poker-hells where humanity was going to the devil with shouting and laughter and song and the rattle of dice-boxes. i would fain have stayed, but i feared that an evil end would come to me when my money was all spent and i descended to the street corner. a voice inside me said: "get out of this. go north. strike for victoria and vancouver. bask for a day under the shadow of the old flag." so i set forth from san francisco to portland in oregon, and that was a railroad run of thirty-six hours. the oakland railway terminus, whence all the main lines start, does not own anything approaching to a platform. a yard with a dozen or more tracks is roughly asphalted, and the traveller laden with hand-bags skips merrily across the metals in search of his own particular train. the bells of half a dozen shunting engines are tolling suggestively in his ears. if he is run down, so much the worse for him. "when the bell rings, look out for the locomotive." long use has made the nation familiar and even contemptuous towards trains to an extent which god never intended. women who in england would gather up their skirts and scud timorously over a level crossing in the country, here talk dress and babies under the very nose of the cow-catcher, and little children dally with the moving car in a manner horrible to behold. we pulled out at the wholly insignificant speed of twenty-five miles an hour through the streets of a suburb of fifty thousand, and in our progress among the carts and the children and the shop fronts slew nobody; at which i was not a little disappointed. when the negro porter bedded me up for the night and i had solved the problem of undressing while lying down,--i was much cheered by the thought that if anything happened i should have to stay where i was and wait till the kerosene lamps set the overturned car alight and burned me to death. it is easier to get out of a full theatre than to leave a pullman in haste. by the time i had discovered that a profusion of nickel-plating, plush, and damask does not compensate for closeness and dust, the train ran into the daylight on the banks of the sacramento river. a few windows were gingerly opened after the bunks had been reconverted into seats, but that long coffin-car was by no means ventilated, and we were a gummy, grimy crew who sat there. at six in the morning the heat was distinctly unpleasant, but seeing with the eye of the flesh that i was in bret harte's own country, i rejoiced. there were the pines and madrone-clad hills his miners lived and fought among; there was the heated red earth that showed whence the gold had been washed; the dry gulch, the red, dusty road where hamblin was used to stop the stage in the intervals of his elegant leisure and superior card-play; there was the timber felled and sweating resin in the sunshine; and, above all, there was the quivering pungent heat that bret harte drives into your dull brain with the magic of his pen. when we stopped at a collection of packing-cases dignified by the name of a town, my felicity was complete. the name of the place was something offensive,--amberville or jacksonburgh,--but it owned a cast-iron fountain worthy of a town of thirty thousand. next to the fountain was a "hotel," at least seventeen feet high including the chimney, and next to the hotel was the forest--the pine, the oak, and the untrammelled undergrowth of the hillside. a cinnamon-bear cub--baby sylvester in the very fur--was tied to the stump of a tree opposite the fountain; a pack-mule dozed in the dust-haze, a red-shirted miner in a slouch hat supported the hotel, a blue-shirted miner swung round the corner, and the two went indoors for a drink. a girl came out of the only other house but one, and shading her eyes with a brown hand stared at the panting train. she didn't recognise me, but i knew her--had known her for years. she was m'liss. she never married the schoolmaster, after all, but stayed, always young and always fair, among the pines. i knew red-shirt too. he was one of the bearded men who stood back when tennessee claimed his partner from the hands of the law. the sacramento river, a few yards away, shouted that all these things were true. the train went on while baby sylvester stood on his downy head, and m'liss swung her sun-bonnet by the strings. "what do you think?" said a lawyer who was travelling with me. "it's a new world to you; isn't it?" "no. it's quite familiar. i was never out of england; it's as if i saw it all." quick as light came the answer: "'yes, they lived once thus at venice when the miners were the kings.'" i loved that lawyer on the spot. we drank to bret harte who, you remember, "claimed california, but california never claimed him. he's turned english." lying back in state, i waited for the flying miles to turn over the pages of the book i knew. they brought me all i desired--from the man of no account sitting on a stump and playing with a dog, to "that most sarcastic man, the quiet mister brown." he boarded the train from out of the woods, and there was venom and sulphur on his tongue. he had just lost a lawsuit. only yuba bill failed to appear. the train had taken his employment from him. a nameless ruffian backed me into a corner and began telling me about the resources of the country, and what it would eventually become. all i remember of his lecture was that you could catch trout in the sacramento river--the stream that we followed so faithfully. then rose a tough and wiry old man with grizzled hair and made inquiries about the trout. to him was added the secretary of a life-insurance company. i fancy he was travelling to rake in the dead that the train killed. but he, too, was a fisherman, and the two turned to meward. the frankness of a westerner is delightful. they tell me that in the eastern states i shall meet another type of man and a more reserved. the californian always speaks of the man from the new england states as a different breed. it is our punjab and madras over again, but more so. the old man was on a holiday in search of fish. when he discovered a brother-loafer he proposed a confederation of rods. quoth the insurance-agent, "i'm not staying any time in portland, but i will introduce you to a man there who'll tell you about fishing." the two told strange tales as we slid through the forests and saw afar off the snowy head of a great mountain. there were vineyards, fruit orchards, and wheat fields where the land opened out, and every ten miles or so, twenty or thirty wooden houses and at least three churches. a large town would have a population of two thousand and an infinite belief in its own capacities. sometimes a flaring advertisement flanked the line, calling for men to settle down, take up the ground, and make their home there. at a big town we could pick up the local newspaper, narrow as the cutting edge of a chisel and twice as keen--a journal filled with the prices of stock, notices of improved reaping and binding machines, movements of eminent citizens--"whose fame beyond their own abode extends--for miles along the harlem road." there was not much grace about these papers, but all breathed the same need for good men, steady men who would plough, and till, and build schools for their children, and make a township in the hills. once only i found a sharp change in the note and a very pathetic one. i think it was a young soul in trouble who was writing poetry. the editor had jammed the verses between the flamboyant advertisement of a real-estate agent--a man who sells you land and lies about it--and that of a jew tailor who disposed of "nobby" suits at "cut-throat prices." here are two verses; i think they tell their own story:-- "god made the pine with its root in the earth, its top in the sky; they have burned the pine to increase the worth of the wheat and the silver rye. "go weigh the cost of the soul of the pine cut off from the sky; and the price of the wheat that grows so fine and the worth of the silver rye!" the thin-lipped, keen-eyed men who boarded the train would not read that poetry, or, if they did, would not understand. heaven guard that poor pine in the desert and keep "its top in the sky"! when the train took to itself an extra engine and began to breathe heavily, some one said that we were ascending the siskiyou mountains. we had been climbing steadily from san francisco, and at last won to over four thousand feet above sea-level, always running through forest. then, naturally enough, we came down, but we dropped two thousand two hundred feet in about thirteen miles. it was not so much the grinding of the brakes along the train, or the sight of three curves of track apparently miles below us, or even the vision of a goods-train apparently just under our wheels, or even the tunnels, that made me reflect; it was the trestles over which we crawled,--trestles something over a hundred feet high and looking like a collection of match-sticks. "i guess our timber is as much a curse as a blessing," said the old man from southern california. "these trestles last very well for five or six years; then they get out of repair, and a train goes through 'em, or else a forest fire burns 'em up." this was said in the middle of a groaning, shivering trestle. an occasional plate-layer took a look at us as we went down, but that railway didn't waste men on inspection duty. very often there were cattle on the track, against which the engine used a diabolical form of whistling. the old man had been a driver in his youth, and beguiled the way with cheery anecdotes of what might be expected if we fouled a young calf. "you see, they get their legs under the cow-catcher and that'll put an engine off the line. i remember when a hog wrecked an excursion-train and killed sixty people. 'guess the engineer will look out, though." there is considerably too much guessing about this large nation. as one of them put it rather forcibly: "we guess a trestle will stand for ever, and we guess that we can patch up a washout on the track, and we guess the road's clear, and sometimes we guess ourselves into the _deepot_, and sometimes we guess ourselves into hell." * * * * * the descent brought us far into oregon and a timber and wheat country. we drove through wheat and pine in alternate slices, but pine chiefly, till we reached portland, which is a city of fifty thousand, possessing the electric light of course, equally, of course, devoid of pavements, and a port of entry about a hundred miles from the sea at which big steamers can load. it is a poor city that cannot say it has no equal on the pacific coast. portland shouts this to the pines which run down from a thousand-foot ridge clear up to the city. you may sit in a bedizened bar-room furnished with telephone and clicker, and in half an hour be in the woods. portland produces lumber and jig-saw fittings for houses, and beer and buggies, and bricks and biscuit; and, in case you should miss the fact, there are glorified views of the town hung up in public places with the value of the products set down in dollars. all this is excellent and exactly suitable to the opening of a new country; but when a man tells you it is civilisation, you object. the first thing that the civilised man learns to do is to keep the dollars in the background, because they are only the oil of the machine that makes life go smoothly. portland is so busy that it can't attend to its own sewage or paving, and the four-storey brick blocks front cobble-stones and plank sidewalks and other things much worse. i saw a foundation being dug out. the sewage of perhaps twenty years ago, had thoroughly soaked into the soil, and there was a familiar and oriental look about the compost that flew up with each shovel-load. yet the local papers, as was just and proper, swore there was no place like portland, oregon, u.s.a., chronicled the performances of oregonians, "claimed" prominent citizens elsewhere as oregonians, and fought tooth and nail for dock, rail, and wharfage projects. and you could find men who had thrown in their lives with the city, who were bound up in it, and worked their life out for what they conceived to be its material prosperity. pity it is to record that in this strenuous, labouring town there had been, a week before, a shooting-case. one well-known man had shot another on the street, and was now pleading self-defence because the other man had, or the murderer thought he had, a pistol about him. not content with shooting him dead, he squibbed off his revolver into him as he lay. i read the pleadings, and they made me ill. so far as i could judge, if the dead man's body had been found with a pistol on it, the shooter would have gone free. apart from the mere murder, cowardly enough in itself, there was a refinement of cowardice in the plea. here in this civilised city the surviving brute was afraid he would be shot--fancied he saw the other man make a motion to his hip-pocket, and so on. eventually the jury disagreed. and the degrading thing was that the trial was reported by men who evidently understood all about the pistol, was tried before a jury who were versed in the etiquette of the hip-pocket, and was discussed on the streets by men equally initiate. but let us return to more cheerful things. the insurance-agent introduced us as friends to a real-estate man, who promptly bade us go up the columbia river for a day while he made inquiries about fishing. there was no overwhelming formality. the old man was addressed as "california," i answered indifferently to "england" or "johnny bull," and the real-estate man was "portland." this was a lofty and spacious form of address. so california and i took a steamboat, and upon a sumptuous blue and gold morning steered up the willamette river, on which portland stands, into the great columbia--the river that brings the salmon that goes into the tin that is emptied into the dish when the extra guest arrives in india. california introduced me to the boat and the scenery, showed me the "texas," the difference between a "tow-head" and a "sawyer," and the precise nature of a "slue." all i remember is a delightful feeling that mark twain's huckleberry finn and mississippi pilot were quite true, and that i could almost recognise the very reaches down which huck and jim had drifted. we were on the border line between oregon state and washington territory, but that didn't matter. the columbia was the mississippi so far as i was concerned. we ran along the sides of wooded islands whose banks were caving in with perpetual smashes, and we skipped from one side to another of the mile-wide stream in search of a channel, exactly like a mississippi steamer, and when we wanted to pick up or set down a passenger we chose a soft and safe place on the shore and ran our very snub nose against it. california spoke to each new passenger as he came aboard and told me the man's birthplace. a long-haired tender of kine crashed out of the underwood, waved his hat, and was taken aboard forthwith. "south carolina," said california, almost without looking at him. "when he talks you will hear a softer dialect than mine." and it befell as he said: whereat i marvelled, and california chuckled. every island in the river carried fields of rich wheat, orchards, and a white, wooden house; or else, if the pines grew very thickly, a sawmill, the tremulous whine of whose saws flickered across the water like the drone of a tired bee. from remarks he let fall i gathered that california owned timber ships and dealt in lumber, had ranches too, a partner, and everything handsome about him; in addition to a chequered career of some thirty-five years. but he looked almost as disreputable a loafer as i. "say, young feller, we're going to see scenery now. you shout and sing," said california, when the bland wooded islands gave place to bolder outlines, and the steamer ran herself into a hornet's nest of black-fanged rocks not a foot below the boiling broken water. we were trying to get up a slue, or back channel, by a short cut, and the stern-wheel never spun twice in the same direction. then we hit a floating log with a jar that ran through our system, and then, white-bellied, open-gilled, spun by a dead salmon--a lordly twenty-pound chinook salmon who had perished in his pride. "you'll see the salmon-wheels 'fore long," said a man who lived "way back on the washoogle," and whose hat was spangled with trout-flies. "those chinook salmon never rise to the fly. the canneries take them by the wheel." at the next bend we sighted a wheel--an infernal arrangement of wire-gauze compartments worked by the current and moved out from a barge in shore to scoop up the salmon as he races up the river. california swore long and fluently at the sight, and the more fluently when he was told of the weight of a good night's catch--some thousands of pounds. think of the black and bloody murder of it! but you out yonder insist in buying tinned salmon, and the canneries cannot live by letting down lines. about this time california was struck with madness. i found him dancing on the fore-deck shouting, "isn't she a daisy? isn't she a darling?" he had found a waterfall--a blown thread of white vapour that broke from the crest of a hill--a waterfall eight hundred and fifty feet high whose voice was even louder than the voice of the river. "bridal veil," jerked out the purser. "d--n that purser and the people who christened her! why didn't they call her mechlin lace falls at fifty dollars a yard while they were at it?" said california. and i agreed with him. there are many "bridal veil" falls in this country, but few, men say, lovelier than those that come down to the columbia river. then the scenery began--poured forth with the reckless profusion of nature, who when she wants to be amiable succeeds only in being oppressively magnificent. the river was penned between gigantic stone walls crowned with the ruined bastions of oriental palaces. the stretch of green water widened and was guarded by pine-clad hills three thousand feet high. a wicked devil's thumb nail of rock shot up a hundred feet in midstream. a sand-bar of blinding white sand gave promise of flat country that the next bend denied; for, lo! we were running under a triple tier of fortifications, lava-topped, pine-clothed, and terrible. behind them the white dome of mount hood ran fourteen thousand feet into the blue, and at their feet the river threshed among a belt of cottonwood trees. there i sat down and looked at california half out of the boat in his anxiety to see both sides of the river at once. he had seen my note-book, and it offended him. "young feller, let her go--and you shut your head. it's not you nor anybody like you can put this down. black, the novelist, he could. he can describe salmon-fishing, _he_ can." and he glared at me as though he expected me to go and do likewise. "i can't. i know it," i said humbly. "then thank god that you came along this way." we reached a little railway, on an island, which was to convey us to a second steamer, because, as the purser explained, the river was "a trifle broken." we had a six-mile run, sitting in the sunshine on a dummy wagon, whirled just along the edge of the river-bluffs. sometimes we dived into the fragrant pine woods, ablaze with flowers; but we generally watched the river now narrowed into a turbulent millrace. just where the whole body of water broke in riot over a series of cascades, the united states government had chosen to build a lock for steamers, and the stream was one boiling, spouting mob of water. a log shot down the race, struck on a rock, split from end to end, and rolled over in white foam. i shuddered because my toes were not more than sixty feet above the log, and i feared that a stray splinter might have found me. but the train ran into the river on a sort of floating trestle, and i was upon another steamer ere i fully understood why. the cascades were not two hundred yards below us, and when we cast off to go upstream, the rush of the river, ere the wheel struck the water, dragged us as though we had been towed. then the country opened out; and california mourned for his lost bluffs and crags, till we struck a rock wall four hundred feet high, crowned by the gigantic figure of a man watching us. on a rocky island we saw the white tomb of an old-time settler who had made his money in san francisco, but had chosen to be buried in an indian burying-ground. a decayed wooden "wickyup," where the bones of the indian dead are laid, almost touched the tomb. the river ran into a canal of basaltic rock, painted in yellow, vermilion, and green by indians and, by inferior brutes, adorned with advertisements of "bile beans." we had reached the dalles--the centre of a great sheep and wool district, and the head of navigation. when an american arrives at a new town it is his bounden duty to "take it in." california swung his coat over his shoulder with the gesture of a man used to long tramps, and together, at eight in the evening, we explored the dalles. the sun had not yet set, and it would be light for at least another hour. all the inhabitants seemed to own a little villa and one church apiece. the young men were out walking with the young maidens, the old folks were sitting on the front steps,--not the ones that led to the religiously shuttered best drawing-room, but the side-front-steps,--and the husbands and wives were tying back pear trees or gathering cherries. a scent of hay reached me, and in the stillness we could hear the cattle bells as the cows came home across the lava-sprinkled fields. california swung down the wooden pavements, audibly criticising the housewives' hollyhocks and the more perfect ways of pear-grafting, and, as the young men and maidens passed, giving quaint stories of his youth. i felt that i knew all the people aforetime, i was so interested in them and their life. a woman hung over a gate talking to another woman, and as i passed i heard her say, "skirts," and again, "skirts," and "i'll send you over the pattern"; and i knew they were talking dress. we stumbled upon a young couple saying good-by in the twilight, and "when shall i see you again?" quoth he; and i understood that to the doubting heart the tiny little town we paraded in twenty minutes might be as large as all london and as impassable as an armed camp. i gave them both my blessing, because "when shall i see you again?" is a question that lies very near to hearts of all the world. the last garden gate shut with a click that travelled far down the street, and the lights of the comfortable families began to shine in the confidingly uncurtained windows. "say, johnny bull, doesn't all this make you feel lonesome?" said california. "have you got any folks at home? so've i--a wife and five children--and i'm only on a holiday." "and i'm only on a holiday," i said, and we went back to the spittoon-wood hotel. alas! for the peace and purity of the little town that i had babbled about. at the back of a shop, and discreetly curtained, was a room where the young men who had been talking to the young maidens could play poker and drink and swear, and on the shop were dime novels of bloodshed to corrupt the mind of the little boy, and prurient servant-girl-slush yarns to poison the mind of the girl. california only laughed grimly. he said that all these little one-house towns were pretty much the same all over the states. that night i dreamed i was back in india with no place to sleep in; tramping up and down the station mall and asking everybody, "when shall i see you again?" no. xxvii shows how i caught salmon in the clackamas. "the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but time and chance cometh to all." i have lived! the american continent may now sink under the sea, for i have taken the best that it yields, and the best was neither dollars, love, nor real estate. hear now, gentlemen of the punjab fishing club, who whip the reaches of the tavi, and you who painfully import trout to ootacamund, and i will tell you how "old man california" and i went fishing, and you shall envy. we returned from the dalles to portland by the way we had come, the steamer stopping _en route_ to pick up a night's catch of one of the salmon wheels on the river, and to deliver it at a cannery down-stream. when the proprietor of the wheel announced that his take was two thousand two hundred and thirty pounds' weight of fish, "and not a heavy catch, neither," i thought he lied. but he sent the boxes aboard, and i counted the salmon by the hundred--huge fifty-pounders, hardly dead, scores of twenty and thirty-pounders, and a host of smaller fish. the steamer halted at a rude wooden warehouse built on piles in a lonely reach of the river, and sent in the fish. i followed them up a scale-strewn, fishy incline that led to the cannery. the crazy building was quivering with the machinery on its floors, and a glittering bank of tin-scraps twenty feet high showed where the waste was thrown after the cans had been punched. only chinamen were employed on the work, and they looked like blood-besmeared yellow devils, as they crossed the rifts of sunlight that lay upon the floor. when our consignment arrived, the rough wooden boxes broke of themselves as they were dumped down under a jet of water, and the salmon burst out in a stream of quicksilver. a chinaman jerked up a twenty-pounder, beheaded and de-tailed it with two swift strokes of a knife, flicked out its internal arrangements with a third, and cast it into a bloody-dyed tank. the headless fish leaped from under his hands as though they were facing a rapid. other chinamen pulled them from the vat and thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit for the can. more chinamen with yellow, crooked fingers, jammed the stuff into the cans, which slid down some marvellous machine forthwith, soldering their own tops as they passed. each can was hastily tested for flaws, and then sunk, with a hundred companions, into a vat of boiling water, there to be half cooked for a few minutes. the cans bulged slightly after the operation, and were therefore slidden along by the trolleyful to men with needles and soldering irons, who vented them, and soldered the aperture. except for the label, the "finest columbia salmon" was ready for the market. i was impressed, not so much with the speed of the manufacture, as the character of the factory. inside, on a floor ninety by forty, the most civilised and murderous of machinery. outside, three footsteps, the thick-growing pines and the immense solitude of the hills. our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at that place, but i counted two hundred and forty finished cans, made from the catch of the previous night, ere i left the slippery, blood-stained, scale-spangled, oily floors, and the offal-smeared chinamen. we reached portland, california and i, crying for salmon, and the real-estate man, to whom we had been intrusted by "portland" the insurance man, met us in the street saying that fifteen miles away, across country, we should come upon a place called clackamas where we might perchance find what we desired. and california, his coat-tails flying in the wind, ran to a livery stable and chartered a wagon and team forthwith. i could push the wagon about with one hand, so light was its structure. the team was purely american--that is to say, almost human in its intelligence and docility. some one said that the roads were not good on the way to clackamas and warned us against smashing the springs. "portland," who had watched the preparations, finally reckoned "he'd come along too," and under heavenly skies we three companions of a day set forth; california carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, and the bystanders overwhelming us with directions as to the sawmills we were to pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the sign-posts we were to seek signs from. half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls we struck (and this must be taken literally) a plank-road that would have been a disgrace to an irish village. then six miles of macadamised road showed us that the team could move. a railway ran between us and the banks of the willamette, and another above us through the mountains. all the land was dotted with small townships, and the roads were full of farmers in their town wagons, bunches of tow-haired, boggle-eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind. the men generally looked like loafers, but their women were all well dressed. brown hussar-braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort with hay-wagons. then we struck into the woods along what california called a "_camina reale_,"--a good road,--and portland a "fair track." it wound in and out among fire-blackened stumps, under pine trees, along the corners of log-fences, through hollows which must be hopeless marsh in the winter, and up absurd gradients. but nowhere throughout its length did i see any evidence of road-making. there was a track,--you couldn't well get off it,--and it was all you could do to stay on it. the dust lay a foot thick in the blind ruts, and under the dust we found bits of planking and bundles of brushwood that sent the wagon bounding into the air. sometimes we crashed through bracken; anon where the blackberries grew rankest we found a lonely little cemetery, the wooden rails all awry, and the pitiful stumpy headstones nodding drunkenly at the soft green mulleins. then with oaths and the sound of rent underwood a yoke of mighty bulls would swing down a "skid" road, hauling a forty-foot log along a rudely made slide. a valley full of wheat and cherry trees succeeded, and halting at a house we bought ten pound weight of luscious black cherries for something less than a rupee and got a drink of icy-cold water for nothing, while the untended team browsed sagaciously by the roadside. once we found a wayside camp of horse-dealers lounging by a pool, ready for a sale or a swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters shot down a hill on indian ponies, their full creels banging from the high-pommelled saddles. they had been fishing, and were our brethren therefore. we shouted aloud in chorus to scare a wild-cat; we squabbled over the reasons that had led a snake to cross a road; we heaved bits of bark at a venturesome chipmunk, who was really the little grey squirrel of india and had come to call on me; we lost our way and got the wagon so beautifully fixed on a steep road that we had to tie the two hind-wheels to get it down. above all, california told tales of nevada and arizona, of lonely nights spent out prospecting, of the slaughter of deer and the chase of men; of woman, lovely woman, who is a firebrand in a western city, and leads to the popping of pistols, and of the sudden changes and chances of fortune, who delights in making the miner or the lumberman a quadruplicate millionnaire, and in "busting" the railroad king. that was a day to be remembered, and it had only begun when we drew rein at a tiny farmhouse on the banks of the clackamas and sought horse-feed and lodging ere we hastened to the river that broke over a weir not a quarter of a mile away. imagine a stream seventy yards broad divided by a pebbly island, running over seductive riffles, and swirling into deep, quiet pools where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals. set such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, log-fenced meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the clackamas. portland had no rod. he held the gaff and the whisky. california sniffed upstream and downstream across the racing water, chose his ground, and let the gaudy spoon drop in the tail of a riffle. i was getting my rod together when i heard the joyous shriek of the reel and the yells of california, and three feet of living silver leaped into the air far across the water. the forces were engaged. the salmon tore up stream, the tense line cutting the water like a tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. what happened after i cannot tell. california swore and prayed, and portland shouted advice, and i did all three for what appeared to be half a day, but was in reality a little over a quarter of an hour, and sullenly our fish came home with spurts of temper, dashes head-on, and sarabands in the air; but home to the bank came he, and the remorseless reel gathered up the thread of his life inch by inch. we landed him in a little bay, and the spring-weight checked at eleven and a half pounds. eleven and one-half pounds of fighting salmon! we danced a war dance on the pebbles, and california caught me round the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs while he shouted: "partner! partner! this _is_ glory! now you catch your fish! twenty-four years i've waited for this!" i went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above a weir, and all but foul-hooked a blue and black water-snake with a coral mouth who coiled herself on a stone and hissed maledictions. the next cast--ah, the pride of it, the regal splendour of it! the thrill that ran down from finger-tip to toe! the water boiled. he broke for the spoon and got it! there remained enough sense in me to give him all he wanted when he jumped not once but twenty times before the upstream flight that ran my line out to the last half-dozen turns, and i saw the nickled reel-bar glitter under the thinning green coils. my thumb was burned deep when i strove to stopper the line, but i did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing water praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away. the prayer was heard. as i bowed back, the butt of the rod on my left hip-bone and the top joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned, and i accepted each inch of slack that i could by any means get in as a favour from on high. there be several sorts of success in this world that taste well in the moment of enjoyment, but i question whether the stealthy theft of line from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it is not sweeter than any other victory within human scope. like california's fish, he ran at me head-on and leaped against the line, but the lord gave me two hundred and fifty pairs of fingers in that hour. the banks and the pine trees danced dizzily round me, but i only reeled--reeled as for life--reeled for hours, and at the end of the reeling continued to give him the butt while he sulked in a pool. california was farther up the reach, and with the corner of my eye i could see him casting with long casts and much skill. then he struck, and my fish broke for the weir in the same instant, and down the reach we came, california and i; reel answering reel even as the morning stars sung together. the first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. we were both at work now in deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to stall off a downstream rush for deep water just above the weir, and at the same time to get the fish into the shallow bay downstream that gave the best practicable landing. portland bade us both be of good heart, and volunteered to take the rod from my hands. i would rather have died among the pebbles than surrender my right to play and land my first salmon, weight unknown, on an eight-ounce rod. i heard california, at my ear it seemed, gasping: "he's a fighter from fightersville sure!" as his fish made a fresh break across the stream. i saw portland fall off a log fence, break the overhanging bank, and clatter down to the pebbles, all sand and landing-net, and i dropped on a log to rest for a moment. as i drew breath the weary hands slackened their hold, and i forgot to give him the butt. a wild scutter in the water, a plunge and a break for the head-waters of the clackamas was my reward, and the hot toil of reeling-in with one eye under the water and the other on the top joint of the rod, was renewed. worst of all, i was blocking california's path to the little landing-bay aforesaid, and he had to halt and tire his prize where he was. "the father of all salmon!" he shouted. "for the love of heaven, get your _trout_ to bank, johnny bull." but i could no more. even the insult failed to move me. the rest of the game was with the salmon. he suffered himself to be drawn, skipping with pretended delight at getting to the haven where i would fain have him. yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my labour was in vain. a dozen times at least this happened ere the line hinted he had given up that battle and would be towed in. he was towed. the landing-net was useless for one of his size, and i would not have him gaffed. i stepped into the shallows and heaved him out with a respectful hand under the gill, for which kindness he battered me about the legs with his tail, and i felt the strength of him and was proud. california had taken my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. i was up the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass, and gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ounce rod. my hands were cut and bleeding. i was dripping with sweat, spangled like harlequin with scales, wet from the waist down, nose-peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy. he, the beauty, the darling, the daisy, my salmon bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and i had been seven and thirty minutes bringing him to bank! he had been lightly hooked on the angle of the right jaw, and the hook had not wearied him. that hour i sat among princes and crowned heads--greater than them all. below the bank we heard california scuffling with his salmon, and swearing spanish oaths. portland and i assisted at the capture, and the fish dragged the spring-balance out by the roots. it was only constructed to weigh up to fifteen pounds. we stretched the three fish on the grass,--the eleven and a half, the twelve, and fifteen pounder,--and we swore an oath that all who came after should merely be weighed and put back again. how shall i tell the glories of that day so that you may be interested? again and again did california and i prance down that reach to the little bay, each with a salmon in tow, and land him in the shallows. then portland took my rod, and caught some ten-pounders, and my spoon was carried away by an unknown leviathan. each fish, for the merits of the three that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked on the balance and flung back, portland recording the weight in a pocket-book, for he was a real-estate man. each fish fought for all he was worth, and none more savagely than the smallest--a game little six-pounder. at the end of six hours we added up the list. total: fish, aggregate weight lbs. the score in detail runs something like this--it is only interesting to those concerned: , - / , , , - / , , and so forth; as i have said, nothing under six pounds, and three ten-pounders. very solemnly and thankfully we put up our rods--it was glory enough for all time--and returned weeping in each other's arms--weeping tears of pure joy--to that simple bare-legged family in the packing-case house by the waterside. the old farmer recollected days and nights of fierce warfare with the indians--"way back in the fifties," when every ripple of the columbia river and her tributaries hid covert danger. god had dowered him with a queer crooked gift of expression, and a fierce anxiety for the welfare of his two little sons--tanned and reserved children who attended school daily, and spoke good english in a strange tongue. his wife was an austere woman who had once been kindly and perhaps handsome. many years of toil had taken the elasticity out of step and voice. she looked for nothing better than everlasting work--the chafing detail of housework, and then a grave somewhere up the hill among the blackberries and the pines. but in her grim way she sympathised with her eldest daughter, a small and silent maiden of eighteen, who had thoughts very far from the meals she tended or the pans she scoured. we stumbled into the household at a crisis; and there was a deal of downright humanity in that same. a bad, wicked dressmaker had promised the maiden a dress in time for a to-morrow's railway journey, and, though the barefooted georgie, who stood in very wholesome awe of his sister, had scoured the woods on a pony in search, that dress never arrived. so with sorrow in her heart, and a hundred sister anne glances up the road, she waited upon the strangers, and, i doubt not, cursed them for the wants that stood between her and her need for tears. it was a genuine little tragedy. the mother in a heavy, passionless voice rebuked her impatience, yet sat bowed over a heap of sewing for the daughter's benefit. these things i beheld in the long marigold-scented twilight and whispering night, loafing round the little house with california, who unfolded himself like a lotus to the moon; or in the little boarded bunk that was our bedroom, swapping tales with portland and the old man. most of the yarns began in this way: "red larry was a bull-puncher back of lone county, montanna," or "there was a man riding the trail met a jack-rabbit sitting in a cactus," or "'bout the time of the san diego land boom, a woman from monterey," etc. you can try to piece out for yourselves what sort of stories they were. and next day california tucked me under his wing and told me we were going to see a city smitten by a boom, and catch trout. so we took a train and killed a cow--she wouldn't get out of the way, and the locomotive "chanced" her and slew--and crossing into washington territory won the town of tacoma, which stands at the head of puget sound upon the road to alaska and vancouver. california was right. tacoma was literally staggering under a boom of the boomiest. i do not quite remember what her natural resources were supposed to be, though every second man shrieked a selection in my ear. they included coal and iron, carrots, potatoes, lumber, shipping, and a crop of thin newspapers all telling portland that her days were numbered. california and i struck the place at twilight. the rude boarded pavements of the main streets rumbled under the heels of hundreds of furious men all actively engaged in hunting drinks and eligible corner-lots. they sought the drinks first. the street itself alternated five-storey business blocks of the later and more abominable forms of architecture with board shanties. overhead the drunken telegraph, telephone, and electric-light wires tangled on the tottering posts whose butts were half-whittled through by the knife of the loafer. down the muddy, grimy, unmetalled thoroughfare ran a horse-car line--the metals three inches above road level. beyond this street rose many hills, and the town was thrown like a broken set of dominoes over all. a steam tramway--it left the track the only time i used it--was nosing about the hills, but the most prominent features of the landscape were the foundations in brick and stone of a gigantic opera house and the blackened stumps of the pines. california sized up the town with one comprehensive glance. "big boom," said he; and a few instants later: "about time to step off, _i_ think," meaning thereby that the boom had risen to its limit, and it would be expedient not to meddle with it. we passed down ungraded streets that ended abruptly in a fifteen-foot drop and a nest of brambles; along pavements that beginning in pine-plank ended in the living tree; by hotels with turkish mosque trinketry on their shameless tops, and the pine stamps at their very doors; by a female seminary, tall, gaunt and red, which a native of the town bade us marvel at, and we marvelled; by houses built in imitation of the ones on nob hill, san francisco,--after the dutch fashion; by other houses plenteously befouled with jig-saw work, and others flaring with the castlemented, battlemented bosh of the wooden gothic school. "you can tell just about when those fellers had their houses built," quoth california. "that one yonder wanted to be _i_talian, and his architect built him what he wanted. the new houses with the low straddle roofs and windows pitched in sideways and red brick walls are dutch. that's the latest idea. i can read the history of the town." i had no occasion so to read. the natives were only too glad and too proud to tell me. the hotel walls bore a flaming panorama of tacoma in which by the eye of faith i saw a faint resemblance to the real town. the hotel stationary advertised that tacoma bore on its face all the advantages of the highest civilisation, and the newspapers sang the same tune in a louder key. the real-estate agents were selling house-lots on unmade streets miles away for thousands of dollars. on the streets--the rude, crude streets, where the unshaded electric light was fighting with the gentle northern twilight--men were babbling of money, town lots, and again money--how alf or ed had done such and such a thing that had brought him so much money; and round the corner in a creaking boarded hall the red-jerseyed salvationists were calling upon mankind to renounce all and follow their noisy god. the men dropped in by twos and threes, listened silently for a while, and as silently went their way, the cymbals clashing after them in vain. i think it was the raw, new smell of fresh sawdust everywhere pervading the air that threw upon me a desolating homesickness. it brought back in a moment all remembrances of that terrible first night at school when the establishment has been newly whitewashed, and a soft smell of escaping gas mingles with the odour of trunks and wet overcoats. i was a little boy, and the school was very new. a vagabond among collarless vagabonds, i loafed up the street, looking into the fronts of little shops where they sold slop shirts at fancy prices, which shops i saw later described in the papers as "great." california had gone off to investigate on his own account, and presently returned, laughing noiselessly. "they are all mad here," he said, "all mad. a man nearly pulled a gun on me because i didn't agree with him that tacoma was going to whip san francisco on the strength of carrots and potatoes. i asked him to tell me what the town produced, and i couldn't get anything out of him except those two darned vegetables. say, what do you think." i responded firmly, "i'm going into british territory a little while--to draw breath." "i'm going up the sound, too, for a while," said he, "but i'm coming back--coming back to our salmon on the clackamas. a man has been pressing me to buy real estate here. young feller, don't you buy real estate here." california disappeared with a kindly wave of his overcoat into worlds other than mine,--good luck go with him for he was a true sportsman!--and i took a steamer up puget sound for vancouver, which is the terminus of the canadian pacific railway. that was a queer voyage. the water, landlocked among a thousand islands, lay still as oil under our bows, and the wake of the screw broke up the unquivering reflections of pines and cliffs a mile away. 'twas as though we were trampling on glass. no one, not even the government, knows the number of islands in the sound. even now you can get one almost for the asking; can build a house, raise sheep, catch salmon, and become a king on a small scale--your subjects the indians of the reservation, who glide among the islets in their canoes and scratch their hides monkeywise by the beach. a sound indian is unlovely and only by accident picturesque. his wife drives the canoe, but he himself is so thorough a mariner that he can spring up in his cockle-craft and whack his wife over the head with a paddle without tipping the whole affair into the water. this i have seen him do unprovoked. i fancy it must have been to show off before the whites. have i told you anything about seattle--the town that was burned out a few weeks ago when the insurance men at san francisco took their losses with a grin? in the ghostly twilight, just as the forest fires were beginning to glare from the unthrifty islands, we struck it--struck it heavily, for the wharves had all been burned down, and we tied up where we could, crashing into the rotten foundations of a boathouse as a pig roots in high grass. the town, like tacoma, was built upon a hill. in the heart of the business quarters there was a horrible black smudge, as though a hand had come down and rubbed the place smooth. i know now what being wiped out means. the smudge seemed to be about a mile long, and its blackness was relieved by tents in which men were doing business with the wreck of the stock they had saved. there were shouts and counter-shouts from the steamer to the temporary wharf, which was laden with shingles for roofing, chairs, trunks, provision-boxes, and all the lath and string arrangements out of which a western town is made. this is the way the shouts ran:-- "oh, george! what's the best with you?" "nawthin'. got the old safe out. she's burned to a crisp. books all gone." "'save anythin'?" "bar'l o' crackers and my wife's bonnet. goin' to start store on them though." "bully for you. where's that emporium? i'll drop in." "corner what used to be fourth and main--little brown tent close to militia picquet. sa-ay! we're under martial law, an' all the saloons are shut down." "best for you, george. some men gets crazy with a fire, an' liquor makes 'em crazier." "'spect any creator-condemned son of a female dog who has lost all his fixin's in a conflagration is going to put ice on his head an' run for congress, do you? how'd you like us act?" the job's comforter on the steamer retired into himself. "oh george" dived into the bar for a drink. p. s.--among many curiosities i have unearthed one. it was a face on the steamer--a face above a pointed straw-coloured beard, a face with thin lips and eloquent eyes. we conversed, and presently i got at the ideas of the face. it was, though it lived for nine months of the year in the wilds of alaska and british columbia, an authority on the canon law of the church of england--a zealous and bitter upholder of the supremacy of the aforesaid church. into my amazed ears, as the steamer plodded through the reflections of the stars, it poured the battle-cry of the church militant here on earth, and put forward as a foul injustice that in the prisons of british columbia the protestant chaplain did not always belong to the church. the face had no official connection with the august body, and by force of his life very seldom attended service. "but," said he, proudly, "i should think it direct disobedience to the orders of my church if i attended any other places of worship than those prescribed. i was once for three months in a place where there was only a wesleyan methodist chapel, and i never set foot in it once, sir. never once. 'twould have been heresy. rank heresy." and as i leaned over the rail methought that all the little stars in the water were shaking with austere merriment! but it may have been only the ripple of the steamer, after all. no. xxviii takes me from vancouver to the yellowstone national park. "but who shall chronicle the ways of common folk, the nights and days spent with rough goatherds on the snows, and travellers come whence no man knows?" this day i know how a deserter feels. here in victoria, a hundred and forty miles out of america, the mail brings me news from our home--the land of regrets. i was enjoying myself by the side of a trout-stream, and i feel inclined to apologise for every rejoicing breath i drew in the diamond clear air. the sickness, they said, is heavy with you; from rewari to the south good men are dying. two names come in by the mail of two strong men dead--men that i dined and jested with only a little time ago, and it seems unfair that i should be here, cut off from the chain-gang and the shot-drill of our weary life. after all, there is no life like it that we lead over yonder. americans are americans, and there are millions of them; english are english; but we of india are us all the world over, knowing the mysteries of each other's lives and sorrowing for the death of a brother. how can i sit down and write to you of the mere joy of being alive? the news has killed the pleasure of the day for me, and i am ashamed of myself. there are seventy brook trout lying in a creel, fresh drawn from harrison hot springs, and they do not console me. they are like the stolen apples that clinch the fact of a bad boy's playing truant. i would sell them all, with my heritage in the woods and air and the delight of meeting new and strange people, just to be back again in the old galling harness, the heat and the dust, the gatherings in the evenings by the flooded tennis-courts, the ghastly dull dinners at the club when the very last woman has been packed off to the hills and the four or five surviving men ask the doctor the symptoms of incubating smallpox. i should be troubled in body, but at peace in the soul. o excellent and toil-worn public of mine--men of the brotherhood, griffins new joined from the february troopers, and gentlemen waiting for your off-reckonings--take care of yourselves and keep well! it hurts so when any die. there are so few of us, and we know one another too intimately. * * * * * vancouver three years ago was swept off by fire in sixteen minutes, and only one house was left standing. to-day it has a population of fourteen thousand people, and builds its houses out of brick with dressed granite fronts. but a great sleepiness lies on vancouver as compared with an american town: men don't fly up and down the streets telling lies, and the spittoons in the delightfully comfortable hotel are unused; the baths are free and their doors are unlocked. you do not have to dig up the hotel clerk when you want to bathe, which shows the inferiority of vancouver. an american bade me notice the absence of bustle, and was alarmed when in a loud and audible voice i thanked god for it. "give me granite--hewn granite and peace," quoth i, "and keep your deal boards and bustle for yourselves." the canadian pacific terminus is not a very gorgeous place as yet, but you can be shot directly from the window of the train into the liner that will take you in fourteen days from vancouver to yokohama. the _parthia_, of some five thousand tons, was at her berth when i came, and the sight of the ex-cunard on what seemed to be a little lake was curious. except for certain currents which are not much mentioned, but which make the entrance rather unpleasant for sailing-boats, vancouver possesses an almost perfect harbour. the town is built all round and about the harbour, and young as it is, its streets are better than those of western america. moreover, the old flag waves over some of the buildings, and this is cheering to the soul. the place is full of englishmen who speak the english tongue correctly and with clearness, avoiding more blasphemy than is necessary, and taking a respectable length of time to getting outside their drinks. these advantages and others that i have heard about, such as the construction of elaborate workshops and the like by the canadian pacific in the near future, moved me to invest in real estate. he that sold it me was a delightful english boy who, having tried for the army and failed, had somehow meandered into a real-estate office, where he was doing well. i couldn't have bought it from an american. he would have overstated the case and proved me the possessor of the original eden. all the boy said was: "i give you my word it isn't on a cliff or under water, and before long the town ought to move out that way. i'd advise you to take it." and i took it as easily as a man buys a piece of tobacco. _me voici_, owner of some four hundred well-developed pines, a few thousand tons of granite scattered in blocks at the roots of the pines, and a sprinkling of earth. that's a town-lot in vancouver. you or your agent hold to it till property rises, then sell out and buy more land further out of town and repeat the process. i do not quite see how this sort of thing helps the growth of a town, but the english boy says that it is the "essence of speculation," so it must be all right. but i wish there were fewer pines and rather less granite on my ground. moved by curiosity and the lust of trout, i went seventy miles up the canadian pacific in one of the cross-continent cars, which are cleaner and less stuffy than the pullman. a man who goes all the way across canada is liable to be disappointed--not in the scenery, but in the progress of the country. so a batch of wandering politicians from england told me. they even went so far as to say that eastern canada was a failure and unprofitable. the place didn't move, they complained, and whole counties--they said provinces--lay under the rule of the roman catholic priests, who took care that the people should not be overcumbered with the good things of this world to the detriment of their souls. my interest was in the line--the real and accomplished railway which is to throw actual fighting troops into the east some day when our hold of the suez canal is temporarily loosened. all that vancouver wants is a fat earthwork fort upon a hill,--there are plenty of hills to choose from,--a selection of big guns, a couple of regiments of infantry, and later on a big arsenal. the raw self-consciousness of america would be sure to make her think these arrangements intended for her benefit, but she could be enlightened. it is not seemly to leave unprotected the head-end of a big railway; for though victoria and esquimalt, our naval stations on vancouver island, are very near, so also is a place called vladivostok, and though vancouver narrows are strait, they allow room enough for a man-of-war. the people--i did not speak to more than two hundred of them--do not know about russia or military arrangements. they are trying to open trade with japan in lumber, and are raising fruit, wheat, and sometimes minerals. all of them agree that we do not yet know the resources of british columbia, and all joyfully bade me note the climate, which was distinctly warm. "we never have killing cold here. it's the most perfect climate in the world." then there are three perfect climates, for i have tasted 'em--california, washington territory, and british columbia. i cannot say which is the loveliest. when i left by steamer and struck across the sound to our naval station at victoria, vancouver island, i found in that quite english town of beautiful streets quite a colony of old men doing nothing but talking, fishing, and loafing at the club. that means that the retired go to victoria. on a thousand a year pension a man would be a millionnaire in these parts, and for four hundred he could live well. it was at victoria they told me the tale of the fire in vancouver. how the inhabitants of new westminster, twelve miles from vancouver, saw a glare in the sky at six in the evening, but thought it was a forest fire; how later bits of burnt paper flew about their streets, and they guessed that evil had happened; how an hour later a man rode into the city crying that there was no vancouver left. all had been wiped out by the flames in sixteen minutes. how, two hours later, the mayor of new westminster having voted nine thousand dollars from the municipal funds, relief-wagons with food and blankets were pouring into where vancouver stood. how fourteen people were supposed to have died in the fire, but how even now when they laid new foundations the workmen unearth charred skeletons, many more than fourteen. "that night," said the teller, "all vancouver was houseless. the wooden town had gone in a breath. next day they began to build in brick, and you have seen what they have achieved." the sight afar off of three british men-of-war and a torpedo-boat consoled me as i returned from victoria to tacoma and discovered _en route_ that i was surfeited with scenery. there is a great deal in the remark of a discontented traveller: "when you have seen a fine forest, a bluff, a river, and a lake you have seen all the scenery of western america. sometimes the pine is three hundred feet high, and sometimes the rock is, and sometimes the lake is a hundred miles long. but it's all the same, don't you know. i'm getting sick of it." i dare not say getting sick. i'm only tired. if providence could distribute all this beauty in little bits where people most wanted it,--among you in india,--it would be well. but it is _en masse_, overwhelming, with nobody but the tobacco-chewing captain of a river steamboat to look at it. men said if i went to alaska i should see islands even more wooded, snow-peaks loftier, and rivers more lovely than those around me. that decided me not to go to alaska. i went east--east to montana, after another horrible night in tacoma among the men who spat. why does the westerner spit? it can't amuse him, and it doesn't interest his neighbour. but i am beginning to mistrust. everything good as well as everything bad is supposed to come from the east. is there a shooting-scrape between prominent citizens? oh, you'll find nothing of that kind in the east. is there a more than usually revolting lynching? they don't do that in the east. i shall find out when i get there whether this unnatural perfection be real. eastward then to montana i took my way for the yellowstone national park, called in the guide-books "wonderland." but the real wonderland began in the train. we were a merry crew. one gentleman announced his intention of paying no fare and grappled the conductor, who neatly cross-buttocked him through a double plate-glass window. his head was cut open in four or five places. a doctor on the train hastily stitched up the biggest gash, and he was dropped at a wayside station, spurting blood at every hair--a scarlet-headed and ghastly sight. the conductor guessed that he would die, and volunteered the information that there was no profit in monkeying with the north pacific railway. night was falling as we cleared the forests and sailed out upon a wilderness of sage brush. the desolation of montgomery, the wilderness of sind, the hummock-studded desert of bikaneer, are joyous and homelike compared to the impoverished misery of the sage. it is blue, it is stunted, it is dusty. it wraps the rolling hills as a mildewed shroud wraps the body of a long-dead man. it makes you weep for sheer loneliness, and there is no getting away from it. when childe roland came to the dark tower he traversed the sage brush. yet there is one thing worse than sage unadulterated, and that is a prairie city. we stopped at pasco junction, and a man told me that it was the queen city of the prairie. i wish americans didn't tell such useless lies. i counted fourteen or fifteen frame-houses, and a portion of a road that showed like a bruise on the untouched surface of the blue sage, running away and away up to the setting sun. the sailor sleeps with a half-inch plank between himself and death. he is at home beside the handful of people who curl themselves up o' nights with nothing but a frail scantling, almost as thin as a blanket, to shut out the unmeasurable loneliness of the sage. when the train stopped on the road, as it did once or twice, the solid silence of the sage got up and shouted at us. it was like a nightmare, and one not in the least improved by having to sleep in an emigrant-car; the regularly ordained sleepers being full. there was a row in our car toward morning, a man having managed to get querulously drunk in the night. up rose a cornishman with a red head full of strategy, and strapped the obstreperous one, smiling largely as he did so, and a delicate little woman in a far bunk watched the fray and called the drunken man a "damned hog," which he certainly was, though she needn't have put it quite so coarsely. emigrant cars are clean, but the accommodation is as hard as a plank bed. later we laid our bones down to crossing the rockies. an american train can climb up the side of a house if need be, but it is not pleasant to sit in it. we clomb till we struck violent cold and an indian reservation, and the noble savage came to look at us. he was a flathead and unlovely. most americans are charmingly frank about the indian. "let us get rid of him as soon as possible," they say. "we have no use for him." some of the men i meet have a notion that we in india are exterminating the native in the same fashion, and i have been asked to fix a date for the final extinguishment of the aryan. i answer that it will be a long business. very many americans have an offensive habit of referring to natives as "heathen." mahometans and hindus are heathen alike in their eyes, and they vary the epithet with "pagan" and "idolater." but this is beside the matter, which is the stampede tunnel--our actual point of crossing the rockies. thank heaven, i need never take that tunnel again! it is about two miles long, and in effect is nothing more than the gallery of a mine shored with timber and lighted with electric lamps. black darkness would be preferable, for the lamps just reveal the rough cutting of the rocks, and that is very rough indeed. the train crawls through, brakes down, and you can hear the water and little bits of stone falling on the roof of the car. then you pray, pray fervently, and the air gets stiller and stiller, and you dare not take your unwilling eyes off the timber shoring, lest a prop should fall, for lack of your moral support. before the tunnel was built you crossed in the open air by a switchback line. a watchman goes through the tunnel after each train, but that is no protection. he just guesses that another train will pull through, and the engine-driver guesses the same thing. some day between the two of them there will be a cave in the tunnel. then the enterprising reporter will talk about the shrieks and groans of the buried and the heroic efforts of the press in securing first information, and--that will be all. human life is of small account out here. i was listening to yarns in the smoking-compartment of the pullman, all the way to helena, and with very few exceptions, each had for its point, violent, brutal, and ruffianly murder--murder by fraud and the craft of the savage--murder unavenged by the law, or at the most by an outbreak of fresh lawlessness. at the end of each tale i was assured that the old days had passed away, and that these were anecdotes of five years' standing. one man in particular distinguished himself by holding up to admiration the exploits of some cowboys of his acquaintance, and their skill in the use of the revolver. each tale of horror wound up with "and that's the sort of man he was," as who should say: "go and do likewise." remember that the shootings, the cuttings, and the stabbings were not the outcome of any species of legitimate warfare; the heroes were not forced to fight for their lives. far from it. the brawls were bred by liquor in which they assisted--in saloons and gambling-hells they were wont to "pull their guns" on a man, and in the vast majority of cases without provocation. the tales sickened me, but taught one thing. a man who carries a pistol may be put down as a coward--a person to be shut out from every decent mess and club, and gathering of civilised folk. there is neither chivalry nor romance in the weapon, for all that american authors have seen fit to write. i would i could make you understand the full measure of contempt with which certain aspects of western life have inspired me. let us try a comparison. sometimes it happens that a young, a very young, man, whose first dress-coat is yet glossy, gets slightly flushed at a dinner-party among his seniors. after the ladies are gone, he begins to talk. he talks, you will remember, as a "man of the world" and a person of varied experiences, an authority on all things human and divine. the grey heads of the elders bow assentingly to his wildest statement; some one tries to turn the conversation when what the youngster conceives to be wit has offended a sensibility; and another deftly slides the decanters beyond him as they circle round the table. you know the feeling of discomfort--pity mingled with aversion--over the boy who is making an exhibition of himself. the same emotion came back to me, when an old man who ought to have known better appealed from time to time for admiration of his pitiful sentiments. it was right in his mind to insult, to maim, and to kill; right to evade the law where it was strong and to trample over it where it was weak; right to swindle in politics, to lie in affairs of state, and commit perjury in matters of municipal administration. the car was full of little children, utterly regardless of their parents, fretful, peevish, spoilt beyond anything i have ever seen in anglo-india. they in time would grow up into men such as sat in the smoker, and had no regard for the law; men who would conduct papers siding with defiance of any and every law. but it's of no consequence, as mr. toots says. during the descent of the rockies we journeyed for a season on a trestle only two hundred and eighty-six feet high. it was made of iron, but up till two years ago a wooden structure bore up the train, and was used long after it had been condemned by the civil engineers. some day the iron one will come down, just as stampede tunnel will, and the results will be even more startling. late in the night we ran over a skunk--ran over it in the dark. everything that has been said about the skunk is true. it is an awesome stink. no. xxix shows how yankee jim introduced me to diana of the crossways on the banks of the yellowstone, and how a german jew said i was no true citizen. ends with the celebration of the th of july and a few lessons therefrom. livingstone is a town of two thousand people, and the junction for the little side-line that takes you to the yellowstone national park. it lies in a fold of the prairie, and behind it is the yellowstone river and the gate of the mountains through which the river flows. there is one street in the town, where the cowboy's pony and the little foal of the brood-mare in the buggy rest contentedly in the blinding sunshine while the cowboy gets himself shaved at the only other barber's shop, and swaps lies at the bar. i exhausted the town, including the saloons, in ten minutes, and got away on the rolling grass downs where i threw myself to rest. directly under the hill i was on, swept a drove of horses in charge of two mounted men. that was a picture i shall not soon forget. a light haze of dust went up from the hoof-trodden green, scarcely veiling the unfettered deviltries of three hundred horses who very much wanted to stop and graze. "yow! yow! yow!" yapped the mounted men in chorus like coyotes. the column moved forward at a trot, divided as it met a hillock and scattered into fan shape all among the suburbs of livingstone. i heard the "snick" of a stock whip, half a dozen "yow, yows," and the mob had come together again, and, with neighing and whickering and squealing and a great deal of kicking on the part of the youngsters, rolled like a wave of brown water toward the uplands. i was within twenty feet of the leader, a grey stallion--lord of many brood-mares all deeply concerned for the welfare of their fuzzy foals. a cream-coloured beast--i knew him at once for the bad character of the troop--broke back, taking with him some frivolous fillies. i heard the snick of the whips somewhere in the dust, and the fillies came back at a canter, very shocked and indignant. on the heels of the last rode both the stockmen--picturesque ruffians who wanted to know "what in hell" i was doing there, waved their hats, and sped down the slope after their charges. when the noise of the troop had died there came a wonderful silence on all the prairie--that silence, they say, which enters into the heart of the old-time hunter and trapper and marks him off from the rest of his race. the town disappeared in the darkness, and a very young moon showed herself over a bald-headed, snow-flecked peak. then the yellowstone, hidden by the water-willows, lifted up its voice and sang a little song to the mountains, and an old horse that had crept up in the dusk breathed inquiringly on the back of my neck. when i reached the hotel i found all manner of preparation under way for the th of july, and a drunken man with a winchester rifle over his shoulder patrolling the sidewalk. i do not think he wanted any one. he carried the gun as other folk carry walking-sticks. none the less i avoided the direct line of fire and listened to the blasphemies of miners and stockmen till far into the night. in every bar-room lay a copy of the local paper, and every copy impressed it upon the inhabitants of livingstone that they were the best, finest, bravest, richest, and most progressive town of the most progressive nation under heaven; even as the tacoma and portland papers had belauded their readers. and yet, all my purblind eyes could see was a grubby little hamlet full of men without clean collars and perfectly unable to get through one sentence unadorned by three oaths. they raise horses and minerals round and about livingstone, but they behave as though they raised cherubims with diamonds in their wings. from livingstone the national park train follows the yellowstone river through the gate of the mountains and over arid volcanic country. a stranger in the cars saw me look at the ideal trout-stream below the windows and murmured softly: "lie off at yankee jim's if you want good fishing." they halted the train at the head of a narrow valley, and i leaped literally into the arms of yankee jim, sole owner of a log hut, an indefinite amount of hay-ground, and constructor of twenty-seven miles of wagon-road over which he held toll right. there was the hut--the river fifty yards away, and the polished line of metals that disappeared round a bluff. that was all. the railway added the finishing touch to the already complete loneliness of the place. yankee jim was a picturesque old man with a talent for yarns that ananias might have envied. it seemed to me, presumptuous in my ignorance, that i might hold my own with the old-timer if i judiciously painted up a few lies gathered in the course of my wanderings. yankee jim saw every one of my tales and went fifty better on the spot. he dealt in bears and indians--never less than twenty of each; had known the yellowstone country for years, and bore upon his body marks of indian arrows; and his eyes had seen a squaw of the crow indians burned alive at the stake. he said she screamed considerable. in one point did he speak the truth--as regarded the merits of that particular reach of the yellowstone. he said it was alive with trout. it was. i fished it from noon till twilight, and the fish bit at the brown hook as though never a fat trout-fly had fallen on the water. from pebbly reaches, quivering in the heat-haze where the foot caught on stumps cut foursquare by the chisel-tooth of the beaver; past the fringe of the water-willow crowded with the breeding trout-fly and alive with toads and water-snakes; over the drifted timber to the grateful shadow of big trees that darkened the holes where the fattest fish lay, i worked for seven hours. the mountain flanks on either side of the valley gave back the heat as the desert gives it, and the dry sand by the railway track, where i found a rattlesnake, was hot-iron to the touch. but the trout did not care for the heat. they breasted the boiling river for my fly and they got it. i simply dare not give my bag. at the fortieth trout i gave up counting, and i had leached the fortieth in less than two hours. they were small fish,--not one over two pounds,--but they fought like small tigers, and i lost three flies before i could understand their methods of escape. ye gods! that was fishing, though it peeled the skin from my nose in strips. at twilight yankee jim bore me off, protesting, to supper in the hut. the fish had prepared me for any surprise, wherefore when yankee jim introduced me to a young woman of five-and-twenty, with eyes like the deep-fringed eyes of the gazelle, and "on the neck the small head buoyant, like a bell-flower in its bed," i said nothing. it was all in the day's events. she was california-raised, the wife of a man who owned a stock-farm "up the river a little ways," and, with her husband, tenant of yankee jim's shanty. i know she wore list slippers and did not wear stays; but i know also that she was beautiful by any standard of beauty, and that the trout she cooked were fit for a king's supper. and after supper strange men loafed up in the dim delicious twilight, with the little news of the day--how a heifer had "gone strayed" from nicholson's; how the widow at grant's fork wouldn't part with a little hayland nohow, though "she's an' her big brothers can't manage more than ha-af their land now. she's so darned proud." diana of the crossways entertained them in queenly wise, and her husband and yankee jim bade them sit right down and make themselves at home. then did yankee jim uncurl his choicest lies on indian warfare aforetime; then did the whisky-flask circle round the little crowd; then did diana's husband 'low that he was quite handy with the lariat, but had seen men rope a steer by any foot or horn indicated; then did diana unburden herself about her neighbours. the nearest house was three miles away, "but the women aren't nice, neighbourly folk. they talk so. they haven't got anything else to do seemingly. if a woman goes to a dance and has a good time, they talk, and if she wears a silk dress, they want to know how jest ranchin' folks--folk on a ranche--come by such things; and they make mischief down all the lands here from gardiner city way back up to livingstone. they're mostly montanna raised, and they haven't been nowheres. ah, how they talk!" "were things like this," demanded diana, "in the big world outside, whence i had come?" "yes," i said, "things were very much the same all over the world," and i thought of a far-away station in india where new dresses and the having of good times at dances raised cackle more grammatical perhaps, but no less venomous than the gossip of the "montanna-raised" folk on the ranches of the yellowstone. next morn i fished again and listened to diana telling the story of her life. i forget what she told me, but i am distinctly aware that she had royal eyes and a mouth that the daughter of a hundred earls might have envied--so small and so delicately cut it was. "an' you come back an' see us again," said the simple-minded folk. "come back an' we'll show you how to catch six-pound trout at the head of the cañon." to-day i am in the yellowstone park, and i wish i were dead. the train halted at cinnabar station, and we were decanted, a howling crowd of us, into stages, variously horsed, for the eight-mile drive to the first spectacle of the park--a place called the mammoth hot springs. "what means this eager, anxious throng?" i asked the driver. "you've struck one of rayment's excursion parties--that's all--a crowd of creator-condemned fools mostly. aren't you one of 'em?" "no," i said. "may i sit up here with you, great chief and man with a golden tongue? i do not know mister rayment. i belong to t. cook and son." the other person, from the quality of the material he handles, must be the son of a sea-cook. he collects masses of down-easters from the new england states and elsewhere and hurls them across the continent and into the yellowstone park on tour. a brake-load of cook's continental tourists trapezing through paris (i've seen 'em) are angels of light compared to the rayment trippers. it is not the ghastly vulgarity, the oozing, rampant bessemer-steel self-sufficiency and ignorance of the men that revolts me, so much as the display of these same qualities in the women-folk. i saw a new type in the coach, and all my dreams of a better and more perfect east died away. "are these--um--persons here any sort of persons in their own places?" i asked a shepherd who appeared to be herding them. "why, certainly. they include very many prominent and representative citizens from seven states of the union, and most of them are wealthy. yes, _sir_. representative and prominent." we ran across bare hills on an unmetalled road under a burning sun in front of a volley of playful repartee from the prominent citizens inside. it was the th of july. the horses had american flags in their head-stalls, some of the women wore flags and coloured handkerchiefs in their belts, and a young german on the box-seat with me was bewailing the loss of a box of crackers. he said he had been sent to the continent to get his schooling and so had lost his american accent; but no continental schooling writes german jew all over a man's face and nose. he was a rabid american citizen--one of a very difficult class to deal with. as a general rule, praise unsparingly, and without discrimination. that keeps most men quiet: but some, if you fail to keep up a continuous stream of praise, proceed to revile the old country--germans and irish who are more americans than the americans are the chief offenders. this young american began to attack the english army. he had seen some of it on parade and he pitied the men in bearskins as "slaves." the citizen, by the way, has a contempt for his own army which exceeds anything you meet among the most illiberal classes in england. i admitted that our army was very poor, had done nothing, and had been nowhere. this exasperated him, for he expected an argument, and he trampled on the british lion generally. failing to move me, he vowed that i had no patriotism like his own. i said i had not, and further ventured that very few englishmen had; which, when you come to think of it, is quite true. by the time he had proved conclusively that before the prince of wales came to the throne we should be a blethering republic, we struck a road that overhung a river, and my interest in "politics" was lost in admiration of the driver's skill as he sent his four big horses along that winding road. there was no room for any sort of accident--a shy or a swerve would have dropped us sixty feet into the roaring gardiner river. some of the persons in the coach remarked that the scenery, was "elegant." wherefore, even at the risk of my own life, i did urgently desire an accident and the massacre of some of the more prominent citizens. what "elegance" lies in a thousand-foot pile of honey-coloured rock, riven into peak and battlement, the highest peak defiantly crowned by an eagle's nest, the eaglet peering into the gulf and screaming for his food, i could not for the life of me understand. but they speak a strange tongue. _en route_ we passed other carriages full of trippers, who had done their appointed five days in the park, and yelped at us fraternally as they disappeared in clouds of red dust. when we struck the mammoth hot spring hotel--a huge yellow barn--a sign-board informed us that the altitude was six thousand two hundred feet. the park is just a howling wilderness of three thousand square miles, full of all imaginable freaks of a fiery nature. an hotel company, assisted by the secretary of state for the interior, appears to control it; there are hotels at all the points of interest, guide-books, stalls for the sale of minerals, and so forth, after the model of swiss summer places. the tourists--may their master die an evil death at the hand of a mad locomotive!--poured into that place with a joyful whoop, and, scarce washing the dust from themselves, began to celebrate the th of july. they called it "patriotic exercises"; elected a clergyman of their own faith as president, and, sitting on the landing of the first floor, began to make speeches and read the declaration of independence. the clergyman rose up and told them they were the greatest, freest, sublimest, most chivalrous, and richest people on the face of the earth, and they all said amen. another clergyman asserted in the words of the declaration that all men were created equal, and equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. i should like to know whether the wild and woolly west recognises this first right as freely as the grantors intended. the clergyman then bade the world note that the tourists included representatives of seven of the new england states; whereat i felt deeply sorry for the new england states in their latter days. he opined that this running to and fro upon the earth, under the auspices of the excellent rayment, would draw america more closely together, especially when the westerners remembered the perils that they of the east had surmounted by rail and river. at duly appointed intervals the congregation sang "my country, 'tis of thee" to the tune of "god save the queen" (here they did not stand up) and the "star-spangled banner" (here they did), winding up the exercise with some doggrel of their own composition to the tune of "john brown's body," movingly setting forth the perils before alluded to. they then adjourned to the verandahs and watched fire-crackers of the feeblest, exploding one by one, for several hours. what amazed me was the calm with which these folks gathered together and commenced to belaud their noble selves, their country, and their "institootions" and everything else that was theirs. the language was, to these bewildered ears, wild advertisement, gas, bunkum, blow, anything you please beyond the bounds of common sense. an archangel, selling town-lots on the glassy sea, would have blushed to the tips of his wings to describe his property in similar terms. then they gathered round the pastor and told him his little sermon was "perfectly glorious," really grand, sublime, and so forth, and he bridled ecclesiastically. at the end a perfectly unknown man attacked me and asked me what i thought of american patriotism. i said there was nothing like it in the old country. by the way, always tell an american this. it soothes him. then said he: "are you going to get out your letters,--your letters of naturalisation?" "why?" i asked. "i presoom you do business in this country, and make money out of it,--and it seems to me that it would be your dooty." "sir," said i, sweetly, "there is a forgotten little island across the seas called england. it is not much bigger than the yellowstone park. in that island a man of your country could work, marry, make his fortune or twenty fortunes, and die. throughout his career not one soul would ask him whether he were a british subject or a child of the devil. do you understand?" i think he did, because he said something about "britishers" which wasn't complimentary. no. xxx shows how i entered mazanderan of the persians and saw devils of every colour, and some troopers. hell and the old lady from chicago. the captain and the lieutenant. "that desolate land and lone where the big horn and yellowstone roar down their mountain path." twice have i written this letter from end to end. twice have i torn it up, fearing lest those across the water should say that i had gone mad on a sudden. now we will begin for the third time quite solemnly and soberly. i have been through the yellowstone national park in a buggy, in the company of an adventurous old lady from chicago and her husband, who disapproved of scenery as being "ongodly." i fancy it scared them. we began, as you know, with the mammoth hot springs. they are only a gigantic edition of those pink and white terraces not long ago destroyed by earthquake in new zealand. at one end of the little valley in which the hotel stands the lime-laden springs that break from the pine-covered hillsides have formed a frozen cataract of white, lemon, and palest pink formation, through and over and in which water of the warmest bubbles and drips and trickles from pale-green lagoon to exquisitely fretted basin. the ground rings hollow as a kerosene-tin, and some day the mammoth hotel, guests and all, will sink into the caverns below and be turned into a stalactite. when i set foot on the first of the terraces, a tourist-trampled ramp of scabby grey stuff, i met a stream of iron-red hot water which ducked into a hole like a rabbit. followed a gentle chuckle of laughter, and then a deep, exhausted sigh from nowhere in particular. fifty feet above my head a jet of steam rose up and died out in the blue. it was worse than the boiling mountain at myanoshita. the dirty white deposit gave place to lime whiter than snow; and i found a basin which some learned hotel-keeper has christened cleopatra's pitcher, or mark antony's whisky-jug, or something equally poetical. it was made of frosted silver; it was filled with water as clear as the sky. i do not know the depth of that wonder. the eye looked down beyond grottoes and caves of beryl into an abyss that communicated directly with the central fires of earth. and the pool was in pain, so that it could not refrain from talking about it; muttering and chattering and moaning. from the lips of the lime-ledges, forty feet under water, spurts of silver bubbles would fly up and break the peace of the crystal atop. then the whole pool would shake and grow dim, and there were noises. i removed myself only to find other pools all equally unhappy, rifts in the ground, full of running, red-hot water, slippery sheets of deposit overlaid with greenish grey hot water, and here and there pit-holes dry as a rifled tomb in india, dusty and waterless. elsewhere the infernal waters had first boiled dead and then embalmed the pines and underwood, or the forest trees had taken heart and smothered up a blind formation with greenery, so that it was only by scraping the earth you could tell what fires had raged beneath. yet the pines will win the battle in years to come, because nature, who first forges all her work in her great smithies, has nearly finished this job, and is ready to temper it in the soft brown earth. the fires are dying down; the hotel is built where terraces have overflowed into flat wastes of deposit; the pines have taken possession of the high ground whence the terraces first started. only the actual curve of the cataract stands clear, and it is guarded by soldiers who patrol it with loaded six-shooters, in order that the tourist may not bring up fence-rails and sink them in a pool, or chip the fretted tracery of the formations with a geological hammer, or, walking where the crust is too thin, foolishly cook himself. i manoeuvred round those soldiers. they were cavalry in a very slovenly uniform, dark-blue blouse, and light-blue trousers unstrapped, cut spoon-shape over the boot; cartridge belt, revolver, peaked cap, and worsted gloves--black buttons! by the mercy of allah i opened conversation with a spectacled scot. he had served the queen in the marines and a line regiment, and the "go-fever" being in his bones, had drifted to america, there to serve uncle sam. we sat on the edge of an extinct little pool, that under happier circumstances would have grown into a geyser, and began to discuss things generally. to us appeared yet another soldier. no need to ask his nationality or to be told that the troop called him "the henglishman." a cockney was he, who had seen something of warfare in egypt, and had taken his discharge from a fusilier regiment not unknown to you. "and how do things go?" "very much as you please," said they. "there's not half the discipline here that there is in the queen's service--not half--nor the work either, but what there is, is rough work. why, there's a sergeant now with a black eye that one of our men gave him. they won't say anything about that, of course. our punishments? fines mostly, and then if you carry on too much you go to the cooler--that's the clink. yes, sir. horses? oh, they're devils, these montanna horses. bronchos mostly. we don't slick 'em up for parade--not much. and the amount of schooling that you put into one english troop-horse would be enough for a whole squadron of these creatures. you'll meet more troopers further up the park. go and look at their horses and their turnouts. i fancy it'll startle you. i'm wearing a made tie and a breastpin under my blouse? of course i am! i can wear anything i darn please. we aren't particular here. i shouldn't dare come on parade--no, nor yet fatigue duty--in this condition in the old country; but it don't matter here. but don't you forget, sir, that it's taught me how to trust to myself, and my shooting irons. i don't want fifty orders to move me across the park, and catch a poacher. yes, they poach here. men come in with an outfit and ponies, smuggle in a gun or two, and shoot the bison. if you interfere, they shoot at you. then you confiscate all their outfit and their ponies. we have a pound full of them now down below. there's our captain over yonder. speak to him if you want to know anything special. this service isn't a patch on the old country's service; but you look, if it was worked up it would be just a hell of a service. but these citizens despise us, and they put us on to road-mending, and such like. 'nough to ruin any army." to the captain i addressed myself after my friends had gone. they told me that a good many american officers dressed by the french army. the captain certainly might have been mistaken for a french officer of light cavalry, and he had more than the courtesy of a frenchman. yes, he had read a good deal about our indian border warfare, and had been much struck with the likeness it bore to red indian warfare. i had better, when i reached the next cavalry post, scattered between two big geyser basins, introduce myself to a captain and lieutenant. they could show me things. he himself was devoting all his time to conserving the terraces, and surreptitiously running hot water into dried-up basins that fresh pools might form. "i get very interested in that sort of thing. it's not duty, but it's what i'm put here for." and then he began to talk of his troop as i have heard his brethren in india talk. such a troop! built up carefully, and watched lovingly; "not a man that i'd wish to exchange, and, what's more, i believe not a man that would wish to leave on his own account. we're different, i believe, from the english. your officers value the horses; we set store on the men. we train them more than we do the horses." of the american trooper i will tell you more hereafter. he is not a gentleman to be trifled with. next dawning, entering a buggy of fragile construction, with the old people from chicago, i embarked on my perilous career. we ran straight up a mountain till we could see, sixty miles away, the white houses of cook city on another mountain, and the whiplash-like trail leading thereto. the live air made me drunk. if tom, the driver, had proposed to send the mares in a bee-line to the city, i should have assented, and so would the old lady, who chewed gum and talked about her symptoms. the tub-ended rock-dog, which is but the translated prairie-dog, broke across the road under our horses' feet, the rabbit and the chipmunk danced with fright; we heard the roar of the river, and the road went round a corner. on one side piled rock and shale, that enjoined silence for fear of a general slide-down; on the other a sheer drop, and a fool of a noisy river below. then, apparently in the middle of the road, lest any should find driving too easy, a post of rock. nothing beyond that save the flank of a cliff. then my stomach departed from me, as it does when you swing, for we left the dirt, which was at least some guarantee of safety, and sailed out round the curve, and up a steep incline, on a plank-road built out from the cliff. the planks were nailed at the outer edge, and did not shift or creak very much--but enough, quite enough. that was the golden gate. i got my stomach back again when we trotted out on to a vast upland adorned with a lake and hills. have you ever seen an untouched land--the face of virgin nature? it is rather a curious sight, because the hills are choked with timber that has never known an axe, and the storm has rent a way through this timber, so that a hundred thousand trees lie matted together in swathes; and, since each tree lies where it falls, you may behold trunk and branch returning to the earth whence they sprang--exactly as the body of man returns--each limb making its own little grave, the grass climbing above the bark, till at last there remains only the outline of a tree upon the rank undergrowth. then we drove under a cliff of obsidian, which is black glass, some two hundred feet high; and the road at its foot was made of black glass that crackled. this was no great matter, because half an hour before tom had pulled up in the woods that we might sufficiently admire a mountain who stood all by himself, shaking with laughter or rage. the glass cliff overlooks a lake where the beavers built a dam about a mile and a half long in a zig-zag line, as their necessities prompted. then came the government and strictly preserved them, and, as you shall learn later on, they be damn impudent beasts. the old lady had hardly explained the natural history of beavers before we climbed some hills--it really didn't matter in that climate, because we could have scaled the stars--and (this mattered very much indeed) shot down a desperate, dusty slope, brakes shrieking on the wheels, the mares clicking among unseen rocks, the dust dense as a fog, and a wall of trees on either side. "how do the heavy four-horse coaches take it, tom?" i asked, remembering that some twenty-three souls had gone that way half an hour before. "take it at the run!" said tom, spitting out the dust. of course there was a sharp curve, and a bridge at the bottom, but luckily nothing met us, and we came to a wooden shanty called an hotel, in time for a crazy tiffin served by very gorgeous handmaids with very pink cheeks. when health fails in other and more exciting pursuits, a season as "help" in one of the yellowstone hotels will restore the frailest constitution. then by companies after tiffin we walked chattering to the uplands of hell. they call it the norris geyser basin on earth. it was as though the tide of desolation had gone out, but would presently return, across innumerable acres of dazzling white geyser formation. there were no terraces here, but all other horrors. not ten yards from the road a blast of steam shot up roaring every few seconds, a mud volcano spat filth to heaven, streams of hot water rumbled under foot, plunged through the dead pines in steaming cataracts and died on a waste of white where green-grey, black-yellow, and pink pools roared, shouted, bubbled, or hissed as their wicked fancies prompted. by the look of the eye the place should have been frozen over. by the feel of the feet it was warm. i ventured out among the pools, carefully following tracks, but one unwary foot began to sink, a squirt of water followed, and having no desire to descend quick into tophet i returned to the shore where the mud and the sulphur and the nameless fat ooze-vegetation of lethe lay. but the very road rang as though built over a gulf; and besides, how was i to tell when the raving blast of steam would find its vent insufficient and blow the whole affair into nirvana? there was a potent stench of stale eggs everywhere, and crystals of sulphur crumbled under the foot, and the glare of the sun on the white stuff was blinding. sitting under a bank, to me appeared a young trooper--ex-cape mounted rifles, this man: the real american seems to object to his army--mounted on a horse half-maddened by the noise and steam and smell. he carried only the six-shooter and cartridge-belt. on service the springfield carbine (which is clumsy) and a cartridge-belt slung diagonally complete equipment. the sword is no earthly use for border warfare and, except at state parades, is never worn. the saddle is the mcclellan tree over a four-folded blanket. sweat-leathers you must pay for yourself. and the beauty of the tree is that it necessitates first very careful girthing and a thorough knowledge of tricks with the blanket to suit the varying conditions of the horse--a broncho will bloat in a night if he can get at a bellyful--and, secondly, even more careful riding to prevent galling. crupper and breast-band do not seem to be used,--but they are casual about their accoutrements,--and the bit is the single, jaw-breaking curb which american war-pictures show us. that young man was very handsome, and the grey service hat--most like the under half of a seedy terai--shaded his strong face admirably as his horse backed and shivered and sidled and plunged all over the road, and he lectured from his saddle, one foot out of the heavy-hooded stirrup, one hand on the sweating neck. "he's not used to the park, this brute, and he's a confirmed bolter on parade; but we understand each other." _whoosh!_ went the steam-blast down the road with a dry roar. round spun the troop horse prepared to bolt, and, his momentum being suddenly checked, reared till i thought he would fall back on his rider. "oh no; we've settled that little matter when i was breaking him," said centaur. "he used to try to fall back on me. isn't he a devil? i think you'd laugh to see the way our regiments are horsed. sometimes a big montana beast like mine has a thirteen-two broncho pony for neighbour, and it's annoying if you're used to better things. and oh, how you have to ride your mount! it's necessary; but i can tell you at the end of a long day's march, when you'd give all the world to ride like a sack, it isn't sweet to get extra drill for slouching. when we're turned out, we're turned out for _anything_--not a fifteen-mile trot, but for the use and behoof of all the northern states. i've been in arizona. a trooper there who had been in india told me that arizona was like afghanistan. there's nothing under heaven there except horned toads and rattlesnakes--and indians. our trouble is that we only deal with indians and they don't teach us much, and of course the citizens look down on us and all that. as a matter of fact, i suppose we're really only mounted infantry, but remember we're the best mounted infantry in the world." and the horse danced a fandango in proof. "my faith!" said i, looking at the dusty blouse, grey hat, soiled leather accoutrements, and whalebone poise of the wearer. "if they are all like you, you are." "thanks, whoever you may be. of course if we were turned into a lawn-tennis court and told to resist, say, your heavy cavalry, we'd be ridden off the face of the earth if we couldn't get away. we have neither the weight nor the drill for a charge. my horse, for instance, by english standards, is half-broken, and like all the others, he bolts when we're in line. but cavalry charge against cavalry charge doesn't happen often, and if it did, well--all our men know that up to a hundred yards they are absolutely safe behind this old thing." he patted his revolver pouch. "absolutely safe from any shooting of yours. what man do you think would dare to use a pistol at even thirty yards, if his life depended oh it? not one of _your_ men. they can't shoot. we can. you'll hear about that down the park--further up." then he added, courteously: "just now it seems that the english supply all the men to the american army. that's what makes them so good perhaps." and with mutual expressions of good-will we parted--he to an outlying patrol fifteen miles away, i to my buggy and the old lady, who, regarding the horrors of the fire-holes, could only say, "good lord!" at thirty-second intervals. her husband talked about "dreffel waste of steam-power," and we went on in the clear, crisp afternoon, speculating as to the formation of geysers. "what i say," shrieked the old lady _apropos_ of matters theological, "and what i say more, after having seen all that, is that the lord has ordained a hell for such as disbelieve his gracious works." _nota bene._--tom had profanely cursed the near mare for stumbling. he looked straight in front of him and said no word, but the left corner of his left eye flickered in my direction. "and if," continued the old lady, "if we find a thing so dreffel as all that steam and sulphur allowed on the face of the earth, musn't we believe that there is something ten thousand times more terrible below prepared un_toe_ our destruction?" some people have a wonderful knack of extracting comfort from things. i am ashamed to say i agreed ostentatiously with the old lady. she developed the personal view of the matter. "_now_ i shall be able to say something to anna fincher about her way of living. shan't i, blake?" this to her husband. "yes," said he, speaking slowly after a heavy tiffin. "but the girl's a good girl;" and they fell to arguing as to whether the luckless anna fincher really stood in need of lectures edged with hell fire (she went to dances i believe), while i got out and walked in the dust alongside of tom. "i drive blame cur'ous kinder folk through this place," said he. "blame cur'ous. 'seems a pity that they should ha' come so far just to liken norris basin to hell. 'guess chicago would ha' served 'em, speaking in comparison, jest as good." we curved the hill and entered a forest of spruce, the path serpentining between the tree-boles, the wheels running silent on immemorial mould. there was nothing alive in the forest save ourselves. only a river was speaking angrily somewhere to the right. for miles we drove till tom bade us alight and look at certain falls. wherefore we stepped out of that forest and nearly fell down a cliff which guarded a tumbled river and returned demanding fresh miracles. if the water had run uphill, we should perhaps have taken more notice of it; but 'twas only a waterfall, and i really forget whether the water was warm or cold. there is a stream here called firehole river. it is fed by the overflow from the various geysers and basins,--a warm and deadly river wherein no fish breed. i think we crossed it a few dozen times in the course of a day. then the sun began to sink, and there was a taste of frost about, and we went swiftly from the forest into the open, dashed across a branch of the firehole river and found a wood shanty, even rougher than the last, at which, after a forty-mile drive, we were to dine and sleep. half a mile from this place stood, on the banks of the firehole river, a "beaver-lodge," and there were rumours of bears and other cheerful monsters in the woods on the hill at the back of the building. in the cool, crisp quiet of the evening i sought that river, and found a pile of newly gnawed sticks and twigs. the beaver works with the cold-chisel, and a few clean strokes suffice to level a four-inch bole. across the water on the far bank glimmered, with the ghastly white of peeled dead timber, the beaver-lodge--a mass of dishevelled branches. the inhabitants had dammed the stream lower down and spread it into a nice little lake. the question was would they come out for their walk before it got too dark to see. they came--blessings on their blunt muzzles, they came--as shadows come, drifting down the stream, stirring neither foot nor tail. there were three of them. one went down to investigate the state of the dam; the other two began to look for supper. there is only one thing more startling than the noiselessness of a tiger in the jungle, and that is the noiselessness of a beaver in the water. the straining ear could catch no sound whatever till they began to eat the thick green river-scudge that they call beaver-grass. i, bowed among the logs, held my breath and stared with all my eyes. they were not ten yards from me, and they would have eaten their dinner in peace so long as i had kept absolutely still. they were dear and desirable beasts, and i was just preparing to creep a step nearer when that wicked old lady from chicago clattered down the bank, an umbrella in her hand, shrieking: "beavers, beavers! young man, whurr are those beavers? good lord! what was that now?" the solitary watcher might have heard a pistol shot ring through the air. i wish it had killed the old lady, but it was only the beaver giving warning of danger with the slap of his tail on the water. it was exactly like the "phink" of a pistol fired with damp powder. then there were no more beavers--not a whisker-end. the lodge, however, was there, and a beast lower than any beaver began to throw stones at it because the old lady from chicago said: "p'raps, if you rattle them up they'll come out. i do so want to see a beaver." yet it cheers me to think i have seen the beaver in his wilds. never will i go to the zoo. that even, after supper--'twere flattery to call it dinner--a captain and a subaltern of the cavalry post appeared at the hotel. these were the officers of whom the mammoth springs captain had spoken. the lieutenant had read everything that he could lay hands on about the indian army, especially our cavalry arrangements, and was very full of a scheme for raising the riding red indians--it is not every noble savage that will make a trooper--into frontier levies--a sort of khyber guard. "only," as he said ruefully, "there is no frontier these days, and all our indian wars are nearly over. those beautiful beasts will die out, and nobody will ever know what splendid cavalry they can make." the captain told stories of border warfare--of ambush, firing on the rear-guard, heat that split the skull better than any tomahawk, cold that wrinkled the very liver, night-stampedes of baggage-mules, raiding of cattle, and hopeless stern-chases into inhospitable hills, when the cavalry knew that they were not only being outpaced but outspied. then he spoke of one fair charge when a tribe gave battle in the open and the troopers rode in swordless, firing right and left with their revolvers and--it was excessively uncomfy for that tribe. and i spoke of what men had told me of huntings in burma, of hill-climbing in the black mountain affair, and so forth. "exactly!" said the captain. "nobody knows and nobody cares. what does it matter to the down-easter who wrap-up-his-tail was?" "and what does the fat briton know or care about boh hla-oo?" said i. then both together: "depend upon it, my dear sir, the army in both anglo-saxon countries is a mischievously underestimated institution, and it's a pleasure to meet a man who," etc., etc. and we nodded triangularly in all good will, and swore eternal friendship. the lieutenant made a statement which rather amazed me. he said that, on account of the scarcity of business, many american officers were to be found getting practical instruction from little troubles among the south american republics. when the need broke out they would return. "there is so little for us to do, and the republic has a trick of making us hedge and ditch for our pay. a little road-making on service is not a bad thing, but continuous navvying is enough to knock the heart out of any army." i agreed, and we sat up till two in the morning swapping the lies of east and west. as that glorious chief man-afraid-of-pink-rats once said to the agent on the reservation: "'melican officer good man. heap good man. drink me. drink he. drink me. drink he. drink _he_. me blind. _heap_ good man!" no. xxxi ends with the caÑon of the yellowstone. the maiden from new hampshire--larry--"wrap-up-his-tail"--tom--the old lady from chicago--and a few natural phenomena--including one briton. "what man would read and read the selfsame faces and like the marbles which the windmill grinds, rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds, this year retracing last year's every year's dull traces, when there are woods and unmanstifled places?" --_lowell._ once upon a time there was a carter who brought his team and a friend into the yellowstone park without due thought. presently they came upon a few of the natural beauties of the place, and that carter turned his team into his friend's team howling: "get back o' this, jim. all hell's alight under our noses." and they call the place hell's half-acre to this day. we, too, the old lady from chicago, her husband, tom, and the good little mares came to hell's half-acre, which is about sixty acres, and when tom said: "would you like to drive over it?" we said: "certainly no, and if you do, we shall report you to the authorities." there was a plain, blistered and peeled and abominable, and it was given over to the sportings and spoutings of devils who threw mud and steam and dirt at each other with whoops and halloos and bellowing curses. the place smelt of the refuse of the pit, and that odour mixed with the clean, wholesome aroma of the pines in our nostrils throughout the day. be it known that the park is laid out, like ollendorf, in exercises of progressive difficulty. hell's half-acre was a prelude to ten or twelve miles of geyser formation. we passed hot streams boiling in the forest; saw whiffs of steam beyond these, and yet other whiffs breaking through the misty green hills in the far distance; we trampled on sulphur, and sniffed things much worse than any sulphur which is known to the upper world; and so came upon a park-like place where tom suggested we should get out and play with the geysers. imagine mighty green fields splattered with lime beds: all the flowers of the summer growing up to the very edge of the lime. that was the first glimpse of the geyser basins. the buggy had pulled up close to a rough, broken, blistered cone of stuff between ten and twenty feet high. there was trouble in that place--moaning, splashing, gurgling, and the clank of machinery. a spurt of boiling water jumped into the air and a wash of water followed. i removed swiftly. the old lady from chicago shrieked. "what a wicked waste!" said her husband. i think they call it the riverside geyser. its spout was torn and ragged like the mouth of a gun when a shell has burst there. it grumbled madly for a moment or two and then was still. i crept over the steaming lime--it was the burning marl on which satan lay--and looked fearfully down its mouth. you should never look a gift geyser in the mouth. i beheld a horrible slippery slimy funnel with water rising and falling ten feet at a time. then the water rose to lip level with a rush and an infernal bubbling troubled this devil's bethesda before the sullen heave of the crest of a wave lapped over the edge and made me run. mark the nature, of the human soul! i had begun with awe, not to say terror. i stepped back from the flanks of the riverside geyser saying: "pooh! is that all it can do?" yet for aught i knew the whole thing might have blown up at a minute's notice; she, he, or it being an arrangement of uncertain temper. we drifted on up that miraculous valley. on either side of us were hills from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet high and wooded from heel to crest. as far as the eye could range forward were columns of steam in the air, misshapen lumps of lime, most like preadamite monsters, still pools of turquoise blue, stretches of blue cornflowers, a river that coiled on itself twenty times, boulders of strange colours, and ridges of glaring, staring white. the old lady from chicago poked with her parasol at the pools as though they had been alive. on one particularly innocent-looking little puddle she turned her back for a moment, and there rose behind her a twenty-foot column of water and steam. then she shrieked and protested that "she never thought it would ha' done it," and the old man chewed his tobacco steadily, and mourned for steam power wasted. i embraced the whitened stump of a middle-sized pine that had grown all too close to a hot pool's lip, and the whole thing turned over under my hand as a tree would do in a nightmare. from right and left came the trumpetings of elephants at play. i stepped into a pool of old dried blood rimmed with the nodding cornflowers; the blood changed to ink even as i trod; and ink and blood were washed away in a spurt of boiling sulphurous water spat out from the lee of a bank of flowers. this sounds mad, doesn't it? a moonfaced trooper of german extraction--never was park so carefully patrolled--came up to inform us that as yet we had not seen any of the real geysers, that they were all a mile or so up the valley, tastefully scattered round the hotel in which we would rest for the night. america is a free country, but the citizens look down on the soldier. _i_ had to entertain that trooper. the old lady from chicago would have none of him; so we loafed along together, now across half-rotten pine logs sunk in swampy ground, anon over the ringing geyser formation, then knee-deep through long grass. "and why did you 'list?" said i. the moonfaced one's face began to work. i thought he would have a fit, but he told me a story instead--such a nice tale of a naughty little girl who wrote love letters to two men at once. she was a simple village wife, but a wicked "family novelette" countess couldn't have accomplished her ends better. she drove one man nearly wild with her pretty little treachery; and the other man abandoned her and came west to forget. moonface was that man. we rounded a low spur of hill, and came out upon a field of aching snowy lime, rolled in sheets, twisted into knots, riven with rents and diamonds and stars, stretching for more than half a mile in every direction. in this place of despair lay most of the big geysers who know when there is trouble in krakatoa, who tell the pines when there is a cyclone on the atlantic seaboard, and who--are exhibited to visitors under pretty and fanciful names. the first mound that i encountered belonged to a goblin splashing in his tub. i heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on his shoulders, gasp, crack his joints, and rub himself down with a towel; then he let the water out of the bath, as a thoughtful man should, and it all sank down out of sight till another goblin arrived. yet they called this place the lioness and the cubs. it lies not very far from the lion, which is a sullen, roaring beast, and they say that when it is very active the other geysers presently follow suit. after the krakatoa eruption all the geysers went mad together, spouting, spurting, and bellowing till men feared that they would rip up the whole field. mysterious sympathies exist among them, and when the giantess speaks (of her more anon) they all hold their peace. i was watching a solitary spring, when, far across the fields, stood up a plume of spun glass, iridescent and superb, against the sky. "that," said the trooper, "is old faithful. he goes off every sixty-five minutes to the minute, plays for five minutes, and sends up a column of water a hundred and fifty feet high. by the time you have looked at all the other geysers he will be ready to play." so we looked and we wondered at the beehive, whose mouth is built up exactly like a hive; at the turban (which is not in the least like a turban); and at many, many other geysers, hot holes, and springs. some of them rumbled, some hissed, some went off spasmodically, and others lay still in sheets of sapphire and beryl. would you believe that even these terrible creatures have to be guarded by the troopers to prevent the irreverent american from chipping the cones to pieces, or worse still, making the geysers sick? if you take of soft-soap a small barrelful and drop it down a geyser's mouth, that geyser will presently be forced to lay all before you and for days afterwards will be of an irritated and inconsistent stomach. when they told me the tale i was filled with sympathy. now i wish that i had stolen soap and tried the experiment on some lonely little beast of a geyser in the woods. it sounds so probable--and so human. yet he would be a bold man who would administer emetics to the giantess. she is flat-lipped, having no mouth, she looks like a pool, fifty feet long and thirty wide, and there is no ornamentation about her. at irregular intervals she speaks, and sends up a column of water over two hundred feet high to begin with; then she is angry for a day and a half--sometimes for two days. owing to her peculiarity of going mad in the night not many people have seen the giantess at her finest; but the clamour of her unrest, men say, shakes the wooden hotel, and echoes like thunder among the hills. when i saw her trouble was brewing. the pool bubbled seriously, and at five-minute intervals, sank a foot or two, then rose, washed over the rim, and huge steam bubbles broke on the top. just before an eruption the water entirely disappears from view. whenever you see the water die down in a geyser-mouth get away as fast as you can. i saw a tiny little geyser suck in its breath in this way, and instinct made me retire while it hooted after me. leaving the giantess to swear, and spit, and thresh about, we went over to old faithful, who by reason of his faithfulness has benches close to him whence you may comfortably watch. at the appointed hour we heard the water flying up and down the mouth with the sob of waves in a cave. then came the preliminary gouts, then a roar and a rush, and that glittering column of diamonds rose, quivered, stood still for a minute. then it broke, and the rest was a confused snarl of water not thirty feet high. all the young ladies--not more than twenty--in the tourist band remarked that it was "elegant," and betook themselves to writing their names in the bottoms of shallow pools. nature fixes the insult indelibly, and the after-years will learn that "hattie," "sadie," "mamie," "sophie," and so forth, have taken out their hair-pins, and scrawled on the face of old faithful. the congregation returned to the hotel to put down their impressions in diaries and note-books which they wrote up ostentatiously in the verandahs. it was a sweltering hot day, albeit we stood somewhat higher than the summit of jakko, and i left that raw pine-creaking caravanserai for the cool shade of a clump of pines between whose trunks glimmered tents. a batch of troopers came down the road, and flung themselves across country into their rough lines. verily the 'melican cavalry-man _can_ ride, though he keeps his accoutrements pig, and his horse cow-fashion. i was free of that camp in five minutes--free to play with the heavy lumpy carbines, to have the saddles stripped, and punch the horses knowingly in the ribs. one of the men had been in the fight with "wrap-up-his-tail" before alluded to, and he told me how that great chief, his horse's tail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front of the united states cavalry, challenging all to single combat. but he was slain, and a few of his tribe with him. "there's no use in an indian, anyway," concluded my friend. a couple of cowboys--real cowboys, not the buffalo bill article--jingled through the camp amid a shower of mild chaff. they were on their way to cook city, i fancy, and i know that they never washed. but they were picturesque ruffians with long spurs, hooded stirrups, slouch hats, fur weather-cloths over their knees, and pistol-butts easy to hand. "the cowboy's goin' under before long," said my friend. "soon as the country's settled up he'll have to go. but he's mighty useful now. what should we do without the cowboy?" "as how?" said i, and the camp laughed. "he has the money. we have the know-how. he comes in in winter to play poker at the military posts. _we_ play poker--a few. when he's lost his money we make him drunk and let him go. sometimes we get the wrong man." and he told a tale of an innocent cowboy who turned up, cleaned out, at a post, and played poker for thirty-six hours. but it was the post that was cleaned out when that long-haired caucasian ah sin removed himself, heavy with everybody's pay, and declining the proffered liquor. "naow," said the historian, "i don't play with no cowboy unless he's a little bit drunk first." ere i departed i gathered from more than one man that significant fact that _up to one hundred yards_ he felt absolutely secure behind his revolver. "in england, i understand," quoth a limber youth from the south, "in england a man aren't allowed to play with no firearms. he's got to be taught all that when he enlists. i didn't want much teaching how to shoot straight 'fore i served uncle sam. and that's just where it is. but you was talking about your horse guards now?" i explained briefly some peculiarities of equipment connected with our crackest crack cavalry. i grieve to say the camp roared. "take 'em over swampy ground. let 'em run around a bit an' work the starch out of 'em, an' then, almighty, if we wouldn't plug 'em at ease i'd eat their horses!" "but suppose they engaged in the open?" said i. "engage the hades. not if there was a tree-trunk within twenty miles they _couldn't_ engage in the open!" gentlemen, the officers, have you ever seriously considered the existence on earth of a cavalry who by preference would fight in timber? the evident sincerity of the proposition made me think hard as i moved over to the hotel and joined a party exploration, which, diving into the woods, unearthed a pit pool of burningest water fringed with jet black sand--all the ground near by being pure white. but miracles pall when they arrive at the rate of twenty a day. a flaming dragonfly flew over the pool, reeled and dropped on the water, dying without a quiver of his gorgeous wings, and the pool said nothing whatever, but sent its thin steam wreaths up to the burning sky. i prefer pools that talk. there was a maiden--a very trim maiden--who had just stepped out of one of mr. james's novels. she owned a delightful mother and an equally delightful father, a heavy-eyed, slow-voiced man of finance. the parents thought that their daughter wanted change. she lived in new hampshire. accordingly, she had dragged them up to alaska, to the yosemite valley, and was now returning leisurely _via_ the yellowstone just in time for the tail-end of the summer season at saratoga. we had met once or twice before in the park, and i had been amazed and amused at her critical commendation of the wonders that she saw. from that very resolute little mouth i received a lecture on american literature, the nature and inwardness of washington society, the precise value of cable's works as compared with "uncle remus" harris, and a few other things that had nothing whatever to do with geysers, but were altogether delightful. now an english maiden who had stumbled on a dust-grimed, lime-washed, sun-peeled, collarless wanderer come from and going to goodness knows where, would, her mother inciting her and her father brandishing his umbrella, have regarded him as a dissolute adventurer. not so those delightful people from new hampshire. they were good enough to treat me--it sounds almost incredible--as a human being, possibly respectable, probably not in immediate need of financial assistance. papa talked pleasantly and to the point. the little maiden strove valiantly with the accent of her birth and that of her reading, and mamma smiled benignly in the background. balance this with a story of a young english idiot i met knocking about inside his high collars, attended by a valet. he condescended to tell me that "you can't be too careful who you talk to in these parts," and stalked on, fearing, i suppose, every minute for his social chastity. now that man was a barbarian (i took occasion to tell him so), for he comported himself after the manner of the head-hunters of assam, who are at perpetual feud one with another. you will understand that these foolish tales are introduced in order to cover the fact that this pen cannot describe the glories of the upper geyser basin. the evening i spent under the lee of the castle geyser sitting on a log with some troopers and watching a baronial keep forty feet high spouting hot water. if the castle went off first, they said the giantess would be quiet, and _vice versa_; and then they told tales till the moon got up and a party of campers in the woods gave us all something to eat. next morning tom drove us on, promising new wonders. he pulled up after a few miles at a clump of brushwood where an army was drowning. i could hear the sick gasps and thumps of the men going under, but when i broke through the brushwood the hosts had fled, and there were only pools of pink, black, and white lime, thick as turbid honey. they shot up a pat of mud every minute or two, choking in the effort. it was an uncanny sight. do you wonder that in the old days the indians were careful to avoid the yellowstone? geysers are permissible, but mud is terrifying. the old lady from chicago took a piece of it, and in half an hour it died into lime-dust and blew away between her fingers. all _maya_,--illusion,--you see! then we clinked over sulphur in crystals; there was a waterfall of boiling water; and a road across a level park hotly contested by the beavers. every winter they build their dam and flood the low-lying land; every summer that dam is torn up by the government, and for half a mile you must plough axle-deep in water, the willows brushing into the buggy, and little waterways branching off right and left. the road is the main stream--just like the bolan line in flood. if you turn up a byway, there is no more of you, and the beavers work your buggy into next year's dam. then came soft, turfy forest that deadened the wheels, and two troopers--on detachment duty--came noiselessly behind us. one was the wrap-up-his-tail man, and we talked merrily while the half-broken horses bucked about among the trees till we came to a mighty hill all strewn with moss agates, and everybody had to get out and pant in that thin air. but how intoxicating it was! the old lady from chicago clucked like an emancipated hen as she scuttled about the road cramming pieces of rock into her reticule. she sent me fifty yards down the hill to pick up a piece of broken bottle which she insisted was moss agate! "i've some o' that at home an' they shine. you go get it, young feller." as we climbed the long path, the road grew viler and viler till it became without disguise the bed of a torrent; and just when things were at their rockiest we emerged into a little sapphire lake--but never sapphire was so blue--called mary's lake; and that between eight and nine thousand feet above the sea. then came grass downs, all on a vehement slope, so that the buggy following the new-made road ran on to the two off-wheels mostly, till we dipped head-first into a ford, climbed up a cliff, raced along a down, dipped again and pulled up dishevelled at "larry's" for lunch and an hour's rest. only "larry" could have managed that school-feast tent on the lonely hillside. need i say that he was an irishman? his supplies were at their lowest ebb, but larry enveloped us all in the golden glamour of his speech ere we had descended, and the tent with the rude trestle-table became a palace, the rough fare, delicacies of delmonico, and we, the abashed recipients of larry's imperial bounty. it was only later that i discovered i had paid eight shillings for tinned beef, biscuits, and beer, but on the other hand larry had said: "will i go out an' kill a buffalo?" and i felt that for me and for me alone would he have done it. everybody else felt that way. good luck go with larry! "an' now you'll all go an' wash your pocket-handkerchiefs in that beautiful hot spring round the corner," said he. "there's soap an' a washboard ready, an' 'tis not every day that ye can get hot water for nothing." he waved us large-handedly to the open downs while he put the tent to rights. these was no sense of fatigue on the body or distance in the air. hill and dale rode on the eyeball. i could have clutched the far-off snowy peaks by putting out my hand. never was such maddening air. why we should have washed pocket-handkerchiefs larry alone knows. it appeared to be a sort of religious rite. in a little valley overhung with gay painted rocks ran a stream of velvet brown and pink. it was hot--hotter than the hand could bear--and it coloured the boulders in its course. there was the maiden from new hampshire, the old lady from chicago, papa, mamma, the woman who chewed gum, and all the rest of them, gravely bending over a washboard and soap. mysterious virtues lay in that queer stream. it turned the linen white as driven snow in five minutes, and then we lay on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive. this have i known once in japan, once on the banks of the columbia, what time the salmon came in and "california" howled, and once again in the yellowstone by the light of the eyes of the maiden from new hampshire. four little pools lay at my elbow: one was of black water (tepid), one clear water (cold), one clear water (hot), one red water (boiling); my newly washed handkerchief covered them all. we marvelled as children marvel. "this evening we shall do the grand cañon of the yellowstone?" said the maiden. "together?" said i; and she said yes. the sun was sinking when we heard the roar of falling waters and came to a broad river along whose banks we ran. and then--oh, then! i might at a pinch describe the infernal regions, but not the other place. be it known to you that the yellowstone river has occasion to run through a gorge about eight miles long. to get to the bottom of the gorge it makes two leaps, one of about one hundred and twenty and the other of three hundred feet. i investigated the upper or lesser fall, which is close to the hotel. up to that time nothing particular happens to the yellowstone, its banks being only rocky, rather steep, and plentifully adorned with pines. at the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with a little foam and not more than thirty yards wide. then it goes over still green and rather more solid than before. after a minute or two you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to understand that something has occurred; that the river has jumped a huge distance between solid cliff walls and what looks like the gentle froth of ripples lapping the sides of the gorge below is really the outcome of great waves. and the river yells aloud; but the cliffs do not allow the yells to escape. that inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror, for it seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite from under my feet. i followed with the others round the corner to arrive at the brink of the cañon: we had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent to begin with, for the ground rises more than the river drops. stately pine woods fringe either lip of the gorge, which is--the gorge of the yellowstone. all i can say is that without warning or preparation i looked into a gulf seventeen hundred feet deep with eagles and fish-hawks circling far below. and the sides of that gulf were one wild welter of colour--crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed with port-wine, snow-white, vermilion, lemon, and silver-grey, in wide washes. the sides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time and water and air into monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs, men and women of the old time. so far below that no sound of its strife could reach us, the yellowstone river ran--a finger-wide strip of jade-green. the sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those that nature had already laid there. once i saw the dawn break over a lake in rajputana and the sun set over the oodey sagar amid a circle of holman hunt hills. this time i was watching both performances going on below me--upside down you understand--and the colours were real! the cañon was burning like troy town; but it would burn for ever, and, thank goodness, neither pen nor brush could ever portray its splendours adequately. the academy would reject the picture for a chromolithograph. the public would scoff at the letter-press for _daily telegraphese_. "i will leave this thing alone," said i; "'tis my peculiar property. nobody else shall share it with me." evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full glory of the day flamed in that cañon as we went out very cautiously to a jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink it was--that overhung the deepest deeps of all. now i know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset. giddiness took away all sensation of touch or form; but the sense of blinding colour remained. when i reached the mainland again i had sworn that i had been floating. the maid from new hampshire said no word for a very long time. she then quoted poetry, which was perhaps the best thing she could have done. "and to think that this show-place has been going on all these days an' none of we ever saw it," said the old lady from chicago, with an acid glance at her husband. "no, only the injuns," said he, unmoved; and the maiden and i laughed long. inspiration is fleeting, beauty is vain, and the power of the mind for wonder limited. though the shining hosts themselves had risen choiring from the bottom of the gorge they would not have prevented her papa and one baser than himself from rolling stones down those stupendous rainbow-washed slides. seventeen hundred feet of steepest pitch and rather more than seventeen hundred colours for log or boulder to whirl through! so we heaved things and saw them gather way and bound from white rock to red or yellow, dragging behind them torrents of colour, till the noise of their descent ceased and they bounded a hundred yards clear at the last into the yellowstone. "i've been down there," said tom that evening. "it's easy to get down if you're careful--just sit and slide; but getting up is worse. an' i found, down below there, two rocks just marked with a picture of the cañon. i wouldn't sell those rocks not for fifteen dollars." and papa and i crawled down to the yellowstone--just above the first little fall--to wet a line for good luck. the round moon came up and turned the cliffs and pines into silver; a two-pound trout came up also, and we slew him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into that wild river. * * * * * then out and away to livingstone once more. the maiden from new hampshire disappeared; papa and mamma with her disappeared. disappeared, too, the old lady from chicago and all the rest, while i thought of all that i had _not_ seen--the forest of petrified trees with amethyst crystals in their black hearts; the great yellowstone lake where you catch your trout alive in one spring and drop him into another to boil him; and most of all of that mysterious hoodoo region where all the devils not employed in the geysers live and kill the wandering bear and elk, so that the scared hunter finds in death gulch piled carcasses of the dead whom no man has smitten. hoodoo-land with the overhead noises, the bird and beast and devil-rocks, the mazes and the bottomless pits,--all these things i missed. on the return road yankee jim and diana of the crossways gave me kindly greeting as the train paused an instant before their door, and at livingstone whom should i see but tom the driver? "i've done with the yellowstone and decided to clear out east somewheres," said he. "your talkin' about movin' round so gay an' careless made me kinder restless; i'm movin' out." lord forgie us for our responsibility one to another! "and your partner?" said i. "here's him," said tom, introducing a gawky youth with a bundle; and i saw those two young men turn their faces to the east. no. xxxii of the american army and the city of the saints. the temple, the book of mormon, and the girl from dorset. an oriental consideration of polygamy. "a fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be; and what shall be after him who can tell?" it has just occurred to me with great force that delightful as these letters are to myself their length and breadth and depth may be just the least little bit in the world wearisome to you over there. i will compress myself rigorously, though i should very much like to deliver a dissertation on the american army and the possibilities of its extension. the american army is a beautiful little army. some day, when all the indians are happily dead or drunk, it ought to make the finest scientific and survey corps that the world has ever seen. it does excellent work now, but there is this defect in its nature: it is officered, as you know, from west point, but the mischief of it is that west point seems to be created for the purpose of spreading a general knowledge of military matters among the people. a boy goes up to that institution, gets his pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is a sucking moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile american to begin with, as cocksure of himself as a man can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him through his demi-semi-professional generalship. in a country where, as the records of the daily papers show, men engaged in a conflict with police or jails are all too ready to adopt a military formation, and get heavily shot in a sort of cheap, half-instructed warfare instead of being decently scared by the appearance of the military, this sort of arrangement does not seem wise. the bond between the states is of amazing tenuity. so long as they do not absolutely march into the district of columbia, sit on the washington statues, and invent a flag of their own, they can legislate, lynch, hunt negroes through swamps, divorce, railroad, and rampage as much as ever they choose. they do not need knowledge of their own military strength to back their genial lawlessness. that regular army, which is a dear little army, should be kept to itself, blooded on detachment duty, turned into the paths of science, and now and again assembled at feasts of freemasons and so forth. it's too tiny to be a political power. the immortal wreck of the grand army of the republic is a political power of the largest and most unblushing description. it ought not to help to lay the foundations of an amateur military power that is blind and irresponsible.... be thankful that the balance of this lecture is suppressed, and with it the account of a "shiveree" which i attended in livingstone city: and the story of the editor and the sub-editor (the latter was a pet cougar, or mountain lion, who used, they said, skilfully to sub-edit disputants in the office) of the livingstone daily paper. omitting a thousand matters of first importance, let me pick up the thread of things on a narrow-gauge line that took me down to salt lake. the run between delhi and ahmedabad on a may day would have been bliss compared to this torture. there was nothing but glare and desert and alkali dust. there was no smoking-accommodation. i sat in the lavatory with the conductor and a prospector who told stories about indian atrocities in the voice of a dreaming child--oath following oath as smoothly as clotted cream laps the mouth of the jug. i don't think he knew he was saying anything out of the way, but nine or ten of those oaths were new to me, and one even made the conductor raise his eyebrows. "and when a man's alone mostly, leadin' his horse across the hills, he gets to talk aloud to himself as it was," said the weather-worn retailer of tortures. a vision rose before me of this man trampling the bannack city trail under the stars--swearing, always swearing! bundles of rags that were pointed out as red indians, boarded the train from time to time. their race privileges allow them free transit on the platforms of the cars. they mustn't come inside of course, and equally of course the train never thinks of pulling up for them. i saw a squaw take us flying and leave us in the same manner when we were spinning round a curve. like the punjabi, the red indian gets out by preference on the trackless plain and walks stolidly to the horizon. he never says where he is going.... _salt lake._ i am concerned for the sake of mr. phil robinson, his soul. you will remember that he wrote a book called _saints and sinners_ in which he proved very prettily that the mormon was almost altogether an estimable person. ever since my arrival at salt lake i have been wondering what made him write that book. on mature reflection, and after a long walk round the city, i am inclined to think it was the sun, which is very powerful hereabouts. by great good luck the evil-minded train, already delayed twelve hours by a burnt bridge, brought me to the city on a saturday by way of that valley which the mormons aver their efforts had caused to blossom like the rose. some hours previously i had entered a new world where, in conversation, every one was either a mormon or a gentile. it is not seemly for a free and independent citizen to dub himself a gentile, but the mayor of ogden--which is the gentile city of the valley--told me that there must be some distinction between the two flocks. long before the fruit orchards of logan or the shining levels of the salt lake had been reached that mayor--himself a gentile, and one renowned for his dealings with the mormons--told me that the great question of the existence of the power within the power was being gradually solved by the ballot and by education. "we have," quoth he, "hills round and about here, stuffed full of silver and gold and lead, and all hell atop of the mormon church can't keep the gentile from flocking in when that's the case. at ogden, thirty miles from salt lake, this year the gentile vote swamped the mormon at the municipal elections, and next year we trust that we shall be able to repeat our success in salt lake itself. in that city the gentiles are only one-third of the total population, but the mass of 'em are grown men, capable of voting. whereas the mormons are cluttered up with children. i guess as soon as we have purely gentile officers in the township, and the control of the policy of the city, the mormons will have to back down considerable. they're bound to go before long. my own notion is that it's the older men who keep alive the opposition to the gentile and all his works. the younger ones, spite of all the elders tell 'em, _will_ mix with the gentile, and read gentile books, and you bet your sweet life there's a holy influence working toward conversion in the kiss of an average gentile--specially when the girl knows that he won't think it necessary for her salvation to load the house up with other woman-folk. i guess the younger generation are giving sore trouble to the elders. what's that you say about polygamy? it's a penal offence now under a bill passed not long ago. the mormon has to elect one wife and keep to her. if he's caught visiting any of the others--do you see that cool and restful brown stone building way over there against the hillside? that's the penitentiary. he is sent there to consider his sins, and he pays a fine, too. but most of the police in salt lake are mormons, and i don't suppose they are too hard on their friends. i presoom there's a good deal of polygamy practised on the sly. but the chief trouble is to get the mormon to see that the gentile isn't the doubly-damned beast that the elders represent. only get the gentiles well into the state, and the whole concern is bound to go to pieces in a very little time." and the wish being father to the thought, "why, certainly," said i, and began to take in the valley of deseret, the home of the latter-day saints, and the abode perhaps of as much misery as has ever been compressed into forty years. the good folk at home will not understand, but you will, what follows. you know how in bengal to this day the child-wife is taught to curse her possible co-wife, ere yet she has gone to her husband's house? and the bengali woman has been accustomed to polygamy for a few hundred years. you know, too, the awful jealousy between mother wife and barren behind the purdah--the jealousy that culminates sometimes in the poisoning of the well-beloved son? now and again, an englishwoman employs a high-caste mussulman nurse, and in the offices of that hire women are apt to forget the differences of colour, and to speak unreservedly as twin daughters under eve's curse. the nurse tells very strange and awful things. she has, and this the mormons count a privilege, been born into polygamy; but she loathes and detests it from the bottom of her jealous soul. and to the lot of the bengali co-wife--"the cursed of the cursed--the daughter of the dunghill--the scald-head and the barren-mute" (you know the rest of that sweet commination-service)--one creed, of all the white creeds to-day, deliberately introduces the white woman taken from centuries of training, which have taught her that it is right to control the undivided heart of one man. to quench her most natural rebellion, that amazing creed and fantastic jumble of mahometanism, the mosaical law, and imperfectly comprehended fragments of freemasonry, calls to its aid all the powers of a hell conceived and elaborated by coarse-minded hedgers and ditchers. a sweet view, isn't it? all the beauty of the valley could not make me forget it. but the valley is very fair. bench after bench of land, flat as a table against the flanks of the ringing hills, marks where the salt lake rested for a while as it sunk from an inland sea to a lake fifty miles long and thirty broad. before long the benches will be covered with houses. at present these are hidden among the green trees on the dead flat of the valley. you have read a hundred times how the streets of salt lake city are very broad, furnished with rows of shade trees and gutters of fresh water. this is true, but i struck the town in a season of great drouth--that same drouth which is playing havoc with the herds of montana. the trees were limp, and the rills of sparkling water that one reads about were represented by dusty, paved courses. main street appears to be inhabited by the commercial gentile, who has made of it a busy, bustling thoroughfare, and, in the eye of the sun, swigs the ungodly lager and smokes the improper cigar all day long. for which i like him. at the head of main street stand the lions of the place; the temple and the tabernacle, the tithing house, and the houses of brigham young, whose portrait is on sale in most of the booksellers' shops. incidentally it may be mentioned that the late amir of utah does not unremotely resemble his highness the amir of afghanistan, whom these fortunate eyes have seen. and i have no desire to fall into the hands of the amir. the first thing to be seen was, of course, the temple, the outward exponent of a creed. armed with a copy of the book of mormon, for better comprehension, i went to form rash opinions. some day the temple will be finished. it was begun only thirty years ago, and up to date rather more than three million dollars and a half have been expended in its granite bulk. the walls are ten feet thick; the edifice itself is about a hundred feet high; and its towers will be nearly two hundred. and that is all there is of it, unless you choose to inspect more closely; always reading the book of mormon as you walk. then the wondrous puerility, of what i suppose we must call the design, becomes apparent. these men, directly inspired from on high, heaped stone on stone and pillar on pillar, without achieving either dignity, relief, or interest. there is, over the main door, some pitiful scratching in stone representing the all-seeing eye, the masonic grip, the sun, moon, and stars, and, perhaps, other skittles. the flatness and meanness of the thing almost makes you weep when you look at the magnificent granite in blocks strewn abroad, and think of the art that three million dollars might have called in to the aid of the church. it is as though a child had said: "let us draw a great, big, fine house--finer than any house that ever was,"--and in that desire had laboriously smudged along with a ruler and pencil, piling meaningless straight lines on compass-drawn curves, with his tongue following every movement of the inept hand. then sat i down on a wheelbarrow and read the book of mormon, and behold the spirit of the book was the spirit of the stone before me. the estimable joseph and hyrum smith struggling to create a new bible, when they knew nothing of the history of old and new testament, and the inspired architect muddling with his bricks--they were brothers. but the book was more interesting than the building. it is written, and all the world has read, how to joseph smith an angel came down from heaven with a pair of celestial gig-lamps, whereby he was marvellously enabled to interpret certain plates of gold scribbled over with dots and scratches, and discovered by him in the ground. which plates joseph smith did translate--only he spelt the mysterious characters "caractors"--and out of the dots and scratches produced a volume of six hundred closely printed pages, containing the books of nephi, first and second, jacob, enos, jarom, omni, mormon, mosiah, the record of zeniff, the book of alma helaman, the third of nephi, the book of ether (the whole thing is a powerful anæsthetic, by the way), and the final book of mononi. three men, of whom one i believe is now living, bear solemn witness that the angel with the spectacles appeared unto them; eight other men swear solemnly that they have seen the golden plates of the revelation; and upon this testimony the book of mormon stands. the mormon bible begins at the days of zedekiah, king of judah, and ends in a wild and weltering quagmire of tribal fights, bits of revelation, and wholesale cribs from the bible. very sincerely did i sympathise with the inspired brothers as i waded through their joint production. as a humble fellow-worker in the field of fiction, i knew what it was to get good names for one's characters. but joseph and hyrum were harder bestead than ever i have been; and bolder men to boot. they created teancum and coriantumy, pakhoran, kishkumen, and gadianton, and other priceless names which the memory does not hold; but of geography they wisely steered clear, and were astutely vague as to the localities of places, because you see they were by no means certain what lay in the next county to their own. they marched and countermarched bloodthirsty armies across their pages; and added new and amazing chapters to the records of the new testament, and reorganised the heavens and the earth as it is always lawful to do in print. but they could not achieve style, and it was foolish of them to let into their weird mosaic pieces of the genuine bible whenever the labouring pen dropped from its toilsome parody to a sentence or two of vile, bad english or downright "penny dreadfulism." "and moses said unto the people of israel: 'great scott! what air you doing?'" there is no sentence in the book of mormon word for word like the foregoing; but the general tone is not widely different. there are the makings of a very fine creed about mormonism. to begin with, the church is rather more absolute than that of rome. drop the polygamy plank in the platform, but on the other hand deal lightly with certain forms of excess. keep the quality of the recruits down to a low mental level and see that the best of the agricultural science available is in the hands of the elders, and you have there a first-class engine for pioneer work. the tawdry mysticism and the borrowings from freemasonry serve the low-caste swede and the dane, the welshman and the cornish cottar, just as well as a highly organised heaven. i went about the streets and peeped into people's front windows, and the decorations upon the tables were after the manner of the year . main street was full of country folk from the outside come in to trade with the zion mercantile co-operative institute. the church, i fancy, looks after the finances of this thing, and it consequently pays good dividends. the faces of the women were not lovely. indeed, but for the certainty that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of undivided love as the beautiful, it seemed that polygamy was a blessed institution for the women, and that only the spiritual power could drive the hulking, board-faced men into it. the women wore hideous garments, and the men seemed to be tied up with string. they would market all that afternoon, and on sunday go to the praying-place. i tried to talk to a few of them, but they spoke strange tongues and stared and behaved like cows. yet one woman, and not an altogether ugly one, confided to me that she hated the idea of salt lake city being turned into a show-place for the amusement of the gentile. "if we 'ave our own institutions, that ain't no reason why people should come 'ere and stare at us, his it?" the dropped "h" betrayed her. "and when did you leave england?" i said. "summer of ' . i am from dorset," she said. "the mormon agents was very good to us, and we was very poor. now we're better off--my father an' mother an' me." "then you like the state?" she misunderstood at first. "oh, i ain't livin' in the state of polygamy. not me yet. i ain't married. i like where i am. i've got things o' my own--and some land." "but i suppose you will--" "not me. i ain't like them swedes an' danes. i ain't got nothin' to say for or against polygamy. it's the elders' business, an' between you an' me i don't think it's going on much longer. you'll 'ear them in the 'ouse to-morrer talkin' as if it was spreadin' all over america. the swedes they think it _his_. i know it hisn't." "but you've got your land all right." "oh, yes, we've got our land an' we never say aught against polygamy o' course--father an' mother an' me." it strikes me that there is a fraud somewhere. you've never heard of the rice-christians, have you? i should have liked to have spoken to the maiden at length, but she dived into the zion co-op. and a man captured me, saying that it was my bounden duty to see the sights of salt lake. these comprised the egg-shaped tabernacle, the beehive, and town houses of brigham young; the same great ruffian's tomb with assorted samples of his wives sleeping round him (just as the eleven faithful ones sleep round the ashes of runjit singh outside fort lahore), and one or two other curiosities. but all these things have been described by abler pens than mine. the animal-houses where brigham used to pack his wives are grubby villas; the tabernacle is a shingled fraud, and the tithing house where all the revenue returns seem to be made, much resembles a stable. the mormons have a paper currency of their own--ecclesiastical bank-notes which are exchanged for local produce. but the little boys of the place prefer the bullion of the gentiles. it is not pleasant to be taken round a township with your guide stopping before every third house to say: "that's where elder so and so kept amelia bathershins, his fifth wife--no, his third. amelia she was took on after keziah, but keziah was the elder's pet, an' he didn't dare to let amelia come across keziah for fear of her spilin' keziah's beauty." the mussulmans are quite right. the minute that all the domestic details of polygamy are discussed in the mouths of the people, that institution is ready to fall. i shook off my guide when he had told me his very last doubtful tale, and went on alone. an ordered peace and a perfection of quiet luxury is the note of the city of salt lake. the houses stand in generous and well-groomed grass-plots, none very much worse or better than their neighbours. creepers grow over the house fronts, and there is a very pleasant music of wind among the trees in the vast empty streets bringing a smell of hay and the flowers of summer. on a tableland overlooking all the city stands the united states garrison of infantry and artillery. the state of utah can do nearly anything it pleases until that much-to-be-desired hour when the gentile vote shall quietly swamp out mormonism; but the garrison is kept there in case of accidents. the big, shark-mouthed, pig-eared, heavy-boned farmers sometimes take to their creed with wildest fanaticism, and in past years have made life excessively unpleasant for the gentile when he was few in the land. but to-day, so far from killing openly or secretly, or burning gentile farms, it is all the mormon dares do to feebly try to boycott the interloper. his journals preach defiance to the united states government, and in the tabernacle of a sunday the preachers follow suit. when i went down there the place was full of people who would have been much better for a washing. a man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of god, the elect of israel, that they were to obey their priest, and that there was a good time coming. i fancy that they had heard all this before so many times it produced no impression whatever; even as the sublimest mysteries of another faith lost salt through constant iteration. they breathed heavily through their noses and stared straight in front of them--impassive as flatfish. and that evening i went up to the garrison post--one of the most coveted of all the army commands--and overlooked the city of the saints as it lay in the circle of its forbidding hills. you can speculate a good deal about the mass of human misery, the loves frustrated, the gentle hearts broken, and the strong souls twisted from the law of life to a fiercer following of the law of death, that the hills have seen. how must it have been in the old days when the footsore emigrants broke through into the circle and knew that they were cut off from hope of return or sight of friends--were handed over to the power of the friends that called themselves priests of the most high? "but for the grace of god there goes richard baxter," as the eminent divine once said. it seemed good that fate did not order me to be a brick in the up-building of the mormon church, that has so aptly established herself by the borders of a lake bitter, salt, and hopeless. no. xxxiii how i met certain people of importance between salt lake and omaha. "much have i seen, cities and men." let there be no misunderstanding about the matter. i love this people, and if any contemptuous criticism has to be done, i will do it myself. my heart has gone out to them beyond all other peoples; and for the life of me i cannot tell why. they are bleeding-raw at the edges, almost more conceited than the english, vulgar with a massive vulgarity which is as though the pyramids were coated with christmas-cake sugar-works. cocksure they are, lawless and as casual as they are cocksure; but i love them, and i realised it when i met an englishman who laughed at them. he proved conclusively that they were all wrong, from their tariff to their go-as-you-please civil service, and beneath the consideration of a true briton. "i admit everything," said i. "their government's provisional; their law's the notion of the moment; their railways are made of hair-pins and match-sticks, and most of their good luck lives in their woods and mines and rivers and not in their brains; but for all that, they be the biggest, finest, and best people on the surface of the globe! just you wait a hundred years and see how they'll behave when they've had the screw put on them and have forgotten a few of the patriarchal teachings of the late mister george washington. wait till the anglo-american-german-jew--the man of the future--is properly equipped. he'll have just the least little kink in his hair now and again; he'll carry the english lungs above the teuton feet that can walk for ever; and he will wave long, thin, bony yankee hands with the big blue veins on the wrist, from one end of the earth to the other. he'll be the finest writer, poet, and dramatist, 'specially dramatist, that the world as it recollects itself has ever seen. by virtue of his jew blood--just a little, little drop--he'll be a musician and a painter too. at present there is too much balcony and too little romeo in the life-plays of his fellow-citizens. later on, when the proportion is adjusted and he sees the possibilities of his land, he will produce things that will make the effete east stare. he will also be a complex and highly composite administrator. there is nothing known to man that he will not be, and his country will sway the world with one foot as a man tilts a see-saw plank!" "but this is worse than the eagle at its worst. do you seriously believe all that?" said the englishman. "if i believe anything seriously, all this i most firmly believe. you wait and see. sixty million people, chiefly of english instincts, who are trained from youth to believe that nothing is impossible, don't slink through the centuries like russian peasantry. they are bound to leave their mark somewhere, and don't you forget it." but isn't it sad to think that with all eternity behind and before us we cannot, even though we would pay for it with sorrow, filch from the immensities one hundred poor years of life, wherein to watch the two great experiments? a hundred years hence india and america will be worth observing. at present the one is burned out and the other is only just stoking up. when i left my opponent there was much need for faith, because i fell into the hands of a perfectly delightful man whom i had met casually in the street, sitting in a chair on the pavement, smoking a huge cigar. he was a commercial traveller, and his beat lay through southern mexico, and he told me tales, of forgotten cities, stone gods up to their sacred eyes in forest growth, mexican priests, rebellions, and dictatorships, that made my hair curl. it was he who dragged me forth to bathe in salt lake, which is some fifteen miles away from the city, and reachable by many trains which are but open tram-cars. the track, like all american tracks, was terrifying in its roughness; and the end of the journey disclosed the nakedness of the accommodation. there were piers and band houses and refreshment stalls built over the solid grey levels of the lake, but they only accentuated the utter barrenness of the place. americans don't mix with their scenery as yet. and "have faith," said the commercial traveller as he walked into water heavy as quicksilver. "walk!" i walked, and i walked till my legs flew up and i had to walk as one struggling with a high wind, but still i rode head and shoulders above the water. it was a horrible feeling, this inability to sink. swimming was not much use. you couldn't get a grip of the water, so i e'en sat me down and drifted like a luxurious anemone among the hundreds that were bathing in that place. you could wallow for three-quarters of an hour in that warm, sticky brine and fear no evil consequences; but when you came out you were coated with white salt from top to toe. and if you accidentally swallowed a mouthful of the water, you died. this is true, because i swallowed half a mouthful and was half-dead in consequence. the commercial traveller on our return journey across the level flats that fringe the lake's edge bade me note some of the customs of his people. the great open railway car held about a hundred men and maidens, "coming up with a song from the sea." they sang and they shouted and they exchanged witticisms of the most poignant, and comported themselves like their brothers and sisters over the seas--the 'arries and 'arriets of the older world. and there sat behind me two modest maidens in white, alone and unattended. to these the privileged youth of the car--a youth of a marvellous range of voice--proffered undying affection. they laughed, but made no reply in words. the suit was renewed, and with extravagant imagery; the nearest seats applauding. when we arrived at the city the maidens turned and went their way up a dark tree-shaded street, and the boys elsewhere. whereat, recollecting what the london rough was like, i marvelled that they did not pursue. "it's all right," said the commercial traveller. "if they had followed--well, i guess some one would ha' shot 'em." the very next day on those very peaceful cars returning from the lake some one was shot--dead. he was what they call a "sport," which is american for a finished "leg," and he had an argument with a police officer, and the latter slew him. i saw his funeral go down the main street. there were nearly thirty carriages, filled with doubtful men, and women not in the least doubtful, and the local papers said that deceased had his merits, but it didn't much matter, because if the sheriff hadn't dropped him he would assuredly have dropped the sheriff. somehow this jarred on my sensitive feelings, and i went away, though the commercial traveller would fain have entertained me in his own house, he knowing not my name. twice through the long hot nights we talked, tilting up our chairs on the sidewalk, of the future of america. you should hear the saga of the states reeled off by a young and enthusiastic citizen who had just carved out for himself a home, filled it with a pretty little wife, and is preparing to embark on commerce on his own account. i was tempted to believe that pistol-shots were regrettable accidents and lawlessness only the top scum on the great sea of humanity. i am tempted to believe that still, though baked and dusty utah is very many miles behind me. then chance threw me into the arms of another and very different commercial traveller, as we pulled out of utah on our way to omaha _via_ the rockies. he travelled in biscuits, of which more anon, and fate had smitten him very heavily, having at one stroke knocked all the beauty and joy out of his poor life. so he journeyed with a case of samples as one dazed, and his eyes took no pleasure in anything that he saw. in his despair he had withdrawn himself to his religion,--he was a baptist,--and spoke of its consolation with the artless freedom that an american generally exhibits when he is talking about his most sacred private affairs. there was a desert beyond utah, hot and barren as mian mir in may. the sun baked the car-roof, and the dust caked the windows, and through the dust and the glare the man with the biscuits bore witness to his creed, which seems to include one of the greatest miracles in the world--the immediate unforeseen, self-conscious redemption of the soul by means very similar to those which turned paul to the straight path. "you must experi_ence_ religion," he repeated, his mouth twitching and his eyes black-ringed with his recent loss. "you must experi_ence_ religion. you can't tell when you're goin' to get, or haow; but it will come--it will come, sir, like a lightning stroke, an' you will wrestle with yourself before you receive full conviction and assurance." "how long does that take?" i asked reverently. "it may take hours. it may take days. i knew a man in san jo who lay under conviction for a month an' then he got the sperrit--as you _must_ git it." "and then?" "and then you are saved. you feel that, an' you kin endure anything," he sighed. "yes, anything. i don't care what it is, though i allow that some things are harder than others." "then you have to wait for the miracle to be worked by powers outside yourself. and if the miracle doesn't work?" "but it _must_. i tell you it must. it comes to all who profess with faith." i learned a good deal about that creed as the train fled on; and i wondered as i learned. it was a strange thing to watch that poor human soul, broken and bowed by its loss, nerving itself against each new pang of pain with the iterated assurance that it was safe against the pains of hell. the heat was stifling. we quitted the desert and launched into the rolling green plains of colorado. dozing uneasily with every removable rag removed, i was roused by a blast of intense cold and the drumming of a hundred drums. the train had stopped. far as the eye could range the land was white under two feet of hail--each hailstone as big as the top of a sherry-glass. i saw a young colt by the side of the track standing with his poor little fluffy back to the pitiless pelting. he was pounded to death. an old horse met his doom on the run. he galloped wildly towards the train, but his hind legs dropped into a hole half water and half ice. he beat the ground with his fore-feet for a minute and then rolling over on his side submitted quietly to be killed. when the storm ceased, we picked our way cautiously and crippledly over a track that might give way at any moment. the western driver urges his train much as does the subaltern the bounding pony, and 'twould seem with an equal sense of responsibility. if a foot does go wrong, why there you are, don't you know, and if it is all right, why all right it is, don't you know. but i would sooner be on the pony than the train. this seems a good place wherein to preach on american versatility. when mr. howells writes a novel, when a reckless hero dams a flood by heaving a dynamite-shattered mountain into it, or when a notoriety-hunting preacher marries a couple in a balloon, you shall hear the great american press rise on its hind legs and walk round mouthing over the versatility of the american citizen. and he is versatile--horribly so. the unlimited exercise of the right of private judgment (which, by the way, is a weapon not one man in ten is competent to handle), his blatant cocksureness, and the dry-air-bred restlessness that makes him crawl all over the furniture when he is talking to you, conspire to make him versatile. but what he calls versatility the impartial bystander of anglo-indian extraction is apt to deem mere casualness, and dangerous casualness at that. no man can grasp the inwardness of an employ by the light of pure reason--even though that reason be republican. he must serve an apprenticeship to one craft and learn that craft all the days of his life if he wishes to excel therein. otherwise he merely "puts the thing through somehow;" and occasionally he doesn't. but wherein lies the beauty of this form of mental suppleness? old man california, whom i shall love and respect always, told me one or two anecdotes about american versatility and its consequences that came back to my mind with direful force as the train progressed. we didn't upset, but i don't think that that was the fault of the driver or the men who made the track. take up--you can easily find them--the accounts of ten consecutive railway catastrophes--not little accidents, but first-class fatalities, when the long cars turn over, take fire, and roast the luckless occupants alive. to seven out of the ten you shall find appended the cheerful statement: "the accident is supposed to have been due to the rails spreading." that means the metals were spiked down to the ties with such versatility that the spikes or the tracks drew under the constant vibration of the traffic, and the metals opened out. no one is hanged for these little affairs. we began to climb hills, and then we stopped--at night in darkness, while men threw sand under the wheels and crowbarred the track and then "guessed" that we might proceed. not being in the least anxious to face my maker half asleep and rubbing my eyes, i went forward to a common car, and was rewarded by two hours' conversation with the stranded, broken-down, husband-abandoned actress of a fourth-rate, stranded, broken-down, manager-bereft company. she was muzzy with beer, reduced to her last dollar, fearful that there would be no one to meet her at omaha, and wept at intervals because she had given the conductor a five-dollar bill to change, and he hadn't come back. he was an irishman, so i knew he couldn't steal, and i addressed myself to the task of consolation. i was rewarded, after a decent interval, by the history of a life so wild, so mixed, so desperately improbable, and yet so simply probable, and above all so quick--not fast--in its kaleidoscopic changes that the _pioneer_ would reject any summary of it. and so you will never know how she, the beery woman with the tangled blond hair, was once a girl on a farm in far-off new jersey. how he, a travelling actor, had wooed and won her,--"but paw he was always set against alf,"--and how he and she embarked all their little capital on the word of a faithless manager who disbanded his company a hundred miles from nowhere, and how she and alf and a third person who had not yet made any noise in the world, had to walk the railway-track and beg from the farm-houses; how that third person arrived and went away again with a wail, and how alf took to the whisky and other things still more calculated to make a wife unhappy; and how after barn-stormings, insults, shooting-scrapes, and pitiful collapses of poor companies she had once won an encore. it was not a cheerful tale to listen to. there was a real actress in the pullman,--such an one as travels sumptuously with a maid and dressing-case,--and my draggle-tail thought of appealing to her for help, but broke down after several attempts to walk into the car jauntily as befitted a sister in the profession. then the conductor reappeared,--the five-dollar bill honestly changed,--and she wept by reason of beer and gratitude together, and then fell asleep waveringly, alone in the car, and became almost beautiful and quite kissable; while the man with the sorrow stood at the door between actress and actress and preached grim sermons on the certain end of each if they did not mend their ways and find regeneration through the miracle of the baptist creed. yes, we were a queer company going up to the rockies together. i was the luckiest, because when a breakdown occurred, and we were delayed for twelve hours, i ate all the baptist's sample-biscuits. they were various in composition, but nourishing. always travel with a "drummer." no. xxxiv across the great divide; and how the man gring showed me the garments of the ellewomen. after much dallying and more climbing we came to a pass like all the bolan passes in the world, and the black cañon of the gunnison called they it. we had been climbing for very many hours, and attained a modest elevation of some seven or eight thousand feet above the sea, when we entered a gorge, remote from the sun, where the rocks were two thousand feet sheer, and where a rock-splintered river roared and howled ten feet below a track which seemed to have been built on the simple principle of dropping miscellaneous dirt into the river and pinning a few rails a-top. there was a glory and a wonder and a mystery about that mad ride which i felt keenly (you will find it properly dressed up in the guide-books), until i had to offer prayers for the safety of the train. there was no hope of seeing the track two hundred yards ahead. we seemed to be running into the bowels of the earth at the invitation of an irresponsible stream. then the solid rock would open and disclose a curve of awful twistfulness. then the driver put on all steam, and we would go round that curve on one wheel chiefly, the gunnison river gnashing its teeth below. the cars overhung the edge of the water, and if a single one of the rails had chosen to spread, nothing in the wide world could have saved us from drowning. i knew we should damage something in the end--the sombre horrors of the gorge, the rush of the jade-green water below, and the cheerful tales told by the conductor made me certain of the catastrophe. we had just cleared the black cañon and another gorge, and were sailing out into open country nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, when we came most suddenly round a corner upon a causeway across a waste water--half dam and half quarry-pool. the locomotive gave one wild "hoo! hoo! hoo!" but it was too late. he was a beautiful bull, and goodness only knows why he had chosen the track for a constitutional with his wife. _she_ was flung to the left, but the cow-catcher caught _him_, and turning him round, heaved him shoulder deep into the pool. the expression of blank, blind bewilderment on his bovine, jovine face was wonderful to behold. he was not angry. i don't think he was even scared, though he must have flown ten yards through the air. all he wanted to know was: "will somebody have the goodness to tell a respectable old gentleman what in the world, or out of it, has occurred?" and five minutes later the stream that had been snapping at our heels in the gorges split itself into a dozen silver threads on a breezy upland, and became an innocent trout beck, and we halted at a half-dead city, the name of which does not remain with me. it had originally been built on the crest of a wave of prosperity. once ten thousand people had walked its street; but the boom had collapsed. the great brick houses and the factories were empty. the population lived in little timber shanties on the fringes of the deserted town. there were some railway workshops and things, and the hotel (whose pavement formed the platform of the railway) contained one hundred and more rooms--empty. the place, in its half-inhabitedness, was more desolate than amber or chitor. but a man said: "trout--six pounds--two miles away," and the sorrowful man and myself went in search of 'em. the town was ringed by a circle of hills all alive with little thunder-storms that broke across the soft green of the plain in wisps and washes of smoke and amber. to our tiny party associated himself a lawyer from chicago. we foregathered on the question of flies, but i didn't expect to meet elijah pogram in the flesh. he delivered orations on the future of england and america, and of the great federation that the years will bring forth when america and england will belt the globe with their linked hands. according to the notions of the british, he made an ass of himself, but for all his high-falutin he talked sense. i might knock through england on a four months' tour and not find a man capable of putting into words the passionate patriotism that possessed the little chicago lawyer. and he was a man with points, for he offered me three days' shooting in illinois, if i would step out of my path a little. i might travel for ten years up and down england ere i found a man who would give a complete stranger so much as a sandwich, and for twenty ere i squeezed as much enthusiasm out of a britisher. he and i talked politics and trout-flies all one sultry day as we wandered up and down the shallows of the stream aforesaid. little fish are sweet. i spent two hours whipping a ripple for a fish that i knew was there, and in the pasture-scented dusk caught a three-pounder on a ragged old brown hackle and landed him after ten minutes' excited argument. he was a beauty. if ever any man works the western trout-streams, he would do well to bring out with him the dingiest flies he possesses. the natives laugh at the tiny english hooks, but they hold, and duns and drabs and sober greys seem to tickle the æsthetic tastes of the trout. for salmon (but don't say that i told you) use the spoon--gold on one side, silver on the other. it is as killing as is a similar article with fish of another calibre. the natives seem to use much too coarse tackle. it was a search for a small boy who should know the river that revealed to me a new phase of life--slack, slovenly, and shiftless, but very interesting. there was a family in a packing-case hut on the outskirts of the town. they had seen the city when it was on the boom and made pretence of being the metropolis of the rockies; and when the boom was over, they did not go. she was affable, but deeply coated with dirt; he was grim and grimy, and the little children were simply caked with filth of various descriptions. but they lived in a certain sort of squalid luxury, six or eight of them in two rooms; and they enjoyed the local society. it was their eight-year-old son whom i tried to take out with me, but he had been catching trout all his life and "guessed he didn't feel like coming," though i proffered him six shillings for what ought to have been a day's pleasuring. "i'll stay with maw," he said, and from that attitude i could not move him. maw didn't attempt to argue with him. "if he says he won't come, he won't," she said, as though he were one of the elemental forces of nature instead of a spankable brat; and "paw," lounging by the store, refused to interfere. maw told me that she had been a school-teacher in her not-so-distant youth, but did not tell me what i was dying to know--how she arrived at this mucky tenement at the back of beyond, and why. though preserving the prettinesses of her new england speech, she had come to regard washing as a luxury. paw chewed tobacco and spat from time to time. yet, when he opened his mouth for other purposes, he spoke like a well-educated man. there was a story there, but i couldn't get at it. next day the man with the sorrow and myself and a few others began the real ascent of the rockies; up to that time our climbing didn't count. the train ran violently up a steep place and was taken to pieces. five cars were hitched on to two locomotives, and two cars to one locomotive. this seemed to be a kind and thoughtful act, but i was idiot enough to go forward and watch the coupling-on of the two rear cars in which cæsar and his fortunes were to travel. some one had lost or eaten the regularly ordained coupling, and a man picked up from the tailboard of the engine a single iron link about as thick as a fetter-link watch-chain, and "guessed it would do." get hauled up a simla cliff by the hook of a lady's parasol if you wish to appreciate my sentiments when the cars moved uphill and the link drew tight. miles away and two thousand feet above our heads rose the shoulder of a hill epauletted with the long line of a snow-tunnel. the first section of the cars crawled a quarter of a mile ahead of us, the track snaked and looped behind, and there was a black drop to the left. so we went up and up and up till the thin air grew thinner and the _chunk-chunk-chunk_, of the labouring locomotive was answered by the oppressed beating of the exhausted heart. through the chequed light and shade of the snow tunnels (horrible caverns of rude timbering) we ground our way, halting now and again to allow a down-train to pass. one monster of forty mineral-cars slid past, scarce held by four locomotives, their brakes screaming and chortling in chorus; and in the end, after a glimpse at half america spread mapwise leagues below us, we halted at the head of the longest snow tunnel of all, on the crest of the divide, between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea. the locomotive wished to draw breath, and the passengers to gather the flowers that nodded impertinently through the chinks of the boarding. a lady passenger's nose began to bleed, and other ladies threw themselves down on the seats and gasped with the gasping train, while a wind as keen as a knife-edge rioted down the grimy tunnel. then, despatching a pilot-engine to clear the way, we began the downward portion of the journey with every available brake on, and frequent shrieks, till after some hours we reached the level plain, and later the city of denver, where the man with the sorrow went his way and left me to journey on to omaha alone, after one hasty glance at denver. the pulse of that town was too like the rushing mighty wind in the rocky mountain tunnel. it made me tired because complete strangers desired me to do something to mines which were in mountains, and to purchase building blocks upon inaccessible cliffs; and once, a woman urged that i should supply her with strong drinks. i had almost forgotten that such attacks were possible in any land, for the outward and visible signs of public morality in american towns are generally safe-guarded. for that i respect this people. omaha, nebraska, was but a halting-place on the road to chicago, but it revealed to me horrors that i would not willingly have missed. the city to casual investigation seemed to be populated entirely by germans, poles, slavs, hungarians, croats, magyars, and all the scum of the eastern european states, but it must have been laid out by americans. no other people would cut the traffic of a main street with two streams of railway lines, each some eight or nine tracks wide, and cheerfully drive tram-cars across the metals. every now and again they have horrible railway-crossing accidents at omaha, but nobody seems to think of building an overhead-bridge. that would interfere with the vested interests of the undertakers. be blessed to hear some details of one of that class. there was a shop the like of which i had never seen before. its windows were filled with dress-coats for men, and dresses for women. but the studs of the shirts were made of stamped cloth upon the shirt front, and there were no trousers to those coats--nothing but a sweep of cheap black cloth falling like an abbé's frock. in the doorway sat a young man reading pollock's _course of time_, and by that i knew that he was an undertaker. his name was gring, which is a beautiful name, and i talked to him on the mysteries of his craft. he was an enthusiast and an artist. i told him how corpses were burnt in india. said he: "we're vastly superior. we hold--that is to say, embalm--our dead. so!" whereupon he produced the horrible weapons of his trade, and most practically showed me how you "held" a man back from that corruption which is his birthright. "and i wish i could live a few generations just to see how my people keep. but i'm sure it's all right. nothing can touch 'em after _i_'ve embalmed 'em." then he displayed one of those ghastly dress-suits, and when i laid a shuddering hand upon it, behold it crumpled to nothing, for the white linen was sewn on to the black cloth and--there was no back to it! that was the horror. the garment was a shell. "we dress a man in that," said gring, laying it out tastily on the counter. "as you see here, our caskets have a plate-glass window in front" (oh me, but that window in the coffin was fitted with plush like a brougham-window!), "and you don't see anything below the level of the man's waistcoat. consequently ..." he unrolled the terrible cheap black cloth that falls down over the stark feet, and i jumped back. "of course a man can be dressed in his own clothes if he likes, but these are the regular things: and for women look at this!" he took up the body of a high-necked dinner-dress in subdued lilac, slashed and puffed and bedeviled with black, but, like the dress-suit, backless, and below the waist turning to shroud. "that's for an old maid. but for young girls we give white with imitation pearls round the neck. that looks very pretty through the window of the casket--you see there's a cushion for the head--with flowers banked all round." can you imagine anything more awful than to take your last rest as much of a dead fraud as ever you were a living lie--to go into the darkness one half of you shaved, trimmed and dressed for an evening party, while the other half--the half that your friends cannot see--is enwrapped in a flapping black sheet? i know a little about burial customs in various places in the world, and i tried hard to make mr. gring comprehend dimly the awful heathendom that he was responsible for--the grotesquerie--the giggling horror of it all. but he couldn't see it. even when he showed me a little boy's last suit, he couldn't see it. he said it was quite right to embalm and trick out and hypocritically bedizen the poor innocent dead in their superior cushioned and pillowed caskets with the window in front. bury me cased in canvas like a fishing-rod, in the deep sea; burn me on a back-water of the hughli with damp wood and no oil; pin me under a pullman car and let the lighted stove do its worst; sizzle me with a fallen electric wire or whelm me in the sludge of a broken river dam; but may i never go down to the pit grinning out of a plate-glass window, in a backless dress-coat, and the front half of a black stuff dressing-gown; not though i were "held" against the ravage of the grave for ever and ever. amen! no. xxxv how i struck chicago, and how chicago struck me. of religion, politics, and pig-sticking, and the incarnation of the city among shambles. "i know thy cunning and thy greed, thy hard, high lust and wilful deed, and all thy glory loves to tell of specious gifts material." i have struck a city,--a real city,--and they call it chicago. the other places do not count. san francisco was a pleasure-resort as well as a city, and salt lake was a phenomenon. this place is the first american city i have encountered. it holds rather more than a million people with bodies, and stands on the same sort of soil as calcutta. having seen it, i urgently desire never to see it again. it is inhabited by savages. its water is the water of the hugli, and its air is dirt. also it says that it is the "boss" town of america. i do not believe that it has anything to do with this country. they told me to go to the palmer house, which is a gilded and mirrored rabbit-warren, and there i found a huge hall of tessellated marble, crammed with people talking about money and spitting about everywhere. other barbarians charged in and out of this inferno with letters and telegrams in their hands, and yet others shouted at each other. a man who had drunk quite as much as was good for him told me that this was "the finest hotel in the finest city on god almighty's earth." by the way, when an american wishes to indicate the next county or state he says, "god a'mighty's earth." this prevents discussion and flatters his vanity. then i went out into the streets, which are long and flat and without end. and verily it is not a good thing to live in the east for any length of time. your ideas grow to clash with those held by every right-thinking white man. i looked down interminable vistas flanked with nine, ten, and fifteen storied houses, and crowded with men and women, and the show impressed me with a great horror. except in london--and i have forgotten what london is like--i had never seen so many white people together, and never such a collection of miserables. there was no colour in the street and no beauty--only a maze of wire-ropes overhead and dirty stone flagging underfoot. a cab-driver volunteered to show me the glory of the town for so much an hour, and with him i wandered far. he conceived that all this turmoil and squash was a thing to be reverently admired; that it was good to huddle men together in fifteen layers, one atop of the other, and to dig holes in the ground for offices. he said that chicago was a live town, and that all the creatures hurrying by me were engaged in business. that is to say, they were trying to make some money, that they might not die through lack of food to put into their bellies. he took me to canals, black as ink, and filled with untold abominations, and bade me watch the stream of traffic across the bridges. he then took me into a saloon, and, while i drank, made me note that the floor was covered with coins sunk into cement. a hottentot would not have been guilty of this sort of barbarism. the coins made an effect pretty enough, but the man who put them there had no thought to beauty, and therefore he was a savage. then my cab-driver showed me business-blocks, gay with signs and studded with fantastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and looking down the long street so adorned it was as though each vender stood at his door howling: "for the sake of money, employ or buy of _me_ and me only!" have you ever seen a crowd at our famine relief distributions? you know then how men leap into the air, stretching out their arms above the crowd in the hope of being seen; while the women dolorously slap the stomachs of their children and whimper. i had sooner watch famine-relief than the white man engaged in what he calls legitimate competition. the one i understand. the other makes me ill. and the cabman said that these things were the proof of progress; and by that i knew he had been reading his newspaper, as every intelligent american should. the papers tell their readers in language fitted to their comprehension that the snarling together of telegraph wires, the heaving up of houses, and the making of money is progress. i spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, wandering through scores of miles of these terrible streets, and jostling some few hundred thousand of these terrible people who talked money through their noses. the cabman left me: but after a while i picked up another man who was full of figures, and into my ears he poured them as occasion required or the big blank factories suggested. here they turned out so many hundred thousand dollars' worth of such and such an article; there so many million other things; this house was worth so many million dollars; that one so many million more or less. it was like listening to a child babbling of its hoard of shells. it was like watching a fool playing with buttons. but i was expected to do more than listen or watch. he demanded that i should admire; and the utmost that i could say was: "are these things so? then i am very sorry for you." that made him angry, and he said that insular envy made me unresponsive. so, you see, i could not make him understand. about four and a half hours after adam was turned out of the garden of eden he felt hungry, and so, bidding eve take care that her head was not broken by the descending fruit, shinned up a cocoanut palm. that hurt his legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe heavily, and eve was tormented with fear lest her lord should miss his footing and so bring the tragedy of this world to an end ere the curtain had fairly risen. had i met adam then, i should have been sorry for him. to-day i find eleven hundred thousand of his sons just as far advanced as their father in the art of getting food, and immeasurably inferior to him in that they think that their palm-trees lead straight to the skies. consequently i am sorry in rather more than a million different ways. in our east bread comes naturally even to the poorest by a little scratching or the gift of a friend not quite so poor. in less favoured countries one is apt to forget. then i went to bed. and that was on a saturday night. sunday brought me the queerest experience of all--a revelation of barbarism complete. i found a place that was officially described as a church. it was a circus really, but that the worshippers did not know. there were flowers all about the building, which was fitted up with plush and stained oak and much luxury, including twisted brass candlesticks of severest gothic design. to these things, and a congregation of savages, entered suddenly a wonderful man completely in the confidence of their god, whom he treated colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper reporter would exploit a foreign potentate. but, unlike the newspaper reporter, he never allowed his listeners to forget that he and not he was the centre of attraction. with a voice of silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction-room, he built up for his hearers a heaven on the lines of the palmer house (but with all the gilding real gold and all the plate-glass diamond) and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, and very shrewd creation that he called god. one sentence at this point caught my delighted ear. it was _apropos_ of some question of the judgment day and ran: "no! i tell you god doesn't do business that way." he was giving them a deity whom they could comprehend, in a gold and jewel heaven in which they could take a natural interest. he interlarded his performance with the slang of the streets, the counter, and the exchange, and he said that religion ought to enter into daily life. consequently i presume he introduced it _as_ daily life--his own and the life of his friends. then i escaped before the blessing, desiring no benediction at such hands. but the persons who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and i understood that i had met with a popular preacher. later on when i had perused the sermons of a gentleman called talmage and some others, i perceived that i had been listening to a very mild specimen. yet that man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, his hands-in-pocket, cigar-in-mouth, and hat-on-the-back-of-the-head style of dealing with the sacred vessels would count himself spiritually quite competent to send a mission to convert the indians. all that sunday i listened to people who said that the mere fact of spiking down strips of iron to wood and getting a steam and iron thing to run along them was progress. that the telephone was progress, and the network of wires overhead was progress. they repeated their statements again and again. one of them took me to their city hall and board of trade works and pointed it out with pride. it was very ugly, but very big, and the streets in front of it were narrow and unclean. when i saw the faces of the men who did business in that building i felt that there had been a mistake in their billeting. by the way, 'tis a consolation to feel that i am not writing to an english audience. then should i have to fall into feigned ecstasies over the marvellous progress of chicago since the days of the great fire, to allude casually to the raising of the entire city so many feet above the level of the lake which it faces, and generally to grovel before the golden calf. but you, who are desperately poor, and therefore by these standards of no account, know things, and will understand when i write that they have managed to get a million of men together on flat land, and that the bulk of these men appear to be lower than _mahajans_ and not so companionable as a punjabi _jat_ after harvest. but i don't think it was the blind hurry of the people, their argot, and their grand ignorance of things beyond their immediate interests that displeased me so much as a study of the daily papers of chicago. imprimis, there was some sort of dispute between new york and chicago as to which town should give an exhibition of products to be hereafter holden, and through the medium of their more dignified journals the two cities were ya-hooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like opposition newsboys. they called it humour, but it sounded like something quite different. that was only the first trouble. the second lay in the tone of the productions. leading articles which include gems such as: "back of such and such a place," or "we noticed, tuesday, such an event," or "don't" for "does not" are things to be accepted with thankfulness. all that made me want to cry was that, in these papers, were faithfully reproduced all the war-cries and "back-talk" of the palmer house bar, the slang of the barbers' shops, the mental elevation and integrity of the pullman-car porter, the dignity of the dime museum, and the accuracy of the excited fishwife. i am sternly forbidden to believe that the paper educates the public. then i am compelled to believe that the public educate the paper? just when the sense of unreality and oppression were strongest upon me, and when i most wanted help, a man sat at my side and began to talk what he called politics. i had chanced to pay about six shillings for a travelling-cap worth eighteen pence, and he made of the fact a text for a sermon. he said that this was a rich country and that the people liked to pay two hundred per cent on the value of a thing. they could afford it. he said that the government imposed a protective duty of from ten to seventy per cent on foreign-made articles, and that the american manufacturer consequently could sell his goods for a healthy sum. thus an imported hat would, with duty, cost two guineas. the american manufacturer would make a hat for seventeen shillings and sell it for one pound fifteen. in these things, he said, lay the greatness of america and the effeteness of england. competition between factory and factory kept the prices down to decent limits, but i was never to forget that this people were a rich people, not like the pauper continentals, and that they enjoyed paying duties. to my weak intellect this seemed rather like juggling with counters. everything that i have yet purchased costs about twice as much as it would in england, and when native-made is of inferior quality. moreover, since these lines were first thought of i have visited a gentleman who owned a factory which used to produce things. he owned the factory still. not a man was in it, but he was drawing a handsome income from a syndicate of firms for keeping it closed in order that it might not produce things. this man said that if protection were abandoned, a tide of pauper labour would flood the country, and as i looked at his factory i thought how entirely better it was to have no labour of any kind whatever, rather than face so horrible a future. meantime, do you remember that this peculiar country enjoys paying money for value not received. i am an alien, and for the life of me cannot see why six shillings should be paid for eighteen-penny caps, or eight shillings for half-crown cigar-cases. when the country fills up to a decently populated level a few million people who are not aliens will be smitten with the same sort of blindness. but my friend's assertion somehow thoroughly suited the grotesque ferocity of chicago. see now and judge! in the village of isser jang on the road to montgomery there be four _changar_ women who winnow corn--some seventy bushels a year. beyond their hut lives puran dass, the money-lender, who on good security lends as much as five thousand rupees in a year. jowala singh, the _lohar_, mends the village ploughs--some thirty, broken at the share, in three hundred and sixty-five days; and hukm chund, who is letter-writer and head of the little club under the travellers' tree, generally keeps the village posted in such gossip as the barber and the midwife have not yet made public property. chicago husks and winnows her wheat by the million bushels, a hundred banks lend hundreds of millions of dollars in the year, and scores of factories turn out plough gear and machinery by steam. scores of daily papers do work which hukm chund and the barber and the midwife perform, with due regard for public opinion, in the village of isser jang. so far as manufactures go, the difference between chicago on the lake and isser jang on the montgomery road is one of degree only, and not of kind. as far as the understanding of the uses of life goes isser jang, for all its seasonal cholera, has the advantage over chicago. jowala singh knows and takes care to avoid the three or four ghoul-haunted fields on the outskirts of the village; but he is not urged by millions of devils to run about all day in the sun and swear that his ploughshares are the best in the punjab; nor does puran dass fly forth in a cart more than once or twice a year, and he knows, on a pinch, how to use the railway and the telegraph as well as any son of israel in chicago. but this is absurd. the east is not the west, and these men must continue to deal with the machinery of life, and to call it progress. their very preachers dare not rebuke them. they gloss over the hunting for money and the twice-sharpened bitterness of adam's curse by saying that such things dower a man with a larger range of thoughts and higher aspirations. they do not say: "free yourself from your own slavery," but rather, "if you can possibly manage it, do not set quite so much store on the things of this world." and they do not know what the things of this world are. i went off to see cattle killed by way of clearing my head, which, as you will perceive, was getting muddled. they say every englishman goes to the chicago stockyards. you shall find them about six miles from the city; and once having seen them will never forget the sight. as far as the eye can reach stretches a township of cattle-pens, cunningly divided into blocks so that the animals of any pen can be speedily driven out close to an inclined timber path which leads to an elevated covered way straddling high above the pens. these viaducts are two-storied. on the upper storey tramp the doomed cattle, stolidly for the most part. on the lower, with a scuffling of sharp hooves and multitudinous yells, run the pigs. the same end is appointed for each. thus you will see the gangs of cattle waiting their turn--as they wait sometimes for days; and they need not be distressed by the sight of their fellows running about in the fear of death. all they know is that a man on horseback causes their next-door neighbours to move by means of a whip. certain bars and fences are unshipped, and, behold, that crowd have gone up the mouth of a sloping tunnel and return no more. it is different with the pigs. they shriek back the news of the exodus to their friends, and a hundred pens skirl responsive. it was to the pigs i first addressed myself. selecting a viaduct which was full of them, as i could hear though i could not see, i marked a sombre building whereto it ran, and went there, not unalarmed by stray cattle who had managed to escape from their proper quarters. a pleasant smell of brine warned me of what was coming. i entered the factory and found it full of pork in barrels, and on another storey more pork unbarrelled, and in a huge room, the halves of swine for whose use great lumps of ice were being pitched in at the window. that room was the mortuary chamber where the pigs lie for a little while in state ere they begin their progress through such passages as kings may sometimes travel. turning a corner and not noting an overhead arrangement of greased rail, wheel, and pulley, i ran into the arms of four eviscerated carcasses, all pure white and of a human aspect, being pushed by a man clad in vehement red. when i leaped aside, the floor was slippery under me. there was a flavour of farmyard in my nostrils and the shouting of a multitude in my ears. but there was no joy in that shouting! twelve men stood in two lines--six a-side. between them and overhead ran the railway of death that had nearly shunted me through the window. each man carried a knife, the sleeves of his shirt were cut off at the elbows, and from bosom to heel he was blood-red. the atmosphere was stifling as a night in the rains, by reason of the steam and the crowd. i climbed to the beginning of things and, perched upon a narrow beam, overlooked very nearly all the pigs ever bred in wisconsin. they had just been shot out of the mouth of the viaduct and huddled together in a large pen. thence they were flicked persuasively, a few at a time, into a smaller chamber, and there a man fixed tackle on their hinder legs so that they rose in the air suspended from the railway of death. oh! it was then they shrieked and called on their mothers and made promises of amendment till the tackle-man punted them in their backs, and they slid head down into a brick-floored passage, very like a big kitchen sink that was blood-red. there awaited them a red man with a knife which he passed jauntily through their throats, and the full-voiced shriek became a sputter, and then a fall as of heavy tropical rain. the red man who was backed against the passage wall stood clear of the wildly kicking hoofs and passed his hand over his eyes, not from any feeling of compassion, but because the spurted blood was in his eyes, and he had barely time to stick the next arrival. then that first stuck swine dropped, still kicking, into a great vat of boiling water, and spoke no more words, but wallowed in obedience to some unseen machinery, and presently came forth at the lower end of the vat and was heaved on the blades of a blunt paddle-wheel-thing which said, "hough! hough! hough!" and skelped all the hair off him except what little a couple of men with knives could remove. then he was again hitched by the heels to that said railway and passed down the line of the twelve men--each man with a knife--leaving with each man a certain amount of his individuality which was taken away in a wheel-barrow, and when he reached the last man he was very beautiful to behold, but immensely unstuffed and limp. preponderance of individuality was ever a bar to foreign travel. that pig could have been in no case to visit you in india had he not parted with some of his most cherished notions. the dissecting part impressed me not so much as the slaying. they were so excessively alive, these pigs. and then they were so excessively dead, and the man in the dripping, clammy, hot passage did not seem to care, and ere the blood of such an one had ceased to foam on the floor, such another, and four friends with him, had shrieked and died. but a pig is only the unclean animal--forbidden by the prophet. i was destined to make rather a queer discovery when i went over to the cattle-slaughter. all the buildings here were on a much larger scale, and there was no sound of trouble, but i could smell the salt reek of blood before i set foot in the place. the cattle did not come directly through the viaduct as the pigs had done. they debouched into a yard by the hundred, and they were big red brutes carrying much flesh. in the centre of that yard stood a red texan steer with a headstall on his wicked head. no man controlled him. he was, so to speak, picking his teeth and whistling in an open byre of his own when the cattle arrived. as soon as the first one had fearfully quitted the viaduct, this red devil put his hands in his pockets and slouched across the yard, no man guiding him. then he lowed something to the effect that he was the regularly appointed guide of the establishment and would show them round. they were country folk, but they knew how to behave; and so followed judas some hundred strong, patiently, and with a look of bland wonder in their faces. i saw his broad back jogging in advance of them, up a lime-washed incline where i was forbidden to follow. then a door shut, and in a minute back came judas with the air of a virtuous plough-bullock and took up his place in his byre. somebody laughed across the yard, but i heard no sound of cattle from the big brick building into which the mob had disappeared. only judas chewed the cud with a malignant satisfaction, and so i knew there was trouble, and ran round to the front of the factory and so entered and stood aghast. who takes count of the prejudices which we absorb through the skin by way of our surroundings? it was not the spectacle that impressed me. the first thought that almost spoke itself aloud was: "they are killing kine;" and it was a shock. the pigs were nobody's concern, but cattle--the brothers of the cow, the sacred cow--were quite otherwise. the next time an m.p. tells me that india either sultanises or brahminises a man, i shall believe about half what he says. it is unpleasant to watch the slaughter of cattle when one has laughed at the notion for a few years. i could not see actually what was done in the first instance, because the row of stalls in which they lay was separated from me by fifty impassable feet of butchers and slung carcasses. all i know is that men swung open the doors of a stall as occasion required, and there lay two steers already stunned, and breathing heavily. these two they pole-axed, and half raising them by tackle they cut their throats. two men skinned each carcase, somebody cut off the head, and in half a minute more the overhead rail carried two sides of beef to their appointed place. there was clamour enough in the operating room, but from the waiting cattle, invisible on the other side of the line of pens, never a sound. they went to their death, trusting judas, without a word. they were slain at the rate of five a minute, and if the pig men were spattered with blood, the cow butchers were bathed in it. the blood ran in muttering gutters. there was no place for hand or foot that was not coated with thicknesses of dried blood, and the stench of it in the nostrils bred fear. and then the same merciful providence that has showered good things on my path throughout sent me an embodiment of the city of chicago, so that i might remember it forever. women come sometimes to see the slaughter, as they would come to see the slaughter of men. and there entered that vermilion hall a young woman of large mould, with brilliantly scarlet lips, and heavy eyebrows, and dark hair that came in a "widow's peak" on the forehead. she was well and healthy and alive, and she was dressed in flaming red and black, and her feet (know you that the feet of american women are like unto the feet of fairies?) her feet, i say, were cased in red leather shoes. she stood in a patch of sunlight, the red blood under her shoes, the vivid carcasses packed round her, a bullock bleeding its life away not six feet away from her, and the death factory roaring all round her. she looked curiously, with hard, bold eyes, and was not ashamed. then said i: "this is a special sending. i have seen the city of chicago." and i went away to get peace and rest. no. xxxvi how i found peace at musquash on the monongahela. "prince, blown by many a western breeze our vessels greet you treasure-laden; we send them all--but best of these a free and frank young yankee maiden." it is a mean thing and an unhandsome to "do" a continent in five-hundred-mile jumps. but after those swine and bullocks at chicago i felt that complete change of air would be good. the united states at present hinge in or about chicago, as a double-leaved screen hinges. to be sure, the tiny new england states call a trip to pennsylvania "going west," but the larger-minded citizen seems to reckon his longitude from chicago. twenty years hence the centre of population--that shaded square on the census map--will have shifted, men say, far west of chicago. twenty years later it will be on the pacific slope. twenty years after that america will begin to crowd up, and there will be some trouble. people will demand manufactured goods for their reduced-establishment households at the cheapest possible rates, and the cry that the land is rich enough to afford protection will cease with a great abruptness. at present it is the farmer who pays most dearly for the luxury of high prices. in the old days, when the land was fresh and there was plenty of it and it cropped like the garden of eden, he did not mind paying. now there is not so much free land, and the old acres are needing stimulants, which cost money, and the farmer, who pays for everything, is beginning to ask questions. also the great american nation, which individually never shuts a door behind its noble self, very seldom attempts to put back anything that it has taken from nature's shelves. it grabs all it can and moves on. but the moving-on is nearly finished and the grabbing must stop, and then the federal government will have to establish a woods and forests department the like of which was never seen in the world before. and all the people who have been accustomed to hack, mangle, and burn timber as they please will object, with shots and protestations, to this infringement of their rights. the nigger will breed bounteously, and _he_ will have to be reckoned with; and the manufacturer will have to be contented with smaller profits, and _he_ will have to be reckoned with; and the railways will no longer rule the countries through which they run, and they will have to be reckoned with. and nobody will approve of it in the least. yes; it will be a spectacle for all the world to watch, this big, slashing colt of a nation, that has got off with a flying start on a freshly littered course, being pulled back to the ruck by that very mutton-fisted jockey necessity. there will be excitement in america when a few score millions of "sovereigns" discover that what they considered the outcome of their own government is but the rapidly diminishing bounty of nature; and that if they want to get on comfortably they must tackle every single problem from labour to finance humbly, without gasconade, and afresh. but at present they look "that all the to-morrows shall be as to-day," and if you argue with them they say that the democratic idea will keep things going. they believe in that idea, and the less well-informed fortify themselves in their belief by curious assertions as to the despotism that exists in england. this is pure provincialism, of course; but it is very funny to listen to, especially when you compare the theory with the practice (pistol, chiefly) as proven in the newspapers. i have striven to find out where the central authority of the land lies. it isn't at washington, because the federal government can't do anything to the states save run the mail and collect a federal tax or two. it isn't in the states, because the townships can do as they like; and it isn't in the townships, because these are bossed by alien voters or rings of patriotic homebred citizens. and it certainly is not in the citizens, because they are governed and coerced by despotic power of public opinion as represented by their papers, preachers, or local society. i found one man who told me that if anything went wrong in this huge congress of kings,--if there was a split or an upheaval or a smash,--the people in detail would be subject to the idea of the sovereign people in mass. this is a survival from the civil war, when, you remember, the people in a majority did with guns and swords slay and wound the people in detail. all the same, the notion seems very much like the worship by the savage of the unloaded rifle as it leans against the wall. but the men and women set us an example in patriotism. they believe in their land and its future, and its honour, and its glory, and they are not ashamed to say so. from the largest to the least runs this same proud, passionate conviction to which i take off my hat and for which i love them. an average english householder seems to regard his country as an abstraction to supply him with policemen and fire-brigades. the cockney cad cannot understand what the word means. the bloomin' toffs he knows, and the law, and the soldiers that supply him with a spectacle in the parks; but he would laugh in your face at the notion of any duty being owed by himself to his land. pick an american of the second generation anywhere you please--from the cab-rank, the porter's room, or the plough-tail,--'specially the plough-tail,--and that man will make you understand in five minutes that he understands what manner of thing his republic is. he might laugh at a law that didn't suit his convenience, draw your eye-teeth in a bargain, and applaud 'cuteness on the outer verge of swindling: but you should hear him stand up and sing:-- "my country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee i sing!" i have heard a few thousand of them engaged in that employment. i respect him. there is too much romeo and too little balcony about our national anthem. with the american article it is all balcony. there must be born a poet who shall give the english _the_ song of their own, own country--which is to say, of about half the world. remains then only to compose the greatest song of all--the saga of the anglo-saxon all round the earth--a pæan that shall combine the terrible slow swing of the _battle hymn of the republic_ (which, if you know not, get chanted to you) with _britannia needs no bulwarks_, the skirl of the _british grenadiers_ with that perfect quickstep, _marching through georgia_, and at the end the wail of the _dead march_. for we, even we who share the earth between us as no gods have ever shared it, we also are mortal in the matter of our single selves. will any one take the contract? it was with these rambling notions that i arrived at the infinite peace of the tiny township of musquash on the monongahela river. the clang and tumult of chicago belonged to another world. imagine a rolling, wooded, english landscape, under softest of blue skies, dotted at three-mile intervals with fat little, quiet little villages, or aggressive little manufacturing towns that the trees and the folds of the hills mercifully prevented from betraying their presence. the golden-rod blazed in the pastures against the green of the mulleins, and the cows picked their way home through the twisted paths between the blackberry bushes. all summer was on the orchards, and the apples--such apples as we dream of when we eat the woolly imitations of kashmir--were ripe and toothsome. it was good to lie in a hammock with half-shut eyes, and, in the utter stillness, to hear the apples dropping from the trees, and the tinkle of the cowbells as the cows walked statelily down the main road of the village. everybody in that restful place seemed to have just as much as he wanted; a house with all comfortable appliances, a big or little verandah wherein to spend the day, a neatly shaved garden with a wild wealth of flowers, some cows, and an orchard. everybody knew everybody else intimately, and what they did not know, the local daily paper--a daily for a village of twelve hundred people!--supplied. there was a court-house where justice was done, and a jail where some most enviable prisoners lived, and there were four or five churches of four or five denominations. also it was impossible to buy openly any liquor in that little paradise. but--and this is a very serious _but_--you could by procuring a medical certificate get strong drinks from the chemist. that is the drawback of prohibition. it makes a man who wants a drink a shirker and a contriver, which things are not good for the soul of a man, and presently, 'specially if he be young, causes him to believe that he may just as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb; and the end of that young man is not pretty. nothing except a rattling fall will persuade an average colt that a fence is not meant to be jumped over; whereas if he be turned out into the open he learns to carry himself with discretion. one heard a good deal of this same dread of drink in musquash, and even the maidens seemed to know too much about its effects upon certain unregenerate youths, who, if they had been once made thoroughly, effectually, and persistently drunk--with a tepid brandy and soda thrust before their goose-fleshed noses on the terrible next morning--would perhaps have seen the futility of their ways. it was a sin by village canons to imbibe lager, though--_experto crede_--you can get dropsy on that stuff long before you can get drunk. "but what man knows his mind?" besides, it was all their own affair. the little community seemed to be as self-contained as an indian village. had the rest of the land sunk under the sea, musquash would have gone on sending its sons to school in order to make them "good citizens," which is the constant prayer of the true american father, settling its own road-making, local cesses, town-lot arbitrations, and internal government by ballot and vote and due respect to the voices of the headmen (which is the salvation of the ballot), until such time as all should take their places in the cemetery appointed for their faith. here were americans and no aliens--men ruling themselves by themselves and for themselves and their wives and their children--in peace, order, and decency. but what went straightest to this heart, though they did not know it, was that they were methody folk for the most part--ay, methody as ever trod a yorkshire moor, or drove on a sunday to some chapel of the faith in the dales. the old methody talk was there, with the discipline whereby the souls of the just are, sometimes to their intense vexation, made perfect on this earth in order that they may "take out their letters and live and die in good standing." if you don't know the talk, you won't know what that means. the discipline, or dis_cip_line, is no thing to be trifled with, and its working among a congregation depends entirely upon the tact, humanity, and sympathy of the leader who works it. he, knowing what youth's desires are, can turn the soul in the direction of good, gently, instead of wrenching it savagely towards the right path only to see it break away quivering and scared. the arm of the dis_cip_line is long. a maiden told me, as a new and strange fact and one that would interest a foreigner, of a friend of hers who had once been admonished by some elders somewhere--not in musquash--for the heinous crime of dancing. she, the friend, did not in the least like it. she would not. can't you imagine the delightful results of a formal wigging administered by a youngish and austere elder who was not accustomed to make allowances for the natural dancing instincts of the young of the human animal? the hot irons that are held forth to scare may also sear, as those who have ever lain under an unfortunate exposition of the old faith can attest. but it was all immensely interesting--the absolutely fresh, wholesome, sweet life that paid due reverence to the things of the next world, but took good care to get enough tennis in the cool of the evening; that concerned itself as honestly and thoroughly with the daily round, the trivial task (and that same task is anything but trivial when you are "helped" by an american "help") as with the salvation of the soul. i had the honour of meeting in the flesh, even as miss louisa alcott drew them, meg and joe and beth and amy, whom you ought to know. there was no affectation of concealment in their lives who had nothing to conceal. there were many "little women" in that place, because, even as is the case in england, the boys had gone out to seek their fortunes. some were working in the thundering, clanging cities, others had removed to the infinite west, and others had disappeared in the languid, lazy south; and the maidens waited their return, which is the custom of maidens all over the world. then the boys would come back in the soft sunlight, attired in careful raiment, their tongues cleansed of evil words and discourtesy. they had just come to call--bless their carefully groomed heads so they had,--and the maidens in white dresses glimmered like ghosts on the stoop and received them according to their merits. mamma had nothing to do with this, nor papa either, for he was down-town trying to drive reason into the head of a land surveyor; and all along the shaded, lazy, intimate street you heard the garden-gates click and clash, as the mood of the man varied, and bursts of pleasant laughter where three or four--be sure the white muslins were among them,--discussed a picnic past or a buggy-drive to come. then the couples went their ways and talked together till the young men had to go at last on account of the trains, and all trooped joyously down to the station and thought no harm of it. and, indeed, why should they? from her fifteenth year the american maiden moves among "the boys" as a sister among brothers. they are her servants to take her out riding,--which is driving,--to give her flowers and candy. the last two items are expensive, and this is good for the young man, as teaching him to value friendship that costs a little in cash and may necessitate economy on the cigar side. as to the maiden, she is taught to respect herself, that her fate is in her own hands, and that she is the more stringently bound by the very measure of the liberty so freely accorded to her. wherefore, in her own language, "she has a lovely time" with about two or three hundred boys who have sisters of their own, and a very accurate perception that if they were unworthy of their trust a syndicate of other boys would probably pass them into a world where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. and so time goes till the maiden knows the other side of the house,--knows that a man is not a demi-god nor a mysteriously veiled monster, but an average, egotistical, vain, gluttonous, but on the whole companionable, sort of person, to be soothed, fed, and managed--knowledge that does not come to her sister in england till after a few years of matrimony. and then she makes her choice. the golden light touches eyes that are full of comprehension; but the light is golden none the less, for she makes just the same sweet, irrational choices that an english girl does. with this advantage: she knows a little more, has experience in entertaining, insight into the businesses, employ, and hobbies of men, gathered from countless talks with the boys, and talks with the other girls who find time at those mysterious conclaves to discuss what tom, ted, stuke, or jack have been doing. thus it happens that she is a companion, in the fullest sense of the word, of the man she weds, zealous for the interest of the firm, to be consulted in time of stress and to be called upon for help and sympathy in time of danger. pleasant it is that one heart should beat for you; but it is better when the head above that heart has been thinking hard on your behalf, and when the lips, that are also very pleasant to kiss, give wise counsel. when the american maiden--i speak now for the rank and file of that noble army--is once married, why, it is finished. she has had her lovely time. it may have been five, seven, or ten years according to circumstances. she abdicates promptly with startling speed, and her place knows her no more except as with her husband. the queen is dead, or looking after the house. this same household work seems to be the thing that ages the american woman. she is infamously "helped" by the irish trollop and the negress alike. it is not fair upon her, because she has to do three parts of the housework herself, and in dry, nerve-straining air the "chores" are a burden. be thankful, o my people, for mauz baksh, kadir baksh, and the _ayah_ while they are with you. they are twice as handy as the unkempt slatterns of the furnished apartments to which you will return, commissioners though you be; and five times as clever as the amelia araminta rebellia secessia jackson (coloured) under whose ineptitude and insolence the young american housewife groans. but all this is far enough from peaceful, placid musquash and its boundless cordiality, its simple, genuine hospitality, and its--what's the french word that just covers all?--_gra_--_gracieuseness_, isn't it? oh, be good to an american wherever you meet him. put him up for the club, and he will hold you listening till three in the morning; give him the best tent, and the gram-fed mutton. i have incurred a debt of salt that i can never repay, but do you return it piecemeal to any of that nation, and the account will be on my head till our paths in the world cross again. he drinks iced water just as we do; but he doesn't quite like our cigars. and how shall i finish the tale? would it interest you to learn of the picnics in the hot, still woods that overhang the monongahela, when those idiotic american buggies that can't turn round got stuck among the brambles and all but capsized; of boating in the blazing sun on the river that but a little time before had cast at the feet of the horrified village the corpses of the johnstown tragedy? i saw one, only one, remnant of that terrible wreck. he had been a minister. house, church, congregation, wife, and children had been swept away from him in one night of terror. he had no employment; he could have employed himself at nothing; but god had been very good to him. he sat in the sun and smiled a little weakly. it was in his poor blurred mind that something had happened--he was not sure what it was, but undoubtedly something had occurred. one could only pray that the light would never return. but there be many pictures on my mind. of a huge manufacturing city of three hundred thousand souls lighted and warmed by natural gas, so that the great valley full of flaming furnaces sent up no smoke wreaths to the clear sky. of musquash itself lighted by the same mysterious agency, flares of gas eight feet long, roaring day and night at the corners of the grass-grown streets because it wasn't worth while to turn them out; of fleets of coal-flats being hauled down the river on an interminable journey to st. louis; of factories nestling in woods where all the axe-handles and shovels in the world seemed to be manufactured daily; and last, of that quaint forgotten german community, the brotherhood of perpetual separation, who founded themselves when the state was yet young and land cheap, and are now dying out because they will neither marry nor give in marriage and their recruits are very few. the advance in the value of land has almost smothered these poor old people in a golden affluence that they never desired. they live in a little village where the houses are built old dutch fashion, with their front doors away from the road, and cobbled paths all about. the cloistered peace of musquash is a metropolitan riot beside the hush of that village. and there is, too, a love-tale tucked away among the flowers. it has taken seventy years in the telling, for the brother and sister loved each other well, but they loved their duty to the brotherhood more. so they have lived and still do live, seeing each other daily, and separated for all time. any trouble that might have been is altogether wiped out of their faces, which are as calm as those of very little children. to the uninitiated those constant ones resemble extremely old people in garments of absurd cut. but they love each other, and that seems to bring one back quite naturally to the girls and the boys in musquash. the boys were nice boys--graduates of yale of course; you mustn't mention harvard here--but none the less skilled in business, in stocks and shares, the boring for oil, and the sale of everything that can be sold by one sinner to another. skilled, too, in baseball, big-shouldered, with straight eyes and square chins--but not above occasional diversion and mild orgies. they will make good citizens and possess the earth, and eventually wed one of the nice white muslin dresses. there are worse things in this world than being "one of the boys" in musquash. no. xxxvii an interview with mark twain. you are a contemptible lot, over yonder. some of you are commissioners, and some lieutenant-governors, and some have the v. c., and a few are privileged to walk about the mall arm in arm with the viceroy; but _i_ have seen mark twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand, and smoked a cigar--no, two cigars--with him, and talked with him for more than two hours! understand clearly that i do not despise you; indeed, i don't. i am only very sorry for you, from the viceroy downward. to soothe your envy and to prove that i still regard you as my equals, i will tell you all about it. they said in buffalo that he was in hartford, conn.; and again they said "perchance he is gone upon a journey to portland"; and a big, fat drummer vowed that he knew the great man intimately, and that mark was spending the summer in europe--which information so upset me that i embarked upon the wrong train, and was incontinently turned out by the conductor three-quarters of a mile from the station, amid the wilderness of railway tracks. have you ever, encumbered with great-coat and valise, tried to dodge diversely-minded locomotives when the sun was shining in your eyes? but i forgot that you have not seen mark twain, you people of no account! saved from the jaws of the cow-catcher, me wandering devious a stranger met. "elmira is the place. elmira in the state of new york--this state, not two hundred miles away;" and he added, perfectly unnecessarily, "slide, kelley, slide." i slid on the west shore line, i slid till midnight, and they dumped me down at the door of a frowzy hotel in elmira. yes, they knew all about "that man clemens," but reckoned he was not in town; had gone east somewhere. i had better possess my soul in patience till the morrow, and then dig up the "man clemens'" brother-in-law, who was interested in coal. the idea of chasing half a dozen relatives in addition to mark twain up and down a city of thirty thousand inhabitants kept me awake. morning revealed elmira, whose streets were desolated by railway tracks, and whose suburbs were given up to the manufacture of door-sashes and window-frames. it was surrounded by pleasant, fat, little hills, rimmed with timber and topped with cultivation. the chemung river flowed generally up and down the town, and had just finished flooding a few of the main streets. the hotel-man and the telephone-man assured me that the much-desired brother-in-law was out of town, and no one seemed to know where "the man clemens" abode. later on i discovered that he had not summered in that place for more than nineteen seasons, and so was comparatively a new arrival. a friendly policeman volunteered the news that he had seen twain or "some one very like him" driving a buggy the day before. this gave me a delightful sense of nearness. fancy living in a town where you could see the author of _tom sawyer_, or "some one very like him," jolting over the pavements in a buggy! "he lives out yonder at east hill," said the policeman; "three miles from here." then the chase began--in a hired hack, up an awful hill, where sunflowers blossomed by the roadside, and crops waved, and _harper's magazine_ cows stood in eligible and commanding attitudes knee-deep in clover, all ready to be transferred to photogravure. the great man must have been persecuted by outsiders aforetime, and fled up the hill for refuge. presently the driver stopped at a miserable, little, white wood shanty, and demanded "mister clemens." "i know he's a big-bug and all that," he explained, "but you can never tell what sort of notions those sort of men take into their heads to live in, anyways." there rose up a young lady who was sketching thistle-tops and goldenrod, amid a plentiful supply of both, and set the pilgrimage on the right path. "it's a pretty gothic house on the left-hand side a little way farther on." "gothic h----," said the driver. "very few of the city hacks take this drive, specially if they know they are coming out here," and he glared at me savagely. it was a very pretty house, anything but gothic, clothed with ivy, standing in a very big compound, and fronted by a verandah full of chairs and hammocks. the roof of the verandah was a trellis-work of creepers, and the sun peeping through moved on the shining boards below. decidedly this remote place was an ideal one for work, if a man could work among these soft airs and the murmur of the long-eared crops. appeared suddenly a lady used to dealing with rampageous outsiders. "mr. clemens has just walked down-town. he is at his brother-in-law's house." then he was within shouting distance, after all, and the chase had not been in vain. with speed i fled, and the driver, skidding the wheel and swearing audibly, arrived at the bottom of that hill without accidents. it was in the pause that followed between ringing the brother-in-law's bell and getting an answer that it occurred to me for the first time mark twain might possibly have other engagements than the entertainment of escaped lunatics from india, be they never so full of admiration. and in another man's house--anyhow, what had i come to do or say? suppose the drawing-room should be full of people,--suppose a baby were sick, how was i to explain that i only wanted to shake hands with him? then things happened somewhat in this order. a big, darkened drawing-room; a huge chair; a man with eyes, a mane of grizzled hair, a brown mustache covering a mouth as delicate as a woman's, a strong, square hand shaking mine, and the slowest, calmest, levellest voice in all the world saying:-- "well, you think you owe me something, and you've come to tell me so. that's what i call squaring a debt handsomely." "piff!" from a cob-pipe (i always said that a missouri meerschaum was the best smoking in the world), and, behold! mark twain had curled himself up in the big armchair, and i was smoking reverently, as befits one in the presence of his superior. the thing that struck me first was that he was an elderly man; yet, after a minute's thought, i perceived that it was otherwise, and in five minutes, the eyes looking at me, i saw that the grey hair was an accident of the most trivial. he was quite young. i was shaking his hand. i was smoking his cigar, and i was hearing him talk--this man i had learned to love and admire fourteen thousand miles away. reading his books, i had striven to get an idea of his personality, and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the reality. blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face to face with a revered writer. that was a moment to be remembered; the landing of a twelve-pound salmon was nothing to it. i had hooked mark twain, and he was treating me as though under certain circumstances i might be an equal. about this time i became aware that he was discussing the copyright question. here, so far as i remember, is what he said. attend to the words of the oracle through this unworthy medium transmitted. you will never be able to imagine the long, slow surge of the drawl, and the deadly gravity of the countenance, the quaint pucker of the body, one foot thrown over the arm of the chair, the yellow pipe clinched in one corner of the mouth, and the right hand casually caressing the square chin:-- "copyright? some men have morals, and some men have--other things. i presume a publisher is a man. he is not born. he is created--by circumstances. some publishers have morals. mine have. they pay me for the english productions of my books. when you hear men talking of bret harte's works and other works and my books being pirated, ask them to be sure of their facts. i think they'll find the books are paid for. it was ever thus. "i remember an unprincipled and formidable publisher. perhaps he's dead now. he used to take my short stories--i can't call it steal or pirate them. it was beyond these things altogether. he took my stories one at a time and made a book of it. if i wrote an essay on dentistry or theology or any little thing of that kind--just an essay that long (he indicated half an inch on his finger), any sort of essay--that publisher would amend and improve my essay. "he would get another man to write some more to it or cut it about exactly as his needs required. then he would publish a book called _dentistry by mark twain_, that little essay and some other things not mine added. theology would make another book, and so on. i do not consider that fair. it's an insult. but he's dead now, i think. i didn't kill him. "there is a great deal of nonsense talked about international copyright. the proper way to treat a copyright is to make it exactly like real-estate in every way. "it will settle itself under these conditions. if congress were to bring in a law that a man's life was not to extend over a hundred and sixty years, somebody would laugh. that law wouldn't concern anybody. the man would be out of the jurisdiction of the court. a term of years in copyright comes to exactly the same thing. no law can make a book live or cause it to die before the appointed time. "tottletown, cal., was a new town, with a population of three thousand--banks, fire-brigade, brick buildings, and all the modern improvements. it lived, it flourished, and it disappeared. to-day no man can put his foot on any remnant of tottletown, cal. it's dead. london continues to exist. bill smith, author of a book read for the next year or so, is real-estate in tottletown. william shakespeare, whose works are extensively read, is real-estate in london. let bill smith, equally with mr. shakespeare now deceased, have as complete a control over his copyright as he would over his real-estate. let him gamble it away, drink it away, or--give it to the church. let his heirs and assigns treat it in the same manner. "every now and again i go up to washington, sitting on a board to drive that sort of view into congress. congress takes its arguments against international copyright delivered ready made, and--congress isn't very strong. i put the real-estate view of the case before one of the senators. "he said: 'suppose a man has written a book that will live for ever?' "i said: 'neither you nor i will ever live to see that man, but we'll assume it. what then?' "he said: 'i want to protect the world against that man's heirs and assigns, working under your theory.' "i said: 'you think that all the world has no commercial sense. the book that will live for ever can't be artificially kept up at inflated prices. there will always be very expensive editions of it and cheap ones issuing side by side.' "take the case of sir walter scott's novels," mark twain continued, turning to me. "when the copyright notes protected them, i bought editions as expensive as i could afford, because i liked them. at the same time the same firm were selling editions that a cat might buy. they had their real estate, and not being fools, recognised that one portion of the plot could be worked as a gold mine, another as a vegetable garden, and another as a marble quarry. do you see?" what i saw with the greatest clearness was mark twain being forced to fight for the simple proposition that a man has as much right to the work of his brains (think of the heresy of it!) as to the labour of his hands. when the old lion roars, the young whelps growl. i growled assentingly, and the talk ran on from books in general to his own in particular. growing bold, and feeling that i had a few hundred thousand folk at my back, i demanded whether tom sawyer married judge thatcher's daughter and whether we were ever going to hear of tom sawyer as a man. "i haven't decided," quoth mark twain, getting up, filling his pipe, and walking up and down the room in his slippers. "i have a notion of writing the sequel to _tom sawyer_ in two ways. in one i would make him rise to great honour and go to congress, and in the other i should hang him. then the friends and enemies of the book could take their choice." here i lost my reverence completely, and protested against any theory of the sort, because, to me at least, tom sawyer was real. "oh, he _is_ real," said mark twain. "he's all the boy that i have known or recollect; but that would be a good way of ending the book"; then, turning round, "because, when you come to think of it, neither religion, training, nor education avails anything against the force of circumstances that drive a man. suppose we took the next four and twenty years of tom sawyer's life, and gave a little joggle to the circumstances that controlled him. he would, logically and according to the joggle, turn out a rip or an angel." "do you believe that, then?" "i think so. isn't it what you call kismet?" "yes; but don't give him two joggles and show the result, because he isn't your property any more. he belongs to us." he laughed--a large, wholesome laugh--and this began a dissertation on the rights of a man to do what he liked with his own creations, which being a matter of purely professional interest, i will mercifully omit. returning to the big chair, he, speaking of truth and the like in literature, said that an autobiography was the one work in which a man, against his own will and in spite of his utmost striving to the contrary, revealed himself in his true light to the world. "a good deal of your life on the mississippi is autobiographical, isn't it?" i asked. "as near as it can be--when a man is writing to a book and about himself. but in genuine autobiography, i believe it is impossible for a man to tell the truth about himself or to avoid impressing the reader with the truth about himself. "i made an experiment once. i got a friend of mine--a man painfully given to speak the truth on all occasions--a man who wouldn't dream of telling a lie--and i made him write his autobiography for his own amusement and mine. he did it. the manuscript would have made an octavo volume, but--good, honest man that he was--in every single detail of his life that i knew about he turned out, on paper, a formidable liar. he could not help himself. "it is not in human nature to write the truth about itself. none the less the reader gets a general impression from an autobiography whether the man is a fraud or a good man. the reader can't give his reasons any more than a man can explain why a woman struck him as being lovely when he doesn't remember her hair, eyes, teeth, or figure. and the impression that the reader gets is a correct one." "do you ever intend to write an autobiography?" "if i do, it will be as other men have done--with the most earnest desire to make myself out to be the better man in every little business that has been to my discredit; and i shall fail, like the others, to make my readers believe anything except the truth." this naturally led to a discussion on conscience. then said mark twain, and his words are mighty and to be remembered:-- "your conscience is a nuisance. a conscience is like a child. if you pet it and play with it and let it have everything that it wants, it becomes spoiled and intrudes on all your amusements and most of your griefs. treat your conscience as you would treat anything else. when it is rebellious, spank it--be severe with it, argue with it, prevent it from coming to play with you at all hours, and you will secure a good conscience; that is to say, a properly trained one. a spoiled one simply destroys all the pleasure in life. i think i have reduced mine to order. at least, i haven't heard from it for some time. perhaps i have killed it from over-severity. it's wrong to kill a child, but, in spite of all i have said, a conscience differs from a child in many ways. perhaps it's best when it's dead." here he told me a little--such things as a man may tell a stranger--of his early life and upbringing, and in what manner he had been influenced for good by the example of his parents. he spoke always through his eyes, a light under the heavy eyebrows; anon crossing the room with a step as light as a girl's, to show me some book or other; then resuming his walk up and down the room, puffing at the cob pipe. i would have given much for nerve enough to demand the gift of that pipe--value, five cents when new. i understood why certain savage tribes ardently desired the liver of brave men slain in combat. that pipe would have given me, perhaps, a hint of his keen insight into the souls of men. but he never laid it aside within stealing reach. once, indeed, he put his hand on my shoulder. it was an investiture of the star of india, blue silk, trumpets, and diamond-studded jewel, all complete. if hereafter, in the changes and chances of this mortal life, i fall to cureless ruin, i will tell the superintendent of the workhouse that mark twain once put his hand on my shoulder; and he shall give me a room to myself and a double allowance of paupers' tobacco. "i never read novels myself," said he, "except when the popular persecution forces me to--when people plague me to know what i think of the last book that every one is reading." "and how did the latest persecution affect you?" "robert?" said he, interrogatively. i nodded. "i read it, of course, for the workmanship. that made me think i had neglected novels too long--that there might be a good many books as graceful in style somewhere on the shelves; so i began a course of novel reading. i have dropped it now; it did not amuse me. but as regards robert, the effect on me was exactly as though a singer of street ballads were to hear excellent music from a church organ. i didn't stop to ask whether the music was legitimate or necessary. i listened, and i liked what i heard. i am speaking of the grace and beauty of the style." "you see," he went on, "every man has his private opinion about a book. but that is my private opinion. if i had lived in the beginning of things, i should have looked around the township to see what popular opinion thought of the murder of abel before i openly condemned cain. i should have had my private opinion, of course, but i shouldn't have expressed it until i had felt the way. you have my private opinion about that book. i don't know what my public ones are exactly. they won't upset the earth." he recurled himself into the chair and talked of other things. "i spend nine months of the year at hartford. i have long ago satisfied myself that there is no hope of doing much work during those nine months. people come in and call. they call at all hours, about everything in the world. one day i thought i would keep a list of interruptions. it began this way:-- "a man came and would see no one but mr. clemens. he was an agent for photogravure reproductions of salon pictures. i very seldom use salon pictures in my books. "after that man another man, who refused to see any one but mr. clemens, came to make me write to washington about something. i saw him. i saw a third man, then a fourth. by this time it was noon. i had grown tired of keeping the list. i wished to rest. "but the fifth man was the only one of the crowd with a card of his own. he sent up his card. 'ben koontz, hannibal, mo.' i was raised in hannibal. ben was an old schoolmate of mine. consequently i threw the house wide open and rushed with both hands out at a big, fat, heavy man, who was not the ben i had ever known--nor anything like him. "'but _is_ it you, ben?' i said. 'you've altered in the last thousand years.' "the fat man said: 'well, i'm not koontz exactly, but i met him down in missouri, and he told me to be sure and call on you, and he gave me his card, and'--here he acted the little scene for my benefit--'if you can wait a minute till i can get out the circulars--i'm not koontz exactly, but i'm travelling with the fullest line of rods you ever saw.'" "and what happened?" i asked breathlessly. "i shut-the door. he was not ben koontz--exactly--not my old school-fellow, but i had shaken him by both hands in love, and ... i had been bearded by a lightning-rod man in my own house. "as i was saying, i do very little work in hartford. i come here for three months every year, and i work four or five hours a day in a study down the garden of that little house on the hill. of course, i do not object to two or three interruptions. when a man is in the full swing of his work these little things do not affect him. eight or ten or twenty interruptions retard composition." i was burning to ask him all manner of impertinent questions, as to which of his works he himself preferred, and so forth; but, standing in awe of his eyes, i dared not. he spoke on, and i listened, grovelling. it was a question of mental equipment that was on the carpet, and i am still wondering whether he meant what he said. "personally i never care for fiction or story-books. what i like to read about are facts and statistics of any kind. if they are only facts about the raising of radishes, they interest me. just now, for instance, before you came in"--he pointed to an encyclopædia on the shelves--"i was reading an article about 'mathematics.' perfectly pure mathematics. "my own knowledge of mathematics stops at 'twelve times twelve,' but i enjoyed that article immensely. i didn't understand a word of it: but facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful. that mathematical fellow believed in his facts. so do i. get your facts first, and"--the voice dies away to an almost inaudible drone--"then you can distort 'em as much as you please." bearing this precious advice in my bosom, i left; the great man assuring me with gentle kindness that i had not interrupted him in the least. once outside the door, i yearned to go back and ask some questions--it was easy enough to think of them now--but his time was his own, though his books belonged to me. i should have ample time to look back to that meeting across the graves of the days. but it was sad to think of the things he had not spoken about. in san francisco the men of _the call_ told me many legends of mark's apprenticeship in their paper five and twenty years ago; how he was a reporter delightfully incapable of reporting according to the needs of the day. he preferred, so they said, to coil himself into a heap and meditate until the last minute. then he would produce copy bearing no sort of relationship to his legitimate work--copy that made the editor swear horribly, and the readers of _the call_ ask for more. i should like to have heard mark's version of that, with some stories of his joyous and variegated past. he has been journeyman printer (in those days he wandered from the banks of the missouri even to philadelphia), pilot cub and full-blown pilot, soldier of the south (that was for three weeks only), private secretary to a lieutenant-governor of nevada (that displeased him), miner, editor, special correspondent in the sandwich islands, and the lord only knows what else. if so experienced a man could by any means be made drunk, it would be a glorious thing to fill him up with composite liquors, and, in the language of his own country, "let him retrospect." but these eyes will never see that orgy fit for the gods! the city of dreadful night the city of dreadful night chapter i jan.-feb., a real live city we are all backwoodsmen and barbarians together--we others dwelling beyond the ditch, in the outer darkness of the mofussil. there are no such things as commissioners and heads of departments in the world, and there is only one city in india. bombay is too green, too pretty, and too stragglesome; and madras died ever so long ago. let us take off our hats to calcutta, the many-sided, the smoky, the magnificent, as we drive in over the hugli bridge in the dawn of a still february morning. we have left india behind us at howrah station, and now we enter foreign parts. no, not wholly foreign. say rather too familiar. all men of a certain age know the feeling of caged irritation--an illustration in the _graphic_, a bar of music or the light words of a friend from home may set it ablaze--that comes from the knowledge of our lost heritage of london. at home they, the other men, our equals, have at their disposal all that town can supply--the roar of the streets, the lights, the music, the pleasant places, the millions of their own kind, and a wilderness full of pretty, fresh-coloured englishwomen, theatres and restaurants. it is their right. they accept it as such, and even affect to look upon it with contempt. and we--we have nothing except the few amusements that we painfully build up for ourselves--the dolorous dissipations of gymkhanas where every one knows everybody else, or the chastened intoxication of dances where all engagements are booked, in ink, ten days ahead, and where everybody's antecedents are as patent as his or her method of waltzing. we have been deprived of our inheritance. the men at home are enjoying it all, not knowing how fair and rich it is, and we at the most can only fly westward for a few months and gorge what, properly speaking, should take seven or eight or ten luxurious years. that is the lost heritage of london; and the knowledge of the forfeiture, wilful or forced, comes to most men at times and seasons, and they get cross. calcutta holds out false hopes of some return. the dense smoke hangs low, in the chill of the morning, over an ocean of roofs, and, as the city wakes, there goes up to the smoke a deep, full-throated boom of life and motion and humanity. for this reason does he who sees calcutta for the first time hang joyously out of the _ticca-ghari_[ ] and sniff the smoke, and turn his face toward the tumult, saying: "this is, at last, some portion of my heritage returned to me. this is a city. there is life here, and there should be all manner of pleasant things for the having, across the river and under the smoke." [ ] hired carriage. the litany is an expressive one and exactly describes the first emotions of a wandering savage adrift in calcutta. the eye has lost its sense of proportion, the focus has contracted through overmuch residence in up-country stations--twenty minutes' canter from hospital to parade-ground, you know--and the mind has shrunk with the eye. both say together, as they take in the sweep of shipping above and below the hugli bridge: "why, this is london! this is the docks. this is imperial. this is worth coming across india to see!" then a distinctly wicked idea takes possession of the mind: "what a divine--what a heavenly place to _loot_!" this gives place to a much worse devil--that of conservatism. it seems not only a wrong but a criminal thing to allow natives to have any voice in the control of such a city--adorned, docked, wharfed, fronted, and reclaimed by englishmen, existing only because england lives, and dependent for its life on england. all india knows of the calcutta municipality; but has any one thoroughly investigated the big calcutta stink? there is only one. benares is fouler in point of concentrated, pent-up muck, and there are local stenches in peshawar which are stronger than the b. c. s.; but, for diffused, soul-sickening expansiveness, the reek of calcutta beats both benares and peshawar. bombay cloaks her stenches with a veneer of assafoetida and tobacco; calcutta is above pretence. there is no tracing back the calcutta plague to any one source. it is faint, it is sickly, and it is indescribable; but americans at the great eastern hotel say that it is something like the smell of the chinese quarter in san francisco. it is certainly not an indian smell. it resembles the essence of corruption that has rotted for the second time--the clammy odour of blue slime. and there is no escape from it. it blows across the _maidan_; it comes in gusts into the corridors of the great eastern hotel; what they are pleased to call the "palaces of chowringhi" carry it; it swirls round the bengal club; it pours out of by-streets with sickening intensity, and the breeze of the morning is laden with it. it is first found, in spite of the fume of the engines, in howrah station. it seems to be worst in the little lanes at the back of lai bazar where the drinking-shops are, but it is nearly as bad opposite government house and in the public offices. the thing is intermittent. six moderately pure mouthfuls of air may be drawn without offence. then comes the seventh wave and the queasiness of an uncultured stomach. if you live long enough in calcutta you grow used to it. the regular residents admit the disgrace, but their answer is: "wait till the wind blows off the salt lakes where all the sewage goes, and _then_ you'll smell something." that is their defence! small wonder that they consider calcutta is a fit place for a permanent viceroy. englishmen who can calmly extenuate one shame by another are capable of asking for anything--and expecting to get it. if an up-country station holding three thousand troops and twenty civilians owned such a possession as calcutta does, the deputy commissioner or the cantonment magistrate would have all the natives off the board of management or decently shovelled into the background until the mess was abated. then they might come on again and talk of "high-handed oppression" as much as they liked. that stink, to an unprejudiced nose, damns calcutta as a city of kings. and, in spite of that stink, they allow, they even encourage, natives to look after the place! the damp, drainage-soaked soil is sick with the teeming life of a hundred years, and the municipal board list is choked with the names of natives--men of the breed born in and raised off this surfeited muck-heap! they own property, these amiable aryans on the municipal and the bengal legislative council. launch a proposal to tax them on that property, and they naturally howl. they also howl up-country, but there the halls for mass-meetings are few, and the vernacular papers fewer, and with a strong secretary and a president whose favour is worth the having and whose wrath is undesirable, men are kept clean despite themselves, and may not poison their neighbours. why, asks a savage, let them vote at all? they can put up with this filthiness. they _cannot_ have any feelings worth caring a rush for. let them live quietly and hide away their money under our protection, while we tax them till they know through their purses the measure of their neglect in the past, and when a little of the smell has been abolished, let us bring them back again to talk and take the credit of enlightenment. the better classes own their broughams and barouches; the worse can shoulder an englishman into the kennel and talk to him as though he were a cook. they can refer to an english lady as an _aurat_[ ]; they are permitted a freedom--not to put it too coarsely--of speech which, if used by an englishman toward an englishman, would end in serious trouble. they are fenced and protected and made inviolate. surely they might be content with all those things without entering into matters which they cannot, by the nature of their birth, understand. [ ] woman. now, whether all this genial diatribe be the outcome of an unbiassed mind or the result first of sickness caused by that ferocious stench, and secondly of headache due to day-long smoking to drown the stench, is an open question. anyway, calcutta is a fearsome place for a man not educated up to it. a word of advice to other barbarians. do not bring a north-country servant into calcutta. he is sure to get into trouble, because he does not understand the customs of the city. a punjabi in this place for the first time esteems it his bounden duty to go to the _ajaib-ghar_--the museum. such an one has gone and is even now returned very angry and troubled in the spirit. "i went to the museum," says he, "and no one gave me any abuse. i went to the market to buy my food, and then i sat upon a seat. there came an orderly who said, 'go away, i want to sit here.' i said, 'i am here first.' he said, 'i am a _chaprassi_![ ] get out!' and he hit me. now that sitting-place was open to all, so i hit him till he wept. he ran away for the police, and i went away too, for the police here are all sahibs. can i have leave from two o'clock to go and look for that man and hit him again?" [ ] messenger. behold the situation! an unknown city full of smell that makes one long for rest and retirement, and a champing servant, not yet six hours in the stew, who has started a blood-feud with an unknown _chaprassi_ and clamours to go forth to the fray. alas! for the lost delusion of the heritage that was to be restored. let us sleep, let us sleep, and pray that calcutta may be better to-morrow. at present it is remarkably like sleeping with a corpse. chapter ii the reflections of a savage. morning brings counsel. _does_ calcutta smell so pestiferously after all? heavy rain has fallen in the night. she is newly washed, and the clear sunlight shows her at her best. where, oh where, in all this wilderness of life shall a man go? the great eastern hums with life through all its hundred rooms. doors slam merrily, and all the nations of the earth run up and down the staircases. this alone is refreshing, because the passers bump you and ask you to stand aside. fancy finding any place outside the levée-room where englishmen are crowded together to this extent! fancy sitting down seventy strong to _tâble d'hôte_ and with a deafening clatter of knives and forks! fancy finding a real bar whence drinks may be obtained! and, joy of joys, fancy stepping out of the hotel into the arms of a live, white, helmeted, buttoned, truncheoned bobby! what would happen if one spoke to this bobby? would he be offended? he is not offended. he is affable. he has to patrol the pavement in front of the great eastern and to see that the crowding carriages do not jam. toward a presumably respectable white he behaves as a man and a brother. there is no arrogance, about him. and this is disappointing. closer inspection shows that he is not a _real_ bobby after all. he is a municipal police something and his uniform is not correct; at least if they have not changed the dress of the men at home. but no matter. later on we will inquire into the calcutta bobby, because he is a white man, and has to deal with some of the "toughest" folk that ever set out of malice aforethought to paint job charnock's city vermilion. you must not, you cannot cross old court house street without looking carefully to see that you stand no chance of being run over. this is beautiful. there is a steady roar of traffic, cut every two minutes by the deep roll of the trams. the driving is eccentric, not to say bad, but there is the traffic--more than unsophisticated eyes have beheld for a certain number of years. it means business, it means money-making, it means crowded and hurrying life, and it gets into the blood and makes it move. here be big shops with plate-glass fronts--all displaying the well-known names of firms that we savages only correspond with through the parcels post.[ ] they are all here, as large as life, ready to supply anything you need if you only care to sign. great is the fascination of being able to obtain a thing on the spot without having to write for a week and wait for a month, and then get something quite different. no wonder pretty ladies, who live anywhere within a reasonable distance, come down to do their shopping personally. [ ] c.o.d. "look here. if you want to be respectable you mustn't smoke in the streets. nobody does it." this is advice kindly tendered by a friend in a black coat. there is no levée or lieutenant-governor in sight; but he wears the frock-coat because it is daylight, and he can be seen. he refrains from smoking for the same reason. he admits that providence built the open air to be smoked in, but he says that "it isn't the thing." this man has a brougham, a remarkably natty little pill-box with a curious wabble about the wheels. he steps into the brougham and puts on--a top-hat, a shiny black "plug." there was a man up-country once who owned a top-hat. he leased it to amateur theatrical companies for some seasons until the nap wore off. then he threw it into a tree and wild bees hived in it. men were wont to come and look at the hat, in its palmy days, for the sake of feeling homesick. it interested all the station, and died with two seers of _babul_-flower honey in its bosom. but top-hats are not intended to be worn in india. they are as sacred as home letters and old rosebuds. the friend cannot see this. he allows that if he stepped out of his brougham and walked about in the sunshine for ten minutes he would get a bad headache. in half-an-hour he would probably die of sunstroke. he allows all this, but he keeps to his hat and cannot see why a barbarian is moved to inextinguishable laughter at the sight. every one who owns a brougham and many people who hire _ticca-gharis_ keep top-hats and black frock-coats. the effect is curious, and at first fills the beholder with surprise. and now, "let us see the handsome houses where the wealthy nobles dwell." northerly lies the great human jungle of the native city, stretching from burra bazar to chitpore. that can keep. southerly is the _maidan_ and chowringhi. "if you get out into the centre of the _maidan_ you will understand why calcutta is called the city of palaces." the travelled american said so at the great eastern. there is a short tower, falsely called a "memorial," standing in a waste of soft, sour green. that is as good a place to get to as any other. the size of the _maidan_ takes the heart out of any one accustomed to the "gardens" of up-country, just as they say newmarket heath cows a horse accustomed to more a shut-in course. the huge level is studded with brazen statues of eminent gentlemen riding fretful horses on diabolically severe curbs. the expanse dwarfs the statues, dwarfs everything except the frontage of the far-away chowringhi road. it is big--it is impressive. there is no escaping the fact. they built houses in the old days when the rupee was two shillings and a penny. those houses are three-storied, and ornamented with service-staircases like houses in the hills. they are very close together, and they have garden walls of masonry pierced with a single gate. in their shut-upness they are british. in their spaciousness they are oriental, but those service-staircases do not look healthy. we will form an amateur sanitary commission and call upon chowringhi. a first introduction to the calcutta _durwân_ or door-keeper is not nice. if he is chewing _pân_, he does not take the trouble to get rid of his quid. if he is sitting on his cot chewing sugar-cane, he does not think it worth his while to rise. he has to be taught those things, and he cannot understand why he should be reproved. clearly he is a survival of a played-out system. providence never intended that any native should be made a _concierge_ more insolent than any of the french variety. the people of calcutta put a man in a little lodge close to the gate of their house, in order that loafers may be turned away, and the houses protected from theft. the natural result is that the _durwân_ treats everybody whom he does not know as a loafer, has an intimate and vendible knowledge of all the outgoings and incomings in that house, and controls, to a large extent, the nomination of the servants. they say that one of the estimable class is now suing a bank for about three lakhs of rupees.[ ] up-country, a lieutenant-governor's servant has to work for thirty years before he can retire on seventy thousand rupees of savings. the calcutta _durwân_ is a great institution. the head and front of his offence is that he will insist upon trying to talk english. how he protects the houses calcutta only knows. he can be frightened out of his wits by severe speech, and is generally asleep in calling hours. if a rough round of visits be any guide, three times out of seven he is fragrant of drink. so much for the _durwân_. now for the houses he guards. [ ] say $ , . very pleasant is the sensation of being ushered into a pestiferously stablesome drawing-room. "does this always happen?" "no, not unless you shut up the room for some time; but if you open the shutters there are other smells. you see the stables and the servants' quarters are close to." people pay five hundred a month for half-a-dozen rooms filled with scents of this kind. they make no complaint. when they think the honour of the city is at stake they say defiantly: "yes, but you must remember we're a metropolis. we are crowded here. we have no room. we aren't like your little stations." chowringhi is a stately place full of sumptuous houses, but it is best to look at it hastily. stop to consider for a moment what the cramped compounds, the black soaked soil, the netted intricacies of the service-staircases, the packed stables, the seethment of human life round the _durwâns'_ lodges and the curious arrangement of little open drains mean, and you will call it a whited sepulchre. men living in expensive tenements suffer from chronic sore throat, and will tell you cheerily that "we've got typhoid in calcutta now." is the pest ever out of it? everything seems to be built with a view to its comfort. it can lodge comfortably on roofs, climb along from the gutter-pipe to piazza, or rise from sink to verandah and thence to the topmost story. but calcutta says that all is sound and produces figures to prove it; at the same time admitting that healthy cut flesh will not readily heal. further evidence may be dispensed with. here come pouring down park street on the _maidân_ a rush of broughams, neat buggies, the lightest of gigs, trim office brownberrys, shining victorias, and a sprinkling of veritable hansom cabs. in the broughams sit men in top-hats. in the other carts, young men, all very much alike, and all immaculately turned out. a fresh stream from chowringhi joins the park street detachment, and the two together stream away across the _maidân_ toward the business quarter of the city. this is calcutta going to office--the civilians to the government buildings and the young men to their firms and their blocks and their wharves. here one sees that calcutta has the best turn-out in the empire. horses and traps alike are enviably perfect, and--mark the touchstone of civilization--_the lamps are in their sockets!_ the country-bred is a rare beast here; his place is taken by the waler,[ ] and the waler, though a ruffian at heart, can be made to look like a gentleman. it would be indecorous to applaud the winking harness, the perfectly lacquered panels, and the liveried _saises_. they show well in the outwardly fair roads shadowed by the palaces. [ ] imported australian horse. how many sections of the complex society of the place do the carts carry? _first_, the bengal civilian who goes to writers' buildings and sits in a perfect office and speaks flippantly of "sending things to india," meaning thereby referring matters to the supreme government. he is a great person, and his mouth is full of promotion-and-appointment "shop." generally he is referred to as a "rising man." calcutta seems full of "rising men." _secondly_, the government of india man, who wears a familiar simla face, rents a flat when he is not up in the hills, and is rational on the subject of the drawbacks of calcutta. _thirdly_, the man of the "firms," the pure non-official who fights under the banner of one of the great houses of the city, or for his own hand in a neat office, or dashes about clive street in a brougham doing "share work" or something of the kind. he fears not "bengal," nor regards he "india." he swears impartially at both when their actions interfere with his operations. his "shop" is quite unintelligible. he is like the english city man with the chill off, lives well and entertains hospitably. in the old days he was greater than he is now, but still he bulks large. he is rational in so far that he will help the abuse of the municipality, but womanish in his insistence on the excellencies of calcutta. over and above these who are hurrying to work are the various brigades, squads, and detachments of the other interests. but they are sets and not sections, and revolve round belvedere, government house, and fort william. simla and darjeeling claim them in the hot weather. let them go. they wear top-hats and frock-coats. it is time to escape from chowringhi road and get among the long-shore folk, who have no prejudices against tobacco, and who all use very much the same sort of hat. chapter iii the council of the gods. he set up conclusions to the number of nine thousand seven hundred and sixty-four ... he went afterwards to the sorbonne, where he maintained argument against the theologians for the space of six weeks, from four o'clock in the morning till six in the evening, except for an interval of two hours to refresh themselves and take their repasts, and at this were present the greatest part of the lords of the court, the masters of request, presidents, counsellors, those of the accompts, secretaries, advocates, and others; as also the sheriffs of the said town.--_pantagruel._ "the bengal legislative council is sitting now. you will find it in an octagonal wing of writers' buildings: straight across the _maidân_. it's worth seeing." "what are they sitting on?" "municipal business. no end of a debate." so much for trying to keep low company. the long-shore loafers must stand over. without doubt this council is going to hang some one for the state of the city, and sir steuart bayley will be chief executioner. one does not come across councils every day. writers' buildings are large. you can trouble the busy workers of half-a-dozen departments before you stumble upon the black-stained staircase that leads to an upper chamber looking out over a populous street. wild orderlies block the way. the councillor sahibs are sitting, but any one can enter. "to the right of the lât sahib's chair, and go quietly." ill-mannered minion! does he expect the awe-stricken spectator to prance in with a war-whoop or turn catherine-wheels round that sumptuous octagonal room with the blue-domed roof? there are gilt capitals to the half pillars and an egyptian patterned lotus-stencil makes the walls gay. a thick piled carpet covers all the floor, and must be delightful in the hot weather. on a black wooden throne, comfortably cushioned in green leather, sits sir steuart bayley, ruler of bengal. the rest are all great men, or else they would not be there. not to know them argues oneself unknown. there are a dozen of them, and sit six aside at two slightly curved lines of beautifully polished desks. thus sir steuart bayley occupies the frog of a badly made horse-shoe split at the toe. in front of him, at a table covered with books and pamphlets and papers, toils a secretary. there is a seat for the reporters, and that is all. the place enjoys a chastened gloom, and its very atmosphere fills one with awe. this is the heart of bengal, and uncommonly well upholstered. if the work matches the first-class furniture, the inkpots, the carpet, and the resplendent ceilings, there will be something worth seeing. but where is the criminal who is to be hanged for the stench that runs up and down writers' buildings staircases; for the rubbish heaps in the chitpore road; for the sickly savour of chowringhi; for the dirty little tanks at the back of belvedere; for the street full of small-pox; for the reeking ghari-stand outside the great eastern; for the state of the stone and dirt pavements; for the condition of the gullies of shampooker, and for a hundred other things? "this, i submit, is an artificial scheme in supersession of nature's unit, the individual." the speaker is a slight, spare native in a flat hat-turban, and a black alpaca frock-coat. he looks like a scribe to the boot-heels, and, with his unvarying smile and regulated gesticulation, recalls memories of up-country courts. he never hesitates, is never at a loss for a word, and never in one sentence repeats himself. he talks and talks and talks in a level voice, rising occasionally half an octave when a point has to be driven home. some of his periods sound very familiar. this, for instance, might be a sentence from the _indian mirror_: "so much for the principle. let us now examine how far it is supported by precedent." this sounds bad. when a fluent native is discoursing of "principles" and "precedents," the chances are that he will go on for some time. moreover, where is the criminal, and what is all this talk about abstractions? they want shovels not sentiments, in this part of the world. a friendly whisper brings enlightenment: "they are ploughing through the calcutta municipal bill--plurality of votes, you know. here are the papers." and so it is! a mass of motions and amendments on matters relating to ward votes. is _a_ to be allowed to give two votes in one ward and one in another? is section to be omitted, and is one man to be allowed one vote and no more? how many votes does three hundred rupees' worth of landed property carry? is it better to kiss a post or throw it in the fire? not a word about carbolic acid and gangs of sweepers. the little man in the black dressing-gown revels in his subject. he is great on principles and precedents, and the necessity of "popularising our system." he fears that under certain circumstances "the status of the candidates will decline." he riots in "self-adjusting majorities," and "the healthy influence of the educated middle classes." for a practical answer to this, there steals across the council chamber just one faint whiff of the stink. it is as though some one laughed low and bitterly. but no man heeds. the englishmen look supremely bored, the native members stare stolidly in front of them. sir steuart bayley's face is as set as the face of the sphinx. for these things he draws his pay,--a low wage for heavy labour. but the speaker, now adrift, is not altogether to be blamed. he is a bengali, who has got before him just such a subject as his soul loveth,--an elaborate piece of academical reform leading nowhere. here is a quiet room full of pens and papers, and there are men who must listen to him. apparently there is no time limit to the speeches. can you wonder that he talks? he says "i submit" once every ninety seconds, varying the form with "i do submit, the popular element in the electoral body should have prominence." quite so. he quotes one john stuart mill to prove it. there steals over the listener a numbing sense of nightmare. he has heard all this before somewhere--yea; even down to j. s. mill and the references to the "true interests of the ratepayers." he sees what is coming next. yes, there is the old sabha, anjuman journalistic formula--"western education is an exotic plant of recent importation." how on earth did this man drag western education into this discussion? who knows? perhaps sir steuart bayley does. he seems to be listening. the others are looking at their watches. the spell of the level voice sinks the listener yet deeper into a trance. he is haunted by the ghosts of all the cant of all the political platforms of great britain. he hears all the old, old vestry phrases, and once more he smells the smell. _that_ is no dream. western education is an exotic plant. it is the upas tree, and it is all our fault. we brought it out from england exactly as we brought out the ink-bottles and the patterns for the chairs. we planted it and it grew--monstrous as a banian. now we are choked by the roots of it spreading so thickly in this fat soil of bengal. the speaker continues. bit by bit we builded this dome, visible and invisible, the crown of writers' buildings, as we have built and peopled the buildings. now we have gone too far to retreat, being "tied and bound with the chain of our own sins." the speech continues. we made that florid sentence. that torrent of verbiage is ours. we taught him what was constitutional and what was unconstitutional in the days when calcutta smelt. calcutta smells still, but we must listen to all that he has to say about the plurality of votes and the threshing of wind and the weaving of ropes of sand. it is our own fault. the speech ends, and there rises a grey englishman in a black frock-coat. he looks a strong man, and a worldly. surely he will say, "yes, lala sahib, all this may be true talk, but there's a vile smell in this place, and everything must be cleaned in a week, or the deputy commissioner will not take any notice of you in _durbar_." he says nothing of the kind. this is a legislative council, where they call each other "honourable so-and-so's." the englishman in the frock-coat begs all to remember that "we are discussing principles, and no consideration of the details ought to influence the verdict on the principles." is he then like the rest? how does this strange thing come about? perhaps these so english office fittings are responsible for the warp. the council chamber might be a london board-room. perhaps after long years among the pens and papers its occupants grew to think that it really is, and in this belief give _résumés_ of the history of local self-government in england. the black frock-coat, emphasising his points with his spectacle-case, is telling his friends how the parish was first the unit of self-government. he then explains how burgesses were elected, and in tones of deep fervour announces, "commissioners of sewers are elected in the same way." whereunto all this lecture? is he trying to run a motion through under cover of a cloud of words, essaying the well-known "cuttle-fish trick" of the west? he abandons england for a while, and _now_ we get a glimpse of the cloven hoof in a casual reference to hindus and mahometans. the hindus will lose nothing by the complete establishment of plurality of votes. they will have the control of their own wards as they used to have. so there is race-feeling, to be explained away, even among these beautiful desks. scratch the council, and you come to the old, old trouble. the black frock-coat sits down, and a keen-eyed, black-bearded englishman rises with one hand in his pocket to explain his views on an alteration of the vote qualification. the idea of an amendment seems to have just struck him. he hints that he will bring it forward later on. he is academical like the others, but not half so good a speaker. all this is dreary beyond words. why do they talk and talk about owners and occupiers and burgesses in england and the growth of autonomous institutions when the city, the great city, is here crying out to be cleansed? what has england to do with calcutta's evil, and why should englishmen be forced to wander through mazes of unprofitable argument against men who cannot understand the iniquity of dirt? a pause follows the black-bearded man's speech. rises another native, a heavily built babu, in a black gown and a strange head-dress. a snowy white strip of cloth is thrown duster-wise over his shoulders. his voice is high, and not always under control. he begins, "i will try to be as brief as possible." this is ominous. by the way, in council there seems to be no necessity for a form of address. the orators plunge _in medias res_, and only when they are well launched throw an occasional "sir" towards sir steuart bayley, who sits with one leg doubled under him and a dry pen in his hand. this speaker is no good. he talks, but he says nothing, and he only knows where he is drifting to. he says: "we must remember that we are legislating for the metropolis of india, and therefore we should borrow our institutions from large english towns, and not from parochial institutions." if you think for a minute, that shows a large and healthy knowledge of the history of local self-government. it also reveals the attitude of calcutta. if the city thought less about itself as a metropolis and more as a midden, its state would be better. the speaker talks patronisingly of "my friend," alluding to the black frock-coat. then he flounders afresh, and his voice gallops up the gamut as he declares, "and _therefore_ that makes all the difference." he hints vaguely at threats, something to do with the hindus and the mahometans, but what he means it is difficult to discover. here, however, is a sentence taken _verbatim_. it is not likely to appear in this form in the calcutta papers. the black frock-coat had said that if a wealthy native "had eight votes to his credit, his vanity would prompt him to go to the polling-booth, because he would feel better than half-a-dozen _ghari-wans_ or petty traders." (fancy allowing a _ghari-wan_ to vote! he has yet to learn how to drive!) hereon the gentleman with the white cloth: "then the complaint is that influential voters will not take the trouble to vote? in my humble opinion, if that be so, adopt voting-papers. _that_ is the way to meet them. in the same way--the calcutta trades' association--you abolish all plurality of votes: and that is the way to meet _them_." lucid, is it not? up flies the irresponsible voice, and delivers this statement, "in the election for the house of commons plurality are allowed for persons having interest in different districts." then hopeless, hopeless fog. it is a great pity that india ever heard of anybody higher than the heads of the civil service. once more a whiff of the stink. the gentleman gives a defiant jerk of his shoulder-cloth, and sits down. then sir steuart bayley: "the question before the council is," etc. there is a ripple of "ayes" and "noes," and the "noes" have it, whatever it may be. the black-bearded gentleman springs his amendment about the voting qualifications. a large senator in a white waistcoat, and with a most genial smile, rises and proceeds to smash up the amendment. can't see the use of it. calls it in effect rubbish. the black dressing-gown, he who spoke first of all, speaks again, and talks of the "sojourner who comes here for a little time, and then leaves the land." well it is for the black gown that the sojourner does come, or there would be no comfy places wherein to talk about the power that can be measured by wealth and the intellect "which, sir, i submit, cannot be so measured." the amendment is lost; and trebly and quadruply lost is the listener. in the name of sanity and to preserve the tattered shirt-tails of a torn illusion, let us escape! this is the calcutta municipal bill. they have been at it for several saturdays. last saturday sir steuart bayley pointed out that at their present rate they would be about two years in getting it through. now they will sit till dusk, unless sir steuart bayley, who wants to see lord connemara off, puts up the black frock-coat to move an adjournment. it is not good to watch a government close to. this leads to the formation of blatantly self-satisfied judgments, which may be quite as wrong as the cramping system with which we have encompassed ourselves. and in the streets outside englishmen summarise the situation brutally, thus: "the whole thing is a farce. time is money to us. we can't stick out those everlasting speeches in the municipality. the natives choke us off, but we know that if things get too bad the government will step in and interfere, and so we worry along somehow." meantime calcutta continues to cry out for the bucket and the broom. chapter iv on the banks of the hugli. the clocks of the city have struck two. where can a man get food? calcutta is not rich in respect of dainty accommodation. you can stay your stomach at peliti's or bonsard's, but their shops are not to be found in hastings street, or in the places where brokers fly to and fro in office-jauns, sweating and growing visibly rich. there must be some sort of entertainment where sailors congregate. "honest bombay jack" supplies nothing but burma cheroots and whisky in liqueur-glasses, but in lal bazar, not far from "the sailors' coffee-rooms," a board gives bold advertisement that "officers and seamen can find good quarters." in evidence a row of neat officers and seamen are sitting on a bench by the "hotel" door smoking. there is an almost military likeness in their clothes. perhaps "honest bombay jack" only keeps one kind of felt hat and one brand of suit. when jack of the mercantile marine is sober, he is very sober. when he is drunk he is--but ask the river police what a lean, mad yankee can do with his nails and teeth. these gentlemen smoking on the bench are impassive almost as red indians. their attitudes are unrestrained, and they do not wear braces. nor, it would appear from the bill of fare, are they particular as to what they eat when they attend _tâble d'hôte_. the fare is substantial and the regulation "peg"--every house has its own depth of peg if you will refrain from stopping ganymede--something to wonder at. three fingers and a trifle over seems to be the use of the officers and seamen who are talking so quietly in the doorway. one says--he has evidently finished a long story--"and so he shipped for four pound ten with a first mate's certificate and all. and that was in a german barque." another spits with conviction and says genially, without raising his voice, "that was a hell of a ship. who knows her?" no answer from the assembly, but a dane or a german wants to know whether the _myra_ is "up" yet. a dry, red-haired man gives her exact position in the river--(how in the world can he know?)--and the probable hour of her arrival. the grave debate drifts into a discussion of a recent river accident, whereby a big steamer was damaged, and had to put back and discharge cargo. a burly gentleman who is taking a constitutional down lal bazar strolls up and says: "i tell you she fouled her own chain with her own forefoot. hev you seen the plates?" "no." "then how the ---- can any ---- like you ---- say what it ---- well was?" he passes on, having delivered his highly flavored opinion without heat or passion. no one seems to resent the garnish. let us get down to the river and see this stamp of men more thoroughly. clarke russell has told us that their lives are hard enough in all conscience. what are their pleasures and diversions? the port office, where live the gentlemen who make improvements in the port of calcutta, ought to supply information. it stands large and fair, and built in an orientalised manner after the italians at the corner of fairlie place upon the great strand road, and a continual clamour of traffic by land and by sea goes up throughout the day and far into the night against its windows. this is a place to enter more reverently than the bengal legislative council, for it controls the direction of the uncertain hugli down to the sandheads, owns enormous wealth, and spends huge sums on the frontaging of river banks, the expansion of jetties, and the manufacture of docks costing two hundred lakhs of rupees. two million tons of sea-going shippage yearly find their way up and down the river by the guidance of the port office, and the men of the port office know more than it is good for men to hold in their heads. they can without reference to telegraphic bulletins give the position of all the big steamers, coming up or going down, from the hugli to the sea, day by day, with their tonnage, the names of their captains and the nature of their cargo. looking out from the verandah of their office over a lancer-regiment of masts, they can declare truthfully the name of every ship within eye-scope, with the day and hour when she will depart. in a room at the bottom of the building lounge big men, carefully dressed. now there is a type of face which belongs almost exclusively to bengal cavalry officers--majors for choice. everybody knows the bronzed, black-moustached, clear-speaking native cavalry officer. he exists unnaturally in novels, and naturally on the frontier. these men in the big room have his cast of face so strongly marked that one marvels what officers are doing by the river. "have they come to book passages for home?" "those men? they're pilots. some of them draw between two and three thousand rupees a month. they are responsible for half-a-million pounds' worth of cargo sometimes." they certainly are men, and they carry themselves as such. they confer together by twos and threes, and appeal frequently to shipping lists. "_isn't_ a pilot a man who always wears a pea-jacket and shouts through a speaking-trumpet?" "well, you can ask those gentlemen if you like. you've got your notions from home pilots. ours aren't that kind exactly. they are a picked service, as carefully weeded as the indian civil. some of 'em have brothers in it, and some belong to the old indian army families." but they are not all equally well paid. the calcutta papers echo the groans of the junior pilots who are not allowed the handling of ships over a certain tonnage. as it is yearly growing cheaper to build one big steamer than two little ones, these juniors are crowded out, and, while the seniors get their thousands, some of the youngsters make at the end of one month exactly thirty rupees. this is a grievance with them, and it seems well-founded. in the flats above the pilot's room are hushed and chapel-like offices, all sumptuously fitted, where englishmen write and telephone and telegraph, and deft babus for ever draw maps of the shifting hugli. any hope of understanding the work of the port commissioners is thoroughly dashed by being taken through the port maps of a quarter of a century past. men have played with the hugli as children play with a gutter-runnel, and, in return, the hugli once rose and played with men and ships till the strand road was littered with the raffle and the carcasses of big ships. there are photos on the walls of the cyclone of ' , when the _thunder_ came inland and sat upon an american barque, obstructing all the traffic. very curious are these photos, and almost impossible to believe. how can a big, strong steamer have her three masts razed to deck level? how can a heavy, country boat be pitched on to the poop of a high-walled liner? and how can the side be bodily torn out of a ship? the photos say that all these things are possible, and men aver that a cyclone may come again and scatter the craft like chaff. outside the port office are the export and import sheds, buildings that can hold a ship's cargo apiece, all standing on reclaimed ground. here be several strong smells, a mass of railway lines, and a multitude of men. "do you see where that trolly is standing, behind the big p. and o. berth? in that place as nearly as may be the _govindpur_ went down about twenty years ago, and began to shift out!" "but that is solid ground." "she sank there, and the next tide made a scour-hole on one side of her. the returning tide knocked her into it. then the mud made up behind her. next tide the business was repeated--always the scour-hole in the mud and the filling up behind her. so she rolled, and was pushed out and out until she got in the way of the shipping right out yonder, and we had to blow her up. when a ship sinks in mud or quicksand she regularly digs her own grave and wriggles herself into it deeper and deeper till she reaches moderately solid stuff. then she sticks." horrible idea, is it not, to go down and down with each tide into the foul hugli mud? close to the port offices is the shipping office, where the captains engage their crews. the men must produce their discharges from their last ships in the presence of the shipping master, or, as they call him, "the deputy shipping." he passes them after having satisfied himself that they are not deserters from other ships, and they then sign articles for the voyage. this is the ceremony, beginning with the "dearly beloved" of the crew-hunting captain down to the "amazement" of the deserter. there is a dingy building, next door to the sailors' home, at whose gate stand the cast-ups of all the seas in all manner of raiment. there are the seedee boys, bombay _serangs_ and madras fishermen of the salt villages, malays who insist upon marrying calcutta women, grow jealous and run _amok_; malay-hindus, hindu-malay-whites, burmese, burma-whites, burma-native-whites, italians with gold earrings and a thirst for gambling, yankees of all the states, with mulattoes and pure buck-niggers, red and rough danes, cingalese, cornish boys fresh taken from the plough-tail, "corn-stalks" from colonial ships where they got four pound ten a month as seamen, tun-bellied germans, cockney mates keeping a little aloof from the crowd and talking in knots together, unmistakable "tommies" who have tumbled into seafaring life by some mistake, cockatoo-tufted welshmen spitting and swearing like cats, broken-down loafers, grey-headed, penniless, and pitiful, swaggering boys, and very quiet men with gashes and cuts on their faces. it is an ethnological museum where all the specimens are playing comedies and tragedies. the head of it all is the "deputy shipping," and he sits, supported by an english policeman whose fists are knobby, in a great chair of state. the "deputy shipping" knows all the iniquity of the river-side, all the ships, all the captains, and a fair amount of the men. he is fenced off from the crowd by a strong wooden railing behind which are gathered the unemployed of the mercantile marine. they have had their spree--poor devils--and now they will go to sea again on as low a wage as three pound ten a month, to fetch up at the end in some shanghai stew or san francisco hell. they have turned their backs on the seductions of the howrah boarding-houses and the delights of colootollah. if fate will, "nightingale's" will know them no more for a season. but what skipper will take some of these battered, shattered wrecks whose hands shake and whose eyes are red? enter suddenly a bearded captain, who has made his selection from the crowd on a previous day, and now wants to get his men passed. he is not fastidious in his choice. his eleven seem a tough lot for such a mild-eyed, civil-spoken man to manage. but the captain in the shipping office and the captain on his ship are two different things. he brings his crew up to the "deputy shipping's" bar, and hands in their greasy, tattered discharges. but the heart of the "deputy shipping" is hot within him, because, two days ago, a howrah crimp stole a whole crew from a down-dropping ship, insomuch that the captain had to come back and whip up a new crew at one o'clock in the day. evil will it be if the "deputy shipping" finds one of these bounty-jumpers in the chosen crew of the _blenkindoon_. the "deputy shipping" tells the story with heat. "i didn't know they did such things in calcutta," says the captain. "do such things! they'd steal the eye-teeth out of your head there, captain." he picks up a discharge and calls for michael donelly, a loose-knit, vicious-looking irish-american who chews. "stand up, man, stand up!" michael donelly wants to lean against the desk, and the english policeman won't have it. "what was your last ship?" "_fairy queen._" "when did you leave her?" "'bout 'leven days." "captain's name?" "flahy." "that'll do. next man: jules anderson." jules anderson is a dane. his statements tally with the discharge-certificate of the united states, as the eagle attesteth. he is passed and falls back. slivey, the englishman, and david, a huge plum-coloured negro who ships as cook, are also passed. then comes bassompra, a little italian, who speaks english. "what's your last ship?" "_ferdinand._" "no, after that?" "german barque." bassompra does not look happy. "when did she sail?" "about three weeks ago." "what's her name?" "_haidée._" "you deserted from her?" "yes, but she's left port." the "deputy shipping" runs rapidly through a shipping-list, throws it down with a bang. "'twon't do. no german barque _haidée_ here for three months. how do i know you don't belong to the _jackson's_ crew? cap'en, i'm afraid you'll have to ship another man. he must stand over. take the rest away and make 'em sign." the bead-eyed bassompra seems to have lost his chance of a voyage, and his case will be inquired into. the captain departs with his men and they sign articles for the voyage, while the "deputy shipping" tells strange tales of the sailorman's life. "they'll quit a good ship for the sake of a spree, and catch on again at three pound ten, and by jove, they'll let their skippers pay 'em at ten rupees to the sovereign--poor beggars. as soon as the money's gone they'll ship, but not before. every one under rank of captain engages here. the competition makes first-mates ship sometimes for five pounds or as low as four ten a month." (the gentleman in the boarding-house was right, you see.) "a first mate's wages are seven ten or eight, and foreign captains ship for twelve pounds a month and bring their own small stores--everything, that is to say, except beef, peas, flour, coffee, and molasses." these things are not pleasant to listen to while the hungry-eyed men in the bad clothes lounge and scratch and loaf behind the railing. what comes to them in the end? they die, it seems, though that is not altogether strange. they die at sea in strange and horrible ways; they die, a few of them, in the kintals, being lost and suffocated in the great sink of calcutta; they die, in strange places by the water-side, and the hugli takes them away under the mooring chains and the buoys, and casts them up on the sands below, if the river police have missed the capture. they sail the sea because they must live; and there is no end to their toil. very, very few find haven of any kind, and the earth, whose ways they do not understand, is cruel to them, when they walk upon it to drink and be merry after the manner of beasts. jack ashore is a pretty thing when he is in a book or in the blue jacket of the navy. mercantile jack is not so lovely. later on, we will see where his "sprees" lead him. chapter v with the calcutta police. "the city was of night--perchance of death, but certainly of night." --_the city of dreadful night._ in the beginning, the police were responsible. they said in a patronising way that they would prefer to take a wanderer round the great city themselves, sooner than let him contract a broken head on his own account in the slums. they said that there were places and places where a white man, unsupported by the arm of the law, would be robbed and mobbed; and that there were other places where drunken seamen would make it very unpleasant for him. "come up to the fire look-out in the first place, and then you'll be able to see the city." this was at no. , lal bazar, which is the headquarters of the calcutta police, the centre of the great web of telephone wires where justice sits all day and all night looking after one million people and a floating population of one hundred thousand. but her work shall be dealt with later on. the fire look-out is a little sentry-box on the top of the three-storied police offices. here a native watchman waits to give warning to the brigade below if the smoke rises by day or the flames by night in any ward of the city. from this eyrie, in the warm night, one hears the heart of calcutta beating. northward, the city stretches away three long miles, with three more miles of suburbs beyond, to dum-dum and barrackpore. the lamplit dusk on this side is full of noises and shouts and smells. close to the police office, jovial mariners at the sailors' coffee-shop are roaring hymns. southerly, the city's confused lights give place to the orderly lamp-rows of the _maidân_ and chowringhi, where the respectabilities live and the police have very little to do. from the east goes up to the sky the clamour of sealdah, the rumble of the trams, and the voices of all bow bazar chaffering and making merry. westward are the business quarters, hushed now; the lamps of the shipping on the river; and the twinkling lights on the howrah side. "does the noise of traffic go on all through the hot weather?" "of course. the hot months are the busiest in the year and money's tightest. you should see the brokers cutting about at that season. calcutta _can't_ stop, my dear sir." "what happens then?" "nothing happens; the death-rate goes up a little. that's all!" even in february, the weather would, up-country, be called muggy and stifling, but calcutta is convinced that it is her cold season. the noises of the city grow perceptibly; it is the night side of calcutta waking up and going abroad. jack in the sailors' coffee-shop is singing joyously: "shall we gather at the river--the beautiful, the beautiful, the river?" there is a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard below. some of the mounted police have come in from somewhere or other out of the great darkness. a clog-dance of iron hoofs follows, and an englishman's voice is heard soothing an agitated horse who seems to be standing on his hind legs. some of the mounted police are going out into the great darkness. "what's on?" "a dance at government house. the reserve men are being formed up below. they're calling the roll." the reserve men are all english, and big english at that. they form up and tramp out of the courtyard to line government place, and see that mrs. lollipop's brougham does not get smashed up by sirdar chuckerbutty bahadur's lumbering c-spring barouche with the two raw walers. very military men are the calcutta european police in their set-up, and he who knows their composition knows some startling stories of gentleman-rankers and the like. they are, despite the wearing climate they work in and the wearing work they do, as fine a five-score of englishmen as you shall find east of suez. listen for a moment from the fire look-out to the voices of the night, and you will see why they must be so. two thousand sailors of fifty nationalities are adrift in calcutta every sunday, and of these perhaps two hundred are distinctly the worse for liquor. there is a mild row going on, even now, somewhere at the back of bow bazar, which at nightfall fills with sailormen who have a wonderful gift of falling foul of the native population. to keep the queen's peace is of course only a small portion of police duty, but it is trying. the burly president of the lock-up for european drunks--calcutta central lock-up is worth seeing--rejoices in a sprained thumb just now, and has to do his work left-handed in consequence. but his left hand is a marvellously persuasive one, and when on duty his sleeves are turned up to the shoulder that the jovial mariner may see that there is no deception. the president's labours are handicapped in that the road of sin to the lock-up runs through a grimy little garden--the brick paths are worn deep with the tread of many drunken feet--where a man can give a great deal of trouble by sticking his toes into the ground and getting mixed up with the shrubs. a straight run-in would be much more convenient both for the president and the drunk. generally speaking--and here police experience is pretty much the same all over the civilised world--a woman-drunk is a good deal worse than a man-drunk. she scratches and bites like a chinaman and swears like several fiends. strange people may be unearthed in the lock-ups. here is a perfectly true story, not three weeks old. a visitor, an unofficial one, wandered into the native side of the spacious accommodation provided for those who have gone or done wrong. a wild-eyed babu rose from the fixed charpoy and said in the best of english, "good morning, sir." "_good_ morning. who are you, and what are you in for?" then the babu, in one breath: "i would have you know that i do not go to prison as a criminal but as a reformer. you've read the _vicar of wakefield_?" "ye-es." "well, _i_ am the vicar of bengal--at least that's what i call myself." the visitor collapsed. he had not nerve enough to continue the conversation. then said the voice of the authority: "he's down in connection with a cheating case at serampore. may be shamming insane, but he'll be looked to in time." the best place to hear about the police is the fire look-out. from that eyrie one can see how difficult must be the work of control over the great, growling beast of a city. by all means let us abuse the police, but let us see what the poor wretches have to do with their three thousand natives and one hundred englishmen. from howrah and bally and the other suburbs at least a hundred thousand people come in to calcutta for the day and leave at night. then, too, chandernagore is handy for the fugitive law-breaker, who can enter in the evening and get away before the noon of the next day, having marked his house and broken into it. "but how can the prevalent offence be house-breaking in a place like this?" "easily enough. when you've seen a little of the city you'll see. natives sleep and lie about all over the place, and whole quarters are just so many rabbit-warrens. wait till you see the machua bazar. well, besides the petty theft and burglary, we have heavy cases of forgery and fraud, that leave us with our wits pitted against a bengali's. when a bengali criminal is working a fraud of the sort he loves, he is about the cleverest soul you could wish for. he gives us cases a year long to unravel. then there are the murders in the low houses--very curious things they are. you'll see the house where sheikh babu was murdered presently, and you'll understand. the burra bazar and jora bagan sections are the two worst ones for heavy cases; but colootollah is the most aggravating. there's colootollah over yonder--that patch of darkness beyond the lights. that section is full of tuppenny-ha'penny petty cases, that keep the men up all night and make 'em swear. you'll see colootollah, and then perhaps you'll understand. bamun bustee is the quietest of all, and lal bazar and bow bazar, as you can see for yourself, are the rowdiest. you've no notion what the natives come to the police station for. a man will come on and want a summons against his master for refusing him half-an-hour's leave. i suppose it _does_ seem rather revolutionary to an up-country man, but they try to do it here. now wait a minute, before we go down into the city and see the fire brigade turned out. business is slack with them just now, but you time 'em and see." an order is given, and a bell strikes softly thrice. there is a rush of men, the click of a bolt, a red fire-engine, spitting and swearing with the sparks flying from the furnace, is dragged out of its shelter. a huge brake, which holds supplementary horses, men, and hatchets, follows, and a hose-cart is the third on the list. the men push the heavy things about as though they were pith toys. the men clamber up, some one says softly, "all ready there," and with an angry whistle the fire-engine, followed by the other two, flies out into lal bazar. time-- min. secs. "they'll find out it's a false alarm, and come back again in five minutes." "why?" "because there will be no constables on the road to give 'em the direction of the fire, and because the driver wasn't told the ward of the outbreak when he went out!" "do you mean to say that you can from this absurd pigeon-loft locate the wards in the night-time?" "what would be the good of a look-out if the man couldn't tell where the fire was?" "but it's all pitchy black, and the lights are so confusing." "you'll be more confused in ten minutes. you'll have lost your way as you never lost it before. you're going to go round bow bazar section." "and the lord have mercy on my soul!" calcutta, the darker portion of it, does not look an inviting place to dive into at night. chapter vi the city of dreadful night. "and since they cannot spend or use aright the little time here given them in trust, but lavish it in weary undelight of foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust-- they naturally clamour to inherit the everlasting future--that their merit may have full scope.... as surely is most just." --_the city of dreadful night._ the difficulty is to prevent this account from growing steadily unwholesome. but one cannot rake through a big city without encountering muck. the police kept their word. in five short minutes, as they had prophesied, their charge was lost as he had never been lost before. "where are we now?" "somewhere off the chitpore road, but you wouldn't understand if you were told. follow now, and step pretty much where we step--there's a good deal of filth hereabouts." the thick, greasy night shuts in everything. we have gone beyond the ancestral houses of the ghoses of the boses, beyond the lamps, the smells, and the crowd of chitpore road, and have come to a great wilderness of packed houses--just such mysterious, conspiring tenements as dickens would have loved. there is no breeze here, and the air is perceptibly warmer. if calcutta keeps such luxuries as commissioners of sewers and paving, they die before they reach this place. the air is heavy with a faint, sour stench--the essence of long-neglected abominations--and it cannot escape from among the tall, three-storied houses. "this, my dear sir, is a _perfectly_ respectable quarter as quarters go. that house at the head of the alley, with the elaborate stucco-work round the top of the door, was built long ago by a celebrated midwife. great people used to live here once. now it's the--aha! look out for that carriage." a big mail-phaeton crashes out of the darkness and, recklessly driven, disappears. the wonder is how it ever got into this maze of narrow streets, where nobody seems to be moving, and where the dull throbbing of the city's life only comes faintly and by snatches. "now it's the what?" "the st. john's wood of calcutta--for the rich babus. that 'fitton' belonged to one of them." "well, it's not much of a place to look at!" "don't judge by appearances. about here live the women who have beggared kings. we aren't going to let you down into unadulterated vice all at once. you must see it first with the gilding on--and mind that rotten board." stand at the bottom of a lift shaft and look upwards. then you will get both the size and the design of the tiny courtyard round which one of these big dark houses is built. the central square may be perhaps ten feet every way, but the balconies that run inside it overhang, and seem to cut away half the available space. to reach the square a man must go round many corners, down a covered-in way, and up and down two or three baffling and confused steps. "now you will understand," say the police, kindly, as their charge blunders, shin-first into a well-dark winding staircase, "that these are not the sort of places to visit alone." "who wants to? of all the disgusting, inaccessible dens--holy cupid, what's this?" a glare of light on the stair-head, a clink of innumerable bangles, a rustle of much fine gauze, and the dainty iniquity stands revealed, blazing--literally blazing--with jewellery from head to foot. take one of the fairest miniatures that the delhi painters draw, and multiply it by ten; throw in one of angelica kaufmann's best portraits, and add anything that you can think of from beckford to lalla rookh, and you will still fall short of the merits of that perfect face! for an instant, even the grim, professional gravity of the police is relaxed in the presence of the dainty iniquity with the gems, who so prettily invites every one to be seated, and proffers such refreshments as she conceives the palates of the barbarians would prefer. her maids are only one degree less gorgeous than she. half a lakh, or fifty thousand pounds' worth--it is easier to credit the latter statement than the former--are disposed upon her little body. each hand carries five jewelled rings which are connected by golden chains to a great jewelled boss of gold in the centre of the back of the hand. ear-rings weighted with emeralds and pearls, diamond nose-rings, and how many other hundred articles make up the list of adornments. english furniture of a gorgeous and gimcrack kind, unlimited chandeliers, and a collection of atrocious continental prints are scattered about the house, and on every landing squats or loafs a bengali who can talk english with unholy fluency. the recurrence suggests--only suggests, mind--a grim possibility of the affectation of excessive virtue by day, tempered with the sort of unwholesome enjoyment after dusk--this loafing and lobbying and chattering and smoking, and unless the bottles lie, tippling, among the foul-tongued handmaidens of the dainty iniquity. how many men follow this double, deleterious sort of life? the police are discreetly dumb. "now don't go talking about 'domiciliary visits' just because this one happens to be a pretty woman. we've _got_ to know these creatures. they make the rich man and the poor spend their money; and when a man can't get money for 'em honestly, he comes under _our_ notice. now do you see? if there was any domiciliary 'visit' about it, the whole houseful would be hidden past our finding as soon as we turned up in the courtyard. we're friends--to a certain extent." and, indeed, it seemed no difficult thing to be friends to any extent with the dainty iniquity who was so surpassingly different from all that experience taught of the beauty of the east. here was the face from which a man could write _lalla rookhs_ by the dozen, and believe every work that he wrote. hers was the beauty that byron sang of when he wrote-- "remember, if you come here alone, the chances are that you'll be clubbed, or stuck, or, anyhow, mobbed. you'll understand that this part of the world is shut to europeans--absolutely. mind the steps, and follow on." the vision dies out in the smells and gross darkness of the night, in evil, time-rotten brickwork, and another wilderness of shut-up houses. follows, after another plunge into a passage of a courtyard, and up a staircase, the apparition of a fat vice, in whom is no sort of romance, nor beauty, but unlimited coarse humour. she too is studded with jewels, and her house is even finer than the house of the other, and more infested with the extraordinary men who speak such good english and are so deferential to the police. the fat vice has been a great leader of fashion in her day, and stripped a zemindar raja to his last acre--insomuch that he ended in the house of correction for a theft committed for her sake. native opinion has it that she is a "monstrous well-preserved woman." on this point, as on some others, the races will agree to differ. the scene changes suddenly as a slide in a magic lantern. dainty iniquity and fat vice slide away on a roll of streets and alleys, each more squalid than its predecessor. we are "somewhere at the back of the machua bazar," well in the heart of the city. there are no houses here--nothing but acres and acres, it seems, of foul wattle-and-dab huts, any one of which would be a disgrace to a frontier village. the whole arrangement is a neatly contrived germ and fire trap, reflecting great credit upon the calcutta municipality. "what happens when these pigsties catch fire?" "they're built up again," say the police, as though this were the natural order of things. "land is immensely valuable here." all the more reason, then, to turn several hausmanns loose into the city, with instructions to make barracks for the population that cannot find room in the huts and sleeps in the open ways, cherishing dogs and worse, much worse, in its unwashen bosom. "here is a licensed coffee-shop. this is where your servants go for amusement and to see nautches." there is a huge thatch shed, ingeniously ornamented with insecure kerosene lamps, and crammed with drivers, cooks, small store-keepers and the like. never a sign of a european. why? "because if an englishman messed about here, he'd get into trouble. men don't come here unless they're drunk or have lost their way." the hack-drivers--they have the privilege of voting, have they not?--look peaceful enough as they squat on tables or crowd by the doors to watch the nautch that is going forward. five pitiful draggle-tails are huddled together on a bench under one of the lamps, while the sixth is squirming and shrieking before the impassive crowd. she sings of love as understood by the oriental--the love that dries the heart and consumes the liver. in this place, the words that would look so well on paper have an evil and ghastly significance. the men stare or sup tumblers and cups of a filthy decoction, and the _kunchenee_ howls with renewed vigour in the presence of the police. where the dainty iniquity was hung with gold and gems, she is trapped with pewter and glass; and where there was heavy embroidery on the fat vice's dress, defaced, stamped tinsel faithfully reduplicates the pattern on the tawdry robes of the _kunchenee_. two or three men with uneasy consciences have quietly slipped out of the coffee-shop into the mazes of the huts. the police laugh, and those nearest in the crowd laugh applausively, as in duty bound. perhaps the rabbits grin uneasily when the ferret lands at the bottom of the burrow and begins to clear the warren. "the _chandoo_-shops shut up at six, so you'll have to see opium-smoking before dark some day. no, you won't, though." the detective makes for a half-opened door of a hut whence floats the fragrance of the black smoke. those of the inhabitants who are able promptly clear out--they have no love for the police--and there remain only four men lying down and one standing up. this latter has a pet mongoose coiled round his neck. he speaks english fluently. yes, he has no fear. it was a private smoking party and--"no business to-night--show how you smoke opium." "aha! you want to see. very good, i show. hiya! you"--he kicks a man on the floor--"show how opium-smoke." the kickee grunts lazily and turns on his elbow. the mongoose, always keeping to the man's neck, erects every hair of its body like an angry cat, and chatters in its owner's ear. the lamp for the opium-pipe is the only one in the room, and lights a scene as wild as anything in the witches' revel; the mongoose acting as the familiar spirit. a voice from the ground says, in tones of infinite weariness: "you take _afim_, so"--a long, long pause, and another kick from the man possessed of the devil--the mongoose. "you take _afim_?" he takes a pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of a knitting-needle. "and light _afim_." he plunges the pellet into the night-light, where it swells and fumes greasily. "and then you put it in your pipe." the smoking pellet is jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bamboo-stemmed pipe, and all speech ceases, except the unearthly chitter of the mongoose. the man on the ground is sucking at his pipe, and when the smoking pellet has ceased to smoke will be half-way to _nibban_. "now you go," says the man with the mongoose. "i am going smoke." the hut floor closes upon a red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies, and the man with the mongoose sinking, sinking on to his knees, his head bowed forward, and the little hairy devil chattering on the nape of his neck. after this the fetid night air seems almost cool, for the hut is as hot as a furnace. "now for colootollah. come through the huts. there is no decoration about _this_ vice." the huts now gave place to houses very tall and spacious and very dark. but for the narrowness of the streets we might have stumbled upon chowringhi in the dark. an hour and a half has passed, and up to this time we have not crossed our trail once. "you might knock about the city for a night and never cross the same line. recollect calcutta isn't one of your poky up-country cities of a lakh and a half of people." "how long does it take to know it then?" "about a lifetime, and even then some of the streets puzzle you." "how much has the head of a ward to know?" "every house in his ward if he can, who owns it, what sort of character the inhabitants are, who are their friends, who go out and in, who loaf about the place at night, and so on and so on." "and he knows all this by night as well as by day?" "of course. why shouldn't he?" "no reason in the world. only it's pitchy black just now, and i'd like to see where this alley is going to end." "round the corner beyond that dead wall. there's a lamp there. then you'll be able to see." a shadow flits out of a gulley and disappears. "who's that?" "sergeant of police just to see where we're going in case of accidents." another shadow staggers into the darkness. "who's _that_?" "soldier from the fort or a sailor from the ships. i couldn't quite see." the police open a shut door in a high wall, and stumble unceremoniously among a gang of women cooking their food. the floor is of beaten earth, the steps that lead into the upper stories are unspeakably grimy, and the heat is the heat of april. the women rise hastily, and the light of the bull's eye--for the police have now lighted a lantern in regular london fashion--shows six bleared faces--one a half-native half-chinese one, and the others bengali. "there are no men here!" they cry. "the house is empty." then they grin and jabber and chew _pan_ and spit, and hurry up the steps into the darkness. a range of three big rooms has been knocked into one here, and there is some sort of arrangement of mats. but an average country-bred is more sumptuously accommodated in an englishman's stable. a horse would snort at the accommodation. "nice sort of place, isn't it?" say the police, genially. "this is where the sailors get robbed and drunk." "they must be blind drunk before they come." "na--na! na sailor men ee--yah!" chorus the women, catching at the one word they understand. "arl gone!" the police take no notice, but tramp down the big room with the mat loose-boxes. a woman is shivering in one of these. "what's the matter?" "fever. seek. vary, _vary_ seek." she huddles herself into a heap on the _charpoy_ and groans. a tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the long room, and into this the police plunge. "hullo! what's here?" down flashes the lantern, and a white hand with black nails comes out of the gloom. somebody is asleep or drunk in the cot. the ring of lantern light travels slowly up and down the body. "a sailor from the ships. he'll be robbed before the morning most likely." the man is sleeping like a little child, both arms thrown over his head, and he is not unhandsome. he is shoeless, and there are huge holes in his stockings. he is a pure-blooded white, and carries the flush of innocent sleep on his cheeks. the light is turned off, and the police depart; while the woman in the loose-box shivers, and moans that she is "seek; vary, _vary_ seek." chapter vii deeper and deeper still. "i built myself a lordly pleasure-house, wherein at ease for aye to dwell; i said:--'o soul, make merry and carouse. dear soul--for all is well.'" --_the palace of art._ "and where next? i don't like colootollah." the police and their charge are standing in the interminable waste of houses under the starlight. "to the lowest sink of all, but you wouldn't know if you were told." they lead till they come to the last circle of the inferno--a long, quiet, winding road. "there you are; you can see for yourself." but there is nothing to be seen. on one side are houses--gaunt and dark, naked and devoid of furniture; on the other, low, mean stalls, lighted, and with shamelessly open doors, where women stand and mutter and whisper one to another. there is a hush here, or at least the busy silence of an officer of counting-house in working hours. one look down the street is sufficient. lead on, gentlemen of the calcutta police. we do not love the lines of open doors, the flaring lamps within, the glimpses of the tawdry toilet-tables adorned with little plaster dogs, glass balls from christmas-trees, and--for religion must not be despised though women be fallen--pictures of the saints and statuettes of the virgin. the street is a long one, and other streets, full of the same pitiful wares, branch off from it. "why are they so quiet? why don't they make a row and sing and shout, and so on?" "why should they, poor devils?" say the police, and fall to telling tales of horror, of women decoyed and shot into this trap. then other tales that shatter one's belief in all things and folk of good repute. "how can you police have faith in humanity?" "that's because you're seeing it all in a lump for the first time, and it's not nice that way. makes a man jump rather, doesn't it? but, recollect, you've _asked_ for the worst places, and you can't complain." "who's complaining? bring on your atrocities. isn't that a european woman at that door?" "yes. mrs. d----, widow of a soldier, mother of seven children." "nine, if you please, and good evening to you," shrills mrs. d----, leaning against the door-post, her arms folded on her bosom. she is a rather pretty, slightly made eurasian, and whatever shame she may have owned she has long since cast behind her. a shapeless burmo-native trot, with high cheek-bones and mouth like a shark, calls mrs. d---- "mem-sahib." the word jars unspeakably. her life is a matter between herself and her maker, but in that she--the widow of a soldier of the queen--has stooped to this common foulness in the face of the city, she has offended against the white race. "you're from up-country, and of course you don't understand. there are any amount of that lot in the city, say the police." then the secret of the insolence of calcutta is made plain. small wonder the natives fail to respect the sahib, seeing what they see and knowing what they know. in the good old days, the honourable the directors deported him or her who misbehaved grossly, and the white man preserved his face. he may have been a ruffian, but he was a ruffian on a large scale. he did not sink in the presence of the people. the natives are quite right to take the wall of the sahib who has been at great pains to prove that he is of the same flesh and blood. all this time mrs. d---- stands on the threshold of her room and looks upon the men with unabashed eyes. mrs. d---- is a lady with a story. she is not averse to telling it. "what was--ahem--the case in which you were--er--hmn--concerned, mrs. d----?" "they said i'd poisoned my husband by putting something into his drinking water." this is interesting. "and--ah--_did_ you?" "'twasn't proved," says mrs. d---- with a laugh, a pleasant, lady-like laugh that does infinite credit to her education and upbringing. worthy mrs. d----! it would pay a novelist--a french one let us say--to pick you out of the stews and make you talk. the police move forward, into a region of mrs. d----'s. everywhere are the empty houses, and the babbling women in print gowns. the clocks in the city are close upon midnight, but the police show no signs of stopping. they plunge hither and thither, like wreckers into the surf; and each plunge brings up a sample of misery, filth, and woe. a woman--eurasian--rises to a sitting position on a cot and blinks sleepily at the police. then she throws herself down with a grunt. "what's the matter with you?" "i live in markiss lane and"--this with intense gravity--"i'm _so_ drunk." she has a rather striking gipsy-like face, but her language might be improved. "come along," say the police, "we'll head back to bentinck street, and put you on the road to the great eastern." they walk long and steadily, and the talk falls on gambling hells. "you ought to see our men rush one of 'em. when we've marked a hell down, we post men at the entrances and carry it. sometimes the chinese bite, but as a rule they fight fair. it's a pity we hadn't a hell to show you. let's go in here--there may be something forward." "here" appears to be in the heart of a chinese quarter, for the pigtails--do they ever go to bed?--are scuttling about the streets. "never go into a chinese place alone," say the police, and swing open a postern gate in a strong, green door. two chinamen appear. "what are we going to see?" "japanese gir--no, we aren't, by jove! catch that chinaman, _quick_." the pigtail is trying to double back across a courtyard into an inner chamber; but a large hand on his shoulder spins him round and puts him in rear of the line of advancing englishmen, who are, be it observed, making a fair amount of noise with their boots. a second door is thrown open, and the visitors advance into a large, square room blazing with gas. here thirteen pigtails, deaf and blind to the outer world, are bending over a table. the captured chinaman dodges uneasily in the rear of the procession. five--ten--fifteen seconds pass, the englishmen standing in the full light less than three paces from the absorbed gang who see nothing. then the burly superintendent brings his hand down on his thigh with a crack like a pistol-shot and shouts: "how do, john?" follows a frantic rush of scared celestials, almost tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get clear. one pigtail scoops up a pile of copper money, another a chinaware soup-bowl, and only a little mound of accusing cowries remains on the white matting that covers the table. in less than half a minute two facts are forcibly brought home to the visitor. first, that a pigtail is largely composed of silk, and rasps the palm of the hand as it slides through; and secondly, that the forearm of a chinaman is surprisingly muscular and well-developed. "what's going to be done?" "nothing. there are only three of us, and all the ringleaders would get away. we've got 'em safe any time we want to catch 'em, if this little visit doesn't make 'em shift their quarters. hi! john. no pidgin to-night. show how you makee play. that fat youngster there is our informer." half the pigtails have fled into the darkness, but the remainder assured and trebly assured that the police really mean "no pidgin," return to the table and stand round while the croupier manipulates the cowries, the little curved slip of bamboo, and the soup-bowl. they never gamble, these innocents. they only come to look on, and smoke opium in the next room. yet as the game progresses their eyes light up, and one by one put their money on odd or even--the number of the cowries that are covered and left uncovered by the little soup-bowl. _mythan_ is the name of the amusement, and, whatever may be its demerits, it is clean. the police look on while their charge plays and loots a parchment-skinned horror--one of swift's struldburgs, strayed from laputa--of the enormous sum of two annas. the return of this wealth, doubled, sets the loser beating his forehead against the table from sheer gratitude. "most immoral game this. a man might drop five whole rupees, if he began playing at sun-down and kept it up all night. don't you ever play whist occasionally?" "now, we didn't bring you round to make fun of this department. a man can lose as much as ever he likes and he can fight as well, and if he loses all his money he steals to get more. a chinaman is insane about gambling, and half his crime comes from it. it _must_ be kept down. here we are in bentinck street and you can be driven to the great eastern in a few minutes. joss houses? oh, yes. if you want more horrors, superintendent lamb will take you round with him to-morrow afternoon at five. good night." the police depart, and in a few minutes the silent respectability of old council house street, with the grim free kirk at the end of it, is reached. all good calcutta has gone to bed, the last tram has passed, and the peace of the night is upon the world. would it be wise and rational to climb the spire of that kirk, and shout: "o true believers! decency is a fraud and a sham. there is nothing clean or pure or wholesome under the stars, and we are all going to perdition together. amen!" on second thoughts it would not; for the spire is slippery, the night is hot, and the police have been specially careful to warn their charge that he must not be carried away by the sight of horrors that cannot be written or hinted at. "good morning," says the policeman tramping the pavement in front of the great eastern, and he nods his head pleasantly to show that he is the representative of law and peace and that the city of calcutta is safe from itself for the present. chapter viii concerning lucia. time must be filled in somehow till five this afternoon, when superintendent lamb will reveal more horrors. why not, the trams aiding, go to the old park street cemetery? "you want go park street? no trams going park street. you get out _here_." calcutta tram conductors are not polite. the car shuffles unsympathetically down the street, and the evicted is stranded in dhurrumtollah, which may be the hammersmith highway of calcutta. providence arranged this mistake, and paved the way to a great discovery now published for the first time. dhurrumtollah is full of the people of india, walking in family parties and groups and confidential couples. and the people of india are neither hindu nor mussulman--jew, ethiop, gueber, or expatriated british. they are the eurasians, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them in dhurrumtollah now. there is papa with a shining black hat fit for a counsellor of the queen, and mamma, whose silken dress is tight upon her portly figure, and the brood made up of straw-hatted, olive-cheeked, sharp-eyed little boys, and leggy maidens wearing white, open-work stockings calculated to show dust. there are the young men who smoke bad cigars and carry themselves lordily--such as have incomes. there are also the young women with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful dresses which always fit so badly across the shoulders. and they carry prayer-books or baskets, because they are either going to mass or the market. without doubt, these are the people of india. they were born in it, bred in it, and will die in it. the englishman only comes to the country, and the natives of course were there from the first, but these people have been made here, and no one has done anything for them except talk and write about them. yet they belong, some of them, to old and honourable families, hold houses in sealdah, and are rich, a few of them. they all look prosperous and contented, and they chatter eternally in that curious dialect that no one has yet reduced to print. beyond what little they please to reveal now and again in the newspapers, we know nothing about their life which touches so intimately the white on the one hand and the black on the other. it must be interesting--more interesting than the colourless anglo-indian article; but who has treated of it? there was one novel once in which the second heroine was an eurasienne. she was a strictly subordinate character, and came to a sad end. the poet of the race, henry derozio,--he of whom mr. thomas edwards wrote a history,--was bitten with keats and scott and shelley, and overlooked in his search for material things that lay nearest to him. all this mass of humanity in dhurrumtollah is unexploited and almost unknown. wanted, therefore, a writer from among the eurasians, who shall write so that men shall be pleased to read a story of eurasian life; then outsiders will be interested in the people of india, and will admit that the race has possibilities. a futile attempt to get to park street from dhurrumtollah ends in the market--the hogg market men call it. perhaps a knight of that name built it. it is not one-half as pretty as the crawford market, in bombay, but ... it appears to be the trysting place of young calcutta. the natural inclination of youth is to lie abed late, and to let the seniors do all the hard work. why, therefore, should pyramus, who has to be ruling account forms at ten, and thisbe, who _cannot_ be interested in the price of second-quality beef, wander, in studiously correct raiment, round and about the stalls before the sun is well clear of the earth? pyramus carries a walking stick with imitation silver straps upon it, and there are cloth tops to his boots; but his collar has been two days worn. thisbe crowns her dark head with a blue velvet tam-o'-shanter; but one of her boots lacks a button, and there is a tear in the left-hand glove. mamma, who despises gloves, is rapidly filling a shallow basket, that the coolie-boy carries, with vegetables, potatoes, purple brinjals, and--oh, pyramus! do you ever kiss thisbe when mamma is not by?--garlic--yea, _lusson_ of the bazaar! mamma is generous in her views on garlic. pyramus comes round the corner of the stall looking for nobody in particular--not he--and is elaborately polite to mamma. somehow, he and thisbe drift off together, and mamma, very portly and very voluble, is left to chaffer and sort and select alone. in the name of the sacred unities do not, young people, retire to the meat-stalls to exchange confidences! come up to this end, where the roses are arriving in great flat baskets, where the air is heavy with the fragrance of flowers, and the young buds and greenery are littering all the floor. they won't--they prefer talking by the dead, unromantic muttons, where there are not so many buyers. there must have been a quarrel to make up. thisbe shakes the blue velvet tam-o'-shanter and says, "oah yess!" scornfully. pyramus answers: "no-a, no-a. do-ant say thatt." mamma's basket is full and she picks up thisbe hastily. pyramus departs. _he_ never came here to do any marketing. he came to meet thisbe, who in ten years will own a figure very much like mamma's. may their ways be smooth before them, and after honest service of the government, may pyramus retire on rupees per mensem, into a nice little house somewhere in monghyr or chunar! from love by natural sequence to death. where _is_ the park street cemetery? a hundred hack-drivers leap from their boxes and invade the market, and after a short struggle one of them uncarts his capture in a burial-ground--a ghastly new place, close to a tramway. this is not what is wanted. the living dead are here--the people whose names are not yet altogether perished and whose tombstones are tended. "where are the _old_ dead?" "nobody goes there," says the driver. "it is up that road." he points up a long and utterly deserted thoroughfare, running between high walls. this is the place, and the entrance to it, with its gardener waiting with one brown, battered rose for the visitor, its grilled door and its professional notices, bears a hideous likeness to the entrance of simla churchyard. but, once inside, the sightseer stands in the heart of utter desolation--all the more forlorn for being swept up. lower park street cuts a great graveyard in two. the guide-books will tell you when the place was opened and when it was closed. the eye is ready to swear that it is as old as herculaneum and pompeii. the tombs are small houses. it is as though we walked down the streets of a town, so tall are they and so closely do they stand--a town shrivelled by fire, and scarred by frost and siege. men must have been afraid of their friends rising up before the due time that they weighted them with such cruel mounds of masonry. strong man, weak woman, or somebody's "infant son aged fifteen months," for each the squat obelisk, the defaced classic temple, the cellaret of chunam, or the candlestick of brickwork--the heavy slab, the rust-eaten railings, the whopper-jawed cherubs, and the apoplectic angels. men were rich in those days and could afford to put a hundred cubic feet of masonry into the grave of even so humble a person as "jno. clements, captain of the country service, ." when the "dearly beloved" had held rank answering to that of commissioner, the efforts are still more sumptuous and the verse.... well, the following speaks for itself:-- "soft on thy tomb shall fond remembrance shed the warm yet unavailing tear, and purple flowers that deck the honoured dead shall strew the loved and honoured bier." failure to comply with the contract does not, let us hope, entail forfeiture of the earnest-money; or the honoured dead might be grieved. the slab is out of his tomb, and leans foolishly against it; the railings are rotted, and there are no more lasting ornaments than blisters and stains, which are the work of the weather, and not the result of the "warm yet unavailing tear." let us go about and moralise cheaply on the tombstones, trailing the robe of pious reflection up and down the pathways of the grave. here is a big and stately tomb sacred to "lucia," who died in a.d., aged . here also be lichened verses which an irreverent thumb can bring to light. thus they wrote, when their hearts were heavy in them, one hundred and sixteen years ago:-- "what needs the emblem, what the plaintive strain, what all the arts that sculpture e'er expressed, to tell the treasure that these walls contain? let those declare it most who knew her best. "the tender pity she would oft display shall be with interest at her shrine returned, connubial love, connubial tears repay, and lucia loved shall still be lucia mourned. "though closed the lips, though stopped the tuneful breath, the silent, clay-cold monitress shall teach-- in all the alarming eloquence of death with double pathos to the heart shall preach. "shall teach the virtuous maid, the faithful wife, if young and fair, that young and fair was she, then close the useful lesson of her life, and tell them what she is, they soon must be." that goes well, even after all these years, does it not? and seems to bring lucia very near, in spite of what the later generation is pleased to call the stiltedness of the old-time verse. who will declare the merits of lucia--dead in her spring before there was even a _hickey's gazette_ to chronicle the amusements of calcutta, and publish, with scurrilous asterisks, the _liaisons_ of heads of departments? what pot-bellied east indiaman brought the "virtuous maid" up the river, and did lucia "make her bargain" as the cant of those times went, on the first, second, or third day after her arrival? or did she, with the others of the batch, give a spinsters' ball as a last trial--following the custom of the country? no. she was a fair kentish maiden, sent out, at a cost of five hundred pounds, english money, under the captain's charge, to wed the man of her choice, and _he_ knew clive well, had had dealings with omichand, and talked to men who had lived through the terrible night in the black hole. he was a rich man, lucia's battered tomb proves it, and he gave lucia all that her heart could wish: a green-painted boat to take the air in on the river of evenings. coffree slave-boys who could play on the french horn, and even a very elegant, neat coach with a genteel rutlan roof ornamented with flowers very highly finished, ten best polished plate glasses, ornamented with a few elegant medallions enriched with mother-o'-pearl, that she might take her drive on the course as befitted a factor's wife. all these things he gave her. and when the convoys came up the river, and the guns thundered, and the servants of the honourable the east india company drank to the king's health, be sure that lucia before all the other ladies in the fort had her choice of the new stuffs from england and was cordially hated in consequence. tilly kettle painted her picture a little before she died, and the hot-blooded young writers did duel with small swords in the fort ditch for the honour of piloting her through a minuet at the calcutta theatre or the punch house. but warren hastings danced with her instead, and the writers were confounded--every man of them. she was a toast far up the river. and she walked in the evening on the bastions of fort william, and said, "la! i protest!" it was there that she exchanged congratulations with all her friends on the th of october, when those who were alive gathered together to felicitate themselves on having come through another hot season; and the men--even the sober factor saw no wrong here--got most royally and britishly drunk on madeira that had twice rounded the cape. but lucia fell sick, and the doctor--he who went home after seven years with five lakhs and a half, and a corner of this vast graveyard to his account--said that it was a pukka or putrid fever, and the system required strengthening. so they fed lucia on hot curries, and mulled wine worked up with spirits and fortified with spices, for nearly a week; at the end of which time she closed her eyes on the weary river and the fort for ever, and a gallant, with a turn for _belles-lettres_, wept openly as men did then and had no shame of it, and composed the verses above set, and thought himself a neat hand at the pen--stap his vitals! but the factor was so grieved that he could write nothing at all--could only spend his money--and he counted his wealth by lakhs--on a sumptuous grave. a little later on he took comfort, and when the next batch came out-- but this has nothing whatever to do with the story of lucia, the virtuous maid, the faithful wife. her ghost went to a big calcutta powder ball that very night, and looked very beautiful. i met her. among the railway folk chapter i mar., a railway settlement. jamalpur is the headquarters of the east india railway. this in itself is not a startling statement. the wonder begins with the exploration of jamalpur, which is a station entirely made by, and devoted to, the use of those untiring servants of the public, the railway folk. they have towns of their own at toondla and assensole; a sun-dried sanitarium at bandikui; and howrah, ajmir, allahabad, lahore, and pindi know their colonies. but jamalpur is unadulteratedly "railway," and he who has nothing to do with the e. i. railway in some shape or another feels a stranger and an interloper. running always east and southerly, the train carries him from the torments of the northwest into the wet, woolly warmth of bengal, where may be found the hothouse heat that has ruined the temper of the good people of calcutta. the land is fat and greasy with good living, and the wealth of the bodies of innumerable dead things; and here--just above mokameh--may be seen fields stretching, without stick, stone, or bush to break the view, from the railway line to the horizon. up-country innocents must look at the map to learn that jamalpur is near the top left-hand corner of the big loop that the e. i. r. throws out round bhagalpur and part of the bara-banki districts. northward of jamalpur, as near as may be, lies the ganges and tirhoot, and eastward an offshoot of the volcanic rajmehal range blocks the view. a station which has neither judge, commissioner, deputy, or 'stunt, which is devoid of law courts, _ticca-gharies_, district superintendents of police, and many other evidences of an over-cultured civilisation, is a curiosity. "we administer ourselves," says jamalpur, proudly, "or we did--till we had local self-government in--and now the racket-marker administers us." this is a solemn fact. the station, which had its beginnings thirty odd years ago, used, till comparatively recent times, to control its own roads, sewage, conservancy, and the like. but, with the introduction of local self-government, it was ordained that the "inestimable boon" should be extended to a place made by, and maintained for, europeans, and a brand-new municipality was created and nominated according to the many rules of the game. in the skirmish that ensued, the club racket-marker fought his way to the front, secured a place on a board largely composed of babus, and since that day jamalpur's views on government have not been fit for publication. to understand the magnitude of the insult, one must study the city--for station, in the strict sense of the word, it is not. crotons, palms, mangoes, _mellingtonias_, teak, and bamboos adorn it, and the _poinsettia_ and _bougainvillea_, the railway creeper and the _bignonia venusta_, make it gay with many colours. it is laid out with military precision to each house its just share of garden, its red brick path, its growth of trees, and its neat little wicket gate. its general aspect, in spite of the dutch formality, is that of an english village, such a thing as enterprising stage-managers put on the theatres at home. the hills have thrown a protecting arm round nearly three sides of it, and on the fourth it is bounded by what are locally known as the "sheds"; in other words, the station, offices, and workshops of the company. the e. i. r. only exists for outsiders. its servants speak of it reverently, angrily, despitefully, or enthusiastically as "the company"; and they never omit the big, big c. men must have treated the honourable the east india company in something the same fashion ages ago. "the company" in jamalpur is lord dufferin, all the members of council, the body-guard, sir frederick roberts, mr. westland, whose name is at the bottom of the currency notes, the oriental life assurance company, and the bengal government all rolled into one. at first, when a stranger enters this life, he is inclined to scoff and ask, in his ignorance, "_what_ is this company that you talk so much about?" later on, he ceases to scoff; for the company is a "big" thing--almost big enough to satisfy an american. ere beginning to describe its doings, let it be written, and repeated several times hereafter, that the e. i. r. passenger carriages, and especially the second-class, are just now horrid--being filthy and unwashen, dirty to look at, and dirty to live in. having cast this small stone, we will examine jamalpur. when it was laid out, in or before the mutiny year, its designers allowed room for growth, and made the houses of one general design--some of brick, some of stone, some three, four, and six roomed, some single men's barracks and some two-storied--all for the use of the employés. king's road, prince's road, queen's road, and victoria road--jamalpur is loyal--cut the breadth of the station; and albert road, church street, and steam road the length of it. neither on these roads or on any of the cool-shaded smaller ones is anything unclean or unsightly to be found. there is a dreary village in the neighbourhood which is said to make the most of any cholera that may be going, but jamalpur itself is specklessly and spotlessly neat. from st. mary's church to the railway station, and from the buildings where they print daily about half a lakh of tickets, to the ringing, roaring, rattling workshops, everything has the air of having been cleaned up at ten that very morning and put under a glass case. there is a holy calm about the roads--totally unlike anything in an english manufacturing town. wheeled conveyances are few, because every man's bungalow is close to his work, and when the day has begun and the offices of the "loco." and "traffic" have soaked up their thousands of natives and hundreds of europeans, you shall pass under the dappled shadows of the trees, hearing nothing louder than the croon of some bearer playing with a child in the verandah or the faint tinkle of a piano. this is pleasant, and produces an impression of watteau-like refinement tempered with arcadian simplicity. the dry, anguished howl of the "buzzer," the big steam-whistle, breaks the hush, and all jamalpur is alive with the tramping of tiffin-seeking feet. the company gives one hour for meals between eleven and twelve. on the stroke of noon there is another rush back to the works or the offices, and jamalpur sleeps through the afternoon till four or half-past, and then rouses for tennis at the institute. in the hot weather it splashes in the swimming bath, or reads, for it has a library of several thousand books. one of the most nourishing lodges in the bengal jurisdiction--"st. george in the east"--lives at jamalpur, and meets twice a month. its members point out with justifiable pride that all the fittings were made by their own hands; and the lodge in its accoutrements and the energy of the craftsmen can compare with any in india. but the institute is the central gathering place, and its half-dozen tennis-courts and neatly-laid-out grounds seem to be always full. here, if a stranger could judge, the greater part of the flirtation of jamalpur is carried out, and here the dashing apprentice--the apprentices are the liveliest of all--learns that there are problems harder than any he studies at the night school, and that the heart of a maiden is more inscrutable than the mechanism of a locomotive. on tuesdays and fridays, the volunteers parade. a and b companies, strong in all, of the e. i. r. volunteers, are stationed here with the band. their uniform, grey with red facings, is not lovely, but they know how to shoot and drill. they have to. the "company" makes it a condition of service that a man must be a volunteer; and volunteer in something more than name he must be, or some one will ask the reason why. seeing that there are no regulars between howrah and dinapore, the "company" does well in exacting this toll. some of the old soldiers are wearied of drill, some of the youngsters don't like it, but--the way they entrain and detrain is worth seeing. they are as mobile a corps as can be desired, and perhaps ten or twelve years hence the government may possibly be led to take a real interest in them and spend a few thousand rupees in providing them with real soldiers' kits--not uniform and rifle merely. their ranks include all sorts and conditions of men--heads of the "loco." and "traffic," the "company" is no respecter of rank--clerks in the "audit," boys from mercantile firms at home, fighting with the intricacies of time, fare, and freight tables; guards who have grown grey in the service of the company; mail and passenger drivers with nerves of cast-iron, who can shoot through a long afternoon without losing temper or flurrying; light-blue east indians; tyne-side men, slow of speech and uncommonly strong in the arm; lathy apprentices who have not yet "filled out"; fitters, turners, foremen, full, assistant, and sub-assistant station-masters, and a host of others. in the hands of the younger men the regulation martini-henri naturally goes off the line occasionally on hunting expeditions. there is a twelve-hundred yards' range running down one side of the station, and the condition of the grass by the firing butts tells its own tale. scattered in the ranks of the volunteers are a fair number of old soldiers, for the company has a weakness for recruiting from the army for its guards who may, in time, become station-masters. a good man from the army, with his papers all correct and certificates from his commanding officer, can, after depositing twenty pounds to pay his home passage, in the event of his services being dispensed with, enter the company's service on something less than one hundred rupees a month and rise in time to four hundred as a station-master. a railway bungalow--and they are as substantially built as the engines--will cost him more than one-ninth of the pay of his grade, and the provident fund provides for his latter end. think for a moment of the number of men that a line running from howrah to delhi must use, and you will realise what an enormous amount of patronage the company holds in its hands. naturally a father who has worked for the line expects the line to do something for the son; and the line is not backward in meeting his wishes where possible. the sons of old servants may be taken on at fifteen years of age, or thereabouts, as apprentices in the "shops," receiving twenty rupees in the first and fifty in the last year, of their indentures. then they come on the books as full "men" on perhaps rs. a month, and the road is open to them in many ways. they may become foremen of departments on rs. a month, or drivers earning with overtime rs. ; or if they have been brought into the audit or the traffic, they may control innumerable babus and draw several hundreds of rupees monthly; or, at eighteen or nineteen, they may be ticket-collectors, working up to the grade of guard, etc. every rank of the huge, human hive has a desire to see its sons placed properly, and the native workmen, about three thousand, in the locomotive department only, are, said one man, "making a family affair of it altogether. you see all those men turning brass and looking after the machinery? they've all got relatives, and a lot of 'em own land out monghyr-way close to us. they bring on their sons as soon as they are old enough to do anything, and the company rather encourages it. you see the father is in a way responsible for his son, and he'll teach him all he knows, and in that way the company has a hold on them all. you've no notion how sharp a native is when he's working on his own hook. all the district round here, right up to monghyr, is more or less dependent on the railway." the babus in the traffic department, in the stores, issue department, in all the departments where men sit through the long, long indian day among ledgers, and check and pencil and deal in figures and items and rupees, may be counted by hundreds. imagine the struggle among them to locate their sons in comfortable cane-bottomed chairs, in front of a big pewter inkstand and stacks of paper! the babus make beautiful accountants, and if we could only see it, a merciful providence has made the babu for figures and detail. without him, the dividends of any company would be eaten up by the expenses of english or city-bred clerks. the babu is a great man, and, to respect him, you must see five score or so of him in a room a hundred yards long, bending over ledgers, ledgers, and yet more ledgers--silent as the sphinx and busy as a bee. he is the lubricant of the great machinery of the company whose ways and works cannot be dealt with in a single scrawl. chapter ii the shops. the railway folk, like the army and civilian castes, have their own language and life, which an outsider cannot hope to understand. for instance, when jamalpur refers to itself as being "on the long siding," a lengthy explanation is necessary before the visitor grasps the fact that the whole of the two hundred and thirty odd miles of the loop from luckeeserai to kanu-junction _via_ bhagalpur is thus contemptuously treated. jamalpur insists that it is out of the world, and makes this an excuse for being proud of itself and all its institutions. but in one thing it is badly, disgracefully provided. at a moderate estimate there must be about two hundred europeans with their families in this place. they can, and do, get their small supplies from calcutta, but they are dependent on the tender mercies of the bazaar for their meat, which seems to be hawked from door to door. there is a raja who owns or has an interest in the land on which the station stands, and he is averse to cow-killing. for these reasons, jamalpur is not too well supplied with good meat, and what it wants is a decent meat-market with cleanly controlled slaughtering arrangements. the "company," who gives grants to the schools and builds the institute and throws the shadow of its protection all over the place, might help this scheme forward. the heart of jamalpur is the "shops," and here a visitor will see more things in an hour than he can understand in a year. steam street very appropriately leads to the forty or fifty acres that the "shops" cover, and to the busy silence of the loco. superintendent's office, where, a man must put down his name and his business on a slip of paper before he can penetrate into the temple of vulcan. about three thousand five hundred men are in the "shops," and, ten minutes after the day's work has begun, the assistant superintendent knows exactly how many are "in." the heads of departments--silent, heavy-handed men, captains of five hundred or more--have their names fairly printed on a board which is exactly like a pool-marker. they "star a life" when they come in, and their few names alone represent salaries to the extent of six thousand a month. they are men worth hearing deferentially. they hail from manchester and the clyde, and the great ironworks of the north: pleasant as cold water in a thirsty land is it to hear again the full northumbrian burr or the long-drawn yorkshire "aye." under their great gravity of demeanour--a man who is in charge of a few lakhs' worth of plant cannot afford to be riotously mirthful--lurks melody and humour. they can sing like north-countrymen, and in their hours of ease go back to the speech of the iron countries they have left behind, when "ab o' th' yate" and all "ben briarly's" shrewd wit shakes the warm air of bengal with deep-chested laughter. hear "ruglan' toon," with a chorus as true as the fall of trip-hammers, and fancy that you are back again in the smoky, rattling, ringing north! but this is the "unofficial" side. go forward through the gates under the mango trees, and set foot at once in sheds which have as little to do with mangoes as a locomotive with lakshmi. the "buzzer" howls, for it is nearly tiffin time. there is a rush from every quarter of the shops, a cloud of flying natives, and a procession of more sedately pacing englishmen, and in three short minutes you are left absolutely alone among arrested wheels and belts, pulleys, cranks, and cranes--in a silence only broken by the soft sigh of a far-away steam-valve or the cooing of pigeons. you are, by favour freely granted, at liberty to wander anywhere you please through the deserted works. walk into a huge, brick-built, tin-roofed stable, capable of holding twenty-four locomotives under treatment, and see what must be done to the iron horse once in every three years if he is to do his work well. on reflection, iron horse is wrong. an engine is a she--as distinctly feminine as a ship or a mine. here stands the _echo_, her wheels off, resting on blocks, her underside machinery taken out, and her side scrawled with mysterious hieroglyphics in chalk. an enormous green-painted iron harness-rack bears her piston and eccentric rods, and a neatly painted board shows that such and such englishmen are the fitter, assistant, and apprentice engaged in editing that _echo_. an engine seen from the platform and an engine viewed from underneath are two very different things. the one is as unimpressive as a cart; the other as imposing as a man-of-war in the yard. in this manner is an engine treated for navicular, laminitis, back-sinew, or whatever it is that engines most suffer from. no. , we will say, goes wrong at dinapore, assensole, buxar, or wherever it may be, after three years' work. the place she came from is stencilled on the boiler, and the foreman examines her. then he fills in a hospital sheet, which bears one hundred and eighty printed heads under which an engine can come into the shops. no. needs repair in only one hundred and eighteen particulars, ranging from mud-hole-flanges and blower-cocks to lead-plugs, and platform brackets which have shaken loose. this certificate the foreman signs, and it is framed near the engine for the benefit of the three europeans and the eight or nine natives who have to mend no. . to the ignorant the superhuman wisdom of the examiner seems only equalled by the audacity of the two men and the boy who are to undertake what is frivolously called the "job." no. is in a sorely mangled condition, but is much worse. she is reduced to a shell--is a very elle-woman of an engine, bearing only her funnel, the iron frame and the saddle that supports the boiler. four-and-twenty engines in every stage of decomposition stand in one huge shop. a travelling crane runs overhead, and the men have hauled up one end of a bright vermilion loco. the effect is the silence of a scornful stare--just such a look as a colonel's portly wife gives through her _pince-nez_ at the audacious subaltern. engines are the "livest" things that man ever made. they glare through their spectacle-plates, they tilt their noses contemptuously, and when their insides are gone they adorn themselves with red lead, and leer like decayed beauties; and in the jamalpur works there is no escape from them. the shops can hold fifty without pressure, and on occasion as many again. everywhere there are engines, and everywhere brass domes lie about on the ground like huge helmets in a pantomime. the silence is the weirdest touch of all. some sprightly soul--an apprentice be sure--has daubed in red lead on the end of an iron tool-box a caricature of some friend who is evidently a riveter. the picture has all the interest of an egyptian cartouche, for it shows that men have been here, and that the engines do not have it all their own way. and so, out in the open, away from the three great sheds, between and under more engines, till we strike a wilderness of lines all converging to one turn-table. here be elephant-stalls ranged round a half-circle, and in each stall stands one engine, and each engine stares at the turn-table. a stolid and disconcerting company is this ring-of-eyes monsters; , , and are shining like toys. they are ready for their turn of duty, and are as spruce as hansoms. lacquered chocolate, picked out with black, red, and white, is their dress and delicate lemon graces the ceilings of the cabs. the driver should be a gentleman in evening dress with white kid gloves, and there should be gold-headed champagne bottles in the spick and span tenders. huckleberry finn says of a timber raft, "it amounted to something being captain of that raft." thrice enviable is the man who, drawing rs. a month, is allowed to make rs. overtime out of locos nos. , , or . fifty yards beyond this gorgeous trinity are ten to twelve engines who have put in to jamalpur to bait. they are alive, their fires are lighted, and they are swearing and purring and growling one at another as they stand alone. here is evidently one of the newest type--no. , a giant who has just brought the mail in and waits to be cleaned up preparatory to going out afresh. the tiffin hour has ended. the buzzer blows, and with a roar, a rattle, and a clang the shops take up their toil. the hubbub that followed on the prince's kiss to the sleeping beauty was not so loud or sudden. experience, with a foot-rule in his pocket, authority in his port, and a merry twinkle in his eye, comes up and catches ignorance walking gingerly round no. . "that's one of the best we have," says experience, "a four-wheeled coupled bogie they call her. she's by dobbs. she's done her hundred and fifty miles to-day; and she'll run in to rampore haut this afternoon; then she'll rest a day and be cleaned up. roughly, she does her three hundred miles in the four-and-twenty hours. she's a beauty. she's out from home, but we can build our own engines--all except the wheels. we're building ten locos. now, and we've got a dozen boilers ready if you care to look at them. how long does a loco. last? that's just as may be. she will do as much as her driver lets her. some men play the mischief with a loco. and some handle 'em properly. our drivers prefer hawthorne's old four-wheeled coupled engines because they give the least bother. there is one in that shed, and it's a good 'un to travel. but eighty thousand miles generally sees the gloss off an engine, and she goes into the shops to be overhauled and refitted and replaned, and a lot of things that you wouldn't understand if i told you about them. no. , the first loco. on the line, is running still, but very little of the original engine must be left by this time. that one there, came out in the mutiny year. she's by slaughter and grunning, and she's built for speed in front of a light load. french-looking sort of thing, isn't she? that's because her cylinders are on a tilt. we used her for the mail once, but the mail has grown heavier and heavier, and now we use six-wheeled coupled eighteen-inch, inside cylinder, -ton locos. to shift thousand-ton trains. _no!_ all locos. aren't alike. it isn't merely pulling a lever. the company likes its drivers to know their locos., and a man will keep his hawthorne for two or three years. the more mileage he gets out of her before she has to be overhauled the better man he is. it pays to let a man have his fancy engine. a man must take an interest in his loco., and that means she must belong to him. some locos. won't do anything, even if you coax and humour them. i don't think there are any unlucky ones now, but some years ago no. wasn't popular. the drivers went sick or took leave when they were told off for her. she killed her driver on the jubbulpore line, she left the rails at kajra, she did something or other at rampur haut, and lord knows what she didn't do or try to do in other places! all the drivers fought shy of her, and in the end she disappeared. they said she was condemned, but i shouldn't wonder if the company changed her number quietly, and changed the luck at the same time. you see, the government inspector comes and looks at our stock now and again, and when an engine's condemned he puts his dhobi-mark on her, and she's broken up. well, no. was condemned, but there was a whisper that they only shifted her number, and ran her out again. when the drivers didn't know, there were no accidents. i don't think we've got an unlucky one running now. some are different from others, but there are no man-eaters. yes, a driver of the mail _is_ somebody. he can make rs. a month if he's a covenanted man. we get a lot of our drivers in the country, and we don't import from england as much as we did. 'stands to reason that, now there's more competition both among lines and in the labour market, the company can't afford to be as generous as it used to be. it doesn't cheat a man though. it's this way with the drivers. a native driver gets about rs. a month, and in his way he's supposed to be good enough for branch work and shunting and such. well, an english driver'll get from rs. to rs. , and overtime. the english driver knows what the native gets, and in time they tell the driver that the native'll improve. the driver has that to think of. you see? that's competition!" experience returns to the engine-sheds, now full of clamour, and enlarges on the beauties of sick locomotives. the fitters and the assistants and the apprentices are hammering and punching and gauging, and otherwise technically disporting themselves round their enormous patients, and their language, as caught in snatches, is beautifully unintelligible. but one flying sentence goes straight to the heart. it is the cry of humanity over the task of life, done into unrefined english. an apprentice, grimed to his eyebrows, his cloth cap well on the back of his curly head and his hands deep in his pockets, is sitting on the edge of a tool-box ruefully regarding the very much disorganised engine whose slave is he. a handsome boy, this apprentice, and well made. he whistles softly between his teeth, and his brow puckers. then he addresses the engine, half in expostulation and half in despair, "oh, you condemned old female dog!" he puts the sentence more crisply--much more crisply--and ignorance chuckles sympathetically. ignorance also is puzzled over these engines. chapter iii vulcan's forge. in the wilderness of the railway shops--and machinery that planes and shaves, and bevels and stamps, and punches and hoists and nips--the first idea that occurs to an outsider, when he has seen the men who people the place, is that it must be the birthplace of inventions--a pasture-ground of fat patents. if a writing-man, who plays with shadows and dresses dolls that others may laugh at their antics, draws help and comfort and new methods of working old ideas from the stored shelves of a library, how, in the name of commonsense, his god, can a doing-man, whose mind is set upon things that snatch a few moments from flying time or put power into weak hands, refrain from going forward and adding new inventions to the hundreds among which he daily moves? appealed to on this subject, experience, who had served the e. i. r. loyally for many years, held his peace. "we don't go in much for patents; but," he added, with a praiseworthy attempt to turn the conversation, "we can build you any mortal thing you like. we've got the _bradford leslie_ steamer for the sahibgunge ferry. come and see the brass-work for her bows. it's in the casting-shed." it would have been cruel to have pressed experience further, and ignorance, to foredate matters a little, went about to discover why experience shied off this question, and why the men of jamalpur had not each and all invented and patented something. he won his information in the end, but did not come from jamalpur. _that_ must be clearly understood. it was found anywhere you please between howrah and hoti mardan; and here it is that all the world may admire a prudent and far-sighted board of directors. once upon a time, as every one in the profession knows, two men invented the d. and o. sleeper--cast iron, of five pieces, very serviceable. the men were in the company's employ, and their masters said: "your brains are ours. hand us over those sleepers." being of pay and position, d. and o. made some sort of resistance and got a royalty or a bonus. at any rate, the company had to pay for its sleepers. but thereafter, and the condition exists to this day, they caused it to be written in each servant's covenant, that if by chance he invented aught, his invention was to belong to the company. providence has mercifully arranged that no man or syndicate of men can buy the "holy spirit of man" outright without suffering in some way or another just as much as the purchase. america fully, and germany in part, recognises this law. the e. i. railway's breach of it is thoroughly english. they say, or it is said of them that they say, "we are afraid of our men, who belong to us, wasting their time on trying to invent." is it wholly impossible, then, for men of mechanical experience and large sympathies to check the mere patent-hunter and bring forward the man with an idea? is there no supervision in the "shops," or have the men who play tennis and billiards at the institute not a minute which they can rightly call their very own? would it ruin the richest company in india to lend their model-shop and their lathes to half a dozen, or, for the matter of that, half a hundred, abortive experiments? a massachusetts organ factory, a racine buggy shop, an oregon lumber-yard, would laugh at the notion. an american toy-maker might swindle an employé after the invention, but he would in his own interests help the man to "see what comes of the thing." surely a wealthy, a powerful and, as all jamalpur bears witness, a considerate company might cut that clause out of the covenant and await the issue. there would be quite enough jealousy between man and man, grade and grade, to keep down all but the keenest souls; and, with due respect to the steam-hammer and the rolling-mill, we have not yet made machinery perfect. the "shops" are not likely to spawn unmanageable stephensons or grasping brunels; but in the minor turns of mechanical thought that find concrete expressions in links, axle-boxes, joint packings, valves, and spring-stirrups something might--something would--be done were the practical prohibition removed. will a north countryman give you anything but warm hospitality for nothing? or if you claim from him overtime service as a right, will he work zealously? "onything but t' brass," is his motto, and his ideas are his "brass." gentlemen in authority, if this should meet your august eyes, spare it a minute's thought, and, clearing away the floridity, get to the heart of the mistake and see if it cannot be rationally put right. above all, remember that jamalpur supplied no information. it was as mute as an oyster. there is no one within your jurisdiction to--ahem--"drop upon." let us, after this excursion into the offices, return to the shops and only ask experience such questions as he can without disloyalty answer. "we used once," says he, leading to the foundry, "to sell our old rails and import new ones. even when we used 'em for roof beams and so on, we had more than we knew what to do with. now we have got rolling-mills, and we use the rails to make tie-bars for the d. and o. sleepers and all sorts of things. we turn out five hundred d. and o. sleepers a day. altogether, we use about seventy-five tons of our own iron a month here. iron in calcutta costs about five-eight a hundredweight; ours costs between three-four and three-eight, and on that item alone we save three thousand a month. don't ask me how many miles of rails we own. there are fifteen hundred miles of line, and you can make your own calculation. all those things like babies' graves, down in that shed, are the moulds for the d. and o. sleepers. we test them by dropping three hundredweight and three hundred quarters of iron on top of them from a height of seven feet, or eleven sometimes. they don't often smash. we have a notion here that our iron is as good as the home stuff." a sleek, white, and brindled pariah thrusts himself into the conversation. his house appears to be on the warm ashes of the bolt-maker. this is a horrible machine, which chews red-hot iron bars and spits them out perfect bolts. its manners are disgusting, and it gobbles over its food. "hi, jack!" says experience, stroking the interloper, "you've been trying to break your leg again. that's the dog of the works. at least he makes believe that the works belong to him. he'll follow any one of us about the shops as far as the gate, but never a step further. you can see he's in first-class condition. the boys give him his ticket, and, one of these days, he'll try to get on to the company's books as a regular worker. he's too clever to live." jack heads the procession as far as the walls of the rolling-shed and then returns to his machinery room. he waddles with fatness and despises strangers. "how would you like to be hot-potted there?" says experience, who has read and who is enthusiastic over _she_, as he points to the great furnaces whence the slag is being dragged out by hooks. "here is the old material going into the furnace in that big iron bucket. look at the scraps of iron. there's an old d. and o. sleeper, there's a lot of clips from a cylinder, there's a lot of snipped-up rails, there's a driving-wheel block, there's an old hook, and a sprinkling of boiler-plates and rivets." the bucket is tipped into the furnace with a thunderous roar and the slag below pours forth more quickly. "an engine," says experience, reflectively, "can run over herself so to say. after she's broken up she is made into sleepers for the line. you'll see how she's broken up later." a few paces further on, semi-nude demons are capering over strips of glowing hot iron which are put into a mill as rails and emerge as thin, shapely tie-bars. the natives wear rough sandals and some pretence of aprons, but the greater part of them is "all face." "as i said before," says experience, "a native's cuteness when he's working on ticket is something startling. beyond occasionally hanging on to a red-hot bar too long and so letting their pincers be drawn through the mills, these men take precious good care not to go wrong. our machinery is fenced and guard-railed as much as possible, and these men don't get caught up by the belting. in the first place, they're careful--the father warns the son and so on--and in the second, there's nothing about 'em for the belting to catch on unless the man shoves his hand in. oh, a native's no fool! he knows that it doesn't do to be foolish when he's dealing with a crane or a driving-wheel. you're looking at all those chopped rails? we make our iron as they blend baccy. we mix up all sorts to get the required quality. those rails have just been chopped by this tobacco-cutter thing." experience bends down and sets a vicious-looking, parrot-headed beam to work. there is a quiver--a snap--and a dull smash and a heavy rail is nipped in two like a stick of barley-sugar. elsewhere, a bull-nosed hydraulic cutter is rail-cutting as if it enjoyed the fun. in another shed stand the steam-hammers; the unemployed ones murmuring and muttering to themselves, as is the uncanny custom of all steam-souled machinery. experience, with his hand on a long lever, makes one of the monsters perform: and though ignorance knows that a man designed and men do continually build steam-hammers, the effect is as though experience were maddening a chained beast. the massive block slides down the guides, only to pause hungrily an inch above the anvil, or restlessly throb through a foot and a half of space, each motion being controlled by an almost imperceptible handling of the levers. "when these things are newly overhauled, you can regulate your blow to within an eighth of an inch," says experience. "we had a foreman here once who could work 'em beautifully. he had the touch. one day a visitor, no end of a swell in a tall, white hat, came round the works, and our foreman borrowed the hat and brought the hammer down just enough to press the nap and no more. 'how wonderful!' said the visitor, putting his hand carelessly upon this lever rod here." experience suits the action to the word and the hammer thunders on the anvil. "well, you can guess for yourself. next minute there wasn't enough left of that tall, white hat to make a postage-stamp of. steam-hammers aren't things to play with. now we'll go over to the stores ..." whatever apparent disorder there might have been in the works, the store department is as clean as a new pin, and stupefying in its naval order. copper plates, bar, angle, and rod iron, duplicate cranks and slide bars, the piston rods of the _bradford leslie_ steamer, engine grease, files, and hammer-heads--every conceivable article, from leather laces of beltings to head-lamps, necessary for the due and proper working of a long line, is stocked, stacked, piled, and put away in appropriate compartments. in the midst of it all, neck deep in ledgers and indent forms, stands the many-handed babu, the steam of the engine whose power extends from howrah to ghaziabad. the company does everything, and knows everything. the gallant apprentice may be a wild youth with an earnest desire to go occasionally "upon the bend." but three times a week, between and p.m., he must attend the night-school and sit at the feet of m. bonnaud, who teaches him mechanics and statics so thoroughly that even the awful government inspector is pleased. and when there is no night-school the company will by no means wash its hands of its men out of working-hours. no man can be violently restrained from going to the bad if he insists upon it, but in the service of the company a man has every warning; his escapades are known, and a judiciously arranged transfer sometimes keeps a good fellow clear of the down-grade. no one can flatter himself that in the multitude he is overlooked, or believe that between p.m. and a.m. he is at liberty to misdemean himself. sooner or later, but generally sooner, his goings-on are known, and he is reminded that "britons never shall be slaves"--to things that destroy good work as well as souls. maybe the company acts only in its own interest, but the result is good. best and prettiest of the many good and pretty things in jamalpur is the institute of a saturday when the volunteer band is playing and the tennis courts are full and the babydom of jamalpur--fat, sturdy children--frolic round the band-stand. the people dance--but big as the institute is, it is getting too small for their dances--they act, they play billiards, they study their newspapers, they play cards and everything else, and they flirt in a sumptuous building, and in the hot weather the gallant apprentice ducks his friend in the big swimming-bath. decidedly the railway folk make their lives pleasant. let us go down southward to the big giridih collieries and see the coal that feeds the furnace that smelts the iron that makes the sleeper that bears the loco. that pulls the carriage that holds the freight that comes from the country that is made richer by the great company badahur, the east indian railway. the giridih coal-fields chapter i on the surface. southward, always southward and easterly, runs the calcutta mail from luckeeserai, till she reaches madapur in the sonthal parganas. from madapur a train, largely made up of coal-trucks, heads westward into the hazaribagh district and toward giridih. a week would not have exhausted "jamalpur and its environs," as the guide-books say. but since time drives and man must e'en be driven, the weird, echoing bund in the hills above jamalpur, where the owls hoot at night and hyenas come down to laugh over the grave of "quilem roberts, who died from the effects of an encounter with a tiger near this place, a.d. ," goes undescribed. nor is it possible to deal with monghyr, the headquarters of the district, where one sees for the first time the age of old bengal in the sleepy, creepy station, built in a time-eaten fort, which runs out into the ganges, and is full of quaint houses, with fat-legged balustrades on the roofs. pensioners certainly, and probably a score of ghosts, live in monghyr. all the country seems haunted. is there not at pir bahar a lonely house on a bluff, the grave of a young lady, who, thirty years ago, rode her horse down the cliff and perished? has not monghyr a haunted house in which tradition says sceptics have seen much more than they could account for? and is it not notorious throughout the countryside that the seven miles of road between jamalpur and monghyr are nightly paraded by tramping battalions of spectres, phantoms of an old-time army massacred, who knows how long ago? the common voice attests all these things, and an eerie cemetery packed with blackened, lichened, candle-extinguisher tomb-stones persuades the listener to believe all that he hears. bengal is second--or third is it?--in order of seniority among the provinces, and like an old nurse, she tells many witch-tales. but ghosts have nothing to do with collieries, and that ever-present "company," the e. i. r., has more or less made giridih--principally more. "before the e. i. r. came," say the people, "we had one meal a day. now we have two." stomachs do not tell fibs, whatever mouths may say. that "company," in the course of business, throws about five lakhs a year into the hazaribagh district in the form of wages alone, and giridih bazaar has to supply the wants of twelve thousand men, women, and children. but we have now the authority of a number of high-souled and intelligent native prints that the sahib of all grades spends his time in "sucking the blood out of the country," and "flying to england to spend his ill-gotten gains." giridih is perfectly mad--quite insane! geologically, "the country is in the metamorphic higher grounds that rise out of the alluvial flats of lower bengal between the osri and the barakar rivers." translated, this sentence means that you can twist your ankle on pieces of pure white, pinky, and yellowish granite, slip over weather-worn sandstone, grievously cut your boots over flakes of trap, and throw hornblende pebbles at the dogs. never was such a place for stone-throwing as giridih. the general aspect of the country is falsely park-like, because it swells and sinks in a score of grass-covered undulations, and is adorned with plantation-like jungle. there are low hills on every side, and twelve miles away bearing south the blue bulk of the holy hill of parasnath, greatest of the jain tirthankars, overlooks the world. in bengal they consider four thousand five hundred feet good enough for a dagshai or kasauli, and once upon a time they tried to put troops on parasnath. there was a scarcity of water, and thomas of those days found the silence and seclusion prey upon his spirits. since twenty years, therefore, parasnath has been abandoned by her majesty's army. as to giridih itself, the last few miles of train bring up the reek of the "black country." memory depends on smell. a noseless man is devoid of sentiment, just as a noseless woman, in this country, must be devoid of honour. that first breath of the coal should be the breath of the murky, clouded tract between yeadon and dale--or barnsley, rough and hospitable barnsley--or dewsbury and batley and the derby canal on a sunday afternoon when the wheels are still and the young men and maidens walk stolidly in pairs. unfortunately, it is nothing more than giridih--seven thousand miles away from home and blessed with a warm and genial sunshine, soon to turn into something very much worse. the insanity of the place is visible at the station door. a g. b. t. cart once married a bathing-machine, and they called the child _tum-tum_. you who in flannel and cawnpore harness drive bamboo-carts about up-country roads, remember that a giridih _tum-tum_ is painfully pushed by four men, and must be entered crawling on all-fours, head first. so strange are the ways of bengal! they drive mad horses in giridih--animals that become hysterical as soon as the dusk falls and the countryside blazes with the fires of the great coke ovens. if you expostulate tearfully, they produce another horse, a raw, red fiend whose ear has to be screwed round and round, and round and round, before she will by any manner of means consent to start. the roads carry neat little eighteen-inch trenches at their sides, admirably adapted to hold the flying wheel. skirling about this savage land in the dark, the white population beguile the time by rapturously recounting past accidents, insisting throughout on the super-equine "steadiness" of their cattle. deep and broad and wide is their jovial hospitality; but somebody--the tirhoot planters for choice--ought to start a mission to teach the men of giridih what to drive. they know _how_, or they would be severally and separately and many times dead, but they do not, they do not indeed, know that animals who stand on one hind leg and beckon with all the rest, or try to pigstick in harness, are not trap-horses worthy of endearing names, but things to be pole-axed. their feelings are hurt when you say this. "sit tight," say the men of giridih; "we're insured! we can't be hurt." and now with grey hairs, dry mouth, and chattering teeth to the collieries. the e. i. r. estate, bought or leased in perpetuity from the serampore raja, may be about four miles long and between one and two miles across. it is in two pieces, the serampore field being separated from the karharbari (or kurhurballi or kabarbari) field by the property of the bengal coal company. the raneegunge coal association lies to the east of all other workings. so we have three companies at work on about eleven square miles of land. there is no such thing as getting a full view of the whole place. a short walk over a grassy down gives on to an outcrop of very dirty sandstone, which in the excessive innocence of his heart the visitor naturally takes to be the coal lying neatly on the surface. up to this sandstone the path seems to be made of crushed sugar, so white and shiny is the quartz. over the brow of the down comes in sight the old familiar pit-head wheel, spinning for the dear life, and the eye loses itself in a maze of pumping sheds, red-tiled, mud-walled miners' huts, dotted all over the landscape, and railway lines that run on every kind of gradient. there are lines that dip into valleys and disappear round the shoulders of slopes, and lines that career on the tops of rises and disappear over the brow of the slopes. along these lines whistle and pant metre-gauge engines, some with trucks at their tail, and others rattling back to the pit-bank with the absurd air of a boy late for school that an unemployed engine always assumes. there are six engines in all, and as it is easiest to walk along the lines one sees a good deal of them. they bear not altogether unfamiliar names. here, for instance, passes the "cockburn" whistling down a grade with thirty tons of coal at her heels; while the "whitly" and the "olpherts" are waiting for their complement of trucks. now a mr. t. f. cockburn was superintendent of these mines nearly thirty years ago, in the days before the chord-lines from kanu to luckeeserai were built, and all the coal was carted to the latter place; and surely mr. olpherts was an engineer who helped to think out a new sleeper. what may these things mean? "apotheosis of the manager," is the reply. "christen the engines after the managers. you'll find cockburn, dunn, whitly, abbott, olpherts, and saise, knocking about the place. sounds funny, doesn't it? doesn't sound so funny, when one of these idiots does his best to derail saise, though, by putting a line down anyhow. look at that line! laid out in knots--by jove!" to the unprofessional eye the rails seem all correct; but there must be something wrong, because "one of those idiots" is asked why in the name of all he considers sacred he does not ram the ballast properly. "what would happen if you threw an engine off the line?" "can't say that i know exactly. you see, our business is to keep them _on_, and we do that. here's rather a curiosity. you see that pointsman! they say he's an old mutineer, and when he relaxes he boasts of the sahibs he has killed. he's glad enough to eat the company's salt now." such a withered old face was the face of the pointsman at no. point! the information suggested a host of questions, and the answers were these: "you won't be able to understand till you've been down into a mine. we work our men in two ways: some by direct payment--under our own hand, and some by contractors. the contractor undertakes to deliver us the coal, supplying his own men, tools, and props. he's responsible for the safety of his men, and of course the company knows and sees his work. just fancy, among these five thousand people, what sort of effect the news of an accident would produce! it would go all through the sonthal parganas. we have any amount of sonthals besides mahometans and hindus of every possible caste, down to those musahers who eat pig. they don't require much administering in the civilian sense of the word. on sundays, as a rule, if any man has had his daughter eloped with, or anything of that kind, he generally comes up to the manager's bungalow to get the matter put straight. if a man is disabled through accident he knows that as long as he's in the hospital he gets full wages, and the company pays for the food of any of his women-folk who come to look after him. _one_, of course; not the whole clan. that makes our service popular with the people. don't you believe that a native is a fool. you can train him to everything except responsibility. there's a rule in the workings that if there is any dangerous work--we haven't choke-damp; i will show you when we get down--no gang must work without an englishman to look after them. a native wouldn't be wise enough to understand what the danger was, or where it came in. even if he did, he'd shirk the responsibility. we can't afford to risk a single life. all our output is just as much as the company want--about a thousand tons per working day. three hundred thousand in the year. we could turn out more? yes--a little. well, yes, twice as much. i won't go on, because you wouldn't believe me. there's the coal under us, and we work it at any depth from following up an outcrop down to six hundred feet. that is our deepest shaft. we have no necessity to go deeper. at home the mines are sometimes fifteen hundred feet down. well, the thickness of this coal here varies from anything you please to anything you please. there's enough of it to last your time and one or two hundred years longer. perhaps even longer than that. look at that stuff. that's big coal from the pit." it was aristocratic-looking coal, just like the picked lumps that are stacked in baskets of coal agencies at home with the printed legend atop "only _s_ a ton." but there was no picking in this case. the great piled banks were all "equal to sample," and beyond them lay piles of small, broken, "smithy" coal. "the company doesn't sell to the public. this small, broken coal is an exception. that is sold, but the big stuff is for the engines and the shops. it doesn't cost much to get out, as you say; but our men can earn as much as twelve rupees a month. very often when they've earned enough to go on with they retire from the concern till they've spent their money and then come on again. it's piece-work and they are improvident. if some of them only lived like other natives they would have enough to buy land and cows with. when there's a press of work they make a good deal by overtime, but they don't seem to keep it. you should see giridih bazaar on a sunday if you want to know where the money goes. about ten thousand rupees change hands once a week there. if you want to get at the number of people who are indirectly dependent or profit by the e. i. r. you'll have to conduct a census of your own. after sunday is over the men generally lie off on monday and take it easy on tuesday. then they work hard for the next four days and make it up. of course there's nothing in the wide world to prevent a man from resigning and going away to wherever he came from--behind those hills if he's a sonthal. he loses his employment, that's all. but they have their own point of honour. a man hates to be told by his friends that he has been guilty of shirking. and now we'll go to breakfast. you shall be 'pitted' to-morrow to any depth you like." chapter ii in the depths. "pitted to any extent you please." the only difficulty was for joseph to choose his pit. giridih was full of them. there was an arch in the side of a little hill, a blackened brick arch leading into thick night. a stationary engine was hauling a procession of coal-laden trucks--"tubs" is the technical word--out of its depths. the tubs were neither pretty nor clean. "we are going down in those when they are emptied. put on your helmet and _keep_ it on, and keep your head down." there is nothing mirth-provoking in going down a coal-mine--even though it be only a shallow incline running to one hundred and forty feet vertical below the earth. "get into the tub and lie down. hang it, no! this is not a railway carriage: you can't see the country out of the windows. lie _down_ in the dust and don't lift your head. let her go!" the tubs strain on the wire rope and slide down fourteen hundred feet of incline, at first through a chastened gloom, and then through darkness. an absurd sentence from a trial report rings in the head: "about this time prisoner expressed a desire for the consolations of religion." a hand with a reeking flare-lamp hangs over the edge of the tub, and there is a glimpse of a blackened hat near it, for those accustomed to the pits have a merry trick of going down sitting or crouching on the coupling of the rear tub. the noise is deafening, and the roof is very close indeed. the tubs bump, and the occupant crouches lovingly in the coal dust. what would happen if the train went off the line? the desire for the "consolations of religion" grows keener and keener as the air grows closer and closer. the tubs stop in darkness spangled by the light of the flare-lamps which many black devils carry. underneath and on both sides is the greasy blackness of the coal, and, above, a roof of grey sandstone, smooth as the flow of a river at evening. "now, remember that if you don't keep your hat on, you'll get your head broken, because you will forget to stoop. if you hear any tubs coming up behind you step off to one side. there's a tramway under your feet: be careful not to trip over it." the miner has a gait as peculiarly his own as tommy's measured pace or the bluejacket's roll. big men who slouch in the light of day become almost things of beauty underground. their foot is on their native heather; and the slouch is a very necessary act of homage to the great earth, which if a man observe not, he shall without doubt have his hat--bless the man who invented pith hats!--grievously cut. the road turns and winds and the roof becomes lower, but those accursed tubs still rattle by on the tramways. the roof throws back their noises, and when all the place is full of a grumbling and a growling, how under earth is one to know whence danger will turn up next? the air brings to the unacclimatised a singing in the ears, a hotness of the eyeballs, and a jumping of the heart. "that's because the pressure here is different from the pressure up above. it'll wear off in a minute. _we_ don't notice it. wait till you get down a four-hundred-foot pit. _then_ your ears will begin to sing, if you like." most people know the one night of each hot weather--that still, clouded night just before the rains break, when there seems to be no more breathable air under the bowl of the pitiless skies, and all the weight of the silent, dark house lies on the chest of the sleep-hunter. this is the feeling in a coal-mine--only more so--much more so, for the darkness is the "gross darkness of the inner sepulchre." it is hard to see which is the black coal and which the passage driven through it. from far away, down the side galleries, comes the regular beat of the pick--thick and muffled as the beat of the labouring heart. "six men to a gang, and they aren't allowed to work alone. they make six-foot drives through the coal--two and sometimes three men working together. the rest clear away the stuff and load it into the tubs. we have no props in this gallery because we have a roof as good as a ceiling. the coal lies under the sandstone here. it's beautiful sandstone." it _was_ beautiful sandstone--as hard as a billiard table and devoid of any nasty little bumps and jags. there was a roaring down one road--the roaring of infernal fires. this is not a pleasant thing to hear in the dark. it is too suggestive. "that's our ventilating shaft. can't you feel the air getting brisker? come and look." imagine a great iron-bound crate of burning coal, hanging over a gulf of darkness faintly showing the brickwork of the base of a chimney. "we're at the bottom of the shaft. that fire makes a draught that sucks up the foul air from the bottom of the pit. there's another down-draw shaft in another part of the mine where the clean air comes in. we aren't going to set the mines on fire. there's an earth and brick floor at the bottom of the pit; the crate hangs over. it isn't so deep as you think." then a devil--a naked devil--came in with a pitchfork and fed the spouting flames. this was perfectly in keeping with the landscape. more trucks, more muffled noises, more darkness made visible, and more devils--male and female--coming out of darkness and vanishing. then a picture to be remembered. a great hall of eblis, twenty feet from inky-black floor to grey roof, upheld by huge pillars of shining coal, and filled with flitting and passing devils. on a shattered pillar near the roof stood a naked man, his flesh olive-coloured in the light of the lamps, hewing down a mass of coal that still clove to the roof. behind him was the wall of darkness, and when the lamps shifted he disappeared like a ghost. the devils were shouting directions, and the man howled in reply, resting on his pick and wiping the sweat from his brow. when he smote the coal crushed and slid and rumbled from the darkness into the darkness, and the devils cried _shabash!_ the man stood erect like a bronze statue, he twisted and bent himself like a japanese grotesque, and anon threw himself on his side after the manner of the dying gladiator. then spoke the still small voice of fact: "a first-class workman if he would only stick to it. but as soon as he makes a little money he lies off and spends it. that's the last of a pillar that we've knocked out. see here. these pillars of coal are square, about thirty feet each way. as you can see, we make the pillar first by cutting out all the coal between. then we drive two square tunnels, about seven feet wide, through and across the pillar, propping it with balks. there's one fresh cut." two tunnels crossing at right angles had been driven through a pillar which in its under-cut condition seemed like the rough draft of a statue for an elephant. "when the pillar stands only on four legs we chip away one leg at a time from a square to an hour-glass shape, and then either the whole of the pillar crashes down from the roof or else a quarter or a half. if the coal lies against the sandstones it carries away clear, but in some places it brings down stone and rubbish with it. the chipped-away legs of the pillars are called stooks." "who has to make the last cut that breaks a leg through?" "oh! englishmen of sorts. we can't trust natives for the job unless it's very easy. the natives take kindly to the pillar-work though. they are paid just as much for their coal as though they had hewed it out of the solid. of course we take very good care to see that the roof doesn't come in on us. you would never understand how and why we prop our roofs with those piles of sleepers. anyway, you can see that we cannot take out a whole line of pillars. we work 'em _en echelon_, and those big beams you see running from floor to roof are our indicators. they show when the roof is going to give. oh! dear no, there's no dramatic effect about it. no splash, you know. our roofs give plenty of warning by cracking and then collapse slowly. the parts of the work that we have cleared out and allowed to fall in are called goafs. you're on the edge of a goaf now. all that darkness there marks the limit of the mine. we have worked that out piece-meal, and the props are gone and the place is down. the roof of any pillar-working is tested every morning by tapping--pretty hard tapping." "hi yi! yi!" shout all the devils in chorus, and the hall of eblis is full of rolling sound. the olive man has brought down an avalanche of coal. "it is a sight to see the whole of one of the pillars come away. they make an awful noise. it would startle you out of your wits. but there's not an atom of risk." ("not an atom of risk." oh, genial and courteous host, when you turned up next day blacker than any sweep that ever swept, with a neat, half-inch gash on your forehead--won by cutting a "stook" and getting caught by a bounding coal-knob--how long and earnestly did you endeavour to show that "stook-cutting" was an employment as harmless and unexciting as wool-samplering!) "our ways are rather primitive, but they're cheap, and safe as houses. doms and bauris, kols and beldars, don't understand refinements in mining. they'd startle an english pit where there was fire-damp. do you know it's a solemn fact that if you drop a davy lamp or snatch it quickly you can blow a whole english pit inside out with all the miners? good for us that we don't know what fire-damp is here. we can use flare-lamps." after the first feeling of awe and wonder is worn out, a mine becomes monotonous. there is only the humming, palpitating darkness, the rumble of the tubs, and the endless procession of galleries to arrest the attention. and one pit to the uninitiated is as like to another as two peas. tell a miner this and he laughs--slowly and softly. to him the pits have each distinct personalities, and each must be dealt with differently. chapter iii the perils of the pits. an engineer, who has built a bridge, can strike you nearly dead with professional facts; the captain of a seventy-horse-power ganges river-steamer can, in one hour, tell legends of the sandheads and the james and mary shoal sufficient to fill half a _pioneer_, but a couple of days spent on, above, and in a coal-mine yields more mixed information than two engineers and three captains. it is hopeless to pretend to understand it all. when your host says, "ah, such an one is a thundering good fault-reader!" you smile hazily, and by way of keeping up the conversation, adventure on the statement that fault-reading and palmistry are very popular amusements. then men explain. every one knows that coal-strata, in common with women, horses, and official superiors, have "faults" caused by some colic of the earth in the days when things were settling into their places. a coal-seam is suddenly sliced off as a pencil is cut through with one slanting blow of the penknife, and one-half is either pushed up or pushed down any number of feet. the miners work the seam till they come to this break-off, and then call for an expert to "read the fault." it is sometimes very hard to discover whether the sliced-off seam has gone up or down. theoretically, the end of the broken piece should show the direction. practically its indications are not always clear. then a good "fault-reader," who must more than know geology, is a useful man, and is much prized; for the giridih fields are full of faults and "dykes." tongues of what was once molten lava thrust themselves sheer into the coal, and the disgusted miner finds that for about twenty feet on each side of the tongue all coal has been burnt away. the head of the mine is supposed to foresee these things and more. he can tell you, without looking at the map, what is the geological formation of any thousand square miles of india; he knows as much about brickwork and the building of houses, arches, and shafts as an average p. w. d. man; he has not only to know the intestines of a pumping or winding engine, but must be able to take them to pieces with his own hands, indicate on the spot such parts as need repair, and make drawings of anything that requires renewal; he knows how to lay out and build railways with a grade of one in twenty-seven; he has to carry, in his head all the signals and points between and over which his locomotive engines work; he must be an electrician capable of controlling the apparatus that fires the dynamite charges in the pits, and must thoroughly understand boring operations with thousand-foot drills. he must know by name, at least, one thousand of the men on the works, and must fluently speak the vernaculars of the low castes. if he has sonthali, which is more elaborate than greek, so much the better for him. he must know how to handle men of all grades, and, while holding himself aloof, must possess sufficient grip of the men's private lives to be able to see at once the merits of a charge of attempted abduction preferred by a clucking, croaking kol against a fluent english-speaking brahmin. for he is literally the light of justice, and to him the injured husband and the wrathful father look for redress. he must be on the spot and take all responsibility when any specially risky job is under way in the pit, and he can claim no single hour of the day or the night for his own. from eight in the morning till one in the afternoon he is coated with coal-dust and oil. from one till eight in the evening he has office work. after eight o'clock he is free to attend to anything that he may be wanted for. this is a soberly drawn picture of a life that sahibs on the mines actually enjoy. they are spared all private socio-official worry, for the company, in its mixture of state and private interest, is as perfectly cold-blooded and devoid of bias as any great department of the empire. if certain things be done, well and good. if certain things be not done the defaulter goes, and his place is filled by another. the conditions of service are graven on stone. there may be generosity; there undoubtedly is justice, but above all, there is freedom within broad limits. no irrepressible shareholder cripples the executive arm with suggestions and restrictions, and no private piques turn men's blood to gall within them. they work like horses and are happy. when he can snatch a free hour, the grimy, sweating, cardigan-jacketed, ammunition-booted, pick-bearing ruffian turns into a well-kept english gentleman, who plays a good game of billiards, and has a batch of new books from england every week. the change is sudden, but in giridih nothing is startling. it is right and natural that a man should be alternately valentine and orson, specially orson. it is right and natural to drive--always behind a mad horse--away and away towards the lonely hills till the flaming coke ovens become glow-worms on the dark horizon, and in the wilderness to find a lovely english maiden teaching squat, filthy sonthal girls how to become christians. nothing is strange in giridih, and the stories of the pits, the raffle of conversation that a man picks up as he passes, are quite in keeping with the place. thanks to the law, which enacts that an englishman must look after the native miners, and if any one be killed must explain satisfactorily that the accident was not due to preventable causes, the death-roll is kept astoundingly low. in one "bad" half-year, six men out of the five thousand were killed, in another four, and in another none at all. as has been said before, a big accident would scare off the workers, for, in spite of the age of the mines--nearly thirty years--the hereditary pitman has not yet been evolved. but to small accidents the men are orientally apathetic. read of a death among the five thousand:-- a gang has been ordered to cut clay for the luting of the coke furnaces. the clay is piled in a huge bank in the open sunlight. a coolie hacks and hacks till he has hewn out a small cave with twenty foot of clay above him. why should he trouble to climb up the bank and bring down the eave of the cave? it is easier to cut in. the sirdar of the gang is watching round the shoulder of the bank. the coolie cuts lazily as he stands. sunday is very near, and he will get gloriously drunk in giridih bazaar with his week's earnings. he digs his own grave stroke by stroke, for he has not sense enough to see that undercut clay is dangerous. he is a sonthal from the hills. there is a smash and a dull thud, and his grave has shut down upon him in an avalanche of heavy-caked clay. the sirdar calls to the babu of the ovens, and with the promptitude of his race the babu loses his head. he runs puffily, without giving orders, anywhere, everywhere. finally he runs to the sahib's house. the sahib is at the other end of the collieries. he runs back. the sahib has gone home to wash. then his indiscretion strikes him. he should have sent runners--fleet-footed boys from the coal-screening gangs. he sends them and they fly. one catches the sahib just changed after his bath. "there is a man dead at such a place"--he gasps, omitting to say whether it is a surface or a pit accident. on goes the grimy pit-kit, and in three minutes the sahib's dogcart is flying to the place indicated. they have dug out the sonthal. his head is smashed in, spine and breastbone are broken, and the gang-sirdar, bowing double, throws the blame of the accident on the poor, shapeless, battered dead. "i had warned him, but he would not listen! _twice_ i warned him! these men are witnesses." the babu is shaking like a jelly. "oh, sar, i have never seen a man killed before! look at that eye, sar! i should have sent runners. i ran everywhere! i ran to your house. you were not in. i was running for hours. it was not my fault! it was the fault of the gang-sirdar." he wrings his hands and gurgles. the best of accountants, but the poorest of coroners is he. no need to ask how the accident happened. no need to listen to the sirdar and his "witnesses." the sonthal had been a fool, but it was the sirdar's business to protect him against his own folly. "has he any people here?" "yes, his _rukni_,--his kept-woman,--and his sister's brother-in-law. his home is far-off." the sister's brother-in-law breaks through the crowd howling for vengeance on the sirdar. he will send for the police, he will have the price of his brother's blood full tale. the windmill arms and the angry eyes fall, for the sahib is making the report of the death. "will the government give me _pensin_? i am his wife," a woman clamours, stamping her pewter-ankleted feet. "he was killed in your service. where is his _pensin_? i am his wife." "you lie! you're his _rukni_. keep quiet! go! the pension comes to _us_." the sister's brother-in-law is not a refined man, but the _rukni_ is his match. they are silenced. the sahib takes the report, and the body is borne away. before to-morrow's sun rises the gang-sirdar may find himself a simple "surface-coolie," earning nine _pice_ a day; and in a week some sonthal woman behind the hills may discover that she is entitled to draw monthly great wealth from the coffers of the sirkar. but this will not happen if the sister's brother-in-law can prevent it. he goes off swearing at the _rukni_. in the meantime, what have the rest of the dead man's gang been doing? they have, if you please, abating not one stroke, dug out all the clay, and would have it verified. they have seen their comrade die. he is dead. _bus!_[ ] will the sirdar take the tale of clay? and yet, were twenty men to be crushed by their own carelessness in the pit, these same impassive workers would scatter like panic-stricken horses. [ ] enough. turning from this sketch, let us set in order a few stories of the pits. in some of the mines the coal is blasted out by the dynamite which is fired by electricity from a battery on the surface. two men place the charges, and then signal to be drawn up in the cage which hangs in the pit-eye. once two natives were intrusted with the job. they performed their parts beautifully till the end, when the vaster idiot of the two scrambled into the cage, gave signal, and was hauled up before his friend could follow. thirty or forty yards up the shaft all possible danger for those in the cage was over, and the charge was accordingly exploded. then it occurred to the man in the cage that his friend stood a very good chance of being, by this time, riven to pieces and choked. but the friend was wise in his generation. he had missed the cage, but found a coal-tub--one of the little iron trucks--and turning this upside down, crawled into it. when the charge went off, his shelter was battered in so much, that men had to hack him out, for the tub had made, as it were, a tinned, sardine of its occupant. he was absolutely unhurt, but for his feelings. on reaching the pit-bank his first words were, "i do not desire to go down to the pit with _that_ man any more." his wish had been already gratified, for "that man" had fled. later on, the story goes, when "that man" found that the guilt of murder was not at his door, he returned, and was made a mere surface-coolie, and his brothers jeered at him as they passed to their better-paid occupation. occasionally there are mild cyclones in the pits. an old working, perhaps a mile away, will collapse: a whole gallery sinking bodily. then the displaced air rushes through the inhabited mine, and, to quote their own expression, blows the pitmen about "like dry leaves." few things are more amusing than the spectacle of a burly tyneside foreman who, failing to dodge round a corner in time, is "put down" by the wind, sitting-fashion, on a knobby lump of coal. but most impressive of all is a tale they tell of a fire in a pit many years ago. the coal caught light. they had to send earth and bricks down the shaft and build great dams across the galleries to choke the fire. imagine the scene, a few hundred feet underground, with the air growing hotter and hotter each moment, and the carbonic acid gas trickling through the dams. after a time the rough dams gaped, and the gas poured in afresh, and the englishmen went down and leeped the cracks between roof and dam-sill with anything they could get. coolies fainted, and had to be taken away, but no one died, and behind the first dams they built great masonry ones, and bested that fire; though for a long time afterwards, whenever they pumped water into it, the steam would puff out from crevices in the ground above. it is a queer life that they lead, these men of the coal-fields, and a "big" life to boot. to describe one-half of their labours would need a week at the least, and would be incomplete then. "if you want to see anything," they say, "you should go over to the baragunda copper-mines; you should look at the barakar ironworks; you should see our boring operations five miles away; you should see how we sink pits; you should, above all, see giridih bazaar on a sunday. why, you haven't seen anything. there's no end of a sonthal mission hereabouts. all the little dev--dears have gone on a picnic. wait till they come back, and see 'em learning to read." alas! one cannot wait. at the most one can but thrust an impertinent pen skin-deep into matters only properly understood by specialists. the country life press garden city, n. y. transcriber's notes use the phase to find the text referenced. page rate will know what i mean. 'known' changed to 'know'. page lanquer stands 'lanquer' may be 'lacquer'. unchanged. page if they show the least disposition 'dispositon' changed to 'disposition'. page door with _cloisonnée_ hinges, cloisonnée also spelled cloissonnée in this book. no change. part page jet of steam 'stream' changed to 'steam'. page black-yellow, and pink pools 'link' changed to 'pink'. page lord forgie us 'forgie' may be a form of dialect meaning 'forgive'. unchanged. page the final book of mononi 'mononi' may be 'moroni'. unchanged. page maidan also spelled maidân and maidàn. no change. page pan also spelled pân. no change. page seam has gone up or down. 'beam' changed to 'seam'. [illustration: just so stories] [illustration: how the whale got his throat] transcriber's note: not being able to ascertain which words were kipling being clever and which were his printer's creativity, all spelling anomalies except the few glaringly obvious ones noted at the end have been retained. for example, "he married ever so many wifes" was retained on page . for the html version, the page images have been included so that the reader may make comparisons. jvst so stories by rvdyard kipling [illustration] _pictures by joseph m. gleeson_ doubleday page & company copyright, , by rudyard kipling "just so stories," have also been copyrighted separately as follows: how the whale got his tiny throat. copyright, , by the century company. how the camel got his hump. copyright, , by the century company. how the rhinoceros got his wrinkly skin. copyright, , by the century company. the elephant's child. copyright, , by rudyard kipling; copyright, , by the curtis publishing company. the beginning of the armadillos. copyright, , by rudyard kipling. the sing song of old man kangaroo. copyright, by rudyard kipling. how the leopard got his spots, copyright, , by rudyard kipling. how the first letter was written. copyright, , by rudyard kipling. the cat that walked by himself, copyright, , by rudyard kipling. [illustration] contents page how the whale got his throat how the camel got his hump how the rhinoceros got his skin how the leopard got his spots the elephant's child the sing-song of old man kangaroo the beginning of the armadillos how the first letter was written how the alphabet was made the crab that played with the sea the cat that walked by himself the butterfly that stamped [illustration] how the whale got his throat in the sea, once upon a time, o my best beloved, there was a whale, and he ate fishes. he ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. all the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth--so! till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small 'stute fish, and he swam a little behind the whale's right ear, so as to be out of harm's way. then the whale stood up on his tail and said, 'i'm hungry.' and the small 'stute fish said in a small 'stute voice, 'noble and generous cetacean, have you ever tasted man?' 'no,' said the whale. 'what is it like?' 'nice,' said the small 'stute fish. 'nice but nubbly.' 'then fetch me some,' said the whale, and he made the sea froth up with his tail. 'one at a time is enough,' said the 'stute fish. 'if you swim to latitude fifty north, longitude forty west (that is magic), you will find, sitting _on_ a raft, _in_ the middle of the sea, with nothing on but a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must _not_ forget the suspenders, best beloved), and a jack-knife, one shipwrecked mariner, who, it is only fair to tell you, is a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.' so the whale swam and swam to latitude fifty north, longitude forty west, as fast as he could swim, and _on_ a raft, _in_ the middle of the sea, _with_ nothing to wear except a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must particularly remember the suspenders, best beloved), _and_ a jack-knife, he found one single, solitary shipwrecked mariner, trailing his toes in the water. (he had his mummy's leave to paddle, or else he would never have done it, because he was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.) then the whale opened his mouth back and back and back till it nearly touched his tail, and he swallowed the shipwrecked mariner, and the raft he was sitting on, and his blue canvas breeches, and the suspenders (which you _must_ not forget), _and_ the jack-knife--he swallowed them all down into his warm, dark, inside cupboards, and then he smacked his lips--so, and turned round three times on his tail. but as soon as the mariner, who was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity, found himself truly inside the whale's warm, dark, inside cupboards, he stumped and he jumped and he thumped and he bumped, and he pranced and he danced, and he banged and he clanged, and he hit and he bit, and he leaped and he creeped, and he prowled and he howled, and he hopped and he dropped, and he cried and he sighed, and he crawled and he bawled, and he stepped and he lepped, and he danced hornpipes where he shouldn't, and the whale felt most unhappy indeed. (_have_ you forgotten the suspenders?) [illustration: this is the picture of the whale swallowing the mariner with his infinite-resource-and-sagacity, and the raft and the jack-knife _and_ his suspenders, which you must _not_ forget. the buttony-things are the mariner's suspenders, and you can see the knife close by them. he is sitting on the raft, but it has tilted up sideways, so you don't see much of it. the whity thing by the mariner's left hand is a piece of wood that he was trying to row the raft with when the whale came along. the piece of wood is called the jaws-of-a-gaff. the mariner left it outside when he went in. the whale's name was smiler, and the mariner was called mr. henry albert bivvens, a.b. the little 'stute fish is hiding under the whale's tummy, or else i would have drawn him. the reason that the sea looks so ooshy-skooshy is because the whale is sucking it all into his mouth so as to suck in mr. henry albert bivvens and the raft and the jack-knife and the suspenders. you must never forget the suspenders.] so he said to the 'stute fish, 'this man is very nubbly, and besides he is making me hiccough. what shall i do?' 'tell him to come out,' said the 'stute fish. so the whale called down his own throat to the shipwrecked mariner, 'come out and behave yourself. i've got the hiccoughs.' 'nay, nay!' said the mariner. 'not so, but far otherwise. take me to my natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-albion, and i'll think about it.' and he began to dance more than ever. 'you had better take him home,' said the 'stute fish to the whale. 'i ought to have warned you that he is a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.' [illustration: here is the whale looking for the little 'stute fish, who is hiding under the door-sills of the equator. the little 'stute fish's name was pingle. he is hiding among the roots of the big seaweed that grows in front of the doors of the equator. i have drawn the doors of the equator. they are shut. they are always kept shut, because a door ought always to be kept shut. the ropy-thing right across is the equator itself; and the things that look like rocks are the two giants moar and koar, that keep the equator in order. they drew the shadow-pictures on the doors of the equator, and they carved all those twisty fishes under the doors. the beaky-fish are called beaked dolphins, and the other fish with the queer heads are called hammer-headed sharks. the whale never found the little 'stute fish till he got over his temper, and then they became good friends again.] so the whale swam and swam and swam, with both flippers and his tail, as hard as he could for the hiccoughs; and at last he saw the mariner's natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-albion, and he rushed half-way up the beach, and opened his mouth wide and wide and wide, and said, 'change here for winchester, ashuelot, nashua, keene, and stations on the _fitch_burg road;' and just as he said 'fitch' the mariner walked out of his mouth. but while the whale had been swimming, the mariner, who was indeed a person of infinite-resource-and-sagacity, had taken his jack-knife and cut up the raft into a little square grating all running criss-cross, and he had tied it firm with his suspenders (_now_ you know why you were not to forget the suspenders!), and he dragged that grating good and tight into the whale's throat, and there it stuck! then he recited the following _sloka_, which, as you have not heard it, i will now proceed to relate-- by means of a grating i have stopped your ating. for the mariner he was also an hi-ber-ni-an. and he stepped out on the shingle, and went home to his mother, who had given him leave to trail his toes in the water; and he married and lived happily ever afterward. so did the whale. but from that day on, the grating in his throat, which he could neither cough up nor swallow down, prevented him eating anything except very, very small fish; and that is the reason why whales nowadays never eat men or boys or little girls. the small 'stute fish went and hid himself in the mud under the door-sills of the equator. he was afraid that the whale might be angry with him. the sailor took the jack-knife home. he was wearing the blue canvas breeches when he walked out on the shingle. the suspenders were left behind, you see, to tie the grating with; and that is the end of _that_ tale. [illustration] when the cabin port-holes are dark and green because of the seas outside; when the ship goes _wop_ (with a wiggle between) and the steward falls into the soup-tureen, and the trunks begin to slide; when nursey lies on the floor in a heap, and mummy tells you to let her sleep, and you aren't waked or washed or dressed, why, then you will know (if you haven't guessed) you're 'fifty north and forty west!' [illustration: how the camel got his hump] how the camel got his hump now this is the next tale, and it tells how the camel got his big hump. in the beginning of years, when the world was so new and all, and the animals were just beginning to work for man, there was a camel, and he lived in the middle of a howling desert because he did not want to work; and besides, he was a howler himself. so he ate sticks and thorns and tamarisks and milkweed and prickles, most 'scruciating idle; and when anybody spoke to him he said 'humph!' just 'humph!' and no more. presently the horse came to him on monday morning, with a saddle on his back and a bit in his mouth, and said, 'camel, o camel, come out and trot like the rest of us.' 'humph!' said the camel; and the horse went away and told the man. presently the dog came to him, with a stick in his mouth, and said, 'camel, o camel, come and fetch and carry like the rest of us.' 'humph!' said the camel; and the dog went away and told the man. presently the ox came to him, with the yoke on his neck and said, 'camel, o camel, come and plough like the rest of us.' 'humph!' said the camel; and the ox went away and told the man. at the end of the day the man called the horse and the dog and the ox together, and said, 'three, o three, i'm very sorry for you (with the world so new-and-all); but that humph-thing in the desert can't work, or he would have been here by now, so i am going to leave him alone, and you must work double-time to make up for it.' that made the three very angry (with the world so new-and-all), and they held a palaver, and an _indaba_, and a _punchayet_, and a pow-wow on the edge of the desert; and the camel came chewing milkweed _most_ 'scruciating idle, and laughed at them. then he said 'humph!' and went away again. presently there came along the djinn in charge of all deserts, rolling in a cloud of dust (djinns always travel that way because it is magic), and he stopped to palaver and pow-pow with the three. 'djinn of all deserts,' said the horse, '_is_ it right for any one to be idle, with the world so new-and-all?' 'certainly not,' said the djinn. 'well,' said the horse, 'there's a thing in the middle of your howling desert (and he's a howler himself) with a long neck and long legs, and he hasn't done a stroke of work since monday morning. he won't trot.' 'whew!' said the djinn, whistling, 'that's my camel, for all the gold in arabia! what does he say about it?' 'he says "humph!"' said the dog; 'and he won't fetch and carry.' 'does he say anything else?' [illustration: this is the picture of the djinn making the beginnings of the magic that brought the humph to the camel. first he drew a line in the air with his finger, and it became solid; and then he made a cloud, and then he made an egg--you can see them both at the bottom of the picture--and then there was a magic pumpkin that turned into a big white flame. then the djinn took his magic fan and fanned that flame till the flame turned into a magic by itself. it was a good magic and a very kind magic really, though it had to give the camel a humph because the camel was lazy. the djinn in charge of all deserts was one of the nicest of the djinns, so he would never do anything really unkind.] [illustration] 'only "humph!"; and he won't plough,' said the ox. 'very good,' said the djinn. 'i'll humph him if you will kindly wait a minute.' the djinn rolled himself up in his dust-cloak, and took a bearing across the desert, and found the camel most 'scruciatingly idle, looking at his own reflection in a pool of water. 'my long and bubbling friend,' said the djinn, 'what's this i hear of your doing no work, with the world so new-and-all?' 'humph!' said the camel. the djinn sat down, with his chin in his hand, and began to think a great magic, while the camel looked at his own reflection in the pool of water. 'you've given the three extra work ever since monday morning, all on account of your 'scruciating idleness,' said the djinn; and he went on thinking magics, with his chin in his hand. 'humph!' said the camel. 'i shouldn't say that again if i were you,' said the djinn; 'you might say it once too often. bubbles, i want you to work.' [illustration: here is the picture of the djinn in charge of all deserts guiding the magic with his magic fan. the camel is eating a twig of acacia, and he has just finished saying "humph" once too often (the djinn told him he would), and so the humph is coming. the long towelly-thing growing out of the thing like an onion is the magic, and you can see the humph on its shoulder. the humph fits on the flat part of the camel's back. the camel is too busy looking at his own beautiful self in the pool of water to know what is going to happen to him. underneath the truly picture is a picture of the world-so-new-and-all. there are two smoky volcanoes in it, some other mountains and some stones and a lake and a black island and a twisty river and a lot of other things, as well as a noah's ark. i couldn't draw all the deserts that the djinn was in charge of, so i only drew one, but it is a most deserty desert.] and the camel said 'humph!' again; but no sooner had he said it than he saw his back, that he was so proud of, puffing up and puffing up into a great big lolloping humph. 'do you see that?' said the djinn. 'that's your very own humph that you've brought upon your very own self by not working. to-day is thursday, and you've done no work since monday, when the work began. now you are going to work.' 'how can i,' said the camel, 'with this humph on my back?' 'that's made a-purpose,' said the djinn, 'all because you missed those three days. you will be able to work now for three days without eating, because you can live on your humph; and don't you ever say i never did anything for you. come out of the desert and go to the three, and behave. humph yourself!' and the camel humphed himself, humph and all, and went away to join the three. and from that day to this the camel always wears a humph (we call it 'hump' now, not to hurt his feelings); but he has never yet caught up with the three days that he missed at the beginning of the world, and he has never yet learned how to behave. the camel's hump is an ugly lump which well you may see at the zoo; but uglier yet is the hump we get from having too little to do. kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo, if we haven't enough to do-oo-oo, we get the hump-- cameelious hump-- the hump that is black and blue! we climb out of bed with a frouzly head and a snarly-yarly voice. we shiver and scowl and we grunt and we growl at our bath and our boots and our toys; and there ought to be a corner for me (and i know there is one for you) when we get the hump-- cameelious hump-- the hump that is black and blue! the cure for this ill is not to sit still, or frowst with a book by the fire; but to take a large hoe and a shovel also, and dig till you gently perspire; and then you will find that the sun and the wind, and the djinn of the garden too, have lifted the hump-- the horrible hump-- the hump that is black and blue! i get it as well as you-oo-oo-- if i haven't enough to do-oo-oo-- we all get hump-- cameelious hump-- kiddies and grown-ups too! [illustration: how the rhinoceros got his skin] how the rhinoceros got his skin once upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the red sea, there lived a parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. and the parsee lived by the red sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch. and one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick. it was indeed a superior comestible (_that's_ magic), and he put it on the stove because _he_ was allowed to cook on that stove, and he baked it and he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most sentimental. but just as he was going to eat it there came down to the beach from the altogether uninhabited interior one rhinoceros with a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners. in those days the rhinoceros's skin fitted him quite tight. there were no wrinkles in it anywhere. he looked exactly like a noah's ark rhinoceros, but of course much bigger. all the same, he had no manners then, and he has no manners now, and he never will have any manners. he said, 'how!' and the parsee left that cake and climbed to the top of a palm tree with nothing on but his hat, from which the rays of the sun were always reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. and the rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate and exclusively uninhabited interior which abuts on the islands of mazanderan, socotra, and the promontories of the larger equinox. then the parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs and recited the following _sloka_, which, as you have not heard, i will now proceed to relate:-- them that takes cakes which the parsee-man bakes makes dreadful mistakes. and there was a great deal more in that than you would think. _because_, five weeks later, there was a heat-wave in the red sea, and everybody took off all the clothes they had. the parsee took off his hat; but the rhinoceros took off his skin and carried it over his shoulder as he came down to the beach to bathe. in those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof. he said nothing whatever about the parsee's cake, because he had eaten it all; and he never had any manners, then, since, or henceforward. he waddled straight into the water and blew bubbles through his nose, leaving his skin on the beach. [illustration: this is the picture of the parsee beginning to eat his cake on the uninhabited island in the red sea on a very hot day; and of the rhinoceros coming down from the altogether uninhabited interior, which, as you can truthfully see, is all rocky. the rhinoceros's skin is quite smooth, and the three buttons that button it up are underneath, so you can't see them. the squiggly things on the parsee's hat are the rays of the sun reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, because if i had drawn real rays they would have filled up all the picture. the cake has currants in it; and the wheel-thing lying on the sand in front belonged to one of pharaoh's chariots when he tried to cross the red sea. the parsee found it, and kept it to play with. the parsee's name was pestonjee bomonjee, and the rhinoceros was called strorks, because he breathed through his mouth instead of his nose. i wouldn't ask anything about the cooking-stove if _i_ were you.] presently the parsee came by and found the skin, and he smiled one smile that ran all round his face two times. then he danced three times round the skin and rubbed his hands. then he went to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the parsee never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. he took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could _possibly_ hold. then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and waited for the rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on. [illustration: this is the parsee pestonjee bomonjee sitting in his palm-tree and watching the rhinoceros strorks bathing near the beach of the altogether uninhabited island after strorks had taken off his skin. the parsee has put the cake-crumbs into the skin, and he is smiling to think how they will tickle strorks when strorks puts it on again. the skin is just under the rocks below the palm-tree in a cool place; that is why you can't see it. the parsee is wearing a new more-than-oriental-splendour hat of the sort that parsees wear; and he has a knife in his hand to cut his name on palm-trees. the black things on the islands out at sea are bits of ships that got wrecked going down the red sea; but all the passengers were saved and went home. the black thing in the water close to the shore is not a wreck at all. it is strorks the rhinoceros bathing without his skin. he was just as black underneath his skin as he was outside. i wouldn't ask anything about the cooking-stove if _i_ were you.] and the rhinoceros did. he buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake-crumbs in bed. then he wanted to scratch, but that made it worse; and then he lay down on the sands and rolled and rolled and rolled, and every time he rolled the cake-crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse. then he ran to the palm-tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it. he rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his skin into a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold underneath, where the buttons used to be (but he rubbed the buttons off), and he rubbed some more folds over his legs. and it spoiled his temper, but it didn't make the least difference to the cake-crumbs. they were inside his skin and they tickled. so he went home, very angry indeed and horribly scratchy; and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside. but the parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, packed up his cooking-stove, and went away in the direction of orotavo, amygdala, the upland meadows of anantarivo, and the marshes of sonaput. [illustration] this uninhabited island is off cape gardafui, by the beaches of socotra and the pink arabian sea: but it's hot--too hot from suez for the likes of you and me ever to go in a p. and o. and call on the cake-parsee! [illustration: how the leopard got his spots] how the leopard got his spots in the days when everybody started fair, best beloved, the leopard lived in a place called the high veldt. 'member it wasn't the low veldt, or the bush veldt, or the sour veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot, shiny high veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and 'sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. the giraffe and the zebra and the eland and the koodoo and the hartebeest lived there; and they were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the leopard, he was the 'sclusivest sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all--a greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the high veldt to one hair. this was very bad for the giraffe and the zebra and the rest of them; for he would lie down by a 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish stone or clump of grass, and when the giraffe or the zebra or the eland or the koodoo or the bush-buck or the bonte-buck came by he would surprise them out of their jumpsome lives. he would indeed! and, also, there was an ethiopian with bows and arrows (a 'sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish man he was then), who lived on the high veldt with the leopard; and the two used to hunt together--the ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and the leopard 'sclusively with his teeth and claws--till the giraffe and the eland and the koodoo and the quagga and all the rest of them didn't know which way to jump, best beloved. they didn't indeed! after a long time--things lived for ever so long in those days--they learned to avoid anything that looked like a leopard or an ethiopian; and bit by bit--the giraffe began it, because his legs were the longest--they went away from the high veldt. they scuttled for days and days and days till they came to a great forest, 'sclusively full of trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there they hid: and after another long time, what with standing half in the shade and half out of it, and what with the slippery-slidy shadows of the trees falling on them, the giraffe grew blotchy, and the zebra grew stripy, and the eland and the koodoo grew darker, with little wavy grey lines on their backs like bark on a tree trunk; and so, though you could hear them and smell them, you could very seldom see them, and then only when you knew precisely where to look. they had a beautiful time in the 'sclusively speckly-spickly shadows of the forest, while the leopard and the ethiopian ran about over the 'sclusively greyish-yellowish-reddish high veldt outside, wondering where all their breakfasts and their dinners and their teas had gone. at last they were so hungry that they ate rats and beetles and rock-rabbits, the leopard and the ethiopian, and then they had the big tummy-ache, both together; and then they met baviaan--the dog-headed, barking baboon, who is quite the wisest animal in all south africa. [illustration: this is wise baviaan, the dog-headed baboon, who is quite the wisest animal in all south africa. i have drawn him from a statue that i made up out of my own head, and i have written his name on his belt and on his shoulder and on the thing he is sitting on. i have written it in what is not called coptic and hieroglyphic and cuneiformic and bengalic and burmic and hebric, all because he is so wise. he is not beautiful, but he is very wise; and i should like to paint him with paint-box colours, but i am not allowed. the umbrella-ish thing about his head is his conventional mane.] said leopard to baviaan (and it was a very hot day), 'where has all the game gone?' and baviaan winked. _he_ knew. said the ethiopian to baviaan, 'can you tell me the present habitat of the aboriginal fauna?' (that meant just the same thing, but the ethiopian always used long words. he was a grown-up.) and baviaan winked. _he_ knew. then said baviaan, 'the game has gone into other spots; and my advice to you, leopard, is to go into other spots as soon as you can.' and the ethiopian said, 'that is all very fine, but i wish to know whither the aboriginal fauna has migrated.' then said baviaan, 'the aboriginal fauna has joined the aboriginal flora because it was high time for a change; and my advice to you, ethiopian, is to change as soon as you can.' that puzzled the leopard and the ethiopian, but they set off to look for the aboriginal flora, and presently, after ever so many days, they saw a great, high, tall forest full of tree trunks all 'sclusively speckled and sprottled and spottled, dotted and splashed and slashed and hatched and cross-hatched with shadows. (say that quickly aloud, and you will see how _very_ shadowy the forest must have been.) 'what is this,' said the leopard, 'that is so 'sclusively dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light?' 'i don't know,' said the ethiopian, 'but it ought to be the aboriginal flora. i can smell giraffe, and i can hear giraffe, but i can't see giraffe.' 'that's curious,' said the leopard. 'i suppose it is because we have just come in out of the sunshine. i can smell zebra, and i can hear zebra, but i can't see zebra.' 'wait a bit,' said the ethiopian. 'it's a long time since we've hunted 'em. perhaps we've forgotten what they were like.' 'fiddle!' said the leopard. 'i remember them perfectly on the high veldt, especially their marrow-bones. giraffe is about seventeen feet high, of a 'sclusively fulvous golden-yellow from head to heel; and zebra is about four and a half feet high, of a 'sclusively grey-fawn colour from head to heel.' 'umm,' said the ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows of the aboriginal flora-forest. 'then they ought to show up in this dark place like ripe bananas in a smoke-house.' but they didn't. the leopard and the ethiopian hunted all day; and though they could smell them and hear them, they never saw one of them. 'for goodness' sake,' said the leopard at tea-time, 'let us wait till it gets dark. this daylight hunting is a perfect scandal.' so they waited till dark, and then the leopard heard something breathing sniffily in the starlight that fell all stripy through the branches, and he jumped at the noise, and it smelt like zebra, and it felt like zebra, and when he knocked it down it kicked like zebra, but he couldn't see it. so he said, 'be quiet, o you person without any form. i am going to sit on your head till morning, because there is something about you that i don't understand.' presently he heard a grunt and a crash and a scramble, and the ethiopian called out, 'i've caught a thing that i can't see. it smells like giraffe, and it kicks like giraffe, but it hasn't any form.' 'don't you trust it,' said the leopard. 'sit on its head till the morning--same as me. they haven't any form--any of 'em.' * * * * * so they sat down on them hard till bright morning-time, and then leopard said, 'what have you at your end of the table, brother?' the ethiopian scratched his head and said, 'it ought to be 'sclusively a rich fulvous orange-tawny from head to heel, and it ought to be giraffe; but it is covered all over with chestnut blotches. what have you at _your_ end of the table, brother?' and the leopard scratched his head and said, 'it ought to be 'sclusively a delicate greyish-fawn, and it ought to be zebra; but it is covered all over with black and purple stripes. what in the world have you been doing to yourself, zebra? don't you know that if you were on the high veldt i could see you ten miles off? you haven't any form.' 'yes,' said the zebra, 'but this isn't the high veldt. can't you see?' 'i can now,' said the leopard. 'but i couldn't all yesterday. how is it done?' 'let us up,' said the zebra, 'and we will show you.' they let the zebra and the giraffe get up; and zebra moved away to some little thorn-bushes where the sunlight fell all stripy, and giraffe moved off to some tallish trees where the shadows fell all blotchy. 'now watch,' said the zebra and the giraffe. 'this is the way it's done. one--two--three! and where's your breakfast?' leopard stared, and ethiopian stared, but all they could see were stripy shadows and blotched shadows in the forest, but never a sign of zebra and giraffe. they had just walked off and hidden themselves in the shadowy forest. 'hi! hi!' said the ethiopian. 'that's a trick worth learning. take a lesson by it, leopard. you show up in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle.' 'ho! ho!' said the leopard. 'would it surprise you very much to know that you show up in this dark place like a mustard-plaster on a sack of coals?' well, calling names won't catch dinner, said the ethiopian. 'the long and the little of it is that we don't match our backgrounds. i'm going to take baviaan's advice. he told me i ought to change; and as i've nothing to change except my skin i'm going to change that.' 'what to?' said the leopard, tremendously excited. 'to a nice working blackish-brownish colour, with a little purple in it, and touches of slaty-blue. it will be the very thing for hiding in hollows and behind trees.' so he changed his skin then and there, and the leopard was more excited than ever; he had never seen a man change his skin before. 'but what about me?' he said, when the ethiopian had worked his last little finger into his fine new black skin. 'you take baviaan's advice too. he told you to go into spots.' 'so i did,' said the leopard. 'i went into other spots as fast as i could. i went into this spot with you, and a lot of good it has done me.' 'oh,' said the ethiopian, 'baviaan didn't mean spots in south africa. he meant spots on your skin.' 'what's the use of that?' said the leopard. 'think of giraffe,' said the ethiopian. 'or if you prefer stripes, think of zebra. they find their spots and stripes give them perfect satisfaction.' 'umm,' said the leopard. 'i wouldn't look like zebra--not for ever so.' 'well, make up your mind,' said the ethiopian, 'because i'd hate to go hunting without you, but i must if you insist on looking like a sun-flower against a tarred fence.' 'i'll take spots, then,' said the leopard; 'but don't make 'em too vulgar-big. i wouldn't look like giraffe--not for ever so.' 'i'll make 'em with the tips of my fingers,' said the ethiopian. 'there's plenty of black left on my skin still. stand over!' then the ethiopian put his five fingers close together (there was plenty of black left on his new skin still) and pressed them all over the leopard, and wherever the five fingers touched they left five little black marks, all close together. you can see them on any leopard's skin you like, best beloved. sometimes the fingers slipped and the marks got a little blurred; but if you look closely at any leopard now you will see that there are always five spots--off five fat black finger-tips. [illustration: this is the picture of the leopard and the ethiopian after they had taken wise baviaan's advice and the leopard had gone into other spots and the ethiopian had changed his skin. the ethiopian was really a negro, and so his name was sambo. the leopard was called spots, and he has been called spots ever since. they are out hunting in the spickly-speckly forest, and they are looking for mr. one-two-three-where's-your-breakfast. if you look a little you will see mr. one-two-three not far away. the ethiopian has hidden behind a splotchy-blotchy tree because it matches his skin, and the leopard is lying beside a spickly-speckly bank of stones because it matches his spots. mr. one-two-three-where's-your-breakfast is standing up eating leaves from a tall tree. this is really a puzzle-picture like 'find the cat.'] 'now you _are_ a beauty!' said the ethiopian. 'you can lie out on the bare ground and look like a heap of pebbles. you can lie out on the naked rocks and look like a piece of pudding-stone. you can lie out on a leafy branch and look like sunshine sifting through the leaves; and you can lie right across the centre of a path and look like nothing in particular. think of that and purr!' 'but if i'm all this,' said the leopard, 'why didn't you go spotty too?' 'oh, plain black's best for a nigger,' said the ethiopian. 'now come along and we'll see if we can't get even with mr. one-two-three-where's-your-breakfast!' * * * * * so they went away and lived happily ever afterward, best beloved. that is all. oh, now and then you will hear grown-ups say, 'can the ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?' i don't think even grown-ups would keep on saying such a silly thing if the leopard and the ethiopian hadn't done it once--do you? but they will never do it again, best beloved. they are quite contented as they are. i am the most wise baviaan, saying in most wise tones, 'let us melt into the landscape--just us two by our lones.' people have come--in a carriage--calling. but mummy is there.... yes, i can go if you take me--nurse says _she_ don't care. let's go up to the pig-sties and sit on the farmyard rails! let's say things to the bunnies, and watch 'em skitter their tails! let's--oh, _anything_, daddy, so long as it's you and me, and going truly exploring, and not being in till tea! here's your boots (i've brought 'em), and here's your cap and stick, and here's your pipe and tobacco. oh, come along out of it--quick. [illustration: the elephant's child] the elephant's child in the high and far-off times the elephant, o best beloved, had no trunk. he had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn't pick up things with it. but there was one elephant--a new elephant--an elephant's child--who was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. _and_ he lived in africa, and he filled all africa with his 'satiable curtiosities. he asked his tall aunt, the ostrich, why her tail-feathers grew just so, and his tall aunt the ostrich spanked him with her hard, hard claw. he asked his tall uncle, the giraffe, what made his skin spotty, and his tall uncle, the giraffe, spanked him with his hard, hard hoof. and still he was full of 'satiable curtiosity! he asked his broad aunt, the hippopotamus, why her eyes were red, and his broad aunt, the hippopotamus, spanked him with her broad, broad hoof; and he asked his hairy uncle, the baboon, why melons tasted just so, and his hairy uncle, the baboon, spanked him with his hairy, hairy paw. and _still_ he was full of 'satiable curtiosity! he asked questions about everything that he saw, or heard, or felt, or smelt, or touched, and all his uncles and his aunts spanked him. and still he was full of 'satiable curtiosity! one fine morning in the middle of the precession of the equinoxes this 'satiable elephant's child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. he asked, 'what does the crocodile have for dinner?' then everybody said, 'hush!' in a loud and dretful tone, and they spanked him immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time. by and by, when that was finished, he came upon kolokolo bird sitting in the middle of a wait-a-bit thorn-bush, and he said, 'my father has spanked me, and my mother has spanked me; all my aunts and uncles have spanked me for my 'satiable curtiosity; and _still_ i want to know what the crocodile has for dinner!' then kolokolo bird said, with a mournful cry, 'go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy limpopo river, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.' that very next morning, when there was nothing left of the equinoxes, because the precession had preceded according to precedent, this 'satiable elephant's child took a hundred pounds of bananas (the little short red kind), and a hundred pounds of sugar-cane (the long purple kind), and seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind), and said to all his dear families, 'good-bye. i am going to the great grey-green, greasy limpopo river, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the crocodile has for dinner.' and they all spanked him once more for luck, though he asked them most politely to stop. then he went away, a little warm, but not at all astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up. he went from graham's town to kimberley, and from kimberley to khama's country, and from khama's country he went east by north, eating melons all the time, till at last he came to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy limpopo river, all set about with fever-trees, precisely as kolokolo bird had said. now you must know and understand, o best beloved, that till that very week, and day, and hour, and minute, this 'satiable elephant's child had never seen a crocodile, and did not know what one was like. it was all his 'satiable curtiosity. the first thing that he found was a bi-coloured-python-rock-snake curled round a rock. ''scuse me,' said the elephant's child most politely, 'but have you seen such a thing as a crocodile in these promiscuous parts?' '_have_ i seen a crocodile?' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake, in a voice of dretful scorn. 'what will you ask me next?' ''scuse me,' said the elephant's child, 'but could you kindly tell me what he has for dinner?' then the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake uncoiled himself very quickly from the rock, and spanked the elephant's child with his scalesome, flailsome tail. 'that is odd,' said the elephant's child, 'because my father and my mother, and my uncle and my aunt, not to mention my other aunt, the hippopotamus, and my other uncle, the baboon, have all spanked me for my 'satiable curtiosity--and i suppose this is the same thing.' so he said good-bye very politely to the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake, and helped to coil him up on the rock again, and went on, a little warm, but not at all astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up, till he trod on what he thought was a log of wood at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy limpopo river, all set about with fever-trees. but it was really the crocodile, o best beloved, and the crocodile winked one eye--like this! ''scuse me,' said the elephant's child most politely, 'but do you happen to have seen a crocodile in these promiscuous parts?' then the crocodile winked the other eye, and lifted half his tail out of the mud; and the elephant's child stepped back most politely, because he did not wish to be spanked again. 'come hither, little one,' said the crocodile. 'why do you ask such things?' ''scuse me,' said the elephant's child most politely, 'but my father has spanked me, my mother has spanked me, not to mention my tall aunt, the ostrich, and my tall uncle, the giraffe, who can kick ever so hard, as well as my broad aunt, the hippopotamus, and my hairy uncle, the baboon, _and_ including the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake, with the scalesome, flailsome tail, just up the bank, who spanks harder than any of them; and _so_, if it's quite all the same to you, i don't want to be spanked any more.' 'come hither, little one,' said the crocodile, 'for i am the crocodile,' and he wept crocodile-tears to show it was quite true. then the elephant's child grew all breathless, and panted, and kneeled down on the bank and said, 'you are the very person i have been looking for all these long days. will you please tell me what you have for dinner?' 'come hither, little one,' said the crocodile, 'and i'll whisper.' then the elephant's child put his head down close to the crocodile's musky, tusky mouth, and the crocodile caught him by his little nose, which up to that very week, day, hour, and minute, had been no bigger than a boot, though much more useful. 'i think,' said the crocodile--and he said it between his teeth, like this--'i think to-day i will begin with elephant's child!' at this, o best beloved, the elephant's child was much annoyed, and he said, speaking through his nose, like this, 'led go! you are hurtig be!' then the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake scuffled down from the bank and said, 'my young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the crocodile) 'will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say jack robinson.' this is the way bi-coloured-python-rock-snakes always talk. then the elephant's child sat back on his little haunches, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch. and the crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and _he_ pulled, and pulled, and pulled. and the elephant's child's nose kept on stretching; and the elephant's child spread all his little four legs and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose kept on stretching; and the crocodile threshed his tail like an oar, and _he_ pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each pull the elephant's child's nose grew longer and longer--and it hurt him hijjus! then the elephant's child felt his legs slipping, and he said through his nose, which was now nearly five feet long, 'this is too butch for be!' then the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake came down from the bank, and knotted himself in a double-clove-hitch round the elephant's child's hind legs, and said, 'rash and inexperienced traveller, we will now seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do not, it is my impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the armour-plated upper deck' (and by this, o best beloved, he meant the crocodile), 'will permanently vitiate your future career.' that is the way all bi-coloured-python-rock-snakes always talk. so he pulled, and the elephant's child pulled, and the crocodile pulled; but the elephant's child and the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake pulled hardest; and at last the crocodile let go of the elephant's child's nose with a plop that you could hear all up and down the limpopo. then the elephant's child sat down most hard and sudden; but first he was careful to say 'thank you' to the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake; and next he was kind to his poor pulled nose, and wrapped it all up in cool banana leaves, and hung it in the great grey-green, greasy limpopo to cool. 'what are you doing that for?' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake. ''scuse me,' said the elephant's child, 'but my nose is badly out of shape, and i am waiting for it to shrink.' 'then you will have to wait a long time,' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake. 'some people do not know what is good for them.' the elephant's child sat there for three days waiting for his nose to shrink. but it never grew any shorter, and, besides, it made him squint. for, o best beloved, you will see and understand that the crocodile had pulled it out into a really truly trunk same as all elephants have to-day. [illustration: this is the elephant's child having his nose pulled by the crocodile. he is much surprised and astonished and hurt, and he is talking through his nose and saying, 'led go! you are hurtig be!' he is pulling very hard, and so is the crocodile; but the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake is hurrying through the water to help the elephant's child. all that black stuff is the banks of the great grey-green, greasy limpopo river (but i am not allowed to paint these pictures), and the bottly-tree with the twisty roots and the eight leaves is one of the fever-trees that grow there. underneath the truly picture are shadows of african animals walking into an african ark. there are two lions, two ostriches, two oxen, two camels, two sheep, and two other things that look like rats, but i think they are rock-rabbits. they don't mean anything. i put them in because i thought they looked pretty. they would look very fine if i were allowed to paint them.] at the end of the third day a fly came and stung him on the shoulder, and before he knew what he was doing he lifted up his trunk and hit that fly dead with the end of it. ''vantage number one!' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake. 'you couldn't have done that with a mere-smear nose. try and eat a little now.' before he thought what he was doing the elephant's child put out his trunk and plucked a large bundle of grass, dusted it clean against his fore-legs, and stuffed it into his own mouth. ''vantage number two!' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake. 'you couldn't have done that with a mear-smear nose. don't you think the sun is very hot here?' 'it is,' said the elephant's child, and before he thought what he was doing he schlooped up a schloop of mud from the banks of the great grey-green, greasy limpopo, and slapped it on his head, where it made a cool schloopy-sloshy mud-cap all trickly behind his ears. ''vantage number three!' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake. 'you couldn't have done that with a mere-smear nose. now how do you feel about being spanked again?' ''scuse me,' said the elephant's child, 'but i should not like it at all.' 'how would you like to spank somebody?' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake. 'i should like it very much indeed,' said the elephant's child. 'well,' said the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake, 'you will find that new nose of yours very useful to spank people with.' 'thank you,' said the elephant's child, 'i'll remember that; and now i think i'll go home to all my dear families and try.' so the elephant's child went home across africa frisking and whisking his trunk. when he wanted fruit to eat he pulled fruit down from a tree, instead of waiting for it to fall as he used to do. when he wanted grass he plucked grass up from the ground, instead of going on his knees as he used to do. when the flies bit him he broke off the branch of a tree and used it as a fly-whisk; and he made himself a new, cool, slushy-squshy mud-cap whenever the sun was hot. when he felt lonely walking through africa he sang to himself down his trunk, and the noise was louder than several brass bands. he went especially out of his way to find a broad hippopotamus (she was no relation of his), and he spanked her very hard, to make sure that the bi-coloured-python-rock-snake had spoken the truth about his new trunk. the rest of the time he picked up the melon rinds that he had dropped on his way to the limpopo--for he was a tidy pachyderm. one dark evening he came back to all his dear families, and he coiled up his trunk and said, 'how do you do?' they were very glad to see him, and immediately said, 'come here and be spanked for your 'satiable curtiosity.' 'pooh,' said the elephant's child. 'i don't think you peoples know anything about spanking; but _i_ do, and i'll show you.' then he uncurled his trunk and knocked two of his dear brothers head over heels. 'o bananas!' said they, 'where did you learn that trick, and what have you done to your nose?' 'i got a new one from the crocodile on the banks of the great grey-green, greasy limpopo river,' said the elephant's child. 'i asked him what he had for dinner, and he gave me this to keep.' [illustration: this is just a picture of the elephant's child going to pull bananas off a banana-tree after he had got his fine new long trunk. i don't think it is a very nice picture; but i couldn't make it any better, because elephants and bananas are hard to draw. the streaky things behind the elephant's child mean squoggy marshy country somewhere in africa. the elephant's child made most of his mud-cakes out of the mud that he found there. i think it would look better if you painted the banana-tree green and the elephant's child red.] 'it looks very ugly,' said his hairy uncle, the baboon. 'it does,' said the elephant's child. 'but it's very useful,' and he picked up his hairy uncle, the baboon, by one hairy leg, and hove him into a hornet's nest. then that bad elephant's child spanked all his dear families for a long time, till they were very warm and greatly astonished. he pulled out his tall ostrich aunt's tail-feathers; and he caught his tall uncle, the giraffe, by the hind-leg, and dragged him through a thorn-bush; and he shouted at his broad aunt, the hippopotamus, and blew bubbles into her ear when she was sleeping in the water after meals; but he never let any one touch kolokolo bird. at last things grew so exciting that his dear families went off one by one in a hurry to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy limpopo river, all set about with fever-trees, to borrow new noses from the crocodile. when they came back nobody spanked anybody any more; and ever since that day, o best beloved, all the elephants you will ever see, besides all those that you won't, have trunks precisely like the trunk of the 'satiable elephant's child. i keep six honest serving-men; (they taught me all i knew) their names are what and where and when and how and where and who. i send them over land and sea, i send them east and west; but after they have worked for me, _i_ give them all a rest. _i_ let them rest from nine till five. for i am busy then, as well as breakfast, lunch, and tea, for they are hungry men: but different folk have different views; i know a person small-- she keeps ten million serving-men, who get no rest at all! she sends 'em abroad on her own affairs, from the second she opens her eyes-- one million hows, two million wheres, and seven million whys! [illustration: the sing-song of old man kangaroo] the sing-song of old man kangaroo not always was the kangaroo as now we do behold him, but a different animal with four short legs. he was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on an outcrop in the middle of australia, and he went to the little god nqa. he went to nqa at six before breakfast, saying, 'make me different from all other animals by five this afternoon.' up jumped nqa from his seat on the sand-flat and shouted, 'go away!' he was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on a rock-ledge in the middle of australia, and he went to the middle god nquing. he went to nquing at eight after breakfast, saying, 'make me different from all other animals; make me, also, wonderfully popular by five this afternoon.' up jumped nquing from his burrow in the spinifex and shouted, 'go away!' he was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on a sandbank in the middle of australia, and he went to the big god nqong. he went to nqong at ten before dinner-time, saying, 'make me different from all other animals; make me popular and wonderfully run after by five this afternoon.' up jumped nqong from his bath in the salt-pan and shouted, 'yes, i will!' nqong called dingo--yellow-dog dingo--always hungry, dusty in the sunshine, and showed him kangaroo. nqong said, 'dingo! wake up, dingo! do you see that gentleman dancing on an ashpit? he wants to be popular and very truly run after. dingo, make him so!' up jumped dingo--yellow-dog dingo--and said, 'what, _that_ cat-rabbit?' off ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--always hungry, grinning like a coal-scuttle,--ran after kangaroo. off went the proud kangaroo on his four little legs like a bunny. this, o beloved of mine, ends the first part of the tale! he ran through the desert; he ran through the mountains; he ran through the salt-pans; he ran through the reed-beds; he ran through the blue gums; he ran through the spinifex; he ran till his front legs ached. he had to! still ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--always hungry, grinning like a rat-trap, never getting nearer, never getting farther,--ran after kangaroo. he had to! still ran kangaroo--old man kangaroo. he ran through the ti-trees; he ran through the mulga; he ran through the long grass; he ran through the short grass; he ran through the tropics of capricorn and cancer; he ran till his hind legs ached. he had to! [illustration: this is a picture of old man kangaroo when he was the different animal with four short legs. i have drawn him grey and woolly, and you can see that he is very proud because he has a wreath of flowers in his hair. he is dancing on an outcrop (that means a ledge of rock) in the middle of australia at six o'clock before breakfast. you can see that it is six o'clock, because the sun is just getting up. the thing with the ears and the open mouth is little god nqa. nqa is very much surprised, because he has never seen a kangaroo dance like that before. little god nqa is just saying, 'go away,' but the kangaroo is so busy dancing that he has not heard him yet. the kangaroo hasn't any real name except boomer. he lost it because he was so proud.] still ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--hungrier and hungrier, grinning like a horse-collar, never getting nearer, never getting farther; and they came to the wollgong river. now, there wasn't any bridge, and there wasn't any ferry-boat, and kangaroo didn't know how to get over; so he stood on his legs and hopped. he had to! he hopped through the flinders; he hopped through the cinders; he hopped through the deserts in the middle of australia. he hopped like a kangaroo. first he hopped one yard; then he hopped three yards; then he hopped five yards; his legs growing stronger; his legs growing longer. he hadn't any time for rest or refreshment, and he wanted them very much. still ran dingo--yellow-dog dingo--very much bewildered, very much hungry, and wondering what in the world or out of it made old man kangaroo hop. for he hopped like a cricket; like a pea in a saucepan; or a new rubber ball on a nursery floor. he had to! [illustration: this is the picture of old man kangaroo at five in the afternoon, when he had got his beautiful hind legs just as big god nqong had promised. you can see that it is five o'clock, because big god nqong's pet tame clock says so. that is nqong, in his bath, sticking his feet out. old man kangaroo is being rude to yellow-dog dingo. yellow-dog dingo has been trying to catch kangaroo all across australia. you can see the marks of kangaroo's big new feet running ever so far back over the bare hills. yellow-dog dingo is drawn black, because i am not allowed to paint these pictures with real colours out of the paint-box; and besides, yellow-dog dingo got dreadfully black and dusty after running through the flinders and the cinders. i don't know the names of the flowers growing round nqong's bath. the two little squatty things out in the desert are the other two gods that old man kangaroo spoke to early in the morning. that thing with the letters on it is old man kangaroo's pouch. he had to have a pouch just as he had to have legs.] he tucked up his front legs; he hopped on his hind legs; he stuck out his tail for a balance-weight behind him; and he hopped through the darling downs. he had to! still ran dingo--tired-dog dingo--hungrier and hungrier, very much bewildered, and wondering when in the world or out of it would old man kangaroo stop. then came nqong from his bath in the salt-pans, and said, 'it's five o'clock.' down sat dingo--poor dog dingo--always hungry, dusky in the sunshine; hung out his tongue and howled. down sat kangaroo--old man kangaroo--stuck out his tail like a milking-stool behind him, and said, 'thank goodness _that's_ finished!' then said nqong, who is always a gentleman, 'why aren't you grateful to yellow-dog dingo? why don't you thank him for all he has done for you?' then said kangaroo--tired old kangaroo--'he's chased me out of the homes of my childhood; he's chased me out of my regular meal-times; he's altered my shape so i'll never get it back; and he's played old scratch with my legs.' then said nqong, 'perhaps i'm mistaken, but didn't you ask me to make you different from all other animals, as well as to make you very truly sought after? and now it is five o'clock.' 'yes,' said kangaroo. 'i wish that i hadn't. i thought you would do it by charms and incantations, but this is a practical joke.' 'joke!' said nqong from his bath in the blue gums. 'say that again and i'll whistle up dingo and run your hind legs off.' 'no,' said the kangaroo. 'i must apologise. legs are legs, and you needn't alter 'em so far as i am concerned. i only meant to explain to your lordliness that i've had nothing to eat since morning, and i'm very empty indeed.' 'yes,' said dingo--yellow-dog dingo,--'i am just in the same situation. i've made him different from all other animals; but what may i have for my tea?' then said nqong from his bath in the salt-pan, 'come and ask me about it to-morrow, because i'm going to wash.' so they were left in the middle of australia, old man kangaroo and yellow-dog dingo, and each said, 'that's _your_ fault.' this is the mouth-filling song of the race that was run by a boomer, run in a single burst--only event of its kind-- started by big god nqong from warrigaborrigarooma, old man kangaroo first: yellow-dog dingo behind. kangaroo bounded away, his back-legs working like pistons-- bounded from morning till dark, twenty-five feet to a bound. yellow-dog dingo lay like a yellow cloud in the distance-- much too busy to bark. my! but they covered the ground! nobody knows where they went, or followed the track that they flew in, for that continent hadn't been given a name. they ran thirty degrees, from torres straits to the leeuwin (look at the atlas, please), and they ran back as they came. s'posing you could trot from adelaide to the pacific, for an afternoon's run-- half what these gentlemen did-- you would feel rather hot, but your legs would develop terrific-- yes, my importunate son, you'd be a marvellous kid! [illustration: the beginning of the armadillos] the beginning of the armadillos this, o best beloved, is another story of the high and far-off times. in the very middle of those times was a stickly-prickly hedgehog, and he lived on the banks of the turbid amazon, eating shelly snails and things. and he had a friend, a slow-solid tortoise, who lived on the banks of the turbid amazon, eating green lettuces and things. and so _that_ was all right, best beloved. do you see? but also, and at the same time, in those high and far-off times, there was a painted jaguar, and he lived on the banks of the turbid amazon too; and he ate everything that he could catch. when he could not catch deer or monkeys he would eat frogs and beetles; and when he could not catch frogs and beetles he went to his mother jaguar, and she told him how to eat hedgehogs and tortoises. she said to him ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'my son, when you find a hedgehog you must drop him into the water and then he will uncoil, and when you catch a tortoise you must scoop him out of his shell with your paw.' and so that was all right, best beloved. one beautiful night on the banks of the turbid amazon, painted jaguar found stickly-prickly hedgehog and slow-solid tortoise sitting under the trunk of a fallen tree. they could not run away, and so stickly-prickly curled himself up into a ball, because he was a hedgehog, and slow-solid tortoise drew in his head and feet into his shell as far as they would go, because he was a tortoise; and so _that_ was all right, best beloved. do you see? 'now attend to me,' said painted jaguar, 'because this is very important. my mother said that when i meet a hedgehog i am to drop him into the water and then he will uncoil, and when i meet a tortoise i am to scoop him out of his shell with my paw. now which of you is hedgehog and which is tortoise? because to save my spots, i can't tell.' 'are you sure of what your mummy told you?' said stickly-prickly hedgehog. 'are you quite sure? perhaps she said that when you uncoil a tortoise you must shell him out of the water with a scoop, and when you paw a hedgehog you must drop him on the shell.' 'are you sure of what your mummy told you?' said slow-and-solid tortoise. 'are you quite sure? perhaps she said that when you water a hedgehog you must drop him into your paw, and when you meet a tortoise you must shell him till he uncoils.' 'i don't think it was at all like that,' said painted jaguar, but he felt a little puzzled; 'but, please, say it again more distinctly.' 'when you scoop water with your paw you uncoil it with a hedgehog,' said stickly-prickly. 'remember that, because it's important.' '_but_,' said the tortoise, 'when you paw your meat you drop it into a tortoise with a scoop. why can't you understand?' [illustration: this is an inciting map of the turbid amazon done in red and black. it hasn't anything to do with the story except that there are two armadillos in it--up by the top. the inciting part are the adventures that happened to the men who went along the road marked in red. i meant to draw armadillos when i began the map, and i meant to draw manatees and spider-tailed monkeys and big snakes and lots of jaguars, but it was more inciting to do the map and the venturesome adventures in red. you begin at the bottom left-hand corner and follow the little arrows all about, and then you come quite round again to where the adventuresome people went home in a ship called the _royal tiger_. this is a most adventuresome picture, and all the adventures are told about in writing, so you can be quite sure which is an adventure and which is a tree or a boat.] 'you are making my spots ache,' said painted jaguar; 'and besides, i didn't want your advice at all. i only wanted to know which of you is hedgehog and which is tortoise.' 'i shan't tell you,' said stickly-prickly, 'but you can scoop me out of my shell if you like.' 'aha!' said painted jaguar. 'now i know you're tortoise. you thought i wouldn't! now i will.' painted jaguar darted out his paddy-paw just as stickly-prickly curled himself up, and of course jaguar's paddy-paw was just filled with prickles. worse than that, he knocked stickly-prickly away and away into the woods and the bushes, where it was too dark to find him. then he put his paddy-paw into his mouth, and of course the prickles hurt him worse than ever. as soon as he could speak he said, 'now i know he isn't tortoise at all. but'--and then he scratched his head with his un-prickly paw--'how do i know that this other is tortoise?' 'but i _am_ tortoise,' said slow-and-solid. 'your mother was quite right. she said that you were to scoop me out of my shell with your paw. begin.' 'you didn't say she said that a minute ago,' said painted jaguar, sucking the prickles out of his paddy-paw. 'you said she said something quite different.' 'well, suppose you say that i said that she said something quite different, i don't see that it makes any difference; because if she said what you said i said she said, it's just the same as if i said what she said she said. on the other hand, if you think she said that you were to uncoil me with a scoop, instead of pawing me into drops with a shell, i can't help that, can i?' 'but you said you wanted to be scooped out of your shell with my paw,' said painted jaguar. 'if you'll think again you'll find that i didn't say anything of the kind. i said that your mother said that you were to scoop me out of my shell,' said slow-and-solid. 'what will happen if i do?' said the jaguar most sniffily and most cautious. 'i don't know, because i've never been scooped out of my shell before; but i tell you truly, if you want to see me swim away you've only got to drop me into the water.' 'i don't believe it,' said painted jaguar. 'you've mixed up all the things my mother told me to do with the things that you asked me whether i was sure that she didn't say, till i don't know whether i'm on my head or my painted tail; and now you come and tell me something i _can_ understand, and it makes me more mixy than before. my mother told me that i was to drop one of you two into the water, and as you seem so anxious to be dropped i think you don't want to be dropped. so jump into the turbid amazon and be quick about it.' 'i warn you that your mummy won't be pleased. don't tell her i didn't tell you,' said slow-solid. 'if you say another word about what my mother said--' the jaguar answered, but he had not finished the sentence before slow-and-solid quietly dived into the turbid amazon, swam under water for a long way, and came out on the bank where stickly-prickly was waiting for him. 'that was a very narrow escape,' said stickly-prickly. 'i don't like painted jaguar. what did you tell him that you were?' 'i told him truthfully that i was a truthful tortoise, but he wouldn't believe it, and he made me jump into the river to see if i was, and i was, and he is surprised. now he's gone to tell his mummy. listen to him!' they could hear painted jaguar roaring up and down among the trees and the bushes by the side of the turbid amazon, till his mummy came. 'son, son!' said his mother ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'what have you been doing that you shouldn't have done?' 'i tried to scoop something that said it wanted to be scooped out of its shell with my paw, and my paw is full of per-ickles,' said painted jaguar. 'son, son!' said his mother ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'by the prickles in your paddy-paw i see that that must have been a hedgehog. you should have dropped him into the water.' 'i did that to the other thing; and he said he was a tortoise, and i didn't believe him, and it was quite true, and he has dived under the turbid amazon, and he won't come up again, and i haven't anything at all to eat, and i think we had better find lodgings somewhere else. they are too clever on the turbid amazon for poor me!' 'son, son!' said his mother ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'now attend to me and remember what i say. a hedgehog curls himself up into a ball and his prickles stick out every which way at once. by this you may know the hedgehog.' 'i don't like this old lady one little bit,' said stickly-prickly, under the shadow of a large leaf. 'i wonder what else she knows?' 'a tortoise can't curl himself up,' mother jaguar went on, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail. 'he only draws his head and legs into his shell. by this you may know the tortoise.' 'i don't like this old lady at all--at all,' said slow-and-solid tortoise. 'even painted jaguar can't forget those directions. it's a great pity that you can't swim, stickly-prickly.' 'don't talk to me,' said stickly-prickly. 'just think how much better it would be if you could curl up. this _is_ a mess! listen to painted jaguar.' painted jaguar was sitting on the banks of the turbid amazon sucking prickles out of his paws and saying to himself-- 'can't curl, but can swim-- slow-solid, that's him! curls up, but can't swim-- stickly-prickly, that's him!' 'he'll never forget that this month of sundays,' said stickly-prickly. 'hold up my chin, slow-and-solid. i'm going to try to learn to swim. it may be useful.' 'excellent!' said slow-and-solid; and he held up stickly-prickly's chin, while stickly-prickly kicked in the waters of the turbid amazon. 'you'll make a fine swimmer yet,' said slow-and-solid. 'now, if you can unlace my back-plates a little, i'll see what i can do towards curling up. it may be useful.' stickly-prickly helped to unlace tortoise's back-plates, so that by twisting and straining slow-and-solid actually managed to curl up a tiddy wee bit. 'excellent!' said stickly-prickly; 'but i shouldn't do any more just now. it's making you black in the face. kindly lead me into the water once again and i'll practise that side-stroke which you say is so easy.' and so stickly-prickly practised, and slow-solid swam alongside. 'excellent!' said slow-and-solid. 'a little more practice will make you a regular whale. now, if i may trouble you to unlace my back and front plates two holes more, i'll try that fascinating bend that you say is so easy. won't painted jaguar be surprised!' 'excellent!' said stickly-prickly, all wet from the turbid amazon. 'i declare, i shouldn't know you from one of my own family. two holes, i think, you said? a little more expression, please, and don't grunt quite so much, or painted jaguar may hear us. when you've finished, i want to try that long dive which you say is so easy. won't painted jaguar be surprised!' and so stickly-prickly dived, and slow-and-solid dived alongside. 'excellent!' said slow-and-solid. 'a leetle more attention to holding your breath and you will be able to keep house at the bottom of the turbid amazon. now i'll try that exercise of wrapping my hind legs round my ears which you say is so peculiarly comfortable. won't painted jaguar be surprised!' 'excellent!' said stickly-prickly. 'but it's straining your back-plates a little. they are all overlapping now, instead of lying side by side.' 'oh, that's the result of exercise,' said slow-and-solid. 'i've noticed that your prickles seem to be melting into one another, and that you're growing to look rather more like a pine-cone, and less like a chestnut-burr, than you used to.' 'am i?' said stickly-prickly. 'that comes from my soaking in the water. oh, won't painted jaguar be surprised!' they went on with their exercises, each helping the other, till morning came; and when the sun was high they rested and dried themselves. then they saw that they were both of them quite different from what they had been. 'stickly-prickly,' said tortoise after breakfast, 'i am not what i was yesterday; but i think that i may yet amuse painted jaguar.' 'that was the very thing i was thinking just now,' said stickly-prickly. 'i think scales are a tremendous improvement on prickles--to say nothing of being able to swim. oh, _won't_ painted jaguar be surprised! let's go and find him.' by and by they found painted jaguar, still nursing his paddy-paw that had been hurt the night before. he was so astonished that he fell three times backward over his own painted tail without stopping. 'good morning!' said stickly-prickly. 'and how is your dear gracious mummy this morning?' 'she is quite well, thank you,' said painted jaguar; 'but you must forgive me if i do not at this precise moment recall your name.' 'that's unkind of you,' said stickly-prickly, 'seeing that this time yesterday you tried to scoop me out of my shell with your paw.' 'but you hadn't any shell. it was all prickles,' said painted jaguar. 'i know it was. just look at my paw!' 'you told me to drop into the turbid amazon and be drowned,' said slow-solid. 'why are you so rude and forgetful to-day?' 'don't you remember what your mother told you?' said stickly-prickly,-- 'can't curl, but can swim-- stickly-prickly, that's him! curls up, but can't swim-- slow-solid, that's him!' then they both curled themselves up and rolled round and round painted jaguar till his eyes turned truly cart-wheels in his head. then he went to fetch his mother. [illustration: this is a picture of the whole story of the jaguar and the hedgehog and the tortoise _and_ the armadillo all in a heap. it looks rather the same any way you turn it. the tortoise is in the middle, learning how to bend, and that is why the shelly plates on his back are so spread apart. he is standing on the hedgehog, who is waiting to learn how to swim. the hedgehog is a japanesy hedgehog, because i couldn't find our own hedgehogs in the garden when i wanted to draw them. (it was daytime, and they had gone to bed under the dahlias.) speckly jaguar is looking over the edge, with his paddy-paw carefully tied up by his mother, because he pricked himself scooping the hedgehog. he is much surprised to see what the tortoise is doing, and his paw is hurting him. the snouty thing with the little eye that speckly jaguar is trying to climb over is the armadillo that the tortoise and the hedgehog are going to turn into when they have finished bending and swimming. it is all a magic picture, and that is one of the reasons why i haven't drawn the jaguar's whiskers. the other reason was that he was so young that his whiskers had not grown. the jaguar's pet name with his mummy was doffles.] 'mother,' he said, 'there are two new animals in the woods to-day, and the one that you said couldn't swim, swims, and the one that you said couldn't curl up, curls; and they've gone shares in their prickles, i think, because both of them are scaly all over, instead of one being smooth and the other very prickly; and, besides that, they are rolling round and round in circles, and i don't feel comfy.' 'son, son!' said mother jaguar ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'a hedgehog is a hedgehog, and can't be anything but a hedgehog; and a tortoise is a tortoise, and can never be anything else.' 'but it isn't a hedgehog, and it isn't a tortoise. it's a little bit of both, and i don't know its proper name.' 'nonsense!' said mother jaguar. 'everything has its proper name. i should call it "armadillo" till i found out the real one. and i should leave it alone.' so painted jaguar did as he was told, especially about leaving them alone; but the curious thing is that from that day to this, o best beloved, no one on the banks of the turbid amazon has ever called stickly-prickly and slow-solid anything except armadillo. there are hedgehogs and tortoises in other places, of course (there are some in my garden); but the real old and clever kind, with their scales lying lippety-lappety one over the other, like pine-cone scales, that lived on the banks of the turbid amazon in the high and far-off days, are always called armadillos, because they were so clever. so _that's_ all right, best beloved. do you see? [illustration] i've never sailed the amazon, i've never reached brazil; but the _don_ and _magdalena_, they can go there when they will! yes, weekly from southampton, great steamers, white and gold, go rolling down to rio (roll down--roll down to rio!) and i'd like to roll to rio some day before i'm old! i've never seen a jaguar, nor yet an armadill-- o dilloing in his armour, and i s'pose i never will, unless i go to rio these wonders to behold-- roll down--roll down to rio-- roll really down to rio! oh, i'd love to roll to rio some day before i'm old! [illustration: how the first letter was written] how the first letter was written once upon a most early time was a neolithic man. he was not a jute or an angle, or even a dravidian, which he might well have been, best beloved, but never mind why. he was a primitive, and he lived cavily in a cave, and he wore very few clothes, and he couldn't read and he couldn't write and he didn't want to, and except when he was hungry he was quite happy. his name was tegumai bopsulai, and that means, 'man-who-does-not-put-his-foot-forward-in-a-hurry'; but we, o best beloved, will call him tegumai, for short. and his wife's name was teshumai tewindrow, and that means, 'lady-who-asks-a-very-many-questions'; but we, o best beloved, will call her teshumai, for short. and his little girl-daughter's name was taffimai metallumai, and that means, 'small-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked'; but i'm going to call her taffy. and she was tegumai bopsulai's best beloved and her own mummy's best beloved, and she was not spanked half as much as was good for her; and they were all three very happy. as soon as taffy could run about she went everywhere with her daddy tegumai, and sometimes they would not come home to the cave till they were hungry, and then teshumai tewindrow would say, 'where in the world have you two been to, to get so shocking dirty? really, my tegumai, you're no better than my taffy.' now attend and listen! one day tegumai bopsulai went down through the beaver-swamp to the wagai river to spear carp-fish for dinner, and taffy went too. tegumai's spear was made of wood with shark's teeth at the end, and before he had caught any fish at all he accidentally broke it clean across by jabbing it down too hard on the bottom of the river. they were miles and miles from home (of course they had their lunch with them in a little bag), and tegumai had forgotten to bring any extra spears. 'here's a pretty kettle of fish!' said tegumai. 'it will take me half the day to mend this.' 'there's your big black spear at home,' said taffy. 'let me run back to the cave and ask mummy to give it me.' 'it's too far for your little fat legs,' said tegumai. 'besides, you might fall into the beaver-swamp and be drowned. we must make the best of a bad job.' he sat down and took out a little leather mendy-bag, full of reindeer-sinews and strips of leather, and lumps of bee's-wax and resin, and began to mend the spear. taffy sat down too, with her toes in the water and her chin in her hand, and thought very hard. then she said-- 'i say, daddy, it's an awful nuisance that you and i don't know how to write, isn't it? if we did we could send a message for the new spear.' 'taffy,' said tegumai, 'how often have i told you not to use slang? "awful" isn't a pretty word,--but it _would_ be a convenience, now you mention it, if we could write home.' just then a stranger-man came along the river, but he belonged to a far tribe, the tewaras, and he did not understand one word of tegumai's language. he stood on the bank and smiled at taffy, because he had a little girl-daughter of his own at home. tegumai drew a hank of deer-sinews from his mendy-bag and began to mend his spear. 'come here,' said taffy. 'do you know where my mummy lives?' and the stranger-man said 'um!'--being, as you know, a tewara. 'silly!' said taffy, and she stamped her foot, because she saw a shoal of very big carp going up the river just when her daddy couldn't use his spear. 'don't bother grown-ups,' said tegumai, so busy with his spear-mending that he did not turn round. 'i aren't,' said taffy. 'i only want him to do what i want him to do, and he won't understand.' 'then don't bother me,' said tegumai, and he went on pulling and straining at the deer-sinews with his mouth full of loose ends. the stranger-man--a genuine tewara he was--sat down on the grass, and taffy showed him what her daddy was doing. the stranger-man thought, 'this is a very wonderful child. she stamps her foot at me and she makes faces. she must be the daughter of that noble chief who is so great that he won't take any notice of me.' so he smiled more politely than ever. 'now,' said taffy, 'i want you to go to my mummy, because your legs are longer than mine, and you won't fall into the beaver-swamp, and ask for daddy's other spear--the one with the black handle that hangs over our fireplace.' the stranger-man (_and_ he was a tewara) thought, 'this is a very, very wonderful child. she waves her arms and she shouts at me, but i don't understand a word of what she says. but if i don't do what she wants, i greatly fear that that haughty chief, man-who-turns-his-back-on-callers, will be angry.' he got up and twisted a big flat piece of bark off a birch-tree and gave it to taffy. he did this, best beloved, to show that his heart was as white as the birch-bark and that he meant no harm; but taffy didn't quite understand. 'oh!' said she. 'now i see! you want my mummy's living address? of course i can't write, but i can draw pictures if i've anything sharp to scratch with. please lend me the shark's tooth off your necklace.' the stranger-man (and _he_ was a tewara) didn't say anything, so taffy put up her little hand and pulled at the beautiful bead and seed and shark-tooth necklace round his neck. the stranger-man (and he _was_ a tewara) thought, 'this is a very, very, very wonderful child. the shark's tooth on my necklace is a magic shark's tooth, and i was always told that if anybody touched it without my leave they would immediately swell up or burst, but this child doesn't swell up or burst, and that important chief, man-who-attends-strictly-to-his-business, who has not yet taken any notice of me at all, doesn't seem to be afraid that she will swell up or burst. i had better be more polite.' so he gave taffy the shark's tooth, and she lay down flat on her tummy with her legs in the air, like some people on the drawing-room floor when they want to draw pictures, and she said, 'now i'll draw you some beautiful pictures! you can look over my shoulder, but you mustn't joggle. first i'll draw daddy fishing. it isn't very like him; but mummy will know, because i've drawn his spear all broken. well, now i'll draw the other spear that he wants, the black-handled spear. it looks as if it was sticking in daddy's back, but that's because the shark's tooth slipped and this piece of bark isn't big enough. that's the spear i want you to fetch; so i'll draw a picture of me myself 'splaining to you. my hair doesn't stand up like i've drawn, but it's easier to draw that way. now i'll draw you. _i_ think you're very nice really, but i can't make you pretty in the picture, so you mustn't be 'fended. are you 'fended?' the stranger-man (and he was _a_ tewara) smiled. he thought, 'there must be a big battle going to be fought somewhere, and this extraordinary child, who takes my magic shark's tooth but who does not swell up or burst, is telling me to call all the great chief's tribe to help him. he _is_ a great chief, or he would have noticed me.' 'look,' said taffy, drawing very hard and rather scratchily, 'now i've drawn you, and i've put the spear that daddy wants into your hand, just to remind you that you're to bring it. now i'll show you how to find my mummy's living-address. you go along till you come to two trees (those are trees), and then you go over a hill (that's a hill), and then you come into a beaver-swamp all full of beavers. i haven't put in all the beavers, because i can't draw beavers, but i've drawn their heads, and that's all you'll see of them when you cross the swamp. mind you don't fall in! then our cave is just beyond the beaver-swamp. it isn't as high as the hills really, but i can't draw things very small. that's my mummy outside. she is beautiful. she is the most beautifullest mummy there ever was, but she won't be 'fended when she sees i've drawn her so plain. she'll be pleased of me because i can draw. now, in case you forget, i've drawn the spear that daddy wants _outside_ our cave. it's _inside_ really, but you show the picture to my mummy and she'll give it you. i've made her holding up her hands, because i know she'll be so pleased to see you. isn't it a beautiful picture? and do you quite understand, or shall i 'splain again?' the stranger-man (and he was a _tewara_) looked at the picture and nodded very hard. he said to himself, 'if i do not fetch this great chief's tribe to help him, he will be slain by his enemies who are coming up on all sides with spears. now i see why the great chief pretended not to notice me! he feared that his enemies were hiding in the bushes and would see him deliver a message to me. therefore he turned his back, and let the wise and wonderful child draw the terrible picture showing me his difficulties. i will away and get help for him from his tribe.' he did not even ask taffy the road, but raced off into the bushes like the wind, with the birch-bark in his hand, and taffy sat down most pleased. now this is the picture that taffy had drawn for him! [illustration] 'what have you been doing, taffy?' said tegumai. he had mended his spear and was carefully waving it to and fro. 'it's a little berangement of my own, daddy dear,' said taffy. 'if you won't ask me questions, you'll know all about it in a little time, and you'll be surprised. you don't know how surprised you'll be, daddy! promise you'll be surprised.' 'very well,' said tegumai, and went on fishing. the stranger-man--did you know he was a tewara?--hurried away with the picture and ran for some miles, till quite by accident he found teshumai tewindrow at the door of her cave, talking to some other neolithic ladies who had come in to a primitive lunch. taffy was very like teshumai, especially about the upper part of the face and the eyes, so the stranger-man--always a pure tewara--smiled politely and handed teshumai the birch-bark. he had run hard, so that he panted, and his legs were scratched with brambles, but he still tried to be polite. as soon as teshumai saw the picture she screamed like anything and flew at the stranger-man. the other neolithic ladies at once knocked him down and sat on him in a long line of six, while teshumai pulled his hair. 'it's as plain as the nose on this stranger-man's face,' she said. 'he has stuck my tegumai all full of spears, and frightened poor taffy so that her hair stands all on end; and not content with that, he brings me a horrid picture of how it was done. look!' she showed the picture to all the neolithic ladies sitting patiently on the stranger-man. 'here is my tegumai with his arm broken; here is a spear sticking into his back; here is a man with a spear ready to throw; here is another man throwing a spear from a cave, and here are a whole pack of people' (they were taffy's beavers really, but they did look rather like people) 'coming up behind tegumai. isn't it shocking!' 'most shocking!' said the neolithic ladies, and they filled the stranger-man's hair with mud (at which he was surprised), and they beat upon the reverberating tribal drums, and called together all the chiefs of the tribe of tegumai, with their hetmans and dolmans, all neguses, woons, and akhoonds of the organisation, in addition to the warlocks, angekoks, juju-men, bonzes, and the rest, who decided that before they chopped the stranger-man's head off he should instantly lead them down to the river and show them where he had hidden poor taffy. by this time the stranger-man (in spite of being a tewara) was really annoyed. they had filled his hair quite solid with mud; they had rolled him up and down on knobby pebbles; they had sat upon him in a long line of six; they had thumped him and bumped him till he could hardly breathe; and though he did not understand their language, he was almost sure that the names the neolithic ladies called him were not ladylike. however, he said nothing till all the tribe of tegumai were assembled, and then he led them back to the bank of the wagai river, and there they found taffy making daisy-chains, and tegumai carefully spearing small carp with his mended spear. 'well, you _have_ been quick!' said taffy. 'but why did you bring so many people? daddy dear, this is my surprise. _are_ you surprised, daddy?' 'very,' said tegumai; 'but it has ruined all my fishing for the day. why, the whole dear, kind, nice, clean, quiet tribe is here, taffy.' and so they were. first of all walked teshumai tewindrow and the neolithic ladies, tightly holding on to the stranger-man, whose hair was full of mud (although he was a tewara). behind them came the head chief, the vice-chief, the deputy and assistant chiefs (all armed to the upper teeth), the hetmans and heads of hundreds, platoffs with their platoons, and dolmans with their detachments; woons, neguses, and akhoonds ranking in the rear (still armed to the teeth). behind them was the tribe in hierarchical order, from owners of four caves (one for each season), a private reindeer-run, and two salmon-leaps, to feudal and prognathous villeins, semi-entitled to half a bearskin of winter nights, seven yards from the fire, and adscript serfs, holding the reversion of a scraped marrow-bone under heriot (aren't those beautiful words, best beloved?). they were all there, prancing and shouting, and they frightened every fish for twenty miles, and tegumai thanked them in a fluid neolithic oration. then teshumai tewindrow ran down and kissed and hugged taffy very much indeed; but the head chief of the tribe of tegumai took tegumai by the top-knot feathers and shook him severely. 'explain! explain! explain!' cried all the tribe of tegumai. 'goodness' sakes alive!' said tegumai. 'let go of my top-knot. can't a man break his carp-spear without the whole countryside descending on him? you're a very interfering people.' 'i don't believe you've brought my daddy's black-handled spear after all,' said taffy. 'and what _are_ you doing to my nice stranger-man?' they were thumping him by twos and threes and tens till his eyes turned round and round. he could only gasp and point at taffy. 'where are the bad people who speared you, my darling?' said teshumai tewindrow. 'there weren't any,' said tegumai. 'my only visitor this morning was the poor fellow that you are trying to choke. aren't you well, or are you ill, o tribe of tegumai?' 'he came with a horrible picture,' said the head chief,--'a picture that showed you were full of spears.' 'er--um--pr'aps i'd better 'splain that i gave him that picture,' said taffy, but she did not feel quite comfy. 'you!' said the tribe of tegumai all together. 'small-person-with-no-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked! you?' 'taffy dear, i'm afraid we're in for a little trouble,' said her daddy, and put his arm round her, so she didn't care. 'explain! explain! explain!' said the head chief of the tribe of tegumai, and he hopped on one foot. 'i wanted the stranger-man to fetch daddy's spear, so i drawded it,' said taffy. 'there wasn't lots of spears. there was only one spear. i drawded it three times to make sure. i couldn't help it looking as if it stuck into daddy's head--there wasn't room on the birch-bark; and those things that mummy called bad people are my beavers. i drawded them to show him the way through the swamp; and i drawded mummy at the mouth of the cave looking pleased because he is a nice stranger-man, and _i_ think you are just the stupidest people in the world,' said taffy. 'he is a very nice man. why have you filled his hair with mud? wash him!' nobody said anything at all for a long time, till the head chief laughed; then the stranger-man (who was at least a tewara) laughed; then tegumai laughed till he fell down flat on the bank; then all the tribe laughed more and worse and louder. the only people who did not laugh were teshumai tewindrow and all the neolithic ladies. they were very polite to all their husbands, and said 'idiot!' ever so often. then the head chief of the tribe of tegumai cried and said and sang, 'o small-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked, you've hit upon a great invention!' 'i didn't intend to; i only wanted daddy's black-handled spear,' said taffy. 'never mind. it _is_ a great invention, and some day men will call it writing. at present it is only pictures, and, as we have seen to-day, pictures are not always properly understood. but a time will come, o babe of tegumai, when we shall make letters--all twenty-six of 'em,--and when we shall be able to read as well as to write, and then we shall always say exactly what we mean without any mistakes. let the neolithic ladies wash the mud out of the stranger's hair. 'i shall be glad of that,' said taffy, 'because, after all, though you've brought every single other spear in the tribe of tegumai, you've forgotten my daddy's black-handled spear.' then the head chief cried and said and sang, 'taffy dear, the next time you write a picture-letter, you'd better send a man who can talk our language with it, to explain what it means. i don't mind it myself, because i am a head chief, but it's very bad for the rest of the tribe of tegumai, and, as you can see, it surprises the stranger.' then they adopted the stranger-man (a genuine tewara of tewar) into the tribe of tegumai, because he was a gentleman and did not make a fuss about the mud that the neolithic ladies had put into his hair. but from that day to this (and i suppose it is all taffy's fault), very few little girls have ever liked learning to read or write. most of them prefer to draw pictures and play about with their daddies--just like taffy. [illustration: this is the story of taffimai metallumai carved on an old tusk a very long time ago by the ancient peoples. if you read my story, or have it read to you, you can see how it is all told out on the tusk. the tusk was part of an old tribal trumpet that belonged to the tribe of tegumai. the pictures were scratched on it with a nail or something, and then the scratches were filled up with black wax, but all the dividing lines and the five little rounds at the bottom were filled with red wax. when it was new there was a sort of network of beads and shells and precious stones at one end of it; but now that has been broken and lost--all except the little bit that you see. the letters round the tusk are magic--runic magic,--and if you can read them you will find out something rather new. the tusk is of ivory--very yellow and scratched. it is two feet long and two feet round, and weighs eleven pounds nine ounces.] there runs a road by merrow down-- a grassy track to-day it is-- an hour out of guildford town, above the river wey it is. here, when they heard the horse-bells ring, the ancient britons dressed and rode to watch the dark phoenicians bring their goods along the western road. and here, or hereabouts, they met to hold their racial talks and such-- to barter beads for whitby jet, and tin for gay shell torques and such. but long and long before that time (when bison used to roam on it) did taffy and her daddy climb that down, and had their home on it. then beavers built in broadstonebrook and made a swamp where bramley stands: and bears from shere would come and look for taffimai where shamley stands. the wey, that taffy called wagai, was more than six times bigger then; and all the tribe of tegumai they cut a noble figure then! [illustration: how the alphabet was made] how the alphabet was made the week after taffimai metallumai (we will still call her taffy, best beloved) made that little mistake about her daddy's spear and the stranger-man and the picture-letter and all, she went carp-fishing again with her daddy. her mummy wanted her to stay at home and help hang up hides to dry on the big drying-poles outside their neolithic cave, but taffy slipped away down to her daddy quite early, and they fished. presently she began to giggle, and her daddy said, 'don't be silly, child.' 'but wasn't it inciting!' said taffy. 'don't you remember how the head chief puffed out his cheeks, and how funny the nice stranger-man looked with the mud in his hair?' 'well do i,' said tegumai. 'i had to pay two deerskins--soft ones with fringes--to the stranger-man for the things we did to him.' '_we_ didn't do anything,' said taffy. 'it was mummy and the other neolithic ladies--and the mud.' 'we won't talk about that,' said her daddy. 'let's have lunch.' taffy took a marrow-bone and sat mousy-quiet for ten whole minutes, while her daddy scratched on pieces of birch-bark with a shark's tooth. then she said, 'daddy, i've thinked of a secret surprise. you make a noise--any sort of noise.' 'ah!' said tegumai. 'will that do to begin with?' 'yes,' said taffy. 'you look just like a carp-fish with its mouth open. say it again, please.' 'ah! ah! ah!' said her daddy. 'don't be rude, my daughter.' 'i'm not meaning rude, really and truly,' said taffy. 'it's part of my secret-surprise-think. _do_ say _ah_, daddy, and keep your mouth open at the end, and lend me that tooth. i'm going to draw a carp-fish's mouth wide-open.' 'what for?' said her daddy. 'don't you see?' said taffy, scratching away on the bark. 'that will be our little secret s'prise. when i draw a carp-fish with his mouth open in the smoke at the back of our cave--if mummy doesn't mind--it will remind you of that ah-noise. then we can play that it was me jumped out of the dark and s'prised you with that noise--same as i did in the beaver-swamp last winter.' 'really?' said her daddy, in the voice that grown-ups use when they are truly attending. 'go on, taffy.' [illustration: ] 'oh bother!' she said. 'i can't draw all of a carp-fish, but i can draw something that means a carp-fish's mouth. don't you know how they stand on their heads rooting in the mud? well, here's a pretence carp-fish (we can play that the rest of him is drawn). here's just his mouth, and that means _ah_.' and she drew this. ( .) 'that's not bad,' said tegumai, and scratched on his own piece of bark for himself; but you've forgotten the feeler that hangs across his mouth.' 'but i can't draw, daddy.' 'you needn't draw anything of him except just the opening of his mouth and the feeler across. then we'll know he's a carp-fish, 'cause the perches and trouts haven't got feelers. look here, taffy.' and he drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'now i'll copy it.' said taffy. 'will you understand _this_ when you see it?' and she drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'perfectly,' said her daddy. 'and i'll be quite as s'prised when i see it anywhere, as if you had jumped out from behind a tree and said "ah!"' 'now, make another noise,' said taffy, very proud. 'yah!' said her daddy, very loud. 'h'm,' said taffy. 'that's a mixy noise. the end part is _ah_-carp-fish-mouth; but what can we do about the front part? _yer-yer-yer_ and _ah! ya!'_ 'it's very like the carp-fish-mouth noise. let's draw another bit of the carp-fish and join 'em,' said her daddy. _he_ was quite incited too. 'no. if they're joined, i'll forget. draw it separate. draw his tail. if he's standing on his head the tail will come first. 'sides, i think i can draw tails easiest,' said taffy. 'a good notion,' said tegumai. 'here's a carp-fish tail for the _yer_-noise.' and he drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'i'll try now,' said taffy. ''member i can't draw like you, daddy. will it do if i just draw the split part of the tail, and the sticky-down line for where it joins?' and she drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] her daddy nodded, and his eyes were shiny bright with 'citement. 'that's beautiful,' she said. 'now make another noise, daddy.' 'oh!' said her daddy, very loud. 'that's quite easy,' said taffy. 'you make your mouth all around like an egg or a stone. so an egg or a stone will do for that.' 'you can't always find eggs or stones. we'll have to scratch a round something like one.' and he drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'my gracious!' said taffy, 'what a lot of noise-pictures we've made,--carp-mouth, carp-tail, and egg! now, make another noise, daddy.' 'ssh!' said her daddy, and frowned to himself, but taffy was too incited to notice. 'that's quite easy,' she said, scratching on the bark. 'eh, what?' said her daddy. 'i meant i was thinking, and didn't want to be disturbed.' 'it's a noise just the same. it's the noise a snake makes, daddy, when it is thinking and doesn't want to be disturbed. let's make the _ssh_-noise a snake. will this do?' and she drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'there,' she said. 'that's another s'prise-secret. when you draw a hissy-snake by the door of your little back-cave where you mend the spears, i'll know you're thinking hard; and i'll come in most mousy-quiet. and if you draw it on a tree by the river when you're fishing, i'll know you want me to walk most _most_ mousy-quiet, so as not to shake the banks.' 'perfectly true,' said tegumai. 'and there's more in this game than you think. taffy, dear, i've a notion that your daddy's daughter has hit upon the finest thing that there ever was since the tribe of tegumai took to using shark's teeth instead of flints for their spear-heads. i believe we've found out _the_ big secret of the world.' 'why?' said taffy, and her eyes shone too with incitement. 'i'll show,' said her daddy. 'what's water in the tegumai language?' '_ya_, of course, and it means river too--like wagai-_ya_--the wagai river.' 'what is bad water that gives you fever if you drink it--black water--swamp-water?' '_yo_, of course.' 'now look,' said her daddy. 's'pose you saw this scratched by the side of a pool in the beaver-swamp?' and he drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'carp-tail and round egg. two noises mixed! _yo_, bad water,' said taffy. ''course i wouldn't drink that water because i'd know you said it was bad.' 'but i needn't be near the water at all. i might be miles away, hunting, and still----' 'and _still_ it would be just the same as if you stood there and said, "g'way, taffy, or you'll get fever." all that in a carp-fish-tail and a round egg! o daddy, we must tell mummy, quick!' and taffy danced all round him. 'not yet,' said tegumai; 'not till we've gone a little further. let's see. _yo_ is bad water, but _so_ is food cooked on the fire, isn't it?' and he drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'yes. snake and egg,' said taffy 'so that means dinner's ready. if you saw that scratched on a tree you'd know it was time to come to the cave. so'd i.' 'my winkie!' said tegumai. 'that's true too. but wait a minute. i see a difficulty. _so_ means "come and have dinner," but _sho_ means the drying-poles where we hang our hides.' 'horrid old drying-poles!' said taffy. 'i hate helping to hang heavy, hot, hairy hides on them. if you drew the snake and egg, and i thought it meant dinner, and i came in from the wood and found that it meant i was to help mummy hang the two hides on the drying-poles, what _would_ i do?' 'you'd be cross. so'd mummy. we must make a new picture for _sho_. we must draw a spotty snake that hisses _sh-sh_, and we'll play that the plain snake only hisses _ssss_.' 'i couldn't be sure how to put in the spots,' said taffy. 'and p'raps if _you_ were in a hurry you might leave them out, and i'd think it was _so_ when it was _sho_, and then mummy would catch me just the same. _no!_ i think we'd better draw a picture of the horrid high drying-poles their very selves, and make _quite_ sure. i'll put them in just after the hissy-snake. look!' and she drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'p'raps that's safest. it's very like our drying-poles, anyhow,' said her daddy, laughing. 'now i'll make a new noise with a snake and drying-pole sound in it. i'll say _shi_. that's tegumai for spear, taffy.' and he laughed. 'don't make fun of me,' said taffy, as she thought of her picture-letter and the mud in the stranger-man's hair. '_you_ draw it, daddy.' 'we won't have beavers or hills this time, eh?' said her daddy. 'i'll just draw a straight line for my spear.' and he drew this, ( .) [illustration: ] 'even mummy couldn't mistake that for me being killed.' '_please_ don't, daddy. it makes me uncomfy. do some more noises. we're getting on beautifully.' 'er-hm!' said tegumai, looking up. 'we'll say _shu_. that means sky.' taffy drew the snake and the drying-pole. then she stopped. 'we must make a new picture for that end sound, mustn't we?' '_shu-shu-u-u-u!_' said her daddy. 'why, it's just like the round-egg-sound made thin.' 'then s'pose we draw a thin round egg, and pretend it's a frog that hasn't eaten anything for years.' 'n-no,' said her daddy. 'if we drew that in a hurry we might mistake it for the round egg itself. _shu-shu-shu!_ _i'll_ tell you what we'll do. we'll open a little hole at the end of the round egg to show how the o-noise runs out all thin, _ooo-oo-oo_. like this.' and he drew this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'oh, that's lovely! much better than a thin frog. go on,' said taffy, using her shark's tooth. her daddy went on drawing, and his hand shook with excitement. he went on till he had drawn this. ( .) [illustration: ] 'don't look up, taffy,' he said. 'try if you can make out what that means in the tegumai language. if you can, we've found the secret.' 'snake--pole--broken-egg--carp-tail and carp-mouth,' said taffy. '_shu-ya._ sky-water (rain).' just then a drop fell on her hand, for the day had clouded over. 'why, daddy, it's raining. was _that_ what you meant to tell me?' 'of course,' said her daddy. 'and i told it you without saying a word, didn't i?' 'well, i _think_ i would have known it in a minute, but that raindrop made me quite sure. i'll always remember now. _shu-ya_ means rain or "it is going to rain." why, daddy!' she got up and danced round him. 's'pose you went out before i was awake, and drawed _shu-ya_ in the smoke on the wall, i'd know it was going to rain and i'd take my beaver-skin hood. wouldn't mummy be surprised!' tegumai got up and danced. (daddies didn't mind doing those things in those days.) 'more than that! more than that!' he said. 's'pose i wanted to tell you it wasn't going to rain much and you must come down to the river, what would we draw? say the words in tegumai-talk first.' '_shu-ya-las, ya maru._ (sky-water ending. river come to.) _what_ a lot of new sounds! _i_ don't see how we can draw them.' 'but i do--but i do!' said tegumai. 'just attend a minute, taffy, and we won't do any more to-day. we've got _shu-ya_ all right, haven't we? but this _las_ is a teaser. _la-la-la!'_ and he waved his shark-tooth. 'there's the hissy-snake at the end and the carp-mouth before the snake--_as-as-as_. we only want _la-la_,' said taffy. 'i know it, but we have to make la-la. and we're the first people in all the world who've ever tried to do it, taffimai!' 'well,' said taffy, yawning, for she was rather tired. '_las_ means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn't it?' 'so it does,' said tegumai. '_yo-las_ means that there's no water in the tank for mummy to cook with--just when i'm going hunting, too.' 'and _shi-las_ means that your spear is broken. if i'd only thought of _that_ instead of drawing silly beaver pictures for the stranger!' '_la! la! la!_' said tegumai, waving his stick and frowning. 'oh bother!' 'i could have drawn _shi_ quite easily,' taffy went on. 'then i'd have drawn your spear all broken--this way!' and she drew. ( .) [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] 'the very thing,' said tegumai. 'that's _la_ all over. it isn't like any of the other marks, either.' and he drew this. ( .) 'now for _ya_. oh, we've done that before. now for _maru_. _mum-mum-mum_. _mum_ shuts one's mouth up, doesn't it? we'll draw a shut mouth like this.' and he drew. ( .) 'then the carp-mouth open. that makes _ma-ma-ma!_ but what about this _rrrrr_-thing, taffy?' 'it sounds all rough and edgy, like your shark-tooth saw when you're cutting out a plank for the canoe,' said taffy. 'you mean all sharp at the edges, like this?' said tegumai. and he drew. ( .) [illustration: ] ''xactly,' said taffy. 'but we don't want all those teeth: only put two.' 'i'll only put in one,' said tegumai. 'if this game of ours is going to be what i think it will, the easier we make our sound-pictures the better for everybody.' and he drew. ( .) [illustration: ] '_now_ we've got it,' said tegumai, standing on one leg. 'i'll draw 'em all in a string like fish.' 'hadn't we better put a little bit of stick or something between each word, so's they won't rub up against each other and jostle, same as if they were carps?' 'oh, i'll leave a space for that,' said her daddy. and very incitedly he drew them all without stopping, on a big new bit of birch-bark. ( .) '_shu-ya-las ya-maru_,' said taffy, reading it out sound by sound. [illustration] 'that's enough for to-day,' said tegumai. 'besides, you're getting tired, taffy. never mind, dear. we'll finish it all to-morrow, and then we'll be remembered for years and years after the biggest trees you can see are all chopped up for firewood.' so they went home, and all that evening tegumai sat on one side of the fire and taffy on the other, drawing _ya's_ and _yo's_ and _shu's_ and _shi's_ in the smoke on the wall and giggling together till her mummy said, 'really, tegumai, you're worse than my taffy.' 'please don't mind,' said taffy. 'it's only our secret-s'prise, mummy dear, and we'll tell you all about it the very minute it's done; but _please_ don't ask me what it is now, or else i'll have to tell.' so her mummy most carefully didn't; and bright and early next morning tegumai went down to the river to think about new sound-pictures, and when taffy got up she saw _ya-las_ (water is ending or running out) chalked on the side of the big stone water-tank, outside the cave. 'um,' said taffy. 'these picture-sounds are rather a bother! daddy's just as good as come here himself and told me to get more water for mummy to cook with.' she went to the spring at the back of the house and filled the tank from a bark bucket, and then she ran down to the river and pulled her daddy's left ear--the one that belonged to her to pull when she was good. 'now come along and we'll draw all the left-over sound-pictures,' said her daddy, and they had a most inciting day of it, and a beautiful lunch in the middle, and two games of romps. when they came to t, taffy said that as her name, and her daddy's, and her mummy's all began with that sound, they should draw a sort of family group of themselves holding hands. that was all very well to draw once or twice; but when it came to drawing it six or seven times, taffy and tegumai drew it scratchier and scratchier, till at last the t-sound was only a thin long tegumai with his arms out to hold taffy and teshumai. you can see from these three pictures partly how it happened. ( , , .) [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] many of the other pictures were much too beautiful to begin with, especially before lunch, but as they were drawn over and over again on birch-bark, they became plainer and easier, till at last even tegumai said he could find no fault with them. they turned the hissy-snake the other way round for the z-sound, to show it was hissing backwards in a soft and gentle way ( ); and they just made a twiddle for e, because it came into the pictures so often ( ); and they drew pictures of the sacred beaver of the tegumais for the b-sound ( , , , ); and because it was a nasty, nosy noise, they just drew noses for the n-sound, till they were tired ( ); and they drew a picture of the big lake-pike's mouth for the greedy ga-sound ( ); and they drew the pike's mouth again with a spear behind it for the scratchy, hurty ka-sound ( ); and they drew pictures of a little bit of the winding wagai river for the nice windy-windy wa-sound ( , ); and so on and so forth and so following till they had done and drawn all the sound-pictures that they wanted, and there was the alphabet, all complete. [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] [illustration: ] and after thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and after hieroglyphics and demotics, and nilotics, and cryptics, and cufics, and runics, and dorics, and ionics, and all sorts of other ricks and tricks (because the woons, and the neguses, and the akhoonds, and the repositories of tradition would never leave a good thing alone when they saw it), the fine old easy, understandable alphabet--a, b, c, d, e, and the rest of 'em--got back into its proper shape again for all best beloveds to learn when they are old enough. but _i_ remember tegumai bopsulai, and taffimai metallumai and teshumai tewindrow, her dear mummy, and all the days gone by. and it was so--just so--a little time ago--on the banks of the big wagai! one of the first things that tegumai bopsulai did after taffy and he had made the alphabet was to make a magic alphabet-necklace of all the letters, so that it could be put in the temple of tegumai and kept for ever and ever. all the tribe of tegumai brought their most precious beads and beautiful things, and taffy and tegumai spent five whole years getting the necklace in order. this is a picture of the magic alphabet-necklace. the string was made of the finest and strongest reindeer-sinew, bound round with thin copper wire. beginning at the top, the first bead is an old silver one that belonged to the head priest of the tribe of tegumai; then come three black mussel-pearls; next is a clay bead (blue and gray); next a nubbly gold bead sent as a present by a tribe who got it from africa (but it must have been indian really); the next is a long flat-sided glass bead from africa (the tribe of tegumai took it in a fight); then come two clay beads (white and green), with dots on one, and dots and bands on the other; next are three rather chipped amber beads; then three clay beads (red and white), two with dots, and the big one in the middle with a toothed pattern. then the letters begin, and between each letter is a little whitish clay bead with the letter repeated small. here are the letters-- a is scratched on a tooth--an elk-tusk i think. b is the sacred beaver of tegumai on a bit of old glory. c is a pearly oyster-shell--inside front. d must be a sort of mussel-shell--outside front. e is a twist of silver wire. f is broken, but what remains of it is a bit of stag's horn. g is painted black on a piece of wood. (the bead after g is a small shell, and not a clay bead. i don't know why they did that.) h is a kind of a big brown cowie-shell. i is the inside part of a long shell ground down by hand. (it took tegumai three months to grind it down.) j is a fish hook in mother-of-pearl. l is the broken spear in silver. (k ought to follow j of course, but the necklace was broken once and they mended it wrong.) k is a thin slice of bone scratched and rubbed in black. m is on a pale gray shell. n is a piece of what is called porphyry with a nose scratched on it. (tegumai spent five months polishing this stone.) o is a piece of oyster-shell with a hole in the middle. p and q are missing. they were lost, a long time ago, in a great war, and the tribe mended the necklace with the dried rattles of a rattlesnake, but no one ever found p and q. that is how the saying began, 'you must mind your p's. and q's.' r is, of course, just a shark's tooth. s is a little silver snake. t is the end of a small bone, polished brown and shiny. u is another piece of oyster-shell. w is a twisty piece of mother-of-pearl that they found inside a big mother-of-pearl shell, and sawed off with a wire dipped in sand and water. it took taffy a month and a half to polish it and drill the holes. x is silver wire joined in the middle with a raw garnet. (taffy found the garnet.) y is the carp's tail in ivory. z is a bell-shaped piece of agate marked with z-shaped stripes. they made the z-snake out of one of the stripes by picking out the soft stone and rubbing in red sand and bee's-wax. just in the mouth of the bell you see the clay bead repeating the z-letter. these are all the letters. the next bead is a small round greeny lump of copper ore; the next is a lump of rough turquoise; the next is a rough gold nugget (what they call water-gold); the next is a melon-shaped clay bead (white with green spots). then come four flat ivory pieces, with dots on them rather like dominoes; then come three stone beads, very badly worn; then two soft iron beads with rust-holes at the edges (they must have been magic, because they look very common); and last is a very very old african bead, like glass--blue, red, white, black, and yellow. then comes the loop to slip over the big silver button at the other end, and that is all. i have copied the necklace very carefully. it weighs one pound seven and a half ounces. the black squiggle behind is only put in to make the beads and things look better. [illustration] of all the tribe of tegumai who cut that figure, none remain,-- on merrow down the cuckoos cry-- the silence and the sun remain. but as the faithful years return and hearts unwounded sing again, comes taffy dancing through the fern to lead the surrey spring again. her brows are bound with bracken-fronds, and golden elf-locks fly above; her eyes are bright as diamonds and bluer than the skies above. in mocassins and deer-skin cloak, unfearing, free and fair she flits, and lights her little damp-wood smoke to show her daddy where she flits. for far--oh, very far behind, so far she cannot call to him, comes tegumai alone to find the daughter that was all to him. [illustration: the crab that played with the sea] the crab that played with the sea before the high and far-off times, o my best beloved, came the time of the very beginnings; and that was in the days when the eldest magician was getting things ready. first he got the earth ready; then he got the sea ready; and then he told all the animals that they could come out and play. and the animals said, 'o eldest magician, what shall we play at?' and he said, 'i will show you.' he took the elephant--all-the-elephant-there-was--and said, 'play at being an elephant,' and all-the-elephant-there-was played. he took the beaver--all-the-beaver-there-was--and said, 'play at being a beaver,' and all-the-beaver-there-was played. he took the cow--all-the-cow-there-was--and said, 'play at being a cow,' and all-the-cow-there-was played. he took the turtle--all-the-turtle-there-was--and said, 'play at being a turtle,' and all-the-turtle-there-was played. one by one he took all the beasts and birds and fishes and told them what to play at. but towards evening, when people and things grow restless and tired, there came up the man (with his own little girl-daughter?)--yes, with his own best beloved little girl-daughter sitting upon his shoulder, and he said, 'what is this play, eldest magician?' and the eldest magician said, 'ho, son of adam, this is the play of the very beginning; but you are too wise for this play.' and the man saluted and said, 'yes, i am too wise for this play; but see that you make all the animals obedient to me.' now, while the two were talking together, pau amma the crab, who was next in the game, scuttled off sideways and stepped into the sea, saying to himself, 'i will play my play alone in the deep waters, and i will never be obedient to this son of adam.' nobody saw him go away except the little girl-daughter where she leaned on the man's shoulder. and the play went on till there were no more animals left without orders; and the eldest magician wiped the fine dust off his hands and walked about the world to see how the animals were playing. he went north, best beloved, and he found all-the-elephant-there-was digging with his tusks and stamping with his feet in the nice new clean earth that had been made ready for him. '_kun?_' said all-the-elephant-there-was, meaning, 'is this right?' '_payah kun_,' said the eldest magician, meaning, 'that is quite right'; and he breathed upon the great rocks and lumps of earth that all-the-elephant-there-was had thrown up, and they became the great himalayan mountains, and you can look them out on the map. he went east, and he found all-the-cow-there-was feeding in the field that had been made ready for her, and she licked her tongue round a whole forest at a time, and swallowed it and sat down to chew her cud. [illustration: this is a picture of pau amma the crab running away while the eldest magician was talking to the man and his little girl daughter. the eldest magician is sitting on his magic throne, wrapped up in his magic cloud. the three flowers in front of him are the three magic flowers. on the top of the hill you can see all-the-elephant-there-was, and all-the-cow-there-was, and all-the-turtle-there-was going off to play as the eldest magician told them. the cow has a hump, because she was all-the-cow-there-was; so she had to have all there was for all the cows that were made afterwards. under the hill there are animals who have been taught the game they were to play. you can see all-the-tiger-there-was smiling at all-the-bones-there-were, and you can see all-the-elk-there-was, and all-the-parrot-there-was, and all-the-bunnies-there-were on the hill. the other animals are on the other side of the hill, so i haven't drawn them. the little house up the hill is all-the-house-there-was. the eldest magician made it to show the man how to make houses when he wanted to. the snake round that spiky hill is all-the-snake-there-was, and he is talking to all-the-monkey-there-was, and the monkey is being rude to the snake, and the snake is being rude to the monkey. the man is very busy talking to the eldest magician. the little girl daughter is looking at pau amma as he runs away. that humpy thing in the water in front is pau amma. he wasn't a common crab in those days. he was a king crab. that is why he looks different. the thing that looks like bricks that the man is standing in, is the big miz-maze. when the man has done talking with the eldest magician he will walk in the big miz-maze, because he has to. the mark on the stone under the man's foot is a magic mark; and down underneath i have drawn the three magic flowers all mixed up with the magic cloud. all this picture is big medicine and strong magic.] '_kun?_' said all-the-cow-there-was. '_payah kun_,' said the eldest magician; and he breathed upon the bare patch where she had eaten, and upon the place where she had sat down, and one became the great indian desert, and the other became the desert of sahara, and you can look them out on the map. he went west, and he found all-the-beaver-there-was making a beaver-dam across the mouths of broad rivers that had been got ready for him. '_kun?_' said all-the-beaver-there-was. '_payah kun_,' said the eldest magician; and he breathed upon the fallen trees and the still water, and they became the everglades in florida, and you may look them out on the map. then he went south and found all-the-turtle-there-was scratching with his flippers in the sand that had been got ready for him, and the sand and the rocks whirled through the air and fell far off into the sea. '_kun?_' said all-the-turtle-there-was. '_payah kun_,' said the eldest magician; and he breathed upon the sand and the rocks, where they had fallen in the sea, and they became the most beautiful islands of borneo, celebes, sumatra, java, and the rest of the malay archipelago, and you can look _them_ out on the map! by and by the eldest magician met the man on the banks of the perak river, and said, 'ho! son of adam, are all the animals obedient to you?' 'yes,' said the man. 'is all the earth obedient to you?' 'yes,' said the man. 'is all the sea obedient to you?' 'no,' said the man. 'once a day and once a night the sea runs up the perak river and drives the sweet-water back into the forest, so that my house is made wet; once a day and once a night it runs down the river and draws all the water after it, so that there is nothing left but mud, and my canoe is upset. is that the play you told it to play?' 'no,' said the eldest magician. 'that is a new and a bad play.' 'look!' said the man, and as he spoke the great sea came up the mouth of the perak river, driving the river backwards till it overflowed all the dark forests for miles and miles, and flooded the man's house. 'this is wrong. launch your canoe and we will find out who is playing with the sea,' said the eldest magician. they stepped into the canoe; the little girl-daughter came with them; and the man took his _kris_--a curving, wavy dagger with a blade like a flame,--and they pushed out on the perak river. then the sea began to run back and back, and the canoe was sucked out of the mouth of the perak river, past selangor, past malacca, past singapore, out and out to the island of bingtang, as though it had been pulled by a string. then the eldest magician stood up and shouted, 'ho! beasts, birds, and fishes, that i took between my hands at the very beginning and taught the play that you should play, which one of you is playing with the sea?' then all the beasts, birds, and fishes said together, 'eldest magician, we play the plays that you taught us to play--we and our children's children. but not one of us plays with the sea.' then the moon rose big and full over the water, and the eldest magician said to the hunchbacked old man who sits in the moon spinning a fishing-line with which he hopes one day to catch the world, 'ho! fisher of the moon, are you playing with the sea?' 'no,' said the fisherman, 'i am spinning a line with which i shall some day catch the world; but i do not play with the sea.' and he went on spinning his line. now there is also a rat up in the moon who always bites the old fisherman's line as fast as it is made, and the eldest magician said to him, 'ho! rat of the moon, are _you_ playing with the sea?' and the rat said, 'i am too busy biting through the line that this old fisherman is spinning. i do not play with the sea.' and he went on biting the line. then the little girl-daughter put up her little soft brown arms with the beautiful white shell bracelets and said, 'o eldest magician! when my father here talked to you at the very beginning, and i leaned upon his shoulder while the beasts were being taught their plays, one beast went away naughtily into the sea before you had taught him his play.' and the eldest magician said, 'how wise are little children who see and are silent! what was the beast like?' and the little girl-daughter said, 'he was round and he was flat; and his eyes grew upon stalks; and he walked sideways like this; and he was covered with strong armour upon his back.' and the eldest magician said, 'how wise are little children who speak truth! now i know where pau amma went. give me the paddle!' so he took the paddle; but there was no need to paddle, for the water flowed steadily past all the islands till they came to the place called pusat tasek--the heart of the sea--where the great hollow is that leads down to the heart of the world, and in that hollow grows the wonderful tree, pauh janggi, that bears the magic twin nuts. then the eldest magician slid his arm up to the shoulder through the deep warm water, and under the roots of the wonderful tree he touched the broad back of pau amma the crab. and pau amma settled down at the touch, and all the sea rose up as water rises in a basin when you put your hand into it. 'ah!' said the eldest magician. 'now i know who has been playing with the sea;' and he called out, 'what are you doing, pau amma?' and pau amma, deep down below, answered, 'once a day and once a night i go out to look for my food. once a day and once a night i return. leave me alone.' then the eldest magician said, 'listen, pau amma. when you go out from your cave the waters of the sea pour down into pusat tasek, and all the beaches of all the islands are left bare, and the little fish die, and raja moyang kaban, the king of the elephants, his legs are made muddy. when you come back and sit in pusat tasek, the waters of the sea rise, and half the little islands are drowned, and the man's house is flooded, and raja abdullah, the king of the crocodiles, his mouth is filled with the salt water. then pau amma, deep down below, laughed and said, 'i did not know i was so important. henceforward i will go out seven times a day, and the waters shall never be still.' and the eldest magician said, 'i cannot make you play the play you were meant to play, pau amma, because you escaped me at the very beginning; but if you are not afraid, come up and we will talk about it.' 'i am not afraid,' said pau amma, and he rose to the top of the sea in the moonlight. there was nobody in the world so big as pau amma--for he was the king crab of all crabs. not a common crab, but a king crab. one side of his great shell touched the beach at sarawak; the other touched the beach at pahang; and he was taller than the smoke of three volcanoes! as he rose up through the branches of the wonderful tree he tore off one of the great twin-fruits--the magic double-kernelled nuts that make people young,--and the little girl-daughter saw it bobbing alongside the canoe, and pulled it in and began to pick out the soft eyes of it with her little golden scissors. 'now,' said the magician, 'make a magic, pau amma, to show that you are really important.' pau amma rolled his eyes and waved his legs, but he could only stir up the sea, because, though he was a king crab, he was nothing more than a crab, and the eldest magician laughed. [illustration: this is the picture of pau amma the crab rising out of the sea as tall as the smoke of three volcanoes. i haven't drawn the three volcanoes, because pau amma was so big. pau amma is trying to make a magic, but he is only a silly old king crab, and so he can't do anything. you can see he is all legs and claws and empty hollow shell. the canoe is the canoe that the man and the girl daughter and the eldest magician sailed from the perak river in. the sea is all black and bobbly, because pau amma has just risen up out of pusat tasek. pusat tasek is underneath, so i haven't drawn it. the man is waving his curvy _kris_-knife at pau amma. the little girl daughter is sitting quietly in the middle of the canoe. she knows she is quite safe with her daddy. the eldest magician is standing up at the other end of the canoe beginning to make a magic. he has left his magic throne on the beach, and he has taken off his clothes so as not to get wet, and he has left the magic cloud behind too, so as not to tip the boat over. the thing that looks like another little canoe outside the real canoe is called an outrigger. it is a piece of wood tied to sticks, and it prevents the canoe from being tipped over. the canoe is made out of one piece of wood, and there is a paddle at one end of it.] 'you are not so important after all, pau amma,' he said. 'now, let _me_ try,' and he made a magic with his left hand--with just the little finger of his left hand--and--lo and behold, best beloved, pau amma's hard, blue-green-black shell fell off him as a husk falls off a cocoa-nut, and pau amma was left all soft--soft as the little crabs that you sometimes find on the beach, best beloved. 'indeed, you are very important,' said the eldest magician. 'shall i ask the man here to cut you with _kris_? shall i send for raja moyang kaban, the king of the elephants, to pierce you with his tusks, or shall i call raja abdullah, the king of the crocodiles, to bite you?' and pau amma said, 'i am ashamed! give me back my hard shell and let me go back to pusat tasek, and i will only stir out once a day and once a night to get my food.' and the eldest magician said, 'no, pau amma, i will _not_ give you back your shell, for you will grow bigger and prouder and stronger, and perhaps you will forget your promise, and you will play with the sea once more.' then pau amma said, 'what shall i do? i am so big that i can only hide in pusat tasek, and if i go anywhere else, all soft as i am now, the sharks and the dogfish will eat me. and if i go to pusat tasek, all soft as i am now, though i may be safe, i can never stir out to get my food, and so i shall die.' then he waved his legs and lamented. 'listen, pau amma,' said the eldest magician. 'i cannot make you play the play you were meant to play, because you escaped me at the very beginning; but if you choose, i can make every stone and every hole and every bunch of weed in all the seas a safe pusat tasek for you and your children for always.' then pau amma said, 'that is good, but i do not choose yet. look! there is that man who talked to you at the very beginning. if he had not taken up your attention i should not have grown tired of waiting and run away, and all this would never have happened. what will _he_ do for me?' and the man said, 'if you choose, i will make a magic, so that both the deep water and the dry ground will be a home for you and your children--so that you shall be able to hide both on the land and in the sea.' and pau amma said, 'i do not choose yet. look! there is that girl who saw me running away at the very beginning. if she had spoken then, the eldest magician would have called me back, and all this would never have happened. what will _she_ do for me?' and the little girl-daughter said, 'this is a good nut that i am eating. if you choose, i will make a magic and i will give you this pair of scissors, very sharp and strong, so that you and your children can eat cocoa-nuts like this all day long when you come up from the sea to the land; or you can dig a pusat tasek for yourself with the scissors that belong to you when there is no stone or hole near by; and when the earth is too hard, by the help of these same scissors you can run up a tree.' and pau amma said, 'i do not choose yet, for, all soft as i am, these gifts would not help me. give me back my shell, o eldest magician, and then i will play your play.' and the eldest magician said, 'i will give it back, pau amma, for eleven months of the year; but on the twelfth month of every year it shall grow soft again, to remind you and all your children that i can make magics, and to keep you humble, pau amma; for i see that if you can run both under the water and on land, you will grow too bold; and if you can climb trees and crack nuts and dig holes with your scissors, you will grow too greedy, pau amma.' then pau amma thought a little and said, 'i have made my choice. i will take all the gifts.' then the eldest magician made a magic with the right hand, with all five fingers of his right hand, and lo and behold, best beloved, pau amma grew smaller and smaller and smaller, till at last there was only a little green crab swimming in the water alongside the canoe, crying in a very small voice, 'give me the scissors!' and the girl-daughter picked him up on the palm of her little brown hand, and sat him in the bottom of the canoe and gave him her scissors, and he waved them in his little arms, and opened them and shut them and snapped them, and said, 'i can eat nuts. i can crack shells. i can dig holes. i can climb trees. i can breathe in the dry air, and i can find a safe pusat tasek under every stone. i did not know i was so important. _kun?_' (is this right?) '_payah-kun_,' said the eldest magician, and he laughed and gave him his blessing; and little pau amma scuttled over the side of the canoe into the water; and he was so tiny that he could have hidden under the shadow of a dry leaf on land or of a dead shell at the bottom of the sea. 'was that well done?' said the eldest magician. 'yes,' said the man. 'but now we must go back to perak, and that is a weary way to paddle. if we had waited till pau amma had gone out of pusat tasek and come home, the water would have carried us there by itself.' 'you are lazy,' said the eldest magician. 'so your children shall be lazy. they shall be the laziest people in the world. they shall be called the malazy--the lazy people;' and he held up his finger to the moon and said, 'o fisherman, here is the man too lazy to row home. pull his canoe home with your line, fisherman.' 'no,' said the man. 'if i am to be lazy all my days, let the sea work for me twice a day for ever. that will save paddling.' and the eldest magician laughed and said, '_payah kun_' (that is right). and the rat of the moon stopped biting the line; and the fisherman let his line down till it touched the sea, and he pulled the whole deep sea along, past the island of bintang, past singapore, past malacca, past selangor, till the canoe whirled into the mouth of the perak river again. '_kun?_' said the fisherman of the moon. '_payah kun_,' said the eldest magician. 'see now that you pull the sea twice a day and twice a night for ever, so that the malazy fishermen may be saved paddling. but be careful not to do it too hard, or i shall make a magic on you as i did to pau amma.' then they all went up the perak river and went to bed, best beloved. now listen and attend! from that day to this the moon has always pulled the sea up and down and made what we call the tides. sometimes the fisher of the sea pulls a little too hard, and then we get spring-tides; and sometimes he pulls a little too softly, and then we get what are called neap-tides; but nearly always he is careful, because of the eldest magician. and pau amma? you can see when you go to the beach, how all pau amma's babies make little pusat taseks for themselves under every stone and bunch of weed on the sands; you can see them waving their little scissors; and in some parts of the world they truly live on the dry land and run up the palm trees and eat cocoa-nuts, exactly as the girl-daughter promised. but once a year all pau ammas must shake off their hard armour and be soft--to remind them of what the eldest magician could do. and so it isn't fair to kill or hunt pau amma's babies just because old pau amma was stupidly rude a very long time ago. oh yes! and pau amma's babies hate being taken out of their little pusat taseks and brought home in pickle-bottles. that is why they nip you with their scissors, and it serves you right! china-going p. and o.'s pass pau amma's playground close, and his pusat tasek lies near the track of most b.i.'s. u.y.k. and n.d.l. know pau amma's home as well as the fisher of the sea knows 'bens,' m.m.'s, and rubattinos. but (and this is rather queer) a.t.l.'s can _not_ come here; o. and o. and d.o.a. must go round another way. orient, anchor, bibby, hall, never go that way at all. u.c.s. would have a fit if it found itself on it. and if 'beavers' took their cargoes to penang instead of lagos, or a fat shaw-savill bore passengers to singapore, or a white star were to try a little trip to sourabaya, or a b.s.a. went on past natal to cheribon, then great mr. lloyds would come with a wire and drag them home! you'll know what my riddle means when you've eaten mangosteens. or if you can't wait till then, ask them to let you have the outside page of the _times_; turn over to page , where it is marked 'shipping' on the top left hand; then take the atlas (and that is the finest picture-book in the world) and see how the names of the places that the steamers go to fit into the names of the places on the map. any steamer-kiddy ought to be able to do that; but if you can't read, ask some one to show it you. [illustration: the cat that walked by himself] the cat that walked by himself hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, o my best beloved, when the tame animals were wild. the dog was wild, and the horse was wild, and the cow was wild, and the sheep was wild, and the pig was wild--as wild as wild could be--and they walked in the wet wild woods by their wild lones. but the wildest of all the wild animals was the cat. he walked by himself, and all places were alike to him. of course the man was wild too. he was dreadfully wild. he didn't even begin to be tame till he met the woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. she picked out a nice dry cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the cave; and she said, 'wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.' that night, best beloved, they ate wild sheep roasted on the hot stones, and flavoured with wild garlic and wild pepper; and wild duck stuffed with wild rice and wild fenugreek and wild coriander; and marrow-bones of wild oxen; and wild cherries, and wild grenadillas. then the man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the woman sat up, combing her hair. she took the bone of the shoulder of mutton--the big fat blade-bone--and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a magic. she made the first singing magic in the world. out in the wet wild woods all the wild animals gathered together where they could see the light of the fire a long way off, and they wondered what it meant. then wild horse stamped with his wild foot and said, 'o my friends and o my enemies, why have the man and the woman made that great light in that great cave, and what harm will it do us?' wild dog lifted up his wild nose and smelled the smell of roast mutton, and said, 'i will go up and see and look, and say; for i think it is good. cat, come with me.' 'nenni!' said the cat. 'i am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. i will not come.' 'then we can never be friends again,' said wild dog, and he trotted off to the cave. but when he had gone a little way the cat said to himself, 'all places are alike to me. why should i not go too and see and look and come away at my own liking.' so he slipped after wild dog softly, very softly, and hid himself where he could hear everything. [illustration: this is the picture of the cave where the man and the woman lived first of all. it was really a very nice cave, and much warmer than it looks. the man had a canoe. it is on the edge of the river, being soaked in the water to make it swell up. the tattery-looking thing across the river is the man's salmon-net to catch salmon with. there are nice clean stones leading up from the river to the mouth of the cave, so that the man and the woman could go down for water without getting sand between their toes. the things like black-beetles far down the beach are really trunks of dead trees that floated down the river from the wet wild woods on the other bank. the man and the woman used to drag them out and dry them and cut them up for firewood. i haven't drawn the horse-hide curtain at the mouth of the cave, because the woman has just taken it down to be cleaned. all those little smudges on the sand between the cave and the river are the marks of the woman's feet and the man's feet. the man and the woman are both inside the cave eating their dinner. they went to another cosier cave when the baby came, because the baby used to crawl down to the river and fall in, and the dog had to pull him out.] when wild dog reached the mouth of the cave he lifted up the dried horse-skin with his nose and sniffed the beautiful smell of the roast mutton, and the woman, looking at the blade-bone, heard him, and laughed, and said, 'here comes the first. wild thing out of the wild woods, what do you want?' wild dog said, 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy, what is this that smells so good in the wild woods?' then the woman picked up a roasted mutton-bone and threw it to wild dog, and said, 'wild thing out of the wild woods, taste and try.' wild dog gnawed the bone, and it was more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, and he said, 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy, give me another.' the woman said, 'wild thing out of the wild woods, help my man to hunt through the day and guard this cave at night, and i will give you as many roast bones as you need.' 'ah!' said the cat, listening. this is a very wise woman, but she is not so wise as i am.' wild dog crawled into the cave and laid his head on the woman's lap, and said, 'o my friend and wife of my friend, i will help your man to hunt through the day, and at night i will guard your cave.' 'ah!' said the cat, listening. 'that is a very foolish dog.' and he went back through the wet wild woods waving his wild tail, and walking by his wild lone. but he never told anybody. when the man waked up he said, 'what is wild dog doing here?' and the woman said, 'his name is not wild dog any more, but the first friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always. take him with you when you go hunting.' next night the woman cut great green armfuls of fresh grass from the water-meadows, and dried it before the fire, so that it smelt like new-mown hay, and she sat at the mouth of the cave and plaited a halter out of horse-hide, and she looked at the shoulder of mutton-bone--at the big broad blade-bone--and she made a magic. she made the second singing magic in the world. out in the wild woods all the wild animals wondered what had happened to wild dog, and at last wild horse stamped with his foot and said, 'i will go and see and say why wild dog has not returned. cat, come with me.' 'nenni!' said the cat. 'i am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. i will not come.' but all the same he followed wild horse softly, very softly, and hid himself where he could hear everything. when the woman heard wild horse tripping and stumbling on his long mane, she laughed and said, 'here comes the second. wild thing out of the wild woods what do you want?' wild horse said, 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy, where is wild dog?' the woman laughed, and picked up the blade-bone and looked at it, and said, 'wild thing out of the wild woods, you did not come here for wild dog, but for the sake of this good grass.' and wild horse, tripping and stumbling on his long mane, said, 'that is true; give it me to eat.' the woman said, 'wild thing out of the wild woods, bend your wild head and wear what i give you, and you shall eat the wonderful grass three times a day.' 'ah,' said the cat, listening, 'this is a clever woman, but she is not so clever as i am.' [illustration: this is the picture of the cat that walked by himself, walking by his wild lone through the wet wild woods and waving his wild tail. there is nothing else in the picture except some toadstools. they had to grow there because the woods were so wet. the lumpy thing on the low branch isn't a bird. it is moss that grew there because the wild woods were so wet. underneath the truly picture is a picture of the cozy cave that the man and the woman went to after the baby came. it was their summer cave, and they planted wheat in front of it. the man is riding on the horse to find the cow and bring her back to the cave to be milked. he is holding up his hand to call the dog, who has swum across to the other side of the river, looking for rabbits.] wild horse bent his wild head, and the woman slipped the plaited hide halter over it, and wild horse breathed on the woman's feet and said, 'o my mistress, and wife of my master, i will be your servant for the sake of the wonderful grass.' 'ah,' said the cat, listening, 'that is a very foolish horse.' and he went back through the wet wild woods, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone. but he never told anybody. when the man and the dog came back from hunting, the man said, 'what is wild horse doing here?' and the woman said, 'his name is not wild horse any more, but the first servant, because he will carry us from place to place for always and always and always. ride on his back when you go hunting.' next day, holding her wild head high that her wild horns should not catch in the wild trees, wild cow came up to the cave, and the cat followed, and hid himself just the same as before; and everything happened just the same as before; and the cat said the same things as before, and when wild cow had promised to give her milk to the woman every day in exchange for the wonderful grass, the cat went back through the wet wild woods waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone, just the same as before. but he never told anybody. and when the man and the horse and the dog came home from hunting and asked the same questions same as before, the woman said, 'her name is not wild cow any more, but the giver of good food. she will give us the warm white milk for always and always and always, and i will take care of her while you and the first friend and the first servant go hunting.' next day the cat waited to see if any other wild thing would go up to the cave, but no one moved in the wet wild woods, so the cat walked there by himself; and he saw the woman milking the cow, and he saw the light of the fire in the cave, and he smelt the smell of the warm white milk. cat said, 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy, where did wild cow go?' the woman laughed and said, 'wild thing out of the wild woods, go back to the woods again, for i have braided up my hair, and i have put away the magic blade-bone, and we have no more need of either friends or servants in our cave.' cat said, 'i am not a friend, and i am not a servant. i am the cat who walks by himself, and i wish to come into your cave.' woman said, 'then why did you not come with first friend on the first night?' cat grew very angry and said, 'has wild dog told tales of me?' then the woman laughed and said, 'you are the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to you. you are neither a friend nor a servant. you have said it yourself. go away and walk by yourself in all places alike.' then cat pretended to be sorry and said, 'must i never come into the cave? must i never sit by the warm fire? must i never drink the warm white milk? you are very wise and very beautiful. you should not be cruel even to a cat.' woman said, 'i knew i was wise, but i did not know i was beautiful. so i will make a bargain with you. if ever i say one word in your praise you may come into the cave.' 'and if you say two words in my praise?' said the cat. 'i never shall,' said the woman, 'but if i say two words in your praise, you may sit by the fire in the cave.' 'and if you say three words?' said the cat. 'i never shall,' said the woman, 'but if i say three words in your praise, you may drink the warm white milk three times a day for always and always and always.' then the cat arched his back and said, 'now let the curtain at the mouth of the cave, and the fire at the back of the cave, and the milk-pots that stand beside the fire, remember what my enemy and the wife of my enemy has said.' and he went away through the wet wild woods waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone. that night when the man and the horse and the dog came home from hunting, the woman did not tell them of the bargain that she had made with the cat, because she was afraid that they might not like it. cat went far and far away and hid himself in the wet wild woods by his wild lone for a long time till the woman forgot all about him. only the bat--the little upside-down bat--that hung inside the cave, knew where cat hid; and every evening bat would fly to cat with news of what was happening. one evening bat said, 'there is a baby in the cave. he is new and pink and fat and small, and the woman is very fond of him.' 'ah,' said the cat, listening, 'but what is the baby fond of?' 'he is fond of things that are soft and tickle,' said the bat. 'he is fond of warm things to hold in his arms when he goes to sleep. he is fond of being played with. he is fond of all those things.' 'ah,' said the cat, listening, 'then my time has come.' next night cat walked through the wet wild woods and hid very near the cave till morning-time, and man and dog and horse went hunting. the woman was busy cooking that morning, and the baby cried and interrupted. so she carried him outside the cave and gave him a handful of pebbles to play with. but still the baby cried. then the cat put out his paddy paw and patted the baby on the cheek, and it cooed; and the cat rubbed against its fat knees and tickled it under its fat chin with his tail. and the baby laughed; and the woman heard him and smiled. then the bat--the little upside-down bat--that hung in the mouth of the cave said, 'o my hostess and wife of my host and mother of my host's son, a wild thing from the wild woods is most beautifully playing with your baby.' 'a blessing on that wild thing whoever he may be,' said the woman, straightening her back, 'for i was a busy woman this morning and he has done me a service.' the very minute and second, best beloved, the dried horse-skin curtain that was stretched tail-down at the mouth of the cave fell down--_woosh!_--because it remembered the bargain she had made with the cat, and when the woman went to pick it up--lo and behold!--the cat was sitting quite comfy inside the cave. 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy and mother of my enemy,' said the cat, 'it is i: for you have spoken a word in my praise, and now i can sit within the cave for always and always and always. but still i am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.' the woman was very angry, and shut her lips tight and took up her spinning-wheel and began to spin. but the baby cried because the cat had gone away, and the woman could not hush it, for it struggled and kicked and grew black in the face. 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy and mother of my enemy,' said the cat, 'take a strand of the wire that you are spinning and tie it to your spinning-whorl and drag it along the floor, and i will show you a magic that shall make your baby laugh as loudly as he is now crying.' 'i will do so,' said the woman, 'because i am at my wits' end; but i will not thank you for it.' she tied the thread to the little clay spindle-whorl and drew it across the floor, and the cat ran after it and patted it with his paws and rolled head over heels, and tossed it backward over his shoulder and chased it between his hind-legs and pretended to lose it, and pounced down upon it again, till the baby laughed as loudly as it had been crying, and scrambled after the cat and frolicked all over the cave till it grew tired and settled down to sleep with the cat in its arms. 'now,' said the cat, 'i will sing the baby a song that shall keep him asleep for an hour.' and he began to purr, loud and low, low and loud, till the baby fell fast asleep. the woman smiled as she looked down upon the two of them and said, 'that was wonderfully done. no question but you are very clever, o cat.' that very minute and second, best beloved, the smoke of the fire at the back of the cave came down in clouds from the roof--_puff!_--because it remembered the bargain she had made with the cat, and when it had cleared away--lo and behold!--the cat was sitting quite comfy close to the fire. 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy and mother of my enemy,' said the cat, 'it is i, for you have spoken a second word in my praise, and now i can sit by the warm fire at the back of the cave for always and always and always. but still i am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.' then the woman was very very angry, and let down her hair and put more wood on the fire and brought out the broad blade-bone of the shoulder of mutton and began to make a magic that should prevent her from saying a third word in praise of the cat. it was not a singing magic, best beloved, it was a still magic; and by and by the cave grew so still that a little wee-wee mouse crept out of a corner and ran across the floor. 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy and mother of my enemy,' said the cat, 'is that little mouse part of your magic?' 'ouh! chee! no indeed!' said the woman, and she dropped the blade-bone and jumped upon the footstool in front of the fire and braided up her hair very quick for fear that the mouse should run up it. 'ah,' said the cat, watching, 'then the mouse will do me no harm if i eat it?' 'no,' said the woman, braiding up her hair, 'eat it quickly and i will ever be grateful to you.' cat made one jump and caught the little mouse, and the woman said, 'a hundred thanks. even the first friend is not quick enough to catch little mice as you have done. you must be very wise.' that very moment and second, o best beloved, the milk-pot that stood by the fire cracked in two pieces--_ffft_--because it remembered the bargain she had made with the cat, and when the woman jumped down from the footstool--lo and behold!--the cat was lapping up the warm white milk that lay in one of the broken pieces. 'o my enemy and wife of my enemy and mother of my enemy,' said the cat, 'it is i; for you have spoken three words in my praise, and now i can drink the warm white milk three times a day for always and always and always. but _still_ i am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.' then the woman laughed and set the cat a bowl of the warm white milk and said, 'o cat, you are as clever as a man, but remember that your bargain was not made with the man or the dog, and i do not know what they will do when they come home.' 'what is that to me?' said the cat. 'if i have my place in the cave by the fire and my warm white milk three times a day i do not care what the man or the dog can do.' that evening when the man and the dog came into the cave, the woman told them all the story of the bargain while the cat sat by the fire and smiled. then the man said, 'yes, but he has not made a bargain with _me_ or with all proper men after me.' then he took off his two leather boots and he took up his little stone axe (that makes three) and he fetched a piece of wood and a hatchet (that is five altogether), and he set them out in a row and he said, 'now we will make _our_ bargain. if you do not catch mice when you are in the cave for always and always and always, i will throw these five things at you whenever i see you, and so shall all proper men do after me.' 'ah,' said the woman, listening, 'this is a very clever cat, but he is not so clever as my man.' the cat counted the five things (and they looked very knobby) and he said, 'i will catch mice when i am in the cave for always and always and always; but _still_ i am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.' 'not when i am near,' said the man. 'if you had not said that last i would have put all these things away for always and always and always; but i am now going to throw my two boots and my little stone axe (that makes three) at you whenever i meet you. and so shall all proper men do after me!' then the dog said, 'wait a minute. he has not made a bargain with _me_ or with all proper dogs after me.' and he showed his teeth and said, 'if you are not kind to the baby while i am in the cave for always and always and always, i will hunt you till i catch you, and when i catch you i will bite you. and so shall all proper dogs do after me.' 'ah,' said the woman, listening, 'this is a very clever cat, but he is not so clever as the dog.' cat counted the dog's teeth (and they looked very pointed) and he said, 'i will be kind to the baby while i am in the cave, as long as he does not pull my tail too hard, for always and always and always. but _still_ i am the cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.' 'not when i am near,' said the dog. 'if you had not said that last i would have shut my mouth for always and always and always; but _now_ i am going to hunt you up a tree whenever i meet you. and so shall all proper dogs do after me.' then the man threw his two boots and his little stone axe (that makes three) at the cat, and the cat ran out of the cave and the dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, best beloved, three proper men out of five will always throw things at a cat whenever they meet him, and all proper dogs will chase him up a tree. but the cat keeps his side of the bargain too. he will kill mice and he will be kind to babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. but when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. then he goes out to the wet wild woods or up the wet wild trees or on the wet wild roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone. [illustration] pussy can sit by the fire and sing, pussy can climb a tree, or play with a silly old cork and string to 'muse herself, not me. but i like _binkie_ my dog, because he knows how to behave; so, _binkie's_ the same as the first friend was and i am the man in the cave. pussy will play man-friday till it's time to wet her paw and make her walk on the window-sill (for the footprint crusoe saw); then she fluffles her tail and mews, and scratches and won't attend. but _binkie_ will play whatever i choose, and he is my true first friend. pussy will rub my knees with her head pretending she loves me hard; but the very minute i go to my bed pussy runs out in the yard, and there she stays till the morning-light; so i know it is only pretend; but _binkie_, he snores at my feet all night, and he is my firstest friend! [illustration] [illustration: the butterfly that stamped] the butterfly that stamped this, o my best beloved, is a story--a new and a wonderful story--a story quite different from the other stories--a story about the most wise sovereign suleiman-bin-daoud--solomon the son of david. [illustration] there are three hundred and fifty-five stories about suleiman-bin-daoud; but this is not one of them. it is not the story of the lapwing who found the water; or the hoopoe who shaded suleiman-bin-daoud from the heat. it is not the story of the glass pavement, or the ruby with the crooked hole, or the gold bars of balkis. it is the story of the butterfly that stamped. now attend all over again and listen! suleiman-bin-daoud was wise. he understood what the beasts said, what the birds said, what the fishes said, and what the insects said. he understood what the rocks said deep under the earth when they bowed in towards each other and groaned; and he understood what the trees said when they rustled in the middle of the morning. he understood everything, from the bishop on the bench to the hyssop on the wall, and balkis, his head queen, the most beautiful queen balkis, was nearly as wise as he was. suleiman-bin-daoud was strong. upon the third finger of the right hand he wore a ring. when he turned it once, afrits and djinns came out of the earth to do whatever he told them. when he turned it twice, fairies came down from the sky to do whatever he told them; and when he turned it three times, the very great angel azrael of the sword came dressed as a water-carrier, and told him the news of the three worlds,--above--below--and here. and yet suleiman-bin-daoud was not proud. he very seldom showed off, and when he did he was sorry for it. once he tried to feed all the animals in all the world in one day, but when the food was ready an animal came out of the deep sea and ate it up in three mouthfuls. suleiman-bin-daoud was very surprised and said, 'o animal, who are you?' and the animal said, 'o king, live for ever! i am the smallest of thirty thousand brothers, and our home is at the bottom of the sea. we heard that you were going to feed all the animals in all the world, and my brothers sent me to ask when dinner would be ready.' suleiman-bin-daoud was more surprised than ever and said, 'o animal, you have eaten all the dinner that i made ready for all the animals in the world.' and the animal said, 'o king, live for ever, but do you really call that a dinner? where i come from we each eat twice as much as that between meals.' then suleiman-bin-daoud fell flat on his face and said, 'o animal! i gave that dinner to show what a great and rich king i was, and not because i really wanted to be kind to the animals. now i am ashamed, and it serves me right.' suleiman-bin-daoud was a really truly wise man, best beloved. after that he never forgot that it was silly to show off; and now the real story part of my story begins. [illustration: this is the picture of the animal that came out of the sea and ate up all the food that suleiman-bin-daoud had made ready for all the animals in all the world. he was really quite a nice animal, and his mummy was very fond of him and of his twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine other brothers that lived at the bottom of the sea. you know that he was the smallest of them all, and so his name was small porgies. he ate up all those boxes and packets and bales and things that had been got ready for all the animals, without ever once taking off the lids or untying the strings, and it did not hurt him at all. the sticky-up masts behind the boxes of food belong to suleiman-bin-daoud's ships. they were busy bringing more food when small porgies came ashore. he did not eat the ships. they stopped unloading the foods and instantly sailed away to sea till small porgies had quite finished eating. you can see some of the ships beginning to sail away by small porgies' shoulder. i have not drawn suleiman-bin-daoud, but he is just outside the picture, very much astonished. the bundle hanging from the mast of the ship in the corner is really a package of wet dates for parrots to eat. i don't know the names of the ships. that is all there is in that picture.] he married ever so many wifes. he married nine hundred and ninety-nine wives, besides the most beautiful balkis; and they all lived in a great golden palace in the middle of a lovely garden with fountains. he didn't really want nine-hundred and ninety-nine wives, but in those days everybody married ever so many wives, and of course the king had to marry ever so many more just to show that he was the king. some of the wives were nice, but some were simply horrid, and the horrid ones quarrelled with the nice ones and made them horrid too, and then they would all quarrel with suleiman-bin-daoud, and that was horrid for him. but balkis the most beautiful never quarrelled with suleiman-bin-daoud. she loved him too much. she sat in her rooms in the golden palace, or walked in the palace garden, and was truly sorry for him. of course if he had chosen to turn his ring on his finger and call up the djinns and the afrits they would have magicked all those nine hundred and ninety-nine quarrelsome wives into white mules of the desert or greyhounds or pomegranate seeds; but suleiman-bin-daoud thought that that would be showing off. so, when they quarrelled too much, he only walked by himself in one part of the beautiful palace gardens and wished he had never been born. one day, when they had quarrelled for three weeks--all nine hundred and ninety-nine wives together--suleiman-bin-daoud went out for peace and quiet as usual; and among the orange trees he met balkis the most beautiful, very sorrowful because suleiman-bin-daoud was so worried. and she said to him, 'o my lord and light of my eyes, turn the ring upon your finger and show these queens of egypt and mesopotamia and persia and china that you are the great and terrible king.' but suleiman-bin-daoud shook his head and said, 'o my lady and delight of my life, remember the animal that came out of the sea and made me ashamed before all the animals in all the world because i showed off. now, if i showed off before these queens of persia and egypt and abyssinia and china, merely because they worry me, i might be made even more ashamed than i have been.' and balkis the most beautiful said, 'o my lord and treasure of my soul, what will you do?' and suleiman-bin-daoud said, 'o my lady and content of my heart, i shall continue to endure my fate at the hands of these nine hundred and ninety-nine queens who vex me with their continual quarrelling.' so he went on between the lilies and the loquats and the roses and the cannas and the heavy-scented ginger-plants that grew in the garden, till he came to the great camphor-tree that was called the camphor tree of suleiman-bin-daoud. but balkis hid among the tall irises and the spotted bamboos and the red lillies behind the camphor-tree, so as to be near her own true love, suleiman-bin-daoud. presently two butterflies flew under the tree, quarrelling. suleiman-bin-daoud heard one say to the other, 'i wonder at your presumption in talking like this to me. don't you know that if i stamped with my foot all suleiman-bin-daoud's palace and this garden here would immediately vanish in a clap of thunder.' then suleiman-bin-daoud forgot his nine hundred and ninety-nine bothersome wives, and laughed, till the camphor-tree shook, at the butterfly's boast. and he held out his finger and said, 'little man, come here.' the butterfly was dreadfully frightened, but he managed to fly up to the hand of suleiman-bin-daoud, and clung there, fanning himself. suleiman-bin-daoud bent his head and whispered very softly, 'little man, you know that all your stamping wouldn't bend one blade of grass. what made you tell that awful fib to your wife?--for doubtless she is your wife.' the butterfly looked at suleiman-bin-daoud and saw the most wise king's eye twinkle like stars on a frosty night, and he picked up his courage with both wings, and he put his head on one side and said, 'o king, live for ever. she _is_ my wife; and you know what wives are like.' suleiman-bin-daoud smiled in his beard and said, 'yes, _i_ know, little brother.' 'one must keep them in order somehow,' said the butterfly, 'and she has been quarrelling with me all the morning. i said that to quiet her.' and suleiman-bin-daoud said, 'may it quiet her. go back to your wife, little brother, and let me hear what you say.' back flew the butterfly to his wife, who was all of a twitter behind a leaf, and she said, 'he heard you! suleiman-bin-daoud himself heard you!' 'heard me!' said the butterfly. 'of course he did. i meant him to hear me.' 'and what did he say? oh, what did he say?' 'well,' said the butterfly, fanning himself most importantly, 'between you and me, my dear--of course i don't blame him, because his palace must have cost a great deal and the oranges are just ripening,--he asked me not to stamp, and i promised i wouldn't.' 'gracious!' said his wife, and sat quite quiet; but suleiman-bin-daoud laughed till the tears ran down his face at the impudence of the bad little butterfly. balkis the most beautiful stood up behind the tree among the red lilies and smiled to herself, for she had heard all this talk. she thought, 'if i am wise i can yet save my lord from the persecutions of these quarrelsome queens,' and she held out her finger and whispered softly to the butterfly's wife, 'little woman, come here.' up flew the butterfly's wife, very frightened, and clung to balkis's white hand. balkis bent her beautiful head down and whispered, 'little woman, do you believe what your husband has just said?' the butterfly's wife looked at balkis, and saw the most beautiful queen's eyes shining like deep pools with starlight on them, and she picked up her courage with both wings and said, 'o queen, be lovely for ever. _you_ know what men-folk are like.' and the queen balkis, the wise balkis of sheba, put her hand to her lips to hide a smile and said, 'little sister, _i_ know.' 'they get angry,' said the butterfly's wife, fanning herself quickly, 'over nothing at all, but we must humour them, o queen. they never mean half they say. if it pleases my husband to believe that i believe he can make suleiman-bin-daoud's palace disappear by stamping his foot, i'm sure _i_ don't care. he'll forget all about it to-morrow.' 'little sister,' said balkis, 'you are quite right; but next time he begins to boast, take him at his word. ask him to stamp, and see what will happen. _we_ know what men-folk are like, don't we? he'll be very much ashamed.' away flew the butterfly's wife to her husband, and in five minutes they were quarrelling worse than ever. 'remember!' said the butterfly. 'remember what i can do if i stamp my foot.' 'i don't believe you one little bit,' said the butterfly's wife. 'i should very much like to see it done. suppose you stamp now.' 'i promised suleiman-bin-daoud that i wouldn't,' said the butterfly, 'and i don't want to break my promise.' 'it wouldn't matter if you did,' said his wife. 'you couldn't bend a blade of grass with your stamping. i dare you to do it,' she said. 'stamp! stamp! stamp!' suleiman-bin-daoud, sitting under the camphor-tree, heard every word of this, and he laughed as he had never laughed in his life before. he forgot all about his queens; he forgot all about the animal that came out of the sea; he forgot about showing off. he just laughed with joy, and balkis, on the other side of the tree, smiled because her own true love was so joyful. presently the butterfly, very hot and puffy, came whirling back under the shadow of the camphor-tree and said to suleiman, 'she wants me to stamp! she wants to see what will happen, o suleiman-bin-daoud! you know i can't do it, and now she'll never believe a word i say. she'll laugh at me to the end of my days!' 'no, little brother,' said suleiman-bin-daoud, 'she will never laugh at you again,' and he turned the ring on his finger--just for the little butterfly's sake, not for the sake of showing off,--and, lo and behold, four huge djinns came out of the earth! 'slaves,' said suleiman-bin-daoud, 'when this gentleman on my finger' (that was where the impudent butterfly was sitting) 'stamps his left front forefoot you will make my palace and these gardens disappear in a clap of thunder. when he stamps again you will bring them back carefully.' 'now, little brother,' he said, 'go back to your wife and stamp all you've a mind to.' away flew the butterfly to his wife, who was crying, 'i dare you to do it! i dare you to do it! stamp! stamp now! stamp!' balkis saw the four vast djinns stoop down to the four corners of the gardens with the palace in the middle, and she clapped her hands softly and said, 'at last suleiman-bin-daoud will do for the sake of a butterfly what he ought to have done long ago for his own sake, and the quarrelsome queens will be frightened!' then the butterfly stamped. the djinns jerked the palace and the gardens a thousand miles into the air: there was a most awful thunder-clap, and everything grew inky-black. the butterfly's wife fluttered about in the dark, crying, 'oh, i'll be good! i'm so sorry i spoke. only bring the gardens back, my dear darling husband, and i'll never contradict again.' the butterfly was nearly as frightened as his wife, and suleiman-bin-daoud laughed so much that it was several minutes before he found breath enough to whisper to the butterfly, 'stamp again, little brother. give me back my palace, most great magician.' 'yes, give him back his palace,' said the butterfly's wife, still flying about in the dark like a moth. 'give him back his palace, and don't let's have any more horrid magic.' 'well, my dear,' said the butterfly as bravely as he could, 'you see what your nagging has led to. of course it doesn't make any difference to _me_--i'm used to this kind of thing--but as a favour to you and to suleiman-bin-daoud i don't mind putting things right.' [illustration: this is the picture of the four gull-winged djinns lifting up suleiman-bin-daoud's palace the very minute after the butterfly had stamped. the palace and the gardens and everything came up in one piece like a board, and they left a big hole in the ground all full of dust and smoke. if you look in the corner, close to the thing that looks like a lion, you will see suleiman-bin-daoud with his magic stick and the two butterflies behind him. the thing that looks like a lion is really a lion carved in stone, and the thing that looks like a milk-can is really a piece of a temple or a house or something. suleiman-bin-daoud stood there so as to be out of the way of the dust and the smoke when the djinns lifted up the palace. i don't know the djinns' names. they were servants of suleiman-bin-daoud's magic ring, and they changed about every day. they were just common gull-winged djinns. the thing at the bottom is a picture of a very friendly djinn called akraig. he used to feed the little fishes in the sea three times a day, and his wings were made of pure copper. i put him in to show you what a nice djinn is like. he did not help to lift the palace. he was busy feeding little fishes in the arabian sea when it happened.] so he stamped once more, and that instant the djinns let down the palace and the gardens, without even a bump. the sun shone on the dark-green orange leaves; the fountains played among the pink egyptian lilies; the birds went on singing, and the butterfly's wife lay on her side under the camphor-tree waggling her wings and panting, 'oh, i'll be good! i'll be good!' suleiman-bin-daoud could hardly speak for laughing. he leaned back all weak and hiccoughy, and shook his finger at the butterfly and said, 'o great wizard, what is the sense of returning to me my palace if at the same time you slay me with mirth!' then came a terrible noise, for all the nine hundred and ninety-nine queens ran out of the palace shrieking and shouting and calling for their babies. they hurried down the great marble steps below the fountain, one hundred abreast, and the most wise balkis went statelily forward to meet them and said, 'what is your trouble, o queens?' they stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, '_what_ is our trouble? we were living peacefully in our golden palace, as is our custom, when upon a sudden the palace disappeared, and we were left sitting in a thick and noisome darkness; and it thundered, and djinns and afrits moved about in the darkness! _that_ is our trouble, o head queen, and we are most extremely troubled on account of that trouble, for it was a troublesome trouble, unlike any trouble we have known.' then balkis the most beautiful queen--suleiman-bin-daoud's very best beloved--queen that was of sheba and sabie and the rivers of the gold of the south--from the desert of zinn to the towers of zimbabwe--balkis, almost as wise as the most wise suleiman-bin-daoud himself, said, 'it is nothing, o queens! a butterfly has made complaint against his wife because she quarrelled with him, and it has pleased our lord suleiman-bin-daoud to teach her a lesson in low-speaking and humbleness, for that is counted a virtue among the wives of the butterflies.' then up and spoke an egyptian queen--the daughter of a pharaoh--and she said, 'our palace cannot be plucked up by the roots like a leek for the sake of a little insect. no! suleiman-bin-daoud must be dead, and what we heard and saw was the earth thundering and darkening at the news.' then balkis beckoned that bold queen without looking at her, and said to her and to the others, 'come and see.' they came down the marble steps, one hundred abreast, and beneath his camphor-tree, still weak with laughing, they saw the most wise king suleiman-bin-daoud rocking back and forth with a butterfly on either hand, and they heard him say, 'o wife of my brother in the air, remember after this, to please your husband in all things, lest he be provoked to stamp his foot yet again; for he has said that he is used to this magic, and he is most eminently a great magician--one who steals away the very palace of suleiman-bin-daoud himself. go in peace, little folk!' and he kissed them on the wings, and they flew away. then all the queens except balkis--the most beautiful and splendid balkis, who stood apart smiling--fell flat on their faces, for they said, 'if these things are done when a butterfly is displeased with his wife, what shall be done to us who have vexed our king with our loud-speaking and open quarrelling through many days?' then they put their veils over their heads, and they put their hands over their mouths, and they tiptoed back to the palace most mousy-quiet. then balkis--the most beautiful and excellent balkis--went forward through the red lilies into the shade of the camphor-tree and laid her hand upon suleiman-bin-daoud's shoulder and said, 'o my lord and treasure of my soul, rejoice, for we have taught the queens of egypt and ethiopia and abyssinia and persia and india and china with a great and a memorable teaching.' and suleiman-bin-daoud, still looking after the butterflies where they played in the sunlight, said, 'o my lady and jewel of my felicity, when did this happen? for i have been jesting with a butterfly ever since i came into the garden.' and he told balkis what he had done. balkis--the tender and most lovely balkis--said, 'o my lord and regent of my existence, i hid behind the camphor-tree and saw it all. it was i who told the butterfly's wife to ask the butterfly to stamp, because i hoped that for the sake of the jest my lord would make some great magic and that the queens would see it and be frightened.' and she told him what the queens had said and seen and thought. then suleiman-bin-daoud rose up from his seat under the camphor-tree, and stretched his arms and rejoiced and said, 'o my lady and sweetener of my days, know that if i had made a magic against my queens for the sake of pride or anger, as i made that feast for all the animals, i should certainly have been put to shame. but by means of your wisdom i made the magic for the sake of a jest and for the sake of a little butterfly, and--behold--it has also delivered me from the vexations of my vexatious wives! tell me, therefore, o my lady and heart of my heart, how did you come to be so wise?' and balkis the queen, beautiful and tall, looked up into suleiman-bin-daoud's eyes and put her head a little on one side, just like the butterfly, and said, 'first, o my lord, because i loved you; and secondly, o my lord, because i know what women-folk are.' then they went up to the palace and lived happily ever afterwards. but wasn't it clever of balkis? there was never a queen like balkis, from here to the wide world's end; but balkis talked to a butterfly as you would talk to a friend. there was never a king like solomon, not since the world began; but solomon talked to a butterfly as a man would talk to a man. _she_ was queen of sabæa-- and _he_ was asia's lord-- but they both of 'em talked to butterflies when they took their walks abroad! [illustration] the country life press garden city, n. y. * * * * * transcriber's notes: obvious punctuation errors repaired. page , "waiving" changed to "waving" (tegumai, waving his) page , caption " " was added to illustration. page , "you" changed to "your" (wipe your feet) page , "your" changed to "you" (you are neither a) page , "ths" changed to "the" (and the woman heard him) page , word "is" added to text (but this is not one) page , "pharoah" changed to "pharaoh" (daughter of a pharaoh) page , "sueliman" changed to "suleiman" (then suleiman-bin-daoud rose up) kim books by rudyard kipling a book of words actions and reactions a kipling pageant captains courageous collected dog stories collected verse debits and credits departmental ditties and ballads and barrack-room ballads diversity of creatures france at war from sea to sea his apologies if independence just so song book just so stories kim land and sea tales letters of travel life's handicap: _being stories of mine own people_ limits and renewals many inventions plain tales from the hills puck of pook's hill rewards and fairies rudyard kipling's inclusive verse, - soldier stories soldiers three, the story of the gadsbys, and in black and white songs for youth songs from books stalky & co. supplication of the black aberdeen the complete stalky & co. the day's work the eyes of asia the five nations the humorous tales of rudyard kipling the irish guards in the great war the jungle book the jungle book, _special illustrated edition_ the kipling birthday book the light that failed the naulahka (_with wolcott balestier_) the second jungle book the seven seas the two jungle books the years between "thy servant a dog" traffics and discoveries under the deodars, the phantom 'rickshaw, and wee willie winkie [illustration: kim.] kim rudyard kipling [illustration] _doubleday & company, inc._ garden city new york copyright, , by rudyard kipling all rights reserved cl printed in the united states of america kim chapter i 'oh ye who tread the narrow way by tophet-flare to judgment day, be gentle when the heathen pray to buddha at kamakura!' he sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun zam-zammah on her brick platform opposite the old ajaib-gher--the wonder house, as the natives call the lahore museum. who hold zam-zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon,' hold the punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot. there was some justification for kim,--he had kicked lala dinanath's boy off the trunnions,--since the english held the punjab and kim was english. though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest. the half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium, and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was kim's mother's sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a colonel's family and had married kimball o'hara, a young colour-sergeant of the mavericks, an irish regiment. he afterwards took a post on the sind, punjab, and delhi railway, and his regiment went home without him. the wife died of cholera in ferozepore, and o'hara fell to drink and loafing up and down the line with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby. societies and chaplains, anxious for the child, tried to catch him, but o'hara drifted away, till he came across the woman who took opium and learned the taste from her, and died as poor whites die in india. his estate at death consisted of three papers--one he called his 'ne varietur' because those words were written below his signature thereon, and another his 'clearance-certificate.' the third was kim's birth-certificate. those things, he was used to say, in his glorious opium-hours, would yet make little kimball a man. on no account was kim to part with them, for they belonged to a great piece of magic--such magic as men practised over yonder behind the museum, in the big blue and white jadoo-gher--the magic house, as we name the masonic lodge. it would, he said, all come right some day, and kim's horn would be exalted between pillars--monstrous pillars--of beauty and strength. the colonel himself, riding on a horse, at the head of the finest regiment in the world, would attend to kim,--little kim that should have been better off than his father. nine hundred first-class devils, whose god was a red bull on a green field, would attend to kim, if they had not forgotten o'hara--poor o'hara that was gang-foreman on the ferozepore line. then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush chair on the veranda. so it came about after his death that the woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth-certificate into a leather amulet-case which she strung round kim's neck. 'and some day,' she said, confusedly remembering o'hara's prophecies, 'there will come for you a great red bull on a green field, and the colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into english--'nine hundred devils.' 'ah,' said kim, 'i shall remember. a red bull and a colonel on a horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men making ready the ground for these matters. that is how, my father said, they always did; and it is always so when men work magic.' if the woman had sent kim up to the local jadoo-gher with those papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by the provincial lodge and sent to the masonic orphanage in the hills; but what she had heard of magic she distrusted. kim, too, held views of his own. as he reached the years of indiscretion, he learned to avoid missionaries and white men of serious aspect who asked who he was, and what he did. for kim did nothing with an immense success. true, he knew the wonderful walled city of lahore from the delhi gate to the outer fort ditch; was hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than anything haroun al raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the arabian nights, but missionaries and secretaries of charitable societies could not see the beauty of it. his nickname through the wards was 'little friend of all the world'; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. it was intrigue, of course,--he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak,--but what he loved was the game for its own sake--the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a water-pipe, the sights and sounds of the women's world on the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark. then there were holy men, ash-smeared faquirs by their brick shrines under the trees at the riverside, with whom he was quite familiar--greeting them as they returned from begging-tours, and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish. the woman who looked after him insisted with tears that he should wear european clothes--trousers, a shirt, and a battered hat. kim found it easier to slip into hindu or mohammedan garb when engaged on certain businesses. one of the young men of fashion--he who was found dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake--had once given him a complete suit of hindu kit, the costume of a low-caste street boy, and kim stored it in a secret place under some baulks in nila ram's timber-yard, beyond the punjab high court, where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven down the ravee. when there was business or frolic afoot, kim would use his properties, returning at dawn to the veranda, all tired out from shouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or yelling at a hindu festival. sometimes there was food in the house, more often there was not, and then kim went out again to eat with his native friends. as he drummed his heels against zam-zammah he turned now and again from his king-of-the-castle game with little chota lai, and abdullah the sweetmeat-seller's son, to make a rude remark to the native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the museum door. the big punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew kim of old. so did the water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat-skirt bag. so did jawahir singh, the museum carpenter, bent over new packing-cases. so did everybody in sight except the peasants from the country, hurrying up to the wonder house to view the things that men made in their own province and elsewhere. the museum was given up to indian arts and manufactures, and anybody who sought wisdom could ask the curator to explain. 'off! off! let me up!' cried abdullah, climbing up zam-zammah's wheel. 'thy father was a pastry-cook, thy mother stole the ghi,' sang kim. 'all mussalmans fell off zam-zammah long ago!' 'let me up!' shrilled little chota lal in his gilt-embroidered cap. his father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but india is the only democratic land in the world. 'the hindus fell off zam-zammah too. the mussalmans pushed them off. thy father was a pastry-cook--' he stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring motee bazar, such a man as kim, who thought he knew all castes, had never seen. he was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could kim refer to any known trade or profession. at his belt hung a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. on his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter. his face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of fook shing, the chinese boot-maker in the bazar. his eyes turned up at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx. 'who is that?' said kim to his companions. 'perhaps it is a man,' said abdullah, finger in mouth, staring. 'without doubt,' returned kim; 'but he is no man of india that i have ever seen.' 'a priest, perhaps,' said chota lal, spying the rosary. 'see! he goes into the wonder house!' 'nay, nay,' said the policeman, shaking his head. 'i do not understand your talk.' the constable spoke punjabi. 'oh, friend of all the world, what does he say?' 'send him hither' said kim, dropping from zam-zammah, flourishing his bare heels. 'he is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo.' the man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. he was old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking artemisia of the mountain passes. 'o children, what is that big house?' he said in very fair urdu. 'the ajaib-gher, the wonder house!' kim gave him no title--such as lala or mian. he could not divine the man's creed. 'ah! the wonder house! can any enter?' 'it is written above the door--all can enter.' 'without payment?' 'i go in and out. i am no banker,' laughed kim. 'alas! i am an old man. i did not know.' then, fingering his rosary, he half turned to the museum. 'what is your caste? where is your house? have you come far?' kim asked. 'i came by kulu--from beyond the kailas--but what know you? from the hills where'--he sighed--'the air and water are fresh and cool.' 'aha! khitai' (a chinaman), said abdullah proudly. fook shing had once chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above the boots. 'pahari?' (a hillman), said little chota lal. 'aye, child--a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. didst hear of bhotiyal (tibet)? i am no khitai, but a bhotiya (tibetan), since you must know--a lama--or, say a guru in your tongue.' 'a guru from tibet,' said kim. 'i have not seen such a man. they be hindus in tibet, then?' 'we be followers of the middle way, living in peace in our lamasseries, and i go to see the four holy places before i die. now do you, who are children, know as much as i do who am old.' he smiled benignantly on the boys. 'hast thou eaten?' he fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn wooden begging-bowl. the boys nodded. all priests of their acquaintance begged. 'i do not wish to eat yet.' he turned his head like an old tortoise in the sunlight. 'is it true that there are many images in the wonder house of lahore?' he repeated the last words as one making sure of an address. 'that is true,' said abdullah. 'it is full of heathen buts. thou also art an idolater.' 'never mind him,' said kim. 'that is the government's house and there is no idolatry in it, but only a sahib with a white beard. come with me and i will show.' 'strange priests eat boys,' whispered chota lal. 'and he is a stranger and a but-parast' (idolater), said abdullah, the mohammedan. kim laughed. 'he is new. run to your mothers' laps, and be safe. come!' kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man followed and halted amazed. in the entrance-hall stood the larger figures of the greco-buddhist sculptures done, savants know how long since, by forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted grecian touch. there were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief, fragments of statues and slabs crowded with figures that had encrusted the brick walls of the buddhist stupas and viharas of the north country and now, dug up and labelled, made the pride of the museum. in open-mouthed wonder the lama turned to this and that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large alto-relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the lord buddha. the master was represented seated on a lotus the petals of which were so deeply undercut as to show almost detached. round him was an adoring hierarchy of kings, elders, and old-time buddhas. below were lotus-covered waters with fishes and water-birds. two butterfly-winged dewas held a wreath over his head; above them another pair supported an umbrella surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the bodhisat. 'the lord! the lord! it is sakya muni himself,' the lama half sobbed; and under his breath began the wonderful buddhist invocation:-- 'to him the way--the law--apart-- whom maya held beneath her heart ananda's lord--the bodhisat.' 'and he is here! the most excellent law is here also! my pilgrimage is well begun. and what work! what work!' 'yonder is the sahib,' said kim, and dodged sideways among the cases of the arts and manufacture wing. a white-bearded englishman was looking at the lama, who gravely turned and saluted him and after some fumbling drew forth a note-book and a scrap of paper. 'yes, that is my name,' smiling at the clumsy, childish print. 'one of us who had made pilgrimage to the holy places--he is now abbot of the lung-cho monastery--gave it me,' stammered the lama. 'he spoke of these.' his lean hand moved tremulously round. 'welcome, then, o lama from tibet. here be the images, and i am here'--he glanced at the lama's face--'to gather knowledge. come to my office awhile.' the old man was trembling with excitement. the office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from the sculpture-lined gallery. kim laid himself down, his ear against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched out to listen and watch. most of the talk was altogether above his head. the lama, haltingly at first, spoke to the curator of his own lamassery, the suchzen, opposite the painted rocks, four months' march away. the curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very place, perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley of many-hued strata. 'ay, ay!' the lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of chinese work. 'here is the little door through which we bring wood before winter. and thou--the english know of these things? he who is now abbot of lung-cho told me, but i did not believe. the lord--the excellent one--he has honour here too? and his life is known?' 'it is all carven upon the stones. come and see, if thou art rested.' out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the curator beside him, went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee and the appreciative instinct of a craftsman. incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar greek convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. where the sequence failed, as in the annunciation, the curator supplied it from his mound of books--french and german, with photographs and reproductions. here was the devout asita, the pendant of simeon in the christian story, holding the holy child on his knee while mother and father listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin devadatta. here was the wicked woman who accused the master of impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the deer-park; the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the bodhisat in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost countless repetitions of the meditation under the bodhi tree; and the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. in a few minutes the curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts. and they went at it all over again, the lama taking snuff, wiping his spectacles, and talking at railway speed in a bewildering mixture of urdu and tibetan. he had heard of the travels of the chinese pilgrims, fo-hian and hwen-thiang, and was anxious to know if there was any translation of their record. he drew in his breath as he turned helplessly over the pages of beal and stanislas julien. ''tis all here. a treasure locked.' then he composed himself reverently to listen to fragments, hastily rendered into urdu. for the first time he heard of the labours of european scholars, who by the help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the holy places of buddhism. then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced with yellow. the brown finger followed the curator's pencil from point to point. here was kapilavastu, here the middle kingdom, and here mahabodi, the mecca of buddhism; and here was kusinagara, sad place of the holy one's death. the old man bowed his head over the sheets in silence for a while, and the curator lit another pipe. kim had fallen asleep. when he waked, the talk, still in spate, was more within his comprehension. 'and thus it was, o fountain of wisdom, that i decided to go to the holy places which his foot had trod--to the birth-place, even to kapila; then to maha bodhi, which is buddh gaya--to the monastery--to the deer-park--to the place of his death.' the lama lowered his voice. 'and i come here alone. for five--seven--eighteen--forty years it was in my mind that the old law was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms, and idolatry. even as the child outside said but now. ay, even as the child said, with but-parasti.' 'so it comes with all faiths.' 'thinkest thou? the books of my lamassery i read, and they were dried pith; and the later ritual with which we of the reformed law have cumbered ourselves--that, too, had no worth to these old eyes. even the followers of the excellent one are at feud on feud with one another. it is all illusion. ay, maya, illusion. but i have another desire'--the seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the curator, and the long forefinger nail tapped on the table. 'your scholars, by these books, have followed the blessed feet in all their wanderings; but there are things which they have not sought out. i know nothing,--nothing do i know,--but i go to free myself from the wheel of things by a broad and open road.' he smiled with most simple triumph. 'as a pilgrim to the holy places i acquire merit. but there is more. listen to a true thing. when our gracious lord, being as yet a youth, sought a mate, men said, in his father's court, that he was too tender for marriage. thou knowest?' the curator nodded, wondering what would come next. 'so they made the triple trial of strength against all comers. and at the test of the bow, our lord first breaking that which they gave him, called for such a bow as none might bend. thou knowest?' 'it is written. i have read.' 'and, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far beyond sight. at the last it fell; and, where it touched earth, there broke out a stream which presently became a river, whose nature, by our lord's beneficence, and that merit he acquired ere he freed himself, is that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint and speckle of sin.' 'so it is written,' said the curator sadly. the lama drew a long breath. 'where is that river? fountain of wisdom, where fell the arrow?' 'alas, my brother, i do not know,' said the curator. 'nay, if it please thee to forget--the one thing only that thou hast not told me. surely thou must know? see, i am an old man! i ask with my head between thy feet, o fountain of wisdom. we know he drew the bow! we know the arrow fell! we know the stream gushed! where, then, is the river? my dream told me to find it. so i came. i am here. but where is the river?' 'if i knew, think you i would not cry it aloud?' 'by it one attains freedom from the wheel of things,' the lama went on, unheeding. 'the river of the arrow! think again! some little stream, may be--dried in the heats? but the holy one would never so cheat an old man.' 'i do not know. i do not know.' the lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth from the englishman's. 'i see thou dost not know. not being of the law, the matter is hid from thee.' 'ay--hidden--hidden.' 'we are both bound, thou and i, my brother. but i'--he rose with a sweep of the soft thick drapery--'i go to cut myself free. come also!' 'i am bound,' said the curator. 'but whither goest thou?' 'first to kashi (benares): where else? there i shall meet one of the pure faith in a jain temple of that city. he also is a seeker in secret, and from him haply i may learn. may be he will go with me to buddh gaya. thence north and west to kapilavastu, and there will i seek for the river. nay, i will seek everywhere as i go--for the place is not known where the arrow fell.' 'and how wilt thou go? it is a far cry to delhi, and farther to benares.' 'by road and the trains. from pathankot, having left the hills, i came hither in a te-rain. it goes swiftly. at first i was amazed to see those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and snatching up their threads,'--he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a telegraph-pole flashing past the train. 'but later, i was cramped and desired to walk, as i am used.' 'and thou art sure of thy road?' said the curator. 'oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the appointed persons despatch all to the appointed place. that much i knew in my lamassery from sure report,' said the lama proudly. 'and when dost thou go?' the curator smiled at the mixture of old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of india to-day. 'as soon as may be. i follow the places of his life till i come to the river of the arrow. there is, moreover, a written paper of the hours of the trains that go south.' 'and for food?' lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere about them, but the curator wished to make sure. 'for the journey, i take up the master's begging-bowl. yes. even as he went so go i, forsaking the ease of my monastery. there was with me when i left the hills a chela (disciple) who begged for me as the rule demands, but halting in kulu awhile a fever took him and he died. i have now no chela, but i will take the alms-bowl and thus enable the charitable to acquire merit.' he nodded his head valiantly. learned doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an enthusiast in this quest. 'be it so,' said the curator, smiling. 'suffer me now to acquire merit. we be craftsmen together, thou and i. here is a new book of white english paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three--thick and thin, all good for a scribe. now lend me thy spectacles.' the curator looked through them. they were heavily scratched, but the power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid into the lama's hand, saying: 'try these.' 'a feather! a very feather upon the face!' the old man turned his head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. 'how scarcely do i feel them! how clearly do i see!' 'they be bilaur--crystal and will never scratch. may they help thee to thy river, for they are thine.' 'i will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,' said the lama, 'as a sign of friendship between priest and priest--and now'--he fumbled at his belt, detached the open iron-work pencase, and laid it on the curator's table. 'that is for a memory between thee and me--my pencase. it is something old--even as i am.' it was a piece of ancient design, chinese, of an iron that is not smelted these days; and the collector's heart in the curator's bosom had gone out to it from the first. for no persuasion would the lama resume his gift. 'when i return, having found the river, i will bring thee a written picture of the padma samthora--such as i used to make on silk at the lamassery. yes--and of the wheel of life,' he chuckled, 'for we be craftsmen together, thou and i.' the curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who still have the secret of the conventional brush-pen buddhist pictures which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. but the lama strode out, head high in air, and pausing an instant before the great statue of a bodhisat in meditation, brushed through the turnstiles. kim followed like a shadow. what he had overheard excited him wildly. this man was entirely new to all his experience, and he meant to investigate further: precisely as he would have investigated a new building or a strange festival in lahore city. the lama was his trove, and he purposed to take possession. kim's mother had been irish too. the old man halted by zam-zammah and looked round till his eye fell on kim. the inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for a while, and he felt old, forlorn, and very empty. 'do not sit under that gun,' said the policeman loftily. 'huh! owl!' was kim's retort on the lama's behalf. 'sit under that gun if it please thee. when didst thou steal the milk-woman's slippers, dunnoo?' that was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the moment, but it silenced dunnoo, who knew that kim's clear yell could call up legions of bad bazar boys if need arose. 'and whom didst thou worship within?' said kim affably, squatting in the shade beside the lama. 'i worshipped none, child. i bowed before the excellent law.' kim accepted this new god without emotion. he knew already a few score. 'and what dost thou do?' 'i beg. i remember now it is long since i have eaten or drunk. what is the custom of charity in this town? in silence, as we do of tibet, or speaking aloud?' 'those who beg in silence starve in silence,' said kim, quoting a native proverb. the lama tried to rise, but sank back again, sighing for his disciple, dead in far-away kulu. kim watched--head to one side, considering and interested. 'give me the bowl. i know the people of this city--all who are charitable. give, and i will bring it back filled.' simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl. 'rest thou. i know the people.' he trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a low-caste vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down the motee bazar. she knew kim of old. 'oho, hast thou turned yogi with thy begging-bowl?' she cried. 'nay,' said kim proudly. 'there is a new priest in the city--a man such as i have never seen.' 'old priest--young tiger,' said the woman angrily. 'i am tired of new priests! they settle on our wares like flies. is the father of my son a well of charity to give to all who ask?' 'no,' said kim. 'thy man is rather yagi (bad-tempered) than yogi (a holy man). but this priest is new. the sahib in the wonder house has talked to him like a brother. o my mother, fill me this bowl. he waits.' 'that bowl indeed! that cow-bellied basket! thou hast as much grace as the holy bull of shiv. he has taken the best of a basket of onions already, this morn; and forsooth, i must fill thy bowl. he comes here again.' the huge, mouse-coloured brahminee bull of the ward was shouldering his way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen plantain hanging out of his mouth. he headed straight for the shop, well knowing his privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his head, and puffed heavily along the line of baskets ere making his choice. up flew kim's hard little heel and caught him on his moist blue nose. he snorted indignantly, and walked away across the tram rails, his hump quivering with rage. 'see! i have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. now, mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop--yes, and some vegetable curry.' a growl came out of the back of the shop, where a man lay. 'he drove away the bull,' said the woman in an undertone. 'it is good to give to the poor.' she took the bowl and returned it full of hot rice. 'but my yogi is not a cow,' said kim gravely, making a hole with his fingers in the top of the mound. 'a little curry is good, and a fried cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, i think.' 'it is a hole as big as thy head,' said the woman fretfully. but she filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable curry, clapped a dried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified butter on the cake, dabbed a lump of sour tamarind conserve at the side; and kim looked at the load lovingly. 'that is good. when i am in the bazar the bull shall not come to this house. he is a bold beggarman.' 'and thou?' laughed the woman. 'but speak well of bulls. hast thou not told me that some day a red bull will come out of a field to help thee? now hold all straight and ask for the holy man's blessing upon me. perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my daughter's sore eyes. ask him that also, o thou little friend of all the world.' but kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging pariah dogs and hungry acquaintances. 'thus do we beg who know the way of it,' said he proudly to the lama, who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. 'eat now and--i will eat with thee. ohe bhistie!' he called to the water-carrier, sluicing the crotons by the museum. 'give water here. we men are thirsty.' 'we men!' said the bhistie, laughing. 'is one skinful enough for such a pair? drink then, in the name of the compassionate.' he loosed a thin stream into kim's hands, who drank native fashion; but the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible upper draperies and drink ceremonially. 'pardesi' (a foreigner), kim explained, as the old man delivered in an unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing. they ate together in great content, clearing the beggar's bowl. then the lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd, fingered his rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of age, as the shadow of zam-zammah grew long. kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively young mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that they sell to students of the punjab university who copy english customs. then he smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the belly of the gun, and the outcome of his thoughts was a sudden and stealthy departure in the direction of nila ram's timber-yard. the lama did not wake till the evening life of the city had begun with lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and subordinates from the government offices. he stared dizzily in all directions, but none looked at him save a hindu urchin in a dirty turban and isabella-coloured clothes. suddenly he bowed his head on his knees and wailed. 'what is this?' said the boy, standing before him. 'hast thou been robbed?' 'it is my new chela (my disciple) that is gone away from me, and i know not where he is.' 'and what like of man was thy disciple?' 'it was a boy who came to me in place of him who died, on account of the merit which i had gained when i bowed before the law within there.' he pointed towards the museum. 'he came upon me to show me a road which i had lost. he led me into the wonder house, and by his talk emboldened to speak to the keeper of the images, so that i was cheered and made strong. and when i was faint with hunger he begged for me, as would a chela for his teacher. suddenly was he sent. suddenly has he gone away. it was in my mind to have taught him the law upon the road to benares.' kim stood amazed at this, because he had overheard the talk in the museum, and knew that the old man was speaking the truth, which is a thing a native on the road seldom presents to a stranger. 'but i see now that he was but sent for a purpose. by this i know that i shall find a certain river for which i seek.' 'the river of the arrow?' said kim, with a superior smile. 'is this yet another sending?' cried the lama. 'to none have i spoken of my search, save to the priest of the images. who art thou?' 'thy chela,' said kim simply, sitting on his heels. 'i have never seen any one like to thee in all this my life. i go with thee to benares. and, too, i think that so old a man as thou, speaking the truth to chance-met people at dusk, is in great need of a disciple.' 'but the river--the river of the arrow?' 'oh, that i heard when thou wast speaking to the englishman. i lay against the door.' the lama sighed. 'i thought thou hadst been a guide permitted. such things fall sometimes--but i am not worthy. thou dost not, then, know of the river?' 'not i.' kim laughed uneasily. 'i go to look for--for a bull--a red bull on a green field who shall help me.' boylike, if an acquaintance had a scheme, kim was quite ready with one of his own; and, boylike, he had really thought for as much as twenty minutes at a time of his father's prophecy. 'to what, child?' said the lama. 'god knows, but so my father told me. i heard thy talk in the wonder house of all those new strange places in the hills, and if one so old and so little--so used to truth-telling--may go out for the small matter of a river, it seemed to me that i too must go a-travelling. if it is our fate to find those things we shall find them--thou, thy river; and i, my bull, and the strong pillars and some other matters that i forget.' 'it is not pillars but a wheel from which i would be free,' said the lama. 'that is all one. perhaps they will make me a king,' said kim, serenely prepared for anything. 'i will teach thee other and better desires upon the road,' the lama replied in the voice of authority. 'let us go to benares.' 'not by night. thieves are abroad. wait till the day.' 'but there is no place to sleep.' the old man was used to the order of his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the rule decrees, preferred a decency in these things. 'we shall get good lodging at the kashmir serai,' said kim, laughing at his perplexity. 'i have a friend there. come!' the hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their way through the press of all the races in upper india, and the lama mooned through it like a man in a dream. it was his first experience of a large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-car with its continually squealing brakes frightened him. half pushed, half towed, he arrived at the high gate of the kashmir serai: that huge open square over against the railway station, surrounded with arched cloisters where the camel and horse caravans put up on their return from central asia. here were all manner of northern folk, tending tethered ponies and kneeling camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water for the evening meal at the creaking well-windlasses; piling grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the surly caravan dogs; paying off camel-drivers; taking on new grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in the packed square. the cloisters, reached by three or four masonry steps, made a haven of refuge around this turbulent sea. most of them were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a viaduct; the space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded off into rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous native padlocks. locked doors showed that the owner was away, and a few rude--sometimes very rude--chalk or paint scratches told where he had gone. thus: 'lutuf ullah is gone to kurdistan.' below, in coarse verse: 'o allah, who sufferest lice to live on the coat of a kabuli, why hast thou allowed this louse lutuf to live so long?' kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts, sidled along the cloisters to the far end, nearest the railway station, where mahbub ali, the horsetrader, lived when he came in from that mysterious land beyond the passes of the north. kim had had many dealings with mahbub in his little life,--especially between his tenth and his thirteenth year,--and the big burly afghan, his beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was elderly and did not wish his gray hairs to show), knew the boy's value as a gossip. sometimes he would tell kim to watch a man who had nothing whatever to do with horses: to follow him for one whole day and report every soul with whom he talked. kim would deliver himself of his tale at evening, and mahbub would listen without a word or gesture. it was intrigue of some kind, kim knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing whatever to any one except mahbub, who gave him beautiful meals all hot from the cookshop at the head of the serai, and once as much as eight annas in money. 'he is here,' said kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose. 'ohe, mahbub ali!' he halted at a dark arch and slipped behind the bewildered lama. the horse-trader, his deep, embroidered bokhariot belt unloosed, was lying on a pair of silk carpet saddle-bags, pulling lazily at an immense silver hookah. he turned his head very slightly at the cry; and seeing only the tall silent figure, chuckled in his deep chest. 'allah! a lama! a red lama! it is far from lahore to the passes. what dost thou do here?' the lama held out the begging-bowl mechanically. 'god's curse on all unbelievers!' said mahbub. 'i do not give to a lousy tibetan; but ask my baltis over yonder behind the camels. they may value your blessings. oh, horse-boys, here is a countryman of yours. see if he be hungry.' a shaven, crouching balti, who had come down with the horses, and who was nominally some sort of degraded buddhist, fawned upon the priest, and in thick gutturals besought the holy one to sit at the horse-boys' fire. 'go!' said kim, pushing him lightly, and the lama strode away, leaving kim at the edge of the cloister. 'go!' said mahbub ali, returning to his hookah. 'little hindu, run away. god's curse on all unbelievers! beg from those of my tail who are of thy faith.' 'maharaj,' whined kim, using the hindu form of address, and thoroughly enjoying the situation; 'my father is dead--my mother is dead--my stomach is empty.' 'beg from my men among the horses, i say. there must be some hindus in my tail.' 'oh, mahbub ali, but am i a hindu?' said kim in english. the trader gave no sign of astonishment, but looked under shaggy eyebrows. 'little friend of all the world,' said he, 'what is this?' 'nothing. i am now that holy man's disciple; and we go a pilgrimage together--to benares, he says. he is quite mad, and i am tired of lahore city. i wish new air and water.' 'but for whom, dost thou work? why come to me?' the voice was harsh with suspicion. 'to whom else should i come? i have no money. it is not good to go about without money. thou wilt sell many horses to the officers. they are very fine horses, these new ones: i have seen them. give me a rupee, mahbub ali, and when i come to my wealth i will give thee a bond and pay.' 'um,' said mahbub ali, thinking swiftly. 'thou hast never before lied to me. call that lama--stand back in the dark.' 'oh, our tales will agree,' said kim laughing. 'we go to benares,' said the lama, as soon as he understood the drift of mahbub ali's questions. 'the boy and i. i go to seek for a certain river.' 'maybe--but the boy?' 'he is my disciple. he was sent, i think, to guide me to that river. sitting under a gun was i when he came suddenly. such things have befallen the fortunate to whom guidance was allowed. but i remember now, he said he was of this world--a hindu.' 'and his name?' 'that i did not ask. is he not my disciple?' 'his country--his race--his village? mussalman--sikh--hindu--jain--low caste or high?' 'why should i ask? there is neither high nor low in the middle way. if he is my chela--does--will--can any one take him from me? for, look you, without him i shall not find my river.' he wagged his head solemnly. 'none shall take him from thee. go, sit among my baltis,' said mahbub ali, and the lama drifted off, soothed by the promise. 'is he not quite mad?' said kim, coming forward to the light again. 'why should i lie to thee, hajji?' mahbub puffed his hookah in silence. then he began, almost whispering: 'umballa is on the road to benares--if indeed ye two go there.' 'tck! tck! i tell thee he does not know how to lie--as we two know.' 'and if thou wilt carry a message for me as far as umballa, i will give thee money. it concerns a horse--a white stallion which i have sold to an officer upon the last time i returned from the passes. but then--stand nearer and hold up hands as begging--the pedigree of the white stallion was not fully established, and that officer, who is now at umballa, bade me make it clear.' (mahbub here described the horse and the appearance of the officer.) 'so the message to that officer will be: "the pedigree of the white stallion is fully established." by this will he know that thou comest from me. he will then say "what proof hast thou?" and thou wilt answer: "mahbub ali has given me the proof."' 'and all for the sake of a white stallion,' said kim, with a giggle, his eyes aflame. 'that pedigree i will give thee now--in my own fashion--and some hard words as well.' a shadow passed behind kim, and a feeding camel. mahbub ali raised his voice. 'allah! art thou the only beggar in the city? thy mother is dead. thy father is dead. so is it with all of them. well, well--' he turned as feeling on the floor beside him and tossed a flap of soft, greasy mussalman bread to the boy. 'go and lie down among my horse-boys for to-night--thou and the lama. to-morrow i may give thee service.' kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he found a small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oil-skin, with three silver rupees--enormous largesse. he smiled and thrust money and paper into his leather amulet-case. the lama, sumptuously fed by mahbub's baltis, was already asleep in a corner of one of the stalls. kim lay down beside him and laughed. he knew he had rendered a service to mahbub ali, and not for one little minute did he believe the tale of the stallion's pedigree. but kim did not suspect that mahbub ali, known as one of the best horse-dealers in the punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader, whose caravans penetrated far and far into the back of beyond, was registered in one of the locked books of the indian survey department as c. . b. twice or thrice yearly c. would send in a little story, badly told but most interesting, and generally--it was checked by the statements of r. and m. --quite true. it concerned all manner of out-of-the-way mountain principalities, explorers of nationalities other than english, and the gun-trade--was, in brief, a small portion of that vast mass of 'information received' on which the indian government acts. but, recently, five confederated kings, who had no business to confederate, had been informed by a kindly northern power that there was a leakage of news from their territories into british india. so those kings' prime ministers were seriously annoyed and took steps, after the oriental fashion. they suspected, among many others, the bullying red-bearded horse-dealer whose caravans ploughed through their fastnesses belly deep in snow. at least, his caravan that season had been ambushed and shot at twice on the way down, when mahbub's men accounted for three strange ruffians who might, or might not, have been hired for the job. therefore mahbub had avoided halting at the insalubrious city of peshawur, and had come through without stop to lahore, where, knowing his country-people, he anticipated curious developments. and there was that on mahbub ali which he did not wish to keep an hour longer than was necessary--a wad of closely folded tissue-paper, wrapped in oil-skin--an impersonal, unaddressed statement, with five microscopic pin-holes in one corner, that most scandalously betrayed the five confederated kings, the sympathetic northern power, a hindu banker in peshawur, a firm of gun-makers in belgium, and an important, semi-independent mohammedan ruler to the south. this last was r. 's work, which mahbub had picked up beyond the dora pass and was carrying in for r. , who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, could not leave his post of observation. dynamite was milky and innocuous beside that report of c. ; and even an oriental, with an oriental's views of the value of time, could see that the sooner it was in the proper hands the better. mahbub had no particular desire to die by violence, because two or three family blood-feuds across the border hung unfinished on his hands, and when these scores were cleared he intended to settle down as a more or less virtuous citizen. he had never passed the serai gate since his arrival two days ago, but had been ostentatious in sending telegrams to bombay, where he banked some of his money; to delhi, where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling horses to the agent of a rajputana state; and to umballa, where an englishman was excitedly demanding the pedigree of a white stallion. the public letter-writer, who knew english, composed excellent telegrams, such as:--'creighton, laurel bank, umballa.--horse is arabian as already advised. sorrowful delayed-pedigree which am translating.' and later to the same address: 'much sorrowful delay. will forward pedigree.' to this sub-partner at delhi he wired: 'lutuf ullah.--have wired two thousand rupees your credit luchman narain's bank.' this was entirely in the way of trade, but every one of those telegrams was discussed and re-discussed, by parties who conceived themselves to be interested, before they went over to the railway station in charge of a foolish balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on the road. when, in mahbub's own picturesque language, he had muddied the wells of inquiry with the stick of precaution, kim had dropped on him, sent from heaven; and, being as prompt as he was unscrupulous, mahbub ali, used to taking all sorts of gusty chances, pressed him into service on the spot. a wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a moment's interest as they wandered about india, the land of pilgrims; but no one would suspect them or, what was more to the point, rob. he called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the case. if the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm, the paper would incriminate nobody. and he would go up to umballa leisurely and--at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion--repeat his tale by word of mouth to the people concerned. but r. 's report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would be distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand. however, god was great, and mahbub ali felt he had done all he could for the time being. kim was the one soul in the world who had never told him a lie. that would have been a fatal blot on kim's character if mahbub had not known that to others, for his own ends or mahbub's business, kim could lie like an oriental. then mahbub ali rolled across the serai to the gate of the harpies who paint their eyes and trap the stranger, and was at some pains to call on the one girl who, he had reason to believe, was a particular friend of a smooth-faced kashmiri pundit who had waylaid his simple balti in the matter of the telegrams. it was an utterly foolish thing to do; because they fell to drinking perfumed brandy against the law of the prophet, and mahbub grew wonderfully drunk, and the gates of his mouth were loosened, and he pursued the flower of delight with the feet of intoxication till he fell flat among the cushions, where the flower of delight, aided by a smooth-faced kashmiri pundit, searched him from head to foot most thoroughly. about the same hour kim heard soft feet in mahbub's deserted stall. the horse-trader, curiously enough, had left his door unlocked, and his men were busy celebrating their return to india with a whole sheep of mahbub's bounty. a sleek young gentleman from delhi, armed with a bunch of keys which the flower had unshackled from the senseless one's belt, went through every single box, bundle, mat, and saddle-bag in mahbub's possession even more systematically than the flower and the pundit were searching the owner. 'and i think,' said the flower scornfully an hour later, one rounded elbow on the snoring carcase, 'that he is no more than a pig of an afghan horse-dealer, with no thought except women and horses. moreover, he may have sent it away by now--if ever there were such a thing.' 'nay--in a matter touching five kings it would be next his black heart,' said the pundit. 'was there nothing?' the delhi man laughed and resettled his turban as he entered. 'i searched between the soles of his slippers as the flower searched his clothes. this is not the man but another. i leave little unseen.' 'they did not say he was the very man,' said the pundit thoughtfully. 'they said, "look if he be the man, since our councils are troubled."' 'that north country is full of horse-dealers as an old coat of lice. there is sikandar khan, nur ali beg, and farrukh shah--all heads of kafilas--who deal there,' said the flower. 'they have not yet come in,' said the pundit. 'thou must ensnare them later.' 'phew!' said the flower with deep disgust, rolling mahbub's head from her lap. 'i earn my money. farrukh shah is a bear, ali beg a swashbuckler, and old sikandar khan--yaie! go! i sleep now. this swine will not stir till dawn.' when mahbub woke, the flower talked to him severely on the sin of drunkenness. asiatics do not wink when they have out-manoeuvred an enemy, but as mahbub ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very near to it. 'what a colt's trick,' said he to himself. 'as if every girl in peshawur did not use it! but 'twas prettily done. now god he knows how many more there be upon the road who have orders to test me--perhaps with the knife. so it stands that the boy must go to umballa--and by rail--for the writing is something urgent. i abide here, following the flower and drinking wine as an afghan coper should.' he halted at the stall next but one to his own. his men lay there heavy with sleep. there was no sign of kim or the lama. 'up!' he stirred a sleeper. 'whither went those who lay here last even--the lama and the boy? is aught missing?' 'nay,' grunted the man; 'the old madman rose at second cockcrow saying he would go to benares, and the young one led him away.' 'the curse of allah on all unbelievers,' said mahbub heartily, and climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard. but it was kim who had wakened the lama--kim with one eye laid against a knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the delhi man's search through the boxes. this was no common thief that turned over letters, bills, and saddles--no mere burglar who ran a little knife sideways into the soles of mahbub's slippers, or picked the seams of the saddle-bags so deftly. at first kim had been minded to give the alarm--the long-drawn 'cho-or--choor!' (thief! thief!) that sets the serai ablaze of nights; but he looked more carefully, and, hand on amulet, drew his own conclusions. 'it must be the pedigree of that made-up horse-lie,' said he, 'the thing that i carry to umballa. better that we go now. those who search bags with knives may presently search bellies with knives. surely there is a woman behind this. hai! hai!' in a whisper to the light-sleeping old man. 'come. it is time--time to go to benares.' the lama rose obediently, and they passed out of the serai like shadows. chapter ii 'for whoso will, from pride released, contemning neither creed nor priest, may hear the soul of all the east about him at kamakura.' they entered the fort-like railway station, black in the end of night; the electrics sizzling over the goods yard where they handle the heavy northern grain-traffic. 'this is the work of devils!' said the lama, recoiling from the hollow echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails between the masonry platforms, and the maze of girders above. he stood in a gigantic stone hall paved, it seemed, with the sheeted dead--third-class passengers who had taken their tickets overnight and were sleeping in the waiting-rooms. all hours of the twenty-four are alike to orientals, and their passenger traffic is regulated accordingly. 'this is where the fire-carriages come. one stands behind that hole'--kim pointed to the ticket-office--'who will give thee a paper to take thee to umballa.' 'but we go to benares,' he replied petulantly. 'all one. benares then. quick: she comes!' 'take thou the purse.' the lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started as the . a. m. south bound roared in. the sleepers sprang to life, and the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of water and sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and shrill yells of women gathering up their baskets, their families, and their husbands. 'it is the train--only the te-rain. it will come here. wait!' amazed at the lama's immense simplicity (he had handed him a small bag full of rupees), kim asked and paid for a ticket to umballa. a sleepy clerk grunted and flung out a ticket to the next station, just six miles distant. 'nay,' said kim, scanning it with a grin. 'this may serve for farmers, but i live in the city of lahore. it was cleverly done, babu. now give the ticket to umballa.' the babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket. 'now another to amritzar,' said kim, who had no notion of spending mahbub ali's money oh anything so crude as a paid ride to umballa. 'the price is so much. the small money in return is just so much. i know the ways of the te-rain. . . . never did yogi need chela as thou dost,' he went on merrily to the bewildered lama. 'they would have flung thee out at mian mir but for me. this way! come.' he returned the money, keeping only one anna in each rupee of the price of the umballa ticket as his commission--the immemorial commission of asia. the lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class carriage. 'were it not better to walk?' said he weakly. a burly sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. 'is he afraid? do not be afraid. i remember the time when i was afraid of the te-rain. enter! this thing is the work of the government.' [illustration: 'beggars a plenty have i met, and holy men to boot, but never such a _yogi_ nor such a disciple.'] 'i do not fear,' said the lama. 'have ye room within for two?' 'there is no room even for a mouse,' shrilled the wife of a well-to-do cultivator--a hindu jat from the rich jullundur district. our night trains are not as well looked after as the day ones, where the sexes are very strictly kept to separate carriages. 'oh, mother of my son, we can make space,' said the blue-turbaned husband. 'pick up the child. it is a holy man, see'st thou?' 'and my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! why not bid him sit on my knee, shameless? but men are ever thus!' she looked round for approval. an amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed behind her head drapery. 'enter! enter!' cried a fat hindu money-lender, his folded account-book in a cloth under his arm. with an oily smirk: 'it is well to be kind to the poor.' 'ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn calf,' said a young dogra soldier going south on leave; and they all laughed. 'will it travel to benares?' said the lama. 'assuredly. else why should we come? enter, or we are left,' cried kim. 'see!' shrilled the amritzar girl. 'he has never entered a train. oh see!' 'nay, help,' said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand and hauling him in. 'thus is it done, father.' 'but--but--i sit on the floor. it is against the rule to sit on a bench,' said the lama. 'moreover, it cramps me.' 'i say,' began the money-lender, pursing his lips, 'that there is not one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause us to break. we sit, for example, side by side with all castes and peoples.' 'yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones,' said the wife, scowling at the amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy. 'i said we might have gone by cart along the road,' said the husband, 'and thus have saved some money.' 'yes--and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way. that was talked out ten thousand times.' 'ay, by ten thousand tongues,' grunted he. 'the gods help us poor women if we may not speak. oho! he is of that sort which may not look at or reply to a woman.' for the lama, constrained by his rule, took not the faintest notice of her. 'and his disciple is like him?' 'nay, mother,' said kim most promptly. 'not when the woman is well-looking and above all charitable to the hungry.' 'a beggar's answer,' said the sikh, laughing. 'thou hast brought it on thyself, sister!' kim's hands were crooked in supplication. 'and whither goest thou?' said the woman, handing him the half of a cake from a greasy package. 'even to benares.' 'jugglers belike?' the young soldier suggested. 'have ye any tricks to pass the time? why does not that yellow man answer?' 'because,' said kim stoutly, 'he is holy, and thinks upon matters hidden from thee.' 'that may be well. we of the loodhiana sikhs,' he rolled it out sonorously, 'do not trouble our heads with doctrine. we fight.' 'my sister's brother's son is naik (corporal) in that regiment,' said the sikh craftsman quietly. 'there are also some dogra companies there.' the soldier glared, for a dogra is of other caste than a sikh, and the banker tittered. 'they are all one to me,' said the amritzar girl. 'that we believe,' snorted the cultivator's wife malignantly. 'nay, but all who serve the sirkar with weapons in their hands are, as it were, one brotherhood. there is one brotherhood of the caste, but beyond that again'--she looked round timidly--'the bond of the pulton--the regiment--eh?' 'my brother is in a jat regiment,' said the cultivator. 'dogras be good men.' 'thy sikhs at least were of that opinion,' said the soldier, with a scowl at the placid old man in the corner. 'thy sikhs thought so when our two companies came to help them at the pirzai kotal in the face of eight afreedee standards on the ridge not three months gone.' he told the story of a border action in which the dogra companies of the loodhiana sikhs had acquitted themselves well. the amritzar girl smiled; for she knew the tale was to win her approval. 'alas!' said the cultivator's wife at the end. 'so their villages were burnt and their little children made homeless?' 'they had marked our dead. they paid a great payment after we of the sikhs had schooled them. so it was. is this amritzar?' 'ay, and here they cut our tickets,' said the banker, fumbling at his belt. the lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came round. ticket-collecting is a slow business in the east, where people secrete their tickets in all sorts of curious places. kim produced his and was told to get out. 'but i go to umballa,' he protested. 'i go with this holy man.' 'thou canst go to jehannum for aught i care. this ticket is only to amritzar. out!' kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama's declining years, and that the lama would die without his care. all the carriage bade the guard be merciful,--the banker was specially eloquent here,--but the guard hauled kim on to the platform. the lama blinked, he could not overtake the situation, and kim lifted up his voice and wept outside the carriage window. 'i am very poor. my father is dead--my mother is dead. oh, charitable ones, if i am left here, who shall tend that old man?' 'what--what is this?' the lama repeated. 'he must go to benares. he must come with me. he is my chela. if there is money to be paid--' 'oh, be silent,' whispered kim; 'are we rajahs to throw away good silver when the world is so charitable?' the amritzar girl stepped out with her bundles, and it was on her that kim kept his watchful eye. ladies of that persuasion, he knew, were generous. 'a ticket--a little tikkut to umballa--o breaker of hearts!' she laughed. 'hast thou no charity?' 'does the holy man come from the north?' 'from far and far in the north he comes,' cried kim. 'from among the hills.' 'there is snow among the pine trees in the north--in the hills there is snow. my mother was from kulu. get thee a ticket. ask him for a blessing.' 'ten thousand blessings,' shrilled kim. 'o holy one, a woman has given us in charity so that i can come with thee--a woman with a golden heart. i run for the tikkut.' the girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed kim to the platform. he bowed his head that he might not see her, and muttered in tibetan as she passed on with the crowd. 'light come--light go,' said the cultivator's wife viciously. 'she has acquired merit,' returned the lama. 'beyond doubt it was a nun.' 'there be ten thousand such nuns in amritzar alone. return, old man, or the train may depart without thee,' cried the banker. 'not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food also,' said kim, leaping to his place. 'now eat, holy one. look. day comes!' golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away across the flat green levels. all the rich punjab lay out in the splendour of the keen sun. the lama flinched a little as the telegraph-posts swung by. 'great is the speed of the train,' said the banker, with a patronising grin. 'we have gone farther since lahore than thou couldst walk in two days: at even, we shall enter umballa.' 'and that is still far from benares,' said the lama wearily, mumbling over the cakes that kim offered. they all unloosed their bundles and made their morning meal. then the banker, the cultivator, and the soldier prepared their pipes and wrapped the compartment in choking, acrid smoke, spitting and coughing and enjoying themselves. the sikh and the cultivator's wife chewed pan; the lama took snuff and told his beads, while kim, cross-legged, smiled over the comfort of a full stomach. 'what rivers have ye by benares?' said the lama of a sudden to the carriage at large. 'we have gunga,' returned the banker, when the little titter had subsided. 'what others?' 'what other than gunga?' 'nay, but in my mind was the thought of a certain river of healing.' 'that is gunga. who bathes in her is made clean and goes to the gods. thrice have i made pilgrimage to gunga.' he looked round proudly. 'there was need,' said the young sepoy drily, and the travellers' laugh turned against the banker. 'clean--to return again to the gods,' the lama muttered. 'and to go forth on the round of lives anew--still tied to the wheel.' he shook his head testily. 'but maybe there is a mistake. who, then, made gunga in the beginning?' 'the gods. of what known faith art thou?' the banker said, appalled. 'i follow the law--the most excellent law. so it was the gods that made gunga. what like of gods were they?' the carriage looked at him in amazement. it was inconceivable that any one should be ignorant of gunga. 'what--what is thy god?' said the money-lender at last. 'hear!' said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. 'hear: for i speak of him now! o people of hind, listen!' he began in urdu the tale of the lord buddha, but, borne by his own thoughts, slid into tibetan and long-droned texts from a chinese book of the buddha's life. the gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently. all india is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers, and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning and will continue to the end. 'um!' said the soldier of the loodhiana sikhs. 'there was a mohammedan regiment lay next to us at the pirzai kotal, and a priest of theirs,--he was, as i remember, a naik,--when the fit was on him, spake prophecies. but the mad all are in god's keeping. his officers overlooked much in that man.' the lama fell back on urdu, remembering that he was in a strange land. 'hear the tale of the arrow which our lord loosed from the bow,' he said. this was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while he told it. 'now, o people of hind, i go to seek that river. know ye aught that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case.' 'there is gunga--and gunga alone--who washes away sin,' ran the murmur round the carriage. 'though past question we have good gods jullundur-way,' said the cultivator's wife, looking out of window. 'see how they have blessed the crops.' 'to search every river in the punjab is no small matter,' said her husband. 'for me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land suffices, and i thank bhumia, the god of the homestead.' he shrugged one knotted, bronzed shoulder. think you our lord came so far north?' said the lama, turning to kim. 'it may be,' kim replied soothingly, as he spat red pan-juice on the floor. 'the last of the great ones,' said the sikh with authority, 'was sikander julkarn (alexander the great). he paved the streets of jullundur and built a great tank near umballa. that pavement holds to this day; and the tank is there also. i never heard of thy god.' 'let thy hair grow long and talk punjabi,' said the young soldier jestingly to kim, quoting a northern proverb. 'that is all that makes a sikh.' but he did not say this very loud. the lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass. in the pauses of their talk they could hear, the low droning--'om mane pudme hum! om mane pudme hum!'--and the thick click of the wooden rosary beads. 'it irks me,' he said at last. 'the speed and the clatter irk me. moreover, my chela, i think that may be we have overpassed that river.' 'peace, peace,' said kim. 'was not the river near benares? we are yet far from the place.' 'but--if our lord came north, it may be any one of these little ones that we have run across.' 'i do not know.' 'but thou wast sent to me--wast thou sent to me?--for the merit i had acquired over yonder at suchzen. from beside the cannon didst thou come--bearing two faces--and two garbs.' 'peace. one must not speak of these things here,' whispered kim. 'there was but one of me. think again and thou wilt remember. a boy--a hindu boy--by the great green cannon.' 'but was there not also an englishman with a white beard--holy--among images--who himself made more sure my assurance of the river of the arrow?' 'he--we--went to the ajaib-gher in lahore to pray before the gods there,' kim explained to the openly listening company. 'and the sahib of the wonder house talked to him--yes, this is truth--as a brother. he is a very holy man, from far beyond the hills. rest thou. in time we come to umballa.' 'but my river--the river of my healing?' 'and then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that river on foot. so that we miss nothing--not even a little rivulet in a field-side.' 'but thou hast a search of thine own?' the lama--very pleased that he remembered so well--sat bolt upright. 'ay,' said kim, humouring him. the boy was entirely happy to be out chewing pan and seeing new people in the great good-tempered world. 'it was a bull--a red bull that shall come and help thee--and carry thee--whither? i have forgotten. a red bull on a green field, was it not?' 'nay, it will carry me nowhere,' said kim. 'it is but a tale i told thee.' 'what is this?' the cultivator's wife leaned forward, her bracelets clinking on her arm. 'do ye both dream dreams? a red bull on a green field, that shall carry thee to the heavens--or what? was it a vision? did one make a prophecy? we have a red bull in our village behind jullundur city, and he grazes by choice in the very greenest of our fields!' 'give a woman an old wife's tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a thread, they will weave wonderful things,' said the sikh. 'all holy men dream dreams, and by following holy men their disciples attain that power.' 'a red bull on a green field, was it?' the lama repeated. 'in a former life it may be thou hast acquired merit, and the bull will come to reward thee.' 'nay--nay--it was but a tale one told to me--for a jest belike. but i will seek the bull about umballa, and thou canst look for thy river and rest from the clatter of the train.' 'it may be that the bull knows--that he is sent to guide us both,' said the lama, hopefully as a child. then to the company, indicating kim: 'this one was sent to me but yesterday. he is not, i think, of this world.' 'beggars a plenty have i met, and holy men to boot, but never such a yogi nor such a disciple,' said the woman. her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled. but the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him their best. and at last--tired, sleepy, and dusty--they reached umballa city station. 'we abide here upon a law-suit,' said the cultivator's wife to kim. 'we lodge with my man's cousin's younger brother. there is room also in the courtyard for thy yogi and for thee. will--will he give me a blessing?' 'o holy man! a woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the night. it is a kindly land, this land of the south. see how we have been helped since the dawn!' the lama bowed his head in benediction. 'to fill my cousin's younger brother's house with wastrels--' the husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff. 'thy cousin's younger brother owes my father's cousin something yet on his daughter's marriage-feast,' said the woman crisply. 'let him put their food to that account. the yogi will beg, i doubt not.' 'ay, i beg for him,' said kim, anxious only to get the lama under shelter for the night, that he might seek mahbub ali's englishman and deliver himself of the white stallion's pedigree. 'now,' said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner courtyard of a decent hindu house behind the cantonments, 'i go away for a while--to--to buy us victual in the bazar. do not stray abroad till i return.' 'thou wilt return? thou wilt surely return?' the old man caught at his wrist. 'and thou wilt return in this very same shape? is it too late to look to-night for the river?' 'too late and too dark. be comforted. think how far thou art on the road--an hundred kos from lahore already.' 'yea--and farther from my monastery. alas! it is a great and terrible world.' kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his own and a few score thousand other folk's fate slung round his neck. mahbub ali's directions left him little doubt of the house in which his englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the club, made him quite sure. it remained only to identify his man, and kim slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed grass close to the veranda. the house blazed with lights, and servants moved about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver. presently forth came an englishman, dressed in black and white, humming a tune. it was too dark to see his face, so kim, beggar-wise, tried an old experiment. 'protector of the poor!' the man backed towards the voice. 'mahbub ali says--' 'hah! what says mahbub ali?' he made no attempt to look for the speaker, and that showed kim that he knew. 'the pedigree of the white stallion is fully established.' 'what proof is there?' the englishman switched at the rose-hedge in the side of the drive. 'mahbub ali has given me this proof.' kim flipped the wad of folded paper into the air, and it fell on the path beside the man, who put his foot on it as a gardener came round the corner. when the servant passed he picked it up, dropped a rupee,--kim could hear the clink,--and strode into the house, never turning round. swiftly kim took up the money; but, for all his training, he was irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of any game. what he desired was the visible effect of action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and wormed nearer to the house. he saw--indian bungalows are open through and through--the englishman return to a small dressing-room, in a corner of the veranda, that was half-office, littered with papers and despatch-boxes, and sit down to study mahbub ali's message. his face, by the full ray of the kerosene lamp, changed and darkened, and kim, used as every beggar must be to watching countenances, took good note. 'will! will, dear!' called a woman's voice. 'you ought to be in the drawing-room. they'll be here in a minute.' the man still read intently. 'will!' said the voice, five minutes later. 'he's come. i can hear the troopers in the drive.' the man dashed out bareheaded as a big landau with four native troopers behind it halted at the veranda, and a tall, black-haired man, erect as an arrow, swung out, preceded by a young officer who laughed pleasantly. flat on his belly lay kim, almost touching the high wheels. his man and the black stranger exchanged two sentences. 'certainly, sir,' said the young officer promptly. 'everything waits while a horse is concerned.' 'we shan't be more than twenty minutes,' said kim's man. 'you can do the honours--keep 'em amused, and all that.' 'tell one of the troopers to wait,' said the tall man, and they both passed into the dressing-room together as the landau rolled away. kim saw their heads bent over mahbub ali's message, and heard the voices--one low and deferential, the other sharp and decisive. 'it isn't a question of weeks. it is a question of days--hours almost,' said the elder. 'i'd been expecting it for some time, but this'--he tapped mahbub ali's paper--'clenches it. grogan's dining here to-night, isn't he?' 'yes, sir, and macklin too.' 'very good. i'll speak to them myself. that matter will be referred to the council, of course, but this is a case where one is justified in assuming that we take action at once. warn the pindi and peshawur brigades. it will disorganise all the summer reliefs, but we can't help that. this comes of not smashing them thoroughly the first time. eight thousand should be enough.' 'what about artillery, sir?' 'i must consult macklin.' 'then it means war?' 'no. punishment. when a man is bound by the action of his predecessor--' 'but c. may have lied.' 'he bears out the other's information. practically, they showed their hand six months back. but devenish would have it there was a chance of peace. of course they used it to make themselves stronger. send off those telegrams at once,--the new code, not the old,--mine and wharton's. i don't think we need keep the ladies waiting any longer. we can settle the rest over the cigars. i thought it was coming. it's punishment--not war.' as the trooper cantered off kim crawled round to the back of the house, where, going on his lahore experiences, he judged there would be food--and information. the kitchen was crowded with excited scullions, one of whom kicked him. 'aie,' said kim, feigning tears. 'i came only to wash dishes in return for a bellyful.' 'all umballa is on the same errand. get hence. they go in now with the soup. think you that we who serve creighton sahib need strange scullions to help us through a big dinner?' 'it is a very big dinner;' said kim, looking at the plates. 'small wonder. the guest of honour is none other than the jang-i-lat sahib' (the commander-in-chief). 'ho!' said kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. he had learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone. 'and all that trouble,' said he to himself, thinking as usual in hindustanee, 'for a horse's pedigree! mahbub ali should have come to me to learn a little lying. every time before that i have borne a message it concerned a woman. now it is men. better. the tall man said that they will loose a great army to punish some one--somewhere--the news goes to pindi and peshawur. there are also guns. would i had crept nearer. it is big news!' he returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother discussing the family law-suit in all its bearings with the cultivator and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed. after the evening meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and kim felt very much of a man as he pulled at the smooth cocoanut-shell, his legs spread abroad in the moonlight, his tongue clicking in remarks from time to time. his hosts were most polite; for the cultivator's wife had told them of his vision of the red bull, and of his probable descent from another world. moreover, the lama was a great and venerable curiosity. the family priest, an old, tolerant sarsut brahmin, dropped in later, and naturally started a theological argument to impress the family. by creed, of course, they were all on their priest's side, but the lama was the guest and the novelty. his gentle kindliness, and his impressive chinese quotations, that sounded like spells, delighted them hugely; and in this sympathetic, simple air he expanded like the bodhisat's own lotus, speaking of his life in the great hills of suchzen, before, as he said, 'i rose up to seek enlightenment.' then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a master-hand at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family priest led him on to describe his methods; each giving the planets names that the other could not understand, and pointing upwards as the big stars sailed across the dark. the children of the house tugged unrebuked at his rosary; and he clean forgot the rule which forbids looking at women as he talked of enduring snows, landslips, blocked passes, the remote cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful upland road that leads at last into great china itself. 'how thinkest thou of this one?' said the cultivator aside to the priest. 'a holy man--a holy man indeed. his gods are not the gods, but his feet are upon the way,' was the answer. 'and his methods of nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure.' 'tell me,' said kim lazily, 'whether i find my red bull on a green field, as was promised me.' 'what knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?' the priest asked, swelling with importance. 'between first and second cockcrow of the first night in may.' 'of what year?' 'i do not know; but upon the hour that i cried first fell the great earthquake in srinagur which is in kashmir.' this kim had from the woman who took care of him, and she again from kimball o'hara. the earthquake had been felt in india, and for long stood a leading date in the punjab. 'ai!' said a woman excitedly. this seemed to make kim's supernatural origin more certain. 'was not such an one's daughter born then--' 'and her mother bore her husband four sons in four years--all likely boys,' cried the cultivator's wife, sitting outside the circle in the shadow. 'none reared in the knowledge,' said the family priest, 'forget how the planets stood in their houses upon that night.' he began to draw in the dust of the courtyard. 'at least thou hast good claim to a half of the house of the bull. how runs thy prophecy?' 'upon a day,' said kim, delighted at the sensation he was creating, 'i shall be made great by means of a red bull on a green field, but first there will enter two men making all things ready.' 'yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. a thick darkness that clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place. then begins the sight. two men--thou sayest? ay, ay. the sun, leaving the house of the bull, enters that of the twins. hence the two men of the prophecy. let us now consider. fetch me a twig, little one.' he knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again in the dust mysterious signs--to the wonder of all save the lama, who, with fine instinct, forbore to interfere. at the end of half an hour he tossed the twig from him with a grunt. 'hm. thus say the stars. within three days come the two men to make all things ready. after them follows the bull; but the sign over against him is the sign of war and armed men.' 'there was indeed a man of the loodhiana sikhs in the carriage from lahore,' said the cultivator's wife hopefully. 'tck! armed men--many hundreds. what concern hast thou with war?' said the priest to kim. 'thine is a red and an angry sign of war to be loosed very soon.' 'none--none,' said the lama earnestly. 'we seek only peace and our river.' kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the dressing-room. decidedly he was a favourite of the stars. the priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. 'more than this i cannot see. in three days comes the bull to thee, boy.' 'and my river, my river,' pleaded the lama. 'i had hoped his bull would lead us both to the river.' 'alas, for that wondrous river, my brother,' the priest replied. 'such things are not common.' next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on departure. they gave kim a large bundle of good food and nearly three annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn. 'pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from the wheel of things,' said the lama. 'nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who would give us meat and shelter?' quoth kim, stepping merrily under his burden. 'yonder is a small stream. let us look,' said the lama, and he led from the white road across the fields; walking into a very hornets'-nest of pariah dogs. chapter iii 'yea, voice of every soul that clung to life that strove from rung to rung when devadatta's rule was young, the warm wind brings kamakura.' behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. he was a market-gardener, arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers for umballa city, and well kim knew the breed. 'such an one,' said the lama, disregarding the dogs, 'is impolite to strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. be warned by his demeanour, my disciple.' 'ho, shameless beggars!' shouted the farmer. 'begone! get hence!' 'we go,' the lama returned, with quiet dignity. 'we go from these unblessed fields.' 'ah,' said kim, sucking in his breath. 'if the next crops fail, thou canst only blame thy own tongue.' the man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. 'the land is full of beggars,' he began, half apologetically. 'and by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, o mali?' said kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener least likes. 'all we sought was to look at that river beyond the field there.' 'river, forsooth!' the man snorted. 'what city do ye hail from not to know a canal-cut? it runs as straight as an arrow, and i pay for the water as though it were molten silver. there is a branch of a river beyond. but if ye need water i can give that--and milk.' 'nay, we will go to the river,' said the lama, striding out. 'milk and a meal,' the man stammered, as he looked at the strange tall figure. 'i--i would not draw evil upon myself--or my crops; but beggars are so many in these hard days.' 'take notice,' the lama turned to kim. 'he was led to speak harshly by the red mist of anger. that clearing from his eyes, he becomes courteous and of an affable heart. may his fields be blessed. beware not to judge men too hastily, o farmer.' 'i have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone to byre,' said kim to the abashed man. 'is he not wise and holy? i am his disciple.' he cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the narrow field-borders with great dignity. 'there is no pride,' said the lama, after a pause, 'there is no pride among such as follow the middle way.' 'but thou hast said he was low caste and discourteous.' 'low caste i did not say, for how can that be which is not? afterwards he amended his discourtesy, and i forgot the offence. moreover, he is as we are, bound upon the wheel of things; but he does not tread the way of deliverance.' he halted at a little runlet among the fields, and considered the hoof-pitted bank. 'now, how wilt thou know thy river?' said kim, squatting in the shade of some tall sugar-cane. 'when i find it, an enlightenment will surely be given. this, i feel, is not the place. o littlest among the waters, if only thou couldst tell me where runs my river! but be thou blessed to make the fields bear!' 'look! look!' kim sprang to his side and dragged him back. a yellow and brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still--a big cobra with fixed, lidless eyes. 'i have no stick--i have no stick,' said kim. 'i will get me one and break his back.' 'why? he is upon the wheel as we are--a life ascending or descending--very far from deliverance. great evil must the soul have done that is cast into this shape.' 'i hate all snakes,' said kim. no native training can quench the white man's horror of the serpent. 'let him live out his life.' the coiled thing hissed and half opened its hood. 'may thy release come soon, brother,' the lama continued placidly. 'hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my river?' 'never have i seen such a man as thou art,' kim whispered, overwhelmed. 'do the very snakes understand thy talk?' 'who knows?'. he passed within a foot of the cobra's poised head. it flattened itself among the dusty coils. 'come thou!' he called over his shoulder. 'not i,' said kim. 'i go round.' 'come. he does no hurt.' kim hesitated for a moment. the lama backed his order by some droned chinese quotation which kim took for a charm. he obeyed and bounded across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no sign. 'never have i seen such a man.' kim wiped the sweat from his forehead. 'and now, whither go we?' 'that is for thee to say. i am old, and a stranger--far from my own place. but that the rel-carriage fills my head with noises of devil-drums i would go in it to benares now. . . . yet by so going we may miss the river. let us find another river.' where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year--through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the lama replying to the vollied questions with an unswerving simplicity. they sought a river--a river of miraculous healing. had any one knowledge of such a stream? sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the end and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a meal. the women were always kind, and the little children as children are the world over, alternately shy and venturesome. evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day's last meal. they had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens round hungry umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the staple crops. he was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining strangers. he dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set warm cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the evening ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for the village priest. kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of lahore, of railway travel, and such-like city things, while the men talked, slowly as their cattle chew the cud. 'i cannot fathom it,' said the headman at last to the priest. 'how readest thou this talk?' the lama, his tale told, was silently telling his beads. 'he is a seeker,' the priest answered. 'the land is full of such. remember him who came only last month--the faquir with the tortoise?' 'ay, but that man had right and reason, for krishna himself appeared in a vision promising him paradise without the burning-pyre if he journeyed to prayag. this man seeks no god who is within my knowledge.' 'peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad,' the smooth-shaven priest replied. 'hear me.' he turned to the lama. 'three kos (six miles) to the westward runs the great road to calcutta.' 'but i would go to benares--to benares.' 'and to benares also. it crosses all streams on this side of hind. now my word to thee, holy one, is rest here till to-morrow. then take the road' (it was the grand trunk road he meant) 'and test each stream that it overpasses; for, as i understand, the virtue of thy river lies neither in one pool nor place, but throughout its length. then, if thy gods will, be assured that thou wilt come upon thy freedom.' 'that is well said.' the lama was much impressed by the plan. 'we will begin to-morrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet such a near road.' a deep, sing-song chinese half-chant closed the sentence. even the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an evil spell: but none could look at the lama's simple, eager face and doubt him long. 'seest thou my chela?' he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with an important sniff. it was his duty to repay courtesy with courtesy. 'i see--and hear.' the headman rolled his eye where kim was chatting to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a fire. 'he also has a search of his own. no river, but a bull. yea, a red bull on a green field will some day raise him to honour. he is, i think, not altogether of this world. he was sent of a sudden to aid me in this search, and his name is friend of all the world.' the priest smiled. 'ho there, friend of all the world,' he cried across the sharp-smelling smoke, 'what art thou?' 'this holy one's disciple,' said kim. 'he says thou art a but' (a spirit). 'can buts eat?' said kim, with a twinkle. 'for i am hungry.' 'it is no jest,' cried the lama. 'a certain astrologer of that city whose name i have forgotten--' 'that is no more than the city of umballa where we slept last night,' kim whispered to the priest. 'ay, umballa was it? he cast a horoscope and declared that my chela should find his desire within two days. but what said he of the meaning of the stars, friend of all the world?' kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village graybeards. 'the meaning of my star is war,' he replied pompously. somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the brickwork plinth under the great tree. where a native would have lain down, kim's white blood set him upon his feet. 'ay, war,' he answered. 'that is a sure prophecy,' rumbled a deep voice. 'for there is always war along the border--as i know.' it was an old, withered man, who had served the government in the days of the mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry regiment. the government had given him a good holding in the village, and though the demands of his sons, now gray-bearded officers on their own account, had impoverished him, he was still a person of consequence. english officials--deputy commissioners even--turned aside from the main road to visit him, and on those occasions he dressed himself in the uniform of ancient days, and stood up like a ramrod. 'but this shall be a great war--a war of eight thousand,' kim's voice shrilled across the quick-gathering crowd, astonishing himself. 'redcoats or our own regiments?' the old man snapped, as though he were asking an equal. his tone made men respect kim. 'redcoats,' said kim at a venture. 'redcoats and guns.' 'but--but the astrologer said no word of this,' cried the lama, snuffing prodigiously in his excitement. 'but i know. the word has come to me, who am this holy one's disciple. there will rise a war--a war of eight thousand redcoats. from pindi and peshawur they will be drawn. this is sure.' 'the boy has heard bazar-talk,' said the priest. 'but he was always by my side,' said the lama. 'how should he know? i did not know.' 'he will make a clever juggler when the old man is dead,' muttered the priest to the headman. 'what new trick is this?' 'a sign. give me a sign,' thundered the old soldier suddenly. 'if there were war my sons would have told me.' 'when all is ready, thy sons, doubt not, will be told. but it is a long road from thy sons to the man in whose hands these things lie.' kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he pretended to know more than he knew. but now he was playing for larger things--the sheer excitement and the sense of power. he drew a new breath and went on. 'old man, give me a sign. do underlings order the goings of eight thousand redcoats--with guns?' 'no.' still the old man answered as though kim were an equal. 'dost thou know who he is then that gives the order?' 'i have seen him.' 'to know again?' 'i have known him since he was a lieutenant in the topkhana' (the artillery). 'a tall man. a tall man with black hair, walking thus?' kim took a few paces in a stiff, wooden style. 'ay. but that any one may have seen.' the crowd were breathless-still through all this talk. 'that is true,' said kim. 'but i will say more. look now. first the great man walks thus. then he thinks thus. (kim drew a forefinger over his forehead and downwards till it came to rest by the angle of the jaw.) anon he twitches his fingers thus. anon he thrusts his hat under his left armpit.' kim illustrated the motion and stood like a stork. the old man groaned, inarticulate with amazement; and the crowd shivered. 'so--so--so. but what does he when he is about to give an order?' 'he rubs the skin at the back of his neck--thus. then falls one finger on the table and he makes a small sniffing noise through his nose. then he speaks, saying: "loose such and such a regiment. call out such guns."' the old man rose stiffly and saluted. '"for"'--kim translated into the vernacular the clinching sentences he had heard in the dressing-room at umballa--'"for," says he, "we should have done this long ago. it is not war--it is a chastisement. snff!"' 'enough. i believe. i have seen him thus in the smoke of battles. seen and heard. it is he!' 'i saw no smoke'--kim's voice shifted to the rapt sing-song of the wayside fortune-teller. 'i saw this in darkness. first came a man to make things clear. then came horsemen. then came he, standing in a ring of light. the rest followed as i have said. old man, have i spoken truth?' 'it is he. past all doubt it is he.' the crowd drew a long, quavering breath, staring alternately at the old man, still at attention, and ragged kim against the purple twilight. 'said i not--said i not he was from the other world?' cried the lama proudly. 'he is the friend of all the world. he is the friend of the stars!' 'at least it does not concern us,' a man cried. 'o thou young soothsayer, if the gift abides with thee at all seasons, i have a red-spotted cow. she may be sister to thy bull for aught i know--' 'or i care,' said kim. 'my stars do not concern themselves with thy cattle.' 'nay, but she is very sick,' a woman struck in. 'my man is a buffalo, or he would have chosen his words better. tell me if she recover?' had kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the play; but one does not know lahore city, and least of all the faquirs by the taksali gate, for thirteen years without also knowing human nature. the priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly--a dry and blighting smile. 'is there no priest then in the village? i thought i had seen a great one even now,' cried kim. 'ay--but--' the woman began. 'but thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful of thanks.' the shot told: they were notoriously the closest-fisted couple in the village. 'it is not well to cheat the temples. give a young calf to thy own priest, and, unless thy gods are angry past recall, she will give milk within a month.' 'a master-beggar art thou,' purred the priest approvingly. 'not the cunning of forty years could have done better. surely thou hast made the old man rich?' 'a little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms,' kim retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious--'does one grow rich on that? and, as thou canst see, he is mad. but it serves me while i learn the road at least.' he knew what the faquirs of the taksali gate were like when they talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their lewd disciples. 'is his search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends? it may be treasure.' 'he is mad--many times mad. there is nothing else.' here the old soldier hobbled up and asked if kim would accept his hospitality for the night. the priest recommended him to do so, but insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the temple--at which the lama smiled guilelessly. kim glanced from one face to the other, and drew his own conclusions. 'where is the money?' he whispered, beckoning the old man off into the darkness. 'in my bosom. where else?' 'give it me. quietly and swiftly give it me.' 'but why? here is no ticket to buy.' 'am i thy chela, or am i not? do i not safeguard thy old feet about the ways? give me the money and at dawn i will return it.' he slipped his hand above the lama's girdle and brought away the purse. 'be it so--be it so.' the old man nodded his head. 'this is a great and terrible world. i never knew there were so many men alive in it.' next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was quite happy; and kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with the old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on his dry knees, told tales of the mutiny and young captains thirty years in their graves, till kim dropped off to sleep. 'certainly the air of this country is good,' said the lama. 'i sleep lightly, as do all old men; but last night i slept unwaking till broad day. even now i am heavy.' 'drink a draught of hot milk,' said kim, who had carried not a few such remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance. 'it is time to take the road again.' 'the long road that overpasses all the rivers of hind,' said the lama gaily. 'let us go. but how thinkest thou, chela, to recompense these people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness? truly they are but-parast, but in other lives, may be, they will receive enlightenment. a rupee to the temple? the thing within is no more than stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must acknowledge when and where it is good.' 'holy one, hast thou ever taken the road alone?' kim looked up sharply, like the indian crows so busy about the fields. 'surely, child: from kulu to pathankot--from kulu, where my first chela died. when men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men were well-disposed throughout all the hills.' 'it is otherwise in hind,' said kim drily. 'their gods are many-armed and malignant. let them alone.' 'i would set thee on thy road for a little, friend of all the world--thou and thy yellow man.' the old soldier ambled up the village street, all shadowy in the dawn, on a gaunt, scissor-hocked pony. 'last night broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried heart, and it was as a blessing to me. truly there is war abroad in the air. i smell it. see! i have brought my sword.' he sat long-legged on the little beast, with the big sword at his side,--hand dropped on the pommel,--staring fiercely over the flat lands towards the north. 'tell me again how he showed in thy vision. come up and sit behind me. the beast will carry two.' 'i am this holy one's disciple,' said kim, as they cleared the village-gate. the villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them, but the priest's farewell was cold and distant. he had wasted some opium on a man who carried no money. 'that is well spoken. i am not much used to holy men, but respect is always good. there is no respect in these days--not even when a commissioner sahib comes to see me. but why should one whose star leads him to war follow a holy man?' 'but he is a holy man,' said kim earnestly. 'in truth, and in talk and in act, holy. he is not like the others. i have never seen such an one. we be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars.' 'thou art not, that i can see; but i do not know that other. he marches well, though.' the first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long, easy, camel-like strides. he was deep in meditation, mechanically clicking his rosary. they followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the snow-capped himalayas faint to the eastward. all india was at work in the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of ploughmen behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows. even the pony felt the good influence and almost broke into a trot as kim laid a hand on the stirrup-leather. 'it repents me that i did not give a rupee to the shrine,' said the lama on the last bead of his eighty-one. the old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the first time was aware of him. 'seekest thou the river also?' said he, turning. 'the day is new,' was the reply. 'what need of a river save to water at before sundown? i come to show thee a short lane to the big road.' 'that is a courtesy to be remembered, o man of good will; but why the sword?' the old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his game of make-believe. 'the sword,' he said, fumbling it. 'oh, that was a fancy of mine--an old man's fancy. truly the police orders are that no man must bear weapons throughout hind, but'--he cheered up and slapped the hilt--'all the constabeels hereabout know me.' 'it is not a good fancy,' said the lama. 'what profit to kill men?' 'very little--as i know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers. i do not speak without knowledge who have seen the land from delhi south awash with blood.' 'what madness was that, then?' 'the gods, who sent it for a plague, alone know. a madness ate into all the army, and they turned against their officers. that was the first evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands. but they chose to kill the sahibs' wives and children. then came the sahibs from over the sea and called them to most strict account.' 'some such rumour, i believe, reached me once long ago. they called it the black year, as i remember.' 'what manner of life hast thou led, not to know the year? a rumour indeed! all earth knew, and trembled.' 'our earth never shook but once--upon the day that the excellent one received enlightenment.' 'umph! i saw delhi shake at least; and delhi is the navel of the world.' 'so they turned against women and children? that was a bad deed, for which the punishment cannot be avoided.' 'many strove to do so, but with very small profit. i was then in a regiment of cavalry. it broke. of six hundred and eighty sabres stood fast to their salt--how many think you? three. of whom i was one.' [illustration: he sat long-legged on the little beast, with the big sword at his side--hand dropped on the pommel--staring fiercely ever the flat lands. . .] 'the greater merit.' 'merit! we did not consider it merit in those days. my people, my friends, my brothers fell from me. they said: "the time of the english is accomplished. let each strike out a little holding for himself." but i had talked with the men of sobraon, of chillianwallah, of moodkee and ferozeshah. i said: "abide a little and the wind turns. there is no blessing in this work." in those days i rode seventy miles with an english memsahib and her babe on my saddle-bow. (wow! that was a horse fit for a man!) i placed them in safety, and back came i to my officer--the one that was not killed of our five. "give me work," said i, "for i am an outcast among my own kin, and my cousin's blood is wet on my sabre." "be content," said he. "there is great work forward. when this madness is over there is a recompense."' 'ay, there is a recompense when the madness is over, surely?' the lama muttered half to himself. 'they did not hang medals in those days on all who by accident had heard a gun fired. no! in nineteen pitched battles was i; in six-and-forty skirmishes of horse; and in small affairs without number. nine wounds i bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of an order, for my captains who are now generals, remembered me when the kaiser-i-hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign, and all the land rejoiced. they said: "give him the order of berittish india." i carry it upon my neck now. i have also my jaghir (holding) from the hands of the state--a free gift to me and mine. the men of the old days--they are now commissioners--come riding to me through the crops,--high upon horses so that all the village sees,--and we talk out the old skirmishes, one dead man's name leading to another.' 'and after?' said the lama. 'oh, afterwards they go away, but not before my village has seen.' 'and at the last what wilt thou do?' 'at the last i shall die.' 'and after?' 'let the gods order it. i have never pestered them with prayers: i do not think they will pester me. look you, i have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon those above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much. no, i have never wearied the gods. they will remember this, and give me a quiet place where i can drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: i have no less than three--ressaldar-majors all--in the regiments.' 'and they likewise, bound upon the wheel, go forth from life to life--from despair to despair,' said the lama below his breath, 'hot, uneasy, snatching.' 'ay,' the old soldier chuckled. 'three ressaldar-majors in three regiments. gamblers a little, but so am i. they must be well mounted; and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took women. well, well, my holding can pay for all. how thinkest thou? it is a well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. i do not know how to ask save at the lance's point. ugh! i grow angry and i curse them, and they feign penitence, but behind my back i know they call me a toothless old ape.' 'hast thou never desired any other thing?' yes--yes--a thousand times! a straight back and a close-clinging knee once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that makes a man. oh, the old days--the good days of my strength!' 'that strength is weakness.' 'it has turned so; but fifty years since i could have proved it otherwise,' the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into the pony's lean flank. 'but i know a river of great healing.' 'i have drunk gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. all she gave me was a flux, and no sort of strength.' 'it is not gunga. the river that i know washes from all taint of sin. ascending the far bank one is assured of freedom. i do not know thy life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and courteous. thou hast clung to thy way, rendering fidelity when it was hard to give, in that black year of which i now remember other tales. enter now upon the middle way, which is the path to freedom. hear the most excellent law, and do not follow dreams.' 'speak then, old man,' the soldier smiled, half saluting. 'we be all babblers at our age.' the lama squatted under the shade of a mango, whose shadow played checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony; and kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the crotch of the twisted roots. there was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. slowly and impressively the lama began. at the end of ten minutes the old soldier slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the reins round his wrist. the lama's voice faltered--the periods lengthened. kim was busy watching a gray squirrel. when the little scolding bunch of fur, close pressed to the branch, disappeared, preacher and audience were fast asleep, the old officer's strong-cut head pillowed on his arm, the lama's thrown back against the tree hole, where it showed like yellow ivory. a naked child toddled up, stared, and, moved by some quick impulse of reverence made a solemn little obeisance before the lama--only the child was so short and fat that it toppled over sideways, and kim laughed at the sprawling, chubby legs. the child, scared and indignant, yelled aloud. 'hai! hai!' said the soldier leaping to his feet. 'what is it? what orders? . . . it is . . . a child! i dreamed it was an alarm. little one--little one--do not cry. have i slept? that was discourteous indeed!' 'i fear! i am afraid!' roared the child. 'what is it to fear? two old men and a boy? how wilt thou ever make a soldier, princeling?' the lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child, clicked his rosary. 'what is that?' said the child, stopping a yell midway. 'i have never seen such things. give them me.' 'aha,' said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the grass: 'this is a handful of cardamoms, this is a lump of ghi: this is millet and chillies and rice, a supper for thee and me!' the child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing beads. 'oho!' said the old soldier. 'whence had thou that song, despiser of this world?' 'i learned it in pathankot--sitting on a door-step,' said the lama shyly. 'it is good to be kind to babes.' 'as i remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light, stumbling-blocks upon the way. do children drop from heaven in thy country? is it the way to sing them songs?' 'no man is all perfect,' said the lama gravely, recoiling the rosary. 'run now to thy mother, little one.' 'hear him!' said the soldier to kim. 'he is ashamed for that he has made a child happy. there was a very good householder lost in thee, my brother. hai, child!' he threw it a pice. 'sweetmeats are always sweet.' and as the little figure capered away into the sunshine: 'they grow up and become men. holy one, i grieve that i slept in the midst of thy preaching. forgive me.' 'we be two old men,' said the lama. 'the fault is mine. i listened to thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the next.' 'hear him! what harm do thy gods suffer from play with a babe? and that song was very well sung. let us go on and i will sing thee the song of nikal seyn before delhi--the old song.' and they fared out from the gloom of the mango tope, the old man's high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail he unfolded the story of nikal seyn (nicholson)--the song that men sing in the punjab to this day. kim was delighted, and the lama listened with deep interest. 'ahi! nikal seyn is dead--he died before delhi! lances of north take vengeance for nikal seyn.' he quavered it out to the end, marking the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony's rump. 'and now we come to the big road,' said he, after receiving the compliments of kim; for the lama was markedly silent. 'it is long since i have ridden this way, but thy boy's talk stirred me. see, holy one--the great road which is the backbone of all hind. for the most part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road--all hard--takes the quick traffic. in the days before rail-carriages the sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. now there are only country-carts and such like. left and right is the rougher road for the heavy carts--grain and cotton and timber, bhoosa, lime and hides. a man goes in safety here--for at every few kos is a police-station. the police are thieves and extortioners (i myself would patrol it with cavalry--young recruits under a strong captain), but at least they do not suffer any rivals. all castes and kinds of men move here. look! brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters--all the world going and coming. it is to me as a river from which i am withdrawn like a log after a flood.' and truly the grand trunk road is a wonderful spectacle. it runs straight, bearing without crowding india's traffic for fifteen hundred miles--such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. they looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed police-station opposite. 'who bears arms against the law?' a constable called out laughingly, as he caught sight of the soldier's sword, 'are not the police enough to destroy evil-doers?' 'it was because of the police i bought it,' was the answer. 'does all go well in hind?' 'ressaldar sahib, all goes well.' 'i am like an old tortoise, look you, who puts his head out from the bank and draws it in again. ay, this is the road of hindustan. all men come by this way. . . .' 'son of a swine, is the soft part of the road meant for thee to scratch thy back upon? father of all the daughters of shame and husband of ten thousand virtueless ones, thy mother was devoted to a devil, being led thereto by her mother; thy aunts have never had a nose for seven generations! thy sister--what owl's folly told thee to draw thy carts across the road? a broken wheel? then take a broken head and put the two together at leisure!' the voice and a venomous whip-cracking came out of a pillar of dust fifty yards away, where a cart had broken down. a thin, high kattiwar mare, with eyes and nostrils aflame, rocketed out of the jam, snorting and wincing as her rider bent her across the road in chase of a shouting man. he was tall and gray-bearded, sitting the almost mad beast as a piece of her, and scientifically lashing his victim between plunges. the old man's face lit with pride. 'my child!' said he briefly, and strove to rein the pony's neck to a fitting arch. 'am i to be beaten before the police?' cried the carter. 'justice! i will have justice--' 'am i to be blocked by a shouting ape who upsets ten thousand sacks under a young horse's nose? that is the way to ruin a mare.' 'he speaks truth. he speaks truth. but she follows her man close,' said the old man. the carter ran under the wheels of his cart and thence threatened all sorts of vengeance. 'they are strong men, thy sons,' said the policeman serenely, picking his teeth. the horseman delivered one last vicious cut with his whip and came on at a canter. 'my father!' he reined back ten yards and dismounted. the old man was off his pony in an instant, and they embraced as do father and son in the east. chapter iv good luck, she is never a lady, but the cursedest quean alive. tricksy, wincing, and jady-- kittle to lead or drive. greet her--she's hailing a stranger! meet her--she's busking to leave! let her alone for a shrew to the bone and the hussy comes plucking your sleeve! largesse! largesse, o fortune! give or hold at your will if i've no care for fortune, fortune must follow me still! 'the wishing caps.' then, lowering their voices, they spoke together. kim came to rest under a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow. 'let us go on. the river is not here.' 'hai mai? have we not walked enough for a little? our river will not run away. patience, and he will give us a dole.' 'that,' said the old soldier suddenly, 'is the friend of the stars. he brought me the news yesterday. having seen the very man himself, in a vision, giving orders for the war.' 'hm!' said his son, all deep in his broad chest. 'he came by a bazar-rumour and made profit of it.' his father laughed. 'at least he did not ride to me begging for a new charger and the gods know how many rupees. are thy brothers' regiments also under orders?' 'i do not know. i took leave and came swiftly to thee in case--' 'in case they ran before thee to beg. o gamblers and spendthrifts all! but thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. a good horse is needed there, truly. a good follower and a good pony also for the marching. let us see--let us see.' he thrummed on the pommel. 'this is no place to cast accounts in, my father. let us go to thy house.' 'at least pay the boy then: i have no pice with me, and he brought auspicious news. ho! friend of all the world, a war is toward as thou hast said.' 'nay, as i know, the war,' returned kim composedly. 'eh?' said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road. 'my master does not trouble the stars for hire. we brought the news--bear witness we brought the news, and now we go.' kim half-crooked his hand at his side. the son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling something about beggars and jugglers. it was a four-anna piece, and would feed them well for some days. the lama, seeing the flash of the metal, droned a blessing. 'go thy way, friend of all the world,' piped the old soldier, wheeling his scrawny mount. 'for once in all my days i have met a true prophet--who was not in the army.' father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as the younger. a punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the road. he had seen the money pass. 'halt!' he cried in impressive english. 'know ye not that there is a takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter the road from this side-road. it is the order of the sirkar, and the money is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the ways.' 'and the bellies of the police,' said kim, skipping out of arm's reach. 'consider for a while, man with a mud head. think you we came from the nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law. hast thou ever heard the name of thy brother?' 'and who was he? leave the boy alone,' cried a senior constable, immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the veranda. 'he took a label from a bottle of belaitee-pani (soda-water), and, affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who passed, saying that it was the sirkar's order. then came an englishman and broke his head. ah, brother, i am a town-crow, not a village-crow!' the policeman drew back abashed, and kim hooted at him all down the road. 'was there ever such a disciple as i?' he cried merrily to the lama. 'all earth would have picked thy bones within ten mile of lahore city if i had not guarded thee.' 'i consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp,' said the lama, smiling slowly. 'i am thy chela.' kim dropped into step at his side--that indescribable gait of the long-distance tramp all the world over. 'now let us walk,' muttered the lama, and to the click of his rosary they walked in silence mile upon mile. the lama, as usual, was deep in meditation, but kim's bright eyes were open wide. this broad, smiling river of life, he considered, was a vast improvement on the cramped and crowded lahore streets. there were new people and new sights at every stride--castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his experience. they met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented sansis with baskets of lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs sniffing at their heels. these people kept their own side of the road, moving at a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes gave them ample room; for the sansi is deep pollution. behind them, walking wide and stiffly across the strong shadows, the memory of his leg-irons still on him, strode one newly released from the jail; his full stomach and shiny skin to prove that the government fed its prisoners better than most honest men could feed themselves. kim knew that walk well, and made broad jest of it as they passed. then an akali, a wild-eyed, wild-haired sikh devotee in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, with polished-steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban, stalked past, returning from a visit to one of the independent sikh states, where he had been singing the ancient glories of the khalsa to college-trained princelings in top-boots and white-cord breeches. kim was careful not to irritate that man; for the akali's temper is short and his arm quick. here and there they met or were overtaken by the gaily dressed crowds of whole villages turning out to some local fair; the women, with their babes on their hips, walking behind the men, the older boys prancing on sticks of sugar-cane, dragging rude brass models of locomotives such as they sell for a halfpenny, or flashing the sun into the eyes of their betters from cheap toy mirrors. one could see at a glance what each had bought; and if there were any doubt it needed only to watch the wives comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the newly purchased dull glass bracelets that come from the north-west. these merry-makers stepped slowly, calling one to the other and stopping to haggle with sweetmeat-sellers, or to make a prayer before one of the wayside shrines--sometimes hindu, sometimes mussalman--which the low caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. a solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a chorus of quick cackling. that was a gang of changars--the women who have taken all the embankments of all the northern railways under their charge--a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a job, and wasting no time by the road. they belong to the caste whose men do not count, and they walked with squared elbows, swinging hips, and heads on high, as suits women who carry heavy weights. a little later a marriage procession would strike into the grand trunk with music and shoutings, and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust. one could see the bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel, staggering through the haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony turned aside to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. then kim would join the kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the couple a hundred sons and no daughters, as the saying is. still more interesting and more to be shouted over it was when a strolling juggler with some half-trained monkeys, or a panting, feeble bear, or a woman who tied goats' horns to her feet, and with these danced on a slack-rope, set the horses to shying and the women to shrill, long-drawn quavers of amazement. the lama never raised his eyes. he did not note the money-lender on his goose-rumped pony, hastening along to collect the cruel interest; or the long-shouting, deep-voiced little mob--still in military formation--of native soldiers on leave, rejoicing to be rid of their breeches and puttees, and saying the most outrageous things to the most respectable women in sight. even the seller of ganges-water he did not see, and kim expected that he would at least buy a bottle of that precious stuff. he looked steadily at the ground, and strode as steadily hour after hour, his soul busied elsewhere. but kim was in the seventh heaven of joy. the grand trunk at this point was built on an embankment to guard against winter floods from the foothills, so that one walked, as it were, a little above the country, along a stately corridor, seeing all india spread out to left and right. it was beautiful to behold the many-yoked grain and cotton waggons crawling over the country-roads: one could hear their axles, complaining a mile away, coming nearer, till with shouts and yells and bad words they climbed up the steep incline and plunged on to the hard main road, carter reviling carter. it was equally beautiful to watch the people, little clumps of red and blue and pink and white and saffron, turning aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and growing small by twos and threes across the level plain. kim felt these things, though he could not give tongue to his feelings, and so contented himself with buying peeled sugar-cane and spitting the pith generously about his path. from time to time the lama took snuff, and at last kim could endure the silence no longer. 'this is a good land--the land of the south!' said he. 'the air is good; the water is good. eh?' 'and they are all bound upon the wheel,' said the lama. 'bound from life after life. to none of these has the way been shown.' he shook himself back to this world. 'and now we have walked a weary way,' said kim. 'surely we shall soon come to a parao (a resting-place). shall we stay there? look, the sun is sloping.' 'who will receive us this evening?' 'that is all one. this country is full of good folk. besides,'--he sunk his voice beneath a whisper,--'we have money.' the crowd thickened as they neared the resting-place which marked the end of their day's journey. a line of stalls selling very simple food and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a police-station, a well, a horse-trough, a few trees, and, under them, some trampled ground dotted with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a parao on the grand trunk; if you except the beggars and the crows--both hungry. by this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower branches of the mango trees; the parakeets and doves were coming home in their hundreds; the chattering, gray-backed seven sisters, talking over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the night-picket. swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for an instant the faces and the cart-wheels and the bullocks' horns as red as blood. then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the country, and bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke and cattle and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes. the evening patrol hurried out of the police-station with important coughings and reiterated orders; and a live charcoal ball in the cup of a wayside carter's hookah glowed red while kim's eye mechanically watched the last flicker of the sun on the brass tweezers. [illustration: the lama and kim walked a little to one side; kim chewing his stick of sugar-cane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest.] the life of the parao was very like that of the kashmir serai on a small scale. kim dived into the happy asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs. his wants were few, because, since the lama had no caste scruples, cooked food from the nearest stall would serve; but, for luxury's sake, kim bought a handful of dung-cakes to build a fire. all about, coming and going round the little flames, men cried for oil, or grain, or sweetmeats, or tobacco, jostling one another while they waited their turn at the well; and under the men's voices you heard from halted, shuttered carts the high squeals and giggles of women whose faces should not be seen in public. nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their womenfolk travel--and they visit a good deal--it is better to take them quickly by rail in a properly screened compartment; and that custom is spreading. but there are always those of the old rock who hold by the use of their forefathers; and, above all, there are always the old women,--more conservative than the men,--who toward the end of their days go a pilgrimage. they, being withered and undesirable, do not, under certain circumstances, object to unveiling. after their long seclusion, during which they have always been in business touch with a thousand outside interests, they love the bustle and stir of the open road, the gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite possibilities of gossip with like-minded dowagers. very often it suits a long-suffering family that a strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady should disport herself about india in this fashion; for certainly pilgrimage is grateful to the gods. so all about india, in the most remote places, as in the most public, you find some knot of grizzled servitors in nominal charge of an old lady who is more or less curtained and hid away in a bullock-cart. such men are staid and discreet, and when a european or a high-caste native is near will net their charge with most elaborate precautions; but in the ordinary haphazard chances of pilgrimage the precautions are not taken. the old lady is, after all, intensely human, and lives to look upon life. kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had just been drawn into the parao. eight men made its retinue, and two of the eight were armed with rusty sabres--sure signs that they followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. an increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a european would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. here was evidently a woman used to command. kim looked over the retinue critically. half of them were thin-legged, gray-bearded ooryas from down country. the other half were duffle-clad, felt-hatted hillmen of the north: and that mixture told its own tale, even if he had not overheard the incessant sparring between the two divisions. the old lady was going south on a visit--probably to a rich relative, most probably to a son-in-law, who had sent up an escort as a mark of respect. the hillmen would be of her own people--kulu or kangra folk. it was quite clear that she was not taking her daughter down to be wedded, or the curtains would have been laced home and the guard would have allowed no one near the car. a merry and a high-spirited dame, thought kim, balancing the dung-cake in one hand, the cooked food in the other, and piloting the lama with a nudging shoulder. something might be made out of the meeting. the lama would give him no help, but, as a conscientious chela, kim was delighted to beg for two. he built his fire as close to the cart as he dared, waiting for one of the escort to order him away. the lama dropped wearily to the ground, much as a heavy fruit-eating bat cowers, and returned to his rosary. 'stand farther off, beggar!' the order was shouted in broken hindustanee by one of the hillmen. 'huh! it is only a pahari' (a hillman), said kim over his shoulder. 'since when have the hill-asses owned all hindustan?' the retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of kim's pedigree for three generations. 'ah!' kim's voice was sweeter than ever, as he broke the dung-cake into fit pieces. 'in my country we call that the beginning of love-talk.' a harsh, thin cackle behind the curtains put the hillman on his mettle for a second shot. 'not so bad--not so bad,' said kim with calm. 'but have a care, my brother, lest we--we, i say--be minded to give a curse or so in return. and our curses have the knack of biting home.' the ooryas laughed; the hillman sprang forward threateningly; the lama suddenly raised his head, bringing his huge tam-o'-shanter cap into the full light of kim's new-started fire. 'what is it?' said he. the man halted as though struck to stone. 'i--i--am saved from a great sin,' he stammered. 'the foreigner has found him a priest at last,' whispered one of the ooryas. 'hai! why is that beggar-brat not well beaten?' the old woman cried. the hillman drew back to the cart and whispered something to the curtain. there was dead silence, then a muttering. 'this goes well,' thought kim, pretending neither to see nor hear. 'when--when--he has eaten,'--the hillman fawned on kim--'it--it is requested that the holy one will do the honour to talk to one who would speak to him.' 'after he has eaten he will sleep,' kim returned loftily. he could not quite see what new turn the game had taken, but stood resolute to profit by it. 'now, i will get him his food.' the last sentence, spoken loudly, ended with a sigh as of faintness. 'i--i myself and the others of my people will look to that--if it is permitted.' 'it is permitted,' said kim, more loftily than ever. 'holy one, these people will bring us food.' 'the land is good. all the country of the south is good--a great and a terrible world,', mumbled the lama drowsily. 'let him sleep,' said kim, 'but look to it that we are well fed when he wakes. he is a very holy man.' again one of the ooryas said something contemptuously. 'he is not a faquir. he is not a down-country beggar,' kim went on severely, addressing the stars. 'he is the most holy of holy men. he is above all castes. i am his chela.' 'come here!' said the flat thin voice behind the curtain; and kim came, conscious that eyes he could not see were staring at him. one skinny brown finger heavy with rings lay on the edge of the cart, and the talk went this way: 'who is that one?' 'an exceedingly holy one. he comes from far off. he comes from tibet.' 'where in tibet?' 'from behind the snows--from a very far place. he knows the stars; he makes horoscopes; he reads nativities. but he does not do this for money. he does it for kindness and great charity. i am his disciple. i am called also the friend of the stars.' 'thou art no hillman.' 'ask him. he will tell thee i was sent to him from the stars to show him an end to his pilgrimage.' 'humph! consider, brat, that i am an old woman and not altogether a fool. lamas i know, and to these i give reverence, but thou art no more a lawful chela than this my finger is the pole of this waggon. thou art a casteless hindu--a bold and unblushing beggar, attached, belike, to the holy one for the sake of gain.' 'do we not all work for gain?' kim changed his tone promptly to match that altered voice. 'i have heard'--this was a bow drawn at a venture--'i have heard--' 'what hast thou heard?' she snapped, rapping with the finger. 'nothing that i well remember, but some talk in the bazars, which is doubtless a lie, that even rajahs--small hill rajahs--' 'but none the less of good rajput blood.' 'assuredly of good blood. that these even sell the more comely of their womenfolk for gain. down south they sell them--to zemindars and such-all of oudh.' if there be one thing in the world that the small hill rajahs deny it is just this charge; but it happens to be one thing that the bazars believe, when they discuss the mysterious slave-traffics of india. the old lady explained to kim, in a tense, indignant whisper, precisely what manner and fashion of malignant liar he was. had kim hinted this when she was a girl, he would have been pommelled to death that same evening by an elephant. this was perfectly true. 'ahai! i am only a beggar's brat, as the eye of beauty has said,' he wailed in extravagant terror. 'eye of beauty, forsooth! who am i that thou shouldst fling beggar-endearments at me?' and yet she laughed at the long-forgotten word. 'forty years ago that might have been said, and not without truth. ay, thirty years ago. but it is the fault of this gadding up and down hind that a king's widow must jostle all the scum of the land, and be made a mock by beggars.' 'great queen,' said kim promptly, for he heard her shaking with indignation, 'i am even what the great queen says i am; but none the less is my master holy. he has not yet heard the great queen's order that--' 'order? i order a holy one--a teacher of the law--to come and speak to a woman? never!' 'pity my stupidity. i thought it was given as an order--' 'it was not. it was a petition. does this make all clear?' a silver coin clicked on the edge of the cart. kim took it and salaamed profoundly. the old lady recognised that, as the eyes and the ears of the lama, he was to be propitiated. 'i am but the holy one's disciple. when he has eaten perhaps he will come.' 'oh, villain and shameless rogue!' the jewelled forefinger shook itself at him reprovingly; but he could hear the old lady's chuckle. 'nay, what is it?' he said, dropping into his most caressing and confidential tone--the one, he well knew, that few could resist. 'is--is there any need of a son in thy family? speak freely, for we priests--' that last was a direct plagiarism from a faquir by the taksali gate. 'we priests! thou art not yet old enough to--' she checked the joke with another laugh. 'believe me, now and again, we women, o priest, think of other matters than sons. moreover, my daughter has borne her man-child.' 'two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are better still.' kim quoted the proverb with a meditative cough, looking discreetly earthward. 'true--oh, true. but perhaps that will come. certainly those down-country brahmins are utterly useless. i sent gifts and monies and gifts again to them and they prophesied.' 'ah,' drawled kim, with infinite contempt, 'they prophesied!' a professional could have done no better. 'and it was not till i remembered my own gods that my prayers were heard. i chose an auspicious hour, and--perhaps thy holy one has heard of the abbot of the lung-cho lamassery. it was to him i put the matter, and behold in the due time all came about as i desired. the brahmin in the house of the father of my daughter's son has since said that it was through his prayers--which is a little error that i will explain to him when we reach our journey's end. and so afterwards i go to buddh gaya, to make shraddha for the father of my children.' 'thither go we.' 'doubly auspicious,' chirruped the old lady. 'a second son at least!' 'o friend of all the world!' the lama had waked, and, simply as a child bewildered in a strange bed, called for kim. 'i come! i come, holy one!' he dashed to the fire, where he found the lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen visibly adoring him and the southerners looking sourly. 'go back! withdraw!' kim cried. 'do we eat publicly like dogs?' they finished the meal in silence, each turned a little from the other, and kim topped it with a native-made cigarette. 'have i not said an hundred times that the south is a good land? here is a virtuous and high-born widow of a hill rajah on pilgrimage, she says, to buddh gaya. she it is sends us those dishes; and when thou art well rested she would speak to thee.' 'is this also thy work?' the lama dipped deep into his snuff-gourd. 'who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?' kim's eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his nostrils and stretched him on the dusty ground. 'have i failed to oversee thy comforts, holy one?' 'a blessing on thee.' the lama inclined his solemn head. 'i have known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. but to none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to thee--thoughtful, wise, and courteous, but something of a small imp.' 'and i have never seen such a priest as thou.' kim considered the benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. 'it is less than three days since we took road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years.' 'perhaps in a former life it was permitted that i should have rendered thee some service. may be'--he smiled--'i freed thee from a trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when i was not enlightened, cast thee back into the river.' 'may be,' said kim quietly. he had heard this sort of speculation again and again, from the mouths of many whom the english would not consider imaginative. 'now, as regards that woman in the bullock-cart, i think she needs a second son for her daughter.' 'that is no part of the way,' sighed the lama. 'but at least she is from the hills. ah, the hills, and the snow of the hills!' he rose and stalked to the cart. kim would have given his ears to come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he caught were in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech of the mountains. the woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned over in his mind before answering. now and again he heard the sing-song cadence of a chinese quotation. it was a strange picture that kim watched between drooped eyelids. the lama, very straight and erect, the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in the light of the parao fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is slashed with the shadow of the long sun, addressed a tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a many-coloured jewel in the same uncertain light. the patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and re-forming as the folds shook and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew more earnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between the embroideries. behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and faces and shadows. the voices of early evening had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the tinkle of a bengali dancing-girl's sitar. most men had eaten and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full blast sound like bull-frogs. at last the lama returned. a hillman walked behind him with a wadded cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire. 'she deserves ten thousand grandchildren,' thought kim. 'none the less, but for me, these gifts would not have come.' 'a virtuous woman--and a wise one.' the lama slackened off, joint by joint, like a slow camel. 'the world is full of charity to those who follow the way.' he flung a fair half of the quilt over kim. 'and what said she?' kim rolled up in his share of it. 'she asked me many questions and propounded many problems--the most of which were idle tales which she had heard from devil-serving priests who pretend to follow the way. some i answered, and some i said were foolish. many wear the robe, but few keep the way.' 'true. that is true.' kim used the thoughtful, conciliatory tone of those who wish to draw confidences. 'but by her lights she is most right-minded. she desires greatly that we should go with her to buddh gaya; her road being ours, as i understand, for many days' journey to the southward.' 'and?' 'patience a little. to this i said that my search came before all things. she had heard many foolish legends, but this great truth of my river she had never heard. such are the priests of the lower hills! she knew the abbot of lung-cho, but she did not know of my river--nor the tale of the arrow.' 'and?' 'i spoke therefore of the search, and of the way, and of matters that were profitable; she desiring only that i should accompany her and make prayer for a second son.' 'aha! "we women" do not think of anything save children,' said kim sleepily. 'now, since our roads run together for a while, i do not see that we in any way depart from our search if so be we accompany her--at least as far as--i have forgotten the name of the city.' 'ohe!' said kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of the ooryas a few yards away. 'where is your master's house?' 'a little behind saharunpore, among the fruit gardens.' he named the village. 'that was the place,' said the lama. 'so far, at least, we can go with her.' 'flies go to carrion,' said the oorya, in an abstracted voice. 'for the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a brahmin.' kim breathed the proverb impersonally to the shadow-tops of the trees overhead. the oorya grunted and held his peace. 'so then we go with her, holy one?' 'is there any reason against? i can still step aside and try all the rivers that the road overpasses. she desires that i should come. she very greatly desires it.' kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. when once that imperious old lady had recovered from her natural awe of a lama he thought it probable that she would be worth listening to. he was nearly asleep when the lama suddenly quoted a proverb: 'the husbands of the talkative have a great reward hereafter.' then kim heard him snuff thrice, and dozed off, still laughing. the diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. kim sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. this was seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have it--bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food, and new sights at every turn of the approving eye. the morning mist swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some distant river in shrieking green hosts: all the well-wheels within earshot went to work. india was awake, and kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more excited than any one, chewing on a twig that he would presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved. there was no need to worry about food--no need to spend a cowrie at the crowded stalls. he was the disciple of a holy man annexed by a strong-willed old lady. all things would be prepared for them, and when they were respectfully invited so to do they would sit and eat. for the rest,--kim giggled here as he cleaned his teeth,--his hostess would rather heighten the enjoyment of the road. he inspected her bullocks critically, as they came up grunting and blowing under the yokes. if they went too fast--it was not likely--there would be a pleasant seat for himself along the pole; the lama would sit beside the driver. the escort, of course, would walk. the old lady, equally of course, would talk a great deal, and by what he had heard that conversation would not lack salt. she was already ordering, haranguing, rebuking, and, it must be said, cursing her servants for delays. 'get her her pipe. in the name of the gods, get her her pipe and stop her ill-omened mouth,' cried an oorya, tying up his shapeless bundles of bedding. 'she and the parrots are alike. they screech in the dawn.' 'the lead-bullocks! hai! look to the lead-bullocks!' they were backing and wheeling as a grain-cart's axle caught them by the horns. 'son of an owl, where dost thou go?' this to the grinning carter. 'ai! yai! yai! that within there is the queen of delhi going to pray for a son,' the man called back over his high load. 'room for the queen of delhi and her prime minister the gray monkey climbing up his own sword!' another cart loaded with bark for a down-country tannery followed close behind, and its driver added a few compliments as the ruth-bullocks backed and backed again. from behind the shaking curtains came one volley of invective. it did not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even kim had heard. he could see the carter's bare chest collapse with amazement, as the man salaamed reverently to the voice, leaped from the pole, and helped the escort haul their volcano on to the main road. here the voice told him truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing in his absence. 'oh, shabash!' murmured kim, unable to contain himself, as the man slunk away. 'well done, indeed? it is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman may not go to make prayer to her gods except she be jostled and insulted by all the refuse of hindustan--that she must eat gali (abuse) as men eat ghi. but i have yet a wag left to my tongue--a word or two well spoken that serves the occasion. and still am i without my tobacco! who is the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not yet prepared my pipe?' it was hastily thrust in by a hillman, and a trickle of thick smoke from each corner of the curtains showed that peace was restored. if kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man, to-day he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal procession, with a recognised place under the patronage of an old lady of charming manners and infinite resource. the escort, their heads tied up native fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling enormous clouds of dust. the lama and kim walked a little to one side; kim chewing his stick of sugar-cane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest. they could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker. she bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. her men did not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties were more or less observed. a dark, sallowish district superintendent of police, faultlessly uniformed, an englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing from her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her. 'o mother,' he cried, 'do they do this in the zenanas? suppose an englishman came by and saw that thou hadst no nose?' 'what?' she shrilled back. 'thy own mother has no nose? why say so, then, on the open road?' it was a fair counter. the englishman threw up his hand with the gesture of a man hit at sword-play. she laughed and nodded. 'is this a face to tempt virtue aside?' she withdrew all her veil and stared at him. it was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he called it a moon of paradise, a disturber of integrity, and a few other fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth. 'that is a nut-cut' (rogue), she said. 'all police-constables are nut-cuts; but the police-wallahs are the worst. hai, my son, thou hast never learned all that since thou camest from belait (europe). who suckled thee?' 'a pahareen--a hillwoman of dalhousie, my mother. keep thy beauty under a shade--o dispenser of delights,' and he was gone. 'these be the sort'--she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her mouth with pan. 'these be the sort to oversee justice. they know the land and the customs of the land. the others, all new from europe, suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse than the pestilence. they do harm to kings.' then she told a long, long tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young policeman who had disturbed some small hill rajah, a ninth cousin of her own, in the matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a quotation from a work by no means devotional. then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether the lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. so kim dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. for an hour or more the lama's tam-o'-shanter showed like a moon through the haze; and, from all he heard, kim gathered that the old woman wept. one of the ooryas half apologised for his rudeness overnight, saying that he had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it to the presence of the strange priest. personally, he believed in brahmins, though, like all natives, he was acutely aware of their cunning and their greed. still, when brahmins but irritated with begging demands the mother of his master's wife, and when she sent them away so angry that they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real reason of the second off-side bullock going lame, and of the pole breaking the night before), he was prepared to accept any priest of any other denomination in or out of india. to this kim assented with wise nods, and bade the oorya observe that the lama took no money, and that the cost of his and kim's food would be repaid a hundred times in the good luck that would attend the caravan henceforward. he also told stories of lahore city, and sang a song or two which made the escort laugh. as a town-mouse well acquainted with the latest songs by the most fashionable composers,--they are women for the most part,--kim had a distinct advantage over men from a little fruit-village behind saharunpore, but he let that advantage be inferred. at noon they, turned aside to eat, and the meal was good, plentiful, and well served on plates of clean leaves, in decency, out of drift of the dust. they gave the scraps to certain beggars, that all requirements might be fulfilled, and sat down to a long, luxurious smoke. the old lady had retreated behind her curtains, but mixed most freely in the talk, her servants arguing with and contradicting her as servants do throughout the east. she compared the cool and the pines of the kangra and kulu hills with the dust and the mangoes of the south; she told a tale of some old local gods at the edge of her husband's territory; she roundly abused the tobacco which she was then smoking, reviled all brahmins, and speculated without reserve on the coming of many grandsons. chapter v here come i to my own again-- fed, forgiven, and known again-- claimed by bone of my bone again, and sib to flesh of my flesh! the fatted calf is dressed for me, but the husks have greater zest for me . . . i think my pigs will be best for me, so i'm off to the styes afresh. 'the prodigal son.' once more the lazy, string-tied, shuffling procession got under way, and she slept till they reached the next halting-stage. it was a very short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so kim cast about for means of amusement. 'but why not sit and rest?' said one of the escort. 'only the devils and the english walk to and fro without reason.' 'never make friends with the devil, a monkey, or a boy. no man knows what they will do next,' said his fellow. kim turned a scornful back--he did not want to hear the old story how the devil played with the boys and repented of it--and walked idly across country. the lama strode after him. all that day, whenever they passed a stream, he had turned aside to look at it, but in no case had he received any warning that he had found his river. insensibly too the comfort of speaking to some one in a reasonable tongue, and of being properly considered and respected as her spiritual adviser by a well-born woman, had weaned his thoughts a little from the search. and further, he was prepared to spend serene years in his quest; having nothing of the white man's impatience, but a great faith. 'where goest thou?' he called after kim. 'no whither--it was a small march, and all this'--kim waved his hands abroad--'is new to me.' 'she is beyond question a wise and a discerning woman. but it is hard to meditate when--' 'all women are thus.' kim spoke as might have solomon. 'before the lamassery was a broad platform,' the lama muttered, looping up the well-worn rosary, 'of stone. on that i have left the marks of my feet--pacing to and fro with these.' he clicked the beads, and began the 'om mane pudme hum' of his devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet, and the absence of dust. one thing after another drew kim's idle eye across the plain. there was no purpose in his wanderings, except that the build of the huts near by seemed new, and he wished to investigate. they came out on a broad tract of grazing-ground, brown and purple in the afternoon light, with a heavy clump of mangoes in the centre. it struck kim as curious that no shrine stood in so eligible a spot: the boy was observing as any priest for these things. far across the plain walked side by side four men, made small by the distance. he looked intently under his curved palms and caught the sheen of brass. 'soldiers. white soldiers!' said he. 'let us see.' 'it is always soldiers when thou and i go out alone together. but i have never seen the white soldiers.' 'they do no harm except when they are drunk. keep behind this tree.' they stepped behind the thick trunks in the cool dark of the mango-tope. two little figures halted; the other two came forward uncertainly. they were the advance-party of a regiment on the march, sent out, as usual, to mark the camp. they bore five-foot sticks with fluttering flags, and called to each other as they spread over the flat earth. at last they entered the mango-grove, walking heavily. 'it's here or hereabouts--officers' tents under the trees, i take it, an' the rest of us can stay outside. have they marked out for the baggage-waggons behind?' they cried again to their comrades in the distance, and the rough answer came back faint and mellowed. 'shove the flag in here, then,' said one. 'what do they prepare?' said the lama, wonder-struck. 'this is a great and terrible world. what is the device on the flag?' a soldier thrust a stave within a few feet of them, grunted discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion, who looked up and down the shaded cave of greenery, and returned it. kim stared with all his eyes, his breath coming short and sharp between his teeth. the soldiers stamped off into the sunshine. 'o holy one,' he gasped, 'my horoscope! the drawing in the dust by the priest at umballa! remember what he said. first come two--ferashes--to make all things ready--in a dark place, as it is always at the beginning of a vision.' 'but this is not vision,' said the lama. 'it is the world's illusion, and no more.' 'and after them comes the bull--the red bull on the green field. look! it is he!' he pointed to the flag that was snap-snapping in the evening breeze not ten feet away. it was no more than an ordinary camp marking-flag; but the regiment, always punctilious in matters of millinery, had charged it with the regimental device, the red bull, which is the crest of the mavericks--the great red bull on a background of irish green. 'i see, and now i remember,' said the lama. 'certainly it is thy bull. certainly, also, the two men came to make all ready.' 'they are soldiers--white soldiers. what said the priest? "the sign over against the bull is the sign of war and armed men." holy one, this thing touches my search.' 'true. it is true.' the lama stared fixedly at the device that flamed like a ruby in the dusk. 'the priest at umballa said that thine was the sign of war.' 'what is to do now?' 'wait. let us wait.' 'even now the darkness clears,' said kim. it was only natural that the descending sun should at last strike through the tree-trunks, across the grove, filling it with mealy gold light for a few minutes; but to kim it was crown of the umballa brahmin's prophecy. 'hark!' said the lama. 'one beats a drum--far off!' at first the sound, carrying diluted through the still air, resembled the beating of an artery in the head. soon a sharpness was added. 'ah! the music,' kim explained. he knew the sound of a regimental band, but it amazed the lama. at the far end of the plain a heavy, dusty column crawled in sight. then the wind brought the tune:-- 'we crave your condescension to tell you what we know of marching in the mulligan guards to sligo port below.' here broke in the shrill-tongued fifes:-- 'we shouldered arms, we marched--we marched away from phoenix park we marched to dublin bay. the drums and the fifes, oh, sweetly they did play, as we marched--marched--marched--with the mulligan guards!' it was the band of the mavericks playing the regiment to camp; for the men were route-marching with their baggage. the rippling column swung into the level--carts behind it--divided left and right, ran about like an ant-hill, and . . . but this is sorcery!' said the lama. the plain dotted itself with tents that seemed to rise, all spread, from the carts. another rush of men invaded the grove, pitched a huge tent in silence, ran up yet eight or nine more by the side of it, unearthed cooking-pots, pans, and bundles, which were taken possession of by a crowd of native servants; and behold the mango-tope turned into an orderly town as they watched! 'let us go,' said the lama, sinking back afraid, as the fires twinkled and white officers with jingling swords stalked into the mess-tent. 'stand back in the shadow. no one can see beyond the light of a fire,' said kim, his eyes still on the flag. he had never before watched the routine of a seasoned regiment pitching camp in thirty minutes. 'look! look! look!' clucked the lama. 'yonder comes a priest.' it was bennett, the church of england chaplain of the regiment, limping in dusty black. one of his flock had made some rude remarks about the chaplain's mettle; and to abash him bennett had marched step by step with the men that day. the black dress, gold cross on the watch-chain, the hairless face, and the soft, black wideawake hat would have marked him as a holy man anywhere in all india. he dropped into a camp-chair by the door of the mess-tent and slid off his boots. three or four officers gathered round him, laughing and joking over his exploit. 'the talk of white men is wholly lacking in dignity,' said the lama, who judged only by tone. 'but i have considered the countenance of that priest, and i think he is learned. is it likely that he will understand our talk? i would talk to him of my search.' 'never speak to a white man till he is fed,' said kim, quoting a well-known proverb. 'they will eat now, and--and i do not think they are good to beg from. let us go back to the resting-place. after we have eaten we will come again. it certainly was a red bull--my red bull.' they were both noticeably absent-minded when the old lady's retinue set their meal before them; so none broke their reserve, for it is not lucky to annoy guests. 'now,' said kim, picking his teeth, 'we will return to that place; but thou, o holy one, must wait a little way off, because thy feet are heavier than mine and i am anxious to see more of that red bull.' 'but how canst thou understand the talk? walk slowly. the road is dark,' the lama replied uneasily. kim put the question aside. 'i marked a place near to the trees,' said he, 'where thou canst sit till i call. nay,' as the lama made some sort of protest, 'remember this is my search--the search for my red bull. the sign in the stars was not for thee. i know a little of the customs of white soldiers, and i always desire to see some new things.' 'what dost thou not know of this world?' the lama squatted obediently in a little hollow of the ground not a hundred yards from the hump of the mango trees dark against the star-powdered sky. 'stay till i call.' kim flitted into the dusk. he knew that in all probability there would be sentries round the camp, and smiled to himself as he heard the thick boots of one. a boy who can dodge over the roofs of lahore city on a moonlight night, using every little patch and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely to be checked by a line of well-trained soldiers. he paid them the compliment of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting, crouching and dropping flat, worked his way toward the lighted mess-tent where, close pressed behind the mango tree, he waited till some chance word should give him a returnable lead. the one thing in his mind now was further information as to the red bull. for aught he knew, and kim's limitations were as curious and sudden as his expansions, the men, the nine hundred thorough devils of his father's prophecy, might pray to the beast after dark, as hindus pray to the holy cow. that at least would be entirely right and logical, and the padre with the gold cross would be therefore the man to consult in the matter. on the other hand, remembering sober-faced padres whom he had avoided in lahore city, the priest might be an inquisitive nuisance who would bid him learn. but had it not been proven at umballa that his sign in the high heavens portended war and armed men? was he not the friend of the stars as well as of all the world, crammed to the teeth with dreadful secrets? lastly,--and firstly as the undercurrent of all his quick thoughts,--this adventure, though he did not know the english word, was a stupendous lark--a delightful continuation of his old flights across the housetops, as well as the fulfilment of sublime prophecy. he lay belly-flat and wriggled towards the mess-tent door, a hand on the amulet round his neck. it was as he suspected. the sahibs prayed to their god; for in the centre of the mess-table--its sole ornament when they were on the line of march--stood a golden bull fashioned from old-time loot of the summer palace at pekin--a red-gold bull with lowered head, ramping upon a field of irish green. to him the sahibs held out their glasses and cried aloud confusedly. now the reverend arthur bennett always left mess after that toast, and being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt than usual. kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his totem on the table, when the chaplain stepped on his right shoulder-blade. kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways, brought down the chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by the throat and nearly choked the life out of him. kim then kicked him desperately in the stomach. mr. bennett gasped and doubled up but without relaxing his grip, rolled over again, and silently hauled kim to his own tent. the mavericks were incurable practical jokers; and it occurred to the englishman that silence was best till he had made complete inquiry. 'why, it's a boy!' he said, as he drew his prize under the light of the tent-pole lantern, then shaking him severely cried: 'what were you doing? you're a thief. choor? mallum?' his hindustanee was very limited, and the ruffled and disgusted kim intended to keep to the character laid down for him. as he recovered his breath he was inventing a beautifully plausible tale of his relations to some mess-scullion, and at the same time keeping a keen eye on and a little under the chaplain's left armpit. the chance came; he ducked for the doorway, but a long arm shot out and clutched at his neck, snapping the amulet string and closing on the amulet. 'give it me. o give it me. is it lost? give me the papers.' the words were in english--the tinny, saw-cut english of the native-bred, and the chaplain jumped. 'a scapular,' said he, opening his hand. 'no, some sort of heathen charm. why--why, do you speak english? little boys who steal are beaten. you know that?' 'i do not--i did not steal.' kim danced in agony like a terrier at a lifted stick. 'o give it me. it is my charm. do not thieve it from me.' the chaplain took no heed, but, going to the tent door, called aloud. a fattish, clean-shaven man appeared. 'i want your advice, father victor,' said bennett. 'i found this boy in the dark outside the mess-tent. ordinarily, i should have chastised him and let him go, because i believe him to be a thief. but it seems he talks english, and he attaches some sort of value to a charm round his neck. i thought perhaps you might help me.' between himself and the roman catholic chaplain of the irish contingent lay, as bennett believed, an unbridgeable gulf, but it was noticeable that whenever the church of england dealt with a human problem she was likely to call in the church of rome. bennett's official abhorrence of the scarlet woman and all her ways was only equalled by his private respect for father victor. 'a thief talking english is it? let's look at his charm. no, it's not a scapular, bennett.' he held out his hand. 'but have we any right to open it? a sound whipping--' 'i did not thieve,' protested kim. 'you have hit me kicks all over my body. now give me my charm and i will go away.' 'not quite so fast; we'll look first,' said father victor, leisurely rolling out poor kimball o'hara's 'ne varietur' parchment, his clearance-certificate, and kim's baptismal certificate. on this last o'hara--with some confused idea that he was doing wonders for his son--had scrawled scores of times: 'look after the boy. please look after the boy,'--signing his name and regimental number in full. 'powers of darkness below!' said father victor, passing all over to mr. bennett. 'do you know what these things are?' 'yes,' said kim. 'they are mine, and i want to go away.' 'i do not quite understand,' said mr. bennett. 'he probably brought them on purpose. it may be a begging trick of some kind.' 'i never saw a beggar less anxious to stay with his company, then. there's the makings of a gay mystery here. ye believe in providence, bennett?' 'i hope so.' 'well, i believe in miracles, so it comes to the same thing. powers of darkness! kimball o'hara! and his son! but then he's a native, and i saw kimball married myself to annie shott. how long have you had these things, boy?' 'ever since i was a little baby.' father victor stepped forward quickly and opened the front of kim's upper garment. 'you see, bennett, he's not very black. what's your name?' 'kim.' 'or kimball?' 'perhaps. will you let me go away?' 'what else?' 'they call me kim rishti ke. that is kim of the rishti.' 'what is that--"rishti"?' 'eye-rishti--that was the regiment--my father's.' 'irish, oh i see.' 'yess. that was how my father told me. my father, he has lived.' 'has lived where?' 'has lived. of course he is dead--gone-out.' 'oh. that's your abrupt way of putting it, is it?' bennett interrupted. 'it is possible i have done the boy an injustice. he is certainly white, though evidently neglected. i am sure i must have bruised him. i do not think spirits--' 'get him a glass of sherry, then, and let him squat on the cot. now, kim,' continued father victor, 'no one is going to hurt you. drink that down and tell us about yourself. the truth, if you've no objection.' kim coughed a little as he put down the empty glass, and considered. this seemed a time for caution and fancy. small boys who prowl about camps are generally turned out after a whipping. but he had received no stripes; the amulet was evidently working in his favour, and it looked as though the umballa horoscope and the few words that he could remember of his father's maunderings fitted in most miraculously. else why did the fat padre seem so impressed, and why the glass of hot yellow wine from the lean one? 'my father, he is dead in lahore city since i was very little. the woman, she kept kabarri-shop near where the hire-carriages are.' kim began with a plunge, not quite sure how far the truth would serve him. 'your mother?' 'no'--with a gesture of disgust. 'she went out when i was born. my father, he got these papers from the jadoo-gher--what do you call that?' (bennett nodded) 'because he was in--good-standing. what do you call that?' (again bennett nodded). 'my father told me that. he said too, and also the brahmin who made the drawing in the dust at umballa two days ago, he said, that i shall find a red bull on a green field and that the bull shall help me.' 'a phenomenal little liar,' muttered bennett. 'powers of darkness below, what a country!' murmured father victor. 'go on, kim.' 'i did not thieve. besides, i am just now disciple of a very holy man. he is sitting outside. we saw two men come with flags, making the place ready. that is always so in a dream, or on account of a--a--prophecy. so i knew it was come true. i saw the red bull on the green field, and my father he said: "nine hundred pukka devils and the colonel riding on a horse will look after you when you find the red bull!" i did not know what to do when i saw the bull, but i went away and i came again when it was dark. i wanted to see the bull again, and i saw the bull again with the--the sahibs praying to it. i think the bull shall help me. the holy man said so too. he is sitting outside. will you hurt him, if i call him a shout now? he is very holy. he can witness to all the things i say, and he knows i am not a thief.' '"officers praying to a bull!" what in the world do you make of that?' said bennett. '"disciple of a holy man!" is the boy mad?' 'it's o'hara's boy, sure enough. o'hara's boy leagued with all the powers of darkness. it's very much what his father would have done--if he was drunk. we'd better invite the holy man. he may know something.' 'he does not know anything,' said kim. 'i will show you him if you come. he is my master. then afterwards we can go.' 'powers of darkness!' was all that father victor could say, as bennett marched off, with a firm hand on kim's shoulder. they found the lama where he had dropped. 'the search is at an end for me,' shouted kim in the vernacular. 'i have found the bull, but god knows what comes next. they will not hurt you. come to the fat priest's tent with this thin man and see the end. it is all new, and they cannot talk hindi. they are only uncurried donkeys.' 'then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance,' the lama returned. 'i am glad if thou art rejoiced, chela.' dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent, saluted the churches as a churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier. the yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face red-gold. bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of 'heathen.' 'and what was the end of the search? what gift has the red bull brought?' the lama addressed himself to kim. 'he says, "what are you going to do?"' bennett was staring uneasily at father victor, and kim, for his own ends, took upon himself the office of interpreter. 'i do not see what concern this faquir has with the boy, who is probably his dupe or his confederate,' bennett began. 'we cannot allow an english boy--assuming that he is the son of a mason, the sooner he goes to the masonic orphanage the better.' 'ah! that's your opinion as secretary to the regimental lodge,' said father victor; 'but we might as well tell the old man what we are going to do. he doesn't look like a villain.' 'my experience is that one can never fathom the oriental mind. now, kimball, i wish you to tell this man what i say--word for word.' kim gathered the import of the next few sentences and began thus: 'holy one, the thin fool who looks like a camel says that i am the son of a sahib.' 'but how?' 'oh, it is true. i knew it since my birth, but he could only find it out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers. he thinks that once a sahib is always a sahib, and between the two of them they purpose to keep me in this regiment or to send me to a madrissah (a school). it has happened before. i have always avoided it. the fat fool is of one mind and the camel-like one of another. but that is no odds. i may spend one night here and perhaps the next. it has happened before. then i will run away and return to thee.' 'but tell them that thou art my chela. tell them how thou didst come to me when i was faint and bewildered. tell them of our search, and they will surely let thee go now.' 'i have already told them. they laugh, and they talk of the police.' 'what are you saying?' asked mr. bennett. 'oah. he only says that if you do not let me go it will stop him in his business--his ur-gent private affairs.' this last was a reminiscence of some talk with a eurasian clerk in the canal department, but it only drew a smile, which nettled him. 'and if you did know what his business was you would not be in such a beastly hurry to interfere.' 'what is it then?' said father victor, not without feeling, as he watched the lama's face. 'there is a river in this country which he wishes to find so verree much. it was put out by an arrow which--' kim tapped his foot impatiently as he translated in his own mind from the vernacular to his clumsy english. 'oah, it was made by our lord god buddha, you know, and if you wash there you are washed away from all your sins and made as white as cotton-wool.' (kim had heard mission-talk in his time.) 'i am his disciple, and we must find that river. it is so verree valuable to us.' 'say that again,' said bennett. kim obeyed, with amplifications. 'but this is gross blasphemy!' cried the church of england. 'tck! tck!' said father victor sympathetically. 'i'd give a good deal to be able to talk the vernacular. a river that washes away sin! and how long have you two been looking for it?' 'oh, many days. now we wish to go away and look for it again. it is not here, you see.' 'i see,' said father victor gravely. 'but he can't go on in that old man's company. it would be different, kim, if you were not a soldier's son. tell him that the regiment will take care of you and make you as good a man as your--as good a man as can be. tell him that if he believes in miracles he must believe that--' 'there is no need to play on his credulity,' bennett interrupted. 'i'm doing no such thing. he must believe that the boy's coming here--to his own regiment--in search of his red bull is in the nature of a miracle. consider the chances against it, bennett. this one boy in all india, and our regiment of all others on the line o' march for him to meet with! it's predestined on the face of it. yes, tell him it's kismet. kismet, mallum?' (fate! do you understand?) he turned towards the lama, to whom he might as well have talked of mesopotamia. 'they say,'--the old man's eye lighted at kim's speech,--'they say that the meaning of my horoscope is now accomplished, and that being led back--though as thou knowest i went out of curiosity--to these people and their red bull i must needs go to a madrissah and be turned into a sahib. now i make pretence of agreement, for at the worst it will be but a few meals eaten away from thee. then i will slip away and follow down the road to saharunpore. therefore, holy one, keep with that kulu woman--on no account stray far from her cart till i come again. past question, my sign is of war and of armed men. see how they have given me wine to drink and set me upon a bed of honour! my father must have been some great person. so if they raise me to honour among them, good. if not, good again. however it goes, i will run back to thee when i am tired. but stay with the rajputni, or i shall miss thy feet. . . . oah yess,' said the boy, 'i have told him everything you tell me to say.' 'and i cannot see any need why he should wait,' said bennett, feeling in his trouser-pocket. 'we can investigate the details later--and i will give him a ru--' 'give him time. may be he's fond of the lad,' said father victor, half-arresting the clergyman's motion. the lama dragged forth his rosary and pulled his huge hat-brim over his eyes. 'what can he want now?' 'he says'--kim put up one hand. 'he says: be quiett. he wants to speak to me by himself. you see you do not know one little word of what he says, and i think if you talk he will perhaps give you very bad curses. when he takes those beads like that, you see he always wants to be quiett.' the two englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in bennett's eye that promised ill for kim when he should be relaxed to the religious arm. 'a sahib and the son of a sahib--' the lama's voice was harsh with pain. 'but no white man knows the land and the customs of the land as thou knowest. how comes it this is true?' 'what matter, holy one: but remember it is only for a night or two. remember, i can change swiftly. it will all be as it was when i first spoke to thee under zam-zammah the great gun--' 'as a boy in the dress of white men--when i first went to the wonder house. and a second time thou wast a hindu. what shall the third incarnation be?' he chuckled drearily. 'ah, chela, thou hast done a wrong to an old man because my heart went out to thee.' 'and mine to thee. but how could i know that the red bull would bring me to this business?' the lama covered his face afresh, and nervously rattled the rosary. kim squatted beside him and laid hold upon a fold of his clothing. 'now it is understood that the boy is a sahib?' he went on in a muffled tone. 'such a sahib as was he who kept the images in the wonder house.' the lama's experience of white men was limited. he seemed to be repeating a lesson. 'so then it is not seemly that he should do other than as the sahibs do. he must go back to his own people.' 'for a day and a night and a day,' kim pleaded. 'no, ye don't!' father victor saw kim edging towards the door, and interposed a strong leg. 'i do not understand the customs of white men. the priest of the images in the wonder house in lahore was more courteous than the thin one here. this boy will be taken from me. they will make a sahib of my disciple? woe to me, how shall i find my river? have they no disciples? ask.' 'he says he is very sorry that he cannot find the river now any more. he says, why have you no disciples, and stop bothering him? he wants to be washed of his sins.' neither bennett nor father victor found any answer ready. said kim in english, distressed for the lama's agony: 'i think if you will let me go now we will walk away quietly and not steal. we will look for that river like before i was caught. i wish i did not come here to find the red bull and all that sort of thing. i do not want it.' 'it's the very best day's work you ever did for yourself, young man,' said bennett. 'good heavens, i don't know how to console him,' said father victor, watching the lama intently. 'he can't take the boy away with him, and yet he's a good man--i'm sure he's a good man. bennett, if you give him that rupee he'll curse you root and branch!' they listened to each other's breathing--three--five full minutes. then the lama raised his head, and looked forth across them into space and emptiness. 'and i am a follower of the way,' he said bitterly. 'the sin is mine and the punishment is mine. i made believe to myself--for now i see it was but make-belief--that thou wast sent to me to aid in the search. so my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and the wisdom of thy little years. but those who follow the way must permit not the fire of any desire or attachment, for that is all illusion. as says . . .' he quoted an old, old chinese text, backed it with another, and reinforced these with a third. 'i stepped aside from the way, my chela. it was no fault of thine. i delighted in the sight of life, the new people upon the roads, and in thy joy at seeing these things. i was pleased with thee who should have considered my search and my search alone. now i am sorrowful because thou art taken away and my river is far from me. it is the law which i have broken!' 'powers of darkness below!' said father victor, who, wise in the confessional, heard the pain in every sentence. 'i see now that the sign of the red bull was a sign for me as well as for thee. all desire is red--and evil. i will do penance and find my river alone.' 'at least go back to the kulu woman,' said kim, 'otherwise thou wilt be lost upon the roads. she will feed thee till i run back to thee.' the lama waved a hand to show that the matter was finally settled in his mind. 'now,'--his tone altered as he turned to kim,--'what will they do with thee? at least i may, acquiring merit, wipe out past ill.' 'make me a sahib--so they think. the day after to-morrow i return. do not grieve.' 'of what sort? such an one as this or that man?' he pointed to father victor. 'such an one as those i saw this evening--men wearing swords and stamping heavily?' 'maybe.' 'that is not well. these men follow desire and come to emptiness. thou must not be of their sort.' 'the umballa priest said that my star was war,' kim interjected. 'i will ask these fools--but there is truly no need. i will run away this night, for all i wanted to see the new things.' kim put two or three questions in english to father victor, translating the replies to the lama. then: 'he says, "you take him from me and you cannot say what you will make him." he says, "tell me before i go, for it is not a small thing to make a child."' 'you will be sent to a school. later on, we shall see. kimball, i suppose you'd like to be a soldier?' 'gorah-log (white-folk). no-ah! no-ah!' kim shook his head violently. there was nothing in his composition to which drill and routine appealed. 'i will not be a soldier.' 'you will be what you're told to be,' said bennett; and you should be grateful that we're going to help you.' kim smiled compassionately. if these men lay under the delusion that he would do anything that he did not fancy, so much the better. another long silence followed. bennett fidgeted with impatience, and suggested calling a sentry to evict the faquir. 'do they give or sell learning among the sahibs? ask them,' said the lama, and kim interpreted. 'they say that money is paid to the teacher--but that money the regiment will give. . . . what need? it is only for a night.' 'and--the more money is paid the better learning is given?' the lama disregarded kim's plans for an early flight. 'it is no wrong to pay for learning; to help the ignorant to wisdom is always a merit.' the rosary clicked furiously as an abacus. then he faced his oppressors. 'ask them for how much money do they give a wise and suitable teaching? and in what city is that teaching given?' 'well,' said father victor in english, when kim had translated, 'that depends. the regiment would pay for you all the time you are at the military orphanage; or you might go on the punjab masonic orphanage's list (not that he or you'ud understand what that means); but the best schooling a boy can get in india is, of course, at st. xavier's in partibus at lucknow.' this took some time to interpret, for bennett wished to cut it short. 'he wants to know how much?' said kim placidly. 'two or three hundred rupees a year.' father victor was long past any sense of amazement. bennett, impatient, did not understand. 'he says: "write that name and the money upon a paper and give it him." and he says you must write your name below, because he is going to write a letter in some days to you. he says you are a good man. he says the other man is a fool. he is going away.' the lama rose suddenly. 'i follow my search,' he cried, and was gone. 'he'll run slap into the sentries,' cried father victor, jumping up as the lama stalked out; 'but i can't leave the boy.' kim made swift motion to follow, but checked himself. there was no sound of challenge outside. the lama had disappeared. kim settled himself composedly on the chaplain's cot. at least the lama had promised that he would stay with the rajput woman from kulu, and the rest was of the smallest importance. it pleased him that the two padres were so evidently excited. they talked long in undertones, father victor urging some scheme on mr. bennett, who seemed incredulous. all this was very new and fascinating, but kim felt sleepy. they called men into the tent--one of them certainly was the colonel, as his father had prophesied--and they asked him an infinity of questions, chiefly about the woman who looked after him, all of which kim answered truthfully. they did not seem to think the woman a good guardian. after all, this was the newest of his experiences. sooner or later, if he chose, he could escape into great, gray, formless india, beyond tents and padres and colonels. meantime, if the sahibs were to be impressed, he would do his best to impress them. he too was a white man. after much talk that he could not comprehend, they handed him over to a sergeant, who had strict instructions not to let him escape. the regiment would go on to umballa, and kim would be sent up, partly at the expense of the lodge and in part by subscription, to a place called sanawar. 'it's miraculous past all whooping, colonel,' said father victor, when he had talked without a break for ten minutes. 'his buddhist friend has levanted after taking my name and address. i can't quite make out whether he'll pay for the boy's education or whether he is preparing some sort of witchcraft on his own account.' then to kim: 'you'll live to be grateful to your friend the red bull yet. we'll make a man of you at sanawar--even at the price o' making you a protestant.' 'certainly--most certainly,' said bennett. 'but you will not go to sanawar,' said kim. 'but we will go to sanawar, little man. that's the order of the commander-in-chief, who's a trifle more important than o'hara's son.' 'you will not go to sanawar. you will go to thee war.' there was a shout of laughter from the full tent. 'when you know your own regiment a trifle better you won't confuse the line of march with line of battle, kim. we hope to go to "thee war" sometime.' 'oah, i know all thatt.' kim drew his bow again at a venture. if they were not going to the war, at least they did not know what he knew of the talk in the veranda at umballa. 'i know you are not at thee war now; but i tell you that as soon as you get to umballa you will be sent to the war--the new war. it is a war of eight thousand men, besides the guns.' 'that's explicit. d'you add prophecy to your other gifts? take him along, sergeant. take up a suit for him from the drums, an' take care he doesn't slip through your fingers. who says the age of miracles is gone by? i think i'll go to bed. my poor mind's weakening.' at the far end of the camp, silent as a wild animal, an hour later sat kim, newly washed all over, in a horrible stuff suit that rasped his arms and legs. 'a most amazin' young bird,' said the sergeant. 'he turns up in charge of a yellow-headed buck-brahmin priest, with his father's lodge certificates round his neck, talkin' god knows what all of a red bull. the buck-brahmin evaporates without explanations, an' the bhoy sets cross-legged on the chaplain's bed prophesyin' bloody war to the men at large. injia's a wild land for a god-fearin' man. i'll just tie his leg to the tent-pole in case he'll go through the roof. what did ye say about the war?' 'eight thousand men, besides guns,' said kim. 'very soon you will see.' 'you're a consolin' little imp. lie down between the drums an' go to bye-bye. those two boys beside ye will watch your slumbers.' chapter vi now i remember comrades-- old playmates on new seas-- whenas we traded orpiment among the savages. ten thousand leagues to southward, and thirty years removed-- they knew not noble valdez, but me they knew and loved. 'song of diego valdez.' very early in the morning the white tents came down and disappeared as the mavericks took a side road to umballa. it did not skirt the resting-place, and kim, trudging beside a baggage-cart under fire of comments from soldiers' wives, was not so confident as over-night. he discovered that he was closely watched--father victor on the one side, and mr. bennett on the other. in the forenoon the column checked. a camel-orderly handed the colonel a letter. he read it, and spoke to a major. half a mile in the rear, kim heard a hoarse and joyful clamour rolling down on him through the thick dust. then some one beat him on the back, crying: 'tell us how ye knew, ye little limb of satan? father dear, see if ye can make him tell.' a pony ranged alongside, and he was hauled on to the priest's saddle-bow. 'now, my son, your prophecy of last night has come true. our orders are to entrain at umballa for the front to-morrow.' 'what is thatt?' said kim, for 'front' and 'entrain' were newish words to him. 'we are going to "thee war," as you called it.' 'of course you are going to thee war. i said last night.' 'ye did; but, powers o' darkness, how did ye know?' kim's eyes sparkled. he shut his lips, nodded his head, and looked unspeakable things. the chaplain moved on through the dust, and privates, sergeants, and subalterns called one another's attention to the boy. the colonel, at the head of the column, stared at him curiously. 'it was probably some bazar rumour,' he said; 'but even then--' he referred to the paper in his hand. 'hang it all, the thing was only decided within the last forty-eight hours.' 'are there many more like you in india?' said father victor, 'or are you by way o' being a lusus naturæ?' 'now i have told you,' said the boy, 'will you let me go back to my old man? if he has not stayed with that woman from kulu, i am afraid he will die.' 'by what i saw of him he's as well able to take care of himself as you. no. ye've brought us luck, an' we're goin' to make a man of you. i'll take ye back to your baggage-cart and ye'll come to me this evening.' for the rest of the day kim found himself an object of distinguished consideration among a few hundred white men. the story of his appearance in camp, the discovery of his parentage, and his prophecy, had lost nothing in the telling. a big, shapeless white woman on a pile of bedding asked him mysteriously whether he thought her husband would come back from the war. kim reflected gravely, and said that he would, and the woman gave him food. in many respects, this big procession that played music at intervals--this crowd that talked and laughed so easily--resembled a festival in lahore city. so far, there was no sign of hard work, and he resolved to lend the spectacle his patronage. at evening there came out to meet them bands of music, and played the mavericks into camp near umballa railway station. that was an interesting night. men of other regiments came to visit the mavericks. the mavericks went visiting on their own account. their pickets hurried forth to bring them back, met pickets of strange regiments on the same duty; and, after a while, the bugles blew madly for more pickets with officers to control the tumult. the mavericks had a reputation for liveliness to live up to. but they fell in on the platform next morning in perfect shape and condition; and kim, left behind with the sick, women, and boys, found himself shouting farewells excitedly as the trains drew away. life as a sahib was amusing so far; but he touched it with a cautious hand. then they marched him back in charge of a drummer-boy to empty, lime-washed barracks, whose floors were covered with rubbish and string and paper, and whose ceilings gave back his lonely footfall. native fashion, he curled himself up on a stripped cot and went to sleep. an angry man stumped down the veranda, woke him up, and said he was a schoolmaster. this was enough for kim, and he retired into his shell. he could just puzzle out the various english police notices in lahore city, because they affected his comfort; and among the many guests of the woman who looked after him had been a queer german who painted scenery for the parsee travelling theatre. he told kim that he had been 'on the barricades in forty-eight,' and therefore--at least that was how it struck kim--he would teach the boy to write in return for food. kim had been kicked as far as single letters, but did not think well of them. 'i do not know anything. go away!' said kim, scenting evil. hereupon the man caught him by the ear, dragged him to a room in a far-off wing where a dozen drummer-boys were sitting on forms, and told him to be still if he could do nothing else. this he managed very successfully. the man explained something or other with white lines on a black board for at least half an hour, and kim continued his interrupted nap. he much disapproved of the present aspect of affairs, for this was the very school and discipline he had spent two-thirds of his young life in avoiding. suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him, and he wondered that he had not thought of it before. the man dismissed them, and first to spring through the veranda into the open sunshine was kim. ''ere you! 'alt! stop!' said a high voice at his heels. 'i've got to look after you. my orders are not to let you out of my sight. where are you goin'?' it was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the forenoon--a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and kim loathed him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons. 'to the bazar--to get sweets--for you,' said kim, after thought. 'well, the bazar's out o' bounds. if we go there we'll get a dressing-down. you come back.' 'how near can we go?' kim did not know what bounds meant, but he wished to be polite--for the present. ''ow near? 'ow far, you mean? we can go as far as that tree down the road.' 'then i will go there.' 'all right. i ain't goin'. it's too 'ot. i can watch you from 'ere. it's no good runnin' away. if you did, they'd spot you by your clothes. that's regimental stuff you're wearin'. there ain't a picket in umballa wouldn't 'ead you back quicker than you started out.' this did not impress kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment would tire him out if he tried to run. he slouched to the tree at the corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives passing. most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the european boy could not follow. the low, quick answer undeceived him. kim put his fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue he knew best. 'and now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazar and tell him to come here. i would write a letter.' 'but--but what manner of white man's son art thou, to need a bazar letter-writer? is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?' 'ay; and hell is full of the same sort. do my order, you--you od! thy mother was married under a basket! servant of lal beg' (kim knew the god of the sweepers), 'run on my business or we will talk again.' the sweeper shuffled off in haste. 'there is a white boy by the barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,' he stammered to the first bazar letter-writer he came across. 'he needs thee.' 'will he pay?' said that spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens and sealing-wax all in order. 'i do not know. he is not like other boys. go and see. it is well worth.' kim danced with impatience when the slim young kayeth hove in sight. as soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly. 'first i will take my pay,' the letter-writer said. 'bad words have made the price higher. but who art thou, dressed in that fashion, to speak in this fashion?' 'aha! that is in the letter which thou shalt write. never was such a tale. but i am in no haste. another writer will serve me. umballa city is as full of them as is lahore.' 'four annas,' said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in the shade of a deserted barrack-wing. mechanically kim squatted beside him,--squatted as only the natives can,--in spite of the abominable clinging trousers. the writer regarded him sideways. 'that is the price to ask of sahibs,' said kim. 'now fix me a true one.' 'an anna and a half. how do i know, having written the letter, that thou wilt not run away?' 'i must not go beyond this tree, and there is also the stamp to be considered.' 'i get no commission on the price of the stamp. once more, what manner of white boy art thou?' 'that shall be said in the letter, which is to mahbub ali, the horse-dealer in the kashmir serai, at lahore. he is my friend.' 'wonder on wonder!' murmured the letter-writer, dipping a reed in the inkstand. 'to be written in hindi?' 'assuredly. to mahbub ali then. begin! "i have come down with the old man as far as umballa in the train. at umballa i carried the news of the bay mare's pedigree."' after what he had seen in the garden, he was not going to write of white stallions. 'slower a little. what has a bay mare to do. . . . is it mahbub ali the great dealer?' 'who else? i have been in his service. take more ink. again. "as the order was, so i did it. we then went on foot towards benares, but on the third day we found a certain regiment." is that down?' 'ay, "pulton,"' murmured the writer, all ears. '"i went into their camp and was caught, and by means of the charm about my neck, which thou knowest, it was established that i was the son of some man in the regiment: according to the prophecy of the red bull, which thou knowest was common talk of our bazar."' kim waited for this shaft to sink into the letter-writer's heart, cleared his throat, and continued: '"a priest clothed me and gave me a new name . . . one priest, however, was a fool. the clothes are very heavy, but i am a sahib and my heart is heavy too. they send me to a school and beat me. i do not like the air and water here. come then and help me, mahbub ali, or send me some money, for i have not sufficient to pay the writer who writes this."' '"who writes this." it is my own fault that i was tricked. thou art as clever as husain bux that forged the treasury stamps at nucklao. but what a tale! what a tale! is it true by any chance?' [illustration: 'first i will take my pay,' the letter-writer said.] 'it does not profit to tell lies to mahbub ali. it is better to help his friends by lending them a stamp. when the money comes i will repay.' the writer grunted doubtfully, but took a stamp out of his desk, sealed the letter, handed it over to kim, and departed. mahbub ali's was a name of power in umballa. 'that is the way to win a good account with the gods,' kim shouted after him. 'pay me twice over when the money comes,' the man cried over his shoulder. 'what was you bukkin' to that nigger about?' said the drummer-boy when kim returned to the veranda. 'i was watchin' you.' 'i was only talkin' to him.' 'you talk the same as a nigger, don't you?' 'no-ah! no-ah! i onlee speak a little. what shall we do now?' 'the bugles 'ill go for dinner in arf a minute. my gawd! i wish i'd gone up to the front with the regiment. it's awful doin' nothin' but school down 'ere. don't you 'ate it?' 'oah yess!' 'i'd run away if i knew where to go to, but, as the men say, in this bloomin' injia you're only a prisoner at large. you can't desert without bein' took back at once. i'm fair sick of it.' 'you have been in be--england?' 'w'y, i only come out last troopin' season with my mother. i should think i 'ave been in england. what a ignorant little beggar you are. you was brought up in the gutter, wasn't you?' 'oah yess. tell me something about england. my father he came from there.' though he would not say so, kim of course disbelieved every word the drummer-boy spoke about the liverpool suburb which was his england. it passed the heavy time till dinner--a most unappetising meal served to the boys and a few invalids in a corner of a barrack-room. but that he had written to mahbub ali, kim would have been almost depressed. the indifference of native crowds he was used to; but this strong loneliness among white men preyed on him. he was grateful when, in the course of the afternoon, a big soldier took him over to father victor, who lived in another wing across another dusty parade-ground. the priest was reading an english letter written in purple ink. he looked at kim more curiously than ever. 'an' how do you like it, my son, as far as you've gone? not much, eh? it must be hard--very hard on a wild animal. listen now. i've an amazin' epistle from your friend.' 'where is he? is he well? oah! if he knows to write me letters, it is all right.' 'you're fond of him then?' 'of course i am fond of him. he was fond of me.' 'it seems so by the look of this. he can't write english, can he?' 'oah no. not that i know, but of course he found a letter-writer who can write english verree well, and so he wrote. i do hope you understand.' 'that accounts for it. d'you know anything about his money affairs?' kim's face showed that he did not. 'how can i tell?' 'that's what i'm askin'. now listen if you can make head or tail o' this. we'll skip the first part. . . . it's written from jagadhir road. . . . "sitting on wayside in grave meditation, trusting to be favoured with your honour's applause of present step, which recommend your honour to execute for almighty god's sake. education is greatest blessing if of best sorts. otherwise no earthly use." faith, the old man's hit the bull's-eye that time! "if your honour condescending giving my boy best educations xavier" (i suppose that's st. xavier in partibus) "in terms of our conversation dated in your tent th instant" (a business-like touch there!) "then almighty god blessing your honour's succeedings to third an' fourth generation and"--now listen!--"confide in your honour's humble servant for adequat remuneration per hoondie per annum three hundred rupees a year to one expensive education st. xavier, lucknow, and allow small time to forward same per hoondie sent to any part of india as your honour shall address yourself. this servant of your honour has presently no place to lay crown of his head, but going to benares by train on account of persecution of old woman talking so much and unanxious residing saharunpore in any domestic capacity." now what in the world does that mean?' 'she has asked him to be puro--her clergyman--at saharunpore, i think. he would not do that on account of his river. she did talk.' 'it's clear to you, is it? it beats me altogether. "so going to benares, where will find address and forward rupees for boy who is apple of eye, and for almighty god's sake execute this education, and your petitioner as in duty bound shall ever awfully pray. written by sobrao satai, failed entrance allahabad university, for venerable teshoo lama the priest of suchzen looking for a river, address care of tirthankers' temple, benares. p. m.--please note boy is apple of eye, and rupees shall be sent per hoondie three hundred per annum. for god almighty's sake." now, is that ravin' lunacy or a business proposition? i ask you, because i'm fairly at my wits' end.' 'he says he will give me three hundred rupees a year, so he will give me them.' 'oh, that's the way you look at it, is it?' 'of course. if he says so!' the priest whistled; then he addressed kim as an equal. 'i don't believe it; but we'll see. you were goin' off to-day to the military orphanage at sanawar, where the regiment would keep you till you were old enough to enlist. ye'd be brought up to the church of england. bennett arranged for that. on the other hand, if ye go to st. xavier's ye'll get a better education an'--an' can have the religion. d'ye see my dilemma?' kim saw nothing save a vision of the lama going south in a train with none to beg for him. 'like most people, i'm going to temporise. if your friend sends the money from benares--powers of darkness below, where's a street-beggar to raise three hundred rupees?--ye'll go down to lucknow and i'll pay your fare, because i can't touch the subscription-money if i intend, as i do, to make ye a catholic. if he doesn't, ye'll go to the military orphanage at the regiment's expense. i'll allow him three days' grace, though i don't believe it at all. even then, if he fails in his payments later on . . . but it's beyond me. we can only walk one step at a time in this world, praise god! an' they sent bennett to the front an' left me behind. bennett can't expect everything.' 'oah yess,' said kim vaguely. the priest leaned forward. 'i'd give a month's pay to find what's goin' on inside that little round head of yours.' 'there is nothing,' said kim, and scratched it. he was wondering whether mahbub ali would send him as much as a whole rupee. then he could pay the letter-writer and write letters to the lama at benares. perhaps mahbub ali would visit him next time he came south with horses. surely he must know that kim's delivery of the letter to the officer at umballa had caused the great war which the men and boys had discussed so loudly over the barrack dinner-tables. but if mahbub ali did not know this, it would be very unsafe to tell him so. mahbub ali was hard upon boys who knew, or thought they knew, too much. 'well, till i get further news'--father victor's voice interrupted the reverie--'ye can run along and play with the other boys. they'll teach ye something--but i don't think ye'll like it.' the day dragged to its weary end. when he wished to sleep he was instructed how to fold up his clothes and set out his boots; the other boys deriding. bugles waked him in the dawn; the schoolmaster caught him after breakfast, thrust a page of meaningless characters under his nose, gave them senseless names, and whacked him without reason. kim meditated poisoning him with opium borrowed from a barrack-sweeper, but reflected that, as they all ate at one table in public (this was peculiarly revolting to kim, who preferred to turn his back on the world at his meals), the stroke might be dangerous. then he attempted running off to the village where the priest had tried to drug the lama--the village where the old soldier lived. but far-seeing sentries at every exit headed back the little scarlet figure. trousers and jacket crippled body and mind alike, so he abandoned the project and fell back, oriental fashion, on time and chance. three days of torment passed in the big, echoing white rooms. he walked out of afternoons under escort of the drummer-boy, and all he heard from his companion were the few useless words which seemed to make two-thirds of the white man's abuse. kim knew and despised them all long ago. the boy resented his silence and lack of interest by beating him, as was only natural. he did not care for any of the bazars which were in bounds. he styled all natives 'niggers'; yet servants and sweepers called him abominable names to his face, and, misled by their deferential attitude, he never understood. this somewhat consoled kim for the beatings. on the morning of the fourth day a judgment overtook that drummer. they had gone out together towards umballa race-course. he returned alone, weeping, with news that young o'hara, to whom he had been doing nothing in particular, had hailed a scarlet-bearded nigger on horseback; that the nigger had then and there laid into him with a peculiarly adhesive quirt, picked up young o'hara, and borne him off at full gallop. these tidings came to father victor, and he drew down his long upper lip. he was already sufficiently startled by a letter from the temple of the tirthankers at benares, enclosing a native banker's note of hand for three hundred rupees, and an amazing prayer to 'almighty god.' the lama would have been more annoyed than the priest had he known how the bazar letter-writer had translated his phrase 'to acquire merit.' 'powers of darkness below!' father victor fumbled with the note. 'an' now he's off with another of his peep-o'-day friends. i don't know whether it will be a greater relief to me to get him back or to have him lost. he's beyond my comprehension. how the divil--yes, he's the man i mean--can a street-beggar raise money to educate white boys?' three miles off, on umballa race-course, mahbub ali, reining a gray cabuli stallion with kim in front of him, was saying: 'but, little friend of all the world, there is my honour and reputation to be considered. all the officer-sahibs in all the regiments, and all umballa, know mahbub ali. men saw me pick thee up and chastise that boy. we are seen now from far across this plain. how can i take thee away, or account for thy disappearing if i set thee down and let thee run off into the crops? they would put me in jail. be patient. once a sahib, always a sahib. when thou art a man--who knows--thou wilt be grateful to mahbub ali.' 'take me beyond their sentries where i can change this red. give me money and i will go to benares and be with my lama again. i do not want to be a sahib, and remember i did deliver that message.' the stallion bounded wildly. mahbub ali had incautiously driven home the sharp-edged stirrup. (he was not the new sort of fluent horse-dealer who wears english boots and spurs.) kim drew his own conclusions from that betrayal. 'that was a small matter. it lay on the straight road to benares. i and the sahib have by this time forgotten it. i send so many letters and messages to men who ask questions about horses, i cannot well remember one from the other. was it some matter of a bay mare that peters sahib wished the pedigree of?' kim saw the trap at once. if he had said 'bay mare' mahbub would have known by his very readiness to fall in with the amendment that the boy suspected something. kim replied therefore: 'bay mare? no. i do not forget my messages thus. it was a white stallion.' 'ay, so it was. a white arab stallion. but thou didst write bay mare to me.' 'who cares to tell truth to a letter-writer?' kim answered, feeling mahbub's palm on his heart. 'hi! mahbub, you old villain, pull up!' cried a voice, and an englishman raced alongside on a little polo-pony. 'i've been chasing you half over the country. that cabuli of yours can go. for sale, i suppose?' 'i have some young stuff coming on made by heaven for the delicate and difficult polo-game. he has no equal. he--' 'plays polo and waits at table. yes. we know all that. what the deuce have you got there?' 'a boy,' said mahbub gravely. 'he was being beaten by another boy. his father was once a white soldier in the big war. the boy was a child in lahore city. he played with my horses when he was a babe. now i think they will make him a soldier. he has been newly caught by his father's regiment that went up to the war last week. but i do not think he wants to be a soldier. i take him for a ride. tell me where thy barracks are and i will set thee there.' 'let me go. i can find the barracks alone.' 'and if thou runnest away who will say it is not my fault?' 'he'll run back to his dinner. where has he to run to?' the englishman asked. 'he was born in the land. he has friends. he goes where he chooses. he is a chabuk sawai (a sharp chap). it needs only to change his clothing, and in a twinkling he would be a low-caste hindi boy.' 'the deuce he would!' the englishman looked critically at the boy as mahbub headed towards the barracks. kim ground his teeth. mahbub was mocking him, as faithless afghans will; for he went on: 'they will send him to a school and put heavy boots on his feet and swaddle him in these clothes. then he will forget all he knows. now which of the barracks is thine?' kim pointed--he could not speak--to father victor's wing, all staring white near by. 'perhaps he will make a good soldier,' said mahbub reflectively. 'he will make a good orderly at least. i sent him to deliver a message once from lahore. a message concerning the pedigree of a white stallion.' here was deadly insult on deadlier injury--and the sahib to whom he had so craftily given that war-making letter heard it all. kim beheld mahbub ali frying in flame for his treachery, but for himself he saw one long gray vista of barracks, schools, and barracks again. he gazed imploringly at the clear-cut face in which there was no glimmer of recognition; but even at this extremity it never occurred to him to throw himself on the white man's mercy or to denounce the afghan. and mahbub stared deliberately at the englishman, who stared as deliberately at kim, quivering and tongue-tied. 'my horse is well trained,' said the dealer. 'others would have kicked, sahib.' 'ah,' said the englishman at last, rubbing his pony's damp withers with his whip-butt. 'who makes the boy a soldier?' 'he says the regiment that found him, and especially the padre-sahib of that regiment.' 'there is the padre!' kim choked as bare-headed father victor sailed down upon them from the veranda. 'powers o' darkness below, o'hara! how many more mixed friends do you keep in asia?' he cried, as kim slid down and stood helplessly before him. 'good morning, padre,' the colonel said cheerily. 'i know you by reputation well enough. meant to have come over and called before this. i'm creighton.' 'of the ethnological survey?' said father victor. the colonel nodded. 'faith i'm glad to meet ye then; an' i owe you some thanks for bringing back the boy.' 'no thanks to me, padre. besides, the boy wasn't going away. you don't know old mahbub ali'--the horse-dealer sat impassive in the sunlight. 'you will when you have been in the station a month. he sells us all our crocks. that boy is rather a curiosity. can you tell me anything about him?' 'can i tell you?' puffed father victor. 'you'll be the one man that could help me in my quandaries. tell you! powers o' darkness, i'm bursting to tell some one who knows something o' the native!' a groom came round the corner. colonel creighton raised his voice, speaking in urdu. 'very good, mahbub ali, but what is the use of telling me all those stories about the pony. not one pie more than three hundred and fifty rupees will i give.' 'the sahib is a little hot and angry after riding,' the horse-dealer returned, with the leer of a privileged jester. 'presently, he will see my horse's points more clearly. i will wait till he has finished his talk with the padre. i will wait under that tree.' 'confound you!' the colonel laughed. 'that comes of looking at one of mahbub's horses. he's a regular old leech, padre. wait then, if thou hast so much time to spare, mahbub. now i'm at your service, padre. where is the boy? oh, he's gone off to collogue with mahbub. queer sort of boy. might i ask you to send my mare round under cover?' he dropped into a chair which commanded a clear view of kim and mahbub ali in conference beneath the tree. the padre went indoors for cheroots. creighton heard kim say bitterly: 'trust a brahmin before a snake, and a snake before a harlot, and a harlot before an afghan, mahbub ali.' 'that is all one,' the great red beard wagged solemnly. 'children should not see a carpet on the loom till the pattern is made plain. believe me, friend of all the world, i do thee great service. they will not make a soldier of thee.' 'you crafty old sinner,' thought creighton. 'but you're not far wrong. that boy mustn't be wasted if he is as advertised.' 'excuse me half a minute,' cried the padre from within, 'but i'm gettin' the documents of the case.' 'if through me the favour of this bold and wise colonel sahib comes to thee, and thou art raised to honour, what thanks wilt thou give mahbub ali when thou art a man?' 'nay, nay; i begged thee to let me take the road again, where i should have been safe; and thou hast sold me back to the english. what will they give thee for blood-money?' 'a cheerful young demon!' the colonel bit his cigar, and turned politely to father victor. 'what are the letters that the fat priest is waving before the colonel? stand behind the stallion as though looking at my bridle!' said mahbub ali. 'a letter from my lama which he wrote from jagadhir road, saying that he will pay three hundred rupees by the year for my schooling.' 'oho! is old red hat of that sort? at which school?' 'god knows. i think in nucklao.' 'yes. there is a big school there for the sons of sahibs--and half-sahibs. i have seen it when i sell horses there. so the lama also loved the friend of all the world?' 'ay; and he did not tell lies, or return me to captivity.' 'small wonder the padre does not know how to unravel the thread. how fast he talks to the colonel sahib.' mahbub ali chuckled. 'by allah!'--the keen eyes swept the veranda for an instant--'thy lama has sent what to me looks like a note of hand. i have had some small dealings in hoondies. the colonel sahib is looking at it.' 'what good is all this to me?' said kim wearily. 'thou wilt go away, and they will return me to those empty rooms where there is no good place to sleep and where the boys beat me.' 'i do not think that. have patience, child. all pathans are not faithless--except in horseflesh.' five--ten--fifteen minutes passed, father victor talking energetically or asking questions which the colonel answered. 'now i've told you everything that i know about the boy from beginnin' to end; and it's a blessed relief to me. did ye ever hear the like?' 'at any rate, the old man has sent the money. gobind sahai's notes of hand are good from here to china,' said the colonel. 'the more one knows about natives the less can one say what they will or won't do.' 'that's consolin'--from the head of the ethnological survey. it's this mixture of red bulls and rivers of healing (poor heathen, god help him!) an' notes of hand and masonic certificates. are you a mason, by any chance?' 'by jove, i am, now i come to think of it. that's an additional reason,' said the colonel absently. 'i'm glad ye see a reason in it. but as i said, it's the mixture o' things that's beyond me. an' his prophesyin' to our colonel sitting on my bed with his little shimmy torn open showing his white skin; an' the prophecy comin' true! they'll cure all that nonsense at st. xavier's, eh?' 'sprinkle him with holy water,' the colonel laughed. 'on my word, i fancy i ought to sometimes. but i'm hoping he'll be brought up as a good catholic. all that troubles me is what'll happen if the old beggarman--' 'lama, lama, my dear sir; and some of them are gentlemen in their own country.' 'the lama, then, fails to pay next year. he's a fine business head to plan on the spur of the moment, but he's bound to die some day. an' takin' a heathen's money to give a child a christian education--' 'but he said explicitly what he wanted. as soon as he knew the boy was white he seems to have made his arrangements accordingly. i'd give a month's pay to hear how he explained it all at the tirthankers' temple at benares. look here, padre, i don't pretend to know much about natives, but if he says he'll pay, he'll pay--dead or alive. i mean his heirs will assume the debt. my advice to you is, send the boy down to lucknow. if your anglican chaplain thinks you've stolen a march on him--' 'bad luck to bennett! he was sent to the front instead o' me. doughty certified me medically unfit. i'll excommunicate doughty if he comes back alive! surely bennett ought to be content with--' 'glory, leaving you the religion. quite so! as a matter of fact i don't think bennett will mind. put the blame on me. i--er--strongly recommend sending the boy to st. xavier's. he can go down on pass as a soldier's orphan, so the railway fare will be saved. you can buy him an outfit from the regimental subscription. the lodge will be saved the expense of his education, and that will put the lodge in a good temper. it's perfectly easy. i've got to go down to lucknow next week. i'll look after the boy on the way--give him in charge of my servants, and so on.' 'you're a good man.' 'not in the least. don't make that mistake. the lama has sent us money for a definite end. we can't very well return it. we shall have to do as he says. well, that's settled, isn't it? shall we say that, tuesday next, you'll hand him over to me at the night train south? that's only three days. he can't do much harm in three days.' 'it's a weight off my mind, but--this thing here?'--he waved the note of hand--'i don't know gobind sahai: or his bank, which may be a hole in a wall.' 'you've never been a subaltern in debt. i'll cash it if you like, and send you the vouchers in proper order.' 'but with all your own work too! it's askin'--' 'it's not the least trouble indeed. you see, as an ethnologist, the thing's very interesting to me. i'd like to make a note of it for some government work that i'm doing. the transformation of a regimental badge like your red bull into a sort of fetish that the boy follows is very interesting.' 'but i can't thank you enough.' 'there's one thing you can do. all we ethnological men are as jealous as jackdaws of one another's discoveries. they're of no interest to any one but ourselves, of course, but you know what book-collectors are like. well, don't say a word, directly or indirectly, about the asiatic side of the boy's character--his adventures and his prophecy, and so on. i'll worm them out of the boy later on and--you see?' 'i do. ye'll make a wonderful account of it. never a word will i say to any one till i see it in print.' 'thank you. that goes straight to an ethnologist's heart. well, i must be getting back to my breakfast. good heavens! old mahbub here still?' he raised his voice, and the horse-dealer came out from under the shadow of the tree. 'well, what is it?' 'as regards that young horse,' said mahbub, 'i say that when a colt is born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without teaching--when such a colt knows the game by divination--then i say it is a great wrong to break that colt to a heavy cart, sahib!' 'so do i say also, mahbub. the colt will be entered for polo only. (these fellows think of nothing in the world but horses, padre.) i'll see you to-morrow, mahbub, if you've anything likely for sale.' the dealer saluted, horseman fashion, with a sweep of the off hand. 'be patient a little, friend of all the world,' he whispered to the agonised kim. 'thy fortune is made. in a little while thou goest to nucklao and--here is something to pay the letter-writer. i shall see thee again, i think, many times,' and he cantered off down the road. 'listen to me,' said the colonel from the veranda, speaking in the vernacular. 'in three days thou wilt go with me to lucknow, seeing and hearing new things all the while. therefore sit still for three days and do not run away. thou wilt go to school at lucknow.' 'shall i meet my holy one there?' kim whimpered. 'at least lucknow is nearer to benares than umballa. it may be thou wilt go under my protection. mahbub ali knows this, and he will be angry if thou returnest to the road now. remember--much has been told to me which i do not forget.' 'i will wait,' said kim, 'but the boys will beat me.' then the bugles blew for dinner. [illustration: '. . . pathans are not faithless--except in horse-flesh.'] chapter vii unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised with idiot moons and stars retracting stars? creep thou betweene--thy coming's all unnoised. heaven hath her high, as earth her baser, wars. heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray (by adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway); peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say which planet mends thy threadbare fate or mars! sir john christie. in the afternoon the red-faced schoolmaster told kim that he had been 'struck off the strength,' which conveyed no meaning to him till he was ordered to go away and play. then he ran to the bazar, and found the young letter-writer to whom he owed a stamp. 'now i pay,' said kim royally, 'and now i need another letter to be written.' 'mahbub ali is in umballa,' said the writer jauntily. he was, by virtue of his office, a bureau of general misinformation. 'this is not to mahbub, but to a priest. take thy pen and write quickly. "to teshoo lama, the holy one from bhotiyal seeking for a river, who is now in the temple of the tirthankers at benares." take more ink! "in three days i am to go down to nucklao to the school at nucklao. the name of the school is xavier. i do not know where that school is, but it is at nucklao." 'but i know nucklao,' the writer interrupted. 'i know the school.' 'tell him where it is, and i give half an anna.' the reed pen scratched busily. 'he cannot mistake.' the man lifted his head. 'who watches us across the street?' kim looked up hurriedly and saw colonel creighton in tennis-flannels. 'oh, that is some sahib who knows the fat priest in the barracks. he is beckoning me.' 'what dost thou?' said the colonel, when kim trotted up. 'i--i am not running away. i send a letter to my holy one at benares.' 'i had not thought of that. hast thou said that i take thee to lucknow?' 'nay, i have not. read the letter, if there be a doubt.' 'then why hast thou left out my name in writing to that holy one?' the colonel smiled a queer smile. kim took his courage in both hands. 'it was said once to me that it is inexpedient to write the names of strangers concerned in any matter, because by the naming of names many good plans are brought to confusion.' 'thou hast been well taught,' the colonel replied, and kim flushed. 'i have left my cheroot-case in the padre's veranda. bring it to my house this even.' 'where is the house?' said kim. his quick wit told him that he was being tested in some fashion or another, and he stood on guard. 'ask any one in the big bazar.' the colonel walked on. 'he has forgotten his cheroot-case,' said kim, returning. 'i must bring it to him this evening. that is all my letter except, thrice over, "come to me! come to me! come to me!" now i will pay for a stamp and put it in the post.' he rose to go, and as an afterthought asked, 'who is that angry-faced sahib who lost the cheroot-case?' 'oh, he is only creighton sahib--a very foolish sahib, who is a colonel sahib without a regiment.' 'what is his business?' 'god knows. he is always buying horses which he cannot ride, and asking riddles about the works of god--such as plants and stones and the customs of people. the dealers call him the father of fools, because he is so easily cheated about a horse. mahbub ali says he is madder than all other sahibs.' 'oh!' said kim, and departed. his training had given him some small knowledge of character, and he argued that fools are not given information which leads to calling out eight thousand men, besides guns. the commander-in-chief of all india does not talk, as kim had heard him talk, to fools. nor would mahbub ali's tone have changed, as it did every time he mentioned the colonel's name, if the colonel had been a fool. consequently--and this set kim to skipping--there was a mystery somewhere, and mahbub ali probably spied for the colonel much as kim had spied for mahbub. and, like the horse-dealer, the colonel evidently respected people who did not show themselves to be too clever. he rejoiced that he had not betrayed his knowledge of the colonel's house; and when, on his return to barracks, he discovered that no cheroot-case had been left behind, he beamed with delight. here was a man after his own heart--a tortuous and indirect person playing a hidden game. well, if he could be a fool, so could kim. he showed nothing of his mind when father victor, for three long mornings, discoursed to him of an entirely new set of gods and godlings--notably of a goddess called mary, who, he gathered, was one with bibi miriam of mahbub ali's theology. he betrayed no emotion when, after the lecture, father victor dragged him from shop to shop buying articles of outfit, nor when envious drummer-boys kicked him because he was going to a superior school did he complain, but awaited the play of circumstances with an interested soul. father victor, good man, took him to the station, put him into an empty second-class next to colonel creighton's first, and bade him farewell with genuine feeling. 'they'll make a man o' you, o'hara, at st. xavier's--a white man, an', i hope, a good man. they know all about your comin', an' the colonel will see that ye're not lost or mislaid anywhere on the road. i've given you a notion of religious matters,--at least i hope so,--and you'll remember, when they ask you your religion, that you're a cath'lic. better say roman cath'lic, tho' i'm not fond of the word.' kim lit a rank cigarette--he had been careful to buy a stock in the bazar--and lay down to think. this solitary passage was very different from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the lama. 'sahibs get little pleasure of travel,' he reflected. 'hai mai! i go from one place to another as it might be a kick-ball. it is my kismet. no man can escape his kismet. but i am to pray to bibi miriam and i am a sahib'--he looked at his boots ruefully. 'no; i am kim. this is the great world, and i am only kim. who is kim?' he considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. he was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of india, going southward to he knew not what fate. presently the colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. so far as kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the survey of india as a chain-man. if he were very good, and passed the proper examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen years old, and colonel creighton would see that he found a suitable employment. kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of this talk. then the colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent and picturesque urdu and kim was contented. no man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other sahibs. 'yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers--to carry these pictures in thy eye till a suitable time comes to set them upon paper. perhaps some day, when thou art a chain-man, i may say to thee when we are working together: "go across those hills and see what lies beyond." then one will say: "there are bad people living in those hills who will slay the chain-man if he be seen to look like a sahib." what then?' kim thought. would it be safe to return the colonel's lead? 'i would tell what that other man had said.' 'but if i answered: "i will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge of what is behind those hills--for a picture of a river and a little news of what the people say in the villages there"?' 'how can i tell? i am only a boy. wait till i am a man.' then, seeing the colonel's brow clouded, he went on: 'but i think i should in a few days earn the hundred rupees.' 'by what road?' kim shook his head resolutely. 'if i said how i would earn them, another man might hear and forestall me. it is no good to sell knowledge for nothing.' 'tell now.' the colonel held up a rupee. kim's hand half reached towards it, and dropped. 'nay, sahib; nay. i know the price that will be paid for the answer, but i do not know why the question is asked.' 'take it for a gift, then,' said creighton, tossing it over. 'there is a good spirit in thee. do not let it be blunted at st. xavier's. there are many boys there who despise the black men.' 'their mothers were bazar-women,' said kim. he knew well there is no hatred like that of the half-caste for his brother-in-law. 'true; but thou art a sahib and the son of a sahib. therefore, do not at any time be led to contemn the black men. i have known boys newly entered into the service of the government who feigned not to understand the talk or the customs of black men. their pay was cut for ignorance. there is no sin so great as ignorance. remember this.' several times in the course of the long twenty-four hours' run south did the colonel send for kim, always developing this latter text. 'we be all on one lead-rope, then,' said kim at last, 'the colonel, mahbub ali, and i--when i become a chain-man. he will use me as mahbub ali employed me, i think. that is good, if it allows me to return to the road again. this clothing grows no easier by wear.' when they came to the crowded lucknow station there was no sign of the lama. he swallowed his disappointment, while the colonel bundled him into a ticca-garri with his neat belongings and dispatched him alone to st. xavier's. 'i do not say farewell, because we shall meet again,' he cried. 'again, and many times, if thou art one of good spirit. but thou art not yet tried.' 'not when i brought thee'--kim actually dared to use the tum of equals--'a white stallion's pedigree that night?' 'much is gained by forgetting, little brother,' said the colonel, with a look that pierced through kim's shoulder-blades as he scuttled into the carriage. it took him nearly five minutes to recover. then he sniffed the new air appreciatively. 'a rich city,' he said. 'richer than lahore. how good the bazars must be! coachman, drive me a little through the bazars here.' 'my order is to take thee to the school.' the driver used the 'thou,' which is rudeness when applied to a white man. in the clearest and most fluent vernacular kim pointed out his error, climbed on to the box-seat, and, perfect understanding established, drove for a couple of hours up and down, estimating, comparing, and enjoying. there is no city--except bombay, the queen of all--more beautiful in her garish style than lucknow, whether you see her from the bridge over the river, or from the top of the imambara looking down on the gilt umbrellas of the chutter munzil, and the trees in which the town is bedded. kings have adorned her with fantastic buildings, endowed her with charities, crammed her with pensioners, and drenched her with blood. she is the centre of all idleness, intrigue, and luxury, and shares with delhi the claim to talk the only pure urdu. 'a fair city--a beautiful city.' the driver, as a lucknow man, was pleased with the compliment, and told kim many astounding things where an english guide would have talked of the mutiny. 'now we will go to the school,' said kim at last. the great old school of st. xavier's in partibus, block on block of low white buildings, stands in vast grounds over against the gumti river, at some distance from the city. 'what like of folk are they within?' said kim. 'young sahibs--all devils; but to speak truth, and i drive many of them to and fro from the railway station, i have never seen one that had in him the making of a more perfect devil than thou--this young sahib whom i am now driving.' naturally, for he was never trained to consider them in any way improper, kim had passed the time of day with one or two frivolous ladies at upper windows in a certain street, and naturally, in the exchange of compliments, had acquitted himself well. he was about to acknowledge the driver's last insolence, when his eye--it was growing dusk--caught a figure sitting by one of the white plaster gate-pillars in the long sweep of wall. 'stop!' he cried. 'stay here! i do not go to the school at once.' 'but what is to pay me for this coming and recoming?' said the driver petulantly. 'is the boy mad? last time it was a dancing-girl. this time it is a priest.' kim was in the road headlong, patting the dusty feet beneath the dirty yellow robe. 'i have waited here a day and a half,' the lama's level voice began. 'nay, i had a disciple with me. he that was my friend at the temple of the tirthankers gave me a guide for this journey. i came from benares in the train, when thy letter was given me. yes, i am well fed. i need nothing.' 'but why didst thou not stay with the kulu woman, o holy one? in what way didst thou get to benares? my heart has been heavy since we parted.' 'the woman wearied me by constant flux of talk and requiring charms for children. i separated myself from that company, permitting her to acquire merit by gifts. she is at least a woman of open hands, and i made a promise to return to her house if need arose. then, perceiving myself alone in this great and terrible world, i bethought me of the te-rain to benares, where i knew one abode in the tirthankers' temple who was a seeker, even as i.' 'ah! thy river,' said kim. 'i had forgotten the river.' 'so soon, my chela? i have never forgotten it; but when i had left thee it seemed better that i should go to the temple and take counsel, for, look you, india is very large, and it may be that wise men before us, some two or three, have left a record of the place of our river. there is debate in the temple of the tirthankers on this matter; some saying one thing, and some another. they are courteous folk.' 'so be it; but what dost thou do now?' 'i acquire merit in that i help thee, my chela, to wisdom. the priest of that body of men who serve the red bull wrote me that all should be as i desired for thee. i sent the money to suffice for one year, and then i came, as thou seest me, to watch for thee going up into the gates of learning. a day and a half have i waited--not because i was led by any affection towards thee--that is not part of the way--but, as they said at the tirthankers' temple, because, money having been paid for learning, it was right that i should oversee the end of the matter. they resolved my doubts most clearly. i had a fear that, perhaps, i came because i wished to see thee--misguided by the red mist of affection. it is not so. . . . moreover, i am troubled by a dream.' 'but surely, holy one, thou hast not forgotten the road and all that befell on it. surely it was a little to see me that thou didst come?' 'the horses are cold, and it is past their feeding-time,' whined the driver. 'go to jehannum and abide there with thy reputationless aunt!' kim snarled over his shoulder. 'i am all alone in this land; i know not where i go nor what shall befall me. my heart was in that letter i sent thee. except for mahbub ali, and he is a pathan, i have no friend save thee, holy one. do not altogether go away.' 'i have considered that also,' the lama replied, in a shaking voice. 'it is manifest that from time to time i shall acquire merit--if before that i have not found my river--by assuring myself that thy feet are set on wisdom. what they will teach thee i do not know, but the priest wrote me that no son of a sahib in all india will be better taught than thou. so from time to time, therefore, i will come again. may be thou wilt be such a sahib as he who gave me these spectacles'--the lama wiped them elaborately--'in the wonder house at lahore. that is my hope, for he was a fountain of wisdom--wiser than many abbots. . . . again, may be thou wilt forget me and our meetings.' 'if i eat thy bread,' cried kim passionately, 'how shall i ever forget thee?' 'no--no.' he put the boy aside. 'i must go back to benares. from time to time, now that i know the customs of letter-writers in this land, i will send thee a letter, and from time to time i will come and see thee.' 'but whither shall i send my letters?' wailed kim, clutching at the robe, all forgetful that he was a sahib. 'to the temple of the tirthankers at benares. that is the place i have chosen till i find my river. do not weep; for, look you, all desire is illusion and a new binding upon the wheel. go up to the gates of learning. let me see thee go. . . . dost thou love me? then go, or my heart cracks. . . . i will come again. surely i will come again.' the lama watched the ticca-garri rumble into the compound, and strode off, snuffing between each long stride. 'the gates of learning' shut with a clang. * * * * * the country born and bred boy has his own manners and customs, which do not resemble those of any other land; and his teachers approach him by roads which an english master would not understand. therefore, you would scarcely be interested in kim's experiences as a st. xavier's boy among two or three hundred precocious youths, most of whom had never seen the sea. he suffered the usual penalties for breaking out of bounds when there was cholera in the city. this was before he had learned to write fair english, and so was obliged to find a bazar letter-writer. he was, of course, indicted for smoking and for the use of abuse more full-flavoured than even st. xavier's had ever heard. he learned to wash himself with the levitical scrupulosity of the native-born, who in his heart considers the englishman rather dirty. he played the usual tricks on the patient coolies pulling the punkahs in the sleeping-rooms where the boys thrashed through the hot nights telling tales till the dawn; and quietly he measured himself against his self-reliant mates. they were sons of subordinate officials in the railway, telegraph, and canal services; of warrant-officers sometimes retired and sometimes acting as commanders-in-chief to a feudatory rajah's army; of captains of the indian marine, government pensioners, planters, presidency shopkeepers, and missionaries. a few were cadets of the old eurasian houses that have taken strong root in dhurrumtollah--pereiras, de souzas, and d'silvas. their parents could well have educated them in england, but they loved the school that had served their own youth, and generation followed sallow-hued generation at st. xavier's. their homes ranged from howrah of the railway people to abandoned cantonments like monghyr and chunar; lost tea-gardens shillong-way; villages where their fathers were large landholders in oudh or the deccan; mission-stations a week from the nearest railway line; seaports a thousand miles south, facing the brazen indian surf; and cinchona-plantations south of all. the mere story of their adventures, which to them were no adventures, on their road to and from school would have crisped a western boy's hair. they were used to jogging off alone through a hundred miles of jungle, where there was always the delightful chance of being delayed by tigers; but they would no more have bathed in the english channel in an english august than their brothers across the world would have lain still while a leopard snuffed at their palanquin. there were boys of fifteen who had spent a day and a half on an islet in the middle of a flooded river, taking charge, as by right, of a camp of frantic pilgrims returning from a shrine; there were seniors who had requisitioned a chance-met rajah's elephant, in the name of st. francis xavier, when the rains once blotted out the cart-track that led to their father's estate, and had all but lost the huge beast in a quicksand. there was a boy who, he said, and none doubted, had helped his father to beat off with rifles from the veranda a rush of akas in the days when those head-hunters were bold against lonely plantations. and every tale was told in the even, passionless voice of the native-born, mixed with quaint reflections, borrowed unconsciously from native foster-mothers, and turns of speech that showed they had been that instant translated from the vernacular. kim watched, listened, and approved. this was not insipid, single-word talk of drummer-boys. it dealt with a life he knew and in part understood. the atmosphere suited him, and he throve by inches. they gave him a white drill suit as the weather warmed, and he rejoiced in the new-found bodily comforts as he rejoiced to use his sharpened mind over the tasks they set him. his quickness would have delighted an english master; but at st. xavier's they know the first rush of minds developed by sun and surroundings, as well as they know the half-collapse that sets in at twenty-two or twenty-three. none the less he remembered to hold himself lowly. when tales were told of hot nights, kim did not sweep the board with his reminiscences; for st. xavier's looks down on boys who 'go native altogether.' one must never forget that one is a sahib, and that some day, when examinations are passed, one will command natives. kim made a note of this, for he began to understand where examinations led. then came the holidays from august to october--the long holidays imposed by the heat and the rains. kim was informed that he would go north to some station in the hills behind umballa, where father victor would arrange for him. 'a barrack-school?' said kim, who had asked many questions and thought more. 'yes, i suppose so,' said the master. 'it will not do you any harm to keep you out of mischief. you can go up with young de castro as far as delhi.' kim considered it in every possible light. he had been diligent, even as the colonel advised. a boy's holiday was his own property,--of so much the talk of his companions had advised him,--and a barrack-school would be torment after st. xavier's. moreover--this was magic worth anything else--he could write. in three months he had discovered how men can speak to each other without a third party, at the cost of half an anna and a little knowledge. no word had come from the lama, but there remained the road. kim yearned for the caress of soft mud squishing up between the toes, as his mouth watered for mutton stewed with butter and cabbages, for rice speckled with strong-scented cardamoms, for the saffron-tinted rice, garlic and onions, and the forbidden greasy sweetmeats of the bazars. they would feed him raw beef on a platter at the barrack-school, and he must smoke by stealth. but again, he was a sahib and was at st. xavier's, and that pig mahbub ali . . . no, he would not test mahbub's hospitality--and yet . . . he thought it out alone in the dormitory, and came to the conclusion he had been unjust to mahbub. the school was empty; nearly all the masters had gone away; colonel creighton's railway-pass lay in his hand, and kim puffed himself that he had not spent colonel creighton's or mahbub's money in riotous living. he was still lord of two rupees seven annas. his new bullock-trunk, marked 'k. o'h.,' and bedding-roll lay in the empty sleeping-room. 'sahibs are always tied to their baggage,' said kim, nodding at them. 'you will stay here.' he went out into the warm rain, smiling sinfully, and sought a certain house whose outside he had noted down some time before. . . . 'arre! dost thou know what manner of women we be in this quarter? o shame!' 'was i born yesterday?' kim squatted native fashion on the cushions of that upper room. 'a little dye-stuff and three yards of cloth to help out a jest. is it much to ask?' 'who is she? thou art full young, as sahibs go, for this devilry.' 'oh, she? she is the daughter of a certain schoolmaster of a regiment in the cantonments. he has beaten me twice because i went over their wall in these clothes. now i would go as a gardener's boy. old men are very jealous.' 'that is true. hold thy face still while i dab on the juice.' 'not too black, naikan. i would not appear to her as a hubshi' (nigger). 'oh, love makes nought of these things. and how old is she?' 'twelve years, i think,' said the shameless kim. 'spread it also on the breast. it may be her father will tear my clothes off me and if i am piebald--' he laughed. the girl worked busily, dabbing a twist of cloth into a little saucer of brown dye that holds longer than any walnut juice. 'now send out and get me a cloth for the turban. woe is me, my head is all unshaved! and he will surely knock off my turban.' 'i am not a barber, but i will make shift. thou wast born to be a breaker of hearts! all this disguise for one evening? remember, the stuff does not wash away.' she shook with laughter till her bracelets and anklets jingled. 'but who is to pay me for this? huneefa herself could not have given thee better stuff.' 'trust in the gods, my sister,' said kim gravely screwing his face round as the stain dried. 'besides, hast thou ever helped to paint a sahib thus before?' 'never indeed. but a jest is not money.' 'it is worth much more.' 'child, thou art beyond all dispute the most shameless son of shaitan that i have ever known to take up a poor girl's time with this play, and then to say: "is not the jest enough?" thou wilt go very far in this world.' she gave the dancing-girls' salutation in mockery. 'all one. make haste and rough-cut my head.' kim shifted from foot to foot, his eyes ablaze with mirth as he thought of the fat days before him. he gave the girl four annas, and ran down the stairs in the likeness of a low-caste hindu boy--perfect in every detail. a cookshop was his next point of call, where he feasted in extravagance and greasy luxury. on lucknow station platform he watched young de castro, all covered with prickly-heat, get into a second-class compartment. kim patronised a third, and was the life and soul of it. he explained to the company that he was assistant to a juggler who had left him behind sick with fever, and that he would pick up his master at umballa. as the occupants of the carriage changed, he varied this tale, or adorned it with all the shoots of a budding fancy, the more rampant for being held off native speech so long. in all india that night was no human being so joyful as kim. at umballa he got out and headed eastward, plashing over the sodden fields to the village where the old soldier lived. about this time colonel creighton at simla was advised from lucknow by wire that young o'hara had disappeared. mahbub ali was in town selling horses, and to him the colonel confided the affair one morning cantering round annandale race-course. 'oh, that is nothing,' said the horse-dealer. 'men are like horses. at certain times they need salt, and if that salt is not in the mangers they will lick it up from the earth. he has gone back to the road again for a while. the madrissah wearied him. i knew it would. another time, i will take him upon the road myself. do not be troubled, creighton sahib. it is as though a polo-pony, breaking loose, ran out to learn the game alone.' 'then he is not dead, think you?' 'fever might kill him. i do not fear for the boy otherwise. a monkey does not fall among trees.' next morning, on the same course, mahbub's stallion ranged alongside the colonel. 'it is as i had thought,' said the horse-dealer. 'he has come through umballa at least, and there he has written a letter to me, having learned in the bazar that i was here.' 'read,' said the colonel, with a sigh of relief. it was absurd that a man of his position should take an interest in a little country-bred vagabond; but the colonel remembered the conversation in the train, and often in the past few months had caught himself thinking of the queer, silent, self-possessed boy. his evasion, of course, was the height of insolence, but it argued some resource and nerve. mahbub's eyes twinkled as he reined out into the centre of the cramped little plain, where none could come near unseen. '"the friend of the stars, who is the friend of all the world--"' 'what is this?' 'a name we give him in lahore city. "the friend of all the world takes leave to go to his own places. he will come back upon the appointed day. let the box and the bedding-roll be sent for; and if there has been a fault, let the hand of friendship turn aside the whip of calamity." there is yet a little more, but--' 'no matter, read.' '"certain things are not known to those who eat with forks. it is better to eat with both hands for a while. speak soft words to those who do not understand this that the return may be propitious." now the manner in which that was cast is of course the work of the letter-writer, but see how wisely the boy has devised the matter of it so that no hint is given except to those who know!' 'is this the hand of friendship to avert the whip of calamity?' laughed the colonel. 'see how wise is the boy. he would go back to the road again, as i said. not knowing yet thy trade--' 'i am not quite sure of that,' the colonel muttered. 'he turns to me to make a peace between you. is he not wise? he says he will return. he is but perfecting his knowledge. think, sahib! he has been three months at the school. and he is not mouthed to that bit. for my part, i rejoice: the pony learns the game.' 'ay, but another time he must not go alone.' 'why? he went alone before he came under the colonel sahib's protection. when he comes to the great game he must go alone--alone, and at peril of his head. then, if he spits, or sneezes, or sits down other than as the people do whom he watches, he may be slain. why hinder him now? remember how the persians say: the jackal that lives in the wilds of mazanderan can only be caught by the hounds of mazanderan.' 'true. it is true, mahbub ali. and if he comes to no harm, i do not desire anything better. but it is great insolence on his part.' 'he does not tell me, even, whither he goes,' said mahbub. 'he is no fool. when his time is accomplished he will come to me. it is time the healer of pearls took him in hand. he ripens too quickly--as sahibs reckon.' this prophecy was fulfilled to the letter a month later. mahbub had gone down to umballa to bring up a fresh consignment of horses, and kim met him on the kalka road at dusk riding alone, begged an alms of him, was sworn at, and replied in english. there was nobody within earshot to hear mahbub's gasp of amazement. 'oho! and where hast thou been?' 'up and down--down and up.' 'come under a tree, out of the wet, and tell.' 'i stayed for a while with an old man near umballa; anon with a household of my acquaintance in umballa. with one of these i went as far as delhi to the southward. that is a wondrous city. then i drove a bullock for a teli (an oilman) coming north; but i heard of a great feast forward in puttiala, and thither went i in the company of a firework-maker. it was a great feast' (kim rubbed his stomach). 'i saw rajahs, and elephants with gold and silver trappings; and they lit all the fireworks at once, whereby eleven men were killed, my firework-maker among them, and i was blown across a tent but took no harm. then i came back to the rel with a sikh horseman, to whom i was groom for my bread; and so here.' 'shabash!' said mahbub ali. 'but what does the colonel sahib say? i do not wish to be beaten.' 'the hand of friendship has averted the whip of calamity; but another time, when thou takest the road it will be with me. this is too early.' 'late enough for me. i have learned to read and to write english a little at the madrissah. i shall soon be altogether a sahib.' 'hear him!' laughed mahbub, looking at the little drenched figure dancing in the wet. 'salaam--sahib,' and he saluted ironically. 'well, art tired of the road, or wilt thou come on to umballa with me and work back with the horses?' 'i come with thee, mahbub ali.' chapter viii 'something i owe to the soil that grew-- more to the life that fed-- but most to allah who gave me two separate sides to my head. i would go without shirts or shoes, friends, tobacco or bread sooner than for an instant lose either side of my head.' 'then in god's name take blue for red,' said mahbub, alluding to the hindu colour of kim's disreputable turban. kim countered with the old proverb, 'i will change my faith and my bedding, but thou must pay for it.' the dealer laughed till he nearly fell from his horse. at a shop on the outskirts of the city the change was made, and kim stood up, externally at least, a mohammedan. mahbub hired a room over against the railway station, sent for a cooked meal of the finest with almond-curd sweetmeats (balushai we call it) and fine-chopped lucknow tobacco. 'this is better than some other meat that i ate with the sikh,' said kim, grinning as he squatted, 'and assuredly they give no such victuals at my madrissah.' 'i have a desire to hear of that same madrissah.' mahbub stuffed himself with great boluses of spiced mutton fried in fat with cabbage and golden-brown onions. 'but tell me first, altogether and truthfully, the manner of thy escape. for, o friend of all the world,'--he loosed his cracking belt,--'i do not think it is often that a sahib and the son of a sahib runs away from there.' 'how should they? they do not know the land. it was nothing,' said kim, and began his tale. when he came to the disguisement and the interview with the girl in the bazar, mahbub ali's gravity went from him. he laughed aloud and beat his hand on his thigh. 'shabash! shabash! oh, well done, little one! what will the healer of turquoises say to this? now, slowly, let us hear what befell afterwards--step by step, omitting nothing.' step by step then, kim told his adventures between coughs as the full-flavoured tobacco caught his lungs. 'i said,' growled mahbub ali to himself, 'i said it was the pony breaking out to play polo. the fruit is ripe already--except that he must learn his distances and his pacings, and his rods and his compasses. listen now. i have turned aside the colonel's whip from thy skin, and that is no small service.' 'true.' kim puffed serenely. 'that is all true.' 'but it is not to be thought that this running out and in is any way good.' 'it was my holiday, hajji. i was a slave for many weeks. why should i not run away when the school was shut? look, too, how i, living upon my friends or working for my bread, as i did with the sikh, have saved the colonel sahib a great expense.' mahbub's lips twitched under his well-pruned mohammedan moustache. 'what are a few rupees'--the pathan threw out his open hand carelessly--'to the colonel sahib? he spends them for a purpose, not in any way for love of thee.' 'that,' said kim slowly, 'i knew a very long time ago.' 'who told?' 'the colonel sahib himself. not in those many words, but plainly enough for one who is not altogether a mud-head. yea, he told me in the te-rain when we went down to lucknow.' 'be it so. then i will tell thee more, friend of all the world, though in the telling i lend thee my head.' 'it was forfeit to me,' said kim, with deep relish, 'in umballa, when thou didst pick me up on the horse after the drummer-boy beat me.' 'speak a little plainer. all the world may tell lies save thou and i. for equally is thy life forfeit to me if i chose to raise my finger here.' 'and this is known to me also,' said kim, readjusting the live charcoal-ball on the weed. 'it is a very sure tie between us. indeed thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy beaten to death, or, it may be, thrown into a well by the roadside? many people here and in simla and across the passes behind the hills would, on the other hand, say: "what has come to mahbub ali," if he were found dead among his horses. surely too the colonel sahib would make inquiries. but again,'--kim's face puckered with cunning,--'he would not make overlong inquiry, lest people should ask: "what has this colonel sahib to do with that horse-dealer?" but i--if i lived--' 'as thou wouldst surely die--' 'it may be; but i say, if i lived, i, and i alone, would know that one had come by night, as a common thief perhaps, to mahbub ali's bulkhead in the serai, and there had slain him, either before or after that thief had made a full search into his saddle-bags and between the soles of his slippers. is that news to tell to the colonel, or would he say to me--(i have not forgotten when he sent me back for a cigar-case that he had not left behind him)--"what is mahbub ali to me?"' up went a gout of heavy smoke. there was a long pause; then mahbub ali spoke in admiration: 'and with these things on thy mind, dost thou lie down and rise again among all the sahibs' little sons at the madrissah and meekly take instruction from thy teachers?' 'it is an order,' said kim blandly. 'who am i to dispute an order?' 'a most finished son of eblis,' said mahbub ali. 'but what is this tale of the thief and the search?' 'that which i saw,' said kim, 'the night that my lama and i lay next thy place in the kashmir serai. the door was left unlocked, which i think is not thy custom, mahbub. he came in as one assured that thou wouldst not soon return. my eye was against a knot-hole in the plank. he searched as it were for something--not a rug, not stirrups, nor a bridle, nor brass pots--something little and most carefully hid. else why did he prick with an iron between the soles of thy slippers?' 'ha!' mahbub ali smiled gently. 'and seeing these things, what tale didst thou fashion to thyself, well of the truth?' 'none. i put my hand upon my amulet, which lies always next to my skin, and, remembering the pedigree of a white stallion that i had bitten out of a piece of mussalmani bread, i went away to umballa perceiving that a heavy trust was laid upon me. at that hour, had i chosen, thy head was forfeit. it needed only to say to that man, "i have here a paper concerning a horse which i cannot read." and then?' kim peered at mahbub under his eyebrows. 'then thou wouldst have drunk water twice--perhaps thrice, afterwards. i do not think more than thrice,' said mahbub simply. 'it is true. i thought of that a little, but most i thought that i loved thee, mahbub. therefore i went to umballa, as thou knowest, but (and this thou dost not know) i lay hid in the garden-grass to see what colonel creighton sahib might do upon reading the white stallion's pedigree.' 'and what did he?' for kim had bitten off the conversation. 'dost thou give news for love, or dost thou sell it?' kim asked. 'i sell and--i buy.' mahbub took a four-anna piece out of his belt and held it up. 'eight!' said kim, mechanically following the huckster instinct of the east. mahbub laughed, and put away the coin. 'it is too easy to deal in that market, friend of all the world. tell me for love. our lives lie in each other's hand.' 'very good. i saw the jang-i-lat sahib (the commander-in-chief) come to a big dinner. i saw him in creighton sahib's office. i saw the two read the white stallion's pedigree. i heard the very orders given for the opening of a great war.' 'hah!' mahbub nodded with deepest eyes afire. the game is well played. that war is done now, and the evil, we hope, nipped before the flower--thanks to me--and thee. what didst thou later?' 'i made the news as it were a hook to catch me victual and honour among the villagers in a village whose priest drugged my lama. but i bore away the old man's purse, and the brahmin found nothing. so next morning he was angry. ho! ho! and i also used the news when i fell into the hands of that white regiment with their bull!' 'that was foolishness.' mahbub scowled. 'news is not meant to be thrown about like dung-cakes, but used sparingly--like bhang.' 'so i think now, and, moreover, it did me no sort of good. but that was very long ago,'--he made as to brush it all away with a thin brown hand,--'and since then, and especially in the nights under the punkah at the madrissah, i have thought very greatly.' 'is it permitted to ask whither the heaven-born's thought might have led?' said mahbub, with an elaborate sarcasm, smoothing his scarlet beard. 'it is permitted,' said kim, and threw back the very tone. 'they say at nucklao that no sahib must tell a black man that he has made a fault.' mahbub's hand shot into his bosom, for to call a pathan a 'black man' (kala admi) is a blood-insult. then he remembered and laughed. 'speak, sahib: thy black man hears.' 'but,' said kim, 'i am not a sahib, and i say i made a fault when i cursed thee, mahbub ali, on the day at umballa i thought i was betrayed by a pathan. i was senseless; for i was but newly caught, and i wished to kill that low-caste drummer-boy. i say now, hajji, that it was well done; and i see my road all clear before me to a good service. i will stay in the madrissah till i am ripe.' 'well said. especially are distances and numbers and the manner of using compasses to be learned in that game. one waits in the hills above to show thee.' 'i will learn their teaching upon a condition--that my time is given to me without question when the madrissah is shut. ask that for me of the colonel.' 'but why not ask the colonel in the sahib's tongue?' 'the colonel is the servant of the government. he is sent hither and yon at a word, and must consider his own advancement. (see how much i have already learned at nucklao!) moreover, the colonel i know since three months only. i have known one mahbub ali for six years. so! to the madrissah i will go. at the madrissah i will learn. in the madrissah i will be a sahib. but when the madrissah is shut, then must i be free and go among my people. otherwise i die!' 'and who are thy people, friend of all the world?' 'this great and beautiful land,' said kim, waving his paw round the little clay-walled room where the oil-lamp in its niche burned heavily through the tobacco-smoke. 'and, further, i would see my lama again. and further, i need money.' 'that is the need of everyone,' said mahbub ruefully. 'i will give thee eight annas, for much money is not picked out of horses' hooves, and it must suffice for many days. as to all the rest, i am well pleased, and no further talk is needed. make haste to learn, and in three years, or it may be less, thou wilt be an aid--even to me.' 'have i been such a hindrance till now?' said kim, with a boy's giggle. 'do not give answers,' mahbub grunted. 'thou art my new horse-boy. go and bed among my men. they are near the north end of the station, with the horses.' 'they will beat me to the south end of the station if i come without authority.' mahbub felt in his belt, wetted his thumb on a cake of chinese ink, and dabbed the impression on a piece of soft native paper. from balkh to bombay men know that rough-ridged print with the old scar running diagonally across it. 'that is enough to show my headman. i come in the morning.' 'by which road?' said kim. 'by the road from the city. there is but one, and then we return to creighton sahib. i have saved thee a beating.' 'allah! what is a beating when the very head is loose on the shoulders?' kim slid out quietly into the night, walked half round the house, keeping close to the walls, and headed away from the station for a mile or so. then, fetching a wide compass, he worked back at leisure, for he needed time to invent a story if any of mahbub's retainers asked questions. they were camped on a piece of waste ground beside the railway, and, being natives, had not, of course, unloaded the two trucks in which mahbub's animals stood among a consignment of country-breds bought by the bombay tram-company. the headman, a broken-down, consumptive-looking mohammedan, promptly challenged kim, but was pacified at sight of mahbub's sign-manual. 'the hajji has of his favour given me service,' said kim testily. 'if this be doubted, wait till he comes in the morning. meantime, a place by the fire.' followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must raise on every occasion. it died down, and kim lay out behind the little knot of mahbub's followers, almost under the wheels of a horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering. now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashen baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but kim was utterly happy. change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of st. xavier's all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multiplication-table in english. 'i am very old,' he thought sleepily. 'every month i become a year more old. i was very young, and a fool to boot, when i took mahbub's message to umballa. even when i was with that white regiment i was very young and small and had no wisdom. but now i learn every day, and in three years the colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me go upon the road with mahbub hunting for horses' pedigrees, or maybe i shall go by myself; or maybe i shall find the lama and go with him. yes; that is best. to walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes back to benares.' the thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly. he was plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous babble round the fire. it came from behind the iron-skinned horse-truck. 'he is not here then?' 'where should he be but roystering in the city. who looks for a rat in a frog-pond? come away. he is not our man.' 'he must not go back beyond the passes a second time. it is the order.' 'hire some woman to drug him. it is a few rupees only, and there is no evidence.' 'except the woman. it must be more certain; and remember the price upon his head.' 'ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the border. if it were in peshawur now!' 'yes--in peshawur,' the second voice sneered. 'peshawur, full of his blood-kin--full of bolt-holes and women behind whose clothes he will hide. yes, peshawur or jehannum would suit us equally well.' 'then what is the plan?' 'o fool, have i not told it a hundred times. wait till he comes to lie down, and then one sure shot. the trucks are between us and pursuit. we have but to run back over the lines and go our way. they will not see whence the shot came. wait here at least till the dawn. what manner of faquir art thou to shiver at a little watching?' 'oho!' thought kim, behind close-shut eyes. 'once again it is mahbub. indeed a white stallion's pedigree is not a good thing to peddle to sahibs! or maybe mahbub has been selling other news. now what is to do, kim? i know not where mahbub houses, and if he comes here before the dawn they will shoot him. that would be no profit for thee, kim. and this is not a matter for the police. that would be no profit for mahbub; and,' he giggled almost aloud, 'i do not remember any lesson at nucklao which will help me. allah! here is kim and yonder are they. first then, kim must wake and go away, so that they shall not suspect. a bad dream wakes a man--thus--' he threw the blanket off his face, and raised himself suddenly with the terrible, bubbling, meaningless yell of the asiatic roused by nightmare. 'urr-urr-urr-urr! ya-la-la-la-la! narain! the churel! the churel!' a churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in child-bed. she haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on the ankles, and she leads men to torment. louder rose kim's quavering howl, till at last he leaped to his feet and staggered off sleepily, while the camp cursed him for waking them. some twenty yards farther up the line he lay down again, taking care that the whisperers should hear his grunts and groans as he recomposed himself. after a few minutes he rolled towards the road and stole away into the thick darkness. [illustration: 'they are all most holy and--most greedy . . . i have walked the pillars and trodden the temples till my feet are flayed, and the child is no whit better.'] he paddled along swiftly till he came to a culvert, and dropped behind it, his chin on a level with the coping-stone. here he could command all the night-traffic, himself unseen. two or three carts passed, jingling out to the suburbs; a coughing policeman and a hurrying foot-passenger or two who sang to keep off evil spirits. then rapped the shod feet of a horse. 'ah! this is more like mahbub,' thought kim, as the beast shied at the little head above the culvert. 'ohe, mahbub ali,' he whispered, 'have a care!' the horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards the culvert. 'never again,' said mahbub, 'will i take a shod horse for night-work. they pick up all the bones and nails in the city.' he stooped to lift its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of kim's. 'down--keep down,' he muttered. 'the night is full of eyes.' 'two men wait thy coming behind the horse-trucks. they will shoot thee at thy lying down, because there is a price on thy head. i heard, sleeping near the horses.' 'didst thou see them? . . . hold still, sire of devils!' this furiously to the horse. 'no.' 'was one dressed belike as a faquir?' 'one said to the other, "what manner of a faquir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?"' 'good. go back to the camp and lie down. i do not die to-night.' mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. kim tore back down the ditch till he reached a point opposite his second resting-place, slipped across the road like a weasel, and recoiled himself in the blanket. 'at least mahbub knows,' he thought contentedly. 'and certainly he spoke as one expecting it. i do not think those two men will profit by to-night's watch.' an hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake all night, he slept deeply. now and again a night train roared along the metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the oriental's indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a dream through his slumber. mahbub was anything but asleep. it annoyed him vehemently that people outside his tribe and unaffected by his casual amours should pursue him for the life. his first and natural impulse was to cross the line lower down, work up again, and, catching his well-wishers from behind, summarily slay them. here, he reflected with sorrow, another branch of the government, totally unconnected with colonel creighton, might demand explanations which would be hard to supply; and he knew that south the border a perfectly ridiculous fuss is made about a corpse or so. he had not been troubled in this way since he sent kim to umballa with the message, and hoped that suspicion had been finally diverted. then a most brilliant notion struck him. 'the english do eternally tell the truth,' he said, 'therefore we of this country are eternally made foolish. by allah, i will tell the truth to an englishman! of what use is the government police if a poor kabuli be robbed of his horses in their very trucks. this is as bad as peshawur! i should lay a complaint at the station. better still, some young sahib on the railway! they are zealous, and if they catch thieves it is remembered to their honour.' he tied up his horse outside the station, and strode on to the platform. 'hullo, mahbub ali!' said a young assistant district traffic superintendent who was waiting to go down the line--a tall, tow-haired, horsey youth in dingy white linen. 'what are you doing here? selling weeds--eh?' 'no; i am not troubled for my horses. i come to look for lutuf ullah. i have a truck-load up the line. could any one take them out without the railway's knowledge?' 'shouldn't think so, mahbub. you can claim against us if they do.' 'i have seen two men crouching under the wheels of one of the trucks nearly all the night. faquirs do not steal horses, so i gave them no more thought. i would find lutuf ullah, my partner.' 'the deuce you did? and you didn't bother your head about it? 'pon my word, it's just almost as well that i met you. what were they like, eh?' 'they were only faquirs. they will no more than take a little grain perhaps from one of the trucks. there are many up the line. the state will never miss the dole. i came here seeking for my partner, lutuf ullah--' 'never mind your partner. where are your horse-trucks?' 'a little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for the trains.' 'the signal-box. yes.' 'and upon, the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand side--looking up the line thus. but as regards lutuf ullah--a tall man with a broken nose, and a persian greyhound--aie!' the boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman; for, as he said, the railway had suffered much from depredations in the goods-yard. mahbub ali chuckled in his dyed beard. 'they will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will wonder why there are no faquirs. they are very clever boys--barton sahib and young sahib.' he waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the line girt for action. a light engine slid through the station, and he caught a glimpse of young barton in the cab. 'i did that child an injustice. he is not altogether a fool,' said mahbub ali. 'to take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!' when mahbub ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth while to tell him any news of the night. no one, at least, but one small horse-boy, newly advanced to the great man's service, whom mahbub called to his tiny tent to assist in some packing. 'it is all known to me,' whispered kim, bending above saddle-bags. 'two sahibs came up on a te-rain. i was running to and fro in the dark on this side of the trucks as the te-rain moved up and down slowly. they fell upon two men sitting under this truck--hajji, what shall i do with this lump of tobacco? wrap it in paper and put it under the salt-bag? yes--and struck them down. but one man struck at a sahib with a faquir's buck's horn' (kim meant the conjoined black-buck horns, which are a faquir's sole temporal weapon)--'the blood came. so the other sahib, first smiting his own man senseless, smote the stabber with a short gun which had rolled from the first man's hand. they all raged as though mad together.' mahbub smiled with heavenly resignation. 'no! that is not so much dewanee (madness, or a case for the civil court--the word can be punned upon both ways) as nizamut (a criminal case). a gun sayest thou? ten good years in jail.' 'then they both lay still, but i think they were nearly dead when they were put on the te-rain. their heads moved thus. and there is much blood on the line. come and see?' 'i have seen blood before. jail is the sure place--and assuredly they will give false names, and assuredly no man will find them for a long time. they were unfriends of mine. thy fate and mine seem on one string. what a tale for the healer of pearls! now swiftly with the saddle-bags and the cooking-platter. we will take out the horses and away to simla.' swiftly,--as orientals understand speed,--with long explanations, with abuse and windy talk, carelessly, amid a hundred checks for little things forgotten, the untidy camp broke up and led the half-dozen stiff and fretful horses along the kalka road in the fresh of the rain-swept dawn. kim, regarded as mahbub ali's favourite by all who wished to stand well with the pathan, was not called upon to work. they strolled on by the easiest of stages, halting every few hours at a wayside shelter. very many sahibs travel along the kalka road; and, as mahbub ali says, every young sahib must needs esteem himself a judge of a horse, and, though he be over head in debt to the money-lender, must make as if to buy. that was the reason that sahib after sahib, rolling along in a stage-carriage, would stop and open talk. some would even descend from their vehicles and feel the horses' legs; asking inane questions, or, through sheer ignorance of the vernacular, grossly insulting the imperturbable trader. 'when first i dealt with sahibs, and that was when colonel soady sahib was governor of fort abazai and flooded the commissioner's camping-ground for spite,' mahbub confided to kim as the boy filled his pipe under a tree, 'i did not know how greatly they were fools, and this made me wroth. as thus--' and he told kim a tale of an expression, misused in all innocence, that doubled kim up with mirth. 'now i see, however,'--he exhaled smoke slowly,--'that it is with them as with all men--in certain matters they are wise, and in others most foolish. very foolish it is to use the wrong word to a stranger; for though the heart may be clean of offence, how is the stranger to know that? he is more like to search truth with a dagger.' 'true. true talk,' said kim solemnly. 'fools speak of a cat when a woman is brought to bed, for instance. i have heard them.' 'therefore, in one situate as thou art, it particularly behoves thee to remember this with both kinds of faces. among sahibs, never forgetting thou art a sahib; among the folk of hind, always remembering thou art--' he paused, with a puzzled smile. 'what am i? mussalman, hindu, jain, or buddhist? that is a hard nut.' 'thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be damned. so says my law--or i think it does. but thou art also my little friend of all the world, and i love thee. so says my heart. this matter of creeds is like horseflesh. the wise man knows horses are good--that there is a profit to be made from all; and for myself--but that i am a good sunni and hate the men of tirah--i could believe the same of all the faiths. now manifestly a kattiawar mare taken from the sands of her birthplace and removed to the west of bengal founders--nor is even a balkh stallion (and there are no better horses than those of balkh, were they not so heavy in the shoulder) of any account in the great northern deserts beside the snow-camels i have seen. therefore i say in my heart the faiths are like the horses. each has merit in its own country.' 'but my lama said altogether a different thing.' 'oh, he is an old dreamer of dreams from bhotiyal. my heart is a little angry, friend of all the world, that thou shouldst see such worth in a man so little known.' 'it is true, hajji; but that worth do i see; and to him my heart is drawn.' 'and his to thine, i hear. hearts are like horses. they come and they go against bit or spur. shout gul sher khan yonder to drive in that bay stallion's pickets more firmly. we do not want a horse-fight at every resting-stage, and the dun and the black will be locked in a little. . . . now hear me. is it necessary to the comfort of thy heart to see that lama?' 'it is one part of my bond,' said kim. 'if i do not see him, and if he is taken from me, i will go out of that madrissah in nucklao and, and--once gone, who is to find me again?' 'it is true. never was colt held on a lighter heel-rope than thou.' mahbub nodded his head. 'do not be afraid.' kim spoke as though he could have evanished on the moment. 'my lama has said that he will come to see me at the madrissah--' 'a beggar and his bowl in the presence of those young sa--' 'not all!' kim cut in with a snort. 'their eyes are blued and their nails are blackened with low-caste blood, many of them. sons of metheeranees--brothers-in-law to the bhungi' (sweeper). we need not follow the rest of the pedigree; but kim made his little point clearly and without heat, chewing a piece of sugar-cane the while. 'friend of all the world,' said mahbub, pushing over the pipe for the boy to clean, 'i have met many men, women, and boys, and not a few sahibs. i have never in all my days met such an imp as thou art.' 'and why? when i always tell thee the truth.' 'perhaps the very reason, for this is a world of danger to honest men.' mahbub ali hauled himself off the ground, girt in his belt, and went over to the horses. 'or sell it?' there was that in the tone that made mahbub halt and turn. 'what new devilry?' 'eight annas, and i will tell,' said kim, grinning. 'it touches thy peace.' 'o shaitan!' mahbub gave the money. 'rememberest thou the little business of the thieves in the dark, down yonder at umballa?' 'seeing they sought my life, i have not altogether forgotten. why?' 'rememberest thou the kashmir serai?' 'i will twist thy ears in a moment--sahib.' 'no need--pathan. only, the second faquir, whom the sahibs beat senseless, was the man who came to search thy bulkhead at lahore. i saw his face as they helped him on the engine. the very same man.' 'why didst thou not tell before?' 'oh, he will go to jail, and be safe for some years. there is no need to tell more than is necessary at any one time. besides, i did not then need money for sweetmeats.' 'allah karim!' said mahbub ali. 'wilt thou some day sell my head for a few sweetmeats if the fit takes thee?' * * * * * kim will remember till he dies that long, lazy journey from umballa, through kalka and the pinjore gardens near by, up to simla. a sudden spate in the gugger river swept down one horse (the most valuable, be sure), and nearly drowned kim among the dancing boulders. farther up the road the horses were stampeded by a government elephant, and being in high condition of grass food, it cost a day and a half to get them together again. then they met sikandar khan coming down with a few unsaleable screws,--remnants of his string,--and mahbub, who has more of horse-coping in his little finger nail than sikandar khan in all his tents, must needs buy two of the worst, and that meant eight hours' laborious diplomacy and untold tobacco. but it was all pure delight--the wandering road, climbing, dipping, and sweeping about the growing spurs; the flush of the morning laid along the distant snows; the branched cacti, tier upon tier on the stony hillsides; the voices of a thousand water-channels; the chatter of the monkeys; the solemn deodars, climbing one after another with down-drooped branches; the vista of the plains rolled out far beneath them; the incessant twanging of the tonga-horns and the wild rush of the led horses when a tonga swung round a curve; the halts for prayers (mahbub was very religious in dry-washings and bellowings when time did not press); the evening conferences by the halting-places, when camels and bullocks chewed solemnly together and the stolid drivers told the news of the road--all these things lifted kim's heart to song within him. 'but, when the singing and dancing is done,' said mahbub ali, 'comes the colonel sahib's, and that is not so sweet.' 'a fair land--a most beautiful land is this of hind--and the land of the five rivers is fairer than all,' kim half chanted. 'into it i will go again if mahbub ali or the colonel lift hand or foot against me. once gone, who shall find me? look, hajji, is yonder the city of simla? allah, what a city!' 'my father's brother, and he was an old man when mackerson sahib's well was new at peshawur, could recall when there were but two houses in it.' he led the horses below the main road into the lower simla bazar--the crowded rabbit-warren that climbs up from the valley to the town-hall at an angle of forty-five. a man who knows his way there can defy all the police of india's summer capital; so cunningly does veranda communicate with veranda, alley-way with alley-way, and bolt-hole with bolt-hole. here live those who minister to the wants of the glad city--jhampanis who pull the pretty ladies' rickshaws by night and gamble till the dawn; grocers, oil-sellers, curio-vendors, firewood dealers, priests, pickpockets, and native employees of the government: here are discussed by courtesans the things which are supposed to be profoundest secrets of the india council; and here gather all the sub-sub-agents of half the native states. here, too, mahbub ali rented a room, much more securely locked than his bulkhead at lahore, in the house of a mohammedan cattle-dealer. it was a place of miracles, too, for there went in at twilight a mohammedan horse-boy, and there came out an hour later a eurasian lad--the lucknow girl's dye was of the best--in badly fitting shop-clothes. 'i have spoken with creighton sahib,' quoth mahbub ali, 'and a second time has the hand of friendship averted the whip of calamity. he says that thou hast altogether wasted sixty days upon the road, and it is too late, therefore, to send thee to any hill-school.' 'i have said that my holidays are my own. i do not go to school twice over. that is one part of my bond.' 'the colonel sahib is not yet aware of the contract. thou art to lodge in lurgan sahib's house till it is time to go again to nucklao.' 'i had sooner lodge with thee, mahbub.' 'thou dost not know the honour. lurgan sahib himself asked for thee. thou wilt go up the hill and along the road atop, and there thou must forget for a while that thou hast ever seen or spoken to me, mahbub ali, who sells horses to creighton sahib, whom thou dost not know. remember this order.' kim nodded. 'good,' said he, 'and who is lurgan sahib? nay'--he caught mahbub's sword-keen glance 'indeed i have never heard his name. is he by chance'--he lowered his voice--'one of us?' 'what talk is this of us, sahib?' mahbub ali returned, in the tone he used towards europeans. 'i am a pathan; thou art a sahib and the son of a sahib. lurgan sahib has a shop among the european shops. all simla knows it. ask there . . . and, friend of all the world, he is one to be obeyed to the last wink of his eyelashes. men say he does magic, but that should not touch thee. go up the hill and ask. here begins the great game.' chapter ix s'doaks was son of yelth the wise-- chief of the raven clan. itswoot the bear had him in care to make him a medicine-man. he was quick and quicker to learn-- bold and bolder to dare: he danced the dread kloo-kwallie dance to tickle itswoot the bear! 'oregon legend.' kim flung himself whole-heartedly upon the next turn of the wheel. he would be a sahib again for a while. in that idea, so soon as he had reached the broad road under simla town-hall, he cast about for one to impress. a hindu child, some ten years old, squatted under a lamp-post. 'where is mr. lurgan's house?' demanded kim. 'i do not understand english,' was the answer, and kim shifted his speech accordingly. 'i will show.' together they set off through the mysterious dusk, full of the noises of a city below the hillside, and the breath of a cool wind in deodar-crowned jakko, shouldering the stars. the house-lights, scattered on every level, made, as it were, a double firmament. some were fixed, others belonged to the rickshaws of the careless, open-spoken english folk, going out to dinner. 'it is here,' said kim's guide, and halted in a veranda flush with the main road. no door stayed them, but a curtain of beaded reeds that split up the lamp-light beyond. 'he is come,' said the boy, in a voice little louder than a sigh, and vanished. kim felt sure that the boy had been posted to guide him from the first, but putting a bold face on it, parted the curtain. a black-bearded man, with a green shade over his eyes, sat at a table, and, one by one, with short, white hands, picked up globules of light from a tray before him, threaded them on a glancing silken string, and hummed to himself the while. kim was conscious that beyond the circle of light the room was full of things that smelt like all the temples of all the east. a whiff of musk, a puff of sandal-wood, and a breath of sickly jessamine-oil caught his opened nostrils. 'i am here,' said kim at last, speaking in the vernacular: the smells made him forget that he was to be a sahib. 'seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one,' the man counted to himself, stringing pearl after pearl so quickly that kim could scarcely follow his fingers. he slid off the green shade and looked fixedly at kim for a full half-minute. the pupils of the eye dilated and closed to pin-pricks, as if at will. there was a faquir by the taksali gate who had just this gift and made money by it, especially when cursing silly women. kim stared with interest. his disreputable friend could further twitch his ears, almost like a goat, and kim was disappointed that this new man could not imitate him. 'do not be afraid,' said mr. lurgan suddenly. 'why should i fear?' 'thou wilt sleep here to-night, and stay with me till it is time to go again to nucklao. it is an order.' 'it is an order,' kim repeated. 'but where shall i sleep?' 'here, in this room.' lurgan sahib waved his hand towards the darkness behind him. 'so be it,' said kim composedly. 'now?' he nodded and held the lamp above his head. as the light swept them, there leaped out from the walls a collection of tibetan devil-dance masks, hanging above the fiend-embroidered draperies of those ghastly functions--horned masks, scowling masks, and masks of idiotic terror. in a corner, a japanese warrior, mailed and plumed, menaced him with a halberd, and a score of lances and khandas and kuttars gave back the unsteady gleam. but what interested kim more than all these things--he had seen devil-dance masks at the lahore museum--was a glimpse of the soft-eyed hindu child who had left him in the doorway, sitting cross-legged under the table of pearls with a little smile on his scarlet lips. 'i think that lurgan sahib wishes to make me afraid. and i am sure that the devil's brat below the table wishes to see me afraid. this place,' he said aloud, 'is like a wonder house. where is my bed?' lurgan sahib pointed to a native quilt in a corner by the loathsome masks, picked up the lamp, and left the room black. 'was that lurgan sahib?' kim asked as he cuddled down. no answer. he could hear the hindu boy breathing, however, and, guided by the sound, crawled across the floor, and cuffed into the darkness, crying: 'give answer, devil! is this the way to lie to a sahib?' from the darkness he fancied he could hear the echo of a chuckle. it could not be his soft-fleshed companion, because he was weeping. so kim lifted up his voice and called aloud: 'lurgan sahib! o lurgan sahib! is it an order that thy servant does not speak to me?' 'it is an order.' the voice came from behind him and he started. 'very good. but remember,' he muttered, as he resought the quilt, 'i will beat thee in the morning. i do not love hindus.' that was no cheerful night; the room being overfull of voices and music. kim was waked twice by some one calling his name. the second time he set out in search, and ended by bruising his nose against a box that certainly spoke with a human tongue, but in no sort of human accent. it seemed to end in a tin trumpet and to be joined by wires to a smaller box on the floor--so far, at least, as he could judge by touch. and the voice, very hard and whirring, came out of the trumpet. kim rubbed his nose and grew furious, thinking, as usual, in hindi. 'this with a beggar from the bazar might be good but--i am a sahib and the son of a sahib and, which is twice as much more beside, a student of nucklao. yess' (here he turned to english), 'a boy of st. xavier's. damn mr. lurgan's eyes!--it is some sort of machinery like a sewing-machine. oh, it is a great cheek of him--we are not frightened that way at lucknow--no!' then in hindi: 'but what does he gain? he is only a trader--i am in his shop. but creighton sahib is a colonel--and i think creighton sahib gave orders that it should be done. how i will beat that hindu in the morning! what is this?' the trumpet-box was pouring out a string of the most elaborate abuse that even kim had ever heard, in a high uninterested voice, that for a moment lifted the short hairs of his neck. when the vile thing drew breath, kim was reassured by the soft, sewing-machine-like whirr. 'chup!' (be still) he cried, and again he heard a chuckle that decided him. 'chup--or i break your head.' the box took no heed. kim wrenched at the tin trumpet and something lifted with a click. he had evidently raised a lid. if there were a devil inside, now was its time for--he sniffed--thus did the sewing-machines of the bazar smell. he would clean that shaitan. he slipped off his jacket, and plunged it into the box's mouth. something long and round bent under the pressure, there was a whirr and the voice stopped--as voices must if you ram a thrice-doubled coat on to the wax cylinder and into the works of an expensive phonograph. kim finished his slumbers with a serene mind. in the morning he was aware of lurgan sahib looking down on him. 'oah!' said kim, firmly resolved to cling to his sahibdom. 'there was a box in the night that gave me bad talk. so i stopped it. was it your box?' the man held out his hand. 'shake hands, o'hara,' he said. 'yes, it was my box. i keep such things because my friends the rajahs like them. that one is broken, but it was cheap at the price. yes, my friends the kings are very fond of toys--and so am i sometimes.' [illustration: full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and deep-voiced.] kim looked him over out of the corners of his eyes. he was a sahib in that he wore sahib's clothes; the accent of his urdu, the intonation of his english, showed that he was anything but a sahib. he seemed to understand what moved in kim's mind ere the boy opened his mouth, and he took no pains to explain himself as did father victor or the lucknow masters. sweetest of all--he treated kim as an equal on the asiatic side. 'i am sorry you cannot beat my boy this morning. he says he will kill you with a knife or poison. he is jealous, so i have put him in the corner and i shall not speak to him to-day. he has just tried to kill me. you must help me with the breakfast. he is almost too jealous to trust, just now.' now a genuine imported sahib from england would have made a great to do over this tale. lurgan sahib stated it as simply as mahbub ali was used to record his little affairs in the north. the back veranda of the shop was built out over the sheer hillside, and they looked down into their neighbours' chimney-pots, as is the custom of simla. but even more than the purely persian meal cooked by lurgan sahib with his own hands, the shop fascinated kim. the lahore museum was larger, but here were more wonders--ghost-daggers and prayer-wheels from tibet; turquoise and raw amber necklaces; green jade bangles; curiously packed incense-sticks in jars crusted over with raw garnets; the devil-masks of overnight and a wall of peacock-blue draperies; gilt figures of buddha, and little portable lacquer altars; russian samovars with turquoises on the lid; egg-shell china sets in quaint octagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes--from japan of all places in the world, so lurgan sahib said; carpets in dusty bales, smelling atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical work; persian water-jugs for the hands after meals; dull copper incense-burners neither chinese nor persian, with friezes of fantastic devils running round them; tarnished silver belts that knotted like raw hide; hairpins of jade, ivory, and plasma; arms of all sorts and kinds, and a thousand other oddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown into the room, leaving a clear space only round the rickety deal table, where lurgan sahib worked. 'those things are nothing,' said his host, following kim's glance. 'i buy them because they are pretty, and sometimes i sell--if i like the buyer's look. my work is on the table--some of it.' it blazed in the morning light--all red and blue and green flashes, picked out with the vicious blue-white spurt of a diamond here and there. kim opened his eyes. 'oh, they are quite well, those stones. it will not hurt them to take the sun. besides, they are cheap. but with sick stones it is very different.' he piled kim's plate anew. 'there is no one but me can doctor a sick pearl and re-blue turquoises. i grant you opals--any fool can cure an opal--but for a sick pearl there is only me. suppose i were to die! then there would be no one. . . . oh no! you cannot do anything with jewels. it will be quite enough if you understand a little about the turquoise--some day.' he moved to the end of the veranda to refill the heavy, porous clay water-jug from the filter. 'do you want drink?' kim nodded. lurgan sahib, fifteen feet off, laid one hand on the jar. next instant, it stood at kim's elbow, full to within half of inch of the brim--the white cloth only showing, by a small wrinkle, where it had slid into place. 'wah!' said kim in most utter amazement. 'that is magic.' lurgan sahib's smile showed that the compliment had gone home. 'throw it back.' 'it will break.' 'i say, throw it back.' kim pitched it at random. it fell short and crashed into fifty pieces, while the water dripped through the rough veranda boarding. 'i said it would break.' 'all one. look at it. look at the largest piece.' that lay with a sparkle of water in its curve, as it were a star on the floor. kim looked intently; lurgan sahib laid one hand gently on the nape of the neck, stroked it twice or thrice, and whispered: 'look! it shall come to life again, piece by piece. first the big piece shall join itself to two others on the right and the left--on the right and the left. look!' to save his life, kim could not have turned his head. the light touch held him as in a vise, and his blood tingled pleasantly through him. there was one large piece of the jar where there had been three, and above them the shadowy outline of the entire vessel. he could see the veranda through it, but it was thickening and darkening with each beat of his pulse. yet the jar--how slowly the thoughts came!--the jar had been smashed before his eyes. another wave of prickling fire raced down his neck, as lurgan sahib moved his hand. 'look! it is coming into shape,' said lurgan sahib. so far kim had been thinking in hindi, but a tremor came on him, and with an effort like that of a swimmer before sharks, who hurls himself half out of the water, his mind leaped up from a darkness that was swallowing it and took refuge in--the multiplication-table in english! 'look! it is coming into shape,' whispered lurgan sahib. the jar had been smashed--yess, smashed--not the native word, he would not think of that--but smashed--into fifty pieces, and twice three was six, and thrice three was nine, and four times three was twelve. he clung desperately to the repetition. the shadow-outline of the jar cleared like a mist after rubbing eyes. there were the broken shards; there was, the spilt water drying in the sun, and through the cracks of the veranda showed, all ribbed, the white house-wall below--and thrice twelve was thirty-six! 'look! is it coming into shape?' asked lurgan sahib. 'but it is smashed--smashed,' he gasped--lurgan sahib had been muttering softly for the last half-minute. kim wrenched his head aside. 'look! dekho! it is there as it was there.' 'it is there as it was there,' said lurgan, watching kim closely while the boy rubbed his neck. 'but you are the first of a many who have ever seen it so.' he wiped his broad forehead. 'was that more magic?' kim asked suspiciously. the tingle had gone from his veins; he felt unusually wide awake. 'no, that was not magic. it was only to see if there was--a flaw in a jewel. sometimes very fine jewels will fly all to pieces if a man holds them in his hand, and knows the proper way. that is why one must be careful before one sets them. tell me, did you see the shape of the pot?' 'for a little time. it began to grow like a flower from the ground.' 'and then what did you do? i mean, how did you think?' 'oah! i knew it was broken, and so, i think, that was what i thought--and it was broken.' 'hm! has any one ever done that same sort of magic to you before?' 'if it was,' said kim, 'do you think i should let it again? i should run away.' 'and now you are not afraid--eh?' 'not now.' lurgan sahib looked at him more closely than ever. 'i shall ask mahbub ali--not now, but some day later,' he muttered. 'i am pleased with you--yes; and i am pleased with you--no. you are the first that ever saved himself. i wish i knew what it was that . . . but you are right. you should not tell that--not even to me.' he turned into the dusky gloom of the shop, and sat down at the table, rubbing his hands softly. a small, husky sob came from behind a pile of carpets. it was the hindu child obediently facing towards the wall: his thin shoulders worked with grief. 'ah! he is jealous, so jealous. i wonder if he will try to poison me again in my breakfast, and make me cook it twice.' 'kubbee--kubbee nahin,' came the broken answer. 'and whether he will kill this other boy?' 'kubbee--kubbee nahin' (never--never. no!). 'what do you think he will do?' he turned suddenly on kim. 'oah! i do not know. let him go, perhaps. why did he want to poison you?' 'because he is so fond of me. suppose you were fond of some one, and you saw some one come, and the man you were fond of was more pleased with him than he was with you, what would you do?' kim thought. lurgan repeated the sentence slowly in the vernacular. 'i should not poison that man,' said kim reflectively, 'but i should beat that boy--if that boy was fond of my man. but first i would ask that boy if it were true.' 'ah! he thinks every one must be fond of me.' 'then i think he is a fool.' 'hearest thou?' said lurgan sahib to the shaking shoulders. 'the sahib's son thinks thou art a little fool. come out, and next time thy heart is troubled, do not try white arsenic quite so openly. surely the devil dasim was lord of our table-cloth that day! it might have made me ill, child, and then a stranger would have guarded the jewels. come!' the child, heavy-eyed with much weeping, crept out from behind the bale and flung himself passionately at lurgan sahib's feet, with an extravagance of remorse that impressed even kim. 'i will look into the ink-pools--i will faithfully guard the jewels! oh, my father and my mother, send him away!' he indicated kim with a backward jerk of his bare heel. 'not yet--not yet. in a little while he will go away again. but now he is at school--at a new madrissah--and thou shalt be his teacher. play the play of the jewels against him. i will keep tally.' the child dried his tears at once, and dashed to the back of the shop, whence he returned with a copper tray. 'give me!' he said to lurgan sahib. 'let them come from thy hand, for he may say that i knew them before.' 'gently--gently,' the man replied, and from a drawer under the table dealt a half handful of clattering trifles into the tray. 'now,' said the child, waving an old newspaper. 'look on them as long as thou wilt, stranger. count and, if need be, handle. one look is enough for me.' he turned his back proudly. 'but what is the game?' 'when thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst remember them all, i cover them with this paper, and thou must tell over the tally to lurgan sahib. i will write mine.' 'oah!' the instinct of competition waked in his breast. he bent over the tray. there were but fifteen stones on it. 'that is easy,' he said after a minute. the child slipped the paper over the winking jewels and scribbled in a native account-book. 'there are under that paper five blue stones--one big, one smaller, and three small,' said kim, all in haste. 'there are four green stones, and one with a hole in it; there is one yellow stone that i can see through, and one like a pipe-stem. there are two red stones, and--and--i made the count fifteen, but two i have forgotten. no! give me time. one was of ivory, little and brownish; and--and--give me time . . .' 'one--two'--lurgan sahib counted him out up to ten. kim shook his head. 'hear my count!' the child burst in, trilling with laughter. 'first, are two flawed sapphires--one of two ruttees and one of four as i should judge. the four-ruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge. there is one turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and there are two inscribed--one with a name of god in gilt, and the other being cracked across, for it came out of an old ring, i cannot read. we have now all five blue stones. four flawed emeralds there are, but one is drilled in two places, and one is a little carven--' 'their weights?' said lurgan sahib impassively. 'three--five--five--and four ruttees as i judge it. there is one piece of old greenish pipe amber, and a cut topaz from europe. there is one ruby of burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and there is a balas-ruby, flawed, of two ruttees. there is a carved ivory from china representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is last--ah ha!--a ball of crystal as big as a bean set in a gold leaf.' he clapped his hands at the close. 'he is thy master,' said lurgan sahib, smiling. 'huh! he knew the names of the stones,' said kim, flushing. 'try again! with common things such as he and i both know.' they heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the shop, and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till kim marvelled. 'bind my eyes--let me feel once with my fingers, and even then i will leave thee open-eyed behind,' he challenged. kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good. 'if it were men--or horses,' he said, 'i could do better. this playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.' 'learn first--teach later,' said lurgan sahib. 'is he thy master?' 'truly. but how is it done?' 'by doing it many times over till it is done perfectly--for it is worth doing.' the hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted kim on the back. 'do not despair,' he said. 'i myself will teach thee.' 'and i will see that thou art well taught,' said lurgan sahib, still speaking in the vernacular, 'for except my boy here--it was foolish of him, to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, i could have given it--except my boy here i have not in a long time met with one better worth teaching. and there are ten days more ere thou canst return to lucknow where they teach nothing--at the long price. we shall, i think, be friends.' they were a most mad ten days, but kim enjoyed himself too much to reflect on their craziness. in the morning they played the jewel game--sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords and daggers, sometimes with photographs of natives. through the afternoons he and the hindu boy would mount guard in the shop, sitting dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching mr. lurgan's many and very curious visitors. there were small rajahs, escorts coughing in the veranda, who came to buy curiosities--such as phonographs and mechanical toys. there were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it seemed to kim--but his mind may have been vitiated by early training--in search of the ladies; natives from independent and feudatory courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces--rivers of light poured out upon the table--but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry maharanees or young rajahs. there were babus to whom lurgan sahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes. there were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in english and bengali, to mr. lurgan's great edification. he was always interested in religions. at the end of the day, kim and the hindu boy--whose name varied at lurgan's pleasure--were expected to give a detailed account of all that they had seen and heard--their view of each man's character, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of his real errand. after dinner, lurgan sahib's fancy turned more to what might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a most informing interest. he could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dab here and a line there changing them past recognition. the shop was full of all manner of dresses and turbans, and kim was apparelled variously as a young mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and once--which was a joyous evening--as the son of an oudh landholder in the fullest of full dress. lurgan sahib had a hawk's eye to detect the least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood couch, would explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since 'hows' matter little in this world, the 'why' of everything. the hindu child played this game clumsily. that little mind, keen as an icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter another's soul; but a demon in kim woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speech and gesture therewith. carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show lurgan sahib one evening how the disciples of a certain caste of faquir, old lahore acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language he would use to an englishman, to a punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. lurgan sahib laughed immensely, and begged kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour--cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. at the end of that time entered a hulking, obese babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. lurgan sahib--this annoyed kim--watched the babu and not the play. 'i think,' said the babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'i am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. except that you had told me i should have opined that--that--that you were pulling my legs. how soon can he become approximately effeecient chain-man? because then i shall indent for him.' 'that is what he must learn at lucknow.' 'then order him to be jolly dam-quick. good-night, lurgan.' the babu swung out with the gait of a bogged cow. when they were telling over the day's list of visitors, lurgan sahib asked kim who he thought the man might be. 'god knows!' said kim cheerily. the tone might almost have deceived mahbub ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls. 'that is true. god, he knows; but i wish to know what you think.' kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of compelling truth. 'i--i think he will want me when i come from the school, but'--confidentially, as lurgan sahib nodded approval--'i do not understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.' 'thou wilt understand many things later. he is a writer of tales for a certain colonel. his honour is great only in simla, and it is noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter--that is a custom among us.' 'and is there a price upon his head too--as upon mah--all the others?' 'not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went--look, the door is open!--as far as a certain house with a red-painted veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the lower bazar, and whispered through the shutters: "hurree chunder mookerjee bore the bad news of last month," that boy might take away a belt full of rupees.' 'how many?' said kim promptly. 'five hundred--a thousand--as many as he might ask for.' 'good. and how long might such a boy live after the news was told?' he smiled merrily at lurgan sahib's very beard. 'ah! that is to be well thought of. perhaps if he were very clever, he might live out the day--but not the night. by no means the night.' 'then what is the babu's pay if so much is put upon his head?' 'eighty--perhaps a hundred--perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees; but the pay is the least part of the work. from time to time, god causes men to be born--and thou art one of them--who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news--to-day it may be of far-off things, to-morrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness against the state. these souls are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best. among these ten i count the babu, and that is curious. how great therefore and desirable must be a business that brazens the heart of a bengali!' 'true. but the days go slowly for me. i am yet a boy, and it is only within two months i learned to write angrezi. even now i cannot read it well. and there are yet years and years and long years before i can be even a chain-man.' 'have patience, friend of all the world'--kim started at the title. 'would i had a few of the years that so irk thee. i have proved thee in several small ways. this will not be forgotten when i make my report to the colonel sahib.' then, changing suddenly into english with a deep laugh:-- 'by jove! o'hara, i think there is a great deal in you; but you must not become proud and you must not talk. you must go back to lucknow and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the english say, and perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!' kim's face fell. 'oh, i mean if you like. i know where you want to go.' four days later a seat was booked for kim and his small trunk at the rear of a kalka tonga. his companion was the whale-like babu, who, with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat openwork-stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in the morning chill. 'how comes it that this man is one of us?' thought kim, considering the jelly-back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection threw him into most pleasant day-dreams. lurgan sahib had given him five rupees--a splendid sum--as well as the assurance of his protection if he worked. unlike mahbub, lurgan sahib had spoken most explicitly of the reward that would follow obedience, and kim was content. if only, like the babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a letter and a number--and a price upon his head! some day he would be all that and more. some day he might be almost as great as mahbub ali! the housetops of his search should be half india; he would follow kings and ministers, as in the old days he had followed vakils and lawyers' touts across lahore city for mahbub ali's sake. meantime, there was the present, and not at all unpleasant, fact of st. xavier's immediately before him. there would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday adventures to hear. young martin, son of the tea-planter at manipur, had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the head-hunters. that might be, but it was certain young martin had not been blown half across the forecourt of a patiala palace by an explosion of fireworks; nor had he. . . . kim fell to telling himself the story of his own adventures through the last three months. he could paralyse st. xavier's--even the biggest boys who shaved--with the recital, were that permitted. but it was, of course, out of the question. there would be a price upon his head in good time, as lurgan sahib had assured him; and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price never be set, but colonel creighton would cast him off--and he would be left to the wrath of lurgan sahib and mahbub ali--for the short space of life that would remain to him. 'so i should lose delhi for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial philosophy. it behoved him to forget his holidays (there would always remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as lurgan sahib had said, to work. of all the boys hurrying back to st. xavier's, from sukkur in the sands to galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with virtue as kimball o'hara, jiggeting down to umballa behind hurree chunder mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the ethnological survey was r. . and if additional spur were needed, the babu supplied it. after a huge meal at kalka, he spoke uninterruptedly. was kim going to school? then he, an m. a. of calcutta university, would explain the advantages of education. there were marks to be gained by due attention to latin and wordsworth's 'excursion' (all this was greek to kim). french, too, was vital, and the best was to be picked up in chandernagore, a few miles from calcutta. also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by strict attention to plays called 'lear' and 'julius caesar,' both much in demand by examiners. 'lear' was not so full of historical allusions as 'julius caesar'; the book cost four annas, but could be bought second-hand in bow bazar for two. still more important than wordsworth, or the eminent authors, burke and hare, was the art and science of mensuration. a boy who had passed his examination in these branches--for which, by the way, there were no cram-books--could, by merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and a straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. but as it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains, a boy would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived of what hurree chunder called 'adventitious aids' he might still tread his distances. to keep count of thousands of paces, hurree chunder's experience had shown him nothing more valuable than a rosary of eighty-one or a hundred and eight beads, for 'it was divisible and sub-divisible into many multiples and sub-multiples.' through the volleying drifts of english, kim caught the general trend of the talk, and it interested him very much. here was a new craft that a man could tuck away in his head; and by the look of the large wide world unfolding itself before him, it seemed that the more a man knew the better for him. [illustration: 'i am the woman of shamlegh.'] said the babu when he had talked for an hour and a half, 'i hope some day to enjoy your offeecial acquaintance. ad interim, if i may be pardoned that expression, i shall give you this betel-box which is highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago.' it was a cheap, heart-shaped brass thing with three compartments for carrying the eternal betel-nut, lime and pan-leaf; but it was filled with little tabloid-bottles. 'that is reward of merit for your performance in character of that holy man. you see, you are so young you think you will last for ever and not take care of your body. it is great nuisance to go sick in the middle of business. i am fond of drugs myself, and they are handy to cure poor people too. these are good departmental drugs--quinine and so on. i give it you for souvenir. now good-bye. i have urgent private business here by the roadside.' he slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the umballa road, hailed a passing ekka and jingled away, while kim, tongue-tied, twiddled the brass betel-box in his hands. * * * * * the record of a boy's education interests few save his parents, and, as you know, kim was an orphan. it is written in the books of st. xavier in partibus that a report of kim's progress was forwarded at the end of each term to colonel creighton and to father victor, from whose hands duly came the money for his schooling. it is further recorded in the same books that he showed a great aptitude for mathematical studies as well as map-making, and carried away a prize ('the life of lord lawrence,' tree-calf, two vols., nine rupees, eight annas) for proficiency therein; and the same term played in st. xavier's eleven against the allyghur mohammedan college, his age being fourteen years and ten months. he was also re-vaccinated (from which we may assume that there had been another epidemic of small-pox at lucknow) about the same time. pencil notes on the edge of an old muster-roll record that he was punished several times for 'conversing with improper persons,' and it seems that he was once sentenced to heavy pains for 'absenting himself for a day in the company of a street beggar.' that was when he got over the gate and pleaded with the lama through a whole day down the banks of the goomtee to accompany him on the road next holidays--for one month--for a little week; and the lama set his face as a flint against it, averring that the time had not yet come. kim's business, said the old man as they ate cakes together, was to get all the wisdom of the sahibs and then he would see. the hand of friendship must in some way have averted the whip of calamity, for six weeks later kim seems to have passed an examination in elementary surveying 'with great credit,' his age being fifteen years and eight months. from this date the record is silent. his name does not appear in the year's batch of those who entered for the subordinate survey of india, but against it stand the words 'removed on appointment.' several times in those three years, cast up at the temple of the tirthankers in benares the lama, a little thinner and a shade yellower, if that were possible, but gentle and untainted as ever. sometimes it was from the south that he came--from south of tuticorin, whence the wonderful fire-boats go to ceylon where are priests who know pali; sometimes it was from the wet green west and the thousand cotton-factory chimneys that ring bombay; and once from the north, where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk a day with the keeper of the images in the wonder house. he would stride to his cell in the cool, cut marble--the priests of the temple were good to the old man--wash off the dust of travel, make prayer, and depart for lucknow, well accustomed now to the ways of the rail, in a third-class carriage. returning, it was noticeable, as his friend the seeker pointed out to the head-priest, that he ceased for a while to mourn the loss of his river, or to draw wondrous pictures of the wheel of life, but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom of a certain mysterious chela whom no man of the temple had ever seen. yes, he had followed the traces of the blessed feet throughout all india. (the curator has still in his possession a most marvellous account of his wanderings and meditations.) there remained nothing more in life but to find the river of the arrow. yet it was shown to him in dreams that it was a matter not to be undertaken with any hope of success unless that seeker had with him the one chela appointed to bring the event to a happy issue, and versed in great wisdom---such wisdom as white-haired keepers of images possess. for example (here came out the snuff-gourd, and the kindly jain priests made haste to be silent):-- 'long and long ago, when devadatta was king of benares--let all listen to the "jataka"!--an elephant was captured for a time by the king's hunters and, ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous leg-iron. this he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants to wrench it asunder. one by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed. at the last they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be broken by any bestial power. and in a thicket, new-born, wet with the moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd whose mother had died. the fettered elephant, forgetting his own agony, said: "if i do not help this suckling it will perish under our feet." so he stood above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily moving herd; and he begged milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve, and the ringed elephant was the calf's guide and defence. now the days of an elephant--let all listen to the "jataka"!--are thirty-five years to his full strength, and through thirty-five rains the ringed elephant befriended the younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh. 'then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron, and turning to the elder said: "what is this?" "it is even my sorrow," said he who had befriended him. then that other put out his trunk and in the twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring, saying: "the appointed time has come." so the virtuous elephant who had waited temperately and done kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by the very calf whom he had turned aside to cherish--let all listen to the "jataka"!--for the elephant was ananda, and the calf that broke the ring was none other than the lord himself. . . .' then he would shake his head benignly, and over the ever-clicking rosary point out how free that elephant calf was from the sin of pride. he was as humble as a chela who, seeing his master sitting in the dust outside the gates of learning, overleapt the gates (though they were locked) and took his master to his heart in the presence of the proud-stomached city. rich would be the reward of such a master and such a chela when the time came for them to seek freedom together! so did the lama speak, coming and going across india as softly as a bat. a sharp-tongued old woman in a house among the fruit-trees behind saharunpore honoured him as the woman honoured the prophet, but his chamber was by no means upon the wall. in an apartment of the forecourt overlooked by cooing doves he would sit, while she laid aside her useless veil and chattered of spirits and fiends of kulu, of grandchildren unborn, and of the free-tongued brat who had talked to her in the resting-place. once, too, he strayed alone from the grand trunk road below umballa to the very village whose priest had tried to drug him; but the kind heaven that guards lamas sent him at twilight through the crops, absorbed and unsuspicious, to the ressaldar's door. here was like to have been a grave misunderstanding, for the old soldier asked him why the friend of the stars had gone that way only six days before. 'that may not be,' said the lama. 'he has gone back to his own people.' 'he sat in that corner telling a hundred merry tales five nights ago,' his host insisted. 'true, he vanished somewhat suddenly in the dawn after foolish talk with my grand-daughter. he grows apace, but he is the same friend of the stars as brought me true word of the war. have ye parted?' 'yes--and no,' the lama replied. 'we--we have not altogether parted, but the time is not ripe that we should take the road together. he acquires wisdom in another place. we must wait.' 'all one--but if it were not the boy how did he come to speak so continually of thee?' 'and what said he?' asked the lama eagerly. 'sweet words--an hundred thousand--that thou art his father and mother and such all. pity that he does not take the queen's service. he is fearless.' this news amazed the lama, who did not then know how religiously kim kept to the contract made with mahbub ali, and perforce ratified by colonel creighton. . . . 'there is no holding the young pony from the game,' said the horse-dealer when the colonel pointed out that vagabonding over india in holiday time was absurd. 'if permission be refused to go and come as he chooses, he will make light of the refusal. then who is to catch him? colonel sahib, only once in a thousand years is a horse born so well fitted for the game as this our colt. and we need men.' chapter x your tiercel's too long at hack, sire. he's no eyass but a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him, dangerously free o' the air. faith! were he mine (as mine's the glove he binds to for his tirings) i'd fly him with a make-hawk. he's in yarak plumed to the very point--so manned so weathered . . . give him the firmament god made him for, and what shall take the air of him? --old play. lurgan sahib did not use as direct speech, but his advice tallied with mahbub's; and the upshot was good for kim. he knew better now than to leave lucknow city in native garb, and if mahbub were anywhere within reach of a letter, it was to mahbub's camp he headed, and made his change under the pathan's wary eye. could the little survey paint-box that he used for map-tinting in term-time have found a tongue to tell of holiday doings, he might have been expelled. once mahbub and he went together as far as the beautiful city of bombay, with three truck-loads of tram-horses, and mahbub nearly melted when kim proposed a sail in a dhow across the indian ocean to buy gulf arabs, which he understood from a hanger-on of the dealer abdul rahman, fetched better prices than mere cabulis. he dipped his hand into the dish with that great trader when mahbub and a few co-religionists were invited to a big haj dinner. they came back by way of karachi by sea, when kim took his first experience of sea-sickness sitting on the fore-hatch of a coasting-steamer, well persuaded he had been poisoned. the babu's famous drug-box proved useless, though kim had restocked it at bombay. mahbub had business at quetta, and there kim, as mahbub admitted, earned his keep, and perhaps a little over, by spending four curious days as scullion in the house of a fat commissariat sergeant, from whose office-box, in an auspicious moment, he removed a little vellum ledger which he copied out--it seemed to deal entirely with cattle and camel sales--by moonlight, lying behind an outhouse, all through one hot night. then he returned the ledger to its place, and, at mahbub's word, left that service unpaid, rejoining him six miles down the road, the clean copy in his bosom. 'that soldier is a small fish,' mahbub ali explained, 'but in time we shall catch the larger one. he only sells oxen at two prices--one for himself and one for the government--which i do not think is a sin.' 'why could not i take away the little book and be done with it?' 'then he would have been frightened, and he would have told his master. then we should miss, perhaps, a great number of new rifles which seek their way up from quetta to the north. the game is so large that one sees but a little at a time.' 'oho!' said kim, and held his tongue. that was in the monsoon holidays, after he had taken the prize for mathematics. the christmas holidays he spent--deducting ten days for private amusements--with lurgan sahib, where he sat for the most part in front of a roaring wood-fire--jakko-road was four feet deep in snow that year--and--the small hindu had gone away to be married--helped lurgan to thread pearls. he made kim learn whole chapters of the koran by heart, till he could deliver them with the very roll and cadence of a mullah. moreover, he told kim the names and properties of many native drugs, as well as the runes proper to recite when you administer them. and in the evenings he wrote charms on parchment--elaborate pentagrams crowned with the names of devils--murra, and awan the companion of kings--all fantastically written in the corners. more to the point, he advised kim as to the care of his own body, the cure of fever-fits, and simple remedies of the road. a week before it was time to go down, colonel creighton sahib--this was unfair--sent kim a written examination-paper that concerned itself solely with rods and chains and links and angles. next holidays he was out with mahbub, and here, by the way, he nearly died of thirst, plodding through the sand on a camel to the mysterious city of bikaneer, where the wells are four hundred feet deep, and lined throughout with camel-bone. it was not an amusing trip from kim's point of view, because--in defiance of the contract--the colonel ordered him to make a map of that wild, walled city; and since mohammedan horse-boys and pipe-tenders are not expected to drag survey-chains round the capital of an independent native state, kim was forced to pace all his distances by means of a bead rosary. he used the compass for bearings as occasion served--after dark chiefly, when the camels had been fed--and by the help of his little survey paint-box of six colour-cakes and three brushes, he achieved something not remotely unlike the city of jeysalmir. mahbub laughed a great deal, and advised him to make up a written report as well; and in the back of the big account-book that lay under the flap of mahbub's pet saddle kim fell to work. 'it must hold everything that thou hast seen or touched or considered. write as though the jung-i-lat sahib himself had come by stealth with a vast army outsetting to war.' 'how great an army?' 'oh, half a lakh of men.' 'folly! remember how few and bad were the wells in the sand. not a thousand thirsty men could come near by here.' 'then write that down--also all the old breaches in the walls--and whence the firewood is cut--and what is the temper and disposition of the king. i stay here till all my horses are sold. i will hire a room by the gateway, and thou shalt be my accountant. there is a good lock to the door.' the report in its unmistakable st. xavier's running script, and the brown, yellow, and lake-daubed map, was on hand a few years ago (a careless clerk filed it with the rough notes of e. 's second seistan survey), but by now the pencil characters must be almost illegible. kim translated it, sweating under the light of an oil-lamp, to mahbub, the second day of their return-journey. the pathan rose and stooped over his dappled saddle-bags. 'i knew it would be worthy a dress of honour, and so i made one ready,' he said smiling. 'were i amir of afghanistan (and some day we may see him), i would fill thy mouth with gold.' he laid the garments formally at kim's feet. there was a gold-embroidered peshawur turban-cap, rising to a cone, and a big turban-cloth ending in a broad fringe of gold. there was a delhi embroidered waistcoat to slip over a milky-white shirt, fastening to the right, ample and flowing; green pyjamas with twisted silk waist-string; and that nothing might be lacking, russia-leather slippers, smelling divinely, with arrogantly curled tips. 'upon a wednesday, and in the morning, to put on new clothes is auspicious,' said mahbub solemnly. 'but we must not forget the wicked folk in the world. so!' he capped all the splendour, that was taking kim's delighted breath away, with a mother-of-pearl, nickel-plated, self-extracting . revolver. 'i had thought of a smaller bore, but reflected that this takes government bullets. a man can always come by those--especially across the border. stand up and let me look.' he clapped kim on the shoulder. 'may you never be tired, pathan! oh, the hearts to be broken! oh, the eyes under the eyelashes, looking sideways!' kim turned about, pointed his toes, stretched, and felt mechanically for the moustache that was just beginning. then he stooped towards mahbub's feet to make proper acknowledgment with fluttering, quick-patting hands; his heart too full for words. mahbub forestalled and embraced him. 'my son,' said he, 'what need of words between us? but is not the little gun a delight? all six cartridges come out at one twist. it is borne in the bosom next the skin, which, as it were, keeps it oiled. never put it elsewhere, and please god, thou shalt some day kill a man with it.' 'hai mai!' said kim ruefully. 'if a sahib kills a man he is hung in the jail.' 'true: but one pace beyond the border, men are wiser. put it away; but fill it first. of what use is a gun unfed?' 'when i go back to the madrissah i must return it. they do not allow little guns. thou wilt keep it for me?' 'son, i am wearied of that madrissah, where they take the best years of a man to teach him what he can only learn upon the road. the folly of the sahibs has neither top nor bottom. no matter. maybe thy written report shall save thee further bondage; and god he knows we need men more and more in the game.' they marched, jaw-bound against blowing sand, across the salt desert to jodhpore, where mahbub and his handsome nephew habib-ullah did much trading; and then sorrowfully, in european clothes, which he was fast outgrowing, kim went second-class to st. xavier's. three weeks later, colonel creighton, pricing tibetan ghost-daggers at lurgan's shop, faced mahbub ali openly mutinous. lurgan sahib operated as support in reserve. 'the pony is made--finished--mouthed and paced, sahib! from now on, day by day, he will lose his manners if he is kept at tricks. drop the rein on his back and let go,' said the horse-dealer. 'we need him.' 'but he is so young, mahbub--not more than sixteen--is he?' 'when i was fifteen, i had shot my man and begot my man, sahib.' 'you impenitent old heathen.' creighton turned to lurgan. the black beard nodded assent to the wisdom of the afghan's dyed scarlet. 'i should have used him long ago,' said lurgan. 'the younger the better. that is why i always have my really valuable jewels watched by a child. you sent him to me to try. i tried him in every way: he is the only boy i could not make to see things.' 'in the crystal--in the ink-pool?' demanded mahbub. 'no. under my hand, as i told you. that has never happened before. it means that he is strong enough--but you think it skittles, colonel creighton--to make any one do anything he wants. and that is three years ago. i have taught him a good deal since, colonel creighton. i think you waste him now.' 'hmm! maybe you're right. but, as you know, there is no survey work for him at present.' 'let him out--let him go,' mahbub interrupted. 'who expects any colt to carry heavy weight at first? let him run with the caravans like our white camel-colts--for luck. i would take him myself, but--' 'there is a little business where he would be most useful--in the south,' said lurgan, with peculiar suavity, dropping his heavy blued eyelids. 'e. has that in hand,' said creighton quickly. 'he must not go down there. besides, he knows no turki.' 'only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he will bring them back,' lurgan insisted. 'no. that is a man's job,' said creighton. it was a wry-necked matter of unauthorised and incendiary correspondence between a person who claimed to be the ultimate authority in all matters of the mohammedan religion throughout the world, and a younger member of a royal house who had been brought to book for kidnapping women within british territory. the moslem archbishop had been emphatic and over-arrogant; the young prince was merely sulky at the curtailment of his privileges, but there was no need he should continue a correspondence which might some day compromise him. one letter indeed had been procured, but the finder was later found dead by the roadside in the habit of an arab trader, as e. , taking up the work, duly reported. these facts, and a few others not to be published, made both mahbub and creighton shake their heads. 'let him go out with his red lama,' said the horse-dealer with visible effort. 'he is fond of the old man. he can learn his paces by the rosary at least.' 'i have had some dealings with the old man--by letter,' said colonel creighton, smiling to himself. 'whither goes he?' 'up and down the land, as he has these three years. he seeks a river of healing. god's curse upon all--' mahbub checked himself. 'he beds down at the temple of the tirthankers or at buddh gaya when he is in from the road. then he goes to see the boy at the madrissah as we know, for the boy was punished for it twice or thrice. he is quite mad, but a peaceful man. i have met him. the babu also has had dealings with him. we have watched him for three years. red lamas are not so common in hind that one loses track.' 'babus are very curious,' said lurgan meditatively. 'do you know what hurree babu really wants? he wants to be made a member of the royal society by taking ethnological notes. i tell you, i tell him about the lama everything that mahbub and the boy have told me. hurree babu goes down to benares--at his own expense, i think.' 'i don't,' said creighton briefly. he had paid hurree's travelling expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to learn what the lama might be. 'and he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and devil dances, and spells and charms, several times in these few years. holy virgin! i could have told him all that yee-ars ago. i think hurree babu is getting too old for the road. he likes better to collect manners and customs information. yes, he wants to be an f. r. s.' 'hurree thinks well of the boy, doesn't he?' 'oh, very indeed--we have had some pleasant evenings at my little place--but i think it would be waste to throw him away with hurree on the ethnological side.' 'not for a first experience. how does that strike you, mahbub? let the boy run with the lama for six months. after that we can see. he will get experience.' 'he has it already, sahib--as a fish controls the water he swims in; but for every reason it will be well to loose him from the school.' 'very good, then,' said creighton, half to himself. 'he can go with the lama, and if hurree babu cares to keep an eye on them so much the better. he won't lead the boy into any danger as mahbub would. curious--his wish to be an f. r. s. very human, too. he is best on the ethnological side--hurree.' no money and no preferment would have drawn creighton from his work on the indian survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write 'f. r. s.' after his name. honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief, nothing save work--papers representing a life of it--took a man into the society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange asiatic cults and unknown customs. nine men out of ten would flee from a royal society soiree in extremity of boredom; but creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy london where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of the army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito. by all right and reason, it was the royal geographical that should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice of playthings. so creighton smiled, and thought the better of hurree babu, moved by like desires. he dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at mahbub. 'how soon can we get the colt from the stable?' said the horse-dealer, reading his eyes. 'hmm. if i withdraw him by order now--what will he do, think you? i have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one.' 'he will come to me,' said mahbub promptly. 'lurgan sahib and i will prepare him for the road.' 'so be it, then. for six months he shall run at his choice: but who will be his sponsor?' lurgan slightly inclined his head. 'he will not tell anything, if that is what you are afraid of, colonel creighton.' [illustration: he crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man who has won salvation for himself and his beloved.] 'it's only a boy, after all.' 'ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what would happen. also, he is very fond of mahbub, and of me a little.' 'will he draw pay?' demanded the practical horse-dealer. 'food and water allowance only. twenty rupees a month.' one advantage of the secret service is that it has no worrying audit. the service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds are administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or present itemised accounts. mahbub's eyes lighted with almost a sikh's love of money. even lurgan's impassive face changed. he considered the years to come when kim would have been entered and made to the great game that never ceases day and night, throughout india. he foresaw honour and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming to him from his pupil. lurgan sahib had made e. what e. was, out of a bewildered, impertinent, lying, little north-west province man. but the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of kim when st. xavier's head called him aside, with word that colonel creighton had sent for him. 'i understand, o'hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant chain-man in the canal department: that comes of taking up mathematics. it is great luck for you, for you are only seventeen; but of course you understand that you do not become pukka (permanent) till you have passed the autumn examination. so you must not think you are going out into the world to enjoy yourself, or that your fortune is made. there is a great deal of hard work before you. only, if you succeed in becoming pukka, you can rise, you know, to four hundred and fifty a month.' whereat the principal gave him much good advice as to his conduct, and his manners, and his morals; and others, his elders, who had not been wafted into billets, talked, as only anglo-indian lads can, of favouritism and corruption. indeed, young cazalet, whose father was a pensioner at chunar, hinted very broadly that colonel creighton's interest in kim was directly paternal; and kim, instead of retaliating, did not even use language. he was thinking of the immense fun to come, of mahbub's letter of the day before, all neatly written in english, making appointment for that afternoon in a house the very name of which would have crisped the principal's hair with horror. . . . said kim to mahbub in lucknow railway station that evening, above the luggage-scales--'i feared lest, at the last, the roof would fall upon me and cheat me. is it indeed all finished, o my father?' mahbub snapped his fingers to show the utterness of that end, and his eyes blazed like red coals. 'then where is the pistol that i may wear it?' 'softly! a half-year, to run without heel-ropes. i begged that much from colonel creighton sahib. at twenty rupees a month. old red hat knows that thou art coming.' 'i will pay thee dustoorie (commission) on my pay for three months,' said kim gravely. 'yea, two rupees a month. but first we must get rid of these.' he plucked his thin linen trousers and dragged at his collar. 'i have brought with me all that i need on the road. my trunk has gone up to lurgan sahib's.' 'who sends his salaams to thee--sahib.' 'lurgan sahib is a very clever man. but what dost thou do?' 'i go north again, upon the great game. what else? is thy mind still set on following old red hat?' 'do not forget he made me that i am--though he did not know it. year by year, he sent the money that taught me.' 'i would have done as much--had it struck my thick head,' mahbub growled. 'come away. the lamps are lit now, and none will mark thee in the bazar. we go to huneefa's house.' on the way thither, mahbub gave him much the same sort of advice as his mother gave to lemuel, and curiously enough, mahbub was exact to point out how huneefa and her likes destroyed kings. 'and i remember,' he quoted maliciously, 'one who said, "trust a snake before a harlot and a harlot before a pathan, mahbub ali." now, excepting as to pathans, of whom i am one, all that is true. most true is it in the great game, for it is by means of woman that all plans come to ruin and we lie out in dawning with our throats cut. so it happened to such a one,'--he gave the reddest particulars. 'then why--?' kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the warm darkness of an upper chamber in the ward that is behind azim ullah's tobacco-shop. those who know it call it the bird-cage--it is so full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings. the room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. in one corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist, arm, waist, and ankle, with heavy native jewellery. when she turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. a lean cat in the balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. kim checked, bewildered, at the door-curtain. 'is that the new stuff, mahbub?' said huneefa lazily, scarce troubling to remove the mouthpiece from her lips. 'o buktanoos!'--like most of her kind, she swore by the djinns--'o buktanoos! he is very good to look upon.' 'that is part of the selling of the horse,' mahbub explained to kim, who laughed. 'i have heard that talk since my sixth day,' he replied, squatting by the light. 'whither does it lead?' 'to protection. to-night we change thy colour. this sleeping under roofs has blanched thee like an almond. but huneefa has the secret of a colour that catches. no painting of a day or two. also, we fortify thee against the chances of the road. that is my gift to thee, my son. take out all metals on thee and lay them here. make ready, huneefa.' kim dragged forth his compass, survey paint-box, and the new-filled medicine-box. they had all accompanied his travels, and boy-like he valued them immensely. the woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread before her. then kim saw that she was blind. 'no, no,' she muttered, 'the pathan speaks truth--my colour does not go in a week or a month, and those whom i protect are under strong guard.' 'when one is far off and alone, it would not be well to grow blotched and leprous of a sudden,' said mahbub. 'when thou wast with me i could oversee the matter. besides, a pathan is a fair-skin. strip to the waist now and look how thou art whitened.' huneefa felt her way back from an inner room. 'it is no matter, she cannot see.' he took a pewter bowl from her ringed hand. the dye-stuff showed blue and gummy. kim experimented on the back of his wrist, with a dab of cotton wool; but huneefa heard him. 'no, no,' she cried, 'the thing is not done thus, but with the proper ceremonies. the colouring is the least part. i give thee the full protection of the road.' 'jadoo?' (magic), said kim, with a half start. he did not like the white, sightless eyes. mahbub's hand on his neck bowed him to the floor, nose within an inch of the boards. 'be still. no harm comes to thee, my son. i am thy sacrifice!' he could not see what the woman was about, but heard the clish-clash of her jewellery for many minutes. a match lit up the darkness; he caught the well-known purr and fizzle of grains of incense. then the room filled with smoke--heavy, aromatic, and stupefying. through growing drowse he heard the names of devils--of zulbazan, son of eblis, who lives in bazars and paraos, making all the sudden lewd wickedness of wayside halts; of dulhan, invisible about mosques, the dweller among the slippers of the faithful, who hinders folk from their prayers; and musboot, lord of lies and panic. huneefa, now whispering in his ear, now talking as from an immense distance, touched him with horrible soft fingers, but mahbub's grip never shifted from his neck till, relaxing with a sigh, the boy lost his senses. 'allah! how he fought! we should never have done it but for the drugs. that was his white blood, i take it,' said mahbub testily. 'go on with the dawut (invocation). give him full protection.' 'o hearer! thou that hearest with ears, be present. listen, o hearer!' huneefa moaned, her dead eyes turned to the west. the dark room filled with moanings and snortings. from the outer balcony, a ponderous figure raised a round bullet head and coughed nervously. 'do not interrupt this ventriloquial necromanciss, my friend,' it said in english. 'i opine that it is very disturbing to you, but no enlightened observer is jolly well upset.' '. . . i will lay a plot for their ruin! o prophet, bear with the unbelievers. let them alone awhile!' huneefa's face, turned to the northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the ceiling answered her. hurree babu returned to his note-book, balanced on the window-sill, but his hand shook. huneefa, in some sort of drugged ecstasy, wrenched herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by kim's still head, and called upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the ritual, binding them to avoid the boy's every action. 'with him are the keys of the secret things! none knoweth them beside himself. he knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the sea!' again broke out the unearthly whistling responses. 'i--i apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?' said the babu, watching the throat-muscles quiver and jerk as huneefa spoke with tongues. 'it--it is not likely that she has killed the boy? if so, i decline to be witness at the trial. . . . what was the last hypothetical devil mentioned?' 'babuji,' said mahbub in the vernacular. 'i have no regard for the devils of hind, but the sons of eblis are far otherwise, and whether they be jumalee (well-affected) or jullalee (terrible) they love not kafirs.' 'then you think i had better go?' said hurree babu, half rising. 'they are, of course, dematerialised phenomena. spencer says--' huneefa's crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of howling, with a touch of froth at the lips. she lay spent and motionless beside kim, and the crazy voices ceased. 'wah! that work is done. may the boy be better for it; and huneefa is surely a mistress of dawut. help haul her aside, babu. do not be afraid.' 'how am i to fear the absolutely non-existent?' said hurree babu, talking english to reassure himself. it is an awful thing still to dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate--to collect folk-lore for the royal society with a lively belief in all powers of darkness. mahbub chuckled. he had been out with hurree on the road ere now. 'let us finish the colouring,' said he. 'the boy is well protected if--if the lords of the air have ears to hear. i am a sufi (free-thinker), but when one can get blind-sides of a woman, a stallion, or a devil, why go round to invite a kick? set him upon the way, babu, and see that old red hat does not lead him beyond our reach. i must get back to my horses.' 'all raight,' said hurree babu. 'he is at present a curious spectacle.' * * * * * about third cock-crow, kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years. huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but mahbub was gone. 'i hope you were not frightened,' said an oily voice at his elbow. 'i superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from ethnological point of view. it was high-class dawut.' 'huh!' said kim, recognising hurree babu, who smiled ingratiatingly. 'and also i had honour to bring down from lurgan your present costume. i am not in the habit offeecially of carrying such gauds to subordinates, but'--he giggled--'your case is noted as exceptional on the books. i hope mr. lurgan will note my action.' kim yawned and stretched himself. it was good to turn and twist within loose clothes once again. 'what is this?' he looked curiously at the heavy duffle-stuff loaded with the scents of the far north. 'oho! that is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of lamaistic lama. com-plete in every particular,' said hurree babu, rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. 'i am of opeenion it is not your old gentleman's precise religion, but rather sub-variant of same. i have contributed rejected notes to "asiatic quarterly review" on these subjects. now it is curious that the old gentleman himself is totally devoid of religiosity. he is not a dam particular.' 'do you know him?' hurree babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the prescribed rites that accompany tooth-cleaning and such things among decently bred bengalis. then he recited in english an arya-somaj prayer of a theistical nature, and stuffed his mouth with pan and betel. 'oah yes. i have met him several times at benares, and also at buddh gaya, to interrogate him on religious points and devil-worship. he is pure agnostic--same as me.' huneefa stirred in her sleep, and hurree babu jumped nervously to the copper incense-burner, all black and discoloured in morning-light, rubbed a finger in the accumulated lampblack, and drew it diagonally across his face. 'who has died in thy house?' asked kim in the vernacular. 'none. but she may have the evil eye--that sorceress,' the babu replied. 'what dost thou do now, then?' 'i will set thee on thy way to benares, if thou goest thither, and tell thee what must be known by us.' 'i go. at what hour runs the te-rain?' he rose to his feet, looked round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of huneefa as the low sun stole across the floor. 'is there money to be paid that witch?' 'no. she has charmed thee against all devils and all dangers--in the name of her devils. it was mahbub's desire.' in english: 'he is highly obsolete, i think, to indulge in such supersteetion. why, it is all ventrilo-quy. belly-speak--eh?' kim snapped his fingers mechanically to avert whatever evil--mahbub, he knew, meditated none--might have crept in through huneefa's ministrations; and hurree giggled once more. but as he crossed the room he was careful not to step in huneefa's blotched, squat shadow on the boards. witches--when their time is on them--can lay hold of the heels of a man's soul if he does that. 'now you must well listen,' said the babu when they were in the fresh air. 'part of these ceremonies which we witnessed they include supply of effeecient amulet to those of our department. if you feel in your neck you will find one small silver amulet, verree cheap. that is ours. do you understand?' 'oah yes, hawa-dilli' (a heart-lifter), said kim, feeling at his neck. 'huneefa she makes them for two rupees twelve annas with--oh, all sorts of exorcisms. they are quite common, except they are partially black enamel, and there is a paper inside each one full of names of local saints and such things. thatt is huneefa's look-out, you see? huneefa makes them onlee for us, but in case she does not, when we get them we put in, before issue, one small piece of turquoise. mr. lurgan, he gives, them. there is no other source of supply; but it was me invented all this. it is strictly unoffeecial of course, but convenient for subordinates. colonel creighton he does not know. he is european. the turquoise is wrapped in the paper. . . . yes, that is road to railway station. . . . now suppose you go with the lama, or with me, i hope, some day, or with mahbub. suppose we get into a dam-tight place. i am a fearful man--most fearful--but i tell you i have been in dam-tight places more than hairs on my head. you say: "i am son of the charm." verree good.' 'i do not understand quite. we must not be heard talking english here.' 'that is all raight. i am only babu showing off my english to you. all we babus talk english to show off,' said hurree, flinging his shoulder-cloth jauntily. 'as i was about to say, "son of the charm" means that you may be member of the sat bhai--the seven brothers, which is hindi and tantric. it is popularly supposed to be extinct society, but i have written notes to show it is still extant. you see it is all my invention. verree good. sat bhai has many members, and perhaps before they jolly-well-cut-your-throat they may give you just a chance for life. that is useful, anyhow. and, moreover, these foolish natives--if they are not too excited--they always stop to think before they kill a man who says he belongs to any specific organisation. you see? you say then when you are in tight place, "i am son of the charm," and you get--perhaps--ah--your second wind. that is only in extreme instances, or to open negotiations with a stranger. can you quite see? verree good. but suppose now, i, or any one of the department, come to you dressed quite different. you would not know me at all unless i choose, i bet you. some day i will prove it. i come as ladakhi trader--oh anything--and i say to you: "you want to buy precious stones?" you say: "do i look like a man who buys precious stones?" then i say: "even verree poor man can buy a turquoise or tarkeean."' 'that is kichree--vegetable curry,' said kim. 'of course it is. you say: "let me see the tarkeean." then i say: "it was cooked by a woman, and perhaps it is bad for your caste." then you say: "there is no caste when men go to--look for tarkeean." you stop a little between those words, "to--look." that is thee whole secret. the little stop before the words.' kim repeated the test-sentence. 'that is all right. then i will show you my turquoise if there is time, and then you know who i am, and then we exchange views and documents and those-all things. and so it is with any other man of us. we talk sometimes about turquoises and sometimes about tarkeean, but always with that little stop in the words. it is verree easy. first, "son of the charm," if you are in a tight place. perhaps that may help you--perhaps not. then what i have told you about the tarkeean, if you want to transact offeecial business with a strange man. of course, at present, you have no offeecial business. you are--ah ha!--supernumerary on probation. quite unique specimen. if you were asiatic of birth you might be employed right off; but this half-year of leave is to make you de-englishised, you see? the lama, he expects you, because i have demi-offeecially informed him you have passed all your examinations, and will soon obtain government appointment. oh ho! you are on acting-allowance you see: so if you are called upon to help sons of the charm mind you jolly well try. now i shall say good-bye, my dear fellow, and i hope you--ah--will come out top-side all raight.' hurree babu stepped back a pace or two into the crowd at the entrance of lucknow station and--was gone. kim drew a deep breath and hugged himself all over. the nickel-plated revolver he could feel in the bosom of his sad-coloured robe, the amulet was on his neck; begging-gourd, rosary, and ghost-dagger (mr. lurgan had forgotten nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paint-box, and compass, and in a worn old purse-belt embroidered with porcupine quill-patterns lay a month's pay. kings could be no richer. he bought sweetmeats in a leaf-cup from a hindu trader, and ate them with glad rapture till a policeman ordered him off the steps. chapter xi give the man who is not made to his trade swords to fling and catch again, coins to ring and snatch again, men to harm and cure again, snakes to charm and lure again-- he'll be hurt by his own blade, by his serpents disobeyed, by his clumsiness bewrayed, by the people mocked to scorn. so 'tis not with juggler born. pinch of dust or withered flower, chance-flung fruit or borrowed staff, serve his need and shore his power, bind the spell, or loose the laugh! 'but a man who, etc.,' op. . followed a sudden natural reaction. 'now am i alone--all alone,' he thought. 'in all india is no one so alone as i! if i die to-day, who shall bring the news--and to whom? if i live and god is good, there will be a price upon my head, for i am a son of the charm--i, kim.' a very few white people, but many asiatics, can throw themselves into a mazement as it were by repeating their own names over and over again to themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is called personal identity. when one grows older, the power, usually, departs, but while it lasts it may descend upon a man at any moment. 'who is kim--kim--kim?' he squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to pin-points. in a minute--in another half second--he felt he would arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with the rush of a wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head. a long-haired hindu bairagi (holy man), who had just bought a ticket, halted before him at that moment and stared intently. 'i also have lost it,' he said sadly. 'it is one of the gates to the way, but for me it has been shut many years.' 'what is the talk?' said kim, abashed. 'thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy soul might be. the seizure came of a sudden. i know. who should know but i? whither goest thou?' 'toward kashi'(benares). 'there are no gods there. i have proved them. i go to prayag (allahabad) for the fifth time--seeking the road to enlightenment. of what faith art thou?' 'i too am a seeker,' said kim, using one of the lama's pet words. 'though'--he forgot his northern dress for the moment--'though allah alone knoweth what i seek.' the old fellow slipped the bairagi's crutch under his armpit and sat down on a patch of ruddy leopard's skin as kim rose at the call for the benares train. 'go in hope, little brother,' he said. 'it is a long road to the feet of the one; but thither do we all travel.' kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty miles in the crowded compartment, was cheering his neighbours with a string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master's magical gifts. benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though it was pleasant to find how his cloth was respected. at least one-third of the population prays eternally to some group or other of the many million deities, and so revere every sort of holy man. kim was guided to the temple of the tirthankers, about a mile outside the city, near sarnath, by a chance-met punjabi farmer--a kamboh from jullundur-way who had appealed in vain to every god of his homestead to cure his small son, and was trying benares as a last resort. 'thou art from the north?' he asked, shouldering through the press of the narrow, stinking streets much like his own pet bull at home. 'ay, i know the punjab. my mother was a pahareen, but my father came from amritzar--by jandiala,' said kim, oiling his ready tongue for the needs of the road. 'jandiala--jullundur? oho! then we be neighbours in some sort, as it were.' he nodded tenderly to the wailing child in his arms. 'whom dost thou serve?' 'a most holy man at the temple of the tirthankers.' 'they are all most holy and--most greedy,' said the jat with bitterness. 'i have walked the pillars and trodden the temples till my feet are flayed, and the child is no whit better. and the mother being sick too. . . . hush, then, little one. . . . we changed his name when the fever came. we put him into girl's clothes. there was nothing we did not do, except--i said to his mother when she bundled me off to benares--she should have come with me--i said sakhi sarwar sultan would serve us best. we know his generosity, but these down-country gods are strangers.' the child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked at kim through heavy eyelids. 'and was it all worthless?' kim asked, with easy interest. 'all worthless--all worthless,' said the child, lips cracking with fever. 'the gods have given him a good mind, at least,' said the father proudly. 'to think he should have listened so cleverly. yonder is thy temple. now i am a poor man,--many priests have dealt with me,--but my son is my son, and if a gift to thy master can cure him--i am at my very wits' end.' kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. three years ago he would have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way without a thought; but now, the very respect the jat paid him proved that he was a man. moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice already, and knew enough to recognise starvation when he saw it. 'call him forth and i will give him a bond on my best yoke, so that the child is cured.' kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. a white-clad oswal banker from ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked him what he did. 'i am chela to teshoo lama, an holy one from bhotiyal--within there. he bade me come. i wait. tell him.' 'do not forget the child,' cried the importunate jat over his shoulder, and then bellowed in punjabi: 'o holy one--o disciple of the holy one--o gods above all the worlds--behold affliction sitting at the gate!' that cry is so common in benares that the passers never turned their heads. the oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the darkness behind him, and the easy, uncounted eastern minutes slid by; for the lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him. when the click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court where the calm images of the arhats stand, a novice whispered, 'thy chela is here,' and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of that prayer. hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the jat ran before him, and, lifting up the child, cried: 'look upon this, holy one; and if the gods will, he lives--he lives!' he fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin. 'what is now?' the lama's eyes turned to kim. it was noticeable he spoke far clearer urdu than long ago, under zam-zammah; but the father would allow no private talk. 'it is no more than a fever,' said kim. 'the child is not well fed.' 'he sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.' 'if it be permitted, i may cure, holy one.' 'what! have they made thee a healer? wait here,' said the lama, and he sat down by the jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while kim, looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little betel-box. he had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as a sahib--of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself--boy's dreams all. there was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for thought and a muttered invocation between whiles. quinine he had in tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges--beef most probably, but that was not his business. the little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste. 'take then these six.' kim handed them to the man. 'praise the gods, and boil three in milk; other three in water. after he has drunk the milk give him this (it was the half of a quinine pill), and wrap him warm. give him the water of the other three, and the other half of this white pill when he wakes. meantime, here is another brown medicine that he may suck at on the way home.' 'gods, what wisdom!' said the kamboh, snatching. it was as much as kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of autumn malaria--if you except the patter that he added to impress the lama. 'now go! come again in the morning.' 'but the price--the price,' said the jat, and threw back his sturdy shoulders. 'my son is my son. now that he will be whole again, how shall i go back to his mother and say i took help by the wayside and did not even give a bowl of curds in return?' 'they are alike, these jats,' said kim softly. 'the jat stood on his dunghill and the king's elephants went by. "o driver," said he, "what will you sell those little donkeys for?"' the jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the lama. 'it is the saying of my own country--the very talk of it. so are we jats all. i will come to-morrow with the child; and the blessing of the gods of the homesteads--who are good little gods--be on you both. . . . now, son, we grow strong again. do not spit it out, little princeling! king of my heart, do not spit it out, and we shall be strong men, wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning.' he moved away, crooning and mumbling. the lama turned to kim, and all the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes. 'to heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge. that was wisely done, o friend of all the world.' 'i was made wise by thee, holy one,' said kim, forgetting the little play just ended; forgetting st. xavier's; forgetting his white blood; forgetting even the great game as he stooped, mohammedan fashion, to touch his master's feet in the dust of the jain temple. 'my teaching i owe to thee. i have eaten thy bread three years. my time is finished. i am loosed from the schools. i come to thee.' 'herein is my reward. enter! enter! and is all well?' they passed to the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across. 'stand that i may see. so!' he peered critically. 'it is no longer a child, but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. i did well--i did well when i gave thee up to the armed men on that black night. dost thou remember our first day under zam-zammah?' 'ay,' said kim. 'dost thou remember when i leapt off the carriage the first day i went to--' 'the gates of learning? truly. and the day that we ate the cakes together at the back of the river by nucklao. aha! many times hast thou begged for me, but that day i begged for thee.' 'good reason,' quoth kim. 'i was then a scholar in the gates of learning, and attired as a sahib. do not forget, holy one,' he went on playfully, 'i am still a sahib--by thy favour.' 'true. and a sahib in most high esteem. come to my cell, chela.' 'how is that known to thee?' the lama smiled. 'first by means of letters from the kindly priest whom we met in the camp of armed men; but he is now gone to his own country, and i sent the money to his brother.' colonel creighton, who had succeeded to the trusteeship when father victor went to england with the mavericks, was hardly the chaplain's brother. 'but i do not well understand sahibs' letters. they must be interpreted to me. i chose a surer way. many times when i returned from my search to this temple, which has always been a nest to me, there came one seeking enlightenment--a man from leh--that had been, he said, a hindu, but wearied of all those gods.' the lama pointed to the arhats. 'a fat man?' said kim, a twinkle in his eye. 'very fat; but i perceived in a little his mind was wholly given up to useless things--such as devils and charms and the form and fashion of our tea-drinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we initiated the novices. a man abounding in questions; but he was a friend of thine, chela. he told me that thou wast on the road to much honour as a scribe. and i see thou art a physician.' 'yes, that am i--a scribe, when i am a sahib, but it is set aside when i come as thy disciple. i have accomplished the years appointed for a sahib.' 'as it were a novice?' said the lama, nodding his head. 'art thou freed from the schools? i would not have thee unripe.' 'i am all free. in due time i take service under the government as a scribe--' 'not as a warrior. that is well.' 'but first i come to wander--with thee. therefore i am here. who begs for thee, these days?' he went on quickly. the ice was thin. 'very often i beg myself; but, as thou knowest, i am seldom here, except when i come to look again at my disciple. from one end to another of hind have i travelled afoot and in the te-rain. a great and a wonderful land! but here, when i put in, is as though i were in my own bhotiyal.' he looked round the little clean cell complacently. a low cushion gave him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-legged attitude of the bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teak-wood table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups, was before him. in one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily carved teak, bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated buddha and fronted by a lamp, an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-pots. 'the keeper of the images in the wonder house acquired merit by giving me these a year since,' he said, following kim's eye. 'when one is far from one's own land such things carry remembrance; and we must reverence the lord for that he showed the way. see!' he pointed to a curiously-built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic metal ornament. 'when i was abbot in my own place--before i came to better knowledge--i made that offering daily. it is the sacrifice of the universe to the lord. thus do we of bhotiyal offer all the world daily to the excellent law. and i do it even now, though i know that the excellent one is beyond all pinchings and pattings.' he snuffed from his gourd. 'it is well done, holy one,' kim murmured, sinking at ease on the cushions, very happy and rather tired. 'and also,' the old man chuckled, 'i write pictures of the wheel of life. three days to a picture. i was busied on it--or it may be i shut my eyes a little--when they brought word of thee. it is good to have thee here: i will show thee my art--not for pride's sake, but because thou must learn. the sahibs have not all this world's wisdom.' he drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of india ink. in cleanest, severest outline he had traced the great wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined hog, snake, and dove (ignorance, anger, and lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and hells, and all the chances of human life. men say that the bodhisat himself first drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach his disciples the cause of things. many ages have crystallised it into a most wonderful convention crowded with hundreds of little figures whose every line carries a meaning. few can translate the picture-parable; there are not twenty in all the world who can draw it surely without a copy: of those who can both draw and expound are but three. 'i have a little learned to draw,' said kim. 'but this is a marvel beyond marvels.' 'i have written it for many years,' said the lama. 'time was when i could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. i will teach thee the art--after due preparation; and i will show thee the meaning of the wheel.' 'we take the road, then?' 'the road and our search. i was but waiting for thee. it was made plain to me in a hundred dreams--notably one that came upon the night of the day that the gates of learning first shut--that without thee i should never find my river. again and again, as thou knowest, i put this from me, fearing an illusion. therefore i would not take thee with me that day at lucknow, when we ate the cakes. i would not take thee till the time was ripe and auspicious. from the hills to the sea, from the sea to the hills have i gone, but it was vain. then i remembered the "jataka."' he told kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had told it so often to the jain priests. 'further testimony is not needed,' he ended serenely. 'thou wast sent for an aid. that aid removed, my search came to naught. therefore we will go out again together, and our search is sure.' 'whither go we?' 'what matters, friend of all the world? the search, i say, is sure. if need be, the river will break from the ground before us. i acquired merit when i sent thee to the gates of learning, and gave thee the jewel that is wisdom. thou didst return, i saw even now, a follower of sakyamuni, the physician, whose altars are many in bhotiyal. it is sufficient. we are together, and all things are as they were--friend of all the world--friend of the stars--my chela!' then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the lama never demanded any details of life at st. xavier's, nor showed the faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of sahibs. his mind moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their wonderful first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling, till it pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old age. kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played with his ghost-dagger and rosary. the clamour of benares, oldest of all earth's cities awake before the gods, day and night, beat round the walls as the sea's roar round a breakwater. now and again, a jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a living thing. a lamp twinkled, and there followed the sound of a prayer. kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. that night he dreamed in hindustanee, with never an english word. . . . 'holy one, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,' he said, about three o'clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking from dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. 'the jat will be here at the light.' 'i am well answered. in my haste i would have done a wrong.' he sat down on the cushions and returned to his rosary. 'surely old folk are as children,' he said pathetically. 'they desire a matter--behold, it must be done at once, or they fret and weep! many times when i was upon the road i have been ready to stamp with my feet at the hindrance of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust. it was not so when i was a man--a long time ago. none the less it is wrongful--' 'but thou art indeed old, holy one.' 'the thing was done. a cause was put out into the world, and, old or young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the effect of that cause? does the wheel hang still if a child spin it--or a drunkard? chela, this is a great and a terrible world.' 'i think it good,' kim yawned. 'what is there to eat? i have not eaten since yesterday even.' 'i had forgotten thy need. yonder is good bhotiyal tea and cold rice.' 'we cannot walk far on such stuff.' kim felt all the european's lust for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a jain temple. yet, instead of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. it brought the farmer, voluble, stuttering with gratitude. 'in the night the fever broke and the sweat came,' he cried. 'feel here--his skin is fresh and new! he esteemed the salt lozenges, and took milk with greed.' he drew the cloth from the child's face, and it smiled sleepily at kim. a little knot of jain priests, silent but all-observant, gathered by the temple door. they knew, and kim knew that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. being courteous folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by presence, word, or gesture. wherefore kim repaid them as the sun rose. 'thank the gods of the jains, brother,' he said, not knowing how those gods were named. 'the fever is indeed broken.' 'look! see!' the lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of three years. 'was there ever such a chela? he follows our lord the healer.' now the jains officially recognise all the gods of the hindu creed, as well as the lingam and the snake. they wear the brahminical thread; they adhere to every claim of hindu caste-law. but, because they knew and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he sought the way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued long of nights with the head-priest--as free-thinking a metaphysician as ever split one hair into seventy--they murmured assent. 'remember,'--kim bent over the child,--'this trouble may come again.' 'not if thou hast the proper spell,' said the father. 'but in a little while we go away.' 'true,' said the lama to all the jains. 'we go now together upon the search whereof i have often spoken. i waited till my chela was ripe. behold him! we go north. never again shall i look upon this place of my rest, o people of good will.' 'but i am not a beggar.' the cultivator rose to his feet, clutching the child. 'be still. do not trouble the holy one,' a priest cried. 'go,' kim whispered. 'meet us again under the big railway bridge, and for the sake of all the gods of our punjab, bring food--curry, pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. specially sweetmeats. be swift!' the pallor of hunger suited kim very well as he stood, tall and slim, in his sad-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama. an english observer might have said that he looked rather like the young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad faint with emptiness. long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed. the seeker--he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-away tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic--took no part in it, but meditated, as always, alone among the images. the others were very human; pressing small comforts upon the old man,--a betel-box, a fine new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such like,--warning him against the dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the search. meantime kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and swore to himself in the language of st. xavier's. 'but it is my own fault,' he concluded. 'with mahbub, i ate mahbub's bread, or lurgan sahib's. at st. xavier's, three meals a day. here i must jolly well look out for myself. besides, i am not in good training. how i could eat a plate of beef now! . . . is it finished, holy one?' the lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate chinese. 'i must lean on thy shoulder,' said he, as the temple-gates closed. 'we grow stiff, i think.' the weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of crowded streets, and kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for the way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge. 'here we eat,' he said resolutely, as the kamboh, blue-robed and smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child on the other. 'fall to, holy ones!' he cried from fifty yards. (they were by the shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.) 'rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing (asafoetida), curds and sugar. king of my fields,' this to the small son, 'let us show these holy men that we jats of jullundur can pay a service. . . . i had heard the jains would eat nothing that they had not cooked, but truly'--he looked away politely over the broad river--'where there is no eye there is no caste.' 'and we,' said kim, turning his back and heaping a leaf-platter for the lama, 'are beyond all castes.' they gorged themselves on the good food in silence. nor till he had licked the last of the sticky sweet-stuff from his little finger did kim note that the kamboh too was girt for travel. 'if our roads lie together,' he said roughly, 'i go with thee. one does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak. but i am not altogether a reed.' he picked up his lathi--a five-foot male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron--and flourished it in the air. 'the jats are called quarrelsome, but that is not true. except when we are crossed, we are like our own buffaloes.' 'so be it,' said kim. 'a good stick is a good reason.' the lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged perspective the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-ghats by the river. now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment of a half-burned body bobbed by on the full current. 'but for thee,' said the kamboh to kim, drawing his child into his hairy breast, 'i might to-day have gone thither--with this one. the priests tell us that benares is holy--which none doubt--and desirable to die in. but i do not know their gods, and they ask for money; and when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of none effect except one do another. wash here! wash there! pour, drink, lave, and scatter flowers--but always pay the priests. no, the punjab for me, and the soil of the jullundur-doab for the best soil in it.' 'i have said many times--in the temple i think--that if need be, the river will open at our feet. we will therefore go north,' said the lama, rising. 'i remember a pleasant place, set about with fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation--and the air is cooler there. it comes from the hills and the snow of the hills.' 'what is the name?' said kim. 'how should i know? didst thou not--no, that was after the army rose out of the earth and took thee away. i abode there in meditation in a room against the dovecot--except when she talked eternally.' 'oho! the woman from kulu. that is by saharunpore,' kim laughed. 'how does the spirit move thy master? does he go afoot, for the sake of past sins?' the jat demanded cautiously. 'it is a far cry to delhi.' 'no,' said kim. 'i will beg a tikkut for the te-rain.' one does not own to the possession of money in india. 'then in the name of the gods, let us take the fire-carriage. my son is best in his mother's arms. the government has brought on us many taxes, but it gives us one good thing--the te-rain that joins friends and unites the anxious. a wonderful matter is the te-rain.' they all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the heat of the day. the kamboh plied kim with ten thousand questions as to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some curious answers. kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat north-western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of fellow-passengers. even to-day, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark oppression to indian rustics. they do not understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great pieces out of the charm. so long and furious are the debates between travellers and eurasian ticket-collectors. kim assisted at two or three with grave advice, meant to darken council and to show off his wisdom before the lama and the admiring kamboh. but at somna road the fates sent him a matter to think upon. there tumbled into the compartment, as the train was moving off, a mean, lean little person--a mahratta, so far as kim could judge by the cock of the tight turban. his face was cut, his muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. he told them that a country-cart had upset and nearly slain him: he was going to delhi, where his son lived. kim watched him closely. if, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on the earth, there should have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin. but all his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not cast a man into such extremity of terror. as, with shaking fingers, he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an amulet of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart. now, amulets are common enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. there were none except the kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. kim made as to scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. the mahratta's face changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the amulet fairly on his breast. 'yes,' he went on to the kamboh, 'i was in haste, and the cart, driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the harm done to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean. i was not a son of the charm (a lucky man) that day.' 'that was a great loss,' said kamboh, withdrawing interest. his experience of benares had made him suspicious. 'who cooked it?' said kim. 'a woman.' the mahratta raised his eyes. 'but all women can cook tarkeean,' said the kamboh. 'it is a good curry, as i know.' 'oh, yes, it is a good curry,' said the mahratta. 'and cheap,' said kim. 'but what about caste?' 'oh, there is no caste where men go to--look for tarkeean,' the mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. 'of whose service art thou?' 'of the service of this holy one.' kim pointed to the happy, drowsy lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word. 'ah, he was sent from heaven to aid me. he is called the friend of all the world. he is also called the friend of the stars. he walks as a physician--his time being ripe. great is his wisdom.' 'and a son of the charm,' said kim under his breath, as the kamboh made haste to prepare a pipe lest the mahratta should beg. 'and who is that?' the mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously. 'one whose child i--we have cured, who lies under great debt to us.--sit by the window, man from jullundur. here is a sick one.' 'humph! i have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. my ears are not long. i am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.' the jat slid himself heavily into a far corner. 'art thou anything of a healer? i am ten leagues deep in calamity,' cried the mahratta, picking up the cue. 'the man is cut and bruised all over. i go about to cure him,' kim retorted. 'none interfered between thy babe and me.' 'i am rebuked,' said the kamboh meekly. 'i am thy debtor for the life of my son. thou art a miracle-worker--i know it.' 'show me the cuts.' kim bent over the mahratta's neck, his heart nearly choking him; for this was the great game with a vengeance. 'now, tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while i say a charm.' 'i come from the south, where my work lay. one of us they slew by the roadside. hast thou heard?' kim shook his head. he, of course, knew nothing of e. 's predecessor, slain down south in the habit of an arab trader. 'having found a certain letter which i was sent to seek, i came away. i escaped from the city and ran to mhow. so sure was i that none knew, i did not change my face. at mhow a woman brought charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which i had left. then i saw the cry was out against me. i ran from mhow by night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without question to my enemies in the south. then i lay in old chitor city a week, a penitent in a temple, but i could not get rid of the letter which was my charge. i buried it under the queen's stone, at chitor, in the place known to us all.' kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the thread. 'at chitor, look you, i was all in kings' country; for kotah to the east is beyond the queen's law, and east again lie jeypur and gwalior. neither love spies, and there is no justice. i was hunted like a wet jackal; but i broke through at bandakui, where i heard there was a charge against me of murder in the city i had left--of the murder of a boy. they have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting.' 'but cannot the government protect?' 'we of the game are beyond protection. if we die, we die. our names are blotted from the book. that is all. at bandakui, where lives one of us, i thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me a mahratta. then i came to agra, and would have turned back to chitor to recover the letter. so sure i was i had slipped them. therefore i did not send a tar (telegram) to any one saying where the letter lay. i wished the credit of it all.' kim nodded. he understood that feeling well. 'but at agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me, and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts then and there. oh, they are clever in the south! he recognised me as his agent for cotton. may he burn in hell for it!' 'and wast thou?' 'o fool! i was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! i ran into the fleshers' ward and came out by the house of the jew, who feared a riot and pushed me forth. i came afoot to somna road--i had only money for my tikkut to delhi--and there, while i lay in a ditch with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut me and searched me from head to foot. within earshot of the te-rain it was!' 'why did he not slay thee out of hand?' 'they are not so foolish. if i am taken in delhi at the instance of lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over to the state that desires it. i go back guarded, and then--i die slowly for an example to the rest of us. the south is not my country. i run in circles--like a goat with one eye. i have not eaten for two days. i am marked'--he touched the filthy bandage on his leg--'so that they will know me at delhi.' 'thou art safe in the te-rain, at least.' 'live a year at the great game and tell me that again! the wires will be out against me at delhi, describing every tear and rag upon me. twenty--a hundred, if need be--will have seen me slay that boy. and thou art useless!' kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the case would be deadly complete--even to the corpse. the mahratta twitched his fingers with pain from time to time. the kamboh in his corner glared sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and kim, fumbling doctor-fashion at the man's neck, thought out his plan between invocations. 'hast thou a charm to change my shape? else i am dead. five--ten minutes alone, if i had not been so pressed, and i might--' 'is he cured yet, miracle-worker?' said the kamboh jealously. 'thou hast chanted long enough.' 'nay. there is no cure for his hurts, as i see, except he sit for three days in the habit of a bairagi.' this is a common penance, often imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher. 'one priest always goes about to make another priest,' was the retort. like most grossly superstitious folk, the kamboh could not keep his tongue from deriding his church. 'will thy son be a priest, then? it is time he took more of my quinine.' 'we jats are all buffaloes,' said the kamboh, softening anew. kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child's trusting little lips. 'i have asked for nothing,' he said sternly to the father, 'except food. dost thou grudge me that? i go to heal another man. have i thy leave--prince?' up flew the man's huge paws in supplication. 'nay--nay. do not mock me thus.' 'it pleases me to cure this sick one. thou shalt acquire merit by aiding. what colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl? white. that is auspicious. was there raw turmeric among thy food-stuffs?' 'i--i--' 'open thy bundle!' it was the usual collection of small oddments: bits of cloth, quack medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of atta,--grayish, rough-ground native flour,--twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry pipe-stems, and a packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in a quilt. kim turned it over with the air of a wise warlock, muttering a mohammedan invocation. 'this is wisdom i learned from the sahibs,' he whispered to the lama; and here, when one thinks of his training at lurgan's, he spoke no more than the truth. 'there is a great evil in this man's fortune, as shown by the stars, which--which troubles him. shall i take it away?' 'friend of the stars, thou hast done well in all things. let it be at thy pleasure. is it another healing?' 'quick! be quick!' gasped the mahratta. 'the train may stop.' 'a healing against the shadow of death,' said kim, mixing the kamboh's flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the red-earth bowl of the pipe. e. , without a word, slipped off his turban and shook down his long black hair. 'that is my food--priest,' the jat growled. 'a buffalo in the temple! hast thou dared to look even thus far?' said kim. 'i must do mysteries before fools; but have a care for thy eyes. is there a film before them already? i save the babe, and for return thou--oh, shameless!' the man flinched at the direct gaze, for kim was wholly in earnest. 'shall i curse thee, or shall i--' he picked up the outer cloth of the bundle and threw it over the bowed head. 'dare so much as to think a wish to see, and--and--even i cannot save thee. sit! be dumb!' 'i am blind--dumb. forbear to curse! co--come, child; we will play a game of hiding. do not, for my sake, look from under the cloth.' 'i see hope,' said e. . 'what is thy scheme?' 'this comes next,' said kim, plucking the thin body-shirt. e. hesitated, with all a north-west man's dislike of baring his body. 'what is caste to a cut throat?' said kim, rending it to the waist. 'we must make thee a yellow saddhu all over. strip--strip swiftly, and shake thy hair over thy eyes while i scatter the ash. now, a caste-mark on thy forehead.' he drew from his bosom the little survey paint-box and a cake of crimson lake. 'art thou only a beginner?' said e. , labouring literally for the dear life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings and stood clear in the loin-cloth while kim splashed in a noble caste-mark on the ash-smeared brow. 'but two days entered to the game, brother,' kim replied. 'smear more ash on the bosom.' 'hast thou met--a physician of sick pearls?' he switched out his long, tight-rolled turban-cloth and, with swiftest hands, rolled it over and under about his loins into the intricate devices of a saddhu's cincture. 'hah! dost thou know his touch, then? he was my teacher for a while. we must bar thy legs. ash cures wounds. smear it again.' 'i was his pride once, but thou art almost better. the gods are kind to us! give me that.' it was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the jat's bundle. e. gulped down a half handful. 'they are good against hunger, fear, and chill. and they make the eyes red too,' he explained. 'now i shall have heart to play the game. we lack only a saddhu's tongs. what of the old clothes?' kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of his tunic. with a yellow-ochre paint cake he smeared the legs and breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and turmeric. 'the blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother.' 'may be; but no need to throw them out of the window. . . . it is finished.' his voice thrilled with a boy's pure delight in the game. 'turn and look, o jat!' 'the gods protect us,' said the hooded kamboh, emerging like a buffalo from the reeds. 'but--whither went the mahratta? what hast thou done?' kim had been trained by lurgan sahib; and e. , by virtue of his business, was no bad actor. in place of the tremulous, shrinking trader there lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash-smeared, ochre-barred, dusty-haired saddhu, his swollen eyes--opium takes quick effect on an empty stomach--luminous with insolence and bestial lust, his legs crossed under him, kim's brown rosary round his neck, and a scant yard of worn, flowered chintz on his shoulders. the child buried his face in his amazed father's arms. 'look up, princeling! we travel with warlocks, but they will not hurt thee. oh, do not cry. . . . what is the sense of curing a child one day and killing him with fright the next?' 'the child will be fortunate all his life. he has seen a great healing. when i was a child i made clay men and horses.' 'i have made them too. sir banas, he comes in the night and makes them all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child. 'and so thou art not frightened at anything. eh, prince?' 'i was frightened because my father was frightened. i felt his arms shake.' 'oh, chicken-man,' said kim, and even the abashed jat laughed. 'i have done a healing on this poor trader. he must forsake his gains and his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the malignity of his enemies. the stars are against him.' 'the fewer money-lenders the better, say i; but, saddhu or no saddhu, he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.' 'so? but that is thy child on thy shoulder--given over to the burning-ghat not two days ago. there remains one thing more. i did this charm in thy presence because need was great. i changed his shape and his soul. none the less, if, by any chance, o man from jullundur, thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the elders sitting under the village tree, or in thy own house, or in company of thy priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will come among the buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the corn-bin, and the curse of our gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy feet and after thy ploughshare.' this was part of an old curse picked up from a faquir by the taksali gate in the days of kim's innocence. it lost nothing by repetition. 'cease, holy one! in mercy, cease!' cried the jat. 'do not curse the household. i saw nothing! i heard nothing! i am thy cow!' and he made to grab at kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage floor. 'but since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of a pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as i have honoured by using in my art, so will the gods return a blessing,' and he gave it at length, to the man's immense relief. it was one that he had learned from lurgan sahib. the lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the business of disguisement. 'friend of the stars,' he said at last, 'thou hast acquired great wisdom. beware that it do not give birth to pride. no man having the law before his eyes speaks hastily of any matter which he has seen or encountered.' 'no--no--no indeed,' cried the farmer, fearful lest the master should be minded to improve on the pupil. e. , with relaxed mouth, gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the spent asiatic. so, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into delhi about lamp-lighting time. chapter xii 'who hath desired the sea--the sight of salt-water unbounded? the heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded? the sleek-barrelled swell before storm--gray, foamless, enormous, and growing? stark calm on the lap of the line--or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing? his sea in no showing the same--his sea and the same 'neath all showing-- his sea that his being fulfils? so and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hill-men desire their hills!' 'i have found my heart again,' said e. , under cover of the platform's tumult. 'hunger and fear make men dazed, or i might have thought of this escape before. i was right. they come to hunt for me. thou hast saved my head.' a group of yellow-trousered punjab policemen, headed by a hot and perspiring young englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages. behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who looked like a lawyer's tout. 'see the young sahib reading from a paper. my description is in his hand,' said e. . 'they go carriage by carriage, like fisher-folk netting a pool.' when the procession reached their compartment, e. was counting his beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while kim jeered at him for being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the saddhu's distinguishing mark. the lama, deep in meditation, stared straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up his belongings. 'nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies,' said the englishman aloud, and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police mean extortion to the native all india over. 'the trouble now,' whispered e. , 'lies in sending a wire as to the place where i hid that letter i was sent to find. i cannot go to the tar-office in this guise.' 'is it not enough i have saved thy neck?' 'not if the work be left unfinished. did never the healer of sick pearls tell thee so? comes another sahib! ah!' this was a tallish, sallowish district superintendent of police,--belt, helmet, polished spurs and all,--strutting and twirling his dark moustache. 'what fools are these police sahibs!' said kim genially. e. glanced up under his eyelids. 'it is well said,' he muttered in a changed voice. 'i go to drink water. keep my place.' he blundered out almost into the englishman's arms, and was bad-worded in clumsy urdu. 'tum-mut? you drunk? you mustn't bang about as though delhi station belonged to you, my friend.' e. , not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of the filthiest abuse, at which kim naturally rejoiced. it reminded him of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at umballa in the terrible time of his first schooling. 'my good fool,' the englishman drawled. 'nickle-jao! go back to your carriage.' step by step, withdrawing deferentially, and dropping his voice, the yellow saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the d. s. p. to remotest posterity by--here kim almost jumped--by the curse of the queen's stone, by the writing under the queen's stone, and by an assortment of gods with wholly new names. 'i don't know what you're saying,'--the englishman flushed angrily,--'but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. come out of that!' e. , affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the englishman wrenched angrily from his hand. 'oh zoolum! what oppression!' growled the jat from his corner. 'all for the sake of a jest too.' he had been grinning at the freedom of the saddhu's tongue. 'thy charms do not work well to-day, holy one!' the saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. the ruck of passengers, busy with their babies and their bundles, had not noticed the affair. kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed through his head that he had heard this angry, stupid sahib discoursing loud personalities to an old lady near umballa three years ago. 'it is well,' the saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting, bewildered press--a persian greyhound between his feet and a cadgeful of yelling hawks under charge of a rajput falconer in the small of his back. 'he has gone now to send word of the letter which i hid. they told me he was in peshawur. i might have known that he is like the crocodile--always at the other ford. he has saved me from present calamity, but i owe my life to thee.' 'is he also one of us?' kim ducked under a mewar camel-driver's greasy armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering sikh matrons. 'not less than the greatest. we are both fortunate! i will make report to him of what thou hast done. i am safe under his protection.' he bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages, and squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office. 'return, or they take thy place! have no fear for the work, brother--or my life. thou hast given me breathing-space, and strickland sahib has pulled me to land. we may work together at the game yet. farewell!' kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little nettled in that he had no key to the secrets about him. 'i am only a beginner at the game, that is sure. i could not have leaped into safety as did the saddhu. he knew it was darkest under the lamp. i could not have thought to tell news under pretence of cursing . . . and how clever was the sahib! no matter, i saved the life of one. . . . where is the kamboh gone, holy one?' he whispered, as he took his seat in the now crowded compartment. 'a fear gripped him,' the lama replied, with a touch of tender malice. 'he saw thee change the mahratta to a saddhu in the twinkling of an eye, as a protection against evil. that shook him. then he saw the saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the polis--all the effect of thy art. then he gathered up his son and fled; for he said that thou didst change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier of words with the sahibs, and he feared a like fate. where is the saddhu?' 'with the polis,' said kim. . . . 'yet i saved the kamboh's child.' the lama snuffed blandly. 'ah, chela, see how thou art overtaken! thou didst cure the kamboh's child solely to acquire merit. but thou didst put a spell on the mahratta with prideful workings--i watched thee--and with side-long glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer: whence calamity and suspicion.' kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. not more than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged, but he saw himself in a cleft stick. the train rolled out of delhi into the night. 'it is true,' he murmured. 'where i have offended thee i have done wrong.' 'it is more, chela. thou hast loosed an act upon the world, and as a stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not tell how far.' this ignorance was well both for kim's vanity and for the lama's peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at simla a code-wire reporting the arrival of e. at delhi, and, more important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to--abstract. incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of murder done in a far southern state, a horribly indignant ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a mr. strickland on delhi platform, while e. was paddling through by-ways into the locked heart of delhi city. in two hours several telegrams had reached the angry minister of a southern state reporting that all trace of a somewhat bruised mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely train halted at saharunpore the last ripple of the stone kim had helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in far-away roum--where it disturbed a pious man at prayers. the lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvillea-trellis near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of his disciple. 'we will put these things behind us,' he said, indicating the brazen engine and the gleaming track. 'the jolting of the te-rain--though a wonderful thing--has turned my bones to water. we will use clean air henceforward.' 'let us go to the kulu woman's house,' said kim, and stepped forth cheerily under the bundles. early morning saharunpore-way is clean and well scented. he thought of the other mornings at st. xavier's, and it topped his already thrice-heaped contentment. 'where is this new haste born from? wise men do not run about like chickens in the sun. we have come hundreds upon hundreds of kos already, and, till now, i have scarcely been alone with thee an instant. how canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds? how can i, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the way?' 'her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then?' the disciple smiled. 'nor her desire for charms. i remember once when i spoke of the wheel of life'--the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy--'she was only curious about the devils that besiege children. she shall acquire merit by entertaining us--in a little while--at an after-occasion--softly, softly. now we will wander loose-foot, waiting upon the chain of things. the search is sure.' so they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful fruit-gardens--by way of aminabad, sahaigunge, akrola of the ford, and little phulesa--the line of the sewaliks always to the north, and behind them again the snows. after long, sweet sleep under the dry stars came the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking village--begging-bowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in defiance of the law from sky's edge to sky's edge. then would kim return soft-footed through the soft dust to his master under the shadow of a mango tree or the thinner shade of a white doon siris, to eat and drink at ease. at mid-day, after talk and a little wayfaring, they slept; meeting the world refreshed when the air was cooler. night found them adventuring into new territory--some chosen village spied three hours before across the fat land, and much discussed upon the road. there they told their tale,--a new one each evening so far as kim was concerned,--and there were they made welcome, either by priest or headman, after the custom of the kindly east. when the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon kim, there was always the wheel of life to draw forth, to hold flat under wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle. here sat the gods on high--and they were dreams of dreams. here was our heaven and the world of the demi-gods--horsemen fighting among the hills. here were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls ascending or descending the ladder and therefore not to be interfered with. here were the hells, hot and cold, and the abodes of tormented ghosts. let the chela study the troubles that come from over-eating--bloated stomach and burning bowels. obediently then, with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did the chela study; but when they came to the human world, busy and profitless, that is just above the hells, his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the very wheel itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling--all warmly alive. often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text, bidding, kim--too ready--note how the flesh takes a thousand thousand shapes, desirable or detestable as men reckon; but in truth of no account either way; and how the stupid spirit, bond-slave to the hog, the dove, and the serpent--lusting after betel-nut, a new yoke of oxen, women, or the favour of kings--is bound to follow the body through all the heavens and all the hells, and strictly round again. sometimes a woman or a poor man, watching the ritual--it was nothing less--when the great yellow chart was unfolded, would throw a few flowers or a handful of cowries upon its edge. it sufficed these humble ones that they had met a holy one who might be moved to remember them in his prayers. 'cure them if they are sick,' said the lama, when kim's sporting instincts woke. 'cure them if they have fever, but by no means work charms. remember what befell the mahratta.' 'then all doing is evil?' kim replied, lying out under a big tree at the fork of the doon road, watching the little ants run over his hand. 'to abstain from action is well--except to acquire merit.' 'at the gates of learning we were taught that to abstain from action was unbefitting a sahib. and i am a sahib.' 'friend of all the world,'--the lama looked directly at kim,--'i am an old man--pleased with shows as are children. to those who follow the way there is neither black nor white, hind nor bhotiyal. we be all souls seeking escape. no matter what thy wisdom learned among sahibs, when we come to my river thou wilt be freed from all illusion--at my side. hai! my bones ache for that river, as they ached in the te-rain; but my spirit sits above my bones, waiting. the search is sure!' 'i am answered. is it permitted to ask a question?' the lama inclined his stately head. 'i ate thy bread for three years--as thou knowest. holy one, whence came--?' 'there is much wealth, as men count it, in bhotiyal,' the lama returned with composure. 'in my own place i have the illusion of honour. i ask for that i need. i am not concerned with the account. that is for my monastery. ai! the black high seats in the monastery, and the novices all in order!' and he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the immense and sumptuous ritual of avalanche-guarded cathedrals; of processions and devil-dances; of the changing of monks and nuns into swine; of holy cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue between monastery and monastery; of voices among the hills, and of that mysterious mirage that dances on dry snow. he spoke even of lhassa and of the dalai lama, whom he had seen and adored. each long, perfect day rose behind kim for a barrier to cut him off from his race and his mother-tongue. he slipped back to thinking and dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. the old man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned to the steadfast snows. his river troubled him nothing. now and again, indeed, he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing; but he was content to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down from the doon. this was not ceylon, nor buddh gaya, nor bombay, nor some grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled upon two years ago. he spoke of those places as a scholar removed from vanity, as a seeker walking in humility, as an old man, wise and temperate, illumining knowledge with brilliant insight. bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tale called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and down hind; till kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him for fifty good reasons. so they enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over-eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. their stomachs told them the time, and the people brought them their food, as the saying is. they were lords of the villages of aminabad, sahaigunge, akrola of the ford, and little phulesa, where kim gave the soulless woman a blessing. but news travels fast in india, and too soon shuffled across the crop-land, bearing a basket of fruits with a box of cabul grapes and gilt oranges, a white-whiskered servitor--a lean, dry oorya--begging them to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress, distressed in her mind that the lama had neglected her so long. 'now do i remember'--the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new proposition. 'she is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.' kim was sitting on the edge of a cow's manger, telling stories to a village smith's children. 'she will only ask for another son for her daughter. i have not forgotten her,' he said. 'let her acquire merit. send word that we will come.' they covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were overwhelmed with attentions at the end; for the old lady held a fine tradition of hospitality; to which she forced her son-in-law, who was under the thumb of his women-folk and bought peace by borrowing of the money-lender. age had not weakened her tongue or her memory, and from a discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not less than a dozen servants, she paid kim compliments that would have flung european audiences into unclean dismay. 'but thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the parao,' she shrilled. 'i have not forgotten thee. wash ye and eat. the father of my daughter's son is gone away awhile. so we poor women are dumb and useless.' for proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food and drink were brought; and in the evening--the smoke-scented evening, copper-dun and turquoise across the fields--it pleased her to order her palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky torch-light; and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains, she gossiped. 'had the holy one come alone, i should have received him otherwise; but with this rogue, who can be too careful?' 'maharanee,' said kim, choosing as always the amplest title, 'is it my fault that none other than a sahib--a polis-sahib--called the maharanee whose face he--' 'chitt! that was on the pilgrimage. when we travel--thou knowest the proverb.' 'called the maharanee a breaker of hearts and a dispenser of delights?' 'to remember that! it was true. so he did. that was in the time of the bloom of my beauty.' she chuckled like a contented parrot above the sugar lump. 'now tell me of thy goings and comings--as much as may be without shame. how many maids, and whose wives, hang upon thy eyelashes? ye hail from benares? i would have gone there again this year, but my daughter--we have only two sons. phaii! such is the effect of these low plains. now in kulu men are elephants. but i would ask thy holy one--stand aside, rogue--a charm against most lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter's eldest. two years back he gave me a powerful spell.' 'oh, holy one!' said kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama's rueful face. 'it is true. i gave her one against wind.' 'teeth--teeth--teeth,' snapped the old woman. 'cure them when they are sick,' kim quoted relishingly, 'but by no means work charms. remember what befell the mahratta.' 'that was two rains ago; she wearied me with her continual importunity.' the lama groaned as the unjust judge had groaned before him. 'thus it comes--take note, my chela--that even those who would follow the way are thrust aside by idle women. three days through, when the child was sick, she talked to me.' 'arre! and to whom else should i talk? the boy's mother knew nothing, and the father--in the nights of the cold weather it was--"pray to the gods," said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!' 'i gave her the charm. what is an old man to do?' '"to abstain from action is well--except when we acquire merit."' 'ah, chela, if thou desertest me, i am all alone.' 'he found his milk-teeth easily at any rate,' said the old lady. 'but all priests are alike.' kim coughed severely. being young, he did not approve of her flippancy. 'to importune the wise out of season is to invite calamity.' 'there is a talking mynah'--the thrust came back with the well-remembered snap of the jewelled forefinger--'over the stables which has picked up the very tone of the family-priest. maybe i forget honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists into his belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: "here is the pain!" ye would forgive. i am half minded to take the hakim's medicine. he sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as shiv's own bull. he does not deny remedies, but i doubted for the child because of the inauspicious colour of the bottles.' the lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness towards the room prepared. 'thou hast angered him, belike,' said kim. 'not he. he is wearied, and i forgot, being a grandmother. (none but a grandmother should ever oversee a child. mothers are only fit for bearing.) to-morrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he will write the charm. then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's drugs.' 'who is the hakim, maharanee?' 'a wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober bengali from dacca--a master of medicine. he relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. he travels about now, vending preparations of great value. he has even papers, printed in angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack women. he has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (hakims and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as i take it, gone to cover.' while she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torch-light, muttered: 'this house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and--priests. let the boy stop eating mangoes . . . but who can argue with a grandmother?' he raised his voice respectfully: 'sahiba, the hakim sleeps after his meat. he is in the quarters behind the dovecot.' kim bristled like an expectant terrier. to outface and down-talk a calcutta-taught bengali, a voluble dacca drug-vendor, would be a good game. it was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should be thrown aside for such an one. he knew those curious bastard english advertisements at the backs of native newspapers. st. xavier's boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their mates; for the language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms is most simple and revealing. the oorya, not unanxious to play off one parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecot. 'yes,' said kim, with measured scorn. 'their stock-in-trade is a little coloured water and a very great shamelessness. their prey are broken-down kings and overfed bengalis. their profit is in children--who are not born.' the old lady chuckled. 'do not be envious. charms are better, eh? i never gainsaid it. see that thy holy one writes me a good amulet by the morning.' 'none but the ignorant deny'--a thick, heavy voice boomed through the darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting--'none but the ignorant deny the value of charms. none but the ignorant deny the value of medicines.' 'a rat found a piece of turmeric. said he: "i will open a grocer's shop,"' kim retorted. battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to attention. 'the priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three gods. says he: "hear me, or i will curse you by the three million great ones."' decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. he went on: 'i am but a teacher of the alphabet. i have learned all the wisdom of the sahibs.' 'the sahibs never grow old. they dance and they play like children when they are grandfathers. a strong-backed breed,' piped the voice inside the palanquin. 'i have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and angry men. sina well compounded when the moon stands in the proper house; yellow earths i have--arplan from china that makes a man to renew his youth and astonish his household; saffron from kashmir, and the best salep of cabul. many people have died before--' 'that i surely believe,' said kim. 'they knew the value of my drugs. i do not give my sick the mere ink in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend and wrestle with the evil.' 'very mightily they do so,' sighed the old lady. the voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy, studded with plentiful petitions to the government. 'but for my fate, which overrules all, i had been now in government employ. i bear a degree from the great school at calcutta--whither, maybe, the son of this house shall go.' 'he shall indeed. if our neighbour's brat can in a few years be made an f. a.' (first arts--she used the english word, of which she had heard so often), 'how much more shall children clever as some that i know bear away prizes at rich calcutta.' 'never,' said the voice, 'have i seen such a child! born in an auspicious hour, and--but for that colic which, alas! turning into black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon--destined to many years, he is enviable.' 'hai mai!' said the old lady. 'to praise children is inauspicious, or i could listen to this talk. but the back of the house is unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men and women we know. . . . the child's father is away too, and i must be chowkedar (watchman) in my old age. up! up! take up the palanquin. let the hakim and the young priest settle between them whether charms or medicine most avail. ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the guests, and--round the homestead go i!' the palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of dogs. twenty villages knew the sahiba--her failings, her tongue, and her large charity. twenty villages cheated her after immemorial custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction for any gift under heaven. none the less, she made great parade of her formal inspections, the riot of which could be heard half-way to mussoorie. kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. the hakim, still squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and kim pulled at the good weed. the hangers-on expected grave professional debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring. 'to discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching the peacock to sing,' said the hakim. 'true courtesy,' kim echoed, 'is very often inattention.' these, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress. 'hi! i have an ulcer on my leg,' cried a scullion. 'look at it!' 'get hence! remove!' said the hakim. 'is it the habit of the place to pester honoured guests? ye crowd in like buffaloes.' 'if the sahiba knew--' kim began. 'ai! ai! come away. they are meat for our mistress. when her young shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to--' 'the mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the money-lender's head. who speaks against her?' the old servitor curled his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'i am responsible for the honour of this house. go!' and he drove the underlings before him. said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips: 'how do you do, mr. o'hara? i am jolly glad to see you again.' kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. anywhere on the open road, perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet backwater of life, he was not prepared for hurree babu. it annoyed him, too, that he had been hoodwinked. 'ah ha! i told you at lucknow--resurgam--i shall rise again and you shall not know me. how much did you bet--eh?' he chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed uneasily. 'but why come here, babuji?' 'ah! thatt is the question, as shakespeare hath said. i come to congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at delhi. oah! i tell you we are all proud of you. it was verree neat and handy. our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. he has been in some dam-tight places. now he will be in some more. he told me; i tell mr. lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. all the department is pleased.' for the first time in his life, kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of departmental praise--ensnaring praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-workers. earth has nothing on the same plane to compare with it. but, cried the oriental in him, babus do not travel far to retail compliments. 'tell thy tale, babu,' he said authoritatively. 'oah, it is nothing. onlee i was at simla when the wire came in about what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old creighton--' he looked to see how kim would take this piece of audacity. 'the colonel sahib,' the boy from st. xavier's corrected. 'of course. he found me at a loose string, and i had to go down to chitor to find that beastly letter. i do not like the south--too much railway travel; but i drew good travelling allowance. ha! ha! i meet our mutual at delhi on the way back. he lies quiett just now, and says saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. well, there i hear what you have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous spur of the moment. i tell our mutual friend you take the bally bun, by jove! it was splendid. i come to tell you so.' 'umm!' the frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her setting. some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night and to beat upon a drum kim's next sentence was in the vernacular. 'how didst thou follow us?' 'oah. thatt was nothing. i know from our mutual friend you go to saharunpore. so i come on. red lamas are not inconspicuous persons. i buy myself my drug-box, and i am very good doctor really. i go to akrola by the ford, and hear all about you, and i talk here and talk there. all the common people know what you do. i know when the hospitable old lady sent the dooli. they have great recollections of the old lama's visits here. i know old ladies cannot keep their hands from medicines. so i am a doctor, and--you hear my talk? i think it is verree good. my word, mister o'hara, they know about you and the lama for fifty miles--the common people. so i come. do you mind?' 'babuji,' said kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, 'i am a sahib.' 'my dear mister o'hara--' 'and i hope to play the great game.' 'you are subordinate to me departmentally at present.' 'then why talk like an ape up in a tree? men do not come after one from simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet words. i am not a child. talk hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg. thou art here--speaking not one word of truth in ten. why art thou here? give a straight answer.' 'that is so verree disconcerting of the european, mister o'hara. you should know a heap better at your time of life.' 'but i want to know,' said kim, laughing. 'if it is the game, i may help. how can i do anything if you bukh (babble) all round the shop.' hurree babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it guggled again. 'now i will speak vernacular. you sit tight, mister o'hara. . . . it concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.' 'still? that was finished long ago.' 'when every one is dead the great game is finished. not before. listen to me till the end. there were five kings who prepared a sudden war three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion's pedigree by mahbub ali. upon them, because of that news, and ere they were ready, fell our army.' 'ay--eight thousand men with guns. i remember that night.' 'but the war was not pushed. that is the government custom. the troops were recalled because the government believed the five kings were cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high passes. hilas and bunar--rajahs with guns--undertook for a price to guard the passes against all coming from the north. they protested both fear and friendship.' he broke off with a giggle into english: 'of course, i tell you this unoffeecially to elucidate political situation, mister o'hara. offeecially, i am debarred from criticising any action of superior. now i go on.--this pleased the government, anxious to avoid expense, and a bond was made for so many rupees a month that hilas and bunar should guard the passes as soon as the state's troops were withdrawn. at that time--it was after we two met--i, who had been selling tea in leh, became a clerk of accounts in the army. when the troops were withdrawn, i was left behind to pay the coolies who made new roads in the hills. this road-making was part of the bond between bunar, hilas, and the government.' 'so; and then?' 'i tell you, it was jolly beastly cold up there too, after summer,' said hurree babu confidentially. 'i was afraid these bunar men would cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. my native sepoy-guard, they laughed at me! by jove! i was such a fearful man! nevar mind thatt. i go on colloquially. . . . i send word many times that these two kings were sold to the north; and mahbub ali, who was yet farther north, amply confirmed it. nothing was done. only my feet were frozen, and a toe dropped off. i sent word that the roads for which i was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of strangers and enemies.' 'for?' 'for the russians. the thing was an open jest among the coolies. then i was called down to tell what i knew by speech of tongue. mahbub came south too. see the end! over the passes this year after snow-melting'--he shivered afresh--'come two strangers under cover of shooting wild goats. they bear guns, but they bear also chains and levels and compasses.' 'oho! the thing gets clearer.' 'they are well received by hilas and bunar. they make great promises; they speak as the mouthpiece of a kaisar with gifts. up the valleys, down the valleys go they, saying, "here is a place to build a breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. here can ye hold the road against an army"--the very roads for which i paid out the rupees monthly. the government knows, but does nothing. the three other kings, who were not paid for guarding the passes, tell them by runner of the bad faith of bunar and hilas. when all the evil is done, look you--when these two strangers with the levels and the compasses make the five kings to believe that a great army will sweep the passes to-morrow or the next day--hill-people are all fools--comes the order to me, hurree babu, "go north and see what those strangers do." i say to creighton sahib, "this is not a lawsuit, that we go about to collect evidence."' hurree returned to his english with a jerk: '"by jove," i said, "why the dooce do you not issue demi-offeecial orders to some brave man to poison them, for an example? it is, if you permit the observation, most reprehensible laxity on your part." and colonel creighton, he laughed at me! it is all your beastly english pride. you think no one dare conspire! that is all tommy-rott.' kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood it, in his quick mind. 'then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?' 'no; to meet them. they are coming in to simla to send down their horns and heads to be dressed at calcutta. they are exclusively sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the government. of course, we always do that. it is our british pride.' 'then what is to fear from them?' 'by jove, they are not black people. i can do all sorts of things with black people, of course. they are russians, and highly unscrupulous people. i--i do not want to consort with them without a witness.' 'will they kill thee?' 'oah, thatt is nothing. i am good enough herbert spencerian, i trust, to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you know. but--but they may beat me.' 'why?' hurree babu snapped his fingers with irritation. 'of course i shall affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as perhaps interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such thing. and then i must pick up what i can, i suppose. that is as easy for me as playing mister doctor to the old lady. onlee--onlee--you see, mister o'hara, i am unfortunately asiatic, which is serious detriment in some respects. and all-so i am bengali--a fearful man.' 'god made the hare and the bengali. what shame?' said kim, quoting the proverb. 'it was process of evolution, i think, from primal necessity, but the fact remains in all its cui bono. i am, oh, awfully fearful!--i remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to lhassa. (no, i have never reached to lhassa.) i sat down and cried, mister o'hara, anticipating chinese tortures. i do not suppose these two gentlemen will torture me, but i like to provide for possible contingency with european assistance in emergency.' he coughed and spat out his cardamoms. 'it is purely unoffeecial indent, to which you can say, "no, babu." if you have no pressing engagement with your old man--perhaps you might divert him; perhaps i can seduce his fancies--i should like you to keep in departmental touch with me till i find those sporting coves. i have great opeenion of you since i met my friend at delhi. and also i will embody your name in my offeecial report when matter is finally adjudicated. it will be a great feather in your cap. that is why i come really.' 'humph! the end of the tale, i think, is true; but what of the fore-part?' 'about the five kings? oah! there is ever so much truth in it. a lots more than you would suppose,' said hurree earnestly. 'you come--eh? i go from here straight into the doon. it is verree verdant and painted meads. i shall go to mussoorie--to good old mussoorie pahar, as the gentlemen and ladies say. then by rampur into chini. that is the only way they can come. i do not like waiting in the cold, but we must wait for them. i want to walk with them to simla. you see, one russian is a frenchman, and i know my french pretty well. i have friends in chandernagore.' 'he would certainly rejoice to see the hills again,' said kim meditatively. 'all his speech these ten days past has been of little else. if we go together--' 'oah! we can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. i shall just be four or five miles ahead. there is no hurry for hurree--that is an europe pun, ha! ha!--and you come after. there is plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map of course. i shall go to-morrow, and you the next day, if you choose. eh? you go think on it till morning. by jove, it is near morning now.' he yawned ponderously, and with never a civil word lumbered off to his sleeping-place. but kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in hindustanee: 'well is the game called great! i was four days a scullion at quetta, waiting on the wife of the man whose book i stole. and that was part of the great game! from the south--god knows how far--came up the mahratta, playing the great game in fear of his life. now i shall go far and far into the north playing the great game. truly, it runs like a shuttle throughout all hind. and my share and my joy'--he smiled to the darkness--'i owe to the lama here. also to mahbub ali--also to creighton sahib, but chiefly to the holy one. he is right--a great and a wonderful world--and i am kim--kim--kim--alone--one person--in the middle of it all. but i will see these strangers with their levels and chains . . .' 'what was the upshot of last night's babble?' said the lama, after his orisons. 'there came a strolling seller of drugs--a hanger-on of the sahiba's. him i abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that our charms are worthier than his coloured waters.' 'alas! my charms. is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one?' 'very strictly.' 'then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour.' he fumbled at his pencase. 'in the plains,' said kim, 'are always too many people. in the hills, as i understand, there are fewer.' 'oh! the hills, and the snow upon the hills.' the lama tore off a tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. 'but what dost thou know of the hills?' 'they are very close.' kim thrust open the door and looked at the long, peaceful line of the himalayas flushed in morning-gold. 'except in the dress of a sahib, i have never set foot among them.' the lama snuffed the wind wistfully. 'if we go north,'--kim put the question to the waking sunrise,--'would not much mid-day heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at least? . . . is the charm made, holy one?' 'i have written the names of seven silly devils--not one of whom is worth a grain of dust in the eye. thus do foolish women drag us from the way!' hurree babu come out from behind the dovecot, washing his teeth with ostentatious ritual. full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and deep-voiced, he did not look like 'a fearful man.' kim signed almost imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning toilet was over hurree babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to the lama. they ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady, more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of green-mango colics in the young. the lama's knowledge of medicine was of course sympathetic only. he believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the science. hurree babu deferred to these views with enchanting politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous physician. hurree babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert dabbler in the mysteries; but at least--he thanked the gods therefor--he knew when he sat in the presence of a master. he himself had been taught by the sahibs, who do not consider expense, in the lordly halls of calcutta; but, as he was ever first to acknowledge, there lay a wisdom behind earthly wisdom--the high and lonely lore of meditation. kim looked on with envy. the hurree babu of his knowledge--oily, effusive, and nervous--was gone; gone too was the brazen drug-vendor of overnight. there remained--polished, polite, attentive--a sober, learned son of experience and adversity, gathering wisdom from the lama's lips. the old lady confided to kim that these rare levels were beyond her. she liked charms with plenty of ink that one could wash off in water, swallow, and be done with. else what was the use of the gods? she liked men and women, and she spoke of them--of kinglets she had known in the past; of her own youth and beauty; of the depredations of leopards and the eccentricities of love asiatic; of the incidence of taxation, rack-renting, funeral ceremonies, her son-in-law (this by allusion, easy to be followed), the care of the young, and the age's lack of decency. and kim, as interested in the life of this world as she soon to leave it, squatted with his feet under the hem of his robe, drinking all in, while the lama demolished one after another every theory of body-curing put forward by hurree babu. at noon the babu strapped up his brass-bound drug-box, took his patent-leather shoes of ceremony in one hand, a gay blue and white umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the doon, where, he said, he was in demand among the lesser kings of those parts. 'we will go in the cool of the evening, chela,' said the lama. 'that doctor, learned in physic and courtesy, affirms that the people among these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a teacher. in a very short time--so says the hakim--we come to cool air and the smell of pines.' 'ye go to the hills. and by kulu-road? oh, thrice happy!' shrilled the old lady. 'but that i am a little pressed with the care of the homestead i would take palanquin . . . but that would be shameless, and my reputation would be cracked. ho! ho! i know the road--every march of the road i know. ye will find charity throughout--it is not denied to the well-looking. i will give orders for provision. a servant to set you forth upon your journey? no. . . . then i will at least cook ye good food.' 'what a woman is the sahiba!' said the white-bearded oorya, when a tumult rose by the kitchen quarters. 'she has never forgotten a friend: she has never forgotten an enemy in all her years. and her cookery--wah!' he rubbed his slim stomach. there were cakes, there were sweetmeats, there was cold fowl stewed to rags with rice and prunes--enough to burden kim like a mule. 'i am old and useless,' she said. 'none now love me--and none respect--but there are few to compare with me when i call on the gods and squat to my cooking-pots. come again, o people of good will! holy one and disciple, come again! the room is always prepared; the welcome is always ready. . . . see the women do not follow thy chela too openly. i know the women of kulu. take heed, chela, lest he run away when he smells his hills again. . . . hai! do not tilt the rice-bag upside down. . . . bless the household, holy one, and forgive thy servant her stupidities.' she wiped her red old eyes on a corner of her veil, and clucked throatily. 'women talk,' said the lama at last, 'but that is a woman's infirmity. i gave her a charm. she is upon the wheel and wholly given over to the shows of this life, but none the less, chela, she is virtuous, kindly, hospitable--of a whole and zealous heart. who shall say she does not acquire merit?' 'not i, holy one,' said kim, reslinging the bountiful provision on his shoulders. 'in my mind--behind my eyes--i have tried to picture such an one altogether freed from the wheel--desiring nothing, causing nothing--a nun, as it were.' 'and, o imp?' the lama almost laughed aloud. 'i cannot make the picture.' 'nor i. but there are many, many millions of lives before her. she will get wisdom a little, it may be, in each one.' 'and will she forget how to make stews with saffron upon that road?' 'thy mind is set on things unworthy. but she has skill. i am refreshed all over. when we reach the lower hills i shall be yet stronger. the hakim spoke truly to me this morn when he said a breath from the snows blows away twenty years from the life of a man. we will go, up into the hills--the high hills--up to the sound of snow-water and the sound of the trees--for a little while. the hakim said that at any time we may return to the plains, for we do no more than skirt the pleasant places. the hakim is full of learning; but he is in no way proud. i spoke to him--when thou wast talking to the sahiba--of a certain dizziness that lays hold upon the back of my neck in the night, and he said it rose from excessive heat--to be cured by cool air. upon consideration, i marvelled that i had not thought of such a simple remedy.' 'didst thou tell him of thy search?' said kim, a little jealously. he preferred to sway the lama by his own speech--not through the wiles of hurree babu. 'assuredly. i told him of my dream, and of the manner by which i had acquired merit by causing thee to be taught wisdom.' 'thou didst not say i was a sahib?' 'what need? i have told thee many times we be but two souls seeking escape. he said--and he is just herein--that the river of healing will break forth even as i dreamed--at my feet if need be. having found the way, seest thou, that shall free me from the wheel, need i trouble to find a way about the mere fields of earth--which are illusion? that were senseless. i have my dreams, night upon night repeated; i have the "jataka"; and i have thee, friend of all the world. it was written in thy horoscope that a red bull on a green field--i have not forgotten--should bring thee to honour. who but i saw that prophecy accomplished? indeed, i was the instrument. thou shalt find me my river, being in return the instrument. the search is sure!' he set his ivory-yellow face, serene and untroubled, towards the beckoning hills; his shadow shouldering far before him in the dust. chapter xiii 'who hath desired the sea--the immense and contemptuous surges? the shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star-stabbing bowsprit emerges-- the orderly clouds of the trades and the ridged roaring sapphire thereunder-- unheralded cliff-lurking flaws and the head-sails' low-volleying thunder? his sea in no wonder the same--his sea and the same in each wonder-- his sea that his being fulfils? so and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hill-men desire their hills!' 'who goes to the hills goes to his mother.' they had crossed the sewaliks and the half-tropical doon, left mussoorie behind them, and headed north along the narrow hill-roads. day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day after day kim watched the lama return to a man's strength. among the terraces of the doon he had leaned on the boy's shoulder, ready to profit by wayside halts. under the great ramp to mussoorie he drew himself together as an old hunter faces a well-remembered bank, and where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long draperies about him, drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air, and walked as only a hillman can. kim, plains-bred and plains-fed, sweated and panted astonished. 'this is my country,' said the lama. 'beside suchzen, this is flatter than a rice-field'; and with steady, driving strokes from the loins he strode upwards. but it was on the steep downhill marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away from kim, whose back ached with holding back, and whose big toe was nigh cut off by his grass sandal-string. through the speckled shadow of the great deodar-forests; through oak feathered and plumed with ferns; birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare hillsides' slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the woodlands' coolth again, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley, the lama swung untiring. glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the faint thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out, with a hillman's generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on spiti and kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high snows of the horizon. in the dawns they flared windy-red above stark blue, as kedarnath and badrinath--kings of that wilderness--took the first sunlight. all day long they lay like molten silver under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. at first they breathed temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled over some gigantic hogback; but in a few days, at a height of nine or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit: and kim kindly allowed a village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat. the lama was mildly surprised that any one should object to the knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his shoulders. 'these are but the lower hills, chela. there is no cold till we come to the true hills.' 'air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the food is very bad,' kim growled; 'and we walk as though we were mad--or english. it freezes at night, too.' 'a little, maybe; but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the sun. we must not always delight in the soft beds and rich food.' 'we might at the least keep to the road.' kim had all a plains-man's affection for the well-trodden track, not six feet wide, that snaked among the mountains; but the lama, being tibetan, could not refrain from short cuts over spurs and the rims of gravel-strewn slopes. as he explained to his limping disciple, a man bred among mountains can prophesy the course of a mountain-road, and though low-lying clouds might be a hindrance to a short-cutting stranger, they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. thus, after long hours of what would be reckoned very fair mountaineering in civilised countries, they would pant over a saddle-back, sidle past a few landslips, and drop through forest at an angle of forty-five on to the road again. along their track lay the villages of the hill-folk--mud and earth huts, the timbers now and then rudely carved with an axe--clinging like swallows' nests against the steeps, huddled on tiny flats half-way down a three-thousand-foot glissade; jammed into a corner between cliffs that funnelled and focused every wandering blast; or, for the sake of summer pasture, cowering down on a neck that in winter would be ten feet deep in snow. and the people--the sallow, greasy, duffle-clad people, with short bare legs and faces almost esquimaux--would flock out and adore. the plains--kindly and gentle--had treated the lama as a holy man among holy men. but the hills worshipped him as one in the confidence of all the devils. theirs was an almost obliterated buddhism, overlaid with a nature-worship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the terracing of their tiny fields; but they recognised the big hat, the clicking rosary, and the rare chinese texts for great authority; and they respected the man under the hat. 'we saw thee come down over the black breasts of eua,' said a betah who gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one evening. 'we do not use that often--except when calving cows stray in summer. there is a sudden wind among those stones that casts men down on the stillest day. but what should such folk care for the devil of eua!' then did kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take joy in the day's march--such joy as a boy of st. xavier's who had won the quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends. the hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off his bones; the dry air, taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper ribs; and tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and thigh. they meditated often on the wheel of life--the more so since, as the lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations. except the gray eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the hillside, the vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still valley devouring a goat, and now and again a bright-coloured bird, they were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind. the women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they descended the mountains, were unlovely and unclean, wives of many husbands, and afflicted with goitre. the men were wood-cutters when they were not farmers--meek, and of an incredible simplicity. but that suitable discourse might not fail, fate sent them, overtaking and overtaken upon the road, the courteous dacca physician, who paid for his food in ointments good for goitre and counsels that restore peace between men and women. he seemed to know these hills as well as he knew the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land towards ladakh and tibet. he said they could return to the plains at any moment. meantime, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might amuse. this was not all revealed in a breath, but at evening encounters on the stone threshing-floors, when, patients disposed of, the doctor would smoke and the lama snuff, while kim watched the wee cows grazing on the house-tops, or threw his soul after his eye across the deep blue gulfs between range and range. and there were talks apart in the dark woods, when the doctor would seek herbs, and kim, as budding physician, must accompany him. 'you see, mister o'hara, i do not know what the deuce-an'-all i shall do when i find our sporting friends; but if you will kindly keep within sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral survey, i feel much better.' kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. 'this is not my country, hakim. easier, i think, to find one louse in a bearskin.' 'oah, thatt is my strong points. there is no hurry for hurree. they were at leh not so long ago. they said they had come down from the kara korum with their heads and horns and all. i am onlee afraid they will have sent back all their letters and compromising things from leh into russian territoree. of course they will walk away as far to the east as possible--just to show that they were never among the western states. you do not know the hills?' he scratched with a twig on the earth. 'look! they should have come in by srinagar or abbottabad. thatt is their short road--down the river by bunji and astor. but they have made mischief in the west. so'--he drew a furrow from left to right--'they march and they march away east to leh (ah! it is cold there), and down the indus to han-le (i know that road), and then down, you see, to bushahr and chini valley. that is ascertained by process of elimination, and also by asking questions from people that i cure so well. our friends have been a long time playing about and producing impressions. so they are well known from far off. you will see me catch them somewhere in chini valley. please keep your eye on the umbrella.' it nodded like a wind-blown harebell down the valleys and round the mountain sides, and in due time the lama and kim, who steered by compass, would overhaul it, vending ointments and powders at eventide. 'we came by such and such a way!' the lama would throw a careless finger backward at the ridges, and the umbrella would expend itself in compliments. they crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly chaffing kim, went through up to his knees, like a bactrian camel--the snow-bred, shag-haired sort that come into the kashmir serai. they dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they took refuge from a gale in a camp of tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep, each laden with a bag of borax. they came out upon grassy shoulders still snow-speckled, and through forest, to grass anew. for all their marchings, kedarnath and badrinath were not impressed; and it was only after days of travel that kim, uplifted upon some insignificant ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of the two great lords had--ever so slightly--changed outline. at last they entered a world within a world--a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of the mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains. here one day's march carried them no farther, it seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare. they skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold, it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! a rounded meadow revealed itself, when they had reached it, for a vast tableland running far into the valley. three days later, it was a dim fold in the earth to southward. 'surely the gods live here,' said kim, beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain. 'this is no place for men!' 'long and long ago,' said the lama, as to himself, 'it was asked of the lord whether the world were everlasting. to this the excellent one returned no answer. . . . when i was in ceylon, a wise seeker confirmed that from the gospel which is written in pali. certainly, since we know the way to freedom, the question were unprofitable, but--look, and know illusion, chela! these are the true hills! they are like my hills by suchzen. never were such hills!' above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the snow-line, where from east to west across hundreds of miles, ruled as with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. above that, in scarps and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above the white smother. above these again, changeless since the world's beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the eternal snow. they could see blots and blurs on its face where storm and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance. below them, as they stood, the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green for mile upon mile; below the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep grazing-grounds; below the village they knew, though a thunderstorm worried and growled there for the moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen hundred feet gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are the mothers of young sutluj. as usual, the lama had led kim by cow-track and byroad, far from the main route along which hurree babu, that 'fearful man,' had bucketed three days before through a storm to which nine englishmen out of ten would have given full right of way. hurree was no game-shot,--the snick of a trigger made him change colour,--but, as he himself would have said, he was 'fairly effeecient stalker,' and he had raked the huge valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some purpose. moreover, the white of worn canvas tents against green carries far. hurree babu had seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshing-floor of ziglaur, twenty miles away as the eagle flies, and forty by road--that is to say, two small dots which one day were just below the snow-line, and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside. once cleaned out and set to the work, his fat bare legs could cover a surprising amount of ground, and this was the reason why, while kim and the lama lay in a leaky hut at ziglaur till the storm should be overpassed, an oily, wet, but always smiling bengali, talking the best of english with the vilest of phrases, was ingratiating himself with two sodden and rather rheumatic foreigners. he had arrived, revolving many wild schemes, on the heels of a thunderstorm which had split a pine over against their camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly impressed baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel that with one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. they were subjects of a hill-rajah who farmed out their services, as is the custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses, the strange sahibs had already threatened them with rifles. the most of them knew rifles and sahibs of old: they were trackers and shikarris of the northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but they had never been thus treated in their lives. so the forest took them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore. there was no need to feign madness or--the babu had thought of another means of securing a welcome. he wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue and white umbrella, and with mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent for his royal highness, the rajah of rampur, gentlemen. what can i do for you, please?' the gentlemen were delighted. one was visibly french, the other russian, but they spoke english not much inferior to the babu's. they begged his kind offices. their native servants had gone sick at leh. they had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils of the chase to simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. they bore a general letter of introduction (the babu salaamed to it orientally) to all government officials. no, they had not met any other shooting-parties en route. they did for themselves. they had plenty of supplies. they only wished to push on as soon as might be. at this he waylaid a cowering hillman among the trees, and after three minutes' talk and a little silver (one cannot be economical upon state service, though hurree's heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies and the three hangers-on reappeared. at least the babu would be a witness to oppression. 'my royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are onlee common people and grossly ignorant. if your honours will kindly overlook unfortunate affair, i shall be much pleased. in a little while rain will stop and we can then proceed. you have been shooting, eh? that is fine performance!' he skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to adjust each conical basket. the englishman is not, as a rule, familiar with the asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly babu who had accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin top. on the other hand, he would not press drink upon a babu were he never so friendly, nor would he invite him to meat. the strangers did all these things, and asked many questions,--about women mostly,--to which hurree returned gay and unstudied answers. they gave him a glass of whitish fluid like to gin, and then more; and in a little time his gravity departed from him. he became thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of sweeping indecency of a government which had forced upon him a white man's education and neglected to supply him with a white man's salary. he babbled tales of oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his cheeks for the miseries of his land. then he staggered off, singing love-songs of lower bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. never was so unfortunate a product of english rule in india more unhappily thrust upon aliens. 'they are all just of that pattern,' said one sportsman to the other in french. 'when we get into india proper thou wilt see. i should like to visit his rajah. one might speak the good word there. it is possible that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his goodwill.' 'we have not time. we must get into simla as soon as may be,' his companion replied. 'for my own part, i wish our reports had been sent back from hilas, or even leh.' 'the english post is better and safer. remember we are given all facilities--and name of god!--they give them to us too! is it unbelievable stupidity?' 'it is pride--pride that deserves and will receive punishment.' 'yes! to fight a fellow-continental in our game is something. there is a risk attached, but these people--bah! it is too easy.' 'pride--all pride, my friend.' 'now what the deuce is good of chandernagore being so close to calcutta and all,' said hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden moss, 'if i cannot understand their french. they talk so par-tic-ularly fast! it would have been much better to cut their beastly throats.' when he presented himself again he was racked with a headache--penitent, and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might have been indiscreet. he loved the british government--it was the source of all prosperity and honour, and his master at rampur held the very same opinion. upon this the men began to deride him and to quote past words, till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and leers of infinite cunning, the poor babu was beaten out of his defences and forced to speak--truth! when lurgan was told the tale later, he mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn, inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their heads and the raindrops puddling in their foot-prints, waited on the weather. all the sahibs of their acquaintance--rough-clad men joyously returning year after year to their chosen gullies--had servants and cooks and orderlies, very often hillmen. these sahibs travelled without any retinue. therefore they were poor sahibs, and ignorant; for no sahib in his senses would follow a bengali's advice. but the bengali, appearing from somewhere, had given them money, and would make shift with their dialect. used to comprehensive ill-treatment from their own colour, they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by to run if occasion offered. then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious earth-smells, the babu led the way down the slopes--walking ahead of the coolies in pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. his thoughts were many and various. the least of them would have interested his companions beyond words. but he was an agreeable guide, ever keen to point out the beauties of his royal master's domain. he peopled the hills with anything they had a mind to slay--thar, ibex, or markhor, and bear by elisha's allowance. he discoursed of botany and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends--he had been a trusted agent of the state for fifteen years, remember--was inexhaustible. 'decidedly this fellow is an original,' said the taller of the two foreigners. 'he is like the nightmare of a viennese courier.' 'he represents in petto india in transition--the monstrous hybridism of east and west,' the russian replied. 'it is we who can deal with orientals.' 'he has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. but he has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. listen. he confides to me last night,' etc. under the striped umbrella hurree babu was straining ear and brain to follow the quick-poured french, and keeping both eyes on a kilta full of maps and documents--an extra large one with a double red oilskin cover. he did not wish to steal anything. he only desired to know what to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he had stolen it. he thanked all the gods of hindustan, and herbert spencer, that there remained some valuables to steal. on the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama--but they called him a bonze--sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty. the striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and kim had suggested a halt till it came up to them. 'ha!' said hurree babu, resourceful as puss-in-boots. 'that is eminent local holy man. probably subject of my royal master.' 'what is he doing? it is very curious.' 'he is expounding holy picture--all hand-worked.' the two men stood bare-headed in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low across the gold-coloured grass. the sullen coolies, glad of the check, halted and slid down their loads. 'look!' said the frenchman. 'it is like a picture for the birth of a religion--the first teacher and the first disciple. is he a buddhist?' 'of some debased kind,' the other answered. 'there are no true buddhists among the hills. but look at the folds of the drapery. look at his eyes--how insolent! why does this make one feel that we are so young a people?' the speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. 'we have nowhere left our mark yet. nowhere! that, do you understand, is what disquiets me.' he scowled at the placid face, and the monumental calm of the pose. 'have patience. we shall make your mark together--we and you young people. meantime, draw his picture.' the babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his deferential speech, or his wink towards kim. 'holy one, these be sahibs. my medicines cured one of a flux, and i go into simla to oversee his recovery. they wish to see thy picture--' 'to heal the sick is always good. this is the wheel of life,' said the lama, 'the same i showed thee in the hut at ziglaur when the rain fell.' 'and to hear thee expound it.' the lama's eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. 'to expound the most excellent way is good. have they any knowledge of hindi, such as had the keeper of images?' 'a little, maybe.' hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the doctor of divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. the strangers leaned on their alpenstocks and listened. kim, squatting humbly, watched the red sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long shadows. they wore un-english leggings and curious girt-in belts that reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book at st. xavier's library: 'the adventures of a young naturalist in mexico' was its name. yes, they looked very like the wonderful m. sumichrast of that tale, and very unlike the 'highly unscrupulous folk' of hurree babu's imagining. the coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty or thirty yards away, and the babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy proprietorship. 'these are the men,' hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the two whites followed the grass blade sweeping from hell to heaven and back again. 'all their books are in the large kilta with the reddish top,--books and reports and maps,--and i have seen a king's letter that either hilas or bunar has written. they guard it most carefully. they have sent nothing back from hilas or leh. that is sure.' 'who is with them?' 'only the beggar-coolies. they have no servants. they are so close they cook their own food.' 'but what am i to do?' 'wait and see. only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to seek for the papers.' 'this were better in mahbub ali's hands than a bengali's,' said kim scornfully. 'there are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a wall.' 'see here the hell appointed for avarice and greed. flanked upon the one side by desire and on the other by weariness.' the lama warmed to his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading light. 'that is enough,' the man said at last brusquely. 'i cannot understand him, but i want that picture. he is a better artist than i. ask him if he will sell it.' 'he says "no, sar,"' the babu replied. the lama, of course, would no more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an archbishop would pawn the holy vessels of a cathedral. all tibet is full of cheap reproductions of the wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well as a wealthy abbot in his own place. 'perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if i perceive that the sahib is a seeker and of good understanding, i may myself draw him another. but this was used for the initiation of a novice. tell him so, hakim.' 'he wishes it now--for money.' the lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the wheel. the russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling over a dirty piece of paper. he drew out a handful of rupees, and snatched half-jestingly at the chart, which tore in the lama's grip. a low murmur of horror went up from the coolies--some of whom were spiti men and, by their lights, good buddhists. the lama rose at the insult; his hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest's weapon, and the babu danced in agony. 'now you see--you see why i wanted witnesses. they are highly unscrupulous people. oh sar! sar! you must not hit holy man!' 'chela! he has defiled the written word!' it was too late. before kim could ward him off, the russian struck the old man full on the face. next instant he was rolling over and over down hill with kim at his throat. the blow had waked every unknown irish devil in the boy's blood, and the sudden fall of his enemy did the rest. the lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the coolies under their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run across the level. they had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved them to get away before the gods and devils of the hills took vengeance. the frenchman ran towards the lama, fumbling at his revolver with some notion of making him a hostage for his companion. a shower of cutting stones--hillmen are very straight shots--drove him away, and a coolie from ao-chung snatched the lama into the stampede. all came about as swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness. 'they have taken the baggage and all the guns,' yelled the frenchman, firing blindly into the twilight. 'all right, sar! all right! don't shoot. i go to rescue,' and hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the delighted and astonished kim, who was banging his breathless foe's head against a boulder. 'go back to the coolies,' whispered the babu in his ear. 'they have the baggage. the papers are in the kilta with the red top, but look through all. take their papers, and specially the murasla (king's letter). go! the other man comes!' kim tore up hill. a revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and he cowered partridge-wise. 'if you shoot,' shouted hurree, 'they will descend and annihilate us. i have rescued the gentleman, sar. this is par-tic-ularly dangerous.' 'by jove!' kim was thinking hard in english. 'this is dam-tight place, but i think it is self-defence.' he felt in his bosom for mahbub's gift, and uncertainly--save for a few practice shots in the bikaner desert, he had never used the little gun--pulled the trigger. 'what did i say, sar!' the babu seemed to be in tears. 'come down here and assist to resuscitate. we are all up a tree, i tell you.' the shots ceased. there was a sound of stumbling feet, and kim hurried upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat--or a country-bred. 'did they wound thee, chela?' called the lama above him. 'no. and thou?' he dived into a clump of stunted firs. 'unhurt. come away. we go with these folk to shamlegh-under-the-snow.' 'but not before we have done justice,' a voice cried. 'i have got the sahibs' guns--all four. let us go down.' 'he struck the holy one--we saw it! our cattle will be barren--our wives will cease to bear! the snows will slide upon us as we go home. . . . atop of all other oppression too!' the little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies--panic-stricken, and in their terror capable of anything. the man from ao-chung clicked the breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go down hill. 'wait a little, holy one; they cannot go far: wait till i return.' 'it is this person who has suffered wrong,' said the lama, his hand over his brow. 'for that very reason,' was the reply. 'if this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. moreover, ye acquire merit by obedience.' 'wait, and we will all go to shamlegh together,' the man insisted. for a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a breech-loader, the lama hesitated. then he rose to his feet, and laid a finger on the man's shoulder. 'hast thou heard? i say there shall be no killing--i who was abbot of suchzen. is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake under the eaves--a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? is it thy wish to--' the man from ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a tibetan devil-gong. 'ai! ai!' cried the spiti men. 'do not curse us--do not curse him. it was but his zeal, holy one! . . . put down the rifle, fool!' 'anger on anger! evil on evil! there will be no killing. let the priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. just and sure is the wheel, swerving not a hair! they will be born many times--in torment.' his head drooped, and he leaned heavily on kim's shoulder. 'i have come near to great evil, chela,' he whispered in that dead hush under the pines. 'i was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them. . . . he struck me across the face . . . upon the flesh . . .' he slid to the ground, breathing heavily, and kim could hear the over-driven heart bump and check. 'have they hurt him to the death?' said the ao-chung man, while the others stood mute. kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. 'nay,' he cried passionately, 'this is only a weakness.' then he remembered that he was a white man, with a white man's camp-fittings at his service. 'open the kiltas! the sahibs may have a medicine.' 'oho! then i know it,' said the ao-chung man with a laugh. 'not for five years was i yankling sahib's shikarri without knowing that medicine. i too have tasted it. behold!' he drew, from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky--such as is sold to explorers at leh--and cleverly forced a little between the lama's teeth. 'so i did when yankling sahib twisted his foot beyond astor. aha! i have already looked into their baskets--but we will make fair division at shamlegh. give him a little more. it is good medicine. feel! his heart goes better now. lay his head down and rub a little on the chest. if he had waited quietly while i accounted for the sahibs this would never have come. but perhaps the sahibs may chase us here. then it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?' 'one is paid, i think, already,' said kim between his teeth. 'i kicked him in the groin as we went down hill. would i had killed him!' 'it is well to be brave when one does not live in rampur,' said one whose hut lay within a few miles of the rajah's rickety palace. 'if we get a bad name among the sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any more.' 'oh, but these are not angrezi sahibs--not merry-minded men like fostum sahib or yankling sahib. they are foreigners--they cannot speak angrezi as do sahibs.' here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary. 'there shall be no killing,' he murmured. 'just is the wheel! evil on evil--' 'nay, holy one. we are all here.' the ao-chung man timidly patted his feet. 'except by thy order, no one shall be slain. rest awhile. we will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to shamlegh-under-the-snow.' 'after a blow,' said a spiti man sententiously, 'it is best to sleep.' 'there is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a pinching in it. let me lay my head on thy lap, chela. i am an old man, but not free from passion. . . . we must think of the cause of things.' 'give him a blanket. we dare not light a fire lest the sahibs see.' 'better get away to shamlegh. none will follow us to shamlegh.' this was the nervous rampur man. 'i have been fostum sahib's shikarri, and i am yankling sahib's shikarri. i should have been with yankling sahib now but for this cursed beegar (the corvee). let two men watch below with the guns lest the sahibs do more foolishness. i shall not leave this holy one.' they sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old day and martin blacking-bottle. the glow of the red charcoal as it went from hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high chinese cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark duffle folds round the shoulders. they looked like kobolds from some magic mine--gnomes of the hills in conclave. and while they talked, the voices of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as the night-frost choked and clogged the runnels. 'how he stood up against us!' said a spiti man admiring. 'i remember an old ibex, out ladakh-way, that dupont sahib missed on a shoulder-shot, seven seasons back, standing up just like him. dupont sahib was a good shikarri.' 'not as good as yankling sahib.' the ao-chung man took a pull at the whisky-bottle and passed it over. 'now hear me--unless any other man thinks he knows more.' the challenge was not taken up. 'we go to shamlegh when the moon rises. there we will fairly divide the baggage between us. i am content with this new little rifle and all its cartridges.' 'are the bears only bad on thy holding?' said a mate, sucking at the pipe. 'no; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women can have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. we will do all that at shamlegh before dawn. then we all go our ways, remembering that we have never seen or taken service with these sahibs, who may, indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage.' 'that is well for thee, but what will our rajah say?' 'who is to tell him? those sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the babu, who for his own ends gave us money? will he lead an army against us? what evidence will remain? that we do not need we shall throw on shamlegh midden, where no man has yet set foot.' 'who is at shamlegh this summer?' the place was only a grazing centre of three or four huts. 'the woman of shamlegh. she has no love for sahibs, as we know. the others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for us all.' he patted the fat sides of the nearest basket. 'but--but--' 'i have said they are not true sahibs. all their skins and heads were bought in the bazar at leh. i know the marks. i showed them to ye last march.' 'true. they were all bought skins and heads. some had even the moth in them.' that was a shrewd argument, and the ao-chung man knew his fellows. 'if the worst comes to the worst, i shall tell yankling sahib, who is a man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. we are not doing any wrong to any sahibs whom we know. they are priest-beaters. they frightened us. we fled! who knows where we dropped the baggage? do ye think yankling sahib will permit down-country police to wander all over the hills, disturbing his game? it is a far cry from simla to chini, and farther from shamlegh to shamlegh midden.' 'so be it, but i carry the big kilta. the basket with the red top that the sahibs pack themselves every morning.' 'thus it is proved,' said the shamlegh man adroitly, 'that they are sahibs of no account. who ever heard of fostum sahib, or yankling sahib, or even the little peel sahib that sits up of nights to shoot serow--i say, who ever heard of these sahibs coming into the hills without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and--and all manner of well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail? how can they make trouble? what of the kilta?' 'nothing, but that it is full of the written word--books and papers in which they wrote, and strange instruments, as of worship.' 'shamlegh midden will take them all.' 'true! but how if we insult the sahibs' gods thereby? i do not like to handle the written word in that fashion. and their brass idols are beyond my comprehension. it is no plunder for simple hill-folk.' 'the old man still sleeps. hst! we will ask his chela.' the ao-chung man refreshed himself, and swelled with pride of leadership. 'we have here,' he whispered, 'a kilta whose nature we do not know.' 'but i do,' said kim cautiously. the lama drew breath in natural, easy sleep, and kim had been thinking of hurree's last words. as a player of the great game, he was disposed just then to reverence the babu. 'it is a kilta with a red top full of very wonderful things, not to be handled by fools.' 'i said it; i said it,' cried the bearer of that burden. 'thinkest thou it will betray us?' 'not if it be given to me. i will draw out its magic. otherwise it will do great harm.' 'a priest always takes his share.' whisky was demoralising the ao-chung man. 'it is no matter to me,' kim answered, with the craft of his mother-country. 'share it among you, and see what comes!' 'not i. i was only jesting. give the order. there is more than enough for us all. we go our way from shamlegh in the dawn.' they arranged and re-arranged their artless little plans for another hour, while kim shivered with cold and pride. the humour of the situation tickled the irish and the oriental in his soul. here were the emissaries of the dread power of the north, very possibly as great in their own land as mahbub or colonel creighton, suddenly smitten helpless. one of them, he privately knew, would be lame for a time. they had made promises to kings. to-night they lay out somewhere below him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless--except for hurree babu, guideless. and this collapse of their great game (kim wondered to whom they would report it), this panicky bolt into the night, had come about through no craft of hurree's or contrivance of kim's, but simply, beautifully, and inevitably as the capture of mahbub's faquir-friends by the zealous young policeman at umballa. 'they are there--with nothing; and, by jove, it is cold! i am here with all their things. oh, they will be angry! i am sorry for hurree babu.' kim might have saved his pity, for though at that moment the bengali suffered acutely in the flesh, his soul was puffed and lofty. a mile down the hill, on the edge of the pine-forest, two half-frozen men--one powerfully sick at intervals--were varying mutual recriminations with the most poignant abuse of the babu, who seemed distraught with terror. they demanded a plan of action. he explained that they were very lucky to be alive; that their coolies, if not then stalking them, had passed beyond recall; that the rajah, his master, was ninety miles away, and, so far from lending them money and a retinue for the simla journey, would surely cast them into prison if he heard that they had hit a priest. he enlarged on this sin and its consequences till they bade him change the subject. their one hope, said he, was unostentatious flight from village to village till they reached civilisation; and, for the hundredth time dissolved in tears, he demanded of the high stars why the sahibs 'had beaten holy man.' ten steps would have taken hurree into the creaking gloom utterly beyond their reach--to the shelter and food of the nearest village, where glib-tongued doctors were scarce. but he preferred to endure cold, belly-pinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of his honoured employers. crouched against a tree-trunk, he sniffed dolefully. 'and have you thought,' said the uninjured man hotly, 'what sort of spectacle we shall present wandering through these hills among these aborigines?' hurree babu had thought of little else for some hours, but the remark was not to his address. 'we cannot wander! i can hardly walk,' groaned kim's victim. 'perhaps the holy man will be merciful in loving-kindness, sar, otherwise--' 'i promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into that young bonze when next we meet,' was the unchristian answer. 'revolvers! vengeance! bonzes!' hurree crouched lower. the war was breaking out afresh. 'have you no consideration for our loss? the baggage! the baggage!' he could hear the speaker literally dancing on the grass. 'everything we bore! everything we have secured! our gains! eight months' work! do you know what that means? "decidedly it is we who can deal with orientals!" oh, you have done well.' they fell to it in several tongues, and hurree smiled. kim was with the kiltas, and in the kiltas lay eight months of good diplomacy. there was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be trusted. for the rest, he could so stage-manage the journey through the hills that hilas, bunar, and four hundred miles of hill-roads should tell the tale for a generation. men who cannot control their own coolies are little respected in the hills, and the hillman has a very keen sense of humour. 'if i had done it myself,' thought hurree, 'it would not have been better; and, by jove, now i think of it, of course i arranged it myself. how quick i have been! just when i ran down hill i thought it! thee outrage was accidental, but onlee me could have worked it--ah--for all it was dam well worth. consider the moral effect upon these ignorant peoples! no treaties--no papers--no written documents at all--and me to interpret for them. how i shall laugh with the colonel! i wish i had their papers also: but you cannot occupy two places in space simultaneously. thatt is axiomatic.' chapter xiv my brother kneels (so saith kabir) to stone and brass in heathen-wise, but in my brother's voice i hear my own unanswered agonies. his god is as his fates assign-- his prayer is all the world's--and mine. kabir. at moonrise the cautious coolies got under way. the lama, refreshed by his sleep and the spirit, needed no more than kim's shoulder to bear him along--a silent, swift-striding man. they held the shale-sprinkled grass for an hour, swept round the shoulder of an immortal cliff, and climbed into a new country entirely blocked off from all sight of chini valley. a huge pasture-ground ran up fan-shaped to the living snow. at its base was perhaps half an acre of flat land, on which stood a few soil and timber huts. behind them--for, hill-fashion, they were perched on the edge of all things--the ground fell sheer two thousand feet to shamlegh midden, where never yet man has set foot. the men made no motion to divide the plunder till they had seen the lama bedded down in the best room of the place, with kim shampooing his feet, mohammedan fashion. 'we will send food,' said the ao-chung man, 'and the red-topped kilta. by dawn there will be none to give evidence, one way or the other. if anything is not needed in the kilta--see here!' he pointed through the window--opening into space that was filled with moonlight reflected from the snow--and threw out an empty whisky-bottle. 'no need to listen for the fall. this is the world's end,' he said, and swung off. the lama looked forth, a hand on either sill, with eyes that shone like yellow opals. from the enormous pit before him white peaks lifted themselves yearning to the moonlight. the rest was as the darkness of interstellar space. 'these,' he said slowly, 'are indeed my hills. thus should a man abide, perched above the world, separated from delights, considering vast matters.' 'yes; if he has a chela to prepare tea for him, and to fold a blanket for his head, and to chase out calving cows.' a smoky lamp burned in a niche, but the full moonlight beat it down; and by the mixed light, stooping above the food-bag and cups, kim moved like a tall ghost. 'ai! but now i have let the blood cool my head still beats and drums, and there is a cord round the back of my neck.' 'no wonder. it was a strong blow. may he who dealt it--' 'but for my own passions there would have been no evil.' 'what evil? thou hast saved the sahibs from death they deserved a hundred times.' 'the lesson is not well learnt, chela.' the lama came to rest on a folded blanket, as kim went forward with his evening routine. 'the blow was but a shadow upon a shadow. evil in itself--my legs weary apace these latter days!--it met evil in me--anger, rage, and a lust to return evil. these wrought in my blood, woke tumult in my stomach, and dazzled my ears.' here he drank scalding black-tea ceremonially, taking the hot cup from kim's hand. 'had i been passionless, the evil blow would have done only bodily evil--a scar, or a bruise--which is illusion. but my mind was not abstracted, for rushed in straightway a lust to let the spiti men kill. in fighting that lust, my soul was torn and wrenched beyond a thousand blows. not till i had repeated the blessings (he meant the buddhist beatitudes) did i achieve calm. but the evil planted in me by that moment's carelessness works out to its end. just is the wheel, swerving not a hair! learn the lesson, chela.' 'it is too high for me,' kim muttered. 'i am still all shaken. i am glad i hurt the man.' 'i felt that sleeping upon thy knees, in the wood below. it disquieted me in my dreams--the evil in thy soul working through to mine. yet on the other hand'--he loosed his rosary--'i have acquired merit by saving two lives--the lives of those that wronged me. now i must see into the cause of things. the boat of my soul staggers.' 'sleep, and be strong. that is wisest.' 'i meditate: there is a need greater than thou knowest.' till the dawn, hour after hour, as the moonlight paled on the high peaks, and that which had been belted blackness on the sides of the far hills showed as tender green forest, the lama stared fixedly at the wall. from time to time he groaned. outside the barred door, where discomfited kine came to ask for their old stable, shamlegh and the coolies gave itself up to plunder and riotous living. the ao-chung man was their leader, and once they had opened the sahibs' tinned foods and found that they were very good they dared not turn back. shamlegh kitchen-midden took the dunnage. when kim, after a night of bad dreams, stole forth to brush his teeth in the morning chill, a fair-coloured woman with turquoise-studded headgear drew him aside. 'the others have gone. they left thee this kilta as the promise was. i do not love sahibs, but thou wilt make us a charm in return for it. we do not wish little shamlegh to get a bad name on account of the--accident. i am the woman of shamlegh.' she looked him over with bold, bright eyes, unlike the usual furtive glance of hillwomen. 'assuredly. but it must be done in secret.' she raised the heavy kilta like a toy and slung it into her own hut. 'out and bar the door! let none come near till it is finished.' 'but afterwards--we may talk?' kim tilted the kilta on the floor--a cascade of survey-instruments, books, diaries, letters, maps, and queerly scented, native correspondence. at the very bottom was an embroidered bag covering a sealed, gilded, and illuminated document such as one king sends to another. kim caught his breath with delight, and reviewed the situation from a sahib's point of view. 'the books i do not want. besides, they are logarithms--survey, i suppose.' he laid them aside. 'the letters i do not understand, but colonel creighton will. they must all be kept. the maps--they draw better maps than me--of course. all the native letters--oho!--and particularly the murasla.' he sniffed the embroidered bag. 'that must be from hilas or bunar, and hurree babu spoke truth. by jove! it is a fine haul. i wish hurree could know. . . . the rest must go out of the window.' he fingered a superb prismatic compass and the shiny top of a theodolite. but after all, a sahib cannot very well steal, and the things might be inconvenient evidence later. he sorted out every scrap of manuscript, every map, and the native letters. they made one softish slab. the three locked ferril-backed books, with five worn pocket-books, he put aside. 'the letters and the murasla i must carry inside my coat and under my belt, and the hand-written books i must put into the food-bag. it will be very heavy. no. i do not think there is anything more. if there is, the coolies have thrown it down the khud, so thatt is all right. now you go too.' he repacked the kilta with all he meant to lose, and hove it up on to the window-sill. a thousand feet below lay a long, lazy, round-shouldered bank of mist, as yet untouched by the morning sun. a thousand feet below that was an hundred-year-old pine-forest. he could see the green tops looking like a bed of moss when a wind-eddy thinned the cloud. 'no! i don't think any one will go after you!' the wheeling basket vomited its contents as it dropped. the theodolite hit a jutting cliff-ledge and exploded like a shell; the books, inkstand, paint-boxes, compasses, and rulers showed for a few seconds like a swarm of bees. then they vanished; and, though kim, hanging half out of window, strained his young ears, never a sound came up from the gulf. 'five hundred--a thousand rupees could not buy them,' he thought sorrowfully. 'it was verree wasteful, but i have all their other stuff--everything they did--i hope. now how the deuce am i to tell hurree babu, and whatt the deuce am i to do? and my old man is sick. i must tie up the letters in oilcloth. that is something to do first--else they will get all sweated. . . . and i am all alone!' he bound them into a neat packet, swedging down the stiff, sticky oilcloth at the corners, for his roving life had made him as methodical as an old hunter in matters of the road. then with double care he packed away the books at the bottom of the food-bag. the woman rapped at the door. 'but thou hast made no charm,' she said, looking about. 'there is no need.' kim had completely overlooked the necessity for a little patter-talk. the woman laughed at his confusion irreverently. 'none--for thee. thou canst cast a spell by the mere winking of an eye. but think of us poor people when thou art gone! they were all too drunk last night to hear a woman. thou art not drunk?' 'i am a priest.' kim had recovered himself, and, the woman being aught but unlovely, thought best to stand on his office. 'i warned them that the sahibs will be angry and will make an inquisition and a report to the rajah. there is also the babu with them. clerks have long tongues.' 'is that all thy trouble?' the plan rose fully formed in kim's mind, and he smiled ravishingly. 'not all,' quoth the woman, putting out a hard brown hand all covered with turquoises set in silver. 'i can finish that in a breath,' he went on quickly. 'the babu is the very hakim (thou hast heard of him?) who was wandering among the hills by ziglaur. i know him.' 'he will tell for the sake of a reward. sahibs cannot distinguish one hillman from another, but babus have eyes for men--and women.' 'carry a word to him from me.' 'there is nothing i would not do for thee.' he accepted the compliment calmly, as men must in lands where women make the love, tore a leaf from a note-book, and with a patent indelible pencil wrote in gross shikast--the script that bad little boys use when they write dirt on walls: 'i have everything that they have written: their pictures of the country, and many letters. especially the murasla. tell me what to do. i am at shamlegh-under-the-snow. the old man is sick.' 'take this to him. it will altogether shut his mouth. he cannot have gone far.' 'indeed no. they are still in the forest across the spur. our children went to watch them when the light came, and have cried the news as they moved.' kim looked his astonishment; but from the edge of the sheep-pasture floated a shrill, kite-like trill. a child tending cattle had picked it up from a brother or sister on the far side of the slope that commanded chini valley. 'my husbands are also out there gathering wood.' she drew a handful of walnuts from her bosom, split one neatly, and began to eat. kim affected blank ignorance. 'dost thou not know the meaning of the walnut--priest?' she said coyly, and handed him the half-shells. 'well thought of.' he slipped the piece of paper between them quickly. 'hast thou a little wax to close them on this letter?' the woman sighed aloud, and kim relented. 'there is no payment till service has been rendered. carry this to the babu, and say it was sent by the son of the charm.' 'ai! truly! truly! by a magician--who is like a sahib.' 'nay, son of the charm: and ask if there be any answer.' 'but if he offer a rudeness? i--i am afraid.' kim laughed. 'he is, i have no doubt, very tired and very hungry. the hills make cold bedfellows. hai, my'--it was on the tip of his tongue to say mother, but he turned it to sister--'thou art a wise and witty woman. by this time all the villages know what has befallen the sahibs--eh?' 'true. news was at ziglaur by midnight, and by to-morrow should be at kotgarh. the villages are both afraid and angry.' 'no need. tell the villages to feed the sahibs and pass them on, in peace. we must get them quietly away from our valleys. to steal is one thing--to kill another. the babu will understand, and there will be no after-complaints. be swift. i must tend my master when he wakes.' 'so be it. after service--thou hast said?--comes the reward. i am the woman of shamlegh, and i hold from the rajah. i am no common bearer of babes. shamlegh is thine: hoof and horn and hide, milk and butter. take or leave.' she turned resolutely uphill, her silver necklaces clicking on her broad breast, to meet the morning sun fifteen hundred feet above them. this time kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin edges of the packets. 'how can a man follow the way or the great game when he is eternally pestered by women? there was that girl at akrola by the ford; and there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecot--not counting the others--and now comes this one! when i was a child it was well enough, but now i am a man and they will not regard me as a man. walnuts indeed! ho! ho! it is almonds in the plains!' he went out to levy on the village--not with a begging-bowl, which might do for down-country, but in the manner of a prince. shamlegh's summer population is only three families--four women and eight or nine men. they were all full of tinned meats and mixed drinks, from ammoniated quinine to white vodka, for they had taken their full share in the overnight loot. the neat continental tents had been cut up and shared long ago, and there were patent aluminum saucepans abroad. but they considered the lama's presence a perfect safeguard against all consequences, and impenitently brought kim of their best--even to a drink of chang--the barley-beer that comes from ladakh-way. then they thawed out in the sun, and sat with their legs hanging over infinite abysses, chattering, laughing, and smoking. they judged india and its government solely from their experience of wandering sahibs who had employed them or their friends as shikarris. kim heard tales of shots missed upon ibex, serow, or markhor, by sahibs twenty years in their graves--every detail lighted from behind like twigs on tree-tops seen against lightning. they told him of their little diseases, and, more important, the diseases of their tiny, sure-footed cattle; of trips as far as kotgarh, where the strange missionaries live, and beyond even to marvellous simla, where the streets are paved with silver, and any one, look you, can get service with the sahibs, who ride about in two-wheeled carts and spend money with a spade. presently, grave and aloof, walking very heavily, the lama joined himself to the chatter under the eaves, and they gave him great room. the thin air refreshed him, and he sat on the edge of precipices with the best of them, and, when talk languished, flung pebbles into the void. thirty miles away, as the eagle flies, lay the next range, seamed and channelled and pitted with little patches of brush--forests, each a day's dark march. behind the village, shamlegh hill itself cut off all view to southward. it was like sitting in a swallow's nest under the eaves of the roof of the world. from time to time the lama stretched out his hand, and with a little, low-voiced prompting would point out the road to spiti and north across the parungla. 'beyond, where the hills lie thickest, lies de-ch'en' (he meant han-le), 'the great monastery. s'tag-stanras-ch'en built it, and of him there runs this tale.' whereupon he told it: a fantastic piled narrative of bewitchment and miracles that set shamlegh agasping. turning west a little, he speered for the green hills of kulu, and sought kailung under the glaciers. 'for thither came i in the old, old days. from leh i came; over the baralachi.' 'yes, yes; we know it,' said the far-faring people of shamlegh. 'and i slept two nights with the priests of kailung. these are the hills of my delight! shadows blessed above all other shadows! there my eyes opened on this world; there my eyes were opened to this world; there i found enlightenment; and there i girt my loins for my search. out of the hills i came--the high hills and the strong winds. oh, just is the wheel!' he blessed them in detail--the great glaciers, the naked rocks, the piled moraines and tumbled shale; dry upland, hidden salt-lake, age-old timber and fruitful water-shot valley one after the other, as a dying man blesses his folk, and kim marvelled at his passion. 'yes--yes. there is no place like our hills,' said the people of shamlegh. and they fell to wondering how a man could live in the hot terrible plains where the cattle run as big as elephants, unfit to plough on a hillside; where village touches village, they had heard, for a hundred miles; where folk went about stealing in gangs, and what the robbers spared the police carried utterly away. so the still forenoon wore through, and at the end of it kim's messenger dropped from the steep pasture as unbreathed as when she had set out. 'i sent a word to the hakim,' kim explained, while she made reverence. 'he joined himself to the idolaters? nay, i remember he did a healing upon one of them. he has acquired merit, though the healed employed his strength for evil. just is the wheel! what of the hakim?' 'i feared that thou hadst been bruised and--and i knew he was wise.' kim took the waxed walnut-shell and read in english on the back of his note: 'your favour received. cannot get away from present company at present, but shall take them into simla. after which, hope to rejoin you. inexpedient to follow angry gentlemen. return by same road you came, and will overtake. highly gratified about correspondence due to my forethought.' 'he says, holy one, that he will escape from the idolaters, and will return to us. shall we wait awhile at shamlegh, then?' the lama looked long and lovingly upon the hills and shook his head. 'that may not be, chela. from my bones outward i do desire it, but it is forbidden. i have seen the cause of things.' 'why? when the hills give thee back thy strength day by day? remember we were weak and fainting down below there in the doon.' 'i became strong to do evil and to forget. a brawler and a swashbuckler upon the hillsides was i.' kim bit back a smile. 'just and perfect is the wheel, swerving not a hair. when i was a man--a long time ago--i did pilgrimage to guru ch'wan among the poplars' (he pointed bhotanwards), 'where they keep the sacred horse.' 'quiet, be quiet!' said shamlegh, all arow. 'he speaks of jam-lin-nin-k'or, the horse that can go round the world in a day.' 'i speak to my chela only,' said the lama, in gentle reproof, and they scattered like frost on south eaves of a morning. 'i did not seek truth in those days, but the talk of doctrine. all illusion! i drank the beer and ate the bread of guru ch'wan. next day one said: "we go out to fight sangor gutok down the valley to discover (mark again how lust is tied to anger!) which abbot shall bear rule in the valley, and take the profit of the prayers they print at sangor gutok." i went, and we fought a day.' 'but how, holy one?' 'with our long pencases as i could have shown. . . . i say, we fought under the poplars, both abbots and all the monks, and one laid open my forehead to the bone. see!' he tilted back his cap and showed a puckered silvery scar. 'just and perfect is the wheel! yesterday the scar itched, and after fifty years i recalled how it was dealt and the face of him who dealt it; dwelling a little in illusion. followed that which thou didst see--strife and stupidity. just is the wheel! the idolater's blow fell upon the scar. then i was shaken in my soul: my soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of illusion. not till i came to shamlegh could i meditate upon the cause of things, or trace the running grass-roots of evil. i strove all the long night.' 'but, holy one, thou art innocent of all evil. may i be thy sacrifice!' kim was genuinely distressed at the old man's sorrow, and mahbub ali's phrase slipped out unawares. 'in the dawn,' he went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking between the slow sentences, 'came enlightenment. it is here. . . . i am an old man . . . hill-bred, hill-fed, never to sit down among my hills. three years i travelled through hind, but--can earth be stronger than mother earth? my stupid body yearned to the hills and the snow of the hills, from below there. i said, and it is true, my search is sure. so, at the kulu woman's house i turned hillward, over-persuaded by myself. there is no blame to the hakim. he--following desire--foretold that the hills would make me strong. they strengthened me to do evil, to forget my search. i delighted in life and the lust of life. i desired strong slopes to climb. i cast about to find them. i measured the strength of my body, which is evil, against the high hills. i made a mock of thee when thy breath came short under jamnotri. i jested when thou wouldst not face the snow of the pass.' 'but what harm? i was afraid. it was just. i am not a hillman; and i loved thee for thy new strength.' 'more than once i remember,' he rested his cheek dolefully on his hand, 'i sought thy praise and the hakim's for the mere strength of my legs. thus evil followed evil till the cup was full. just is the wheel! all hind for three years did me all honour. from the fountain of wisdom in the wonder house to'--he smiled--'a little child playing by a big gun--the world prepared my road. and why?' 'because we loved thee. it is only the fever of the blow. i myself am still sick and shaken.' 'no! it was because i was upon the way--tuned as are sinen (cymbals) to the purpose of the law. i departed from that ordinance. the tune was broken: followed the punishment. in my own hills, on the edge of my own country, in the very place of my evil desire, comes the buffet--here!' (he touched his brow.) 'as a novice is beaten when he misplaces the cups, so am i beaten, who was abbot of suchzen. no word, look you, but a blow, chela.' 'but the sahibs did not know thee, holy one?' 'we were well matched. ignorance and lust met ignorance and lust upon the road, and they begat anger. the blow was a sign to me, who am no better than a strayed yak, that my place is not here. who can read the cause of an act is half-way to freedom! "back to the path," says the blow. "the hills are not for thee. thou canst not choose freedom and go in bondage to the delight of life."' 'if we had never met that thrice-cursed russian!' 'our lord himself cannot make the wheel swing backward. and for my merit that i had acquired i gain yet another sign.' he put his hand in his bosom, and drew forth the wheel of life. 'look! i considered this after i had meditated. there remains untorn by the idolater no more than the breadth of my finger-nail.' 'i see.' 'so much, then, is the span of my life in this body. i have served the wheel all my days. now the wheel serves me. but for the merit i have acquired in guiding thee upon the way, there would have been added to me yet another life ere i had found my river. is it plain, chela?' kim stared at the brutally disfigured chart. from left to right diagonally the rent ran--from the eleventh house where desire gives birth to the child (as it is drawn by tibetans)--across the human and animal worlds, to the fifth house--the empty house of the senses. the logic was unanswerable. 'before our lord won enlightenment,' the lama folded all away with reverence, 'he was tempted. i too have been tempted, but it is finished. the arrow fell in the plains--not in the hills. therefore, what make we here?' 'shall we at least wait for the hakim?' 'i know how long i live in this body. what can a hakim do?' 'but thou art all sick and shaken. thou canst not walk.' 'how can i be sick if i see freedom?' he rose unsteadily to his feet. 'then i must get food from the village. oh, the weary road!' kim felt that he too needed rest. 'that is lawful. let us eat and go. the arrow fell in plains . . . but i yielded to desire. make ready, chela.' kim turned to the woman with the turquoise headgear who had been idly pitching pebbles over the cliff. she smiled very kindly. 'i found him like a strayed buffalo in a corn-field--the babu; snorting and sneezing with cold. he was so hungry that he forgot his dignity and gave me sweet words. the sahibs have nothing.' she flung out an empty palm. 'one is very sick about the stomach. thy work?' kim nodded, with a bright eye. 'i spoke to the bengali first--and to the people of a nearby village after. the sahibs will be given food as they need it--nor will the people ask money. the plunder is already distributed. that babu makes lying speeches to the sahibs. why does he not leave them?' 'out of the greatness of his heart.' ''was never a bengali yet had one bigger than a dried walnut. but it is no matter. . . . now as to walnuts. after service comes reward. i have said the village is thine.' 'it is my loss,' kim began. 'even now i had planned desirable things in my heart which'--there is no need to go through the compliments proper to these occasions. he sighed deeply . . . 'but my master, led by a vision--' 'huh! what can old eyes see except a full begging-bowl?' '--turns from this village to the plains again.' 'bid him stay.' kim shook his head. 'i know my holy one, and his rage if he be crossed,' he replied impressively. 'his curses shake the hills.' 'pity they did not save him from a broken head! i heard that thou wast the tiger-hearted one who smote the sahib. let him dream a little longer. stay!' 'hillwoman,' said kim, with austerity that could not harden the outlines of his young oval face, 'these matters are too high for thee.' 'the gods be good to us! since when have men and women been other than men and women?' 'a priest is a priest. he says he will go upon this hour. i am his chela, and i go with him. we need food for the road. he is an honoured guest in all the villages, but'--he broke into a pure boyish grin--'the food here is good. give me some.' 'what if i do not give it thee? i am the woman of this village.' 'then i curse thee--a little--not greatly, but enough to remember.' he could not help smiling. 'thou hast cursed me already by the down-dropped eyelash and the uplifted chin. curses? what should i care for mere words?' she clenched her hands upon her bosom. . . . 'but i would not have thee to go in anger, thinking hardly of me--a gatherer of cow-dung and grass at shamlegh, but still a woman of substance.' 'i think nothing,' said kim, 'but that i am grieved to go, for i am very tired, and that we need food. here is the bag.' the woman snatched it angrily. 'i was foolish,' said she. 'who is thy woman in the plains? fair or black? i was fair once. laughest thou? once, long ago, if thou canst believe, a sahib looked on me with favour. once, long ago, i wore european clothes at the mission-house yonder.' she pointed towards kotgarh. 'once, long ago, i was ker-lis-ti-an and spoke english--as the sahibs speak it. yes. my sahib said he would return and wed me--yes, wed me. he went away--i had nursed him when he was sick--but he never returned. then i saw that the gods of the kerlistians lied, and i went back to my own people. . . . i have never set eyes on a sahib since. (do not laugh at me. the fit is past, little priestling.) thy face and thy walk and thy fashion of speech put me in mind of my sahib, though thou art only a wandering mendicant to whom i give a dole. curse me? thou canst neither curse nor bless!' she set her hands on her hips and laughed bitterly. 'thy gods are lies; thy works are lies; thy words are lies. there are no gods under all the heavens. i know it. . . . but for a while i thought it was my sahib come back, and he was my god. yes, once i made music on a pianno in the mission-house at kotgarh. now i give alms to priests who are heatthen.' she wound up with the english word, and tied the mouth of the brimming bag. 'i wait for thee, chela,' said the lama, leaning against the door-post. the woman swept the tall figure with her eyes. 'he walk? he cannot cover half a mile. whither would old bones go?' at this kim, already perplexed by the lama's collapse, and foreseeing the weight of the bag, fairly lost his temper. 'what is it to thee, woman of ill-omen, where he goes?' 'nothing--but something to thee, priest with a sahib's face. wilt thou carry him on thy shoulders?' 'i go to the plains. none must hinder my return. i have wrestled with my soul till i am strengthless. the stupid body is spent, and we are far from the plains.' 'behold!' she said simply, and drew aside to let kim see his own utter helplessness. 'curse me. may be it will give him strength. make a charm! call on thy great god. thou art a priest.' she turned away. the lama had squatted limply, still holding by the door-post. one cannot strike down an old man that he recovers again like a boy in a night. weakness bowed him to the earth, but his eyes that hung on kim were alive and imploring. 'it is all well,' said kim. 'it is the thin air that weakens thee. in a little while we go! it is the mountain-sickness. i too am a little sick at stomach,' . . . and he knelt and comforted with such poor words as came first to his lips. then the woman returned, more erect than ever. 'thy gods useless, heh? try mine. i am the woman of shamlegh.' she hailed hoarsely, and there came out of a cow-pen her two husbands and three others with a dooli, the rude native litter of the hills, that they use for carrying the sick and for visits of state. 'these cattle,' she did not condescend to look at them, 'are thine for so long as thou shalt need.' 'but we will not go simla-way. we will not go near the sahibs,' cried the first husband. 'they will not run away as the others did, nor will they steal baggage. two i know for weaklings. stand to the rear-pole, sonoo and taree.' they obeyed swiftly. 'lower now, and lift in that holy man. i will see to the village and your virtuous wives till ye return.' 'when will that be?' 'ask the priests. do not pester me. lay the food-bag at the foot, it balances better so.' 'oh, holy one, thy hills are kinder than our plains!' cried kim, relieved, as the lama tottered to the litter. 'it is a very king's bed--a place of honour and ease. and we owe it to--' 'a woman of ill-omen. i need thy blessings as much as i do thy curses. it is my order and none of thine. lift and away! here! hast thou money for the road?' she beckoned kim to her hut, and stooped above a battered english cash-box under her cot. 'i do not need anything,' said kim, angered where he should have been grateful. 'i am already rudely loaded with favours.' she looked up with a curious smile and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'at least, thank me. i am foul-faced and a hillwoman, but, as thy talk goes, i have acquired merit. shall i show thee how the sahibs render thanks?' and her hard eyes softened. 'i am but a wandering priest,' said kim, his eyes lighting in answer. 'thou needest neither my blessings nor my curses.' 'nay. but for one little moment--thou canst overtake the dooli in ten strides--if thou wast a sahib, shall i show thee what thou wouldst do?' 'how if i guess, though?' said kim, and putting his arm round her waist, he kissed her on the cheek, adding in english: 'thank you verree much, my dear.' kissing is practically unknown among asiatics, which may have been the reason that she leaned back with wide-open eyes and a face of panic. 'next time,' kim went on, 'you must not be so sure of your heatthen priests. now i say good-bye.' he held out his hand english-fashion. she took it mechanically. 'good-bye, my dear.' 'good-bye, and--and'--she was remembering her english words one by one--'you will come back again? good-bye, and--thee god bless you.' half an hour later, as the creaking litter jolted up the hill path that leads south-easterly from shamlegh, kim saw a tiny figure at the hut door waving a white rag. 'she has acquired merit beyond all others,' said the lama. 'for to set a man upon the way to freedom is half as great as though she had herself found it.' 'umm,' said kim thoughtfully, considering the past. 'it may be that i have acquired merit also. . . . at least she did not treat me like a child.' he hitched the front of his robe, where lay the slab of documents and maps, restowed the precious food-bag at the lama's feet, laid his hand on the litter edge, and buckled down to the slow pace of the grunting husbands. 'these also acquire merit,' said the lama, after three miles. 'more than that, they shall be paid in silver,' quoth kim. the woman of shamlegh had given it to him; and it was only fair, he argued, that her men should earn it back again. chapter xv i'd not give room for an emperor-- i'd hold my road for a king. to the triple crown i'd not bow down-- but this is a different thing! i'll not fight with the powers of air-- sentries pass him through! drawbridge let fall--he's the lord of us all-- the dreamer whose dream came true! 'the siege of the fairies.' two hundred miles north of chini, on the blue shale of ladakh, lies yankling sahib, the merry-minded man, spy-glassing wrathfully across the ridges for some sign of his pet tracker--a man from ao-chung. but that renegade, with a new mannlicher rifle and two hundred cartridges, is elsewhere, shooting musk-deer for the market, and yankling sahib will learn next season how very ill he has been. up the valleys of bushahr--the far-beholding eagles of the himalayas swerve at his new blue-and-white gored umbrella--hurries a bengali, once fat and well-looking, now lean and weather-worn. he has received the thanks of two foreigners of distinction, piloted not unskillfully to mashobra tunnel which leads to the great and gay capital of india. it was not his fault that, blanketed by wet mists, he conveyed them past the telegraph-station and european colony of kotgarh. it was not his fault, but that of the gods, of whom he discoursed so engagingly, that he led them into the borders of nahan, where the rajah of that state mistook them for deserting british soldiery. hurree babu explained the greatness and glory, in their own country, of his companions, till the drowsy kinglet smiled. he explained it to every one who asked--many times--aloud--variously. he begged food, arranged accommodation, proved a skilful leech for an injury of the groin--such a blow as one may receive rolling down a rock-covered hillside in the dark--and in all things indispensable. the reason of his friendliness did him credit. with millions of fellow-serfs, he had learned to look upon russia as the great deliverer from the north. he was a fearful man. he had been afraid that he could not save his illustrious employers from the anger of an excited peasantry. he himself would just as lief hit a holy man as not, but. . . . he was deeply grateful and sincerely rejoiced that he had done his 'little possible' towards bringing their venture to--barring the lost baggage--a successful issue. he had forgotten the blows; denied that any blows had been dealt that unseemly first night under the pines. he asked neither pension nor retaining fee, but, if they deemed him worthy, would they write him a testimonial? it might be useful to him later, if others, their friends, came over the passes. he begged them to remember him in their future greatnesses, for he 'opined subtly' that he, even he, mohendro lal dutt, m. a. of calcutta, had 'done the state some service.' they gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness, and unerring skill as a guide. he put it in his waist-belt and sobbed with emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. he led them at high noon along crowded simla mall to the alliance bank of simla, where they wished to establish their identity. thence he vanished like a dawn-cloud on jakko. behold him, too fine drawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the drugs in his little brass-bound box, ascending shamlegh slope, a just man made perfect. watch him, all babudom laid aside, smoking at noon on a cot, while a woman with turquoise-studded head-gear points south-easterly across the bare grass. litters, she says, do not travel as fast as single men, but his birds should now be in the plains. the holy man would not stay though lispeth pressed him. the babu groans heavily, girds up his huge loins, and is off again. he does not care to travel after dusk; but his days' marches--there is none to enter them in a book--would astonish folk who mock at his race. kindly villagers, remembering the dacca drug-vendor of two months ago, give him shelter against evil spirits of the wood. he dreams of bengali gods, university text-books of education, and the royal society, london, england. next dawn the bobbing blue-and-white umbrella goes forward. on the edge of the doon, mussoorie well behind them and the plains spread out in golden dust before, rests a worn litter in which--all the hills know it--lies a sick lama who seeks a river for his healing. villages have almost come to blows over the honour of bearing it, for not only has the lama given them blessings, but his disciple good money--full one-third sahibs' prices. twelve miles a day has the dooli travelled, as the greasy, rubbed pole-ends show, and by roads that few sahibs use. over the nilang pass in storm when the driven snow-dust filled every fold of the impassive lama's drapery; between the black horns of raieng where they heard the whistle of the wild goats through the clouds; pitching and strained on the shale below; hard-held between shoulder and clenched jaw when they rounded the hideous curves of the cut road under bhagirati; swinging and creaking to the steady jog-trot of the descent into the valley of the waters; pressed along the steamy levels of that locked valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring gusts off kedarnath; set down of mid-days in the dun gloom of kindly oak-forests; passed from village to village in dawn-chill, when even devotees may be forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men; or by torchlight, when the least fearful think of ghosts--the dooli has reached her last stage. the little hill-folk sweat in the modified heat of the lower sewaliks, and gather round the priests for their blessing and their wage. 'ye have acquired merit,' says the lama. 'merit greater than your knowing. and ye will return to the hills,' he sighs. 'surely. the high hills as soon as may be.' the bearer rubs his shoulder, drinks water, spits it out again, and readjusts his grass sandal. kim--his face is drawn and tired--pays very small silver from his belt, heaves out the food-bag, crams an oilskin packet--they are holy writings--into his bosom, and helps the lama to his feet. the peace has come again into the old man's eyes, and he does not look for the hills to fall down and crush him as he did that terrible night when they were delayed by the flooded river. the men pick up the dooli and swing out of sight between the scrub clumps. the lama raises a hand toward the rampart of the himalayas. 'not with you, o blessed among all hills, fell the arrow of our lord! and never shall i breathe your air again!' 'but thou art ten times the stronger man in this good air,' says kim, for to his wearied soul appeal the well-cropped, kindly plains. 'here, or hereabouts, fell the arrow, yes. we will go very softly, perhaps a kos a day, for the search is sure. but the bag weighs heavy.' 'ay, our search is sure. i have come out of great temptation.' * * * * * it was never more than a couple of miles a day now, and kim's shoulders bore all the weight of it--the burden of an old man, the burden of the heavy food-bag with the locked books, the load of the writings on his heart, and the details of the daily routine. he begged in the dawn, set blankets for the lama's meditation, held the weary head on his lap through the noon-day heats, fanning away the flies till his wrist ached, begged again in the evenings, and rubbed the lama's feet, who rewarded him with promise of freedom--to-day, to-morrow, or, at furthest, the next day. 'never was such a chela. i doubt at times whether ananda more faithfully nursed our lord. and thou art a sahib? when i was a man--a long time ago--i forgot that. now i look upon thee often, and every time i remember that thou art a sahib. it is strange.' 'thou hast said there is neither black nor white. why plague me with this talk, holy one? let me rub the other foot. it vexes me. i am not a sahib. i am thy chela, and my head is heavy on my shoulders.' 'patience a little! we reach freedom together. then thou and i, upon the far bank of the river, will look back upon our lives as in the hills we saw our days' marches laid out behind us. perhaps i was once a sahib.' ''was never a sahib like thee, i swear it.' 'i am certain the keeper of the images in the wonder house was in past life a very wise abbot. but even his spectacles do not make my eyes see. there fall shadows when i would look steadily. no matter--we know the tricks of the poor stupid carcass--shadow changing to another shadow. i am bound by the illusion of time and space. how far came we to-day in the flesh?' 'perhaps half a kos.' three-quarters of a mile, and it was a weary march. 'half a kos. ha! i went ten thousand thousand in the spirit. how we are all lapped and swathed and swaddled in these senseless things.' he looked at his thin blue-veined hand that found the beads so heavy. 'chela, hast thou never a wish to leave me?' kim thought of the oilskin packet and the books in the food-bag. if some one duly authorised would only take delivery of them the great game might play itself for aught he then cared. he was tired and hot in his head, and a cough that came from the stomach worried him. 'no,' he said almost sternly. 'i am not a dog or a snake to bite when i have learned to love.' 'thou art too tender for me.' 'not that either. i have moved in one matter without consulting thee. i have sent a message to the kulu woman by that woman who gave us the goat's milk this morn, saying that thou wast a little feeble and would need a litter. i beat myself in my mind that i did not do it when we entered the doon. we stay in this place till the litter returns.' 'i am content. she is a woman with a heart of gold, as thou sayest, but a talker--something of a talker.' 'she will not weary thee. i have looked to that also. holy one, my heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee.' an hysterical catch rose in his throat. 'i have walked thee too far; i have not picked good food always for thee; i have not considered the heat; i have talked to people on the road and left thee alone. . . . i have--i have . . . hai mai! but i love thee . . . and it is all too late. . . . i was a child. . . . oh why was i not a man! . . .' overborne by strain, fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, kim broke down and sobbed at the lama's feet. 'what a to-do is here,' said the old man gently. 'thou hast never stepped a hair's breadth from the way of obedience. neglect me? child, i have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new wall. day by day since shamlegh down, i have stolen strength from thee. therefore, not through any sin of thine art thou weakened. it is the body--the silly, stupid body--that speaks now. not the assured soul. be comforted! know at least the devils that thou fightest. they are earth-born--children of illusion. we will go to the woman from kulu. she shall acquire merit in housing us, and specially in tending me. thou shalt run free till strength returns. i had forgotten the stupid body. if there be any blame, i bear it. but we are too close to the gates of deliverance to weigh blame. i could praise thee, but what need? in a little--in a very little--we shall sit beyond all needs.' and so he petted and comforted kim with wise saws and grave texts on that little-understood beast, our body, who, being but a delusion, insists on posing as the soul, to the darkening of the way, and the immense multiplication of unnecessary devils. 'hai! hai! let us talk of the woman from kulu. think you she will ask another charm for her grandsons? when i was a young man, a very long time ago, i was plagued with these vapours--and some others--and i went to an abbot--a very holy man and a seeker after truth, though then i knew it not. sit up and listen, child of my soul! my tale was told. said he to me, "chela, know this. there are many lies in the world, and not a few liars, but there are no liars like our bodies, except it be the sensations of our bodies." considering this i was comforted, and of his great favour he suffered me to drink tea in his presence. suffer me now to drink tea, for i am thirsty.' with a laugh above his tears, kim kissed the lama's feet, and went about tea-making. 'thou leanest on me in the body, holy one, but i lean on thee for some other things. dost know it?' 'i have guessed maybe,' and the lama's eyes twinkled. 'we must change that.' so, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of importance, paddled up nothing less than the sahiba's pet palanquin sent twenty miles, with that same grizzled old oorya servant in charge, and when they reached the disorderly order of the long white rambling house behind saharunpore, the lama took his own measures. said the sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments: 'what is the good of an old woman's advice to an old man? i told thee--i told thee, holy one, to keep an eye upon the chela. how didst thou do it? never answer me! i know. he has been running among the women. look at his eyes--hollow and sunk--and the betraying line from the nose down! he has been sifted out! fie! fie! and a priest, too!' kim looked up over-weary to smile, shaking his head in denial. 'do not jest,' said the lama. 'that time is done. we are here upon great matters. a sickness of soul took me in the hills, and him a sickness of the body. since then i have lived upon his strength--eating him.' 'children together--young and old,' she sniffed, but forbore to make any new jokes. 'may this present hospitality restore ye. hold awhile and i will come to gossip of the high good hills.' at evening time--her son-in-law was returned, so she did not need to go on inspection round the farm--she won to the meat of the matter, explained low-voicedly by the lama. the two old heads nodded wisely together. kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was dozing soddenly. the lama had forbidden him to set blankets or get food. 'i know--i know. who but i?' she cackled. 'we who go down to the burning-ghats clutch at the hands of those coming up from the river of life with full water-jars--yes, brimming water-jars. i did the boy wrong. he lent thee his strength? it is true that the old eat the young daily. 'stands now we must restore him.' 'thou hast many times acquired merit--' 'my merit. what is it? old bag of bones making curries for men who do not ask "who cooked this?" now if it were stored up for my grandson--' 'he that had the belly-pain?' 'to think the holy one remembers that! i must tell his mother. it is most singular honour! "he that had the belly-pain"--straightway the holy one remembered. she will be proud.' 'my chela is to me as a son to the unenlightened.' 'say grandson, rather. mothers have not the wisdom of our years. if a child cries they say the heavens are falling. now a grandmother is far enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of giving the breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or the wind. and since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the holy one was here, maybe i offended in pressing for charms.' 'sister,' said the lama, using that form of address a buddhist monk may sometimes employ towards a nun, 'if charms comfort thee--' 'they are better than ten thousand doctors.' 'i say, if they comfort thee, i who was abbot of suchzen will make as many as thou mayest desire. i have never seen thy face--' 'that even the monkeys who steal our loquats count for a gain. hee! hee!' 'but as he who sleeps there said,' he nodded at the shut door of the guest-chamber across the forecourt, 'thou hast a heart of gold. . . . and he is in the spirit my very "grandson" to me.' 'good! i am the holy one's cow.' this was pure hinduism, but the lama never heeded. 'i am old. i have borne sons in the body. oh, once i could please men! now i can cure them.' he heard her armlets tinkle as though she bared arms for action. 'i will take over the boy and dose him, and stuff him, and make him all whole. hai! hai! we old people know something yet.' wherefore when kim, aching in every bone, opened his eyes, and would go to the cook-house to get his master's food, he found strong coercion about him, and a veiled old figure at the door, flanked by the grizzled manservant, who told him precisely the very things that he was on no account to do. 'thou must have? thou shalt have nothing. what? a locked box in which to keep holy books? oh, that is another matter. heavens forbid i should come between a priest and his prayers! it shall be brought, and thou shalt keep the key.' they pushed the coffer under his cot, and kim shut away mahbub's pistol, the oilskin packet of letters, and the locked books and diaries, with a groan of relief. for some absurd reason their weight on his shoulders was nothing to their weight on his poor mind. his neck ached under it of nights. 'thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young folk have given up tending their betters. the remedy is sleep, and certain drugs,' said the sahiba; and he was glad to give himself up to the blankness that half menaced and half soothed him. she brewed drinks, in some mysterious asiatic equivalent to the still-room--drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. she stood over kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up. she laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means of an armed man. it is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, hens, and the like, fetched a wide compass by those parts. best of all, when the body was cleared, she cut out from the mass of poor relations that crowded the back of the buildings--household dogs, we name them--a cousin's widow, skilled in what europeans, who know nothing about it, call massage. and the two of them, laying him east and west, that the mysterious earth-currents which thrill the clay of our bodies might help and not hinder, took him to pieces all one long afternoon--bone by bone, muscle by muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by nerve. kneaded to irresponsible pulp, half hypnotised by the perpetual flick and readjustment of the uneasy chudders that veiled their eyes, kim slid ten thousand miles into slumber--thirty-six hours of it--sleep that soaked like rain after drought. then she fed him, and the house spun to her clamour. she caused fowls to be slain; she sent for vegetables, and the sober, slow-thinking gardener, nigh as old as she, sweated for it; she took spices, and milk, and onion, with little fish from the brooks--anon limes for sherbets, fat quails of the pit, then chicken-livers upon a skewer, with sliced ginger between. 'i have seen something of this world,' she said over the crowded trays, 'and there are but two sorts of women in it--those who take the strength out of a man and those who put it back. once i was that one, and now i am this. nay--do not play the priestling with me. mine was but a jest. if it does not hold good now, it will when thou takest the road again. cousin'--this to the poor relation, never wearied of extolling her patroness's charity--'he is getting a bloom on the skin of a new-curried horse. our work is like polishing jewels to be thrown to a dance-girl--eh?' kim sat up and smiled. the terrible weakness had dropped from him like an old shoe. his tongue itched for free speech again, and but a week back the lightest word clogged it like ashes. the pain in his neck (he must have caught it from the lama) had gone with the heavy dengue-aches and the evil taste in the mouth. the two old women, a little, but not much, more careful about their veils now, clucked as merrily as the hens that had entered pecking through the open door. 'where is my holy one?' he demanded. 'hear him! thy holy one is well,' she snapped viciously. 'though that is none of his merit. knew i a charm to make him wise, i'd sell my jewels and buy it. to refuse good food that i cooked myself--and go roving into the fields for two nights on an empty belly--and to tumble into a brook at the end of it--call you that holiness? then, when he has nearly broken what thou hast left of my heart with anxiety, he tells me that he has acquired merit. oh, how like are all men! no, that was not it--he tells me that he is freed from all sin. i could have told him that before he wetted himself all over. he is well now--this happened a week ago--but burn me such holiness! a babe of three would do better! do not fret thyself for the holy one. he keeps both eyes on thee when he is not wading our brooks.' 'i do not remember to have seen him. i remember that the days and nights passed like bars of white and black, opening and shutting. i was not sick: i was only tired.' 'a lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. but it is all done now.' 'maharanee,' kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to the title of plain love--'mother, i owe my life to thee. how shall i make thanks? ten thousand blessings upon thy house and--' 'the house be unblessed.' (it is impossible to give exactly the old lady's word.) 'thank the gods as a priest if thou wilt, but thank me if thou carest as a son. heavens above! have i shifted thee and lifted thee and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung at my head? somewhere a mother must have borne thee to break her heart. what used thou to her--son?' 'i had no mother, my mother,' said kim. 'she died, they tell me, when i was young.' 'hai mai! then none can say i have robbed her of any right if--when thou takest the road again and this house is but one of a thousand used for shelter and forgotten, after an easy-flung blessing. no matter. i need no blessings, but--but--' she stamped her foot at the poor relation: 'take up the trays to the house. what is the good of stale food in the room, oh woman of ill-omen?' 'i ha--have borne a son in my time too, but he died,' whimpered the bowed sister-figure behind the chudder. 'thou knowest he died! i only waited for the order to take away the tray.' 'it is i that am the woman of ill-omen,' cried the old lady penitently. 'we that go down to the chattris (the big umbrellas above the burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues) clutch hard at the bearers of the chattis (water-jars--young folk full of the pride of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy). when one cannot dance in the festival one must e'en look out of the window, and grandmothering takes all a woman's time. thy master gives me all the charms i now desire for my daughter's eldest, by reason--is it?--that he is wholly free from sin. the hakim is brought very low these days. he goes about poisoning my servants for lack of their betters.' 'what hakim, mother?' 'that very dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three pieces. he cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and thou had been blood-brothers together up kulu-way, and feigning great anxiety for thy health. he was very thin and hungry, so i gave orders to have him stuffed too--him and his anxiety!' 'i would see him if he is here.' 'he eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save himself from an apoplexy. he is so full of anxiety for thy health that he sticks to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps. he will keep. we shall never get rid of him.' 'send him here, mother'--the twinkle returned to kim's eye for a flash--'and i will try.' 'i'll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. at least he had the sense to fish the holy one out of the brook; thus, as the holy one did not say, acquiring merit.' 'he is a very wise hakim. send him, mother.' 'priest praising priest? a miracle! if he is any friend of thine (ye squabbled at your last meeting) i'll hale him here with horse-ropes and--and give him a caste-dinner afterwards, my son. . . . get up and see the world! this lying abed is the mother of seventy devils . . . my son! my son!' she trotted forth to raise a typhoon off the cook-house, and almost on her shadow rolled in the babu, robed as to the shoulders like a roman emperor, jowled like titus, bareheaded, with new patent-leather shoes, in highest condition of fat, exuding joy and salutations. 'by jove, mister o'hara, but i am jolly glad to see you. i will kindly shut the door. it is a pity you are sick. are you very sick?' 'the papers--the papers from the kilta. the maps and the murasla!' he held out the key impatiently; for the present need on his soul was to get rid of the loot. 'you are quite right. that is correct departmental view to take. you have got everything?' 'all that was handwritten in the kilta i took. the rest i threw down the hill.' he could hear the key's grate in the lock, the sticky pull of the slow-rending oilcloth, and a quick shuffling of papers. he had been annoyed out of all reason by the knowledge that they lay below him through the sick idle days--a burden incommunicable. for that reason the blood tingled through his body, when hurree, skipping elephantinely, shook hands again. 'this is fine! this is finest! mister o'hara! you have--ha! ha!--swiped the whole bag of tricks--locks, stocks, and barrels. they told me it was eight months' work gone up the spouts! by jove, how they beat me! . . . look, here is the letter from hilas!' he intoned a line or two of court persian, which is the language of authorised and unauthorised diplomacy. 'mister rajah sahib has just about put his foot in the holes. he will have to explain offeecially how the deuce-an'-all he is writing love-letters to the czar. and they are very clever maps . . . and there is three or four prime ministers of these parts implicated by the correspondence. by gad, sar! the british government will change the succession in hilas and bunar, and nominate new heirs to the throne. "treason most base" . . . but you do not understand? eh?' 'are they in thy hands?' said kim. it was all he cared for. 'just you jolly well bet yourself they are.' he stowed the entire trove about his body, as only orientals can. 'they are going up to the office, too. the old lady thinks i am permanent fixture here, but i shall go away with these straight off--immediately. mr. lurgan will be proud man. you are offeecially subordinate to me, but i shall embody your name in my verbal report. it is a pity we are not allowed written reports. we bengalis excel in thee exact science.' he tossed back the key and showed the box empty. 'good. that is good. i was very tired. my holy one was sick, too. and did he fall into--' 'oah yess. i am his good friend, i tell you. he was behaving very strange when i came down after you, and i thought perhaps he might have the papers. i followed him on his meditations, and to discuss ethnological points also. you see, i am verree small person here nowadays in comparison with all his charms. by jove, o'hara, do you know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. yess, i tell you. cataleptic, too, if not also epileptic. i found him in such a state under a tree in articulo mortem, and he jumped up and walked into a brook and he was nearly drowned but for me. i pulled him out.' 'because i was not there!' said kim. 'he might have died.' 'yes, he might have died, but he is dry now, and asserts he has undergone transfiguration.' the babu tapped his forehead knowingly. 'i took notes of his statements for royal society--in posse. you must make haste and be quite well and come back to simla, and i will tell you all my tale at lurgan's. it was splendid. the bottoms of their trousers were quite torn, and old nahan rajah, he thought they were european soldiers deserting.' 'oh, the russians? how long were they with thee?' 'one was a frenchman. oh, days and days and days! now all the hill-people believe all russians are all beggars. by jove! they had not one dam-thing that i did not get them. and i told the common people--oah, such tales and anecdotes! i will tell you at old lurgan's when you come up. we will have--ah--a night out! it is feather in both our caps! yess, and they gave me a certificate. that is creaming joke. you should have seen them at the alliance bank identifying themselves! and thank almighty god you got their papers so well! you do not laugh verree much, but you shall laugh when you are well. now i will go straight to the railway and get out. you shall have all sorts of credits for your game. when do you come along? we are very proud of you, though you gave us great frights. and especially mahbub.' 'ay, mahbub. and where is he?' 'selling horses in this vi-cinity, of course.' 'here! why? speak slowly. there is a thickness in my head still.' the babu looked shyly down his nose. 'well, you see, i am fearful man, and i do not like responsibility. you were sick, you see, and i did not know where deuce-an'-all the papers were, and if so, how many. so when i had come down here i slipped in private wire to mahbub--he was at meerut for races--and i tell him how case stands. he comes up with his men and he consorts with the lama, and then he calls me a fool, and is very rude--' 'but wherefore--wherefore?' 'that is what i ask. i only suggest that if any one steals the papers i should like some good strong, brave men to rob them back again. you see they are vitally important, and mahbub ali he did not know where you were.' 'mahbub ali to rob the sahiba's house? thou art mad, babu,' said kim with indignation. 'i wanted the papers. suppose she had stole them? it was only practical suggestion, i think. you are not pleased, eh?' a native proverb--unquotable--showed the blackness of kim's disapproval. 'well,'--hurree shrugged his shoulders,--'there is no accounting for thee taste. mahbub was angry too. he has sold horses all about here, and he says old lady is pukka (thorough) old lady and would not condescend to such ungentlemanly things. i do not care. i have got the papers, and i was very glad of moral support from mahbub. i tell you i am fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful i am the more dam-tight places i get into. so i was glad you came with me to chini, and i am glad mahbub was close by. the old lady she is sometimes very rude to me and my beautiful pills.' 'allah be merciful,' said kim on his elbow, rejoicing. 'what a beast of wonder is a babu! and that man walked alone--if he did walk--with robbed and angry foreigners!' 'oah, thatt was nothing, after they had done beating me; but if i lost the papers it was pretty jolly serious. mahbub he nearly beat me too, and he went and consorted with the lama no end. i shall stick to ethnological investigations henceforwards. now good-bye, mister o'hara. i can catch . p. m. to umballa if i am quick. it will be good times when we all tell thee tale up at mister lurgan's. i shall report you offeecially better. good-bye, my dear fallow, and when next you are under thee emotions please do not use the mohammedan terms with the tibetan dress.' he shook hands twice--a babu to his boot-heels--and opened the door. with the fall of the sunlight upon his still triumphant face he returned to the humble dacca quack. 'he robbed them,' thought kim, forgetting his own share in the game. 'he tricked them. he lied to them like a bengali. they give him a chit (a testimonial). he makes them a mock at the risk of his life--i never would have gone down to them after the pistol-shots--and then he says he is a fearful man. . . . and he is a fearful man. i must get into the world again.' at first his legs bent like bad pipe-stems, and the flood and rush of the sunlit air dazzled him. he squatted by the white wall, the mind rummaging among the incidents of the long dooli journey, the lama's weaknesses, and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own self-pity, of which, like the sick, he had great store. the unnerved brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once rowelled, sidles from the spur. it was enough, amply enough, that the spoil of the kilta was away--off his hands--out of his possession. he tried to think of the lama,--to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook,--but the bigness of the world, seen between the forecourt gates, swept linked thought aside. then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields, with the thatched huts hidden among crops--looked with strange eyes unable to take up the size and proportion and use of things--stared for a still half-hour. all that while he felt, though he could not put it into words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings--a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery, just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner. the breezes fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house behind--squabbles, orders, and reproofs--hit on dead ears. 'i am kim. i am kim. and what is kim?' his soul repeated it again and again. he did not want to cry,--had never felt less like crying in his life,--but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. they were all real and true--solidly planted upon the feet--perfectly comprehensible--clay of his clay, neither more nor less. he shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. said the sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'let him go. i have done my share. mother earth must do the rest. when the holy one comes back from meditation, tell him.' there stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away, with a young banian tree behind--a look-out, as it were, above some new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as he neared it. the ground was good clean dust--no new herbage that, living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds the seed of all life. he felt it between his toes, patted it with his palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. and mother earth was as faithful as the sahiba. she breathed through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good currents. his head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands surrendered to her strength. the many-rooted tree above him, and even the dead man-handled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did not know. hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep. towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons smoke, came the lama and mahbub ali, both afoot, walking cautiously, for the house had told them where he had gone. 'allah! what a fool's trick to play in open country,' muttered the horse-dealer. 'he could be shot a hundred times--but this is not the border.' 'and,' said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, 'never was such a chela. temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a merry heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous. great is his reward!' 'i know the boy--as i have said.' 'and he was all those things?' 'some of them--but i have not yet found a red hat's charm for making him overly truthful. he has certainly been well nursed.' 'the sahiba is a heart of gold,' said the lama earnestly. 'she looks upon him as her son.' 'hmph! half hind seems that-way disposed. i only wished to see that the boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. as thou knowest, he and i were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.' 'that is a bond between us.' the lama sat down. 'we are at the end of the pilgrimage.' 'no thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back. i heard what the sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the cot.' mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly-dyed beard. 'i was meditating upon other matters that tide. it was the hakim from dacca broke my meditations.' 'otherwise'--this was in pashtu for decency's sake--'thou wouldst have ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of hell--being an unbeliever and an idolater for all thy child's simplicity. but now, red hat, what is to be done?' 'this very night,'--the words came slowly, vibrating with triumph,--'this very night he will be as free as i am from all taint of sin--assured as i am when he quits this body of freedom from the wheel of things. i have a sign,' he laid his hand above the torn chart in his bosom, 'that my time is short; but i shall have safeguarded him throughout the years. remember, i have reached knowledge, as i told thee only three nights back.' 'it must be true, as the tirah priest said when i stole his cousin's wife, that i am a sufi (a freethinker); for here i sit,' said mahbub to himself, 'drinking in blasphemy unthinkable. . . . i remember the tale. on that, then, he goes to jannatu l'adn (the gardens of eden). but how? wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful river from which the babu dragged thee?' 'i was dragged from no river,' said the lama simply. 'thou hast forgotten what befell. i found it by knowledge.' 'oh, aye. true,' stammered mahbub, divided between high indignation and enormous mirth. 'i had forgotten the exact run of what happened. thou didst find it knowingly.' 'and to say that i would take life is---not a sin, but a madness simple. my chela aided me to the river. it is his right to be cleansed from sin--with me.' 'ay, he needs cleansing. but afterwards, old man--afterwards?' 'what matter under all the heavens? he is sure of nibban--enlightened--as i am.' 'well said. i had a fear he might mount mohammed's horse and fly away.' 'nay--he must go forth as a teacher.' 'aha! now i see! that is the right gait for the colt. certainly he must go forth as a teacher. he is somewhat urgently needed as a scribe by the state, for instance.' 'to that end he was prepared. i acquired merit in that i gave alms for his sake. a good deed does not die. he aided me in my search. i aided him in his. just is the wheel, o horse-seller from the north. let him be a teacher; let him be a scribe--what matter? he will have attained freedom at the end. the rest is illusion.' 'what matter? when i must have him with me beyond balkh in six months! i come up with ten lame horses and three strong-backed men--thanks to that chicken of a babu--to break a sick boy by force out of an old trot's house. it seems that i stand by while a young sahib is hoisted into allah knows what of an idolater's heaven by means of old red hat. and i am reckoned something of a player of the game myself! but the madman is fond of the boy; and i must be very reasonably mad too.' 'what is the prayer?' said the lama, as the rough pashtu rumbled into the red beard. 'no matter at all; but now i understand that the boy, sure of paradise, can yet enter government service, my mind is easier. i must get to my horses. it grows dark. do not wake him. i have no wish to hear him call thee master.' 'but he is my disciple. what else?' 'he has told me.' mahbub choked down his touch of spleen and rose laughing. 'i am not altogether of thy faith, red hat--if so small a matter concern thee.' 'it is nothing,' said the lama. 'i thought not. therefore it will not move thee sinless, new-washed and three parts drowned to boot, when i call thee a good man--a very good man. we have talked together some four or five evenings now, and for all i am a horse-coper i can still, as the saying is, see holiness beyond the legs of a horse. yea, can see, too, how our friend of all the world put his hand in thine at the first. use him well, and suffer him to return to the world as a teacher, when thou hast--bathed his legs, if that be the proper medicine for the colt.' 'why not follow the way thyself, and so accompany the boy?' mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the demand, which across the border he would have paid with more than a blow. then the humour of it touched his worldly soul. 'softly--softly--one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over the umballa jumps. i may come to paradise later--i have workings that way--great motions--and i owe them to thy simplicity. thou hast never lied?' 'what need?' 'o allah, hear him! "what need" in this thy world! nor ever harmed a man?' 'once--with a pencase--before i was wise.' 'so? i think the better of thee. thy teachings are good. thou hast turned one man that i know from the path of strife.' he laughed immensely. 'he came here open-minded to commit a dacoity (a house-robbery with violence). yes, to cut, rob, kill, and carry off what he desired.' 'a great foolishness!' 'oh! black shame too. so he thought after he had seen thee--and a few others, male and female. so he abandoned it; and now he goes to beat a big fat babu man.' 'i do not understand.' 'allah forbid it! some men are strong in knowledge, red hat. thy strength is stronger still. keep it--i think thou wilt. if the boy be not a good servant, pull his ears off.' with a hitch of his broad bokhariot belt the pathan swaggered off into the gloaming, and the lama came down from his clouds so far as to look at the broad back. 'that person lacks courtesy, and is deceived by the shadow of appearances. but he spoke well of my chela, who now enters upon his reward. let me make the prayer! . . . wake, o fortunate above all born of women. wake! it is found!' kim came up from those deep wells, and the lama attended his yawning pleasure; duly snapping fingers to head off evil spirits. 'i have slept a hundred years. where--? holy one, hast thou been here long? i went out to look for thee, but'--he laughed drowsily--'i slept by the way. i am all well now. hast thou eaten? let us go to the house. it is many days since i tended thee. and the sahiba fed thee well? who shampooed thy legs? what of the weaknesses--the belly and the neck, and the beating in the ears?' 'gone--all gone. dost thou not know?' 'i know nothing, but that i have not seen thee in a monkey's age. know what?' 'strange the knowledge did not reach out to thee, when all my thoughts were theeward.' 'i cannot see the face, but the voice is like a gong. has the sahiba made a young man of thee by her cookery?' he peered at the cross-legged figure, outlined jet-black against the lemon-coloured drift of light. so does the stone bodhisat sit who looks down upon the patent self-registering turnstiles of the lahore museum. the lama held his peace. except for the click of the rosary and a faint 'clop-clop' of mahbub's retreating feet, the soft, smoky silence of evening in india wrapped them close. 'hear me! i bring news.' 'but let us--' out shot the long yellow hand compelling silence. kim tucked his feet under his robe-edge obediently. 'hear me! i bring news! the search is finished. comes now the reward. . . . thus. when we were among the hills, i lived on thy strength till the young branch bowed and nigh broke. when we came out of the hills, i was troubled for thee and for other matters which i held in my heart. the boat of my soul lacked direction; i could not see into the cause of things. so i gave thee over to the virtuous woman altogether. i took no food. i drank no water. still i saw not the way. they pressed food upon me and cried at my shut door. so i removed myself to a hollow under a tree. i took no food. i took no water. i sat in meditation two days and two nights, abstracting my mind; inbreathing and outbreathing in the required manner. . . . upon the second night--so great was my reward--the wise soul loosed itself from the silly body and went free. this i have never before attained, though i have stood on the threshold of it. consider, for it is a marvel!' 'a marvel indeed. two days and two nights without food! where was the sahiba?' said kim under his breath. 'yea, my soul went free, and, wheeling like an eagle, saw indeed that there was no teshoo lama nor any other soul. as a drop draws to water, so my soul drew near to the great soul which is beyond all things. at that point, exalted in contemplation, i saw all hind, from ceylon in the sea to the hills, and my own painted rocks at suchzen; i saw every camp and village, to the least, where we have ever rested. i saw them at one time and in one place; for they were within the soul. by this i knew the soul had passed beyond the illusion of time and space and of things. by this i knew that i was free. i saw thee lying in thy cot, and i saw thee falling down hill under the idolater--at one time, in one place, in my soul, which, as i say, had touched the great soul. also i saw the stupid body of teshoo lama lying down, and the hakim from dacca kneeled beside, shouting in its ear. then my soul was all alone, and i saw nothing, for i was all things, having reached the great soul. and i meditated a thousand thousand years, passionless, well aware of the causes of all things. then a voice cried: "what shall come to the boy if thou art dead?" and i was shaken back and forth in myself with pity for thee; and i said: "i will return to my chela, lest he miss the way." upon this my soul, which is the soul of teshoo lama, withdrew itself from the great soul with strivings and yearnings and retchings and agonies not to be told. as the egg from the fish, as the fish from the water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air; so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the soul of teshoo lama from the great soul. then a voice cried: "the river! take heed to the river!" and i looked down upon all the world, which was as i had seen it before--one in time, one in place--and i saw plainly the river of the arrow at my feet. at that hour my soul was hampered by some evil or other whereof i was not wholly cleansed, and it lay upon my arms and coiled round my waist; but i put it aside, and i cast forth as an eagle in my flight for the very place of the river. i pushed aside world upon world for thy sake. i saw the river below me--the river of the arrow--and, descending, the waters of it closed over me; and behold i was again in the body of teshoo lama, but free from sin, and the hakim from dacca bore up my head in the waters of the river. it is here! it is behind the mango-tope here--even here!' 'allah karim! oh, well that the babu was by! wast thou very wet?' 'why should i regard? i remember the hakim was concerned for the body of teshoo lama. he haled it out of the holy water in his hands, and there came afterwards thy horse-seller from the north with a cot and men, and they put the body on the cot and bore it up to the sahiba's house.' 'what said the sahiba?' 'i was meditating in that body, and did not hear. so thus the search is ended. for the merit that i have acquired, the river of the arrow is here. it broke forth at our feet, as i have said. i have found it. son of my soul, i have wrenched my soul back from the threshold of freedom to free thee from all sin--as i am free, and sinless. just is the wheel! certain is our deliverance. come!' he crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved. the end * * * * * transcriber's notes: due to being unable to discern which spelling idiosyncracies kipling would have preferred to keep as displaying dialect and which were typesetting errors, all were retained except the one listed below. this includes, for example, the two uses of "quiett" on page . only the most obvious punctuation errors were repaired. this includes such things as a closing double-quotation mark in place of a single one, missing periods at the end of sentences, etc. page , "mahbud" changed to "mahbub" to match rest of usage. (umballa race-course, mahbub ali) generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/a kiplbaftfunnelrich abaft the funnel by rudyard kipling abaft the funnel by rudyard kipling "men in pajamas sitting abaft the funnel and swapping lies of the purple seas" new york b. w. dodge & company copyright, , by b. w. dodge & company preface the measure of a man's popularity is not always--or indeed seldom--the measure of his intrinsic worth. so, when the earlier work of any writer is gathered together in more enduring form, catering to the enthusiasm of his readers in his maturer years, there is always a suspicion that the venture is purely a commercial one, without literary justification. fortunately these stories of mr. kipling's form their own best excuse for this, their first appearance together in book form. not merely because in them may be traced the origin of that style and subject matter that later made their author famous; but because the stories are in themselves worth while--worth writing, worth reading. "the likes o' us" is as true to the type as any of the immortal mulvaney stories; the beginning of "new brooms" is as succinctly fine as any prose mr. kipling ever wrote; for searching out and presenting such splendid pieces of fiction as "sleipner, late thurinda," and "a little more beef" to a public larger than their original one in india, no apology is necessary. a.f. contents page erastasius of the whanghoa her little responsibility a menagerie aboard a smoke of manila the red lamp the shadow of his hand a little more beef the history of a fall griffiths the safe man it the fallen idol new brooms tiglath pileser the like o' us his brother's keeper "sleipner," late "thurinda" a supplementary chapter chautauquaed the bow flume cable car in partibus letters on leave the adoration of the mage a death in the camp a really good time on exhibition the three young men my great and only the betrayal of confidences the new dispensation--i the new dispensation--ii the last of the stories abaft the funnel erastasius of the _whanghoa_[ ] "the old cat's tumbled down the ventilator, sir, and he's swearing away under the furnace-door in the stoke-hole," said the second officer to the captain of the _whanghoa_. "now what in thunder was erastasius doing at the mouth of the ventilator? it's four feet from the ground and painted red at that. any of the children been amusing themselves with him, d'you think? i wouldn't have erastasius disturbed in his inside for all the gold in the treasury," said the captain. "tell some one to bring him up, and handle him delicately, for he's not a quiet beast." in three minutes a bucket appeared on deck. it was covered with a wooden lid. "think he have make die this time," said the chinese sailor who carried the coffin, with a grin. "catchee him topside coals--no open eye--no spit--no sclatchee my. have got bucket, allee same, and make tight. see!" he dived his bare arm under the lid, but withdrew it with a yell, dropping the bucket at the same time. "hya! can do. maskee dlop down--masky spilum coal. have catchee my light there." blood was trickling from his elbow. he moved aft, while the bucket, mysteriously worked by hidden force, trundled to and fro across the decks, swearing aloud. emerged finally erastasius, tom-cat and grandfather-in-chief of the _whanghoa_--a gaunt brindled beast, lacking one ear, with every hair on his body armed and erect. he was patched with coal-dust, very stiff and sore all over, and very anxious to take the world into his confidence as to his wrongs. for this reason he did not run when he was clear of the bucket, but sitting on his hunkers regarded the captain, as who would say: "you hold a master's certificate and call yourself a seaman, and yet you allow this sort of thing on your boat." "guess i must apologise, old man," said the captain gravely. "those ventilators are a little too broad in the beam for a passenger of your build. what made you walk down it? not a rat, eh? you're too well fed to trouble of rats. drink was it." erastasius turned his back on the captain. he was a tailless japanese cat, and the abruptness of his termination gave him a specially brusque appearance. "shouldn't wonder if the old man hasn't been stealing something and was getting away from the galley. he's the biggest reprobate that ever shipped--and that's saying something. no, he isn't my property exactly. i've got a notion that he owns the ship. gathered that from the way he goes round after six bells to see the lights out. the chief engineer says he built the engines. anyway, the old man sits in the engine-room and sort of keeps an eye on the boilers. he was on the ship before i joined her--that's seven years ago, when we were running up and down and around and about the china seas." erastasius, his back to the company, was busied in cleaning his disarranged fur. he licked and swore alternately. the ventilator incident had hurt his feelings sorely. "he knows we are talking about him," continued the captain. "he's a responsible kind o' critter. that's natural when you come to think that he has saved a quarter of a million of dollars. at present his wants are few--guess he would like a netting over those ventilators first thing--but some day he'll begin to live up to his capital." "saved a quarter of a million dollars! what securities did he invest 'em in?" said a man from foochow. "here, in this bottom. he saved the _whanghoa_ with a full cargo of tea, silk and opium, and thirteen thousand dollars in bar silver. yes; that's about the extent of the old man's savings. i commanded. the old man was the rescuer, and i was more grateful to him 'cause it was my darned folly that nearly brought us into the trouble. i was new to these waters, new to the chinaman and his fascinating little ways, being a new england man by raising. erastasius was raised by the devil. that's who his sire was. never ran across his dam. ran across a forsaken sea, though, in the _whanghoa_, a little to the northeast of this, with eight hundred steerage passengers, all chinamen, for various and undenominated ports. had the pleasure of sending eighteen of 'em into the water. yes, that's so, isn't it, old man?" erastasius finished licking himself and mewed affirmatively. "yes, we carried four white officers--a westerner, two vermont men, and myself. there were ten americans, a couple of danes and a half-caste knocking round the ship, and the crew were chinese, but most of 'em good chinese. only good chinese i ever met. we had our steerage passengers 'tween-decks. most of 'em lay around and played dominoes or smoked opium. we had bad weather at the start, and the steerage were powerful sick. i judged they would have no insides to them when the weather lifted, so i didn't put any guards on them. wanted all my men to work the ship. engines rotten as congress, and under sail half the time. next time i carry chinese steerage trash i'll hire a gatling and mount it on the 'tween-decks hatch. "we were fooling about between islands--about a hundred and fifty thousand islands all wrapped up in fog. when the fog laid the wind, the engines broke down. one of the passengers--we carried no ladies that journey--came to me one evening. 'i calculate there's a conspiracy 'tween-decks,' he said. 'those pigtails are talking together. no good ever came of pigtails talking. i'm from 'frisco. i authoritate on these matters.' 'not on this ship,' i said: 'i've no use for duplicate authority.' 'you'll be homesick after nine this time to-morrow,' he said and quit. i guess he told the other passengers his notions. "erastasius shared my cabin in general. i didn't care to dispute with a cat that went heeled the way he did. that particular night when i came down he was not inclined for repose. when i shut the door he scrabbled till i let him out. when he was out he scrabbled to come back. when he was back, he jumped all round the shanty yowling. i stroked him, and the sparks irrigated his back as if 'twas the smoke-stack of a river steamer. 'i'll get you a wife, old man,' i said, 'next voyage. it is no good for you to be alone with me.' '_whoopee, yoopee-yaw-aw-aw_,' said erastasius. 'let me get out of this.' i looked him square between the eyes to fix the place where i'd come down with a boot-heel (he was getting monotonous), and as i looked i saw the animal was just possessed with deadly fear--human fear--crawling, shaking fear. it crept out of the green of his eyes and crept over me in billowing waves--each wave colder than the last. 'unburden your mind, erastasius,' i said. 'what's going to happen?' '_wheepee-yeepee-ya-ya-ya-woop!_' said erastasius, backing to the door and scratching. "i quit my cabin sweating big drops, and somehow my hand shut on my six-shooter. the grip of the handle soothes a man when he is afraid. i heard the whole ship 'tween-decks rustling under me like all the woods of maine when the wind's up. the lamp over the 'tween-decks was out. the steerage watchman was lying on the ground, and the whole hive of celestials were on the tramp--soft-footed hounds. a lantern came down the alley-way. behind it was the passenger that had spoken to me, and all the rest of the crowd, except the half-caste. "'are you homesick any now?' said my passenger. the 'tween-decks woke up with a yell at the light, and some one fired up the hatch-way. then we began our share of the fun--the ten passengers and i. eleven six-shooters. that cleared the first rush of the pigtails, but we continued firing on principle, working our way down the steps. no one came down from the spar-deck to assist, though i heard considerable of a trampling. the pigtails below were growling like cats. i heard the lookout man shout, 'junk on the port bow,' and the bell ring in the engine-room for full speed ahead. then we struck something, and there was a yell inside and outside the ship that would have lifted your hair out. when the outside yell stopped, our pigtails were on their faces. 'run down a junk,' said my passenger--'_their_ junk.' he loosed three shots into the steerage on the strength of it. i went up on deck when things were quiet below. some one had run our dahlgren signal-gun forward and pointed it to the break of the fo'c'sle. there was the balance of a war junk--three spars and a head or two on the water, and the first mate keeping his watch in regular style. "'what is your share?' he said. 'we've smashed up a junk that tried to foul us. seems to have affected the feelings of your friends below. guess they wanted to make connection.' 'it is made,' said i, 'on the glassy sea. where's the watch?' 'in the fo'c'sle. the half-caste is sitting on the signal-gun smoking his cigar. the watch are speculatin' whether he'll stick the business-end of it in the touch-hole or continue smoking. i gather that gun is not empty.' 'send 'em down below to wash decks. tell the quartermaster to go through their boxes while they are away. they may have implements.' "the watch went below to clean things up. there were eighteen stiff uns and fourteen with holes through their systems. some died, some survived. i did not keep particular count. the balance i roped up, and it employed most of our spare rigging. when we touched port there was a picnic among the hangmen. seems that erastasius had been yowling down the cabins all night before he came to me, and kept the passengers alive. the man that spoke to me said the old man's eyes were awful to look at. he was dying to tell his fear, but couldn't. when the passengers came forward with the light, the half-caste quit for topside and got the quartermaster to load the signal-gun with handspikes and bring it forward in case the fo'c'sle wished to assist in the row. that was the best half-caste i ever met. but the fo'c'sle didn't assist. they were sick. so were the men below--horror-sick. that was the way the old man saved the _whanghoa_." footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] her little responsibility[ ] _and no man may answer for the soul of his brother_ it was two in the morning, and epstin's dive was almost empty, when a thing staggered down the steps that led to that horrible place and fawned on me disgustingly for the price of a drink. "i'm dying of thirst," he said, but his tone was not that of a street loafer. there is a freemasonry, the freemasonry of the public schools, stronger than any that the craft knows. the thing drank whisky raw, which in itself is not calculated to slake thirst, and i waited at its side because i knew, by virtue of the one sentence above recorded, that it once belonged to my caste. indeed, so small is the world when one begins to travel round it, that, for aught i knew, i might even have met the thing in that menagerie of carefully-trained wild beasts, decent society. and the thing drank more whisky ere the flood-gates of its speech were loosed and spoke of the wonderful story of its fall. never man, he said, had suffered more than he, or for slighter sin. whereat i winked beerily into the bottom of my empty glass, having heard that tale before. i think the thing had been long divided from all social and moral restraint--even longer from the wholesome influence of soap and water. "what i feel most down here," said it, and by "down here" i presume he meant the inferno of his own wretchedness, "is the difficulty about getting a bath. a man can always catch a free lunch at any of the bars in the city, if he has money enough to buy a drink with, and you can sleep out for six or eight months of the year without harm, but san francisco doesn't run to free baths. it's not an amusing life any way you look at it. i'm more or less used to things, but it hurts me even now to meet a decent man who knows something of life in the old country. i was raised at harrow--harrow, if you please--and i'm not five-and-twenty yet, and i haven't got a penny, and i haven't got a friend, and there is nothing in creation that i can command except a drink, and i have to beg for that. have you ever begged for a drink? it hurts at first, but you get used to it. my father's a parson. i don't think he knows i beg drink. he lives near salisbury. do you know salisbury at all? and then there's my mother, too. but i have not heard from either of them for a couple of years. they think i'm in a real estate office in washington territory, coining money hand over fist. if ever you run across them--i suppose you will some day--there's the address. tell them that you've seen me, and that i am well and fit. understand?--well and fit. i guess i'll be dead by the time you see 'em. that's hard. men oughtn't to die at five-and-twenty--of drink. say, were you ever mashed on a girl? not one of these you see, girls out here, but an english one--the sort of girl one meets at the vicarage tennis-party, don't you know. a girl of our own set. i don't mean mashed exactly, but dead, clean gone, head over ears; and worse than that i was once, and i fancy i took the thing pretty much as i take liquor now. i didn't know when to stop. it didn't seem to me that there was any reason for stopping in affairs of that kind. i'm quite sure there's no reason for stopping half-way with liquor. go the whole hog and die. it's all right, though--i'm not going to get drunk here. five in the morning will suit me just as well, and i haven't the chance of talking to one of you fellows often. so you cut about in fine clothes, do you, and take your drinks at the best bars and put up at the palace? all englishmen do. well, here's luck; you may be what i am one of these days. you'll find companions quite as well raised as yourself. * * * * * "but about this girl. don't do what i did. i fell in love with her. she lived near us in salisbury; that was when i had a clean shirt every day and hired horses to ride. one of the guineas i spent on that amusement would keep me for a week here. but about this girl. i don't think some men ought to be allowed to fall in love any more than they ought to be allowed to taste whisky. she said she cared for me. used to say that about a thousand times a day, with a kiss in between. i think about those things now, and they make me nearly as drunk as the whisky does. do you know anything about that love-making business? i stole a copy of cleopatra off a book-stall in kearney street, and that priest-chap says a very true thing about it. you can't stop when it's once started, and when it's all over you can't give it up at the word of command. i forget the precise language. that girl cared for me. i'd give something if she could see me now. she doesn't like men without collars and odd boots and somebody else's hat; but anyhow she made me what i am, and some day she'll know it. i came out here two years ago to a real estate office; my father bought me some sort of a place in the firm. we were all englishmen, but we were about a match for an average yankee; but i forgot to tell you i was engaged to the girl before i came out. never you make a woman swear oaths of eternal constancy. she'll break every one of them as soon as her mind changes, and call you unjust for making her swear them. i worked enough for five men in my first year. i got a little house and lot in tacoma fit for any woman. i never drank, i hardly ever smoked, i sold real estate all day, and wrote letters at night. she wrote letters, too, about as full of affection as they make 'em. you can tell nothing from a woman's letter, though. if they want to hide anything, they just double the 'dears' and 'darlings,' and then giggle when the man fancies himself deceived. "i don't suppose i was worse off than hundreds of others, but it seems to me that she might have had the grace to let me down easily. she went and got married. i don't suppose she knew exactly what she was doing, because i got the letters just the same six weeks after she was married! it was an odd copy of an english paper that showed me what had happened. it came in on the same day as one of her letters, telling me she would be true to the gates of death. sounds like a novel, doesn't it? but it did not amuse me in the least. i wasn't constructed to pitch the letters into the fire and pick up with a yankee girl. i wrote her a letter; i rather wish i could remember what was in that letter. then i went to a bar in tacoma and had some whisky, about a gallon, i suppose. if i had anything approaching to a word of honour about me, i would give it you that i did not know what happened until i was told that my partnership with the firm had been dissolved, and that the house and lot did not belong to me any more. i would have left the firm and sold the house, anyhow, but the crash sobered me for about three days. then i started another jamboree. i might have got back after the first one, and been a prominent citizen, but the second bust settled matters. then i began to slide on the downgrade straight off, and here i am now. i could write you a book about what i have come through, if i could remember it. the worst of it is i can see that she wasn't worth losing anything in life for, but i've lost just everything, and i'm like the priest-chap in cleopatra--i can't get over what i remember. if she had let me down easy, and given me warning, i should have been awfully cut up for a time, but i should have pulled through. she didn't do that, though. she lied to me all along, and married a curate, and i dare say she'll be a virtuous she-vicar later on; but the little affair broke me dead, and if i had more whisky in me i should be blubbering like a calf all round this dive. that would have disgusted you, wouldn't it?" "yes," said i. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] a menagerie aboard[ ] it was pyjama time on the _madura_ in the bay of bengal, and the incense of the very early morning cigar went up to the stainless skies. every one knows pyjama time--the long hour that follows the removal of the beds from the saloon skylight and the consumption of _chota hazri_. most men know, too, that the choicest stories of many seas may be picked up then--from the long-winded histories of the colonial sheep-master to the crisp anecdotes of the californian; from tales of battle, murder and sudden death told by the burmah-returned subaltern, to the bland drivel of the globe-trotter. the captain, tastefully attired in pale pink, sat up on the signal-gun and tossed the husk of a banana overboard. "it looked in through my cabin-window," said he, "and scared me nearly into a fit." we had just been talking about a monkey who appeared to a man in an omnibus, and haunted him till he cut his own throat. the apparition, amid howls of incredulity, was said to have been the result of excessive tea-drinking. the captain's apparition promised to be better. "it was a menagerie--a whole turnout, lock, stock, and barrel, from the big bear to the little hippopotamus; and you can guess the size of it from the fact that they paid us a thousand pounds in freight only. we got them all accommodated somewhere forward among the deck passengers, and they whooped up terribly all along the ship for two or three days. among other things, such as panthers and leopards, there were sixteen giraffes, and we moored 'em fore and aft as securely as might be; but you can't get a purchase on a giraffe somehow. he slopes back too much from the bows to the stern. we were running up the red sea, i think, and the menagerie fairly quiet. one night i went to my cabin not feeling well. about midnight i was waked by something breathing on my face. i was quite calm and collected, for i had got it into my head that it was one of the panthers, or at least the bear; and i reached back to the rack behind me for a revolver. then the head began to slide against my cabin--all across it--and i said to myself: 'it's the big python.' but i looked into its eyes--they were beautiful eyes--and saw it was one of the giraffes. tell you, though, a giraffe has the eyes of a sorrowful nun, and this creature was just brimming over with liquid tenderness. the seven-foot neck rather spoilt the effect, but i'll always recollect those eyes." "say, did you kiss the critter?" demanded the orchid-hunter en route to siam. "no; i remembered that it was darn valuable, and i didn't want to lose freight on it. i was afraid it would break its neck drawing its head out of my window--i had a big deck cabin, of course--so i shoved it out softly like a hen, and the head slid out, with those mary magdalene eyes following me to the last. then i heard the quartermaster calling on heaven and earth for his lost giraffe, and then the row began all up and down the decks. the giraffe had sense enough to duck its head to avoid the awnings--we were awned from bow to stern--but it clattered about like a sick cow, the quartermaster jumping after it, and it swinging its long neck like a flail. 'catch it, and hold it!' said the quartermaster. 'catch a typhoon,' said i. 'she's going overboard.' the spotted fool had heaved one foot over the stern railings and was trying to get the other to follow. it was so happy at getting its head into the open i thought it would have crowed--i don't know whether giraffes crow, but it heaved up its neck for all the world like a crowing cock. 'come back to your stable,' yelled the quartermaster, grabbing hold of the brute's tail. "i was nearly helpless with laughing, though i knew if the concern went over it would be no laughing matter for me. well, by good luck she came round--the quartermaster was a strong man at a rope's end. first of all she slewed her neck round, and i could see those tender, loving eyes under the stars sort of saying: 'cruel man! what are you doing to my tail?' then the foot came on board, and she bumped herself up under the awning, looking ready to cry with disappointment. the funniest thing was she didn't make any noise--a pig would ha' roused the ship in no time--only every time she dropped her foot on the deck it was like firing a revolver, the hoofs clicked so. we headed her towards the bows, back to her moorings--just like a policeman showing a short-sighted old woman over a crossing. the quartermaster sweated and panted and swore, but she never said anything--only whacked her old head despairingly against the awning and the funnel case. her feet woke up the whole ship, and by the time we had her fairly moored fore and aft the population in their night-gear were giving us advice. then we took up a yard or two in all the moorings and turned in. no other animal got loose that voyage, though the old lady looked at me most reproachfully every time i came that way, and 'you've blasted my young and tender innocence' was the expression of her eyes. it was all the quartermaster's fault for hauling her tail. i wonder she didn't kick him open. well, of course, that isn't much of a yarn, but i remember once, in the city of venice, we had a malayan tapir loose on the deck, and we had to lasso him. it was this way": "_guzl thyar hai_," said the steward, and i fled down the companion and missed the tale of the tapir. footnotes: [footnote : vol. v., jan.--march, .] a smoke of manila[ ] the man from manila held the floor. "much care had made him very lean and pale and hollow-eyed." added to which he smoked the cigars of his own country, and they were bad for the constitution. he foisted his stinkadores magnificosas and his cuspidores imperiallissimos upon all who would accept them, and wondered that the recipients of his bounty turned away and were sad. "there is nothing," said he, "like a manila cigar." and the pink pyjamas and blue pyjamas and the spotted green pyjamas, all fluttering gracefully in the morning breeze, vowed that there was not and never would be. "do the spaniards smoke these vile brands to any extent?" asked the young gentleman travelling for pleasure as he inspected a fresh box of oysters of the east. "smoke 'em!" said the man from manila; "they do nothing else day and night." "ah!" said the young gentleman travelling for pleasure, in the low voice of one who has received mortal injury, "that accounts for the administration of the country being what it is. after a man has tried a couple of these things he would be ready for any crime." the man from manila took no heed of the insult. "i knew a case once," said he, "when a cigar saved a man from the sin of burglary and landed him in quod for five years." "was he trying to kill the man who gave him the cigar?" said the young gentleman travelling for pleasure. "no, it was this way: my firm's godowns stand close to a creek. that is to say, the creek washes one face of them, and there are a few things in those godowns that might be useful to a man, such as piece-goods and cotton prints--perhaps five thousand dollars' worth. i happened to be walking through the place one day when, for a miracle, i was not smoking. that was two years ago." "great cæsar! then he has been smoking ever since!" murmured the young gentleman travelling for pleasure. "was not smoking," continued the man from manila. "i had no business in the godowns. they were a short cut to my house. when half-way through them i fancied i saw a little curl of smoke rising from behind one of the bales. we stack our bales on low saddles, much as ricks are stacked in england. my first notion was to yell. i object to fire in godowns on principle. it is expensive, whatever the insurance may do. luckily i sniffed before i shouted, and i sniffed good tobacco smoke." "and this was in manila, you say?" interrupted the young gentleman travelling for pleasure. "yes, in the only place in the world where you get good tobacco. i knew we had no bales of the weed in stock, and i suspected that a man who got behind print bales to finish his cigar might be worth looking up. i walked between the bales till i reached the smoke. it was coming from the ground under one of the saddles. that's enough, i thought, and i went away to get a couple of the guarda civile--policemen, in fact. i knew if there was anything to be extracted from my friend the bobbies would do it. a spanish policeman carries in the day-time nothing more than a six-shooter and _machete_, a dirk. at night he adorns himself with a repeating rifle, which he fires on the slightest provocation. well, when the policemen arrived, they poked my friend out of his hiding-place with their dirks, hauled him out by the hair, and kicked him round the godown once or twice, just to let him know that he had been discovered. they then began to question him, and under gentle pressure--i thought he would be pulped into a jelly, but a spanish policeman always knows when to leave off--he made a clean breast of the whole business. he was part of a gang, and was to lie in the godown all that night. at twelve o'clock a boat manned by his confederates was to drop down the creek and halt under the godown windows, while he was to hand out our bales. that was their little plan. he had lain there about three hours, and then he began to smoke. i don't think he noticed what he was doing: smoking is just like breathing to a spaniard. he could not understand how he had betrayed himself and wanted to know whether he had left a leg sticking out under the saddles. then the guarda civile lambasted him all over again for trifling with the majesty of the law, and removed him after full confession. "i put one of my own men under a saddle with instructions to hand out print bales to anybody who might ask for them in the course of the night. meantime the police made their own arrangements, which were very comprehensive. "at midnight a lumbering old barge, big enough to hold about a hundred bales, came down the creek and pulled up under the godown windows, exactly as if she had been one of my own barges. the eight ruffians in her whistled all the national airs of manila as a signal to the confederate, then cooling his heels in the lock-up. but my man was ready. he opened the window and held quite a long confab with these second-hand pirates. they were all half-breeds and roman catholics, and the way they called upon all the blessed saints to assist them in their work was edifying. my man began tilting out the bales quite as quickly as the confederate would have done. only he stopped to giggle now and again, and they spat and swore at him like cats. that made him worse, and at last he dropped yelling with laughter over the half door of the godown goods window. then one boat came up stream and another down stream, and caught the barge stem and stern. four guarda civiles were in each boat; consequently, eight repeating rifles were pointed at the barge, which was very nicely loaded with our bales. the pirates called on the saints more fluently than ever, threw up their hands, and threw themselves on their stomachs. that was the safest attitude, and it gave them the chance of cursing their luck, the barge, the godown, the guarda civile, and every saint in the calendar. they cursed the saints most, for the guarda civile thumped 'em when their remarks became too personal. we made them put all the bales back again. then they were handed over to justice and got five years apiece. if they had any dollars they would get out the next day. if they hadn't, they would serve their full time and no ticket-of-leave allowed. that's the whole story." "and the only case on record," said the young gentleman travelling for pleasure, "where a manila cigar was of any use to any one." the man from manila lit a fresh cuspidore and went down to his bath. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] the red lamp[ ] "a strong situation--very strong, sir--quite the strongest one in the play, in fact." "what play?" said a voice from the bottom of the long chair under the bulwarks. "_the red lamp._" "oh!" conversation ceased, and there was an industrious sucking of cheroots for the space of half an hour before the company adjourned to the card-room. it was decidedly a night for sleeping on deck--warm as the red sea and more moist than bengal. unfortunately, every square foot of the deck seemed to be occupied by earlier comers, and in despair i removed myself to the extreme fo'c'sle, where the anchor-chains churn rust-dyed water from the hawseholes and the lascars walk about with slushpots. the throb of the engines reached this part of the world as a muffled breathing which might be easily mistaken for the snoring of the ship's cow. occasionally one of the fowls in the coops waked and cheeped dismally as she thought of to-morrow's entrées in the saloon, but otherwise all was very, very still, for the hour was two in the morning, when the crew of a ship are not disposed to be lively. none came to bear me company save the bo'sun's pet kittens, and they were impolite. from where i lay i could look over the whole length of awning, ghostly white in the dark, and by their constant fluttering judged that the ship was pitching considerably. the fo'c'sle swung up and down like an uneasy hydraulic lift, and a few showers of spray found their passage through the hawseholes from time to time. have you ever felt that maddening sense of incompetence which follows on watching the work of another man's office? the civilian is at home among his despatch-boxes and files of pending cases. "how in the world does he do it?" asks the military man. the budding officer can arrange for the movements of two hundred men across country. "incomprehensible!" says the civilian. and so it is with all alien employs from our own. so it was with me. i knew that i was lying among all the materials out of which clark russell builds his books of the sea--the rush through the night, the gouts of foam, the singing of the wind in the rigging overhead, and the black mystery of the water--but for the life of me i could make nothing of them all. "a topsail royal flying free a bit of canvas was to me, and it was nothing more." "oh, that a man should have but one poor little life and one incomplete set of experiences to crowd into it!" i sighed as the bells of the ship lulled me to sleep and the lookout man crooned a dreary song. i slept far into the night, for the clouds gathered over the sky, the stars died out, and all grew as black as pitch. but we never slackened speed; we beat the foam to left and right with clanking of chains, rattling of bow-ports, and savage noises of ripping and rending from the cut-water ploughing up to the luminous sea-beasts. i was roused by the words of the man in the smoking-room: "a strong situation, sir, very strong--quite the strongest in the play, in fact--_the red lamp_, y' know." i thought over the sentence lazily for a time, and then--surely there was a red lamp in the air somewhere--an intolerable glare that singed the shut eyelids. i opened my eyes and looked forward. the lascar was asleep, his face bowed on his knees, though he ought to have been roused by the hum of a rapidly approaching city, by the noises of men and women talking and laughing and drinking. i could hear it not half a mile away: it was strange that his ears should be closed. the night was so black that one could hardly breathe; and yet where did the glare from the red lamp come from? not from our ship: she was silent and asleep--the officers on the bridge were asleep; there was no one of four hundred souls awake but myself. and the glare of the red lamp went up to the zenith. small wonder. a quarter of a mile in front of us rolled a big steamer under full steam, and she was heading down on us without a word of warning. would the lookout man never look out? would their crew be as fast asleep as ours? it was impossible, for the other ship hummed with populous noises, and there was the defiant tinkle of a piano rising above all. she should have altered her course, or blown a fog-horn. i held my breath while an eternity went by, counted out by the throbbing of my heart and the engines. i knew that it was my duty to call, but i knew also that no one could hear me. moreover, i was intensely interested in the approaching catastrophe; interested, you will understand, as one whom it did in no wise concern. by the light of the luminous sea thrown forward in sheets under the forefoot of the advancing steamer i could discern the minutest details of her structure from cat-head to bridge. abaft the bridge she was crowded with merrymakers--seemed to be, in fact, a p. & o. vessel given up to a ball. i wondered as i leaned over the bulwarks what they would say when the crash came--whether they would shriek very loudly--whether the men and women would try to rush to our decks, or whether we would rush on to theirs. it would not matter in the least, for at the speed we were driving both vessels would go down together locked through the deeps of the sea. it occurred to me then that the sea would be cold, and that instead of choking decently i might be one in a mad rush for the boats--might be crippled by a falling spar or wrenched plate and left on the heeling decks to die. then terror came to me--fear, gross and overwhelming as the bulk of the night--despair unrelieved by a single ray of hope. we were not fifty yards apart when the passengers on the stranger caught sight of us and shrieked aloud. i saw a man pick up his child from one of the benches and futilely attempt to climb the rigging. then we closed--her name-plate ten feet above ours, looking down into our forehatch. i heard the grinding as of a hundred querns, the ripping of the tough bow-plates, and the pistol-like report of displaced rivets followed by the rush of the sea. we were sinking in mid-ocean. * * * * * "beg y' pardon," said the quartermaster, shaking me by the arm, "but you must have been sleeping in the moonlight for the last two hours, and that's not good for the eyes. didn't seem to make you sleep easy, either." i opened my eyes heavily. my face was swollen and aching, for on my forehead lay the malignant splendour of the moon. the glare of the red lamp had vanished with the brilliantly-lighted ship, but the ghastly shrieks of her drowning crew continued. "what's that?" i asked tremulously of the quartermaster. "was it real?" "pork chops in the saloon to-morrow," said the quartermaster. "the butcher he got up at four bells to put the old squeaker out of the way. them's his dying ejaculations." i dragged my bedding aft and went to sleep. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] the shadow of his hand[ ] "i come from san josé," he said. "san josé, calaveras county, california: that's my place." i pricked up my ears at the mention of calaveras county. bret harte has made that sacred ground. "yes?" said i politely. always be polite to a gentleman from calaveras county. for aught you know he may be a lineal descendant of the great colonel starbottle. "did you ever know vermilyea of san luis obispo?" continued the stranger, chewing the plug of meditation. "no," said i. heaven alone knows where lies san luis obispo, but i was not going to expose my ignorance. besides, there might be a story at the back of it all. "what was the special weakness of mister vermilyea?" "vermilyea! he weak! lot vermilyea never had a weakness that you might call a weakness until subsequent events transpired. then that weakness developed into white rye. all westerners drink white rye. on the eastern coast they drink bourbon. lot tried both when his heart was broken. both--by the quart." "d'you happen to remember what broke his heart?" i said. "this must be your first trip to the states, sir, or you would know that lot's heart was broken by his father-in-law. lot's congregation--he took to religion--always said that he had no business fooling with a father-in-law. a good many other people said that too. but i always adhered to lot. 'why don't you kill the animal, lot?' i used to say. 'i can't. he's the father of my wife,' lot used to say. 'loan him money then and settle him on the other side of the states,' i used to say. 'the old clam won't move,' lot used to say." "half a minute. what was the actual trouble between vermilyea and his father-in-law? did he borrow money?" "i'm coming to that," said the stranger calmly. "it arrived this way. lot had a notion to get married. some men get that idea. he went to 'frisco and pawned out his heart--lot had a most feeling heart, and that was his ruin--to a girl who lived at back of kearney street. i've forgotten her given name, but the old man's name was dougherty. guess he was a naturalised irishman. the old man did not see the merits of lot when he went sparking after the girl evenings. he fired lot out off the stoop three or four times. lot didn't hit him because he was fond of the daughter. he just quit like a lamb; the old man welting into him with anything that came handy--sticks and besoms, and such. lot endured that, being a tough man. every time lot was fired out he would wait till the old man was pretty well pumped out. then he used to turn round and say, 'when's the wedding to be?' dougherty used to ramp round lot while the girl hid herself till the breeze abated. he had a peculiar aversion to domiciliary visits from lot, had dougherty. i've my own theory on the subject. i'll explain it later on. at last dougherty got tired of lot and his peacefulness. the girl stuck to him for all she was worth. lot never budged. 'if you want to marry her,' said the old man, 'just drop your long-suffering for half an hour. stand up to me, lot, and we'll run this thing through with our hands.' 'if i must, i must,' said lot, and with that they began the argument up and down the parlour floor. lot he was fighting for his wife. he set considerable value on the girl. the old man he was fighting for the fun of the affair. lot whipped. he handled the old man tenderly out of regard for his connections. all the same he fixed him up pretty thoroughly. when he crawled off the old man he had received his permission to marry the girl. old man dougherty ran round 'frisco advertising lot for the tallest fighter in the town. lot was a respectable sort of man and considerable absorbed in preparing for his wedding. it didn't please him any to receive invitations from the boss fighting men of 'frisco--professional invitations, you must understand. i guess he cussed the father-in-law to be. "when he was married, he concluded to locate in 'frisco, and started business there. a married man don't keep his muscle up any. old man dougherty he must have counted on that. by the time lot's first child was born he came around suffering for a fight. he painted lot's house crimson. lot endured that. he got a hold of the baby and began yanking it around by the legs to see if it could squeal worth listening to. lot stretched him. old man howled with delight. lot couldn't well hand his father-in-law over to the police, so they had it, knuckle and tooth, all round the front floor, and the old man he quit by the window, considerably mashed up. lot was fair spent, not having kept up his muscle. my notion is that old man dougherty being a boss fighter couldn't get his fighting regularly till lot married into the family. then he reckoned on a running discussion to warm up his bones. lot was too fond of his wife to disoblige him. any man in his senses would have brought the old man before the courts, or clubbed him, or laid him out stiff. but lot was always tender-hearted. "soon as old man dougherty got his senses together off the pavement, he argued that lot was considerable less of a fighter than he had been. that pleased the old man. he was plastered and caulked up by the doctors, and as soon as he could move he interviewed lot and made remarks. lot didn't much care what he said, but when he came to casting reflections on the parentage of the baby, lot shut the office door and played round for half an hour till the walls glittered like the evening sun. old man dougherty crawled out, but he crowed as he crawled. 'praise the blessed saints,' he said, 'i kin get my fighting along o' my meals. lot, ye have prolonged my life a century.' "guess lot would like to see him dead now. he is an old man, but most amazing tough. he has been fighting lot for a matter of three years. if lot made a lucky bit of trade, the old man would come along and fight him for luck. if lot lost a little, the old man would fight him to teach him safe speculation. it took all lot's time to keep even with him. no man in business can 'tend his business and fight in streaks. lot's trade fell off every time he laid himself out to stretch the old man. worst of it was that when lot was made a deacon of his church, the old man fought him most terrible for the honour of the roman catholic church. lot whipped, of course. he always whipped. old man dougherty went round among the other deacons and lauded lot for a boss pugilist, not meaning to hurt lot's prospects. lot had to explain the situation to the church in general. they accepted it. "old man dougherty he fought on. age had no effect on him. lot always whipped, but nothing would satisfy the old man. lot shook all his teeth out till his gums were as bare as a sand-bar. old man dougherty came along lisping his invitation to the dance. they fought. "when lot shifted to san luis obispo, old man dougherty he came along too--craving for his fight. it was cocktails and plug to him. it grew on him. lot handled him too gently because of the wife. the old man could come to the scratch once a month, and always at the most inconvenient time. they fought. "last i heard of lot he was sinking into the tomb. 'it's not the fighting,' he said to me. 'it's the darned monotony of the circus. he knows i can whip him, but he won't rest satisfied. 'lay him out, lot,' said i; 'fracture his cranium or gouge him. this show is foolish all round.' 'i can't lay him out,' said lot. 'he's my father-in-law. but don't it strike you i've a deal to be thankful for? if he had been a jew he'd have fought on sundays when i was doing deacon. i've been too gentle with him; the old man knows my spot place, but i've a deal to be thankful for.' "strikes me that thankfulness of lot's sort is nothing more nor less than cussed affectation. say!" i said nothing. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] a little more beef[ ] "a little more beef, please," said the fat man with the grey whiskers and the spattered waistcoat. "you can't eat too much o' good beef--not even when the prices are going up hoof over hock." and he settled himself down to load in a fresh cargo. now, this is how the fat man had come by his meal. one thousand miles away, a red texan steer was preparing to go to bed for the night in the company of his fellows--myriads of his fellows. from dawn till late dusk he had loafed across the leagues of grass and grunted savagely as each mouthful proved to his mind that grass was not what he had known it in his youth. but the steer was wrong. that summer had brought great drought to montana and northern dakota. the cattle feed was withering day by day, and the more prudent stock owners had written to the east for manufactured provender. only the little cactus that grows with the grasses appeared to enjoy itself. the cattle certainly did not; and the cowboys from the very beginning of spring had used language considered profane even for the cowboy. what their ponies said has never been recorded. the ponies had the worst time of all, and at each nightly camp whispered to each other their longings for the winter, when they would be turned out on the freezing ranges--galled from wither to croup, but riderless--thank heaven, riderless. on these various miseries the sun looked down impartial. his business was to cake the ground and ruin the grasses. the cattle--the acres of huddled cattle--were restless. in the first place, they were forced to scatter for graze; and in the second, the heat told on their tempers and made them prod each other with their long horns. in the heart of the herd you would have thought men were fighting with single-sticks. on the outskirts, posted at quarter-mile intervals, sat the cowboys on their ponies, the brims of their hats tilted over their sun-skinned noses, their feet out of the big brown-leather hooded stirrups, and their hands gripping the horn of the heavy saddle to keep themselves from falling on to the ground--asleep. a cowboy can sleep at full gallop; on the other hand, he can keep awake also at full gallop for eight and forty hours and wear down six unamiable bronchos in the process. lafe parmalee; shwink, the german who could not ride but had a blind affection for cattle from the branding-yard to the butcher's block; michigan, so called because he said he came from california but spoke not the californian tongue; jim from san diego, to distinguish him from other jims, and the corpse, were the outposts of the herd. the corpse had won his name from a statement, made in the fulness of much mcbrayer whisky, that he had once been a graduate of corpus christi. he spoke truth, but to the wrong audience. the inhabitants of the elite saloon, after several attempts to get the hang of the name, dubbed the speaker the corpse, and as long as he cinched a broncho or jingled a spur within four hundred miles of livingston--yea, far in the south, even to the unexplored borders of the sheep-eater indians--he was known by that unlovely name. how he had passed from college to cattle no man knew, and, according to the etiquette of the west, no man asked. he was not by any means a tenderfoot--had no unmanly weakness for washing, did not in the least object to appearing at the wild and wonderful reunions held nightly in "miss minnie's parlour," whose flaring advertisement did not in the least disturb the proprieties of wachoma junction, and, in common with his associates, was, when drunk, ready to shoot at anything or anybody. he was not proud. he had condescended to take in hand and educate a young and promising chicago drummer, who by evil fate had wandered into that wilderness, where all his cunning was of no account; and from that youth's quivering hand--outstretched by command--had shot away the top of a wine-glass. the corpse was recognised in the freemasonry of the craft as "one of the c.m.r.'s boys, and tough at that." the c.m.r. controlled much cattle, and their slaughter-houses in chicago bubbled the blood of beeves all day long. their salt-beef fed the sailor on the sea, and their iced, best firsts, the housekeeper in the london suburbs. not even the firm knew how many cowboys they employed, but all the firm knew that on the fourteenth day of july their stockyards at wachoma junction were to be filled with two thousand head of cattle, ready for immediate shipment to chicago while prices yet ruled high, and before the grass had withered utterly. lafe, michigan, jim, the corpse and the others knew this too, and were heartily glad of it, because they would be paid up in chicago for their half-year's work, and would then do their best towards painting that town in purest vermilion. they would get drunk; they would gamble, and would otherwise enjoy themselves till they were broke; and then they would hire out again. the sun dropped behind the rolling hills; and the cattle halted for the night, cheered and cooled by a little wandering breeze. the red steer's mother had been caught in a hailstorm five years ago. till she went the way of all cow-flesh she missed no opportunity of telling her son to beware of the hot day and the cold wind that does not know its own mind. "when it blows five ways at once," said she, "and makes your horns feel creepy, get away, my son. follow the time-honoured instinct of our tribe, and run. i ran"--she looked ruefully at the scars on her side--"but that was in a barb-wire country, and it hurt me. none the less, run." the red steer chewed his cud, and the little wind out of the darkness played round his horns--all five ways at once. the cowboys lifted up their voices in unmelodious song, that the cattle might know where they were, and began slowly walking round the recumbent herd. "do anybody's horns feel creepy?" queried the red steer of his neighbours. "my mother told me"--and he repeated the tale, to the edification of the yearlings and the three-year-olds breathing heavily at his side. the song of the cowboys rose higher. the cattle bowed their heads. their men were at hand. they were safe. something had happened to the quiet stars. they were dying out one by one, and the wind was freshening. "bless my hoofs!" muttered a yearling, "my horns are beginning to feel creepy." softly the red steer lifted himself from the ground. "come away," quoth he to the yearling. "come away to the outskirts, and we'll move. my mother said...." the innocent fool followed, and a white heifer saw them move. being a woman she naturally bellowed "timber wolves!" and ran forward blindly into a dun steer dreaming over clover. followed the thunder of cattle rising to their feet, and the triple crack of a whip. the little wind had dropped for a moment, only to fall on the herd with a shriek and a few stinging drops of hail, that stung as keenly as the whips. the herd broke into a trot, a canter, and then a mad gallop. black fear was behind them, black night in front. they headed into the night, bellowing with terror; and at their side rode the men with the whips. the ponies grunted as they felt the raking spurs. they knew that an all-night gallop lay before them, and woe betide the luckless cayuse that stumbled in that ride. then fell the hail--blinding and choking and flogging in one and the same stroke. the herd opened like a fan. the red steer headed a contingent he knew not whither. a man with a whip rode at his right flank. behind him the lightning showed a field of glimmering horns, and of muzzles flecked with foam; a field of red terror-strained eyes and shaggy frontlets. the man looked back also, and his terror was greater than that of the beasts. the herd had surrounded him in the darkness. his salvation lay in the legs of _whisky peat_--and _whisky peat_ knew it--knew it until an unseen gopher hole received his near forefoot as he strained every nerve--in the heart of the flying herd, with the red steer at his flanks. then, being only over-worked cayuse, _whisky peat_ fell, and the red steer fancied that there was something soft on the ground. * * * * * it was michigan, jim and lafe who at last brought the herd to a standstill as the dawn was breaking, "what's come to the corpse?" quoth lafe. jim loosened the girths of his quivering pony and made answer slowly: "onless i'm a blamed fool, the gentleman is now livin' up to his durned appellation 'bout fifteen miles back--what there is of him and the cayuse." "let's go and look," said lafe, shuddering slightly, for the morning air, you must understand, was raw. "let's go to--a much hotter place than texas," responded jim. "get the steers to the junction first. guess what's left of the corpse will keep." and it did. and that was how the fat man in chicago got his beef. it belonged to the red steer. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] the history of a fall[ ] _mere english will not do justice to the event. let us attempt it according to the custom of the french. thus and so following:_ listen to a history of the most painful--and of the most true. you others, the governors, the lieutenant-governors, and the commissionaires of the oriental indias. it is you, foolishly outside of the truth in prey to illusions so blind that i of them remain so stupefied--it is to you that i address myself! know you sir cyril wollobie, k.c.s.i., c.m.g., and all the other little things? he was of the sacred order of yourself--a man responsible enormously--charged of the conservation of millions.... of people. that is understood. the indian government conserves not its rupees. he was the well-loved of kings. i have seen the viceroy--which is the lorr-maire--embrace him of both arms. that was in simla. all things are possible in simla. even embraces. his wife! mon dieu, his wife! the aheuried imagination prostrates itself at the remembrance of the splendours orientals of the lady cyril--the very respectable the lady wollobie. that was in simla. all things are possible in simla. even wives. in those days i was--what you call--a schnobb. i am now a much larger schnobb. _voila_ the only difference. thus it is true that travel expands the mind. but let us return to our wollobies. i admired that man there with the both hands. i crawled before the lady wollobie--platonically. the man the most brave would be only platonic towards that lady. and i was also afraid. subsequently i went to a dance. the wine equalled not the splendour of the wollobies. nor the food. but there was upon the floor an open space--large and park-like. it protected the dignity wollobi-callisme. it was guarded by aides-de-camp. with blue silk in their coat-tails--turned up. with pink eyes and white moustaches to ravish. also turned up. to me addressed himself an aide-de-camp. that was in simla. to-day i do not speak to aides-de-camp. i confine myself exclusively to the cab-drivaire. he does not know so much bad language, but he can drive better. i approached, under the protection of the aide-de-camp, the luminosity of sir wollobie. the world entire regarded. the band stopped. the lights burned blue. a domestic dropped a plate. it was an inspiring moment. from the summit of jakko forty-five monkies looked down upon the crisis. sir wollobie spoke. to me in that expanse of floor cultured and park-like. he said: "i have long desired to make your acquaintance." the blood bouilloned in my head. i became pink. i was aneantied under the weight of an embarras insubrimable. at that moment sir wollobie became oblivious of my personality. that was his custom. wiping my face upon my coat-tails i refugied myself among the foules. _i had been spoken to by sir wollobie._ that was in simla. that also is history. * * * * * pass now several years. to the day before yesterday! this also is history--farcical, immense, tragi-comic, but true. know you the totnam cortrode? here lives maple, who sells washing appliances and tables of exotic legs. here voyages also a omnibuse proletariat. that is to say for one penny. two pence is the refined volupté of the aristocrat. i am of the people. _entre nous_ the connection is not desired by us. the people address to me epithets, entirely unprintable. i reply that they should wash. the situation is strained. hence the strike docks and the demonstrations laborious. upon the funeste tumbril of the proletariat i take my seat. i demand air outside upon the roof. i will have all my penny. the tumbril advances. a man aged loses his equilibrium and deposits himself into my lap. following the custom of the brutal londoner i demand the devil where he shoves himself. he apologises supplicatorically. i grunt. encore the tumbril shakes herself. i appropriate the desired seat of the old man. the conductaire cries to loud voice: "fare, guvnor." he produces one penny. a reminiscence phantasmal provokes itself. i beat him on the back. it is sir wollobie; the ex-everything! also the ex-everything else! figure you the situation! he clasps my hand. as a child clasps the hand of its nurse. he demands of me particular rensignments of my health. it is to him a matter important. other time he regulated the health of forty-five millions. i riposte. i enquire of his liver--his pancreas, his abdomen. the sacred internals of sir wollobie! he has them all. and they all make him ill. he is very lonely. he speaks of his wife. there is no lady wollobie, but a woman in a flat in bayswater who cries in her sleep for more curricles. he does not say this, but i understand. he derides the council of the indian office. he imprecates the government. he curses the journals. he has a clob. he curses that clob. females with teeth monstrous explain to him the theory of government. men of long hair, the psychologues of the paint-pots, correct him tenderly, but from above. he has known of the actualities of life--death, power, responsibility, honour--the good accomplished, the effacement of wrong for forty years. there remains to him a seat in a penny 'bus. if i do not take him from that. i rap my heels on the knife-board. i sing "_tra la la_." i am also well disposed to larmes. he courbes himself underneath an ulstaire and he damns the fog to eternity. he wills not that i leave him. he desires that i come to dinner. i am grave. i think upon lady wollobie--shorn of chaprassies--at the clob. not in bayswater. i accept. he will bore me affreusely, but ... i have taken his seat. he descends from the tumbril of his humiliation, and the street hawker rolls a barrow up his waistcoat. then intervenes the fog--dense, impenetrable, hopeless, without end. it is because of the fog that there is a drop upon the end of my nose so chiselled. gentlemen the governors, the lieutenant-governors and the commissaires, behold the doom prepared. i am descended to the gates of your life in death. which is brompton or bayswater. you do not believe? you will try the constituencies when you return; is it not so? you will fail. as others failed. your seat waits you on the top of an omnibuse proletariat. i shall be there. you will embrace me as a shipwrecked man embraces a log. you will be "dam glad t' see me." i shall grin. oh life! oh death! oh power! oh toil! oh hope! oh stars! oh honour! oh lodgings! oh fog! oh omnibuses! oh despair! oh skittles! footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. viii.] griffiths the safe man[ ] as the title indicates, this story deals with the safeness of griffiths the safe man, the secure person, the reliable individual, the sort of man you would bank with. i am proud to write about griffiths, for i owe him a pleasant day. this story is dedicated to my friend griffiths, the remarkably trustworthy mortal. in the beginning there were points about griffiths. he quoted proverbs. a man who quotes proverbs is confounded by proverbs. he is also confounded by his friends. but i never confounded griffiths--not even in that supreme moment when the sweat stood on his brow in agony and his teeth were fixed like bayonets and he swore horribly. even then, i say, i sat on my own trunk, the trunk that opened, and told griffiths that i had always respected him, but never more than at the present moment. he was so safe, y' know. safeness is a matter of no importance to me. if my trunk won't lock when i jump on it thrice, i strap it up and go on to something else. if my carpet-bag is too full, i let the tails of shirts and the ends of ties bubble over and go down the street with the affair. it all comes right in the end, and if it does not, what is a man that he should fight against fate? but griffiths is not constructed in that manner. he says: "safe bind is safe find." that, rather, is what he used to say. he has seen reason to alter his views. everything about griffiths is safe--entirely safe. his trunk is locked by two hermetical gun-metal double-end chubbs; his bedding-roll opens to a letter padlock capable of two million combinations; his hat-box has a lever patent safety on it; and the grief of his life is that he cannot lock up the ribs of his umbrella safely. if you could get at his soul you would find it ready strapped up and labelled for heaven. that is griffiths. when we went to japan together, griffiths kept all his money under lock and key. i carried mine in my coat-tail pocket. but all griffiths' contraptions did not prevent him from spending exactly as much as i did. you see, when he had worried his way through the big strap, and the little strap, and the slide-valve, and the spring lock, and the key that turned twice and a quarter, he felt as though he had earned any money he found, whereas i could get masses of sinful wealth by merely pulling out my handkerchief--dollars and five dollars and ten dollars, all mixed up with the tobacco or flying down the road. they looked much too pretty to spend. "safe bind, safe find," said griffiths in the treaty port. he never really began to lock things up severely till we got our passports to travel up-country. he took charge of mine for me, on the ground that i was an imbecile. as you are asked for your passport at every other shop, all the hotels, most of the places of amusement, and on the top of each hill, i got to appreciate griffiths' self-sacrifice. he would be biting a strap with his teeth or calculating the combinations of his padlocks among a ring of admiring japanese while i went for a walk into the interior. "safe bind, safe find," said griffiths. that was true, because i was bound to find griffiths somewhere near his beloved keys and straps. he never seemed to see that half the pleasure of his trip was being strapped and keyed out of him. we never had any serious difficulty about the passports in the whole course of our wanderings. what i purpose to describe now is merely an incident of travel. it had no effect on myself, but it nearly broke griffiths' heart. we were travelling from kyoto to otsu along a very dusty road full of pretty girls. every time i stopped to play with one of them griffiths grew impatient. he had telegraphed for rooms at the only hotel in otsu, and was afraid that there would be no accommodation. there were only three rooms in the hotel, and "safe bind, safe find," said griffiths. he was telegraphing ahead for something. our hotel was three-quarters japanese and one-quarter european. if you walked across it it shook, and if you laughed the roof fell off. strange japanese came in and dined with you, and jap maidens looked through the windows of the bathroom while you were bathing. we had hardly put the luggage down before the proprietor asked for our passports. he asked me of all people in the world. "i have the passports," said griffiths with pride. "they are in the yellow-hide bag. turn it very carefully on to the right side, my good man. you have no such locks in japan, i'm quite certain." then he knelt down and brought out a bunch of keys as big as his fist. you must know that every japanese carries a little _belaiti_-made handbag with nickel fastenings. they take an interest in handbags. "safe bind, safe---- d----n the key! what's wrong with it?" said griffiths. the hotel proprietor bowed and smiled very politely for at least five minutes, griffiths crawling over and under and round and about his bag the while. "it's a percussating compensator," said he, half to himself. "i've never known a percussating compensator do this before." he was getting heated and red in the face. "key stuck, eh? i told you those fooling little spring locks are sure to go wrong sooner or later." "fooling little devils. it's a percussating comp---- there goes the key. now it won't move either way. i'll give you the passport to-morrow. passport _kul demang manana_--catchee in a little time. won't that do for you?" griffiths was getting really angry. the proprietor was more polite than ever. he bowed and left the room. "that's a good little chap," said griffiths. "now we'll settle down and see what the mischief's wrong with this bag. you catch one end." "not in the least," i said. "'safe bind, safe find.' you did the binding. how can you expect me to do the finding? i'm an imbecile unfit to be trusted with a passport, and now i'm going for a walk." the japanese are really the politest nation in the world. when the hotel proprietor returned with a policeman he did not at once thrust the man on griffiths' notice. he put him in the verandah and let him clank his sword gently once or twice. "little chap's brought a blacksmith," said griffiths, but when he saw the policeman his face became ugly. the policeman came into the room and tried to assist. have you ever seen a four-foot policeman in white cotton gloves and a stand-up collar lunging percussating compensator look with a five-foot sword? i enjoyed the sight for a few minutes before i went out to look at otsu, which is a nice town. no one hindered me. griffiths was so completely the head of the firm that had i set the town on fire he would have been held responsible. i went to a temple, and a policeman said "passport." i said, "the other gentleman has got." "where is other gentleman?" said the policeman, syllable by syllable, in the ollendorfian style. "in the ho-tel," said i; and he waddled off to catch him. it seemed to me that i could do a great deal towards cheering griffiths all alone in his bedroom with that wicked bad lock, the hotel proprietor, the policeman, the room-boy, and the girl who helped one to bathe. with this idea i stood in front of four policemen, and they all asked for my passport and were all sent to the hotel, syllable by syllable--i mean one by one. some soldiers of the th n.i. were strolling about the streets, and they were idle. it is unwise to let a soldier be idle. he may get drunk. when the fourth policeman said: "where is other gentleman?" i said: "in the hotel, and take soldiers--those soldiers." "how many soldiers?" said the policeman firmly. "take all soldiers," i said. there were four files in the street just then. the policeman spoke to them, and they caught up their big sword-bayonets, nearly as long as themselves, and waddled after him. i followed them, but first i bought some sweets and gave one to a child. that was enough. long before i had reached the hotel i had a tail of fifty babies. these i seduced into the long passage that ran through the house, and then i slid the grating that answers to the big hall-door. that house was full--pit, boxes and galleries--for griffiths had created an audience of his own, and i also had not been idle. the four files of soldiers and the five policemen were marking time on the boards of griffith's room, while the landlord and the landlord's wife, and the two scullions, and the bath-girl, and the cook-boy, and the boy who spoke english, and the boy who didn't, and the boy who tried to, and the cook, filled all the space that wasn't devoted to babies asking the foreigner for more sweets. somewhere in the centre of the mess was griffiths and a yellow-hide bag. i don't think he had looked up once since i left, for as he raised his eyes at my voice i heard him cry: "good heavens! are they going to train the guns of the city on me? what's the meaning of the regiment? i'm a british subject." "what are you looking for?" i asked. "the passports--your passports--the double-dyed passports! oh, give a man room to use his arms. get me a hatchet." "the passports, the passports!" i said. "have you looked in your great-coat? it's on the bed, and there's a blue envelope in it that looks like a passport. you put it there before you left kyoto." griffiths looked. the landlord looked. the landlord took the passport and bowed. the five policemen bowed and went out one by one; the th n.i. formed fours and went out; the household bowed, and there was a long silence. then the bath-girl began to giggle. when griffiths wanted to speak to me i was on the other side of the regiment of children in the passage, and he had time to reflect before he could work his way through them. they formed his guard-of-honour when he took the bag to the locksmith. i abode on the mountains of otsu till dinner-time. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] it![ ] there was no talk of it for a fortnight. we spoke of latitude and longitude and the proper manufacture of sherry cobblers, while the steamer cut open a glassy-smooth sea. then we turned towards china and drank farewell to the nearer east. "we shall reach hongkong without being it," said the nervous lady. "nobody of ordinary strength of mind ever was it," said the big fat man with the voice. i kept my eye on the big fat man. he boasted too much. the china seas are governed neither by wind nor calm. deep down under the sapphire waters sits a green and yellow devil who suffers from indigestion perpetually. when he is unwell he troubles the waters above with his twistings and writhings. thus it happens that it is never calm in the china seas. the sun was shining brightly when the big fat man with the voice came up the companion and looked at the horizon. "hah!" said he, "calm as ditch water! now i remember when i was in the _florida_ in ' , meeting a tidal-wave that turned us upside down for five minutes, and most of the people inside out, by jove!" he expatiated at length on the heroism displayed by himself when "even the captain was down, sir!" i said nothing, but i kept my eyes upon the strong man. the sun continued to shine brightly, and it also kept an eye in the same direction. i went to the far-off fo'c'sle, where the sheep and the cow and the bo'sun and the second-class passengers dwell together in amity. "bo'sun," said i, "how's her head?" "direckly in front of her, sir," replied that ill-mannered soul, "but we shall be meetin' a head-sea in half an hour that'll put your head atween of your legs. go aft an' tell that to them first-class passengers." i went aft, but i said nothing. we went, later, to tiffin, and there was a fine funereal smell of stale curries and tinned meats in the air. conversation was animated, for most of the passengers had been together for five weeks and had developed two or three promising flirtations. i was a stranger--a minnow among tritons--a third man in the cabin. only those who have been a third man in the cabin know what this means. suddenly and without warning our ship curtsied. it was neither a bob nor a duck nor a lurch, but a long, sweeping, stately old-fashioned curtsy. followed a lull in the conversation. i was distinctly conscious that i had left my stomach two feet in the air, and waited for the return roll to join it. "prettily the old hooper rides, doesn't she?" said the strong man. "i hope she won't do it often," said the pretty lady with the changing complexion. "wha-hoop! wha--wha--wha--willy _whoop_!" said the screw, that had managed to come out of the water and was racing wildly. "good heavens! is the ship going down?" said the fat lady, clutching her own private claret bottle that she might not die athirst. the ship went down at the word--with a drunken lurch down she went, and a smothered yell from one of the cabins showed that there was water in the sea. the portholes closed with a clash, and we rose and fell on the swell of the bo'sun's head-sea. the conversation died out. some complained that the saloon was stuffy, and fled upstairs to the deck. the strong man brought up the rear. "ooshy--ooshy--wooshy--woggle _wop!_" cried a big wave without a head. "get up, old girl!" and he smacked the ship most disrespectfully under the counter, and she squirmed as she took the drift of the next sea. "she--ah--rides very prettily," repeated the strong man as the companion stairs spurned him from them and he wound his arms round the nearest steward. "damn prettily," said the necked officer. "i'm going to lie down. never could stand the china seas." "most refreshing thing in the world," said the strong man faintly. i took counsel purely with myself, which is to say, my stomach, and perceived that the worst would not befall me. "come to the fo'c'sle, then, and feel the wind," said i to the strong man. the plover's-egg eyes of three yellowish-green girls were upon him. "with pleasure," said he, and i bore him away to where the cut-water was pulling up the scared flying-fishes as a spaniel flushes game. in front of us was the illimitable blue, lightly ridged by the procession of the big blind rollers. up rose the stem till six feet of the red paint stood clear above the blue--from twenty-three feet to eighteen i could count as i leaned over. then the sapphire crashed into splintered crystal with a musical jar, and the white spray licked the anchor channels as we drove down and down, sucking at the sea. i kept my eye upon the strong man, and i noticed that his mouth was slightly open, the better to inhale the rushing wind. when i looked a second time he was gone. the driven spray was scarcely quicker in its flight. my excellent stomach behaved with temperance and chastity. i enjoyed the fo'c'sle, and my delight was the greater when i reflected on the strong man. unless i was much mistaken, he would know all about it in half an hour. i went aft, and a lull between two waves heard the petulant pop of a champagne cork. no one drinks champagne after tiffin except.... _it_. the strong man had ordered the champagne. there were bottles of it flying about the quarter-deck. the engaged couple were sipping it out of one glass, but their faces were averted like our parents of old. they were ashamed. "you may go! you may go to hongkong for me!" shouted half-a-dozen little waves together, pulling the ship several ways at once. she rolled stately, and from that moment settled down to the work of the evening. i cannot blame her, for i am sure she did not know her own strength. it didn't hurt her to be on her side, and play cat-and-mouse, and puss-in-the corner, and hide-and-seek, but it destroyed the passengers. one by one they sank into long chairs and gazed at the sky. but even there the little white moved, and there was not one stable thing in heaven above or the waters beneath. my virtuous and very respectable stomach behaved with integrity and resolution. i treated it to a gin cocktail, which i sucked by the side of the strong man, who told me in confidence that he had been overcome by the sun at the fo'c'sle. sun fever does not make people cold and clammy and blue. i sat with him and tried to make him talk about the _florida_ and his voyages in the past. he evaded me and went down below. three minutes later i followed him with a thick cheroot. into his bunk i went, for i knew he would be helpless. he was--he was--he was. he wallowed supine, and i stood in the doorway smoking. "what is it?" said i. he wrestled with his pride--his wicked pride--but he would not tell a lie. "it," said he. and it was so. * * * * * the rolling continues. the ship is a shambles, and i have six places on each side of me all to myself. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. i.] a fallen idol[ ] will the public be good enough to look into this business? it has sent crewe to bed, and mottleby is applying for home leave, and i've lost my faith in man altogether, and the club gives it up. trivey is the only man who is unaffected by the catastrophe, and he says "i told you so." we were all proud of trivey at the club, and would have crowned him with wreaths of bougainvillea had he permitted the liberty. but trivey was an austere man. the utmost that he permitted himself to say was: "i can stretch a little bit when i'm in the humour." we called him the monumental liar. nothing that the club offered was too good for trivey. he had the soft chair opposite the thermantidote in the hot weather, and he made up his own four at whist. when visitors came in--globe-trotters for choice--trivey used to unmuzzle himself and tell tales that sent the globe-trotter out of the club on tiptoe looking for snakes in his hat and tigers in the compound. whenever a man from a strange club came in trivey used to call for a whisky and ginger-wine and rout that man on all points--from horses upward. there was a man whose nickname was "ananias," who came from the prince's plungers to look at trivey; and, though trivey was only a civilian, the plunger man resigned his title to the nickname before eleven o'clock. he made it over to trivey on a card, and trivey hung up the concession in his quarters. we loved trivey--all of us; and now we don't love him any more. a man from the frontier came in and began to tell tales--some very good ones, and some better than good. he was an outsider, but he had a wonderful imagination--for the frontier. he told six stories before trivey brought up his first line, and three more before trivey hurled his reserves into the fray. "when i was at anungaracharlupillay in madras," said trivey quietly, "there was a rogue elephant cutting about the district. and i came upon him asleep." all the club stopped talking here, until trivey had finished the story. he told us that he, in the company of another man, had found the rogue asleep, but just as they got up to the brute's head it woke up with a scream. then trivey, who was careful to explain that he was a "bit powerful about the arms," caught hold of its ears as it rose, and hung there, kicking the animal in the eyes, which so bewildered it that it stayed screaming and frightened until trivey's ally shot it behind the shoulder, and the villagers ran in and hamstrung it. it evidently died from loss of blood. trivey was hanging on the ears and kicking hard for nearly fifteen minutes. when the frontier man heard the story he put his hands in front of his face and sobbed audibly. we gave him all the drinks he wanted, and he recovered sufficiently to carry away eighty rupees at whist later on; but his nerve was irretrievably shattered. he will be no use on the frontier any more. the rest of the club were very pleased with trivey, because these frontier men, and especially the guides, want a great deal of keeping in order. trivey was quite modest. he was a truly great soul, and popular applause never turned his head. as i have said, we loved trivey, till that fatal day when crewe announced that he had been transferred for a couple of months to anungaracharlupillay. "oh!" said trivey, "i dare say they'll remember about my rogue elephant down there. you ask 'em, crewe." then we felt sorry for trivey, because we were sure that he was arriving at that stage of mental decay when a man begins to believe in his own fictions. that spoils a man's hand. crewe wrote up once or twice to mottleby, saying that he would bring back a story that would make our hair curl. good stories are scarce in madras, and we rather scoffed at the announcement. when crewe returned it was easy to see that he was bursting with importance. he gave a big dinner at the club and invited nearly everybody but trivey, who went off after dinner to teach a young subaltern to play "snooker." at coffee and cheroots, crewe could not restrain himself any longer. "i say, you johnnies, it's all true--every single word of it--and you can throw the decanter at my head and i'll apologise. the whole village was full of it. there was a rogue elephant, and it slept, and trivey did catch hold of its ears and kick it in the eyes, and hang on for ten minutes, at least, and all the rest of it. i neglected my regular work to sift that story, and on my honour the tale's an absolute fact. the headsman said so, all the shikaries said so, and all the villagers corroborated it. now would a whole village volunteer a lie that would do them no good?" you might have heard a cigar-ash fall after this statement. then mottleby said, with deep disgust: "what can you do with a man like that? his best and brightest lie, too!" "'tisn't!" shrieked crewe. "it's a fact--a nickel-plated, teak-wood, tantalus-action, forty-five rupee fact." "that only makes it worse," said mottleby; and we all felt that was true. we ran into the billiard-room to talk to trivey, but he said we had put him off his stroke; and that was all the satisfaction we got out of him. later on he repeated that he was a "bit powerful about the arms," and went to bed. we sat up half the night devising vengeance on trivey. we were very angry, and there was no hope of hushing up the tale. the man had taken us in completely, and now that we've lost our champion ananias, all the frontier will laugh at us, and we shall never be able to trust a word that trivey says. i ask with mottleby: "what can you do with a man like that?" footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. i.] new brooms[ ] "if seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, do you suppose," the walrus said, "that they could sweep it clear?" ram buksh, aryan, went to bed with his buffalo, five goats, three children and a wife, because the evening mists were chilly. his hut was builded on the mud scooped from a green and smelly tank, and there were microbes in the thin blood of ram buksh. ram buksh went to bed on a charpoy stretched across the blue tepid drain, because the nights were hot; and there were more microbes in his blood. then the rains came, and ram buksh paddled, mid-thigh deep, in water for a day or two with his buffaloes till he was aware of a crampsome feeling at the pit of his stomach. "mother of my children," said ram buksh, "this is death." they gave him cardamoms and capsicums, and gingelly-oil and cloves, and they prayed for him. "it is enough," said ram buksh, and he twisted himself into a knot and died, and they burned him slightly--for the wood was damp--and the rest of him floated down the river, and was caught in an undercurrent at the bank, and there stayed; and when imam din, the jeweller, drank of the stream five days later, he drank lethe, and passed away, crying in vain upon his gods. his family did not report his death to the municipality, for they desired to keep imam din with them. therefore, they buried him under the flagging in the court-yard, secretly and by night. twelve days later, imam din had made connection with the well of the house, and there was typhus among the women in the zenana, but no one knew anything about it--some died and some did not; and ari booj, the faquir, added to the interest of the proceedings by joining the funeral procession and distributing gratis the more malignant forms of smallpox, from which he was just recovering. he had come all the way from delhi, and had slept on no less than fifteen different charpoys; and that was how they got the smallpox into bahadurgarh. but eshmith sahib's dhobi picked it up from ari booj when imam din's wife was being buried--for he was a merry man, and sent home a beautiful sample among the sunday shirts. so eshmith sahib died. he was only a link in the chain which crawled from the highest to the lowest. the wonder was not that men died like sheep, but that they did not die like flies; for their lives and their surroundings, their deaths, were part of a huge conspiracy against cleanliness. and the people loved to have it so. they huddled together in frowsy clusters, while death mowed his way through them till the scythe blunted against the unresisting flesh, and he had to get a new one. they died by fever, tens of thousands in a month; they died by cholera a thousand in a week; they died of smallpox, scores in the mohulla, and by dysentery by tens in a house; and when all other deaths failed they laid them down and died because their hands were too weak to hold on to life. to and fro stamped the englishman, who is everlastingly at war with the scheme of things. "you shall not die," he said, and he decreed that there should be no more famines. he poured grain down their throats, and when all failed he went down into the strife and died with them, swearing, and toiling, and working till the last. he fought the famine and put it to flight. then he wiped his forehead, and attacked the pestilence that walketh in the darkness. death's scythe swept to and fro, around and about him; but he only planted his feet more firmly in the way of it, and fought off death with a dog-whip. "live, you ruffian!" said the englishman to ram buksh as he rode through the reeking village. "_jenab!_" said ram buksh, "it is as it was in the days of our fathers!" "then stand back while i alter it," said the englishman; and by force, and cunning, and a brutal disregard of vested interests, he strove to keep ram buksh alive. "clean your mohullas; pay for clean water; keep your streets swept; and see that your food is sound, or i'll make your life a burden to you," said the englishman. sometimes he died; but more often ram buksh went down, and the englishman regarded each death as a personal insult. "softly, there!" said the government of india. "you're twisting his tail. you mustn't do that. the spread of education forbids, and ram buksh is an intelligent voter. let him work out his own salvation." "h'm!" said the englishman with his head in a midden; "collectively you always were a fool. here, ram buksh, the sirkar says you are to do all these things for yourself." "_jenab!_" says ram buksh, and fell to breeding microbes with renewed vigour. curiously enough, it was in the centres of enlightenment that he prosecuted his experiments most energetically. the education had been spread, but so thinly that it could not disguise ram buksh's natural instincts. he created an african village, and said it was the hub of the universe, and all the dirt of all the roads failed to convince him that he was not the most advanced person in the world. there was a pause, and ram buksh got himself fearfully entangled among boards and committees, but he valued them as a bower-bird values shells and red rags. "see!" said the englishman to the government of india, "he is blind on that side--blind by birth, training, instinct and associations. five-sixths of him is poor stock raised off poor soil, and he'll die on the least provocation. you've no right to let him kill himself." "but he's educated," said the government of india. "i'll concede everything," said the englishman. "he's a statesman, author, poet, politician, artist, and all else that you wish him to be, but he isn't a sanitary engineer. and while you're training him he is dying. goodness knows that my share in the government is very limited nowadays, but i'm willing to do all the work while he gets all the credit if you'll only let me have some authority over him in his mud-pie making." "but the liberty of the subject is sacred," said the government of india. "i haven't any," said the englishman. "he can trail through my compounds; start shrines in the public roads; poison my family; have me in court for nothing; ruin my character; spend my money, and call me an assassin when all is done. i don't object. let me look after his sanitation." "but the days of a paternal government are over; we must depend on the people. think of what they would say at home," said the government of india. "we have issued a resolution--indeed we have!" the englishman sat down and groaned. "i believe you'll issue a resolution some day notifying your own abolition," said he. "what are you going to do?" "constitute more boards," said the government of india. "boards of control and supervision--fund boards--all sorts of boards. nothing like system. it will be at work in three years or so. we haven't any money, but that's a detail." the englishman looked at the resolution and sniffed. "it doesn't touch the weak point of the country." "what _will_ touch the weak point of the country, then?" said the government of india. "i used to," said the englishman. "i was the district officer, and i twisted their tails. you have taken away my power, and now----" "well," said the government of india, "you seem to think a good deal of yourself." "never mind me," said the englishman. "i'm an effete relic of the past. but ram buksh will die, as he used to do." and now we all wait to see which is right. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. iii.] tiglath pileser[ ] thank heaven he is dead! the municipality sent a cart and a man only this morning, and, all the servants aiding with ropes and tackle, the carcase of tiglath was borne away--a wobbling lump. his head was thrust over the tailboard of the cart. upon it was stamped an expression of horror and surprise, unutterable and grotesque. i have put away my rifle, i have cheered my heart with wine, and i sit down now to write the story of tiglath, the utter brute. his own kind, alas! will not read it, and thus it will be shorn of instruction; but owners will kindly take notice, and when it pleases heaven to inflict them with such an animal as tiglath they will know what to do. to begin with, i bought him, his vices thick as his barsati, for a hundred and seventy rupees, a five-chambered, muzzle-loading revolver, and a cawnpore saddle. "of course, for that price," said staveley, "you can't expect everything. he's not what one would call absolutely sound, y' know, but there's no end of work in him, and if you only give him the butt he'll go like a steam-engine." "staveley," i answered, "when you admit that he is not perfection i perceive that i am in for a really good thing. don't hurt your conscience, staveley. tell me what is his chief vice--weakness, partiality--anything you choose to call it. i shall get to know the minor defects in the course of nature; but what is tiglath's real shouk?" staveley reflected a moment. "well, really, i can't quite say, old man, straight off the reel, y' know. he's a oner to go when his head's turned to home. he's a regular feeder, and vaseline will cure that little eruption"--with its malignant barsati--"in no time. oh, i forgot his shouk: i don't know exactly how to describe it, but he yaws a good deal," said staveley. "he how muches?" i asked. "yaws," said staveley; "goes a bit wide upon occasions, but a good coachwan will cure that in one drive. my man let him do what he liked. one fifty and a hundred, ten and ten is twenty--one-seventy. many thanks, indeed. i'll send over his bedding and ropes. he's a powerful upstanding horse, though rather picked up just at present." staveley departed, and i was left alone with tiglath. i called him tiglath because he resembled a lathy pig. later on i called him pileser on account of his shouk; but my coachwan, a strong, masterless man, called him "_haramzada chor, shaitan ké bap_" and "_oont ki beta_." he certainly was a powerful horse, being full fifteen-two at the withers, with the girth of a waler, and at first the docility of an arab. there was something wrong with his feet--permanently--but he was a considerate beast, and never had more than one leg in hospital at a time. the other three were still movable, and tiglath never grudged them in my service. i write this in justice to his memory; the creaking of the wheels of the municipal cart being still in my ears. for a season--some twelve days--tiglath was beyond reproach. he had not a cheerful disposition, nor did his pendulous underlip add to his personal beauty; but he made no complaints, and moved swiftly to and from office. the hot weather gave place to the cool breezes of october, and with the turn of the year the slumbering devil in the soul of tiglath spread its wings and crowed aloud. i fed him well, i had aided his barsati, i had lapped his lame legs in thanda putties, and adorned his sinful body with new harness. he rewarded me upon a day with an exhibition so new and strange that i feared for the moment his reason had been unhinged. slowly, with a malevolent grin, tiglath, the pampered, turned at right angles to the carriage--a newly-varnished one--and backed the front wheels up the verandah steps, letting them down with a bump. he then wheeled round and round in the portico, and all but brought the carriage over. the show lasted for ten minutes, at the end of which time he trotted peacefully away. i was pained and grieved--nothing more, upon my honour. i forbade the sais to kick tiglath in the stomach, for i was persuaded that the harness galled him, and, in this belief, at the end of the day, undressed him tenderly and fitted sheepskin all over the said harness. tiglath ate the sheepskin next day, and i did not renew it. a week later i met the judge. it was a purely accidental interview. i would have avoided it, as the judge and i did not love each other, but the shafts of my carriage were through the circular front of his brougham, and tiglath was rubbing the boss of his headstall tenderly against the newly-varnished panels of the same. the judge complained that he might have been impaled as he sat. my coachwan declared on oath that the horse deliberately ran into the brougham. tiglath tendered no evidence, and i began to mistrust him. at the end of a month i perceived that my friends and acquaintances avoided me markedly. the appearance of tiglath at the band-stand was enough to clear a space of ten yards in my immediate neighbourhood. i had to shout to my friends from afar, and they shouted back the details of the little bills which i had to pay their coach-builders. tiglath was suffering from carriagecidal mania, and the coachwan had asked for leave. "stay with me, ibrahim," i said. "thou seest how the sahib log do now avoid us. get a new and a stout chabuq, and instruct tiglath in the paths of straight walking." "he will smash the heaven-born's carriage. he is an old and stale devil, but in this matter extreme wise," answered ibrahim. "kitto sahib's filton hath he smashed, and burkitt sahib's brougham gharri, and another tum-tum, and staveley sahib's carriage is still being mended. what profit is this horse? he feigns blindness and much fear, and in the guise of innocency works evil. i will stay, sahib, but the blood of this thy new carriage be upon the brute's head and not upon mine own." i have no space to describe the war of the next few weeks. foiled in his desire to ruin only neighbours' property, tiglath fell back literally, upon his own--my carriage. he tried the verandah step trick till he bent the springs, and wheeled round till the turning action grew red-hot; he scraped stealthily by walls; he performed between heavy-laden bullock-trains, but his chief delight was a _pas de fantasie_ on a dark night and a high, level road. yet what he did he did staidly and without heat, as without remorse. he was vetted thrice, and his eyes were pronounced sound. after this information i laid my bones to the battle, and acquired a desperate facility of leaping from the carriage and kicking tiglath on the stomach as soon as he wheeled around; leaping back at the risk of my life when he set off at full speed. i pressed the lighted end of a cheroot just behind the collar-buckle; i applied fusees to those flaccid nostrils, and i beat him about the head with a stick continually. it was necessary, but it was also demoralising. a year of tiglath would have converted me into a cold-blooded vivisectionist, or a native bullock-driver. each day i took stock of the injuries to my carriage. i had long since given up all hope of keeping it in decent repair; and each day i devised fresh torments for tiglath. he never meant to injure himself, i am certain, and no one was more astonished than he when he backed on the balumon road, and dropped the carriage into a nullah on the night of the jamabundi moguls' dance. i did not go to the dance. i was bent considerably, and one side of the coachwan's face was flayed. when he had pieced the wreck together, he only said, "sahib!" and i said only "bohat acha." but we each knew what the other meant. next morn tiglath was stiff and strained. i gave him time to recover and to enjoy life. when i heard him squealing to the grass-cutter's ponies i knew that the hour had come. i ordered the carriage, and myself superintended the funeral toilet of tiglath. his harness brasses shone like gold, his coat like a bottle, and he lifted his feet daintily. had he even then, at the eleventh hour, given promise of amendment, i should have held my hand. but as i entered the carriage i saw the hunching of his quarters that presaged trouble. "go forward, tiglath, my love, my pride, my delight," i murmured. "for a surety it is a matter of life and death this day." the sais ran to his head with a fragment of chupatti, saved from his all too scanty rations; the man loved him. and tiglath swung round to the left in the portico; round and round swung he, till the near ear touched the muzzle of the shot-gun that waited its coming. he never flinched; he pressed his fate. the coachwan threw down the reins as, with four ounces of no. shot behind the hollow of the root of the ear, tiglath fell. in his death he accomplished the desire of his life, for he fell upon the shaft and broke it into three pieces. i looked on him as he lay, and of a sudden the reason of the horror in his eyes was made clear. tiglath, the breaker of carriages, the strong, the rebellious, had passed into the shadowy spirit land, where there was nought to destroy and no power to destroy it with. the ghastly fore-knowledge of the flitting soul was written on the glazing eyeball. i repented me, then, that i had slain tiglath, for i had no intention of punishing him in the hereafter. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. iv.] the likes o' us[ ] it was the general officer commanding, riding down the mall, on the arab with the perky tail, and he condescended to explain some of the mysteries of his profession. but the point on which he dwelt most pompously was the ease with which the private thomas atkins could be "handled," as he called it. "only feed him and give him a little work to do, and you can do anything with him," said the general officer commanding. "there's no refinement about tommy, you know; and one is very like another. they've all the same ideas and traditions and prejudices. they're all big children. fancy any man in his senses shooting about these hills." there was the report of a shot-gun in the valley. "i suppose they've hit a dog. happy as the day is long when they're out shooting dogs. just like a big child is tommy." he touched up his horse and cantered away. there was a sound of angry voices down the hillside. "all right, you _soor_--i won't never forget this--mind you, not as long as i live, and s' 'elp me--i'll----" the sentence finished in what could be represented by a blaze of asterisks. a deeper voice cut it short: "oh, no, you won't, neither! look a-here, you young smitcher. if i was to take yer up now, and knock off your 'ead again' that tree, could ye say anythin'? no, nor yet do anythin'. if i was to----ah! you would, would you? there!" some one had evidently sat down with a thud, and was swearing nobly. i slid over the edge of the _khud_, down through the long grass, and fetched up, after the manner of a sledge, with my feet in the broad of the back of gunner barnabas in the mountain battery, my friend, the very strong man. he was sitting upon a man--a khaki-coloured volcano of blasphemy--and was preparing to smoke. my sudden arrival threw him off his balance for a moment. then, readjusting his chair, he bade me good-day. "'im an' me 'ave bin 'avin' an arg'ment," said gunner barnabas placidly. "i was going for to half kill him an' 'eave 'im into the bushes 'ere, but, seein' that you 'ave come, sir, and very welcome when you _do_ come, we will 'ave a court-martial instead. shacklock, are you willin'?" the volcano, who had been swearing uninterruptedly through this oration, expressed a desire, in general and particular terms, to see gunner barnabas in torment and the "civilian" on the next gridiron. private shacklock was a tow-haired, scrofulous boy of about two-and-twenty. his nose was bleeding profusely, and the live air attested that he had been drinking quite as much as was good for him. he lay, stomach-down, on a little level spot on the hillside; for gunner barnabas was sitting between his shoulder-blades, and his was not a weight to wriggle under. private shacklock could barely draw breath to swear, but he did the best that in him lay. "amen," said gunner barnabas piously, when an unusually brilliant string of oaths came to an end. "seein' that this gentleman 'ere has never seen the inside o' the orsepitals you've gotten in, and the clinks you've been chucked into like a hay-bundle, _per_-haps, privite shacklock, you will stop. you are a-makin' of 'im sick." private shacklock said that he was pleased to hear it, and would have continued his speech, but his breath suddenly went from him, and the unfinished curse died out in a gasp. gunner barnabas had put up one of his huge feet. "there's just enough room now for you to breathe, shacklock," said he, "an' not enough for you to try to interrupt the conversashin i'm a-havin' with this gentleman. _choop!_" turning to me, gunner barnabas pulled at his pipe, but showed no hurry to open the "conversashin." i felt embarrassed, for, after all, the thus strangely unearthed difference between the gunner and the line man was no affair of mine. "don't you go," said gunner barnabas. he had evidently been deeply moved by something. he dropped his head between his fists and looked steadily at me. "i met this child 'ere," said he, "at deelally--a fish-back recruity as ever was. i knowed 'im at deelally, and i give 'im a latherin' at deelally all for to keep 'im straight, 'e bein' such as wants a latherin' an' knowin' nuthin' o' the ways o' this country. then i meets 'im up here, a butterfly-huntin' as innercent as you please--convalessin'. i goes out with 'im butterfly-huntin', and, as you see 'ere, a-shootin'. the gun betwixt us." i saw then, what i had overlooked before, a company fowling-piece lying among some boulders far down the hill. gunner barnabas continued: "i should ha' seen where he had a-bin to get that drink inside o' 'im. presently, 'e misses summat. 'you're a bloomin' fool,' sez i. 'if that had been a pathan, now!' i sez. 'damn your pathans, an' you, too,' sez 'e. 'i strook it.' 'you did not,' i sez, 'i saw the bark fly.' 'stick to your bloomin' pop-guns,' sez 'e, 'an' don't talk to a better man than you.' i laughed there, knowin' what i was an' what 'e was. 'you laugh?' sez he. 'i laugh,' i sez, 'shacklock, an' for what should i not laugh?' sez i. 'then go an' laugh in hell,' sez 'e, 'for i'll 'ave none of your laughin'.' with that 'e brings up the gun yonder and looses off, and i stretches 'im there, and guv him a little to keep 'im quiet, and puts 'im under, an' while i was thinkin' what nex', you comes down the 'ill, an' finds us as we was." the private was the gunner's prey--i knew that the affair had fallen as the gunner had said, for my friend is constitutionally incapable of lying--and i recognised that in his hands lay the boy's fate. "what do _you_ think?" said gunner barnabas, after a silence broken only by the convulsive breathing of the boy he was sitting on. "i think nothing," i said. "he didn't go at me. he's your property." then an idea occurred to me. "hand him over to his own company. they'll school him half dead." "got no comp'ny," said gunner barnabas. "'e's a conv'lessint draft--all sixes an' sevens. don't matter to them what he did." "thrash him yourself, then," i said. gunner barnabas looked at the man and smiled; then caught up an arm, as a mother takes up the dimpled arm of a child, and ran the sleeve and shirt up to the elbow. "look at that!" he said. it was a pitiful arm, lean and muscleless. "can you mill a man with an arm like that--such as i would like to mill him, an' such as he deserves? i tell you, sir, an' i am not smokin' (swaggering), as you see--i could take that man--sodger 'e is, lord 'elp 'im!--an' twis' off 'is arms an' 'is legs as if 'e was a naked crab. see here!" before i could realise what was going to happen, gunner barnabas rose up, stooped, and taking the wretched private shacklock by two points of grasp, heaved him up above his head. the boy kicked once or twice, and then was still. he was very white. "i could now," said gunner barnabas, "i could now chuck this man where i like. chuck him like a lump o' beef, an' it would not be too much for him if i chucked. can i thrash such a man with both 'ands? no, nor yet with my right 'and tied behind my back, an' my lef' in a sling." he dropped private shacklock on the ground and sat upon him as before. the boy groaned as the weight settled, but there was a look in his white-lashed, red eyes that was not pleasant. "i do not know _what_ i will do," said gunner barnabas, rocking himself to and fro. "i know 'is breed, an' the way o' the likes o' them. if i was in 'is comp'ny, an' this 'ad 'appened, an' i 'ad struck 'im, as i _would_ ha' struck him, 'twould ha' all passed off an' bin forgot till the drink was in 'im again--a month, maybe, or six, maybe. an' when the drink was frizzin' in 'is 'ead he would up and loose off in the night or the day or the evenin'. _all acause of that millin' that 'e would ha forgotten in betweens._ that i would be dead--killed by the likes o' 'im, an' me the next strongest man but three in the british army!" private shacklock, not so hardly pressed as he had been, found breath to say that if he could only get hold of the fowling-piece again the strongest man but three in the british army would be seriously crippled for the rest of his days. "hear that!" said gunner barnabas, sitting heavily to silence his chair. "hear that, you that think things is funny to put into the papers! he would shoot me, 'e would, now; an' so long as he's drunk, or comin' out o' the drink, 'e will want to shoot me. look a-here!" he turned the boy's head sideways, his hand round the nape of the neck, his thumb touching the angle of the jaw. "what do you call those marks?" they were the white scars of scrofula, with which shacklock was eaten up. i told gunner barnabas this. "i don't know what that means. i call 'em murder-marks an' signs. if a man 'as these things on 'im, an' drinks, so long as 'e's drunk, 'e's mad--a looney. _but_ that doesn't 'elp if 'e kills you. look a-here, an' here!" the marks were thick on the jaw and neck. "stubbs 'ad 'em," said gunner barnabas to himself, "an' lancy 'ad 'em, an' duggard 'ad 'em, an' wot's come to _them_? _you've_ got 'em," he said, addressing himself to the man he was handling like a roped calf, "an' sooner or later you'll go with the rest of 'em. but this time i will not do anything--exceptin' keep you here till the drink's dead in you." gunner barnabas resettled himself and continued: "twice this afternoon, shacklock, you 'ave been so near dyin' that i know no man more so. once was when i stretched you, an' might ha' wiped off your face with my boot as you was lyin'; an' once was when i lifted you up in my fists. was you afraid, shacklock?" "i were," murmured the half-stifled soldier. "an' once more i will show you how near you can go to kingdom come in my 'ands." he knelt by shacklock's side, the boy lying still as death. "if i was to hit you here," said he, "i would break your chest, an' you would die. if i was to put my 'and here, an' my other 'and here, i would twis' your neck, an' you would die, privite shacklock. if i was to put my knees here an' put your 'ead _so_, i would pull off your 'ead, privite shacklock, an' you would die. if you think as how i am a liar, say so, an' i'll show you. _do_ you think so?" "no," whispered private shacklock, not daring to move a muscle, for barnabas's hand was on his neck. "now, remember," went on barnabas, "neither you will say nothing nor i will say nothing o' what has happened. i ha' put you to shame before me an' this gentleman here, an' that is enough. but i tell you, an' you give 'eed now, it would be better for you to desert than to go on a-servin' where you are now. if i meets you again--if my batt'ry lays with your reg'ment, an' privite shacklock is on the rolls, i will first mill you myself till you can't see, and then i will say why i strook you. you must go, an' look bloomin' slippy about it, for if you stay, so sure as god made paythans an' we've got to wipe 'em out, you'll be loosing off o' unauthorised amminition--in or out o' barricks, an' you'll be 'anged for it. i know your breed, an' i know what these 'ere white marks mean. you're mad, shacklock, that's all--and here you stay, under me. an' now _choop_, an' lie still." i waited and smoked, and gunner barnabas smoked till the shadows lengthened on the hillside, and a chilly wind began to blow. at dusk gunner barnabas rose and looked at his captive. "drink's out o' 'im now," he said. "i can't move," whimpered shacklock. "i've got the fever back again." "i'll carry you," said gunner barnabas, swinging him up and preparing to climb the hill. "good-night, sir," he said to me. "it looks pretty, doesn't it? but never you forget, an' i won't forget neither, that this 'ere shiverin', shakin', convalescent a-hangin' on to my neck is a ragin', tearin' devil when 'e's lushy--an' 'e a boy!" he strode up to the hill with his burden, but just before he disappeared he turned round and shouted: "it's the likes o' 'im brings shame on the likes o' us. 'tain't we ourselves, s'elp me gawd, 'tain't!" footnotes: [footnote : "week's news," feb. , .] his brother's keeper[ ] "whist?" "can't make up a four?" "poker, then?" "never again with you, robin. 'tisn't good enough, old man." "seeking what he may devour," murmured a third voice from behind a newspaper. "stop the punkah, and make him go away." "don't talk of it on a night like this. it's enough to give a man fits. you've no enterprise. here i've taken the trouble to come over after dinner----" "on the off-chance of skinning some one. i don't believe you ever crossed a horse for pleasure." "that's true, i never did--and there are only two johnnies in the club." "they've all gone off to the gaff." "_wah! wah!_ they must be pretty hard up for amusement. help me to a split." "split in this weather! hi, bearer, _do burra--burra_ whiskey-peg _lao_, and just put all the _barf_ into them that you can find." the newspaper came down with a rustle, as the reader said: "how the deuce d'you expect a man to improve his mind when you two are _bukking_ about drinks? _qui hai! mera wasti bhi._" "oh! you're alive, are you? i thought pegs would fetch you out of that. game for a little poker?" "poker--poker--_red-hot_ poker! saveloy, you're too generous. can't you let a man die in peace?" "who's going to die?" "i am, please the pigs, if it gets much hotter and that bearer doesn't bring the peg quickly." "all right. die away, _mon ami_. only don't do it in the club, that's all. can't have it littered up with dead members. houligan would object." "by jove! i think i can imagine old houligan doing it. 'member dead in the ante-room? good gud! bless my soul! impossible to run a club this way. call the babu and see if his last month's bill is paid. not paid! good gud! bless my soul! impossible to run a club this way. babu, attach that body till the bill is paid.' revel, you might just hurry up your dying once in a way to give us the pleasure of seeing houligan perform." "i'll die legitimately," said revel. "i'm not going to create a fresh scandal in the station. i'll wait for heat-apoplexy, or whatever is going, to come and fetch me." "this is _pukka_ hot-weather talk," said saveloy. "i come over for a little honest poker, and find two moderately sensible men, revel and dallston, talking tombs. i'm sorry i've thrown away my valuable evening." "d'you expect us to talk about buttercups and daisies, then?" said dallston. "no, but there's some sort of medium between those and sudden death." "there isn't. i haven't seen a daisy for seven years, and now i want to die," said revel, plunging luxuriously into his peg. "i knew a johnnie on the frontier once who _did_," began dallston meditatively. "half a minute. bearer, _cherut lao_! tobacco soothes the nerves when a man is expecting to hear a whacker. we know what your frontier stories are, martha." dallston had once, in a misguided moment, taken the part of martha in the burlesque of _faust_, and the nickname stuck. "'tisn't a whacker, it's a fact. he told me so himself." "they always do, martha. i've noticed that before. but what did he tell you?" "he told me that he had died." "was _that_ all? explain him." "it was this way. the man went down with a bad go of fever and was off his head. about the second day it struck him in the middle of the night." "steady the buffs! martha, you aren't an irishman yet." "never mind. it's too hot to put it correctly. in the middle of the night he woke up quite calm, and it struck him that it would be a good thing to die--just as it might ha' struck him that it would be a good thing to put ice on his head. he lay on his bed and thought it over, and the more he thought about it, the better sort of _bundobust_ it seemed to be. he was quite calm, you know, and he said that he could have sworn that he had no fever on him." "well, what happened?" "oh, he got up and loaded his revolver--he remembers all this--and let fly, with the muzzle to his temple. the thing didn't go off, so he turned it up and found he'd forgot to load one chamber." "better stop the tale there. we can guess what's coming." "hang it! it's a _true_ yarn. well, he jammed the thing to his head _again_, and it missed fire, and he said that he felt ready to cry with rage, he was so disgusted. so he took it by the muzzle and hit himself on the head with it." "good man! didn't it go off _then_?" "no, but the blow knocked him silly, and he thought he was dead. he was awfully pleased, for he had been fiddling over the show for nearly half an hour. he dropped down and died. when he got his wits again, he was shaking with the fever worse than ever, but he had sense enough to go and knock up the doctor and give himself into his charge as a lunatic. then he went clean off his head till the fever wore out." "that's a good story," said revel critically. "i didn't think you had it in you at this season of the year." "i can believe it," said the man they called saveloy. "fever makes one do all sorts of queer things. i suppose your friend was mad with it when he discovered it would be so healthy to die." "s'pose so. the fever must have been so bad that he felt all right--same way that a man who is nearly mad with drink gets to look sober. well, anyhow, there was a man who died." "did he tell you what it felt like?" "he said that he was awfully happy until his fever came back and shook him up. then he was sick with fear. i don't wonder. he'd had rather a narrow escape." "that's nothing," said saveloy. "i know a man who lived." "so do i," said revel. "lots of 'em, confound 'em." "now, this takes martha's story, and it's quite true." "they always are," said martha. "i've noticed that before." "never mind, i'll forgive you. but this happened to me. since you _are_ talking tombs, i'll assist at the séance. it was in ' or ' , i have forgotten which. anyhow, it was when i was on the utamamula canal headworks, and i was chumming with a man called stovey. you've never met him because he belongs to the bombay side, and if he isn't really dead by this he ought to be somewhere there now. he was a _pukka_ sweep, and i hated him. we divided the canal bungalow between us, and we kept strictly to our own side of the buildings." "hold on! i call. what was stovey to look at?" said revel. "living picture of the king of spades--a blackish, greasy sort of ruffian who hadn't any pretence of manners or form. he used to dine in the kit he had been messing about the canal in all day, and i don't believe he ever washed. he had the embankments to look after, and i was in charge of the headworks, but he was always contriving to fall foul of me if he possibly could." "i know that sort of man. mullane of ghoridasah's built that way." "don't know mullane, but stovey was a sweep. canal work isn't exactly cheering, and it doesn't take you into _much_ society. we were like a couple of rats in a burrow, grubbing and scooping all day and turning in at night into the barn of a bungalow. well, this man stovey didn't get fever. he was so coated with dirt that i don't believe the fever could have got at him. he just began to go mad." "cheerful! what were the symptoms?" "well, his naturally vile temper grew infamous. it was really unsafe to speak to him, and he always seemed anxious to murder a coolie or two. with me, of course, he restrained himself a little, but he sulked like a bear for days and days together. as he was the only european society within sixty miles, you can imagine how nice it was for me. he'd sit at table and sulk and stare at the opposite wall by the hour--instead of doing his work. when i pointed out that the government didn't send us into these cheerful places to twiddle our thumbs, he glared like a beast. oh, he was a thorough hog! he had a lot of other endearing tricks, but the worst was when he began to pray." "began to--how much?" "pray. he'd got hold of an old copy of the _war cry_ and used to read it at meals; and i suppose that that, on the top of tough goat, disordered his intellect. one night i heard him in his room groaning and talking at a fearful rate. next morning i asked him if he'd been taken worse. 'i've been engaged in prayer,' he said, looking as black as thunder. 'a man's spiritual concerns are his own property.' one night--he'd kept up these spiritual exercises for about ten days, growing queerer and queerer every day--he said 'good-night' after dinner, and got up and shook hands with me." "bad sign, that," said revel, sucking industriously at his cheroot. "at first i couldn't make out what the man wanted. no fellow shakes hands with a fellow he's living with--least of all such a beast as stovey. however, i was civil, but the minute after he'd left the room it struck me what he was going to do. if he hadn't shaken hands i'd have taken no notice, i suppose. this unusual effusion put me on my guard." "curious thing! you can nearly always tell when a johnnie means pegging out. he gives himself away by some softening. it's human nature. what did you do?" "called him back, and asked him what the this and that he meant by interfering with my coolies in the day. he was generally hampering my men, but i had never taken any notice of his vagaries till then. in another minute we were arguing away, hammer and tongs. if it had been any other man i'd 'a' simply thrown the lamp at his head. he was calling me all the mean names under the sun, accusing me of misusing my authority and goodness only knows what all. when he had talked himself down one stretch, i had only to say a few words to start him off again, as fresh as a daisy. on my word, this jabbering went on for nearly three hours." "why didn't you get coolies and have him tied up, if you thought he was mad?" asked revel. "not a safe business, believe me. wrongful restraint on your own responsibility of a man nearly your own standing looks ugly. well, stovey went on bullying me and complaining about everything i'd ever said or done since i came on the canal, till--he went fast asleep." "wha-at?" "went off dead asleep, just as if he'd been drugged. i thought the brute had had a fit at first, but there he was, with his head hanging a little on one side and his mouth open. i knocked up his bearer and told him to take the man to bed. we carried him off and shoved him on his charpoy. he was still asleep, and i didn't think it worth while to undress him. the fit, whatever it was, had worked itself out, and he was limp and used up. but as i was going to leave the room, and went to turn the lamp down, i looked in the glass and saw that he was watching me between his eyelids. when i spun round he seemed asleep. 'that's your game, is it?' i thought, and i stood over him long enough to see that he was shamming. then i cast an eye round the room and saw his martini in the corner. we were all _bullumteers_ on the canal works. i couldn't find the cartridges, so to make all serene i knocked the breech-pin out with the cleaning-rod and went to my own room. i didn't go to sleep for some time. about one o'clock--our rooms were only divided by a door of sorts, and my bed was close to it--i heard my friend open a chest of drawers. then he went for the martini. of course, the breech-block came out with a rattle. then he went back to bed again, and i nearly laughed. "next morning he was doing the genial, hail-fellow-well-met trick. said he was afraid he'd lost his temper overnight, and apologised for it. about half way through breakfast--he was talking thickly about everything and anything--he said he'd come to the conclusion that a beard was a beastly nuisance and made one stuffy. he was going to shave his. would i lend him my razors? 'oh, you're a crafty beast, you are,' i said to myself. i told him that i was of the other opinion, and finding my razors nearly worn out had chucked them into the canal only the night before. he gave me one look under his eyebrows and went on with his breakfast. i was in a stew lest the man should cut his throat with one of the breakfast knives, so i kept one eye on him most of the time. "before i left the bungalow i caught old jeewun singh, one of the _mistries_ on the gates, and gave him strict orders that he was to keep in sight of the sahib wherever he went and whatever he did; and if he did or tried to do anything foolish, such as jumping down the well, jeewun singh was to stop him. the old man tumbled at once, and i was easier in my mind when i saw how he was shadowing stovey up and down the works. then i sat down and wrote a letter to old baggs, the civil surgeon at chemanghath, about sixty miles off, telling him how we stood. the runner left about three o'clock. jeewun singh turned up at the end of the day and gave a full, true and particular account of stovey's doings. d'you know what the brute had done?" "spare us the agony. kill him straight off, saveloy!" "he'd stopped the runner, opened the bag, read my letter and torn it up! there were only two letters in the bag, both of which i'd written. i was pretty _average_ angry, but i lay low. at dinner he said he'd got a touch of dysentery and wanted some chlorodyne. for a man anxious to depart this life he was _about_ as badly equipped as you could wish. hadn't even a medicine-chest to play with. he was no more suffering from dysentery than i, but i said i'd give him the chlorodyne, and so i did--fifteen drops, mixed in a wine-glass, and when he asked for the bottle i said that i hadn't any more. "that night he began praying again, and i just lay in bed and shuddered. he was invoking the most blasphemous curses on my head--all in a whisper, for fear of waking me up--for frustrating what he called his 'great and holy purpose.' you never heard anything like it. but as long as he was praying i knew he was alive, and he ran his praying half through the night. "well, for the next ten days he was apparently quite rational; but i watched him and told jeewun singh to watch him like a cat. i suppose he wanted to throw me off my guard, but i wasn't to be thrown. i grew thin watching him. baggs wrote in to say he had gone on tour and couldn't be found anywhere in particular for another six weeks. it was a ghastly time. "one day old jeewun singh turned up with a bit of paper that stovey had given to one of the _lohars_ as a _naksha_. i thought it was mean work spying into another man's very plans, but when i saw what was on the paper i gave old jeewun singh a rupee. it was a be-auti-ful little breech-pin. the one-idead idiot had gone back to martini! i never dreamt of such persistence. 'tell me when the _lohar_ gives it to the sahib,' i said, and i felt more comfy for a few days. even if jeewun singh hadn't split i should have known when the new breech-pin was made. the brute came in to dinner with a dashed confident, triumphant air, as if he'd done me in the eye at last; and all through dinner he was fiddling in his waistcoat pocket. he went to bed early. i went, too, and i put my head against the door and listened like a woman. i must have been shivering in my pyjamas for about two hours before my friend went for the dismantled martini. he could not get the breech-pin to fit at first. he rummaged about, and then i heard a file go. that seemed to make too much noise to suit his fancy, so he opened the door and went out into the compound, and i heard him, about fifty yards off, filing in the dark at that breech-pin as if he had been possessed. well, he _was_, you know. then he came back to the light, cursing me for keeping him out of his rest and the peace of abraham's bosom. as soon as i heard him taking up the martini, i ran round to his door and tried to enter gaily, as the stage directions say. 'lend me your gun, old man, if you're awake,' i said. 'there's a howling big brute of a pariah in my room, and i want to get a shot at it.' i pretended not to notice that he was standing over the gun, but just pranced up and caught hold of it. he turned round with a jump and said: 'i'm sick of this. i'll see that dog, and if it's another of your lies i'll----' you know i'm not a moral man." "hear! hear!" drowsily from martha. "but i simply daren't repeat what he said. 'all right!' i said, still hanging on to the gun. 'come along and we'll bowl him over.' he followed me into my room with a face like a fiend in torment. and, as truly as i'm yarning here, there _was_ a huge brindled beast of a pariah sitting _on my bed_!" "tall, sir, tall. but go on. the audience is now awake." "hang it! could i have invented that pariah? stovey dropped of the gun and flopped down in a corner and yowled. i went '_ee ki ri ki re!_' like a woman in hysterics, pitched the gun forward and loosed off through a window." "and the pariah?" "he quitted for the time being. stovey was in an awful state. he swore the animal hadn't been there when i called him. that was true enough. i firmly believe providence put it there to save me from being killed by the infuriated stovey." "you've too lively a belief in providence altogether. what happened?" "stovey tried to recover himself and pass it all over, but he let me keep the gun and went to bed. about two days afterwards old baggs turned up on tour, and i told him stovey wanted watching--more than i could give him. i don't know whether baggs or the _pi_ did it, but he didn't throw any more suicidal splints. i was transferred a little while afterwards." "ever meet the man again?" "yes; once at sheik katan dâk bungalow--trailing the big brindle _pi_ after him." "oh, it was real, then. i thought it was arranged for the occasion." "not a bit. it was a _pukka pi_. stovey seemed to remember me in the same way that a horse seems to remember. i fancy his brain was a little cloudy. we tiffined together--_after_ the _pi_ had been fed, if you please--and stovey said to me: 'see that dog? he saved my life once. oh, by the way, i believe you were there, too, weren't you?' i shouldn't care to work with stovey again." * * * * * there was a holy pause in the smoking-room of the toopare club. "what i like about saveloy's play," said martha, looking at the ceiling, "is the beautifully artistic way in which he follows up a flush with a full. go to bed, old man!" footnotes: [footnote : from the "week's news," april , .] "sleipner," late "thurinda"[ ] there are men, both good and wise, who hold that in a future state dumb creatures we have cherished here below will give us joyous welcome as we pass the golden gate. is it folly if i hope it may be so? --_the place where the old horse died._ if there were any explanation available here, i should be the first person to offer it. unfortunately, there is not, and i am compelled to confine myself to the facts of the case as vouched for by hordene and confirmed by "guj," who is the last man in the world to throw away a valuable horse for nothing. jale came up with _thurinda_ to the shayid spring meeting; and besides _thurinda_ his string included _divorce_, _meg's diversions_ and _benoni_--ponies of sorts. he won the officers' scurry--five furlongs--with _benoni_ on the first day, and that sent up the price of the stable in the evening lotteries; for _benoni_ was the worst-looking of the three, being a pigeon-toed, split-chested _dâk_ horse, with a wonderful gift of blundering in on his shoulders--ridden out to the last ounce--but _first_. next day jale was riding _divorce_ in the wattle and dab stakes--round the jump course; and she turned over at the on-and-off course when she was leading and managed to break her neck. she never stirred from the place where she dropped, and jale did not move either till he was carried off the ground to his tent close to the big _shamiana_ where the lotteries were held. he had ricked his back, and everything below the hips was as dead as timber. otherwise he was perfectly well. the doctor said that the stiffness would spread and that he would die before the next morning. jale insisted upon knowing the worst, and when he heard it sent a pencil note to the honorary secretary, saying that they were not to stop the races or do anything foolish of that kind. if he hung on till the next day the nominations for the third day's racing would not be void, and he would settle up all claims before he threw up his hand. this relieved the honorary secretary, because most of the horses had come from a long distance, and, under any circumstance, even had the judge dropped dead in the box, it would have been impossible to have postponed the racing. there was a great deal of money on the third day, and five or six of the owners were gentlemen who would make even one day's delay an excuse. well, settling would not be easy. no one knew much about jale. he was an outsider from down country, but every one hoped that, since he was doomed, he would live through the third day and save trouble. jale lay on his charpoy in the tent and asked the doctor and the man who catered to the refreshments--he was the nearest at the time--to witness his will. "i don't know how long my arms will be workable," said jale, "and we'd better get this business over." the private arrangements of the will concern nobody but jale's friends; but there was one clause that was rather curious. "who was that man with the brindled hair who put me up for a night until the tent was ready? the man who rode down to pick me up when i was smashed. nice sort of fellow he seemed." "hordene?" said the doctor. "yes, hordene. good chap, hordene. he keeps bull whisky. write down that i give this johnnie hordene _thurinda_ for his own, if he can sell the other ponies. _thurinda's_ a good mare. he can enter her--post-entry--for the all horse sweep if he likes--on the last day. have you got that down? i suppose the stewards'll recognise the gift?" "no trouble about that," said the doctor. "all right. give him the other two ponies to sell. they're entered for the last day, but i shall be dead then. tell him to send the money to----" here he gave an address. "now i'll sign and you sign, and that's all. this deadness is coming up between my shoulders." jale lived, dying very slowly, till the third day's racing, and up till the time of the lotteries on the fourth day's racing. the doctor was rather surprised. hordene came in to thank him for his gift, and to suggest it would be much better to sell _thurinda_ with the others. she was the best of them all, and would have fetched twelve hundred on her looking-over merits only. "don't you bother," said jale. "you take her. i rather liked you. i've got no people, and that bull whisky was first-class stuff. i'm pegging out now, i think." the lottery-tent outside was beginning to fill, and jale heard the click of the dice. "that's all right," said he. "i wish i was there, but--i'm--going to the drawer." then he died quietly. hordene went into the lottery-tent, after calling the doctor. "how's jale?" said the honorary secretary. "gone to the drawer," said hordene, settling into a chair and reaching out for a lottery paper. "poor beggar!" said the honorary secretary. "'twasn't the fault of our on-and-off, though. the mare blundered. gentlemen! gentlemen! nine hundred and eighty rupees in the lottery, and _river of years_ for sale!" the lottery lasted far into the night, and there was a supplementary lottery on the all horse sweep, where _thurinda_ sold for a song, and was not bought by her owner. "it's not lucky," said hordene, and the rest of the men agreed with him. "i ride her myself, but i don't know anything about her and i wish to goodness i hadn't taken her," said he. "oh, bosh! never refuse a horse or a drink, however you come by them. no one objects, do they? not going to refer this matter to calcutta, are we? here, somebody, bid! eleven hundred and fifty rupees in the lottery, and _thurinda_--absolutely unknown, acquired under the most romantic circumstances from about _the_ toughest man it has ever been my good fortune to meet--for sale. hullo, nurji, is that you? gentlemen, where a pagan bids shall enlightened christians hang back? ten! going, going, gone!" "you want ha-af, sar?" said the battered native trainer to hordene. "no, thanks--not a bit of her for me." the all horse sweep was run, and won by _thurinda_ by about a street and three-quarters, to be very accurate, amid derisive cheers, which hordene, who flattered himself that he knew something about riding, could not understand. on pulling up he looked over his shoulder and saw that the second horse was only just passing the box. "now, how did i make such a fool of myself?" he said as he returned to weigh out. his friends gathered round him and asked tenderly whether this was the first time that he had got up, and whether it was _absolutely_ necessary that the winning horse should be ridden out when the field were hopelessly pumped, a quarter of a mile behind, etc., etc. "i--i--thought _river of years_ was pressing me," explained hordene. "_river of years_ was wallowing, absolutely wallowing," said a man, "before you turned into the straight. you rode like a--hang it--like a militia subaltern!" the shayid spring meeting broke up and the sportsmen turned their steps towards the next carcase--the ghoriah spring. with them went _thurinda's_ owner, the happy possessor of an almost perfect animal. "she's as easy as a pullman car and about twice as fast," he was wont to say in moments of confidence to his intimates. "for all her bulk, she's as handy as a polo-pony; a child might ride her, and when she's at the post she's as cute--she's as cute as the bally starter himself." many times had hordene said this, till at last one unsympathetic friend answered with: "when a man _bukhs_ too much about his wife or his horse, it's a sure sign he's trying to make himself like 'em. i mistrust your _thurinda_. she's too good, or else----" "or else what?" "you're trying to believe you like her." "like her! i _love_ her! i trust that darling as i'm shot if i'd trust you. i'd hack her for tuppence." "hack away, then. i don't want to hurt your feelings. i don't hack my stable myself, but some horses go better for it. come and peacock at the band-stand this evening." to the band-stand accordingly hordene came, and the lovely _thurinda_ comported herself with all the gravity and decorum that might have been expected. hordene rode home with the scoffer, through the dusk, discoursing on matters indifferent. "hold up a minute," said his friend, "there's gagley riding behind us." then, raising his voice: "come along, gagley! i want to speak to you about the race ball." but no gagley came; and the couple went forward at a trot. "hang it! there's that man behind us still." hordene listened and could clearly hear the sound of a horse trotting, apparently just behind them. "come on, gagley! don't play bo-peep in that ridiculous way," shouted the friend. again no gagley. twenty yards farther there was a crash and a stumble as the friend's horse came down over an unseen rat-hole. "how much damaged?" asked hordene. "sprained my wrist," was the dolorous answer, "and there is something wrong with my knee-cap. there goes my mount to-morrow, and this gee is cut like a cab-horse." on the first day of the ghoriah meeting _thurinda_ was hopelessly ridden out by a native jockey, to whose care hordene had at the last moment been compelled to confide her. "you forsaken idiot!" said he, "what made you begin riding as soon as you were clear? she had everything safe, if you'd only left her alone. you rode her out before the home turn, you hog!" "what could i do?" said the jockey sullenly. "i was pressed by another horse." "whose 'other horse'? there were twenty yards of daylight between you and the ruck. if you'd kept her there even then 'twouldn't ha' mattered. but you rode her out--you rode her out!" "there was another horse and he pressed me to the end, and when i looked round he was no longer there." let us, in charity, draw a veil over hordene's language at this point. "goodness knows whether she'll be fit to pull out again for the last event. d----n you and your other horses! i wish i'd broken your neck before letting you get up!" _thurinda_ was done to a turn, and it seemed a cruelty to ask her to run again in the last race of the day. hordene rode this time, and was careful to keep the mare within herself at the outset. once more _thurinda_ left her field--with one exception--a grey horse that hung upon her flanks and could not be shaken off. the mare was done, and refused to answer the call upon her. she tried hopelessly in the straight and was caught and passed by her old enemy, _river of years_--the chestnut of kurnaul. "you rode well--like a native, hordene," was the unflattering comment. "the mare was ridden out before _river of years_." "but the grey," began hordene, and then ceased, for he knew that there was no grey in the race. _blue point_ and _diamond dust_, the only greys at the meeting, were running in the arab handicap. he caught his native jockey. "what horse, d'you say, pressed you?" "i don't know. it was a grey with nutmeg tickings behind the saddle." that evening hordene sought the great major blare-tyndar, who knew personally the father, mother and ancestors of almost every horse, brought from _ekka_ or ship, that had ever set foot on an indian race-course. "say, major, what is a grey horse with nutmeg tickings behind the saddle?" "a curiosity. _wendell holmes_ is a grey, with nutmeg on the near shoulder, but there is no horse marked your way, now." then, after a pause: "no, i'm wrong--you ought to know. the pony that got you _thurinda_ was grey and nutmeg." "how much?" "_divorce_, of course. the mare that broke her neck at the shayid meeting and killed jale. a big thirteen-three she was. i recollect when she was hacking old snuffy beans to office. he bought her from a dealer, who had her left on his hands as a rejection when the pink hussars were buying team up country and then----hullo! the man's gone!" hordene had departed on receipt of information which he already knew. he only demanded extra confirmation. then he began to argue with himself, bearing in mind that he himself was a sane man, neither gluttonous nor a wine-bibber, with an unimpaired digestion, and that _thurinda_ was to all appearance a horse of ordinary flesh and exceedingly good blood. arrived at these satisfactory conclusions, he reargued the whole matter. being by nature intensely superstitious, he decided upon scratching _thurinda_ and facing the howl of indignation that would follow. he also decided to leave the ghoriah meet and change his luck. but it would have been sinful--positively wicked--to have left without waiting for the polo-match that was to conclude the festivities. at the last moment before the match, one of the leading players of the ghoriah team and hordene's host discovered that, through the kindly foresight of his head _sais_, every single pony had been taken down to the ground. "lend me a hack, old man," he shouted to hordene as he was changing. "take _thurinda_," was the reply. "she'll bring you down in ten minutes." and _thurinda_ was accordingly saddled for marish's benefit. "i'll go down with you," said hordene. the two rode off together at a hand canter. "by jove! somebody's _sais_ 'll get kicked for this!" said marish, looking round. "look there! he's coming for the mare! pull out into the middle of the road." "what on earth d'you mean?" "well, if _you_ can take a strayed horse so calmly, i can't. didn't you see what a lather that grey was in?" "what grey?" "the grey that just passed us--saddle and all. he's got away from the ground, i suppose. now he's turned the corner; but you can hear his hoofs. listen!" there was a furious gallop of shod horses, gradually dying into silence. "come along," said hordene. "we're late as it is. we shall know all about it on the ground." "anybody lost a tat?" asked marish cheerily as they reached the ground. "no, we've lost _you_. double up. you're late enough as it is. get up and go in. the teams are waiting." marish mounted his polo-pony and cantered across. hordene watched the game idly for a few moments. there was a scrimmage, a cloud of dust, and a cessation of play, and a shouting for _saises_. the umpire clattered forward and returned. "what has happened?" "marish! neck broken! nobody's fault. pony crossed its legs and came down. game's stopped. thank god, he hasn't got a wife!" again hordene pondered as he sat on his horse's back. "under any circumstances it was written that he was to be killed. i had no interest in his death, and he had his warning, i suppose. i can't make out the system that this infernal mare runs under. why _him_? anyway, i'll shoot her." he looked at _thurinda_, the calm-eyed, the beautiful, and repented. "no! i'll sell her." "what in the world has happened to _thurinda_ that hordene is so keen on getting rid of her?" was the general question. "i want money," said hordene unblushingly, and the few who knew how his accounts stood saw that this was a varnished lie. but they held their peace because of the great love and trust that exists among the ancient and honourable fraternity of sportsmen. "there's nothing wrong with her," explained hordene. "try her as much as you like, but let her stay in my stable until you've made up your mind one way or the other. nine hundred's my price." "i'll take her at that," quoth a red-haired subaltern, nicknamed carrots, later gaja, and then, for brevity's sake, guj. "let me have her out this afternoon. i want her more for hacking than anything else." guj tried _thurinda_ exhaustively and had no fault to find with her. "she's all right," he said briefly. "i'll take her. it's a cash deal." "virtuous guj!" said hordene, pocketing the cheque. "if you go on like this you'll be loved and respected by all who know you." a week later guj insisted that hordene should accompany him on a ride. they cantered merrily for a time. then said the subaltern: "listen to the mare's beat a minute, will you? seems to me that you've sold me two horses." behind the mare was plainly audible the cadence of a swiftly trotting horse. "d'you hear anything?" said guj. "no--nothing but the regular triplet," said hordene; and he lied when he answered. guj looked at him keenly and said nothing. two or three months passed and hordene was perplexed to see his old property running, and running well, under the curious title of "_sleipner_--late _thurinda_." he consulted the great major, who said: "i don't know a horse called _sleipner_, but i know _of_ one. he was a northern bred, and belonged to odin." "a mythological beast?" "exactly. like _bucephalus_ and the rest of 'em. he was a great horse. i wish i had some of his get in my stable." "why?" "because he had eight legs. when he had used up one set, he let down the other four to come up the straight on. stewards were lenient in those days. _now_ it's all you can do to get a crock with _three_ sound legs." hordene cursed the red-haired guj in his heart for finding out the mare's peculiarity. then he cursed the dead man jale for his ridiculous interference with a free gift. "if it was given--it was given," said hordene, "and he has no right to come messing about after it." when guj and he next met, he enquired tenderly after _thurinda_. the red-haired subaltern, impassive as usual, answered: "i've shot her." "well--you know your own affairs best," said hordene. "you've given yourself away," said guj. "what makes you think i shot a sound horse? she might have been bitten by a mad dog, or lamed." "you didn't say that." "no, i didn't, because i've a notion that you knew what was wrong with her." "wrong with her! she was as sound as a bell----" "i know that. don't pretend to misunderstand. you'll believe _me_, and i'll believe _you_ in this show; but no one else will believe _us_. that mare was a bally nightmare." "go on," said hordene. "i stuck the noise of the other horse as long as i could, and called her _sleipner_ on the strength of it. _sleipner_ was a stallion, but that's a detail. when it got to interfering with every race i rode it was more than i could stick. i took her off racing, and, on my honour, since that time i've been nearly driven out of my mind by a grey and nutmeg pony. it used to trot round my quarters at night, fool about the mall, and graze about the compound. you _know_ that pony. it isn't a pony to catch or ride or hit, is it?" "no," said hordene; "i've seen it." "so i shot _thurinda_; that was a thousand rupees out of my pocket. and old stiffer, who's got his new crematorium in full blast, cremated her. i say, what _was_ the matter with the mare? was she bewitched?" hordene told the story of the gift, which guj heard out to the end. "now, that's a nice sort of yarn to tell in a messroom, isn't it? they'd call it jumps or insanity," said guj. "there's no reason in it. it doesn't lead up to anything. it only killed poor marish and made you stick me with the mare; and yet it's true. are you mad or drunk, or am i? that's the only explanation." "can't be drunk for nine months on end, and madness would show in that time," said hordene. "all right," said guj recklessly, going to the window. "i'll lay that ghost." he leaned out into the night and shouted: "jale! jale! jale! wherever you are." there was a pause and then up the compound-drive came the clatter of a horse's feet. the red-haired subaltern blanched under his freckles to the colour of glycerine soap. "_thurinda's_ dead," he muttered, "and--and all bets are off. go back to your grave again." hordene was watching him open-mouthed. "now bring me a strait-jacket or a glass of brandy," said guj. "that's enough to turn a man's hair white. what did the poor wretch mean by knocking about the earth?" "don't know," whispered hordene hoarsely. "let's get over to the club. i'm feeling a bit shaky." footnotes: [footnote : "week's news," may , .] a supplementary chapter[ ] shall i not one day remember thy bower-- one day when all days are one day to me? thinking i stirred not and yet had the power, yearning--ah, god, if again it might be! --_the song of the bower_. this is a base betrayal of confidence, but the sin is mrs. hauksbee's and not mine. if you remember a certain foolish tale called "the education of otis yeere," you will not forget that mrs. mallowe laughed at the wrong time, which was a single, and at mrs. hauksbee, which was a double, offence. an experiment had gone wrong, and it seems that mrs. mallowe had said some quaint things about the experimentrix. "i am not angry," said mrs. hauksbee, "and i admire polly in spite of her evil counsels to me. but i shall wait--i shall wait, like the frog footman in _alice in wonderland_, and providence will deliver polly into my hands. it always does if you wait." and she departed to vex the soul of the "hawley boy," who says that she is singularly "_uninstruite_ and childlike." he got that first word out of a ouida novel. i do not know what it means, but am prepared to make an affidavit before the collector that it does not mean mrs. hauksbee. mrs. hauksbee's ideas of waiting are very liberal. she told the "hawley boy" that he dared not tell mrs. reiver that "she was an intellectual woman with a gift for attracting men," and she offered another man two waltzes if he would repeat the same thing in the same ears. but he said: "timeo danaos et dona ferentes," which means "mistrust all waltzes except those you get for legitimate asking." the "hawley boy" did as he was told because he believes in mrs. hauksbee. he was the instrument in the hand of a higher power, and he wore _jharun_ coats, like "the scoriac rivers that roll their sulphurous torrents down yahek, in the realms of the boreal pole," that made your temples throb when seen early in the morning. i will introduce him to you some day if all goes well. he is worth knowing. unpleasant things have already been written about mrs. reiver in other places. she was a person without invention. she used to get her ideas from the men she captured, and this led to some eccentric changes of character. for a month or two she would act _à la_ madonna, and try theo for a change if she fancied theo's ways suited her beauty. then she would attempt the dark and fiery lilith, and so and so on, exactly as she had absorbed the new notion. but there was always mrs. reiver--hard, selfish, stupid mrs. reiver--at the back of each transformation. mrs. hauksbee christened her the magic lantern on account of this borrowed mutability. "it just depends upon the slide," said mrs. hauksbee. "the case is the only permanent thing in the exhibition. but that, thank heaven, is getting old." there was a fancy ball at government house and mrs. reiver came attired in some sort of ' costume, with her hair pulled up to the top of her head, showing the clear outline on the back of the neck like the récamier engravings. mrs. hauksbee had chosen to be loud, not to say vulgar, that evening, and went as the black death--a curious arrangement of barred velvet, black domino and flame-coloured satin puffery coming up to the neck and the wrists, with one of those shrieking keel-backed cicalas in the hair. the scream of the creature made people jump. it sounded so unearthly in a ballroom. i heard her say to some one: "let me introduce you to madame récamier," and i saw a man dressed as autolycus bowing to mrs. reiver, while the black death looked more than usually saintly. it was a very pleasant evening, and autolycus and madame récamier--i heard her ask autolycus who madame récamier was, by the way--danced together ever so much. mrs. hauksbee was in a meditative mood, but she laughed once or twice in the back of her throat, and that meant trouble. autolycus was trewinnard, the man whom mrs. mallowe had told mrs. hauksbee about--the platonic paragon, as mrs. hauksbee called him. he was amiable, but his moustache hid his mouth, and so he did not explain himself all at once. if you stared at him, he turned his eyes away, and through the rest of the dinner kept looking at you to see whether you were looking again. he took stares as a tribute to his merits, which were generally known and recognised. when he played billiards he apologised at length between each bad stroke, and explained what would have happened if the red had been somewhere else, or the bearer had trimmed the third lamp, or the wind hadn't made the door bang. also he wriggled in his chair more than was becoming to one of his inches. little men may wriggle and fidget without attracting notice. it doesn't suit big-framed men. he was the main girder boom of the kutcha, pukka, bundobust and benaoti department and corresponded direct with the three taped bashaw. every one knows what _that_ means. the men in his own office said that where anything was to be gained, even temporarily, he would never hesitate for a moment over handing up a subordinate to be hanged and drawn and quartered. he didn't back up his underlings, and for that reason they dreaded taking responsibility on their shoulders, and the strength of the department was crippled. a weak department can, and often does, do a power of good work simply because its chief sees it through thick and thin. mistakes may be born of this policy, but it is safe and sounder than giving orders which may be read in two ways and reserving to yourself the right of interpretation according to subsequent failure or success. offices prefer administration to diplomacy. they are very like empires. hatchett of the almirah and thannicutch--a vicious little three-cornered department that was always stamping on the toes of the elect--had the fairest estimate of trewinnard, when he said: "i don't believe he is as good as he is." they always quoted that verdict as an instance of the blind jealousy of the uncovenanted, but hatchett was quite right. trewinnard was just as good and no better than mrs. mallowe could make him; and she had been engaged on the work for three years. hatchett has a narrow-minded partiality for the more than naked--the anatomised truth--but he can gauge a man. trewinnard had been spoilt by over-much petting, and the devil of vanity that rides nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand made him behave as he did. he had been too long one woman's property; and that belief will sometimes drive a man to throw the best things in the world behind him, from rank perversity. perhaps he only meant to stray temporarily and then return, but in arranging for this excursion he misunderstood both mrs. mallowe and mrs. reiver. the one made no sign, she would have died first; and the other--well, the high-falutin mindsome lay was her craze for the time being. she had never tried it before and several men had hinted that it would eminently become her. trewinnard was in himself pleasant, with the great merit of belonging to somebody else. he was what they call "intellectual," and vain to the marrow. mrs. reiver returned his lead in the first, and hopelessly out-trumped him in the second suit. put down all that comes after this to providence or the black death. trewinnard never realised how far he had fallen from his allegiance till mrs. reiver referred to some official matter that he had been telling her about as "ours." he remembered then how that word had been sacred to mrs. mallowe and how she had asked his permission to use it. opium is intoxicating, and so is whisky, but more intoxicating than either to a certain build of mind is the first occasion on which a woman--especially if she have asked leave for the "honour"--identifies herself with a man's work. the second time is not so pleasant. the answer has been given before, and the treachery comes to the top and tastes coppery in the mouth. trewinnard swallowed the shame--he felt dimly that he was not doing mrs. reiver any great wrong by untruth--and told and told and continued to tell, for the snare of this form of open-heartedness is that no man, unless he be a consummate liar, knows where to stop. the office door of all others must be either open wide or shut tight with a _shaprassi_ to keep off callers. mrs. mallowe made no sign to show that she felt trewinnard's desertion till a piece of information that could only have come from _one_ quarter ran about simla like quicksilver. she met trewinnard at a dinner. "choose your _confidantes_ better, harold," she whispered as she passed him in the drawing-room. he turned salmon-colour, and swore very hard to himself that babu durga charan laha must go--must go--must go. he almost believed in that grey-headed old oyster's guilt. and so another of those upside-down tragedies that we call a simla season wore through to the end--from the birthday ball to the "tripping" to naldera and kotghar. and fools gave feasts and wise men ate them, and they were bidden to the wedding and sat down to bake, and those who had nuts had no teeth and they staked the substance for the shadow, and carried coals to newcastle, and in the dark all cats were grey, as it was in the days of the great curé of meudon. late in the year there developed itself a battle-royal between the k.p.b. and b. department and the almirah and thannicutch. three columns of this paper would be needed to supply you with the outlines of the difficulty; and then you would not be grateful. hatchett snuffed the fray from afar and went into it with his teeth bared to the gums, while his department stood behind him solid to a man. they believed in him, and their answer to the fury of men who detested him was: "ah! but you'll admit he's d----d right in what he says." "the head of trewinnard in a government resolution," said hatchett, and he told the _daftri_ to put a new pad on his blotter, and smiled a bleak smile as he spread out his notes. hatchett is a thug in his systematic way of butchering a man's reputation. "what are you going to do?" asked trewinnard's department. "sit tight," said trewinnard, which was tantamount to saying "lord knows." the department groaned and said: "which of us poor beggars is to be jonahed _this_ time?" they knew trewinnard's vice. the dispute was essentially not one for the k.p.b. and b. under its then direction to fight out. it should have been compromised, or at the worst sent up to the supreme government with a private and confidential note directing justice into the proper paths. some people say that the supreme government is the devil. it is more like the deep sea. anything that you throw into it disappears for weeks, and comes to light hacked and furred at the edges, crusted with weeds and shells and almost unrecognisable. the bold man who would dare to give it a file of love-letters would be amply rewarded. it would overlay them with original comments and marginal notes, and work them piecemeal into d.o. dockets. few things, from a setter or a whirlpool to a sausage-machine or a hatching hen, are more interesting and peculiar than the supreme government. "what shall we do?" said trewinnard, who had fallen from grace into sin. "fight," said mrs. reiver, or words to that effect; and no one can say how far aimless desire to test her powers, and how far belief in the man she had brought to her feet prompted the judgment. of the merits of the case she knew just as much as any _ayah_. then mrs. mallowe, upon an evil word that went through simla, put on her visiting-garb and attired herself for the sacrifice, and went to call--to call upon mrs. reiver, knowing what the torture would be. from half-past twelve till twenty-five minutes to two she sat, her hand upon her cardcase, and let mrs. reiver stab at her, all for the sake of the information. mrs. reiver double-acted her part, but she played into mrs. mallowe's hand by this defect. the assumptions of ownership, the little intentional slips, were overdone, and so also was the pretence of intimate knowledge. mrs. mallowe never winced. she repeated to herself: "and he has trusted this--this thing. she knows nothing and she cares nothing, and she has digged this trap for him." the main feature of the case was abundantly clear. trewinnard, whose capacities mrs. mallowe knew to the utmost farthing, to whom public and departmental petting were as the breath of his delicately-cut nostrils--trewinnard, with his nervous dread of dispraise, was to be pitted against the paul de cassagnac of the almirah and thannicutch--the unspeakable hatchett, who fought with the venom of a woman and the skill of a red indian. unless his cause was triply just, trewinnard was already under the guillotine, and if he had been under this "thing's" dominance, small hope for the justice of his case. "oh, why did i let him go without putting out a hand to fetch him back?" said mrs. mallowe, as she got into her 'rickshaw. now, _tim_, her fox-terrier, is the only person who knows what mrs. mallowe did that afternoon, and as i found him loafing on the mall in a very disconsolate condition and as he recognised me effusively and suggested going for a monkey-hunt--a thing he had never done before--my impression is that mrs. mallowe stayed at home till the light fell and thought. if she did this, it is of course hopeless to account for her actions. so you must fill in the gap for yourself. that evening it rained heavily, and horses mired their riders. but not one of all the habits was so plastered with mud as the habit of mrs. mallowe when she pulled up under the scrub oaks and sent in her name by the astounded bearer to trewinnard. "folly! downright folly!" she said as she sat in the steam of the dripping horse. "but it's all a horrible jumble together." it may be as well to mention that ladies do not usually call upon bachelors at their houses. bachelors would scream and run away. trewinnard came into the light of the verandah with a nervous, undecided smile upon his lips, and he wished--in the bottomless bottom of his bad heart--he wished that mrs. reiver was there to see. a minute later he was profoundly glad that he was alone, for mrs. mallowe was standing in his office room and calling him names that reflected no credit on his intellect. "what have you done? what have you said?" she asked. "be quick! be _quick_! and have the horse led round to the back. can you speak? what have you written? show me!" she had interrupted him in the middle of what he was pleased to call his reply; for hatchett's first shell had already fallen in the camp. he stood back and offered her the seat at the _duftar_ table. her elbow left a great wet stain on the baize, for she was soaked through and through. "say exactly how the matter stands," she said, and laughed a weak little laugh, which emboldened trewinnard to say loftily: "pardon me, mrs. mallowe, but i hardly recognise your----" "idiot! will you show me the papers, will you speak, and _will_ you be quick?" her most reverent admirers would hardly have recognised the soft-spoken, slow-gestured, quiet-eyed mrs. mallowe in the indignant woman who was drumming on trewinnard's desk. he submitted to the voice of authority, as he had submitted in the old times, and explained as quickly as might be the cause of the war between the two departments. in conclusion he handed over the rough sheets of his reply. as she read he watched her with the expectant sickly half-smile of the unaccustomed writer who is doubtful of the success of his work. and another smile followed, but died away as he saw mrs. mallowe read his production. all the old phrases out of which she had so carefully drilled him had returned; the unpruned fluency of diction was there, the more luxuriant for being so long cut back; the reckless riotousness of assertion that sacrificed all--even the vital truth that hatchett would be so sure to take advantage of--for the sake of scoring a point, was there; and through and between every line ran the weak, wilful vanity of the man. mrs. mallowe's mouth hardened. "and you wrote this!" she said. then to herself: "_he_ wrote this!" trewinnard stepped forward with a gesture habitual to him when he wished to explain. mrs. reiver had never asked for explanations. she had told him that all his ways were perfect. therefore he loved her. mrs. mallowe tore up the papers one by one, saying as she did so: "_you_ were going to cross swords with hatchett. do you know your own strength? oh, harold, harold, it is _too_ pitiable! i thought--i thought----" then the great anger that had been growing in her broke out, and she cried: "oh, you fool! you blind, blind, _blind_, trumpery fool! why do i help you? why do i have anything to do with you? you miserable man! sit down and write as i dictate. quickly! and i had chosen _you_ out of a hundred other _men_! write!" it is a terrible thing to be found out by a mere unseeing male--thackeray has said it. it is worse, far worse, to be found out by a woman, and in that hour after long years to discover her worth. for ten minutes trewinnard's pen scratched across the paper, and mrs. mallowe spoke. "and that is all," she said bitterly. "as you value yourself--your noble, honourable, modest self--keep within that." but that was not all--by any means. at least as far as trewinnard was concerned. he rose from his chair and delivered his soul of many mad and futile thoughts--such things as a man babbles when he is deserted of the gods, has missed his hold upon the latch-door of opportunity--and cannot see that the ways are shut. mrs. mallowe bore with him to the end, and he stood before her--no enviable creature to look upon. "a cur as well as a fool!" she said. "will you be good enough to tell them to bring my horse? i do not trust to your honour--you have none--but i believe that your sense of shame will keep you from speaking of my visit." so he was left in the verandah crying "come back" like a distracted guinea-fowl. * * * * * "he's done us in the eye," grunted hatchett as he perused the k.p.b. and b. reply. "look at the cunning of the brute in shifting the issue on to india in that carneying, blarneying way! only wait until i can get my knife into him again. i'll stop every bolt-hole before the hunt begins." * * * * * oh, i believe i have forgotten to mention the success of mrs. hauksbee's revenge. it was so brilliant and overwhelming that she had to cry in mrs. mallowe's arms for the better part of half an hour; and mrs. mallowe was just as bad, though she thanked mrs. hauksbee several times in the course of the interview, and mrs. hauksbee said that she would repent and reform, and mrs. mallowe said: "hush, dear, hush! i don't think either of us had anything to be proud of." and mrs. hauksbee said: "oh, but i didn't _mean_ it, polly, i didn't _mean_ it!" and i stood with my hat in my hand trying to make two very indignant ladies understand that the bearer really _had_ given me "_salaam bolta_." that was an evil quarter minute. footnotes: [footnote : "week's news," may , .] chatauquaed[ ] tells how the professor and i found the precious rediculouses and how they chautauquaed at us. puts into print some sentiments better left unrecorded, and proves that a neglected theory will blossom in congenial soil. contains fragments of three lectures and a confession. "_but these, in spite of careful dirt, are neither green nor sappy; half conscious of the garden squirt, the spendlings look unhappy._" out of the silence under the apple-trees the professor spake. one leg thrust from the hammock netting kicked lazily at the blue. there was the crisp crunch of teeth in an apple core. "get out of this," said the professor lazily. as it was on the banks of the hughli, so on the green borders of the musquash and the ohio--eternal unrest, and the insensate desire to go ahead. i was lapped in a very trance of peace. even the apples brought no indigestion. "permanent nuisance, what is the matter now?" i grunted. "g'long out of this and go to niagara," said the professor in jerks. "spread the ink of description through the waters of the horseshoe falls--buy a papoose from the tame wild indian who lives at the clifton house--take a fifty-cent ride on the _maid of the mist_--go over the falls in a tub." "seriously, is it worth the trouble? everybody who has ever been within fifty miles of the falls has written his or her impressions. everybody who has never seen the falls knows all about them, and--besides, i want some more apples. they're good in this place, ye big fat man," i quoted. the professor retired into his hammock for a while. then he reappeared flushed with a new thought. "if you want to see something quite new let's go to chautauqua." "what's that?" "well, it's a sort of institution. it's an educational idea, and it lives on the borders of a lake in new york state. i think you'll find it interesting; and i know it will show you a new side of american life." in blank ignorance i consented. everybody is anxious that i should see as many sides of american life as possible. here in the east they demand of me what i thought of their west. i dare not answer that it is as far from their notions and motives as hindustan from hoboken--that the west, to this poor thinking, is an america which has no kinship with its neighbour. therefore i congratulated them hypocritically upon "their west," and from their lips learn that there is yet another america, that of the south--alien and distinct. into the third country, alas! i shall not have time to penetrate. the newspapers and the oratory of the day will tell you that all feeling between the north and south is extinct. none the less the northerner, outside his newspapers and public men, has a healthy contempt for the southerner which the latter repays by what seems very like a deep-rooted aversion to the northerner. i have learned now what the sentiments of the great american nation mean. the north speaks in the name of the country; the west is busy developing its own resources, and the southerner skulks in his tents. his opinions do not count; but his girls are very beautiful. so the professor and i took a train and went to look at the educational idea. from sleepy, quiet little musquash we rattled through the coal and iron districts of pennsylvania, her coke ovens flaring into the night and her clamorous foundries waking the silence of the woods in which they lay. twenty years hence woods and cornfields will be gone, and from pittsburg to shenango all will be smoky black as bradford and beverly: for each factory is drawing to itself a small town, and year by year the demand for rails increases. the professor held forth on the labour question, his remarks being prompted by the sight of a train-load of italians and hungarians going home from mending a bridge. "you recollect the burmese," said he. "the american is like the burman in one way. he won't do heavy manual labour. he knows too much. consequently he imports the alien to be his hands--just as the burman gets hold of the madrassi. if he shuts down all labour immigration he will have to fill up his own dams, cut his cuttings and pile his own embankments. the american citizen won't like that. he is racially unfit to be a labourer in _muttee_. he can invent, buy, sell and design, but he cannot waste his time on earth-works. _iswaste_, this great people will resume contract labour immigration the minute they find the aliens in their midst are not sufficient for the jobs in hand. if the alien gives them trouble they will shoot him." "yes, they will shoot him," i said, remembering how only two days before some hungarians employed on a line near musquash had seen fit to strike and to roll down rocks on labourers hired to take their places, an amusement which caused the sheriff to open fire with a revolver and wound or kill (it really does not much matter which) two or three of them. only a man who earns ten pence a day in sunny italy knows how to howl for as many shillings in america. the composition of the crowd in the cars began to attract my attention. there were very many women and a few clergymen. where you shall find these two together, there also shall be a fad, a hobby, a theory, or a mission. "these people are going to chautauqua," said the professor. "it's a sort of open-air college--they call it--but you'll understand things better when you arrive." a grim twinkle in the back of his eye awakened all my fears. "can you get anything to drink there?" "no." "are you allowed to smoke?" "ye-es, in certain places." "are we staying there over sunday?" "_no._" this very emphatically. feminine shrieks of welcome: "there's sadie!" "why, maimie, is that yeou!" "alf's in the smoker. did you bring the baby?" and a profligate expenditure of kisses between bonnet and bonnet told me we had struck a gathering place of the clans. it was midnight. they swept us, this horde of clamouring women, into a black maria omnibus and a sumptuous hotel close to the borders of a lake--lake chautauqua. morning showed as pleasant a place of summer pleasuring as ever i wish to see. smooth-cut lawns of velvet grass, studded with tennis-courts, surrounded the hotel and ran down to the blue waters, which were dotted with rowboats. young men in wonderful blazers, and maidens in more wonderful tennis costumes; women attired with all the extravagance of unthinking chicago or the grace of washington (which is simla) filled the grounds, and the neat french nurses and exquisitely dressed little children ran about together. there was pickerel-fishing for such as enjoyed it; a bowling-alley, unlimited bathing and a toboggan, besides many other amusements, all winding up with a dance or a concert at night. women dominated the sham mediæval hotel, rampaged about the passages, flirted in the corridors and chased unruly children off the tennis-courts. this place was called lakewood. it is a pleasant place for the unregenerate. "_we_ go up the lake in a steamer to chautauqua," said the professor. "but i want to stay here. this is what i understand and like." "no, you don't. you must come along and be educated." all the shores of the lake, which is eighteen miles long, are dotted with summer hotels, camps, boat-houses and pleasant places of rest. you go there with all your family to fish and to flirt. there is no special beauty in the landscape of tame cultivated hills and decorous, woolly trees, but good taste and wealth have taken the place in hand, trimmed its borders and made it altogether delightful. the institution of chautauqua is the largest village on the lake. i can't hope to give you an idea of it, but try to imagine the charlesville at mussoorie magnified ten times and set down in the midst of hundreds of tiny little hill houses, each different from its neighbour, brightly painted and constructed of wood. add something of the peace of dull dalhousie, flavour with a tincture of missions and the old polytechnic, cassell's self educator and a monday pop, and spread the result out flat on the shores of naini tal lake, which you will please transport to the dun. but that does not half describe the idea. we watched it through a wicket gate, where we were furnished with a red ticket, price forty cents, and five dollars if you lost it. i naturally lost mine on the spot and was fined accordingly. once inside the grounds on the paths that serpentined round the myriad cottages i was lost in admiration of scores of pretty girls, most of them with little books under their arms, and a pretty air of seriousness on their faces. then i stumbled upon an elaborately arranged mass of artificial hillocks surrounding a mud puddle and a wormy streak of slime connecting it with another mud puddle. little boulders topped with square pieces of putty were strewn over the hillocks--evidently with intention. when i hit my foot against one such boulder painted "jericho," i demanded information in aggrieved tones. "hsh!" said the professor. "it's a model of palestine--the holy land--done to scale and all that, you know." two young people were flirting on the top of the highest mountain overlooking jerusalem; the mud puddles were meant for the dead sea and the sea of galilee, and the twisting gutter was the jordan. a small boy sat on the city "safed" and cast his line into chautauqua lake. on the whole it did not impress me. the hotel was filled with women, and a large blackboard in the main hall set forth the exercises for the day. it seemed that chautauqua was a sort of educational syndicate, _cum_ hotel, _cum_ (very mild) rosherville. there were annually classes of young women and young men who studied in the little cottages for two or three months in the year and went away to self-educate themselves. there were other classes who learned things by correspondence, and yet other classes made up the teachers. all these delights i had missed, but had arrived just in time for a sort of debauch of lectures which concluded the three months' education. the syndicate in control had hired various lecturers whose names would draw audiences, and these men were lecturing about the labour problem, the servant-girl question, the artistic and political aspect of greek life, the pope in the middle ages and similar subjects, in all of which young women do naturally take deep delight. professor mahaffy (what the devil was he doing in that gallery?) was the greek art side man, and a dr. gunsaulus handled the pope. the latter i loved forthwith. he had been to some gathering on much the same lines as the chautauqua one, and had there been detected, in the open daylight, smoking a cigar. one whole lighted cigar. then his congregation or his class, or the mothers of both of them, wished to know whether this was the sort of conduct for a man professing temperance. i have not heard dr. gunsaulus lecture, but he must be a good man. professor mahaffy was enjoying himself. i sat close to him at tiffin and heard him arguing with an american professor as to the merits of the american constitution. both men spoke that the table might get the benefit of their wisdom, whence i argued that even eminent professors are eminently human. "now, for goodness' sake, behave yourself," said the professor. "you are not to ask the whereabouts of a bar. you are not to laugh at anything you see, and you are not to go away and deride this institution." remember that advice. but i was virtuous throughout, and my virtue brought its own reward. the parlour of the hotel was full of committees of women; some of them were methodist episcopalians, some were congregationalists, and some were united presbyterians; and some were faith healers and christian scientists, and all trotted about with notebooks in their hands and the expression of atlas on their faces. they were connected with missions to the heathen, and so forth, and their deliberations appeared to be controlled by a male missionary. the professor introduced me to one of them as their friend from india. "indeed," said she; "and of what denomination are you?" "i--i live in india," i murmured. "you are a missionary, then?" i had obeyed the professor's orders all too well. "i am not a missionary," i said, with, i trust, a decent amount of regret in my tones. she dropped me and i went to find the professor, who had cowardly deserted me, and i think was laughing on the balcony. it is very hard to persuade a denominational american that a man from india is not a missionary. the home-returned preachers very naturally convey the impression that india is inhabited solely by missionaries. i heard some of them talking and saw how, all unconsciously, they were hinting the thing which was not. but prejudice governs me against my will. when a woman looks you in the face and pities you for having to associate with "heathen" and "idolaters"--sikh sirdar of the north, if you please, mahommedan gentlemen and the simple-minded _jat_ of the punjab--what can you do? the professor took me out to see the sights, and lest i should be further treated as a denominational missionary i wrapped myself in tobacco smoke. this ensures respectful treatment at chautauqua. an amphitheatre capable of seating five thousand people is the centre-point of the show. here the lecturers lecture and the concerts are held, and from here the avenues start. each cottage is decorated according to the taste of the owner, and is full of girls. the verandahs are alive with them; they fill the sinuous walks; they hurry from lecture to lecture, hatless, and three under one sunshade; they retail little confidences walking arm-in-arm; they giggle for all the world like uneducated maidens, and they walk about and row on the lake with their very young men. the lectures are arranged to suit all tastes. i got hold of one called "the eschatology of our saviour." it set itself to prove the length, breadth and temperature of hell from information garnered from the new testament. i read it in the sunshine under the trees, with these hundreds of pretty maidens pretending to be busy all round; and it did not seem to match the landscape. then i studied the faces of the crowd. one-quarter were old and worn; the balance were young, innocent, charming and frivolous. i wondered how much they really knew or cared for the art side of greek life, or the pope in the middle ages; and how much for the young men who walked with them. also what their ideas of hell might be. we entered a place called a museum (all the shows here are of an improving tendency), which had evidently been brought together by feminine hands, so jumbled were the exhibits. there was a facsimile of the rosetta stone, with some printed popular information; an egyptian camel saddle, miscellaneous truck from the holy land, another model of the same, photographs of rome, badly-blotched drawings of volcanic phenomena, the head of the pike that john brown took to harper's ferry that time his soul went marching on, casts of doubtful value, and views of chautauqua, all bundled together without the faintest attempt at arrangement, and all very badly labelled. it was the apotheosis of popular information. i told the professor so, and he said i was an ass, which didn't affect the statement in the least. i have seen museums like chautauqua before, and well i know what they mean. if you do not understand, read the first part of _aurora leigh_. lectures on the chautauqua stamp i have heard before. people don't get educated that way. they must dig for it, and cry for it, and sit up o' nights for it; and when they have got it they must call it by another name or their struggle is of no avail. you can get a degree from this lawn tennis tabernacle of all the arts and sciences at chautauqua. mercifully the students are women-folk, and if they marry the degree is forgotten, and if they become school-teachers they can only instruct young america in the art of mispronouncing his own language. and yet so great is the perversity of the american girl that she can, scorning tennis and the allurements of boating, work herself nearly to death over the skittles of archæology and foreign tongues, to the sorrow of all her friends. late that evening the contemptuous courtesy of the hotel allotted me a room in a cottage of quarter-inch planking, destitute of the most essential articles of toilette furniture. ten shillings a day was the price of this shelter, for chautauqua is a paying institution. i heard the professor next door banging about like a big jack-rabbit in a very small packing-case. presently he entered, holding between disgusted finger and thumb the butt end of a candle, his only light, and this in a house that would burn quicker than cardboard if once lighted. "isn't it shameful? isn't it atrocious? a dâk bungalow _khansamah_ wouldn't dare to give me a raw candle to go to bed by. i say, when you describe this hole rend them to pieces. a candle stump! give it 'em hot." you will remember the professor's advice to me not long ago. "'fessor," said i loftily (my own room was a windowless dog-kennel), "this is unseemly. we are now in the most civilised country on earth, enjoying the advantages of an institootion which is the flower of the civilisation of the nineteenth century; and yet you kick up a fuss over being obliged to go to bed by the stump of a candle! think of the pope in the middle ages. reflect on the art side of greek life. remember the sabbath day to keep it holy, and get out of this. you're filling two-thirds of my room." * * * * * _apropos_ of sabbath, i have come across some lovely reading which it grieves me that i have not preserved. chautauqua, you must know, shuts down on sundays. with awful severity an eminent clergyman has been writing to the papers about the beauties of the system. the stalls that dispense terrible drinks of moxie, typhoidal milk-shakes and sulphuric-acid-on-lime-bred soda-water are stopped; boating is forbidden; no steamer calls at the jetty, and the nearest railway station is three miles off, and you can't hire a conveyance; the barbers must not shave you, and no milkman or butcher goes his rounds. the reverend gentleman enjoys this (he must wear a beard). i forget his exact words, but they run: "and thus, thank god, no one can supply himself on the lord's day with the luxuries or conveniences that he has neglected to procure on saturday." of course, if you happen to linger inside the wicket gate--verily chautauqua is a close preserve--over sunday, you must bow gracefully to the rules of the place. but what are you to do with this frame of mind? the owner of it would send missions to convert the "heathen," or would convert you at ten minutes' notice; and yet if you called him a heathen and an idolater he would probably be very much offended. oh, my friends, i have been to one source of the river of missionary enterprise, and the waters thereof are bitter--bitter as hate, narrow as the grave! not now do i wonder that the missionary in the east is at times, to our thinking, a little intolerant towards beliefs he cannot understand and people he does not appreciate. rather it is a mystery to me that these delegates of an imperious ecclesiasticism have not a hundred times ere this provoked murder and fire among our wards. if they were true to the iron teachings of centreville or petumna or chunkhaven, when they came they would have done so. for centreville or smithson or squeehawken teach the only true creeds in all the world, and to err from their tenets, as laid down by the bishops and the elders, is damnation. how it may be in england at the centres of supply i cannot tell, but shall presently learn. here in america i am afraid of these grim men of the denominations, who know so intimately the will of the lord and enforce it to the uttermost. left to themselves they would prayerfully, in all good faith and sincerity, slide gradually, ere a hundred years, from the mental inquisitions which they now work with some success to an institootion--be sure it would be an "institootion" with a journal of its own--not far different from what the torquemada ruled aforetime. does this seem extravagant? i have watched the expression on the men's faces when they told me that they would rather see their son or daughter dead at their feet than doing such and such things--trampling on the grass on a sunday, or something equally heinous--and i was grateful that the law of men stood between me and their interpretation of the law of god. they would assuredly slay the body for the soul's sake and account it righteousness. and this would befall not in the next generation, perhaps, but in the next, for the very look i saw in a eusufzai's face at peshawar when he turned and spat in my tracks i have seen this day at chautauqua in the face of a preacher. the will was there, but not the power. the professor went up the lake on a visit, taking my ticket of admission with him, and i found a child, aged seven, fishing with a worm and pin, and spent the rest of the afternoon in his company. he was a delightful young citizen, full of information and apparently ignorant of denominations. we caught sun fish and catfish and pickerel together. the trouble began when i attempted to escape through the wicket on the jetty and let the creeds fight it out among themselves. without that ticket i could not go, unless i paid five dollars. that was the rule to prevent people cheating. "you see," quoth a man in charge, "you've no idea of the meanness of these people. why, there was a lady this season--a prominent member of the baptist connection--we know, but we can't prove it that she had two of her hired girls in a cellar when the grounds were being canvassed for the annual poll-tax of five dollars a head. so she saved ten dollars. we can't be too careful with this crowd. you've got to produce that ticket as a proof that you haven't been living in the grounds for weeks and weeks." "for weeks and weeks!" the blue went out of the sky as he said it. "but i wouldn't stay here for one week if i could help it," i answered. "no more would i," he said earnestly. returned the professor in a steamer, and him i basely left to make explanations about that ticket, while i returned to lakewood--the nice hotel without any regulations. i feared that i should be kept in those terrible grounds for the rest of my life. and it turned out an hour later that the same fear lay upon the professor also. he arrived heated but exultant, having baffled the combined forces of all the denominations and recovered the five-dollar deposit. "i wouldn't go inside those gates for anything," he said. "i waited on the jetty. what do you think of it all?" "it has shown me a new side of american life," i responded. "i never want to see it again--and i'm awfully sorry for the girls who take it seriously. i suppose the bulk of them don't. they just have a good time. but it would be better----" "how?" "if they all got married instead of pumping up interest in a bric-à-brac museum and advertised lectures, and having their names in the papers. one never gets to believe in the proper destiny of woman until one sees a thousand of 'em doing something different. i don't like chautauqua. there's something wrong with it, and i haven't time to find out where. but it is wrong." footnotes: [footnote : no. xxxix appeared in the "pioneer mail," vol. xvii, no. , april , .] the bow flume cable-car[ ] "see those things yonder?" he looked in the direction of the market street cable-cars which, moved without any visible agency, were conveying the good people of san francisco to a picnic somewhere across the harbour. the stranger was not more than seven feet high. his face was burnished copper, his hands and beard were fiery red and his eyes a baleful blue. he had thrust his large frame into a suit of black clothes which made no pretensions toward fitting him, and his cheek was distended with plug-tobacco. "those cars," he said, more to himself than to me, "run upon a concealed cable worked by machinery, and that's what broke our syndicate at bow flume. concealed machinery, no--concealed ropes. don't you mix yourself with them. they are ontrustworthy." "these cars work comfortably," i ventured. "they run over people now and then, but that doesn't matter." "certainly not, not in 'frisco--by no means. it's different out yonder." he waved a palm-leaf fan in the direction of mission dolores among the sandhills. then without a moment's pause, and in a low and melancholy voice, he continued: "young feller, all patent machinery is a monopoly, and don't you try to bust it or else it will bust you. 'bout five years ago i was at bow flume--a minin'-town way back yonder--beyond the sacramento. i ran a saloon there with o'grady--howlin' o'grady, so called on account of the noise he made when intoxicated. i never christened my saloon any high-soundin' name, but owing to my happy trick of firing out men who was too full of bug-juice and disposed to be promiscuous in their dealin's, the boys called it 'the wake up an' git bar.' o'grady, my partner, was an unreasonable inventorman. he invented a check on the whisky bar'ls that wasn't no good except lettin' the whisky run off at odd times and shutting down when a man was most thirstiest. i remember half bow flume city firing their six-shooters into a cask--and bourbon at that--which was refusing to run on account of o'grady's patent double-check tap. but that wasn't what i started to tell you about--not by a long ways. o'grady went to 'frisco when the bow flume saloon was booming. he hed a good time in 'frisco, kase he came back with a very bad head and no clothes worth talkin' about. he had been jailed most time, but he had investigated the mechanism of these cars yonder--when he wasn't in the cage. he came back with the liquor for the saloon, and the boys whooped round him for half a day, singing songs of glory. 'boys,' says o'grady, when a half of bow flume were lying on the floor kissing the cuspidors and singing 'way down the swanee river,' being full of some new stuff o'grady had got up from 'frisco--'boys,' says o'grady, 'i have the makings of a company in me. you know the road from this saloon to bow flume is bad and 'most perpendicular.' that was the exact state of the case. bow flume city was three hundred feet above our saloon. the boys used to roll down and get full, and any that happened to be sober rolled them up again when the time came to get. some dropped into the cañon that way--bad payers mostly. you see, a man held all the hill bow flume was built on, and he wanted forty thousand dollars for a forty-five by hundred lot o' ground. we kept the whisky and the boys came down for it. the exercise disposed them to thirst. 'boys,' says o'grady, 'as you know, i have visited the great metropolis of 'frisco.' then they had drinks all round for 'frisco. 'and i have been jailed a few while enjoying the sights.' then they had drinks all round for the jail that held o'grady. 'but,' he says, 'i have a proposal to make.' more drinks on account of the proposal. 'i have got a hold of the idea of those 'frisco cable-cars. some of the idea i got in 'frisco. the rest i have invented,' says o'grady. then they drank all round for the invention. "i am coming to the point. o'grady made a company--the drunkest i ever saw--to run a cable-car on the 'frisco model from 'wake up an' git saloon' to bow flume. the boys put in about four thousand dollars, for bow flume was squirling gold then. there's nary shanty there now. o'grady put in four thousand dollars of his own, and i was roped in for as much. o'grady desired the concern to represent the resources of bow flume. we got a car built in 'frisco for two thousand dollars, with an elegant bar at one end--nickel-plated fixings and ruby glass. "the notion was to dispense liquor _en route_. a bow flume man could put himself outside two drinks in a minute and a half, the same not being pressed for urgent business. the boys graded the road for love, and we run a rope in a little trough in the middle. that rope ran swift, and any blame fool that had his foot cut off, fooling in the middle of the road, might ha' found salvation by using our bow flume palace car. the boys said that was square. o'grady took the contract for building the engine to wind the rope. he called his show a mule--it was a crossbreed between a threshing machine and an elevator ram. i don't think he had followed the 'frisco patterns. he put all our dollars into that blamed barroom on the car, knowing what would please the boys best. they didn't care much about the machinery, so long as the car hummed. "we charged the boys a dollar a head per trip. one free drink included. that paid--paid like--paradise. they liked the motion. o'grady was engineer, and another man sort of tended to the rope engine when he wasn't otherwise engaged. those cable-cars run by gripping on to the rope. you know that. when the grip's off the car is braked down and stands still. there ought to have been two cars by right--one to run up and the other down. but o'grady had a blamed invention for reversing the engine, so the cable ran both ways--up to bow flume and down to the saloon--the terminus being in front of our door. a man could kick a friend slick from the bar into the car. the boys appreciated that. the bow flume palace car company earned twenty on the hundred in three months, besides the profits of the drinks. we might have lasted to this day if o'grady hadn't tinkered his blamed engine up on top of bow flume hill. the boys complained the show didn't hum sufficient. they required railroad speed. o'grady ran 'em up and down at fourteen miles an hour; and his latest improvement was to touch twenty-four. the strain on the brakes was terrible--quite terrible. but every time o'grady raised the record, the boys gave him a testimonial. 'twasn't in human nature not to crowd ahead after that. testimonials demoralise the publickest of men. "i rode on the car that memorial day. just as we started with a double load of boys and a razzle-dazzle assortment of drinks, something went _zip_ under the car bottom. we proceeded with velocity. all the prominent members of the company were aboard. 'the grip has got snubbed on the rope,' says o'grady quite quietly. 'boys, this will be the biggest smash on record. something's going to happen.' we proceeded at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour till the end of our journey. i don't know what happened there. we could get clear of the rope anyways at the point where it turned round a pulley to start up hill again. we struck--struck the stoop of the 'wake up an' git saloon'--_my_ saloon--and the next thing i knew was feeling of my legs under an assortment of matchwood and broken glass, representing liquor and fixtures to the tune of eight thousand. the car had been flicked through the saloon, bringing down the entire roof on the floor. it had then bucked out into the firmament, describing a parabola over the bluff at the back of the saloon, and was lying at the foot of that bluff, three hundred feet below, like a busted kaleidoscope--all nickel, shavings and bits of red glass. o'grady and most of the prominent members of the company were dead--very dead--and there wasn't enough left of the saloon to pay for a drink. i took in the situation lying on my stomach at the edge of the bluff, and i suspicioned that any lawsuits that might arise would be complicated by shooting. so i quit bow flume by the back trail. i guess the coroner judged that there were no summons--leastways i never heard any more about it. since that time i've had a distrust to cable-cars. the rope breaking is no great odds, bekase you can stop the car, but it's getting the grip tangled with the running rope that spreads ruin and desolation over thriving communities and prevents the development of local resources." footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. vii.] in partibus[ ] _the 'buses run to battersea, the 'buses run to bow, the 'buses run to westbourne grove, and nottinghill also; but i am sick of london town, from shepherd's bush to bow._ i see the smut upon my cuff and feel him on my nose; i cannot leave my window wide when gentle zephyr blows, because he brings disgusting things and drops 'em on my "clo'es." the sky, a greasy soup-toureen, shuts down atop my brow. yes, i have sighed for london town and i have got it now: and half of it is fog and filth, and half is fog and row. and when i take my nightly prowl, 'tis passing good to meet the pious briton lugging home his wife and daughter sweet, through four packed miles of seething vice, thrust out upon the street. earth holds no horror like to this in any land displayed, from suez unto sandy hook, from calais to port said; and 'twas to hide their heathendom the beastly fog was made. i cannot tell when dawn is near, or when the day is done, because i always see the gas and never see the sun, and now, methinks, i do not care a cuss for either one. but stay, there was an orange, or an aged egg its yolk; it might have been a pears' balloon or barnum's latest joke: i took it for the sun and wept to watch it through the smoke. it's oh to see the morn ablaze above the mango-tope, when homeward through the dewy cane the little jackals lope, and half bengal heaves into view, new-washed--with sunlight soap. it's oh for one deep whisky peg when christmas winds are blowing, when all the men you ever knew, and all you've ceased from knowing, are "entered for the tournament, and everything that's going." but i consort with long-haired things in velvet collar-rolls, who talk about the aims of art, and "theories" and "goals," and moo and coo with women-folk about their blessed souls. but that they call "psychology" is lack of liver pill, and all that blights their tender souls is eating till they're ill, and their chief way of winning goals consists in sitting still. it's oh to meet an army man, set up, and trimmed and taut, who does not spout hashed libraries or think the next man's thought, and walks as though he owned himself, and hogs his bristles short. hear now, a voice across the seas to kin beyond my ken, if ye have ever filled an hour with stories from my pen, for pity's sake send some one here to bring me news of men! _the 'buses run to islington, to highgate and soho, to hammersmith and kew therewith, and camberwell also, but i can only murmur "'bus" from shepherd's bush to bow._ footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. viii.] letters on leave[ ] i to lieutenant john mchail, st (kumharsen) p.n.i., _hakaiti via tharanda_, _assam_. dear old man: your handwriting is worse than ever, but as far as i can see among the loops and fish-hooks, you are lonesome and want to be comforted with a letter. i knew you wouldn't write to me unless you needed something. you don't tell me that you have left your regiment, but from what you say about "my battalion," "my men," and so forth, it seems as if you were raising military police for the benefit of the chins. if that's the case, i congratulate you. the pay is good. ouless writes to me from some new fort something or other, saying that he has struggled into a billet of rs. (military police), and instead of being chased by writters as he used to be, is ravaging the country round shillong in search of a wife. i am very sorry for the mrs. ouless of the future. that doesn't matter. you probably know more about the boys yonder than i do. if you'll only send me from time to time some record of their movements i'll try to tell you of things on this side of the water. you say "you don't know what it is to hear from town." i say "you don't know what it is to hear from the _dehat_." now and again men drift in with news, but i don't like hot-weather _khubber_. it's all of the domestic occurrence kind. old "hat" constable came to see me the other day. you remember the click in his throat before he begins to speak. he sat still, clicking at quarter-hour intervals, and after each click he'd say: "d'ye remember mistress so-an'-so? well, she's dead o' typhoid at naogong." when it wasn't "mistress so-an'-so" it was a man. i stood four clicks and four deaths, and then i asked him to spare me the rest. you seem to have had a bad season, taking it all round, and the women seem to have suffered most. is that so? we don't die in london. we go out of town, and we make as much fuss about it as if we were going to the neva. now i understand why the transport is the first thing to break down when our army takes the field. the englishman is cumbrous in his movements and very particular about his baskets and hampers and trunks--not less than seven of each--for a fifty-mile journey. leave season began some weeks ago, and there is a _burra-choop_ along the streets that you could shovel with a spade. all the people that say they are everybody have gone--quite two hundred miles away. some of 'em are even on the continent--and the clubs are full of strange folk. i found a reform man at the savage a week ago. he didn't say what his business was, but he was dusty and looked hungry. i suppose he had come in for food and shelter. like the rest i'm on leave too. i converted myself into a government secretary, awarded myself one month on full pay with the chance of an extension, and went off. then it rained and hailed, and rained again, and i ran up and down this tiny country in trains trying to find a dry place. after ten days i came back to town, having been stopped by the sea four times. i was rather like a kitten at the bottom of a bucke chasing its own tail. so i'm sitting here under a grey, muggy sky wondering what sort of time they are having at simla. it's august now. the rains would be nearly over, all the theatricals would be in full swing, and jakko hill would be just paradise. you're probably pink with prickly heat. sit down quietly under the punkah and think of umballa station, hot as an oven at four in the morning. think of the dak-gharry slobbering in the wet, and the first little cold wind that comes round the first corner after the tonga is clear of kalka. there's a wind you and i know well. it's blowing over the grass at dugshai this very moment, and there's a smell of hot fir trees all along and along from solon to simla, and some happy man is flying up that road with fragments of a tonga-bar in his eye, his pet terrier under his arm, his thick clothes on the back-seat and the certainty of a month's pure joy in front of him. _instead of which_ you're being stewed at hakaiti and i'm sitting in a second-hand atmosphere above a sausage-shop, watching three sparrows playing in a dirty-green tree and pretending that it's summer. i have a view of very many streets and a river. except the advertisements on the walls, there isn't one speck of colour as far as my eye can reach. the very cat, who is an amiable beast, comes off black under my hand, and i daren't open the window for fear of smuts. and this is better than a soaked and sobbled country, with the corn-shocks standing like plover's eggs in green moss and the oats lying flat in moist lumps. we haven't had any summer, and yesterday i smelt the raw touch of the winter. just one little whiff to show that the year had turned. "oh, what a happy land is england!" i cannot understand the white man at home. you remember when we went out together and landed at the apollo bunder with all our sorrows before us, and went to watson's hotel and saw the snake-charmers? you said: "it'll take me all my lifetime to distinguish one nigger from another." that was eight years ago. now you don't call them niggers any more, and you're supposed--quite wrongly--to have an insight into native character, or else you would never have been allowed to recruit for the kumharsens. i feel as i felt at watson's. they are so deathlily alike, especially the more educated. they all seem to read the same books, and the same newspapers telling 'em what to admire in the same books, and they all quote the same passages from the same books, and they write books on books about somebody else's books, and they are penetrated to their boot-heels with a sense of the awful seriousness of their own views of the moment. above that they seem to be, most curiously and beyond the right of ordinary people, divorced from the knowledge or fear of death. of course, every man conceives that every man except himself is bound to die (you remember how hallatt spoke the night before he went out), but these men appear to be like children in that respect. i can't explain exactly, but it gives an air of unreality to their most earnest earnestnesses; and when a young man of views and culture and aspirations is in earnest, the trumpets of jericho are silent beside him. because they have everything done for them they know how everything ought to be done; and they are perfectly certain that wood pavements, policemen, shops and gaslight come in the regular course of nature. you can guess with these convictions how thoroughly and cocksurely they handle little trifles like colonial administration, the wants of the army, municipal sewage, housing of the poor, and so forth. every third common need of average men is, in their mouths, a tendency or a movement or a federation affecting the world. it never seems to occur to 'em that the human instinct of getting as much as possible for money paid, or, failing money, for threats and fawnings, is about as old as cain; and the burden of their _bat_ is: "me an' a few mates o' mine are going to make a new world." as long as men only write and talk they must think that way, i suppose. it's compensation for playing with little things. and that reminds me. do you know the university smile? you don't by that name, but sometimes young civilians wear it for a very short time when they first come out. something--i wonder if it's our brutal chaff, or a billiard-cue, or which?--takes it out of their faces, and when they next differ with you they do so without smiling. but that smile flourishes in london. i've met it again and again. it expresses tempered grief, sorrow at your complete inability to march with the march of progress at the universities, and a chastened contempt. there is one man who wears it as a garment. he is frivolously young--not more than thirty-five or forty--and all these years no one has removed that smile. he knows everything about everything on this earth, and above all he knows all about men under any and every condition of life. he knows all about the aggressive militarism of you and your friends; he isn't quite sure of the necessity of an army; he is certain that colonial expansion is nonsense; and he is more than certain that the whole step of all our empire must be regulated by the knowledge and foresight of the workingman. then he smiles--smiles like a seraph with an m.a. degree. what can you do with a man like that? he has never seen an unmade road in his life; i think he believes that wheat grows on a tree and that beef is dug from a mine. he has never been forty miles from a railway, and he has never been called upon to issue an order to anybody except his well-fed servants. isn't it wondrous? and there are battalions and brigades of these men in town removed from the fear of want, living until they are seventy or eighty, sheltered, fed, drained and administered, expending their vast leisure in talking and writing. but the real fun begins much lower down the line. i've been associating generally and very particularly with the men who say that they are the only men in the world who work--and they call themselves _the_ workingman. now the workingman in america is a nice person. he says he is a man and behaves accordingly. that is to say, he has some notion that he is part and parcel of a great country. at least, he talks that way. but in this town you can see thousands of men meeting publicly on sundays to cry aloud that everybody may hear that they are poor, downtrodden helots--in fact, "the pore workin'man." at their clubs and pubs the talk is the same. it's the utter want of self-respect that revolts. my friend the tobacconist has a cousin, who is, apparently, sound in mind and limb, aged twenty-three, clear-eyed and upstanding. he is a "skibbo" by trade--a painter of sorts. he married at twenty, and he has two children. he can spend three-quarters of an hour talking about his downtrodden condition. he works under another _raj-mistri_, who has saved money and started a little shop of his own. he hates that _raj-mistri_; he loathes the police; and his views on the lives and customs of the aristocracy are strange. he approves of every form of lawlessness, and he knows that everybody who holds authority is sure to be making a good thing out of it. of himself as a citizen he never thinks. of himself as an ishmael he thinks a good deal. he is entitled to eight hours' work a day and some time off--said time to be paid for; he is entitled to free education for his children--and he doesn't want no bloomin' clergyman to teach 'em; he is entitled to houses especially built for himself because he pays the bulk of the taxes of the country. he is not going to emigrate, not he; he reserves to himself the right of multiplying as much as he pleases; the streets must be policed for him while he demonstrates, immediately under my window, by the way, for ten consecutive hours, and _i_ am probably a thief because my clothes are better than his. the proposition is a very simple one. he has no duties to the state, no personal responsibility of any kind, and he'd sooner see his children dead than soldiers of the queen. the government owes him everything because he is a pore workin'man. when the guards tried their board-school mutiny at the wellington barracks my friend was jubilant. "what did i tell you?" he said. "you see the very soldiers won't stand it." "what's it?" "bein' treated like machines instead of flesh and blood. 'course they won't." the popular evening paper wrote that the guards, with perfect justice, had rebelled against being treated like machines instead of flesh and blood. then i thought of a certain regiment that lay in mian mir for three years and dropped four hundred men out of a thousand. it died of fever and cholera. there were no pretty nursemaids to work with it in the streets, because there were no streets. i saw how the guards amused themselves and how their sergeants smoked in uniform. i pitied the guards with their cruel sentry-goes, their three nights out of bed, and their unlimited supply of love and liquor. another man, not a workman, told me that the guards' riot--it's impossible, as you know, to call this kick-up of the fatted flunkies of the army a mutiny--was only "a schoolboy's prank"; and he could not see that if it was what he said it was, the guards were no regiment and should have been wiped out decently and quietly. there again the futility of a sheltered people cropped up. you mustn't treat a man like a machine in this country, but you can't get any work out of a man till he has learned to work like a machine. d---- has just come home for a few months from the charge of a mountain battery on the frontier. he used to begin work at eight, and he was thankful if he got off at six; most of the time on his feet. when he went to the black mountain he was extensively engaged for nearly sixteen hours a day; and that on food at which the "pore workin'man" would have turned up his state-lifted nose. d---- on the subject of labour as understood by the white man in his own home is worth hearing. though coarse--considerably coarse! but d---- doesn't know all the hopeless misery of the business. when the small pig, oyster, furniture, carpet, builder or general shopman works his way out of the ruck he turns round and makes his old friends and employes sweat. he knows how near he can go to flaying 'em alive before they kick; and in this matter he is neither better nor worse than a _bunnia_ or a _havildar_ of our own blessed country. it's the small employer of labour that skins his servant, exactly as the forty-pound householder works her one white servant to the bone and goes to drop pennies into the plate to convert the heathen in the east. just at present, as you have read, the person who calls himself the pore workin'man--the man i saw kicking fallen men in the mud by the docks last winter--has discovered a real, fine, new original notion; and he is working it for all he is worth. he calls it the solidarity of labour _bundobast_; but it's caste--four thousand years old, caste of menu--with old _shetts_, _mahajuns_, guildtolls, excommunication and all the rest of it. all things considered, there isn't anything much older than caste--it began with the second generation of man on earth--but to read the "advance" papers on the subject you'd imagine it was a revelation from heaven. the real fun will begin--as it has begun and ended many times before--when the caste of skilled labour--that's the pore workin'man--are pushed up and knocked about by the lower and unrecognised castes, who will form castes of their own and outcaste on the decision of their own _punchayats_. how these castes will scuffle and fight among themselves, and how astonished the englishman will be! he is naturally lawless because he is a fighting animal; and his amazingly sheltered condition has made him inconsequent. i don't like inconsequent lawlessness. i've seen it down at bow street, at the docks, by the g.p.o., and elsewhere. its chief home, of course, is in that queer place called the house of commons, but no one goes there who isn't forced by business. it's shut up at present, and the persons who belong to it are loose all over the face of the country. i don't think--but i won't swear--that any of them are spitting at policemen. one man appears to have been poaching, others are advocating various forms of murder and outrage--and nobody seems to care. the residue talk--just heavens, how they talk, and what wonderful fictions they tell! and they firmly believe, being ignorant of the mechanism of government, that they administer the country. in addition, certain of their newspapers have elaborately worked up a famine in ireland that could be engineered by two deputy commissioners and four average stunts into a "woe" and a "calamity" that is going to overshadow the peace of the nation--even the empire. i suppose they have their own sense of proportion, but they manage to keep it to themselves very successfully. what do you, who have seen half a countryside in deadly fear of its life, suppose that this people would do if they were _chukkered_ and _gabraowed_? if they really knew what the fear of death and the dread of injury implied? if they died very swiftly, indeed, and could not count their futile lives enduring beyond next sundown? some of the men from your--i mean our--part of the world say that they would be afraid and break and scatter and run. but there is no room in the island to run. the sea catches you, midwaist, at the third step. i am curious to see if the cholera, of which these people stand in most lively dread, gets a firm foothold in london. in that case i have a notion that there will be scenes and panics. they live too well here, and have too much to make life worth clinging to--clubs, and shop fronts, and gas, and theatres, and so forth--things that they affect to despise, and whereon and whereby they live like leeches. but i have written enough. it doesn't exhaust the subject; but you won't be grateful for other epistles. de vitre of the poona irregular moguls will have it that they are a tiddy-iddy people. he says that all their visible use is to produce loans for the colonies and men to be used up in developing india. i honestly believe that the average englishman would faint if you told him it was lawful to use up human life for any purpose whatever. he believes that it has to be developed and made beautiful for the possessor, and in that belief talkatively perpetrates cruelties that would make torquemada jump in his grave. go to alipur if you want to see. i am off to foreign parts--forty miles away--to catch fish for my friend the char-cat; also to shoot a little bird if i have luck. yours, rudyard kipling. ii to captain j. mchail, st (kumharsen) n.i., _hakaiti via tharanda_. captain sahib bahadur! the last _pi_ gives me news of your step, and i'm more pleased about it than many. you've been "cavalry quick" in your promotion. eight years and your company! allahu! but it must have been that long, lean horse-head of yours that looks so wise and says so little that has imposed upon the authorities. my best congratulations. let out your belt two holes, and be happy, as i am not. did i tell you in my last about going to woking in search of a grave? the dust and the grime and the grey and the sausage-shop told on my spirits to such an extent that i solemnly took a train and went grave-hunting through the necropolis--locally called the necrapolis. i wanted an eligible, entirely detached site in a commanding position--six by three and bricked throughout. i found it, but the only drawback was that i must go back to town to the head office to buy it. one doesn't go to town to haggle for tomb-space, so i deferred the matter and went fishing. all the same, there are very nice graves at woking, and i shall keep my eye on one of 'em. since that date i seem to have been in four or five places, because there are labels on the bag. one of the places was plymouth, where i found half a regiment at field exercises on the hoe. they were practising the attack in three lines with the mixed rush at the end, even as it is laid down in the drill-book, and they charged subduedly across the hoe. the people laughed. i was much more inclined to cry. except the major, there didn't seem to be anything more than twenty years old in the regiment; and oh! but it was pink and white and chubby and undersized--just made to die succulently of disease. i fancied that some of our battalions out with you were more or less young and exposed, but a home battalion is a _crêche_, and it scares one to watch it. eminent and distinguished generals get up after dinner--i've listened to two of 'em--and explain that though the home battalion can only be regarded as a feeder to the foreign, yet all our battalions can be regarded as efficient; and if they aren't efficient we shall find in our military reserve the nucleus--how i loath that lying word!--of the lord knows what, but the speeches always end with allusions to the spirit of the english, their glorious past, and the certainty that when the hour of need comes the nation will "emerge victorious." if (_sic_) the engineer of the hungerford bridge told the southeastern railway that because a main girder had stood for thirty years without need of renewal it was therefore sure to stand for another fifty, he would probably get the sack. our military authorities don't get the sack. they are allowed to make speeches in public. some day, if we live long enough, we shall see the glories of the past and the "sublime instinct of an ancient people" without one complete army corps, pitted against a few unsentimental long-range guns and some efficiently organised troops. then the band will begin to play, and it will not play _rule britannia_ until it has played some funny tunes first. do you remember tighe? he was in the deccan lancers and retired because he got married. he is in ireland now, and i met him the other day, idle, unhappy and dying for some work to do. mrs. tighe is equally miserable. she wants to go back to poona instead of administering a big barrack of a house somewhere at the back of a bog. i quote tighe here. he has, you may remember, a pretty tongue about him, and he was describing to me at length how a home regiment behaves when it is solemnly turned out for a week or a month training under canvas: "about four in the mornin', me dear boy, they begin pitchin' their tents for the next day--four hours to pitch it, and the tent ropes a howlin' tangle when all's said and sworn. then they tie their horses with strings to their big toes and go to bed in hollows and caves in the earth till the rain falls and the tents are flooded, and then, me dear boy, the men and the horses and the ropes and the vegetation of the country cuddle each other till the morning for the company's sake. and next day it all begins again. just when they are beginning to understand how to camp they are all put back into their boxes, and half of 'em have lung disease." but what is the use of snarling and grumbling? the matter will adjust itself later on, and the one nation on earth that talks and thinks most of the sanctity of human life will be a little astonished at the waste of life for which it will be responsible. in those days, my captain, the man who can command seasoned troops and have made the best use of those troops will be sought after and petted and will rise to honour. remember the hakaiti when next you measure the naked recruit. let us revisit calmer scenes. i've been down for three perfect days to the seaside. don't you remember what a really fine day means? a milk-white sea, as smooth as glass, with blue-white heat haze hanging over it, one little wave talking to itself on the sand, warm shingle, four bathing machines, cliff in the background, and half the babies in christendom paddling and yelling. it was a queer little place, just near enough to the main line of traffic to be overlooked from morning till night. there was a baby--an ollendorfian baby--with whom i fell madly in love. she lived down at the bottom of a great white sun-bonnet; talked french and english in a clear, bell-like voice, and of such i fervently hope will the kingdom of heaven be. when she found that my french wasn't equal to hers she condescendingly talked english and bade me build her houses of stones and draw cats for her through half the day. after i had done everything that she ordered she went off to talk to some one else. the beach belonged to that baby, and every soul on it was her servant, for i know that we rose with shouts when she paddled into three inches of water and sat down, gasping: "_mon dieu! je suis mort!_" i know you like the little ones, so i don't apologise for yarning about them. she had a sister aged seven and one-half--a lovely child, without a scrap of self-consciousness, and enormous eyes. here comes a real tragedy. the girl--and her name was violet--had fallen wildly in love with a little fellow of nine. they used to walk up the single street of the village with their arms round each other's necks. naturally, she did all the little wooings, and hugh submitted quietly. then devotion began to pall, and he didn't care to paddle with violet. hereupon, as far as i can gather, she smote him on the head and threw him against a wall. anyhow, it was very sweet and natural, and hugh told me about it when i came down. "she's so unrulable," he said. "i didn't hit her back, but i was very angry." of course, violet repented, but hugh grew suspicious, and at the psychological moment there came down from town a destroyer of delights and a separator of companions in the shape of a tricycle. also there were many little boys on the beach--rude, shouting, romping little chaps--who said: "come along!" "hullo!" and used the wicked word "beastly!" among these hugh became a person of importance and began to realise that he was a man who could say "beastly," and "come on!" with the best of 'em. he preferred to run about with the little boys on wars and expeditions, and he wriggled away when violet put her arm round his waist. violet was hurt and angry, and i think she slapped hugh. relations were strained when i arrived because one morning violet, after asking permission, invited hugh to come to lunch. and that bad, spanish-eyed boy deliberately filled his bucket with the cold sea-water and dashed it over violet's pink ankles. (joking apart, this seems to be about the best way of refusing an invitation that civilisation can invent. try it on your colonel.) she was madly angry for a moment, and then she said: "let me carry you up the beach, 'cause of the shingles in your toes." this was divine, but it didn't move hugh, and violet went off to her mother. she sat down with her chin in her hand, looking out at the sea for a long time very sorrowfully. then she said, and it was her first experience: "i know that hugh cares more for his horrid bicycle than he does for me, and if he said he didn't i wouldn't believe him." up to date hugh has said nothing. he is running about playing with the bold, bad little boys, and violet is sitting on a breakwater, trying to find out why things are as they are. it's a nice tale, and tales are scarce these days. have you noticed how small and elemental is the stock of them at the world's disposal? men foregathered at that little seaside place, and, manlike, exchanged stories. they were all the same stories. one had heard 'em in the east with eastern variations, and in the west with western extravagances tacked on. only one thing seemed new, and it was merely a phrase used by a groom in speaking of an ill-conditioned horse: "no, sir; he's not ill in a manner o' speaking, but he's so to speak generally unfriendly with his innards as a usual thing." i entrust this to you as a sacred gift. see that it takes root in the land. "unfriendly with his innards as a usual thing." remember. it's better than laboured explanations in the rains. and i fancy it's raw. and now. but i had nearly forgotten. we're a nation of grumblers, and that's why other people call anglo-indians bores. i write feelingly because m----, just home on long leave, has for the second time sat on my devoted head for two hours simply and solely for the purpose of swearing at the accountant-general. he has given me the whole history of his pay, prospects and promotion twice over, and in case i should misunderstand wants me to dine with him and hear it all for the third time. if m---- would leave the a.-g. alone he is a delightful man, as we all know; but he's loose in london now, button-holing english friends and quoting leave and pay-codes to them. he wants to see a member of parliament about something or other, and i believe he spends his nights rolled up in a _rezai_ on the stairs of the india office waiting to catch a secretary. i like the india office. they are so beautifully casual and lazy, and their rooms look out over the green park, and they are never tired of admiring the view. now and then a man comes in to report himself, and the secretaries and the under-secretaries and the _chaprassies_ play battledore and shuttlecock with him until they are tired. some time since, when i was better, more serious and earnest than i am now, i preached a _jehad_ up and down those echoing corridors, and suggested the abolition of the india office and the purchase of a four-pound-ten american revolving bookcase to hold all the documents on india that were of public value or could be comprehended by the public. now i am more frivolous because i am dropping gently into that grave at woking; and yet i believe in the bookcase. india is bowed down with too much _duftar_ as it is, and the house of correction, revision, division and supervision cannot do her much good. i saw a committee or a council file in the other day. only one desirable tale came to me out of that office. if you've heard it before stop me. it began with a cutting from an obscure welsh paper, i think. a man--a gardener--went mad, announced that lord cross was the messiah and burned himself alive on a pile of garden refuse. that's the first part. i never could get at the second, but i am credibly informed that the work of the india office stood still for three weeks, while the entire staff took council how to break the news to the secretary of state. i believe it still remains unbroken. * * * * * decidedly, leave in england is a disappointing thing. i've wandered into two stations since i wrote the last. nothing but the labels on the bag remain--oh, and a memory of a weighing-in at an east end fishing club. that was an experience. i foregathered with a man on the top of a 'bus, and we became great friends because we both agreed that gorge-tackle for pike was only permissible in very weedy streams. he repeated his views, which were my views, nearly ten times, and in the evening invited me to this weighing-in, at, we'll say, rooms of the lea and chertsey piscatorial anglers' benevolent brotherhood. we assembled in a room at the top of a public-house, the walls ornamented with stuffed fish and water-birds, and the anglers came in by twos and threes, and i was introduced to all of 'em as "the gen'elman i met just now." this seemed to be good enough for all practical purposes. there were ten and five shilling prizes, and the affable and energetic clerk of the scales behaved as though he were weighing-in for the lucknow races. the take of the day was one pound fifteen ounces of dace and roach, about twenty fingerlings, and the winner, who is in charge of a railway book-stall, described minutely how he had caught each fish. as a matter of fact, roach-fishing in the lea and thames is a fine art. then there were drinks--modest little drinks--and they called upon me for a sentiment. you know how things go at the sergeants' messes and some of the lodges. in a moment of brilliant inspiration i gave "free fishing in the parks" and brought down the whole house. sah! free fishing for coarse fish in the serpentine and the green park water would hurt nobody and do a great deal of good to many. the stocking of the water--but what does this interest you? the englishman moves slowly. he is just beginning to understand that it is not sufficient to set apart a certain amount of land for a lung of london and to turn people into it with "there, get along and play," unless he gives 'em something to play with. thirty years hence he will almost allow _cafés_ and hired bands in hyde park. to return for a moment to the fish club. i got away at eleven, and in darkness and despair had to make my way west for leagues and leagues across london. i was on the mile end road at midnight and there lost myself, and learned something more about the policeman. he is haughty in the east and always afraid that he is being chaffed. i honestly only wanted sailing directions to get homeward. one policeman said: "get along. you know your way as well as i do." and yet another: "you go back to the country where you comed from. you ain't doin' no good 'ere!" it was so deadly true that i couldn't answer back, and there wasn't an expensive cab handy to prove my virtue and respectability. next time i visit the lea and chertsey affabilities i'll find out something about trains. meantime i keep holiday dolefully. there is not anybody to play with me. they have all gone away to their own places. even the infant, who is generally the idlest man in the world, writes me that he is helping to steer a ten-ton yacht in scottish seas. when she heels over too much the infant is driven to the o.p. side and she rights herself. the infant's host says: "isn't this bracing? isn't this delightful?" and the infant, who lives in dread of a chill bringing back his indian fever, has to say "ye-es," and pretend to despise overcoats. wallah! this is a cheerful world. rudyard kipling. footnotes: [footnote : the "pioneer mail," vol. xvii, no. , oct. , , page .] the adoration of the mage[ ] this is a slim, thin little story, but it serves to explain a great many things. i picked it up in a four-wheeler in the company of an eminent novelist, a pink-eyed young gentleman who lived on his income, and a gentleman who knew more than he ought; and i preserved it, thinking it would serve to interest you. it may be an old story, but the g.w.k.t.h.o., whom, for the sake of brevity, we will call captain kydd, declared that his best friend had heard it himself. consequently, i doubted its newness more than ever. for when a man raises his voice and vows that the incident occurred opposite his own club window, all the listening world know that they are about to hear what is vulgarly called a cracker. this rule holds good in london as well as in lahore. when we left the house of the highly distinguished politician who had been entertaining us, we stepped into a london particular, which has nothing whatever to do with the story, but was interesting from the little fact that we could not see our hands before our faces. the black, brutal fog had turned each gas-jet into a pin-prick of light, visible only at six inches range. there were no houses, there were no pavements. there were no points of the compass. there were only the eminent novelist, the young gentleman with the pink eyes, captain kydd and myself, holding each other's shoulders in the gloom of tophet. then the eminent novelist delivered himself of an epigram. "let's go home," said he. "let us try," said captain kydd, and incontinently fell down an area into somebody's kitchen yard and disappeared into chaos. when he had climbed out again we heard a something on wheels swearing even worse than captain kydd was, all among the railings of a square. so we shouted, and presently a four-wheeler drove gracefully on to the pavement. "i'm trying to get 'ome," said the cabby. "but if you gents make it worth while ... though heaven knows 'ow we ever shall. guess 'arf a crown apiece might ... and any'ow i won't promise anywheres in particular." the cabby kept his word nobly. he did not find anywheres in particular, but he found several places. first he discovered a pavement kerb and drove pressing his wheel against it till we came to a lamp-post, and that we hit grievously. then he came to what ought to have been a corner, but was a 'bus, and we embraced the thing amid terrific language. then he sailed out into nothing at all--blank fog--and there he commended himself to heaven and his horse to the other place, while the eminent novelist put his head out of the window and gave directions. i begin to understand now why the eminent novelist's villains are so lifelike and his plots so obscure. he has a marvellous breadth of speech, but no ingenuity in directing the course of events. we drove into the island of refuge near the brompton oratory just when he was telling the cabby to be sure and avoid the regents' park canal. then we began to talk about the weather and mister gladstone. if an englishman is unhappy he always talks about mister gladstone in terms of reproof. the eminent novelist was a socialistic-neo-plastic-unionistic-demagoglot radical of the extreme left, and that is the latest novelty of the thing yet invented. he withdrew his head to answer captain kydd's arguments, which were forcible. "well, you'll admit he's all sorts of a madman," said captain kydd sweetly. "he's a saint," said the eminent novelist, "and he moves in an atmosphere that you and those like you cannot breathe." "yes, i always said it was a pretty thick fog. now i know it's as thick as this one. i say, we're on the pavement again; we shall be in a shop in a minute," said captain kydd. but i wanted to see the eminent novelist fight, so i reintroduced mister gladstone while the cab crawled up a wall. "it's not exactly a wholesome atmosphere," said captain kydd when the novelist had finished speaking. "that reminds me of a story--perfectly true story. in the old days, before he went off his chump--" "yah-h-h!" said the eminent novelist, wrapping himself in his inverness. "--went off his nut, he used to consort a good deal with his friends on his own side--visit 'em, y' know, and deliver addresses out of their own bedroom windows, and steal their postcards, and generally be friendly. well, one man he stayed with had a house, a country house, y' know, and in the garden there was a path which was supposed to divide kent and surrey or some counties. they led the old man forth for his walk, y' know, and followed him in gangs to hear that the weather was fine, and of course his host pointed out the path, the old man took in the situation, and put one i daresay they had strewn rose-leaves on it, or spread it with homespun trousers. anyhow, one leg on one side of the path and the other on the other, and with one of those wonderful flashes of humour that come to him when he chooses to frisk among his friends, he said: 'now i am in kent and in surrey at the same time.'" captain kydd ceased speaking as the cab tried to force a way into the south kensington museum. "well, what's there in that?" said the eminent novelist. "oh, nothing much. let's see how it goes afterwards. mrs. gladstone, who was close behind him, turned round and whispered to the hostess in an ecstatic shriek: 'oh, mrs. whateverhernamewas, you _will_ plant a tree there, won't you?'" "by jove!" said the young gentleman with the pink eyes. "i don't believe it," said the eminent novelist. i said nothing, but it seemed very likely. captain kydd laughed: "well, i don't consider that sort of atmosphere exactly wholesome, y' know." and when the cab had landed us in the drinking-fountain in high street, kensington, and the horse fell down, and the cabby collected our half-crowns and gave us his beery blessing, and i had to grope my way home on foot, it occurred to me that perhaps you might be interested in that anecdote. as i have said, it explains a great deal more than appears at first sight. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," no. ix.] a death in the camp[ ] two awful catastrophes have occurred. one englishman in london is dead, and i have scandalised about twenty of his nearest and dearest friends. he was a man nearly seventy years old, engaged in the business of an architect, and immensely respected. that was all i knew about him till i began to circulate among his friends in these parts, trying to cheer them up and make them forget the fog. "hush!" said a man and his wife. "don't you know he died yesterday of a sudden attack of pneumonia? isn't it shocking?" "yes," said i vaguely. "aw'fly shocking. has he left his wife provided for?" "oh, he's very well off indeed, and his wife is quite old. but just think--it was only in the next street it happened!" then i saw that their grief was not for strangeways, deceased, but for themselves. "how old was he?" i said. "nearly seventy, or maybe a little over." "about time for a man to rationally expect such a thing as death," i thought, and went away to another house, where a young married couple lived. "isn't it perfectly ghastly?" said the wife. "mr. strangeways died last night." "so i heard," said i. "well, he had lived his life." "yes, but it was such a shockingly short illness. why, only three weeks ago he was walking about the street." and she looked nervously at her husband, as though she expected him to give up the ghost at any minute. then i gathered, with the knowledge of the length of his sickness, that her grief was not for the late mr. strangeways, and went away thinking over men and women i had known who would have given a thousand years in purgatory for even a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and who were anything but well off. i passed on to a third house full of children, and the shadow of death hung over their heads, for father and mother were talking of mr. strangeway's "end." "most shocking," said they. "it seems that his wife was in the next room when he was dying, and his only son called her, so she just had time to take him in her arms before he died. he was unconscious at the last. wasn't it awful?" when i went away from that house i thought of men and women without a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and without any money, who were anything but unconscious at the last, and who would have given a thousand years in purgatory for one glimpse at their mothers, their wives or their husbands. i reflected how these people died tended by hirelings and strangers, and i was not in the least ashamed to say that i laughed over mr. strangeways' death as i entered the house of a brother in his craft. "heard of strangeways' death?" said he. "most hideous thing. why, he had only a few days before got news of his designs being accepted by the burgoyne cathedral. if he had lived he would have been working out the details now--with me." and i saw that this man's fear also was not on account of mr. strangeways. and i thought of men and women who had died in the midst of wrecked work; then i sought a company of young men and heard them talk of the dead. "that's the second death among people i know within the year," said one. "yes, the second death," said another. i smiled a very large smile. "and you know," said a third, who was the oldest of the party, "they've opened the new road by the head of tresillion road, and the wind blows straight across that level square from the parks. everything is changing about us." "he was an old man," i said. "ye-es. more than middle-aged," said they. "and he outlived his reputation?" "oh, no, or how would he have taken the designs for the burgoyne cathedral? why, the very day he died...." "yes," said i. "he died at the end of a completed work--his design finished, his prize awarded?" "yes; but he didn't live to...." "and his illness lasted seventeen days, of twenty-four hours each?" "yes." "and he was tended by his own kith and kin, dying with his head on his wife's breast, his hand in his only son's hand, without any thought of their possible poverty to vex him. are these things so?" "ye-es," said they. "wasn't it shocking?" "shocking?" i said. "get out of this place. go forth, run about and see what death really means. you have described such dying as a god might envy and a king might pay half his ransom to make certain of. wait till you have seen men--strong men of thirty-five, with little children, die at two days' notice, penniless and alone, and seen it not once, but twenty times; wait till you have seen the young girl die within a fortnight of the wedding; or the lover within three days of his marriage; or the mother--sixty little minutes--before her son can come to her side; wait till you hesitate before handling your daily newspaper for fear of reading of the death of some young man that you have dined with, drank with, shot with, lent money to and borrowed money from, and tested to the uttermost--till you dare not hope for the death of an old man, but, when you are strongest, count up the tale of your acquaintances and friends, wondering how many will be alive six months hence. wait till you have heard men calling in the death hour on kin that cannot come; till you have dined with a man one night and seen him buried on the next. then you can begin to whimper about loneliness and change and desolation." here i foamed at the mouth. "and do you mean to say," drawled a young gentleman, "that there is any society in which that sort of holocaust goes on?" "i do," said i. "it's not society; it's life." and they laughed. but this is the old tale of pharaoh's chariot-wheel and flying-fish. if i tell them yarns, they say: "how true! how true!" if i try to present the truth, they say: "what superb imagination!" but you understand, don't you? footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," no. ix.] a really good time[ ] there are times when one wants to get into pyjamas and stretch and loll, and explain things generally. this is one of those times. it is impossible to stand at ease in london, and the inhabitants are so abominably egotistical that one cannot shout "i, i, i" for two minutes without another man joining in with "me, too!" which things are an allegory. the amusement began with a gentleman of infinite erudition offering to publish my autobiography. i was to write a string of legends--he would publish them; and would i forward a cheque for five guineas "to cover incidental expenses?" to him i explained that i wanted five guinea cheques myself very much indeed, and that, emboldened by his letter, which gave me a very fair insight into his character, i was even then maturing _his_ autobiography, which i hoped to publish before long with illustrations, and would he forward a cheque for five guineas "to cover incidental expenses?" this brought me an eight-page compilation of contumely. he was grieved to find that he had been mistaken in my character, which he had believed was, at least, elevated. he begged me to remember that the first letter had been written in the strictest confidence, and that if i notated one tittle of the said "repository" he would unkennel the bloodhounds of the law and hunt me down. an autobiography on the lines that i had "so flippantly proposed" was libel without benefit of authorship, and i had better lend him two guineas--i.o.u. enclosed--to salve his lacerated feelings. i replied that i had his autobiography by me in manuscript, and would post it to his address, v.p.p., two guineas and one-half. he evidently knew nothing about the v.p.p., and the correspondence stopped. it is really very hard for an anglo-indian to get along in london. besides, my autobiography is not a thing i should care to make public before extensive bowdlerisation. these things, however, only led up to much worse. i dare not grin over them unless i step aside eastward. i wrote stories, all about little pieces of india, carefully arranged and expurgated for the english public. then various people began to write about them. one gentleman pointed out that i had taken "the well-worn themes of passion, love, despair and fate," and, thanks to the "singular fascination" of my style had "wrought them into new and glowing fabricks instinct with the eternal vitality of the east." for three days after this _chit_ i was almost too proud to speak to the housemaid with the fan-teeth (there is a story about her that i will tell another time). on the fourth day another gentleman made clear that that beautiful style was "tortuous, elaborated and inept," and it was only on account of the "newness of the subjects handled so crabbedly" that i "arrested the attention of the public for a day." then i wept before the housemaid, and she called me a "real gentleman" because i gave her a shilling. then i tried an all-round cannon--published one thing under one name and another under another, and sat still to watch. a gentleman, who also speaks with authority on literature and art, came to me and said: "i don't deny that there is a great deal of clever and superficial fooling in that last thing of yours in the--i've forgotten what it was called--but do you yourself think that you have that curious, subtle grip on and instinct of matters oriental that that other man shows in his study of native life?" and he mentioned the name of my other self. i bowed my head, and my shoulders shook with repentance and grief. "no," said i. "it's so true," said he. "yes," said i. "so feeling," said he. "indeed it is," said i. "such honest work, too!" said he. "oh, awful!" said i. "think it over," said he, "and try to follow his path." "i will," said i. and when he left i danced sarabands with the housemaid of the fan-teeth till she wanted to know whether i had bought "spirruts." then another man came along and sat on my sofa and hailed me as a brother. "and i know that we are kindred souls," said he, "because i feel sure that you have evolved all the dreamy mystery and curious brutality of the british soldier from the pure realm of fancy." "i did," i said. "if you went into a barrack-room you would see at once." "faugh!" said he. "what have we to do with barrack-rooms? the pure air of fancy feeds us both; keep to that. if you are trammelled by the bitter, _bornée_ truth, you are lost. you die the death of zola. invention is the only test of creation." "of course," said i. "zola's a bold, bad man. not a patch on _you_." i hadn't caught his name, but i fancied that would prevent him flinging himself about on my sofa, which is a cheap one. "i don't say that altogether," he said. "he has his strong points. but he is deficient in imaginative constructiveness. _you_, i see from what you have said, will belong to the neo-gynekalistic school." i knew "gyne" meant something about cow-killing, and was prepared to hedge when he said good-bye, and wrote an article about my ways and works, which brought another man to my door spouting foam. "great landor's ghost!" he said. "what under the stars has possessed you to join the gynekalistic lot?" "i haven't," i said. "i believe in municipal regulation of slaughter-houses, if there is a strong deputy commissioner to control the muhammadan butchers, especially in the hot weather, but...." "this is madness," said he. "your reputation is at stake. you must make it clear to the world that you have nothing whatever to do with the flatulent, unballasted fiction of...." "do you suppose the world cares a tuppeny dam?" said i. then he raged afresh, and left me, pointing out that the gynewallahs wrote about nothing but women--which seems rather an unlimited subject--and that i would die the death of a french author whose name i have forgotten. but it wasn't zola this time. i asked the housemaid what in the world the gynekalisthenics were. "la, sir," said she, "it's only their way of being rude. that fat gentleman with the long hair tried to kiss me when i opened the door. i slapped his fat chops for him." now the crisis is at its height. all the entire round world, composed, as far as i can learn, of the gynekalistic and the anti-gynekalistic man, and two or three loafers, are trying to find out to what school i rightly belong. they seem to use what they are pleased to call my reputation as a bolster through which to stab at the foe. one gentleman is proving that i am a bit of a blackguard, probably reduced from the ranks, rather an impostor, and a considerable amount of plagiarist. the other man denies the reduction from the ranks, withholds judgment about the plagiarism, but would like, in the interest of the public--who are at present exclusively occupied with barnum--to prove it true, and is convinced that my style is "hermaphroditic." i have all the money on the first man. he is on the eve of discovering that i stole a dead tommy's diary just before i was drummed out of the service for desertion, and have lived on the proceeds ever since. "do _yew_ know," as the private secretary said at simla this year, "it's remarkably hard for an anglo-indian to get along in england." _shakl hai lekin ukl nahin hai!_ footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," no. ix.] on exhibition[ ] it makes me blush pink all over to think about it, but, none the less, i have brought the tale to you, confident that you will understand. an invitation to tea arrived at my address. the english are very peculiar people about their tea. they don't seem to understand that it is a function at which any one who is passing down the mall may present himself. they issue formal cards--just as if tea-drinking were like dancing. my invitation said that i was to tea from : till p.m., and there was never a word of lawn-tennis on the whole of the card. i knew the english were heavy eaters, but this amazed me. "what in the wide world," thought i, "will they find to do for an hour and a half? perhaps they'll play games, as it's near christmas time. they can't sit out in the verandah, and _chabutras_ are impossible." wherefore i went to this house prepared for anything. there was a fine show of damp wraps in the hall, and a cheerful babble of voices from the other side of the drawing-room door. the hostess ran at me, vehemently shouting: "oh, i am so glad you have come. we were all talking about you." as the room was entirely filled with strangers, chiefly female, i reflected that they couldn't have said anything very bad. then i was introduced to everybody, and some of the people were talking in couples, and didn't want to be interrupted in the least, and some were behind settees, and some were in difficulty with their tea-cups, and one and all had exactly the same name. that is the worst of a lisping hostess. almost before i had dropped the last limp hand, a burly ruffian, with a beard, rumbled in my ear: "i trust you were satisfied with my estimate of your powers in last week's _concertina_?" now i don't see the _concertina_ because it's too expensive, but i murmured: "immense! immense! most gratifying. totally undeserved." and the ruffian said: "in a measure, yes. not wholly. i flatter myself that----" "oh, not in the least," said i. "no sugar, thanks." this to the hostess, who was waving sally lunns under my nose. a female, who could not have been less than seven feet high, came on, half speed ahead, through the fog of the tea-steam, and docked herself on the sofa just like an inman liner. "have you ever considered," said she, "the enormous moral responsibility that rests in the hands of one who has the gift of literary expression? in my own case--but you surely know my collaborator." a much huger woman arrived, cast anchor, and docked herself on the other side of the sofa. she was the collaborator. together they confided to me that they were desperately in earnest about the amelioration of something or other. their collective grievance against me was that i was not in earnest. "we have studied your works--all," said the five-thousand-ton four-master, "and we cannot believe that you are in earnest." "oh, no," i said hastily, "i never was." then i saw that that was the wrong thing to say, for the eight-thousand-ton palace cunarder signalled to the sister ship, saying: "you see, my estimate was correct." "now, my complaint against him is that he is too savagely _farouche_," said a weedy young gentleman with tow hair, who ate sally lunns like a workhouse orphan. "_faroucherie_ in his age is a fatal mistake." i reflected a moment on the possibility of getting that young gentleman out into a large and dusty maidan and gently _chukkering_ him before _chota hazri_. he looked too sleek to me as he then stood. but i said nothing, because a tiny-tiny woman with beady-black eyes shrilled: "i disagree with you entirely. he is too much bound by the tradition of the commonplace. i have seen in his later work signs that he is afraid of his public. you must _never_ be afraid of your public." then they began to discuss me as though i were dead and buried under the hearth-rug, and they talked of "tones" and "notes" and "lights" and "shades" and tendencies. "and which of us do you think is correct in her estimate of your character?" said the tiny-tiny woman when they had made me out (a) a giddy lothario; (b) a savage; (c) a pre-rafaelite angel; (d) co-equal and co-eternal with half a dozen gentlemen whose names i had never heard; (e) flippant; (f) penetrated with pathos; (g) an open atheist; (h) a young man of the roman catholic faith with a mission in life. i smiled idiotically, and said i really didn't know. then a man entered whom i knew, and i fled to him for comfort. "have i missed the fun?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye. i explained, snorting, what had befallen. "ay," said he quietly, "you didn't go the right way to work. you should have stood on the hearth-rug and fired off epigrams. that's what i did after i had written _down in the doldrums_, and was fed with crumpets in consequence." a woman plumped down by my side and twisted her hands into knots, and hung her eyes over her cheek-bones. i thought it was too many muffins, till she said: "tell me, oh, tell me, was such-and-such in such a one of your books--was he _real_? was he _quite_ real? oh, how lovely! how sweet! how precious!" she alluded to that drunken ruffian mulvaney, who would have driven her into fits had he ever set foot on her doorstep in the flesh. i caught the half of a wink in my friend's eye as he removed himself and left me alone to tell fibs about the evolution of private mulvaney. i said anything that came uppermost, and my answers grew so wild that the woman departed. then i heard the hostess whispering to a girl, a nice, round, healthy english maiden. "go and talk to him," she said. "talk to him about his books." i gritted my teeth, and waited till the maiden was close at hand and about to begin. there was a lovely young man at the end of the room sucking a stick, and i felt sure that the maiden would much have preferred talking to him. she smiled prefatorily. "it's hot here," i said; "let's go over to the window"; and i plumped down on a three-seated settee, with my back to the young man, leaving only one place for the maiden. i was right. i signalled up the man who had written _down in the doldrums_, and talked to him as fast as i knew how. when he had to go, and the young man with him, the maiden became enthusiastic, not to say gushing. but i knew that those compliments were for value received. then she explained that she was going out to india to stay with her married aunt, wherefore she became as a sister unto me on the spot. her mamma did not seem to know much about indian outfits, and i waxed eloquent on the subject. "it's all nonsense," i said, "to fill your boxes with things that can be made just as well in the country. what you want are walking-dresses and dinner-dresses as good as ever you can get, and gloves tinned up, and odds and ends of things generally. all the rest, unless you're extravagant, the _dharzee_ can make in the verandah. take underclothing, for instance." i was conscious that my loud and cheerful voice was ploughing through one of those ghostly silences that sometimes fall upon a company. the english only wear their outsides in company. they have nothing to do with underclothing. i could feel that without being told. so the silence cut short the one matter in which i could really have been of use. on the pavement my friend who wrote _down in the doldrums_ was waiting to walk home with me. "what in the world does it all mean?" i said. "nothing," said he. "you've been asked there as a small deputy lion to roar in place of a much bigger man. you growled, though." "i should have done much worse if i'd known," i grunted. "ah," said he, "you haven't arrived at the real fun of the show. wait till they've made you jump through hoops and your turn's over, and you can sit on a sofa and watch the new men being brought up and put through their paces. you've nothing like that in india. how do you manage your parties?" and i thought of smooth-cut lawns in the gloaming, and tables spread under mighty trees, and men and women, all intimately acquainted with each other, strolling about in the lightest of raiment, and the old dowagers criticising the badminton, and the young men in riding-boots making rude remarks about the claret cup, and the host circulating through the mob and saying: "hah, piggy," or bobby or flatnose, as the nickname might be, "have another peg," and the hostess soothing the bashful youngsters and talking _khitmatgars_ with the judge's wife, and the last new bride hanging on her husband's arm and saying: "isn't it almost time to go home, dicky, dear?" and the little fat owls chuckling in the _bougainvilleas_, and the horses stamping and squealing in the carriage-drive, and everybody saying the most awful things about everybody else, but prepared to do anything for anybody else just the same; and i gulped a great gulp of sorrow and homesickness. "you wouldn't understand," said i to my friend. "let's go to a pot-house, where cabbies call, and drink something." footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," no. ix.] the three young men[ ] london in the fog "curiouser and curiouser," as alice in wonderland said when she found her neck beginning to grow. each day under the smoke brings me new and generally unpleasant discoveries. the latest are most on my mind. i hasten to transfer them to yours. at first, and several times afterwards, i very greatly desired to talk to a thirteen-two subaltern--not because he or i would have anything valuable to say to each other, but just because he was a subaltern. i wanted to know all about that evergreen polo-pony that "can turn on a sixpence," and the second-hand second charger that, by a series of perfectly unprecedented misfortunes, just failed to win the calcutta derby. then, too, i wished to hear of many old friends across the sea, and who had got his company, and why and where the new generals were going next cold weather, and how the commander-in-chief had been enlivening the simla season. so i looked east and west, and north and south, but never a thirteen-two subaltern broke through the fog; except once--and he had grown a fifteen-one cot down, and wore a tall hat and frock coat, and was begging for coppers from the horse-guards. by the way, if you stand long enough between the mounted sentries--the men who look like reflectors stolen from christmas trees--you will presently meet every human being you ever knew in india. when i am not happy--that is to say, once a day--i run off and play on the pavement in front of the horse-guards, and watch the expressions on the gentlemen's faces as they come out. but this is a digression. after some days--i grew lonelier and lonelier every hour--i went away to the other end of the town, and catching a friend, said: "lend me a man--a young man--to play with. i don't feel happy. i want rousing. i have liver." and the friend said: "ah, yes, of course. what you want is congenial society, something that will stir you up--a fellow-mind. now let me introduce you to a thoroughly nice young man. he's by way of being an ardent neo-alexandrine, and has written some charming papers on the 'ethics of the wood pavement.'" concealing my almost visible rapture, i murmured "oh, bliss!" as they used to say at the gaiety, and extended the hand of friendship to a young gentleman attired after the fashion of the neo-alexandrines, who appear to be a sub-caste of social priests. his hand was a limp hand, his face was very smooth because he had not yet had time to grow any hair, and he wore a cloak like a policeman's cloak, but much more so. on his finger was a cameo-ring about three inches wide, and round his neck, the weather being warm, was a fawn, olive and dead-leaf comforter of soft silk--the sort of thing any right-minded man would give to his mother or his sister without being asked. we looked at each other cautiously for some minutes. then he said: "what do you think of the result of the brighton election?" "beautiful, beautiful," i said, watching his eye, which saddened. "one of the worst--that is, entirely the most absurd _reductio ad absurdum_ of the principle of the narrow and narrow-minded majority imposing a will which is necessarily incult on a minority animated by...." i forget exactly what he said they were animated by, but it was something very fine. "when i was at oxford," he said, "haward of exeter"--he spoke as one speaks of smith of asia--"always inculcated at the union----by the way, you do not know, i suppose, anything of the life at oxford?" "no," i said, anxious to propitiate, "but i remember some boys once who seduced an ekka and a pony into a major's tent at a camp of exercise, laced up the door, and let the major fight it out with the horse." i told that little incident in my best style, and was three parts through it before i discovered that he was looking pained and shocked. "that--ah--was not the side of oxford that i had in mind when i was saying that haward of exeter----" and he explained all about mr. haward, who appeared to be a young gentleman, rising twenty-three, of wonderful mental attainments, and as pernicious a prig as i ever dreamed about. mr. haward had schemes for the better management of creation; my friend told me them all--social, political and economical. then, just as i was feeling faint and very much in need of a drink, he launched without warning upon the boundless seas of literature. he wished to know whether i had read the works of messrs. guy de maupassant, paul bourget and pierre loti. this in the tone of a teacher of euclid. i replied that all my french was confined to the vie parisienne and translations of zola's novels with illustrations. here we parted. london is very large, and i do not think we shall meet any more. i thanked our mutual friend for his kindness, and asked for another young man to play with. this gentleman was even younger than the last, but quite as cocksure. he told me in the course of half a cigar that only men of mediocre calibre went into the army, which was a brutalising profession; that he suffered from nerves, and "an uncontrollable desire to walk up and down the room and sob" (that was too many cigarettes), and that he had never set foot out of england, but knew all about the world from his own theories. thought dickens coarse; scott jingling and meretricious; and had not by any chance read the novels of messrs. guy de maupassant, paul bourget and pierre loti. him i left quickly, but sorry that he could not do a six weeks' training with a middlesex militia regiment, where he would really get something to sob for. the novel business interested me. i perceived that it was a fashion, like his tie and his collars, and i wanted to work it to the fountain-head. to this end i procured the whole shibboleth from guy de maupassant even unto pierre loti by way of bourget. unwholesome was a mild term for these interesting books, which the young men assured me that they read for style. when a fat major makes that remark in an indian club, everybody hoots and laughs. but you must not laugh overseas, especially at young gentlemen who have been to oxford and listened to mr. haward of exeter. then i was introduced to another young man who said he belonged to a movement called toynbee hall, where, i gathered, young gentlemen took an indecent interest in the affairs of another caste, whom, with rare tact, they called "the poor," and told them generally how to order their lives. such was the manner and general aggressiveness of this third young gentleman, that if he had told me that coats were generally worn and good for the protection of the body, i should have paraded bond street in my shirt. what the poor thought of him i could not tell, but there is no room for it in this letter. he said that there was going to be an upheaval of the classes--the english are very funny about their castes. they don't know how to handle them one little bit, and never allow them to draw water or build huts in peace--and the entire social fabric was about to be remodelled on his recommendations, and the world would be generally altered past recognition. no, he had never seen anything of the world, but close acquaintance with authorities had enabled him to form dispassionate judgments on the subjects, and had i, by any chance, read the novels of guy de maupassant, pierre loti and paul bourget? it was a mean thing to do, but i couldn't help it. i had read 'em. i put him on, so to speak, far back in paul bourget, who is a genial sort of writer. i pinned him to one book. he could not escape from paul bourget. he was fed with it till he confessed--and he had been quite ready to point out its beauties--that we could not take much interest in the theories put forward in that particular book. then i said: "get a dictionary and read him," which severed our budding friendship. thereafter i sought our mutual friend and walked up and down his room sobbing, or words to that effect. "good gracious!" said my friend. "is that what's troubling you? now, i hold the ravaging rights over half a dozen fields and a bit of a wood. you can pot rabbits there in the evenings sometimes, and anyway you get exercise. come along." so i went. i have not yet killed anything, but it seems wasteful to drive good powder and shot after poor little bunnies when there are so many other things in the world that would be better for an ounce and a half of number five at sixty yards--not enough to disable, but just sufficient to sting, and be pricked out with a penknife. i should like to wield that penknife. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," no. ix.] my great and only[ ] whether macdougal or macdoodle be his name, the principle remains the same, as mrs. nickleby said. the gentleman appeared to hold authority in london, and by virtue of his position preached or ordained that music-halls were vulgar, if not improper. subsequently, i gathered that the gentleman was inciting his associates to shut up certain music-halls on the ground of the vulgarity aforesaid, and i saw with my own eyes that unhappy little managers were putting notices into the corners of their programmes begging the audience to report each and every impropriety. that was pitiful, but it excited my interest. now, to the upright and impartial mind--which is mine--all the diversions of heathendom--which is the british--are of equal ethnological value. and it is true that some human beings can be more vulgar in the act of discussing etchings, editions of luxury, or their own emotions, than other human beings employed in swearing at each other across the street. therefore, following a chain of thought which does not matter, i visited very many theatres whose licenses had never been interfered with. there i discovered men and women who lived and moved and behaved according to rules which in no sort regulate human life, by tradition dead and done with, and after the customs of the more immoral ancients and barnum. at one place the lodging-house servant was an angel, and her mother a madonna; at a second they sounded the loud timbrel o'er a whirl of bloody axes, mobs, and brown-paper castles, and said it was not a pantomime, but art; at a third everybody grew fabulously rich and fabulously poor every twenty minutes, which was confusing; at a fourth they discussed the nudities and lewdities in false-palate voices supposed to belong to the aristocracy and that tasted copper in the mouth; at a fifth they merely climbed up walls and threw furniture at each other, which is notoriously the custom of spinsters and small parsons. next morning the papers would write about the progress of the modern drama (that was the silver paper pantomime), and "graphic presentment of the realities of our highly complex civilisation." that was the angel housemaid. by the way, when an englishman has been doing anything more than unusually pagan, he generally consoles himself with "over-civilisation." it's the "martyr-to-nerves-dear" note in his equipment. i went to the music-halls--the less frequented ones--and they were almost as dull as the plays, but they introduced me to several elementary truths. ladies and gentlemen in eccentric, but not altogether unsightly, costumes told me (a) that if i got drunk i should have a head next morning, and perhaps be fined by the magistrate; (b) that if i flirted promiscuously i should probably get into trouble; (c) that i had better tell my wife everything and be good to her, or she would be sure to find out for herself and be very bad to me; (d) that i should never lend money; or (e) fight with a stranger whose form i did not know. my friends (if i may be permitted to so call them) illustrated these facts with personal reminiscences and drove them home with kicks and prancings. at intervals circular ladies in pale pink and white would low to their audience to the effect that there was nothing half so sweet in life as "love's young dream," and the billycock hats would look at the four-and-elevenpenny bonnets, and they saw that it was good and clasped hands on the strength of it. then other ladies with shorter skirts would explain that when their husbands "stagger home tight about two, an' can't light the candle, we taik the broom 'andle an' show 'em what women can do." naturally, the billycocks, seeing what might befall, thought things over again, and you heard the bonnets murmuring softly under the clink of the lager-glasses: "not _me_, bill. not _me_!" now these things are basic and basaltic truths. anybody can understand them. they are as old as time. perhaps the expression was occasionally what might be called coarse, but beer is beer, and best in a pewter, though you can, if you please, drink it from venetian glass and call it something else. the halls give wisdom and not too lively entertainment for sixpence--ticket good for four pen'orth of refreshments, chiefly inky porter--and the people who listen are respectable folk living under very grey skies who derive all the light side of their life, the food for their imagination and the crystallised expression of their views on fate and nemesis, from the affable ladies and gentlemen singers. they require a few green and gold maidens in short skirts to kick before them. herein they are no better and no worse than folk who require fifty girls very much undressed, and a setting of music, or pictures that won't let themselves be seen on account of their age and varnish, or statues and coins. all animals like salt, but some prefer rock-salt, red or black in lumps. but this is a digression. out of my many visits to the hall--i chose one hall, you understand, and frequented it till i could tell the mood it was in before i had passed the ticket-poll--was born the great idea. i served it as a slave for seven days. thought was not sufficient; experience was necessary. i patrolled westminster, blackfriars, lambeth, the old kent road, and many, many more miles of pitiless pavement to make sure of my subject. at even i drank my lager among the billycocks, and lost my heart to a bonnet. goethe and shakespeare were my precedents. i sympathised with them acutely, but i got my message. a chance-caught refrain of a song which i understand is protected--to its maker i convey my most grateful acknowledgments--gave me what i sought. the rest was made up of four elementary truths, some humour, and, though i say it who should leave it to the press, pathos deep and genuine. i spent a penny on a paper which introduced me to a great and only who "wanted new songs." the people desired them really. he was their ambassador, and taught me a great deal about the property-right in songs, concluding with a practical illustration, for he said my verses were just the thing and annexed them. it was long before he could hit on the step-dance which exactly elucidated the spirit of the text, and longer before he could jingle a pair of huge brass spurs as a dancing-girl jingles her anklets. that was my notion, and a good one. the great and only possessed a voice like a bull, and nightly roared to the people at the heels of one who was winning triple encores with a priceless ballad beginning deep down in the bass: "we was shopmates--boozin' shopmates." i feared that song as rachel feared ristori. a greater than i had written it. it was a grim tragedy, lighted with lucid humour, wedded to music that maddened. but my "great and only" had faith in me, and i--i clung to the great heart of the people--my people--four hundred "when it's all full, sir." i had not studied them for nothing. i must reserve the description of my triumph for another "turnover." there was no portent in the sky on the night of my triumph. a barrowful of onions, indeed, upset itself at the door, but that was a coincidence. the hall was crammed with billycocks waiting for "we was shopmates." the great heart beat healthily. i went to my beer the equal of shakespeare and molière at the wings in a first night. what would my public say? could anything live after the abandon of "we was shopmates"? what if the redcoats did not muster in their usual strength. o my friends, never in your songs and dramas forget the redcoat. he has sympathy and enormous boots. i believed in the redcoat; in the great heart of the people: above all in myself. the conductor, who advertised that he "doctored bad songs," had devised a pleasant little lilting air for my needs, but it struck me as weak and thin after the thunderous surge of the "shopmates." i glanced at the gallery--the redcoats were there. the fiddle-bows creaked, and, with a jingle of brazen spurs, a forage-cap over his left eye, my great and only began to "chuck it off his chest." thus: "at the back o' the knightsbridge barricks, when the fog was a-gatherin' dim, the lifeguard talked to the undercook, an' the girl she talked to 'im." "_twiddle-iddle-iddle-lum-tum-tum!_" said the violins. "_ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling-ting-ling!_" said the spurs of the great and only, and through the roar in my ears i fancied i could catch a responsive hoof-beat in the gallery. the next four lines held the house to attention. then came the chorus and the borrowed refrain. it took--it went home with a crisp click. my great and only saw his chance. superbly waving his hand to embrace the whole audience, he invited them to join him in: "you may make a mistake when you're mashing a tart, but you'll learn to be wise when you're older, and don't try for things that are out of your reach, and that's what the girl told the soldier, soldier, soldier, and that's what the girl told the soldier." i thought the gallery would never let go of the long-drawn howl on "soldier." they clung to it as ringers to the kicking bell-rope. then i envied no one--not even shakespeare. i had my house hooked--gaffed under the gills, netted, speared, shot behind the shoulder--anything you please. that was pure joy! with each verse the chorus grew louder, and when my great and only had bellowed his way to the fall of the lifeguard and the happy lot of the undercook, the gallery rocked again, the reserved stalls shouted, and the pewters twinkled like the legs of the demented ballet-girls. the conductor waved the now frenzied orchestra to softer lydian strains. my great and only warbled piano: "at the back o' knightsbridge barricks, when the fog's a-gatherin' dim, the lifeguard waits for the undercook, but she won't wait for 'im." "_ta-ra-rara-rara-ra-ra-rah!_" rang a horn clear and fresh as a sword-cut. 'twas the apotheosis of virtue. "she's married a man in the poultry line that lives at 'ighgate 'ill, an' the lifeguard walks with the 'ousemaid now, an' (_awful pause_) she can't foot the bill!" who shall tell the springs that move masses? i had builded better than i knew. followed yells, shrieks and wildest applause. then, as a wave gathers to the curl-over, singer and sung to fill their chests and heave the chorus through the quivering roof--alto, horns, basses drowned, and lost in the flood--to the beach-like boom of beating feet: "oh, think o' my song when you're gowin' it strong an' your boots is too little to 'old yer; an' don't try for things that is out of your reach, an' that's what the girl told the soldier, soldier, so-holdier!" ow! hi! yi! wha-hup! phew! whew! pwhit! bang! wang! crr-rash! there was ample time for variations as the horns uplifted themselves and ere the held voices came down in the foam of sound-- "_that's what the girl told the soldier._" providence has sent me several joys, and i have helped myself to others, but that night, as i looked across the sea of tossing billycocks and rocking bonnets, my work, as i heard them give tongue, not once, but four times--their eyes sparkling, their mouths twisted with the taste of pleasure--i felt that i had secured perfect felicity. i am become greater than shakespeare. i may even write plays for the lyceum, but i never can recapture that first fine rapture that followed the upheaval of the anglo-saxon four hundred of him and her. they do not call for authors on these occasions, but i desired no need of public recognition. i was placidly happy. the chorus bubbled up again and again throughout the evening, and a redcoat in the gallery insisted on singing solos about "a swine in the poultry line," whereas i had written "man," and the pewters began to fly, and afterwards the long streets were vocal with various versions of what the girl had really told the soldier, and i went to bed murmuring: "i have found my destiny." but it needs a more mighty intellect to write the songs of the people. some day a man will rise up from bermondsey, battersea or bow, and he will be coarse, but clearsighted, hard but infinitely and tenderly humorous, speaking the people's tongue, steeped in their lives and telling them in swinging, urging, dinging verse what it is that their inarticulate lips would express. he will make them songs. such songs! and all the little poets who pretend to sing to the people will scuttle away like rabbits, for the girl (which, as you have seen, of course, is wisdom) will tell that soldier (which is hercules bowed under his labours) all that she knows of life and death and love. and the same, they say, is a vulgarity! footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," no. ix.] "the betrayal of confidences"[ ] that was its real name, and its nature was like unto it; but what else could i do? you must judge for me. they brought a card--the housemaid with the fan-teeth held it gingerly between black finger and blacker thumb--and it carried the name mr. r.h. hoffer in old gothic letters. a hasty rush through the file of bills showed me that i owed nothing to any mr. hoffer, and assuming my sweetest smile, i bade fan of the teeth show him up. enter stumblingly an entirely canary-coloured young person about twenty years of age, with a suspicious bulge in the bosom of his coat. he had grown no hair on his face; his eyes were of a delicate water-green, and his hat was a brown billycock, which he fingered nervously. as the room was blue with tobacco-smoke (and latakia at that) he coughed even more nervously, and began seeking for me. i hid behind the writing-table and took notes. what i most noted was the bulge in his bosom. when a man begins to bulge as to that portion of his anatomy, hit him in the eye, for reasons which will be apparent later on. he saw me and advanced timidly. i invited him seductively to the only other chair, and "what's the trouble?" said i. "i wanted to see you," said he. "i am me," said i. "i--i--i thought you would be quite otherwise," said he. "i am, on the contrary, completely this way," said i. "sit still, take your time and tell me all about it." he wriggled tremulously for three minutes, and coughed again. i surveyed him, and waited developments. the bulge under the bosom crackled. then i frowned. at the end of three minutes he began. "i wanted to see what you were like," said he. i inclined my head stiffly, as though all london habitually climbed the storeys on the same errand and rather wearied me. then he delivered himself of a speech which he had evidently got by heart. he flushed painfully in the delivery. "i am flattered," i said at the conclusion. "it's beastly gratifying. what do you want?" "advice, if you will be so good," said the young man. "then you had better go somewhere else," said i. the young man turned pink. "but i thought, after i had read your works--all your works, on my word--i had hoped that you would understand me, and i really have come for advice." the bulge crackled more ominously than ever. "i understand perfectly," said i. "you are oppressed with vague and nameless longings, are you not?" "i am, terribly," said he. "you do not wish to be as other men are? you desire to emerge from the common herd, to make your mark, and so forth?" "yes," said he in an awestricken whisper. "that is my desire." "also," said i, "you love, excessively, in several places at once cooks, housemaids, governesses, schoolgirls, and the aunts of other people." "but one only," said he, and the pink deepened to beetroot. "consequently," said i, "you have written much--you have written verses." "it was to teach me to write prose, only to teach me to write prose," he murmured. "you do it yourself, because i have bought your works--all your works." he spoke as if he had purchased dunghills _en bloc_. "we will waive that question," i said loftily. "produce the verses." "they--they aren't exactly verses," said the young man, plunging his hand into his bosom. "i beg your pardon, i meant will you be good enough to read your five-act tragedy." "how--how in the world did you know?" said the young man, more impressed than ever. he unearthed his tragedy, the title of which i have given, and began to read. i felt as though i were walking in a dream; having been till then ignorant of the fact that earth held young men who held five-act tragedies in their insides. the young man gave me the whole of the performance, from the preliminary scene, where nothing more than an eruption of vesuvius occurs to mar the serenity of the manager, till the very end, where the roman sentry of pompeii is slowly banked up with ashes in the presence of the audience, and dies murmuring through his helmet-vizor: "s.p.q.r.r.i.p.r.s.v.p.," or words to that effect. for three hours and one-half he read to me. and then i made a mistake. "sir," said i, "who's your ma and pa?" "i haven't got any," said he, and his lower lip quivered. "where do you live?" i said. "at the back of tarporley mews," said he. "how?" said i. "on eleven shillings a week," said he. "i was pretty well educated, and if you don't stay too long they will let you read the books in the holywell street stalls." "and you wasted your money buying my books," said i with a lump the size of a bolster in my throat. "i got them second-hand, four and sixpence," said he, "and some i borrowed." then i collapsed. i didn't weep, but i took the tragedy and put it in the fire, and called myself every name that i knew. this caused the young man to sob audibly, partly from emotion and partly from lack of food. i took off my hat to him before i showed him out, and we went to a restaurant and i arranged things generally on a financial basis. would that i could let the tale stop here. but i cannot. three days later a man came to see me on business, an objectionable man of uncompromising truth. just before he departed he said: "d' you know anything about the struggling author of a tragedy called 'the betrayal of confidences'?" "yes," said i. "one of the few poor souls who in the teeth of grinding poverty keep alight." "at the back of tarporley mews," said he. "on eleven shillings a week." "on the mischief!" said i. "he didn't happen to tell you that he considered you the finest, subtlest, truest, and so forth of all the living so forths, did he?" "he may have said something out of the fulness of an overladen heart. you know how unbridled is the enthusiasm of----" "young gentlemen who buy your books with their last farthing. you didn't soak it all in by any chance, give him a good meal and half a sovereign as well, did you?" "i own up," i said. "i did all that and more. but how do you know?" "because he victimised me in the same way a fortnight ago." "thank you for that," i said, "but i burned his disgusting manuscripts. and he wept." "there, unless he keeps a duplicate, you have scored one." but considering the matter impartially, it seems to me that the game is not more than "fifteen all" in any light. it makes me blush to think about it. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," no. ix.] the new dispensation--i[ ] london in a fog--november things have happened--but that is neither here nor there. what i urgently require is a servant--a nice, fat mussulman _khitmatgar_, who is not above doing bearer's work on occasion. such a man i would go down to southampton or tilbury to meet, would usher tenderly into a first-class carriage (i always go third myself), and wrap in the warmest of flannel. he should be "_jenab_" and i would be "_o tum_." when he died, as he assuredly would in this weather, i would bury him in my best back garden and write mortuary verses for publication in the _koh-i-nur_, or whatever vernacular paper he might read. i want, in short, a servant; and this is why i am writing to you. the english, who, by the way, are unmitigated barbarians, maintain cotton-print housemaids to do work which is the manifest portion of a man. besides which, no properly constructed person cares to see a white woman waiting upon his needs, filling coal-scuttles (these are very mysterious beasts) and tidying rooms. the young homebred englishman does not object, and one of the most tantalising sights in the world is that of the young man of the house--the son newly introduced to shaving-water and great on the subject of maintaining authority--it is tantalising, i say, to see this young cub hectoring a miserable little slavey for not having lighted a fire or put his slippers in their proper place. the next time a big, bold man from the frontier comes home i shall hire him to kick a few young gentlemen of my acquaintance all round their own drawing-rooms while i lecture on my theory that this sort of thing accounts for the perceptible lack of chivalry in the modern englishman. now, if you or i or anybody else raved over and lectured at kadir baksh, or ram singh, or jagesa on the necessity of obeying orders and the beauty of reverencing our noble selves, our men would laugh; or if the lecture struck them as too long-winded would ask us if our livers were out of order and recommend _dawai_. the housemaid must stand with her eyes on the ground while the young whelp sticks his hands under the tail of his dressing-gown and explains her duty to her. this makes me ill and sick--sick for kadir baksh, who rose from the earth when i called him, who knew the sequence of my papers and the ordering of my paltry garments, and, i verily believed, loved me not altogether for the sake of lucre. he said he would come with me to _belait_ because, "though the sahib says he will never return to india, yet i know, and all the other _nauker log_ know, that return is his fate." being a fool, i left kadir baksh behind, and now i am alone with housemaids, who will under no circumstances sleep on the mat outside the door. even as i write, one of these persons is cleaning up my room. kadir baksh would have done his work without noise. she tramps and scuffles; and, what is much worse, snuffles horribly. kadir baksh would have saluted me cheerfully and began some sort of a yarn of the "it hath reached me, o auspicious king!" order, and perhaps we should have debated over the worthlessness of dunni, the _sais_, or the chances of a little cold-weather expedition, or the wisdom of retaining a fresh _chaprassi_--some intimate friend of kadir baksh. but now i have no horses and no _chaprassis_, and this smutty-faced girl glares at me across the room as though she expected i was going to eat her. she must have a soul of her own--a life of her own--and perhaps a few amusements. i can't get at these things. she says: "ho, yuss," and "ho, no," and if i hadn't heard her chattering to the lift-boy on the stairs i should think that her education stopped at these two phrases. now, i knew all about kadir baksh, his hopes and his savings--his experiences in the past, and the health of the little ones. he was a man--a human man remarkably like myself, and he knew that as well as i. a housemaid is of course not a man, but she might at least be a woman. my wanderings about this amazing heathen city have brought me into contact with very many english _mem sahibs_ who seem to be eaten up with the fear of letting their servants get "above their position," or "presume," or do something which would shake the foundations of the four-mile cab radius. they seem to carry on a sort of cat-and-mouse war when the husband is at office and they have nothing much to do. later, at places where their friends assemble, they recount the campaign, and the other women purr approvingly and say: "you did quite right, my dear. it is evident that she forgets her place." all this is edifying to the stranger, and gives him a great idea of the dignity that has to be bolstered and buttressed, eight hours of the twenty-four, against the incendiary attacks of an eighteen-pound including-beer-money sleeps-in-a-garret-at-the-top-of-the-house servant-girl. there is a fine-crusted, slave-holding instinct in the hearts of a good many deep-bosomed matrons--a "throw back" to the times when we trafficked in black ivory. at tea-tables and places where they eat muffins it is called dignity. now, your kadir baksh or my kadir baksh, who is a downtrodden and oppressed heathen (the young gentlemen who bullyrag white women assure me that we are in the habit of kicking our dependents and beating them with umbrellas daily), would ask for his _chits_, and probably say something sarcastic ere he drifted out of the compound gate, if you nagged or worried his noble self. he does not know much about the meaner forms of dignity, but he is entirely sound on the subject of _izzat_; and the fact of his cracking an azure and oriental jest with you in the privacy of your dressing-room, or seeing you at your incoherent worst when you have an attack of fever, does not in the least affect his general deportment in public, where he knows that the honour of his sahib is his own honour, and dons a new _kummerbund_ on the strength of it. i have tried to deal with those housemaids in every possible way. to sling a blunt "annie" or "mary" or "jane" at a girl whose only fault is that she is a heavy-handed incompetent, strikes me as rather an insult, seeing that the girl may have a brother, and that if you had a sister who was a servant you would object to her being howled at upstairs and downstairs by her given name. but only ladies' maids are entitled to their surnames. they are not nice people as a caste, and they regard the housemaids as the _chamar_ regards the _mehter_. consequently, i have to call these girls by their christian names, and cock my feet up on a chair when they are cleaning the grate, and pass them in the halls in the morning as though they didn't exist. now, the morning salutation of your kadir baksh or my kadir is a performance which turveydrop might envy. these persons don't understand a nod; they think it as bad as a wink, i believe. respect and courtesy are lost upon them, and i suppose i must gather my dressing-gown into a tail and swear at them in the bloodless voice affected by the british female who--have i mentioned this?--is a highly composite heathen when she comes in contact with her sister clay downstairs. the softer methods lay one open to harder suspicions. not long ago there was trouble among my shirts. i fancied buttons grew on neck-bands. kadir baksh and the _durzie_ encouraged me in the belief. when the lead-coloured linen (they cannot wash, by the way, in this stronghold of infidels) shed its buttons i cast about for a means of renewal. there was a housemaid, and she was not very ugly, and i thought she could sew. i knew i could not. therefore i strove to ingratiate myself with her, believing that a little interest, combined with a little capital, would fix those buttons more firmly than anything else. subsequently, and after an interval--the buttons were dropping like autumn leaves--i kissed her. the buttons were attached at once. so, unluckily, was the housemaid, for i gathered that she looked forward to a lifetime of shirt-sewing in an official capacity, and my revenue board contemplated no additional establishment. my shirts are buttonsome, but my character is blasted. oh, i wish i had kadir baksh! this is only the first instalment of my troubles. the heathen in these parts do not understand me; so if you will allow i will come to you for sympathy from time to time. i am a child of calamity. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. viii.] the new dispensation--ii[ ] writing of kadir baksh so wrought up my feelings that i could not rest till i had at least made an attempt to get a _budli_ of some sort. the black man is essential to my comfort. i fancied i might in this city of barbarism catch a brokendown native strayed from his home and friends, who would be my friend and humble pardner--the sort of man, y' know, who would sleep on a rug somewhere near my chambers (i have forty things to tell you about chambers, but they come later), and generally look after my things. in the intervals of labour i would talk to him in his own tongue, and we would go abroad together and explore london. do you know the albert docks? the british-india steamers go thence to the sunshine. they sometimes leave a lascar or two on the wharf, and, in fact, the general tone of the population thereabouts is brown and umber. i was in no case to be particular. anything dusky would do for me, so long as it could talk hindustani and sew buttons. i went to the docks and walked about generally among the railway lines and packing-cases, till i found a man selling tooth-combs, which is not a paying trade. he was ragged even to furriness, and very unwashed. but he came from the east. "what are you?" i said, and the look of the missionary that steals over me in moments of agitation deluded that tooth-comb man into answering, "sar, i am native ki-li-sti-an," but he put five more syllables into the last word. there is no christianity in the docks worth a tooth-comb. "i don't want your beliefs. i want your _jat_," said i. "i am tamil," said he, "and my name is ramasawmy." it was an awful thing to lower oneself to the level of a colonel of the madras army, and come down to being tended by a ramasawmy; but beggars cannot be choosers. i pointed out to him that the tooth-comb trade was a thing lightly to be dropped and taken up. he might injure his health by a washing, but he could not much hurt his prospects by coming along with me and trying his hand at bearer's work. "could he work?" oh, yes, he didn't mind work. he had been a servant in his time. several servants, in fact. "could he wash himself?" "ye-es," he might do that if i gave him a coat--a thick coat--afterwards, and especially took care of the tooth-combs, for they were his little all. "had he any character of any kind?" he thought for a minute and then said cheerfully: "not a little dam." thereat i loved him, because a man who can speak the truth in minor matters may be trusted with important things, such as shirts. we went home together till we struck a public bath, mercifully divided into three classes. i got him to go into the third without much difficulty. when he came out he was in the way of cleanliness, and before he had time to expostulate i ran him into the second. into the first he would not go till i had bought him a cheap ulster. he came out almost clean. that cost me three shillings altogether. the ulster was half a sovereign, and some other clothes were thirty shillings. even these things could not hide from me that he looked an unusually villainous creature. at the chambers the trouble began. the people in charge had race prejudices very strongly, and i had to point out that he was a civilised native christian anxious to improve his english--it was fluent but unchastened--before they would give him some sort of a crib to lie down in. the housemaids called him the camel. i introduced him as "the tamil," but they knew nothing of the ethnological sub-divisions of india. they called him "that there beastly camel," and i saw by the light in his eye he understood only too well. coming up the staircase he confided to me his views about the housemaids. he had lived at the docks too long. i said they weren't. he said they were. then i showed him his duties, and he stood long in thought before the wardrobe. he evidently knew more than a little of the work, but whenever he came to a more than unusually dilapidated garment, he said: "no good for you, _i_ take"; and he took. then he put all the buttons on in the smoking of a pipe, and asked if there was anything else. i weakly said "no." he said: "good-bye," and faded out of the house. the housekeeper of the chambers said he would never return. but he did. at three in the morning home he came, and, naturally, possessing no latch-key, rang the bell. a policeman interfered, taking him for a burglar, and i was roused by the racket. i explained he was my servant, and the policeman said: "he do swear wonderful. 'tain't any language. i know most of it, but some i've heard at poplar." then i dragged the camel upstairs. he was quite sober, and said he had been waiting at the docks. he must wait at the docks every time a british-india steamer came in. a lascar on the _rewah_ had stabbed him in the side three voyages ago, and he was waiting for his man. "maybe he have died," he said; "but if he have not died i catch him and cut his liver out." then he curled himself up on the mat, and slept as noiselessly as a child. next morning he inspected the humble breakfast bloater, which did not meet with his approval, for he instantly cut it in two pieces, fried it with butter, dusted it with pepper, and miraculously made of it a dish fit for a king. when the shock-headed boy came to take away the breakfast things, he counted every piece of crockery into his quaking hand and said: "if you break one dam thing i cut your dam liver out and fly _him_ with butter." consequently, the housemaids said they were not going to clean the rooms as long as the camel abode within. the camel put his head out of the door and said they need not. he cleaned the rooms with his own hand and without noise, filled my pipe, made the bed, filled a pipe for himself, and sat down on the hearth-rug while i worked. when thought carried him away to the lascar of the _rewah_, he would brandish the poker or take out his knife and whet it on the brickwork of the grate. it was a soothing sound to work to. at one o'clock he said that the _chyebassa_ would be in, and he must go. he demanded no money, saw that my tiffin was served, and fled. he returned at six o'clock singing a hymn. a lascar on the _chyebassa_ had told him that the _rewah_ was due in four days, and that his friend was not dead, but ripe for the knife. that night he got very drunk while i was out, and frightened the housemaids. all the chambers were in an uproar, but he crawled out of the skylight on the roof, and sat there till i came home. in the dawn he was very penitent. he had misarranged his drink: the original intention being to sleep it off on my hearth-rug, but a housemaid had invited a friend up to the chambers to look at him, and the whispered comments and giggles made him angry. all next day he was restless but attentive. he urged me to fly to foreign shores, and take him with me. when other inducements failed, he reiterated that he was a "native ki-lis-ti-an," and whetted his knife more furiously than ever. "you do not like this place. _i_ do not like this place. let us travel _dam_ quick. let us go on the sea. _i_ cook blotters." i told him this was impossible, but that if he stayed in my service we might later go abroad and enjoy ourselves. but he would not rest and sleep on the rug and tend my shirts. on the morning of the _rewah's_ arrival he went away, and from his absence i fancied he had fallen into the hands of the law. but at midnight he came back, weak and husky. "have got him," said he simply, and dragged his ulster down from the wall, wrapping it very tightly round him. "now i go 'way." he went into the bedroom, and began counting over the tale of the week's wash, the boots, and so forth. "all right," he called into the other room. then came in to say good-bye, walking slowly. "what's your name, marshter?" said he. i told him. he bowed and descended the staircase painfully. i had not paid him a penny, and since he did not ask for it, counted on his returning at least for wages. it was not till next morning that i found big dark drops on most of my clean shirts, and the housemaid complained of a trail of blood all down the staircase. "the camel" had received payment in full from other hands than mine. footnotes: [footnote : "turnovers," vol. viii.] the last of the stories[ ] _wherefore i perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion._ --_ecc._ iii, . "kench with a long hand, lazy one," i said to the punkah coolie. "but i am tired," said the coolie. "then go to jehannum and get another man to pull," i replied, which was rude and, when you come to think of it, unnecessary. "happy thought--go to jehannum!" said a voice at my elbow. i turned and saw, seated on the edge of my bed, a large and luminous devil. "i'm not afraid," i said. "you're an illusion bred by too much tobacco and not enough sleep. if i look at you steadily for a minute you will disappear. you are an _ignis fatuus_." "fatuous yourself!" answered the devil blandly. "do you mean to say you don't know _me_?" he shrivelled up to the size of a blob of sediment on the end of a pen, and i recognised my old friend the devil of discontent, who lived in the bottom of the inkpot, but emerges half a day after each story has been printed with a host of useless suggestions for its betterment. "oh, it's you, is it?" i said. "you're not due till next week. get back to your inkpot." "hush!" said the devil. "i have an idea." "too late, as usual. i know your ways." "no. it's a perfectly practicable one. your swearing at the coolie suggested it. did you ever hear of a man called dante--charmin' fellow, friend o' mine?" "'dante once prepared to paint a picture,'" i quoted. "yes. i inspired that notion--but never mind. are you willing to play dante to my virgil? i can't guarantee a nine-circle inferno, any more than _you_ can turn out a cantoed epic, but there's absolutely no risk and--it will run to three columns at least." "but what sort of hell do you own?" i said. "i fancied your operations were mostly above ground. you have no jurisdiction over the dead." "sainted leopardi!" rapped the devil, resuming natural size. "is _that_ all you know? i'm proprietor of one of the largest hells in existence--the limbo of lost endeavor, where the souls of all the characters go." "characters? what characters?" "all the characters that are drawn in books, painted in novels, sketched in magazine articles, thumb-nailed in _feuilletons_ or in any way created by anybody and everybody who has had the fortune or misfortune to put his or her writings into print." "that sounds like a quotation from a prospectus. what do you herd characters for? aren't there enough souls in the universe?" "who possess souls and who do not? for aught you can prove, man may be soulless and the creatures he writes about immortal. anyhow, about a hundred years after printing became an established nuisance, the loose characters used to blow about interplanetary space in legions which interfered with traffic. so they were collected, and their charge became mine by right. would you care to see them? _your own are there._" "that decides me. but _is_ it hotter than northern india?" "on my devildom, no. put your arms round my neck and sit tight. i'm going to dive!" he plunged from the bed headfirst into the floor. there was a smell of jail-_durrie_ and damp earth; and then fell the black darkness of night. * * * * * we stood before a door in a topless wall, from the further side of which came faintly the roar of infernal fires. "but you said there was no danger!" i cried in an extremity of terror. "no more there is," said the devil. "that's only the furnace of first edition. will you go on? no other human being has set foot here in the flesh. let me bring the door to your notice. pretty design, isn't it? a joke of the master's." i shuddered, for the door was nothing more than a coffin, the backboard knocked out, set on end in the thickness of the wall. as i hesitated, the silence of space was cut by a sharp, shrill whistle, like that of a live shell, which rapidly grew louder and louder. "get away from the door," said the devil of discontent quickly. "here's a soul coming to its place." i took refuge under the broad vans of the devil's wings. the whistle rose to an ear-splitting shriek and a naked soul flashed past me. "always the same," said the devil quietly. "these little writers are _so_ anxious to reach their reward. h'm, i don't think he likes _his'n_, though." a yell of despair reached my ears and i shuddered afresh. "who was he?" i asked. "hack-writer for a pornographic firm in belgium, exporting to london, you'll understand presently--and now we'll go in," said the devil. "i must apologise for that creature's rudeness. he should have stopped at the distance-signal for line-clear. you can hear the souls whistling there now." "are they the souls of men?" i whispered. "yes--writer-men. that's why they are so shrill and querulous. welcome to the limbo of lost endeavour!" they passed into a domed hall, more vast than visions could embrace, crowded to its limit by men, women and children. round the eye of the dome ran, a flickering fire, that terrible quotation from job: "oh, that mine enemy had written a book!" "neat, isn't it?" said the devil, following my glance. "another joke of the master's. man of _us_, y' know. in the old days we used to put the characters into a disused circle of dante's inferno, but they grew overcrowded. so balzac and théophile gautier were commissioned to write up this building. it took them three years to complete, and is one of the finest under earth. don't attempt to describe it unless you are _quite_ sure you are equal to balzac and gautier in collaboration. look at the crowds and tell me what you think of them." i looked long and earnestly, and saw that many of the multitude were cripples. they walked on their heels or their toes, or with a list to the right or left. a few of them possessed odd eyes and parti-coloured hair; more threw themselves into absurd and impossible attitudes; and every fourth woman seemed to be weeping. "who are these?" i said. "mainly the population of three-volume novels that never reach the six-shilling stage. see that beautiful girl with one grey eye and one brown, and the black and yellow hair? let her be an awful warning to you how you correct your proofs. she was created by a careless writer a month ago, and he changed all colours in the second volume. so she came here as you see her. there will be trouble when she meets her author. he can't alter her now, and she says she'll accept no apology." "but when will she meet her author?" "not in _my_ department. do you notice a general air of expectancy among all the characters? they are waiting for their authors. look! that explains the system better than i can." a lovely maiden, at whose feet i would willingly have fallen and worshipped, detached herself from the crowd and hastened to the door through which i had just come. there was a prolonged whistle without, a soul dashed through the coffin and fell upon her neck. the girl with the parti-coloured hair eyed the couple enviously as they departed arm in arm to the other side of the hall. "that man," said the devil, "wrote one magazine story, of twenty-four pages, ten years ago when he was desperately in love with a flesh and blood woman. he put all his heart into the work, and created the girl you have just seen. the flesh and blood woman married some one else and died--it's a way they have--but the man has this girl for his very own, and she will everlastingly grow sweeter." "then the characters are independent?" "slightly! have you never known one of your characters--even yours--get beyond control as soon as they are made?" "that's true. where are those two happy creatures going?" "to the levels. you've heard of authors finding their levels? we keep all the levels here. as each writer enters, he picks up his characters, or they pick _him_ up, as the case may be, and to the levels he goes." "i should like to see----" "so you shall, when you come through that door a second time--whistling. i can't take you there now." "do you keep only the characters of living scribblers in this hall?" "we should be crowded out if we didn't draft them off somehow. step this way and i'll take you to the master. one moment, though. there's john ridd with lorna doone, and there are mr. maliphant and the bormalacks--clannish folk, those besant characters--don't let the twins talk to you about literature and art. come along. what's here?" the white face of mr. john oakhurst, gambler, broke through the press. "i wish to explain," said he in a level voice, "that had i been consulted i should never have blown out my brains with the duchess and all that poker flat lot. i wish to add that the only woman i ever loved was the wife of brown of calaveras." he pressed his hand behind him suggestively. "all right, mr. oakhurst," i said hastily; "i believe you." "_kin_ you set it right?" he asked, dropping into the doric of the gulches. i caught a trigger's cloth-muffled click. "just heavens!" i groaned. "must i be shot for the sake of another man's characters?" oakhurst levelled his revolver at my head, but the weapon was struck up by the hand of yuba bill. "you durned fool!" said the stage-driver. "hevn't i told you no one but a blamed idiot shoots at sight _now_? let the galoot go. you kin see by his eyes he's no party to your matrimonial arrangements." oakhurst retired with an irreproachable bow, but in my haste to escape i fell over caliban, his head in a melon and his tame orc under his arm. he spat like a wildcat. "manners none, customs beastly," said the devil. "we'll take the bishop with us. they all respect the bishop." and the great bishop blougram joined us, calm and smiling, with the news, for my private ear, that mr. gigadibs despised him no longer. we were arrested by a knot of semi-nude bacchantes kissing a clergyman. the bishop's eyes twinkled, and i turned to the devil for explanation. "that's robert elsmere--what's left of him," said the devil. "those are french _feuilleton_ women and scourings of the opera comique. he has been lecturing 'em, and they don't like it." "he lectured _me_!" said the bishop with a bland smile. "he has been a nuisance ever since he came here. by the holy law of proportion, he had the audacity to talk to the master! called him a 'pot-bellied barbarian'! that is why he is walking so stiffly now," said the devil. "listen! marie pigeonnier is swearing deathless love to him. on my word, we ought to segregate the french characters entirely. by the way, your regiment came in very handy for zola's importations." "my regiment?" i said. "how do you mean?" "you wrote something about the tyneside tail-twisters, just enough to give the outline of the regiment, and of course it came down here--one thousand and eighty strong. i told it off in hollow squares to pen up the rougon-macquart series. there they are." i looked and saw the tyneside tail-twisters ringing an inferno of struggling, shouting, blaspheming men and women in the costumes of the second empire. now and again the shadowy ranks brought down their butts on the toes of the crowd inside the square, and shrieks of pain followed. "you should have indicated your men more clearly; they are hardly up to their work," said the devil. "if the zola tribe increase, i'm afraid i shall have to use up your two companies of the black tyrone and two of the old regiment." "i am proud----" i began. "go slow," said the devil. "you won't be half so proud in a little while, and i don't think much of your regiments, anyway. but they are good enough to fight the french. can you hear coupeau raving in the left angle of the square? he used to run about the hall seeing pink snakes, till the children's story-book characters protested. come along!" never since caxton pulled his first proof and made for the world a new and most terrible god of labour had mortal man such an experience as mine when i followed the devil of discontent through the shifting crowds below the motto of the dome. a few--a very few--of the faces were of old friends, but there were thousands whom i did not recognise. men in every conceivable attire and of every possible nationality, deformed by intention, or the impotence of creation that could not create--blind, unclean, heroic, mad, sinking under the weight of remorse, or with eyes made splendid by the light of love and fixed endeavour; women fashioned in ignorance and mourning the errors of their creator, life and thought at variance with body and soul; perfect women such as walk rarely upon this earth, and horrors that were women only because they had not sufficient self-control to be fiends; little children, fair as the morning, who put their hands into mine and made most innocent confidences; loathsome, lank-haired infant-saints, curious as to the welfare of my soul, and delightfully mischievous boys, generalled by the irrepressible tom sawyer, who played among murderers, harlots, professional beauties, nuns, italian bandits and politicians of state. the ordered peace of arthur's court was broken up by the incursions of mr. john wellington wells, and dagonet, the jester, found that his antics drew no attention so long as the "dealer in magic and spells," taking tristram's harp, sang patter-songs to the round table; while a zulu impi, headed by allan quatermain, wheeled and shouted in sham fight for the pleasure of little lord fauntleroy. every century and every type was jumbled in the confusion of one colossal fancy-ball where all the characters were living their parts. "aye, look long," said the devil. "you will never be able to describe it, and the next time you come you won't have the chance. look long, and look at"--good's passing with a maiden of the zu-vendi must have suggested the idea--"look at their legs." i looked, and for the second time noticed the lameness that seemed to be almost universal in the limbo of lost endeavour. brave men and stalwart to all appearance had one leg shorter than the other; some paced a few inches above the floor, never touching it, and others found the greatest difficulty in preserving their feet at all. the stiffness and laboured gait of these thousands was pitiful to witness. i was sorry for them. i told the devil as much. "h'm," said he reflectively, "that's the world's work. rather cockeye, ain't it? they do everything but stand on their feet. _you_ could improve them, i suppose?" there was an unpleasant sneer in his tone, and i hastened to change the subject. "i'm tired of walking," i said. "i want to see some of my own characters, and go on to the master, whoever he may be, afterwards." "reflect," said the devil. "are you certain--do you know how many they be?" "no--but i want to see them. that's what i came for." "very well. don't abuse me if you don't like the view. there are one-and-fifty of your make up to date, and--it's rather an appalling thing to be confronted with fifty-one children. however, here's a special favourite of yours. go and shake hands with her!" a limp-jointed, staring-eyed doll was hirpling towards me with a strained smile of recognition. i felt that i knew her only too well--if indeed she were she. "keep her off, devil!" i cried, stepping back. "i never made _that_!" "'she began to weep and she began to cry, lord ha' mercy on me, this is none of i!' you're very rude to--mrs. hauksbee, and she wants to speak to you," said the devil. my face must have betrayed my dismay, for the devil went on soothingly: "that's as she _is_, remember. i _knew_ you wouldn't like it. now what will you give if i make her as she ought to be? no, i don't want your soul, thanks. i have it already, and many others of better quality. will you, when you write your story, own that i am the best and greatest of all the devils?" the doll was creeping nearer. "yes," i said hurriedly. "anything you like. only i can't stand her in that state." "you'll _have_ to when you come next again. look! no connection with jekyll and hyde!" the devil pointed a lean and inky finger towards the doll, and lo! radiant, bewitching, with a smile of dainty malice, her high heels clicking on the floor like castanets, advanced mrs. hauksbee as i had imagined her in the beginning. "ah!" she said. "you are here so soon? not dead yet? that will come. meantime, a thousand congratulations. and now, what do you think of me?" she put her hands on her hips, revealed a glimpse of the smallest foot in simla and hummed: "'just look at that--just look at this! and then you'll see i'm not amiss.'" "she'll use exactly the same words when you meet her next time," said the devil warningly. "you dowered her with any amount of vanity, if you left out----excuse me a minute! i'll fetch up the rest of your menagerie." but i was looking at mrs. hauksbee. "well?" she said. "_am_ i what you expected?" i forgot the devil and all his works, forgot that this was not the woman i had made, and could only murmur rapturously: "by jove! you _are_ a beauty." then, incautiously: "and you stand on your feet." "good heavens!" said mrs. hauksbee. "would you, at my time of life, have me stand on my head?" she folded her arms and looked me up and down. i was grinning imbecilely--the woman was so alive. "talk," i said absently; "i want to hear you talk." "i am not used to being spoken to like a coolie," she replied. "never mind," i said, "that may be for outsiders, but i made you and i've a right----" "you have a right? you made me? my dear sir, if i didn't know that we should bore each other so inextinguishably hereafter i should read you an hour's lecture this instant. you made me! i suppose you will have the audacity to pretend that you understand me--that you _ever_ understood me. oh, man, man--foolish man! if you only knew!" "is that the person who thinks he understands us, loo?" drawled a voice at her elbow. the devil had returned with a cloud of witnesses, and it was mrs. mallowe who was speaking. "i've touched 'em all up," said the devil in an aside. "you couldn't stand 'em raw. but don't run away with the notion that they are your work. i show you what they ought to be. you must find out for yourself how to make 'em so." "am i allowed to remodel the batch--up above?" i asked anxiously. "_litera scripta manet._ that's in the delectus and eternity." he turned round to the semi-circle of characters: "ladies and gentlemen, who are all a great deal better than you should be by virtue of _my_ power, let me introduce you to your maker. if you have anything to say to him, you can say it." "what insolence!" said mrs. hauksbee between her teeth. "this isn't a peterhoff drawing-room. i haven't the slightest intention of being leveed by this person. polly, come here and we'll watch the animals go by." she and mrs. mallowe stood at my side. i turned crimson with shame, for it is an awful thing to see one's characters in the solid. "wal," said gilead p. beck as he passed, "i would not be you at this _pre_-cise moment of time, not for all the ile in the univarsal airth. _no_, sirr! i thought my dinner-party was soul-shatterin', but it's mush--mush and milk--to your circus. let the good work go on!" i turned to the company and saw that they were men and women, standing upon their feet as folks should stand. again i forgot the devil, who stood apart and sneered. from the distant door of entry i could hear the whistle of arriving souls, from the semi-darkness at the end of the hall came the thunderous roar of the furnace of first edition, and everywhere the restless crowds of characters muttered and rustled like windblown autumn leaves. but i looked upon my own people and was perfectly content as man could be. "i have seen you study a new dress with just such an expression of idiotic beatitude," whispered mrs. mallowe to mrs. hauksbee. "hush!" said the latter. "he thinks he understands." then to me: "please trot them out. eternity is long enough in all conscience, but that is no reason for wasting it. _pro_-ceed, or shall i call them up? mrs. vansuythen, mr. boult, mrs. boult, captain kurrel and the major!" the european population in kashima in the dosehri hills, the actors in the wayside comedy, moved towards me; and i saw with delight that they were human. "so you wrote about us?" said mrs. boult. "about my confession to my husband and my hatred of that vansuythen woman? did you think that you understood? are _all_ men such fools?" "that woman is bad form," said mrs. hauksbee, "but she speaks the truth. i wonder what these soldiers have to say." gunner barnabas and private shacklock stopped, saluted, and hoped i would take no offence if they gave it as their opinion that i had not "got them down quite right." i gasped. a spurred hussar succeeded, his wife on his arm. it was captain gadsby and minnie, and close behind them swaggered jack mafflin, the brigadier-general in his arms. "had the cheek to try to describe our life, had you?" said gadsby carelessly. "ha-hmm! s'pose he understood, minnie?" mrs. gadsby raised her face to her husband and murmured: "i'm _sure_ he didn't, pip," while poor dear mamma, still in her riding-habit, hissed: "i'm sure he didn't understand _me_." and these also went their way. one after another they filed by--trewinnard, the pet of his department; otis yeere, lean and lanthorn-jawed; crook o'neil and bobby wick arm in arm; janki meah, the blind miner in the jimahari coal fields; afzul khan, the policeman; the murderous pathan horse-dealer, durga dass; the bunnia, boh da thone; the dacoit, dana da, weaver of false magic; the leander of the barhwi ford; peg barney, drunk as a coot; mrs. delville, the dowd; dinah shadd, large, red-cheeked and resolute; simmons, slane and losson; georgie porgie and his burmese helpmate; a shadow in a high collar, who was all that i had ever indicated of the hawley boy--the nameless men and women who had trod the hill of illusion and lived in the tents of kedar, and last, his majesty the king. each one in passing told me the same tale, and the burden thereof was: "you did not understand." my heart turned sick within me. "where's wee willie winkie?" i shouted. "little children don't lie." a clatter of pony's feet followed, and the child appeared, habited as on the day he rode into afghan territory to warn coppy's love against the "bad men." "i've been playing," he sobbed, "playing on ve levels wiv jackanapes and lollo, an' _he_ says i'm only just borrowed. i'm _isn't_ borrowed. i'm willie wi-_inkie_! vere's coppy?" "'out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,'" whispered the devil, who had drawn nearer. "you know the rest of the proverb. don't look as if you were going to be shot in the morning! here are the last of your gang." i turned despairingly to the three musketeers, dearest of all my children to me--to privates mulvaney, ortheris and learoyd. surely the three would not turn against me as the others had done! i shook hands with mulvaney. "terence, how goes? are _you_ going to make fun of me, too?" "'tis not for me to make fun av you, sorr," said the irishman, "knowin' as i _du_ know, fwat good friends we've been for the matter av three years." "fower," said ortheris, "'twas in the helanthami barricks, h block, we was become acquaint, an' 'ere's thankin' you kindly for all the beer we've drunk twix' that and now." "four ut is, then," said mulvaney. "he an' dinah shadd are your friends, but----" he stood uneasily. "but what?" i said. "savin' your presence, sorr, an' it's more than onwillin' i am to be hurtin' you; you did not ondersthand. on my sowl an' honour, sorr, you did not ondersthand. come along, you two." but ortheris stayed for a moment to whisper: "it's gawd's own trewth, but there's this 'ere to think. 'tain't the bloomin' belt that's wrong, as peg barney sez, when he's up for bein' dirty on p'rade. 'tain't the bloomin' belt, sir; it's the bloomin' pipeclay." ere i could seek an explanation he had joined his companions. "for a private soldier, a singularly shrewd man," said mrs. hauksbee, and she repeated ortheris's words. the last drop filled my cup, and i am ashamed to say that i bade her be quiet in a wholly unjustifiable tone. i was rewarded by what would have been a notable lecture on propriety, had i not said to the devil: "change that woman to a d----d doll again! change 'em all back as they were--as they are. i'm sick of them." "poor wretch!" said the devil of discontent very quietly. "they are changed." the reproof died on mrs. hauksbee's lips, and she moved away marionette-fashion, mrs. mallowe trailing after her. i hastened after the remainder of the characters, and they were changed indeed--even as the devil had said, who kept at my side. they limped and stuttered and staggered and mouthed and staggered round me, till i could endure no more. "so i am the master of this idiotic puppet-show, am i?" i said bitterly, watching mulvaney trying to come to attention by spasms. "_in saecula saeculorum_," said the devil, bowing his head; "and you needn't kick, my dear fellow, because they will concern no one but yourself by the time you whistle up to the door. stop reviling me and uncover. here's the master!" uncover! i would have dropped on my knees, had not the devil prevented me, at sight of the portly form of maitre françois rabelais, some time curé of meudon. he wore a smoke-stained apron of the colours of gargantua. i made a sign which was duly returned. "an entered apprentice in difficulties with his rough ashlar, worshipful sir," explained the devil. i was too angry to speak. said the master, rubbing his chin: "are those things yours?" "even so, worshipful sir," i muttered, praying inwardly that the characters would at least keep quiet while the master was near. he touched one or two thoughtfully, put his hand upon my shoulder and started: "by the great bells of notre dame, you are in the flesh--the warm flesh!--the flesh i quitted so long--ah, so long! and you fret and behave unseemly because of these shadows! listen now! i, even i, would give my three, panurge, gargantua and pantagruel, for one little hour of the life that is in you. and _i_ am the master!" but the words gave me no comfort. i could hear mrs. mallowe's joints cracking--or it might have been merely her stays. "worshipful sir, he will not believe that," said the devil. "who live by shadows lust for shadows. tell him something more to his need." the master grunted contemptuously: "and he is flesh and blood! know this, then. the first law is to make them stand upon their feet, and the second is to make them stand upon their feet, and the third is to make them stand upon their feet. but, for all that, trajan is a fisher of frogs." he passed on, and i could hear him say to himself: "one hour--one minute--of life in the flesh, and i would sell the great perhaps thrice over!" "well," said the devil, "you've made the master angry, seen about all there is to be seen, except the furnace of first edition, and, as the master is in charge of that, i should avoid it. now you'd better go. you know what you ought to do?" "i don't need all hell----" "pardon me. better men than you have called this paradise." "all _hell_, i said, and the master to tell me what i knew before. what i want to know is _how_?" "go and find out," said the devil. we turned to the door, and i was aware that my characters had grouped themselves at the exit. "they are going to give you an ovation. think o' that, now!" said the devil. i shuddered and dropped my eyes, while one-and-fifty voices broke into a wailing song, whereof the words, so far as i recollect, ran: but we brought forth and reared in hours of change, alarm, surprise. what shelter to grow ripe is ours-- what leisure to grow wise? i ran the gauntlet, narrowly missed collision with an impetuous soul (i hoped he liked his characters when he met them), and flung free into the night, where i should have knocked my head against the stars. but the devil caught me. * * * * * the brain-fever bird was fluting across the grey, dewy lawn, and the punkah had stopped again. "go to jehannum and get another man to pull," i said drowsily. "exactly," said a voice from the inkpot. now the proof that this story is absolutely true lies in the fact that there will be no other to follow it. footnotes: [footnote : from "week's news," sept. , .]